Ouroboros, Baby!

by dishrag

Summary:

When good luck hit Eddie, first by Billy Hargrove waking him up in the Upside Down, then by figuring out a plan to actually get back, executing that plan to success and crawling out of Lover's Lake only to find Steve Harrington eating a bag of chips whilst he sat on the front of his car. He didn't know quite what to do with it. He simply sat at the water's edge as the sun went down, breathed in a way he'd almost forgotten how to and watched Billy Hargrove shake Steve mercilessly by the shoulders before Steve dropped his chips and slapped him across the face in shock. 

---

In September 1986, Eddie Munson and Billy Hargrove find themselves on the shore of Lover's Lake, only to be found by Steve Harrington.

(was previously titled 6/18)

Notes:

I changed the title cause i didn't like it. soz

Chapter 1: Re-Birthday

Eddie's birthday was on the second of January. 

His mom and dad would never forget it; they always celebrated. But more often than not, the celebrations of Christmas and his birthday were combined. Gifts he'd receive from the handful of relatives he had in town had tags dangling from them, designating that this was for both occasions. Birthday parties were cancelled due to the fact that nobody had any steam left after the holidays. He usually spent his birthdays with a takeaway pizza and a book his Grandpa had bought for him.

The rest of his life followed a similar pattern. When he ran in the school sports day in sixth grade, he came fourth. He watched as the other children stood on a podium of milk crates and were presented with plastic medals. When he first learned to play the guitar, he played in a group, and there was another boy there called Eddie. It wasn't that nobody liked him; it was just that they liked Eddie One just a little bit more. 

Then his parents split up when his dad got sent to jail. It wasn't for anything too serious, a string of minor misdemeanours and then skipping out on his parole. His mom left him then and there like she had been waiting for any excuse to jump ship. However, he wasn't the only person for that to happen to; in fact, there were at least three other families in Hawkins Trailer Park that he could think of that had been through that exact set of circumstances, give or take on the order of execution. 

Until spring break of 1986, Eddie didn't really have bad luck. It wasn't even a pattern of mild inconveniences. But rather a set of circumstances that saw him be overlooked and over-passed and fly under any radar surveying the town of Hawkins. 

But when bad luck hit Eddie Munson, it hit him hard. Not like a car, or a train or even a plane firing uncontrollably to the ground. It was more like the kinetic energy found when smashing two planets together in an intergalactic game of clackers. He watched someone die on his ceiling, was accused of her murder, got involved in a government conspiracy, got accused of more murders, was chased down by an angry mob, and accused of opening the gates of hell and finally dying. All within the span of about a week. Eddie wasn't one to gloat about his misfortunes, but if he was standing on that milk crate podium for 'worst week ever', he'd be at least third. 

So when good luck hit him, first by Billy Hargrove waking him up in the Upside Down, then by figuring out a plan to actually get back, executing that plan to success and crawling out of Lover's Lake only to find Steve Harrington eating a bag of chips whilst he sat on the front of his car. He didn't know quite what to do with it. He simply sat at the water's edge as the sun went down, breathed in a way he'd almost forgotten how to and watched Billy Hargrove shake Steve mercilessly by the shoulders before Steve dropped his chips and slapped him across the face in shock. 

Bad luck always felt like an explosion, and good luck would be ever so quiet, nondescript even. It felt unfair, but Eddie wasn't exactly in a position to be ungrateful.

 

***

Steve's eyes were darting frantically between Billy in the passenger's seat and the rearview mirror to watch Eddie. Occasionally he'd divert one of his darts to the road, but probably not enough for this whole thing to be considered safe driving. 

In addition to his frenetic looks, he'd also mutter, at varying volumes, "Holy fuck." 

Take three long breathes in and no breathes out; he muttered again, "Just like... holy fuck."

When the road turned clear and straight with no other cars in sight, he almost pivoted entirely in his chair to look at Eddie, "This is insane, like actually insane." 

Eddie shrugged, and Billy grinned to himself in the passenger seat. 

"You're both alive," Steve began again and pointed between the two of them, still completely exasperated, "And you're together?"

"Yeah-"

Before Eddie could continue, Billy was leaning forward, turning off the aircon in Steve's car, and turning up the heating. Eddie was distracted momentarily by how Billy's hair looked in the sunset as he wrung it out down the interior of Steve's car.

"Hey, asshole!" Steve sneered and jabbed Billy in the shoulder quickly. 

Billy did nothing in response except try and hide a wolfish grin. 

Then Steve's eyes were back on Eddie, silently encouraging him to continue.

"Yeah, Hargrove found me, patched me up begrudgingly, and then dragged me about the Upside Down for the past six months. It was like the weirdest buddy cop film you've ever seen."

Billy barked out a laugh and swivelled in his seat to face Eddie. He had on his, 'I'm going to threaten you, and it's up to you to figure out if it's idle or not' face on. Eddie had gotten pretty good at the game. The key was treating them all as idle until Billy became oddly ensured by his confidence. It did get him tripped over once and kicked in the shin another time, though.

His thick eyebrow was cocked up as he purred, "Should I have just let you die?" he ran his tongue over his bottom lip before adding, "It's not too late."

It was playful, happy, a threat so obviously idle even a stranger couldn't mistake it for real. He'd never seen Billy like this, so relaxed that it dripped from him like the water from his mud-soaked clothes. 

Still, Eddie shifted a little to allow himself the leg room to kick the back of Billy's chair in retaliation.

"Hey, watch it!" Steve exclaimed. 

And Eddie just spread his legs on either side of the tunnel console and deflated against the middle chair, ignoring Steve entirely. 

Seemingly unperturbed by the fact that nobody had listened to his scolding, he asked, "How did you get out?"

"The gate in Lover's Lake opens like every full moon or some crap. We timed it right and got out."  

Billy's answer was the long and short of it. There was much more to it than that. It took weeks (what seemed like weeks, Vecna, for all his clock imagery, didn't actually have any) of painfully meticulous stakeouts. Billy would just sit there for hours, motionless, flagging up every tiny detail of the behaviour of the gate. What caused it to flinch, or squeeze tighter or even open. Eddie had never met a person so focused. It was mesmerising.

Billy had a plan, and he'd tried it multiple times, but as made evident by the deep gnarled scars all over his body, there was a missing element, and Eddie was a godsend, an angel in leather. Eddie had once called himself that to Billy's face, and he had told him to shut the fuck up. 

The flaw in the plan was that Billy needed to be able to build a platform tall enough to get out of the gate, and even with all his musculature, he couldn't do it alone. The plan also included a kamikaze attempt. If they messed it up, they were sure to be ripped apart. Trying to blow up the gate to propel them up through the lake whilst injuring the living gate enough so the vines didn't follow, was a stroke of insanity come genius that only gave them one shot of escaping. 

And luckily, with a distraction sent out to the bats, and the three Molotov cocktails that had been left behind at the Creel house, the plan worked. 

Eddie exhaled steadily, promising that he would tell Steve the whole story once his nerves had calmed from a deadly shock to a gentle jangle, "We managed to get the bats distracted for long enough that we could make it. For a hive mind, it's not very smart." 

Eddie could see that Billy was smirking from the front seat; he turned in his chair to look at Eddie, eyes wide and pumped full of adrenaline. He slapped his hands together and hooted, "It was fucking amazing, man. I can't believe we did it!"

Immediately, Eddie held out his fist, and Billy bumped it excitedly, probably harder than necessary. He always relished those touches from Billy, even the harsher ones. He secretly hoped that the soft touches he occasionally received from Billy were more frequent. That those touches were not only to tend wounds but to reassure, to calm, even just to hold. He never dared say anything when they were stuck together because there was one thing worse than never being touched gently and that was never being touched at all. He couldn't risk being left alone, nothing was worth that.

Then Billy slumped back into his chair, turned his attention back to Steve, and sneered, "Thanks for coming to look for us by the way, Harrington."

"Why is that on me?" 

And it was a fair question. It wasn't just up to Steve to have tried to find them. They all thought they both were dead after all. Eddie did always wonder if any of them did try and come back for his body. He really hoped they didn't. It would have been a very stupid thing to do after all, and none of them had the right combination of stupid and heroic to try, besides maybe Steve. Maybe Billy knew Steve a little more than he ever let on then. 

"Well, I, for one, was grateful for the vacation from the murder charges," said Eddie as he opened and closed the central box between his legs, "That place was like Costa Del Hell compared to Jason Carver."

As he played mercilessly with the box lid, a nervous tick from idle hands, Steve slammed his hand on the top, holding it shut. Steve didn't say anything other than, "Oh, he died. Jason died."

Eddie was making eye contact with Steve in the rear view mirror when he repeated back, "He died?" Just to make doubly sure. 

Sucking on his lower lip and letting out a loud pop when he was done, Steve explained, "Hawkins got ripped apart when we wounded Vecna, and according to Lucas he literally melted in half."

"Gnarly," whispered Eddie.

He wasn't happy that Carver was dead; wishing death upon someone was a particularly fucked up thing to do, even when that person wished it upon him. He was relieved, though. 

Billy was stroking his lower lip with the knuckle of his crooked thumb when he asked, "Carver was that annoying little asshole from the basketball team, right?"

"Yeah, that was him."

Billy just shrugged and turned on the radio, his life entirely unaffected by the news.

Even though he'd spent six months with Billy, he often forgot that Billy had lived a life outside the Upside Down. He was so hardened and practised when he met Eddie, arms thick with smooth rings of scar tissue, hair long, facial hair kept trimmed with a knife. He clung to an axe like a baby would cling to its mother's finger, he knew precisely how to skin and cook a demobat. It was like he was born there, spawned from a pool of death and decay,  full of survivor's rage. 

So it was strange to see these snippets, vestiges of a life he once lived. It felt less like memories to Eddie and more like a story. One he had told Eddie when the air got particularly choking in their hideout one day.

The car was mostly silent, aside from the quiet hum of the engine around them, the light crackle of the radio trying to bite a station. It was quiet until Steve looked between them once more and stuttered out, "Jesus Christ, I can't believe it," his voice teeming with awe.

It was calm, so calm. 

Until Billy's right hand extended and nipped at the exposed skin on Steve's forearm. Steve's hand flinched off the steering wheel and slapped Billy away. Billy grinned back at him, proud of himself. 

"Ow!"

"Sorry, I thought you were going to say 'somebody pinch me."

Steve's jaw clenched, but Eddie could see his eyes sparkle with something akin to fondness. Billy could feel something swirl in his gut, jealousy, intrigue, perhaps even a gross amalgam of the two. 

Billy's head turned to look out of the window, his face illuminating every so often with the passing of each orange street light, "Where are we going? This isn't the way to your place?"

The strange feeling in his gut intensified; he wanted to lean forward, clasping his hands over both of their shoulders, and ask how many times has Billy been to your house, huh, Steve? It was obvious once Eddie got to know Billy that he felt a certain way about Steve Harrington, it was messy and twisted and hidden amongst layers and layers of thick war paint, but the feeling was there, and it was so obvious when Eddie knew where and how to look. It was easy for Eddie to find because he felt exactly the same way about Steve. 

He had this magnetism, a bewitching allure locked away in his large round eyes. His attraction to Steve was both complex and very simple; there were layers to Steve just as there were to Billy, his selflessness, his snark, his bumbling yet calm demeanour. But there was also a simpleness to him too, the kind of simpleness Eddie could only dream of possessing. It was infuriating when he first met Steve, and the longer he spent around him it became intoxicating. And now? Having come back to life and having to deal with it again. Eddie wasn't sure he'd be able to last the night without saying something. 

Eddie could never really put a finger on what it was about Steve exactly, and he was sure that if he and Billy had the nerve to say what was unspoken out loud, they would be able to figure it out. 

Sheepishly, Steve clicked his tongue and, for once, kept his roaming eyes fixed upon the road. "Well yeah, about that," he began in the cadence of a man whose following words would have his listeners with their heads in their hands in irritation. 

"When Hawkins got, y'know…torn apart. Me and Robin thought it might be a good idea to break into Hawkins PD and burn all the documents relating to Eddie's case." 

Good idea. It certainly was a novel way of using the phrase, Eddie thought. He was also quietly buzzing with delight that his name was even passing Steve's mind, even more so in such a ridiculously idiotic scenario. 

Steve continued to explain himself like he was trying to prove something, even though Eddie just wanted to hear the story, and Billy would rip him a new one regardless of the contents.

"Like nothing fancy, just a small controlled burn. We could blame it on another flare-up, earthquake or whatever. We weren't going to do it at first, we figured that Hop and all those Hawkins lab people might be able to spin something up to get Eddie off the hook, but that didn't pan out." 

Finally, Steve's eyes were off the road and on Eddie in the mirror again; something outraged and focused shone in those big brown eyes. 

"And we were sick of everyone still dragging your dead name through the shit." Eddie could hear that Steve's jaw was clenched when he spat out that line.

It was odd. The feeling of someone being protective of Eddie. Protective in a way that they gained absolutely nothing out of it. Dead men didn't fight back against murder allegations, but they also couldn't throw their arms around you and thank you when you get them post-humously exonerated. 

Billy was quiet. Quiet to the level of suspect.

The quietness was followed by a long whistle from the passenger seat and then, "Damn, Harrington didn't realise you had it in you." 

Steve was grinning now, the kind of grin that was tinged with embarrassment and a touch of mania, "Well, neither did I!" He laughed. 

One of Steve's hands was off the steering wheel and mimicking an explosion as he spoke, "Issue was that the incident ended up being a little more explosive than we first planned." 

The hand fell back on the steering wheel with a resigned thud, "and long story short, I'm hiding out in Hopper's old cabin waiting until he can get me out of the whole, destroying evidence charges."

"You fucking idiot, why did you get caught?" Billy asked as if it was a choice that Steve had made. 

Eddie wanted to tell Billy to shut up, but Billy was right; Steve was an idiot. A well-meaning one but an idiot, no less. An idiot on his behalf, no less. 

 "Is Robin okay?" Eddie asked instead of delving into the feeling that was blooming in his chest.

"Robin, yeah, she's fine. I took the wrap for it all cause, well, yeah, of course, I did." 

The fact that Steve was blisteringly self-aware was another reason why Eddie was painstakingly attracted to him. He looked over at Billy and wondered if the same thing was going through his head too. 

"Hop says it'll be fine and that he can get it blamed it on another earthquake, but it'll take some time. He got that Murray guy involved too. I think he's sorted it already to be honest, and he's just like leaving me out here to stew in my bad choices."

Billy was biting on his lower lip, clearly holding something back. Billy had gotten a lot more restrained since being in the Upside Down. His anger had been somewhat funnelled into humour. It was a weird development, a weird coping mechanism, but it sure looked good on him. Eddie quietly liked to think that he'd rubbed off on Billy.  

Eddie sighed, trying to hide the way his stomach was performing the whole book of 'Sailors Knots for Beginners' as he sat tightly in the back seat, "For what it's worth, Steve, thanks for trying."

"Presumably, it didn't work?" Said Billy, his harshness softened by genuine curiosity. Billy had a stake in Eddie now, whether he liked it or not. 

"It did not work." Stated Steve plainly. 

Both Billy and Eddie huffed out a noise of disappointment. It wasn't like Eddie was expecting it to work, and neither did Billy, probably. Even with the old adage of, 'expect nothing and don't be disappointed, he did expect nothing and was disappointed. It was the way it always was, perhaps Eddie was a little too optimistic for his own good, or maybe it was impossible to indeed expect nothing. 

Steve hummed and sucked on his tongue like a jawbreaker. When he began again, it was in that same embarrassed cadence as before. "But turns out they didn't actually have enough evidence to link you anyway. They just sort of swept it under the rug, considering everything that went on in Hawkins people just kind of forgot after a while."

Not bad luck. Just ironic. Painfully, blisteringly ironic.

Eddie just laughed because there wasn't much more he could say on the matter. He caught Billy's eye in the rearview mirror, those blue eyes harbouring the lust for justice that Eddie simply did not have the energy to.

"So am I in the clear, or did you burn away that too?" Eddie asked finally, already knowing the answer. 

Slowly but surely, a wide grin split across Steve's face. 

"Turns out that case file was on the chief's desk. So I missed it anyway. You're all good, man."

Eddie had never seen someone look so pleased about botching a plan. 

On instinct, Eddie lunged at the back of the driver's seat, wrapped his arms around Steve, and squeezed tightly. 

"You big beautiful buffoon!" Eddie exclaimed, and he squeezed just tight enough to eek a winded squeak out of Steve, followed by a chuckle. Finally, Eddie stood as best he could in the back of the moving car, braced his hands around either side of Steve's face and headrest, and kissed the top of Steve's head.

The car swerved a little, but luckily nobody was on the road. When Eddie flopped back down on the backseat, he buckled his seatbelt, finally sure in knowing that he did in fact, have a life worth going back to, a life worth living. 

Billy looked impressed, astounded by it all, but nevertheless impressed. So there was no malice behind it when Billy playfully clasped a hand around the side of Steve's head whilst he drove and patted it, "That pretty head of yours really is just there for decoration, isn't it Harrington."

In return, Steve just shrugged with one shoulder. 

Finally, in the first time in his two lifetimes, BD and AD (before and after death), Eddie relaxed. Like truly relaxed. He wondered how long it would take him to melt into the seat and if Steve would ever be able to get him out of there, and if, to be honest, he would even care. Staying there, in that moment forever, seemed actually kind of nice. 

It was all serene, from the lights passing by sparsely on the backroad, lighting up the car from black to orange, the sound of Wishin' and Hopin' by Dusty Springfield playing on the radio, loud enough to discern, too quiet to hear the vocals. His eyes slowly began to close, his bone tiredness beginning to take over. 

Something caught Eddie's eye before they could close fully. It was the sight and sound of Steve lighting up a cigarette. The flick of a lighter, the gentle glow of the smouldering ember. Then there was the look Steve and Billy were sharing. Something that morphed from cautious to intense seamlessly. There was a kind of understanding in that look, something deep and old, the sort of look only shared between the oldest friends or those relationships forged in the belly of chaos. 

He and Billy had shared that look. He had never really wondered what it had looked like to someone outside of them; he never really had to. But sitting here, quietly spying on a moment he felt like he shouldn't be privy to, he felt the look swell inside the car. It felt so big and ever-expanding that he was only sure the car wouldn't float away when Steve finally cracked a window and the cigarette smoke petered out of it. 

Eddie closed his eyes and tried to make out the song's lyrics but could only hear the deep, steady inhales of Steve's breathing. All of a sudden, Eddie could feel a shift and hear a creak in the car. When he cracked an eye, Billy was leaning over to Steve, his eyes flicking over Steve's face, long eyelashes casting shadows in the glow of the cigarette. Wordlessly, Billy plucked it from his lips and placed it between his own, pausing to inhale as he lingered a little longer in Steve's space. As quickly as he had risen, Billy relaxed into his seat again, leaning back, taking long drags of his first cigarette in eighteen months. 

The smoke danced freely but sultrily in the car, curling around and in on itself, before dissipating either out of the window or around Eddie in the backseat. He could hear the lit end crackle every time Billy took an inhale. For some reason, Eddie knew Billy's eyes were closed as he sat in an almost stasis. 

As Billy removed the cigarette from between his lips, Eddie leaned forward, fending off the tiredness that kept him glued to his seat. He placed a hand on Billy's unclothed shoulder. Billy wordlessly answered his question and passed the cigarette to Eddie. Staying leaned forward, perched on the end of the seat, Eddie had his turn, letting coils of smoke furl and unfurl between Steve and Billy. 

Billy's eyes hazily found their way to Eddie's face. His gaze was lazy, fat and happy, a look he'd only ever been able to piece together before with the fragments of what would make it. Eddie didn't turn to Billy, but instead let the corners of his lips flick up in amusement, in recognition that he not only felt the same way, but he was ecstatic that Billy even felt that way at all.

As the cigarette dwindled to the length of only two or three remaining drags, Eddie let it fall limp between his lips before carefully extracting it and handing it off to Steve, who accepted it willingly. 

Notes:

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Chapter 2: Staying Still Feels An Awful Lot Like Being Dead

Summary:

okay, so y'all really liked the first chapter of this. I've never had that kind of reception to the first chapter of a fic, absolutely bonkers shit that was.

anyway here's another chapter, go wild, or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

also big thanks to my sweet cheese, my good time boy, holdyoubytheedges for holding my hand and being dragged along at full pelt with this ship.

When they arrived at the house, Hopper's Cabin, which was a name thrown around the party as if it was a mythos all of its own. The lights were left on, amber light emanated from boarded-up windows, and Eddie wondered if they were always left on here. The warm glow of safety beckoned in all those who knew where to look. 

Steve opened the six locks on the door. As he did, Billy watched diligently as if it was something for him to learn. Eddie wondered if he had always been like that or if being in The Upside Down had made him needlessly observant. It was probably something to do with his father, he thought, and a wave of sickness coursed over him as he imagined Billy plotting carefully around his father. 

The sickness passed when the door swung open; a smell of damp wood and dust welcomed them in. The place was well lived in, not just by Steve but by others too. It was in a transient state, littered with relics of all who came before them. Hopper's stacks of records, what he assumed to be posters that El had hung up on the walls. There was even a crochet blanket swung over a lazy boy. It was imperfect and homemade and probably by the hands of someone who had been there even before them.

There were hints of Steve, too, blankets piled on the sofa, comic books commandeered from Dustin on the coffee table. There was a small stack of unwashed plates and a seasonally inappropriate jacket hanging by the front door. 

It was the place that felt most like home, anyone's home, that Eddie had ever been. 

After ushering both intrepid travellers inside, Steve relocked the locks and kicked off his sneakers. He turned on the stereo, put on a record and set the needle but didn't press play. Instead, Steve made his way into the bedroom and began rifling through drawers, pulling out two towels, one blush pink and the other sage green, both thin and worn. He handed one to Eddie and one to Billy.

Billy grunted out a thankyou. Steve beckoned them both to follow him into the bathroom, where he painstakingly explained how the shower worked. He then rinsed down the tub and rifled through the under the sink, pulling out a new bottle of body wash and one brand new toothbrush. 

Eddie almost asked if he expected him and Billy to share that, but the moment passed as Steve shook out the bathmat and placed it on the floor. He stood there with his hands on his hips, waiting for either of them to say something. 

"Do you need anything else?" Steve asked, having already perfectly anticipated everything they wanted. 

Neither Billy nor Eddie had said anything about wanting a shower. But Steve knew anyway. It came before sleeping or eating. There was something inherently human about wanting to be clean. It was something about a fresh start, Eddie thought. It was easier to move on when the remnants of your past weren't caked under your fingernails. 

They both shook their heads, and Steve pushed back the curtain in aggressive invitation. 

Billy shrugged off the vest Eddie had let him borrow when they first met and relieved himself of his ragged tank. He wandered back into the bedroom, and they followed him like ducklings. Steve, with his aggressive hostessing, and Eddie followed Billy because that is just what Eddie did now.  

They both watched absently as he proceeded to fold the items of clothing and lay them neatly upon the chest of drawers. There was something in that, something symbolic, poetic, almost sad, like picking up the wreckage of a favourite broken mug with the intent of fixing it. 

"Are you sure you're good?" Steve asked, and Eddie's attention flicked back to Steve just for a moment.

"Harrington," Billy warned, "I got it. I can still remember how to shower."

There was a joke pulling at Steve's lips, one that was probably along the lines of 'you don't look or smell like it, but it was probably a little too insensitive, making a little too light, too quickly of their shared trauma. 

Instead, he inhaled and blinked those eyes at Eddie, "What about you, Munson?"

Eddie grinned lazily at him before purring exactly what was on his mind, "Why? Are you offering to give me a lesson?"

He knew letting his guard down so much would be dangerous. His guard wasn't even down; it was gone, completely obliterated by the time they'd crawled exhaustedly from Lover's Lake and into the back of Steve's car. 

Steve said 'haha' instead of laughing, "Haha, very funny."

Fanning himself with his hand, Eddie teased, "I haven't changed at all, I know."

Holding eye contact with Eddie, Steve then rolled his eyes and bit down slightly at the edge of his lower lip. Signalling to Eddie that he was funny and, in fact, hadn't changed at all. Eddie hoped his six-month opportunity for growth only sought to have him grow out of the bad things and it looked like that was true. 

In contrast, Billy just stood there with the pink towel over the crook of his elbow, watching them banter inanely. 

Eventually, Steve slapped the top of the dresser, "There are clothes in here. Just look through the draws. Something in there will fit you both. There might be some of Hop's stuff in there too."

Billy folded his arms across his bare chest and signalled to the dresser with the top of his head, "Do you not need to come and lay them out for us or have we graduated to big boys now?"

In response, Eddie snickered, and before Eddie could add to the narrative and ask for a cup of hot milk, Billy stepped forward a little, and the look of irritation melted from Steve's face and was replaced by eyebrow twitching intrigue. 

Billy began to speak, his voice deep, clear and sincere, "Look, Steve, thank you." 

Steve seemed shocked at the candour, and if there was a mirror in front of him, he was sure he looked shocked too. Even with his edges softened by the Upside Down and the awful ouroboros of death and rebirth and then trying not to die again, it still seemed awfully out of character for Billy to be so forward with his appreciation. 

And when Eddie didn't think he could get more candid, Billy pushed out, "And I wanted to say sorry for everything. I was an asshole."

