Chapter Text
Despite his overall appearance, the genre he preferred to play in, and the rumors that persisted about him all throughout his generally shitty high school experience, Eddie Munson was not actually a violent guy. He was a lot of things, for sure — too energetic, overly dramatic, decidedly dorky. But violent? Not at all. He’d never been in a real fight (mosh pit scuffles surely didn’t count), he teared up at those ASPCA commercials with the sad lady singing, and he never really wanted to hurt anyone.
Except Petey, in this moment, right now. Petey, he wanted to murder.
“Who the fuck goes BMX biking for the first time ever right before they’re set to go on a national tour? An idiot?” The question was rhetorical, as it had been the last fifteen times Eddie had shouted it into the room, but it still felt good to ask. Cathartic — he needed catharsis.
Dustin Henderson didn’t flinch from where he was sat cross legged on the floor of Eddie’s apartment, where he’d been for the past fifteen times the question was asked as well. He was starting to look a bit bored, which — okay, Eddie’s existential pain wasn’t interesting enough for him? Rude. “You know this affects you too, man,” Eddie pointed out. “Without Petey on bass, there’s no Corroded Coffin tour, and with no Corroded Coffin tour your little teeny-bopper band’s opening act is getting nixed too.”
Eddie knew well that Dustin’s band, The Party, was not exactly teeny-bopper — he’d basically begged for them to be the opening act of his tour, after all. He also knew that most of the kids in it were no longer, well, kids, were in fact now all legally old enough to drink, but Eddie had met Dustin two years earlier just a few weeks shy of Dustin’s 19th birthday, and liked to remind him quite often that Eddie was his elder, all around. Even if, by his own admittance, Eddie was rarely the more mature of the two of them.
The little shithead just rolled his eyes. “Dude. Are you, like, done being dramatic? The tour isn’t getting cancelled. You’ll be fine.”
Eddie stared at him, mouth open. “Dramatic? Petey has a broken wrist man! That won’t heal for like, twelve weeks! You can’t play bass with a broken wrist!” He realized his voice got a touch shrill on the end of that sentence but powered through regardless. Dustin winced as he approached fever pitch. “I wouldn’t call my very real, very serious problem being dramatic.”
Dustin, who was rapidly graduating from regular shithead to King Shithead of the Year, just rolled his eyes again. Eddie very nearly wanted to murder him too, which was putting him at two people in one day on the “to murder” list, which had up until this point been empty. The whole thing was an ordeal. He wasn’t sure he liked this new direction for his character.
“You’re being dramatic,” Dustin said, very slowly, like Eddie was stupid. It was not the first time Eddie had heard that tone — nor, he suspected, anywhere the near the last. “Because I know a bassist you can hire.”
Silence hung, for a long beat.
“You know a bassist,” Eddie said, flatly. “Who’s available, randomly, for a massive summer tour.” Dustin nodded enthusiastically. “And who knows the Corroded Coffin discography by, what, heart?”
Here the kid's grin dropped, but only slightly. “Well, no, he doesn’t know the catalog, but he can learn it fast.”
Eddie shook his head. “Dude, no one can learn that many metal songs that quickly, I don’t care how good they are. It’s three albums worth of stuff and we leave in a week and a half.”
“Steve can,” Dustin said.
And. Oh.
No. No, no, no.
“No,” Eddie said out loud.
“You haven’t even—”
“No, no, a million times no. Steve Harrington is your solution to my problem? That—” he paused to search for the right word. “Prep?” he ended with, which even to his own ears sounded a little lame.
Dustin was fully frowning now. “You don’t even know him! You’re basing this entire irrational hatred you have for him on a few gossip articles you read, like, ten years ago! Steve’s not who you think he is, I swear. I think you two will actually get along.”
Eddie very much doubted that. Because — ugh. Because Steve Harrington was just the worst.
Even if Eddie had never met him, fine. He didn’t have to. Regardless of whatever strange and inexplicable friendship Steve had maintained with Dustin over the years (they apparently met at a music camp where Steve was a counselor when Dustin was, like, fourteen, which made no sense whatsoever to Eddie), Eddie had heard enough about Steve Harrington to make up his mind.
The story went like this: when he was all but sixteen, bushy haired and bright-eyed Steve Harrington burst onto the scene as the lead singer and guitarist of Swim Team. Swim Team was one of those broad crossover bands — rock enough for the rock stations, pop enough for the pop stations, so it got play everywhere across the country, basically. Their first single, a frankly irritating number called “Smashed Cameras,” topped the charts pretty quickly. And Steve and his bandmates — Tommy and Carol — were suddenly the hot new thing, with a number one album and attention everywhere. They even got award nominations — the Grammy nod for Best New Artist (which they lost to some other, irritating pop-rock nonsense), and a few MTV awards, which they won handily and which Steve had accepted with a supposedly charming speech thanking all their fans.
Except, of course, the whole reason they even got a record deal was that Steve’s dad, Christopher Harrington, owned the label they were signed to. Pure, stupid nepotism baby shit — the type of stuff that made Eddie’s fingers clench into fists involuntarily.
Because, see, Eddie had been raised in a trailer and taught himself how to play on second hand guitars he bought with money he made selling drugs while his uncle worked a night shift to keep a roof over their head. He spent hours listening to Metallica CDs and playing along with them over and over again until his fingers bled and then calloused over but he could manage all the power chords. He played every seedy, sort-of-dangerous fire-hazard-heavy house show and dive bar gig he was offered until he started to make somewhat of a name for himself in a local scene, and then went and self-produced his first EP, a screechy piece of shit that sounded like it was recorded by the ghost of an 8track player but that he proudly declared lo-fi when he posted it on the internet and, eventually, managed to have cassettes pressed. (Cassettes because there was a cool collector thing that Eddie had encountered the first time he drove himself 3 hours to Philadelphia to play a house show and met other people in the scene.) And then he’d left his awful small town trailer park and moved to Philly, crashed on couches until he could scrape money for rent from a frankly terrible job at Starbucks, of all places. He lived in squalid punk houses, still playing shows, making no money but making a name, until Jeff and Gareth and Petey cornered him outside a gig and invited themselves to be in his band, and suggested they all move to Brooklyn, and well — that had been that, the start of something beautiful.
Eddie had poured sweat and blood into music for nearly ten full years and was only just now starting to have something to show for it — a real record deal, with a real record label (which, granted, was a Mom and Pop label, small but mighty, but Eddie always preferred small time indie to big name sell outs), actual well-maintained instruments, and now Corroded Coffin’s first real, grand tour, which wasn’t selling out stadiums or anything but which was, in fact, getting quite a lot of buzz where it mattered (metal magazines, goth blogs, and the occasional weird Tumblr where teenaged girls still shipped members of My Chemical Romance).
Eddie had done all of that and could still barely make rent, and meanwhile guys like Steve Harrington just walked into multi-million dollar careers because their dads waved their hands and made it so? That shit was not fair. Violently not fair.
(And, okay, Eddie wasn’t too proud to admit that he didn’t completely hate the Swim Team record. He hated “Smashed Cameras” and he super hated “King Of It All,” the other single, but some of the B sides and deep cuts were alright — like “Running Back Into Your House,” which had a guitar riff good enough that it almost redeemed the entire album. There was one track, buried just before the end, called “Barb’s Song,” and it had a weird, mournful sound that was admittedly a bit interesting. It wasn’t his thing, by a long stretch, but sure — it wasn’t like Steve was totally talentless. It was the principle of the thing, really, it was that he got to skip all the steps, that his talent was bought and paid for by his dad, that his career path was paved in gold like the yellow brick fucking road.
And, fine, if Eddie had perhaps spent a bit too much of his time and spare pocket change in high school buying and reading any magazine that featured Steve’s stupid, pretty face and his intensely perfect hair on it, that was nobody’s business but his own. He had also been a teenaged boy, and it wasn’t like his dead-end hometown had much in the way of other boys to look at without getting punched in the face, okay?)
Anyway — it was hard to miss Swim Team. They were everywhere, back then, and Eddie was perfectly within their target age demo except for the whole “metalhead D&D nerd” bit. Steve graced the covers of celebrity magazines every week with a new girl on his arm, although Eddie suspected at least some of those were PR relationships meant to sell movie tickets to whatever bland teen flick was hitting the screens that week. The press called him King Steve, with absolutely zero irony.
And then, well, it all sort of fell apart, it seemed overnight. There were rumors: discord between band members, drug use. Pictures of Steve looking coked out at clubs he wasn’t legally old enough to be in. Rumors that Steve had become belligerent and impossible to work with, and his poor Dad didn’t know how to stop his self-destructive streak.
And Swim Team never made another album. They never officially broke up either, they just sort of — stopped. Every once in a while someone would write a “where are they now” article, but the consensus was that they were sort of nowhere, really, and no one really knew why.
Steve Harrington had never written another song. No solo projects, no new band. When Eddie had met Dustin and Dustin had gone on and on about Steve and summer camp (and Eddie was convinced the camp was somehow community service for some cocaine bust even though Dustin got really offended when he’d said that) Eddie had looked the guy up. And he’d found work — Steve in the liner notes of what seemed like hundreds of albums, playing session music for bands in every genre from pop to reggae. But no songwriting credits. No projects that were his. Which was weird, for a dude at one point considered a total wunderkind.
So Eddie figured he was right. Steve was a real, true nepotism baby: Daddy paid big bucks to have one vanity album made, and then there wasn’t anything else behind that pretty little haircut. Which was why, again, this was a mistake — besides Steve’s indie pop/rock background, besides his clean-cut all-American image which any Corroded Coffin or metal fans would violently rebel against, there was just no way Steve was as good as Dustin thought. Hero worship was a hell of a drug.
As if he was reading Eddie’s mind, Dustin piped back up. “Look just give him a chance, will you?” The kid looked sheepish. “He’s, uh, maybe already on his way.”
Eddie blinked. “He’s already on his way? What, here? Right now? To my apartment?”
There was a pair of boxers draped lazily over the back of Eddie’s couch. He genuinely wasn’t sure who’s they were. There were dishes in the sink that had been there — well, frankly, long enough that it was probably a scientific mystery what was growing on them. There were empty beer cans everywhere. And while Eddie’s embarrassing teenaged celebrity crush had long faded into true and deep resentment for the unfair benefits of wealth in the industry, the idea of someone he once read about in Tiger Beat (again . . . not that he’d ever admit that) being inside his apartment was, well. A bit much.
“Oh, no,” Dustin clarified. Eddie’s heart slowed down to a much more normal rate. “I asked Robin to bring him to your practice space.”
“Buckley?” Robin Buckley worked for Eddie’s label, Upside Down Records. To be honest, her role sort of baffled him — half tour manager, half publicist, all motor-mouth. Mostly he thought she was around to make sure no one died on tour and that they kept selling t-shirts which, you know, fair enough. He’d only met her a handful of times but he knew Dustin and the kids in The Party were better friends with her, somehow.
“Yeah, she’s Steve’s best friend — besides me, I mean. Platonic soulmates or whatever,” Dustin said, rolling his eyes.
Oh, so the kids knew her through Steve. This day was just getting better and better.
“Buckley’s friends with Steve Harrington?” More than that, Buckley was apparently soulmates with Harrington, the “platonic” bit coming most likely from the fact that she was, quite frankly, one of the biggest lesbians Eddie had ever met. “But Buckley’s like . . . cool,” he finished, lamely.
Dustin raised an eyebrow. “That’s two people you like giving Steve a seal of approval, you know. More if you count Will, Lucas, El, and Max.”
Eddie frowned. “Not Mike?”
“Mike’s an asshole,” Dustin said, plainly. And, well, Eddie couldn’t disagree there. “Look, we’ll go to the studio, he’ll play some riffs, you’ll see he’s really good. And he’s willing! Besides, you need a bassist, and you’re right — no one else can or will do it this late notice except Steve. And it would be so so fun to have both of you on tour. Please?” Dustin whipped out the saddest set of puppy dog eyes Eddie had ever seen. Eddie tried to glare them down. Dustin just puppy-eyed even harder.
God damn, the kid was good. And Eddie did need a bassist.
“Oh, fucking — fine. I will hear him out. But if he sucks, I’m kicking your ass, Henderson.”
Dustin was too busy jumping up in glee to hear him.
Great. This was going to be just great.
---
An hour later they’d arrived at Eddie’s practice space, which was really just a windowless room in an old factory that had been gentrified into office space and that he’d shoved a few amps and a drum kit into last year when the noise complaints from his neighbors got him threatened with eviction. Dustin was, once again, sitting lazily on the floor. Eddie was pacing.
“They’re late, Henderson — you said 2pm, right? Is this going to be a thing, King Steve not arriving on time?”
Dustin didn’t even bother with an eye roll this time. There was no AC in the practice space, and even now in the mostly pleasant days of mid-May it was pretty unpleasantly hot, apparently enough so that it dulled Henderson’s most irritating tendencies. “It’s been fifteen minutes. The trains are probably screwy,” Dustin said. “Can you stop trying to find excuses not to hire Steve before he even shows up?”
“Lateness is unbecoming of a professional,” Eddie shot back.
Dustin sighed. “You know, it’s sort of hypocritical for you to hate Steve because his dad owns a label when you, like, love Joyce and Hopper. I mean, they signed us to their label, and our band has both of their kids.”
“That’s different,” Eddie said back. “Joyce and Hopper made Upside Down to produce your albums, one. And two, they aren’t millionaires.”
Dustin scoffed. “Right, because Steve’s a millionaire,” he said.
Eddie opened his mouth to retort that, yes, actually, having a platinum record did likely make Steve a millionaire, but as if summoned by the mere mention of his name, the door swung open. And there he was — Steve Harrington, walking into the practice space with a bass case slung lazily over one shoulder.
He looked better than he did at sixteen. His hair was less ridiculously poofy, for one, although it still had volume and presence, swooped gracefully over his brow bone. It also looked very soft. An insane part of Eddie wanted to reach out and touch it to see if he was right. Steve was wearing a polo shirt and dark blue jeans, which should have looked stupid, really, but actually somehow made his arms and chest look nice, well defined. And his eyes — that’s what all the magazines had always gone on about, Steve’s giant brown eyes, soft and warm and romantic. Those, well, hadn’t changed.
And right now, those eyes were looking at Eddie.
Life was deeply, truly insane.
“Hi,” Eddie said dumbly.
“Hello,” Steve replied.
Robin appeared suddenly from behind Steve’s shoulder, shoving him bodily into the room. Steve did a little flailing motion with his arms. “Christ, Rob—”
“Sorry we’re late!” Robin was already babbling. “The train got stuck at a station for like twenty five minutes because someone was sick, and then when it started moving it went so slow, god I hate this city sometimes—”
Dustin cut her off by leaping to his feet and nearly tackling Steve to the ground, like he’d just realized the guy had entered the room. “Dude! It’s been ages! How are you? My mom says hi and that you have to come back to visit soon so she can make you a real meal because she knows you’re never eating enough when you’re alone.”
Steve laughed good-naturedly, ruffling Dustin’s hair with affection. “Tell your mom I eat fine, but yes, I promise I’ll come back soon. Just been a crazy couple of months.”
The entire scene made Eddie feel — well, in all honesty, a little jealous. It was unfair, he knew that, but he’d always figured Steve was just another of Dustin’s mentors, and that was livable. Sure, the kid thought the sun shined out of Steve’s ass, but whatever. Steve was famous, after all, had been successful. Eddie had been willing to forgive the part of Dustin that was starstruck by that.
But this display, this whole song and dance — it made Eddie realize that Steve was way more than a mentor, to Dustin. He was basically the kid’s big brother. Dustin had never looked so excited to see Eddie. Claudia Henderson had never demanded he come over for meals.
The jealousy pooled into Eddie’s gut and seeped into his bloodstream. Which was his excuse, really, for the bad mood that was gathering, stormy, behind his eyes.
“He does not eat fine,” Robin cut in with an eye roll. “He had like two handfuls of peanuts yesterday and called that a meal.”
“Hey, we were in a rush, I was making do with that I could,” Steve said back.
“I’m pretty sure you spent the last six months in LA eating nothing but Lean Cuisine,” Robin said. “Which should be illegal, when you could spend six months getting fat on unbelievably delicious tacos.”
Steve rolled his eyes and looked away from her, clearly done with the topic of conversation. He stuck out his hand at Eddie. “Steve Harrington.”
“Yeah, man, I know,” Eddie said. He didn’t intend for it to come out as harshly as it did, but. . .whoops. The jealousy was clearly taking over the rational part of Eddie’s brain.
He did not reach out to shake Steve’s offered hand.
A beat passed. Steve retracted his hand and stuck it into his back jeans pocket. “Alright,” he said, raising a condescending little eyebrow, and it wasn’t a sneer but it felt close enough to one that Eddie’s hackles raised even farther. “Dustin says you need a bassist.” He took the hand not in his pocket and gestured lazily at himself. “And I am here to provide.” And then he smirked. He smirked!
Here to provide. Because, right — to Steve, this whole thing was just a favor to Dustin. Steve didn’t need the money. Despite Dustin’s scoff at millionaire, there was no way Steve wasn’t rolling in royalties, even still. Swim Team’s songs had been used in movies, sitcom finales, and at least one terrible old iPhone commercial, to Eddie’s recollection. Steve didn’t need money, and he certainly didn’t need exposure. He didn’t need a record deal, or to curry favor in an industry that already loved him, that he was the beloved prince of. No, Steve was here for one reason and one reason only. Because of Dustin. Most likely because he owed Dustin some sort of favor and Dustin, sweet but shortsighted, had called it in for Eddie, of all people. The whole thing made Eddie feel a bit sick. Everything in his life, everything in this band, he’d built from scratch with his bare hands. And now here was the king of nepotism babies, strolling in to save Eddie as a favor, as some sort of handout. Like Eddie was a charity case. Like Steve was one of those blonde women on Instagram who did mission trips to Africa and posed with all the kids for likes. And it was frustrating because if Eddie had more time, or, better yet, if Petey had been less of an idiot, he wouldn’t have needed the charity to start.
There had always been a part of Eddie that wanted to antagonize the people at the top of the food chain. Uncle Wayne had used to half sigh “just keep your head down,” or “let sleeping dogs lie,” but Eddie’d never been good at doing those things. Maybe it was a need for attention, maybe it was just that his survival instinct had always been slightly half-baked. Hard to say. But while it would have been easier to simply not draw attention to himself, he’d never been capable of it. The unfashionably long hair, the ripped denim, the D&D guidebooks — none of that would have been a death sentence, on its own, even in a notably Sperrys-and-Lacoste-only town like his. Hell, selling drugs should have earned him more respect, instead of less. But Eddie couldn’t stop himself. Would climb on the tables at lunch, would snarl in the faces of football players, would openly antagonize the dickhead teachers. That was just who he was.
And here was Steve, just like those football jocks in high school, standing tall and proud and thinking he was better then old trailer trash Eddie Munson, and maybe it was a strange, semi-jealousy fueled flashback to being 17 again and getting chased out of town by Jason fucking Carver, but Eddie wanted to hurt him, just a little. Eddie wanted to take him down a peg. A hundred pegs. “Dustin said you could play bass. Funny, though, because I always thought you were a guitarist, King Steve,” he sneered right back, perhaps with more malice than was strictly necessary. Steve flinched, which was sort of the point.
But Robin also flinched. And behind Steve, Dustin was openly glaring at Eddie.
Shit. Maybe too far — he hadn’t really meant for Dustin to get caught up in this little hate-on he was having.
Eddie cleared his throat in the awkward silence. “I mean, uh. You played guitar in Swim Team, right? Not bass?”
Somehow Dustin was glaring even harder.
Steve, to his credit, was making steady eye contact, although his expression had dropped to a very careful look of wariness. He looked like he was trying to read Eddie’s mind, figure out what, exactly, had provoked this line of questioning. “Swim Team was a long time ago, man. And I play guitar, yes — and bass, and piano, and if you wanted I could probably shake a tambourine on beat and look pretty on stage instead of doing anything actually productive.” He smirked again, although it looked a little practiced, like a piece of armor he was slotting on in defense of Eddie’s tone.
“Like Daphne in Scooby Doo!” Robin provided. “Does that make me Fred?”
“Exactly,” Steve said, grinning back at her, much looser with it now, “and you are very clearly Shaggy, Robs.” Then, back to Eddie. “But I’m guessing that Corroded Coffin doesn’t exactly need Daphne from Scooby Doo.” He said the band name like it was a joke, and Eddie felt his shoulders rise towards his ears involuntarily. “You need a bassist, right? So let me play you some bass.” Steve raised both his eyebrows.
Oh Eddie hated this fucking guy.
But he did need a bassist.
There were two wolves inside of Eddie, at all times: the one that hated rich-kid assholes who never suffered a day in their lives and the one that would literally saw off both of his arms if it, in some way, helped his stupid band that he loved more than anything.
The second wolf won.
He was going to kill Henderson when this was all over, he swore. Non-violence was overrated, officially.
“Fine,” he spat out. “Play something. But this is metal. None of your pop-rock shit here, okay.”
Steve shrugged, like this was no issue at all. “Okay.”
Eddie frowned. He’d sort of expected that to rattle Steve a little. “And actually, you know what — I’ll tell you what to play. Just to make sure you actually know what you’re doing. Gimme, uh — N.I.B. by Black Sabbath.”
“Dude,” Dustin interrupted. “How’s Steve supposed to play a song he doesn’t know?”
“How’s he supposed to be a bassist in a metal band if he doesn’t know Black Sabbath, Henderson?” Eddie shot back.
“I’m just filling in,” Steve said. It sounded strangely automatic, like he wasn’t even really thinking about it. Like it was just something he was obliged to correct — which, of course. No way King Steve would ever deign to be a real member of a band like Corroded Coffin. This was charity. Steve cleared his throat. “Play it. On your phone, the first, like, 45 seconds.”
This earned a scoff from Eddie. “Oh what, you’re saying you can hear it once and play it by ear?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Munson.” Steve grinned again — all arrogance, but strangely boyish, this time. Another feeling in Eddie’s stomach that was less hatred and more — ugh — fluttering. If Eddie was going to continue to hate this man he needed to get over his dumb teenaged crush pronto. Yes, Steve was hot: objective statement of fact. Steve was also, clearly, an asshole who thought he was the best bassist in the world even though bass wasn’t even his primary instrument.
Eddie took his phone out of his back pocket, ignoring the spike of shame he felt at how shattered the screen was. He could afford to replace it, maybe, if he shifted some money around or put it on a credit card. It just didn’t seem like the most pressing issue at the moment, always got passed over for some bigger, more important expense.
(Steve Harrington probably never had a phone screen cracked for more than a day or two, always got it fixed first thing. Just another staggering difference between them.)
Eddie pressed play on the song, and it sounded from his phone’s shitty speakers. Steve furrowed his brow in concentration, staring off into a middle space. Eddie let the song get to a minute in and then hit pause. “That’s all you get, Harrington. Blow me away.”
Steve flashed that arrogant smile again. Eddie firmly ignored the way his stomach swooped a little bit, now for the second time. Focus, Munson.
Steve moved to take his bass out, humming the tune to N.I.B slightly under his breath. It took him a beat to tune, his back turned to Eddie. Then he spun around, looked Eddie dead in the eye, smirked again and—
And then he played N.I.B. The whole bass line. For a minute.
Fucking perfectly.
“Holy shit,” Eddie said out loud.
“Told you,” Dustin said, in his practiced King Shithead of the Year voice. “Steve’s the best. And he can learn Corroded Coffin’s whole discography in time.”
Steve nodded, just once, a slight jerk of movement. “It’ll be easier if there’s songs you definitely don’t play, and I might need some time to remember which song is which, so written set lists would be great. And we’ll need to practice, obviously. But yeah. I can learn your stuff in time. And I can even sing harmonies if you need me too.” He grinned, and unlike his smirk it was a bright, blinding thing. Eddie almost had to look away. “Come on Munson. You need me.”
God. Eddie hated when Dustin was right. He hated more that Steve was right. He’d walked in here prepared to feed a starving orphan and Eddie had, in fact, turned out to be the orphan. Or, no — god, these metaphors were getting confusing in his own head. The point was: he was pissed off. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell Steve to fuck off. He wanted to unbreak Petey’s wrist, or maybe to break the other one, actually.
But he needed a bassist.
He turned around and shuffled through his backpack, pulling out a notebook and shoving it gracelessly towards Steve. “Here. There are liner notes for basically everything in this. We’ll play slightly different set lists each night, so learn everything on the albums. And maybe a couple covers too — Black Sabbath, some Ozzy. Master of Puppets by Metallica, we always play that one.” He sighed. “We leave next Tuesday morning. Meet me here. And do not be late.”
Dustin whooped loudly in excitement. Steve was still smiling. Eddie’s stomach still felt weird about that smile.
“I’ll see you Tuesday, then,” Steve said.
And like that, they were off.
Notes:
i'm baaaaaaack! you know i couldn't leave these two alone for too long. (actually, if we're being technical, i started writing this fic well before "how a resurrection really feels," but it took me a lot longer to get it into shape for some reason.) i wanted to try my hand at something goofier and more rom-com-y, but i assure you there will still be plenty of angst because i cannot help myself.
this takes place in roughly 2022 but COVID doesn't exist because. . . escapism. the exact year doesn't really matter, i just like to have accurate dates because it calms my brain. everyone is also slightly aged up; Eddie's 27, Steve and Robin are both 26, and the Party members are all 21. Joyce and Hopper are ageless and eternal (read: somewhere in their 40s or 50s probably)
the fic title is from the Hold Steady song Barfruit Blues, because i cannot stop naming fics after Hold Steady songs, apparently. the chapter title is just a aphorism.
Chapter Text
The Corroded Coffin: Summer In Hell Tour (featuring Special Guests: The Party) was, to be totally frank, a very big deal. To the bands, at least, and possibly to Eddie the most, given how hard he’d worked to get himself — to get Corroded Coffin — there. They had toured before — workhorse shit, really, the type of thankless grinding where you ended up spending more money then you ever got paid, somehow negative at the end of weeks of hard work wondering how you’d make rent if everyone only ever wanted to pay you in beer and “exposure.” Grueling roadtrips to SXSW, to cramped college campus apartment basements, to the occasional real bar where everyone largely ignored you and nobody ever dropped more than a single dollar into the tip jar. There were months where Eddie spent more time sleeping in the back of rundown vans then he did in any sort of apartment; a six month stretch or so before he and Gareth and Jeff just decided to actually live together where he technically lived nowhere and had to return to Pennsylvania to crash at his uncle’s trailer in his random time off, or couch surf.
(Petey, the sole one of them in a stable, long-term relationship, lived with his girlfriend instead and regularly referred to this apartment as a bachelor pad, in the tone of voice used by someone who thinks they’re a real adult solely because they own coasters, which are frankly a stupid thing to own if none of your furniture was nice enough to be concerned about water stains, which of course none of theirs was because it was all free or secondhand. Duh.)
And then even when they got real tours, they’d never had their own tour, had always been the opening act for some aging, fading metal band, or the opening act to the opening act of some slightly bigger metal band, invited only on a small leg of a much larger series of shows. They’d never really had money put behind them like they did now, and Eddie still found it insane. It felt professional. It felt real. It felt like how holding their first pressed CD felt, or their first vinyl record, felt like the first time someone else had offered to produce something for them.
It felt like he was actually making it. Which was good, because there was always the fear that if it took them too much longer to get here the band would disintegrate in his hands, his hopes and dreams and hard work all come to, essentially, naught.
The tour plan itself was simple enough — privately, Eddie had been thinking of the stretch of shows in quadrants, four big chunks. The first chunk was The Midwest, with the first tour stop in Ohio (because where was Hell except Ohio, really?). The Midwest lasted until Denver or so, at which point he figured they were officially on The West Coast, nevermind that Denver was not coastal whatsoever; they remained in The West Coast until Tucson, which was the first stop that Eddie felt safe enough calling The South. And then they were in The South until Washington D.C., when they were officially back on The East Coast, heading upwards again.
(He knew this generalization would piss off probably 90% of all Americans, who’d feel in some way or another they were geographically misclassed, but whatever — no one had to know he was breaking the tour up in his mind like this, right?)
That said, there were a few weird things he’d demanded that sort of threw off the natural rhythm of the tour. For instance, there was a day off built into the schedule for him to drive out to Bumfuck Nowhere and see Uncle Wayne after the Philly show, because it’d been too long since Eddie had gone to see him and he figured he owed the guy. They also bypassed NYC on their way up north during The East Coast, skipped straight towards Boston and even up into Maine, and then headed back down so they could finish it out in Brooklyn. It maybe didn’t make the most sense, but Eddie wanted to close out in a city where he had his own bed and Joyce and Hopper had been game to let him.
It was an old-school tour. They had three vans to transport equipment and people, and sure, they had to swap off driving duties but the record company was paying for gas so Eddie didn’t have to pass a literal hat around at the end of the night begging for cash. And unlike every other time Eddie had toured, they actually got real hotel rooms. Well, motel rooms, most places. And they had to share. But still. Beds! On a tour! It was fucking novel, is what it was.
He bet Steve Harrington had never slept in the back of the van on a tour. He wondered if Steve had ever even slept in a hotel that wasn’t five star.
Probably not. Asshole.
He hadn’t really spoken to Steve since the audition, even though they’d swapped numbers at the end of it largely at Harrington’s insistence. Eddie knew it was a smart move, but the idea that Steve could just call him stressed him out immensely for reasons he refused to elaborate on in his mind. He also knew, logically, that he was about to spending a lot of time with Steve. Even if they traveled in different cars the whole tour, they’d probably have to bunk together at least once, and they inevitably had to practice, soundcheck and play basically every night. It was about to be hours in the man’s company.
Eddie was sort of dreading it.
(That was the feeling in his stomach, for sure. Dread.)
He walked towards the offices of Upside Down Records (read: an old coworking space in Williamsburg where Joyce and Hop’s three other employees worked). That was the kickoff point — Joyce and Hopper and Robin were bringing the vans there to pack up and set off right around 8:30am. He assumed he’d be the first person there, anxiety causing him to arrive a full twenty-five minutes before they were meant to despite the fact that he was famously incapable of being on time to anything, ever, so he was slightly shocked to see Steve and Robin leaning against the building when he arrived, chatting lightly to Joyce and Hop, El and Will chilling on the stoop behind them.
Hopper was frowning at Steve appraisingly. “You eating enough?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you’re worse than Mrs. Henderson — yes, I’m eating fine.”
“He’s not,” Robin chimed in, yet again. “Our freezer is filled with frozen dinners, it’s depressing.” Steve smacked her side lightly.
Weird. He figured Harrington could at least afford better than frozen food, if nothing else — maybe Robin’s LeanCusine thing from yesterday was just a bit she was trying out for a new audience?
Joyce laughed. Eddie loved Joyce’s laugh. It sounded like bells around Christmastime, reminded him of home cooked meals, late night shared cigarettes, warm tea in chipped mugs. He was fully aware he was projecting his home-grown Mommy Issues onto her, and he did not care. “Oh, Steve, you know Hop worries about you — let him have it,” she said, brightly.
Okay, interesting. It made sense that Steve knew Hopper and Joyce — he knew Robin and Dustin, after all — but Eddie had no idea he knew them well enough for Hopper to care about Steve’s well-being in any significant way. Hopper huffed an annoyed laugh as Eddie took his final few steps towards the group. “I do not worry.”
Joyce winked at Steve conspiratorially, and Steve let out a laugh, throwing his head back. Eddie found his eyes drawn, entirely against his will, to the long column of Steve’s throat.
Robin took this moment to notice Eddie’s arrival. “Eddie!” she greeted, cheery, like it wasn’t the ass crack of dawn and she hadn’t caught him staring at another man’s neck like a weirdo. Great day already, A+. She turned around and fumbled with something on the stoop of the building, and then whipped back and shoved a cup of bodega coffee into his hand. “Steve and I brought coffee for the early birds.”
“The adults,” Steve corrected, “who we correctly assumed would be here first.” He nodded at Eddie once, bro-y. “There’s creamers and sugar, if you want.”
Eddie took his coffee with about a pound of sugar dumped into it, actually, but it felt embarrassing to do that here for some reason (a cruel voice in his head suggested trying to maintain your hardcore reputation in front of the king?). He nodded and took a sip of it black, tried to hide his grimace. He wondered if this was Steve trying to bribe him. Eddie had been at least a bit of an asshole at the tryout, after all. Dustin had sent him no less than four separate texts chiding him for it. Maybe Steve felt he had something to prove? But Eddie was never a person whose love could be bought, and he doubted Steve’s charitable gifts would last much beyond shitty early-morning coffee.
He wanted to make a joke — couldn’t King Steve afford better than this, spring for Starbucks? But he was distinctly aware of Joyce and Hopper buzzing around, worrying about Steve’s health, and he didn’t want to seem like such a brat that they gave up and cancelled the tour on him. Not that they would. Probably.
Hopper moved to grab an amp on the side of the road and Steve put down his coffee to lend a hand. Eddie figured he was supposed to help, too, but Hop just waved him off. “You just got here, enjoy your coffee for a minute, the kid and I got this.”
The kid? Jesus, how close were these people?
Eddie took another terrible sip of his terrible coffee. “So, uh, how do you know each other?” he asked, gesturing between Joyce and Steve, now sauntering away from the group, arms filled with equipment.
Joyce shook her head, a small breath of laughter escaping from her mouth. “Well, Will wanted to go to this music camp one summer — Clark’s Music Camp, out in Jersey? And I ended up talking Hop into sending El, too — this was just after the adoption officially went through, and she was still having a bit of trouble adjusting, so we thought it might be nice for them both to go together, so Will could help her make some friends. That’s where the whole,” and here she waved her hand vaguely, “Party happened, you know? Will and El met Dustin and Lucas and Max, and they all met Steve. He had a huge impact on all of them. He taught Dustin keyboard, helped Max with some home stuff. And he made the whole band happen, really, because he introduced them all to Mike Wheeler, and the rest was history.”
Eddie frowned, confused by this new tidbit of information. “Wait, Steve introduced them to Mike? How did they even know each other? I was sort of under the impression Mike didn’t like Steve, very much.”
“Oh, Mike hates everyone, he’s just that age” Joyce said airily, like Mike was thirteen and not twenty-one. “But he and Steve actually grew up in the same town. Steve used to date his sister, Nancy, back in high school, before, you know,” she dropped her voice a little, not quite a whisper but low enough that Steve and Hopper couldn’t hear her from the van, “Swim Team really took off.”
“Don’t bring up Swim Team,” Robin said, suddenly. “Not where Steve can hear you.” It was sharp, a tone that brokered no argument, and she was nearly glaring at Eddie when she said it which — rude, okay, he hadn’t even been the person to bring it up, this time. “Steve doesn’t like to talk about it.”
He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that. “Oh, sure, yeah, if I was hugely and wildly successful I’d hate talking about it too.”
When he looked back both women were frowning at him, Robin’s a bit annoyed and Joyce’s just sad. Robin shook her head. “I’m serious, it’s a sore spot, okay?” There was something unsaid there too — it was a sore spot and Eddie would poke at it, press down on the bruise, would not treat it with care. Which was a little offensive, if probably true.
“It’s complicated,” Joyce said, softly. Eddie felt like he’d wandered into a story two thirds of the way through the book, and no one was bothering to catch him up on the plot. Steve had met Dustin when the kid was fourteen — that was seven years ago, three years after Swim Team’s album. These people had known each other for the better part of a decade, and the entirety of it was after whatever Steve did to blow up his storied little career. He had a sudden urge to ask for more of the story, but he had the strangest feeling no one would tell him even if he did ask.
And he wasn’t going to ask because it’s not like he cared what happened, or about Steve in any real way. It wasn’t his job to care. Steve was just playing bass for him — that was it. As long as he was good at playing bass, the whole history of his life didn’t matter to Eddie. The only reason Eddie even had the urge to ask was that he was just a naturally curious guy. He noticed how people felt, how they reacted. Part of that had been survival, back in high school; if you could read someone’s mood good enough you could usually avoid a black eye. (Not that Eddie did often avoid it, instead tended to prod the bears and provoke the fights and cause the meatheads to chase him through the forest until he was breathless and shaking and so filled with adrenaline he knew he was alive.) But part of it was just that he loved stories, always had. It’s what made him a good DM, a good songwriter. He wanted to know the whole arc of someone’s life, to dig into the parts that made it real. And once he knew that, he could use it, for characters, for lyrics, for whatever.
And he’d been incurious, once, about someone — had let the questions in his head about her go unanswered. Had let her walk away. And he regretted it every day of his life, so he tried to never do it again.
But this wasn’t her. This was Steve Harrington. Spoiled rich kid with everything handed to him. And somehow he’d gotten all of these people to care about him, to protect him from the consequences of his own actions. There was no way he didn’t ruin his own career — the stories about the drugs and girls and the parties were enough to confirm that for Eddie —and yet here he had Joyce and Robin playing guard dog, protecting him from the fallout of that? Dustin and the kids wrapped around his finger, worshipping him? It boiled something in Eddie’s stomach. If he blew up his own life tomorrow, who’d be around to pick up the pieces? He’d be alone; only the very fortunate got second chances. It occurred to him, a bit nastily, that he might be jealous of more than just Steve’s money, or Steve’s closeness to Dustin. The thought was upsetting, so he did was he usually did with thoughts like that, and ignored it.
Steve returned from the van to grab another amp. The re-arrival of him in Eddie’s space did nothing to quell the shitty burst of jealousy he felt, which meant he wasn’t able to stop himself from saying something dumb. “Never thought I’d see the day when someone as famous as King Steve lifted his own equipment,” he quipped. He should have made it teasing, but it fell flat, a bit angry. Steve blinked at him, Robin frowned expressively, and Joyce let out a little half-sound like a sigh.
“Well, man, you could always lift your own equipment,” Steve said back, a little haughtily, single eyebrow raised. Eddie glowered at him, opened his mouth to retort, but was interrupted.
“Steve, Eddie!” Dustin called, fully barreling down the street towards them. The rest of The Party trailed behind — the band Steve Harrington had apparently put together. Eddie knew Dustin the best, naturally, had practically taken the kid under his wing after they’d met. It had been at a weird little festival upstate. The Party hadn’t been on the bill, but Dustin had gone to see some headliner and apparently had been blown away by Corroded Coffin’s 2pm set. (Who put a metal band on at 2pm? It had baffled Eddie, and the show hadn’t been great, all told, not that it apparently bothered Dustin.) Eddie lived in the city, and Dustin had still lived in the suburbs upstate with his mother. The rest of The Party had been all over the tri-state, back then, but in the last year or so most of them had moved into the city proper, except for Will and El, who still lived somewhere off the Hudson with Joyce and Hop.
Still, only Dustin and Mike were regularly ready and willing to trek across Brooklyn to sit in Eddie’s shitty apartment or Eddie’s shitty practice space and talk about music. Eddie appreciated it.
(A thought occurred to Eddie, then, that it was interesting that in the two years Dustin had been blathering to him about how great Steve Harrington was, Eddie’d never actually met the guy. Couldn’t be bothered to come see his fan club, apparently. Or, if he did come, he conveniently never let himself cross over with the likes of commoners like Eddie Munson.)
The rest of The Party was a mishmashed group that Eddie had never been able to make sense of together. Firstly, there were a ton of them. It was like the Grateful fucking Dead, except instead of playing hippie jam band music they played weird experimental rock layered with synth. That was Dustin, on the synth, pouring his whole heart into those keys. Lucas was the singer and lead guitarist; Mike was on another guitar, Will Byers on bass. Hopper’s daughter, El, was on the fucking fiddle, which should have sucked but actually ruled extremely hard, and a redhead firebrand named Max Mayfield absolutely murdered it on the drums. At no point should any of it have worked, and yet somehow it meshed together perfectly. They played music that Eddie otherwise would have never listened to, but when they did it — it was magic, really, it was. Eddie was happy to know them.
For a lot of reasons, actually. Dustin was most of the reason Eddie got signed to Upside Down. It was Dustin who pressed Corroded Coffin’s second record, made carelessly by a label that was more a vanity publisher than a real producer, into Joyce and Hopper’s hands. He owed the kid a lot. And as thanks, because it really was going amazing, Eddie had demanded The Party as his opening act. Fair was fair, after all.
(And also, well — Upside Down only had about seven artists signed up, altogether, so it was pretty easy to talk Joyce and Hop into making it an all-label affair.)
Dustin practically launched himself into Eddie’s arms, a backpack half hanging off one shoulder. Eddie grunted as the kid made contact. “This is so exciting aren’t you so excited?,” he babbled.
Eddie laughed. “Yes, Dustin, I am very excited.”
Somewhere behind his shoulder, he heard Steve laugh. “Yeah, everyone’s excited, dweeb, don’t knock people over.”
Again, a coil of anger unfurled in Eddie’s chest. Curbing the kid’s fucking glee? Really? Dustin didn’t seem to notice or mind though, shooting a giant grin at Steve and detaching himself from Eddie to hug the other man. “Steve! It’s exciting!”
Steve just laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, I know dude, I know — hey, where the hell is your synth?”
“Lucas is carrying it,” Mike said, and Eddie could hear the eye roll even if he wasn’t actually looking at Mike to see it. “Because Dustin had to run up and hug his brothers.” He said the word with a snotty disdain that Eddie had only previously heard in movies about cheerleaders. Not for the first time, Eddie felt glad that Mike had a weird, near-obsessive respect for him. Getting on that kid’s bad side seemed like it’d be very, very annoying.
Dustin was scowling. “I did not call them my brothers.” His arms, however, were still fully wrapped around Steve’s middle, which sort of muddled his point.
“You didn’t have to, loser,” Max snarked back. “You just radiate ‘desperate for an older male support figure’ energy all of the time.”
“Hey!” Dustin yelled while Steve, the bastard, laughed at him. It was well known that Dustin’s dad was not in the picture, and somehow Steve’s laugh just felt like he was mocking the kid, for being fatherless. Which. . . okay, was probably unfair, given Max had made the joke first, but, whatever. Steve not was beating the "being an asshole" allegations as far as Eddie was concerned.
The other kids came and unloaded a series of instruments and duffle bags and backpacks near the back of the vans. Hopper heaved a world-weary sigh and started packing. Steve extracted himself from Dustin and started loading up the vans as well. Eddie considered Steve’s comment from earlier, and, mostly out of a desire to look useful and grateful to Joyce and Hopper, set his coffee down on the curb and went to help.
He was shoving in someone’s guitar to the back of a van when Steve walked up, carrying one of Jeff’s amps — the bozos from his band had decided to finally show up, dead last, and Eddie remembered Steve’s “adults” quip from earlier and felt a weird sense of shame about it. He tried not to be annoyed at his band, though. Bad way to start a tour. Steve caught his eye, smiled a little — almost shyly? “Munson, come on, cheer up. It’s a good day. Start of something, right?”
Eddie felt annoyance simmer again in his gut. “Sorry if I’m not smiling enough for you, my liege.”
Steve’s smile fell off entirely, replaced with a strange little look. He shook his head. “You’re a weird guy, Munson.”
Eddie just sneered back. “Yeah, well, you’re not the first person to say that.”
Steve shrugged, turned and walked off. Eddie looked up and caught Robin staring at him again, with a look he couldn’t read at all. In the background Mike and Lucas were getting into a fight, and off to his side he could hear Steve, Joyce, and Hopper talking in low voices. He suppressed a sigh.
What the fuck had he gotten himself into?
Notes:
me: it's a tour fic
also me: doesn't even start the tour for two full chaptersthe funniest thing about writing this au is that, unlike in "canon" fics, steve has literally less than no clue why eddie would hate him. it's like meeting your friends cat and learning your friends cat is kind of a dickhead who won't let you pet it even though everyone else can pet it. steve's so clueless here, god bless. the second funniest thing about this au is peppering canon characters where they do not belong, like letting mr. clark run a music camp for some reason.
chapter title is a Foo Fighters song. this is the first fic i've ever written where i wish you could see future chapter titles before i post them, because i have some deeply goofy ones coming up i'm hype about.
thanks for all the comments and excitement on chapter one! i'm glad to be back in your loving arms. adore this fandom. <3
Chapter 3: Halfway to Columbus (UNCLE JED'S GOOD TIME COOKIN')
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Eddie, thankfully, got the first leg of driving duty in a van carrying Gareth, Jeff, and Dustin. Steve was driving with Max, Lucas, and Robin, and Joyce and Hopper were driving the third van with El, Mike, and Will. So for the first leg of the journey, Eddie didn’t have to think about Steve Harrington at all — except for when Dustin told a story about him, which was, of course, about every five minutes.
The drive was eight hours, straight through to Columbus, which was the first stop of the tour officially. They were going to be in Columbus for a couple days before the actual gig — which was good, as Steve had never played with the band before, and Eddie figured there’d be a few kinks they’d want to work out before actually getting on stage. But eight hours was a long time to get regaled with stories about just how great and perfect and wonderful and dreamy Steve Harrington was.
(Okay, that last one may have been Eddie editorializing just slightly. Whatever.)
It was fucking awful. They’d been on the road for four hours, and Dustin had been talking for nearly all of it. It wasn’t enough to totally dull the thrumming excitement that Eddie had coursing through him about being on tour, but it was enough that Eddie was seriously considering trying to swap Dustin for someone else on the next leg. El seemed nice and quiet, maybe she could use a break from her dad for a minute?
“And then Steve just stormed up to Billy—” Dustin was saying, and Eddie had only been half paying attention. He had no idea who Billy was, or what Steve was about to do to him, and he frankly didn’t care. Jeff and Gareth seemed to be listening with rapt attention though, which was deeply annoying. Eddie tuned it back out.
A cell phone rang in the car. It took Eddie half a second to realize that it was his cell phone. He frowned, grabbing it from the cupholder he’d lazily stuffed it in at the start, and checked the caller ID. He rolled his eyes, considered declining, and then answered anyway, because it might have been important.
“Speak of the Devil,” Eddie said as he answered. “Dustin has not shut the fuck up about you for one second since we started.”
“Hey!” Dustin protested from the backseat. And then, leaning forward, “is it Steve?”
“Jesus Christ, Henderson, buckle your fucking seatbelt,” Eddie snapped, and Dustin leaned back in a huff.
On the other end, Steve was laughing. “Glad someone else has babysitting duty for the afternoon, I gotta say.”
“Ugh, and here I was just about to ask you to split custody,” Eddie said back before he could think about it. Which — okay, no. He was not going to do banter with Steve Harrington, what? What was wrong with him? He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward.
“We can rock, paper, scissors for it,” Steve said back easily, like they chatted like this all the time. Like Eddie hadn’t literally just been sort of a dick to him a few hours before. What, did he have short term memory loss or something? It was unnerving. “Anyway, Hopper just called. We’re a little over halfway through, he suggested stopping somewhere for lunch. Take the next exit?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever man,” Eddie replied. “Just gimme the name.”
Forty minutes, two-and-a-half wrong turns, and one completely illegal u-turn later Eddie pulled into the parking lot at the weirdest looking roadside restaurant he’d ever seen. It was like a giant log cabin, complete with a fifteen-foot statue of a bear outside.
Dustin was frowning at the sign. “Uncle Jed’s Good Time Cookin’? Sounds. . . bad.”
“Sounds fucking awful,” Eddie agreed cheerfully. “Let’s go.”
Inside, the others had already arrived and were milling in the entrance hall. Hopper was talking to a hostess who looked completely stressed out despite the fact that the rest of the restaurant was entirely empty. He wondered how such a big place stayed open when no one actually went to it. Maybe it was a front for drugs? Hopefully if it was a front for drugs it still had good food, because he was suddenly starving.
The kids had gathered around a giant, ugly looking moose head on a wall, and Steve was hovering near them, chatting with an animated-looking Lucas.
Robin materialized at Eddie’s side, eying him knowingly. “You were nice to Steve on the phone,” she said, simply.
Eddie scoffed. “I’m not an asshole all of the time, you know.”
“You have been so far, at least to Steve,” she said back. Okay, fair enough. “I know it doesn’t make sense, and I know what he seems like, but I swear he’s a good dude. He wouldn’t be my best friend if he wasn’t.”
Jesus Christ. How much of this trip was going to be people insisting to him that Steve Harrington was a good dude? Couldn’t they let him live in peace?
Still, again, that curiosity coursed through him. He wasn’t good friends with Robin, or anything, but even to a casual observer she and Steve were a bit of an odd duo. That they were so wholly dedicated to each other had to have a fairly interesting story attached to it, and he doubted it was Clark’s Music Camp this time.
“Alright, I gotta know,” Eddie said, finally. “How did you and Harrington even become friends, Buckley?”
Her entire face lit up, a grin splitting it nearly in half. “Ohmygod, do you not know this story? This is like, the best story of all—” and then she turned around and, oh no, gestured wildly for Steve to join them. He paused whatever conversation he was having with Sinclair and strolled up to them. “Steve, Eddie wants to know how we became friends.”
Steve snorted. “Oh man, that is a story. You sure you ready for it, Munson?”
Eddie was not, it turned out, ready for it.
“Okay, so,” Robin began. “This was like, what — four years ago?” Steve nodded in agreement. “Four years ago. And I was like, a tiny baby publicist, really, brand new, so nervous and Steve—”
“I was doing guitar work on an album for this, frankly, fucking terrible comedy-rock band that turned out to be Robin’s first assignment at the label she was at, at the time.”
“They wore sailor outfits,” Robin elaborated. “All of their songs were about, like. Boats. But not in a Jimmy Buffet way. The boats were maybe spaceships? Filled with ice cream? They were so, so weird.”
Eddie held up a hand to stop her, a sudden question sparking in his head. “Wait, did you have to wear a sailor outfit?” he asked Steve.
Steve — oh god, Steve blushed. “Oh my god,” Eddie said. “You did, didn’t you?”
Robin was nearly in tears giggling. “The shorts were so short Eddie. Like. Obscenely, shockingly short. I’ve never felt so acquainted with someone else’s knees.” Eddie tried very, very valiantly to not picture Steve in tiny sailor shorts and failed, miserably. God, he almost wished he had pictures.
So he could, uh, sell them to a tabloid, or something. Whatever.
“It didn’t even make sense,” Robin was still saying. “Steve wasn’t touring with them or anything, they just decided that everyone had to wear the outfits in the studio, including me and all the producers. It was so deranged. They had the outfits handmade for us, stitched our names in the breast pockets and everything.”
“Anyway, we’re getting away from the point,” Steve snapped, blushing even harder, somehow. “The album was done and they decided to throw this huge wrap party at an absolute mansion out in Calabasas that one of the guys in the band’s dad owned. Robin went because she was obligated by work, and I went because I don’t say no to free alcohol.”
“But I was like, panicking, right?” Robin butted in. “Because this was all so new to me, and there were so many famous people at this party, like I swear to god I saw a Kardashian—”
“You did not see a Kardashian,” Steve interjected.
Robin, bless her, ignored him. “And I didn’t know what to do, like. Should I be drinking? Should I not be drinking? Should I be talking more?”
“Rob, you should never be talking more,” Steve said. Robin smacked him across the back of the head without even looking his way. It was, honestly, a bit impressive.
“Anyway — I was panicking, and on this one table I saw what looked like, you know. Juice! Like that red fruit punch you used to get at birthday parties when you were a kid.”
“Oh no,” Eddie said.
“Oh no,” Steve agreed.
“I didn’t know,” Robin whined. “I thought it was juice, just like, really tiny glasses of juice, so I downed, like, two glasses and the glasses were so small, and I went to pick up a third and Steve appeared out of like nowhere—”
“I saw her from across the party, and she was just downing cups of psychedelics. I mean, there was a sign on the table that said Enjoy The Trip!”
“I didn’t see the sign!”
“So I come up, and I’m like, woah, Buckley, I don’t think you need to get that high. Which was a mistake because—”
“Because I didn’t know I was getting high, until that moment, and I’d never even done drugs before, not even pot, so I was panicking—”
“And you never want to trip when you’re panicking, so I’m trying to calm her down and she just keeps getting worse and worse, like fever pitch, near tears freaking out, so I—”
“So Steve grabs a cup of the acid juice and downs it. And then he grabs a second one and downs it too!”
Eddie literally could not believe what he was hearing. “Wait. What? Why the fuck would you do that, Harrington?”
Steve shrugged helplessly. “It seemed like a good idea in the moment and I have never had great impulse control, to be totally be honest. Of course, the minute I did it I realized it was a terrible idea, but it was too late, you know, we’re on this bus together.”
“So we get like — extremely, terribly, high. And this house, Eddie, this house is so weird. It was like space themed, for no reason.”
“It turned out the dude in the band’s dad was some, like, Russian oil baron who’d been obsessed with Sputnik as a kid so he made the whole mansion space themed and named it Starcourt,” Steve cut in. “Which, also, made his weird spaceship boat band make more sense, in the end. There were so many rooms that were just filled with the weirdest, most overwhelming shit you’d ever seen in your life. Murals of constellations on the ceiling, a mini replica of Apollo 1. They had an ice cream parlor inside, off one of the bedrooms. I think it would have been surreal even if we were sober.”
“Which we very much were not.” Robin sighed. “We were both so overwhelmed we ended up collapsing in the only somewhat normal room we could find—”
“Which was a bathroom that was done entirely in gold plating,” Steve added.
“We sat on the floor and just . . . talked, for like hours. High out of our minds and like, unable to stop giggling.” Robin smiled to herself. “I told Steve I was gay, you know, that night? He was the first person I’d ever told. I was so scared.”
“And I was so high I didn’t understand what she was saying for like, five full minutes.”
Robin snorted. “Steve’s like, ‘of course you like girls, everyone likes girls,’ like I didn’t just absolutely say the scariest thing on Earth to him.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. Ah, Steve Harrington, the king of heterosexuality. He thought of all those magazine covers — King Steve’s Queen of the Week on OK!, Heartbreak Harrington Strikes Again on People. “You know Harrington, not everyone likes girls.” He gestured lazily to himself. “Some of us are outside your box.” He was aware, vaguely, that he sounded a bit like a brat saying it out loud.
Robin shot him an indecipherable look.
Steve just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, man, I know about gay people, I had just done, like, enough LSD to kill a sixth grader, cut me some slack. I was seeing leprechauns and shit, I didn’t exactly have the highest comprehension skills. Robin might as well have been telling me she worked for a secret Russian government base hidden under the mansion for all I was grasping onto reality at that point.”
“So that's the story,” Robin said. She turned to Steve, “you know that place burned down a few summers ago?”
Steve huffed a laugh. “That’s definitely insurance fraud, or something.”
“Anyway, we've been attached at the hip ever since,” Robin said, turning back to Eddie. “Steve even got me the job at Upside Down, later that summer, convinced me to move out to New York and come live with him.”
“That other label was stupid, they had no idea what to do with you,” Steve scoffed.
And huh. Steve got her a job? That was sort of . . . strange. Unlike him. Or, maybe, unlike the way Eddie assumed Steve would be in his head. Which was an uncomfortable thought for reasons Eddie had absolutely no desire to explore at the moment.
Lucas was calling Steve back to whatever conversation they’d been having before, and Steve was heading over with an eye roll and an expressive “yeah, yeah, I’m coming shithead, calm down,” waving lazily back at Eddie and Robin as he moved back to the other side of the space.
Robin was back to giving Eddie a look. “What?” he asked.
“This maybe isn’t my place,” she said, “but, seriously, what’s your deal with Steve?”
Eddie spluttered. His face felt like it was getting a bit red, too, which was, frankly, unacceptable. “I don’t have a deal.”
