Chapter Text
The first time Steve pays attention to Eddie Munson, the junior is selling weed to Mario Estevez under the bleachers during lunch. The guy has a chain hanging off his pants and he’s wearing a t-shirt for some weird band that Steve’s never heard of. His wild, curly hair falls just past his ears and objectively, looks terrible, Steve thinks. He wouldn't be caught dead with the guy.
“Come on,” Tommy H urges him, giving him a bump on the shoulder. “Just do it and get it over with.
But Steve shakes his head, pulling a face of utter distaste. “Nah, Dave will be back in town tomorrow. We’ll get your weed then.”
Tommy groans in frustration. As if they weren’t already planning on raiding Steve’s dad’s liquor cabinet that night. He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “I don’t want to buy drugs from the school freak, alright? I bet it’s shit anyway.”
Tommy eyes the pair under the bleachers and sneers. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I bet he’s a fag too,” he says with an ugly laugh. “He’d probably charge you a knob job just for some grass, Harrington!”
“Fuck off.” Steve’s mood sours a bit and he changes the subject.
He’s not going to buy drugs from Eddie Munson. He’s got a reputation to maintain. And so he doesn’t give the guy with bad hair or his dingy old tin lunchbox of drugs another thought.
The last time Steve sees Eddie Munson, he’s pulling Dustin away from the body. Dustin is screaming and crying, shouting Eddie’s name over and over, refusing to let go of his friend. Steve’s heart breaks for him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Steve repeats again and again, not really sure if he’s saying it to Dustin or to the dead guy in front of them.
He flinches when his eyes land on Eddie’s vacant gaze. The blood on his face and the gaping gash on his neck, so dark and dried that it nearly looks black. His broken body shakes from Dustin’s tight grasp. He’s probably still warm, Steve thinks. He’s suddenly aware of the tears beading in his eyes, his clenched fists, and his heavy breathing. He hates the helplessness that he feels. There's nothing he can do to make this better.
But he’s got to keep it together, for Dustin, and for the others. At least until they get out.
“We have to go,” Steve’s voice breaks. He grabs Dustin’s hands, pulling them away. He puts his body in between them, blocking the other from Dustin’s sight. “I’m so sorry, but we have to go.”
“No, we can’t just leave him!” Dustin beats his fists against him but Steve barely feels it.
“They’ll come back for him—we’ll come back—” (He shouldn’t have said that. He has no idea what’s going to happen. Maybe the military will take over, go down and retrieve the corpse. Or maybe the government will just board up all the gates and prevent anyone from coming or going. Or maybe they’re all too late and they’ve already lost. And no one will care about another body lost in the carnage.)
“He tr-tried to f-fight them—h-he wanted to buy m-more t-time—” Dustin sobs and sags against him, burying his face in Steve's chest.
Steve can only stand there, holding him while he cries. He swallows and closes his eyes, thinking back to the last words he and Eddie Munson said to each other.
“Don’t try to be cute or be a hero or something—
“Hey Steve, make him pay.”
Seems like neither of them were very good at listening.
Three days later, Steve’s driving past the General Store on Fourth and Main when he sees the back of a familiar head of curly, wild hair. He slams on the brakes and nearly breaks his neck twisting around to catch sight of the guy.
It’s not Eddie. It’s just another guy with a bad perm.
It takes a few solid seconds and some angry honking from the horn of the car behind him to snap him out of it.
When he sleeps that night, he’s haunted by empty, unseeing eyes, so devoid of life in a way that is the polar opposite of the Eddie he knew. Albeit they barely knew each other really, but it seems those few days left quite a mark on him.
In his dream, Eddie’s corpse comes back to life with a jerk and a horrible gasp, fresh blood spilling from his lips. His body rolls over, gasping for air, choking—and Steve watches, frozen and dumb.
“Eddie?” He finally whispers, and slowly he kneels to the ground. He reaches out a shaking, trembling hand—
The other man doesn’t speak, maybe he can't speak. He just makes a terrible, broken sound from his throat. More blood spills from his lips, splattering to the ground.