At this stage, Steve looked completely dumbfounded. He didn't even have a hint of scepticism; it was all shock. 

Eventually, Steve cracked out a response, his voice breathy and unsure, "I mean, I don't think it's me you need to be apologising to, really." 

Eddie watched Steve as he recalibrated in real-time, probably remembering the incident in which Billy had broken his nose. Billy wasn't proud of that; his face twisted up in self-hatred when he told Eddie what he did to get the small star-shaped scar on his right knuckle. 

"Well yeah, you do, and yeah, uh, thanks. Thanks for that, man."

Steve was holding Billy's eye contact, despite his stuttering. Eddie watched as Billy swallowed, a bob forming and dissipating in his strong throat. It felt like before; it felt like Eddie shouldn't be in the room. 

After finally looking away, Steve chewed on one of the insides of his cheeks and added, "Y'know if you're gonna re-enter, you're gonna have to do a boat load of apologising to pretty much everyone you've ever met."

Billy nodded and let his eyes flicker upwards. He wasn't being facetious. He was still clearly uncomfortable with the kind of person the Upside Down had spat out. He'd changed a lot, and Eddie thought it was for the better. He was a kinder, more patient person now. Eddie thought it was a miracle he hadn't gotten angrier. Lord knows Eddie had. Eddie had gained the ability to rage against those who'd genuinely wronged others, and somehow Billy had found the ability to control that rage. 

It was a miracle, really, how they'd both come out of it stronger than when they fell into it, both the hell they'd traversed together and the hells they carried with them.

He swallowed thickly again and nodded before responding to Steve, "I know, I know, I got it, just not tonight. I'm just so fucking tired, and I fucking stink. Just let me shower, yeah?"

"Yeah, sure," There was a tentativeness to Steve's demeanour now, his lips pursed a little, his hands twitched as they tried desperately to stay by his sides. "Sure," he finally settled on, letting out a breath. 

Billy's jaw relaxed from where it was set. His curls, caked in mud, swung a little as he went to place a hand on Steve's shoulder. Instinctively, Steve flinched. It seemed that Steve was not used to having kindness bestowed upon him by Billy in the same way he was not used to bestowing it upon others. It felt like the first day of spring, a newborn lamb tumbling to its feet. Damp and slimy, covered in blood, ambling helplessly, knowing that if it was not nurtured properly that it would not survive. With his hand upon Steve's shoulder, he patted once and then again.

"We'll leave you to it." Steve decided with a little nod.

Steve exited the little bedroom adjoining the bathroom and wordlessly beckoned Eddie to follow. Eddie knew he was intending to give Billy some privacy, but it felt strange, almost dangerous, to leave Billy alone. They'd spent so long looking out for each other, both figuratively and literally, there were only a handful of times during their stint in hell that Billy wasn't somewhere in Eddie's eye line. Sometimes in his periphery, skirting around the edges of his vision, building something, destroying something, cutting into vines, pilfering through a box of tinned food. Sometimes, directly in front of him, blue eyes made even bluer by the hue of the Upside Down, sometimes narrowed and punctuating hateful words, sometimes filled with so much silent sadness that they appeared to change shape, slanting downwards like they were falling down his face along with the tears that should've fallen. Eddie's favourite, though, was when they were creased with laughter. Freckled cheeks ridden high, tears forming in the best way. 

Eddie could still remember his favourite instance of Billy laughing. He couldn't remember what he said; even if he tried really hard, he couldn't remember it. But he could remember; however, the sound of Billy's laughter ringing out through the wasteland. It was so unexpected, so welcomed. It felt like hearing a song for the very first time and instantly knowing it would become his favourite. 

And that was even before he fell in love with him. He at least thought it was love. It was one good thing in a wasteland of only awful things. Anyone would have done the same; Eddie wasn't special. But Billy was, at least to him. 

The door clicked behind Eddie, and Steve turned to face him, uttering out, "Eddie."

He was barely out of his haze, barely registering the fact that Steve had begun to play the music, the urge to go and sit on the floor by the bathroom still tugging at the balls of his feet.

Now Steve was looking at him so earnestly; his big brown eyes explored his face. 

He also remembered the first time he made Steve laugh. He thought the flame he held for Steve had long since been extinguished, under the overwhelming evidence suggesting he would never see him again. But here it was, flickering contentedly in his chest. 

That was one of his many regrets, never telling Steve how he felt. But he didn't even know how he felt until he woke up on the cold, wet ground, now completely helpless to do anything about it. It almost felt like a regret he regretted not having sooner.  

He could tell Billy felt the same way as he did. It was unspoken, kept hidden to preserve the precarious little bubble in hell that they shared between them. They were in a glass house, and neither of them wanted to cast the first stone. But he could never tell with Steve. Steve was so used to people falling in love around him that it was surely difficult for him to register them all. The beating of hearts, the sound of quickened breaths, the sliding of hands wringing nervously against one another. It all must have been white noise to him. 

Steve spoke above the white noise, "I, uh."

He seemed unsure, really unsure, which was strange for someone like Steve. 

The hesitancy tried to pass, but it was only masked when he said, "Glad to have you back." 

He tapped him lightly on his bicep and carried on, "Dustin's gonna be over the moon man, he's really-"

The waver in Steve's voice was a dead giveaway. He heard it when his mom told him she was leaving Hawkins. It was like a bubble in her throat, fit to burst at any moment, and when it did, it would be filled with a litany of apologies, filled with snot and sobs. 

And when Steve's did burst, he was surprised by the fact he wasn't blown apart by it. The force of regret ripped through him like an atom bomb. 

"It's alright, Steve."

Steve was quiet for a moment, but Eddie could hear him loud and clear. The way his eyes glistened over slightly, the way his jaw squared and quivered. Worst of all was the way he hung his head. 

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he finally muttered. His head was no longer hanging, and now he was looking at Eddie cautiously.

Eddie had thought long and hard about what his reaction to this situation would be. There wasn't much else to think about down there. He went through a long line of emotions. Sadness, elation, regret. But never anger. He couldn't blame the others for not going back into the jaws of hell for him when he wasn't 100% sure he would or  could  do the same.

So Eddie did what he always did and skirted around the uncomfortable feeling that Steve's earnestness was bestowing upon him with humour, "Well, I'm not wanted for murder anymore, at least." He smiled, but he could tell it wasn't quite reaching his eyes, "Silver linings, right?"

"That's," Steve began immediately but paused to think a moment before saying, "True."

Eddie didn't know Steve all that well, just from the time they spent together before he died and then whatever Dustin had waxed poetically about during Hellfire. But what he did know is that Steve would be blaming himself for the rest of his life, knowing that there was something that he could've done but didn't.

Steve inhaled shakily.

"Well, I'm sorry you had to spend six months with him." Steve tapped at the door behind Eddie as if they both weren't sure about who they were referring to. Steve's hand lingered there a moment, and Eddie could hear the way the grain of the wood sounded beneath his shifting fingertips.

After a second, Steve moved his hand away, and Eddie felt fit to answer. 

"Billy?" Eddie's voice flicked upwards, and he looked towards the door as if he could see right through it. His voice began to pitch fondly, and he didn't really care if Steve noticed it, "He's not so bad." 

Almost immediately, Steve's face scrunched up. His eyebrows drew down at an almost comical rate, and the two moles on his cheek drew forward as his lips pursed. 

"He literally was famously, really, really bad." Steve's hands were on his hands, indicative of the fact that he was trying to prove something right. "That was his whole," with his left hand on his hip still and his right waving nebulously in the air, "deal."

"Well," Eddie began in his 'I know more than you, and I'm making no effort to hide it' voice, "I hate to sound like a cliche, but a year and a half in another dimension fighting off random demons really does wonders for character growth."

Steve still seemed unconvinced, but his face was softening slightly, or that could have just been the fact that holding a scowl for such a prolonged period of time was sure to give him a headache.

 "Plus, I think all the like," Eddie created two fists of his dirty hands and mimicked tearing something apart, "of demons, I think it did wonders for his sense of control." 

Eddie's hands settled on his hips, mirroring Steve's position, and let his face split into a grin, "I don't even think he needs to go to therapy at all now," he snickered.

Billy very much did need to go to therapy. They all did, admittedly with varying degrees of intensities and omittances to their stories, but it was bound to help. 

As if to speak, Steve opened his mouth for a moment but closed it again. Then, his eyebrows stopped frowning but instead bounced together almost playfully, like two puppies meeting for the first time. The edges of his lips twitched upwards, and his head cocked to the side ever so slightly.

Eddie wanted to put a bag over his head so he could get back to trying to think somewhat straight. Both figuratively and literally., 

"Silver linings," Steve sighed finally.

The grin split across Eddie's face again, "Silver linings."

The moment hung above them like a canopy of stars on a summer evening. Steve was standing close. He always stood close to Eddie, even when they first met. In his mind, Eddie had always chalked it up to Steve trying to scope him out. To check that he wasn't a weirdo hanging out with Dustin. Which he was, but he wasn't the wrong kind of weirdo. The closer he stood, the more he knew about him, like he was absorbing Eddie through osmosis. But then it went beyond that; Steve continued to linger around Eddie closer than he lingered around anyone else. Even Robin, they were in each other's mental pockets but not physical ones. That spot was seemingly only reserved for Eddie.

He always told himself not to read too much into it, to tread carefully about where he put his feelings. But dying really made him regret not cracking that book open and all but eating the words.

He can feel it. Whatever was there before. He could feel it again.

Steve was not only looking at him but appraising him as if he was something important, something precious. 

"I, uh," Steve began cautiously, as if not to spook not only Eddie but himself.

Something in Steve's face shifted as Eddie could feel something shift beneath his own skin. Steve's voice went from delicate to plain worry as he asked, "Are you okay?"

The moment passed. 

"I'm, yeah, I'm alright, Steve," he said, not trying to sound defeated but not hiding the fact he was somewhat disappointed. "Hungry, though. What have you got in that kitchen?" 

There was a certain levity between them now. Steve wandered over to the small kitchen, and Eddie followed behind him. He noted how warm the floor was beneath his bare feet. Steve placed a hand on the refrigerator and opened it with a jangle, and peered inside. It was the only light in the house that wasn't warm, and it lit up Steve's face blue and cold. Eddie couldn't see what was in the fridge, but he could hear it as Steve shifted things around and pulled a disgruntled face. 

He let the door close with a slam and turned back to Eddie. "I can do you toast and eggs, and I think there's one sausage." His eyes flicked to the closed door leading to the showering Billy, "You can share the sausage."

"Oh, come on, you know Billy isn't going to share his sausage with anyone."

Steve's face perked up before a singular laugh burst from him. 

"He was down there longer than me. He can have it."

"Don't be a martyr Eddie."

It was intended to be a joke from Steve, but it didn't fall that way. It was almost a plea. 'I know what you did, don't do it again, you idiot.'

The jovial tone in Eddie's voice had been replaced with quiet recognition, "I've done enough of that for one lifetime."

He never expected Steve to recognise it back, not in this way at least. With his face open and his bottom lip being worked nervously between his teeth. He expected it the way he talked to Dustin, parental, not angry but disappointed. There was something more here. 

Steve's voice was dry when he muttered, "Yeah, you have."

Maybe he was right to feel the way he did about Steve.

There was another pause, this time longer. Steve's eyes scanned Eddie in appraisal again. He felt like a bug caught in a jar or a man being held hostage by a very beautiful giant. It was unnerving, not unwelcome, but unnerving to have Steve's complete attention. 

Steve pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and backed himself up until he was braced against the edge of the countertop. Eddie almost lulled forward, missing the fact that they were no longer sharing the exact space that they had become accustomed to. Even after all this time, the string that bound them together remained like two puppets tangled together by a benevolent master. 

After nudging a dirty fork into the sink, Steve laid his weight on his forearms and leaned back, and Eddie finally gave in to the urge to move forward. Just one step, enough for plausible deniability. 

Steve looked different from when he last saw him, softer. His hair was lacking its usual product but still sat in magnificent waves sprouting from his crown. But it was more than that; it was his whole demeanour, it seemed less frenetic as if Eddie and Billy coming back to life had sucked all of the chaotic energy he ever had from his system forever and left him here docile. 

It was inviting, the way his narrow hips were braced against the counter, the way he wore his jeans like they were sentient and they were wearing him. The feeling caught in his throat like a fly stuck to glue. He rolled his tongue over his lips as if it was deciding itself to say anything more. 

His mind lapsed quickly over Billy, and his heart squeezed a little as if someone had given it a firm flick with their finger. 

Suddenly, Steve shifted and looked at Eddie's face, "It's weird, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I mean, yeah fuck Steve, we came back from the dead!"

Steve seemed disappointed in the shift in tone but went along with it anyway. His voice was playful and putting on a performance of false indignance that felt like he'd learned it from Dustin, "It's like nobody prepares you for that. There really should be a better support network in place for things like this. 

Eddie swung around to stand next to Steve, their shoulders almost touching. 

"Unless we are living out some zombie movie, then no, I don't think a handbook on that would be a best-seller, Steve."

Eddie watched as ripples formed on Steve's cheeks as he laughed. Sweet sounds emanated from his lips, deep but still playful. His eyes moved carefully over to look at Eddie without turning his head. His long neck vibrated with the happy sounds coming from his mouth. 

He seemed relaxed, just like Billy had looked before. 

He really was the most beautiful person Eddie had ever seen. And Eddie once saw Cindy Crawford in Indianapolis. 

They sat together against the side of the kitchen counter. Eddie stole glances when he could. Plucking up the courage to say something more meaningful, even though he was sure that whatever came out of a dead man's walking's mouth would be the most profound thing in the world. 

He didn't say anything, not because of fear of rejection. He'd been dead and to hell and back (literally); rejection out here was like training a demodog to hunt for food (difficult and painful at first but easier over time.) But rather because of the sounds trickling from the bathroom, the hum of the shower, the clanking of ageing pipes and hot water was carried through them. 

Billy was someone he'd fallen in love with in the face of adversity, and Steve, Steve was the kind of guy he always dreamed of, ever since he started dreaming of guys. Steve was who he was, and Billy was the person he'd become.

It was a decision he didn't know how to make. Steve was right. They don't make handbooks preparing you for the real difficult issues out there. 

Eddie was somewhat smiling to himself, and Steve leaned into him. Steve was simple in his intentions, straightforward. He'd been like this even before; Eddie was just very bad at letting things be simple. Letting things be good. 

He could die again at any moment.  Fuck it .

"Steve," he began, his heart being chased up and down his throat like a rabbit and a fox. 

Steve suddenly looked nervous and shifted away, the bare skin of their forearms sticking as they unfurled from each other. 

It was funny, not haha funny. But funny. 

"I'm reading this wrong, aren't I?" Eddie took another step along the counter, his jeans catching as he moved.

He scrubbed his face with his hands and huffed, sending a flurry of drying frizz flying from his hair.

"Reading what?" Steve asked coyly, clearly biding himself more time.

Eddie's heart ached. He'd always been shit at reading subtext; that was why he'd failed English so many times.  

"I don't blame you," he resigned, leaning his hands back onto the counter and letting his head fall back with a lull. He focused on a repaired patch of wood on the ceiling, "It's fine, I get it, man. You all thought I was dead."

It was all understandable, but it hurt almost as much as demobat teeth in his small intestines. 

It's not like he had really said anything. It wasn't like there was anything to regret, maybe asides from saying something sooner. There was a feeling, though, that there was something there between them at some point, but there wasn't any more from Steve. He wasn't sure what was worse. To know that he would wait for a train that never came, or he would turn his back just for a moment and not even notice that it had gone by.

The dulcet tones of Bob Dylan filled the air. Dylan asked meandering rhetorical questions whilst Eddie waited for Steve to answer. The harmonica in the music suddenly felt louder, more discordant than any guitar in any song he'd ever played as it thrummed against his chest.

Eventually, Steve skirted closer again, perhaps worried that if Eddie wasn't within grabbing distance, he would run away. As if he had truly thought about what he wanted to say, Steve spoke sagely, "There's only so much you can take sometimes and then you've just gotta learn to just move on, cause you can't keep focusing on the past and-" The words bobbed in his throat, the carefully planned words seemingly lost to the air of the warm little cabin. His practised words suddenly gave way to something a little rawer, "It's not that we forgot about you, it's just, You've moved on. We've all had to live without you."

Moved on wasn't quite what Eddie did. Life moved on. Eddie died. They were two different things, two mutually exclusive things. Dead things don't grow, they stay the same forever until they start decaying. Eddie felt like he'd done a pretty good job at running away from the encroaching wave of decay, which felt a little like living at points. But it wasn't. 

Steve finally ended with, "Shit, I'm sorry." 

"For what?" Was Eddie's only response - knowing that Steve had already said sorry before, but somehow this time, it felt entirely different.

He didn't really expect Steve to answer honestly because he was sure that Steve didn't really know either. The same way that when Dylan asked, ' How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? ' There wasn't a neat little answer, no score card that said, ' One more Mr Dylan you're almost a man! '. The real answer was both everything and nothing, or I'm not sure if I should be sorry at all, but I sure feel that way. It couldn't be pinpointed or explained, and Eddie wondered if there was any point in saying sorry at all. 

Self-aware to a fault, Steve eked out, "I don't know."

Eddie created a fist and let it fall like a judge's gavel against the countertop and said, "Alright."

Steve looked at him like he was stained glass, knowing that things were not, in fact, alright.

 But when Eddie pointed to the bathroom with the thumb of his balled hand and said, "I should probably go check on him. He's been quiet for too long, and that makes me nervous."

Steve didn't do anything to try and stop him.

Notes:

The song referenced in this chapter is Blowin' in the Wind by Bob Dylan.

Kudos and comments are super highly appreciated.

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Chapter 3: The Executioner, The Queen and The Diplomat

Notes:

reet.

so i never intended this fic to be what it's become. it was supposed to be some fun crack ship smut. now it's an ever-expanding deep dive into the characters and also into the never-ending hellish ouroboros that these characters have to exist in.

sorry about that.

also I'm going away for the weekend so i probably won't be writing threesome porn with my 3-year-old nephew sitting next to me, so check back here next week for the final (longer) chapter.

so as always, i love you, thanks for reading, godspeed you etc.

When Eddie opened the bedroom door, he was met with steam. There was so much steam it was hard to believe that there was anything in the room beyond it. As Eddie moved through the thick, pleasant billows, he noticed that when Billy had removed his ratty jeans, he had folded those too and added them to the neat little stack of destruction. 

When Eddie looked at the folded pile of ruined clothes, he saw a desire, a pattern, the will to take whatever happened to them and fold it up neatly, to try and contain it and mark it in a box. Billy was an explosive person on the surface, but when Eddie really got to know him, this here, this little pile of dirt and fabric was the best representation of his friend that he'd ever seen. It was just a desperate bid to make sense of, to put order to chaos. 

Eddie's heart was still aching for Billy and for the conversation he'd just had with Steve. The steam filled his lungs with choking, cloying air; it was entirely different from the air in The Upside Down. But it all felt as if he would die in it if he stayed in it too long. 

"Billy?" he asked, having not been joking to Steve that Billy being quiet for too long unnerved him. When Billy didn't respond from behind the bathroom door, he tried again. 

"Hey, dickhead are you alright?"

When no response came again, Eddie felt a bullet of panic shoot through him. 

There was only one time in The Upside Down when Eddie thought he'd lost Billy. He'd tumbled down one of the sharp, shingled cliffs of the ghastly version of Hawkin's Quarry. A vine had wrapped around his leg, and as he cut himself free, the energy saw him lose his footing on the unstable ground. It was the same as now. When Eddie called out Billy's name, there was no response. 

Eddie knew that Billy was fine, that he was probably in a state of deep relaxation, entranced by the feeling of being finally clean along with the soft folk music playing through the walls. But that didn't stop the panic. Eddie wanted to tell himself it was entirely irrational to feel such a way, but after what they'd been through, nothing was irrational. 

It would be hard to ever tell anyone who was ever afraid of a bump in the night that it wasn't a monster, and they should stop being silly because it very well could be a monster, and they probably should actually be pretty fucking afraid of it.

So without knocking and in a haze of dread, Eddie swung open the door, half expecting Billy to be sprawled on the floor with his forearm broken in two places, just like he had in the quarry.

What he didn't expect, what he should've expected, though, was Billy with his head in the under-sink cabinet, moving the bottles around like an octopus that had been trained to solve puzzles. 

"So you're not dead?" Eddie sneered, trying to hide the fact that he was fighting off the adrenaline that had threatened to poison him.

Billy didn't take his head out of the cabinet when he mumbled, "Still alive, sorry."

" Asshole ."

They didn't say they worried for each other. They just passed around thinly veiled insults in lieu of it all. ' Go choke on a bat bone' , meant 'Don't  do anything stupid , ' Asshole ', meant ' I care for you deeply ' and ' Fuck you ' well, that mostly meant ' fuck you '. 

Eddie always felt the desire to move beyond their strange little code. But Billy was so backward, he didn't know how to express kindness if not through spitting it at someone else. He expressed kindness and worry through the facets of control, holding onto things so tightly he broke them. And then, once they were broken, he would pick up those pieces, squeeze them and keep going until it was all dust. After all that, he would just simply look at the wreckage of his own making and wonder why there was nothing but dust left anymore. 

It was cyclical, and it was painful. Nobody wanted to be squeezed so hard they broke, so they stayed away, and when there was nobody else to wrap his arms around and wring the life out of, Billy did it to himself. 

Eddie had often wondered if that was how his father loved him, squeezing and squeezing until something snapped. But it was more likely that he never loved him at all. 

The thing was that Billy didn't demand Eddie leave, even after he couldn't quite break him in the same way. Billy wasn't happy in his graveyard of broken things, but it was better than being alone. Eddie couldn't say much to the person he was before, but he wasn't sure that anyone had stuck around in his graveyard for so long. Eddie cut the grass and pulled the weeds, made sure that the gates were locked every night and no raccoons got in the trashcans. Eddie had started off as a witness to Billy's horrible crimes, and  somehow , now he was the gravedigger, the groundsman and the priest giving the eulogies: ' Here lies someone who tried to love Billy Hargrove. They died alone and fed up with his shit, just like Billy will if he doesn't get his shit together.' 

But  somehow , he was never the one turned into dust and lowered into the ground.

Eddie had always assumed he was made of sturdy stuff, inexorably unbreakable stuff; he'd been through a lot in his life to remain unshattered the way that he had. Eddie thought of himself as the stone bricks of a wind-battered castle proud on a cliff's edge on the Irish coast. No matter how hard he was pushed, attacked or even firebombed, he would always stay grounded. On his first day of high school, guarded and angry, His uncle had told him that no man was an island. Which was true, but he  was  a fucking castle. 

It wasn't until he met Billy that he realised he wasn't made of something hard and unyielding, like the bricks of the castle, but rather the moat surrounding the castle. It was intrinsically unbreakable, would fill any shape it needed to be but still remained to be water. He could be frozen, boiled or turned into steam. But when all was said and done, he would just become water again. 

It was elemental, really. Billy was a forest fire, and Eddie was the river that surrounded it. 

Which suited Eddie just fine. The world couldn't all be made of fire; There'd be nothing left. 

After what felt like a lifetime of shuffling through the cabinet, Billy slumped back and held up a bottle of shampoo, "Look at all the shit Harrington has. Pretty boy's gotta stay pretty, right?"

Eddie knew Billy was not going through the cabinet to find things to make fun of Steve for; well at least that wasn't his only objective. He was most certainly going to use those things. 

Whereas Eddie was water, Steve was made of that hard stuff. Steve was the earth, solid and dependable, compacted to make rough unbreakable diamonds. 

And Billy knew that. That's why he was drawn to Steve, amongst all the other glaringly obvious reasons why someone would be drawn to Steve Harrington. 

Eddie wondered if Billy still felt the same way about Steve now. What was better, water or diamonds?

Finally, Billy stood, making no effort to hide the garish bottles he'd pulled out of the cabinet. He was stripped to his underwear now, glistening with sweat in the steam-filled room. Eddie didn't even have to ask about the steam. He knew Billy was cold because he was cold. There was a part of him that didn't know if they'd ever be warm again. So taking liberties with Steve's heating bill made perfect sense. 

One of the precariously balanced bottles slipped into the tub, and neither of them paid it any mind.

Eddie was waiting for Billy to politely tell him to fuck off. But he probably felt the same way, unsafe without the other around. 

Instead, Billy's eyes bore into Eddie's face, probably gearing up to say something completely inane in the most intense way possible.

"You look weird," he settled on.

Yes, he did look weird. He was wearing the ragged remnants of a shirt he found in The Upside Down version of his trailer, jeans that were more hole than jeans, and a bandana pushing back the outgrown bangs from his face. He also wasn't wearing any shoes and had a leather sling around his chest that once carried a spear. But Billy had seen him like that every day. It wasn't weird  to him . 

"Weird how?"

Billy squinted and grabbed Eddie's jaw between his thumb and forefinger and pivoted Eddie's head around on his neck like he was a Barbie doll's shoulder socket. Eddie was taller than Billy, so he settled on tilting his head downwards. 

"Your eyes really are that fucking black aren't they?" Billy finally said as his own blue eyes flickered carefully from the bridge of Eddie's nose to his eyes and back again, "I always thought it was just the light down there." 