Robin rolled her eyes. “You’ve been a dick from the start. And you just implied he’s unaware of gay people, Eddie.” She frowned. “I mean, you know, he’s not—”
A giant clattering cut her off. She and Eddie whipped around to see Dustin stumbling back from the moose head, which he’d somehow knocked off the wall. Steve literally faceplamed — Eddie wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone do that in real life. “Henderson, my god, you’re going to be the death of me,” Steve started, and then Robin was heading over to help him, whatever she’d been about to say forgotten. Which was good.
Because whatever Steve was not, Eddie really wasn’t eager to hear about it.
Notes:
bit of a shorter one, but the backstory of steve-and-robin felt like it earned its own little chapter.
next week, we get to columbus, and things escalate!
this chapter is dedicated to every weird, empty restaurant off a highway in america that has made me ask: is this a front for something? truly the backbone of our nation's economy.
Chapter 4: Columbus (HEATHER HOLLOWAY SINGS THE BLUES)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
In the end Dustin did opt to go into Steve’s car for the second half of the drive. The vans were big enough that no one had to replace Dustin, which meant that the four-hour trip went pretty easily, mostly because Eddie begged driving off on Gareth and promptly passed out asleep in the back, not waking up until they were rolling to a stop at their motel in Columbus.
The issue with sleeping the entire way there was that now he was awake. Awake and jittery, filled with useless energy he had to expend, somehow. He clasped his hands on the back of Jeff and Gareth’s seats, startling both of them. “Boys, we should practice.”
Gareth groaned. “Dude, we just schlepped here. Can’t we get a break?”
“No rest for the wicked, Gare-Bear,” Eddie said. “Plus, we should see if ol’ King Steve actually has what it takes to party with us.”
Gareth and Jeff exchanged a look, cryptic and unreadable. It was annoying to Eddie, that the two of them could do that silent talking thing that old married couples and best friends could do. They hadn’t known Eddie as long as they’d known each other, granted, but still, they’d been a band for ages now. It would only be polite for them to let Eddie in on their little eyebrow-only chats.
That said, Eddie could guess some of it. Like, okay, right now, the way Jeff was raising his eyebrows meant something like no, you do it, and the way Gareth was squinting back meant you owe me, bitch.
Eddie was proven right when Gareth opened his mouth to speak. Sweet fucking victory, baby.
“Look,” Gareth said. “This whole Steve thing . . . are you cool, man?”
Ugh, never mind. Not so sweet victory. Eddie scoffed. “Yeah, man, I’m cool. What do you mean? He’s the uncool one, here. I’m a heavy metal rock god heading out on an epic tour. He’s, like, a coddled brat doing this for community service hours, or some shit.”
“No, okay,” Gareth said, pointing accusingly at Eddie, “that’s exactly what I’m talking about! You, like, hate the guy. You never even met him before the other week, have you?”
“Have you?” Eddie said back. Why the hell were his own bandmates defending this douchebag, seriously? “What, he your bestie or something?”
Gareth rolled his eyes. Sensing the other man’s annoyance, Jeff swept in. “No, obviously, but, like — Dustin made him seem kinda cool, on the way here, you know? And he’s doing us a big solid, man. It just seems like it might all go a bit easier if you weren’t so . . .”
“Fucking bitchy.” Gareth cut in.
“Openly antagonistic,” Jeff offered, half a beat later, with a weak smile, trying to soften the blow.
Eddie scowled at the two of them. “I’m not antagonistic, or bitchy,” he said. Gareth raised his eyebrows up. Again, a look Eddie could actually read — this one meant are you totally delusional?
“Dude, you practically bit his head off at Uncle Jed’s when he tried to pass you bread,” Gareth said, irritated sounding.
Alright, yeah, he had done that, but — well, okay, he didn’t have a great excuse for that one beyond the sound of his voice was starting to piss me off.
(A half a beat before Steve had tried to pass Eddie the bread, he’d been telling Will Byers that he thought the kid would really like Paris. So, okay, maybe the real excuse was the constant reminder of all the places Steve had been, the life handed to him so easily, the money and the fame and dream Eddie was still desperately trying to claw his way to just delivered, open handed, to this poofy haired douchebag.
Or maybe it had been because his voice was annoying. One of those things.)
Eddie rolled his eyes and tried again. “Look, okay, Steve Harrington is everything we are against as a band, you know? We’re DIY! We’re working class! We’re the outcasts and the freaks! Harrington’s rich kid pop rock! It’s like . . .” He scrambled for a metaphor. “It’s like Ozzy Osbourne doing a limited run tour with Vampire Weekend!”
“What’s wrong with Vampire Weekend?” Jeff asked, half under his breath. Eddie ignored him.
“Sure, okay,” Gareth said, “ignoring the fact that Ozzy is probably one of the richest dudes currently living, fine. But Steve is rich kid pop rock who’s filling in for us on a massive tour.” Eddie opened his mouth to protest, but Gareth put a hand on his shoulder, a little warning. “I’m not saying you have to like the guy. But I’m saying every time he opens his mouth you say something snotty back. And right now he’s being cool about it because he probably just thinks it’s like, your rock persona, or restless tour nerves burning out on the easiest target, or whatever, but eventually you’re gonna start pissing him off for real. And if he quits, we really are sunk. So can you just chill a little? Keep some of those lovely, bitchy little thoughts of yours inside that beautiful, bitchy little head you have?”
That was, tragically, a fair point. It had felt impossible to find a bassist a week ago, back in NYC, when Dustin had first offered the deus ex machina of Steve Harrington up. Now they were on the road and the tour was underway. If they lost Steve, the best they could do was backing tracks, or hope Will could learn a few of the songs, neither of which were ideal.
Plus, as bad as Eddie could be at this stuff, he understood that if he went too far he’d definitely annoy Dustin and Robin, and possibly also Joyce, Hopper, and the rest of the Party, and he didn’t really want to do that. Hating Steve was supposed to be a victimless crime. Or, like, a single victim crime. Whatever.
“Okay, fine,” he agreed, with a sigh. “I’ll play nice, as long as you stop calling me bitchy.” Gareth nodded his agreement. “Does this mean you agree band practice tonight is a good idea?”
Jeff and Gareth shared another look. Jeff shrugged. “Yeah, man, I guess we better start eventually. The question is . . . where do we practice?”
---
“Oh, I know a place,” Steve said five minutes later when approached with the question. “Let me call her while we check in and we can drive over there.”
Of fucking course he did. Somehow Steve’s nepo baby connections stretched as far as Columbus, Ohio.
Eddie didn’t say it, though. He kept his bitchy little mouth shut, while Gareth and Jeff gushed thanks.
“Can I tag along?” Dustin asked, popping up out of nowhere. “Also, Steve, we’re bunking together tonight. I need Suzie advice.”
“Ugh,” Steve whined. “I was hoping to actually sleep at some point, Henderson.”
Yet again, Dustin seemed completely oblivious to Steve’s cutting comment, just beaming up at him. Eddie tried not to let it roil him. Steve could clearly be as mean to the kid as he wanted, because Dustin was never going to say shit. One of these days Eddie was going to pull Henderson aside and have a long talk about bumping up his self-esteem.
“I’ll come too,” Robin chimed in. She was looking at Eddie again. It was still unreadable, but Eddie sort of figured it was because she didn’t really trust him to play nice. Which, rude! He could be nice. He could be so nice.
“You just wanna see Heather again,” Steve said to her, with an eye roll, which caused a little blush to burst across her face.
So that was how Eddie found himself in front of a small studio building an hour later, being greeted enthusiastically by a leggy brunette wearing seasonally inappropriate Daisy Dukes and a tank top that showed off a truly early 2000s beer commercial amount of cleavage. Which, look — women were way out of Eddie’s wheelhouse, sexuality-wise, he’d been all dudes since pre-puberty, but even he could appreciate when a woman was objectively hot. And this one was. He wasn’t the only one who thought so, if the glazed look on Gareth and Jeff’s faces were any indications. Or the bright blush on Robin. Or Dustin’s mouth literally hanging open. He reached over to snap it shut, two of his fingers on the underside of Dustin’s chin. “Don’t be rude,” he hissed. “That’s a lady, Henderson.”
The only person seemingly unaffected by the bundle of attractive woman in front of him was — surprise, surprise — King Steve himself. Probably, Eddie reasoned, because this was some ex of his. Or current girlfriend, god knew how many of those Steve was likely to have at any given moment — even ex-fame had to carry some pull with the dating scene. He was probably on one of those apps that they make just for rich people, stuck in between all the old Bachelor contestants who now made money selling laxative teas and the sort of vaguely dubious #grindset influencers who were peddling multi-level marketing schemes.
Heather actually wolf-whistled when Steve approached the door, two fingers in her mouth like an old-timey cartoon. “Well look what the cat dragged in,” she cheered. “Long time no see, Mr. Harrington.”
Steve looked a little bashful. “I’ve been meaning to come back out! Just, you know,” he waved a hand, dismissively. “been busy.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. “Oh sure, I heard. You had a few months in LA, right.” She shot a little two fingered salute Robin’s way, dragging her eye up and down the other woman’s body as she did so. Which. Weird. If Eddie didn’t know better he’d say Heather was checking her out. A ploy to make Steve jealous? “Heya Buckley. Keeping cool?”
“So cool,” Robin breathed. Eddie was starting to wonder if her insistence on coming actually had nothing to do with babysitting them, and was, indeed, as Steve said, just to see this woman.
“Heather,” Steve said, tossing a hand out to gesture to the ragtag metal band behind him, “this is Eddie, Gareth, and Jeff, AKA Corroded Coffin. The pipsqueak is Dustin Henderson.”
“Oh my god, kid brother,” Heather practically squealed. Dustin’s face was clearly torn between being annoyed at kid and being delighted at being recognized. “You were the one calling every day while Steve mixed my record. Annoying, you know, we were very delayed,” she said, while not sounding even a little annoyed at all.
“We were, like, a week delayed,” Steve protested. “And that was mostly because the first drummer we hired was an idiot.” He turned back to the band. “Corroded Coffin and Dustin, meet Heather.”
“Steve . . . mixed your record?” Gareth asked. There was a slight tone to his voice, like he thought it was a euphemism.
Hell, Eddie thought it was a euphemism. It sounded so much like a euphemism.
“Yep!” Heather said, cheerily. “Heather Holloway Sings the Blues. Didn’t make me a national star or anything, but if you ask around Columbus people might know it. And it was a big hit at Oberlin.” She grinned, winking again, mostly in Robin’s direction. “Come in! Steve says y’all need a practice space and I am happy to provide. Least I can do after you worked way under value.”
“I didn’t!” Steve said. It sounded like this was a well-worn argument. “I swear, I charged what I always charge.”
“Well then you always undercharge,” Heather said, unlocking the door and letting them in.
Eddie figured Steve could at least afford to undercharge, especially for a hot woman he was almost certainly sleeping with. But Eddie was not going to look a gift free practice space in a city where none of you live in the mouth, so he followed, dutifully.
Heather helped them set up for a moment before decamping to a side room to grab beers for everyone. Robin watched her go with a wistful sigh, which Steve snorted at. “What happened to Vickie?” he asked, all fake innocence.
Robin scoffed at him. “Vickie has a boyfriend.”
“Because that’s stopped you before,” Steve shot back.
Gareth was looking between the two of them, clearly completely baffled. “Wait,” he said. “You’re cool with her hitting on . . . you know?”
Steve just looked deeply confused at that. Robin rolled her eyes and smacked his arm. “They think you and Heather are sleeping together, dumbass.”
“Oh!” Steve said. And then, “no, we really, really are not.”
“But,” Jeff cut in, “she’s letting us use this space for free?”
“I mixed her album!” Steve paused, face furrowed together as he put it together. “Oh, no, you know what? Now that I’ve said it out loud I hear it, too.”
“I’m a lesbian, morons,” Heather said, as she re-entered the room, masterfully clutching seven beer bottles by their necks between two hands. Again, not Eddie’s scene but — god, what a woman. He took one happily. “Steve and I met through my last girlfriend Tammy, who knew him from some weird indie folk band shit she did in Chicago. But then she ditched me partway through this record we were making together. Ran off with the masters, left me a bunch of shitty voicemails about suing me. And not even shitty enough voicemails that I could sell them to Drake to sample.” She sighed, like this was a great tragedy. “Steve took pity on me and offered to mix my new stuff. Again, at an extremely cut rate.“
“Tammy was a dud,” Steve cut in. “Sounded like a muppet. Heather’s the real talent. And it wasn’t a cut rate!”
“Wait,” Eddie said, catching all of this in this brain and finally sorting all the pieces out. “So between Buckley here and the lovely lady Heather, you’ve managed two close lesbian friendships?”
Robin shrugged. “Steve collects us.”
“Like that anime shit! From the app, where you had to walk around all day?” Steve offered, unhelpfully.
Gareth frowned at him. “Dude, do you mean Pokemon?” Steve snapped his fingers at the other man in agreement. “You collect lesbians like . . . Pokemon?”
“I think it’s the eyes,” Heather said, with a sigh. “That deep hazel-brown just screams talk to me about the Indigo Girls, you know?”
“Ugh, do not talk to me about the Indigo Girls, please,” Steve said, with a whine.
“What the fuck is happening here,” Eddie cut in, again. Because, seriously — what the fuck was happening here?
Maybe it was one of those things, where straight men, like, loved lesbians. But Robin seemed like she’d shut that down pretty quick, so maybe not?
“You guys are gonna run through a set and Buckley and I are going to judge you until we get bored and go into another room to make out,” Heather offered, easily. “And then Dustin here can judge you all alone.”
“That sounds about right,” Dustin added.
“What the fuck,” Eddie said, again.
“Regretting hiring me yet, Munson?” Steve asked.
And the thing was — it was playful. Steve said it like a little joke. Like there was no way Eddie could ever not love that King Steve had deigned to join his band. Which, of course, sent a spike of pure rage up Eddie’s spine. Because he did regret hiring Steve. Or, at least, he regretted that he had to hire Steve, that he needed to rely on Steve, that Steve had swept in and took this thing he’d built himself and flipped it all on its head. Eddie had been scrappy, Eddie had been DIY, Eddie had built the band up from nothing. And now they were in a practice space gifted for them for free because Steve knew some chick? They were relying on some rich kid’s charity?
Eddied opened his mouth to sneer something back, but like he could sense Eddie’s thoughts, Gareth clamped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, near painful. “Nah, man, of course not,” he cut in. Good, peacekeeping Gareth. “We really appreciate you stepping in like this.”
Steve gave Gareth a funny little look. “Of course, dude.” Then he turned back to Eddie. “So, Columbus setlist. Where do you want to start? Hellfire Club?”
Eddie felt shocked. He was sure he looked shocked. How did Steve just guess their go-to opening number so quickly? Eddie hadn’t actually written any of the set lists out yet.
Steve shrugged, looking a little abashed. “Just seemed like a real get the crowd going number, you know?” he offered, like he knew exactly what Eddie was thinking.
“It’s our go-to!” Jeff gushed, clutching his guitar a little closer to him. God, this was going to be so much harder if Jeff and Gareth started to hero worship Steve, too. Dustin was bad enough, he didn’t need everyone on the “Steve Rules” train.
“It’s fast as hell, Harrington,” Eddie said, trying to keep the bitch out of it, mostly to avoid Gareth’s stink eye. “Hope you can keep up.”
Steve just grinned back, boyish and playful—
(and cute, Eddie’s horrible traitor brain supplied. It only served to make him angier.)
“Oh, don’t worry about me Munson,” he said. “I got this.”
And then they were off.
---
The first rehearsal went . . . fine.
Well. Okay. Maybe fine was an overstatement. But it wasn’t, as Eddie had slightly feared, a total mess. It turned out Steve’s perfect playing of N.I.B. wasn’t a fluke, but there was a lot they had to work on in terms of synergy. Which was normally a stupid, terribly useless corporate nonsense word, but actually applied here.
If he was being honest, most of the issue was, in fact, on Eddie’s shoulders. Steve just wasn’t Petey. Hell, Geezer Butler himself could have shown up to the first rehearsal and offered to play and Eddie still probably would have struggled with finding the rhythm. He’d gotten used to Petey, the good and the bad of the guy. The way he dragged on certain songs and sped on others, the little conversations they’d have back and forth, the constant presence of him on Eddie’s right hand side.
It probably hadn’t helped that every time Steve slipped even a little, a wrong note or a rhythm missed, Eddie had rolled his eyes or grumbled under his breath. He wasn’t being subtle about it, which he knew because Steve’s shoulders had hiked up a good amount by the last run of the last song, and because even Heather was frowning at him, by the end of the night. He was starting to hate that frown people got around him, re: King Steve.
By the end of rehearsal the mood in the space had dropped considerably. Steve packed his bass silently and slipped out ahead of the others, mumbling some half-baked excuse about loading the car up. Robin ducked out after him, but not before shooting Eddie another little look. Jeff and Gareth were fiddling with their instruments and heading out after Steve and Robin, and Dustin had darted off to the bathroom, which meant for a long moment Eddie was standing and looking at Heather. Who was looking back at him, arms crossed, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“I get it, you know,” she said, finally, just as the silence had gotten to be a bit too much for Eddie. “It’s hard letting go of control over something you love. When Steve stepped in on my album after Tammy ditched me. . . it wasn’t easy. He had good suggestions, but I kept hearing them as criticisms, even when they weren’t. Like, here’s this better, more successful person who knows more than you.” She shrugged. “But he wasn’t trying to be better than me. He was trying to make the record the best it could be. Everything else aside, you should know that Steve is really fucking good at this. And if you let go of a little control and let him take the reins, you’re not going to regret it.”
“He’s not in the band,” Eddie said, aware he sounded like an absolute brat as he did so. Heather raised an eyebrow like, so you’re throwing a tantrum? and he tried to modify his tone just a little. “He’s a fill-in bassist. He doesn’t need to offer suggestions or take control or whatever. He just needs to play the songs right.”
“He was playing the songs right, for the most part,” Heather said, not unkindly. “He wasn’t suggesting edits.” Which was fair, maybe, if Eddie let himself consider it. Steve’s slips had been few and far between, only getting worse as the rehearsal had dragged and Eddie’d continued sighing about them. “Look, I’m not saying he needs to be your best friend or whatever. But if you chill just a touch, you might find this whole thing will go a bit easier.” She socked him in the shoulder, once, a surprisingly painful hit. He tried not to wince. “Just have a beer with him or something, will you? I know his reputation precedes him, but I swear, he’s not some . . . golden boy, or whatever. Ignore the King Steve shit and you might find you just have a really good bassist filling in for you.”
He frowned at her. “How did you know the King Steve shit was part of it?” he asked, genuinely curious. He hadn’t said anything about that since Gareth’s comments in the car.
She laughed, loud and bright. “Eddie, of course it’s the King Steve shit. It bothered me too. It’s weird, right? Working with someone who’s posters you used to own?”
“You owned his poster?” Eddie asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Hey, I was trying to fit in. Besides, I’m a lesbian, not blind, the guy’s hot, alright?” She shook her head, then. “Look, everything else aside, he’s not whatever the tabloids made it seem like. He’s not King Steve, not really. He’s just. . . Steve. You let him play bass for you, you’re gonna have a good tour. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
She grinned. “You got another night before your first show, and if I have anything to say about it, it’s going to rule. So I’ll see you tomorrow. After dinner, we do another run.”
Dustin emerged from the bathroom, tugging at Eddie’s sleeve. “Come on man, I’m beat, let’s go. See you tomorrow Heather,” he added cheerily, dragging Eddie out the door.
So that was that, he guessed. Tomorrow indeed.
Notes:
stranger things the tv show: literally the only character trait heather holloway has is that she's really into billy
me: hmmmm. . . i'm going to make her a lesbian blues singer. it's my AU and i can do what i want.so far none of my fics have been able to explore eddie's relationship with the other guys in hellfire/his band, so i'm really enjoying the chance to do that here.
i promise eddie's not endlessly obtuse THAT much longer. just. you know. it takes him a minute, okay?
Chapter Text
Outside, the others were milling around the van, chatting. Robin and Steve both cut a look at him as he exited. Robin’s expression had softened slightly, and Steve’s was — almost guilty?
Which, weirdly, made Eddie feel a bit guilty. He couldn’t really place why.
“Heather said we’re, uh, back again tomorrow?” he offered, kind of lamely, at the two of them.
Steve nodded, with a shrug. “Helps to get in as much as possible. I figure after dinner. Rob’s making me go shopping in the morning.” He said this last part with a little eyeroll.
“I weirdly don’t want him to get torn to shreds by metalheads who don’t understand why he’s wearing a polo shirt,” she said. And then, “it was a long day for everyone. So we should all, you know, try to relax a bit in the morning before we get back in work mode. Sleep in, have a coffee, see some local sights. Like, uh,” and here she looked to Steve for help.
He laughed at her. “God, all I have for you is this space, Heather’s apartment, and the studio we recorded at. I’m useless here.”
“You’re both useless,” Dustin said, snippy. “Am I the only one who bothered to Google anything?”
“Yes,” Steve and Robin said simultaneously.
“Okay, perfect, so Rob takes me shopping and Henderson leads everyone else on a weird little adventure in Ohio. Then we meet back here after dinner,” Steve said. “Sound like a plan?” He directed the question to Eddie, a guarded look on his face. Like he knew that Eddie didn’t like him.
Which, okay, to be fair, that had to be sort of apparent, by now. Still, it wasn’t a hostile look, or anything. It was possible Gareth’s point earlier was true, and Steve was chalking most of Eddie’s dickishness up to the long travel day or general tour anxiety, and was hoping to avoid stepping on any toes.
He thought of Heather’s suggestion that they just have a beer. The thing was, everything else aside, he wanted the tour to be good. He needed the tour to be good, needed it like oxygen or water or sunlight or a cold beer on a summer afternoon or any other number of things in the Munson Hierarchy of Needs (pot, his battle vest, his guitar — it was a long list of needs, okay?).
Which was his only excuse for saying “maybe I should go shopping with you two,” without really thinking it through.
In his peripheral vision he saw Gareth drop his face into his hand.
Steve was frowning at him, now. “Look,” he said, “I get that I’m not cool, or whatever, but you don’t have to babysit us. Rob’s way better at this stuff than me, she’ll pick good clothes.”
I’m not trying to babysit you, I’m trying to be fucking nice you dickhead, Eddie thought. But didn’t say, because, of course, the thought was, itself, not very nice. Instead, he went with, “yeah, but I know our fanbase. We’re not, like, traditional metal, really. I can make sure you fit in with the rest of our aesthetic.”
(Not that they really had an aesthetic, collectively. But, whatever.)
Steve and Robin exchanged a look, clearly speaking silently in that way that Gareth and Jeff had done earlier in the car, all eyebrows and pursed lips and squinting. Unlike with Gareth and Jeff, though, he didn’t know either of them well enough to even guess what they were getting at. Finally, Robin turned back to him with a shrug. “Sure,” she said. “I was gonna wander in to the college kid part of town and find some thrift stores. 11am work for you? We’ll get coffee.”
“Yeah, that works,” Eddie agreed.
Steve said nothing at all. He was giving Eddie a long, considering look with a completely unreadable expression. Eddie met it, for a moment, and something passed between them, some unnamable tension that Eddie hadn’t been expecting. More than his weird (and perhaps semi-irrational, fine, okay) hatred for Steve. Something else.
But then Steve looked away and moved to get into the car, still silent. The moment broke, and Eddie shoved it away entirely, not ready to think about whatever the fuck had just happened at all.
---
So that was how Eddie ended up in some god-awful hipster thrift shop at noon the next day, flipping lackadaisically through the ugliest short-sleeved button-up shirts he’d ever seen while Robin and Steve bickered like an old married couple a few racks away.
“What if someone asks me who they are,” Steve was saying. Whining, really, like a kid being told he had to do homework, or something.
“No one is going to ask you anything about My Bloody Valentine, Steve!”
“My Bloody Valentine is shoegaze,” Eddie called, frowning at a pattern that could really only be called bowling alley carpeting chic. “If Steve wears a shoegaze shirt to a metal show they really will eat him.” Untrue, probably, Corroded Coffin’s fans were mostly very cool and tended to show interest in a wide variety of genres, but, well. Eddie himself hated that band, so, whatever, he wasn’t standing next to Steve proudly boasting their logo all day.
Robin made a frustrated noise, but Eddie could hear her shoving something back onto a metal rack as she did so.
The trip had, so far, been pretty successful. They’d gone to Old Navy first and grabbed a bunch of plain black, grey, and white t-shirts and flannels — more grunge than metal, obviously, but it would work in a pinch. The first thrift store they’d been to had boasted some winners — a lightly ripped up Blondie shirt that Steve had liked enough to buy, an old shirt proudly boasting membership in some steel workers union none of them had ever heard of, a Budweiser shirt vintage-looking enough that that it read ironic, instead of frat boy fashion. Eddie sort of felt the trip could probably be over, by now, because they were going to have to stop and do laundry on the road anyway, but Robin seemed determined to keep this going.
He wasn’t really bonding with either of them. He also wasn’t really trying, unfortunately. He kept getting close; kept almost asking Steve a personal question, or offering something up about himself. But then Steve would roll his eyes, or turn his nose up a little, or whine, and that alarm bell of douchebag alert would sound in Eddie’s brain and turn whatever he was going to say into a scoff or a biting comment. And, look, all else aside he was trying to sneer less at Steve, so mostly he was keeping his distance and letting Robin do all of the work.
If either Steve or Robin had noticed he wasn’t really offering the expert opinion he claimed to have come along to offer, neither one of them said anything about it.
“What about this?” Robin asked, somewhere to Eddie’s right. Steve made a groaning noise. “Eddie,” she snapped, “what about this?”
Reluctantly, Eddie looked up. Robin was holding up a Metallica t-shirt. Probably from an old sales rack at Forever 21 or Target or some shit, back when faux-vintage band tees were all the rage. But still, there was a reason Master of Puppets was on every single Corroded Coffin set list, and it was because it had essentially saved Eddie’s life when he was nineteen and failing out of his second high school and restless with energy he couldn’t get out any other way besides playing guitar for hours on end.
“That’s a winner,” he admitted.
Robin shoved it into Steve’s arms. “Try it on.”
“It’s a t-shirt,” Steve bitched. “Why do I have to try it on?”
“It looks small,” Robin said, with a shrug. “I think it honestly might be a women’s cut. So to the dressing room with you, Harrington.”
Steve sighed like his found this deeply annoying, but went, ultimately, leaving Eddie alone with Robin. She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re being . . . nicer,” she offered.
He sighed. “Gareth said I was being bitchy,” he admitted. “So I’m trying to be . . . less bitchy.”
“Well, your effort is noted,” she said back. She was still looking at him though, like he was a riddle she was trying to solve in her head. “Look—” she started.
“If you’re going to tell me to be nicer to Steve, I’m trying okay?” he snapped, half against his will. He really didn’t want to be annoyed at Robin, but it was starting to be a bit much, all of these people defending Steve to him.
She rolled her eyes, grandly. It was sort of Henderson-esque, in its drama. “Man, you’re kind of a baby, anyone ever tell you that?” She slapped his arm, then, but it was friendly — like they were friends, which he didn’t really think they were, at least not yet. “I wasn’t going to say you had to be nice to Steve. He’s a big boy who’s been in this industry twice as long as either of us. He can handle people not liking him.” She shook her head here, a little sadly, and muttered something under her breath that sounded weirdly like believe me. Before Eddie could inquire more, though, she was talking through it. “I was going to say that I swear this is going to get easier.” She leveled him with a serious look, no-nonsense. “It’s not my first rodeo, Munson. I know that some of this is jitters. But once you actually get playing, and you fall into a rhythm, it’ll feel less like there’s some strange, faded away ex-child star standing next to you fumbling you up and more like you’re just, you know . . . a band.” She shrugged. “You just gotta relax. It’ll get easier.”
Steve emerged, then, Metallica shirt firmly on. It was, in fact, a little small, but not in a bad way. Actually in a terribly, unfortunately sexy way. There was a strip of Steve’s stomach showing between the top of his jeans and the bottom of the shirt, and it clung to his pecs and arms nicely.
Eddie had the strangest vision, then, of Steve in this outfit with Eddie’s battle vest on — the one he’d made his first go at senior year of high school, the one he never let anyone touch, ever, but that he always brought on the road and wore for good luck. It was such an insane, out of nowhere thought that it actually floored him into total silence.
Robin whistled next to him. “Looking hawt, Steven,” she said. And then, casting Eddie a very mischievous glance, “wouldn’t you agree, Eddie?”
Jesus, whatever the look on his face was had to be pretty obvious. Because Eddie did agree. Eddie agreed a thousand times over. Eddie wanted to lick the bare strip of Steve’s stomach that was exposed, which was insane because he hated Steve. Despised him. Couldn’t stand the guy.
Perhaps, maybe, just a little, also wanted to crawl inside him and devour him whole.
That was an upsetting notion. Eddie had always prided himself on being, primarily, a good judge of character. Sure, he’d fucked a lot of dickheads in his day, who hadn’t? But usually he only learned those guys were dickheads after sex. If a guy was whiny and bitchy and mean before sex that was more often than not a total dealbreaker for Eddie, complete turnoff. So the fact that he still found Steve hot, despite hating him, despite all of Steve’s mean little comments to Dustin and sneering condescension pissed him off.
(He ignored the very, very small part of him that wondered if perhaps the reason those things hadn’t turned him off of Steve was because they weren’t that serious, in the end. If Dustin could laugh at Steve’s mean little jokes, perhaps that meant the two of them were inside of the joke together, in a way Eddie simply didn’t understand? He ignored that part of his brain because it was wrong and dumb, and Eddie knew that Steve Harrington was an arrogant, nepo baby asshole the same way he knew the sky was blue and Neil Peart was probably, objectively the best drummer who’d ever lived even if Rush was a band for Canadian douchebags and long haul-truckers, not that there was anything wrong with being a long-haul trucker, really, it was honest work and in the end they were an important part of the American infrastructure—
At this point, Eddie had to admit the thought had sort of gotten away from him.)
Steve crossed his arms, looking more like a put out single mother than a dude in his mid-to-late-twenties. “I look like a freak,” Steve said, rolling his eyes.
Which.
Right.
The thing was that Steve couldn’t know. He couldn’t know about The Freak because no one knew, except Gareth and Jeff (and Uncle Wayne, of course). And there was no way Gareth and Jeff had told Steve about it. Dustin might have, but Eddie had always ridden high on Dustin’s hero worship, so he hadn’t ever told the kid the big, long sob story of his pathetic high school years, the mob that ran him and Wayne out of town. He’d tried to write it down in a song, a few times — The Ballad of the Freak, something like that — but it’d never come out right, so it’d never made an album. Which meant that there really was no way for Steve to know how much that word hurt, how much it cut straight down through the bone and into the pure marrow of Eddie, of who he thought he was, of how he was seen in the world.
So it wasn’t really Steve’s fault, the flare of pure, hot rage that boiled up Eddie’s stomach and out of his throat. But it happened anyway, uncontrollable, and Steve was there, looking hot and being cruel and saying shit that hurt Eddie in a weird, embarrassing manner that a part of him felt he really should have gotten over, by now. Which is why Eddie bit out, harsh and filled with spite, “oh, god forbid you look like one of us freaks, Harrington.”
Robin was gaping at him, eyes wide. Steve too looked shocked, head actually jerking back a bit like he’d felt the physical impact of Eddie’s words against his skin. Then his faced curdled into a scowl. “Okay, seriously dude? What the fuck have I done to you?” He waited for Eddie to answer for half a beat before barreling on. “Because you’ve been an asshole to me this entire time, and as far as I can tell all I’ve done so far is agree to be your bassist. Which, by the way, you needed me to be!”
The rage that had flown out of Eddie’s mouth had already started to settle into shame in his stomach, but Steve’s nasty little reminder of his charity efforts snapped that feeling right back into anger again. “Oh, sorry for not being reverential enough to your gracious act of charity, Sir Harrington,” he sneered. “God forbid us peasants don’t worship at your feet for your good deeds, picking us up out of the slums.”
Steve threw his hands up like he found this whole thing ridiculous. “Man, what the fuck does that even mean? Who talks like that? And this isn’t charity, come on.”
Eddie couldn’t stop himself from audibly scoffing at that. Steve’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What was that for?” he asked, flinging a hand in Eddie’s direction.
“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know,” Eddie snapped, because how could Steve not know? How could he not see how this felt to Eddie?
Steve just glared back at him. “I really, really don’t know,” he said.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure—” Eddie started, but Robin finally moved to get physically between them, smacking him in the chest to cut him off.
“Okay, Jesus you two, enough!” She pointed a stern finger at Steve. “You go get changed. We’re buying that shirt.” And then she pointed at Eddie. “And you go sit out by the car for a minute and chill, okay? Deep, calming breaths.” She waved her hands around dramatically, encompassing both of them in the vague, chaotic gesture. “And when we’re done buying these clothes, we’re going to stand outside until you two agree to a truce, you got it?”
“Whatever,” Eddie said, sulkily. He was aware he sounded a little like a brat. She smacked his chest again, and with a giant groan he moved and went outside of the store, not bothering to look back at either of them.
Notes:
listen, it can't all be eddie being an asshole and steve powering through it. steve harrington, too, has a beautiful, bitchy little head filled with beautiful, bitchy little thoughts, and they had to emerge sometime.
i swear to god we leave columbus at some point. just not, you know, for a minute.
sorry to any my bloody valentine or rush fans reading this. a lot of really random bands take a lot of strays in this fic. please know that the characters opinions do not always reflect my own; but it's true to eddie's character that he has a lot of very strong opinions that he refuses to ever flinch on at all, particularly about music.
this chapter is posted in solidarity with the WGA and their ongoing strike; studios should pay the people who write the shit we like! that's just logic!!
Chapter Text
After about five minutes of waiting by the van, Eddie’s anger had cooled entirely and been replaced by—
Well, if he was being honest, embarrassment.
Robin had said earlier that Steve had been doing this twice as long as either of them. For the first time since the start of this whole thing, Eddie realized that his behavior could be considered . . . unprofessional.
Not that Eddie was ever the standard bearer for professionalism, in his life (his old Starbucks managers could tell you that), but there were things he tried not to do. Piss off venue owners, trash other people’s equipment, show up late when he didn’t have the clout or the fanbase to back it up.
The thing was that Eddie respected other musicians. They were just like him in the end, right? Trying to make it through all the bullshit, to do something they loved. But he was having trouble seeing Steve as another musician, because Steve had everything handed to him on a silver platter. And also because, to be frank, it was unclear to Eddie that Steve did love this.
Eddie did this because he literally did not know how to do anything else. Or, no, even that was wrong. Eddie did this because he literally couldn’t not do it.
He’d had an English teacher at his second high school — the only teacher in a long line of them who actually seemed to believe in him, a youngish woman called Ms. Hampton, who wore these big, dorky glasses and those twee patterned long skirts with ankle socks and assigned them reading like Maus and Slaughterhouse Five, instead of the usual boring crap. He wasn’t really good at English class, because he was bad at writing essays, but Ms. Hampton had pulled him aside one day and said she could tell he did all the reading from the way he talked in class (when forced to), and was there something he could do that wasn’t an essay that showed he had, like, critical understanding or whatever?
So he’d written songs. She’d liked them, even though she only saw the lyrics and never heard the music he’d written, too. She even let him do a bunch for extra credit, so he had a whole backlog of Led Zeppelin-type pieces about Lord of the Rings, and stuff like that. At the end of the year he’d actually passed, got to graduate, thanks in no small part to her. She’d gone up to him on the last day to give him the good news.
“Normally,” she’d said, after the congratulatory you’re graduating!, “people tell writers not to give up. But I know you won’t. Because a real writer is just someone who has to write, you know? An artist is an artist because they have to make art in order to live. They don’t do it for money, or for fame. They do it because they’re compelled to. They do it because to them it’s the same as breathing or eating or drinking. Right?”
He’d been too dumbstruck to answer at the time, but she’d given him a little wink and walked off. And eventually he’d realized she was right — maybe one day he’d stop doing this band, stop trying to be famous, or whatever, but he knew he’d never stop writing music. He literally couldn’t. He had a million notes on the app on his phone, half scratched out lyrics on random pads of papers, tons of different riffs saved into incomprehensibly named folders on his truly ancient Macbook. Eddie was a musician because Eddie needed music, not just because he loved it.
Steve was a musician because his father decided he’d be one, one day. Steve had a Grammy Nomination because his father had probably paid for it. And maybe it was unfair, to blame Steve for things he couldn’t control, like who his dad was and how much money he was born into, but the truth was that those things had made it hard for Eddie to see Steve as a musician and therefore a fellow professional he ought to respect.
Which was dumb, really, because everything else aside . . . Steve was pretty fucking good at playing the bass.
And everything else aside, Gareth was right. Eddie did need him. He was smart enough to know that Steve wouldn’t just bail on tour — Steve was, and it really pained him to say this, a professional, and he also had some clear allegiance to the Party and Hop and Joyce and Robin that meant he wasn’t likely to pack his bags and run at the first sign of trouble. But he was also smart enough to know that if he made a truly hostile work environment that eventually everyone would agree it wasn’t working, and Steve would head off for greener pastures and Eddie would, yet again, be without a bassist.
So, really: he had to suck it the fuck up.
Eventually Steve emerged from the store, suspiciously sans Robin.
“She’s paying,” he said as he approached Eddie, like he could read his mind. And then, “well, and also probably spying on us from the window to make sure we don’t kill each other.” He moved to lean against the van next to Eddie — closer than he needed to be, probably, but not close enough that they were touching, or whatever.
Eddie’d thought about what he was going to say for nearly the entire five minutes he was alone, but suddenly Steve was there, next to him, and it all evaporated into, “they called me freak in high school.”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “So, I touched a nerve,” he said, easily. Not necessarily apologetically, or even pityingly, just like he was trying to confirm what Eddie was saying, here.
“Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, drug dealer, metalhead, queer, burnout—” he cut himself off.
The last word in that list was murderer, but he really, really didn’t know Steve well enough to tell that story.
“Not a very creative nickname,” Steve said. There was a little wrinkle to his nose, like he found the lack of creativity of bonehead American high schoolers offensive.
Eddie scoffed. “Oh, you’re one to talk. The King? You stole that shit from Elvis, man.”
Much to his surprise, Steve laughed here, a bright, happy sound straight from his chest. Eddie had heard Steve laugh before, but never quite like this — never like the act of laughing had snuck up on him, the joy taking over and exploding out, loudly. “Fair enough,” Steve said, after a pause. “Look — you don’t like me. I get it. I know how I come off.” He gestured lazily to himself. “Rich kid asshole who got everything in life handed to him. I get it. I promise that I’m not. . . I’m not that, at least not anymore, but you have no reason to believe me.” He shrugged. “But you and I don’t need to be friends, right? We just have to work together. So let’s just work together, alright?” He stuck a hand towards Eddie. “I won’t be a dick to you, you try not to be a dick to me, and mostly we avoid each other except when we have practice. Coworkers. Deal?”
Eddie considered the hand for a moment. It was, all told, probably a nicer offer than he deserved considering he hadn’t even apologized.
“Deal,” he agreed, and took Steve’s hand and shook it.
Okay: they had a truce. Perfect.
Robin burst out of the store, weirdly perfectly timed. Eddie suspected that Steve was right, and that she’d been hovering at the window watching them this whole time.
“You idiots get your shit together?” she said.
“Yeah, we’re good,” Steve said back. “Come on, we better get going. I won’t hear the end of it from Dustin if we’re late to his recap of how the science museum was, or whatever.”
“Plus, I’m starving,” Robin said. And then “shotgun,” rushing past to fling herself into the passenger seat while Eddie stared at her, flabbergasted.
“Gotta be quicker than that, Munson,” Steve said with a grin, and as he moved to get into the van Eddie found that he couldn’t help but smile back.
---
So, the second rehearsal:
It went better.
Actually, Eddie allowed himself to admit that better was an understatement: it went great, really. There’d been a few catches at the beginning, a little warm-up slippage on a few of their parts. Jeff and Gareth had been on edge, clearly waiting for Eddie to snap or say something mean. But when he didn’t, they all relaxed into it, and after a few songs the rhythm they built up felt good, natural almost.
When he’d first started making music he’d done it alone. When Gareth, Jeff, and Petey had cornered him and basically bullied him into hiring them to make a band, it hadn’t been immediately easy. All else aside Eddie understood that he could be difficult — not once had a teacher ever described him as a pleasure to have in class, not even Ms. Hampton, you know? The thing about memory, though, was that it was fickle, and malleable, and if you’d asked Eddie yesterday to tell the origin story of Corroded Coffin he would have skipped over the first six to seven weeks of roughness, the times when he tried to write Jeff’s guitar parts for him, the many, many times when he snapped at Gareth for missing a beat or lagging too much, the long, protracted fight he and Petey had gotten into about the purpose of the bass that had led to a full week where Petey straight up refused to talk to him, and they only spoken passive-aggressively through Gareth.
(You know, stuff like Gareth, can you tell Petey that he’s being a baby? and Gareth, can you tell Eddie he’s going too fast on the guitar line? They only stopped when Gareth cornered them and said his parents were already divorced and he hadn’t needed this shit.)
The point being that Corroded Coffin was good because they’d practiced at it, because they’d learned to communicate better, because Eddie had learned to allow direction from others and loosen some control and the others had learned when to accept his flailing dramatics and when to push back on them. They’d put in time and energy, and that was what made a good band — no great act was ever sprung, fully formed from the head of Zeus, or what the fuck ever, you know?
Things with Steve weren’t immediately perfect, but that had been an unfair and unrealistic expectation to start.
Eddie was able to admit a few things, the second go around, now that he and Steve had shaken hands on coworkers. Like, one, Steve had truly crazy inherent musical talent — that was undeniable, and Eddie was 100% absolutely jealous of it, and that had been no small reason why he found the guy so fucking annoying. It turned out that money could buy you, at the very least, a pretty excellent music education.
Another thing Eddie could admit, after the second rehearsal: Steve was pretty funny. They actually had a little banter going now, sometimes, between songs, even if it was mostly the two of them lightly bitching at each other. Still, it was lightly bitching in a sort of funny way, which was good, because that was a thing that was sorely missing with Petey gone. Jeff was great, but he had a sort of laser focus when he played that was hard to shake him from, sometimes. It was one of Eddie’s unspoken Rock n’ Roll Rules that silence killed a good show, so he needed to do some talking while everyone tuned into a new song or swapped a pedal out, or whatever. And look, he could fill thirty minutes of silence by himself easily if he wanted to, but it was always more fun to talk to someone than to just ramble on alone.
The third thing he could admit was this: it was interesting, watching Steve Harrington play his songs.
He supposed, now that he could concede that maybe he was being a bit of a dick, that part of Eddie’s defensiveness about this whole thing had been about handing over his songs, which were sort of like his children in how much he loved them, to someone he assumed would not treat them with care.
But the thing was that Steve did treat them with care. He asked smart questions about the progressions, the flow of the music. He made notes to himself after every song they ran in a small, leather-bound journal. Eddie only caught glimpses — allow Eddie riff here on the end of the bridge of Trailer Trash where Eddie liked to fiddle a bit, quieter near the last third of Cheerleader’s Corpse, where the song got kind of sad, long pause for drama during Lunchbox, where Eddie had a tendency to, well, prefer a dramatic pause.
To continue the sort of confusing kids metaphor he’d started, it was a bit like hiring a babysitter — they might play different games with your kids, might have a slightly different approach, but at the end of the day everyone wanted to have fun and be safe and make sure your kids turned out alright, as adults.
Or. Whatever. Man, Eddie needed better metaphors, his brain was a mess sometimes.
The point being, that he’d been worried that Steve would treat these songs dismissively, but he hadn’t. He cared — maybe not as much as Eddie cared, but that was essentially impossible.
When rehearsal was over and they were packing up, Heather sent him a wink and a grin, as if to say told ya so. Then she disappeared outside with Robin, Dustin and Steve lagging behind carrying equipment.
The OG members of Corroded Coffin (sans Petey) stood alone. Gareth raised an eyebrow at Eddie. “That went better,” he said, easily.
“Steve and I talked,” Eddie admitted. “We made a truce, or whatever.”
“Good,” Jeff said. “He’s not that bad, you know.”
Eddie looked out the door where Steve had vanished. He could almost picture the other man, the way he looked loading equipment into the van, shirt riding up a little, face creased in concentration
“Nah,” Eddie said, “I guess he’s not that bad.” He shot a little glare at the other two. “We’ve settled on trying not to bother each other. Colleagues and shit.”
“How mature of you,” Jeff said, and he sounded like he meant it, but it was always a little hard to tell with Jeff, honestly. Guy could be dry as hell when he wanted to be.
“You think the show’s gonna go good?” Gareth asked. There was an undercurrent of nervousness to the question.
Another one of Eddie’s unspoken Rock n’ Roll rules: Generally, the best part of the tour is the middle. The first few shows tend to be working out kinks, getting back into the swing of being in front of a crowd (unless you were one of those bands that toured continuously, which Eddie couldn’t manage if only because touring always cost more than you made, in the early days.) By the end of the tour exhaustion was catching up with you, the songs starting to grate a little, the novelty of the feeling worn away. If he had an option, he always tried to catch his favorite bands in the middle of their tour runs — when they were flying high, playing their best.
So, before they even started, he sort of expected the first show to go . . . okay. Maybe not terrible, but certainly not amazingly.
Strangely, though, he felt a sudden rush of confidence. Rehearsal had been good. There were kinks. Things weren’t perfect. But it was the first real show of their first big tour, and despite every setback, despite a new bassist, despite everything, rehearsal had been good.
“I think,” he said, “it’s going to be one hell of a fucking show, boys.”
---
CONCERT REVIEW: Corroded Coffin Shreds in Columbus
The beauty of being a music reviewer is that sometimes your editor puts a random album in your hand and says hey, Doug, go to this show and tell me how it is, will you? And, look, 90% of the time the record sucks and the band sucks, and in the interest of not ragging on some newcomers we never write anything about it, and I just have to live with wasting a night standing around a bunch of drunk twenty somethings listening to shit. But 10% of the time you get to find something new, and fresh, and interesting, and go to a show that rules and that you, otherwise, never would have bothered going to.
Corroded Coffin was in that 10%.
I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical, having never considered myself a big fan of metal. But the New York based quartet proved me wrong, rolling out a banger of a show that defied all my expectations. The songs were quick and rapid fire, the solos were loud and engaging, and you could tell, more than anything, that these guys love doing this. The crowd wasn’t massive, but there were a few clearly dedicated fans among them, and by the end of the night the band seemed to have won everyone else over too, generating a sizable mosh pit and ending on Trailer Trash, a song with a chorus easy enough to learn that everyone was singing along.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, though, was just who was onstage. Based on their artist page on their record company’s website, Corroded Coffin is usually a four man line-up consisting of lead guitarist and vocalist Eddie Munson, second guitarist Jeff Munroe, bassist Pete Jones, and drummer Gareth Taylor. So imagine my surprise when Pete Jones was nowhere to be found, instead replaced by an oddly familiar looking man it took me until halfway through the show to place.
I placed him when Munson did the classic round of intros, stating that “filling in on bass” was a guy named Steve Harrington.
I know a lot of college kids read this blog, so it’s possible that the fleeting nature of time and fame means you don’t know who Steve Harrington is. The short answer is that Steve Harrington was, briefly, poised to be the next big thing, a wunderkind darling with a hit record at just 16. When he vanished off the face of Earth shortly after his band’s debut, many chalked it up to a kid buckling under the crushing pressure of fame. That he never really resurfaced is a chagrin to many a fan on pop subreddits, I imagine.
So imagine my surprise, seeing him shredding with a metal band in good ol’ Columbus. I tried to sneak my way backstage after the show, see if I could grab the story — just how did the man the press used to call King Steve end up as a second string metal bassist? — but, alas, no such luck. By the time I got past security, the band had packed up and vanished into the night.
So, no, I can’t tell you why Steve Harrington is playing with Corroded Coffin. Nor can I tell you if seeing him in the lineup is better or worse than seeing Pete Jones, who’s work on Corroded Coffin’s three albums is quite good. (The albums are Hellfire Club, Hotwired and the newly released Cheerleader’s Corpse, all available through Upside Down Records.) What I can tell you is that if you’re a fan of metal, rock, or just a damn good night of music, it’s worth catching these guys out on tour this summer. And hell, make sure you arrive in time for the opener too — those guys in The Party sure live up to that name.
Corroded Coffin Presents: Summer In Hell tickets are available now.
Notes:
they've called a truce, so in the words of the classic crazy ex-girlfriend song they'll never have problems again, right?
right????
Chapter Text
The next day they piled into the vans to head to Cincinnati; stop two of a million and fifteen, give or take.
As they were packing up, Eddie caught a strange snippet of conversation between Robin and Steve. He didn’t think either of them were quite aware he could hear them.
“Don’t freak,” Robin was saying, “but my Google Alert went off today.”
It was, perhaps, the most seriously anyone had ever said the phrase Google Alert in human history. Eddie would have probably laughed out loud if he wasn’t trying to not get caught eavesdropping.
(Sue him, okay? He loved gossip, always had, always will.)
Steve was leaning against the van, turned in such a way that Eddie couldn’t see the expression on his face without making it obvious that he was trying to. But he could see from Steve’s posture that the other man was uncomfortable, holding himself tightly. “What’d it say?”
“Just a review of the show last night — actually a really positive one! But the guy clocked you.”
“Did he say Swim Team?” Steve asked. He sounded nervous about the prospect. Which was strange. Sure, Eddie had been told not to bring up Swim Team, that Steve didn’t like talking about it, but he supposed a part of him still assumed that it would at least feel good to be recognized, publicly, even if the project you were well known for sort of ended in flames.
“No,” Robin said, “but it was sort of a what’s Steve Harrington doing here, thing. He called you King Steve.”
“So, he knows I’m on tour,” Steve said. His voice was perfectly flat, almost listless. And look, okay, Eddie still mostly hated the guy, don’t get him wrong, but it was still a sort of strange tone of voice to hear from Steve. A bit concerning, if Eddie was the type of person who let himself be concerned about guys he hated. (Or, you know, mostly hated and had a tentative truce with, whatever.) Even when he was being annoying there was always some sort of life in Steve’s voice, a lilting tease, an undercurrent of bitchiness or exhaustion. This flatness, it was—
Well, honestly, it reminded him a bit of Chrissy. Which was annoying. Eddie did not want to be reminded of Chrissy, not ever, and certainly not because of Steve fucking Harrington.
“We knew this might happen,” Robin said, softly. “You said it was worth the risk, remem—”
“I know,” Steve cut her off. “I know, it’s — I’m fine, Robs, really.”
He didn’t sound fine. He sounded extremely not fine at all, and if the little sigh Robin gave was any indication she thought so too.
Again, the part of Eddie that loved gossip, that loved stories, wanted to interrupt his own movements and just ask. Who’s he? The reviewer? Who cared if some random music blogger knew if you were on tour? Who gives a shit about a Google alert? What the hell was going on?
Before he could even give that much thought, though, Hopper was slamming the trunk of the third van loudly enough to jolt everyone’s attention. “Alright folks,” Hop said, “let’s get going.”
And so they did, Robin and Steve getting into their van fast enough that in the end Eddie didn’t catch the expression on either of their faces.
---
They didn’t have a day break for the show, this time, so they headed straight to the venue to load in after dropping their bags at the motel. The Party had already run their check, and were now milling around the space — Lucas, Max, El, and Will decamping to the green room, while Mike and Dustin hovered to watch CC’s rehearsal and goad the bartender into giving them free beers before their drink tickets officially kicked in.
They were partway through a run of Lover's Lake when there was the unmistakable sound of a phone vibrating against a surface. Eddie looked up — it was Steve’s phone, which he’d laid to rest on top of an amp for some reason beyond Eddie’s understanding. Phones were a strict no-go in rehearsal, meant to be turned off and tucked away.
Steve ducked down and clicked it off, dropping it back onto the amp with an apologetic shrug.
It started vibrating again almost immediately.
“Jeeze, man, you got better places to be?” Eddie asked. He aimed it for a joke, and he thought he managed it, this time — he didn’t sound pissed, even though he was, kind of, a little bit pissed, because rehearsal was supposed to be a sacred, uninterrupted space.
“Ignore it,” Steve said, ignoring the call again and dropping the phone back on the amp. “No need to interrupt rehearsal.”
It started vibrating again.
“I don’t think your phone got the memo,” Eddie quipped. “Who could need you this bad, aren’t all your friends standing around in this room?” And then he darted over to the amp, and grabbed at Steve’s phone. Steve made a half-move to stop him, but he wasn’t quick enough — Eddie had fully stolen his phone. “It’s, uh — DO NOT ANSWER?”
That was all it said. All caps, DO NOT ANSWER, no contact photo.
Steve moved towards Eddie. “Well then,” he said, taking the phone from Eddie’s hands, turning it off entirely, and sticking it into his back pocket in one smooth move, “you probably shouldn’t answer.” There was something strange happening with his face. He was frowning at nothing. His eyes had glazed a bit. It was like Steve was sliding away from the present moment and into something buried deep inside his head. It was sort of freaky.
Again, it reminded Eddie of Chrissy. Of how she’d looked that day in the park back in high school, when she’d asked him for drugs and he’d asked why she wanted them. The same expression. The one he’d ignored, the one he hadn’t followed up on.
The thought passed through him, clear as day — he should ask Steve what was wrong. He should find out who was calling who Steve wouldn’t answer. He should care, this time.
But he hated Steve. (Didn’t he?) And Steve hated him. (Right?) Like, they’d shaken hands on colleagues — that certainly didn’t give Eddie the right to pry into his personal life.
Maybe he’d get Dustin or Robin to ask or something.
Gareth cleared his throat and Steve’s eyes snapped back into the present. “Sorry, man, ignore Eddie. He loves other people’s business.”
“True,” Eddie said, a bit weakly, still slightly thrown by whatever had just happened with Steve’s entire thing.
Steve shrugged, languidly, but it felt rehearsed. Eddie had been bullied a lot in his life, knew how to play nonchalant and uncaring when you actually cared more than anything. That felt worse, honestly, than it would have if Steve had snapped at him or cursed him out. Steve pretending he didn’t care. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I get a lot of spam calls, that’s all. Price of—” and then he cut himself off, shook his head, didn’t finish the thought. “Anyway, we should run the song again, I think I’m lagging in part of it.”
The conversation dropped, and rehearsal continued without any more interruptions.
---
By show time Steve still didn’t seem quite there, not 100%, but the show itself went well either way.
The space was slightly more full than Columbus — apparently one of the local rock stations had done a bit of promo, and the venue itself was cool, according to Hopper, who said it with the slight mocking tone older people always said the word cool with.
They hung around after the show, this time, because the venue was open for a bit longer, the bar still vibrant and cluttered with people who wanted to talk to them, congratulate them, buy a t-shirt. Eddie and Gareth were having a nice chat with the girl who’d they gotten to staff the merch table, who was apparently a fan and seemed to be making pretty, fluttering eyes at Gareth. Eddie, figuring it was about time he stepped away and let his friend get his flirt on, looked up and realized Steve was gone. Everyone else was still milling about, but Harrington had slipped out somewhere.
Which — fine, okay, that was Steve’s prerogative, to disappear when he wanted to. But Eddie couldn’t shake Steve’s glazed eyes, his rehearsed shrug, from his mind. He couldn’t help it, really, the strange instinct he had to go make sure the other man was okay. A part of him blamed Chrissy, blamed the consequences of his own incuriosity. Now he’d always have the urge to ask the hard question, to chase after the story, to check back in.