“I’m so sorry. I—I should have been there. I should’ve helped fight them off, I should've—”
There’s a bit of comfort to be had in the dreams. It’s his brain’s way of processing loss and trauma. He couldn’t save Eddie. He can’t take away Dustin’s pain, he can’t bring back Max, and he can’t stop the Upside-Down from spilling into Hawkins.
But he sees Eddie in his dreams and he can say that he’s sorry. He's sorry for letting him die, he's sorry for high school, and he's sorry for so much more.
They’re just dreams, after all. Nothing more.
Except that they don’t stop.
“It’s survivor’s guilt,” Robin tells him, when he admits what’s been happening. Details omitted, of course. “What happened to him wasn’t your fault, Steve.”
Steve closes his eyes and sees nothing but the pain on the other man’s face. The emptiness of his eyes, the blood on his teeth. How broken his body looked. “It feels like it is,” he finally says with a grimace.
She rests a gentle hand on his arm. “You wouldn’t blame Dustin…”
“Of course not!”
Robin gives him a pointed look. “Then don’t blame yourself either,” she says softly. “Eddie wouldn’t. He wouldn’t want you to be like this.”
He barely knew the guy. They never spoke in school. Steve just called him a freak behind his back like everyone else.
Sometimes he dreams that he does that and worse while they were in high school. He dreams that his indifference and arrogance became sadistic brutality. Like his brain was trying to tell him that Jason might have been the worst possible version of Steve Harrington. He doesn't know how close he was to becoming that. If Nancy had died that year, when it all first began... who knows?
Every time he wakes ups with his heart pounding in his chest, his skin and sheets drenched in sweat.
He doesn’t sleep anymore on nights like that.
The dreams start to feel different, almost like they have a mind of their own. They become too vivid. Too real. Too dangerous. And Eddie Munson is always there.
The wounds heal. The blood disappears. But not fast enough for his liking.
Steve loses count of the number of nights he’s spent with him.
The worst are when Eddie takes his deepest, most terrible thoughts and spits them back into his face. When Eddie tells him that he should have been stronger. He should have been faster, he should have been better. Eddie tears apart his ripped shirt and exposes the gashes and bites that litter his torso. Maybe then I would still be alive, he screams.
It hurts. Steve breathes.
He ends up having a panic attack the next day when his eyes catch on Eddie’s denim vest inside his closet where he’d stored it away.
He deserves it. He deserves the pain and the guilt. He deserves to suffer the terrible grinding in his chest, feeling like his lungs are going to give out. He deserves it for letting this happen, because Eddie is dead and Dustin is so broken and there is nothing he can do to fix them.
It occurs to him that his dreams might not just be dreams. And what a terrifying thought that is because the alternative is—
Sometimes it’s the Eddie that he knew. The sweet, kind, funny, and dreadfully flirtatious guy, who teases him and makes fun of his hair and looks at him like he’s the goddamn sun. Fucking hell, Steve didn’t know how much he missed that smile.
He really didn't know.
Other times, Eddie is dark and cruel. Twisted by his mind into something horrid and ugly and vicious.
Both hurt him in ways that he can’t explain.
But dreams aren’t supposed to hurt. They aren’t supposed to leave him aching and wanting.
“You died trying to help us. Trying to save us—” Steve tells him when Eddie fails to understand. “You didn’t run. You died a hero, trying to save the world,” he says, like that somehow makes it all better.
It doesn’t.
And when Eddie kisses him, Steve cries. He smiles and cries and huffs a hollow laugh. And he pulls the other man closer like it would mean he could somehow hold onto him after all is said and done. He wants to stay like that, just as they are, in each other’s arms, for as long as he’s allowed.
But when the sun rises and he opens his eyes, he always wakes up alone.
He must be losing his mind. That’s the only explanation for why he’s seeing a dead man and falling for him. He’s going fucking insane.