Eddie could feel his cheeks squash in Billy's grip as he smiled, "Aw, you think about my eyes that often, handsome?"

He could feel the way that Billy inhaled before he spat back, "No seriously, there's something wrong with you." and released Eddie's face.

There wasn't enough force to leave a bruise; there never was. 

Eddie wobbled his head from side to side and held up his hands like chattering claws, "Yeah, yeah, I'm a demon, a vessel for satan et cetera."

They'd spoken at length about everything that had happened with Chrissy and the townsfolk's response to it. There was almost a hint of jealousy in Billy's voice after Eddie told him that he'd been accused of opening the gates of hell. Eddie seldom thought about the reason beyond Billy wanting to be obnoxiously better than Eddie at everything. But once Eddie made it clear that he couldn't be bothered to compete with him, and Billy still brought it up, he chalked it up to Billy, wanting to be so dangerous that his father would finally leave him alone. 

"No, that's way too cool," Billy snapped and folded up his arms, and Eddie purposely had to not think about what that meant. 

Grinning, Eddie limply held up his hands against the side of his head to create horns. 

Before he could go any further, Billy split the moment with a knife and threatened, "If you do the tongue thing, I will rip it out of your mouth."

It should have been more intense than it was. Billy mostly naked, grabbing at Eddie, making threats. But it wasn't. It was actually quite funny to those who had adapted to it . Eddie was easily adaptable, Eddie was water. 

Billy went to pick up the towel from its screwed-up position atop the toilet seat and hung it closer to the shower. 

He looked over Eddie, who simply stood steadfast in his scrutinising gaze.

"God, you're weird." Billy finally said, as if it was a compliment. 

There was a beat of quiet as the sounds of the shower filled the room, along with a  Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall  playing in the other room. For a second, Eddie wondered if Billy had heard the conversation he had with Steve, and if he did, what did he make of it. 

Billy's hand was on the shower curtain, and as Eddie went to leave, a sound beaconed him back in. 

"What happens now?" Billy asked in a moment of uncharacteristic candour. He was usually the one to tell Eddie what to do. Billy was the man with the plan, the king and Eddie was the executioner, the queen and the diplomat. 

He looked nervous. Maybe not about the answer but rather about the out-of-character frankness that Eddie had honed in on so instantaneously. 

"We kill Vecna. Save the world. Usual Tuesday stuff." Eddie reductively explained. 

Billy huffed out a laugh through his nose, and it made him look like he was a dragon and the steam was a plume of smoke. 

"Harrington said it was Thursday."

Eddie cocked his head as if to say ' really ?' even though he had no particular attachment to Tuesday. He just said any day of the week randomly, he had no fucking clue which of them it was. It was all arbitrary anyway. 

Leaning on the open door frame, Eddie crooned, "Can't believe we're gonna have to get used to hours of the day again. It might be weird to say, but I kinda liked that." 

Eddie moved his hand in a languid, smooth motion, cutting through the steam, "One long blurrrrrr. I could never be late for anything."

Billy was giving him that look again; irritation come intrigue. The same one he'd given him before he grabbed onto his chin and refused to concede to just how cool it was that Eddie's eyes were almost black. 

"It's nice to know you're just as fucking strange here as you were there." It was the second time Billy had said something like that. It was as if he was trying to convince himself of it. Or at least convince himself to feel a certain way about it. 

"I'm pretty much the same, whatever dimension I'm in."

Then Eddie shrugged. He wasn't 100% sure what he might be like in a dimension where anteaters were the ruling species, but that was a bridge he would cross when it came to it. 

As if he had expected Billy to have heard his frankly hilarious internal monologue, he waited for Billy to huff out another laugh. But instead, Billy stood still, his hand gripping tighter around the shower curtain, the sounds of it crinkling barely audible above the sounds of the shower itself. 

Suddenly Eddie felt small. He felt as if himself wasn't enough. He felt just like he did when he was thirteen, and his father grabbed him by the collar and just begged him to ' be normal '. 

"You gonna pretend you don't know me then? When we  re-enter, " Eddie's voice dipped on the final word. A word he stole from Steve. It sounded clinical and scary that they had somehow forgotten to behave like regular folk and would need to be reassimilated. 

There was a book Eddie read a few years ago,  Stranger in a Strange Land . He felt a little like that. 

The shower curtain suddenly became taut, and two of the rings along the rail flexed and threatened to break. Eddie's attention drew downwards to look at what had caused it. 

Billy's face settled something angry, "Fuck you," he spat, "Don't fuck around like that."

"I'm not fucking around." Said Eddie. Before The Upside Down, Eddie was just Billy's drug dealer on occasion. Billy would wring Eddie out at school and shove past him in the cafeteria. He never did try to beat Eddie up, the only reason probably being that Eddie and his stash of weed were always around Hawkins. And Eddie was too much of a pussy to ever pull the wool over his customer's eyes.

Which he wasn't. He just didn't like being dishonest; he liked the absurd idea of being the world's most honourable drug dealer. 

Eddie swallowed thickly, and the words preceding it grated against his throat like a hand to a cheese grater, "What happens to" he began to gesture between himself and Billy. He wanted to say ' what happens to us ', but putting the word ' us ' out there felt a little presumptuous. "To you and me?"

Billy slapped away the shower curtain, and it fluttered away from him meekly. It was a pathetic scene, really. Billy was standing on a quickly dampening bath mat, all but naked and caked in mud, a creased shower curtain billowing in the steam, Steve's hair products littering the scene in various locations. 

Eddie felt pathetic. Billy looked pathetic and sounded it when he grumbled, "I'm too fucking tired, Eddie. I'm so fucking tired."

"Of me."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. 

"Of everything. Including you."

This wasn't the first time Billy had been like this. Of course, it wasn't. Billy's favourite thing to do was push Eddie away and throw up his walls and send out his guards and send out a defensive attack of thousands of arrows. Just like those arrows, though, it still stung every time. 

Eddie folded his arms and stood his ground, and spat out incredulously. "Right, okay, well, uh, fuck you." 

Billy smiled flippantly and waved his finger toward the door, and spoke with a sneer, "So get lost then."

God, Billy was such a child. A scared little one most of the time. Trapped under layers of mud and hatred and societal expectation and plain fucking asshole-ry. But when that child cried, it was so deafening and horrible. Sometimes Eddie felt what he was supposed to, wanting to nurture that child to turn to him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, even when it probably wasn't. But most of the time, now included, Eddie just wanted to kick that child square in the balls, even though it was generally frowned upon in polite society. So instead, Eddie flipped him the bird and stomped from the bathroom. 

The door slammed shut behind him, sending reverberations through the little cabin. Steve was sure to hear it. Eddie just hoped he wouldn't poke his head through the door so he wouldn't have to slam another door in so many minutes. 

Eddie slumped down against the back of the bed. Too irritated to go and talk to Steve, not irritated enough to stay and fight with Billy. He stretched out his legs in front of him and placed his palms flat on the floorboards on either side of him. Just as he began to use those palms as snare drums on the hardwood floor, a pitiful sound came from the bathroom. 

"Munson -"

"I'm staying guard, don't worry."

They'd gotten used to this. Whatever happened between them, they would always stay guard. Even after one particularly bad fight, where Billy had Eddie by the front of his shirt, where Billy had called him a ' fucked up fag ’ and Eddie just laughed in his face and told him ' takes one to know one' . Even when he'd thrown Eddie to the floor and Eddie had scuttled away, Billy still found him silently and stayed guard whilst Eddie slept. 

He hated Billy at first. Like really hated him. He'd even told him  'you should've let me die ' in half jest when Billy let him get snagged and choked out in vines. It wasn't the act itself but the way Billy looked at him, head cocked to the side, weighing up if he was worth saving again. 

It got better. Quietly though, the way good things often did. And by some miracle, eventually, Eddie found himself looking at Billy in thanks. Not only for the fact that he saved Eddie's life but for the fact that it was Billy who did it. 

Fuck it. He wanted there to be an ' us ' beyond the bowels of fucking Tartarus. It wasn't like Billy had any other friends anyway. He wanted to tell him he was a fucking asshole, and he hated him, and he should go choke on a demobat bone. He wanted to tell him all the things those words actually meant too.

The walls around them were no longer glass, they were solid timber and steel, and it didn't matter if they had a god damn stone fight in here; nothing would come crumbling down that couldn't be patched up.

He stood, marched to the door and swung it open and was met with a billow of floral-smelling steam. 

Notes:

The song referenced in this chapter is A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan.

Kudos and comments are super highly appreciated.

For the love of god please follow me on tumblr or follow me on twitter I want to talk about these boys desperately

Chapter 4: Not All Stars are Made of Wood

Notes:

thank you all for reading this story.

Godspeed.

Immediately, Billy's voice rang out; it wasn't angry. It just seemed surprisingly calm, "I know you're there, Munson. I told you to stay guard."

Eddie had no idea what to do with Billy. There were times he thought he'd softened, and there were times like this. When Eddie was the hand that feeds, and Billy was a rabid animal. He wasn't even cornered this time. It just felt as if a dog just woke up one morning and decided, 'I'm going to be an absolute dick to the people who love me today'. 

As he marched forward, the steam-filled Eddie's lungs, emboldened by righteous rage, "What's wrong with you? Really Billy, what the fu-"

"Not just," Billy began from beyond the veil of the plastic curtain. The 's' in 'just' lingered in the air and rose just like the steam around them. 

Eddie waited for further instruction, even though he probably should've marched directly out of the door and thanked his lucky stars that he could do that now. That he could be free of Billy without the consequence of being lonely. But he didn't; he waited. The water fell in an inconsistent stream against the bottom of the tub and the muscle of Billy's body.

Eddie could tell in Billy's voice when he commanded, "Come here," that there was a lump in his throat. The kind of lump that couldn't be rid of by a long sigh or balling one's fists together and shouting in the face of someone who really should walk away when you'd finished. 

Obviously, Eddie obliged and perched himself on the edge of the bath. He could see from this vantage point that Billy was sitting hunched over under the shower. The silhouette moved slowly, hands coming to his face, rubbing against his cheeks and brow painstakingly. 

Audible above the sound of the shower, Billy swallowed, "No, come in."

 He wasn't sure what lay beyond the plastic shroud of the curtain. What this figure may look like beyond black lines of coiled hair, shadows of hunched shoulders. He could imagine Billy to be whatever was behind there. The formation of the angry dog lay cowering in his mind. As soon as he pulled back that curtain, he knew his perception of Billy would be changed forever. He wasn't sure this was the example that Plato had in mind when he spoke of shadows touching shadows' hands in a cave somewhere in the middle of Greece. Still, Plato probably didn't know about the existence of an alternate universe. 

 Eddie had seen Billy naked before, but he hadn't seen him  naked .

"You're-" Eddie protested meekly, giving Billy the option to tell him to turn around. 

Billy spoke resolutely, "I don't care." 

With that, Eddie pulled back the curtain and the end of the bathtub just enough for him to slip through. The edge of the bath was tall, and he wobbled a little before steadying himself on his feet. 

Billy, whose arms were crossed atop knees drawn to his chest, looked up. Water collected in fat droplets along his thick lashes. He was sure that those droplets included tears too. Billy had always found a way of masking how he was feeling. Waiting for a shower to finally sob out everything seemed entirely something that he would do, even though Eddie had heard Billy cry before, even when he knew he wasn't supposed to. 

"You're still dressed?" he asked disapprovingly. 

Eddie watched in disgust as the dirt and silt washed from him in dark currents. He watched them disappear beneath where Billy sat. 

The reason why Eddie hadn't undressed and thrown his clothes into a pile somewhere for Steve to complain about later was the fact that he was cold. His bones ached, his jaw constantly chittered, and his rings didn't even fit anymore. Even with the steam pouring from the bathroom and the hearth that Steve had been cooking up from beyond the room walls, Eddie was  freezing .

"Well, I was cold."

It was a simple enough answer.

Billy let out a little laugh, "I'm always fucking cold." 

"Me too," Eddie confirmed. Not really going into the ever-burgeoning worry that neither of them might ever be warm again. 

Eddie tried not to look at Billy. He always knew that he probably wasn't the kind of person to have run down to the market square and watched a public execution. It was hard for Eddie to watch someone suffer. Instead, he crossed his arms around his waist and just stood there. 

It'd been a while since he had just gotten to exist. Not to fight, or to scavenge or to hunt or build or to plot or to plan or to do anything else. He just got to be. An aimlessness washed over him, his hands began to itch at his sides, and an unnerving disquiet swelled in his mind. Billy's question from before echoed there, like an explosion in a cave.  'What now?'

He knew what they had to do. But he had no idea who he had to be, who he was, or even could be. Who was the person who died, and who was the person who came clawing back to life again?

All of a sudden, there was contact against Eddie's leg. His eyes drifted downwards to see that Billy had just about managed to lean his temple against Eddie. He waited for Billy to wordlessly correct his mistake and pull away, but didn't. 

As Eddie cautiously lifted his hand and placed it on Billy's head, he realised whatever he was feeling, he wasn't alone. He'd been alone most of his life; nobody had ever really understood him all the way through. People loved him, but they didn't understand him, and now here he was with someone who, through sheer dumb lousy luck, understood him completely. For better or for worse, he'd found a soulmate. 

Fingers carded through wet curls, and a few strands of hair caught between the peaks and troughs of his rings. Billy didn't say anything or even look at Eddie. He kept his head down, burying his nose between his bent knees.

They stayed like that for a moment, a moment that felt like all of life had been encapsulated in it. He lived a life at that moment. Not his life, but a life, one where he was a happy man mostly; on other days, he wasn't, but that was just life. He married, had children, lived with his wife and family, listened to old jazz standards, and cooked pancakes on weekends. His co-workers at the insurance company called him ' cheese ', and nobody could quite remember why. His oldest son grew up to be a painter, and his daughter became a lawyer and married a woman she met in a cafe. He died on a Tuesday. It was raining, and the hospital lights kind of hummed pleasantly.

 It wasn't a perfect life, but it was a life. 

And as soon as that was over, it began again. Another life. Another and another and another. Until it landed on this one, with Billy tugging carefully at the material of his jeans, guiding him downwards. 

Carefully, Eddie assumed the same position as Billy, facing forward, packed together like the world's most ill-prepared bobsledders. Without a word, Billy's head resumed its position, leaning into Eddie as if he was an anchor and Eddie was the seafloor. He could feel Billy's breath against him, deep, satisfying breaths. The kind of breaths that you could only muster after long, cathartic sobs. 

Eddie daredn't look backwards, fearing whatever spell they'd cast on the moment would surely break. The smell of cooking and the sound of  Don't Think Twice, It's Alright  bled through the gaps under the doors. Then, Billy pulled his head away for a moment. There was the sound of a bottle being opened, and the smell of vanilla and gardenia overwhelmed the smell of cooking. The shampoo was cool when it made contact with his hair, and Billy's hands were soft and gentle as they worked through it. 

Good things were quiet. Good things smelled like expensive shampoo and sounded like Bob Dylan and the rattle of a loved one's breathing, and felt like careful fingers and the spray of warm water on cold skin. Good things happened quietly, and Eddie had never been grateful for it really, not until now. 

Now he realised why Billy was crying when he found him. He felt safe. Overwhelmingly, terrifyingly safe. 

With safety came bravery. He always thought that was a silly way for that to go. Usually, one needed to be brave when they weren't safe. He'd managed to be brave once before when he wasn't safe, and it got him killed. This time it was different, though, with Billy tilting his head out of the water's spray and carefully rubbing conditioner on the tangled ends of his hair. 

Eddie let out a sigh against his knee, the wet fabric barring the breath from tickling there. Billy's hands ran in long delicate stripes along the lengths of Eddie's hair.

 As Billy's hand brushed along the base of his scalp, Eddie huffed out, "There's something I never told you." 

Billy didn't respond right away but instead continued his work, putting as much care into it as Billy did with everything else that he set his mind to. 

If Eddie thought that Billy wasn't going to say anything, he would've jumped in with something else. Maybe a lie or diversion, but it would probably be the truth. One way or another. 

"I'm not an idiot Munson," said Billy, finally. His voice did not contain any malice, absolutely none at all. In fact, if one was to prick up one's ears and lean closely and if one knew Billy, it could be construed as fondness. Luckily for Eddie, he did both of those things. 

"You knew?" Eddie asked through a grin that had taken no time to form, as Billy continued with the final strands of his hair.

"Of course, I knew. You're so obvious with  everything . You're about as subtle as a tonne of bricks."

Billy wasn't an idiot, and Eddie was loud and obnoxious and wore his heart on his sleeve. But he was a good liar and a good storyteller. He knew how to put the truth in a box and tie a bow around it and proceed to leave it in a cupboard for safe keeping till Christmas. Billy knew that about him and knew how to lift the edges of the paper to just peek at what was inside. Billy was observant, and Eddie was not used to being actually observed by anyone. 

" Prick,"  said Eddie in the same not malicious but fond tone Billy had bestowed upon him. 

For the first time in this whole situation, Billy was rough with Eddie and tugged down at the curl between his fingers.

"If you knew, then why didn't you say anything?" 

Immediately, Billy volleyed the question back over to Eddie, "Why didn't you, huh?"

Eddie made a noise at the back of his throat, half a scoff, half a laugh, all in utmost surprise that they were having this conversation at all. He held out his hands and focused on them, still not daring to turn around to look at Billy. For the first time in a long time, his rings finally felt like they fit on his fingers as the heat of the shower and his emotional turmoil sent blood rushing back to his fingers. 

 "I was scared, I guess," he spun the pig's head around his finger and continued to mutter, "I didn't want to end up alone."

Once again, Billy didn't respond right away. Immediately, Eddie tensed up, and Billy's hands lifted from his hair. After a moment, his fingers landed in his hair again after tilting Eddie's head a little backwards. 

Eddie relaxed again, knowing that he hadn't said anything wrong, but rather, Billy was worried about saying something wrong in return. 

His fingers carded through the hair above his ears, putting the tiniest bit of pleasant pressure there. They continued down the lengths of his hair until the very, very tips. He did it again and continued hypnotically. 

Eddie almost missed it when he finally spoke, his voice calm and premeditated, "I didn't want to make you feel like you didn't have a choice. I've done some awful things because I didn't feel like I had a choice."

Those words didn't feel like they came from the Billy he knew but instead the Billy he wanted to be. The Billy that had come crawled out of the depths of him, kicking and screaming, just the way Billy had crawled out of hell itself.

He swallowed loudly, and his knee shifted behind Eddie's back, "Acting on, well, whatever was going on between us could have been an awful choice for you to make."

Billy's past was a wound that could never heal. Not because time doesn't heal all things, but because Billy wouldn't let it. He wanted to poke and prod at it; he wanted to relish in the pain that it had caused him because he felt like he deserved it. He inflicted pain upon himself because of the pain he inflicted on others, sometimes forgetting that someone else had carved out those wounds on him in the first place. Billy liked to watch it bleed as if somehow his blood was penance. 

He had words for everything, everything other than this. Eddie didn't know what to say.

Billy spoke firmly as if this was the only thing that  The Billy Beyond the Bullshit  had ever said in his life, "You were everything to me in that fucking hellscape. Y'know that?" 

Before Eddie could respond, the top of Billy's head was pressing into his shoulder. It was firm and desperate. It almost hurt. It was the way he'd always been taught to touch the skin of others fighting with the way that he wanted to. 

Eddie only caught the end of the sentence he was muttering under his breath, half-obscured by the sound of the water, half-obscured by the fact he clearly wasn't ready for Eddie to hear it all.

"...alive." 

Then, Billy's chin was hovering just above Eddie's shoulder, and Eddie finally found the courage to turn around. Billy's dark lashes were clumped with water, sending fat droplets dripping down his cheeks as he scanned Eddie's face. His lips were parted and pink, with deep red marks on the bottom lip, as if he had been biting down upon it when Eddie's back was turned. Finally, his eyes locked on Eddie's, even bluer than the sky they had both forgotten existed. 

Eddie went to lean into him and close the gap but couldn't. Immediately, Billy pushed forward, pressing their mouths together in a long hard peck. They pulled apart for a moment, and Billy's gaze appraised him like he was hanging in the MoMA. Like something beautiful and complex, something that he couldn't work out why it was so special, but he knew  it was . That it and Eddie were profoundly breathtaking for whatever reason Billy wanted them to be. 

Billy's hand wrapped around the back of Eddie's head, twisting him closer into him for another kiss. As they kissed, this time harder and more frantically, Billy's hands moved to grip the side's of Eddie's face, pulling him so tightly into him that there was a sadness to him, that if he let up just the tiniest amount, Eddie would pull back and leap out of the bath and never look back. So, in turn, despite the pain in his craning neck, Eddie pushed forward himself, and ran his tongue over Billy's chewed on bottom lip. Billy opened his mouth and allowed Eddie to enter, deepening the kiss, not out of wanting but ardent desperation. Billy kissed Eddie like he was his only lifeline, and in some ways, he had been. In some ways, he still was. 

Billy tried to stand as they stayed connected, and Eddie scrambled to his feet. As they broke apart and Eddie tried to stand, he got a good look at Billy's face, and he was right; the look that Billy gave him was that of a man whose happiness entirely hinged upon Eddie, for better or for worse, healthy or otherwise. Eddie was not a particularly strong man, especially when it came to denying those that he loved something they loved. So when Eddie finally stood, he kissed him again, reverently. This emphatically told Billy that this was a choice he was making, and it was the right one. 

It was being alive in the absolute best way. He was used to being alive in the absolute worst way, aware of how an infected cut stung, how his bones ached and his empty stomach growled, and how his head pounded and screamed when he didn't sleep enough. But this? This was the first time in two lifetimes that he truly felt alive in the way that he wanted. 

Billy fisted his hand into Eddie's wet shirt and pulled them together tightly. Billy hummed in satisfaction as soon as Eddie's hand was tangled in the grown-out layers of Billy's hair. Releasing his grip on Eddie's shirt, Billy's hands travelled down Eddie's torso, gliding frantically against the ruined material between his hands and Eddie's skin, finally settling on the bones of Eddie's narrow hips and gripping so tightly that he would leave tiny bruises like faded tattoos. 

Eddie wanted that. He wanted to be wanted by Billy so badly that he left a mark. He'd been kissed before, by boys and girls, but never wanted, not really. Never wanted in the way that had Billy panting into his mouth as he literally tore the shirt off Eddie's back. Never wanted in the way that had his partner moaning like Billy as he sucked a kiss into the space on his throat just behind his ear. He wanted to be wanted like that by Steve too.

Eddie broke the kiss apart for a moment, and Billy looked on in slight confusion, and as Billy's eyes began to narrow and something harsh formed on his tongue, Eddie pulled them close again. Billy sneered into the kiss and bit down lightly on Eddie's bottom lip. Eddie wrapped his fist in Billy's hair and pulled down on it, resulting in a heavy-lidded grin and a low growl. 

Lips on the warm skin of Billy's neck, Eddie purred, "I've been thinking of fucking you for a long time, big boy." 

Eddie should've watched the way Billy's knees wobbled slightly, the way his cock twitched. The way he didn't protest at all at the prospect of Eddie being the one to take him apart slowly and deliciously. Eddie should've noticed the way that made him feel more, the way that Billy knew himself just enough, just for a moment to know that it was exactly what he needed and not the other way around. 

But Eddie didn't notice that. The only thing he noticed was the memory of Steve's pursed lips as Eddie grinned at him, the phrase  'big boy ' just having trickled from his lips. He could only think of the way that Steve might react to such an offer. The way Steve's lips would taste on his, the way that his skin would feel caught between his lips. 

He pulled back again.

"What's wrong?" Billy asked carefully, even though Eddie could tell there was a burning desire to get out whilst he could. Billy glanced at the shower curtain and then back at Eddie.

"Nothing, nothing. I'm all good, handsome."

Billy's eyes looked nervous, but his jaw set square. He swallowed thickly. Eddie brushed the scar on Billy's cheek with the back of his knuckle and then dipped forward into a kiss again. His hand trailed down Billy's back as the water droplets did. His muscles created little valleys for them to run through like tiny rivers. As his hand settled on his lower back, Billy's hand slid to the base of Eddie's skull, tightly and desperately. 

Billy's hand began to migrate, first to his neck, holding it firmly but not tightly. It was possessive but not painful. Then to the base of his jaw, thick finger pads traced along the straight line of his jaw. Then finally, Billy pulled away, and his pinky finger arched from its position to swipe over Eddie's lower lip. 

They parted from the kiss, but the finger remained, caressing gently, and in a way, it seemed impossible for someone like Billy to muster. Eddie's tongue darted out to touch the tip, swirling around it testily at first and then languidly, sucking the digit through carefully parted teeth. His lips closed around the nail, and Eddie could feel every ridge of Billy's fingerprint. The very fabric of Billy's being trapped and examined in such a personal way. 

Then Billy removed the pinky, and Eddie mourned the loss a little. It felt right there, just like a guitar pick between his teeth or a cigarette between his lips. Before Billy acted again, his eye's traced hungrily over Eddie's face. Then, two digits were pressed carefully between Eddie's lips, and Eddie sucked them eagerly in. It was almost worth dying to be reborn and see someone such as Billy Hargrove completely humbled by such a thing. 