Obviously something had thrown Steve. Eddie made the connection in his mind pretty easily — blame his DM brain, but he was good at making quick connections. Like, okay, Robin had a Google Alert that she and some mysterious he used to track Steve, and shortly after it’d gone off Steve had gotten no less than three calls in two minutes from someone he refused to pick up on. So DO NOT ANSWER was probably he and whoever he was, he was probably not a happy memory, for Steve.
Unbidden, he saw Chrissy in his mind, sitting at the picnic table in the trailer park, her smile fake, her eyes far away, something like pain humming underneath her skin. How many nights had he woken up in tears, trying so hard to go back in time? To change the memory? To stop himself from sliding her the Special K and walking away, begging himself to turn around and ask, ask her what was wrong, ask her what was happening?
Suddenly the fact that Steve wasn’t within eyesight was making Eddie nervous, making him worry even though there was probably no real reason to. A strange trauma response, one he couldn’t help.
A throat cleared behind him, and he turned to face the bartender, who was cleaning out a glass with a little smirk on her face. “If you’re looking for your bassist, I think he ducked out for a smoke,” she said. She stuck her chin out towards a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. “Load-in alley.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said, and decided not to think too hard about how she immediately knew he was looking for Steve.
Sure enough, when he ducked outside Steve was there, leaning against a wall, one foot propped lazily against it like he was in an ad for the jeans he was wearing. If he noticed Eddie coming through the door he made no move to show it, instead taking another long drag of a cigarette and blowing the smoke out in front of him, tilted upwards, out towards the handful of stars visible even in the city lights.
“You smoke?” Eddie asked, half to simply announce his presence in case Steve was so in his head he really hadn’t noticed.
Steve looked at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, not moving his head at all. “Bad habit,” he said, easily. “Picked it up the first time I did all this shit.”
“What, touring?” Eddie couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice — not that Steve had started smoking on tour, but that Steve had mentioned his past. It had felt like they'd been dancing around it, this whole time, stories untold, topics meant to be untalked about, Robin's eyes glaring at Eddie across the bar and hissing that he wasn't supposed to ask. So it felt weird that Steve was the one broaching it.
Steve just shrugged, not really committing to the answer, even though he’d been the one to bring it up. “Lots of bad habits,” he said, after a moment, and Eddie once again remembered the photos, the girls, the parade of headlines before Steve vanished like a ghost from the limelight.
“Who was calling?” Eddie blurted. He hadn’t quite meant to — he’d been wanting to approach the whole thing with a bit more grace. But, tragically, he was as fumbling as ever. “On the phone earlier,” he clarified, when Steve didn’t bother answering. “DO NOT ANSWER?”
Steve just took another long drag of his cigarette, not looking at Eddie.
“I just—” Eddie continued, chronically incapable of shutting the fuck up, desperate to fill the silence with something, to cut the tension with a joke or whatever.
Steve shut him up, though, by talking over him. “Look,” he said, and then sighed. “No offense, man, but why do you care?”
Eddie was taken aback by the question. Stunned into actual silence, which was a real rarity for him.
Taking the moment, Steve kept talking. “Up until, like, yesterday you couldn’t stand me and what, now you give a shit?” He dragged a hand through his hair, obviously agitated. “I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he continued, “I just . . . We’re not friends. We don’t have to be friends.”
“I never said I wanted to be your friend, Harrington,” Eddie said, with the bratty intonation of a child having a fit in a Walmart because his mother wouldn’t buy him something. He couldn’t help himself — he had been genuinely worried about Steve, and something about that had made him feel a little vulnerable. To have that questioned, tossed back into his face — well, it made his shoulders hike up, a bit defensive.
“Well then,” Steve said, fully bitchy, now, tone dripping with a level of annoyance Eddie had yet to hear from him, “if we’re not friends, then I don’t see why I have to tell you shit about my life.”
Eddie threw his hands into the air, matching Steve’s frustration beat for beat. “You’re the one who’s being all weird,” he snapped. “You’re hiding from the afterparty in a fucking alley, man.”
“I’m taking a smoke break,” Steve said, between slightly clenched teeth. “I’ll be back in a minute. In the meantime, why don’t you lay off? Lay all the way off.” He chucked his cigarette away from him. “I don’t need you to check up on me, alright? We’re coworkers. We’re not friends.”
He said this final bit with finality. Like: okay, this was the end. They weren’t friends.
Which shouldn’t have hurt Eddie. Hell, Eddie wasn’t kidding — he really didn’t want to be Steve’s friend. They just needed to get through the next few weeks as arms distance acquaintances, stuck together on this tour and then only ever seeing each other every once in a while afterwards, when Dustin forced them into the same room, exchanging polite hellos and inane small talk before going their separate ways.
But it did hurt. Because Eddie was trying to be nice, for perhaps the first time since he met Steve, and Steve was just full out rejecting him. And sure, maybe Eddie would have had more luck if he’d been nice to Steve in the first place, but, still. It pissed him off that Steve was here being bitchy and snotty and shoving Eddie away when Eddie was actually trying.
So, fine. Fuck trying.
“Alright,” he snapped back. “Fine. Then I’ll see you in the morning, colleague,” he sneered, and turned on his heel and stomped back in, not bothering to check if Steve was watching him go.
Notes:
eddie encounters one single speed bump trying to be nice to steve and immediately gives up and we do have to stan because that's relatable as hell
i know you are all so eager for the steve backstory and i promise it's coming i just chronically need to write so many words before we get there it's a disease i have i'm sorry
also this chapter is dedicated to the fact that i perhaps spent nearly all week playing tears of the kingdom instead of writing and am now consumed will guilt over it. but seriously . . . what a game, right?
next week: we go to indiana and everything really goes to shit. because this is a stranger things fic. so of course it's gotta go to shit in indiana. ;)
Chapter 8: Indianapolis (CORRODED COFFIN W/ SPECIAL GUESTS THE PARTY: SOLD OUT)
Notes:
a content warning here: there are allusions to domestic violence against children, both somewhat offhandedly said by max and eddie
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The next stop of the tour was in Indianapolis.
It was also, naturally, where shit really hit the fan. Eddie never had any fucking luck in the state of Indiana, that was for sure.
No one seemed to notice that he and Steve were avoiding each other entirely, the rest of the night in Cincinnati, which was fine with Eddie. He didn’t really want to have to explain to anyone that their truce had been so short-lived.
Although, he supposed not talking to each other was sort of also a truce, really. Just a decidedly icier one.
Everyone was tired enough after the show that he was able to retire to his room without anyone asking any questions. He had trouble sleeping, though — he was plagued with Chrissy dreams, for the first time in ages, her wide, pretty eyes staring sadly at him and then shifting, without warning, to Steve’s brown ones, to his scowl.
He woke up more pissed off than he was when he fell asleep. His fucking subconscious being worried about Steve was a step too far, okay?
There’d been a van reshuffle Eddie found mostly baffling, which ended up with what El was calling, jokingly, the girls car and the boys car (and, of course, the third car, which was mostly just Corroded Coffin. A gender unto themselves, metalheads).
The girls car was Joyce, El, Max, Robin, and, a bit inexplicably, Steve, who offered El a small fist bump when she said his name with finality, like it wasn’t even a question that Steve would be in the girls car. The boys car was Hopper, Mike, Will, and Lucas. Dustin, apparently feeling a bit bad the CC boys had somehow been left out of all this, decided to go with them.
The kid did raise an eyebrow questioningly when Eddie tossed the keys to Gareth, but Eddie just shrugged. “Slept bad,” he said, without further explanation, and Dustin seemed to accept it.
He camped out in the third row of seats, stretched out, pretending to take a nap. He wasn’t, really — couldn’t quite bring himself to fall asleep, worried that the Steve-as-Chrissy dream would rear its head again. Instead he just eavesdropped on the conversation the boys had when they thought he wasn’t listening. (Predictably boring fare about which Legend of Zelda game was the best, followed up by a slightly embarrassing bit where the three of them sang along to Oops I Did It Again on the radio, which they probably would have also done if they knew Eddie was awake, to be fair, because no one respected him.
Granted, they actually harmonized pretty well, but it didn’t do anything to make Eddie feel less annoyed.)
Anyway, all of this was to say that Eddie was in a bad mood to start with, by the time they all managed to get to the venue.
There was a marquee on the bar — most of the places they played were either venues inside of bars or venues that were like 95% bar. It proudly boasted TONIGHT: CORRODED COFFIN W/ SPECIAL GUESTS THE PARTY: SOLD OUT.
“Holy shit,” Jeff said, as all of them gaped up at the sign. “We sold out?”
Hop had a thoughtful frown on. “That’s odd.” At Eddie’s glower, the man held his hands up. “No offense, Munson, just you weren’t that close to sold out when I checked last, okay?”
“Oh no,” Robin said, very softly, somewhere behind him. When he turned to look at her she was looking at Steve, and Steve—
Steve looked mortified. Like, really, truly embarrassed, face red with it.
What, embarrassed to be sold out?
As if to answer that question, a woman stuck her head out of the front door. “You must be the band!” she said, cheerily. “I’m Crystal, nice to meet you. Congrats on the sell out! Although, I guess it’s to be expected with the news.”
“What news?” Eddie asked. They had a new album out, but that wasn’t exactly news.
“Oh, well,” Crystal said, looking awkwardly at him, “just. . . one of those, like, meme pages all the kids follow mentioned that you had Steve Harrington in your band, so — I guess people are excited, to see someone from a band they used to love, you know? I’ve heard people are coming from all over.”
Ah. People were coming from all over. To see Steve.
Steve who wasn’t even in the fucking band.
There’d been a moment where Eddie’s mood had lifted at those two glorious words: SOLD OUT. Now it cratered immediately.
Steve, Steve, fucking Steve.
“I mean,” Dustin offered, seeming to sense Eddie’s general storm cloud, “it’s good news, right?”
“Yeah,” Gareth said, “sold out is sold out.”
In a weird twist, Steve seemed to be the only person who understood this wasn’t actually a very good argument at the moment. “Let’s just get to soundcheck,” he said, a bit exasperated sounding, and moved to enter the venue. He didn’t look at Eddie as he did so. Didn’t even spare him a glace.
So that was the truce, officially dead. Eddie was right back to hating his fucking guts.
That tension remained through soundcheck. Eddie could tell the others were noticing it, because he kept seeing strange, worried glances pass between everyone — Dustin and Robin, El and Max, Joyce and Will. Everyone seemed on edge. That he and Steve had cut the banter out all together probably didn’t help matters. He found he couldn’t even quite meet Steve’s eye.
“Dude,” Dustin started, when soundcheck was over.
“Leave it, Henderson,” Eddie snapped back. And he hadn’t meant to snap at the kid, felt instant regret at the wince Dustin gave him, but, shit. He just couldn’t have that conversation right now.
The show was sold out, not because people cared about his music or his art — basically the only two things Eddie cared about at all — but because people wanted to gape at the former golden boy. It just felt unfair. Like every other part of Eddie’s life, really.
He’d hoped he could shake some of his mood before the show, tried his usual tricks of “pacing restlessly” and — well, okay, that was really his only trick — but it hadn’t worked. He went on stage pissed off.
Which, look: they were a metal band. Pissed off wasn’t the worse thing they could be. In fact, he had to admit a few songs seemed to sound better as he and Steve sort of battled, a bit, onstage. It really did something to Cancer Sticks, to have the bass harsh like Steve was playing. He made a little mental note to tell Petey about that, when they texted next.
Midway through the set some drunk chick in the crowd screamed “GO SWIM TEAM!” Which made Eddie growl audibly, but which also made Steve wince. A little flinch of movement, like he was being hit.
(Right. Like the rich kid knew about being hit, he thought, and the ignored the slimey guilt feeling that he had immediately after, because it was a really, truly, shitty and unfair thought.)
There was a part of him that understood most of his anger was irrational. Steve hadn’t advertised himself in the band, he hadn’t asked for these people to come, he wasn’t boasting about Swim Team. He was just a guy, filling in for a band, faced with the awkward reality of being somewhat, formerly famous. But Eddie didn’t really have the space around his bad mood to allow for rationality. He was too busy getting goaded by the drunk chick, who was now chanting “PLAY SMASHED CAMERAS” loudly, much to the apparent annoyance of at least some people around her.
“Look,” Steve started, and somehow that snapped something in Eddie. Steve did not speak for the band, okay? Fuck that.
“We only play good songs, honey, sorry,” he drawled into the mic. He didn’t turn to see whatever look Steve was giving him — but he knew Steve was looking because he could see the turn of Steve’s head in his peripheral vision. “He might be your king, but this certainly isn’t his fucking kingdom, you know? And if you got a problem, well — no refunds.”
A few people in the crowd chuckled. The girl went silent.
Steve said nothing at all.
They moved onto the next song. And the next one, and the next one, not really stopping for banter — not really stopping for anything, but playing harsh and rough and fast, real rock n’ roll shit. It got the crowd moving, too, the beginnings of a mosh pit breaking out front.
They’d come for Steve, but they stayed for Eddie. That felt like a victory, at least.
After the encore they poured off the stage and back into the green room.
Usually, Eddie’s post-show high turned whatever mood he had into a good one. It was hard for him to throw all his energy into music and come out feeling negative — music was the way he burned that stuff, you know? But somehow, leaving stage and watching Steve run a hand through his slightly sweaty hair, flopping it back a little, just pissed him off even more.
(A very, very small part of his brain thought that maybe he was pissed because he found the movement sort of sexy, in a gross way. He ignored that part of his brain.)
“Sorry to disappoint your fanclub Harrington,” he bit out. “Guess they really wanted us to play some of your shit.”
Gareth smacked his arm, but Eddie pointedly didn’t look at him.
Steve, meanwhile, shot him a bitchy little glare. “Look, man, I didn’t ask for those girls to yell that, okay? And I didn’t ask for people to announce I was touring with you guys. In fact, you’re the one who said my full name onstage on Columbus, what did you think would happen? I’m sorry I, like, stole your thunder or whatever—”
Eddie cut him off there, because — stole his thunder? What a fucking dick! “Oh, please,” he sneered, “you didn’t steal shit, Harrington, they stuck around because we rock, Corroded Coffin. You’re not even in this band, man.”
“Right,” Steve snarked back, “because being in this band must be the dream, right? Newsflash, Munson, I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life playing Dio covers, you know?”
Another flash of rage, red hot. “No, of course not,” he snapped, “you want to spend the rest of your life as a has-been nobody who only has a career because of his fucking Daddy.”
That, finally, seemed to stun Steve into silence. In the long, sort of terrible pause that followed, Eddie realized that the rest of their ragtag tour group had filtered in, and were looking between the two of them with something like horror.
Steve’s face had changed, at that. Eddie couldn’t quite read him, right now, but his eyes were flicking around Eddie’s face like he was looking for something, some sort of tell or sign. “Fine,” he said, eventually. “You don’t want me around, then fire me.”
Which was goading, of course, because Eddie couldn’t fire Steve. He’d be stuck in the Midwest without a bassist, for one, and two, he thought the genuinely miserable looks Dustin would give him the rest of tour might ruin him.
“Quit,” he leveled back at Steve.
“No chance, Munson,” Steve said. There was an airy arrogance to it, which read to Eddie like Steve understood that Eddie had played a bad hand, here. “I’m not a quitter. I don’t quit things.”
Oh, well. Eddie had a card for that, actually.
“You quit Swim Team,” he said.
Again, silence. This time worse, somehow.
Steve’s face fell into total, perfect blankness. Nothing there, behind the eyes. Again, Eddie saw Chrissy in the park, Chrissy at the picnic table, Chrissy going blank and then politely dodging the question, and Eddie letting her, letting her walk away, letting her—
“Eddie, dude,” Jeff said, sounding genuinely horrified. “What the fuck?”
Steve said nothing. He wasn’t meeting Eddie’s eye, anymore. He was looking at a point on the ground, which he continued to do for about ten seconds before he abruptly moved, pushing his way out of the green room and back out to the bar.
Robin gave Eddie a caustic look, eyes narrowed to tiny little slits, before darting out after him.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Munson,” Hopper said, coldly, before he and Joyce followed her, Joyce just shaking her head sadly and not meeting Eddie’s eye at all.
“Whatever,” Eddie scoffed, half under his breath as they left, even though the sight of Joyce looking that sad had eroded some of his anger away.
“No, not whatever,” someone snapped. It was, of all fucking people, Mike Wheeler, the self-proclaimed Steve hater himself. “You’re being an asshole.”
“Why would you bring up Swim Team?” El asked. There were actual tears in her eyes, unshed but there. Which was enough for Eddie to feel like a bit of a dick. He hadn’t meant to make El cry, for god’s sake.
Then, Dustin actually punched him.
On the arm, and it didn’t really hurt because the kid was sort of soft, all over, but still.
“Henderson, what the hell?” he said, rubbing his arm.
Dustin was just glaring at him, angrier than he thought he’d ever seen the kid. “Hopper’s right. You really don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, voice bordering on deadly. Grave. Whatever.
He seemed to have really pissed everyone else off, even Jeff and Gareth, which hadn’t been his intention. He held his hands up, placating. “Look, okay, whatever, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize to us,” Max snapped, before he could finish.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “I’m only sorry to you,” he said back, again aware that he sounded a little petulant. “I made it weird, and that wasn’t fair. But, I mean—”
“No buts, dude,” Lucas said, shaking his head like Eddie was being an idiot.
“You don’t get it,” Dustin said again, and then made no move to clarify what, exactly, Eddie didn’t get. Eddie held a hand up, like, well? Dustin sighed, clearly frustrated. “It’s not my story to tell,” he said.
“Look,” Max said, “you think he’s not like us, right?”
“Us?” Eddie asked.
He thought she meant the group at large, but she clearly didn’t, because she followed it up with a bitter little shrug, and “trailer trash with fucked up family who kicked the shit out of them?” She said it almost like it was a joke.
He whistled a breath between his teeth, ignoring the sort of horrifying thud in his stomach at hearing she, too, had gotten the short end of that stick. And also ignoring the slight bit of embarrassment he felt that she’d clocked him so hard — to be fair, the lyrics to songs like, well, Trailer Trash and Hotwired and Corner Store Lookout weren’t exactly subtle. “Wow, you nailed that.”
He, strangely, wanted to follow up — to ask who it’d been, for her, how she’d dealt with it — but it felt like the wrong time, in a room full of people.
She nodded. “But through all of that, all the shit, you had people who cared, right?”
“You had your uncle,” Dustin pointed out.
“Yeah, Wayne rules,” Jeff said, unhelpfully. (And man, a small part of him felt he really had screwed up if even his own bandmates weren’t defending him.)
Eddie shrugged — he was failing to grasp the kid’s point, here.
“Steve didn’t have that,” Dustin finished. Eddie opened his mouth to protest, again — because there was simply no way that was true, that the coddled rich kid didn’t have friends, or whatever, but Dustin held a hand up to stop him. “Just believe me, okay? Steve spent the first, like, two decades of his life surrounded by nannies and music tutors and other people on his Dad’s payroll.”
“And his dad—” Mike started, but he was cut off when Will stomped on his foot.
“Fuck, ow,” Mike whined, like a little bitch.
“Not your story,” El said, very seriously.
“It’s complicated, okay?” Lucas cut in. “And we can’t tell you the story, because it’s Steve’s, and it’s his to keep private, but. . . he’s not who you think he is. Like, first off, he’s not even rich.”
Eddie scoffed, again. “Look, I might not be an expert on how big record deals work, but Swim Team went, like, platinum,” he said. “I swear I heard one of his songs in a car commercial last week. You can live off residuals for a long time, you know.”
“He doesn’t see that money,” Dustin said, and then clamped his mouth shut like he hadn’t meant to say it. “Shit. Shit, I shouldn’t have — seriously, we can’t be the people telling you this Eddie, it has to come from Steve.”
Silence fell again. Slightly less horrible this time, except maybe to Eddie, who took this news like a brick to the stomach.
“What, he’s broke?” Eddie asked, full disbelief.
Dustin made another frustrated sound. “We can’t—”
“Right, right, not your story, whatever,” Eddie said, waving him off.
A lot of Eddie’s assumptions about Steve had been based around the idea that this entire thing — joining the tour — was a charity move on Steve’s end. Something he did as a favor to Dustin, or the kids as a whole, or Hopper or Joyce, or whoever. The idea that this was an actual job for Steve, something he was doing because he needed money—
Well, okay, it made Eddie feel a little worse about how he treated him, sure. A little worse about goading him to quit. Of course the guy wouldn’t quit if he needed the cash to stay liquid.
Again, that nagging thought that he was being unprofessional rose up.
He sighed. “Shit,” he said, to no one in particular.
“Yeah,” Max said, still glaring.
Dustin held his hands up. “Look, I get that maybe you two will never be friends, or whatever — even though I do think you’d get along—” here, Eddie cut him an exasperated look which Dustin ignored entirely, “—but you guys have got to figure out a way to work together, okay? And it’ll be easier if you stop treating Steve like he’s some sort of pompous asshole, or like he wanted to be famous and he wanted that fame to ruin your tour.”
“The Swim Team shit is, like, really complicated,” Lucas added.
Dustin sighed. “He was sixteen when he got famous, you know? He was just a kid. Can’t you imagine how weird that must be, for a kid? There was a reason he convinced us not to put out an album until we were older.”
Eddie thought of Steve at sixteen, his personal life plastered on every magazine, his name all over, his life open season. And then he though about being seventeen and getting chased out of his hometown, feeling young and helpless and stupid. Feeling like he was old enough to know better but too young to have any power.
“It’s not like he likes me, either,” Eddie pointed out, feeling a bit petulant, still. “He bit my head off the other day, you know.”
“Was it about the phone calls?” Will asked, all sympathy. At Eddie’s nod, he shook his head, a little. “Yeah, like we said, it’s. . . complicated. He gets uptight about it, sometimes. He doesn’t really like to talk about it, especially not with new people. I don’t even think he told my mom the whole story until a couple years ago.”
Again, Eddie’s curiosity spiked — a story bad enough that Steve had hidden it from Joyce? Joyce, who surely would have offered only warmth and affection and possibly a slug of whiskey to drink?
The little puzzle of Steve Harrington was right in front of him, but he didn’t have enough pieces to solve it. He hated that feeling.
“I don’t think I realized how much this would expose him,” Dustin said softly, under his breath, like Eddie wasn’t quite meant to hear.
Expose him to what? Eddie wanted to ask. But he knew Dustin wouldn’t answer, so he didn’t.
“Okay,” Henderson continued. “I was supposed to bunk with Steve tonight, but I’m calling it — you’re bunking with him, okay?”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mike asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” Dustin admitted. “But you two need to talk. Like actually talk, not this stalemate or truce you called or whatever.”
“And you need to apologize,” El said. “Steve does not like to talk about Swim Team. You hurt his feelings.”
WHAT HAPPENED the voice in Eddie’s head screamed.
“Ask him,” Max said, like she could hear it. “He might tell you if you ask. And you might stop making an ass out of yourself. And we might all survive this tour.”
Eddie thought about it for a long moment. Weighed the useless of his anger, now spent, against the hard feeling in his stomach that he knew was guilt.
“Fine,” he said, snagging the key from Dustin. “Fine. I’ll apologize.”
If Steve would even hear it, that was.
Notes:
oh boy! DRAMA!
next week: an actual conversation??? about things?? backstory reveal??? is the temptation killing you???
steve goes in the girls car because he's a girls girl; at clarke's music camp he'd braid el and max's hair and he always let them paint his nails and now it's solidified, okay?
i simply cannot resist having mike wheeler be a weird little steve defender in my fics. the show will never give it to me so i must take it for myself.
Chapter 9: Indianapolis (HEY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO STEVE HARRINGTON ANYWAY?)
Notes:
finally some ~backstory~
before we get into, there are some content warnings for this chapter i think are worth calling out:
-recreational drug use is mentioned in the form of steve previously being a person who did a lot of cocaine. in the world of this fic he isn't an addict; he was just sort of a douche who overdid it
-some of chrissy's canonical backstory comes up, although none of it is discussed in very specific detail
-there are allusions to violence against women, specifically murder, although nothing happens onscreen and the conversation is largely theoretical
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Eddie had expected one of the vans to be gone when they left the venue, but it was still there, Joyce and Hopper leaning against it.
No sign of Robin or Steve, though.
“They took an Uber,” Joyce had said, simply, and then helped them pack up. Her and Hopper stayed mostly silent, but at one point she reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you didn’t mean it,” she said, soft. “He’ll forgive you, you know. He’s like that.”
Eddie’s guilt feeling spiked.
When they got the motel he found himself hovering outside the door to Dustin and Steve’s room — or, his and Steve’s room now, whatever. What if Robin was in there? She might actually kill him. She seemed awful protective of Steve, after all.
And what was he even going to say?
He looked up to find Max and Dustin both death glaring him from down the hall. Lucas was also with them, but he looked a lot more sheepish about the force of their joint anger.
He held his hands up in surrender, took a deep breath, and then entered.
Robin was not there — it was just Steve, who, to his credit, didn’t even look shocked to see Eddie. He’d changed into a loose, plain white t-shirt and basketball shorts, and was leaning against the far wall of the room, barefoot, hair slightly deflated. Like he was ready for bed but understood he wouldn’t have gotten away with faking sleep.
He nodded at Eddie, once, a little jerk of his head. “Dustin made you switch?” he said.
“Yeah,” Eddie said back, weakly.
“Twerp,” Steve said, but it was oddly fond. “Look—” he started.
“No, no—” Eddie cut him off. “I’m sorry. I was . . . everyone pretty much bit my head off, after you left, about how mean I was being, and they were right. I was being a dickhead for no reason.”
“You were,” Steve said, after a pause. Then he heaved a huge sigh. “Look, man, have we met before or something?”
Eddie knew what he meant. The pit in his stomach that had started earlier that night grew. “Uh, yeah, hi, Eddie Munson, we’ve been on tour together for a few days?” he said. The joke splatted to the floor, like the time he’d tried to flip pancakes using only the pan to show off to Wayne and had, instead — well, splatted them on the floor.
(Not his strongest simile work, but he was still feeling very awkward about this whole thing, okay?)
Steve shook his head, rolling his eyes. “You know that’s not what I mean. I just — you’ve hated me since the moment I showed up in your practice space. And I—” he cut himself off with a groan. He looked . . . embarrassed, maybe? Whatever it was, it made him look smaller, and younger, and for the first time in a minute Eddie remembered that they were actually around the same age.
Steve had looked away and was resolutely not meeting Eddie’s eyes at all. “I used to do a lot of coke, okay, and I don’t always remember people who I met at like, parties and shit, back then. And I was a dick, you know? I hung out with shitty people, and I said shitty things, and I acted like a shithead because I was — I mean, I was terrible. Really, seventeen year olds should really not be allowed to spend whatever money they want.” Eddie almost laughed, at that, but the guilt prevented it. “So, if we met, before, back when Swim Team was still a thing, and I said something shitty, I’m just. I’m sorry, okay? I don’t do coke anymore, I haven’t for years. And the drugs aren’t all of it, I know, but I also did, like, years of therapy and — I’m not who I was. Back then.” Steve cleared his throat. Finally, he looked Eddie in the eye again. “But I am sorry.”
Christ, he’d been such an asshole, hadn’t he? And for what reason? Jealousy? “No, man,” he said. “No, uh, we’ve never met, that’s not. . .” he trailed off, a bit too mortified to finish the sentence.
Steve frowned expressively. In any other context, it’d be a very funny expression. Right now, it made Eddie want to die. “So, then what? Why do you hate me?”
Eddie let out a sigh of frustration and slumped onto the edge of the bed closest to him. “Man, it’s gonna sound so fucking dumb, but. I mean, I guess you were right at the van the other day, right? I just thought you were this lucky little nepotism baby. Like I worked my ass off to get here, and you’ve gotten a thousand times farther because your dad just handed it to you. My dad went to jail when I was ten. I guess I just resented that you had it easy. And then the Swim Team groupies tonight, it just made me feel like. . . like I worked so hard, and you were still overshadowing me, and I was a brat about it.”
Steve nodded, like this made some sort of sense. “I thought,” he said, after a pause, and then stopped again, frowning down at his feet. “I guess maybe I thought us calling a truce at the van, or whatever, might have lessened some of that?”
Eddie shrugged. “It helped a little. But then I came to check up on you after you vanished down that alley, later, and you kind of bit my head off and I thought, I dunno, maybe we were back to square one.”
Steve winced, here. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t fair, I just. . . I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t know a better way to get you to leave. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, though.”
“No, I get it,” Eddie said. “I mean, it must have seemed weird, that I cared suddenly.” He sighed.
Steve shrugged. “It’s not even that, it’s just. . . to be honest, I’m a bit jealous of you?” Before Eddie could cut in to express his shock at that, Steve barreled forward. “I mean, Dustin’s so obsessed with you, all the kids pressed so hard to get you on the label. . . you’re the next big thing. I’m just some washed up has been. I don’t live in LA, but I’ve been out there for, like, six months, because I was sort of. Avoiding the issue? I didn’t want to meet you. Didn’t want to face the fact that Dustin and those guys wouldn’t, you know, need me anymore, could find better, cooler people to hang out with. I mean, it’s the whole reason I agreed to the tour, right? Just because it felt . . . good? I guess. To be needed. And then you were in the alley, like, I don’t know, being nice to me suddenly, and it was. . . I couldn’t really handle it. Being weak, like that, in front of you. I’m sorry.”
Eddie let this sink in for a long moment. “No, no, I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “That I — what I said, about you quitting Swim Team. It wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have called you a has-been.”
“You’re not wrong,” Steve said. There wasn’t bitterness in his tone. Just resignation. “Swim Team was a long time ago.”
Ask him, Max had suggested.
“What happened?” he asked, a bit abruptly. And then, clearing his throat, “uh, I mean. . . Robin told me not to bring up Swim Team, and stuff, and I didn’t really get why? And then tonight, the kids said. . . they said you don’t have any money, or anything, from it. That I didn’t know the story, that I was being unfair, jumping to conclusions.” He paused and scratched the back of his neck, feeling sheepish. “You don’t have to tell me, or anything, I just. . . I mean, why don’t you have any money, man? Why didn’t you start a new band? You’re not a bad musician, obviously.”
Steve heaved a sigh, rolled his head back so it clunked against the wall. “I signed a bad contract, okay? It’s not that big of a deal. Tale as old as time.”
“But didn’t your dad sign you to his own label?” Eddie asked, lost.
Steve said nothing. It was there, underneath his posture, the Big Thing that Steve was hiding. Eddie could see it, written in the tense line of his body, in the way he wouldn’t meet Eddie’s eye. A desperate thing hovering between them, unsaid.
Eddie was good at puzzles, at making them, at solving them, always had been, and he had all the pieces to figure this one out.
“Can I ask again who was calling you the other day? Do Not Answer? Without you snapping at me, this time?” he said, finally.
Steve looked down at him, then, seemingly wary of the subject change. “Why?”
It was a different tone than the first time Steve had asked, that bratty why do you care? This was like Steve really, genuinely, couldn’t figure out why Eddie was even asking.
Eddie shrugged, awkwardly. “I just — it upset you. I could, uh. See. You,” and he waved his hand in front of his face to illustrate his meaning, “you sort of went somewhere else, after it came up during rehearsal. And you were there in the alleyway. And you went there again, after I said that thing about Swim Team tonight. So.”
A moment of silence. “It’s my Dad,” Steve said, and then nothing else.
Eddie frowned. “Your dad who got you your record deal and made you famous.” And then, like Tetris pieces slotting together. “Your dad who let you sign a bad contract.” Neither were questions. Statements of facts — like he could tell how close he was getting.
Steve looked at him for a long moment. Eddie felt scrutinized — he squirmed, involuntarily. “My dad who wrote the bad contract,” Steve said, very softly.
Congratulations! the DM voice in Eddie’s head said, you solved my Steve Harrington puzzle!
“I won’t work with him anymore for — that doesn’t matter,” Steve continued. “But he owns everything I do. My first record, but also anything I write in the future. I’m supposed to make two more albums I never bothered making, so anything I do make is his. All of my music has to go through him. My money too. He’s holding my earnings hostage until I agree to record those new Swim Team albums, which I will never do. So. Session work. Some producing. That’s my life now.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, very softly. He was starting to feel like maybe the kids were right, and he really didn’t know what he was talking about at all. “Why didn’t you — I mean, can’t you call a lawyer, or something? There’s no way that’s legal.”
Steve shrugged. “Hop had me look, a few years ago, but I can’t really afford anyone who’s rich enough to take on Christopher Harrington. And it always seemed more trouble than it was worth. Easier to walk away then to fight it.” He leveled Eddie with a long look. “Why do you care?” he asked. Again, it wasn’t quite the same tone as the night, even if the content of the question was the same. “I mean, you said that shit today to hurt me, right?”
Eddie groaned. He considered his options, really weighed them out. Eventually he settled on the truth — he wondered if when he died and Anubis weighed his heart in the afterlife this would be a point for him or against him. Hard to say. “Look, I said this shit to rile you up because, you know, I was pissed off about you selling out the show and not me. But I asked about the calls in the alley yesterday, and I’m following up now, partly because the kids really tried to set me straight on being an asshole but also because . . . I was worried man. About you. When you look like that, that sort of gone-away face, you look like this girl I knew in high school.”
He paused and braced himself. He hated telling the story. Actually, he just never told this story. But it felt, weirdly, like he owed it to Steve — to try and explain it, maybe. Or just to clarify a bit who he was, why he’d been the way he’d been. So: here went nothing. “Chrissy Cunningham. She was head cheerleader my senior year — the most popular girl in school, Queen Bee, you get it.”
Steve clearly had no idea where this was going judging by the look on his face, but he didn’t interrupt, which Eddie appreciated. Story was hard enough to get through without additional commentary.
“I used to sell drugs in high school. To pay for my guitar at first, and then to pay for gas to get to gigs. It was a living, I guess.”
“They called you freak,” Steve said, clearly remembering from earlier.
“Like you said,” Eddie answered. “Not very creative.” He cleared his throat, launched back into the story. “One day Chrissy came to the place where I sold. She wanted ketamine. Which, like — you don’t know this girl, but that was an insane request. She wore a gold cross chain and never touched pot or beer at parties. I’m pretty sure she was the head of abstinence club, she was so not that girl. So I made a joke about her being a narc, asked why she wanted the stuff.
“And she — she did that thing you do, sometimes. Her eyes glazed over. She went somewhere else. I could tell something was wrong, you know? Like really wrong, in her life, to bring her to me for fucking drugs. I could see it, in that look, that nothing stare, like she’d seen — like she’d seen fucking war, man, I dunno. And I wanted to ask. I wanted to tell her no, I wouldn’t sell her ket, and what does she want ket for anyway? But . . . I needed the money. And she was nice, but she wasn’t my friend. And I figured it wasn’t any of my business anyway, right? What’s the Freak doing asking if the Queen is alright? So I just — I sold her the stuff.” Eddie shrugged. The story tasted bitter on his tongue. Steve stayed silent, waiting.
“And then she vanished.”
“Vanished?” Steve said, clearly startled. “Like, what . . . into thin air?”
Eddie shrugged again. “Pretty much. Cops thought she ran off — there was a bag and a bunch of clothes missing from her house, toothbrush, stuff like that. It turned out her mother was sort of awful, and she had all these problems at home. Basic runaway shit, right? Except it got out that we’d been seen together, the day she disappeared, and her shithead boyfriend Jason claimed I’d corrupted her with the Devil, that I’d gotten her into drugs, that I’d killed her and covered it up. And so The Freak stopped being a weird little nickname and became, like, a brand.” He paused and frowned at his own phrasing. “Like a cow brand, not like an Instagram Influencer brand. Anyway, Jason actually had me and my uncle Wayne run out of town. The cops didn’t do anything to stop him from vandalizing our trailer and sitting outside with his headlights on, his goddamn pistol in the front seat. So we packed our bags and fucked off before he could make good on the threat. And I failed senior year. The, uh, first time.”
Steve was perfectly still where he was leaned against the wall, face unreadable. Finally, after a long moment, he said, “I’m really sorry, Eddie.”
Eddie shook his head. “It was a long time ago,” he said back.
“Did you ever find out what happened to her? Chrissy?” Steve looked genuinely curious — like he wanted to know where the girl had gone, wanted to know if the story had a happy ending.
Except life wasn’t neat like that. “No. Never heard from her again. She was eighteen, so they didn’t really put a lot of effort into looking for her — said she had every right to leave and not tell anyone where she was going.” He shrugged. “The shithead small town cops used to say that nothing good ever happened to a pretty girl out on the road on her own. But I like to think she got a better ending. That she’s somewhere doing something cool, happy and shit, our dead end little town a long forgotten memory.”
“Cheerleader’s Corpse,” Steve said, a look of sudden understanding on his face. When Eddie frowned at him the expression shifted, just slightly, to something more sheepish. “Your third album, the title track, I’d been saying to Robin it confused me. Because it sounds like a murder ballad, but it isn’t — the girl lives at the end, even though the cheerleader dies. You make it sound like they’re two different characters, Jenny and the cheerleader, but they’re the same person in the first verse, you only start referring to them separately in the second one. It’s a metaphor, right? Jenny lives, and she leaves behind the body of who she used to be.” And then here, quoting the song directly, “the cheerleader’s corpse has gone cold in the forest, and Jenny’s on the highway hitching a ride. Jenny is Chrissy.”
“Wow,” Eddie said, genuinely a bit shocked that Steve knew all of that, this early on in their tour.
“Sorry,” Steve said, a little embarrassed, again. “You know, you’re a good writer.”
He felt strangely floored, at that. “Thanks,” he said, softly. And then he took another deep breath. There was still a little bit of the story to tell. “I still feel like. . . partly Jason was right. It was my fault. That she vanished. Because I knew something was wrong, I could see it, and I just sold her drugs and let her go. She probably traded them for a ride, retrospectively, and anyone who offers a ride for ket is probably—” he stopped himself. He didn’t like to think of the bad ending to the story, the one where Chrissy was long buried, unfound or labeled Jane Doe in some back-country morgue. She had to have made it. The only thing he had sometimes was the blind, irrational hope that she’d made it.
“I didn’t help,” he said, after a pause. “I didn’t ask.” He caught Steve’s eye full on. “So, I mean. I saw the look on you. So I asked.”
Steve was quiet for a long moment. “It’s not as bad as all that, Eddie,” he said, softly.
Eddie nodded. “Good to know. But you still go away, and I guess I wanted to know why.”
Steve smiled then — a soft, gentle little smile, one Eddie hadn’t ever seen before. It was, unfortunately, very fucking cute. Eddie wanted to die, just a little. “You’re telling me you hated my guts and even then you still wanted to check in?”
“I just wanted to know if you’re alright,” Eddie said, a bit petulant.
The smile shifted, a bit, to something outright fond. “I’m alright. I did a lot of work to be alright, and it took a long time, but I’m alright. Sometimes I slip a little, if my Dad tries to contact me. But mostly I’m alright.”
"Why don't you block his number?" It seemed, in truth, to be the easiest way out of this, and that Steve hadn't taken it was perplexing. Then again, Eddie had no relationship with his father, so maybe he wasn't in a good position to judge someone else's.
Steve frowned a bit thoughtfully here, like he hadn't even really considered that an option, before. "He's my dad," he said, after a beat. Like that was enough of an answer. Like that meant Steve had to keep the door open, somehow. "And," he continued, before Eddie could butt in to say that being half made of the dude's sperm didn't mean Steve owed him anything, "I guess maybe I think one day he'll call with some news I need, or something. About my mom. Or maybe he'll call to apologize." He shrugged, again. "I guess that's dumb."
“No," Eddie said. “I get that." There was a long time in his life where he'd been waiting for his dad to show up, hat in hand, ready to make amends. He'd given up on that, but everyone had their own path to moving forward. Who was he to sit here and judge Steve? Or, well, any more than he already had, he supposed. He let the silence linger, for a moment. "Thanks for telling me.”
“Thanks for listening," Steve said. And then, very softly, "it wasn’t your fault. Chrissy. You couldn’t have known.”
“I could have known. I just chose not to,” Eddie said back.
“She could be out there somewhere,” Steve pointed out. “Doing something cool. Like you said.”
He was right. Again, it was a bit of hope Eddie clung to, most nights. But that was an ending people on got in fairytales, he thought, a bit bitter. Not in real life.
Still, he didn’t point it out. “I’m sorry,” he said, instead. “Robin told me not to bring up Swim Team. I knew it would hurt, so I did.”
Steve nodded. “I’m sorry that your show got sold out because people wanted to gawk at the has-been.”
“Truce?” Eddie offered, sticking out his hand. “Again?”
Steve looked at it, and then shook it. “Truce,” he agreed. “For real this time.”
Notes:
five minutes before eddie's arrival back at the motel steve and robin discussed the near certain reality that dustin made him switch rooms and robin very reluctantly went to go crash with dustin, which she then bitched about all night. in the morning dustin tells the rest of the group they're never bunking together again, which robin vehemently cosigns.
there is more to steve's backstory coming down the bend, because you can't get it at all once. where's the fun in that?
we are getting slightly handwavey about the fact that getting a minor to sign a contract like this is probably 100% illegal and steve would most likely not have any issues getting out of it IRL or at least finding a lawyer who'd rep him - sorry if this reality break bothers you, but i am willing to ignore actual contract law for the sake of ~drama.~ think of it as half steve being in a jojo situation where he really can't get out of the contract legally and half steve deciding that taking the path of least resistance is easiest when it comes to his dad.
truce two point oh is already off to a much more promising start than truce one if only because this time eddie will have the slight fear of god that max mayfield might literally kill him if he breaks this one.
Chapter 10: Indianapolis (THE WORLD'S MOST ILL-ADVISED PARENT TRAP)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Eddie woke up to a text from Dustin saying that Hop and Will had done a breakfast run and come back with coffee and pastries, and that everyone was gathering in the parking lot to eat and then leave.
And then, five seconds later, a second text that read PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN’T KILL EACH OTHER STEVE IS NOT RESPONDING RN.
He rolled his eyes. we’re good, he texted back. wrkd it out. steve’s fine, dumbass.
Across the motel room, perched on the edge of the other bed tying his shoes, Steve was frowning at his phone. “Is it too late to make him think you killed me and hid the body last night?” he asked. “I feel like I could get an extra hour of sleep, if we do it right.”
“Oh damnit,” Eddie said. “That’s way funnier, why didn’t I think of that?”
They packed up and headed out to the parking lot, where everyone else was already assembled. As they exited, every single person’s head swiveled to look at them.
Steve rolled his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, to the assembled crowd, “you can’t get in one fight with a guy.” And then he, bizarrely, knocked his shoulder into Eddie’s, like they were pals or whatever, and headed to snag half a croissant straight out of Henderson’s hand.
Max caught Eddie’s eye as he grabbed his coffee. “You asked?”
“I asked,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow, like and?
“And you were right, and I was wrong.”
“Don’t forget that,” she said. “Important life lesson there. I am always right, and you will always be wrong.” But then she handed him a slice of lemon loaf, before she left to cross the parking lot, back towards Dustin and Lucas, so he figured all was mostly forgiven.
After all, it wasn’t really a tour if you didn’t have one weird, awkward, massive fight, right? The last time Corroded Coffin had traveled for a show he and Gareth had stopped speaking for a night because Eddie had said he thought Nevermind was overrated, and Gareth had claimed he was just trying to be contrary.
Not as dramatic, really, but still a big fight. Turned out Gareth really loved Nirvana, who knew?
Hop clapped his hands together and said, “alright, folks, lets get this show on the road. Detroit ain’t close.” It was their longest drive in a few days, four and a half hours, give or take traffic.
Across the parking lot Henderson, Mayfield, and Sinclair had their heads bent together. Like he could sense Eddie’s eyes, Henderson looked up, that familiar plotting face of his on, and started making his way across the parking lot, the other two following behind.
“Shit,” Eddie said out loud, to no one at all.
“Eddie,” Dustin said, voice dripping with a fake innocence Eddie saw straight through, thank you very much. “I have a proposal for van formation today.”
“Van formation,” Eddie muttered under his breath, because it was a completely ridiculous thing for someone to say as seriously as Dustin had said it. Then, louder, “what, you want to drive or something? I didn’t think you had a license, pipsqueak.”
“I was just thinking,” Dustin continued, ignoring the dig, fake innocence still firmly in place, “that we could all use a bit of time to get to know each other, you know? If we’re going to be touring together.”
“Ohkay,” Eddie allowed, unsure where this was going still.
“So, Max here has offered to take one of the vans with Gareth and Jeff in it.”
“And El,” Max cut in. “And Lucas, I guess.”
“Five years of dating and I still get relegated to I guess,” Lucas said, with a put-upon little sigh. Max just slugged him in the arm, not even looking his direction. Lucas winced dramatically, staggering a few steps away like Mayfield had arms of steel.
Which, hell, considering how she drummed . . . maybe she did.
“Then Hopper and Joyce get Will and Mike,” Dustin said.
“Sure, fine,” Eddie said, annoyed that they were still talking about this. “So, what, that means my car has—”
Oh.
God, Eddie really should have seen that one coming.
“Me, Robin, and Steve, yeah!” the kid said, all bright.
What, was Dustin’s plan was to Parent Trap Eddie and Steve into being friends?
Oh, shit, wait, that was absolutely his plan.
Four and a half hours in a car with Steve, who he only just managed to shake hands with, for real, the night before was sort of . . . daunting. Like, who knew how quickly they might go back to annoying each other if they were directly exposed to each other like that?
Besides, he sort of resented the implication that he and Steve had to be friends. Was it not enough for these kids that Eddie no longer hated him? Could they not simply exist as coworkers?
As if to answer that question, Dustin spoke again. “This tour is going on forever, and it’ll be a lot more fun if you two, like, hang out and talk and stuff and don’t do that weird thing where you stand on opposite sides of the room with your arms crossed and snip at each other. And I really think if you tried you’d find that you and Steve have a lot in common, now that you don’t hate each other!”
“For instance,” Steve cut in, suddenly appearing at the outside of their little circle, wearing a huge pair of aviator sunglasses that he’d apparently pulled from hammerspace, “I’d bet twenty bucks we both find you annoying as hell right now.”
“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Eddie said, nodding. “Unless you want to be out twenty bucks, I guess. In that case, have at.”
Mayfield rolled her eyes like they were all being stupid. “Look, it’s simple: Dustin wants his brothers to be besties, and I want to get through this long-ass tour without killing either of you because you’re being weird and annoying.”
When he looked up he thought he saw the faintest dusting of pink across Steve’s cheekbones, a slight flush of embarrassment, hidden mostly behind the dark frames of his glasses.
The blush was sort of cute.
Wait, no. No, bad thought. Bad, bad thought.
While Eddie had hated Steve it hadn’t really mattered, the way his stomach had swooped just a little at Steve’s boyish smiles during that first tryout. Or the slight spike in his heart rate when Steve had winked at him on stage in Columbus, after Lunchbox’s dramatic pause, even though there'd been something a bit mocking about it, too. Or the way the strip of Steve’s stomach in that tiny t-shirt he’d bought and had yet to actually wear had sort of broken Eddie’s brain entirely.
He had 100% already thought this before, but it beared repeating: it was an objective statement of fact that Steve was hot, okay? You didn’t get to be as famous as he got to be if you weren’t hot. Or, at least, hot in that way that weird British musicians got to be hot. You know, where they kind of weren’t hot, they were more, like, greasy-looking, or what people called editorial, which really meant sorta ugly, but they wore nice clothes and had a strange charisma that carried them through life? But Steve wasn’t even weird British musician hot! He was just regular, corn-fed all-American boy hot.
It was also an objective statement of fact that on the list of people it was a bad idea to develop crushes on bandmates and straight men were among the two highest. Eddie had learned the latter the hard way, through years of agonizingly embarrassing middle-and-high school crushes that he’d written hundreds of terrible songs about, none of which would ever see the light of day.
He’d never technically had personal hands on experience with the former, because Gareth and Jeff and Petey had pretty immediately felt more like family than anything else and also because, tragically, his type tended towards pretty boys, not metalheads — he was always more interested in people who didn’t remind him too much of himself.
(Steve was quite pretty. And not into metal at all. Bad news bears, all around.)
But he’d played with bands who were fucking, and the occasionally terrible tension in those was enough to convince him it wasn’t really worth it.
The thing was that finding Steve objectively hot and hating his guts had been livable, because Eddie understood that it was merely an aesthetic attraction and would fundamentally never develop into a real crush. You can’t crush on people you hate, right?
But if Dustin had his way and managed to make Steve endearing to Eddie, well, that was a recipe for making tour very uncomfortable, and also possibly for wrecking the next Corroded Coffin album by making him only capable of writing songs about yearning, which was not a very metal topic.
(Rainbow In the Dark did not fucking count, okay?)
The thing was that now that Eddie knew about Steve’s situation, he couldn’t talk himself out of this by thinking something like he’s a stupid rich kid douchebag. Because Steve wasn’t. Steve was a working musician, another guy out on the road trying to make it, who just happened to have nice hair and nice arms and be sort of exactly Eddie’s type, physically, and, quite possibly, personality-wise, if Eddie let himself find Steve’s bitchiness endearing instead of irritating.
He’d need a new strategy.
STOP FINDING HIM HOT he demanded his brain.
His brain ignored the demand.
Fucking brain.
“Eddie and I are fine,” Steve said, sounding slightly more annoyed, now. “Is that really not enough for you guys? You need us to be, what, best friends too? Make each other friendship bracelets?”
“I’ll make yours pink,” Eddie said, gamely. Steve sent what would have probably been a brutal scowl at him, if his eyes weren’t blocked by the sunnies.
“Look,” Lucas said, holding his hands up, placating. “It’s a long tour, and we’re all gonna need to bunk up in rooms together and ride in different cars at different points. All we’re saying is that we’d like to feel comfortable leaving you two alone in a room without worrying that while we’re not looking you’re going to kill each other.”
“Ugh, fine,” he said, before Steve could argue any further. Mostly because he had a feeling this conversation was going to go in circles, and the kids were absolutely going to be more relentless than he felt like being. “We will do your little team building exercises, or whatever.”
“I’m not doing trust falls,” Steve said, frowning. “I saw you literally get distracted by something shiny during rehearsal the other day, you will 100% drop me.”
“I would not drop you,” Eddie snipped back.
Max raised an eyebrow as if to say, see? He supposed that this little bitching at each other wasn’t helping their argument against the kids.
“This is banter,” Steve defended. “This is, you know . . .” he trailed off, argument deflating a bit as he searched for something else convincing to say. “Friendly,” he finished, after a moment.
“I will believe it’s friendly banter if you two get through a long car ride without killing each other,” Max said, simply.
“You just want to drive,” Steve whined. “And you know I will never, ever ride in a car with you again.”
“You are such a drama queen, Harrington,” she said back.
“She’s a menace,” Steve said, to Eddie this time, sotto voice but still purposefully loud enough for Max to hear. “She only passed her driving test because she threatened the instructor with physical violence.”
“He was a sexist douchebag!” She stomped her foot, here, hilariously enough, a strangely childlike gesture. “And his fail was bullshit, no one goes the speed limit on that road, if I’d been going thirty miles an hour I’d be dead.”
“And if you ever ride in her car you’ll be dead,” Steve finished, grave. He placed his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “If you care about Gareth and Jeff, I would tell them to buckle their seatbelts. Maybe buckle into two seatbelts, if they can.”
Max tossed her hands up with a frustrated groan and stomped off towards one of the vans. Steve watched her go with a little smirk, hands still on Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie tried not to look at the hinge of his jaw and failed, sort of miserably.
“Anyway,” Dustin said. Steve finally let his hands drop, turning to face the kid more fully. “Now for the first test in Operation: Make Steve and Eddie Friends.”
“You named it?” Eddie asked, incredulous.
“Dustin loves a good operation,” Steve said, with a shrug. “Although most of them end in total failure.” And then, to Henderson, “or do I need to remind you of Operation: Get Steve and Robin Together?”
Henderson rolled his eyes and huffed an unimpressed sounding noise. “That wouldn’t have been such an abject failure if you’d just told me she was a lesbian, Harrington.”
“Not my secret to tell, dude,” Steve said back, grinning. “And you can’t use lesbians as an excuse for the failures of Operation: Replace Mews With Mews II or Operation: Secretly Buy Suzie a Burner Phone.”
“These aren’t very creative operation names,” Eddie said, frowning down at Henderson. He really thought the kid would have more in him, go for stuff like Red Eagle or Rainbow Twilight. Although, actually, that last one kind of sounded like a My Little Pony. Maybe Eddie also wasn’t good at naming operations?
Then the names actually registered. “Wait, what, you bought your girlfriend a fucking burner phone?”
“Her parents are very religious!” Dustin defended. “Back when she lived with them they wouldn’t let her text!”
“And they found the phone within a week and became convinced Dustin was trying to kidnap their daughter,” Steve added. “I had to make a lot of pleading phone calls so they didn’t get his mom involved.”
“We can discuss these delightful stories from our past in the car,” Dustin groaned. “And the Mews operation would have worked if you weren’t such a sucker for my mom’s guilt face, man.”
“Claudia and I don’t keep secrets from each other,” Steve said, prim, nose actually raised into the air.
“The test is: who’s driving?” Dustin said, holding up the van keys in front of him and ignoring Steve’s last point entirely.
Oh. This was an easy test.
“Me,” Eddie said.
“Me,” Steve said, at the exact same time.
They shared a glance. Or, really, Eddie shared a glance with his own reflection, mirrored in Steve’s stupid fucking sunglasses.
Ah. Okay, calling it a test made more sense now.
“You spent like the entire trip to Columbus driving twenty-five miles over the speed limit,” Steve said, crossing his arms in a bitchy little way.
“Who cares?” Eddie scoffed back.
“You had Dustin in the car!” Steve said, tossing a hand up, like Dustin was a child who needed to be in a carseat and not a twenty-one-year-old adult.
Robin had chosen this moment to slide her way into the conversation. “Steve really wasn’t a fan of your driving,” she said, moving to lean her full body weight against the aforementioned man. “He complained about it for like, twenty minutes.” She dropped her voice into a truly terrible impression of him. “Eddie’s so reckless, does he think we’re street racing?”
Steve scowled at her, but still shifted, lifting an arm up and dropping it over her shoulders so she could cuddle into his side more effectively.
He kind of understood why Dustin had tried Operation: Get Steve and Robin Together. Well-intentioned, if horrendously misaimed.
“Twenty-five over the speed limit on the highway is, like, barely over the speed limit,” Eddie argued back. He had honor to defend here, okay? You could say a lot of bad things about him, but you couldn’t say he was a bad driver. He was a great driver. Ultra-defensive. So defensive he was offensive, really, in both senses of the word. One of the only good things his dad had done was taught him how to drive.
And hotwire a car, but that hadn’t really come up as a needed skill in Eddie’s life.
At least, not yet.
“Steve doesn’t like anyone else’s driving,” Robin said.
“He’s a control freak,” Dustin agreed, easily. “Likes to have us all under his wing. Back at camp he’d stay up half the night until he was sure we’d all fallen asleep because he was convinced we’d sneak out and get lost in the woods.”
Oh, god damnit. That was kind of sweet.
Steve looked horrendously embarrassed, that pink flush back with a vengeance, creeping down his neck now, too. “I was responsible for you!” he argued back.