Maybe his dad is right and he really does need therapy.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” Steve mutters when he’s reprimanded for his mindlessness. It’s the truth, at least.
“I don’t blame you for that,” his mother says, trying to be sympathetic. “It’s like the whole world’s gone mad.”
Steve looks out their window to the endless gray particles falling from the sky.
It really is madness.
It makes Steve sick inside when he thinks about how unfair it is. It’s not fair that Eddie died, at twenty years old, with so much left to live for. It’s not fair that he was dragged into this mess, and with no choice but to go along with their insane, hopeless plan to take down a monster, he was killed trying to save them all. They were such idiots to think they could pull it off.
It’s not fair that Steve has to watch his pain, every night when he sleeps. He sees the devastation when Eddie realizes that he’s dead. That the world is out of his reach, and that for some inexplicable reason, he now only exists in Steve’s dreams. He'll never see his uncle again. He'll never speak to anyone, ever again. Acceptance doesn’t come easy.
It hurts that Steve can’t help him.
The worst part is that they failed. Vecna got away and Hawkins is slowly being swallowed by the other dimension. They lost Max and Eddie and none of it was worth it. And Steve will never forgive himself for not being enough when it mattered.
Steve gets angry sometimes before he’s able to bury it back down inside. He thinks about the hole that Eddie left behind. Dustin still gets choked up around him. He wipes away his tears when he thinks Steve isn’t watching.
It makes him rage inside, that the whole town thinks Eddie Munson is a murderer, when he died brave and fighting, to his very last agonizing breath.
It feels like a sick joke, that Steve’s been going around in circles, trying to find the right person. That he spilled his guts to Nancy, talking about his dream of a full brood of Harringtons and the summer trips they would take. He told her that she was the one who was there. That it was always Nancy who was there.
But he knows, deep down in his stupid Harrington brain, that Nancy isn’t the right person for him. They had their chance and the truth is, they both blew it.
Nancy isn’t the right person. And it’s definitely not Robin. It’s not Heidi or Linda or anyone else that he’s chased after these past two years.
He thinks now that it could have been Eddie.
Eddie, who still flirts and smiles and bats his eyelashes at him. Eddie, who speaks with his hands and his whole body and is so passionate about the things that he loves in life (and after). Every time without fail, Steve’s dumb brain short-circuits, and that’s got to mean something.
Eddie… who died trying to protect them.
And when they kiss and touch and fuck, it’s almost worse than watching Eddie die all over again, because Steve knows with absolute certainty that it’ll all go up in smoke when morning comes.
And when he wakes up alone, empty and aching, he hates himself for missing brown eyes and soft hair and a lovely, beautiful smile.
Eddie always wants to ask. Steve can see it in his eyes. He wants to ask about so much, but he keeps holding himself back.
The unspoken questions: Has my uncle left Hawkins yet? Is anyone still in contact with him? How’s Dustin doing, is he holding up okay? What happened to my guitar? — someone better be taking care of my sweetheart. How many people have died now? Is the world really going to end?
But Eddie doesn’t ask. And so, Steve doesn’t answer.
Instead, they just stay in their safe little bubble inside Steve’s head.
But when he can’t hold himself back anymore, Eddie says, “Have you… have you told anyone about this?” He looks suddenly nervous. “About… us?”
About how I see a dead man in my dreams? Steve thinks. Hey Robin, so you know that guy we knew that died? Eddie Munson? Yeah, I see him in my dreams every night. But there’s more, he’s actually the real Eddie, come back to life inside my head. And we talk and we get along most of the time… Oh, and by the way, we’re fucking too, so I guess you were right about how my dick swings both ways! As always, Robin!
Yeah, that’ll go over great.
Steve answers with a scoff, “Are you kidding, man? People think I’ve lost enough marbles as it is.”
Eddie’s face falls. He’s a shadow of quiet devastation before he’s able to slip his mask back into place. He looks away, looking a mix of distraught and angry and this isn’t how Steve wanted it to go.
He feels bad. He should have phrased his words more carefully.