Eddie began to mumble, and Billy quickly removed his fingers. Eddie knew what was coming next. 

"Y'know you're going to have to ask for that."

Eddie tried not to glance downwards, even though he really wanted to. He just wanted to see Billy Hargrove ask that of him even more.

"C'mon-" Billy said with a nervous little laugh. 

There was a pause, and Billy ran his teeth over his lower lip, and Eddie could swear that he could hear Billy's chest crack open, laying himself bare. 

"Please, Eddie."

With a squeak of the bathtub, Eddie lowered himself and positioned himself in front of Billy. Tauntingly close but not close enough. 

"Please, Eddie what?" He murmured the whisper of his words just enough to tickle Billy's length and shoot volts of stimulation right through him. 

"I want you." Said Billy finally and breathlessly. 

Now Eddie's lips were on him, kissing lightly, savouring every shiver of a man who deep down just wanted to be touched gently, to be cared for in a way he never had. Eddie had always pictured this, and it always went this way, Billy above him but quivering as he worked him, his hand fisted in his hair, his knees buckling slightly.

Eddie had a knack for pulling people apart and patching them back up again, and all Billy ever needed was to be held. By tape, glue or even rubber bands, but mostly he needed to be held together by someone who cared enough to pick up the pieces. 

Billy's hand continued to twist in Eddie's hair as he worked, and water rained down over him. It was uncomfortable, but it was worth it to get these kinds of reactions from Billy. As Eddie took him as far back as he could, Billy shuddered and yanked down on Eddie's hair too tight. 

"Hey, Steve, watch it!"

Hand still tangled in Eddie's hair, Billy pulled him back away from him. He held onto it steadfastly and looked down at Eddie, his expression having morphed from pure bliss to something completely unreadable.

Eddie laughed a little, nervous, before saying, "Hey, what the fuck, man? that hurts." 

The hand fisted in his hair suddenly released, and Eddie fell back onto the heels of his feet. 

The unreadable expression on Billy's face soon transformed into lip-snarling anger. His button nose had flared nostrils, and his kiss-bitten lips turned downwards, "What did you say?"

Eddie's head recoiled in confusion, "I said watch it."

" No ," Billy began condescendingly. His tone was firm and almost frightening, and he immediately snatched away the upper hand from Eddie, " You said , Hey  Steve , watch it." 

Oh shit.

Oh  shit . 

He had. He'd been so wrapped up and so turned on it must have slipped out. Something like this was bound to happen. He should've stopped earlier; he should've never done this with Billy without sorting his head out with Steve.

Billy looked furious, but most of all, worst of all, he looked heartbroken. 

"Do I look like princess Harrington? Or do you just wish I was him?" His seething sarcastic tone did a poor job hiding the quiver in his throat. 

Eddie immediately scrambled to his feet, slipping a little on the tub's sides, and protested, "It's not like that."

"Then what?" Billy jabbed hard at Eddie's shoulder, the pleasant jingle from his necklace entirely incongruent for the rest of the conversation.

 "What the fuck is it, Munson? cause it sounds like you'd rather be out there sucking Harrington's cock." 

Eddie should have stepped up and tried to defend himself. Told Billy the truth. Told him that Billy was someone he'd fallen in love with in the face of adversity, and Steve, Steve was the kind of guy he always dreamed of, ever since he started dreaming of guys. Steve was who he was, and Billy was the person he'd become. And he wasn't really sure which one of those people he'd become, or even either of those people, really. 

Billy knew him, and Billy loved him so obviously - he would understand. They'd been through hell and back together. Not just the hell they found in the Upside Down but the hell they'd dragged along with them. 

So when Eddie snarled out, "And you wouldn't," in a half-laugh half bark of a cornered hyena chittering away in the face of danger. He wasn't sure why he did it. 

Billy was immediately defensive, "Shut the fuck up."

"No, I know the way you look at him. You look at him like you want to eat him alive, and you look at me like well-" 

That meant Eddie was right. He was right because he knew Billy, and he loved him so obviously - he understood. 

Eddie's voice faltered as he came to the epiphany that part of what had bound them together was Steve, in life, in death and here, on their re-birthday as they stood in Steve's temporary home.

"You look at me like that too." The statement rang of a realisation and then a plan. That this was never going to work unless they addressed the Steve shaped elephant in the room. The three of them had been bound together like some eldritch horror. Formed in the cusp of this world and another, like nuclear fusion the belly of a dying star. Like the Celestial Rat King, tails fused together through trauma, through hatred, through love, or whatever could constitute love. 

It was a strange weightless feeling to come to a realisation such as that. The feeling was surrounded by the crushing reality that one, or even both of them wouldn't want him at all. 

And like watching the strongest rat chew through Eddie's tail in real-time, Billy prodded him in the shoulder again and spat out, "Go fuck yourself."

As he turned to get out of the shower, he pushed Eddie aside a little, causing Eddie to lose his footing on the old porcelain tub and collide with it with a wet clang. 

Billy wrapped a towel around his waist and looked back at Eddie. From the base of the bathtub, Eddie watched as Billy gave him that look. The look that had made him so angry as Eddie was ensnared by vines. It was the look that asked him, ' Are you worth saving? ' 

Before either of them could answer, the door opened, and steam flooded out of the room. Billy let go of the curtain and let it flutter shut.  

Steve stood there, his silhouette with one hand on the door handle and the other on the architrave and huffed out, "Hey, Hargrove, do you know where Munson is?"

Billy didn't respond and continued to shuffle with his towel.

 "I can't find him, he said he was coming in here to check on you, and there was a loud bang-" Steve's rambling was cut off by Billy interrupting. 

"Harrington, what are you doing? Look at me, you weirdo."

It was easy to imagine Steve covering his eyes like the shy love interest in a regency-era novel. Eddie didn't even need to look beyond the curtain. 

"I dunno you're in the shower, and I didn't wanna y'know-"

Billy's shadow was getting smaller as he walked away from the backdrop of the shower curtain. He reached for a second towel and began rubbing it in his hair, "Come on, pretty boy, we both know you always liked a peek."

Eddie was still crouching quietly in the tub, not quite ready to unveil why he was half-clothed in the shower and why it had all come to an unceremonious end upon Steve's unbeknown participation. Billy's aggressive flirting was proving his theory right, though. 

Rapping his fingers on the door frame, Steve asked, "Where's Eddie?" Ignoring Billy's, come on.

Billy was clearly antagonised by that fact and edged a little closer to the shape in the doorframe and purred, "So you're not denying it?"

The desire to pull back the curtain slightly was almost overwhelming. Not out of an unexpected schadenfreude but the very burgeoning desire that he actually liked the idea of watching them flirt. 

What came next was so far beyond the realms of what Eddie had expected but somehow precisely aligned to all the evidence he had been presented with.

Steve sighed a long and irritated sigh, "Well, since we did sleep together-"

Eddie couldn't help it, he really really couldn’t help it when he mumbled, " Oh shit. " 

"Hey, hey!" Steve bounded forward into the bathroom at the unexpected noise. "What's going on? Privacy doesn't extend to you getting sucked back down into the upside-down in the shower.."

There was a hand clasped over Eddie's mouth in residual shock as Billy reapproached his hiding place and flicked the closed curtain just once, "There was a Demogorgon in there giving me a blow job."

The was the sound and the outline of a minor scuffle as Steve tried to push past the damp Billy, "Oh fuck off, where's Eddie?"

Billy put up a blockade momentarily before stepping aside and stating, "He's in the shower. He uses about as many teeth as a Demogorgon." 

It seemed as if Steve hadn't heard him or didn't believe him and flung the curtain open with a metallic rattle as the hooks clattered against the rail.

Billy looked over from the corner of his eye and encouraged, "Hope he scrapes the skin off your dick Harrington."

Now Steve was bearing down over him, his hazel eyes blinking too quickly and then too slowly as he processed what he saw. Eddie gave him a paltry wave; he already looked like a pathetic drowned rat who'd just been chastised for having subpar dick-sucking skills; he may as well make it mildly funny. 

Steve leaned forward and idly turned off the water as grip lay stagnant on the curtain. He didn’t look at Eddie again before he closed it in one swift motion. Taking that as his cue for the 'the show actually will not go on’, Eddie stood and wobbled his way out of the confines of the bath. 

The three of them were now standing in the small steam-filled room, each of them in different corners, in varying states of dampness and undress, hands-on-hips, as if it was history's strangest Mexican standoff. 

Steve pursed his lips, and his eyes darted between Billy and Eddie. He quickly sighed at what seemed to bedisappointment and began rambling, "Oh yeah, shit, sorry. It makes sense, actually. Carry on or whatever." 

Eddie was selfishly focusing on the prospect that a part of Steve was disappointed and hoped that it was not focused on either him or Billy but rather on the idea that he was not invited.

So when Steve's tone changed and he fumbled out, "Wait what?"

Billy was the first to respond, "Yeah, apparently we all get a turn on the freak."

It was the first time anyone had called him that word for a very long time, six months and eight days, to be precise. Unlike how others had spat it at him, Billy's outburst was laden with jealousy. 

He scoffed and tightened his grip on the knot of the towel around his waist; he did it so tightly that the fabric creaked. Beginning with the same jealousy/anger amalgam, Billy glared at Eddie from his position by the door, "I think he likes you more than me which is-"

Then surprisingly, Billy paused and looked at Steve. It was the same look he'd given Steve before; it was the same look he had been giving Eddie earlier. A look that said he'd lost something and had found it in them. His tone was defeated when he finally drawled out, "it makes fucking perfect sense, doesn't it?" 

Eddie did not want Steve any more than he wanted Billy. And that was the fucking problem. 

Without either of them jumping to his immediate defence, Billy rolled his eyes and turned on his heels to walk out of the door. 

"Wait," Eddie began, biding time to think of something helpful to say beyond the blare of air raid sirens in his head, "We should talk, all of us." 

Steve's reaction caught his eye; first, it was surprisingly calm for someone who had been unwittingly dragged into the epicentre of a very strange romantic quarrel. He nodded lightly, and only Eddie noticed.

In turn, Billy's hand was on the doorknob as he turned around. He looked back at the room, a room so quickly associated with both amazing and heartbreaking memories that it must have been some kind of emotional ping-pong volley record. 

He pointed his index finger at Eddie and spoke with genuine, no holds barred anger, "Munson, if you follow me out of here, I will break your fucking wrists."

Eddie stormed forward in splattering wet steps. Before he could reach Billy, whose back was disappearing in the closing door along with a tastefully outstretched middle finger, Steve's hands were wrapped around the threatened wrists.

Jerking his wrists upwards, stopping Eddie from carrying on, Steve commanded, "Hey, idiot. Let's not go running after the person who threatened you bodily harm, shall we?"

The door finally slammed shut, and Eddie was now eye to eye with Steve. Steve, whose lips were pursed and his eyebrows bowed aggressively in frustration. He continued to hold up Eddie's wrists in the small gap between them, and Eddie wrangled a little against his confines. 

Finally, Eddie tensed in his position but didn't pull away. 

Then Steve let him go. Eddie stepped away, and his hands swung to his sides; Steves remained poised and battle-ready. His loose fists now formed into two pointing arrows, "Tell me what's going on because this is my house, and if I have to drive you both back and dump you in Lovers Lake to sort this shit out, I will."

Eddie could almost feel the frigid water filling up his lungs when he slumped against the bath and lay his legs outstretched on the bathmat. 

He drew his eyes narrow and his voice firm when he glared up at Steve, "Don't joke about that." 

Instantly Steve closed the toilet lid, muttering out candidly, "Sorry, yeah, that was too far." and perched his person on the closed lid. 

Obviously, Eddie owed Steve an explanation. He also owed Steve some kind of award for behaving so rationally in such an insane situation. However, this was easy compared to all the shit Steve had seen. Some weird lover's quarrel was probably like child's play compared to walking in on Nancy and Johnathon Byers trying to beat an interdimensional monster to death with a baseball bat.

He owed him an explanation, but the words weren't forming in his mouth. There were too many, there were too many words, too many explanations; they all blurred together to create something that had no meaning at all. He could start with the rat king and work his way back from there, or he could tell him that he'd had a crush on him in high school or maybe even just grilled him about sleeping with notorious asshole Billy Hargrove as if he hadn't just done the same thing. 

Instead, he just mumbled out the simplest thing, not an explanation. Not the solution that Steve was looking for but the problem. 

"I love you, Steve."

He daren't look at Steve. He just leaned his wet mop of freshly washed hair on the bath's rim and looked up. 

Predictably, Steve didn't respond right away. That meant he wasn't vehemently opposed to the idea but wasn't entirely in favour of it either. 

As Eddie drew up his clothed legs against his bare chest, Steve finally muttered, "You barely know me."

It was true, but it also wasn't, but mostly, It was a way to back out of what he just said, and Steve was handing it to him on a silver platter. 

Maybe 'I'm  in love with the idea of you ' was a better way of putting it, but it was out there now. Born kicking and screaming into a world that didn't want it. 

With his head still on the cool edge of the bathtub, he uttered, "I love him too." 

He didn't turn his head, but he strained his eyes to look at Steve, who had assumed a pose akin to the thinker and was watching Eddie intently, worriedly. 

Eddie let out a long, long sigh. The kind of sigh that would leave him a deflated suit of skin and hair laid out on the bathroom floor. He looked up again, "I don't know what to do. I'm all messed up, man." 

He watched as the words took shape in the air, bending and curling on themselves and dissipating as soon as they touched the roof. They flitted down onto him like stardust. 

There was movement beside him and suddenly, Steve was there, legs outstretched on the lilac bathmat. 

Eddie rolled his head to the side to look at Steve. Steve looked onwards and not at Eddie, and Eddie watched the words flex and bob in his throat as they left, "You died, Eddie. I'd be way more messed up than you if it was me."

Steve glanced downward to assess Eddie's reaction, his long lashes blinking at him expectantly.

Crooking an eyebrow and facing upward again, Eddie just complained, "That doesn't make me feel better at all."

The arm that was braced by Steve's side was now lifted, the hand attached to it rubbing tired stripes across his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, "What I'm trying to say is that you went through hell. Cut yourself some slack."

He could cut himself some slack for some things; he wasn't an utterly self-flagellating asshole. Still, he couldn't forgive himself for effectively betraying Billy when he showed him vulnerability like that, possibly for the first time in his two very miserable lives. 

Cringing deeply, he told Steve what happened, "I called him 'Steve' whilst I was sucking his dick."

Steve became very still before stuttering, "Jesus, that is, uh," he laughed nervously, "I don't know what to say about that."

He was sure that Steve had something to say about it.

"You slept with him, so surely something?"

Without saying anything, Steve slid down against the side of the bath to Eddie's level and laid his head upon the side of the tub too. They stayed there for a little while in silence, looking up at the wooden ceiling as if they were watching the stars. 

Finally, Steve broke the silence, "I don't know him like you do. I don't think anyone does."

Eddie thought of what had crossed his mind before. How Billy was his soul mate, for better or for worse, and in fact, Steve was too, and as the rat king's tails were tangled, as were they. He wondered just how long that would last for, how long they could remain tethered for without any of them getting bored. He didn't even know if he was the same person now that had been bound to them in the first place.

Licking his lips before he eventually spoke, Eddie uttered, "I don't know who I am anymore. I died one person and then came back another."

Steve remained silent and continued to look at the ceiling. 

"I don't know if I'm a better or a worse person, Steve."

"Does it matter?" 

Steve's question was asked with genuine intrigue, but it didn't negate Eddie's confusion. 

"Of course, it matters its-"

Steve interrupted with shakily placed authority, "Hear me out, okay."

Against the edge of the bath, Eddie nodded. 

As Steve spoke, he swirled his hands. Eddie couldn't see them, but he felt them, tiny breezes in their wake against his naked torso, "Maybe you're not worse or any better, but maybe you're just different."

Eddie lifted his eyebrows purely for his own benefit and tried to clarify, "Different?"

"Yeah, dingus, different. It's good to change, not that I do any of it. I'm reliable old Steve Harrington."

The first thing Eddie noticed was the use of the word dingus, one used exclusively by Robin Buckley. He found it amusing that he was professing that he never changed whilst simultaneously proving that he had. 

He thought it might be too intimate to bring up such a thing, a little too telling. As if he hadn't told him he loved him not five minutes earlier. 

"You burned down a police station for me." The thought of it crinkled his eyes with perverse fondness at such an act, "That was pretty metal. Way more metal than killing some bats. Fuck the man, am I right?"

"Not my finest moment." Steve laughed. 

"Oh, but it was an  amazing  one."

By default, Steve conceded his point by not fighting back and by letting Eddie's pride and fondness wash over him like the sea shore on a summer's day. 

"I'm glad you're back, Eds."

The urge to say ' Glad to be back ', faltered at the gate, and he remained quiet. Until he turned his head on the bath to face Steve.

"Steve?" he asked.

"What?"

"Do you love Billy?"

Steve breathed out deeply before he responded. A breath that shook a little at the edges. 

"Not now."

"Did you ever love him?"

Steve's face was still facing upward as Eddie watched the words form on his lips. They stopped, and they started before, finally, Steve spoke. 

"I, uh, I don't know."

It was evident to the both of them what question was going to come next.

Eddie was safe, and he was brave, if not a little foolish. 

"Do you love me?"

"No." Steve said in a way that sounded like the beginning, not the end, "Not yet."

Steve sought out Eddie's hand from between where they sat and squeezed on it firmly. It felt like a promise. With that, Steve finally turned his head to face Eddie. Eddie instinctively freed his hand from Steve's grip and traced his knuckle along his cheekbone, much like he had with Billy earlier. 

Steve closed his eyes and smiled a little with the touch. He nudged forward and pressed a light kiss to Eddie's lips, nothing more than a peck. It was a promise though, for when the time was right, just as the hand squeeze had been just before. 

"I want you," Eddie breathed.

Steve's eyes fluttered open again, and his lips parted a little as if he was going to say something, "and I want him. Does that make me a terrible person?"

"No."

"No?"

"It'd be pretty hypocritical of me, wouldn't it? To say that it did."

The implication of that statement burnt white hot right at the very core of him. Not because he was wanted by Steve and my Billy because because seemingly they wanted the exact same thing that he did.

Eddie sat upright again and ran his tongue over his teeth, and smiled as he did so. It was a painstakingly broad thing, one that hurt his cheeks just a little. Steve flexed his neck and followed suit. As Steve sat upright again , he placed a large hand on Eddie's thigh and squeezed reassuringly. 

"Get out of these clothes, finish showering, and I'll go talk to Billy. We'll sort this out."

The final track of  The Freewheelin Bob Dylan  had just petered to a close, leaving this good thing to bask in its quietness. 

Notes:

I don't know why I bother putting in the music. They're listening to the whole of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Steve found it in Hopper's records.

Kudos and comments are super highly appreciated.

For the love of god please follow me on tumblr or follow me on twitter I want to talk about these boys desperately

Chapter 5: Interlude/Soccer

Notes:

tyler the creator voice: so that was a lie - infact I am going to include a threesome scene in this because why not. this is my silly story i should have fun with it.

this chapter is just a short one, hence the name, before I publish the last big one. sorry about all the changing chapter amounts, this story took on a life of it's own as you well know and it told me that it was going to be really annoying and change it's mind all the time.

thank you all for your readership and kind words, it means the world to me.

to note there’s mentions of an older man making advances on a nineteen year old steve, just a warning for those who want it

It wasn't long after Steve had left when Eddie stripped off the last of his clothes. They lay in a damp, disgusting pile beside one of the feet of the claw foot tub. They probably needed to be burned to mitigate the risk of becoming sentient and taking over the town. It seemed like an over-exaggeration, but stranger things had happened. 

He wasn't glad of the state in which he was left in the shower alone, but he was pleased with the outcome. He stood for a moment, with his head tilted back as the staccato spray of the old showerhead covered his face. Grateful for the fact he was finally able to actually get clean all of the ways.

 It was like rain. How he missed the rain, and the sun and even the way that they'd somehow come together in a choking blanket of humidity. He missed the way his skin would freckle and then burn in the summer heat. The way his hair would frizz and become unmanageable. He missed the way his bangs would split awkwardly in the middle when doused with a summer shower. He missed the way his lips would chap and peel in the Indiana winter and even that little dry patch of skin that would come up on his elbow in the winter and wouldn't go away no matter what. He missed even the worst things about being in this world, being alive.

He rinsed the suds from his body and washed again for good measure. Focusing on the undersides of his nails, scrubbing violently at the stubborn grime. He'd noticed Billy had fastidiously done the same. They were both well aware of the fact, even though they didn't speak it out loud, that without every morsel of the Upside-Down gone, they couldn't quite re-enter the real world. Like a spell without all the words, a potion without all the ingredients, it wouldn't work without it all. 

Once finally satisfied, Eddie stepped from the shower and dried himself off with the sage green towel. It was already slightly damp and smelled like Steve's expensive shampoo. It was a small defiant act of passive aggression from Billy. Eddie couldn't help but huff a tiny laugh. As he thought of ' character growth ' to himself. He dried himself off with the towel and, as he did, finally really noticed the gnarled scars on his stomach and sides. He was aware of them, but he'd never seen them like this, with a yellow light bulb hanging overhead rather than the deep blue hue of the underground world. 

They were six months healed and ugly. One of them tore up a tattoo of a scythe; it was now missing half of its handle and the tip of its blade. He didn't really know what to think of the scars. Like the way his lips would go try in the winter air, they were now just a part of him, not a good part of a bad part. Just a part of the new him that he would grow to love in the end. 

After all, he loved them on Billy. They were paintings of a man hell-bent on living. The kind of man who looked death right in the eye and sucker punched him. Every day, he would look at those messy scars and find them beautiful in a way. He always found Billy beautiful, not in spite of those things but rather because of them. He was dangerous and unyielding but beautiful. He was a forest fire. 

He nudged around the bathroom counter and picked up the toothbrush. It was damp, and its bristles were not virginal. He didn't care and ran a line of toothpaste over it and thrust it into his mouth. He wasn't precious. As he brushed, he tied the towel around his waist with one hand. He then swiped over the steamed-up mirror with one hand. 

He hadn't really seen his reflection in six months and when he finally did, he  did  recognise it. But it was uncanny. He'd once read about Capgras Syndrome, where sufferers thought their loved ones had been replaced with doppelgangers. He couldn't quite pinpoint why but that was precisely how he felt about himself. He touched around his face. That was his nose, cheeks, and lips (covered in toothpaste), but somehow he felt both more and less than the sum of those parts. It felt like walking into a room where someone had moved everything two inches over to the right. There was nothing obviously wrong, just strange. 

Steve was right; he was different. 

He'd get used to it.

He exited the small bathroom and into the bedroom. Without the shower spray, he could clearly hear the sounds of two bodies moving around one another in the other room. Billy hadn't fled, which was a good thing. There were no sounds of arguments or fighting, which was another good thing. Billy had been rightfully angry but somehow understood the situation enough to know it warranted explaining. Eddie wondered if Steve had tried, just a little, just enough to make him stay. 

As he rifled through the draws, picking up items of clothes that looked like they'd fit him, he listened intently to the scene outside. It was mostly silent, which was a good thing. He slid into a pair of light-coloured jeans, obviously Steve's. They were a little big around the waist and were in perfect condition. He pulled out a sizeable garish shirt, mottled geometric shapes in pink and white. He held it up for a moment whilst he whispered,

"Hideous" to himself and slipped it on his still slightly damp person. 

He felt safe wearing Steve's clothes, and he was sure Billy felt the same way too. Steve had always provided that feeling, land in a tumultuous sea. He often protested wildly when sailors washed up on his shores but patched them up, fed them coconuts, and ensured they had enough drinking water. Steve was always the earth. He was grounding,  literally . 

They were earth, water and fire. Symbiotic and lost without one another, like an ant mill, lost without a sense of direction and eventually dying of exposure. 

And it was a good name for a disco cover band if the mood ever struck them. 

As Eddie exited the bedroom, he hesitated a little. Geared himself up a little on the spot, took two breaths in and one breath out. He knew what he had to say. He had to tell Billy that he was sorry for what he did and that he had just kissed Steve, and Steve also wanted to kiss Billy and that it sounded completely insane, just like everything else that had ever happened to them but also kind of perfect. And, and, and-

He swung the door open with more force than strictly required. The door clattered against the wall with a shunted stutter, causing the mirror on the wall to rattle slightly. His arrival was not met with fanfare. Instead, the rather domestic sight of Billy and Steve sat at the little kitchen table, hunched over plates of food with ' Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town ' playing softly over the radio. 

For a moment, he just stood there watching, the smell of breakfast food hanging in the air. It felt as if there should be warm morning light drifting over the entire scene. He wasn't even sure if he really remembered what that looked like. But there was the feeling, the kind of contentedness that could only be shared over the mutual eating of cooked eggs and the groggy feeling of contemplation. 

Steve beckoned him over and pointed to a plate of untouched food on the kitchen counter. A frankly obscene amount of scrambled eggs, overcooked and probably rubbery and four slices of underdone toast slathered in butter. As Eddie sat down, Steve knocked the side of a pepper container with his knuckle, and it wobbled slightly before settling back down. He nodded and picked up the porcelain obelisk. 