“You two have to figure this out,” Dustin said, “because neither Robin or I even know how to drive, and you’re both super, super weird about driving. So,” he held the keys up again, “who’s it gonna be?”
Eddie once again looked at Steve. Steve was, probably, giving him quite a scrutinizing look, under the glasses. Still a bit hard to tell, really.
The smart thing to do would be to play Dustin’s game. To offer driving off to Steve, hands open, a clear gesture of peace. How could we hate each other if I’m letting him drive? he’d ask Dustin, and Dustin would grumble that it was a good point, and that would be that.
But. But.
Eddie’s pride, man! Was he really going to be stuck with Harrington’s grandma-ass driving? The ride to the thrift store the other day had been agony — Steve actually slowed down at yellow lights, like some kind of sociopath, or something.
The way he saw it, he’d already ceded a lot of ground to Steve, right? He’d let Steve into the band, he’d let Steve on the tour, he’d stopped actively hating him. He didn’t have to cede driving to him too, did he?
Like he could read Eddie’s thoughts, Steve nodded once, decisive, and said, “rock, paper, scissors.” He shrugged at the confused look Dustin shot him. “That’s the only way to solve it, right? Sacred, true, and fair. Can’t cheat at it. And if we argue about who’s the better driver, we’ll all die of old age standing in this parking lot.”
Fair enough. “Alright,” Eddie said. “Hit me.”
He could win rock, paper, scissors. He was a master at rock, paper, scissors.
Thirty seconds later, he learned that his tried-and-true strategy of always do rock was, perhaps, not as foolproof as he thought. Dustin handed the keys over to Steve, who grinned, all cocky arrogant asshole, in Eddie’s direction.
The look did still send a little spike of rage up Eddie’s spine. Unfortunately, though, there was just that little swoop in his stomach again.
Ah, fuck. Not good, not good, not good.
“Shotgun,” he said, mouth going faster than his brain.
Ah, double fuck. Why the hell had he done that? Signed himself up to sit directly next to Steve for the entire duration of the drive?
Steve raised his eyebrows. Dustin did too. Robin just scowled at him. He gestured at her, sort of lamely. “Buckley’s beat me for shotgun before, I can’t keep losing to her you know? Gotta have some sort of victory.”
“Sure, Munson,” Steve said, after a slight pause, sounding skeptical as all hell. “Whatever you say.”
“Are you morons done?” Max shouted from across the parking lot, leaning against another van. “I think Hop’s gonna have an aneurysm at how much daylight we’ve burned.” She dropped her voice into a deeper tone at the end of it, mocking Hop.
“I don’t sound like that, Mayfield!” Hopper yelled back.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re going,” Dustin said.
They clambered towards the van, bags loaded already. As they got there, Steve shuffled ahead and popped the passenger door, bowing at the waist a little dramatically as he held it open for Eddie. “Your chariot,” he said, with another grin.
Which was probably all part of the bit, to make Dustin feel sure that they didn’t hate each other, for real. And the move in all it’s stupid goofiness should have made Eddie’s fluttering stop, should have served as a reminder that Steve was deeply uncool and not crush worthy at all. But it did the opposite. Eddie felt his face go red, like a girl being led into a limo at prom, weirdly touched by the entire, extremely lame move. Steve’s smile softened, just a touch, and the bow had moved his glasses so Eddie could see his eyes, a little, over the top of the frames, soft and brown and deep, and looking at Eddie with a strange, sparkling warmth.
It was, maybe, the first time Steve had looked at Eddie with warmth at all.
He climbed into the car and resoundingly ignored how fast his heart had gotten.
Triple fuck.
Notes:
you need a chapter of eddie just going *squidward voice* "oh no he's hot" if you're writing from his POV, i don't make the rules. also i find it objectively hilarious for eddie to completely 180 into having a crush. the man has no neutral opinions on anything. literally every hill is a hill he would die on. he's so drama.
i could make an entire side fic that's just dustin's failed operations. operation find steve true love was declared a failure many years ago. little does dustin know he's restarting it. . . right now. in [redacted] chapters when this ends the way you know it ends dustin is going to look back on the moment in this chapter and realize he created this monster, and spiral into despair.
Chapter 11: Detroit (INSOMNIACS ANONYMOUS)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
They’d been on the highway for about thirty minutes, and Dustin had been forcing their bonding by peppering them with questions to answer and discuss, like an icebreaker exercise, or something. They’d started boring, like: what’s your favorite color? (Eddie went with red, which had caused Steve to scoff and point out he literally only wore black, like your clothes were only allowed to be your favorite color; Steve went with blue, which both Eddie and Dustin said was boring, so then Steve tried to elaborate which type of blue — not robin’s egg, which Robin had taken fake offense to, but light, but not, like, pastel? — before eventually giving up and just telling them to shut up.)
Before long, though, Dustin had started to get into the topics that he knew would be controversial. For instance:
“No, no, no, Steve, I’m sorry, Carly Rae Jepsen? Your pick for best album of all time cannot be by the chick who did Call Me Maybe.”
“No one disrespects Carly Rae in my car, Munson,” Steve snapped back, sounding genuinely annoyed. “Emotion is a perfect pop album. And also, the question wasn’t greatest album of all time, it was to name a personal favorite, which I did!” He took his hand off the wheel to point accusingly in Eddie’s direction. “You can’t just say Black Sabbath for every musical question and then call my taste into question.”
“Paranoid is, objectively, the greatest album ever made,” Eddie scoffed. “War Pigs is a perfect song. I love it.”
“I know, man, you made me learn the bass line,” Steve groused. “Your Ozzy obsession is bordering on weird, you know that? Did you used to watch his reality TV show, too?”
Eddie hadn’t, but that had been mostly because Wayne hadn’t bothered to get cable until 2010. Not that he’d ever admit that to Steve.
In the back of the van, Robin made a long, low groaning noise. “Dustin, you’ve created a monster. A weird, two-headed monster that can’t stop fighting its other head over music. They will never shut up about this now.”
Eddie turned in his seat to meet her eye. “Okay, but am I the head that always lies or the head that always tells the truth?”
“Steve’s a terrible liar,” Dustin said, easily, “he’s the truth head.”
“I am neither head!” Steve said, sounding frustrated about the whole thing.
“Accept your fate as truth-head, Harrington,” Eddie said. He had a strange instinct to reach over and pat Steve’s shoulder, reassuringly, which he curbed. “Anyway, I still can’t believe your favorite album is Emotion.”
“One of them,” Steve said, half under his breath. And then, louder, “it’s a good album!”
“Okay enough,” Robin said, leaning forward. “If one of you says another thing about this I’m going to die of boredom. Let’s talk about anything else.”
“Like what?” Steve said. As he said it, he stifled a yawn, just a little, half-hidden behind his hand.
Robin smacked his shoulder. “Okay, like how about — did you sleep at all last night?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “I slept fine, mom,” he said.
Dustin scoffed loudly. “Yeah, sure, you did.” And then, turning to Eddie, like Eddie had asked, the kid said, “Steve’s got occasionally debilitating insomnia.”
“It’s fine,” Steve shot back, sending a glare to Henderson through the rear view.
Eddie thought about it for a moment; they’d bunked together but he hadn’t noticed whether or not Steve had actually gone to bed, after their awkward little talk. He’d been so tired he’d conked out within like fifteen minutes; when he’d woken up Steve was already in the shower. So he supposed that while he was dead to the world, Steve was a foot away tossing and turning in the other bed. Weirdly, Eddie felt kind of bad about that, even though he knew from personal experience there was very little someone could do about someone else’s inability to sleep. “I didn’t realize,” he half-muttered. “Sorry.”
Steve glanced at Eddie, expression softening a bit. “Really, it’s fine,” he said, like he understood that for some bizarre reason Eddie needed to be reassured of that fact.
Robin was looking between them with a furrow of her brow. For a moment Eddie thought she’d say something, point out how strange it was that suddenly Eddie cared about Steve’s sleep habits at all — because, to be honest, even Eddie found it a bit strange. Instead she just met Eddie’s eye and frowned a little, before clearly deciding to drop it.
“Well,” Eddie said, sort of lamely, “we can swap off at the next gas station if you need a break.” He wasn’t sure why he was offering, except — well, he supposed Dustin might refer to this as Operation: Be Nicer to Steve. Part 1: offer to drive if he needed to nap.
Steve chuckled and shook his head. “You’re just trying to undo your humiliating rock-paper-scissors loss earlier, Munson, you can’t fool me.” He turned and looked at Eddie again, over the rim of the sunglasses. “You’re not driving this car unless I actually fall asleep at the wheel.”
“Can we not joke about that?” Robin cut in. And then, clearly done with this topic too, “let’s play a game or something. I Spy?”
The drive continued, Dustin and Robin trading off on the worst I Spy game ever played (“you can’t just say cows, Robin!”), and Eddie settled himself into his seat to relax.
And if he couldn’t quite stop himself from checking in to make sure Steve still looked awake and alert every few minutes, well, at least no one else seemed to notice.
---
The usual arrival mess happened in the usual way — the cars pulling in, rooms getting decided. It occurred to Eddie, for the first time, that there was a sort of logic they could have followed for rooms that would avoid the twenty-minute semi-argument they had upon checking in to every motel — Joyce with Hopper, Max with Lucas, Mike with El, Dustin with Will, Robin with Steve and the CC boys together, which you could then stack or unstack depending on how many rooms Joyce and Hopper bothered to get. But Dustin seemed to have a strange desire to constantly swap around, particularly between Steve and Eddie’s rooms. Plus, Max and El wanted to bunk together more often than not and Mike and Lucas refused to bunk together unless they had to, Lucas citing something ominously referred to as the 2018 sleepwalking incident as reason. On top of that, the motels were constantly varying bed types — some places had plenty of rooms with two queens, a few had only single king rooms, some didn’t offer pullout couches — which meant that even with set groups they’d need to reconfigure fairly regularly.
More than that, though, Eddie thought that there was sort of a ritual to the Hunger Games-like fight over room selection as they arrived. Not for the first time, he realized he’d sort of accidentally stumbled into a weird little family dynamic with these people, who seemed to know each other in and out, positive and negative. How else could he explain that Max and Mike both nearly killed him to get him to apologize to Steve despite their constant and vicious mockery of the man? It was little sibling shit, was the thing.
He supposed that sometimes a family could be two parents, a constantly designated babysitter and his lesbian BFF, and a gaggle of children who accidentally imprinted on said babysitter. A weird family, but a family nonetheless.
Room selection was also, apparently, yet another opportunity for Dustin’s parent trap plan to continue, as the kid nearly immediately suggested that he, Steve, Eddie, and Robin take a room altogether.
“Ugh,” Robin said, “boys.”
“Big talk from a woman who once drunkenly told me you get weak if you don’t see Steve at least every other day,” Dustin snipped back.
Rob screeched at this betrayal, while a truly delighted look crossed Steve’s face. “Awww, Robbie,” he cooed, wrapping his arms around her in a way that trapped her arms uselessly against her sides and hoisting her slightly off the ground.
She flapped her hands despite this. “Get away! Your touch repulses me!”
Steve kissed her cheek with an exaggerated smacking sound before setting her back down.
“One of these days we’re getting kicked out of a motel,” Hopper said, and although the words sounded like a complaint his tone was strangely light.
No one actually objected to the room beyond this. As Eddie got handed his key he looked up and met Steve’s eye. Steve offered a small smile — just a twitch of his lips, as if to say, okay, look at us, we’re working on it.
Two nights in a row bunking next to a guy who he’d jerked off to in high school and then irrationally hated ever since. What the fuck was Eddie’s life?
So, yes, anyway — it was all business as usual until they got to the venue in Detroit, at which point they were greeted, yet again, with a big sign declaring CORRODED COFFIN: SOLD OUT.
“Shit,” Steve said, to no one really. It wasn’t quite under his breath, but he said it the way some people sigh, more a reflex than anything else.
“Return of the fangirls?” Jeff asked.
“Probably,” Steve admitted. “Look — I’m sorry. I haven’t toured in ages, I honestly really thought people had mostly forgotten about me. If I’d known—”
He stopped the sentence short. Eddie turned to look at him. Steve wasn’t meeting his eye, was staring up at the sign with an unpleasant, unhappy little twist to his mouth. Eddie wondered how the sentence ended. Steve — what? Wouldn’t have agreed? Would have warned them? Would have gone under a different name? Would have shaved his head?
He looked at Steve’s hair, glorious even after a four-hour slog of a drive. Okay, so probably not shave his head.
“Well,” Robin said, “I crunched some numbers last night and merch was up 200%.”
Eddie gaped at her. “200%?” he asked, like he heard her wrong. Because he had to have heard her wrong, right?
She just nodded.
So he was right, in the end, then. They’d come for Steve, but they’d stayed for the band.
“In a way,” Robin continued, moving closer to Steve and linking her arm through his, clearly trying to ground him a little with touch, “it’s sort of best case scenario, right? We sell out shows because people think they’re going to see, like, some sort of Swim Team reunion. Half of those people are idiots who leave disappointed; the other half enjoy the gig — buy some beers, buy a t-shirt, tell their friends.”
“Ticket sales are up for the rest of the tour,” Hop confirmed. “Sort of to be expected, as dates get closer, but it’s a bigger spike than I thought.”
Robin looked at Eddie, a bit shrewdly, like she was expecting him to say something nasty about the whole thing. “It’s a good thing,” she repeated, clearly trying to convince him. “A body at a show is a body at a show. And most of them probably won’t yell dumb drunk shit at you guys.”
He considered it.
If he wasn’t allowing himself to be clouded with anger and annoyance, he could admit that the words still felt good. SOLD OUT. And sure, people wouldn’t show up, or they’d leave early, but Robin was right, wasn’t she? They were great live, even without Petey — they’d find new fans. And those fans would buy shirts, yes, but more importantly they’d buy the album, maybe, or at least stream it, would come out for the next tour. Converting fans was step one to having fans, and while Eddie appreciated their small and dedicated base he couldn’t help the spark of excitement at having something more. Bigger, better, louder.
Making it, he thought.
“It’s sick,” he said. Steve tore his gaze away from the sign for the first time, meeting Eddie’s gaze head on with a shocked sort of expression. Eddie shrugged. “I was wrong yesterday,” he said, a little softly. “Sold out is sold out. Let’s go make some fucking fans, yeah?”
“Hell yeah!” Gareth yelled, tipping his head back towards the sky. Steve laughed, still meeting Eddie’s eye, and Eddie found the smile a bit contagious.
---
The show.
The show.
The show ruled.
It was, by and far, their best one yet. Without the tension between the two of them he and Steve managed to find a rhythm playing together, a little banter on stage. And it was fun. Anger had been motivating, but Eddie had forgotten how much more motivating sheer joy was. He’d stuck with music all these years because he loved it, yes, but more than that because it was fucking fun, because playing unlocked something in him.
(And something in Steve, too, he saw now — could see it in the way Steve grinned at him from the other side of the stage, shoving his hair out of his face and laughing at some stupid joke Eddie made.)
Hours later he was still buzzing with that joy, crammed into a bed with Dustin, who was snoring loudly at his side. Eddie was aware that it was late, that he ought to be sleeping, but he was too hyped on the post-show high to even bother trying. It wasn’t going to happen, not for a long time anyway.
Across the room, someone in the second bed shifted and moved, standing up and heading for the door. Eddie sat up in time to see Steve’s silhouette dart out of the room. Robin flopped over slightly in the bed, clearly dead asleep.
Eddie considered this, for a moment. Steve, earlier in the car saying he didn’t sleep well and now, ducking out of the room altogether well after midnight, clearly trying his best not to wake any of them.
Well, hell. He was awake too, right? He got up slowly, quietly tossing on a pair of sweatpants as he did so and then digging around his duffle for a moment before finding what he was looking for — one of the joints he’d rolled and packed, for just this kind of night.
The motel they were staying in was one of those roadside ones, where the rooms led out to a balcony outside overseeing the parking lot. Steve was leaning against the railing, a few feet away from the door, and he looked up as Eddie exited, sending a small frown his direction. “Shit, did I wake you up?”
“Nah, couldn’t sleep. Guessing you couldn’t either?” Eddie asked. He felt awkward, suddenly. It must have been strange to Harrington, that Eddie had bothered to follow him out here, right? Like, it made sense in the strange, twisted Eddie-logic of his own brain — he’d been mean to Steve, which he regretted, and now he was trying to make it up the only way he knew how, which was by doing nice things instead, like offering him pot and having normal human conversations. But Eddie was aware that his own logic was regularly not really comprehensible to people who weren’t him. Plus he was terrible at articulating the little mental paths he went down.
Like, right now: Eddie understood his own logic that got him out here, but to Steve he’d just appeared without warning on a balcony when Steve had clearly assumed he was asleep and tried to sneak out.
That was weird, right? Stalkerish?
If Steve thought it was weird, though, he didn’t let it show on his face. He just shrugged, dispassionately. “Not really. Why can’t you?”
Eddie shook his head. “Post show-high, you know? I get jittery.”
Steve smiled, a small thing, like he found this a bit charming.
The idea that Steve found Eddie charming — it did something a little funny to Eddie’s stomach, alright? A sort of strange, semi-gurgle feeling. Almost like he had to burp.
“Anyway,” Eddie said, pressing past it, “I saw you leave and remembered Dustin saying you were, you know, an insomniac, so I thought maybe I’d offer you, uh, a little sleep aid.” He wiggled the joint in his hand in Steve’s general direction.
“You’re bringing pot across state lines?” Steve said, frowning, face creased and serious. “That’s a felony, Munson.”
There was a moment where Eddie’s heart sank, something like fear settling in. Oh, god, Steve was going to think he was some horrible drug addict and bar Dustin from ever being in a car with him again, and there was the end of that friendship.
Steve’s face was stern. So stern.
Wait.
Too stern?
“You’re fucking with me,” Eddie declared, half-certain and half-bluffing.
Steve’s face cracked into a massive grin, his posture loosening immediately. “Sorry, man,” he said, “but it was so easy. You think I’m a real stick in the mud, huh?”
“You don’t even speed!” Eddie protested. “For all I know you’re, like, a hard core law dude, you know?”
“I told you I used to do a ton of coke, Munson.”
“Used to being the operative phrase,” Eddie said. He moved to lean against the railing next to Steve. Maybe a little closer than was strictly necessary, if he was being honest with himself, but, whatever. Closer was better, anyway, because they could talk quieter, would be less annoying to the others trying to sleep.
Steve snorted. “Okay, fine, fair enough. I don’t have an issue with pot, though. Don’t smoke it a ton, but,” he shrugged again, “whatever helps, I guess.”
Eddie nodded and pulled his lighter out to light it.
“Dude!” Steve snapped, eyes wide in panic. “You have a white lighter? That’s bad luck! You gotta get rid of this shit.” He pointed a finger at him. “Spin around three times, spit, and swear. And never bring it into a venue. In fact, throw it out.”
Eddie scoffed. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those superstitious types, Harrington,” he said, taking a drag from the joint. Musicians had a tendency for paranoia, but Eddie always found the whole thing largely ridiculous — wearing a certain shirt or leaving a certain light on wasn’t going to make your show better.
(He ignored his Lucky Pick, hung around his neck, which he’d used to record the first Corroded Coffin album and hadn’t taken off since, and his vest, which he wore on the nights he needed the energy it brought to the world. He found superstitions largely ridiculous, okay, not entirely ridiculous.)
Steve rolled his eyes, a little embarrassed looking, and took the joint as Eddie offered it. “I’m a double whammy, right?,” he offered, almost self-deprecatingly. “Musicians and jocks, the two most paranoid types of people on Earth.”
Eddie felt weirdly floored by the idea of Steve Harrington: Superstitious Jock. He pictured Steve in a letterman jacket, the picture of high school perfection, looking like a character from one of those terrible teen soap operas where all the actors were very clearly thirty. “You’re a jock?”.
Steve laughed, looking at Eddie with a baffled little crinkle in his eye. “Dude, no offense, but my band was called Swim Team,” he said. “I figured jock was sort of obvious.”
Which was fair enough, except — “yeah, but Swim Team took off when you were sixteen, I didn’t exactly think you had time for a normal high school experience in the middle there. I thought the name was, like focused tested or something.”
“Nah, man. The name was actually my idea. One of the only things my dad. . .” he trailed off. Eddie waited for the sentence to finish, for another breadcrumb of the Steve story to drop onto the path laid out between them, but Steve let the thought slide away with a small shake of his head. “And, uh, I didn’t have a normal high school experience, no,” he continued, with a bit of a shrug. “But before my dad got the band together, I was on my high school’s swim team. And track. And JV basketball.” Eddie raised his eyebrows. Steve rubbed the back of his neck, endearingly embarrassed-looking. “Sports were the only thing my dad respected besides music, so it was the only excuse I had to not go home and be immediately set upon by the, like, five different piano tutors I had.” And then, voice getting a little sad. “He made me quit, start of junior year, when he got Tommy and Carol and I together.”
“And Tommy and Carol . . . didn’t go to high school with you,” Eddie said, trying to recall whatever vague memories he had of the Swim Team Wikipedia page, last checked in a three-beer-fueled hate-Googling-rage the night before the tour kicked off. He’d only spent a little time on Swim Team though, before clicking over to Steve’s own page, unedited in over five years and wearing a little banner at the top that said suggested for deletion. The picture had been old and blurry, and Eddie had thought at the time that it didn’t even really look like Steve, at least not anymore.
“Nah,” Steve said. “Dad found them doing some talent scout competition thing, or whatever — does your teen want to be in the next big band? He got their parents to agree to ship them over to our, like, mansion in Connecticut semi-permanently to get things going. And then my dad thought it wasn’t fair that they had dropped out of school to focus on the band and I hadn’t, so he had me drop out too.”
“Wait, you never graduated?” Again, another surprising bit of new information about Steve — not featured in the two-line summary of his early life on Wikipedia. “Hell, I failed senior year two times and even I graduated, eventually.”
Wayne had said it once, the second time he crashed and burned out of senior year — asked if Eddie didn’t want to just let it go and get a G.E.D. “No shame in it, boy.” And Eddie had understood that, really, but there was a part of him that was just unwilling to quit. Didn’t want to prove everyone right about him, maybe — that he was an idiot, that he was useless, that he’d never amount to anything. He supposed in the end that his dedication to music was similar, part of that same relentless drive. You had to spend a long time not making it before you ever started making it, and if Eddie was someone who quit at the first hurdle he never would have gotten past that first, terrible cassette he made, his second senior year. Never would have ended up here, on a balcony in the Midwest on a tour with Steve fucking Harrington.
So he supposed a part of him just assumed Steve had that same drive. Actually, a part of him understood Steve had that same drive. Maybe Swim Team hadn’t been nearly as hard to get off the ground thanks to nepotism, but Steve’s whole post-band career had been built without his father’s connections. There was no way Steve was a quitter, Eddie’s nasty comment the other day aside. Real quitting would have meant leaving it all behind, maybe. Changing his name and moving somewhere far away and sliding into polite society, selling used cars in some suburb and silently changing the channel when his own songs came on the radio.
The man in question looked even more embarrassed, now, and Eddie realized a bit too late how judgey he’d sounded. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Steve was already speaking, again. “Yeah, well, no time with my dad’s aggressive songwriting-recording-touring schedule. He pulled me out. We had this fancy private teacher who was supposed to give us homework and tests and stuff, like kid actors get on set, but in the end dad felt all of that was distracting, so.” He shrugged. “No diploma.”
Suddenly, Eddie thought he understood it. No diploma, no real world job experience, a bad contract that locked Steve into a multiyear prison built his own father. All tactics to keep Steve under Christopher Harrington’s thumb. The man must have been shocked when Steve walked out anyway, must have figured that with all the cards stacked against him like that, Steve would have found the alternative, carving out a life for himself, too hard to handle.
God. It just made Steve more impressive in Eddie’s eye. It was terrible, really.
“Dustin made me get my G.E.D a few years ago, though,” Steve continued, jerking a thumb back at the motel door behind them, where Dustin remained slumbering. “So now I just got a G.E.D. and a give ‘em hell attitude,” he said, with a smirk.
Eddie knew that. Why did he know that? “Is that Supernatural?” He smacked Steve’s arm, dramatically. “My god, are you quoting Supernatural at me, Harrington?”
Steve giggled, a bright little sound that lit something warm in Eddie’s chest.
He ignored that warmth. He ignored it hard. “Oh my god, you are such a dork,” Eddie said, with a groan. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were cool.”
“Did you ever think I was cool?” Steve pointed out, reasonably. “I wore a polo shirt to a metal band tryout.”
“Well—” Eddie started.
“I know the words to every Carly Rae Jepsen song,” Steve continued. “It’s not just Emotion, dude, it’s the deep cuts.” He paused and took another hit of the joint, before blowing the smoke out towards Eddie as he passed it back. “I was the lead singer of Swim Team,” he finished.
“Hm,” Eddie allowed, fingers brushing Steve’s just slightly as he took the offered joint. “Okay, that’s all fair.”
Maybe cool was the wrong word. Every new thing Eddie learned about Steve shifted the image in his mind. He’d thought Steve would be a too-cool-for-school, over-it-all, ego-maniac rockstar; instead he was generous, and good, and a bit of a dork, and he cared about his friends so much that he’d agreed to do fill in to save their tour despite the fact that it clearly made him uncomfortable to be recognized.
The worst part was that somehow every dorky thing he learned about Steve only made him hotter, and not lamer, which was so unfair, really. Like, cosmically unfair.
“Besides,” Steve said, not unkindly, “you also recognized the Supernatural quote, dude.”
“Fuck off, Harrington,” Eddie said, lightly. “That dies between us.”
“Trusting me with a secret, huh?” Steve asked, grinning. He shifted, turning around and leaning his back against the railing, now. “So I guess we really don’t hate each other anymore, huh?”
“I guess not,” Eddie allowed. “Moving on up from colleagues to, what — acquaintances?”
“Acquaintances.” Steve said it softly, like he was testing the word out in his mouth. “Sure, that sounds fair. Baby steps and all that.”
“Famously, me offering you pot is step one in the five part Becoming Eddie Munson’s Friend plan,” Eddie said.
“Oh yeah, what are the other four steps?”
Eddie just grinned, miming zipping his lips with dramatic flair. “You’ll have to wait and find out.”
Steve’s smile was oddly fond — soft, and a bit sleepy, warm around the edges. It reminded Eddie a bit of coming in to a warm house after a long time outside on a very cold day. “Guess I will,” Steve said. “You’re not so bad after all, you know that Munson?”
“Yeah, well,” Eddie said back, “I guess it turns out you don’t totally suck either.” He stubbed the killed joint out and gestured at the door behind them. “Sleep aid work, you think? Wanna head back in?”
“I’m gonna stay out here a minute. You go, though.”
Eddie didn’t have a good excuse not to, even though a part of him, strangely, didn’t want to go — didn’t want to leave Steve alone on the balcony, standing by himself in the dark. But he couldn’t say that, because it was a weird thought, so he just nodded and left, kicking his pants off as he re-entered and returning to his spot, lying next to Dustin.
He didn’t fall asleep though; not until long after he heard Steve re-enter and lay down. He lay awake in the dark, listening to Steve’s breath on the other side of the room, until it evened out; and then, and only then, did Eddie manage to drift off himself.
Notes:
oh, eddie, just fall into the crush. let it take you over. you can't escape it.
a liiiiittle more steve backstory here. i'm not kidding about his dad in this fic: it's comical asshole behavior.
making steve "me coded" by having him love carly rae jepsen. he's RIGHT tho.
Chapter 12: Chicago (I'VE HAD THE TIME OF MY LIFE)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The next day, three hours into their drive to Chicago and stuck in some of the worst bumper-to-bumper traffic they’d seen all tour, Dustin said “we should do something fun tonight.” He had his feet propped up on the dash in the passenger seat — he’d only gone with Eddie because, apparently, Max had pre-called shotgun in the car Lucas was driving.
(“Completely illegal,” Dustin had scoffed. “You can’t play favorites with your girlfriend, dude.”
“Bros before hoes, man,” Mike had said, seriously.
Max had punched him in the stomach. No one argued he hadn’t had it coming.)
Lucas had also gained El and Will; Joyce, Robin, Hopper, and Steve were in the other car. Steve had offered to drive so Hop and Joyce could get some rest.
“Slept pretty well last night,” he’d clarified, when Hopper had asked if he was sure. He’d made a little eye contact with Eddie after, too, a small nod that seemed to say thank you, and Eddie had shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, even though it made him feel warm inside, just a touch, embarrassingly.
It wasn’t surprising that Hop and Joyce were tired — they were all tired. Jeff, Gareth, and Mike were all in varying states of asleep in the back of Eddie’s van, and the only thing keeping Eddie going through the slog of traffic was Dustin’s seemingly boundless ability to chatter on about nothing.
Which was not helped by the Five Hour Energy the kid had grabbed when they pulled over for gas. Eddie should have nixed that, really, but Dustin slid it onto the counter while Eddie was paying for a pack of Twizzlers and a new lighter, baby blue, and the kid distracted him by asking, “what happened to your old lighter?”
“Lost it,” Eddie had said. Sort of true, although it was less lost and more purposefully left behind in the motel room. It felt weird to explain that to Dustin, though — he was leaving a lighter behind because Steve was superstitious? It didn’t even really make sense to Eddie, except that he couldn’t stop picturing the face Steve would make when he saw the new one — a small, pleased little smile, eyes crinkled with joy. He thought Steve might turn away, hide it a bit, behind a hand or in the crook of his shoulder. Steve did that, sometimes. Eddie had noticed.
Shit, Eddie couldn’t stop noticing.
It was mortifying, if he let himself think about it, how quickly hating Steve’s guts had morphed into having a stupid little baby crush on the guy. Although if he was being really honest, he’d found Steve hot the whole time, so he supposed it was only a matter of time once he realized Steve wasn’t actually awful that the dumb, horny part of Eddie’s brain took over and started doing horrendous things like fluttering and sighing wistfully and staring.
Luckily, it was a mostly pointless crush. Steve was straight, like an arrow, or like a piece of paper cut by one of the those large, metal papercutters they used to have in elementary schools. Maybe still had, actually. Surely it couldn’t be all smart boards and iPads these days, right?
Anyway, that wasn’t the point, the point was that Eddie having a crush on Steve was dumb, yes, and embarrassing, double yes, but also fundamentally harmless. Nothing would ever come of it, and eventually Steve would do something incredibly cringey and straight, like hit on a waitress at a Buffalo Wild Wings or punch something because a sports team lost, and Eddie’s crush would fade entirely because — ugh, straight guys. It was very, very easy to fall out of like with straight guys. What was less sexy than owning 3-in-1 shampoo, conditioner, and body wash?
(Not that there was a chance in hell that Steve didn’t have a fifteen-step hair care routine. Eddie would put money down that if he snuck into Steve’s suitcase it would be, like at least 10% hair products. Maybe more like 25%.
Also, Eddie had grown up on the Head and Shoulders 3-in-1, so maybe he couldn’t be all that judgey about it. Straight men were awful, yes, but they counted Uncle Wayne amongst their ranks, tragically. No one was perfect, you know?)
In the passenger seat, Dustin had stolen Eddie’s phone and was making a call with it. “Dude, use your own phone,” Eddie complained.
“It’s dead,” Dustin said back, snottily. He hit the speaker button as someone picked up the call.
“’Sup, Eds?” Steve said on the other end.
Dustin’s eyebrows shot up. Eddie felt himself blush, which — god, right, okay, embarrassing. Steve needed to do some horrific straight guy thing ASAP if Eddie wanted to survive the rest of this tour.
“What, you two are on nicknames already?” Dustin said, instead of something normal like hello or hi Steve, it’s Dustin, I’ve stolen Eddie’s phone and am apparently on a one-man-quest to mortify him to death.
“Eh,” Steve said, seemingly not surprised at all to hear it was Henderson on the line. “Thought I’d try something out. No dice?”
“No one calls him Eds, dude,” Dustin scoffed.
“I’m an original,” Steve argued back. “I aim to be, you know, a free spirit, or whatever. One of a kind. Not like other girls.”
“Sure, right, Manic Pixie Dream Steve,” Dustin said, with a derisive little snort.
“Eds is fine,” Eddie cut in. Dustin turned a skeptical look on him now. He shrugged at the kid. “I’m keeping the peace, Henderson.” Which was a lie, really, because Eddie, actually, kind of liked it. Granted, if anyone else had tried Eds he probably would have hated it — Eddie was already a nickname (who needs a nickname for a nickname?), and there was a strong reason he didn’t go by Ed (read: his shithead dad) — but there was something airy about how it left Steve’s mouth. A little fond in tone, soft. Like it rolled off the tongue. Like it was a name Steve might say a lot.
“Hell yeah,” Steve said, clearly quite pleased in his own victory. “Anyway, why did you steal Eddie’s phone to call me?”
“We should do something fun,” Dustin repeated, to Steve, this time. “We have a night off, we should do, you know — group bonding, or whatever.”
“Hm,” Steve said. “I could be talked into something fun. Any ideas?”
Dustin rolled his eyes spectacularly. “That’s why I called you dumbass. You’re, like, the only person who’s spent any time in Chicago.” He paused. “And don’t say deep dish pizza, I am not getting deep dish pizza.”
“Don’t be a hater, dude,” Steve said back. “But fine, I won’t subject you to objectively good pizza that you won’t try only because you’re a costal elite.”
“You’re from Connecticut!” Henderson screeched. “You’re a costal elite too, jackass!”
“What about bowling?” Steve asked, ignoring Dustin entirely. “And then a movie, maybe? We’re in, like, a real hotel tonight, big TV and stuff, could hook up your laptop and pile a bunch of pillows and cushions on the floor. Crash out.”
For the first time, Eddie could picture Steve Harrington: Camp Counselor. Different than both Steve Harrington: Teen Rockstar and Steve Harrington: Fill-in Bassist. This version of Steve knew how to build pillow forts, and probably how to make friendship bracelets. Knew the best way to pop popcorn, and good campfire stories, and road trip games that would make long stretches of traffic like this more bearable. This Steve could wrangle a group of unruly teens into a semi-coherent formation and lead them around on a field trip and convince them all to start a band.
God. Another little unfolding of the interiority of Steve. Eddie was loathe to admit it, but he liked learning new things about the guy — getting new ideas about his life, about who he was, really, beyond the image Eddie had in his head for so long, beyond the blurry, half-faded paparazzi pics from a decade ago.
“Will the bowling alley have cheese fries?” Dustin asked.
“I mean, probably,” Steve said. “Most bowling alleys do.”
Dustin shrugged. “I’m into it.” He turned to face Eddie. “You?”
“Are you, like, really good at bowling?” Eddie asked. And then, as Dustin opened his mouth to answer, “god, not you Henderson, I meant Steve. You’re obviously not good at bowling.”
“Hey!” Dustin protested. “I could be good at bowling! Lots of weird nerdy dudes are secretly really good at bowling.”
“That’s fair,” Steve said. “It’s like the least sport sport of all the sports, you know?”
Oh, Eddie knew. “My uncle’s really good at bowling,” he admitted. “He’s in a league with other guys at the factory he works at. He has a personalized bowling ball. It says Wayne’s World on it.”
“Holy shit,” Steve said, around a laugh. Dustin’s eyes were sparkling with delight, too. “This adds so much to the Eddie Munson backstory. I feel like I understand you better now.”
For the first time, Eddie wondered if Steve felt the same way learning about him that he felt learning about Steve. Like one of those magic eye posters, where you look at it for a long time until suddenly it clicks in your brain, and is something else entirely, and you can’t help but be delighted that you figured it out.
The thought caused a swooping feeling, in pretty much his whole body, like he was standing on a rocking boat on a chaotic swell of sea.
“Oh, fuck off Harrington,” Eddie said, but there was no real heat to it. “Anyway, Wayne is very competitive and I tragically cannot throw a bowling ball to save my goddamn life, which means I’m sort of traumatized by bowling. You ever met a man who won’t let a ten-year-old win?”
“Aww, don’t be traumatized Munson, I can show you how to bowl,” Steve said. There was an odd tone to his voice — like an undercurrent of something, maybe? Or maybe just bad reception, sort of hard to tell. “It’s not so hard, honest. Just gotta get your stance right, you know?”
Eddie had the mental image of Steve behind him, hands on his hip, adjusting his stance, a gentle, fleeting touch on his arm, Steve’s breath on the back of his neck as he murmured in Eddie’s ear—
“Steve, what are you doing?” Dustin asked. His voice was both flat and suspicious, although Eddie couldn’t figure why.
“Nothing!” Steve said back. “I’m just offering to improve Eddie’s game here, Dustin, really—”
“Okay, bye Steve, don’t crash the car,” Dustin said, and then hung up the phone abruptly.
“Dude. What was that about?” Eddie wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Dustin try to exit a conversation with Steve so quickly. The kid loved talking to Harrington.
“Nothing,” Dustin said, hunkering further down into his seat. “Just Steve being Steve. Ignore it.” He said this last part with a little glare at Eddie, like Eddie had any idea what it was he was meant to be ignoring.
“Whatever,” he said, instead of pressing it, and Dustin went back to fiddling with the music and let the topic drop.
---
The bowling alley Steve chose was — well, okay, it was like every other bowling alley in America. In, possibly, the whole world, although Eddie was suddenly unsure they even bowled in other countries. Like, there was no way they had bowling in England, right? They probably did something similar but slightly more pretentious, and with a goofier name, like whifflebucket or whatever. And they probably didn’t have extremely fluorescent carpeting plastered around the place, or pulsing, strobe-like colorful lights, or a giant screen playing what appeared to be a YouTube anime music video version of some butt rock song from 2005. If you tried to put a member of the British aristocracy in a place that proudly advertised both $5 Bud Light pitchers and something called WEDNESDAY GIRL’S NIGHT COSMIC BOWLING, they’d probably die of a stroke or an aneurysm.
Dustin immediately set about dividing them up into lanes. There was very clearly a sort of side-racket thing going on between The Party, betting on who’s lane could outscore each other, even though Eddie was pretty sure the point of bowling was to beat the people in your lane, but . . . whatever. The bet meant that everyone was jockeying for Steve’s lane and no one was gunning for Eddie, who’s lack of bowling skills had been apparently spoken of at length to the group, somehow, despite Dustin’s claim that his phone was dead.
Liar, he thought, glaring at the back of Henderson’s head.
“Tough shit,” Steve said to Dustin, with a shrug. “I told Eddie I’d teach him how to bowl, and you know I don’t break promises. He’s in my lane.” He looked up and winked at Eddie then, and Eddie hoped the horrible lighting of the alley covered whatever the fuck color his face turned at that.
“That’s also probably the most fair,” Lucas pointed out, wisely. “Steve needs a handicap.”
“Are you that good at bowling?” Eddie asked, raising an eyebrow.
Steve scoffed. “No, actually, I’m just a lot better than anyone else here not named Joyce Byers.”
“Joyce is a killer,” Max agreed, materializing at Eddie’s side. “We had to forbid her from competition a few years ago because she kept taking all of our money.”
“Not my fault you kept taking my bets,” Joyce said, arriving with a couple pitchers of the aforementioned $5 Bud Light. Shitty beer, but hey, Eddie was never one to turn his nose up on a deal.
The lanes ended up being split among the older and the younger groups — Steve, Eddie, Gareth, Jeff, and Robin versus Lucas, Mike, Will, El, Max and Dustin (apparently, the benefit of Steve required multiple handicaps, hence the slightly lopsided teams). Hopper and Joyce were bowling on their own lane for fairness, which caused Joyce to mutter cowards at them all, hilariously.
Max began walking around and demanding money from the others, a five dollar buy in with a spread that Eddie couldn’t even begin to understand scrawled on a piece of paper. “I think you might have a gambling problem, Red,” Eddie said as she held her hand out expectantly.
“Afraid to lose, Munson?” she shot back.
Steve appeared next to Eddie and draped an arm over his shoulder, like they were old friends instead of sort-of-maybe-acquaintances-now. “Once I show Eddie how to bowl, we’re gonna smoke you pipsqueaks.”
Max scoffed. “The Eddie-and-Robin duo will sink you, Harrington.”
“You have Henderson,” Steve said. In the background, Dustin yelped hey! and was resoundingly ignored.
“And Lucas,” Max shot back.
“Being good at basketball doesn’t mean being good at bowling,” Steve said.
“Listen to your own advice there,” Max sneered.
For a moment the two of them just glared at each other. “Okay,” Eddie said, after a beat, slapping Steve lightly in the ribs, “leave your sister alone there, Steve-o, or I’m grounding you both.”
The word sister did something to Max, a strange expression crossing her face that Eddie couldn’t quite read. It ended up as a small, sort of pleased smile in Eddie’s general direction though — like she was glad he’d figured out the nature of their thing so quickly, maybe? He wasn’t quite sure. “Whatever,” she said, but she was still smiling. “Your ass is grass, losers.” And then she flounced away.
Eddie looked away from her to see Steve, too, was giving him a strange little look. “What?” Eddie asked. “Was that weird? Just, you two seem to have a sort of Henderson-and-you thing going on, so—”
“No, no, it’s—” Steve started, and then shook his head. “Max has a brother. A stepbrother. It’s complicated. Honestly, I think he’s a horrible dickbag monster who should be stuck forever on a desert island, but that’s not really my call to make.” He sighed, a little exhale of breath. “Anyway, when we met, she was sort of going through it with him, at home, and she didn’t really want to let anyone in . . . I think I forget, sometimes, how far we’ve come, you know? It’s kind of nice.”
Eddie remembered Max’s comment the night in Indianapolis — trailer trash who got the shit kicked out of them. It sent something cold through him, a harsh spike of something more than rage at this guy — hate, maybe. “She still talks to him?” he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
“No.” Steve said. “There was — something happened, a few years ago, that sort of. . . ended their relationship. But I think she still feels guilty about it.” He shrugged. “Made holidays with her mom and stepdad weird, at least. She spent last Christmas with Robin and I, actually, even though the Sinclairs invited her to theirs. She said I’m a better cook, which is total bullshit, Sue Sinclair is a goddess, she can roast a turkey like no one else. We just ordered Chinese food.” There was a soft smile on his face, like the fact that Max had bothered to show up when she had a “better” option mattered to him.
Eddie considered Steve for a moment. Considered Hop and Joyce making sure he ate, Claudia Henderson inviting him for dinner, Sue Sinclair having him over for holidays (which she must have done, at least once, because how else could Steve know how good her turkey was?). Considered Dustin leaping into Steve’s arms at the start of tour and Max showing up on his doorstep on a major holiday even though she could have gone to her boyfriend’s instead.
He’d thought of them as a family the day before, and it kept feeling right. “You really care about these kids, huh?”
Steve’s arm was still around Eddie’s shoulder. The weight of it felt — nice. Grounding, maybe. Strangely warm.
“They’re not really kids anymore,” Steve said, “but yeah.” He looked back at Eddie. “They saved my life. Figure I sort of owe it back.”
And then Eddie considered that: Steve, a counselor at music camp, trying to rebuild his life after running away from the prison his father built him, meeting a weird group of misfit kids and adopting them wholeheartedly. Letting them save him.
“Man,” Eddie said, “you have a real way of making me feel like even more of an asshole for hating you so long, you know?”
Steve laughed at that, throwing his head back. Eddie’s eyes caught on his throat, again. Couldn’t stop himself. “Well, you’re gonna make up for lost time tonight by letting me teach you to bowl, right?” he said. He moved his arm, clapping Eddie on the shoulder again — friendly, bro-y. Not romantic at all.
STOP FINDING HIM HOT he yelled at his brain, again.
Surprisingly, it didn’t work.
---
In the end, Eddie’s team did manage to win, thanks in part to Steve’s coaching (thankfully, mostly hands-off, in the end), paired with Jeff’s apparently long-hidden ability to be slightly better than mediocre at bowling, and despite the fact that Robin accidentally threw a ball so off course it went down a different lane.
It was a strike on that lane, though.
“I don’t feel good about this,” Steve said, as Max handed him the money. “I feel like we lost some sort of moral victory here. Like taking money from an orphanage that’s on fire, or something.”
“You’re only person among eleven of us who bowled over 130,” Max pointed out. “At this point we’re going to have to ban you the same way we banned Joyce.”
“This is why we stopped playing skiball,” Will said, morosely. “I miss skiball.”
“Maybe next time we just don’t put money down,” Robin suggested, “and play for fun instead?” Which caused Mike and Max to scoff at the same time, like this was patently ridiculous. Robin rolled her eyes, clearly giving up.
“Does winner pick the movie?” Dustin said. “Because it’s never good when Steve picks the movie.”
“I have great taste,” Steve objected.
“You’re going to make us watch John Wick again, aren’t you?” Dustin said.
“Maybe this time it’ll be John Wick 3,” Steve countered, with a smirk.
“You’re forgetting Indiana Jones,” Robin cut in, again. “You know how Steve feels about Raiders of the Lost Arc.”
“We watch Indiana Jones all of the time,” Max groaned.
“How often do you people even watch movies together?” Eddie asked. Because, as far as he was aware, Steve had been in LA for awhile. And Dustin and Mike were always crawling around Brooklyn and Manhattan going to shows that they half-invited him to, sometimes, when they remembered. When did they even all have time to hang out?
“Discord movie nights are an important tradition, Eddie,” El said, with a small, serious head nod.
“Mondays at eight pm, and if you miss it everyone gets to roast you for five full minutes the next week,” Mike added.
“No one’s missed one in a year,” Robin said. “Not since Erica demolished Dustin for the entire five minutes, by herself.”
“Erica?” Eddie asked, still baffled.
“My little sister. Anyway, don’t complain about Indiana Jones,” Lucas said, directing the second bit to Max. “You can’t act like you don’t think Harrison Ford is hot.”
“Don’t confuse me for Steve,” Max sneered.
Wait, what?
Before Eddie could ask what that meant, though, Steve was raising his hands in some sort of surrender, cutting in. “Bowling was a team game,” he said, “and I did not win it alone. Eddie, Jeff, Gareth — give us a suggestion.”
The three of them stared blankly at Steve.
“What nothing?,” Mike cut in, with a disbelieving scoff. “You all look like you’d be into, like, weird esoteric high-brow horror we’ve never heard of.”
“I’m not reliving Robin’s Darius Argentina phase,” Steve said, rubbing two fingers into his bridge of his nose like he was fighting a headache. “I swear to god those movies gave me a migraine.”
“It’s Dario Argento, and you have no taste, Harrington,” Robin spat. “You just want to sit around and watch Point Break all day, like a loser!”
“Big Keanu guy, huh?” Jeff asked, with complete and total earnestness, like this was an interesting and fun fact he was learning.
Steve shot him a megawatt grin. “Oh, hell yeah, have you seen him? Crazy hot. And Point Break has Swayze too, so it’s all smokeshow — oh! We should watch—”
“Not Dirty Dancing!” Mike yelled, throwing his hands in the air.
El scowled at him. “I like Dirty Dancing,” she said. Steve fist bumped her. Mike withered a bit, under her intense stare.
Eddie, though, was still stuck on Steve’s last words, a sort of record-skip sound repeating in his brain.
Crazy sexy. About . . . Keanu Reeves?
Math had always, by and far, been his worst subject. It just made no goddamn sense, was the thing, on top of being generally useless. Like, why did anyone ever need to know how to measure a triangle? What was he, a carpenter? Come on. Was it annoying that he had to use the calculator on his phone any time he tried to calculate tip, no matter how much Gareth sighed just double ten percent, dude, like somehow that made more sense? Yes. Had it almost gotten him fired from Starbucks because he couldn’t actually make change, back when he still had that shit job and lived on a couch someone pulled off the street in what was almost certainly an illegal sublet in Philly? Yes. But it hadn’t gotten him fired, because his manager was a pothead college kid who could give a fuck and 99% of people paid with card anyway.
Wait, okay, he was getting away from himself. The point was he was bad at math, but he had to do a little here, right?
Keanu Reeves is Crazy Sexy plus Double Smokeshow about Patrick Swayze plus "Don’t confuse me for Steve" about young, sweaty, Harrison Ford—
“Wait, I’m sorry Steve, are you gay?” Eddie blurted, abrupt.
Everyone fell totally silent.
Right. Because that was a completely insane thing to say out loud what the fucking hell WAS WRONG WITH HIM?
“Uh,” he said, “I really did not mean for that to come out of my mouth that way. Or, like at all. Can I rewind five seconds to make me sound not completely batshit crazy?”
Steve was making a face like he was trying very hard not to laugh, mouth hidden behind his hand. Will, El, and Lucas, too, looked like they were trying to not laugh openly at Eddie, each politely averting their eyes to either the floor or each other. Robin wasn’t hiding her giggles at all, though, collapsing into Steve’s side with them, while Dustin smacked a hand into his forehead like Eddie was biggest idiot on Earth. Max was looking at him like he’d sprouted a second head, or said something completely horrible, which, to be fair, he had actually kind of done. Mike had gone red, and looked like any hero worship he may have had for Eddie had evaporated entirely.
“Oh my god,” Eddie said, dropping his face into his hands. “I’m never going to emotionally recover from this.”
“I’m bi, yeah. And it’s fine!” Steve said, voice disembodied since Eddie refused to look at him. “Really, it’s — you had no way of knowing, man.”
“Right, it’s not like it’s open information, with your—” Dustin started. Eddie looked up, curious to see where that was going, but Henderson was cut off abruptly by Robin careening into the conversation, almost physically, flapping her arms like Eddie wouldn’t realize she was trying very hard to stop Dustin from finishing the sentence.
“Honestly can’t believe your gaydar didn’t pick it up!” she blurted. “Steve’s like, the most stereotypical disaster bisexual on the planet.”
Alright, that was just unfair, Eddie’s gaydar was fine, it was Steve who was the issue, here. “What about him is stereotypically bisexual at all! He’s, like, famously a hereto playboy.”
Robin scoffed. “Yeah, a decade ago,” she said. Which was . . . reasonable enough, actually. “These days he’s the most ethical slut on Earth, I’m pretty sure.”
“It’s true,” Dustin said. “There was a period a few summers ago where I swear Steve was dating someone new every two weeks.”
“Remember Monica, with the jewelry company?” Max asked.
“Oh, what about Jared, who made his own kombucha?” Lucas added.
“Or Issac, who—”
“Okay, enough,” Steve snapped at all of them. “We get it, my dating life is hilarious and pathetic, thank you!” Then he turned to Eddie, and looked at him with pity, which was horrendous. “Eddie,” he said, very gently. “I told you I know the lyrics to every Carly Rae Jepsen song and you thought I was straight?”
Shit. An incredibly salient point. “Well I don’t stereotype people, Harrington,” he said, a little huffy.
“And I don’t only sleep with women,” Steve said back. “Glad we’ve made those points clear.”
There was. . . something happening, with his smile. Behind his eyes. Eddie couldn’t quite place it, what it meant, what the intention of it was.
Before he could dig further, though, Gareth cut in. “Airplane!” he said, abrupt.
Everyone turned to him now. He winced. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m still reeling from second hand embarrassment at Eddie’s outburst. Felt the need to change the subject. But, uh, for the movie? Airplane!”
The members of the Party seemed to consider this. “I’ve never actually seen it,” Dustin said with a shrug.
Robin gasped, a hand flying to her chest. “Holy shit, I have failed you,” she said. “Steve and I have to give up our titles as cool older mentors now.”
Dustin rolled his eyes. “Oh please, you two aren’t cool. You’re codependent thirty-year-old weirdos!”
Steve’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “We’re both twenty-six, Henderson,” he said.
“Same difference,” Dustin said back, with a shit eating grin.
Steve sighed, like there was a massive weight upon his shoulders. He turned to the Corroded Coffin boys. “Airplane! is a good choice,” he said, “but I unfortunately have to murder Henderson now.” And then he launched himself at Dustin while the kid howled, hands flying up to try and protect him from the noogie Steve was trying to give him.
Off the side, Max was pressing her laugh into Lucas’ shoulder, while Lucas and Mike jeered Steve on. El and Will started rooting for Dustin, maybe just to offset the two boys, and Robin tossed her hands up like they were all idiots even though she had a fond smile on her face that she couldn’t quite hide.
Joyce appeared over his shoulder, suddenly, back from paying the bill. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said. And then, with a little smile at him, “being on the road like this?”
She said like this, but she maybe meant with us. Like she was including Eddie in this dynamic, this strange little family the Hopper-Byers had built around an indie record label.
It felt strange, to be included, because — well, because only a few days ago he’d felt so unincluded, like he was just a guest star in the story of these people’s strange and complex lives. But now Joyce was linking her arm through his, easy, and Hopper was coming up and clapping Jeff on the back to compliment his game, and up ahead Steve had managed to get Dustin in a headlock while the kid screeched that he was cheating, somehow, and he thought maybe he was included, after all. That he didn’t need the history or the backstory, that just being there now meant he got to be a part of it.
“Yeah,” he said back, soft. “It’s nice.”
And then an employee came to kick them all out of the alley for being a nuisance to the other customers.
Notes:
the universal adaptation of "stevie" and "eds" is one of my favorite things about this goofy little fandom
you're getting a lot of my dumb personal headcanons in this chapter, including:
-both robin and eddie have terrible gaydar, mostly when it comes to people hitting on them
-wayne and joyce are great at bowling
-steve is weirdly sort of close with the sinclair family
i will die by these little things.
for the record dustin's opinion on pizza is wrong. chicago pizza is great. so is new york pizza. and detroit pizza. why must we pit beautiful women against each other?
chapter title from the song from dirty dancing, which is an amazing movie.
Chapter 13: Chicago (PERFECT BOYS WITH THEIR PERFECT LIVES)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Eddie waited to have a crisis in the hours approaching the Chicago show and found himself strangely calm.
Crisis for two reasons, really: one, though the show wasn’t sold out officially, when they arrived at the venue they were playing at the owner had said they’d managed to sell just over 90% of the tickets. And the Chicago venue was much bigger than any of the others had been. Not, you know, huge, but not the dinky bars he’d played for so long, with five drunks scattered around and no one bothering to clap even once.
Even without being sold out, 90% filled would put this at their largest crowd on tour so far.
He wasn’t a guy who got stage fright, or anything, but every big show he played before had been accompanied by some sort of thrumming, nervous humiliation-like feeling, a kickdrum of imposter syndrome with a strange cymbal crash of shame on top. Even that dumb festival he’d played, where he’d met Dustin — he’d spent the entire morning pacing around and chugging beers until Gareth cut him off and locked him in a room so he wouldn’t be drunk while they played.
The second reason for his crisis was, well:
Steve. Bisexual! Into men!
Crazy!
Right?
The thing was he’d assumed his crush on Steve would go away when Steve did something horrible and straight-boy and became deeply unfuckable in Eddie’s mind. Now that that wasn’t going to happen, he half anticipated a terrible spiral in his own mind about what a disaster it was to have a crush on Steve, how awkward and uncomfortable.
Neither crisis came, though.
They arrived at the venue, and then tuned their instruments. The CC boys and Steve chatted aimlessly through The Party’s soundcheck—
(Apparently Gareth’s secret jock tendencies came out when baseball came up, because he seemed downright offended that Steve was a Mets fan, like Eddie had ever seen the dude watch a Phillies game even once, even by accident. “Baseball is more about hometown loyalty than the actual sport, Eddie,” Gareth said when Eddie pointed this out. Then Eddie pointed out that if that was the case, Steve was from Connecticut and therefore had no reason to be a Mets fans over a Yankees fan, and Steve had just said, “yeah, but my dad loves the Yankees,” which Eddie actually figured made sense. Then Gareth and Steve stopped fighting to bitch about how much the Yankees sucked for ten minutes instead. Which, again, should have made Steve less adorable, really, but something about the bright passion in his eyes as he talked made Eddie wish he understood the conversation better. He had a mental image of himself, parked on a barstool next to Steve at one of those generic sports bar places, asking who the players were and what the stats meant and—
And that was a totally normal, friendship based activity. A normal thing to want to do, with an acquaintance.