“Listen, Eddie,” Steve says gently. “I… I don’t know what this is… This is crazy, man. I mean… I see you every night and I don’t know how any of this is real. How is it even possible—”
“Fuck if I know,” Eddie mutters harshly. His eyes are blinking rapidly and he gnaws so painfully on his bottom lip that Steve just wants to reach out and make it all okay again—“It’d be better if I wasn’t here.”
Steve freezes, hands clenched by his sides, knuckles white. His veins are ice and fire. “Eddie… Eddie, don’t say that—”
“Being stuck here, stuck inside your head—” Eddie suddenly shouts. His eyes are bright with fury as he whips his head to face him. “It’s not exactly a picnic for me either, Harrington.”
Moments like these, and Steve wants to just fade away.
Some nights, Steve doesn’t sleep at all.
Steve can’t talk about the dreams. If he did, he’d have to admit that he’s losing his mind. Or that maybe Vecna did some weird shit to him in the Upside-Down. Why else would he be connected to a dead man? If he did talk about it, he’d have to admit that he might be falling for Eddie Munson.
The way Eddie’s face lights up when he sees him… makes him think (hope) that Eddie might feel the same way.
But the tired, jaded side of him thinks that’s ridiculous. Eddie’s tied to him, unwilling, unfortunate, and unwanted. There’s a single soul in the world that he can talk to and it’s Steve. He’s only just putting up with him. He fucks him because he’s there, and he’s all that he can get.
He fucks him because he’s convenient.
And when Eddie sinks his teeth into the curve where Steve’s neck meets his shoulder, and Steve arches back against him, hands tightening into the sheets beneath him as he makes a wanton sound of need. The sting of the bite cuts so well. “Oh fuck,” Steve keens, as Eddie’s hand jerks his cock tenderly.
They didn’t use enough lube, but they’ve also found that it doesn’t really matter much in this dream world. He shivers as Eddie’s cock slides in and out of him, his hips thrusting just right that it has him seeing stars behind closed eyes. “Come on, come on, I need it, please fuck me harder—” He’s blathering and he’d be embarrassed if he could give a fuck. If it didn’t feel so good. “Please, Eddie—”
They stumble over the edge together, catching their release with heavy grunts and groans. Eddie’s face presses hard into Steve’s neck as they collapse. Rough fingers dig into his thighs, pulling him close.
It’s a nice moment.
Until Eddie shifts. He pulls back, and a second later, Steve feels fingers against the juncture of his neck and shoulder where he knows a bite mark should have been. There’s nothing but smooth, unmarred skin beneath Eddie’s fingertips.
The cold realization of what it means washes over them like a wave.
Eddie stiffens and freezes, and then he pulls away.
Steve wakes up alone.
A few days later, Steve walks past a bulletin board of missing faces. One familiar face, in particular, catches his attention.
It’s one of Wayne’s old posters of Eddie. Defaced with scribbles and cruel words and fucking devil’s horns. None of which Eddie deserves.
The written script stares back and taunts him.
FREAK
Steve tears down the poster and fights every instinct inside himself not to scream and make a scene. He crumbles it into a ball and tosses it into the trash in a rage of fury.
That night, he lies in bed, staring blankly at the dark ceiling above him. The silence is deafening and for the first time, Steve dreads going to sleep. He’s too much of a coward to face Eddie. Too much of a coward to deal with the man’s pain, his loss, his regrets.
It feels ridiculous, to be afraid to go to sleep.
His eyelids grow heavier and his mind flashes scribbles of devil’s horns, a pitchfork, and the satanic star. They never knew him. None of them knew him.
Steve himself was barely any better. Too concerned about shit that didn’t matter, like popularity and being prom king, that he never paid attention to the things that do.
He stares at the ceiling until his eyelids become too heavy to keep open.
Eddie meets him at skull rock.
Steve is cold, moody, and detached.
“The fuck is wrong with you, Harrington?”
There are no jokes, no smiles, no tender touches between them. Instead, they argue and fight and say crushing words that they don’t even mean just to hurt each other.