As he dusted his eggs with the spice, he thought about what to say, ' Just how many eggs is this, Steve, is the chicken who produced all these still alive ?',  'Billy, I'm so sorry but also how would you feel about a threesome in sex and in life, I think Harrington's down, aren't ya big boy? ', ' Did you know there was a response song to this song, 'Billy, I've Got to Go to Town'? Which is about a woman pledging her fidelity to her husband named Billy. Which was both creepily appropriate and kind of ironic.'  but all of the words fell short. 

The last thought played on his tongue a little, though, as he shuffled in front of his food. He could launch into an explanation about why he knew so much about country music, about how his Uncle Wayne used to play it in the trailer and how country was actually the most metal genre there was. He could tell them about Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and burst into an off-key rendition of  'Here You Come Again ' to Steve as if that song was written about this exact situation. Billy would complain, as would Steve. Steve would complain about the singing, and Billy would complain about that particular song being a cross-over pop song and was, in fact, one of her least metal songs. 

He stayed silent and chewed a little on the side of his cheek before pushing his fork into his eggs. As predicted, the eggs were rubbery and overdone. They were the most delicious thing he'd ever eaten. Granted, he hadn't eaten many delicious things in his life. Before the bats got Eddie, when Nancy had fallen asleep aside Steve in the RV, Eddie had hung off the back of her seat and chattered away with Steve, whose eyes had begun to droop too. They were both hungry, so they talked about food mostly, with the intermission of Dustin to demand that they share it if they had any up there. Steve told him about this restaurant in Chicago that his parents took him to. It was for Steve's father's promotion. It was a fancy place with big plates and small portions.

His father's boss had insisted that Steve get the wine pairing too, that nineteen was old enough for a man to enjoy a drink with dinner. Strangely, he spent a lot of the night talking with Steve. Showering him with conversation and the promise of a job if he could get a resume together. Steve's father had looked at him with the same big round eyes that he had; they sparkled with the hope that his son may not be a pathetic burnout after all. The three men volleyed the conversation around the table for four, with Steve's mother looking bored and hungry next to Steve. He tried to involve her in the discussion whenever he could, his father seemed irritated by it, and she seemed despondent and unwilling to respond anyway. 

His father's boss was an animated man with a thick salt and pepper moustache better suited to the seventies than the eighties. His hands flailed as he talked; he banged the table to punctuate points that he had just made. Steve's father looked on cautiously but willingly, and then when he had gone to the bathroom between the fish and the main course, sternly explained to Steve that he wasn't usually like that, and was in an unusually good mood and for ' Steve not to blow this opportunity for himself' . When they sat down again and continued dinner, the older man's performance continued. As he spoke over lamb cutlets and mint sauce, his knees knocked into Steve, and his ringed hands brushed up against Steve's as he lay them on the dining table. 

At the end of the meal, Steve was filled with too much wine and not really much food. He went to the bathroom, and his father's boss followed him there. He talked about getting his resume over to the Hawkin's office in the next week, and if he wanted, he could transfer to the Chicago branch, moving costs and car leasing to be covered by the company,  of course . Steve nodded along tipsily and thought about if he could bring his friend Robin along because she loved Chicago. 

As they left the bathroom, Steve's father's boss clasped a hand over Steve's shoulder and asked him to wait. The look on his face had changed from jovial but still professional to something else. He didn't do anything other than take the lapel of Steve's dinner jacket between his index and middle finger and slide them from his chest down to his navel. He then took his business card from his own suit jacket. Thomas Waverley, VP of operations on the front and a scrawl of red ink across the back. He flashed it to Steve, who recognised it as a phone number. He smiled cautiously, slid it into Steve's chest pocket, and patted it safely. 

When Eddie heard that story, Steve seemed unphased by that. He didn't seem particularly uncomfortable, instead just put out by the fact that he was a little old for Steve. Eddie laughed along with the joke, not really realising that him being a man wasn't the problem. Steve had looked over at Nancy to check on her, probably to check that she was still sleeping, and wrung his hands along the large steering wheel. 

He told Eddie that when they returned to the hotel, he was still tipsy and riding off the high of being the centre of attention and showed the business card to his mother. She looked at it and then looked at him. She'd always been a stern woman who wore a cross around her neck and kept the house fastidiously neat. She also liked fancy things and nice clothes and hated the fact they were forced to move from Chicago to Hawkins. He'd always been close to his mother, despite all of that. She palmed the business card over in her neatly kept hands and said, ' Do you think this could get us back to Chicago? ', Steve laughed a little before telling her that he wasn't really into older men. She pushed the business card back into his breast pocket and told him to make a good decision for the first time in his life and sometimes good decisions don’t feel like good decisions at the time. 

Eddie's jaw hung open, and Steve simply shrugged like it was no big deal. Steve had said that she was drunk too and that she hated his father, and that came out, especially when she'd been drinking. He didn't really have anything else to say on the matter other than performing a little smile and disclosing that he'd never actually told that story to anyone before. Eddie thought it felt like a last-ditch confessional, he could almost feel the hospital lights and the wires beep around Steve as he told his family all the things he should've said sooner. Eddie didn't know why Steve told him that story, and he didn't know why he thought of it when his insides were being torn apart by demon bats. 

In retrospect, though, it was obvious, and Eddie wished he'd have said something a little more pertinent. Maybe he could have asked him why he only freaked out about the man's age, or what he said to his mother after that, or why he thought to tell Eddie any of it at all. Anything more than, ' that's rough dude' .

Eddie shovelled another spoonful of eggs into his mouth, followed by toast, even though he hadn't yet managed to swallow. The radio presenter mumbled something about Roger Miller before the song flicked over. Billy took a sip of something in front of him, and his gold ring clattered against the glass as he picked it up. As the brandy hit his lips, he winced into the taste of it, and Eddie was reminded that this wasn't breakfast at all. 

But it still felt like it. It felt like the refuge after a hard night, like bowing at the shrine of a new day with offerings of eggs and toast in the hopes that today would be a little better than yesterday and tomorrow would be a little better than today. Billy didn't even glare at him, never mind jab at his shoulder and tell him to get fucked. Steve didn't knock at his shoulder and tell him to just get it over with. Eddie was simply allowed to just exist here, in respite and stasis. 

Steve ate his toast and sipped his own brandy; Billy ploughed through his own mountain of eggs and half of the sausage he and Steve had joked around over before. Steve's leg bounced slightly on Eddie's left, and Billy shifted a little on his right. Then Billy picked up the remaining half a sausage and tipped it onto Eddie's plate. 

He didn't say anything on the matter. He simply huffed and turned back to his eggs. It was an olive branch, a greasy peace offering, even just for this moment. All of them worried that if they said anything above the hum of ' Little Green Apples ' on the radio that they'd never get back such a moment of serenity. Eddie had read about a ceasefire on Christmas day during World War One, where the forces got out of their trenches, played soccer, and sang Christmas Carols. This felt a little like that, albeit a little bit silly in comparison. 

The Munsons were not a family of people who ate together. His father used to eat out of a metallic tray in his Lazy Boy, and his mother used to stand at the kitchen counter picking at any food that Eddie hadn't eaten. He had always dreamed of a kitchen table. Not all of his fantasies were so Rockwellian, but this one was. He'd always thought that there was no better love shared than the love shared around a kitchen table, and he was right. 

Notes:

Songs referenced:

Ruby Dont Take Your Love To Town by Kenny Rogers
Little Green Apples by Roger Miller
Here You Come Again by Dolly Parton

 

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Chapter 6: Boo

Notes:

alright, i promised one long chapter to finish on but it turned out that one long chapter was longer than the entire length of the other chapters combined.

everything has been written and i will be posting the remaining two chapters over the next two days.

Eddie's food was almost finished when he muttered, "Sorry, man."

Historically, he hadn't been great at apologising for things that he had actually done wrong. 

He had spent so much of his life being forced to feel the need to apologise. For the way he looked, for the way he acted, for the fact that he was extremely homosexual. The latter wasn't something he advertised to those who weren't in the know. That was just a whole societal feeling of ' repent, and you'll get better, you dirty homosexual '. So, Eddie just stopped saying sorry. All it ever did was serve the egos of the uppity little assholes who didn't like the fact he lived in a trailer or listened to loud music. They'd get a two-second pat on the back for fighting the good fight on behalf of The Man. 

The thing was, for all of what he was supposed to be apologising for, he didn't actually feel the genuine need to feel sorry about many things. The drugs were one, and his parents leaving was another. Still, Billy had informed him, just as Eddie had assured Billy, that the behaviours of their shitty parents weren't their fault. They patted each other on the back in some kind of mutual Upside Down group therapy club, thing . Asides from what had just happened with Billy, which did have its roots in something rather miraculous, it turned out, was Chrissy. No matter how much anyone could ever tell him that it wasn't his fault, he would always carry around the notion that it was, even if it was just a little bit. 

So Eddie waited nervously in the wake of his half-assed, not really an apology apology. Steve glared at him, clearly expecting him to say something else. Eddie returned the look with a sternness of his own, one that tried to portray the proverbial cogs that were turning in his head. Usually, people only dived off the board when they were ready to swim, and here was Eddie, sinking dangerously fast to the bottom of the pool, never having taken a swimming lesson in his life.

Before Eddie could try and at least dump some of the stones in his pockets, Billy started with a mouthful of eggs still in his mouth, "For what?"

Then he swallowed pointedly, the eggs and the words getting caught in his throat, "Picking out that shirt? You look like Jimmy Buffett."

Eddie took a moment to process the fact Billy hadn't thrown him across the room or threatened him with an imminent beating or the slower promise of replacing all of Eddie's shampoo with rat poison, so eventually, all his hair fell out. Billy was ignoring the problem because it was genuinely horrible to think about what had happened. At some point, Billy had learned to turn everything that really hurt inwards. Eddie wanted to nudge Steve in the stomach and say, ' Another destructive coping mechanism, at least it's not destructive of my face. Silver Linings, hey? ' and be briefly met with Steve's elbow in the soft of his stomach. 

Instead of trying to bring the conversation back around to what it was supposed to be about, Eddie pushed back a little on his chair. He stretched out the oversized shirt and stated, "I kinda like it."

Billy exhaled out of his nose in expectant amusement, a huff which roughly translated to, ' of course you do '.

As he spoke, Billy pointed his fork in Steve's direction, "Harrington, why the hell do you own that?"

Steve looked irritated, if not at the accusation that Steve had wandered into a store and personally picked out the multisensory experience that Eddie was wearing but at the fact that both Eddie and Billy were flirting around the actual very pressing issue at hand. "It's not mine, obviously. It was here when I arrived. I think it might be Hopper's."

Following his characteristic cowardice, Eddie completely ignored Steve's irritation and decided to irritate him further, "Didn't realise you were into that kind of thing, Steve," he irritated, irritatingly, before irritating again, "You have his underwear knocking around too?"

Steve's full lips were nothing but a fine line as he insisted, "I don't. I didn't control what he left here."

It was Steve's fault, really; beyond his cowardice, stellar music taste and frankly marketable ability to world build, Eddie's defining character trait was his ability to boondoggle away important things in the form of jokes. Steve was in Eddie's biology class in his first go around of senior year. He should've remembered what Eddie did with the osmosis potato. 

What Steve probably didn't expect was Billy's new found affliction for it, too, graciously acquired from Eddie. 

So when Billy leaned forward, crooked his dark eyebrows like a cartoon villain, and muttered, "I think he's been wearing Hopper's underwear, don't you?"

And as Eddie replied, " Definitely, " Steve's eyes rolled back so hard they almost audibly sounded like winning the jackpot on some fancy fruit machine in a Vegas casino.

There was a mutual sense of pride in the room. Billy and Eddie shared an invisible handshake across the kitchen table. 

They did this when something terrible happened when it was just those two. Eddie would joke and joke and joke until the thing that had happened didn't seem so bad anymore. The joke was usually at his own expense, sometimes even Steve's still, and Billy's when he felt courageous (stupid). It wasn't the healthiest way of dealing with things, but it got them through it. There was no consideration on what was proper and healthy communication in the Upside Down. There was only getting through. And sometimes getting through involved being insufferably annoying. 

Steve's final straw came when Billy limply pointed his still eggy fork at Steve again and then at Eddie, "Maybe they should have called you Steve ' the freak ' Harrington instead of you."

Steve slammed his palm down, and the occupants of the table all jumped a little as if someone had snuck up on them and quietly whispered 'boo' in their ears.

His eyes were narrowed, and his boring gaze of irritation was now focused on Billy rather than Eddie, "Oh, that's rich, coming from the person who said they'd fuck him if given a shot."

In return, Billy just placed a forkful in his mouth, shrugged and mumbled through it, "What? Hopper's hot."

Jubilantly, Eddie threw his hands in the air and corroborated, "He is! Fuck the police , am I right?"

It felt like a very weird and very small victory. Both Eddie and Billy had skirted around their attraction to other men during their time in The Upside Down; it felt good to be able to admit it freely finally, even if it was under such a strange circumstance. 

Steve just glared at them both in disbelief. Which was fair, it was probably another segment of their Crippling Issues wheel of fortune that they had spun onto and they should probably revisit later. 

Billy just smiled, wide and sharkish, "Sorry, amigo, we've moved on from you."

"Perfect, now I won't feel bad about kicking you out." threatened Steve as he crossed his arms. 

The smile didn't fade from Billy's face when he asked, "So you don't want Munson's toothy blowjob then?"

For a second, Steve looked excited that someone was addressing the elephant in the room. Until then, they all just skirted around the hunched-over animal, hanging coats on its trunk, trying not to look into its big pleading eyes, which simply begged for the sweet release of death rather than endure another moment of this strained awkwardness.

"It's really not that bad. I never had any complaints before." Eddie purred, completely forgetting about addressing the problem and instead firing flirtatiously around it. 

Pausing and humming, Billy said, "You ever called another guy Steve mid-dick sucking, though?"

Immediately, Eddie volleyed back, "Okay, touché."

Steve seemed entirely finished with the conversation when he asked, exasperatedly, "Do you hate each other right now, or are you flirting? I can't keep up."

"Both."

They ignored shit. They joked. They flirted without acknowledging it as flirting. Eddie knew that the basis of a healthy relationship wasn't this cycle. He knew that problems had to be addressed. But casa del Billy and Eddie was made of sheets of glass and duct tape. 

"Of course it is." Steve resigned.

Eddie beamed. Billy looked a little less enthused but still satisfied. Eventually, Billy caught Eddie's eye from across the table. His gaze was inquisitive and inviting through those long lashes. Maybe things were going to be okay. Eddie spread his legs a little so his knee would knock purposely into Billy's. But rather than providing the grounding pressure of the touch of someone he loved. Billy jolted away, sending a shiver through all the items on the table. 

Maybe things weren't okay. 

Before Eddie and Billy could launch into another litany of half-bickers half-flirts, Steve stood, sending his chair careening back with an awful scrape. 

His hands were on his hips when he commanded, "That's it." Eddie looked to Billy for guidance before looking at Steve, but Billy was already fixed in Steve's direction. 

One hand remained on his hip, and the other pointed enthusiastically downwards. His voice had taken on that awfully lecturey tone that he found charming when pointed toward unruly teenagers but condescending and too much like every teacher who ever hated him when pointed at him, "I don't know how you two worked things out down there but up here we talk about things like actual adults."

The tone having got the better of Eddie, he snipped back, "Oh what, adult things like smashing up Jonathan Byers; camera. Word travelled in the freak community."

"That was some real King Steve behaviour, huh?" said Billy. Eddie couldn't see what Billy's face was doing. He was too busy being transfixed on the way that redness pricked at the tops of Steve's ears. 

It was a low blow. Eddie knew Steve felt awful about that and that he'd changed a whole lot since then too. Also, Jonathan was decidedly being a creep. So it wasn't that Steve was entirely in the wrong. It was a moral grey area at best.

However, Steve couldn't hear Eddie's negating internal monologue. So he just literally put his foot down and shouted. "Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, both of you!" 

The hand that was pointing downwards was now flicking between Eddie and Billy as if someone had held a magnet to a compass and spanned it around its perimeter. 

"Don't say another fucking word until you want to actually talk about all this. I know I'm not exactly the poster boy for talking about feelings or whatever but like…Christ alive!"

Eddie opened his mouth to say something between charming and facetious. It was something along the lines of ' I like a man in charge ', but mercifully the words got stuck in his throat, because he was beginning to think that Steve's idle threat of dumping them both back into Lover's Lake was rapidly becoming less idle. 

The moment hung like snapped electrical wire, it thrashed and sent volts of danger skittering through the atmosphere. Eddie was too worried about speaking as if the wetness of his mouth would attract one of those sparks. 

Instead, Billy stepped up and spoke, "Me and him need to talk, you can do the dishes."

If this was a tv show, the live studio audience would be sucking in one large ' ooooh ' right about now. 

Wordlessly, Steve released the hand from his hip and leaned over to where Billy was eating and slipped his hand under Billy's plate of food. His fork screeched against the porcelain as Steve dragged it away. 

With a sardonic smile, Steve stated, "Fine."

Then the two of them entered into a staring competition that would make even the most hardened world champion wince. Not because of the length but because of the sheer barrage of tension zipping between them, sexual or otherwise. 

Billy's jaw twitched, and a vein in Steve's throat pulsed. Finally, Billy swallowed thickly before acquiescing, "Fine." 

It recognised that Steve was right in a way that really made it feel like it wasn't.

The plate landed back on the table with a clatter, and bits of egg and a light smattering of ketchup peppered the table. With his thumb and forefinger, Billy pulled the plate back towards him and shoved the last few pieces into his mouth. 

Billy spoke with his mouthful, "This is bad," he said and dug his fork into the final bites of food harshly, " by the way ." As if he hadn't just eaten the whole thing and then complained when it was taken away. 

The food was food. It was much better than whatever they could scavenge in the Upside Down; unfortunately, Billy was a good cook and knew better. He'd told Eddie all about his cooking and what he wanted to cook when they finally got out. Understandably, his first choice was a steak, a T-Bone, rare with a crispy sear, seasoned with nothing but salt. Cooked in a cast iron pan with ghee. Billy rolled his eyes when he had to explain that ghee was a kind of clarified butter with a high smoke point as if Eddie would have come across ghee before in bumfuck Indiana. One night (they thought it was night, but it was always hard to tell), Eddie had said that he'd always wanted to try a good southern barbeque. Billy had told him that there was a place in California, about three blocks away from where they used to live, where a couple had moved over from Austin. He spent forty-three minutes talking about how good the food was before promising to take Eddie there one day. 

It was the first time Billy had ever promised anything to Eddie outside that hell hole. It was one extra reason to keep living. 

Steve was wiping his hands on an old paisley rag when he said, "Shut up, Hargrove. You never minded my cooking before."

Swallowing and then rubbing his tongue against the front of his teeth, Billy looked up at Steve from the table and smiled, terrifying sweetly, "Yeah, cause you used to put your dick inside me."

Obviously, Eddie inhaled the stray piece of egg in his mouth and almost met his eggy demise right there and then. As he spluttered, Billy smacked him heavily on the back and then passed him the glass of brandy to wash it down. The brandy was not a good choice as it burned almost as much as the coughing. 

Once his breathing was steadied, he looked at Billy through tear-filled eyes, amusement thick across his handsome face. Technically, Billy did save his life so he could have that one. Finally, he coughed again and croaked, "Is anyone gonna tell me what went on there? Because up until thirty minutes ago, I had no idea Harrington here was even interested in the less fair sex."

Steve just shrugged. Eddie wanted to be okay with the fact he never knew. However, he wasn't. He pined after Steve in the same way he pined after his best friend Eric in the eighth grade. It was a similar circumstance in the end. It turned out that Eddie was right about both boys. However, Eric moved away a little after they shared their first kiss, and Eddie fucking died before he could do anything about Steve. Maybe Eddie should've made it more obvious where his attractions laid. Although, he was pretty sure if he made it any more obvious, he'd have to burst into I Am What I Am by Gloria Gaynor in the town square, which was probably not a good idea. 

Anyway, it was up to Steve who he told and who he didn't. It made sense to hide it for someone like Steve. He had a reputation, a bygone one, but a good reputation no less. What didn't make sense was telling Billy Hargrove, who famously beat in Steve Harrington's face and even smashed a dinner plate over his head. There must've been a point between Steve fucking Billy, and that incident in which it was unveiled to one another that there was an attraction between them. It was puzzling that how on earth either of them felt comfortable enough to admit it. 

"I thought you two hated each other." Eddie sniffed, knowing that wasn't the case, especially from what he knew about Billy.

Billy was very obviously in love with Steve for the entire time that he knew him, but Billy was Billy. He loved strange people in strange ways, Eddie included. 

The two of them shared a look as Billy stood. The look went over Eddie's head, both figuratively and literally. He felt left out. There was a history between these two that he could never be a part of, no matter how much he wanted to. 

The look and the moment stretched; it felt like they blinked an impenetrable code before Billy finally said, "You ever hate fucked anyone before? It's really good."

Even with their weird posturing, Eddie was absolutely sure that was a lie. That silent song and dance were pretty wasted on an answer like that. It pissed Eddie off, to be given such a flagrant lie as an answer as if they all weren't trying to figure out this situation together. Yes, he'd been cagey about actually bringing up the topic. But this felt like he was being purposefully excluded. It wasn't a nice feeling. 

"Okay, yeah sure, whatever. But now you're here feeding him eggs and threatening him with emotionally healthy communication. What's that about?"

All the walls Eddie had meticulously and painstakingly pulled down, stone by stone, suddenly went flying back up as Billy narrowed his eyes and stated very plainly, "It's none of your business."

This was when Billy got dangerous. When flaring nostrils gave way to a calm lilt in his voice, like an apex predator laying down in the grass to lull an unlucky gazelle into a false sense of security. Eddie should've known not to forage in that grass, find the pointiest stick he could, and poke the big cat straight in the nose.

He should've known not to do that. He didn't, though.

Instead, he stood, folded his arms, leaned forward a little into Billy's space, and uttered, probably a little more condescendingly than he would've liked, "I very much think it's my business."

" Why? " It was still calm but frazzled around the edges. Steve knew what it meant too and took a step forward in the direction of the table. 

Eddie wasn't sure if it was rhetorical or not, but he was feeling reckless, "Cause of this."

"Oh, but what's this? " Said Billy with sarcastic thoughtfulness. 

His head was dipped a little as if he was conceding something, somewhat like he was bowing to Eddie. 

Billy shook his head slowly and obviously, and spoke even slower, "There's no this."  

When Eddie was in the shower, he wondered what it would have felt like if Billy had punched him in the face. He was sure Billy imagined it. The way his lip would split open and blood would pour from his nose. The way that Eddie would take it because he knew how to take a punch even better than he knew how to throw one. He seldom did, though, he preferred to run away from a fight because, well, he didn't really enjoy getting his nose broken. However, that wouldn't have been a fight, that would've been penance. He sounded just like the parts of Billy that made his heart break when he thought, 'I deserved it' .

This, however, the lull at the breakfast table, the warm flickering ember of the fuse wire, hypnotically catching the eye, dancing and whispering ' Follow me ', before leading you head first into the explosion. The tentative promise that he might just get out of there alive, with fistfuls and a stomach full of cake, blown up directly in his face. That hurt. 

Billy swayed forward menacingly, hands twitching at his sides, "You made pretty fucking clear who you'd rather be fucking." His upper lip looked to almost catch on his teeth, barring them, "We go through all that shit together and then you just run off to the better option."

The intimidation that was thick in his voice suddenly faltered a little. What came next was supposed to be threatening, like a fifty-foot wave at the edge of the beach, looming over him, casting a long cold shadow of impending doom. However, it just came out tinged with sadness and fell wetly back into the sea, "I get it, I'm a fucking monster. " 

Unfortunately for Billy, Eddie knew him. Eddie knew precisely when his anger waned into sadness when the need to be vulnerable swelled up so big inside him it peeked through the straining seams of his angry exterior. 

And Billy knew that Eddie knew. Billy knew because his face faltered, just a touch, the mask slipped and showed the quiver in his chin, the bounce of his forehead and the squeeze of his upper cheeks as if he was willing himself not to cry. 

He swallowed audibly and pushed himself closer to Eddie's face. Eddie could feel his breath. He braced himself for the impact. Impact of what, he wasn't sure. Some part of him hoped it would be a kiss, but it was most likely going to be a bone-crushing punch. 

Tentatively, Eddie spoke, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry for everything."

His face hardened again, and all went quiet and the radio absently asked, Who's Going to Buy You Ribbons?

Then by some miracle, Billy took one large step backwards and drove his fist into the front of the refrigerator. Inside there was the sound of breaking glass. A crate containing pots and pans fell from the top of the fridge with an awful metallic crash, and all of the fridge magnets jumped off as if they were climbers rappelling down a rock face. 

Billy's hand was still bunched for a moment before he let it lay limply by his side.

As soon as he heard the crash, Steve rushed over, thrusting himself between Eddie and Billy, hands up in submission but easily in the position to turn into fists and fight, "Hey! Cool it!"

Billy took another step backwards away from Steve, away from the two of them.  

"Looks like your white knight is here to save you from the big bad monster-"

Before Eddie could make some off-hand remark that would probably get him riled up again, Billy lunged forward and grabbed one of the mostly empty plates from the table. Eddie and Steve jumped backwards. 