He shut the thought down and turned back to the stage to watch The Party again.)
—and then did a little runthrough of their numbers during their own, and it was . . . fine. Eddie wasn’t panicking at all. About either thing.
Because, okay, yes, Steve was into men, but he was also still famous. Or, he had been famous, whatever. Same difference. He probably dated models and Instagram influencers and people who hosted those weird one-off baking shows on the Food Network. He’d never go for a guy like Eddie.
And, really, Eddie was okay with that, because sleeping around on tour was, objectively, a bad idea. He’d been stuck on enough horribly silent long road trips in his life to know — never shit where you eat, right? They were just starting on tour, really, hadn’t even scraped through the Midwest yet, and the tour mattered a thousand times more to Eddie than whatever little schoolboy heart flutter thing was happening with him, right now. He wasn’t going to screw the band over in a vain attempt to recreate a fantasy of his from junior year, you know? Pointless.
(Yes, he was fully aware of the irony of feeling this way after all the time he wasted being openly antagonistic to Steve, okay? Eddie was a lot of things — a great guitarist, an amazing lyricist, an unparalleled D&D DM, and also a raging hypocrite. He was human, alright?)
And about the show being sold out — well, okay, there he thought he’d panic at some point, but it was almost like he was too busy to be panicking. Steve kept roping him into conversation with the others during the Party’s soundcheck, even when it was about shit Eddie didn’t really care about, and on stage Steve kept screwing around between songs in a way he never had before, shooting out the “Buddy Holly” riff at one point, so out of nowhere it made Eddie double over in laughter as Gareth protested that Weezer wasn’t that bad, okay! The venue owner was watching and looking caught between being confused and lightly annoyed, like he thought they’d be more serious (and, sorry, a band called Corroded Coffin? You should expect a minor amount of goofiness, or else suffer a truly suffocating level of pretentious douchebaginess). Hopper, meanwhile, supervising from the back of the bar, just looked downright amused, shaking his head every few minutes.
Eddie couldn’t explain it, but the nervousness, the fear, the imposter syndrome — it just never came. Any moment where there was a lull enough for it to slip in was interrupted — Steve throwing an arm over his shoulder, easy, asking a question about their run of Crazy Train again; Dustin bursting into a loud argument across the room with someone about something; Robin gleefully cackling at Max doing a truly brutal impression of Mike Wheeler.
By the time it was actually show time, the lack of nervousness had evolved into something electric. He was practically bouncing on his heels during the Party’s set, watching Lucas hit an insane high note while Mike actually riffed with it, something he wasn’t sure either of them had ever done before. Dustin couldn’t stop laughing, half-dancing to the music, and while Max was rolling her eyes she was smiling too. And then, in the middle of Zombie Boy, El nailed a fiddle solo that the crowd went totally insane for.
“Holy shit,” Gareth said next to him, like he was really seeing the Party for the first time.
“Right?” Steve said back, beaming with pride, full-on dad-mode. “They’re amazing, aren’t they?”
They were. They really were. Which Eddie made sure to say as they got onto stage themselves, a handful of songs into their set.
“Folks, one more big hand for The Party, am I right? Those kids are something else, aren’t they?” He gestured a hand lazily towards stage left, where the band was gathered, watching them. Dustin gave him a huge, toothy grin, Lucas shot a little thumbs up, and El and Will sent twin little waves, both smiling wide. “You know,” Eddie continued, “Stevie here basically made that band? Discovered them at summer camp, of all places, isn’t that wild?”
On the other side of the stage, Steve was wrinkling his nose at Eddie. “Stevie?” he asked.
“Had to get you back for Eds,” Eddie replied. Which was true, sort of, but really, the nickname had just kind of felt right. Maybe that had been why Steve had been so quick with Eds earlier, he wasn’t sure. And maybe it was overly affectionate, more than their barely started friendship really required. But it had slipped out, easy in Eddie’s mouth so, whatever. He was sticking with it.
Steve just shrugged, but there was a small smile tugging at his lips, like he found it all amusing.
Gareth cleared his throat, just a little.
Oh, shit, right, they were on stage.
“Hi everyone,” Eddie said, out to the crowd, putting on his best showman smile. “We’re Corroded Coffin. Not sure if you know us already, or if you’re just here because you saw some Instagram post about how we roped in the former king of the pop rock scene to play with us—” faintly, Eddie heard Steve huff a laugh at this — “but either way, I hope you’re having fun and that you’re ready to keep fucking rocking tonight, alright? I’m Eddie Munson, that’s Gareth Taylor on drums, that’s Jeff Monroe on the other guitar, and this, of course, is the one and only Steve Harrington, filling in so graciously for Pete Jones, our usual bassist.” He paused and shot a look over to Steve. “You know, Petey’s one of my best friends, and I miss him dearly, but this hasn’t been all bad, Harrington.”
“Oh, no?” Steve asked, airily. “Funny for a guy who hated my guts a week ago.”
“Fair,” Eddie offered back, holding his hands up before returning to retuning his guitar. “It’s true, Stevie and I did not get along at first, but you know, I’ve gotten over it. It turns out that he’s not an airhead, pop-rock nobody. I mean, you all just heard him shred, right?” There was a scattered cheer or two in the crowd. “So, no, man, I guess you’re not the worst bandmate I ever had.”
Steve shot him a smile — one of his sharp ones, more teasing than anything else. “Aww, Munson,” he said, “you’re just saying that cause I’m pretty.”
Shit. There was a brief, wavering moment where Eddie wondered if Steve could see through him — through the showboating and the wild hand movements and the jokes and into the part of him that did find Steve pretty, found him a bit charming, that enjoyed their weird little back-and-forth bantering more than he probably ought to. Eddie’s crush was ignorable so long as it was ignored — the risk of Steve knowing was bad, though. Because if Steve knew then he’d want to talk about it probably, let Eddie down easy, and then he’d be awkward and embarrassed the whole tour, and it’d be the end of their little . . . whatever this was. Friendship-thing, maybe. Gone would be the slightly flirty back-and-forth and gone would be the late-night sharing of joints and gone would be any chance of having a tour that was something other than crushingly awkward and mortifying for everyone involved.
Steve’s face shifted just a bit, though, the sharpness of his smile fading into something warmer, and he shrugged, like he was letting Eddie know this was all a game, a charade, a fun thing. A pattern they were following.
“Please,” Eddie said, falling into the rhythm, the joke Steve had set up for him. “Harrington, your ugly mug is just distracting these fine folks from the real beauty.” And here he took a long, over dramatic bow to the jeers and laughter of the crowd (and a wolf whistle or two which, hey! Weirdly flattering, actually). “Speaking of pretty people, though,” he said, finally segueing them back into the show itself, “this is a song about a girl I used to know. It’s called Cheerleader’s Corpse.”
And then they were off again, running through the end of the set nearly perfectly. Every mistake they did make felt like it didn’t matter, was laughed off, including the brief, embarrassing moment in the middle of War Pigs where Eddie inexplicably forgot the lyrics and Steve leant into the mic to mock-gasp ”poser!” at him, while Gareth and Jeff giggled, the traitors. But even that couldn’t screw his mood up.
It just felt good. Not scary, not horrifying, not like he hadn’t earned it. Just good. A good show for a great crowd, frothing and moshing and having fun.
After they were done, a full two encores later, Hop dragged them all out to some dive bar near the hotel that he’d apparently gone to back when he was young and still had fond memories of, the type that Joyce chuckled softly at. The floors and tables were sticky and the beer was three bucks a pop and there was a dartboard, and Eddie loved it.
He thought Wayne would love it too, a sudden out of nowhere thought which was followed immediately by a strange spike of homesickness.
He didn’t usually get homesick, really, so the feeling was a bit foreign to him. The thing was that he didn’t miss home. He didn’t really have a home, actually, not in the strictest sense. He’d been run out of his hometown, in bumfuck nowhere Indiana, and Wayne had relocated them to bumfuck nowhere Pennsylvania. He made a few friends, during his second and third tries at senior year in the new town, but they hadn’t been long lasting things. He hadn’t bothered to restart Hellfire Club, his D&D group, and he hadn’t bothered to try and start selling drugs again. Mostly he sat with the other quiet kids and semi-burnouts at lunch, amicable, bonded by the mutual reality of being outcasts, but not close. He’d gone home right after school and sat in the new trailer Wayne had gotten and played music, wrote music, breathed music, because there was nothing else for him, nothing else worth doing.
So going back to Pennsylvania, it wasn’t like how other kids went to their hometowns — how Gareth had a thousand cousins in the suburbs of Philly, or how Jeff posted a photo of him and his old buddies in a bar in their hometown outside Baltimore, the day before Thanksgiving. When Eddie went back, it was just for Wayne — just to see and spend time with Wayne.
He knew, logically, that Wayne was proud of him for following his dreams. Man wasn’t verbose over text my any means, but he’d send stupid little old man emojis every time Eddie texted an update — a single yellow thumbs up, a smiley face wearing sunglasses to denote cool. Still, for the first time on tour Eddie felt the way he felt some nights in Brooklyn, lonely and probably a beer too deep and staring up at the cruddy ceiling of his cruddy apartment. He felt like he’d abandoned Wayne. Wayne had raised Eddie, had put everything in his life aside for Eddie, and Eddie had run out of town the moment he could, not even looking over his shoulder.
This was post-show crash. He knew that. He knew that, knew he was dealing with post-show high’s more depressing cousin — there’s so much adrenaline when you play live, such an endorphin rush, it made sense to feel this way in the aftermath. But suddenly Eddie couldn’t stand it, anymore, couldn’t deal with the suffocatingly humid air in the bar or the sound of the Party and Joyce and Hop laughing like it was all good or the feeling crawling up his throat like he might cry.
So he did what he did best: he bolted.
Not far. Just out the door, onto the street, gasping in air like he’d been drowning. For Chicago it was a surprisingly quiet corner, not a ton of foot traffic. There were no stars in the sky, or anyway Eddie couldn’t see them. He leaned heavily against the wall outside and thought about calling Wayne, but it was late, and Wayne had worked the nightshift Edie’s whole life. Even on the off chance he’d gotten a night off, he probably wouldn’t appreciate Eddie crashing into it with all his stupid, useless feelings, his guilt and his sadness. So he just stood there, forcing himself to breathe, for a few minutes.
Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed, all told, before the door opened and Steve stuck his head out. “You good?” he asked, moving to lean against the wall with Eddie. “Saw you leave a minute ago and thought you went for a smoke, but then you didn’t come back. . .” he trailed off, holding his hands out like, and here you are.
Eddie shrugged, a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Steve had noticed. He had the ridiculous image of Steve scanning the bar, eyes falling on every single person, doing a headcount, and realizing Eddie was missing.
Then, as soon as he had the thought, he realized it was probably true. Maybe a holdover from camp, maybe just part of Steve’s personality, but he had been checking. There was a part of Steve that never truly relaxed, that was perpetually alert. Protective, maybe. He wondered if it should have felt stifling, the weight of Steve’s attention, but he decided it just felt nice. To be noticed. To be among the heads that Steve counted, to be one of the people he cared enough about to check on.
“Post-show crash,” Eddie admitted, softly, a bit embarrassed. Steve raised an eyebrow, like he wanted to know more.
Eddie felt strangely inclined to tell him.
Strangely because — well, look, the truth of it was that Eddie wasn’t exactly an open book, alright? Gareth and Jeff were the closest friends he ever had and he didn’t even tell them everything. He’d learned his lessons the hard way, about being vulnerable, about showing your exposed and beating heart to people. Better to wear armor, to slip on a persona — better to let people call you freak then get to know anything that could actually hurt you.
But Steve had shared so much with Eddie. Stuff Eddie hadn’t even earned really, not with the way he’d treated the guy. And it felt easy, talking to Steve. Like, usually with new people there was this fear that they’d use what he said against him, that they’d find a way to hurt him down the line. He didn’t feel that with Steve. And maybe he should have — hell, god knows Steve had earned a blow or two against him — but he didn’t. It was like he knew, innately, that Steve wasn’t asking because he was gathering intel, or because he wanted to mock Eddie, or because he knew one day he could use every bit of information to win some sort of fight. He was asking because he saw Eddie had panicked and he wanted to help.
And more than that, he got the feeling that if he denied Steve, the man would shrug and go back inside for the moment, but he’d keep checking. He’d follow up. He’d care.
Which, sure, was maybe Eddie’s stupid little crush speaking, maybe a touch of wish fulfillment, maybe a spate of hope, but he didn’t think so. Really, he thought it was just how Steve was — with the kids, with Robin. With everyone who’d let him be.
So: Eddie told the truth. “Got a little homesick, suddenly,” he said. “This bar reminded me of my uncle.”
“Wayne, right?” Steve said. Not like he wanted points for remembering, but like he wanted to check he remembered correctly.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, feeling strangely soft about the whole thing. “He’s a real blue collar guy, you know? Salt of the earth. Loves bars like this. No frills.” He paused, pulling his hair in front of his face, slightly. “He raised me, for the most part. And I was, you know, a really shit kid, so that couldn’t have been easy.” Steve laughed, there, just a soft exhale of breath. He was glad that Steve didn’t try to deny it — didn’t try to argue no, I’m sure you weren’t, or anything like that. He knew some of the story, knew what Wayne had done, so he just let Eddie say it without argument. “Anyway, I just — sitting in here, made me think of him.”
“You must miss him,” Steve said, gently.
Eddie nodded. “Sometimes I think. . .” he started, and then trailed off. Steve shifted, a little, angled his body more towards Eddie like he wanted to know — like he wanted to hear it. “I dunno. Sometimes I think that maybe I should have hung around longer, you know? I graduated high school and left town, like, the day after. Sometimes I think I should have tried to stick it out. Looked after him. Repaid him, a bit.”
Steve didn’t say anything for a long moment. When Eddie risked a glance at him, he could see the other man clearly thinking through something, like he didn’t want to speak too soon. “I think,” Steve said, finally, “that he’s probably really happy you’re out here doing what you love, man. You don’t raise a kid hoping it stays in one place forever, right? Everyone’s gotta leave the nest sometimes.” He turned and met Eddie’s eye. “I think if you’d stuck around, living with Wayne and working odd jobs with him and trying to repay him for raising you, he’d be a lot sadder about that than he is with you out here.”
Eddie considered this for a moment. “I just,” he started, and then cut himself off, a bit frustrated at his inability to articulate it right. “Look, I’m only saying this because of post-show crash, or whatever, but it’s . . . music, right? It’s not a forever thing for most people. I love Corroded Coffin, and I love Gareth, and Jeff, and Petey, but I mean. . .” he trailed off.
He wasn’t quite sure what the end of the sentence was, actually. His whole life he’d pooled all of his time into music with the quiet but certain assumption that he’d never be able to live off of music alone. That was fine — most people who made music didn’t live off of music alone. No shame in the day job, no shame in doing something else to pay the bills on the side.
But he didn’t have a day job, right now. Music was sustaining him. This was the closest to making it he’d ever gotten, and yet he still felt a need to temper the success, somehow, to make sure it was a bit dull. Like, if he let himself get too excited it would hurt more, when it eventually went away.
(He remembered, still, the burst of joy at his father coming back into his life on the back of a motorcycle, looking like the coolest guy Eddie had ever seen; how that joy had been crushed by the scent of whiskey breath, and a harsh hand against his cheek, and a grip around his arm telling him to keep watch, just for a minute, kid. Similar, but different, the joy he’d felt when his mother got out of the hospital, the first time; how it curdled into nothingness when she didn’t get out, the second time. The joy he felt having a conversation with Chrissy Cunningham at a picnic table in a trailer park; the strange, surreal feeling that he might have just made friends with a cheerleader, of all people, crushed violently under the boot of Jason Carver, pistol in his jacket pocket, hissing murderous freak at him across the hall of the community center.)
“I mean, one day I’ll have to get realistic, right? I’ll have to go back to Wayne with my hat in my hand, or whatever, and find a real job. It’s not like we’ll ever win a Grammy,” he said, tempering that joy now. Because, yes, of course, Corroded Coffin was in a lot of ways making it, but it would go away, right? Eventually they’d have to become real adults or whatever. Gareth would want to get married and have kids, Jeff would go to a job that gave him health insurance, Petey would move back to be closer to his parents. They could have this, now, but it would go away. Eddie was used to things going away.
Steve was looking at him thoughtfully. “The Grammy’s are overrated,” he said, after a beat.
And god, fuck, right, Steve had been to them before. Eddie barked out a laugh. “You’re just saying that because you lost.”
Steve laughed back. “No, I’m saying that because everyone there is a dick. And because I lost,” he said. Then, after a slight pause, “you know the best moment of my music career, so far?” Eddie shook his head. “It wasn’t the Grammy nomination, or the Teen Choice Award, or any of that shit. It was years after I left Swim Team, actually. I was at some house party in Astoria because Robin was in love with this girl and she dragged us all the way out there to try and impress her.” He leveled Eddie with a very serious look, now. “I went outside to get some air, and there was this other girl out there, smoking a cigarette, and she saw me and went oh my god, you’re Steve Harrington, aren’t you? And I was ready to do my usual oh, I get that all the time, but before I could say anything she said your album changed my life. She launched into this story, about being, like, sad and lonely in high school and how she had this friend who she had a major falling out with — and anyway, the point was that she told me that Barb’s Song helped her get through it. She’d just put it on and play it on repeat and then she wouldn’t feel so lonely anymore.” He let out a half disbelieving laugh. “I mean, I didn’t think anyone even knew that song.”
“I like that one,” Eddie admitted, soft. He hadn’t really meant to say it, but there it was, out there.
Steve’s eyes went wide, even more disbelieving. “You know it?”
Eddie laughed, here. “Yeah, man, I was a high schooler too, when your shit dropped. I remember thinking that song was more interesting than fucking King of It All, or whatever.”
For a long moment Steve just looked at him. Eddie couldn’t parse the expression. “My dad hired songwriters for a lot of that album, even though I’d written, like, ten songs by myself. Said my stuff was—” he cut himself off, here, with a little twist of his mouth. The end of the sentence was quite clearly not good enough, though, and it made something in Eddie’s stomach sink. "Those guys, they mostly wrote King of it All,” he said, after a pause. “I wrote Barb’s Song by myself, though. My high school girlfriend Nancy had this friend, and we’d gone to this party, the three of us. Barb really hadn’t wanted to go, and her and Nancy got into some sort of fight and she left in a huff and, I mean, she was too drunk to drive, really, but we didn't realize and she ended up getting into a car accident — she’s fine, now, she’s a kindergarten teacher in New Haven — but there was a bit where it was sort of hit or miss. Nancy was so pissed at me. Because the party was my idea, and then because I didn’t go to the hospital. My dad had me in rehearsals and PR meetings, preparing for Swim Team to happen. So that song, it was . . . I had all this guilt, about abandoning Barb and Nancy, and I just put it onto paper.”
He looked so sad, telling the story, that Eddie couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and dropping a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve looked up, clearly a bit startled at the contact, but then smiled, softly, at Eddie. “Anyway,” he said, “my dad barely let the song make the album, I had to really fight for it, but — that girl, telling me that I made her feel less lonely, because I’d written a song she’d related to . . . that was the best moment of my career.” He paused, and rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly sheepish. “Well, that and the first time I saw the Party play live, actually. If that counts.” He looked at Eddie, serious again. “It’s not about winning Grammy’s or whatever, Munson. It’s not even about playing sold out shows or going on national tours. It’s about the one person in the crowd who knows all the words to your song because they fucking love it. That’s what it’s all about. And I gotta tell you, watching you on this tour? You’re gonna have a hell of a lot more people loving you than you had before.”
Jesus Christ. It was just so nice, for Steve to say that. And Eddie could tell he meant it, behind his eyes. For all the snipping and bitchiness that had passed between them before this, Steve really, truly believed what he’d just said.
“And,” Steve continued, “even if this does fall apart — even if you wake up tomorrow and decide actually, screw music, I want to be an accountant—” which was enough to make Eddie laugh, at least — “the way you talk about your uncle . . . I don’t think he’ll ever be annoyed that you went out and chased your dream. He’d be annoyed if you hadn’t.”
Eddie thought about this for a minute — thought about Wayne’s little thumbs up, about him taking the night off and driving out to the dive bar in their town, The Hideout, when Eddie was just a solo act with a beat up guitar playing a lame open mic. Thought about him fronting Eddie five hundred bucks to move even when he couldn’t really afford it. “Yeah,” he said, soft. “Guess I just miss him.”
“Call him,” Steve said, easy. “I’m sure he’d be glad to hear from you.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “He works nights, Harrington, I—”
“Leave a voicemail,” Steve cut in, like Eddie was being dense. “He’ll be happy to hear from you, man. It’s always nice to know someone’s thinking about you.”
Eddie thought of Steve’s phone — of the calls from DO NOT ANSWER, ignored and tucked away but never fully blocked. Almost like he could tell what Eddie was thinking, Steve’s face shifted, just slightly, like — maybe not always nice. Depending on the person.
“He’ll be happy to hear from you,” Steve repeated, almost to himself, frowning down at the toe of his shoe. And then he pushed off the wall and clapped Eddie on the shoulder, once, firm. “And when you’re done with that, come back in and I’ll buy you a beer, okay?” he said.
Eddie nodded. Steve slipped back into the bar. Eddie pulled his phone out and dialed Wayne, and left a voicemail — a five minute ramble about nothing at all that he could practically picture Wayne chuckling at in the morning.
And that should have been it, really, the end of the thing, but when he went back into the bar Steve was caught up in a chat with El and Joyce, and it was Hopper who slid up next to him at and paid for his next beer, instead. Eddie raised an eyebrow, and Hop raised one back. “Steve talk to you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, suddenly slightly embarrassed Hop had even noticed.
But Hop just shook his head, that barely concealed amusement from earlier leaking through. “He’s good at it,” he said. “You didn’t feel even a hint of nervousness about the show size today, right?”
Eddie blinked in surprise. He hadn’t, after all.
“The first time the kids played for a live crowd, El didn’t sleep a wink the night before. She’d always been a really shy kid. Sort of awkward. Didn’t make a lot of friends in school. Wasn’t easy, being a foster kid — she came from a real shithole place, you know? And then being adopted, having to adjust to a new environment. . . it’d been tough, on her. Making friends. Opening up. S’why we sent her to camp in the first place. Before that the only person she ever really talked to was Will. Anyway, I thought she’d be too scared to actually play, that first show they did, this open mic the October after their time at camp, thought it might be a disaster. But then Steve showed up, and he just . . . distracted them all. They were too busy having fun to remember to be nervous.” He cut a discerning eye to Eddie. “He’s good at that.”
“Being distracting? I’ll say,” Eddie half muttered, thinking about the way he felt any time Steve smiled at him funny, thinking about him in that tiny Metallica t-shirt, the single stretch of stomach showing—
Hop rolled his eyes, like he could tell Eddie’s mind had gone somewhere decidedly less family friendly. “At noticing,” he clarified. “Other people. Seeing what they need. Figuring it out, even if they don’t really know.” He looked at Eddie for a long time. “He’s a good kid,” he finished.
It sounded like a warning, almost, like Hopper was saying something grave and important that Eddie needed to hear. But Eddie, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out what the warning could be for. So he just said, “yeah, Hop. He is.”
Hop studied his face for a moment longer and then clearly decided whatever he saw there was enough. He clapped Eddie on the shoulder and steered him over to the booth where Henderson and Will were arguing animatedly about comic books, and Eddie let himself be roped back into the night easily, the post show crash leveling out into something more mellow, his sadness from earlier dissipating into the night.
(And in the morning, when he woke up, there was a text from Wayne. It said nice to hear from you, boy. glad the tour is fun. see you in a few weeks. love you.
Followed by a second text, immediately after, of the sunglasses guy emoji.)
Notes:
you get a chapter a day early because it's about to be a holiday in the states and i cannot rely on myself to for sure post tomorrow. huzzah!
the chapter title is from Disloyal Order of Water Buffalos by Fall Out Boy. i'm making my modern au version of steve violently pete wentz coded and solidifying that decision by using fall out boy lyrics when i can . . . and i am not sorry about it
Chapter 14: Milwaukee (WHAT IF WE KISSED AT THE CULVER'S OFF I-94 IN RACINE, WISCONSIN?)
Notes:
we survived the ao3 ddos attack of 2023 babes!! obviously this is a bit late due to those unforeseen circumstances but big shout out to everyone who worked so hard on ao3's end to get us back online. nice work!!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Onwards and more or less literally upwards they went, piling into the vans to venture north to Milwaukee, a city Eddie had never bothered to visit before. For all Eddie was in essence a Midwesterner, having spent seventeen years of his life bouncing around varying flyover states before he and Wayne fled to Pennsylvania, he never really ventured anywhere in the Midwest outside of where he'd lived, at that moment. It wasn’t like they had money for the fancy, lakeshore vacation homes, nor the time for road trips to see America’s Largest Ketchup Bottle, or whatever. He felt a little ashamed of this fact only when Dustin scoffed, incredulously, when Eddie admitted he’d never had cheese curds.
“Some Midwesterner you turned out to be,” the kid said.
“I am a man of no country, Henderson,” Eddie replied, with as much seriousness as he could muster. “You cannot fit me into a regional box. My alliance is only to the goddess of rock n’ roll and her glorious shores, eternal and endless and borderless.”
“You’re such a dork,” Steve said, leaning forward between the seats to interrupt their conversation from his place in the second row. “But also, take this exit.”
“Gotta piss, Harrington?” Eddie said, raising an eyebrow.
Steve grinned at him, all charm. “We’re going to Culver's, dude. You gotta have cheese curds.”
“Okay, but you’re explaining our detour to Hopper,” Eddie said, already heading for the exit.
Which, of course, turned the whole thing into an extended detour, all the vans pulling over and the rest of their giant group absolutely destroying the serenity of this perfectly fine fast food chain’s middle of the weekday lunch shift. Hopper was shooting tiny little glares at Eddie like it was his fault.
“He hates my guts,” Eddie muttered to Steve. The two of them were crouched in a booth together, alone since Henderson had abandoned them to go bug Will about something, hovering over an oddly intimate shared bag of fried . . . cheese things.
“What the fuck even is a curd?” Eddie asked, louder. “Is it curd like curdle? Is this cheese . . . curdled? Are you trying to poison me?”
Steve huffed an amused-sounding breath through his nose, drawing his eyes away from where he’d been watching Mayfield and El fling fries at each other a table down. “Admit it, Munson, you like them.”
They were, unfortunately, very tasty.
Also unfortunate was the way the booth was set up, so Steve’s knees were brushing against Eddie’s just a little. It shouldn’t have felt intimate. It wasn’t intimate, it was Culver’s at, like, barely past noon on a Wednesday. But Steve shifted, a little, and their feet slid together — accidentally, right? It had to be accidentally — and across the booth he was just looking at Eddie, eyes big and warm and so brown, hair so soft looking Eddie wanted to run his hands through it.
God, Eddie wanted to kiss him.
No, wait. Bad. Bad. Eddie wanted to fuck him. Wanting to fuck Steve was normal, right? It’d been a bit of time since he last got laid, after all — sharing rooms with a bunch of people didn’t exactly lend itself to random tour hookups, and he’d been too nervous the weeks before leaving to bother trying to meet anyone, even on Grindr. Steve was Eddie’s literal walking childhood crush, sexy and in front of him and into men, and wanting to fuck him was like . . . normal! Regular, red-blooded homosexual American stuff. Of course he wanted to fuck Steve.
Wanting to kiss Steve though, that was wading into dangerous territory. Murky waters. Here Be Dragons.
Kissing was. . . something else.
Not that Eddie didn’t enjoy kissing. Eddie loved it, okay, loved when it was harsh and fast, more teeth than anything else, loved the part of sex where you kind of couldn’t kiss anymore, had to just breathe into each other’s mouths, lips barely grazing. He was all about that shit. But only that shit, really. It’d been a long time since he’d been kissed any other way.
It’d been a long time since he dated, if he was being honest.
So, okay, maybe he’d never really dated. He was 27 years of age and the longest relationship he’d ever had was a half-baked situationship with a guy he’d met on Grindr for a year who barely seemed to remember his name, most of the time. The longest relationship where he’d been someone’s boyfriend, where they’d, like, held hands and gone on dates and kissed in a soft way, a sweet way, kissed just for kissing’s sake and not as the lead in to something else?
That had lasted about three months. And it had been back in Philly, ages ago at this point. Ancient history.
It wasn’t that Eddie didn’t want to date, really, it was just that he. . .didn’t date. For lots of reasons. It was exhausting, for one — meeting people, in the modern era? Pretending to feel excited and interested, texting dumb small talk back and forth? Wasting a perfectly good evening you could be out with friends on some rando who might not even bother to pay for drinks at the end of the night, and who half of the time ended up being a decidedly mediocre lay anyway?
And all of that aside dating someone had a tendency to lead to them wanting to, you know. Know you. Asking questions about your life, about your childhood, about your dreams. That had been the thing that had ruined him and the Philly boy — Malcolm, a lovely guy who was studying medieval history and who was twice as smart as Eddie deserved, and who broke it off by claiming Eddie was closed off. “You hide yourself from me,” he’d accused, wounded-sounding, like he was the one getting dumped, somehow.
It had felt dumb, at the time, because Eddie was so patently incapable of being anything but himself, at top volume, constantly. But later he realized that Malcolm had a point — Eddie always dodged questions about his childhood, about growing up. He refused to show Malcolm the songs he was working on, afraid of unfinished things (and he’d not-so-politely ignored Malcom’s slightly jokey question about if he’d ever write a song about him, which was sort of a rude question to begin with, in Eddie’s view). He balked when Malcolm had lightly talked about meeting Wayne, one day. How must that have looked, on the other end of it? Like Eddie wasn’t serious. Like Eddie didn’t care.
It was just humiliating, was the thing. His life. Trailer trash with a shit, jailbird dad and a dead mom; chased out of town by a mob who thought he was a murderer; his silly rockstar dreams, no real life skills and no real plan. The idea of opening all of that up to someone, the idea of being really vulnerable, it was terrifying. So he didn’t do it. Refused to do it. Limited his dating life to random hookups and occasional friends-with-benefits things. Ignored the sometimes sad looks Gareth and Jeff and especially Petey gave him, about the whole thing.
(Petey was a totally hopeless romantic, but he’d also had the same girlfriend since sophomore year of high school, so Eddie didn’t think those looks were entirely fair. We can’t all get randomly assigned to do a project on the French Revolution with the love of our life, okay?)
The point being: kissing. It’d been a long time since he thought about kissing in a soft way. And here he was, having those thoughts, about Steve.
Because when he pictured kissing Steve — which he was doing now, embarrassingly over a plate of fried cheese, Jesus Christ — it was soft, and it was gentle, and it wasn’t the first step in foreplay (although, hell, it could also be that). It was just. . . kissing. Kissing Steve the way Steve ought to be kissed — the way someone should kiss him, with his stupid soft hair and his gentle eyes and his constant concerned hovering over everyone.
And that vulnerability, that fear — it didn’t really apply here, did it? Because Steve already knew so much. Eddie had already offered Steve the horrendous, embarrassing life story he carried around like a sack of rocks, half as a peace gesture, half as an explanation for his general shithead behavior. And Steve hadn’t laughed, he hadn’t been cruel. He’d just sort of understood. Or tried to understand.
He got the lyrics to Cheerleader’s Corpse and said it wasn’t Eddie’s fault. He followed Eddie out of the bar. He made Eddie call Wayne.
Jesus. What was happening? This was supposed to be a dumb little crush. A crush of pure horniness. The type that would go away the minute he got laid or found a nice twenty minutes to jerk off in one of the cruddy motel showers without being concerned that Gareth and Jeff would razz him for it for the rest of the trip. It wasn’t supposed to be kissing fantasies at a goddamn Culver’s.
He pinched himself on the fleshy part of his arm, a sharp reminder to get his shit together.
Across the table, Steve frowned at him. “You good? The curds so tasty you think you’re dreaming, or something?”
“Something like that,” Eddie said back, offering Steve a weak little smile before launching a curd across the room at Henderson to distract them all from whatever was going on in his head.
---
After the show, the post-show high flared up again, this time not just for him but for seemingly everybody. They practically closed the venue bar down, but even as they trickled out no one seemed too eager to call it a night or split up.
“What if we go swimming?” Will had said, with a little shrug. They were staying in an inexplicably nice hotel — well, okay, it was just a Country Inn, but still, compared to the roadside motels it might as well have been the Plaza — that had an indoor pool, looking out onto the scenic views of the parking lot.
Eddie was fairly certain the pool was technically closed this late, but Hop had clearly slipped someone a twenty or something, because they got in and remained unbothered in the low lighting, the murky chlorine smell permeating the night as they chattered lightly. No one had bothered to go upstairs to change into swimsuits (if they even brought one — Eddie hadn’t, presuming they weren’t going to exactly get to enjoy beach days). Dustin and Mike had camped out in the hot tub in their boxers, both rapidly turning red but refusing to move in some stupid game of chicken, while the others mostly sat around with their feet dangling in the water until Max came up and shoved Steve in, fully clothed. He clambered out and pulled her down with him, which led to an all out war that ended up with everyone wet and laughing and breathless.
Eddie probably couldn’t wear this pair of jeans again until they managed to stop for laundry but, hey — kind of worth it, in the end.
After a few hours nearly everyone had left, mostly in small waves as exhaustion finally overtook them. Eddie was lounging in a chair when Jeff and Gareth motioned to him that they were going up. The last straggler was Steve, feet still resting in the pool, leaning back on his hands staring out the windows at nothing.
“You go up,” Eddie said. “I’m gonna hang a minute.”
Gareth looked between him and Steve for a beat, a sort of unreadable expression on his face — like he was remembering how recently it had been a bad idea to leave the two of them alone together — before clearly deciding to shrug and trust Eddie that they weren’t going to murder each other. “See you in a bit.”
Eddie offered a lazy two fingered salute, and the boys left the pool. He waited a moment, to see if Steve would move to go too, now that everyone else had, but he didn’t.
So he got up and strolled to sit next to Harrington, dipping his feet into the pool alongside him.
“Another meeting of insomniacs anonymous?” Eddie asked lightly.
Steve had his eyes closed, but his mouth quirked up in a slight smile. “Not really anonymous if you know my last name, Munson,” he said.
“And we probably can’t smoke pot inside,” Eddie offered back.
“What happened to you being a rebel?” Steve opened his eyes and looked at Eddie, then, expression sparkling with mirth. His hair was deflated from the water, unstyled and hanging damp over his forehead. He reached a hand and pushed it back onto the top of his head, a bit inelegantly.
Eddie sort of liked it, this version of Steve with his hair undone, eyes a bit tired. A slightly more lived-in version of Steve, without the armor he clearly wore every day. It felt nice to see it — like Eddie had exclusive access to a club consisting mostly of the people who’d just been in this room. Who got to know Steve, got to really see him, guard down and body language easy and voice a little rough-edged with sleepiness.
Of course, he didn’t say any of that, because that was all deeply bizarre to say. Instead, he said, “if I get us kicked out of the hotel Hopper really will kill me. I’m too pretty to die young, Harrington. And I don’t think I’m famous enough for the 27 Club to even give me membership.”
“Here lies Eddie Munson, killed by a stern father figure for being a little too rowdy,” Steve intoned, deadpan, and Eddie couldn’t help the burst of cackle-laughter he let out. Steve looked a little pleased at having inspired the outburst. “Alright, Eds, if we’re not smoking pot then what’s on the agenda for this meeting? You going to tell me a bedtime story?”
It was a joke, because of course it was, but Eddie couldn’t help himself. He dropped his voice to almost a whisper, echoing around the strange acoustics of the room. “Goodnight stars, and goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere,” he offered. Steve furrowed his brow, a slight look of confusion, so Eddie shrugged, hoping it looked a little more languid than he felt. “Goodnight Moon? My mom used to read it to me when I was a kid.”
A memory of his, well-worn and soft around the edges now, his mother sat in his bed alongside him, arms around him as she held the book, her hair soft on his cheek, her voice low and raspy from the cigarettes she smoked (Lucky’s, which was also Eddie’s brand, now).
Steve nodded then, another small smile, maybe recognition. Eddie, strangely, had trouble picturing Steve so young — young enough that someone would read him a bedtime story, and tuck him in. And even if someone had, based on everything Eddie knew about Steve’s childhood so far he had trouble believing it was his father, at least.
As if the confirm the suspicion, Steve said “I think my nanny used to read that to me.”
There was a flare of something in Eddie’s gut, then, a bit of irrational anger — he thought even rich parents would want to read their own kids to sleep, right? If they could? Steve’s dad seemed like an asshole, but—
“Not your mom?” he asked, before he could really think through how the question sounded.
To his credit, Steve didn’t even flinch. He just shrugged, loose-looking in his posture, although his face was sort of pinched. “My mom wasn’t really around.”
“Your parents divorced?” Eddie didn’t think they were, but he hadn’t actually bothered clicking on Christopher Harrington’s Wikipedia page, back when he was hate-Googling, so he supposed there was some information he’d missed.
“Not officially,” Steve said, with a sardonic little smirk. “But they’re not really together, haven’t been for most of my life. My dad has his mistresses, and my mom has an account he dumps money into and spa retreats in far-off places. On paper we’re a happy little family, but I haven’t seen or spoken to her in years.” He kicked his foot in the water, splashing it around a little listlessly. “She was a model, you know, before she had me. Once, when I was like ten or something, she told me I ruined her career.” He laughed, a touch bitter.
“Jesus,” Eddie said, on a harsh breath out. “That’s a fucked-up thing to say to your kid.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. Eddie raised an eyebrow like why?, and Steve did wince, this time. “I don’t mean to take it dark places, I swear. You know usually I never even talk about this shit, but. . .” he trailed off and gave Eddie a considering little look. “I don’t know. You’re weirdly easy to talk to, you know that Munson?”
It was funny, actually, because Eddie had just been thinking that about Steve — about how Steve had managed to just wander through so many of Eddie’s closed doors, like they weren’t even difficult to get open. There was a little fluttering in his chest as he realized that the feeling was a two-way street, something that they felt about each other—
NO his brain-voice yelled. BAD THOUGHT. PULL IT TOGETHER, MUNSON.
“Perks of being a drug dealer,” he said, sounding ages breezier than he felt at the moment. “Next best thing to hairstylists in terms of free therapy.”
Steve laughed, the sound of it bouncing off the walls. “Well, you should start charging. Easy $250 an hour.”
“Stevie, baby,” he drawled back, “the way Dustin makes it sound, I don’t think you can afford $250 an hour.”
It was maybe too deep of a dig too soon into their little relat—friendship— but Steve seemed delighted by it, letting out an absurd little giggle before mocking getting shot and flopping backwards onto the tile with a grunt. “Right where it hurts Munson, ouch.”
Eddie moved to lay down next to him, even though the tile was wet and honestly uncomfortable. “If it makes you feel any better I can’t afford it either.”
Steve hummed like it did, in fact, make him feel a little better. A moment passed in silence, just the electrical buzzing of the pool lights and filter around them.
Then Steve asked, “what about your mom?” The question nearly startled Eddie — he’d forgotten he’d been the person who brought mothers up. Steve seemed to realize it was a bit of an awkward question, or at least that it had made Eddie balk, because he scrambled to take it back. “Sorry, just — you said Wayne raised you, but she read you Goodnight Moon, so. . .” he trailed off. Eddie turned to look at him and could see the other man’s face twisted in discomfort. “You don’t have to tell me, if it’s—”
“She died,” Eddie said. Because he was a house with ancient doors where the keys had been thrown away decades ago for everyone except Steve, just wandering the hallways, opening closets and poking through the skeletons like it was nothing, like it was easy. “I was pretty young.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said.
“It was a long time ago,” he said back.
“I can still be sorry.” And Steve looked sorry, but not in that cloying pitying way people got. Like, okay, when his mother died there was a funeral (duh), and everyone there had that look, that twisted-pity frown of oh, poor boy. And no one knew how to talk to him, really, they all said terrible, useless shit like I’m sure she’s in a better place now, which was dumb because what could be better than being alive, with him? Or, at least she’s not in pain anymore, which was sort of the first time he’d understood she’d been in pain at all.
He didn’t like talking to people about his mother because they got that look, and because inevitably they said something terrible and clichéd and useless and he had to pretend to be touched, because it was supposed to be the thought that counted. You weren’t supposed to snap or sneer at people offering you sympathy for the horrible things you suffered.
But Steve didn’t have the pity-look, and he didn’t say anything like that. What he said, instead, was, “that must have fucking sucked.”
Which was accurate. It had fucking sucked! Still, someone saying it so plainly startled a laugh out of Eddie. He’d never really been able to laugh about his mother dying before. “It did,” he said, “it really did.” He paused for a moment, caught in the urge to share more with Steve, to open up even further. “She was cool,” he offered. “I don’t really remember her very well, but I remember she was cool.”
“Makes sense,” Steve said. “You’re cool. Coolness is probably genetic.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works, Harrington,” Eddie said, smiling despite himself.
“Yeah, but you don’t know enough about science to say for sure,” Steve pointed out, and Eddie couldn’t help but laugh because yeah, that was fair. He really didn’t. When his laughter died down to turned to see Steve had a small smile on his lips, too. “Sorry,” he said. “I made it dark again.”
“Not your fault,” Eddie said. And then, because something about the chlorine smell and laying on the floor made him feel like being honest, “you’re pretty easy to talk to, too, you know that Harrington?”
Steve grinned big now, wide and pretty. “I’ll send you the bill in the mail,” he said, and Eddie reached over to smack him on the shoulder while Steve laughed and laughed.
---
They ended up staying perhaps a bit too long at the pool, because in the morning Eddie was exhausted in a truly bone-weary way. It wasn’t bad exhaustion, though. It was sort of like the tired you were after a sleepover — the lack of sleep mixing with the slightly rebellious thrill of staying up later than you should and the giddy light-headedness of friendship.
And it was friendship, now. Officially. As they’d parted in the hallway for their rooms, Steve had paused, clapping a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, and said, “so, Munson. You think we’ve talked our way past acquaintances?”
Eddie had pretended to think about it for a moment before going, “sure, I suppose you know enough about me to officially be my friend, Harrington.”
“You know mostly my friends call me Steve,” the other man had retorted, but it still sounded like a joke (and, besides, Robin and Dustin called him Harrington all of the time, so.) “But, okay. Friends.” He’d smiled at Eddie, a sleepy one, eyes sort of droopy. “Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, well, the last test was making sure you weren’t just using me for my weed,” Eddie had said back. He was smiling too, could feel it, and for a strange moment in the late night shitty hallway lighting of this middle-of-the-road Midwestern hotel the two of them just looked at each other, smiling like idiots.
Steve had broken the moment, finally. “Goodnight, man,” he said, moving to enter his room.
“Yeah,” Eddie’d said. “See you tomorrow, Steve.” He’d turned to enter his room, he could still hear Steve’s laughter, soft, behind him.
So, yeah: friends. All official and stuff. And if, instead of going straight to bed, Eddie had checked Gareth and Jeff were asleep and then snuck into the shower to jerk off as quietly as possible, trying to remember the feeling of Steve’s hand, warm and solid against his shoulder, the way his smile went sharp sometimes, the way his eyes glinted in certain lights, if he came biting his hand to muffle the sound of himself saying Steve in a very, very different tone of voice, well — that was information his new friend never needed to know, right?
Anyway, the exhaustion seemed to be universal, carried through nearly everyone — movements were generally sluggish, and in a real rarity no one jumped at the bit to drive, everyone clearly hoping catch a bit of rest during the drive to Minneapolis, the next stop on their expansive tour of the Midwest. “300 miles of nothing but corn and meth labs,” Mike groaned, like he was bored just thinking about it.
“Hey,” Lucas said, “sometimes we also see cows.”
“And horses,” El added, the only bright voice among them.
After a brief amount of bickering where, finally, Joyce, Hopper, and Lucas all agreed to drive, Eddie found himself in the way back of Hopper’s van, seated next to Steve. Eddie raised an eyebrow that he hoped conveyed you didn’t control freak yourself into driving this leg?
Like Steve could read the expression, he replied, “Mike’s right, this drive is dull. And also five hours. Turns out staying up gossiping all night with you made me tired Eddie, I don’t wanna fall asleep on the road and swerve into a stray cow.”
“God forbid,” Eddie agreed, dry, as Steve sprawled out next to him. He thought about saying something else — he felt this tug a little bit, when Steve was around, this sort of endless desire to talk to him, even if it was about nothing at all.
Which was normal for friends. Which they were.
Don’t have a crush, don’t have a crush, stop having a crush—
He took his brain’s advice and clamped down on the urge, sticking a pair of sunglasses on his face instead and leaning against the window to try and sleep, god damnit.
It was a shockingly successful endeavor — he woke up a while later, in that strange post-nap haze, briefly baffled about where he was. Back of a van, leaning against a window, weight on his side—
He shifted and saw that sometime during the drive Steve, too, had fallen asleep — on him, cheek fully smashed into Eddie’s shoulder, left arm bent at a slightly awkward angle, with his hand resting right next to Eddie’s thigh.
In all honesty, Steve looked kind of terrible like this, face squished and mouth slightly open, hair deflated, eyelids fluttering slightly.
Eddie wanted to run his hand through the hair on Steve’s forehead, fix it a little for him.
Shit. That was not stopping the crush, not even at all.
The smart thing to do here would be to move, abruptly, act like he just woke up and wake Steve up in the process. And Steve would scramble away politely, probably rub the back of his neck in that sheepish way he did sometimes, and Eddie would wave his apologies off, and they’d go back to just sitting next to each other, Steve eventually leaning forward to join whatever conversation Hop and Will were having in the front seat. That would be the smart thing to do, the normal thing to do, the thing that caused the moment to move on and would hopefully help Eddie forget the brief, delightful image of Steve being asleep on him.
But hell, Eddie had repeated his senior year three times. No one could ever accuse him of being smart. So, instead, he shifted just a little, slowly, so his arm came up on the back of the seat and Steve’s face could move from the uncomfortable jut of Eddie’s shoulder blade to the softer flesh between his armpit and his pec. Steve hummed, just slightly, in his sleep, and curled a bit deeper into Eddie, and Eddie pretended very valiantly that it didn’t do something strange to his heart rate before putting his head back against the window and pretending to be asleep again.
He stayed like that, faking sleep, for an indeterminate amount of time — until he felt Steve stir next to him, clearly waking up. And the funny thing was he almost swore that there was a moment, there, between Steve waking up and shifting away from Eddie, leaning forward to talk to the others, where Steve seemed to linger. A moment where Steve was awake, still pressed into Eddie’s side and aware of it and for some reason not immediately moving away.
But that couldn’t be right. So, hell, maybe Eddie had fallen asleep again after all, and that was just a strange snippet of a dream.
Notes:
i'm dropping hints that i'm from the midwest by setting a significant chunk of this chapter in a culver's. also if eddie had gone to see any roadside attractions he'd know it's america's biggest catsup bottle, not ketchup, and also that they're driving the wrong direction to see it because it's in southern illinois. i take my midwestern road side attractions very seriously people, believe me. also also it is in fact curd like "curdle" but cheese curds are the fucking best.
i'm realizing late into this that i'm accidentally mostly making this fic a bunch of highly controversial food opinions. i know many of you were disappointed in my admitting i like deep dish pizza; i am sorry if i have let you down further, my friends.
anyway, it's a throwaway line but please know that in this AU el is a horse girl. i am a "horse girl el" truther.
Chapter 15: Minneapolis-Iowa City (YOU'LL BE DANCING ONCE AGAIN)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
In Minneapolis, the Party had their first mediocre show.
It wasn’t bad by any stretch, the kids still rocked, but it wasn’t the best they could have done and everyone was extremely aware of that. It wasn’t anyone’s fault either, just one of those confluences of bad luck things that happen sometimes. Mike had started to lose his voice on the drive—
(“I put on Jagged Little Pill,” El had said, morosely, “and we maybe got carried away.")
—and couldn’t quite hit the backing notes, and the sound guys at the venue didn’t level Lucas’s mic up right so the vocals mostly got lost between the two of them. El snapped a string on stage, and Max broke a drum stick and got uncharacteristically thrown by it, losing a beat in a song, and that caused Dustin to hit a wrong note, which resonated, discordantly, through the venue.
Another one of Eddie’s unspoken rock n’ roll rules: sometimes, a show just . . . didn’t come together. You could rehearse a thousand times and know everything back and forth, but at the end of the day you were still a human and prone to the very human condition of fucking up. And sometimes all of those fuckups happened all at once, and combined to the type of mess that left you feeling a bit bruised and pissy, afterwards.
There were so many nights, chasing this dream, where Eddie had left a gig wondering why he bothered. Of course there were so many reasons he bothered, and all the failures had never piled up big enough to get him to stop trying, but still, it was an easy enough thought to get lost in, on the bad nights. Truthfully, when something bad happened or a note got missed you just had to shake it off and laugh through it, but that was easier said than done, and tonight the kids weren’t really managing. Every mistake begat another mistake, and each one made them angrier and angrier, the mood in the venue souring as the show went on, both on and off stage. By the time they were done Mike and Max were both separately stomping off the stage, clearly pissed. El and Will seemed more sad, Will putting a sympathetic arm around his stepsister. Lucas and Dustin both, meanwhile, landed on embarrassed, Lucas ending the gig with a muted “uh, goodnight,” and Dustin sending a wave, sort of apologetic, at the audience.
A rough opening set did not inherently lead into a bad main set, but it was never helpful. The crowd was cold, and largely uninterested, tuned out by the time Corroded Coffin corralled themselves onto the stage. They weren’t sold out, not tonight, despite the venue being one of their smallest yet, and unlike the electric feeling in Chicago or even the slightly more muted but still very present excitement of Milwaukee, this was more like how Eddie was used to playing — to a group of people only half-listening, who mostly came out for lack of something else to do on a Thursday. Whatever mild excitement about the return of Steve Harrington that had spurred ticket sales seemed to be slowing the further out West they got — maybe it was less novel, now, or maybe it was just that the news hadn’t really made it over here. Hard to say.
So: a rough night in Minnesota. The venue didn’t traditionally stay open after sets, but the manager clearly took pity on them and let them linger pathetically around the area, nursing their wounds. The kids were in varying states of going through it scattered around the room — Mike was scowling into a beer, and Max was pacing restlessly listing out all the things she did wrong while Lucas listened patiently and occasionally tried to interject, only to be met with a withering scowl. Will was sitting on the edge of the stage and scribbling in a notebook — sketching, Robin mouthed across the room at Eddie when she caught him looking curiously — and El was sat next to him, her head on his shoulder. Dustin was talking loudly, much like Max, only his captive audience was Steve, who wasn’t bothering to try to interject as Dustin said increasingly unhinged things like this is why we shouldn’t stay up late and maybe we should have a curfew and maybe we shouldn’t drink anymore.
“Henderson,” Eddie cut in, “if you want to go to bed sober every night at 9pm you’re welcome to, but my god, don’t rope us into it.” Gareth, slumped over the drum kit, made a small humming noise of agreement.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Joyce said, walking up on stage from the bar holding two beers, one of which she deposited with Steve and one with Dustin, who immediately gave up on his sober pledge to take a sad little sip of it. No backbone on that kid, really.
“It wasn’t good,” Mike huffed, voice still croaky.
“You should be vocal resting,” Dustin said back. Mike rolled his eyes, all caustic, which Dustin saw and took immediate offense to. “I’m trying to help!” he squawked, which, of course, did not help at all, clearly causing a spike of irritation in Mike.
“Oh, sure,” Wheeler sneered, “the way you helped by missing that note in Killing the Demogorgan?”
“Guys,” Steve said, trying to broker some sort of peace before this got out of hand. But his tone didn’t catch anyone’s attention — or, at least, the kids were used enough to it to ignore it entirely.
“Don’t blame him,” Max snapped, turning on Mike with a ferociousness that would have cowed a lesser man. Wheeler just looked even more annoyed in the face of it, though. “He’s right, you should be taking care of your voice, instead of doing tequila shots and mansplaining the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline to El at the top of your lungs every night.”
“You were doing shots too,” Mike said, although his argument was dulled by the cracking of his own voicebox. “And besides, this wouldn’t have even mattered if the mics worked, it’s the venue that sucks.”
“Hey, come on,” Steve said, slightly louder. “It’s no one’s fault, alright, sometimes you just have a rough night.”
“And I don’t want to hear any of you trashing a venue when we’re still in it,” Hopper added, tone going full stern father.
“We’re all just tired, okay?” Joyce said. “Let’s get back to the hotel, yeah? Some sleep will help.”
Sleep did not, in fact, help.
The ride to Iowa City was crackling with tension. Eddie wondered if this was how things felt when he still hated Steve — like at any moment someone was going to explode with sudden, violent anger, uncontainable and electric. It made him feel like he owed everyone in the tour group a beer or five, as an apology.
The Party had split into two sides during the night, an apparently unspoken alliance — El, Mike, and a sort of reluctant-looking Will against Max, Lucas, and Dustin. Dustin threw himself into Eddie’s car without a word, and Max and Lucas followed. Eddie met Steve’s eye across the parking lot; the other man offered a helpless shrug, like, what can you do?
The ride itself was silent. Like, eerie silent. For nearly five hours.
Eddie hadn’t been aware Dustin could be silent for five hours. It was concerning — a fact he raised in a group chat he impulsively decided to start with Steve and Robin.
Dustin’s QUIET? Robin wrote back, immediately. And then, Steve won’t text and drive but I showed him this and looks HELLA concerned. Got that little forehead winkle and everything. A single mom who works two jobs mode ACTIVATED. Two minutes passed, and then she texted again. Might be time for desperate measures.
He frowned at his phone. Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound very good.
She then changed the group chat name to THE SQUAD, followed by a bunch of emojis — the red apple, a pear, an orange, a kiwi, cherries, and a watermelon.
Eddie sent back a bunch of question marks. Robin eventually replied cause we’re all FRUITY, get it? Two seconds later, she replied again with Steve is fully glaring at me now. Got his eyes off the road, though! Victory Buckley, bitch, and then he told me to tell you to stop texting and driving, even though Eddie hadn’t responded. He let the chat go silent, though, figuring he shouldn’t test how much patience Steve would have for his worst driving habits.
There was a sort of irrational hope in his heart that things were faring better in the other van, and that by the time they got to the venue the mood would have improved, but instead as he pulled into the motel he saw Will stomping away from Mike, who was throwing his hands in the air like he found the whole thing ridiculous. “Fine then, walk away,” Mike yelled at Will’s back.
Steve, standing next to Wheeler, was rubbing his temples like he had a migraine. Robin was leaning against the van and rolling her eyes to the sky with clearly no patience left in her body.
“You are being a jerk,” El said to Mike, with a huff, and marched off after Will.
“Bad ride?” Eddie asked Steve and Robin after Mike, too, had gone off to his room.
“You have no idea,” Robin said. “You were so lucky in the quiet car. Mike spent like an hour trying to blame the show going wrong on everything and anything else besides his sore throat, until Will finally snapped and told him to shut up and rest his voice.”