Steve would give anything to make the world make sense again.
His family doctor puts him on Diazepam for anxiety and insomnia.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks, Robin. I appreciate the honesty, as always.”
“For real, Steve,” Robin says softly, giving him a stiff smile. “How are you doing?”
What a loaded question. He can’t sleep, because when he does he keeps bumping into a dead guy. His parents keep talking about leaving town, with or without him. He’s pretty sure he’s losing his mind, and on top of that, he’s now medicated up to his eyeballs.
“Well, I’m not lying braindead in a hospital bed, so… can’t complain,” is what Steve says to her.
Robin looks away, going still and quiet as she stares out the passenger window of his car. They try to visit as often as they can. The doctors told them again today, that there’s been no improvement. They say that Max may never wake up.
“How’s Dustin doing?” Robin asks quietly.
Steve closes his eyes. “Awful,” he says honestly. “He’s still broken up about the whole thing. And please don’t tell me it’s not my fault again,” he says because he saw her lips move and knows exactly what she was going to say.
Robin gives him a small smile. Yeah.
“Want to hear something stupid?” Steve lowers his eyes to a spot of nothing on the center console. “I complained about always being partnered up with him. I actually complained about it. I bitch and moan about always being the babysitter and I don't know why—I don’t hate it. I don’t hate watching out for those kids. I don’t even know why I did that.” He chuckles mirthlessly and shakes his head. “And the one time, the one time, Dustin gets paired with someone else… this happens. And Max—”
Robin reaches over and grabs his hand, giving it a squeeze. He sighs heavily and drops his head back against the headrest. He doesn’t know what he’d do without her.
“He’s not the same, you know? None of them are.”
“Dustin’s young. He’s stronger than you think. He’ll be okay.”
“It just makes me feel like shit,” he admits.
The scars on his sides pulse and throb painfully, like a phantom ache. He rubs his eyes, feeling a migraine coming on as well.
“It’s just a headache,” he says, sensing Robin’s concern. He drops her hand and reaches for the keys to start his car.
“You sure?” She asks.
He gives her a pointed look.
“Well… you have been hit in the head a lot. Like… a lot.”
Steve rolls his eyes and they both share a laugh. “Yeah, I get it. Thanks.”
“Have you seen a doctor?” She asks, dropping the humor from her voice as it morphs into real concern.
“Yeah,” Steve says quietly.
“You’re sleeping better?”
Steve tries to smile, but it turns into more of a grimace. He hopes she doesn’t notice. “Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, I am. Don’t worry about it.”
Steve sleeps better on Diazepam. He dreams less too. When he does, the dreams are less vivid. Sometimes, he can barely remember them.
“What is going on with you?” Eddie asks when he catches up to him at the junkyard.
It’s a familiar dream, that night. Steve stands in the middle of the junkyard, surrounded by abandoned cars and old parts. “This feels like a lifetime ago,” he says faintly. He points to the side. “That’s the bus where we hid from Dart. Dart was Dustin’s pet demodog,” he explains.
The world is the wrong color now, Steve notes. It’s not the shadowy darkness of the Upside-Down. But it’s also different. Tinged with a dull bluish-purple-grey, and warbly around the edges. He tries not to look too closely. It makes his head spin.
“Hey, are you mad at me or something?” Eddie finally grabs his arm and spins him around roughly when he doesn’t answer.
“Of course not,” Steve mumbles, shifting under his gaze.
Through his numbness, he thinks that he really wants Eddie to touch him. He wants to ask for it. Maybe they could just be close this time.
Except, he doesn’t think that he could get it up right now. And Eddie probably wouldn’t like that.
So he doesn’t ask.
“What is going on with you?” Eddie asks again. His voice has taken a low and dangerous tone. “What is this? What’s happening? Why does the world look like this—" He raises an arm and gestures wildly, “All the time?”
Steve doesn’t like fighting with Eddie. So he stands there and looks blankly at the junkyard around them. In his peripheral vision, the edges start to quake and warp again.