Shoving the plate into Steve's hand, Billy insisted, "You wanna repay the favour?"

With a loose smile, he backed himself against the dented fridge, sweat and mania glistened from him. His long curls bunched behind his head as he lolled his head against the metal. The line of his strong neck arched a little, and he gazed invitingly at his two companions.

He licked his lips and smiled lazily, "Go on, do it." 

Steve glanced down at the plate in his hand and then back to Billy, who squared his shoulders before lifting his hands up in submission, knuckles knocking lightly against the fridge door. After taking one step with the plate in his hand, one of Billy's eyes winced shut. Steve placed the plate onto the crowded table with a clatter. 

It was evident that Steve was not going to do anything to Billy, even more so with his constant goading. But that wince, that was a wince that had happened before; it was immediate and instinctual. Eddie wondered how many times he'd been in this position before. His father was not as merciful as Steve. The almost sultry smile across his face, with hands splayed submissively on either side of his golden halo of hair, replaced with real fear, real tears, hands held in front of him, praying that they would get broken instead of his face. 

Billy's eyes watched Steve's hand move away from the circular weapon, sticking out his bottom lip. 

"Coward," he sneered. 

He approached Billy as if one was approaching a stray dog, "I'm not going to hurt you," he said in a worn-out tone. As if the stray dog had been a royal little asshole, but Steve was determined to help it nonetheless. 

Billy's hands slid down the back of the fridge dejectedly. His knuckles still lay against the back of the metal, one hand fiddled with the hem of the shorts he was wearing. 

He almost sounded disappointed when he asked, "Why not?"

As Eddie watched the scene unfold, he held his breath and tensed a little, hoping that would at least contain the sound of his heart ripping in two on Billy's behalf. 

Eddie wanted to show him kindness so badly. He wanted Steve to show him kindness. He wanted to make things right. 

When Eddie was shuffling toward the performance by the fridge, Steve responded in confusion, clearly not fully understanding the implication of what Billy had just accidentally unveiled, "Because I don't want to. What kind of question is that?"

By now, Eddie was standing by the side of the two boys, Steve on his right and Billy on his left, still backed against the fridge. 

When he spoke again, his voice having gone from quiet rage, to pure rage, to a sadness that wished it was rage, his voice finally settled just on sorrow. It was a tone he'd never heard come from Billy before. It was raw, as if he'd been screaming for hours, and this was the only sound left.

"Oh, come on, everybody wants to hurt me."

He swallowed a little, the thick line of his neck bobbing. Finally, he made a little noise of negation and smiled in the saddest way anybody had ever smiled. He smiled in a way one does when saying 'I'll see you later ', to an old friend, knowing that you never will. 

 "He did a good job earlier, but I think if you work as a team, you'd have a better shot." 

As he gently spoke, Eddie placed a hand on Billy's bicep. It was still cold, just like he was. Immediately, Billy flinched away from the touch, causing the broken contents of the fridge to rattle behind him. Eventually, he settled into the contact and let out a pointed exhale. 

"Nobody here wants to hurt you."

Until now, Billy's gaze had been fixed on Steve. The man to his front, the man backing him into an immovable corner. Looking away could have been certain doom if this was anyone other than Steve. But this was Steve, and Steve didn't want to hurt Billy any more than Eddie did. Finally, Billy's head rolled to the side a little, and his eyes flickered over Eddie's face.

"You did, though," he said with the same kind of sadness that desperately wanted to be anything other than sadness, "You did hurt me, you asshole." 

Eddie slid his hand down from his bicep along the line of his scarred arm and into his hand. He held the outside of his hand for a moment before slipping his hand inside and squeezing tightly, "I'm sorry," he said again, and Billy seemed to finally accept it, "and I'm not trying to make excuses, but I do need to explain. Will you let me and Stevie explain?"

 

Beside him, Steve nodded resolutely. 

Notes:

Eddie wearing Hopper's S3 shirt as he hides in the cabin to avoid being tried for murder is my favourite mental image of all time.

Music referenced:
I Am What I Am by Gloria Gaynor which was a gay anthem at the time.
Who's Going To Buy You Ribbons? by Paul Clayton

Kudos and comments are super highly appreciated.

For the love of god please follow me on tumblr or follow me on twitter I want to talk about these boys desperately

Chapter 7: Ouroboros, Baby!

Notes:

penultimate chapter my guys

i'm gonna be posting this and chapter 8 together so for the love of god please don't go straight to chapter 8 (I've done that before with a fic and been very confused)

spicy stuff happens in this chapter.

have at it.

Eddie’s grip on Billy’s hand tightened ever so slightly. 

“You wanna sit out? I know you like to be outside.” Asked Steve as he placed a hand over their conjoined hands and patted them reassuringly.

The jealousy that Eddie had felt before, that Steve had known Billy in a way that he never had, dissipated, only leaving pure fondness in its wake. 

Eddie’s face split into a grin, “Maybe we can find some music here that doesn’t suck.”

“Oh yeah, it all sucks,” Steve crooked an eyebrow and glanced over to the stereo system, “Hopper has bad taste.”

“Since when were you the authority on good taste?” Was the first thing that Billy said in a while; his voice came out a little dry but ultimately stable. 

Judging by the look on Billy’s face, Eddie knew that there probably was something decent in Hopper’s stack of records that passed Steve’s less than refined ears by. They had bonded as much over country music and bluegrass as much as they had bonded over metal. Neither of them would admit that though, outside the comforts of each other, they had bonded over that too. 

Eddie simpered, “You’re outnumbered here, Steve-o.”

“I can guarantee you he doesn’t have any Metallica.”

Steve was backing away from the little group and heading in the direction of the living room as he tried to lower their expectations. 

Seemingly unphased by Steve’s warning, Billy stated, “Just leave the radio on; I don’t like the quiet.” He frowned a little, probably having realised that was a little too revealing. Eddie felt like saying, ‘ None of us like the quiet. Look at your captive audience here. ’ But before Eddie could say anything as reassuringly nihilistic as that, Billy expanded upon his point and stood up a little straighter in the process, “I’m used to him talking incessantly, and when he gets mopey, he goes quiet, so-”

Eddie didn’t mope, not outwardly at least. There were universal truths about adult relationships, there needed to be a tantrum-er and a sulker. Billy was definitely the tantrum-er, and Steve just had that unmistakable air of someone who enjoyed putting on a Joni Mitchell record and having a good mope. Eddie couldn’t be either of those things without the relationship becoming unbalanced. He was a pretty unique guy, but he wasn’t sure he was important enough to start fiddling about with the balance of the universe. 

Eddie’s chin bounced back, and he was pretty sure that from Billy’s perspective, he looked just like the unsexy side of an accordion, “I don’t.” 

“You do.” He teased, “You sulk like a teenage girl.”

Eddie broke apart from Billy and used his now free hand to lean against the fridge in a comical to the point of sexy confidence kind of way. 

As Billy turned his head, his eyes dragged up and down Eddie’s person. 

Suddenly, Eddie’s very quickly repressed arousal from earlier made an abrupt and heated re-appearance. 

In the same comic come confident manner, Eddie walked his fore and middle finger up Billy's arm in a way that he’d seen in some movie from the 1950s. He pitched his voice low and sensual and pretended he was Lauren Bacall, “I only sulk when you don’t pay me enough attention, handsome.”

Billy barked out a laugh, but his gaze was dark and inviting.

Before either of them could do anything further, Steve interrupted them, complaining from the other side of the room, “Quit flirting.”

Eddie wanted to flirt Billy into a stupor hazy enough that he would let Eddie fuck him on the sofa in front of the fire. Billy, probably wanted the exact same thing too. 

Then Eddie wondered, just for a moment, how many other times, if they had been caught by anyone other than some notably humanoid-looking vines in the Upside Down, that they’d have turned around and said the same thing. How many times did Vecna walk into their hideout ready to vanquish them both with mind games and a human pretzel-making tutorial and turn around after being like, ‘I’ll come back later .’

“Sorry , mom, I won’t bring boys around again,” whined Eddie.

In retort, Steve turned around, crooked his head to the side, and let out an exasperated and slightly disgusted, “ Dude. ” 

His reaction was probably warranted because Eddie had made it clear that he had every intention of flirting with Steve with the same intensity. He paid it no mind, really; he was too caught up in the fact that he was casually talking about bringing boys home to a crowd of people who wouldn’t want to have him strung up in the town square for it. 

Billy broke Eddie’s happy little stupor when he yelled over, “Are you jealous, Harrington?”

From his hunched position over a pile of records, clearly trying to pull something out to prove he did have taste, Steve responded, “Of what? Munson’s mommy issues? I’ve got plenty of my own, thanks.”

His voice was thick and smug as if he was a hunter who had snagged his kill, a director at the Academy awards holding his prize aloft, Apollo with Hyathinch draped over him, “The flirting.”

The shuffling ceased, only to be filled with the sound of Steve saying a small, “Yes.”

Billy swallowed quickly. It was his nervous swallow, probably hit with the notion that Steve would soon take Billy’s place and have Eddie draped over him in a heartbeat, “Of who?” he asked finally. 

Realistically, Eddie should’ve said something at the start of this whole conversation as soon as Billy calmed down and was willing to have the conversation at all. Sat them both down and asked Steve to stay and meticulously explained to Billy that they both wanted him and they both wanted each other. But Eddie knew this was exactly where this conversation would lead in the end. It was more fun that way, with the suspense, drama, Luton buses, and plot twists, and Eddie was nothing if not a showman. 

“Neither,” Steve began tentatively, and then immediately correcting himself when he knew that wasn’t the correct answer, “both. I’m jealous of the fact I’m not involved.”

Open-mouthed in a way that could only be described as cute by anyone who did or did not know Billy Hargrove, Billy froze and lulled forward a little in shock. He looked back and forth between Eddie and Steve, lost for words in a way he had seldom seen before. 

Eddie let Billy simmer on the revelation a little longer. As he did, Steve elevated himself from his crouched position in the living room and wandered back over. 

Deliciously, Eddie took his finger and tucked a stray lock of golden hair behind Billy’s ear and explained, in the sexiest version of ‘ I told you so’ that the land of the living had ever bore witness to, ‘“It’s what I’ve been trying to say, but you kept freaking out.” 

Billy’s eyebrows bounced a little, and his impossibly blue eyes darted around a little in wonder. Eddie had never wanted to kiss someone quite as much as he wanted to kiss Billy then. Maybe once more, when he watched Steve rip the head off a bat beneath Lover’s Lake. 

In a death-defying feat of self-restraint, Eddie did not kiss Billy. Instead, he let his head lay on the fridge door and muttered, happily, the way only people in love mutter things, “It’s not an either-or situation, man,” a broad, fond grin bloomed across his face, “I want you both, and I think Steve feels the same way too.”

There was a moment of silence as Always See Your Face hummed rather sadly alone in the background. 

The first thing out of Billy’s mouth was a somewhat astounded, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

Candidly, Eddie fawned himself over Billy’s shoulder and joked, “Haha, yeah, gotcha!” 

Immediately, that was met with a relatively sensible “ Dude ” and a slap on the back of Eddie’s shoulder. From the slap, Steve’s hand then curled around Eddie’s shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. Steve’s head came forward, and Eddie caught Steve’s eye, wide-eyed and wondrous. God, he was beautiful. They both were. 

With a certain kind of finality, Billy mustered, “Why?”

The finality wasn’t lost on Eddie but rather ignored. He began with a snigger and looked Billy up and down. He looked along the long lines of exposed skin on his legs, the squareness of his jaw and the dark smattering of hair. He had long since lost the colour on his skin that made him glow as if there was a sun within him, private and illustrious, just for those who had accidentally stumbled across it. But he still glowed, just in a different way, like the pale light of the moon rather than sunlight. 

“Other than being the hottest person you’ve ever scored, Steve.”

Steve did not falter nor protest that. Instead, he just laughed a little at the uncanny accuracy of it all. 

However, Billy did not share their amusement and definitively stated, “No, this isn’t funny. Why?”

Amongst his flirtatious haze, and now with Steve adjoining him, both of them draped across the situation like concubines over the young and beautiful emperor, Eddie hadn’t possibly fathomed that there was anything doubtful about this situation at all. 

After a moment of being stumped, Eddie eked out, “Are you trying to get us to justify it?”

Eddie forwent registering the heat of Steve’s hand upon his hip nor the intoxicating lull of Billy and Steve’s faces being closer than he could’ve ever dreamt of before. Instead, he registered the apprehensive intensity of Billy’s gaze upon his face, the way it flickered as if upon a hair trigger, as if it was waiting to be told it didn’t belong there. 

Billy wanted a fight, he could tell by the crack of hesitation in his voice, something unsure and unworthy to fill the chasm of deserving adoration which was carved out of him long ago. 

In the face of all that, Eddie wrapped his hand around Billy’s again and spoke clearly, “Of course, I fell in love with you. What else was gonna happen, man?”

He took in a breath, and his eyes were drawn back to the table. The table in which love had been shared, if only for a moment, if only quietly. A half-eaten piece of toast was discarded on Steve’s plate as if it was unimportant. It was bread. And just like bread and the way every civilisation across the globe had found a way of combining the flour borne from the earth, water and an unrelenting flame, it was an eventual inevitability, just like they were.

“It was like, fucking… inevitable.”

“So?”

The hand that was in Billy’s hand rose to the side of his face as Steve watched on cautiously, yet transfixed by what he was seeing. The touch didn’t last long; it was fleeting, the way all good things were. 

“Don’t, don’t do that”, Eddie whispered, “You were everything to me. You still are.”

He felt himself lay bare. The sound of his own ribs cracking, the sound of a bone saw working its way expertly through his sternum filled the room, above the sounds of Steve’s breathing, above the sounds of ardent apprehension from Billy. 

Eddie landed on a sigh, not a big one, just enough to let Billy know that he was worthy of such a lovelorn sigh. 

“It’s okay, y’know. To let me love you. You don’t have to be perfect to be loved because I know you’re not perfect, and I love you anyway.” 

He inhaled for a moment and verbalised something that had been bubbling between them, unspoken in the fear that its definition would lead to its untimely demise, “And I’m not perfect either, and you love me.”

That was met with a look, not good or bad, and ultimately one he had not seen on Billy’s face before. It was apprehensive and childlike as if he had been caught in a white lie. His hand in the cookie jar vehemently protesting that the notorious case of the missing cookies wasn’t down to him. The way his mother had been so impressed and amused by his creatively constructed character work in his lie that she forgot about punishing him at all. It was as if he had forgotten that he wasn’t a character at all and that he had to live in a way that was unrelentingly himself, and that nobody else on the planet had ever let him do that before. 

Perhaps everyone else other than Steve. 

Eddie let his gaze soften and his head tilt slightly to the side before speaking melodically but plainly. It was the kind of melody everyone in the world knew they could muster eventually if only they were given the proper tools or time, but they didn’t. His smile was broad and unrelenting, “Oh come on, the cat’s out of the bag with that one Hargrove. You’re about as subtle as a tonne of bricks.”

He was sure that Billy Hargrove was not the kind of person who blushed. Yet, he could see one creep across his cheeks like fields of lavender across a canopy of woodland ferns in the springtime. 

“Shut up,” Billy insisted with a halfhearted shove to Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie was very glad that Billy could not hear the saccharine romanticism that swirled in his head like he was the protagonist of a great English novel musing upon the great lakes of the English highlands. That was sure to finish him off for good. 

Instead, Eddie caught Steve’s eye, and by the fondness that was creeping across his face, he wasn’t thinking of anything more innocent either. 

Eddie’s head tilted to the side a little, and his lower lips stuck out playfully, and he mused, “I thought you liked my inane chatter?”

In return, Billy tilted up his chin and averted his eyes with a bashful roll. How dare Eddie remember something about him. 

Beyond Billy, Steve was also looking at him, lips slightly parted and deep in thought. Long lashes and soft hair catching the honey glow of the warmly lit cabin. For a moment, he just watched how Steve’s chest rose and fell and how wonderful it was to be around someone as ordinary yet blindingly miraculous as Steve. 

After wetting his lips a little, he spoke carefully, as if he was speaking something of an unknown quantity into the world. A new lifeform, unbeknownst to how it would grow, if it would take over the world, if it would destroy him, if it would destroy everybody. Not like it mattered, though, with Steve looking at Billy with such careful adoration, he could eat him alive, and he wouldn’t care one bit.

“I also knew that you could never get over Steve,” Eddie sighed, finally, “Because I never got over Steve.”

Steve’s eyes sharpened, and looked between the two of them. His gaze was frantic for a moment as if he himself had forgotten he existed at all. 

Billy leaned against the fridge door again, this time with less fear, rather the inexorable lean of a happy cat against the leg of someone he loved. The grin that broadened on his face was feline too. 

“There’s something about you, Harrington. The girls in this town were right.”

They were right. Every good thing that had ever been said about Steve Harrington was true. 

The lazy smile on Billy’s face suddenly faltered a little, and his eyes widened ever so slightly. Then Eddie’s attention was drawn to Steve, who looked, simply put, exactly how he had when they’d first been spat out of Lover’s Lake. 

“Steve?” Eddie asked, even though it was less of a question and more of a slightly panic-induced exclamation. 

Steve took a step back and ran his hand through his hair. Suddenly he mumbled out, “ Oh fuck .” 

It was the bad kind of oh fuck . It wasn’t an oh fuck wrapped around an orgasm or at the end of a winning dice roll. It was the kind of oh fuck that followed dropping one’s entire dinner on the floor. 

The hand exited his hair, leaving a plume of brown locks like the crest of a bird of paradise in its wake, “This is insane.” 

Steve’s frantic eyes took on an air of irritation when Eddie stated the obvious, “Yeah, it is.”

He took another step back, flattened both palms against his head, and gave his best impression of an exasperated egg and rambled, “I thought I, I thought I wanted this, and I was ready, y’know? Like fuck I barely know you Eddie and Billy broke my fucking heart, yet I still fucking want this shit show. And I was trying to get you to talk about it, and now you are, and it’s-”

Like the nihilist he was, Billy burst into inevitable laughter. 

Eddie just felt like he was going to be sick and pass out, like he could literally feel the floor being snatched from under his feet. He had just about come around to the idea that nothing really worked without Steve, and here Steve was, trying to tell him the exact opposite. He wished he could laugh like Billy was. It was a strange thing for Eddie not to be able to laugh at something. It was usually the only thing he could do at any given time. He could find the funny side in everything until he really wanted something, then he didn’t find it funny at all. 

Steve was pacing short laps along the length of the back of the sofa now as if the monotony helped him think rather than just fueling the notion that he was losing his mind. Even though the latter probably was true for all of them. Eddie was pretty sure he started losing his mind the day he turned twelve.

Suddenly beyond the muttering, Steve pointed to the both of them; Eddie pulled a little forward as if magnetised to Steve, and Billy pressed himself further into the fridge. 

“But I can’t give you this. You two have been just through hell and out the other side,” he paused and let out a dejected sigh and said, “and I’m just Steve .” 

Just Steve? And a star is just a fucking star . 

Before Eddie could say anything, Billy answered for the both of them, finely attuned to just how miraculous Steve Harrington was. 

“Harrington, come off it.” 

His hands were pushing his hair away from his face again, “I’m serious.”

Steve placed himself on the back of the sofa, placed his hands on his outstretched legs and leaned forward as if a seasick sailor on the bow of a ship. 

“I thought I was in love with Nancy, or like my parents maybe were in love at one point or maybe Hopper and Joyce, but this-” he paused, not taking a breath but merely to wave his hand nebulously in the air, “This is like love , love isn’t it?” 

Love , love. He’d never thought about it like that. Love , love was the kind of shit that was put on the silver screen in grainy images of black and white. It was written in letters and poems and sent across seas. It was the kind of thing no real person ever experienced, least of all a person like Eddie. It never used to bother him; it was just a fact of life, just the way that green leaves turn brown and the human race would eventually be annihilated in the eventual heat death of the universe. 

As he thought about it, he glanced over at Billy and realised that Steve’s frantic musings were correct. It was all sickeningly poetic, if not a little unorthodox. 

“You might want me now, but I’m not this . I’m just something you left on the other side and-.”

Billy’s handsome face was screwed up something ugly when he interrupted, “Are you jealous of the fact that we died?”

After he waved both of his hands dismissively in the air, Steve began again, “No, fuck, I’m doing a horrible job of explaining this.”

Eddie half expected to jump in again, his fuse short already, and Steve was snipping at it with a pair of safety scissors. Instead, Billy just leaned back a little against the fridge, his fingers fluttering idly. His face had softened somewhat, his eyes carefully doleful, his fingers twitching not out of the desire to wrap them into a fist but instead to wrap them across Steve’s shoulder. He wanted to comfort Steve, but he clearly didn’t know how. 

So, Eddie paced forward and perched himself on the back of the little old sofa, causing it to rock a little under the new weight until he braced his legs firmly against the floor. Eddie ran a splayed palm against Steve’s back and slid it up and down his hunched-over spine. Billy looked on apprehensively for a moment, locking eyes with Eddie as if asking for permission to show kindness. 

Without Steve noticing, Eddie motioned a little with his head to get Billy over to them. He obliged wordlessly and wandered over in sock-footed steps. 

Having taken the time to collect his thoughts under the comfort of Eddie’s touch, Steve began again, “I just - I kept losing people I cared about. Like being alive is, okay, I guess , but it fucking sucks when everyone around you leaves, or god damn dies in the end.” 

Holding up two fingers on his right hand, Steve half laughed, half grimaced, “There was Nancy, twice. ”

He held up his hand just long enough to point the finger at Billy, “And then there was you, who I felt like we could have actually worked out if we’d given it a proper shot.”

He crooked his thumb to the side to point at Eddie, “And then there was you, who just, nothing happened with, but I couldn’t stop thinking about.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room as the words flittered down like snowflakes made of asbestos and Eddie could all but hear the trains in Steve’s station whoosh past him without as much of an indication that they were slowing down. 

 “It’s all been what ifs and missed choices.” When he looked at Eddie, his eyes were glassy, not as if they were filled with tears but rather that he was so exhausted, “I just feel like it’s all passed me by, y’know?” 

Steve wasn’t entirely human. He was mostly human, human in the ways that mattered. He felt everything a human being was supposed to. He misunderstood things that only a human could, felt embarrassed, said things he wasn’t supposed to, and cried at movies when they were happy rather than sad. He was fallible but at the same time entirely infallible, in the way that Eddie thought Steve would live forever. Eddie understood where Steve was coming from; Steve was an unyielding figure, a monument to survival. Like a lonely robot on the edge of the universe, Steve would watch everything change around him whilst being cursed to always stay the same.  

Eddie knew what Steve thought of himself; he also thought it was kind of bullshit. 

“And then when I found you guys and then I saw the way you looked at each other, and it felt like it’d passed me by again and-” He gulped as if swallowing a peach pit whole, his hands shook a little, “It makes sense of course it does.”

Then Steve’s glassy gaze was focused on Billy, whose shoulders were hunched and his arms were crossed. “And it’s like you weren’t okay with me or being gay when we were, whatever we were doing, and with him, you’re happy and open and whatever.”

The ennui in Steve’s voice was thick and accusatory, even though he was clearly not intending for that. Billy’s shoulders hunched further, and his crossed arms tightened. 

Steve leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair again. Eddie’s hand didn’t follow in the motion leaving it hovering behind his back.

“I’m stuck.” Said Steve resolutely, “I’m Steve, always stays the fucking same, Harrington.”

Once again, inappropriate laughter rang out into the room. Billy’s arms were no longer crossed, and his hands were now on his hips in the same matronly way Steve did it. He was pretty sure that was a habit he’d picked up from Steve somewhere along the way. Eddie would mention it later, and Billy would vehemently deny it. 

“Shut up.”

Steve scowled and looked up. Eddie was so right; Steve loved a good sulk.

A shark’s grin was on Billy’s face when he bent a little at the hips and lowered his head a little closer to Steve. 

Not to usually negate the suffering of others, often because others negated his own, Billy tactfully said, “You know that’s all horseshit, right?”

There were merits to what Steve had been waxing about. It wasn’t all bullshit, but what was Billy going to do? Hold Steve’s hands and tell him everything was going to be alright? He hadn’t even done that with Eddie, and Eddie almost died on him for real at least twice. However, he knew that right now, Steve didn’t need that anyway. He needed someone to slap him across the face like he had done to Billy earlier. He needed a jolt of irritation to get his mind out of its funk, and by god, if Billy wasn’t that.

The scowl had deepened on his face, and he was pushing closer to Billy. The look on Billy’s face was the perfect encapsulation of, ‘ What are you gonna do about it? ’

It was a ridiculous scene endued with ridiculous sentiment. Even in their time apart, the three of them knew how to make each other tick, knew when to push, knew when to pull. They worked seamlessly around each other as if they’d been friends their entire lives. It looked chaotic to an outsider, but the crossed words, jabbed shoulders, bad blow jobs and tear-stained eyes were a delicate dance, like cogs in a well-oiled machine. 

They were bound together like this, and Steve was the central force. There would be no them without Steve, even if it didn’t look like it at the time. 

A brainwave hit Eddie, and he announced, “You’re like the glue that holds the rat’s tails together.”