“And then they were fighting,” Steve said, with a sigh. “Which, you know, was not super fun. I think El and Mike broke up again.”
“They do that a lot?” Eddie asked.
“Yes,” Steve and Robin said, flatly, at the same time.
“It’s definitely desperate measures time,” Robin added.
“Oh yeah,” Steve agreed.
“What’s desperate measures?” Eddie said, again feeling slightly nervous about the idea.
Steve and Robin shot Eddie an incredibly similar look, a small smirk mirrored on each of their faces. “Oh, Munson,” Robin said, syrup sweet, “that’s for us to know and you to find out.”
Which he did, a few hours later at the venue, when an under-breath comment from Mike set Max off screaming at him.
“Steve,” Robin declared, clapping her hands together. “It’s time.”
“On it,” Steve said with a nod.
“Oh no,” Dustin whined. Steve shot him a manic grin, bolting up and plugging his phone into the sound system “Not this,” Dustin said again, clearly trying to prevent the inevitable.
“Oh yes this,” Robin shot back, as Steve shuffled through something on his phone. Finally a song started to play — a sort of light, twinkling piano.
Eddie frowned. He knew this. Didn’t he know this?
“It’s Chiquitita,” Lucas said, catching his confused look. “By ABBA. Robin and Steve do this routine whenever anyone is sad. Or angry. Or anything besides happy, really.”
“And it works every single time,” Steve said.
“Shut up, it’s starting,” Robin snapped. And then she cleared her throat and started to sing.
She was, to be totally frank, an awful singer. Eddie had often heard people called tone deaf, but he’d never really experienced it — everyone he knew could, at least, carry a tune. Not Robin, though. She sounded like a drunk girl at a Manhattan karaoke bar at 3am, wobbling her way through the first chunk of lyrics with an impressive horribleness.
The kids seemed to all be wincing at her singing, but there was a small, begrudging smile on Mike’s face — like the fact of Robin’s sheer, unadulterated badness was too funny to not find at least a little amusing.
Steve joined in on the second verse, taking over for Robin. And, look, it’d been a minute since Eddie had actually heard Steve sing — he’d joked about doing harmonies for Corroded Coffin but that’d mostly been Jeff’s job anyway, and not even Eddie’s increasingly pathetic crush could convince him to willingly go back and re-listen to Swim Team, especially not knowing that every song play netted Steve’s dad money and not Steve himself. Which meant that Eddie was sort of taken aback at hearing Steve’s voice now — at remembering how nice it was, smooth and lovely. It’d made sense that he’d been adjacent to the pop charts; there was a quality to his voice, even unproduced and backed by the louder, actual track of the ABBA chicks singing, that just sounded like it ought to be on the radio.
As Steve sang he moved to El, who was smiling brightly already, and grabbed to spin her off into a goofy little slow dance, which had her giggling like a little kid. He eventually twirled her into Max, who had to uncross her arms to catch the girl. Mayfield sent a scowl to Steve at this, but El was already pulling her into a dance, and Max clearly wasn’t going to be as caustic to the other girl as she was to Harrington, because she went.
Robin joined back in on the chorus — the vocals swelling with Chiquitita you and I know — and by that point all of the kids had seemingly given up on being pissed off. Mike was huffing but letting himself be roped into a dance by El, Max seemingly having forgiven him enough to let him join without protest; Will and Lucas did twin little bows to each other, full Austen period-piece mode, before clasping hands and managing to fall into an actually not-too-bad waltz. Steve had thrown his arms around Dustin’s shoulders from the back and was forcing him to rock in time with the music while the kid complained out loud, like he wasn’t grinning. Robin, meanwhile, had moved onto Gareth, who was blushing bright red with the humiliation of a person who hadn’t been forced to dance in public since senior prom. Steve left Dustin to spin over to Jeff, who, like Lucas before him, dipped into a bow at the waist before actually pulling Steve into a genuinely very good slow dance (since when could Jeff dance???), while Steve laughed with pure delight. Robin shoved Gareth at Dustin and went over to Eddie, the last person left not dancing, pulling him in so he was the “girl” and she was the “guy,” her hand clutched at his waist, leading him in jerky, slightly off rhythm movements.
Eddie grinned at her and let himself be led. After a beat, the song swelling into the final clash of the piano, he looked up at everyone, laughing and dancing and grinning easily.
“It’s genius, right?” Robin asked. He shifted his gaze away from the others to meet her eye. “Steve’s trick, back from camp. He says no one can be pissed off while ABBA’s playing. Scientifically impossible.”
Eddie looked up, again, this time directly at Steve, who had been roped into a shitty can-can line with Mike, Will, Lucas, and Gareth, while Jeff, Dustin, and the girls laughed at them in the front, jeering and catcalling. Steve’s hair was bouncing around and he had a loose, easy smile on his face, like he’d never had a single trouble in his whole life. A week ago that smile would have pissed Eddie off, probably, but now he just found it magnetic, a pull that made him want to stand at Steve’s side and bask in the light of that smile for as long as he could.
“He sneaks up on you, right?” Robin asked. He looked at her again. There was something knowing in her gaze, and for a strange, disorienting moment he felt certain that she’d figured him out — his stupid little crush broadcast brightly on his face for all to see. She shrugged. “It surprised me, too. One day I thought he was this pretentious, douchey nepo baby, and the next I was moving to New York to live with him. Being his friend, it’s just. . . it’s so easy.”
Right, of course. She was just talking about friendship. Eddie’s secret remained safe, at least for now. Somehow the idea of Robin knowing was more mortifying than he expected. Not because he thought she’d tell Steve, but just because he knew somehow that she’d mock him for being so clichéd — going after the golden-hearted ex-jerk jock pretty boy. Overdone, right? What was he, in a 90s romcom starring Freddie Prinze Jr.?
“He’s definitely a surprise,” Eddie agreed, with a murmur, as the song finally ended.
“In more ways than one,” Robin offered with a wink, and suddenly Eddie thought she did know about his crush, again, but before he could ask the song was over and she was flouncing away, clapping her hands together dramatically. “Alright. Is it out of our systems? Are we ready to rock?” she demanded to the group at large.
There was a resounding cheer from the assembled bands.
“Then let’s fucking do it!” Robin cried, and everyone scattered to set up, and Eddie’s question about just what she meant was left unasked.
Notes:
solidarity with sag-aftra and the strike!! make these fuckers pay you, baby
it's simply not a liars fic if i don't have once big dance scene, i guess
also a few of you asked and i have caved and made a tumblr. i'm new, so there's . . . not much there, but come say hi if you wanna! username's the same
the chapter title is from Chiquitita by ABBA.
Chapter 16: St. Louis (HEAR YOU SING ONCE MORE, LIKE YOU DID BEFORE)
Notes:
more steve backstory means more ~content warnings~
this time for "period typical homophobia" but the period is give or take 2012-2015ish. because, you know, steve's dad sucks, even in AUs. there's no physical violence or slurs, steve's just more-or-less manipulated into a semi-permanent closet. it's also worth mentioning that steve's dad is, like, textbook manipulative and emotionally abusive. just a real dickhead.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Thanks in no small part to Steve and Robin’s ABBA intervention, the Iowa City show went off without a hitch, an energy they carried into a pretty good set in St. Louis the next night, too.
After the St. Louis show they had a day off in the city; they’d spent the morning sightseeing—
(“So it’s . . . really just a big arch, huh?” Eddie had said, of The Arch.
Robin had looked at him like he was an idiot. “What else would it be?”)
—which had been a tiring enough endeavor that everyone agreed an afternoon nap was required before dinner. Pizza, because Henderson for some reason was willing to try pizza on, ugh, a cracker crust but drew the line at Chicago’s famous pizza casserole.
Eddie loved the kid, really, but he thought maybe Steve was right about him having no taste.
He was camped out on the balcony of his and Steve’s room, smoking a cigarette while Steve tooled around with a guitar back inside.
That was a first, actually. Him and Steve were bunking together, just the two of them in the room.
Okay, not quite a first, because they’d done it once before, forced by Henderson’s hand after the terrible fight in Indiana, but Eddie didn’t really think that counted. That had been one awkward and emotional conversation chased immediately by crashing to sleep. There wasn’t this . . . extended period of alone time between the two of them. Eddie didn’t actually think he’d been alone this long with Steve the entire tour. It was hard to be alone with anyone on tour, let alone your own fucking thoughts, so it wasn’t surprising, it was just. . . something he was thinking about, he guessed.
Maybe more surprising was that it hadn’t really felt awkward. Sometimes in a new friendship Eddie felt a pressing need to fill space. Like people would get bored of him if he wasn’t constantly keeping their attention up. He figured this was a fairly standard part of the human condition, coupled with his own hyper tendencies and the fact that during most of his childhood, at least, he was always trying to distract people enough that they didn’t notice how grody his trailer was, or how threadbare his clothes were, that he never wanted to give someone enough time to ask a question he didn’t know how to answer, like, so, man, any girls catch your eye?
He’d expected to feel some of that with Steve, but he hadn’t. They’d chatted for a bit upon arrival, and then Steve had slipped AirPods on and Eddie had cracked a book open. Eventually he'd gone to the bathroom, and walking back to the bed Steve had asked Eddie what he was reading — it was The Fifth Season, which had been a Christmas gift from Petey and he was really enjoying. He asked what Steve had been listening to.
“The Fellowship of the Ring,” Steve admitted, with a sheepish little shrug.
“Woah, what?” Eddie said, genuinely delighted. “Dude, I love those books.”
“Henderson and Byers do too. They’ve been trying to get me to read them since camp, basically, but I suck at reading.” He waved a hand, dismissively. “Turns out I’m dyslexic, who knew? I had literally no idea until Joyce asked me once in a grocery store, like, two years ago. I always thought I was just dumb. Anyway, she recommended I give audiobooks a shot, and it’s been great. I do think I might be too stupid for this book either way, though, I can’t keep track of anyone’s names. And Dustin won’t even let me watch the movie until I read the book, because I apparently need to have an opinion on some dude named Tom, or whatever.”
What Eddie wanted to say to that is that Steve could have known he was dyslexic earlier if his father bothered to keep him in school; that some adult in Steve’s life well before Joyce Byers should have realized he had a very basic and fundamental difficulty with something easy and tried to offer a rope bridge out of the hole it left him in, instead of assuming that Steve had done something to earn being in the hole.
Not that adults in school always did that — hell, Eddie’s teachers mostly didn’t until Ms. Hampton, and Steve must have had plenty himself before dropping out — but Wayne had always kept an eye on Eddie, had taken him to the doctor when his seventh grade teacher had muttered ADHD at him during a parent-teacher conference, had never balked at the prescription prices even though they’d taken a chunk out of their budget.
But Steve had made the comment lightly, and Eddie felt like it was a bit inappropriate to respond with righteous anger at how shitty Steve’s parents were, a thing the other man knew well enough, so what he actually said was “you should read The Hobbit if you haven’t; the names are a lot easier because all the dwarves rhyme. Fili and Kili and Dori and Ori and Nori and Oin and Gloin.”
Steve gaped at him. “You had to have made some of those up.”
“’Fraid not, big boy,” Eddie said, clapping a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t quite sure where big boy came from — it slipped out of his mouth unbidden, as had the casual touch — but it turned Steve’s cheeks just a slightly delightful shade of red, so it was going in the rotation now, holy shit.
Anyway, they lapsed back into silence after that, and it was . . . comfortable. Easy. He didn’t feel a need to fill it; he kind of liked it, actually, just sort of existing in a space with Steve.
(Liked it maybe too much, but he was ignoring the part of his brain still clinging stupidly to this crush. A little flirting, fine, but anything beyond that was foolish and ridiculous, and he knew it. He was being reasonable! He had it under control.)
When he’d slipped out for his smoke he’d offered Steve one, but the man had declined (“officially, I’m quitting. Both Robin and Dustin get really on my case about it; you have maybe a week before they’re on yours, fair warning.”) and gone for the guitar. Eddie had closed the glass screen enough that he couldn’t quite hear was Steve was playing — some twangy tune he didn’t recognize, soft and sweet.
The cigarette was nice — he didn’t smoke them too often, mostly because fifteen bucks a pack was highway robbery, but he was a musician and he’d lived in a trailer park: it was sort of part of the image, you know? And every once in awhile the nicotine cleared the cobwebs in his head out, let him follow a long train of thought seamlessly.
Right now, he was considering this first: he and Steve in the room alone together. Not for crush reasons, this time, but because he was realizing that there would still be a lot of firsts on this tour. They were really only in the beginning of it, after all — they’d only actually been on tour ten days; they’d gotten a two day head start in Columbus, but that show was on a Thursday, and now it was two Saturdays later.
He didn’t have a massive sample size to pull from in terms of how the tour was going, overall but so far it felt good. Steve had fallen into an easy rhythm with the band, and while there were moments where Eddie still missed Petey he could admit they were less while they were on-stage playing, as he expected, assuming Steve would feel like a poor man’s substitute, and more during the fucking around bits of the day, like when he saw a dumb, misspelled political billboard, or when the radio played a song that he knew Petey liked, or today, seeing a great American monument for the first time in his life and thinking that he’d always sort of assumed the whole band would be there when he did these things, and it was kind of sad they weren’t.
He’d sort of figured the entirety of the The Midwest would be growing pains, not the least because he’d assumed he’d hate Steve the entire time. Even now that he and Steve were cool, he still felt things like the Party’s mini-meltdown in Minneapolis proved that they were at the start. Twelve days was a lot of days on the road, and eight shows in that time was a pretty breakneck schedule, so it felt like they covered a lot of ground, but this entire tour was a marathon, and not a sprint, there were a lot of things they hadn’t actually had to deal with yet.
Real, lasting fatigue being one: Eddie had a feeling that’d strike at some point between The West Coast and The South, when exhaustion and the nasty feeling of eating nearly every meal out instead of ever cooking settled in and made for a pretty miserable handful of days.
Another thing they hadn’t had to deal with was Eddie swapping out the setlist. He had a tendency to do that, mostly because he loved covers and got bored easily. Master of Puppets lived forever, but he was already getting a bit sick of Crazy Train and War Pigs, which so far he’d swapping between, doing one every other show. No offense to Ozzy, dude was a fucking hero, but he wondered how quick he could get Steve to learn a Judas Priest song or something. Surely the guy’s weirdly good ear for picking up songs quickly would apply to other bands, right?
He snubbed his cigarette and ducked back in to ask, but stopped when he re-entered the room. Steve was pretty fully into whatever he was playing; he didn’t really want to interrupt the flow. So he paused and watched for a moment, instead.
He didn’t know the song itself. Steve was humming alongside it, harmonizing but not singing any lyrics, which meant there was no chance of placing it.
Eddie had assumed Steve had stolen the guitar from Mike or Lucas, but he realized, looking at it, that he didn’t actually recognize it. It was a sleek electric, bright yellow, and there was a little sticker stuck on the body that said Clark Music Camp Staff on it, which meant it just had to be Steve’s, the only staff member on tour. So Steve had brought a guitar to a tour where he wasn’t even going to play it on-stage.
Steve looked up and clearly realized Eddie was listening. He stopped abruptly, an embarrassed look on his face.
“Don’t stop on my account, man,” Eddie said. “That was good. What song was that? I don’t know it. Some of your pop shit?” It didn’t sound very pop, but you could put a gun to his head and he couldn’t tell you a single song in the top 40 right now. He could maybe guess an artist. Beyoncé still made music, right?
Steve looked even more embarrassed. “Uh,” he said. “In a way?” Eddie raised an eyebrow because, like, that wasn’t an answer. Steve sighed. “It’s. . . mine. I wrote it.”
It wasn’t a Swim Team song. Eddie hadn’t listened to the album since he was a kid, but he knew it wasn’t. One, because the sound was sort of wrong — all else aside, Swim Team had been a very 2012 band in its approach, much preppier and peppier than what Steve had been doing, less technically difficult guitar work. Which made sense, considering the members of the band were all 16 — they wouldn’t be the world’s most technically talented musicians, right? Two, there was no way Steve would seem so at ease playing Swim Team stuff, not with all the baggage he was carrying around about the whole thing.
Which meant one thing, and one thing only.
“You’re still writing?” Eddie blurted, way too incredulous for the tone of the conversation. Steve winced, which really hadn’t been his intention. “God, no, sorry, wait, I didn’t mean to sound so shocked, just. . .”
He trailed off.
Just: he figured Steve had quit writing. He wasn’t actually sure why he thought that, though, now that he was considering it. Except that maybe the idea that Steve hadn’t quit, that he’d been writing for ten years, unable to record it or put it out in the world was. . . really fucking sad. It was easier to hear the story and assume that Steve just didn’t want to write, anymore, that he had no interest in that part of it. That the session work and producing was enough for Steve.
“I guess,” Eddie said, “I thought you stopped doing Swim Team because you didn’t want to, anymore?” His voice raised at the end, embarrassed, like it was a question. It sort of was a question, actually, mostly because Eddie really, terribly wanted Steve to confirm if it was true or not, his curiosity flaring back to life. “Uh, and I mean, couple that with your dad being a dick.” He scratched the back of his neck, feeling like he’d committed some sort of new friend faux pas, now.
There was something about talking to Steve about this stuff that made him uncharacteristically nervous. Maybe it was because he’d been such a horrible asshole for so long. Every new thing Steve revealed really reminded Eddie of how deeply, stupidly unfair he’d been. And even though it didn’t really feel like Steve blamed him — like, after all, how could he not know what he didn’t know, right? — he still had this useless guilt over it. Like he should have looked into Steve’s deep, pretty eyes and realized that all the girls in high school were right — there was just a sad, lonely artist there, waiting to be loved, waiting to be understood.
No, wait, okay, that got a bit weird at the end, shit. He needed a lobotomy or something, why the fuck was his brain like this?
Steve was fiddling with the guitar, not looking at Eddie.
Eddie was still standing in the middle of the room, but suddenly he felt like it was an awkward position to be in — like he was lording over Steve, weirdly. So he moved, sitting down next to Steve on the bed he was on instead.
“I mean,” Eddie said. “Can I ask a — like, a weird question? And hope you don’t find it stupid offensive?”
Steve looked up, a bit of amused curiosity on his face. Which was nice, because probably just a few days ago that look would have been way more skeptical and distrusting. “Go for it,” he said.
“I mean,” Eddie said, and swallowed, a bit shakily. “Why not . . . why not just go back and do the albums? Get it done with? Put it to bed? Like, wouldn’t that be easier? Get him off your back, free yourself to do your own thing? Write your songs?”
Steve was silent for a long time. It was like he was really thinking through something — maybe not what the actual answer was, but how much he was willing to tell Eddie. Which maybe should have hurt, a little, but at this point Eddie was still grateful Steve had mostly seemed to forgive him for all the bullshit. He’d take what he could get. Friendship crumbs, whatever.
Finally, Steve shifted, abandoning the guitar on the floor. “So, the reason I quit Swim Team — it wasn’t about the contract, at first. I quit because my dad’s kind of a homophobe,” he said, soft. He met Eddie’s eye. “I didn’t figure out I was bisexual until I was nineteen, but when I did, and my dad found out. . .” he sighed. “He said it was okay as long as I kept it under wraps. Do whatever I want in private, but be discreet, don’t be out, because you know,” he gestured vaguely, around them, at this, “Midwestern moms won’t buy albums by queers.”
“That’s not even true,” Eddie scoffed. Because, okay, he’d been a Midwestern queer, for one, and even though it had felt like he was the only one at his high school he was sure if he bothered to get a Facebook ever that’d be rapidly proven wrong. (He’d never bothered with Facebook because of the whole witch hunt murder accusation thing, but in the end that turned out to be sort of the smartest thing he ever did. Anti-establishment by pure accident! Suck a dick, Zuckerberg.
Wait, fuck, this was a serious conversation, focus, Munson.)
But also, that whole, deep-seated belief about the inherent conservatism of the Middle Western states, it was all crap. The sheer scope of their tour so far should have proved that. Corroded Coffin was a fairly explicitly queer band — Eddie wasn’t big on love songs, but he had more than a few screwing songs, and he was never one to shy away from a marginally controversial pronoun.
Queer people were everywhere, really, even if they got shoved to the margins. And it turned out they spent money, just like every other demographic of people on Earth. Who woulda thought?
Steve shrugged. “It was a decade ago, to be — well, no, not to be fair, he’s a fucking asshole and he was wrong even then, but. . .” he sighed, again. “That was the thing, right? It was a business call. It wasn’t what’s best for Steve, the person it was what’s best for Steve, the asset. You know, it was making sure at the end of the day he still sold the most records, even if it screwed with my, like, emotions, or whatever.” He paused, scratched his chin consideringly. “My therapist once tried to get me to come up with, like, the best case scenario view of my dad, right? And the best I could come up with is that he thought he was protecting me. From, you know, bad press, from conservative fear-mongering, whatever. But it didn’t feel like protection. It felt like hiding. And I didn’t want to hide, I was—” he rolled his eyes, like he was about to say something deeply stupid— “I was in love, and I didn’t want to give that up. So, I said that if I had to hide, I wouldn’t do Swim Team anymore. That I wanted out. That’s when he told me I should actually read my contract, one day.”
“Christ,” Eddie said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Steve said, with a humorless chuckle.
Eddie considered this for a moment, considered that he’d never even guessed Steve could be bisexual. No hint on his Wikipedia page; no rumors in the press. “But you don't make music for him anymore, and you do date men,” he said, slowly. “So . . . how hasn’t it gotten out? Why isn't it public knowledge?”
Steve stiffened, a little. “Random hookups get fake names. If they recognize me I hit them with, oh, yeah, people are always telling me I look like him.” He paused, looked down at his foot for a moment, directed the next bit mostly to his toes. “I’ve only really dated a couple guys, and. . . afterwards I mostly just ask them not to tell anyone.”
“And they just don’t? Out of the goodness of their heart?” Not that he assumed Steve dated assholes, or whatever, but it was a bit hard to believe not one breakup had been bad enough to cause someone to try and go to the press. Teen heartthrob is secretly a sodomite! could probably earn you a cool couple thousand, right?
With a sigh, Steve turned away from his foot and met Eddie’s eye again. “I think some of them don’t. I think the rest my dad pays off.”
“He pays them off?,” Eddie asked, eyes wide and shocked.
Steve shrugged, that tight, rehearsed shrug he did sometimes, clearly uncomfortable. “I know he’s done it once. The first guy — the one who made me realize I was bi? His name was Mark . . . my dad paid him off for sure.” He ran a hand across his jaw, frowning. Eddie, strangely, had the feeling that this wasn’t quite the entire story, but Steve didn’t elaborate much further, dropping his hand and meeting Eddie’s eye again. “He’s got connections at all the tabloids. If anyone brought them a story, he’d probably send a care package — NDA and a check. And a nice scoop for the journalist, too, something else for TMZ to live off of. That’s show business.”
He said show business with a very healthy amount of disdain.
“Why didn’t you ever say fuck it and just . . . come out?” Eddie asked. He realized, after he said this, that it was probably a rude question. You really can’t just expect people to out themselves. But it seemed odd, a bit, to him, that Steve was still here living under his father’s control in this way, so long after he’d walked away, after saying that he was, at least at first, willing to fight for it.
Steve frowned down at his feet, again. “Once Mark and I broke up. . . I guess I always figured it wasn’t really a fight worth fighting,” he offered, eventually. “None of them were ever going to stick around anyway, so why bother making waves? For Jared who makes his own kombucha?”
He said this last part like it was a joke, sort of, something to lighten the tension, but Eddie didn’t laugh. Mostly because he thought this was ridiculous, frankly, that no one would stick around for Steve, given his . . . well his everything. If it was Eddie in their shoes, he would have stuck around, would have fought every fight, would have taken all the stupid lumps that came with it.
Which. Christ. That was sort of an intense thought, huh?
“Anyway,” Steve said, and Eddie realized his moment to ask a further question had passed, that Steve was moving on from this part of the story. “I never really stopped writing, but the idea of giving my work to him after that. . . I don’t know. A lot of songs I wrote after that first album were about, you know, guys I liked. Changing the pronouns. . .” he shrugged, again. “Felt wrong. Plus, none of these really feel like Swim Team songs, you know? Like. Swim Team wasn’t really me. It was a version of me trying to impress him. And I’m not that person anymore.”
Eddie understood that, he thought. “The first thing I ever wrote,” he offered, “was this awful little four track LP under the name Eddie Hell — which yes, I did steal from Richard Hell, thanks for asking—” Steve laughed here, at least, a light little sound. “It was really. . . kind of depressing? Much more screamo than what I’m doing these days. I was working through stuff. But your music should change, right? Because you should change.”
“Yeah, man, totally,” Steve agreed.
Eddie let the silence hang between them for a minute. He had the strangest feeling this conversation was unfinished — like there was more the story he wasn’t getting, but that Steve actually maybe wanted to offer. If he knew how. “Is that. . . was that the only reason you never went back? Just the homophobe, shit contract thing?”
Steve looked at him. It was, as many of Steve’s looks were, a little hard to read. Maybe a bit surprised? Like he hadn’t expected Eddie to see through to this, to figure it out? Or maybe that was Eddie being a little hopeful, wanting Steve to think that Eddie could see him.
(Wanting Steve to think that Eddie could, maybe, be someone who really knew him, although Eddie couldn’t think of a reason why he cared if Steve thought that.
No, okay, there was a pretty obvious fucking reason he wanted that, but again. Eddie was squashing this. He was going to be a good friend, and a wonderful tourmate, and THAT WAS ALL.)
“No,” Steve said, finally. “The homophobe thing was obviously bad, as was screwing me over, but I had the same thought you did, a few years ago. That it’d be easier to just sit down and shut up and make the records. Suck it up and be free after it was all over. But. . .” he paused, seeming to really consider it for a long time.
Finally, he spoke again. “It’s two things, right? The first thing is that I couldn’t hand him my songs. You know? I care about them. It’s me, it’s like parts of my soul. And I couldn’t hand them over to him, to remaster however he wanted, to hold hostage my whole life. So that was thing one. And thing two, was . . . I mean, I thought maybe I could sing someone else’s songs, whatever, figure that out. He just wanted my face, right? What did he care who actually wrote the things? But . . . you know how nice it is, not being famous?” He looked at Eddie, a strange, awful, pleading look, like he was begging Eddie to understand him. “I know that people want this, hell, I know that you want it, I get it, I do, but I never wanted it. If my dad had been some other guy, in some other universe, would I have ever even picked up a guitar? I don’t . . . I don’t know. And don’t get me wrong, I love music, and I’m good at it, but . . .” he sighed, dragging a hand through his hair and messing it up.
Eddie reached over and flattened it back down. Just a soft touch, but maybe too intimate, too much.
If Steve felt uncomfortable he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sent Eddie a little smile — like he was grateful. Like he appreciated the gesture. Then he cleared his throat, swallowed a bit roughly, like he was holding back tears. “I didn’t want to be a face on a magazine, or a spokesman for some deodorant I didn’t use. I mean, I was really fucking lonely, you know that? Being famous, it’s just. It’s really fucking lonely.” And then Steve was crying, just the beginning of drops down his cheeks, catching in his eyelashes. “All I had were yes-men, and my father’s employees, and drug dealers. And I’d be at these house parties where everyone knew my name and everyone wanted to impress me and no one ever really cared about me. Who I was, or what I liked, or what I wanted. Or, they cared, but only so far as it could get them something. A girl who wanted my number because her agent thought it’d be good for her to be seen with me. A guy who wants to buy me a beer because he’s got a demo track to press into my hand. Nancy and I had broken up, and Tommy and Carol were just bobbleheads, nodding at everything I said, and I . . . I was just really fucking lonely.”
Eddie let himself move again, here, reached a hand over to drop it onto Steve’s knee. Steve, strangely, dropped his own hand on top of it. There was a moment, there, where their fingers were just resting on top of each other, neither speaking. And Eddie felt it flutter in his chest, like a stupid idiot, because this was a sad story he was supposed to be comforting Steve, not taking advantage of . . . of whatever was happening, here. Emotionally. Not that he was doing that, but he didn’t need his dumb feelings to get in the way, was the point.
“I don’t know if it’s like that for everyone,” Steve said, suddenly, meeting Eddie’s eye. His eyes were still wet, but the tears weren’t falling, anymore. “I mean — I don’t think it’ll be like that for you, because you have . . . real people in your life, you know? Your band pushes back at you, and your Uncle gives a shit about you, and the kids all love you, and — what I mean is, you have people who’ll . . . see you, and care about you, no matter how big it gets. How big you get. But it’s not like that for me. And I realized that if I went back, if I became the face of Swim Team again, King Steve, whatever . . . I was just going to be lonely, again. Like that.”
“You have the kids too,” Eddie said, gently. “And I mean, you have Robin, and Hopper and Joyce. And, uh,” and here he coughed, feeling a little awkward, “you have me.” After an awkward pause, he tacked on, “and Gareth and Jeff, too,” to make it sound less horrendously, painfully obvious.
Steve looked at him for a long moment, eyes intent, gaze steady. Eddie felt it everywhere, his whole body, straight down to his fucking toes. “Thanks, Eddie,” Steve said, eventually. “And you’re right, you are, I’m not that lonely anymore. But. . . I still don’t want it. Fame. Or, at least, that type of fame. It’s just, it’s not for me. I tried it on and I hated it.” Finally, he lifted the hand that was still resting on Eddie’s away. Eddie missed the contact, insanely. Steve used it to scratch the back of his neck. “You know a few years ago Dustin found a song I wrote in my room and secretly recorded it? Rough, on the synth and his stupid phone voice memo app, just himself, but . . . listening to him play it, I realized that’s what I wanted. I wanted to write, and I wanted to give it to someone who really cared. Who’d treat it with care. Who would be comfortable being the face of the thing I felt, because I’m not comfortable being that. Does that even make any sense?”
“The babysitter,” Eddie said, half under his breath. Steve furrowed his brow in confusion. “When you started playing with us, my brain felt like giving my songs to you was like giving your kids over to a babysitter. They might play with them different or feed ‘em different food, but. . . “
“They still care,” Steve finished. “Babysitters.” He laughed, here, just a soft huff of breath. “I like that.”
“Can I hear it?” Eddie asked, abrupt. He hadn’t quite meant to say it — a real mouth moving faster than brain moment, there. “Shit, no, sorry, that was — I mean, I guess I sort of already heard it, but I figured there were lyrics, but also you don’t have to show your fucking kids or whatever, I’m being—”
“No, yeah,” Steve said, soft. Almost breathless sounding, if Eddie was being honest. “You can . . . I have a demo or two, on my phone. You can hear ‘em. Or I can, uh,” he scratched the back of his neck again, “I can play them live.” He cut Eddie a little look. “You’d be, like, the fifth person ever to hear them.”
Eddie thought about this for a minute, and then guessed. “Dustin, then Robin, then Max and Lucas at the same time?”
“Damn, you’re good at that,” Steve said back, laughing again. “I wanted to show Hop and Joyce, too, but I know if I do Hop’ll get all serious about having me look at lawyers again, so. . .” he trailed off. “Anyway, I say that you’re the fifth so, you know, if they’re terrible you have to be constructive about it. I’m in a vulnerable state here, Munson.”
Eddie had the strangest feeling they weren’t going to be terrible. Still. “Dude, of course,” he said. “If you suck I’ll say it in the nicest way possible.”
Steve grinned at him. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and then grabbed the guitar. He tuned for a second and then took a deep breath, not looking at Eddie, before he started to play.
Eddie shut up and listened.
It was—
Shit. It was good.
It wasn’t really Eddie’s style of music. Nothing like what he’d write and, if he was being really honest, nothing like what he’d normally listen to. But, hell, The Party wasn’t like that either and he loved their music, too. Steve was right — this wasn’t like Swim Team. It was something else, slow and sort of mournful but also weirdly sort of joyous. Eddie could almost picture it fully produced, with a synth and a drumkit behind it, the type of music one of the cultier pop stars put out, beloved by fans.
Strangely, hearing it live — hearing Steve’s soft, pretty voice sing it, it made Eddie sad again. That Steve wasn’t able to do it, to put it out there. Even if it wasn’t something he wanted to record, Eddie could think of a million acts who’d jump at the chance for something like this, and Steve deserved to have the chance to sell them it. The thought process made him uncomfortable, a little — he didn’t want to reveal this to Steve, to burden Steve with his emotions. So to distract himself from them, he took out his lighter and fiddled with it, for a bit.
The song ended. Steve cleared his throat, and then clearly braced himself to look at Eddie. Like there was a chance Eddie wouldn’t like it — hell, like there was a chance anyone wouldn’t like it.
(Although, perhaps in Steve’s point of view Eddie was the first person he’d shown who he could expect total honesty from. No offense to Dustin, or Robin, or Max or Lucas, but those were his friends. They’d say nice things. And Eddie was his friend, too, but a newer one, and one who’d famously hated him, not too long ago, so he must have thought Eddie wouldn’t lie, if it hated it. Would tell a brutal, harsh truth.)
“Steve,” he said, voice serious. “Dude, that was — you’re fucking amazing, holy shit.”
Steve flushed and smiled bashfully. “Come on, man, that’s — that’s nice, but I mean, it’s a work in progress, it doesn't even have a name yet—”
Eddie reached over and clamped his hand around Steve’s forearm. “Harrington. It’s amazing. You’re—” he stuttered here, just slightly. “You’re amazing, seriously.” He wanted to say your dad is a fucking idiot, but he didn’t.
Steve was still smiling. He looked down, and his eye caught on Eddie’s other hand.
“Wait,” he said, “did you get a new lighter?”
Oh, right. Eddie had sort of forgotten. He could feel his face go red. “Lost the other one,” he offered, with a nervous little glance back to Steve.
Steve’s smile changed, a little, into a bit of a smirk — like he knew Eddie was lying, maybe. “Sure,” he said, a bit skeptical. “Lost it.”
Silence hung between them. For the first time, Eddie realized how close they were sitting — closer than they needed to be, particularly in a room that had two beds. Their knees were brushing. Eddie still had his hand on Steve’s arm. For a long beat they just looked at each other. He wished he could read Steve’s expression, wished he could understand what it meant, the way Steve’s eyes flicked across his face, wished he knew, because not knowing meant he was speculating, meant his stupid heart was picking up and hammering in his chest—
There was a thunderously loud THUMP against the door. The two of them sprang apart, like they’d been doing something more scandalous than just sitting next to each other.
“STEVE! EDDIE!” Mike shouted, through the door. “Hop says we gotta be downstairs in five!”
Steve huffed a sigh, and then stood up and swung the door open. “Wheeler, there are other people staying in this hotel. Don’t yell.”
Mike just rolled his eyes. “Just warning you — you guys weren’t answering the group chat.”
Oh, shit, yeah. Eddie’s phone had been abandoned in the room somewhere, forgotten during the arc of their conversation.
“We’ll be downstairs,” Steve said.
“What were you even doing?” Mike asked. “You’re usually glued to your phone in case there’s an emergency.”
“The crossword,” Steve said, dry as bones.
“Smoking pot,” Eddie said, at the same time.
Mike looked between the two of them like they both had a horrendous, flesh eating fungus or something. “I think it liked it better when you weren’t friends, you weirdos,” he said, and then left without another word.
Steve sighed, slumping against the doorframe. Eddie went and grabbed his phone, perched on a chair, and then walked back over to the other man, dropping a hand on his shoulder. “The burdens of motherhood, eh Steve?”
Harrington lolled his head towards Eddie and shot him a sardonic smile. “I don’t know why I ever had kids,” he deadpanned. “Come on — you ready for dinner?”
“Yeah, man,” Eddie said. Although the truth was that it wasn’t so much that he was hungry, as he was glad that whatever tension had been hovering in the air had snapped. He didn’t want to think too much about the way Steve had looked at him. If he thought too much about it, he’d let his mind run away with thoughts that couldn’t be true.
He and Steve were friends. Maybe heading towards good friends. And that was enough. Really. It was more than enough.
Notes:
cracker crust isn't as bad as eddie makes it seem, honestly. it's odd! but it's . . . special, in it's own way?
there is nothing more romantic to me than the ability to share silent space with someone, without the need to fill it, and i think this chapter makes that very, very obvious!!
i love the contradiction of steve being canonically a fighter, the type of guy who may flinch but never backs off, but only for other people. like, he'll rush to defend anyone he loves but if the fight is to make his own life better? nah, no thank you, i'm good sitting here writing sad songs on my yellow guitar and never ever dealing with it!!!
my last fic was on an accelerated romcom timeline but this one is truly hilarious if you think about it too hard. even eddie's like "wow, i've gone through a lot of emotions in give or take about ten days." yeah babe, this is a romance fic!! we got places to be and smut to write!!
chapter title is once again from Chiquitita by ABBA
Chapter 17: Kansas City-Wichita (THOSE ARE YOU GOT SOME NICE SHOULDERS)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
In Kansas City Eddie’s problem became a Problem. Capital P.
It had been a normal day, for the most part. They’d woken up after their dinner of, no offense, terrible pizza in St. Louis—
(He and Steve had ended up at opposite sides of the table. Not intentionally, just — Eddie had been talking to Mike and Will, and Steve had been roped into some girl drama Robin was blabbering on about, and they’d ended up as far away from each other as possible. Probably for the best, in terms of slowing down Eddie’s pulse, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking across the table every few minutes, to see what Steve was up to, which was weird and embarrassing and which he felt eternally thankful no one else seemed to notice.)
—and they’d once again piled into the vans to drive four hours to their next location. All else about the Midwest aside, Eddie was excited to get to a part of the country that wasn’t just flatlands. There was something mesmerizing about the low hanging horizon, about the green fields of corn and wheat, but only for the first few days. He knew it was hypocritical of him, given he detested nature and spent most of his time in NYC avoiding parks and sunlight altogether, banging around in divebars well after sunset, but he wanted to see a mountain or an ocean or something. No offense to the corn. Really, one of Eddie’s favorite vegetables, great staple of a diet.
Anyway, they arrived in Kansas City the normal way, in a flurry of chaos and dumb questions.
“So are we in Kansas City, Missouri or Kansas City, Kansas?” Lucas asked.
“There’s two of them?” Steve asked back.
“No, dumbass,” Dustin scoffed. “It’s one city that straddles a state border.”
Will rolled his eyes. “Actually, I think Kansas City, Kansas is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. But either way we are in Missouri.”
“Okay, but is the venue?” Dustin asked.
“Do you think we live in the dumbest country?” Max said, with a thoughtful frown.
“Definitely top five,” Eddie agreed. “Although I’m not entirely convinced France is real.”
“Man, what?” Steve asked, exasperated.
Eddie winked at him. “Big conspiracy there, Harrington. The French just want you to think they’re real to sell overpriced cheeses. You ever actually met a person from France?”
“Yes!” Steve said, throwing a hand into the air.
“That’s what they want you to think! Conspiracy,” Eddie hissed back, crowding much closer into Steve’s space than was required for his little joke.
“You are all morons,” Hop declared, face in his hands, and began to usher them into the hotel.
Eddie caught Steve’s arm before the other man got too far. “And yet,” he whispered, “you notice that Hop didn’t clarify which Kansas City we’re in.”
Steve gasped, like he was scandalized. “Conspiracy,” he whispered back, and Eddie grinned at him and let his hand linger on Steve’s arm a beat too long.
But that wasn’t even really the moment when his problem solidified. No, that was later, at the venue. They’d done soundcheck, and afterwards Steve had vanished, oddly, for like a full hour. Not that Eddie was looking—
Oh, okay, yeah, fine, Eddie was looking, whatever.
He was stuck in a corner of the green room while Mike, who’s voice had made a miraculous recovery, was apparently trying to blow it again by explaining the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Eddie, this time, even though Eddie was a guy who hadn’t seen a movie in theaters in like, four years.
(Eddie’s movie interests were limited almost exclusively to weird cult 80s horror movies revered by fellow gays, and, perhaps, the occasional Muppets classic. Sometimes a romcom, but only when Wayne made him, because Wayne loved the damn things. He’d seen When Harry Met Sally like fifteen times. There were only so many times one could see that movie.
Okay, actually untrue, it was sort of a perfect film. Whatever.)
Anyway, Eddie’s problem became a Big Problem at a precise moment. He’d remember it perfectly, crystalized in time, the way people always remembered big events. It was about ten minutes until the Party’s set, hovering just past 8pm, and he was in the green room of some dive bar in Schrodinger’s Kansas City (in both Kansas and Missouri until otherwise proven) and after an hour disappearance, the door swung open and Steve reappeared, Robin right behind him and—
He was wearing that fucking Metallica t-shirt. The too small one that he’d bought all the way back in Columbus.
And someone had put eyeliner on him.
On his fucking EYES!
And one might think that didn’t need restating for emphasis, because where else would eyeliner go, but it very much did. In fact, Eddie’s mind was playing it on a stupid, useless loop. EYELINER ON HIS EYES. EYELINER ON HIS EYES.
He, uh, he looked good. Was the point.
Eddie had a brain, once, at one point, he definitely did, but whatever remnants of it he hadn’t already killed with pot smoke and drinking and staying up too late and sitting too close to his laptop screen and microwaving nearly every meal he ever made melted into absolute nothing at the sight of Steve Harrington, former childhood crush, brief enemy #1, and current adulthood crush in a too tight t-shirt of Eddie’s favorite band wearing eyeliner.
He hoped when he died in the next minute or so from the heart attack this was causing that Gareth was at least too unaware to see what was happening and retaliate by putting HOPELESS HORNY LOSER as the epitaph on Eddie’s grave.
“Holy shit,” Max said, half around a laugh and half around a sort of strangled noise. Eddie checked to see Lucas’ reaction to her outburst, but Lucas himself was hyper focused on the strip of Steve’s stomach that was showing. A late breaking entry for most relatable kid, there.
Dustin had his eyes narrowed. “Did you lose a bet or something?”
Steve rolled his eyes — which had eyeliner on them, BY THE WAY— and crossed his arms, which only caused the hem of the shirt to go up—
Eddie looked away. He met Gareth’s eye. Gareth was already looking at him, actually frowning at him, like he was starting to figure something out.
Oops. Not great.
“For the record,” Steve was saying, “Robin made me buy this shirt.”
“And the eyeliner?” Mike sneered.
“Also me,” Robin admitted. “We’re leaning into the aesthetic. Why? Don’t you think it looks good?”
She said the last part directly at Eddie.
Oh, she definitely knew about his crush, that devious little lesbian.
“It looks good,” Will blurted, and then flushed when he realized just how quickly he answered. Really, Eddie would have been in the same boat if he was capable of human thought at all, but his mind was just sort of making a BUZZ WHIRRRR noise like a fan on an old computer.
Steve’s lips twitched slightly at Will’s reaction, and then his eyes found Eddie’s. His smile shifted a bit, eyes narrowing, lip quirking even more up and—
Well, and on anyone else that expression might look a bit flirtatious, but, like. There was no way Steve was flirting with him. Less than no way. Eddie’s brain really was mush.
“Whaddya think, Munson?” Steve asked, voice loose and laced with — with something, Eddie really didn’t know what — “am I metal enough to play in Corroded Coffin, now?”
Eddie couldn’t stop the small, strange noise he made at that. Sort of a gasp-wheeze-almost-laugh-almost-cry-thing. “You look more like a porn star than a metalhead, Harrington,” he said back. It was only after it left his mouth, and he saw Steve’s eyebrows raise, that he realized how that sounded, Jesus Christ. He fumbled around for something to cover how stupidly, pitifully obvious that statement ended up being.
What he came up with was this — stripping off his battle vest, tossed over a faded Anthrax shirt that he’d owned from high school in a last-minute bit of outfit inspiration before they left the motel, and throwing it at Steve’s face. “For your modesty, dude,” he said, half around a scoff. Playing it like a joke, that was the way to go, right?
Steve smirked again, just a small little upwards tick of his lips, which, shit, Eddie was staring at, and slipped it on.
And, okay, wow — he’d imagined Steve in this outfit before, once, yes, but actually seeing it? It might have been a mistake, tossing him the vest so quickly, because Steve in Eddie’s clothes was hot. Like embarrassing post-puberty wet dream hot. Like embodiment of every single one of Eddie’s horrendous teenaged fantasies hot. It also sparked a weird, possessive feeling deep in his gut. He’d never understood in high school, why girls wore their boyfriends hoodies and hats, their letterman jackets and class rings, until right now. Because it was like a mark. Anyone who knew this was Eddie’s vest and saw Steve wearing it would think it was because Steve was Eddie’s. It looked, a bit, like Steve had put on Eddie’s clothes haphazardly in the morning, maybe after a show the night before, maybe from the ground of Eddie’s bedroom where they’d been tossed, maybe after they—
A woman stuck her head into the green room, thankfully halting Eddie’s train of thought dead in its track. “The Party? You guys ready to go on?”
The kids scrambled to leave the room, and Robin, Gareth, and Jeff went to follow them to the wings backstage. Steve stayed a moment back, though, and Eddie stayed with because—
Okay, he didn’t really think he needed to elaborate why he was staying behind with Steve anymore, at this point. Embarrassingly self-explanatory.
Steve quirked an eyebrow at Eddie. “Does the vest help the outfit?” he asked. It was playful, light.
Eddie swallowed. This was twice as bad, now that they were alone — Eddie had to resist the urge he had to say something obvious back, like, you’d look better with nothing on at all, actually. “Sure, Steve,” he said. “You look great. Only a little like a kid wearing a Halloween costume. Metal Poser, five bucks at Spirit Halloween.”
Steve’s smile sharpened just a touch — a predatory thing, almost, and it made something in Eddie’s stomach lurch. “Aw, don’t start being mean to me again, Munson,” he said, “you might turn me on.”
Eddie’s brain short circuited again. Because, okay that had to be flirting. Had to be. Who said turn me on in any context other than flirting?
It made heat pool in Eddie’s stomach, harsh and molten. He wanted to do something stupid. He wanted to say how mean do you want me, Stevie? with a little curl of his lips. He wanted to run his hand against the flat of Steve’s jaw. He wanted to lean across the distance and sink his teeth into Steve’s neck, shocking some noise out of him, a startled, breathless gasp—
(He wanted to move across the room and press his mouth softly against Steve’s, for no reason other than because he could. He wanted Steve to kiss him back, soft, half-smiling in surprise the way he did, sometimes, that small little smile, like he hadn’t really meant to smile at all, that Eddie thought maybe he liked the most. He wanted everyone to see them, to know that he had this, that it was his. Hell, he wanted it to be his, wanted Steve to be his, which was worse, so much worse than just wanting to fuck him—)
He bit the inside of his cheek. Bad idea bad idea bad idea. A million reasons not to, not the least of which was that Eddie wanted the tour to go well, to be good, and this would be the beginning of a long road to ruin he couldn’t fix. So instead of doing anything he wanted, he reached over and shoved Steve’s shoulder. “Fuck off, Steve,” he said, but he made it a joke, light and laughing, and Steve was laughing too, the tension snapped in a moment.
Like, sure, okay: they were flirting, apparently? But if Steve could make it a joke so fast, then surely it was half a joke to start, right?
It couldn’t be anything else. Eddie’s life just wasn’t ever lucky like that.
---
Okay, so: Eddie had a problem. He was man enough to admit he had a problem. And he was smart enough to know that it was the type of problem he couldn’t solve alone; so he did what he always did when he had a problem and consulted the experts.
Unfortunately, in his case, the experts were. . . less than expert.
Gareth and Jeff looked mostly irritated and frumpy with sleep as he barged into their room the next morning, before the official wake up and get moving time. “Dude,” Gareth said, moving to let him through the open door, “what’s urgent enough that you have to knock six hundred times in a row before 9am?”
“I have a problem,” Eddie announced.
“Is this about Steve?” Gareth asked. He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Because if you woke me up for Steve—”
“Wait,” Eddie cut in. “How did you know?”
Gareth and Jeff shared a glance. “Dude,” Gareth said, like Eddie was a bit slow. “Last night you looked like you wanted to eat him alive when he showed up in that slutty little shirt before the show. And, I mean. . . you gave him your vest. You wouldn’t even let me touch your vest when we were moving you in!”
“And then after the show you very carefully ignored him all night,” Jeff added.
Which was true. Being on-stage had been only slightly better than being off-stage, because at least on-stage Eddie mostly didn’t have to look at Steve. He could look at his guitar, or out into the audience. He only turned to Steve when Steve said something, or once or twice during a song when Steve actually sang a part, and both times Eddie nearly missed a note because he’d been so blinded by how fucking good Steve looked.
(He got a little sweaty, under the stage lights, and it smeared the eye makeup a little, and deflated his hair slightly, and he kept running a hand through it to push it off his head, and Eddie kept imagining his hand through Steve’s hair, Steve sweaty for entirely different reasons—
Oh, god, at this point there wasn’t even any purpose in yelling bad thought at his brain. His brain had gotten away from him entirely. The horniness had won. White flag, up.)
After the show, congregating at the bar, Eddie had done the only smart thing he’d done in ages and just gently, carefully, didn’t end up alone near Steve for the rest of night. He’d been worried about what he might say, if he had a chance, especially with a tongue slightly loosened by beer. He thought he’d been subtle, but if Gareth and Jeff had noticed — shit, did that mean Steve had noticed? It would have bugged him, Eddie returning back to the “being a dickhead” part of their relationship for seemingly no reason, he’d have to apologize—
Gareth made an audible scoffing noise and rolled his eyes. “Oh don’t panic,” he said, annoyed.
“We don’t think he noticed,” Jeff said, much more nicely. “Robin was yammering his ear off all night about some girl named Vickie heart-eyes reacting to one of her Instagram stories? Think that took up most of his mental energy.”
“Look,” Gareth cut in. “The solution to your problem is this: ignore it.”
“I think we are past the ignoring it part,” Eddie said back.
“No!” Gareth said. “We are not! You have to ignore it. You can’t fuck Steve. I’m nixing it. I’m putting the kibosh on it, now.” He waved a hand at Eddie like Eddie had done this intentionally. “I will not let you Fleetwood Mac this tour, dude!”
“In a way it’s sort of an inverse Fleetwood Mac,” Jeff said, sagely. “Like, you started out hating each other and now you want to fuck.”
“There will be absolutely no fucking!” Gareth practically screeched.
“Okay, firstly, this all feels very homophobic,” Eddie said, sticking his nose into the air.
“Fuck any other man on Earth,” Gareth seethed. “Fuck a million men, at the same time! Do a goddamn Roman Caligula orgy of men here at the Super 8 motel, I do not care, but you cannot fuck Steve Harrington.” He jabbed a finger into Eddie’s chest. “You two just stopped hating each other, if you go back to not talking the whole tour goes up in flames.” He sighed. “Or, god, at least wait until it’s over will you? I don’t really give a shit who you sleep with in Brooklyn, anymore.”
“As absolutely useless as this advice is,” Eddie snapped, “you’re really only getting half of my problem. I mean, I want to sleep with Steve, yes, obviously, I’m pretty sure anyone would sleep with Steve given the chance—” he ignored the slightly disgusted groan Gareth made at this— “but I also want to, like. . . hold his hand, and shit?” He didn’t intend for it be a question, but his voice wavered at the end in a sort of humiliating way. “Like, if it was just a sex thing I could get over it, but we have this — we talk, you know, and when we do I want to like, brush his hair behind his ear. I thought about kissing him in a Culver’s.”
There was a long moment of silence at this.
“Dude, back up, I’m sorry —” Gareth said, holding his hands up, “this is just a stupid lust thing, right? Like, this is just classic Eddie I’m going to try and sleep with the most inconvenient man on Earth stuff, yeah? Like that time you slept with the booker at my favorite venue in Brooklyn?”
“Or that time you slept with our fourth roommate and we had to pay extra rent for two months when he moved out because it got weird after?” Jeff added.
“Or that time—”
“I’m getting the point,” Eddie snapped, cutting Gareth off. “There are a lot of bad choices I have made in my life, can we move on?”
“What I mean is,” Gareth said, holding up his hands, “this is like. . . middle school butterflies, right? Or is this like—” he sighed, and tugged a hand through his hair. “Is this like you have feelings?”
In his mind Eddie could see Steve perched at the end of the bed, playing his guitar, smiling sheepishly up at Eddie through his eyelashes. Steve, leaning on the edge of the balcony, joint loosely between his lips. Steve, sprawled out on the tile of the pool next to him. Steve in a hundred situations he hadn’t even been in, yet — Steve across from Eddie in the booth at Eddie’s favorite dive in Brooklyn, Steve pressed next to him on the metal stoop of Wayne’s trailer, Steve sprawled out in that lazy way he got, on Eddie’s mattress—
“Oh my god, wait, that is such a feelings, face,” Gareth said. “Shit, I’m sorry, I went too mean too fast, I thought this was just, like — I could talk you out of a bad idea fling.”
“I told you it was a problem,” Eddie groaned. He moved to flop himself back onto one of the beds and buried his face in his hands. “I mean, even if Steve does want to fuck me, which I still sort of doubt—”
Gareth made a slightly mocking, disbelieving noise at this, which Eddie ignored again.
“—there’s no way he’s, like, doodling Mr. Steve Munson in notebooks or shit.”
“And, just to clarify, you . . . are doing that?” Jeff asked.
Eddie just nodded, too mortified to say it out loud.
“Wow,” Gareth said. “Uh, sorry for the whole Roman orgy thing, it’s just . . . you know, I didn’t really expect you to have, you know, feelings, on account of your. . .” he trailed off.
Eddie sat up to glare at him. “My what?”
“Intimacy issues?” Gareth offered, sheepishly.
“I don’t have intimacy issues!”
“Eddie,” Jeff said, very sweetly, “again, we love you, and we don’t want this to sound like criticism . . . but you absolutely have intimacy issues.”
“Your last three relationships ended because those guys thought you were icing them out,” Gareth added. Eddie knew who he was talking about, but truthfully he hadn’t even actually considered any of those guys relationships, which maybe proved Gareth’s point in an even sadder way. “And it’s normal man, you’ve been through shit, it’s hard to let people in, but you even had trouble letting us in at first, you know?”
“I didn’t have trouble letting Steve in,” Eddie said softly. And then, a bit louder, “I don’t have trouble letting Steve in. I mean, I told him about Chrissy and stuff back in Indianapolis.”
“Woah,” Jeff said, very softly.
“He’s easy to talk to,” Eddie protested, but it sounded weak. “I just. . . like talking to him. It doesn’t feel like work, you know?”
Gareth sighed and sat down next to him on the bed. “I don’t really have good advice here,” he admitted. “Unrequited love is a bitch.” He put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, gently.
“Woah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves—” Eddie protested.
Gareth held a hand up, apologetically. “Sorry, sorry, not love, right.” And then lower, under his breath, “and you think you don’t have intimacy issues?” Eddie shoved him in the side of his head, and Gareth laughed, a little. “Look, Eddie. . . I don’t mean this the way it sounded earlier, I swear — but, seriously. You shouldn’t sleep with him. If you have feelings for him and he doesn’t have them for you, then it’s a recipe for getting your heart broken, dude. And that’s still gonna make tour awkward and weird.”
Jeff had a thoughtful look on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t think it’s as hopeless as you two do.”
“I need the hope snuffed, Jeff,” Eddie said morosely. “Hope will kill me.”
“I mean, Steve flirts back with you,” Jeff said, reasonably. “That’s pretty obvious.”
“I think Steve would flirt with a wall if he thought it might get the wall to smile,” Eddie pointed out. “He’s famously a manwhore. Dustin and Lucas are always making jokes about people he’s dated. Even Robin calls him a slut.”