“I’m sorry that this happened to you,” Steve says quietly. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be dead—”
Eddie snatches his hand back like he’d been burned. His expression grows hard. “What is this, Steve?”
“This is just me saying that I’m sorry.”
Eddie’s expression twists painfully. “Did something happen?” He takes a step closer and his voice has gone all soft. It makes something flutter in Steve’s chest as he watches him panic and worry.
“Is… is it Max? Is she okay? Is Dustin okay? Come on, talk to me, man—”
Steve shakes his head, cutting him off. “It’s fine. Everything is fine,” he lies. “Everyone… is fine.”
“You’re different.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Eddie grimaces and looks away. “Is there someone else?”
Steve almost laughs at the question, at the absurdity of it. The world is ending and Steve is falling in love with a dead man.
“Wheeler?” Eddie asks, the barest hint of jealousy leaking into his tone.
Steve shakes his head slowly. “There’s no one. There’s no one else.”
No one other than you.
The edge warps and splinters, bleeding purple and blue.
The pills help calm him during the day, and they reduce the severity of the dreams he has at night. An extra dose and he often finds that he doesn’t dream at all.
It’s not easy to constantly see someone he cares about in pain.
Sometimes he just wants to sleep. Sometimes it’s easier to stay away.
It’s not all bad, of course. They have their ups and downs.
When it’s good, they spend their nights in each other’s company, listening to heavy metal albums that Steve insists are more noise than music. Mostly because he finds it really endearing to see Eddie lose his shit over something he’s so passionate about.
Yeah, Steve actually went out and bought the latest Metallica album because Eddie insisted over and over that the repertoire in Steve’s head would have him figuratively rolling in his grave.
Eddie plays his guitar. Steve tries not to be outwardly impressed.
They talk about things that don’t matter and laugh at how little their tastes have in common.
Steve can’t talk about the real world. If he did, he’d have to talk about how they failed. How Hawkins is slowly being swallowed up and Eddie made the ultimate sacrifice for nothing. He would have to admit that he’s not been dealing with his shit very well. He would have to admit that sometimes when things are really bad, he chooses to over-medicate because it’s easier to not see him at all than it is to wake up without him.
Eddie deserves better than the ending he got. He deserves a whole lot better than Steve.
The more he pulls away, the harder Eddie fights to hold on.
Sometimes they lash out with cruel words, barbed and aiming straight for the heart.
“You never wanted me until I was dead!”
That stings. And yeah, the truth there hurts too.
Eddie rages on. “You think this is what I want? Typical King Steve Harrington, thinks he’s such hot shit that everyone just falls over themselves for him! I’m not in love with you!” Eddie screams at him. “I am stuck with you, Steve! Trapped here for—for the rest of—who the fuck even knows?!”
Eddie drops his arms to his side. A sad, cynical sneer graces his features. “Do you get that, Steve?”
It’s not fair, Steve thinks. It’s not fair that he never bothered to know Eddie while he was still alive. It’s not fair that they’re stuck together like this. That Eddie gets to rant and rage and take out his anger on Steve just because there’s no one else in the world who can hear him.
He didn’t want this either.
“You died for nothing,” Steve says quietly.
Brown eyes widen and Eddie’s face goes blank with hurt.
“You weren’t a hero. You didn’t save anyone. The monsters won, and we all lost. And you should have ran, Eddie. You should have fucking ran. You weren’t brave, you were stupid.”
“Fuck you.”
Twisting the knife deeper into the wound, Steve says, “They never even found your body.”
Eddie’s eyes glimmer with unshed tears. “Fuck you, Harrington,” he spits. “Don’t fucking come back.”
It should probably hurt more than it does. Mostly, Steve just feels numb.
The edges warp. Purple and blue.
Steve holds the prescription bottle, rolling it over and over in his hands. His thoughts get lost in the rattle of the pills. He closes his eyes and lets the fatigue sink deep into his bones.
He doesn’t see Eddie again for a long time.