Billy was still leaning into Steve’s space, with a playful crinkle carving itself into his forehead. He looked as if he was about to either bite a chunk out of Steve or kiss him. Eddie prayed it was the latter. The moment passed over his occipital lobe like a bump of cocaine directly to his brain. He imagined Steve taking Billy by the scruff of his shirt, pulling him closer, just enough to tease and then-

Out of his flash pan daydream and back into the real world, he found the two actors in his fantasy glaring at him, befuddled.

“What are you talking about?” 

Without any further context to what it was, how it pertained to their situation or even why he’d chosen such a weird metaphor in the first place, Eddie simply muttered, “Rat king.”

Sarcastically, Steve snipped, “ Rat king ? Okay, sure.”

The look that flashed across Billy’s eyes was wicked in its amusement. There was a long list of questions beyond the obvious answers as to why Billy had nursed the flame he carried around for Steve Harrington. His deadpan sarcasm and his capacity for cruelness but only in the most inconsequential ways, must have been one of them. Without it, Billy would’ve gotten mind-numbingly bored.

A smile tweaked at the side of Steve’s lips, and consequently, it tweaked at Eddie’s too. 

“It’s when a bunch of rats all get their tails tangled together, and then they all die like that-”

Taking in a sharp inhale and whistling like a group of construction workers, Steve announced, “ Sexy. ” 

It was Billy’s turn to be marginally confused now, which wasn’t a well-worn look on him. It looked like it fit him awkwardly, “Are you saying we are all going to die because we are together because-”

“No, ugh-” Eddie laughed because it was so ridiculous that he was having this conversation with anyone in the first place. Where was the first rat to get its tail caught with another’s? What did they feel about their misfortune being used as a poetic if not a little disgusting comparison for the love lives of three twenty-somethings in Indiana? 

Leaning forward on the back of the sofa, causing it to rock a little, Eddie began zealously slotting his fingers together between his hands, “I’m saying we are all tied together. It’s all linked.” 

The other two remained silently encouraging, despite mirth still lingering around Billy’s lips. 

 “I only found you-” Eddie tilted his chin towards the still standing Billy, “because I was brave enough and stupid enough to do what I did because I looked up to Steve. You were only capable of saving me and not killing me yourself because Steve laid the groundwork for you… feeling safe around someone.”

The levity had left Billy’s face, it was replaced with something that wasn’t solemn, but just something thick with intrigue, “How’d you know that?” he asked as if it was the most important question in the world. 

He thought of the way they looked at each other in the car, the looks they shared under the comfortable guise of thinking nobody else was watching, “Same way Steve knew, I saw the way you looked at each other.”

Eddie felt a coy smile twinkling on his lips, “Steve made me want to be a better person. Steve made you want to be a better person.”

In response, Billy just nodded.

“Dude, you’re the glue.” Eddie slammed his fingers together again, like the box joints holding this cabin together. Finally, he clasped his hands together and feigned pulling them apart, “You might be stuck, but you’re like, stuck to us.”

Steve’s head was tilted, thrown a little off its axis, his lips parted and quivered ever so slightly as if there were words in his mouth just waiting to come out if only he would open his mouth a little further and give them room to escape. 

From his slightly elevated vantage point, Billy was listening on with intent. The bemusement long since wiped from his face, replaced with steadfast determination. His arms were no longer folded, dangling freely by his sides. He nodded again, this time smaller, just the once but entirely definitive. 

Eddie was the head, Billy was the heart, and Steve was the soul. It was a bastard of a man, ugly and poorly put together, an abomination of evolution, but somehow it worked. Somehow, they worked. 

His tongue was tacky, and his mouth was dry when Eddie asked Steve, “Does that make sense?”

The lips that were one parted drew closed, but his eyes remained wide, aghast but seemingly in the best possible way. 

Eventually, after taking one last look at Eddie and one last look at Billy as the person who he was before he plunged himself head first into all this, he croaked out, “I get it,” in a voice little more than a whisper. 

Before he could say anything else, Billy’s hands, broad and strong, found themselves planted on either side of Steve’s face. Billy’s gold ring caught the warm glow of the lamplight as he drew Steve’s face to his own. It started as a press of lips, tight and desperate as if anyone was to dare try and put space between them, one of them would simply float away. Billy’s eyes were scrunched together tightly, as were Steve’s. It was silent, beyond the far away till of the V an Morrison song playing on the radio. Eddie knew it wasn’t a first kiss, but it sure felt like one. 

It was one he couldn’t believe he found himself watching. He’d always found the religious dogma of heaven and hell to be a bit reductive. Rather he’d found himself subscribing to the notion that hell, and by extension, heaven too, could be found in things, in people. Ordinary things, ordinary people sometimes had this celestial quality that could only be explained by being simply more than he was. The sound of his favourite song just before knowing it would be his favourite song, or the drop in his stomach knowing that he would never see his mother again. They were all things, good and bad, that told him that there was a little bit of heaven and a little bit of hell here. 

For a long, long time, he could only find hell; even when he tried to run away from it, it somehow always tracked him down. Eddie’s bad luck morphed into little bits of hell, gnawing away at him until he finally succumbed to them. He was always glad that he never did, never more so than now, having realised that yes, hell could be other people, but as could heaven. 

Heaven was his own making, and he wanted to build it here. 

Billy finally released Steve’s face, and through a smile, he said, “Yeah, I get it.”

Still, in the stable confines of Billy’s hands, Steve titled his head to look at Eddie, his beautiful face framed by scarred hands. It felt like a painting, not one Eddie had ever seen before, but one that still needed to be immortalised by someone far more talented than he. 

“It’s all like connected, like a cycle, we’re like a cycle-” Steve said, half drunk on whatever Billy had kissed him with.

Eddie drew closer to them on the back of the sofa and looped his finger in the air, “That snake thing,” he couldn’t really remember the name of it, “with the tail.”

“Yeah,” mused Steve, even though Eddie was sure that he had no idea what he was trying to refer to either. 

Eddie was as breathless as Steve looked, and his heart was racing as hard as the skittering pulse in Billy’s neck. 

He leaned in closer, close enough to hear their exchanged breaths, ragged and wondrous. 

His eyes were on Billy’s lips when he muttered, “Do that again.”

As someone who had experienced dying and not found it to be the most pleasant experience, the weight of his words were not lost to himself when he thought, ‘I could die like this , watching these two people he cared deeply for care for each other. 

The parted expression on Billy’s lips drew into a smile, showing nearly all of his straight white teeth. The smile gave way to a purred sentence, “I always knew you were a freak Munson.”

Steve chuckled as Eddie knocked into Billy playfully, “Shut the fuck up Hargrove. Kiss him.” Eddie’s hand lingered on Billy’s shoulder. 

The cheerful teasing melted like liquid gold as Billy obliged, pulling Steve to him again. Steve’s neck tilted upwards, showing every mole, every freckle that adorned his long neck. As their mouths moved against each other, this time with more hunger and passion than the desperation that marked their last kiss. Their last kiss felt like they might die without it, and this kiss felt like they’d realised they could carry on living. Billy’s hands travelled from the sides of Steve’s face, to the hair on the nape of his neck and fisted into it.

Steve simply sighed into the movement and Billy’s tongue found its way into Steve’s mouth. Eddie just stayed still for a moment, watching the symbiosis unfold delicately. Then he suddenly remembered the hand had splayed on Billy’s shoulder, he traced the hand upwards and took the lobe of Billy’s ear between his fore and middle finger and traced absently up the shell of his ear. Billy keened into the touch, almost breaking the kiss with Steve. A small sigh escaped his otherwise occupied lips.

 It was mesmerising just to watch, so much so it was almost a surprise when a hand snaked around his waist and pulled him closer to the pair. The hand began drawing long delicate stripes up the side of his body. They were so light and purposefully teasing, he could barely feel them through the shirt. Regrettably, he shivered into the touch when the careful finger tip brushed the wrong spot on his rib. 

As he shuddered, Steve broke away from the kiss, tilted his head and spoke, his lips love slick and pink. It came out as a rasp, “Ticklish, Eddie?”

There were words somewhere in his body, there definitely were, they just weren’t in his mouth or in his head. So instead, he just swallowed the lump in his throat and shook his head in a bold-faced lie. As Steve laughed, Billy tilted Steve’s head again and Steve willingly obliged, and then took the hand closest to Eddie and began pointing at spots on Steve’s neck

Oce on the moles,

“Steve’s ticklish here.”

He traced a finger from the lobe of Steve’s ear, across the bump of his jaw and along his neck,

“And here.” 

It was somehow more enthralling to know that they’d done this before, that they knew how to make each other gasp and squirm. Where to put their mouths and press their fingers to make each other come apart.

There was a glint in Steve’s eye when he looked over at Eddie again, and the hand in Steve’s hair flexed ever so slightly tighter. With the motion, Steve grinned. 

Billy’s voice dipped low and luxurious, “If you want revenge.” 

Then, Billy used the tightened grip on Steve’s hair to tilt his head away from Eddie, unveiling each precious inch to him. It was tantalising and inviting, as if Eddie was a vampire and Steve was his prey. The hand around his waist snaked tighter, and Eddie moved into Steve, bracing one hand behind him and the other on his thigh. Steve hummed at the contact on his thigh, his lashes fluttered shut.

“Come on, baby, I don’t even have my mouth on you yet.”

Eddie’s lips moved forward, not quite brushing the skin. Beneath them, Steve’s skin pimpled, and his hairs stood on end, tickling Eddie’s lips as he moved diligently across each and every one of the spots Billy had suggested. Eddie felt him squirm into his touch on his leg, and heard him inhale deeply as Eddie ensured that his steady breath tickled him just the right amount.

There was a murmur and then a laugh from Billy, who’d begun lacing his fingers in the crown of Eddie’s still damp hair. Billy’s softness with Eddie still was so surprising. Immediately, the three of them fell into that pattern, a push and pull between Billy and Steve and Eddie teetering above them, quietly controlling the situation like they were puppets on his very long string. 

Eddie’s lips had yet to touch Steve’s when he removed his hand from his thigh and traced it along Billy’s arm. He dug his fingers into his shoulder to ask him to come downwards, which he obliged happily. As Billy dipped, Eddie pulled away from Steve’s intoxicating aura and kissed Billy. Long and languid, and directly in front of Steve. Eddie was a man who loved theatrics and controlling a scene. This was a fantasy custom made for him. 

Eddie could feel Billy smile into the kiss as they both could hear mumbled protests from Steve. Incredulous and petulant, desperate for the attention to be back on him. 

“I think that’s enough revenge.” 

Eventually, Eddie pulled away from Billy. The mourning of the loss of contact for the briefest moment before registering the sanctimonious-come-desperate look on Steve’s face made him glad that he did. 

“Do you, pretty boy?” Slurred Billy, still drunk off the kiss. 

“Big words coming from you,” rasped Steve, and Billy cocked his head and raised his eyebrows in disbelief. 

Eddie was a big fan of laughing during sex; this was no exception. A wry chuckle seeped out of him. The hand that was braced behind Steve earlier found its way onto Steve’s chin, pinching at it mockingly. 

He tilted his head away in a huff, and Billy crooked another eyebrow. He looked at Eddie as if to say, ‘ You gonna let him get away with this? ’

Before Eddie could do anything, the still seated Steve had his finger looped in the top of Billy’s elasticated waistband. He pulled it out and let it ping back with a painless snap.

He looked up and smiled sardonically before sliding that hand along the top of Billy’s thigh, “You his gofer now?” he asked with false sincerity. 

Eddie tutted slowly and crooked a hand along the back of Billy’s head before kissing him chastely, with his eyes fixed on Steve. Steve’s eyes became heavy-lidded again; he shifted his position, and his erection, along with everyone else’s, indicated that he rather enjoyed the show he was such an unwilling participant in. 

“No need to get mean, Stevie, it’ll be your turn soon.” Eddie hummed as he fixed his attention back on Steve, “Or do get mean,” he purred into the shell of his ear, “but keep it consensual and let me referee.” 

As Eddie pulled away and winked happily at his suggestion, Steve’s hand was around the back of Eddie’s waist, all but pulling Eddie into his lap. 

“ Dude, please -” he moaned half in irritation that even now, Eddie wouldn’t stop talking and sheer sexual desperation. He surged forward and pressed their lips together. Pushing Eddie into his person as frantically as he could, hands cupped around Eddie’s head, he deepened the kiss. Eddie never thought of Steve as such a frantic kisser. He was always so in control, sometimes to a fault, and he was needy, desperate, trying to have more of someone that anyone could reasonably give. It was electrifying to the point of almost terror. 

Steve goaded Eddie from the back of the sofa, so he was straddling him. Demandingly, he pulled Eddie into him, wrapping his crossed ankles around the back of Eddie’s legs so their obvious arousals were pressed against one another. Eddie leaned in, pushing harder. Steve gasped into his mouth and then groaned with the satisfaction of two tectonic plates sliding happily against one another. 

It was far from the chaste kiss they’d shared earlier; gone was Steve’s self-restraint, and gone was the aloof man who couldn’t let go until he let go all of the way. 

Neither of them were what Eddie expected at first. He never expected Steve to be so desperate. He expected him to be calm and somewhat controlling, to care for Eddie in a way that he cared for everything and everyone else. Instead, he was frantic, pushy and dramatic. Clearly, he saw someone in Eddie that he could let go with, and let go he had to. Billy was different; Billy was obedient when everything about him stunk of defiance. Billy just wanted to be loved, to be taken care of, plain and simple. 

Eddie didn’t think too much into what that dichotomy meant, at least not now. 

Suddenly there was pressure on his back, a warmth, two arms bracing either side of him, a pair of lips pressing at his neck. One of the hands lifted and moved away the sliver of garish cotton covering his body. Billy’s lips kissed down his neck before placing them along the stark line of his collar bone. There was a breathy hum as Billy rocked into him, his thick arousal pressing into Eddie’s ass hard and desperate. Eddie broke his kiss with Steve to push back into him, laying waste to a groan that exited Billy like steam from a hot spring. 

Eddie smirked to himself and turned his head, looping his hand around the small of Billy’s waist and kissing him over his shoulder again. This time without all the earthshaking pressure that had been on them before. This time it was just sloppy and needy, leaving them panting into each other’s mouths as his neck ached from craning it. The hand that was on the small of Billy’s back slunk downwards, cupping his ass, his fingers grabbing possessively into the swell of muscle there. 

Then Steve stood and began unbuttoning the fastenings on Eddie’s shirt from the front as Eddie kissed the man to his behind. As soon as Steve was done, Billy slipped the shirt from his shoulders, sending it into a lurid puddle of cotton on the floor. The kiss finally broke, and Eddie turned back to face Steve. 

“When did you get so hot?” he asked as he mused over Eddie’s lithe, scarred frame.

“I’ve always been hot, pretty boy. You were just too straight.”

That earned a honk of a laugh from Steve. 

“Yeah, that definitely wasn’t it. I clearly just went blind for a few years,” said Steve as he surged forward and reprieved Billy of his kissing duties. Steve’s leg was between his thigh, the heat and arousal radiating from him unmistakably. Eddie’s hands were on the sharp angles of Steve’s hips, his thumbs pressed inwards, pulling him closer until there was not even enough space for an atom to eek between them. Hands were roaming over the soft of Steve’s stomach, roaming upwards to grace over the curves of his pecs. They broke apart for a moment for Eddie to yank Steve free from the confines of his shirt. 

There was a hum from behind him.

“Looks like there’s some extra meat on those bones now, Harrington.” Eddie could hear the way Billy wet his lips. “You look fucking good.”

It was true. His already broad shoulders were even wider than when he’d seen him last. There was a swell to his pectorals and bulk to his arms. Eddie had remembered Steve back in the locker rooms after gym class, V-shaped but lithe, but how he looked strong . Bulky on top the way Billy was bulky on the bottom, a spattering of hair across his chest. It was dizzying that Eddie died and came back, and in that time, Steve Harrington turned into a man . 

Eddie rolled his own hips forward, eliciting a groan from Steve, a temporary reprieve from the building pressure between them. His head was thrown back, and Eddie placed a kiss on one of the freckles Billy had pointed to earlier. 

Having since removed his shirt, Billy pressed into the back of him, the warm wall of muscle enveloped Eddie. This time, rather than focusing his attention on Eddie, he focused it on Steve, aiming for Steve’s lips across Eddie’s shoulder. As Steve caught his attention, he pushed the damp frizz of Eddie’s hair from his shoulder, his finger working carefully around the shell of Eddie’s ear, it sent a tiny shiver running through him. Steve moved forward, pressed his chin into Eddie’s shoulder, and Billy met him there. 

Eddie couldn’t see what was happening, but he could hear it. The way their mouths moved against one another, wet and pliant. He could hear the litany of muffled sighs exchanged as they pushed into each other and consequently Eddie as they deepened the kiss. He could hear a moan, guttural and needy. That shot straight to his arousal, and his grip on Steve’s hips tightened immeasurably and caused Steve to roll his hips into the searing touch. 

Then Eddie’s hands moved to Steve’s belt buckle; it jingled as he worked his hands over it, his arousal-addled brain making a harder job of it than he had first anticipated. There were so many things he wanted to do to Steve, to Billy, to watch them do together. He wanted to spread Billy out on the bed, and have him and Steve take care of him in a way he never had before. With gentle touches and encouraging words, worshipped like Apollo, the sun god he was. He wanted to get down on his knees for Steve and have Billy hold a hand over his mouth, working him as muffled pleasurable sobs emanated from him as his knees buckled. 

But right now, he just wanted that fucking buckle undone. His surprisingly shaking hands were having no luck.

Steve pulled back a bit from Billy, their mouths still connecting but only just. Steve worked a little at his belt buckle, which opened with a metallic ring. He made short work of his button and his fly and pushed back into Eddie and to Billy, resulting in a delighted moan from the latter. 

“ Touch me ”, Steve begged into the open cavern of Billy’s mouth. 

Not usually one to take orders, even Eddie couldn’t resist such a breathy plea. Eddie pressed the heel of his hand to the seam of Steve’s jeans, resulting in breathy moaning from Steve. Billy laughed a little until Eddie turned around and did the same to him. Billy broke away from the kiss and looked at Eddie, his eyes dark and hungry, as if he was about to eat Eddie whole. 

Eddie took a step back, and Billy kissed him hard and dirty as he pushed down the shorts over the curve of his ass, unveiling his dick. Eddie’s ringed hand ran along the length of him once, his thumb pressing down on the slit of his leaking head. Billy’s lips parted against Eddie, and a gasp escaped. With his other hand, he did the same to Steve. 

 Then he removed his hands from both of them. Steve keened forward at the loss, but before he could say anything defiant, Eddie placed two fingers in their respective mouths. 

“Nice and wet for me, yeah ?” he commanded as they both sucked in their designated fingers. 

Billy obliged dutifully and swirled his tongue around Eddie’s fingers. It was reminiscent of what had happened earlier in the shower. It wasn’t Eddie’s intention, but the cohesive storyteller in Eddie would say, duh , if pressed by Billy later. Conversely, Steve’s eyebrows furrowed for a moment, but his eyes remained playful.

“Come on now,” Eddie coaxed as he crooked his fingers a little in both of their mouths, hooking them and pulling them forward just the tiniest amount, so the only thing occupying the space between their faces were Eddie’s crossed hands. As soon as Steve’s unclothed length brushed against Billy’s, he shuddered, and a moan escaped the space in his mouth not currently filled with Eddie’s fingers. 

Steve’s fingers fluttered by his side, moving them ever so slightly forward towards the pulsing mess between himself and Billy.

“ Nah, ah .” Eddie warned as he facetiously waggled his fingers side to side inside Steve’s mouth. “No touching.” 

Tightening his hook on them again, he pulled them even closer forward, chests pressed against each other, lips parted and touching, unable to kiss. Eddie knew how mortifyingly tempting it was to be this near both Steve and Billy and not kiss them. Instead, Steve’s tongue swirled around Eddie’s fingers lavishly and sucked them down harder. 

Beneath their mouths, their dicks were twitching against each other. A pre-come smear glistened from Steve’s pink tip; it dripped downwards to the tip of Billy too. Eddie’s own dick throbbed at the sight, and his mouth watered, desperate to get his mouth on both of them. But he had a plan. There would be many other times after this one. 

So Eddie slid the fingers from both of their mouths. His hands now gloriously spit slick, finally got their grip on the throbbing mess between the two men. 

As he ran both of his hands across the length of each of them in one languid stroke, finishing by squeezing firmly at their bases, Billy leaned forward with an astonishing “Fuck” leaving his lips, and rested his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve bit down on his lower lip and nestled his nose into the golden crown on Billy’s head. 

Eddie didn’t really have time to think about the renaissance painting he had in front of him, the two men suffering from pleasure, the same way the subjects of a Rubens painting would suffer unimaginable pain. It was beautiful, whatever it was. 

He began working them faster and methodically. Squeezing when he needed to and pausing ever so often to pay special attention to the swollen heads of each of them. He wanted to say something lurid that would leave them both groaning in irritation and arousal. But before he did, Billy had raised his head and was now pressing his forehead against Steve’s. They weren’t always kissing, sometimes, their lips stopped moving against each other to pant into each other’s mouths, to share breath as if only that could sustain one another. 

“Cl-clo-” was all Billy could mutter before Eddie was leaning forward and interrupting them with his own mouth. 

Kissing with three sets of lips was undeniably more awkward than kissing with two. It mainly was passing the kiss in short little volleys. It was all in quick succession as if the kiss was hot and dangerous to hold onto for too long. Billy’s hands moved upwards, cupping Eddie and Steve’s heads and pushing them further into one another. 

Eddie realised that the hands on Billy and Steve had stilled. Then with a stroke of abhorrently sexy inspiration, he broke their kiss triad to spit on his hand, and wrapped his big palm around both Steve and Billy’s lengths. Steve bucked a little into the motion, the stimulation of Billy’s whole slightly curved length being the thing about to get him off clearly working for him. Billy’s legs wobbled a little as Eddie continued to work them quickly and firmly, collecting pearls of precum from them and smearing them down the length of them. 

“Gonna come-” Steve muttered into the open cavern of Billy’s mouth. 

“Gonna come for us, baby?” Eddie purred as he began to feel Steve pulsate between his hand and Billy’s cock. 

As if triggered by the throbbing against his own length, Billy’s swelled and twitched too. Before he came, with his hand still on the back of Eddie’s head, he pushed them closer together again. All three of their tongues tangled serpentine in the space between them, moving hot and wet and lurid. 

Billy came first; Eddie could feel the hot stream of come spurt from him as his whole body quivered as it pressed against them. He threw his head back a little, breaking their triad, muttering a litany of sacrileges under his breath. When Steve came, it was with a grunt, lubricated by Billy as Eddie continued to work over both of them. Billy’s grip tightened in Eddie’s hair as he worked into the cusp of overstimulation. 

As Steve finished riding the shockwaves, Billy took a step back. 

“Shit,” was the only thing either of them said in a good few moments.

Steve slumped himself against the back of the sofa, looking bewildered and fucked out. 

A wave of panic hit Eddie, “You liked that, right?” he asked as neither of them provided a very obvious five-star review of the service. 

Steve was panting when he gave a thumbs up, and Billy was leaning down and wiping his come-covered length with the t-shirt he was wearing earlier. 

“That was fucking amazing, man-” 

“Fuck yeah”, Eddie hummed happily, his own dick was still straining hard against his jeans. 

He popped the button and fly, “I’m just gonna-”

Billy discarded the t-shirt, and Steve gave him, and it, a disgusted scornful look. “The hell you are,” and rushed over to where Eddie had joined Steve, perching on the back of the sofa. 

Immediately Billy sank to his knees, and his hands began to run over the front of Eddie’s clothed thighs. His eyes were still dark and dangerous despite him having already come. 

As his hands traced up his long thighs, he leaned his head against Eddie’s knee and purred, “I’ve been thinking about this for months.”

“You should’ve said something; we could’ve been fucking like rabbits that entire time.”

Billy’s bottom lip jutted forwards, “I’ll just have to make up for it now.”

A heat burned inside Eddie, he knew Billy desired him, but not like this. Not with black eyes and lips so raw and kiss bitten they looked almost painted on. 

“Jesus-” he murmured as he lifted his ass and shuffled off his borrowed pair of jeans. 

Billy’s fingers hooked beneath the hem of the jeans and underwear and aided them down. Eddie’s hardness sprang forth, and Billy pushed his legs apart and leaned between them. As Billy grasped a hand against him and licked a long, wet stripe from his base to the tip, he began to moan, only to find the moan stifled by Steve’s lips upon his. 

Billy continued like that, with long, languid strokes of his mouth, working his tongue expertly around his head, lapping at him like this was a summer’s day, and he was goddamn ice cream. Steve’s hand was in his hair, tangled between the curls at the base of his skull. Then, his hand rose to brush against Eddie’s stomach and to his chest, the large palm moving with perfect pressure until it reached his chest and teased softly at a nipple.

Eddie wasn’t going to last long. Who could blame him? There weren’t enough grand mothers or math tests he could imagine to offset this. 

As Billy’s tongue worked around the base of him, his hand on his length, Steve pulled away, kiss bitten. His eyes looked intrepidly downwards towards Billy. 

“C’mon, share”, he raspily commanded. 