“Sure, fine,” Jeff allowed, “but for all everyone says that, have you actually seen Steve hit on anyone since we’ve been on tour?”
Eddie considered this for a long moment. He. . . hadn’t, actually. Not even some of the people who’d been obviously hitting on Steve, like the waitress at that weird drug-front place on the road to Columbus, or the sound guy who’d hovered around a bit longer than necessary in Detroit. He’d been nice to both of them, sure, but it hadn’t been anything near what he laid on Eddie the night before. Robin had joked that Steve hit on anything that moved, and maybe he was more charming to people than most but it certainly wasn’t hitting on them.
“I guess not,” Eddie said, after a beat. “But, I mean — that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not like he can take someone home to a motel room he’s sharing with Robin and Henderson, right? So it’s sort of an empty promise.”
Jeff looked unconvinced. He opened his mouth to further his argument, but Eddie cut him off before he could. “Look, okay, even if Steve does actually want to sleep with me, and isn’t just flirting as like, a weird bit — I mean, Gareth’s right, right? It’s a mistake to screw him while I’m all,” he waved a hand. “Mushy. So. . . how do I stop?”
“Stop what?” Jeff asked. “Having feelings? I don’t think it works that way, man.”
Eddie groaned and flopped back down onto the bed. “I’m doomed,” he said. Okay, whined, more like, whatever.
“I think maybe you just gotta get some space,” Gareth offered. “Close quarters always blows emotions sky-high. Like, I dunno, maybe avoid being the car together or bunking with the guy until these feelings. . . subside?”
“Or you find a hot guy in a bar and get some in the bathroom,” Jeff said. “Although he’ll probably have worse hair.”
“Oh gross,” Gareth whined. “Why the bathroom?”
“It’s that or a room you and I are most likely also sleeping in!” Jeff protested.
“Okay, enough, talking about sex with you two is like talking about sex with Wayne, it skeevs me out.” Eddie clambered back up, again, and sighed. “Okay, so I — I don’t ignore Steve, because then he’ll get suspicious and things will get weird, but I. . . pull back. Go in different vans. Crash in different rooms.” Stop having late night talks about our lives he added in his head. Stop splitting joints with him and laying down next to him by swimming pools. The idea of losing that, more than anything, was a horrible pang of sadness deep in his chest. But he thought he could have it back, maybe, if he shoved down the sex part of this. Jeff was right. If he got laid, then maybe this desperation for Steve would turn back into just regular friendship. “That’s easy enough. I can chalk it up to being, you know, tired or whatever. Tour slog.”
“You sure, man?” Jeff asked. “I still think—”
“No, I’m sure,” Eddie said, cutting him off. “I’m right. Hope will kill me. There is no world in which Steve Harrington ever ends up anything close to resembling my boyfriend. So I just pull back until this stupid crush fades away and I can just be a normal dude who’s friends with him. Fine.”
Jeff paused for a moment, frowning at him, before shrugging. “Fine. But if I’m right and Gareth’s wrong, I get to be the best man at your wedding.” Eddie groaned again, and Jeff grinned, looking not even a little sorry about it.
“Too soon, man,” Gareth said, punching him in the arm. “Now come on, we’re like two minutes from being late enough that Hop breaks this door down.”
They went downstairs to where the others were already congregating, ready to set off for Wichita, and when it came time to decide who went with who, Eddie volunteered to be in Mike’s van off the jump, even though Steve was driving another car. Across the parking lot Steve’s lips quirked down just once as Eddie did that, almost a frown but not quite committing to it — but he didn’t ask any questions, and Eddie decided not to look at him again as he clambered in the van.
It’d be weird, for a bit, but it’d be fine. Fixable. And when his stupid little crush went away, he could go right back to being Steve’s friend, and it’d be like none of this ever happened.
Notes:
eddie's suffering. poor guy.
the "eddie's terrible past relationships" convo mirrors the "steve's terrible past relationships" convo because i love
repeating a jokecharacter parallelsjeff is the only character in this fic who has realized he's in a romcom and is taking full advantage of it. bad bet, gareth, jeff's genre savvy!!
writing this scene out was so fun, i love the CC boys and the personalities i have entirely projected onto them because they each only got about three lines in the actual season
chapter title is from Bodys by Car Seat Headrest
Chapter 18: Lincoln-Denver (I'M TWO QUARTERS AND A HEART DOWN)
Notes:
a content warning: eddie makes a joking reference to suicide in this chapter
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
What Dustin would have probably referred to as Operation: Stop Having Feelings for Steve began in earnest in Wichita, and continued onto Lincoln.
Getting distance from Steve had been easy enough in both places. In a way, they were back to what Steve had described when he initially suggested the truce — coworkers who tried not to bother each other. It was easy enough to only speak to Steve during soundcheck, or when absolutely necessary. At every other moment, Eddie roped someone else into a conversation, or started looking at his phone, or, once, in a stupidly blind panic, just blurted bathroom and sort of half-ran from a baffled-looking Steve.
If Steve found it weird he didn’t say anything. Probably easy enough to chalk up any strange behavior on Eddie’s part to his whole Eddie-ness, or a resurgence of tour nerves, or the sort of jangly semi-exhaustion that was creeping in, now that they were two full weeks into tour.
And how insane was that? For the sum total of all his insane feelings, Eddie had known Steve for, basically, two weeks. It had taken him two weeks to go from full on hate-fest to sort of friends to embarrassingly all-consuming crush. In a way, being on tour was a bit like summer camp — or like how Eddie imagined summer camp based on movies and TV, cause god knew he’d never been able to afford sleepaway camp. You’re in a weird little bubble, essentially isolated off from the rest of the world, spending every single day and every single night crammed in horrendously close quarters with the same people. It made sense that the worst Eddie had ever fought with anyone was on tour, and that the most intense crush of his life was on tour.
That it was the same person on the same tour was probably a uniquely Eddie problem, though.
Anyway, the shortness of time he’d ultimately known Steve was a good thing, right? Because if it took two weeks to sort of semi-fall for the guy, how long would it take to fall out of that? He just needed some real-world, outside-the-bubble contact. He had a whole idea for it, too; they had another night off, right after the Denver show, in Seattle. He wasn’t sure what Seattle would be like exactly, but he’d read enough about it to have a vague guess, and, hey, every city had gay bars, right? So he’d feign annoyance with everyone, claim he needed a night off alone, and find one in Seattle. Then there he’d find the most sort-of-Steve-looking guy possible, go back to his place, and done! Wouldn’t even have to stay the night, and Gareth and Jeff wouldn’t question where he’d been. If anyone else asked, well — well, he’d get there when he’d get there.
(There was a small, irrational, entirely against the Operation part of him that sort of wanted to do this and tell Steve what he’d done, just to get a reaction. An, ideally, slightly jealous reaction. He had a vision of what a jealous Steve might look like in his head. Brow pinched, eyes narrowed, something harsh in his normally soft gaze.
Completely, deeply unhinged, because even if Steve did want to sleep with him, there was no way he’d care that much about Eddie sleeping with someone else. Because Steve was normal, and whatever feelings he almost certainly didn’t have would also be normal, if he had them. Which he didn’t.
Eddie was starting to get a bit concerned about his own brain, at this point. Maybe it was time to stop smoking weed? Surely this wasn’t how brains were supposed to be.)
Anyway, his carefully thought out, foolproof plan turned out to be not very foolproof, because it hit a snag in Lincoln thanks to one, mischievous, meddling fool:
Robin Buckley.
(And, hey, whatever happened to queer solidarity, huh? Weren’t they supposed to be in this together?)
The snag was this: immediately after the Lincoln show, but before the part of the night where they all hung around aimlessly in a bar, too buzzed with adrenaline to sleep, Robin cornered Eddie outside of the men’s room he’d panic-darted into to, once again, avoid being alone with Steve, and demanded, “okay, what the hell is going on with you?”
“Whaddya mean?” he asked, ignoring the slightly breathless tone he had. He’d sort of run, after all.
“You’re avoiding Steve!” Robin said, smacking the palm of her hand against his chest. “And I can’t figure out why. Nothing happened, right? You’re not fighting again?”
Oh Christ. He thought he was being subtle! Or, you know, as subtle as he was capable of being given his whole general vibe.
He thought about saying I’m not avoiding Steve, but he had perfect clarity on what Robin’s response would be — that deeply unimpressed, bitchy face she got, eyebrows raised and eyes wide — and he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. So, instead, he went with, “we’re not fighting.”
“But you are avoiding him,” she said, eyes narrowed.
He sighed, and tugged a strand of hair in front of his face to chew on it, lightly, ignoring her slightly disgusted grimace at the move. “I’m just tired Rob, honest, it’s — it’s not about Steve.”
“Right,” Robin said, clearly disbelieving. “Just, you two went from all those private little one-on-one talks and bonding sessions to you bolting fully from the room to pretend to pee every time it looks like you might be alone for thirty seconds.”
“Shit,” Eddie said. Caught out. And then, “wait, fuck, do you think Steve noticed?”
“I think Steve thinks you have stomach problems,” Robin deadpanned. “Dustin suggested stocking up on Tums and Pepto Bismol.”
Ah. Well that was pretty much the least sexy thing in the world Steve could think about Eddie. Awesome, great work Munson, amazing.
“But I have a different theory,” she offered. “You like him, don’t you?”
Eddie balked. “What? Who? What?” he asked. SMOOTH MOVES, IDIOT, his brain screeched.
She rolled her eyes expressively at him. “Oh, come on,” she snapped. “You’re not the first person I’ve seen fall victim to Harrington charm. I think he slept with, like, half the people who worked on that Scoops Ahoy album, you know?”
A stupid flare of jealousy hit Eddie in the stomach. Ugh, what? He didn’t even know Steve, then! That was irrational! He was being irrational!
There was a moment here, he knew, where he could tell Robin the truth. Hell, it might help to tell Robin the truth — surely she was one of the few people on Earth with a deep cache of embarrassing Steve stories. One of them might help him fall out of this feelings-spiral. Or, at least, maybe Robin could be the one to let him down easy? Let him know what Steve’s type was, and that it certainly wasn’t Eddie “The Freak” Munson, with his anxious energy and slightly gross personal habits. Robin could tell him about the cool indie chick Steve had waiting in the wings back in Williamsburg, or the surfer-boy LA hunk that he was on-and-off-again with but that would inevitably one day land on on, or any number of the half-imagined people he figured were waiting patiently on Steve to simply call and say okay, I’m ready to settle down. Because, there was just no way a guy like that didn’t have at least one person in his back pocket, nevertheless a line out the door, eager and waiting.
But telling her felt. . . bad. He knew in his heart that no matter what he said Robin wouldn’t tell Steve — she didn’t seem the type to spill secrets. But picturing the twisting sympathy on her face — the way it would fall, the way she’d go “oh, Eddie” in a soft tone, shaking her head. It would be so much worse to get let down easy by someone who wasn’t even Steve. He didn’t think he could handle it, Robin’s gentle reassurances that he wasn’t the first person to have his heart crushed under the weight of Harrington charm, or whatever she’d called it.
So instead, he did was he did best when faced with something scary: he ran the fuck away from it.
“Sure, I like him,” he said, playing dumb. “We’re cool now, I swear.”
She looked exasperated. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I’m saying that you have a big, ridiculous, gay crush on Steve Harrington.”
Eddie put on his own exasperated face, crossing his arms and cocking his hip a little to really nail it in. “Oh, what, so you’re saying just because I like men I have to like Steve?”
“No,” Robin said back, measured, “I’m saying you do like men, and you happen to want to jump Steve’s bones. I saw you react to the shirt, Eddie, you’re not exactly the king of subtle facial expressions.”
Hm. She had him there. He had no idea what had been happening to his face, but it was enough to clue even Gareth and Jeff in, and they had the most broken gaydar he’d ever experienced in his life. (Gareth had thought he was straight for, like, the first four months of their friendship. Even though Eddie had been actively fucking a guy in that span. “I thought you and Dave were just really close friends!” he’d screeched, red face and horrified at being so off course.)
He could get halfway to a truth, maybe, to throw her off. “Fine, okay. The Metallica shirt did it for me. You’re right. But that’s because it was, you know — Steve looked more like my type, and not. . . himself.”
Robin raised an eyebrow. “So, what? You’re into metalheads, and Steve’s usually too. . . pretty?”
So, so, pretty, Eddie thought, in a stupid, dreamy little way.
“Steve’s my friend,” he said, firmly. “And I need to get laid. Two totally unrelated things.”
“Right,” Robin said. She didn’t sound all that convinced. And she was looking at Eddie like she was searching for something, some bigger truth under his skin. He kept his face as perfectly blank as he could, before realizing, belatedly, that that might be more suspicious, not less. He was very rarely of the blank face. Before he could correct though, she shrugged. “Okay, fine,” she said. “So, if you’re not avoiding Steve, you’ll come be normal at the bar, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, “of course.”
She nodded and walked away, and Eddie allowed himself only a brief moment to wallow in despair before following her and gamely talking to Steve an absolutely normal amount that night.
(And no more than that. When Steve ducked out for a cigarette he didn’t follow, and at the end of the night he didn’t offer a joint, and if he felt a little hollow about it, laying in bed in the dark, staring sleeplessly at the fuck-ugly popcorn ceiling of the motel, that was his own problem.)
---
And then, in Denver, Operation: Stop Having Feelings for Steve fell apart entirely.
He should have known Robin hadn’t actually let it go, but he’d let his guard down.
When they arrived at the hotel, Eddie ended up stuck behind a van with Dustin for a moment, discussing, of all things, a D&D campaign the kid wanted to run when they were back in New York. When they got to the group, milling around the front entrance, Steve and Robin had clearly been arguing about something, her arms crossed and her chin held high haughtily, while Steve stood with his hands on his hips, like a perpetually exhausted soccer mom.
“Ah! Dustin! Eddie! Good!” Robin said, brighter than she’d ever sounded talking to either of them. “Just who we were talking about.”
At which point Eddie’s stomach dropped out. Because — uh oh.
“I know we already sort of discussed rooms for tonight, but if I have to deal with another night of Harrington’s snoring I’m going to smother him with a pillow,” she said, easily.
Steve was frowning at her like this made no sense. “I barely snore,” he said. “And it’s never bothered you before!” He seemed a bit offended that she was complaining about it at all.
“We’ve never been on a giant road trip together,” she shot back. “And the snoring’s only half of it. You’re a horrible cuddler Steve, you octopus all over me! All clingy!”
Oh, shit, that was extremely endearing. Also endearing was the way Steve’s face went bright red at this, like it was the most mortifying fact on Earth.
(Eddie didn’t mind being cuddled, his evil, awful brain supplied.)
“Why does that matter?” Eddie asked. “Aren’t we in doubles?”
“No,” Hop cut in, with an exhausted-sounding sigh. “This whole place is kings only, and one room with both a bed and a couch.”
Eddie felt himself balk. Robin’s plan was coming into focus in his mind, and he was not a fan of it. “Wait, why?”
“They had a group rate,” Hop snipped. “Taking your ass on tour isn’t cheap, Munson.”
Robin piped up again. “Look, I need a night off from Steve, and sharing a bed with him tonight is not the way to get that. Even though he’s still my number one guy.” At this, she reached across and pinched his cheek, while he swatted her hand away.
“So, what,” Dustin said, “you want to crash with Eddie? Or me?”
“No,” Robin said.
Eddie’s stomach sank even farther. She smirked at him, just a little.
That devious fucking lesbian!
“No, I’m going to take the couch in that room, and since I only choose to bunk with sane people I’ve requested that Max and El take that bed. You know, girl’s night! Sleepover! So that means that you, Dustin, are going to bunk with Lucas since Lucas and Mike won’t bunk together, which puts Will with Mike, and Eddie and Steve are going to suffer in the giant king bed together.” She clapped her hands. “I get a night off from Steve, everyone’s happy, it’s perfect!”
It was not perfect! It was incredibly far from perfect! Eddie’s entire plan hinged on not spending too much alone time with Steve! You know what the opposite of that was? SHARING A FUCKING BED WITH THE GUY!
Steve just shrugged. “I still think you’re being crazy,” he said, “but whatever.” And then, with a little smirk of his own at Eddie, “hope you don’t mind cuddling, Munson.”
It was light, jokey, because of course it was, because it was a joke. Because Steve didn’t mean it.
And Eddie should have done something self-preserving here. He should have said, sorry, I actually hate being touched — an obvious lie — or maybe I’m sick of Harrington’s snoring too — too mean, and he hadn’t bunked with Steve in a few nights, so it was a moot point. He should have made an excuse, or bargained, or fumbled around the rooms more. But he couldn’t find a way to do that without admitting he just didn’t want to bunk with Steve, which would open up more questions than it answered, and with Steve right there that just wasn’t an option.
So instead, Eddie heaved a long-suffering sigh, and shook his head. “I’ll snuggle you this once Harrington, but you,” and here he jabbed a finger at Robin, "owe me, Buckley.”
She grinned back, all evil. “Oh, don’t worry, Munson,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to collect.”
---
Right, so that night, after the show — rocking by the way, the best Steve had probably ever played half the songs, and the longest Eddie’s Lunchbox solo had gone on, to rollicking applause — Eddie found himself back in a motel room with Steve.
With a single bed.
Just the one.
One bed.
He was handling it fine, really.
Okay, he wasn’t. Instead of playing it cool or being normal, he was sort of hovering awkwardly in the bathroom, pretending to futz with his hair and brush his teeth much longer than strictly necessary, distinctly aware that it was only the open door to the bathroom that was helping him beat the incredibly unsexy stomach issues allegations with Steve.
He couldn’t hide all night though. So. Fine. He left the bathroom.
Steve was sprawled on his side of the bed, staring at the ceiling. Eddie hovered awkwardly at the edge of the room for a beat.
“You good?” Steve asked, still at the ceiling.
“Yeah,” Eddie replied. “Just, you know, my hair.”
Steve propped himself up onto his elbows to look at him, scrutinizing Eddie. “No, I mean — I dunno, feels like I haven’t really seen you since Kansas City.”
“We see each other every day. And, besides, that was four days ago,” Eddie said, hoping it sounded reasonable. “Not, you know, months.”
“No, I know, I just—” Steve cut himself off, looking a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know, seemed like I couldn’t. . .” He trailed off. “Nevermind. I’m being dumb.”
Eddie couldn’t help himself — something about Steve, about his open, stupidly endearing little looks, about his face — it just required that Eddie flirt with him. Mandatory. Couldn’t be stopped. “Aww Stevie,” he cooed, “you saying you miss our little talks?”
“Maybe I just miss your weed,” Steve huffed back, with an eyeroll.
“You already proved you don’t use me for my weed,” Eddie said. “Can’t fool me, Harrington.”
“Alright, fine, maybe I missed the talks,” Steve admitted. “Weirdly, I’ve been sleeping better after them. God knows why.”
“It’s the emotional vulnerability,” Eddie said, sagely. “Really helps you nod off.” Then he sighed, and resigned himself to his fate — Operation: Stop Having Feelings for Steve was an abject failure. It just wasn’t happening. As long as they were on tour together, and as long as they were hovering around each other, he was going to maintain this crush. Fine!
If he was going to have a stupid little crush, he was going to lean in. Might as well go for broke, right?
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Fine, we’re entering little talk mode, then. Tell me something I don’t know. Something embarrassing, I wanna lord it over you.” He flopped down onto the bed next to Steve, who let out an obviously exaggerated grunt of exertion. Eddie smacked his arm in retaliation.
Steve laughed, light and bright. “Okay, fine, okay.” He thought for a minute, frowning up at the ceiling again. Eddie took the moment to just look at him. He could probably stare at Steve in side profile forever. He was a study in contrasts — sharp jawline, soft hair, sharp nose, soft cheeks, sharp voice, soft eyes. It was sort of funny that Eddie had wasted so much time hating Steve when he could have spent that time admiring him.
“Okay,” Steve said again, after a moment, clearly coming to a decision about what to say. “I learned guitar and piano because my dad wanted me to. And I had tutors and shit, you know, music lessons, the whole nine yards. But I taught myself bass, which everyone thought was a huge waste of time. I’ve always told people I just wanted to challenge myself, learn something new, but truthfully I taught myself because I was completely and stupidly in love with Pete Wentz.”
Eddie’s brain short circuited.
“I’m sorry, Pete Wentz? From fucking Fall Out Boy?”
Steve was laughing, burying is face in his hands to hide a blush that Eddie could still see crawling up his neck. “I know, I know! I memorized all of From Under the Cork Tree and Foile a Deux, man, it was mortifying.”
Eddie was laughing too now, a breathless sort of thing. “Wait, okay, how old were you?”
“God, sometime in late middle school or early high school — before Swim Team hit, when I had tons of alone time. I’d just sit in my room and listen to Fall Out Boy records and teach myself bass lines.”
Eddie shook his head. “But you told me you didn’t realize you were bi until you were like, nineteen?”
Steve made a terrible little whine in the back of his throat and Eddie resolutely ignored the way the sound went straight to his dick. So not the time. So, so not the time. “I know, I know,” Steve said, pulling his hands away from his face. He flipped onto his side to fully face Eddie. His hair flopped in front of his face a little, lovely. His eyes were so fucking brown. Eddie swallowed and hoped it wasn’t audible.
Maybe he’d would stick with the plan of fucking a rando in Seattle tomorrow, actually. This was overwhelming.
Steve was speaking again. “I was so stupid, Eds, I mean — I bought every album, I knew every lyric, I googled that dick pic of his multiple times. And the whole time I was like, oh, I’m just really jealous of him. He has perfect hair and a rocking body and all of his lyrics make me feel things, and I’m having a totally normal reaction to all that. I bet tons of straight guys look up other guy’s dicks. You know. To compare! Not for gay reasons!”
Eddie laughed, heartily, let himself meet Steve’s eyes head on, just for a bit. “Stevie, I’d never ever call you stupid, but that is pretty silly.”
Steve shrugged, loose and boyish. “Compulsive heterosexuality is a hell of a drug.” He cleared his throat, then, a bit awkward. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Not even Robin. So that’s very special, Munson.”
It felt very special. It felt like Eddie was the most special boy on Earth.
“Okay,” Steve said, a mischievous little smirk playing at his mouth. “I told you my most embarrassing celebrity crush — you tell me yours.”
Oh god. No.
No no no.
“No,” Eddie said, flopping back onto his back, refusing to look at Steve.
Steve reached over and shoved at his shoulder. “Come on man, fair is fair.”
“No, it’s not, we are not teenaged girls at a sleepover, I owe you nothing.” Eddie was aiming for haughty, hoping that panic wasn’t setting into his voice. He was also desperately trying to think of a better answer — anyone else. But every other crush he came up with was so normal, Steve would dig for something more embarrassing, he just knew. Captain Kirk? No, generically sexy. Captain Picard? Sort of embrassing but also sort of a lie, because really, Riker was the star of that show as far as being hot went. Also, shit, why could Eddie only think of Star Trek characters, he definitely watched other stuff growing up, right?
“Dude, we kinda are teenaged girls at a sleepover,” Steve said. “Now you’re freaking me out, I’m expecting it to be really embarrassing. Is it like, an animated character? Like, is this that thing where everyone thought that one lion from The Lion King was sexy?”
Eddie squawked. “No, I did not want to fuck a lion, Jesus Christ, Steve!”
Steve actually threw his head back laughing, the sound bouncing around the room. “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just — you’re like, so flustered, you’re bright red, I can’t figure who it could be. I mean, you’re acting like it’s—”
And then Steve stopped talking abruptly. Eddie grabbed the pillow from behind his head and put it in front of his face. He wondered if he could successfully suffocate himself. His body would probably prevent it, somehow.
“Eddie,” Steve said, very soft. He felt Steve tugging at the pillow, sighed and let it get pulled away.
Steve did not look horrified. He looked sort of giddy, actually, eyes bright and sparkling. There was a smile on his face that Eddie could only describe as roguish. “Eddie,” he said again. “Was I your embarrassing celebrity crush?”
“I am pleading the fifth,” Eddie said, sounding miserable. “I am refusing to have this conversation with you. I am going to throw myself into the ocean like Virginia Woolf, and it will be all your fault.”
Steve laughed again, but it was different. Breathier. Eddie’s heart picked up involuntarily. “Munson,” Steve said, and his voice was very low, and he was looking at Eddie very intently. “Do you think I’m hot?”
And — wait. There was that tone again, that undercurrent. The one that sounded like flirting.
Steve was flirting with Eddie. He was an idiot, and a moron, and he read too much into everything, but there was no mistaking this face, right? There was no way. Steve’s eyes, slightly hooded, his smile just a little twisted, his body hovering a bit over Eddie’s.
(And, his inside head voice offered, his best friend manipulated everything to get you two in a bed together. Maybe she wasn’t calling Eddie’s bluff about his crush. Christ, maybe she was wingmanning Steve.)
Eddie’s heart was beating so loudly that he felt there was no way Steve couldn’t hear it. “I did think you were hot, Harrington, when we were both idiot kids. Don’t let it get to your head.”
Steve smirked, and it was filled with danger. He was leaning into Eddie’s space, curling over him like the open end of a parentheses that Eddie could lean up and complete. Eddie wanted to kiss him.
Steve’s eyes darted down to Eddie’s lips.
Oh.
Oh shit.
Eddie was going to kiss him. Gareth’s warnings be damned, hell, Fleetwood Mac be damned.
(A stupid thought in his head, then, that maybe it was a bad idea to fuck your bandmates, but Fleetwood Mac made one of the best albums of all time before it all fell apart, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Then, another thought: he’d maybe prefer never making a truly great album over facing a future where Steve wasn’t present in his life.
Which was a big, heavy thought, the type that settled somewhere under his ribcage with a nearly physical pressure and that he, frankly, had less than no idea what to do with.)
Eddie was dragged out of the thought but Steve moving forward, just a little, a knee knocking against his, and all he had to do was press forward, finish the connection, ignore every weird thought in his brain and just kiss Steve—
Outside, someone yelled “HEY!” at the top of their lungs.
Eddie and Steve both startled, pulling a bit away from each other. A pretty flush colored Steve’s cheeks, but he was moving away, clearing his throat, shaking his head, like he’d gotten carried away.
Eddie held in a sigh. This was for the best, right? Whatever was going to happen was a mistake — they hadn’t even made it all the way to the West Coast yet. They had ages left on this tour. He couldn’t let it get strange and awkward. And it would, if they finished. . . whatever was about to happen, because clearly Eddie’s feelings had careened slightly past crush, if that Fleetwood Mac thought meant anything. Even if Steve was open to sleeping together, Eddie was absolutely alone on Stupid Overwhelming Feelings Island, and then they’d have to navigate the complication of being on different pages, of Eddie wanting more than he could have. So, right, better to not, in the end. Even if Eddie really, really wanted to.
The voice called again. This time, it yelled “MUNSON!”
Eddie jolted a little, shocked to be called by name. “What the hell?” Steve asked, frowning at the door. “That didn’t sound like anyone we knew.”
“No,” Eddie said back. “It didn’t.” It did sound familiar though. He just couldn’t place it, head caught in the electric strangeness of the moment he’d just been broken out of.
“Get the fuck out here, FREAK!” the voice yelled again.
And oh. Oh shit. Eddie bolted up, off the bed, backing away from the door, panic clutching at him. Every bone in his body, every shred of his inner instinct, told him to fucking flee, to run, but there was nowhere to run. The only exit was toward him, and he would kill Eddie, he would, he always wanted to kill Eddie—
Steve stood in front of him. “Eddie,” he said, placing his hands gently on his shoulders. “Who the hell is that?”
Eddie swallowed, rough. “I’m not totally sure, but I think — I think it’s Jason Carver,” he said. “The guy from — in high school, the guy who—”
Steve nodded, clearly remembering. “Okay,” he said. He squeezed once, reassuring. “Okay, stay here.”
And then Steve was moving towards the door, what the fuck? In the basketball shorts he slept in and no shoes, like he was going to do something about this. “Steve, stop, what are you doing?” Eddie hissed, voice pitched low like Jason could somehow hear him.
“I’m going to get him to leave,” Steve said, easily. “I’ll get Hop, and we’ll get security, and it’ll be fine. Just say here.” He said it with finality, and then he swung the door open and went outside.
Eddie hovered for a moment. Again, every instinct in his body told him to run, or in this case to hide, to get away from the danger.
But Steve had gone out there. Stupid, lovely, pretty Steve, who he’d almost just kissed, and Eddie suddenly couldn’t stand to be in this room not making sure the dude was okay.
“Oh, fuck,” he said to no one.
And then he darted to chase Steve out the door.
Notes:
i am sorry to those of you i worried last week with the idea that "operation: don't have feelings for steve" would last multiple chapters and lead to lots of angst; luckily for us (and eddie) there's a meddling lesbian to make sure that doesn't happen, and also he's really just too overdramatic to stop himself
UNluckily for the eddie the past has come quite literally knocking, right in the middle of my "there's only one bed" trope. how dare it.
chapter title is from Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy
thank you as always for your lovely comments and for reading!! i'm having so much fun with this one, and i hope you are too!
Chapter 19: Denver (FIRST OF ALL, WHO YELLS?)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Leaving the motel room felt like a stupid plan immediately as he did it, but Eddie was in it now. He and Steve were in a first floor room, so they emerged straight into the parking lot — the motel wasn’t really crowded, so there were only a handful of parked cars beside their vans.
One of which was a truly atrociously expensive looking, cherry red sports car, still running and pulled in at an angle, front door open. Standing outside of it was — sure enough — Jason Carver himself. He looked the same as high school, honestly. Older, definitely, but his hair was still cropped short, he was still vaguely built, and he still had that sneering, condescending look he’d spent years shooting at Eddie down hallways. It was on full display, now, made a little sloppier by the fact that he’d been drinking. Which was obvious, even if he hadn’t been yelling in the parking lot, because he was actively holding a can of beer and swaying, a little, on his feet.
Jesus, he’d driven here drunk? Eddie already hated the guy, but that was a new low.
Steve was still a few steps ahead of Eddie, and he was walking into the parking lot — again, barefoot, the heroic weirdo — hands out in front of him like Carver was a feral dog (which, yeah, okay, kind of).
Carver’s eyes slid over Steve entirely, lighting on Eddie, half a step behind him. “Holy shit,” he said, with a sort of dazed disbelief. “I mean, I told Andy it was you, but holy shit.” He shook his head. “You gotta lotta fucking nerve showing your face in my town, Munson.”
“Okay, well,” Eddie said, because time may have passed but his finely honed ability to piss off jocks certainly hadn’t faded, “like, a million people live here, so it’s not your town. Secondly, I didn’t even know you lived here. I mean, why the fuck are you in Denver? I figured you’d be, like, a mall security guard or an asshole gym teacher back in Indiana, still.”
“Eddie,” Steve hissed, back over his shoulder, a face that clearly said stop making this worse firmly plastered on.
“I’m a ski instructor at a resort in the winter,” Jason snapped. “Not that it’s any of your business, freak.”
“You kinda made it my business by stalking me to my motel,” Eddie said.
“Hey,” Steve cut in. “There’s people trying to sleep here, okay? We’re out of town in the morning. Why don’t you call an Uber, go home, sleep this off, and come back for your car tomorrow? We’ll be long gone, and then you never have to see any of us again.”
“Get your fucking lapdog away from me, Munson,” Carver spat at Steve.
Steve, in all his bitchy glory, just rolled his eyes like the guy was a moron. Which, okay, the guy was a moron, obviously, but Steve seeing that warmed something in Eddie’s heart.
“Original,” Steve bit at Jason, dry. “Look, man, I’ve done the whole jerk jock picking a fight thing and trust me, it’s overdone. We’re all way too old for it. You’re clearly drunk, and you got a lotta big feelings, and I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. So leave.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Jason said. And then, to Eddie, “what, too chickenshit to fight me so you sic’d your little boyfriend on me? He in your cult too, freak?”
“You’re still on that?” Eddie asked, ignoring the incredibly dumb little elated feeling he had at Steve been mistaken for his boyfriend. Stupid! “Wait, okay let me just try to grasp this whole thing. You, what — saw I was playing a show on, like, Instagram or something, and then went to the show, followed me from the venue to a second bar, where we were for hours, and then when we finally left you followed me from that bar here, waited in the parking lot for, like, twenty minutes to build up your nerve or something, and then came to pick a fight with me over something that didn’t even happen a decade ago in an entirely different state?” There was a part of him that found it funny how scared he’d been in the room. This version of Jason was so different from the hulking monster of Eddie’s high school life, parked outside his house with a pistol. There was something pathetic about him, now, following a boogeyman from his past. Maybe it was just that Eddie was pretty sure he didn’t have a gun on him, because he wasn’t waving it around like an asshole. Or any weapon stronger than a beer can and a fist, which thrown drunkenly probably wouldn’t do much. Or maybe it was that Eddie was distinctly aware he had a much bigger group of people to support him, these days, that he wasn’t going to have his plight ignored by the small-town cops who respected Jason’s dad too much to stop him from wreaking havoc on Eddie’s entire life.
Jason had gone bright red. “I saw you in the bar,” he clarified, like that was less weird. “And I — I wasn’t building up my nerve—” he started.
“Then what’s with all the liquid courage?” Steve said, raising an eyebrow. Eddie moved forward a little, so he was standing just behind Steve’s left shoulder — from here, he could see a few crumpled beer cans on the floor of the car. Ugh, this guy. “Dude,” Steve started, again, “seriously, whatever you think Eddie did in high school, he didn’t. It’s ancient history. I’m telling you — walk away.”
“You don’t know him,” Jason half-slurred. “He’s a druggie fucking freak — pervert.”
Pervert in this case probably stood in for a slur, given that Jason seemed to change direction midway through the sentence, clearly cowed by watching Steve’s glare get stronger and stronger with every word. For the best — a gay slur might have actually gotten Harrington hot enough to throw a punch, which would have escalated things past the point of no return. Eddie didn’t really want to test if Steve could actually win a fight in a parking lot in Denver, in all honesty.
“I think I know him better than you, man,” Steve shot back. “He’s a good person, unlike you. You’re just some jumped up alpha male asshole who thinks he’s a big shot. I mean, driving drunk? Following us around town? You’re calling him a freak? You’re the one stalking us. I’m telling you, now, for the last time, to back the fuck off.”
Eddie blinked at Steve, swinging to his defense so clearly and viciously, teeth bared in anger. Like Eddie was worth protecting, like Steve really would jump into a fight for him. It was stupid hot.
(It was more than hot, maybe. It was. . . it was something, alongside the weird Fleetwood Mac thought from earlier, something building deep in the chasm of his ribcage, terrifying and loud and growing.)
For a moment Jason just glowered at Steve, like he was trying to figure out what the words meant and if they were an insult.
And then, with a grimace and no warning, Jason hauled his arm back and launched his beer can at them.
It smacked Steve directly in the face, bouncing off his right cheekbone, just below his eye.
“Steve,” Eddie half-screeched, because, holy hell, that looked like it hurt.
Steve stumbled back a step, a hand flying to his face. “Jesus Christ,” he snapped. And then, pulling his hand away to fling it accusingly at Carver, “did you just throw a beer at me? Who the fuck does that? What are we, twelve year olds at a tailgate?”
Jason, at this point, mostly looked confused, a sort of stupefied drunk look on his face like 1) he couldn’t believe he’d thrown that beer and 2) he couldn’t believe that Steve mostly just seemed lightly bitchy about it, instead of apocalyptically angry.
“I mean, firstly,” Steve was still saying, “it’s a waste of beer. I’d say perfectly good beer, but it’s Coors Light, so I’m not gonna lie. And secondly, it wasn’t even that good of a shot! You like, barely glanced me. If you’re gonna hit me, you should hit me you know?” He shrugged. “I mean, I got a plate smashed over my head once — now that’s getting hit, let me tell you.”
“You what,” Eddie said, flatly.
“That’s not a funny story, Steve,” Max half-screamed across the parking lot. Because, oh — their fight had been loud enough to wake the others, who were now exiting their rooms en masse and seeing what was happening.
Jason, seeming to realize he wasn’t just fighting the two of them, now, began to back up slowly towards his car.
“What the hell is happening?” Hop asked, stomping up. “Who is this?”
“Some dickhead I went to high school with,” Eddie said, feeling oddly embarrassed to admit that to Hopper. “He followed us from the bar.”
“Do you even know who you’re with?” Jason asked Hop. He’d clearly given up on convincing Steve at all. “He murdered my girlfriend, man!”
Hop raised an eyebrow. “You think Eddie Munson murdered someone?” he asked, disbelieving. “You ever seen him try to haul an amp? Kid’s genetically half pool-noodle, I’m pretty sure.”
“Hey!” Eddie snapped. Steve, the bastard, snorted half a laugh. Eddie turned and glared at him.
Jason was starting to look mostly lost by the lack of reaction he was getting. “He, uh,” he stammered. “She disappeared—”
“She ran away,” Eddie said. “And, for the record, knowing what I know about you now, I don’t really blame her. You must have been some treat of a fucking boyfriend.”
Jason half-lunged towards Eddie, then. Steve shoved Eddie back, flinging an arm in front of him, another protective little stance. Hop placed a firm, flat hand on Carver’s chest and shoved him back a step, like the dude weighed nothing at all. “Enough!” Hopper bellowed. He jabbed Jason in the chest, again. “You’re drunk,” he said. “And picking fights. And I could call the cops and get you booked for the drunk driving, not to mention the assault on Steve, but I’m feeling magnanimous, you little twerp. So here’s what you’re going to do — you’re going to call a cab. You’re going to go home. You’re going to sleep this off. And you’re going to forget you ever knew Eddie Munson, okay?”
“But he—” Jason started.
“He nothing. I don’t know what you think he did, but I promise you he didn’t. You’re only making it worse by fighting.” Hop’s face softened, just a fraction, then. “I’m sorry about whatever happened to your girlfriend. But it was a long time ago. Right now, Eddie’s just a guy in a band trying to get some sleep. You leave now, he’s just a page in the history book. But if you keep bothering us, then we’re going to be a long part of your life, in a court of law. Because the shit you’re saying is defamation. And if you keep it up, I will have to sue you to protect my label.”
Jason wavered. Eddie could see it, an actual look on his face, his brow pinching and then smoothing out with resignation. He sent one last, vicious glare Eddie’s way, and then bit out a “fine.” He moved toward the car, but Hop stepped ahead and slammed the door shut before he could get in. “Cab,” he said. Jason rolled his eyes but stomped off towards the street, a retreating back that Eddie sincerely hoped he’d never have to see again.
There was a moment of silence — a sort of pregnant pause — before Robin breathed out, “holy shit, is everyone alright? Who the hell was that?”
“My fan club,” Eddie said, suddenly exhausted. And then, turning to Steve, “Jesus, dude, I’m so sorry, your face—”
He reached forward, half-instinct, and ran his fingers along the edge of Steve’s jaw, under the slightly blooming bruise on his cheek. It wasn’t until Steve let out a slightly shaky breath at contact that he remembered — right. They’d almost kissed. Steve was looking at him so intensely, and Eddie couldn’t look away, trapped in his eyes, a sailor in a siren’s thrall, or something like that.
“I’m fine,” Steve said, very softly.
“He hit you in the face,” Max said, somewhere behind Eddie’s shoulder. At the reminder of the others the tension snapped immediately, and Eddie let his hand fall. Steve’s face twisted a little, and before Eddie could even begin to guess what the expression meant, Max was barreling on. “You’re always throwing yourself in front of danger, Steve. It’s not funny. One day you’re going to get really hurt, again.”
Eddie turned to look at her. She was furious looking, face red and arms crossed. But there was also something strange and wet in her eyes, almost like tears.
Oh. She was scared.
“Max,” Steve said, clearly realizing this too. “I’m sorry, you weren’t supposed to see—”
“You can’t just hope I don’t see shit, Steve,” she said, voice wobbly. “And that plate thing isn’t funny, it’s not—” She cut herself off with a choked sounding sob and turned and stomped off back towards her room.
“Look, I gotta—” Steve said, half to Eddie, like an apology.
“Go,” Eddie said, and Steve nodded gratefully and followed her.
Hopper heaved a sigh. “I’m gonna go get the motel to tow this asshole’s car,” he muttered.
“And get an icepack for Steve,” Joyce added, following after him.
Across the parking lot, Steve had caught up to Max, and they were talking, although too quietly for anyone to hear. Max was glaring at her feet and Steve was bent forward towards her, body language all apologetic.
“He said he got a plate smashed over his head?” Eddie asked.
Lucas grimaced. “Max’s brother. . .” he started, and then trailed off.
“Billy is a fucking monster,” Dustin chimed in.
Billy. Eddie had a vague memory — Dustin in the van that first day, telling a story about Steve storming up to someone named Billy. Jesus, that was Max’s brother?
“We mostly went to different high schools,” Will said, “so we decided to do our own prom thing, for fun, since we couldn’t all go to each others. Steve offered to let us use his apartment, which was the only way our parents would let it happen because they knew he wouldn’t let us drink—”
“Because he’s uncool,” Mike offered, like that was relevant. Will rolled his eyes and shoved him.
“Max and I had started dating during junior year but we had to keep it a secret from her family, because Billy’s — well, he’s racist, honestly,” Lucas said with a wince. “He knew we were friends and that was already bad enough. But he found out about us dating, somehow — we never really figured out how, but he must have seen us or something — and he followed us into the city and to Steve’s apartment.” He paused. “I thought he was gonna kill me. Steve stopped him, or he tried to, shoved us into his room and put himself between me and Billy. Billy ended up barging into the apartment and — well, eventually, he domed Steve with a plate. Knocked him out. By then one of the neighbors had called the cops, and they came and arrested Billy and got Steve to a hospital.”
“He went to jail, for a little,” Dustin said. “Pled guilty to aggravated assault.”
“Steve was hurt pretty bad,” El whispered.
“He got a concussion,” Will added. “And a black eye, and stitches in his eyebrow.” He gestured to his own eyebrow. “You can kind of see the scar, if you’re really looking for it.”
“He’s a brave little idiot,” Robin said, half chiding and half deeply, endlessly fond.
“Jesus Christ,” Gareth said. And, wow, okay, Eddie had sort of not realized Jeff and Gareth were there too, which was a bit startling. Jeff was shaking his head like this whole story depressed him. Which — fair enough. It was pretty depressing. “How did I never hear about this? It never made the press?”
“Hop and my mom got the cops to agree to leave Steve’s name out of it,” Will said. “He was just John Doe, so it never really got anywhere.”
“Max blames herself for it,” Lucas said, sadly. “And Steve always says she’s wrong, he tries to joke about it, deflect I think, but—” he sighed. “It’s hard. She really hates talking about Billy. She kind of shuts off about the whole thing.”
“Because he sucks,” Dustin scoffed. “Steve’s a way better big brother anyways, she got the better deal.”
“Dude,” Lucas said.
“What, she can’t hear me!” Dustin argued back.
Eddie looked back down the parking lot at Max and Steve. He said something and she rolled her head back towards the sky like she was annoyed, but was clearly smiling, which was an improvement. Steve was grabbing at her shoulders, swaying them around, and Eddie realized he could faintly hear Steve singing— just softly, a bit goofy, at Max. Kate Bush, maybe — Running Up That Hill? Max shoved at his shoulder and he staggered back, laughing, but she was laughing too, letting him sling an arm over her shoulder and draw her back to the others.
“All good?” Lucas asked as they approached, a little nervous sounding.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Max said. “He’s an idiot, but we’re good.”
Joyce and Hopper re-appeared, then, Joyce clutching an icepack, which she handed off to Steve, who smiled gratefully. “Okay,” Hop said. “A lot of drama. Everyone’s alright?” Everyone nodded. He sighed. “Let’s try to get some rest. We got another night off, tomorrow, so we can push leaving back an hour or two — let’s say up and moving by 10:30?” Everyone seemed grateful for the extra time, and after a little more discussion to coordinate their morning, they all headed off to sleep.
Robin, pretty clearly, wanted to follow Steve and Eddie, but Steve pulled her close and whispered something in her ear and, reluctantly, she ended up heading back with Max and Lucas.
“What’d you tell her?” Eddie asked, as they walked back towards the room.
“Max needed her more than I did, right now,” Steve said, shrugging.
It wasn’t until Steve closed the door behind them and they were alone, again, that the events of the night crashed violently back into Eddie. He had almost kissed Steve on that bed, right there, that they’d still be sharing, and had only been interrupted by the literal manifestation of Eddie’s past reappearing out of nowhere. There was a moment of awkward hovering, the two of them looking at each other — Steve with his back pressed against the door, Eddie a few steps in front of him.
Eddie looked at the light bruise beginning on Steve’s cheek, the icepack clutched in his hand — all because he’d swung to Eddie’s defense, no questions asked.
You’re his friend, he thought, sternly. Be his friend.
“Come on,” Eddie said, with a little sigh. “Sit down, I’ll hold that thing to your face for a minute.”
Steve obliged, plopping down onto the edge of the bed and handing the ice pack over to Eddie. Again, Eddie brushed his fingers against Steve’s jaw, lightly, and then pressed a little firmly, turning Steve’s face to the side so he could put the icepack against his cheekbone. Steve was quiet but clearly a little restless, hand twitching a bit.
“Thanks,” Eddie said, softly, because he didn’t really know where else to start. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”
Steve seemed surprised by that, turning his head to meet Eddie’s eye, forcing the icepack off. “Dude, of course I did. He wanted to start something, I mean — I wasn’t gonna let him come kick your ass, or whatever.”
“Sure,” Eddie allowed. “But we could have just called reception, let them deal with it. You didn’t have to, you know — defend my honor.”
Steve chuckled, although it was sort of humorless. “That’s what Max was saying. You know, that I rush in too much, that it doesn’t always need to be me getting hurt—” he bit off a sigh. “It’s just. . . you’re my people, you know? I can’t, like, sit around and trust that someone else is going to come protect you.”
Eddie felt the weight of being included as one of Steve’s people settle into his stomach. It wasn’t the lurching or fluttering of a crush, though, it was something heavier, more solid and sure. Weightier, yes, but also a bit more joyful, a bit more wonderful. He thought about Joyce, weaving her arm through his, and Dustin with his feet on the dashboard bickering with Lucas and Will and Mike about some movie, and Robin smacking his side lightly. Being one of Steve’s People meant being part of this family.
It was the first time Eddie felt like maybe he could have a family, outside him and Wayne and the Corroded Coffin boys. It felt good. It felt important.
It felt like a stupid thing to risk for a one-off tour fling. Steve hadn’t brought their little moment up, either, so maybe they were on the same page here — best to move on. Best to just pretend it never happened. Then one day, years from now, at Steve’s wedding or whatever, maybe they could talk about it over a beer, a little drunk, laughing at how dumb it was — remember that time we almost kissed? Tour’s so weird, right? So emotional!
It would be okay, not acting on these feelings. He’d still be one of Steve’s people. That was for the best. He held in the sigh he felt at the decision, but he made it anyway.
He pressed the icepack into Steve’s cheek, again. “Well, she’s probably right that you shouldn’t do that, but. Thanks, anyway. I think you’re very brave,” he said.
“Not always,” Steve said back, very softly. “Not where it matters.”
Eddie scoffed. “Yeah, like when?”
He made the mistake of meeting Steve’s eye. They were so bright, beautiful and deep, and searching for something on Eddie’s face. That flickering around look Steve got, only around Eddie, like he wanted to catalog every possible microexpression to find what it meant.
(And how strange, he thought, that maybe Steve spent time trying to figure Eddie out when Eddie had spent so much time trying to do the reverse.)
Steve seemed to find whatever he was looking for in Eddie’s face, because his eyes settled directly onto Eddie’s, and he took a deep breath.
“Earlier,” he said. “Before we got interrupted. I — I wanted to kiss you.”
Eddie felt his breath stop. His hand stilled.
So much for not talking about it, then.
“I still want to kiss you,” Steve said, soft. “I just — I haven’t worked my nerve back up, yet.”
So much for not acting on these feelings.
“Oh,” Eddie said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
Steve lifted his hand up and moved the icepack away, never breaking eye contact with Eddie. He tossed it off to the side, haphazard. He curled his hand around Eddie’s, so gently, warm where Eddie’s had gotten cold holding the pack, and large, and calloused, a little, from the guitar and the bass and the piano. With his other hand he reached to cup Eddie’s jaw, just slightly.
“You should probably stop me,” Steve said, still so softly, almost a whisper. Like a part of him knew this was a bad idea, too, would be a big terrible mess for both of them to clean up.
“I probably should,” Eddie agreed, matching his volume. But he didn’t, because — because of course he didn’t. Because he wanted this, and he had always been the type of person who did the dumb thing without fully thinking through the consequences — ate candy until he got sick, snarled at the jocks who could outrun him and beat him up, drove too fast and drank too much and never studied enough.
Like, okay, for instance, here’s how he learned to swim:
His mom had been too poor for lessons, then too sick to teach him, and then gone. His dad had never really cared enough to bother. He hadn’t yet been with Wayne, who probably would have dragged him to the nearest YMCA learn on the weekends, if he’d been around. There’d been a lake by town, and he wanted to swim, wanted to beat the heat and hang out with the other kids, instead of just hovering in his dad’s one bedroom shithole alone, and it felt weird and embarrassing that he was almost in middle school and couldn’t swim yet. So one day he’d walked himself over, and just jumped in. Sink or swim. And there’d been a moment where his head was fully underwater where he genuinely thought he was going to die. He hadn’t thought it through, he’d just gone for it.
And then he emerged from the water, gasping for breath, and forced himself to paddle. He’d been fine. He’d figured it out. He hadn’t learned the lesson he was meant to learn — don’t do stupid, dangerous things, because you might get hurt. Instead he learned sometimes, you jump and it works out.
So he didn’t stop Steve. He let Steve hold his jaw a little more insistently, and he let Steve lean in to press their mouths together, softly at first, and then a little harder, let Steve slip his tongue in and push a hand into his hair. And he kissed back, pushed them closer together, fisted a hand in Steve’s shirt, let go of every single thought telling him it was a bad idea.
He let himself be dragged underwater, and he just hoped he’d learn to swim at the end of it.
Notes:
sometimes your old childhood bully shows up to town, throws a beer can at the dude you're sort of in love with, and that's what weirdly gets you two to finally make out. this is a thing that happens, i'm sure of it.
i'm sort of obsessed with the idea that in the canon of season 4 jason is this terrifying horror because he's so fueled by rage and bloodlust but that without any of that happening he's just kind of a prissy dickhead. like do we think jason had ever actually thrown a punch prior to the witch hunt? or is he just a guy who gets his henchmen to do these things for him? does he have any guts without a gun? i say no!
chapter title is a bastardized version of my favorite line from broad city
Chapter 20: Denver (EVERY TIME WE TOUCH I GET THIS FEELING)
Notes:
alright, we've hit the chapter that justifies the explicit rating on this fic! wooo. i have added some relevant tags to the thing if you wanna peep those.
if smut is not your thing, there is some plot in here, mostly contained in Eddie's internal monologue. you can either skip most of the chapter, down to "for a moment, afterwards, all Eddie could do was lay there" -- or you can skip to the end notes where i'll summarize it all for you.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
So: they were making out.
Like really making out. The type of heavy, insistent kissing that emptied Eddie’s head entirely. He didn’t have space for other thoughts, not really, could only act on the instinct of movement, the impulse of what he wanted next. The best he got was I should touch Steve more, which he then did, running a hand down Steve’s chest to the hem of his shirt, letting it rest on the bare skin of Steve’s hip.
Which must have done something for Steve, because the other man nipped at Eddie’s lower lip, then, a light bite that caused Eddie to pull back with a slight gasp.
“Sorry,” Steve said, not looking very sorry at all.
And here, in the silence of them having stopped kissing, was the moment for Eddie to get his shit back together. To push Steve away a little, to say hold on, we should talk about this, to ask is this gonna matter, tomorrow, or is this just a one night thing? To figure out where Steve stood.
But his brain was all mush, heady with the feeling of having had Steve’s tongue in his mouth like half a second ago, so instead of saying anything he made a stupid, whiny little noise and pulled at Steve’s hip a little to get him back, damnit.
Steve laughed, a little breathy, and moved — like really moved, shifted himself so he was sitting in Eddie’s lap, and oh, wow, holy shit, okay. Eddie hadn’t actually been creative enough to have this dream, yet, which was probably for the best for Gareth and Jeff, who would have had to deal with him sneaking off in the middle of the night to jerk off a lot more if he’d realized this was a fantasy he could have. Steve’s thighs were around Eddie’s, and he was so warm, and if Eddie just pressed his hips up he could—
Steve let out a whiny, high-pitched sound, and Eddie realized he had lifted his hips up; had rolled them, half-hard, against each other. “Shit,” he said, smartly.
Steve leaned forward to mouth at the hinge of Eddie’s jaw, under his ear. “Thought about this,” he murmured. Which — what the fuck? Another thing Eddie hadn’t even thought to dream about, Christ, he was so uncreative. His rich fantasy life had nothing on the actual reality of Steve, in his lap, pressing feather light kisses against his feverish skin, half-whispering, “you’re so fucking sexy, can’t stop thinking about you.”
“What did you think about?” Eddie asked. Because clearly Steve had been doing better on the whole imagination front, here, if sitting in his lap was any indication.
Steve leaned back a little, smirking, eyes hooded and sparkling with something that looked suspiciously like desire. “Your hands, mostly,” he admitted. He grabbed at one of them, pulling it off his hip and holding it in front of both their faces. Eddie still had his rings on — taking them off was the last step of his nightly ritual, done right before he turned off the light — and Steve was fiddling with them slowly, spinning them around the base of his fingers. “Watching you play, I thought they were really nice hands.” He shrugged, like this was not a massive, revelatory thing for Eddie to be hearing. Steve thought about him. “Thought about them around my dick,” he continued, and Eddie failed to stop the strangled noise that came out of him, at that. “Thought about them around my throat. In my mouth.” Steve rocked forward, pressing them together again, which even through the layers of Steve’s stupid basketball shorts and Eddie’s boxers was electric, a spark of touch that Eddie felt in his whole body, vibrating. “Thought about you fingering me open and fucking me until I cried.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie said.
“Too much?” Steve asked, but there was no actual nervousness in the question. It was like this was Steve in his element, here, totally fearless, fully aware that Eddie was basically putty in his hands.
“No,” Eddie spat, “don’t stop talking, the fucking mouth on you.”
“My mouth isn’t even my best quality,” Steve offered, with another little roll of his hips.
This man was going to be the death of Eddie. Gareth would have to put HOPELESS HORNY LOSER on his grave after all, after Steve murdered him via dirty talk.
He learned forward to capture Steve’s mouth again, because he simply couldn’t get enough of kissing him, really. Brand new thing on the Eddie’s favorite things to do list, slotted just under playing guitar and just above going to a show, probably. Luckily Steve seemed to be into the kissing, too, leaning into it heavily. Eddie took the moment as an opportunity, locking his arms around Steve’s lower back and tipping backwards until he was sprawled on the bed, Steve lying on top of him.
The other man laughed. “Impatient,” he murmured against Eddie’s lips.
“You’re the one who brought up fingering,” Eddie retorted. “What, I’m supposed to hear you bring that to the table and not immediately try to get your pants off?”
“You haven’t even gotten my shirt off.”
“You’re kind of a brat, Harrington,” Eddie said, but he moved to pull Steve’s shirt off anyway because — well, hell, that was a good point. He really, really wanted to see Steve shirtless. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“You gonna do something about it?” Steve shot back, grappling at Eddie’s shirt too.