Billy left Eddie with a pop, and Eddie keened at the absence. His eyes were pointed up to Steve, and his thick brows were furrowed, “I’m better at this.” 

As if those were the magic words, Steve all but launched himself from the back of the sofa, landing on his knees next to Billy and verbally grappling, “The hell you are, asshole.”

Obviously, Eddie surveyed the scene in front of him as if he was a deity, and these were his subjects, drunk on adoration and arousal. Realistically, they were having too much fun together to pay too much mind to their god for a moment. Their eyebrows were crooked at each other, and they parted competitive glances, snarky comments along with them, even when their mouths were silent. 

Subconsciously, Eddie’s leg bounced, which still did nothing to break the two of them’s stalemate. It would have been intoxicating to watch, arousing, really, if Eddie wasn’t already achingly hard and at their unwitting mercy. 

He kicked Steve in the shin lightly and impatiently murmured, “Come one, two heads are better than one.”

They both looked up at him, and Eddie gave them an overconfident wink. 

“Shut up, Eddie,” Came a voice. He wasn’t sure whose, because someone else’s mouth was already around him, wet and deep, and his head threw back and his eyes spun like pinwheels against his fluttering eyelids. 

The perfect barrage continued, a mouth on either side of him, lips tracing against his length expertly. A tongue working over the end of him, another tongue working at his seam. He breathed in staccato breaths and realised why he was always told he was going to hell because heaven was right fucking here, and there was nowhere else to go but down. 

Eddie thrust forward, only to be stopped by a hand on the sharp edge of his hip-bone. Stupidly Eddie opened his eyes. It was a foolish thing to do because the sight alone brought him teetering towards the edge of coming that he was looking across the ravine, vertigo twinging at his blood. Steve was blinking up at him, eyes wide and wholly inhibited, Billy’s mouth was at the base of him, edging upwards. Without warning, Billy’s ever-so-pushy mouth reached Eddie’s tip and began kissing at the edge of Steve’s mouth. Pink lips met stretched lips, and his tongue pushed onwards obscenely. 

Steve pulled off, and Eddie whined at the sudden lack of pressure. Billy mumbled something along the lines of wanting to be fucked on the floor, and Steve chastised loudly about the fact that Billy’s refractory period was not normal . The bickering led to mouth’s bickering over Eddie, each snide remark encouraged him further. As they continued, they moved onwards, closer together, their mouths began to bicker less and more encouraged. The last snip was exchanged with a sliding of tongues against each other in a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss, right over the edge of Eddie. 

The arguing tongues paid attention to each other and then to him, and then repeated the cycle over and over and over again. There was a finger tracing at the base of him and another squeezing at the muscle on his thigh. He wasn’t sure if there was a documented case of it thus far, but he was sure that he was so turned on he was literally about to die. There was no way he could die though, no place he could go to that would leave silly little Eddie Munson worthy of going to a place like this, so he better fucking not die, not again.

A sob threatened at the back of his throat. Six months of horror built within him, and released all at once. He was happy, he was alive, he was safe. There were not one but two people here pivotal in all of those things. He came with a choked-out gasp and a quiver, one hand fisted in Steve’s hair and another in Billy’s. Breathlessly, he sighed, brought his hand from Billy’s, and bit down on the heel of it hard. He would cry about it one day; this was not the time for tears. 

The aftershocks rolled through him like thunder after a lightning strike. He panted and whined as his teeth sunk down onto the heel of his hand. There were two hands of varying sizes stroking his legs encouragingly. 

Suddenly, one of those encouraging touches gave way to a light flick, and Billy spoke with amusement thick in his voice, “Look.”

Now the quivering aftershocks had subsided, Eddie crooked open an eye to find Billy grinning broadly. His eyeline pivoted to Steve, whose lips and chin were covered with the result of Eddie’s orgasm. 

“Fuck, sorry, man.” Eddie huffed and opened both of his eyes lazily. “It’s hot as shit, though.” 

It was, it really really was. 

Before Steve could protest and smear it off with the back of his hand, Billy took Steve’s face in his hands and licked one long stroke across his lips and chin. 

“Dude, what the fuck was that?” 

Like Steve, Eddie wasn’t sure how he was supposed to go about processing what just happened. The only thing he could garner from it was that he wanted to see it happen again and again and again. Billy seemed unphased by it. His earlier submissiveness was utterly lost as soon as his erection subsided. Eddie wasn’t really sure if that was a classic tactic on how to assert dominance over other men. Still, he sure wasn’t complaining about it. 

“You know I’m gonna get hard again in like two minutes now, right?” stated Eddie as he replayed the image in his head.

Steve readjusted himself and flopped back onto the hardwood floor, exhausted, “I’m not ready for round two yet.” 

Billy rose from his position on the floor and leaned into Eddie, a palm on either thigh and kissed him gently. His eyes were not black and hungry as they had been before, but rather his usual brilliant blue, filled with the jubilance that could only be conjured by winding Steve Harrington up like a spinning top. 

He placed another kiss, a loud peck, before announcing, “You can always just watch, pretty boy.” Both of them were diligently watching Steve from his position on the floor. 

Steve’s head didn’t rise when he said, “Or you can wait like thirty minutes.”

Hands still on his thigh, and face still close to Eddie’s Billy was grinning happily. The happiest he’d ever seen him.

“Sorry, the dick wants what the dick wants.” 

Definitively,  he tapped Eddie lightly on the thighs, pushed away, and grabbed a dishrag from the kitchen. He launched the material over to Eddie, who cleaned himself off with it. It wasn’t easy to see Steve’s expression in the low light of the cabin and from his position on the floor. However, he was pretty sure that it was bent entirely downwards like a painting of a sad clown. 

“I do dishes with that,” he complained from his resting position, “I take back what we just did. I don’t want to do that with either of you again.”

Billy leaned down to Steve’s position on the floor and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. Then, he flippantly slapped the side of Steve’s cheek lightly and announced, “You can’t unsuck a dick, Stevie.”

Steve’s eyes seemed narrowed, if not visually, in spirit. “You came back from the dead. I’m sure there’s a way I could make it happen.”

Billy’s laugh trailed behind him as he wandered into the little bedroom adjoining them. 

“My parents love The Carpenters, I don’t get it though,” Steve mumbled from the floor as Eddie wrestled himself back into his jeans. 

“You’re not supposed to like the music your parents like, Stevie.”

 Then, Eddie bent down to collect his shirt but got distracted by Steve mouthing along with ‘We’ve Only Just Begun ’, and kissed Steve in the same place Billy had. As Eddie rose, he noticed how Steve’s chestnut hair was splayed around him and his broad chest was steadily rising and falling against the old oak floor. He seemed so very serene, regardless of his earlier complaints.

“You good?” Eddie asked, despite being pretty sure he knew the answer. 

“Yep.” A small contented smile drew across Steve’s lips before he held out his hand for Eddie to take. 

Eddie hauled Steve upwards, and their hands stayed connected just for a moment. Steve’s gaze lingered on Eddie, and something deep and satisfying bloomed within him under it. 

Steve’s voice was soft, “It’s been very nice getting to know you.”

Eddie didn’t laugh but exhaled a little out of his nose.

“Likewise.”

Steve’s hand was on the side of Eddie’s head, his thumb slowly traced over Eddie’s ear’s shell. Lightly, he patted twice before bending down to pick up the discarded clothes on the floor. He handed the brightly patterned shirt back to Eddie and shook out his own. Eddie slunk his arms back into the holes, left it open, and headed to where Steve’s jacket was hanging by the door. Steve was grappling with his shirt behind him, and somewhere even further in the background, Billy was rooting around for a fresh one. 

When he reached the jacket, it smelled just like Steve. It smelled more like Steve than even Steve did. He rifled through the inside pockets, pulling out Steve’s box of cigarettes and lighter. He opened the box, plucked out one, and slipped it between his lips. 

With the cigarette dangling limply, Eddie spoke, “Smoking’s a bad habit y’know, Steve-o.”

As if summoned, Billy sauntered in from the little bedroom, his chest with scars like fireworks on the fourth of July now covered in a grey sweatshirt. There was excitement in his eyes as he quickened his pace to avoid missing what Eddie had in his hands. 

Steve was now slipping plates into a sink, quickly filling with water. 

“Not inside the house,” he commanded. 

The lighter was lit in Eddie’s hand and flickered disjointedly as Eddie tried to argue his case. “Dude, it’s Hopper’s. I’m surprised he hasn’t accidentally burnt it down with all the cigarettes he probably smoked here.”

When Billy finally arrived, Eddie expected him to back him up, but instead, he snagged the cigarette from Eddie’s lips and grabbed the box and lighter. 

The cigarette was between Billy’s own lips when he muttered, “Outside, yeah?” He was facing Steve, and Steve nodded. 

Quickly, Steve turned off the tap and slid the final plates into the sudsy water to soak and probably forget about. He meandered over to the now uncluttered dining table and picked up the only things left there. Two half-drunk glasses of brandy and an empty one that had been unused by Eddie. With those between his fingers and the rest of the bottle in his other hand, Steve made his way to the front door, following Billy. 

Steve left the door open as he went outside. Cool September air flooded the little cabin, as well as the sight of Steve and Billy perched on the edge of the porch. Billy was holding the same cigarette between his lips, and Steve was cupping around the flame as he tried to light it. They shuffled closer together, and Steve absently patted the space on the decking beside him. 

Forgoing trying to forage through the stacks of probably horrible records that Steve had gotten out earlier to play as they smoked, Eddie picked up the portable radio that had not stopped playing through their entire encounter and wandered outside to join them. 

Eddie sat down, and Steve placed a peck on his forehead, and the fate of little Jimmy Brown was explained quietly over the radio.

Notes:

I haven't written smut in like 3 years so i apologise if it was Not Good

Music in this chapter:
Always See Your Face by Love
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
We've Only Just Begun by The Carpenters
The Three Bells by The Browns

 

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Chapter 8: Epilogue/The Man Who Visits His Own Grave

Notes:

(make sure you've read chapter 7 before this one otherwise it'll make no fuckin sense)

i hope you all enjoyed this fic as much as i enjoyed writing it.

i want to thank holdyoubytheedges again for being my sweet cheese and my partner in crime.

godspeed.

“Do you have any chips?” Eddie asked after a long stretch of silence as they sat out on the deck of Hopper’s cabin. It was somewhere between very late at night and very early morning. 

“Nah, my last bag is now on the floor at Lover’s Lake.”

Billy laughed at the memory of Steve launching the bag across the car’s hood after seeing them crawl out of the lake like B-Movie horror villains. 

“I really want some chips, though.” 

“Or bacon.” Said Billy as a plume of smoke left his lips as he spoke. 

“Why does it have to be or?” Said Eddie before he realised the irony of the question he’d just uttered. 

He looked between Billy and Steve, his and , not or . Leaning forward and placing a hand on both of their knees, he waggled them roughly and excitedly. “Hah, isn’t that the theme of the night!” 

Steve shook his head but smiled fondly. 

“Come on, Stevie, you know you love it-”

With a chuckle, he interrupted, “Robin’s coming tomorrow with food, though. I’ll let her know she has to be buying for three when she gets here; too late to use the walkie now.”

Billy leaned over Steve’s knee to pass Eddie the cigarette and snickered, “Buying for three? You pregnant with twins?”

“Shut up.”

Despite what Billy said being objectively funny, Eddie didn’t laugh. He was more caught up in the idea that someone else would know that they were alive. That their lives would have to start again in earnest. There would be probing questions and maybe like actual probes. Eddie wasn’t sure he was ready for that just yet. He was content to stay in this little bubble a little while longer. Maybe they could tell Robin not to say anything. She was good at keeping secrets; she kept his secret about being gay for years as he kept hers. However, there was no way he could keep the secret of what happened, not to someone like Robin, who cracked a Russian cypher in her lunch break. 

“So Robin’s gonna know about us?”

Dimly but sweetly, Steve’s face constricted a little in confusion, “I’m not gonna tell her, like not right away at least… I’m gonna at least let her calm down from the back from the dead thing and then deal with everyone else’s reactions before I be like, ‘ Hey Rob, who’s got two thumbs and had a threesome with two presumed dead guys? ’”

As much as Eddie desperately wanted that conversation to happen in that exact format with those exact words, Eddie was sure that Robin’s reaction to it would be closer to ‘ duh ’ than the shock that Steve was naively expecting. 

“Come on, she’s gonna know,” Eddie stated as he took a drag of the cigarette and then passed it to Steve, “She’ll sniff it out like a little bloodhound in a band uniform immediately.”

Confidently, Steve tried to defend himself, “She doesn’t even know about what happened with Billy. I don’t even think she knows I like guys.”

Billy’s eyes were wide, and something was pulling at his lips. He leaned forward and interjected, “Robin was that girl who worked with you in the ice cream place, right? Freckles, bad attitude?”

Obviously, Robin had not said anything to Eddie about Steve. Eddie was also very doubtful that Robin had told Billy Hargrove about the intricacies of her sexuality either. 

Steve nodded in affirmation to Billy’s question. 

“Oh, she knows .” Billy was laughing, and Steve was giving him this doleful look asking him ‘ why? ’

Eddie nudged it along with a little more care than Billy was managing and spoke softly, “She’s probably just waiting for you to tell her.” 

“How-”

“Birds of a feather, gaydar, bloodhound in a band uniform, whatever mixed metaphor you wanna use.”

Drawing up his outstretched legs and sitting up straight, as if a slouched position wasn’t conducive to thinking, Steve bemused, “Wait, you two know she’s-”

“Birds of-”

Then Steve was waving him down in frustration, “I get it, I get it.” 

His eyes were darting between Eddie and Billy, and his brow was a little furrowed. He didn’t seem angry about the situation, rather sad that an unspoken secret club was happening right beneath his nose. Steve wasn’t stupid, no matter how many times he said he was. He was, however, a little slow on the uptake of certain things. Which was fine. Eddie still didn’t know his left and right. 

Then, astutely, he knocked into Eddie and smugly asked, “Why’d you not know about me then?”

“Crush blinkers,” Responded Eddie immediately, “I was like a horse with those” Eddie leaned his elbows onto his knees and cupped his hands around the outside of his eyes. 

As soon as the hands were away from his face, Steve’s disbelieving look and crooked eyebrow caught his attention. He started insolently, “Do you have a list of farm animal-based metaphors or-”

Before Eddie could get a word in edgeways, Billy interrupted, “Dude be thankful he’s not started on The Lord of the Rings comparisons.” 

Steve’s eyes were wide with recognition when he spun on his axis to talk to Billy, “He called the upside down Mordor, didn’t he?”

Excitedly, Billy tapped at Steve’s shoulder in celebration of their shared Eddie trivia, “All the fucking time.”

Some of its endearing quality was slightly lost under the precedence of it being at Eddie’s expense. 

Eddie’s finger was waggling pointedly at Billy, “Yeah, but you got the references because you’d actually read the book, so who’s the…” he paused and tried to think of an appropriate animal-based metaphor but was unsuccessful, “pot calling the kettle black?”

“At least I’m cool about it.” 

He was not cool about it. He talked about Aragorn for a suspiciously long time. Longer than anyone could reasonably imply was cool. 

Eddie’s lips were parting, and Billy’s evisceration was forming upon them. Before he could say anything, Billy took the cigarette from Steve and butted in, “Anyway, speaking of the ice cream place-”

“That outfit, I know .” Steve resigned like a deflated balloon forgotten after a children’s birthday party. 

“Don’t pretend you didn’t love it, sailor.” Billy winked, and Steve screwed up his nose. 

Eddie pitched his voice low and serious, “ What outfit ?” 

“Oh my god , there were these little shorts and this blue and white sailor’s smock or whatever.” Complained Steve as Billy’s eyes traced over Steve’s embarrassment with delight. 

Eddie placed a steadying hand on Steve’s thigh and asked, “Do you still have it? I’ve never wanted to see anything more in my life than I want to see that”

The words came out plain and resolute, if not tinged with a little relief, “I do not still have it.”

Eddie clutched at his chest dramatically, stood up a little and pressed himself into Steve’s ear and crooned, “Can you hear the sound of my heart breaking, sailor?” 

He pressed on a little too firmly, causing Steve to wobble and fall into Billy a little too. Luckily, Billy’s hand was braced on the deck behind him, and he absorbed the incident without too much damage. As Eddie peeled himself away from Steve, he slapped him playfully on the shoulder and then drew his arm around him as he went to sit down again and braced his hand behind Eddie’s back.

They continued like that, talking, flirting, exchanging fingers pointed in irritation. They also continued to smoke and drink the brandy Steve had brought out for them in a joyous display of hedonism. 

Brandy reminded Eddie of his Grandfather, the same Grandfather who would always buy him a book on his birthday and order pizza for him even when every year he said he wouldn’t, a pepperoni pizza would always turn up at their door. Even when Eddie moved in with his Uncle Wayne, the pizza would be there every year, with a bewildered-looking delivery driver hating the fact that he had to drive all the way out to the trailer park. That was until Eddie’s seventeenth birthday when his Grandfather had died in the October beforehand. He and his Uncle Wayne had toasted him with a glass of brandy and made oven pizzas, and Eddie tucked himself in with a book he’d bought himself that year. 

He hadn’t really mentioned that story to Steve or Billy before. It was one of those memories that was only triggered once in a blue moon by the right combination of circumstances. The right smell, the right taste, the right sound. It was one of those memories that someone could only ever become privy to after a very long time, not because he didn’t want to share it, but rather because there was simply too much of any one person to get to know all at once that something was bound to fall by the wayside.

It wasn’t really something he would think about all that often. The notion that nobody would know him all the way and that there would be things that other people knew about him that he himself would long since forget. But it had been a strange day. He’d uncovered many things about himself and created new memories to forget one day. 

The three of them sat on the porch, the light breeze of September only threatening to be cold. They continued to share cigarettes rather than each having their own and listened to whatever was playing on the radio. Steve had complained more than Billy had, other than about a song that nobody knew called Baby Where You Are by Ted Lucas. Steve had made everybody stop talking so he could listen intently to the radio announcer and decipher his thick accent at the end of the song. 

Eddie told them about the brandy, and his Grandfather and Billy told them that his grandparents used to drink port, and Steve said his parents didn’t drink at all because that wasn’t what good Christians did. 

He would undoubtedly forget something about the day eventually, perhaps the colour of the polo Steve was wearing, or Billy’s grandparent’s favourite drink, or perhaps the name of the song they all had to wait patiently to hear. But that was okay. That was just part of life. Forgetting things like that didn’t bother him so much because he’d never really thought of forgetting something as losing something. But rather, something that had become so innate it became a part of him. He didn’t need a marker or a day or a particular set of buttons to press to make him remember that thing because it would always just be there, somewhere within him. 

Eddie hoped that this would go like that too. He wouldn’t have to cling onto memories of today in little defined totems, but rather that there would just be a little part of him marked Steve, and another little part marked Billy and today, and every other day would melt comfortably into those boxes. 

During the tail end of one of Steve’s exasperated laughs, the moment still hanging in the air like the canopy of stars above them. Billy lit another cigarette and spoke as smoke filtered from his lips, “I always wanted to get to know you, Munson.”

The vestiges of a grin left Eddie’s face, leaving only shock. He didn’t say anything but by Steve’s expression too, he knew that they were both wordlessly saying ‘ what’ loud enough for Billy to hear. 

“I wasn’t going to, but I always wanted to.” There was a little smile playing on Billy’s lips, one that wasn’t supposed to be there but was anyway, “Guess I was too much of a coward to do anything about it.” 

“A coward?” Eddie gestured to himself with a ringed hand lightly touching at his chest, “I’m a coward. A coward knows a coward-”

“You’re so you , that’s not cowardly,” he rolled his tongue between his lips and repositioned himself on the deck, “Pretty fucking cool.” 

He took another drag of the cigarette and turned his head a little to the side, just enough that neither Eddie nor Steve could quite see his eyes. “I tried to be me for a bit, and that’s what got us all shipped here to this shit hole town.” 

Pulling down the crew collar of the sweater and tapping at the gnarled skin there, he explained, “You can’t really see it now, cause of the rest of ’em, but there was a scar right here, from when Neil broke my collarbone.” Now Billy was fully smiling; it was a horrible twisted thing, like a dog baring its teeth to a lion in the last effort to assert dominance, even though he knew he was going to get eaten anyway.

His voice was far away when he finally finished, “That was my reward for being me.”

Eddie and Steve remained in stunned silence at Billy’s abrupt candour. Why the Hargroves/Mayfields had moved to Hawkins was always a mystery shrouded in violent secrecy. It made sense, though. Niel was a horrible man, and it was a horrible thing for a horrible man to find out. Eddie felt his heart fill with lead and drop right into the very pit of him. 

There was one thing about being openly himself with Eddie and Steve. It was another doing it in the wake of that .  

Steve was the first to break the silence, first with a sigh, and then, “I remember the scar.”

Billy’s eyes flicked over Steve. They glimmered with that kind of look that could only be found when one had lost something and found it again, even when one hadn’t gone looking for it. 

“What happened between you two?”

They shared a glance. It was obvious that they were going to tell Eddie eventually. This whole thing wouldn’t work unless they shared everything, even the horrible things. Especially the horrible things. 

Steve nodded comfortingly and placed a hand on Billy’s knee. Then Billy tapped at the little split in his eyebrow. He took in a breath and exhaled hard out of his nose, “Got a concussion and six stitches. Had to tell the hospital it was a football injury.”

“Wait, he found out?” Asked Steve immediately. 

Judging by the surprise in Steve’s voice, he didn’t know about that either. Billy probably left Steve high and dry one night and never looked at him again. That seemed just like something Billy would do when backed into a corner. He couldn’t explain the citation to himself. He couldn’t understand it beyond the way of ‘ this is the way things are,’ never mind trying to explain that to someone else too. 

“ No , but he could tell something was up. Maybe cause I seemed happier or some shit, I don’t know.” Billy shook his head and drew in a shaky breath between his teeth.

 “I let my guard down, and he-” Billy clattered his hands together violently, and the end of the cigarette fluttered down in a hot ember, “swooped in.”

Billy had happiness stamped out of him at every opportunity. Eddie vowed to himself, quietly for now, but in the ear of Steve later, that it would never, ever happen again. 

Steve’s voice was little when he spoke, “So that’s why you stopped coming over?” 

Placing the now out cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lighting it again, Billy uttered, “Bingo,” through the flickering flame. 

Steve was pushing his hands through his hair and uttering, “ Shit .” as he rapidly began processing the last few years of his life with new context.  

As Steve processed, Eddie kept his attention on Billy, who was looking utterly raw and utterly lost. Eddie pivoted to Billy and knocked his knees into Steve, and smiled with complete and utter kindness.

“I’m glad he thinks you’re dead.”

Billy laughed in a way that threatened to be a sob if he hadn’t controlled it just the right way. He sat upright and pivoted towards Eddie too. Eddie reached out and cupped the side of Billy’s knee and stroked lightly. Billy’s lips quivered a little as he wasn’t entirely sure what was going to come out of them. 

Suddenly, Steve’s plume of hair like chocolate-coloured feathers leaned into the space between them. Steve’s expression was that of a man who had been through an existential crisis and came out of the other side fairly intact. “Looks like dying solved a lot of your problems then.” he joked.

It was a joke, but it didn’t mean it was untrue. There was a story in there somewhere, a comedy skit or an indie movie, that life begins after death. Maybe he’d write it someday. 

“Silver linings, huh, Stevie?” 

The three of them shared a laugh and a long, satisfying exhale. The radio announcer told a little story about an Australian man he met in Indianapolis, and he told him that he was one of The Seekers and that he didn’t believe him for a second but liked to tell the story anyway. The radio lulled before I’ll Never Find Another You burst chirpily onto the scene. 

As Eddie plucked the cigarette from Billy’s lips and placed it between his own, he asked, “Was I a disappointment?”

“What?” Steve and Billy asked in unison.

“When you said you wanted to get to know me? Was I a disappointment?” 

Neither of them answered; by the looks on their faces, it was out of confusion and not out of the fact that Eddie, in fact, was a disappointment. 

“I wish you could’ve known me before all this.”

“I like who you are now. You’re a” Steve swallowed, trying to find the words, “You’re a great guy, Eddie.”

Billy leaned back on his palm again, “Steve’s right.” 

“I didn’t even get time to like, mourn the old me before I had to learn to,” Eddie swirled his hand in the air, trying to form the right words, “live again.”

The smell of oncoming rain filled the atmosphere with dusky wetness. The wind picked up a little and he edges of Eddie’s shirt fluttered in it.

“Me too,” said Billy eventually, “But good riddance to the old me, right?” and laughed a little at his own blistering self-awareness, something borrowed from Steve. 

Steve took the cigarette from Eddie, brushing their fingers together purposefully. 

Eddie mused on it a little longer and scratched beneath his chin before talking again, “Aren’t you weirded out by the fact you’ll never get to be that person ever again?”

“Not really.” Billy shook his head and spoke sagely, “It’s a fresh start.”

“You’re still Eddie. Does it matter if you’re a slightly different one?” mused Steve.

Eddie was always proud of who he was. He still was now. He wasn’t worse or better. He was just different. They all were. All things change, and all things pass.

“I suppose it doesn’t.”

Notes:

Music referenced:
Baby Where You Are by Ted Lucas
I'll Never Find Another You by The Seekers

 

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