“Alright, you asked for it big boy.” He took half a second to appreciate the way the nickname caused Steve to blush, a flash of red on his cheeks, like it had the first time — and what a revelation, that Steve had blushed the first time because it had flustered him, in, like, a sexy way! — and then used the distraction to flip them, sprawling Steve flat on his back so he could hover over him, running a hand down the hair on his chest. It was a nice chest — Steve wasn’t the most muscular man on Earth, but he had a lean build to him, a smattering of chest hair that Eddie found incredibly sexy. He took a moment just to look at Steve, who’d propped himself up on his elbows to — well, look at Eddie looking, he supposed. He reached up to tweak one of Steve’s nipples, which caused Steve flop back with a slightly dramatic sounding groan.
“You’re a fucking tease, Munson,” he said.
“And you’re whiny,” Eddie said, but he moved anyway, leaning down to suck Steve’s nipple into his mouth. The other man gasped, arching his chest up a little, and Christ was that working for Eddie. He loved when his partners were reactive. Liked them loud. (Which, okay, probably made him a shitty roommate. He’d never really considered that before.) He spared half a thought to wonder just how thin the motel walls were and how many awkward questions he might have to answer in the morning, but then Steve had a hand in his hair and was pulling which caused all sort of rational thought to leave in a stupid little whoosh.
He detached his mouth from Steve’s chest and moved to kiss him, again, shifting his hand to palm at the front of Steve’s shorts. Steve rocked into his hand without breaking the kiss, a little keen vibrating between them. Eddie pulled apart to suck a hickey into Steve’s neck for a moment. When Steve moaned again, hips shifting forward so he kept pressing into the palm of Eddie’s hand, he forced himself to stop. “Not that I don’t love this,” he said, “but if I don’t get my mouth on your dick in the next fifteen seconds I might actually die.”
“Oh,” Steve exhaled. His eyes were blown wide, pupils massive, mouth hanging open a little in a stupefied expression. “Well, can’t have that.”
“No,” Eddie agreed, and shifted himself down, pulling off Steve’s shorts in a single movement.
Okay. Big Boy was not a joke at all. Shit. Steve was hung. His dick was kind of pretty, actually, long and a little curved and dripping precum at the tip. He reached out to grab it along the base, and Steve let out a hiss at the contact, and possibly also the feeling of Eddie’s clunky rings against bare skin. “Fuck, Eddie,” he moaned, and oh. Hearing Steve moan his name, that was going in the bank forever.
“You can pull my hair,” Eddie said, realizing it sounded abrupt but really, truthfully needing to get Steve in his mouth right fucking now. “I like it a little rough.”
Steve’s groaned, and Eddie grinned at him, all mischief, before ducking down and taking Steve into his mouth. Not all the way — he was gonna need to work his way up to that, probably. “Shit,” Steve said, and then, like a good boy, he weaved a hand into Eddie’s hair and tugged. He couldn’t stop himself from moaning, a little, around Steve’s dick, which caused Steve to make a strangled sound in the back of his throat. Eddie dipped his head down more, taking as much of Steve as he could manage, running the flat of his tongue along the underside of Steve’s dick. He worked himself into a good rhythm, for a few minutes, bobbing his head in time with his hand, Steve hard and hot on his tongue, near the back of his throat.
“Eddie,” Steve said, tugging at his hair again, trying to get his attention. Eddie popped off Steve’s dick with a wet pop. “Not that I don’t love this but I, really, seriously wasn’t kidding about the whole finger me open and fuck me until I cry thing.”
“Fucking hell,” Eddie snapped. “You can’t just say shit like that, man.”
“You gonna shut me up?” Steve said, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I got lube and condoms in my bag.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Thought you’d get lucky on tour, Stevie?”
Steve’s expression turned bashful, and he flicked his eyes up and down Eddie’s body, just briefly, so minute Eddie almost missed it. “Kinda hoped, yeah,” he said.
Which — okay, the implication of the words and the look was. . . what? That Steve hoped he’d get a chance to fuck Eddie on this tour? That this had been something he’d been thinking about even when Eddie hated his guts, treated him like shit?
No, that didn’t make any sense — he was misreading something, too addled by his own arousal to understand what was happening. He shoved the thought aside. He was not going to let his own big, dumb feelings cockblock him right now. He was going to fuck Steve, and then maybe tomorrow they’d talk about it, or something, and Eddie could casually say that maybe he wanted something a bit more, if that was something Steve was into?
Oh god, no, wait, he wasn’t going to say that, that was mortifying. He’d figure out something else to say. Whatever. Right now he had to focus. He shoved himself off the bed and went for Steve’s bag, shuffling through the — hah!, nailed it — truly absurd amount of hair product until he hit the jackpot: a pack of condoms and a little bottle of lube. “You a boy scout or something? Always be prepared?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Yeah, there was a lot of time for merit badges in between the piano lessons and the recording sessions,” he quipped. “You should see me build a fire. Are you gonna stand there and make jokes or are you gonna come back over here and fuck me?”
“You know, patience is a virtue, Steven,” Eddie said, walking slowly back over — sauntering, really, if he was being honest. His flair for the dramatic knew no bounds. Steve’s eyes tracked him like an apex predator, or something — a greedy, hungry look, dropping down his chest and across his hips. Gamely, Eddie tugged at the waistband of his boxers, pulling them off slowly. Steve traced the movement, eyes catching openly on Eddie’s dick. There was a part of Eddie that waited for a kick of self-consciousness — he was normally pretty gregarious in bed, but this was Steve, and the lights were all on, and there was something about his open, naked interest that was intimidating. But the shyness didn’t come, because Steve’s pupils blew even wider, and he licked his lips.
Jesus Christ, this guy. Walking fucking wet dream.
It wasn’t until Steve laughed that Eddie realized he’d said that out loud. “Me?” Harrington asked. “Look at you, dude. You said I looked like a porn star the other day, but this is like you walked out of one, I swear to god. Railed by a Rockstar.”
Eddie had finally reached the bed, and he crawled across it until he was hovering over Steve again, bracketing him in with his arms. Steve looked up, through his eyelashes like an ingénue or something. “Not sure I’d call myself a rockstar yet, Stevie.”
“Sure you are,” Steve said, easy. “In a year, you’ll be drowning in groupies. Won’t even think about me.”
It was light, sort of teasing, but Eddie knew it was wrong — he wouldn’t forget about Steve. About this. Whatever happened next, he knew this night would be branded in his memory, forever, the way old guys in bars would spin wistful about the best they ever had. He wasn’t sure it got better than this, Steve hungry and hot and talking dirty underneath him.
He wanted to say something smooth and telling — something that showed his cards a little, like the groupies got nothing on you, baby. Something that told Steve that this was more than just sex, that there were feelings involved. But then the self-consciousness kicked in; not about his looks, or whatever, but about this. About admitting to Steve that he wanted more than just sex and getting that sort of half-pitying look guys got when you said shit like that and they didn’t feel the same way — that, oh, hun, I thought you knew what this was? look.
And worse, if Eddie said it and Steve didn’t reciprocate, he’d probably stop this. Would push Eddie away, gently, would say it was a bad idea, that they shouldn’t sleep together if Eddie was already entangled in feelings. Would spend the rest of the tour being kind to him in remorseful way, nice but not so nice Eddie got the wrong idea. Which would be mortifying enough if it happened tomorrow anyway, which it probably would, when Steve awoke in the harsh light of day and realized this was a bad idea that happened mostly due to a joint adrenaline rush (because obviously Steve didn’t have feelings, right? Not if he was suggesting that in a year Eddie would be fucking other people).
But at least tomorrow he’d have this memory, he’d have this night, tucked away forever. And maybe that was stupid, to risk breaking his own heart for one night, but hell. Eddie was stupid. Sort of famously so.
So, instead, what he said was: “oh now you’re nice, huh?” He pulled off his rings as he did so, clattering them gracelessly on the nightstand. That he did it without breaking eye contact was actually sort of impressive, he thought.
Steve grinned, all wicked. “I can get bratty again, if you keep going so slow.”
Eddie grinned back, leaned down to press one last kiss to Steve — harsh and fast — and then pulled off to coat his fingers in lube. “I know you’re eager, baby,” he said, and Steve made a little sound at baby that went straight to Eddie’s dick, holy shit — “but I’m gonna go slow to start, yeah? Don’t wanna hurt you.”
“S’okay if it hurts a little,” Steve murmured.
“Ah, pretty boy, we gotta talk a lot more before we get there,” Eddie said back, and before Steve could respond he ran a finger across his hole, feather light.
Steve whined, pressing forward towards Eddie’s touch, and Eddie felt his mouth go dry. “Christ, Stevie, you’re fucking needy aren’t you?”
Steve nodded, half-desperate looking, and Eddie took pity on the guy (hah hah, like Eddie wasn’t half-desperate too) and slipped a finger in. Steve moaned, a low, deep noise from his chest. “Fuck, Eddie, fuck,” he panted.
“That’s it, pretty boy,” Eddie said, bending down to mutter the words against Steve’s lips. “Nice and easy, just relax.”
“Want it,” Steve said back. “Want you.”
Well, what could Eddie say to that? Nothing, so instead he did the next best thing to talking, and slid another finger into Steve, scissoring slightly to open him up. Steve tossed his head back, pushing down so he was fucking himself, a little, on Eddie’s fingers, and Christ, wasn’t that a sight? Eddie let himself just watch for a moment. “You’re so unreal,” he said, finally, because there really wasn’t another word for Steve. Just pure unreality: that this was happening, that he was here at all, that it was Eddie’s name he was whining.
He crooked his fingers, just slightly, searching—
“Oh, fuck,” Steve moaned, head falling dramatically over the pillows, back arching again.
Ah, there it was.
“Feel good, baby?” he asked, just slightly arrogant. “Anything like you imagined?”
“Better,” Steve said, breathless, and wow, okay. That deserved a reward, Eddie figured, so he added a third finger. Steve gasped at the stretch. Eddie moved his fingers, stretching Steve open slowly, hitting his prostate just a little until Steve looked desperate underneath him, writhing and red-faced and slack-jawed.
“Eddie, I’m ready, please, Eddie,” he moaned.
“Aww,” Eddie cooed. “Look at you, asking nicely.”
“Fuck you,” Steve spat back.
“Fucking you is the idea, darling.” At this, Steve propped himself up onto his elbows just to meet Eddie’s gaze and roll his eyes expressively. Eddie laughed, loud and bright, and then pulled his fingers out of Steve, who let out a little whine at the loss. He pulled back to open the condom — with his hands, not his teeth, because he was a gentleman, and also because he and Steve hadn’t really had any sort of conversation about where, exactly, they’d been and who, exactly, they’d been with. So, you know: not worth the risk.
Condom on, Eddie took a moment to apply more lube to his hand and pump himself a few times, coating his dick. He was all about comfort you know? Never let it be said that Eddie Munson wasn’t a generous guy. He moved forward, hooking one of Steve’s legs over his shoulder. They made eye contact, then and — wow, yeah, okay. That was intense. He’d thought Steve’s eyes were the most beautiful shade of brown before, but now they were almost black, pure dark pupils, endless and deep. Really, for their first time fucking it’d be smart to not be looking at each other, but again, there was that niggling concern in Eddie’s head that he might only get to do this once, ever, in his life, and if that was true he wanted damn well to see Steve’s face when he came.
“Come on,” Steve said, kicking his foot a little, but he was smiling, and Eddie couldn’t help but smile back as he lined himself up and entered Steve.
“Ah, fuck,” he said, overwhelmed with the sensation almost immediately. Shit, he wasn’t going to last long, was he? That was sort of mortifying. He took a moment to steady himself.
“Move,” Steve whined eventually, and Eddie, once again, obliged, shifting his hips forward to fuck Steve. And Christ, was that a feeling. Eddie’d had sex, okay, Eddie had had a lot of sex, and maybe it was his big dumb crush or maybe it was the tour bubble or maybe it was the fact that Steve had taken a beer can to the face for him, earlier, but he wasn’t sure it ever felt like this before. He wasn’t sure it’d ever been so much before, this sort of all consuming thing, like someone had dropped a cigarette in the forest of Eddie’s chest and now the whole goddamn place was on fire. Whatever it was, it spurred him to move faster, to cant Steve’s hips up slightly until every thrust caused a long, low moan to rip out of the other man’s throat.
Steve reached down to touch himself and Eddie batted his hand away — again, in case this was the only time, he was giving himself the full experience. He wrapped a hand around Steve’s dick and started pumping, at, perhaps, a slightly cruel pace. “Thought you wanted my hands, baby,” he said.
“Fuck, Eddie,” Steve cried, half-broken, as he came. The sight of it, Steve as pretty and flushed and totally undone, was pretty much game over for Eddie, too, he managed to stutter his hips exactly two more times before he came with a strangled cry.
For a moment, afterwards, all Eddie could do was lay there, breath coming harsh and fast. Then Steve shifted, slightly, and — right, okay, this had to be a fairly uncomfortable position for him. Eddie pulled back and out, let Steve’s leg drop back down to the bed with a thump, and found himself hovering over Steve once again, laid back against the bed, hair mussed and sweaty. For a moment, they just sort of looked at each other — Eddie searched, desperately, for something to say that wasn’t stupid or corny or too telling, too much, too soon, too fast. He also searched for some sort of hint on Steve’s face as to how he was feeling, what this meant to him, but all Steve had was a small, sort of shy smile that told Eddie nothing at all.
“I’m gonna—” Eddie said, and then gestured towards the bathroom, scrambling up without another word. He did not turn back to look at Steve’s face, even though he could hear Steve shift on the bed to watch him go.
Man, was he blowing this? It felt like he was blowing this. Why couldn’t he just be normal? What did he usually do after sex? What did they talk about? Was there something to say that wasn’t hey, so now that we’ve had sex, is it a bad time for me to tell you I’m sort of crazy for you, even though I’m pretty convinced you don’t feel the same way?
He disposed of the condom and splashed some water on a towel, bringing it back to help Steve clean up. Steve quirked at eyebrow at him and took it when offered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you be this quiet for this long,” he said. “You’re kind of freaking me out, Munson.”
Munson.
It was just his name — he and Steve did the last name thing a lot, they’d done it during sex, so it shouldn’t have felt weird, but it sort of did. Like a removal, a barrier between them. Like, if Steve felt how Eddie felt, he would have said something more endearing — maybe not baby, or whatever, but Eds, or even just Eddie, something like that.
He was aware that he was getting very, very far ahead of himself, but he couldn’t help it. It was just — it was against everything Eddie fundamentally believed about himself and his life, for someone like Steve to be into him. Munson Doctrine did not allow for this, okay? Maybe Steve wanted to fuck him, sure, but, again — there was just no way Steve had gotten as far down the emotional rabbit hole as Eddie had. There was no way, if he asked right now, that Steve would say anything other than I mean, I had fun, but it’s just a tour thing, right?
He realized that there was a moment, here, for him to open himself up to the conversation he should have had, earlier, the one he put off. To say I don’t really know what to say, softly, to say they needed to talk, to figure out what this meant, if it meant anything. But it was late, and Eddie was suddenly exhausted, and the idea of getting his heart broken the same day he’d already had to encounter Jason Carver was just too much to ask. So, instead, he said, “what can I say, Harrington, you wore me out.” A little drawl, a little cocky.
Steve’s eyebrows twitched up, just slightly. “Guess we should get some sleep, then,” he said, but his voice was strangely guarded. Eddie didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t know what to do with anything, his stupid heart in his stupid throat, his brain totally useless. So he just nodded, and crawled into bed next to Steve, leaving a good bit of space between them.
Steve hit the light next to the bed. There was silence, for a moment. “How’s your face?” Eddie asked, abruptly, just to fill it, the quiet too much and his heart still going way too fast for sleep.
He could hear more than see Steve shift on the bed next to him. “S’fine,” he said. “Probably won’t even bruise too bad.” He paused. “Can’t quite say the same for this hickey I think you gave me.”
It startled a laugh out of Eddie, bright and loud in the darkness. “Shit, sorry man. I’m a biter, what can I say.”
Steve laughed too. “You’re a menace is what you are, I swear to god.”
And okay — that felt good, actually. Normal, again, back to the little banter between them, like it had always been. Maybe the sex wasn’t a totally, stupidly ruinous thing. Maybe this could just be. . . a thing that happened. Even if Steve didn’t feel the same way. “Yeah, well,” he said, “you should have figured that out already.”
“Suppose I should have,” Steve agreed, and then the quiet fell again, but it was much more companionable, much less tense, and before Eddie knew it he’d drifted off to sleep.
Notes:
the brief summary: steve and eddie have sex, and eddie does not take a moment to stop them and be like "so, what are we doing here?" eddie then presumes due to a couple of very off-hand things steve says during it that it's casual for him, which causes him to spiral a bit. then he immediately panics after it's over when steve calls him "munson" even though by his own admittance that's not that big of a deal and they call each other by their last names all the time. he's so immediately weird about it! he's panicking! i'm sure this will have no ramifications next week.
sorry, it's a romcom! i gotta do a little miscommunication! just a little!!! (yes i know they miscommunicated for the whole first like ten chapters of this thing, what of it??)
it's so funny that when i started this fic i didn't really think it'd be slowburn. it took us twenty chapters to get here. i have chronic "cannot shut the fuck up disease" (wow i'm just like eddie) (kidding) (not really)
chapter title is from the absolute banger Every Time We Touch by Cascada, a song that Mike and Lucas have absolutely dueted at karaoke in the canon of this fic
Chapter 21: Denver (THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY OWN ACTIONS)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sometime during the night, Eddie’s body betrayed him, because when he woke up he was tangled in Steve’s arms, head pressed against the other man’s chest, any semblance of the purposeful little gap of space he’d left gone.
For a moment, Eddie let himself bask in the feeling of sleeping in Steve’s arms. Steve was snoring, softly, his hair flattened half against his head, face slightly smushed into the pillow. He had both his arms around Eddie and a leg tossed over Eddie’s hip, and Eddie was suddenly aware that they were both half-hard with morning wood. Maybe he could delay the talk for just one more round? Before Steve shoved him away and the feeling of being wrapped up in his embrace like a caterpillar in a cocoon became a memory, meant to fade?
Then, Eddie realized why he’d woken up. Someone was banging on the door. They’d paused for a beat and then resumed, twice as hard, and this time Steve jerked awake, too, arms tightening around Eddie just a little and then loosening, when he seemed to realize where he was.
Eddie half expected Steve to move to answer the door immediately, but Steve just rolled his eyes, arms still around Eddie.
“You’re not gonna get it?” Eddie asked.
“It’s almost certainly Robin,” Steve said, shoving his face a bit further into the pillow.
As if to confirm that, Robin’s voice sounded, muffled through the door. “I know you’re awake, Harrington! Let me in!”
“She’s definitely freaking out about my face,” he added.
Eddie took the moment to reach over and turn Steve’s face so he could see the area where the bruise was himself. It wasn’t too bad, actually — the beer can must have mostly glanced him, or been mostly empty, because there was just a light bruise on Steve’s cheekbone, already pretty faded.
“What’s the verdict?” Steve asked. He had one eye open, looking at Eddie sort of seriously, which was counteracted by the half of his face still shoved into the pillow like a kid who didn’t want to wake up for school.
“Still pretty,” Eddie said back, before he could really think about it. Which, shit, was flirty. Not that he hadn’t already been flirting with Steve for days at this point, but now that they’d had sex. . .
Ugh. They should talk about it, right? It was time to talk about it. Steve hadn’t shoved Eddie away, still had his arms around him — that had to be a good sign, right? But Eddie was at a loss for how to start the conversation. You didn’t open up with so, by the way, now that we’ve fucked I should probably tell you I have feelings for you.
Did you?
He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Robin, yelling again.
“Joke’s on you, assholes, the desk lady gave me a spare key, so I’m coming in anyways!”
Eddie had exactly one half of a second to register what that meant, share a brief panicked look at Steve, and try furiously to scramble away and pull the sheet over both of them so it wasn’t obvious they were naked. Because, okay, maybe Robin had planned on getting them into a king bed together, but that hadn’t meant she’d signed up to see Eddie’s dick at, like, 10am or whatever.
“Shit, Robin, don’t—” Steve started, bolting upright, but it was too late — she’d swung the door open and was standing in the threshold. It was a bit funny, actually, to see her look of triumph get replaced by one of horror, and to see Steve groan and drop his face into is hands. Also, though, deeply, deeply mortifying.
Robin smacked a hand over her eyes and let out a horrified little screech. “Oh my god! Oh my god! My eyes!”
Steve rolled his own eyes, in response. “You can’t even actually see anything, Robs, Eddie threw the sheet on. Besides, this wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t barged in!”
“You weren’t answering!” She removed the hand over her eyes to point it accusingly at Steve. “For all I know you got a brain bleed and died in your sleep! I saw it happen once on CSI!”
“I don’t think that’s a medically accurate show,” Steve protested.
“Besides, wait, even if Steve had died, I’d still be here to let you in. Unless I got a brain bleed too, somehow?” Eddie pointed out.
“Shut up,” she snapped, pinching at her brow. And then her look shifted, to something more mischievous, darting between the two of them. “So, okay, this is. . . happening? You two? You’re like, dating and stuff?”
Oh. Well. That was one way to force the conversation.
Eddie felt suddenly panicked. The idea that Steve might speak, now — might laugh, lightly, and go jeeze, Rob, we’re not married, or say, oh, uh, well, clearly trying to bide time to let Eddie down easy and without an audience — it was terrifying. Eddie felt he simply couldn’t let Steve speak first, couldn’t let him get the jump and say something that offhandedly broke Eddie’s heart.
Which was the only excuse for what he did, really, which was blurt “dating? Who said anything about dating?” in an incredulous tone at practically the top of his lungs. There was a horrific beat of silence. Eddie kept his eyes locked on Robin because he couldn’t bring himself to look at Steve, now, to see whatever expression that outburst put on his face.
Fuck. Why had he said that? He needed to call Wayne and check to see if his mother had dropped him on his head a bunch as a kid, because, seriously, Munson, WHAT THE FUCK?
Steve cleared his throat, clearly shifting a little in the bed, although Eddie still refused to look at him. “We hadn’t really, uh. . .” he started, and then sighed. “I mean, it’s just. . . we had sex, yeah? It doesn’t have to be more serious than that. It was fun. Burned some adrenaline after all the craziness.”
His tone was very strange. It finally got Eddie to turn and look at his face — Steve wasn’t looking at him, though, was looking at Robin, instead, with a neutral expression. He shrugged.
(Practiced, a voice in Eddie’s head hissed, but that didn’t make any sense, because the the only thing that had gotten Steve nervous enough to act like that was his dad, and this wasn’t anywhere near that, was it?)
Robin was frowning openly at Steve. She darted her glance to Eddie, just once, gave him an up and down like she was trying to read something on him, and then said, “oh. I thought. . .”
“Don’t worry,” Steve cut in. “It’s, you know — it was casual. It’s fine, we’re good.”
“Right,” Robin said, sounding like she didn’t quite believe him. There was another, awkward little pause, and then she shuffled back slightly, jerking a thumb at the door behind her. “I guess I’ll just. . . let you two get dressed, then?”
Some sort of silent conversation clearly passed between her and Steve. Whatever it was must have frustrated her, a little bit, if the furrow in her brow at the end was any indication, but she let it go with a long-suffering sigh, turning around and shutting the door behind her without another word.
And then it was just him and Steve. Great. Awesome. Not at all weird.
God, he’d fucked this whole thing up, hadn’t he?
He had no good excuse for why he’d said what he’d said, except pure panic and the fact that he was a fucking coward. Gareth and Jeff had claimed intimacy issues the other day. Was this that? His refusal to just admit to Steve what he wanted, to open himself up to the possibility of awkward rejection, had instead created a brand new awkward scenario.
After a beat of silence, Steve moved to stand, walking to his bag and grabbing clean clothes (or cleanish. They really were due for a laundry day, soon.) He was still quiet. It was driving Eddie insane, so he once again let his mouth move faster than his brain and blurt something into room. This time, though, it was “I’m sorry.” Steve looked up, eyebrows raised in surprise. Eddie felt himself wince. “I. . . panicked, I don’t know. I didn’t really know what to say. But that was a. . . decidedly uncool reaction, I’m pretty sure.”
“That’s okay,” Steve said, but it sounded half-automatic, like Steve had a default reflex for reassuring people that it was okay, even when sometimes (like right now), it sort of wasn’t.
“No, dude, it’s—” he started, and then cut himself off. Okay, intimacy issues be damned, weird outburst with Robin be damned. He was just going to say it. He was going to say I panicked because I am really into you, and I do want to date you, and that scares the shit out of me, it turns out, and I didn’t want to have that conversation in front of Robin, and to be honest I don’t totally know how to have that conversation with you, even.
But Steve took the opportunity to speak first, before Eddie could gather whatever tiny shreds of courage he had. “Eddie. Seriously. It’s okay. We’re adults. It’s just sex. Sex can just be sex, it doesn’t have to be,” he gestured, vaguely, “anything else.” He shrugged. The look on his face was genuinely one of reassurance — like he really wanted to let Eddie know it was okay. “I had fun. It can just be. . . a night of fun. Two friends who had sex, once.”
Eddie felt that like a fucking anchor sinking into his stomach. “Just once?” he said back, hoping it sounded light and teasing and not really sure it landed there.
Steve shrugged, again, ducking his head down to dig in his bag for something. “I mean. . . I don’t know. Makes tour a bit awkward, right? So maybe we shouldn’t keep. . . doing it.” He looked up and met Eddie’s eye, then, a sort of nervousness apparent in his gaze.
Right — because he was drawing a line, that made sense. Sleeping together once was a thing friends could do and move on from. Falling into a friends with benefits thing. . . well, that tended to involve someone catching feelings and everything blowing up. It made sense, that Steve wanted to avoid that. The feelings bit. Because he had no idea that Eddie was already in the feelings bit, of course, had no way of knowing that this wasn’t avoiding a problem, but making Eddie’s problem a hell of a lot worse. He was trying his best to let Eddie know, easy, that it was okay, really, but it’d never be more.
So that was that. This really was just a night of adrenaline burn. Two people who found each other hot falling into each other’s arms without thinking it through.
And that was okay. That would have to be okay. Eddie knew last night that the odds of this being a more than one-night thing were low. It hurt a little, having it confirmed, but hey: that’s what he got himself into when he didn’t take Steve’s out last night, the offer to pull away, to not kiss him (and blow him, and fuck him, and Jesus Christ, that memory was not fading any time soon).
All else aside, though, he liked being Steve’s friend. He wasn’t going to lose that because he couldn’t get a lid on an outsized crush. This was salvageable.
Those were all things he thought.
What he said was, “yeah, but I mean, we could also keep doing it, you know? Just. . . casually. Like you said.”
Oh god. What? Why was that his suggestion?
(It was his suggestion because the sound of Steve moaning Eddie had irreparably given him brain damage, apparently.)
Steve looked a bit surprised. He stood and crossed his arms. He was still naked, which was so insane, too, felt weirdly intimate. Usually Eddie’s hookups tossed on pants and made their way out pretty quick. Steve didn’t seem to have any self-consciousness about his body, or about Eddie seeing it. Which made sense, they’d fucked, just, you know. Like, somehow casual nakedness was more intimate than nakedness where sex was about to happen? Did that make sense at all? Whatever. Maybe Eddie did have intimacy issues. Sue him!
“You don’t think that’s a bad idea?” Steve offered.
Which wasn’t a no. Okay, door opening, okay!
“I mean,” Eddie said, “we’re friends, right? So, we can just, you know. Be friends who have sex.”
Steve raised an eyebrow and cocked a hip. “Have you ever had a friends with benefits situation that didn’t end in flames?”
Eddie shrugged. “I’ve never really had one before,” he admitted. Of course, everyone he knew who had had one had, in fact, ended in flames. He wasn’t gonna say that though. “But, I mean — I don’t know. I already hated you once. How bad could it be doing it again?” A little joke, really, because he knew in his heart he was incapable of ever hating Steve, ever again.
Steve snorted. “I don’t remember that being very fun for anyone we were traveling with,” he pointed out.
“It won’t happen,” Eddie reassured. He just — he felt desperate suddenly, couldn’t imagine only ever getting to have sex with Steve once. Even if this was a recipe to break his own heart, whatever. When this was over he could go back to Brooklyn and avoid Steve for a month and then go back to being his friend after filling the void with Ben & Jerry’s and red wine and random hookups with men he’d never see again.
That was a problem for later Eddie. Present Eddie was looking at Steve Harrington, naked in front of him, and taking the opportunity presented. He could deal with the consequences of his own actions later.
“It won’t happen because you and I talk now, right? Those people who flame out, it’s because they’re not good at communicating. So, we’ll communicate. We’ll set boundaries, and stuff, and check in. We’ll still be friends, just. . .”
“Friends who have sex,” Steve finished, eyebrow still raised. But he was smiling, a little, lips quirked just up.
Not no, not no, not no was repeating in a steady stream in Eddie’s head.
“Just for tour,” Eddie said. “You know, while our options are limited and there’s. . . adrenaline to burn.” A little mimic of Steve’s wording, earlier. He paused. “And, like, the minute you have second thoughts we can stop. I just,” he sighed, pulling a strand of hair in front of his face, and went for a mortifying truth. “I really liked having sex with you, Steve. Feel like we just barely scratched the surface of our having sex potential, honestly.”
Steve actually laughed, then, shaking his head. He looked away from Eddie for a minute, seeming to really think about it, lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed a little. Hope flared in Eddie’s chest.
“Okay,” Steve said, finally, a little breathy. “Okay, yeah.” He shook his head, shooting Eddie an amused look. “I was thinking that it was a bit unfair that you got to suck my dick and I didn’t get to suck yours. ‘Specially cause I’m really good at sucking dick.”
It was Eddie’s turn to laugh, now, a truly giddy feeling running through his veins, in his blood and shit. “And we never even got to your fingers around your throat thing from last night,” he added.
Steve threw a shirt at Eddie, rolling his eyes. “Alright, dude, we got about five minutes before we have to leave. Keep it in your pants. I’m gonna shower.” He moved towards the bathroom.
“I’m not wearing pants, Harrington,” Eddie called after him. Steve just heaved an obviously over-dramatic put-upon sigh and shut the door. The shower rumbled on a beat later.
Eddie flopped back into the bed.
Holy shit. Why had he done that?
The thing was that Steve was right: friends with benefits never ended well, because someone always caught feelings. Eddie was starting this with feelings, which would surely be a thousand times worse.
“This is your dumbest plan yet, Munson,” he said to himself, but he found he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Eddie would get to fuck Steve Harrington again, and every other problem was just a bridge he would cross when he got there.
Notes:
eddie, actively avoiding communicating: we'll just communicate!
oh, you beautiful fucking moron.
i said in the author notes on my last fic that both steve and eddie are idiots and i maintain that. they're equal opportunities moronosexuals. they're meant to be.
the csi episode robin references is real and it very much traumatized me as a child. i project that trauma onto fictional characters by making them also have seen csi.
Chapter 22: Seattle (ALL MY LIFE I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A GOOD TIME)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
They did actually stop to do laundry in Seattle, which was sort of a dumb way to spend a day off in a city that had cool things to do, but was also really, really necessary. Eddie was about a day away from having to start repeating boxers, and now that he was fucking someone that was no longer a good move.
Okay, it was never a good move, but Eddie had the type of executive dysfunction that made laundry his second worst chore (topped only by dishes), so it was, tragically, a part of his life. Not that Steve ever needed to know that.
A rare perk of simply being a friend with benefit, instead of a boyfriend: Steve could live in ignorance of, like, 80% of Eddie’s grossest habits. Some of them were unhideable on tour, though, like his tendency to chew his hair, or the fact that he definitely talked with food in his mouth, like, a lot, or that he was, overall, kind of a sweaty guy. Sort of a miracle Steve still wanted to fuck him, despite all that.
It was a bit tough, honestly, but he was trying to keep cool about the Steve still wanting to fuck him thing. It’d only been a few hours since they shook on friends with benefits, which meant the novelty of it hadn’t worn off. (The novelty of it might never wear off, if he was being really honest.) But he didn’t really want anyone else to know. Partly because The Party were basically Steve’s little siblings, and Hop and Joyce were basically his parents, and the mixture of weird shovel talks and protective looks from all of them might kill Eddie; and partly because part of being casual was keeping it casual. He was terrified that if even one of them figured out he had feelings for Steve and confronted him on it, he’d be sunk, completely unable to talk himself out of it.
(And let’s be real: it’d be Max who asked, because she was the only one with the correct mixture of perception and blatant disregard for anyone else’s privacy to do so. Dustin and Mike were oblivious, and Will, El and Lucas were all too polite. And Hopper and Joyce were, you know. Grown ups. Also, he wasn’t sure he could lie to Max, and he felt oddly confident he could manage to lie to pretty much every other one of them. Except maybe El. He had a real soft spot for El.)
As is, the only person who even had a hint that something was going on was Robin, who kept sending him totally inscrutable looks across the laundromat. He and Steve had ended up driving different vans, and Robin had, naturally, gone with Steve, but Eddie doubted he’d taken the opportunity to say oh, hey, by the way, Eddie and I are going to continue fucking to her. Which meant all Robin knew was that he and Steve had fucked, and Eddie had been super weird about it in front of her.
He tried sending her back a look that said, no worries, Buckley, I got it all figured out.
She raised an eyebrow like, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Non-exaggerated amount of i’s.
Well, whatever. She could think what she wanted. There was no way she thought Eddie had his shit together before this, right?
He was dragged out of this train of thought by Dustin plopping down next to him. “So,” the kid said, half a Twizzler (which he’d clearly bullied Steve into buying him on the trip up) hanging out of his mouth, “there’s an old movie theater that’s playing Texas Chainsaw Massacre tonight. That could be fun.”
“You could see a movie anytime,” Eddie said. “Don’t you wanna do something unique to this city?”
Dustin scoffed. “Like what, watch them throw fish at that dumb market?”
“You have no sense of culture,” Steve said, appearing out of nowhere and moving to sit on Eddie’s other side. As he did so their knees knocked together, once, and then Steve’s stayed there, pressed lightly into Eddie’s.
He was feeling very cool about that, thanks for asking.
Across the laundromat, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Robin’s eyebrows raise even higher. She seemed to be trying to catch Steve’s eye; Steve seemed to be ignoring her entirely.
Dustin scoffed again. “That’s rich coming from you, Mr. The Dark Knight is the Best Movie Ever Made.”
Steve made an offended noise. “It’s a good movie!” he said, pointing accusingly at Dustin. “I know for a fact you like it, you’ve just gotten pretentious since you got your Tisch degree.”
Steve said Tisch like a curse. Which, fair: NYU kids were the worst, in Eddie’s not-so-humble opinion. One of Dustin’s only truly irredeemable qualities. Although, Eddie figured the beginning of the domino that knocked all the way down to degree from NYU was probably started, at least in part, by Steve teaching Dustin to play piano at music camp.
Like he could tell Eddie was thinking that, Steve shot him a little glare. Eddie raised his hands, placatingly.
“So what, you don’t wanna go see a movie in a cool, old theater?” Dustin asked.
Steve wrinkled his nose. “Does it have to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I hate scary movies.”
“Steve’s a wimp,” Dustin needlessly clarified to Eddie. “The only horror movie he likes is the Scream franchise.”
“Skeet Ulrich is so hot,” Steve said, with a little sigh. Eddie ignored the slight jealously that sparked at the tone because that was, again: really, truly nuts. (Although he was starting to pinpoint Steve’s type down, slightly, to sort of weird brunettes with great hair.) “And Timothy Olyphant. Great movies. Also, they’re funny, not scary! Is Texas Chainsaw Massacre funny?”
“Actually, kinda, yeah,” Eddie offered. “Leatherface is pretty goofy. But he also does hang a woman on a meathook.” At Steve’s wince, Eddie rushed to clarify. “There’s not really blood or anything, because the budget was so low.”
“It sounds scary,” Steve said, with a pout. An adorable little pout, actually, right at Eddie.
Oh! A flirty pout. Shit, right, this was happening, it wasn’t Eddie reading overly hopefully into symbols. Steve wanted to fuck him. Fantastic! Really, still such a wonderful little reality to live in.
(Of course, Steve only wanted to fuck him, probably wasn’t thinking about just leaning forward and kissing him, just to do it, which was what Eddie was thinking about, looking at the jut of Steve’s lower lip, but. Whatever.
There was a stray dog, in the trailer park where he grew up — the first one, the Indiana one. Yappy fucking thing, and to tell the truth Eddie was never sure who actually owned it, because it seemed sort of perpetually underfed and touch starved, and he never saw anyone bothering to take care of it. Sometimes Wayne would feed it scraps from their dinner, and Eddie would see it still gnawing on a bone days later, desperate for whatever it could get.
He related, was the thing. He felt that way now. Like he’d take whatever Steve would throw him, scraps of affection and attention gone slightly moldy — he’d take it all happily, just to be close to the guy.
Which was mortifying, really, sort of horrifying, but. Whatever. It was what it was.)
“Aw, don’t worry Stevie,” he cooed. “I’d hold your hand during the scary parts.”
Steve’s pout vanished, replaced with a little smirk.
Dustin made a noise to Eddie’s left, because — right! Dustin was still here. “Ohkay,” the kid said, “weird and gross.” He narrowed his eyes at Steve. “You’re telling me you’d go if Eddie asked you but not me?”
Damn, maybe Dustin was more perceptive than he gave him credit for. Or maybe Eddie was just stupid obvious, with an offer like that.
“I don’t wanna go either way,” Steve said, evenly. “But I didn’t hear you offering to hold my hand, Henderson.”
“Ugh,” Dustin groaned. And then, to Eddie, “but you’re pro the movie, right?”
Eddie shrugged. “What time is it at? I’m not opposed to going, but I definitely want to hit a bar or something afterwards. Seattle’s supposed to be cool, dude. Don’t you want to go find, like, a craft brewery? Go explain to some hip girl about how IPAs are good and the Game of Thrones books are better than the show?”
Dustin made an offended noise. “Okay, firstly, you’re the one who lent me A Song of Ice and Fire to start with, so don’t even go there. And secondly, I have a girlfriend,” he said back.
“Who you haven’t seen in person in a year,” Steve teased.
“She’s learning Japanese! In Japan! Which is cool!”
“So, I take it you un-broke-up, huh?” Steve said.
“Yes,” Dustin said, with an eyeroll. “Your advice was good, thank you.” He said it flatly, like he was deeply annoyed to admit it.
Eddie raised an eyebrow at Steve. “What was your advice?”
“Apologize,” Steve said, easily. “That was before he even told me what had happened. It’s just usually the right move, when Dustin’s involved.”
Dustin threw a Twizzler at Steve’s head, and Eddie laughed hard enough that he missed the chime letting him know the dryer was done, and accidentally stuck them in the laundromat ten minutes longer than necessary.
---
They did end up at The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, (sans Joyce and Hopper, who’d shuffled off somewhere else for “date night”) and Steve did jump at nearly every other moment, even the non-scary ones.
“I can’t believe this is all happening in the day,” he groaned, at one point.
(Eddie made good on his promise to hold his hand, though. Subtle, at first, just a pinky laid over a pinky, but by the end of the movie Steve had jumped enough that Eddie had just entwined their fingers together, letting Steve squeeze every time something startled him.
Which, okay. Was holding hands during a movie casual? They’d only set this up this morning, but they’d said they’d set boundaries. Eddie had no idea if this was crossing one, if this was giving up too much of himself too quickly. But Steve hadn’t complained, and he found he couldn’t really bring himself to care, with Steve’s hand warm and solid in his, even if Steve let go the moment the credits rolled, like he was a bit afraid someone would notice.)
After the movie, Eddie did cajole them all into going to a bar — although it was slightly more clubby than he thought it’d be for Seattle, a place he mostly associated with grunge music and dudes who said that the only true pleasure in life was mountain climbing. They were playing some poppy shit when they walked in, loud and thumping.
“Oh, shit, I love this song!” Steve said, eyes lighting up in a way that immediately curbed the instinct Eddie had to suggest they go somewhere else.
Robin rolled her eyes, and leaned in conspiratorially towards Eddie. “You can tell Steve used to do a lot of coke because he loves Charli XCX.”
Slightly up ahead, Steve cried, “hey! Sophie was a fucking visionary, okay, that album is produced masterfully!”
“No one likes hyperpop if they’re not on uppers, Steve! Or a teenager!” Robin yelled back. But Steve was clearly ignoring her, bobbing his head to the music in a ridiculous, dorky way.
God, he was cute. Eddie was so screwed.
They sidled up to the bar and ordered drinks, and then Steve was dragging a giggling El onto the dancefloor, Max and Will and Lucas following and laughing brightly. Eddie wasn’t really a dancer, but he considered it, briefly — wondered if there was a way to end up pressed against Steve, sweaty but anonymous in the dark lights, to clutch at his hips in public without anyone else seeing.
Robin slid up to the bar next to him. The others were chatting aimlessly around the area, not really paying attention. Robin hit him with her inscrutable look again. She spoke without preamble. “Are you fucking with him?”
Eddie blinked at her. “What?” he asked, because he thought maybe he misheard her, genuinely.
She rolled her eyes, like she found this annoying. “Don’t screw with me, Munson, he’s my best friend and I love him more than anyone else on Earth. So tell me: are you fucking with him?”
“I really don’t know what you mean,” Eddie said back, feeling a bit helpless.
She looked at his face for a long moment, like she sort of doubted him, and then clearly decided to believe him. “There are people,” she said, slowly, and a bit quieter, so it was nearly hidden under the bassline of the music, and Eddie had to lean forward to hear her at all, “who just. . . they want to sleep with a celebrity, you know? Even one who’s not really famous anymore.” She shook her head, sadly. “Steve’s been screwed over before. And I thought you weren’t like that — I thought you had a real crush on him, or whatever — but then this morning you got all weird, like you’d rather die than date him.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. “And now you’re flirting again! Don’t think I don’t know about Steve’s flirt smile, I’m his best friend!” She crossed her arms and leveled him with a serious look. “So answer me. Are you fucking with him?”
Eddie pictured it, then; Steve on apps, or in bars, only getting matches or attention from people trying to chase the high of high school fantasy, saying they wanted something real and then ditching out in the morning because, to them, he was nothing more than a name in a magazine, nothing more than a fun story to tell at parties — hey, you know I fucked that guy from Swim Team, once?
(He pictured some of them, later, the men, mostly, getting payouts from the father who’s calls Steve couldn’t even take, anymore, and the thought made him feel almost nauseous, horrible, like he was making a bigger mistake than he thought, somehow.)
But also, he couldn’t just admit to Robin that she was right the first time — that he really liked Steve. Because, as she’d pointed more than once during the course of this conversation, she was Steve’s best friend. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he told her, she’d level him with a serious look and say listen, Steve’s not interested in this. He’s not interested in you. It’s a bad idea, and you need to break it off.
(Except. . . it didn’t sound like she’d say that, did it? It sounded like she was worried that Steve had stronger feelings than Eddie. Which just made no goddamn sense.)
“I’m not fucking with him,” he said, serious. “It’s. . . he’s hot, and we’re on tour together, and we’re just gonna keep sleeping together. I think. But it’s not because he’s a celebrity. I like Steve, you know. Not. . . King Steve, or whatever.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s my friend, Robin. I know that sex can . . . complicate stuff. But I care about being his friend more than anything else. The minute it gets weird, it’ll be over. I swear.”
Not a total lie. It wasn’t just sex to Eddie, no; but he did care about being Steve’s friend. And he certainly wasn’t doing it for some sort of celebrity clout, because, hell, he’d sort of hated Steve when he thought he was just King Steve, right?
She looked at him for a long moment. “It’s really just sex to you?” she asked, eyes wide and confused.
“Yes,” he lied, through his fucking teeth. Too much of a coward, still.
She shook her head and pursed her mouth uncomfortably, and sighed. “Okay, if you’re sure. Just don’t fuck with him, okay?”
“Robbie, I promise, he’s way more likely to fuck with me than the other way around,” Eddie muttered, half into his drink.
It didn’t matter, though, because Robin didn’t hear him — Steve had reappeared and slung an arm over both of their shoulders, grinning wildly, hair a bit sweaty. “Come on you two, come dance,” he said, and then he dragged them both onto the floor.
Eddie had seemed to appease Robin, though, because she danced happily with him, hair flying wildly around her, and the tension slipped away into the night.
At least, it slipped away until about an hour later, when Steve dragged him into the bathroom, locked the door, and said, “I think we discussed me sucking your dick, at one point?” before dropping to his knees.
When they emerged, Robin caught both of their eyes again, and there was a slight pause where she just furrowed her brow and pursed her lips again at him, before she rolled her eyes expressively and made an overblow gag me gesture.
“I think she might know,” Steve said, surprisingly easily.
“No shit, Stevie,” Eddie said back, and then dragged him out to dance.
Notes:
it's a bit of a shorter chapter but i do feel robin's mini-shovel talk deserved it's own moment. after this, robin corners steve and he's like "i got it all figured out" and she just stares at him in pure despair, because. . . like, DOES HE? DOES ANYONE? no.
in order to give robin some flaws i make her have bad opinions like "no one likes hyperpop if they are not on uppers." objectively untrue, robbie, i'm sorry.
chapter title is from Vroom Vroom by Charli XCX
Chapter 23: Portland-San Francisco (WE SHOULD PROBABLY HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT THIS AT SOME POINT)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Before the Portland show, Eddie heard something he wasn’t supposed to.
He’d been heading towards the bar for a beer and to watch the Party from the crowd, to really see them. Tucked in a corner in the hallway outside the green room, heads bent together, were Robin and Steve, clearly mid-conversation. Neither one of them saw him, and he was going to announce his presence, swing an arm over both of their shoulders and drag them out with him, when Robin’s words registered.
She was in the middle of a sentence, and he only caught the end, which was “—broken heart.”
Steve sighed like they’d been going around in circles for a little bit, a long-suffering thing. “Rob, come on. I know what I’m doing, it’s fine.”
Robin made a frustrated noise, deep in the back of her throat. "When has something like this ever not ended badly?” she scoffed.
Oh. They were talking about him. About him and Steve, right.
He tried, valiantly, to fill in the rest of the conversation in his mind. Robin was talking about a broken heart. So maybe he’d been too transparent after all, hadn’t convinced her — maybe Robin was having the conversation Eddie was afraid of her having. Telling Steve he needed to back off, because she was pretty sure Eddie was in this. And Steve just, what? Didn’t believe her?
Or didn’t care? But that sounded wrong. If Steve knew this would hurt Eddie, he wouldn’t do it. That’s what made Steve so likable, and also made this whole thing such a precarious situation. Because every day Eddie fell harder for Steve, and the minute Steve realized that he’d back off entirely, to try and spare everyone’s feelings.
The thing was that Eddie had said we’ll set boundries and then failed to actually set any; but to be fair, Steve hadn’t set any either.
Truth be told, Eddie didn’t really have boundaries he wanted to set, because the way he saw it, well — the point of having them was so someone didn’t catch feelings, and that ship had sailed for him. It didn’t matter how casual and loose they kept it; the mere sight of Steve set stupid little butterflies off in Eddie’s stomach, even when he was doing mundane things, like getting out of a van at a gas station in middle America, or snorting stupidly into a beer at a joke someone told, or sniffing at his shirt to see if it was clean enough to wear (which, yes, should have been gross, but, look, Steve’s sweat. . . it did something to him, alright? He, too, was gross!).
So if Steve wanted to hold his hand during the scary parts of a movie and find flimsy, barely-there excuses to continue bunking together and maintain that all of that was perfectly casual, well, that was fine by Eddie, really.
Steve hadn’t even had an excuse for why they were bunking together in Portland. Just said it when it was time to divvy the keys like it had long since been decided. And Eddie could see Max frown at it, and Will raise a little eyebrow, and Lucas sort of glance between them like they were a strange puzzle he couldn’t quite solve, but then Dustin had accused Steve of ditching him for Eddie in such a bratty tone that everyone pivoted to mocking him instead of digging too much deeper into the why of it all.
Still, tour was close quarters, and secrets in close quarters rarely stayed secrets for long. Hell, the night before, after the show, Steve had told a long story about Dustin trying to domesticate a feral cat at music camp and keeping it in the cabin, which had only been a secret for about a day before the other boys ratted him out because they were afraid of the fucking thing.
(“Traitors,” Dustin had murmured in Will and Lucas’ direction. “Dart was perfectly innocent.”
“Dude, we could have gotten rabies,” Lucas had shot back. Which had then devolved into a long tangent from Robin about how rabies was no joke and extremely scary, and now Eddie was 100% going to avoid all of the raccoons in the world forever. Which was a shame, really. Racoons were pretty cute.)
The point was that if Steve and Eddie wanted to keep things casual, they needed to set one, obvious boundary: stop bunking together so much. They’d been forced to in Denver, whatever; they’d managed Seattle without much suspiscion. But three cities in a row, with no Robin or Dustin joining them? That was starting to get a bit obvious, right?
Eddie had actually thought about suggesting a different arrangement for Portland, after the Seattle show, but then after sex — Steve bent over the bathroom counter, staring back in the mirror, eyes so dark they were almost black, sloppy and so hot that Eddie thought he might never, ever see anything hotter again in the whole of his life — after that Steve had flopped on top of Eddie in a single bed (even though there were two beds available) and curled into his chest and murmured Robin wasn’t kidding about the cuddling, sorry, not sounding very sorry at all. And Eddie had been so dumbstruck, watching him and wondering if this was casual, to Steve? Like, did Steve cuddle with all of his fuckbuddies? Hold their hands? Blow them in bathrooms?
(Actually, that last one sounded kind of likely.)
He’d been too dumbstruck to suggest doing anything, in the end, and had just curled a hand into Steve’s hair and fallen asleep pressed together.
The necessicity of setting this boundary was obvious: the minute the kids knew they were sleeping together, shit would get very awkward. Mostly, if not entirely, for Eddie. Gareth and Jeff already knew about his embarrassing feelings; he had a feeling that Max, Will and Lucas would figure it out quickly enough, and then it would only be a matter of time before someone let it out to Steve and it all slipped through his fingers.
Okay, so: Eddie said he didn’t have any boundaries when it came to Steve, which was sort of true, but he also understood a little bit that he probably should have some because the longer he spent doing this with Steve the worse it was going to be when it all fell apart. Already he was getting strangely used to waking up with Steve next to him in bed; used to looking across the room and meeting the other man’s eye whenever Robin or Dustin said something ridiculous, sharing a private little smile; used to the way Steve hovered around the edges of his life. He could live without having sex with Steve, yes, but he probably couldn’t live with the sex thing making the friendship part weird, with Steve politely never hanging out with him alone, with Steve avoiding eye contact for the rest of their natural lives.
And, yes, alright this entire we should keep having sex thing had been Eddie’s idea, which meant that maybe Steve was waiting for him to set boundaries, trying to be polite. All Eddie had to say was look, maybe we shouldn’t bunk together so much. But he just couldn’t bring himself to. He didn’t want to.
God, this was a disaster. Top ten stupidest things he’d ever done. Robin was huddled next to Steve in a hallway, probably saying this is going to end with Eddie having a broken heart, and she was right, and he still couldn’t bring himself not to do it. Like — like watching a train approach you and not moving off the tracks. Or seeing a thunderstorm on the horizon and not battening down the hatches.
Hurricane Harrington was heading to the harbor, and it would surely level the small community of Munson Island, and still, Eddie did not sound the siren and call for evacuation of residents.
In the hallway Robin had a skeptical face on and was opening her mouth to say something else and he decided he’d heard enough and made his presence known, swinging loudly out to greet them. They jumped apart, a little, their conspiracy obvious — but he pretended not to see it, grinning widely instead. “Lady Buckley, Sir Steve — would you care to join me in the mosh pit?” He bowed in Steve’s direction and offered a hand.
Robin looked at the hand, then at Steve, then back to Eddie, then back to Steve, eyebrows saying a million things that Eddie couldn’t parse.
Steve wasn’t looking at her, though. He was looking at Eddie with a small smile on his face, like he found this all endearing and goofy and absurd. He shook his head, just a little, and for a moment Eddie really thought he might take the hand, link their fingers together, walk outside like that, where everyone could see them—
(Decidedly not casual an extremely unhelpful voice in his head offered)
—but instead Steve smacked it away, lightly, and said, “you’re ridiculous, Munson. Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.” Robin gnawed on her thumbnail, and Eddie smiled at Steve — and it was genuine, really, even though a small part of him had really, really been hoping Steve would hold his hand.
Like an idiot.
---
Eddie meant to bring up the whole boundaries thing. Really! He did. He was going to say something as he and Steve went to watch The Party, but Robin was trailing behind them and he still had the echoing sound of her saying broken heart rattling around in his head, so he let it go, then, swore he’d say something that night in the motel. But night rolled around and then Steve was shoving him back against the motel room door, attaching his mouth to Eddie’s neck (low, though, nearer to the collarbone, so any mark left behind would be hideable), and, well, Eddie’s brain turned to mush.
So the conversation didn’t happen. Instead, again, he fell asleep wrapped up in Steve, woke up next to Steve’s bedhead and morning breath (and morning wood, which definitely delayed things) and they didn’t talk about it. They went in separate cars, and in San Francisco when Hop was dividing up the keys Steve reached out and said, “Eddie and I are bunking together,” like it was nothing.
There was a pause, after that. Eddie braced himself for the fallout — for someone to go okay, what the hell is going on with you two?
Hopper raised an eyebrow, glanced between the two of them — and then his face fell, comically, into a little wrinkle, like he’d made two and two equal four and was decidedly not going to ask about it.
“Oh,” he said, instead, voice lightly edging near grossed out.
“What do you mean oh?” Dustin demanded.
“Nothing,” Hop said, “ignore it, kid.”
Which, of course, was the exact wrong thing to say. Telling this group of nosey young adults to ignore something was basically an open invitation for them to do the total opposite. Eddie felt suddenly, immensely grateful that he was only metaphorically Dustin’s brother and not literally so — trying to rein that kid in during his younger years was probably a full time job.
(Shit, it’d been Steve’s full time job, hadn’t it?)
“I don’t think we should be ignoring whatever has your face looking like you smelled a fart, Hop,” Dustin sneered.
“I don’t think he looks that disgusted,” Steve defended, shooting a small look Hopper’s way that Eddie lightly interpreted as is this a weird homophobia thing, man?
Hopper, clearly also seeing the look, rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on,” he said at Steve, “it’s not — I’m not disgusted, it’s just—” he cut himself off with a deeply long-suffering sigh. “It’s nothing. It was an entirely involuntary noise. It meant nothing. Sometimes men my age just make noises, you know?”
“Sure,” Lucas allowed. “Like how every man who becomes a father suddenly starts yawning like a moose.”
“Did you finally figure out that Steve and Eddie have been sneaking off to smoke weed together?” Mike said, in a whiny little tattle-tale voice that did not suit him, really. He leveled a glare at the brat, but Mike, in Pure Brat Fashion, just rolled his eyes like Eddie was the lamest guy on Earth.
God damnit. The kid had worshipped him before this. He was, like, 95% of the reason Wheeler had his current haircut! Where the hell was the respect?
Will jammed his elbow into Mike’s side. “Don’t be a snitch,” he said.
“Pot’s not even addictive,” Steve added. “I used to do way worse drugs, okay? You ever done a whippet? That shit melts your brain cells.”
“Oh, so that’s why you’re dumb,” Mike said, eyes going bright with faux-revelation.
“He’s not dumb,” Eddie said, his newly found knee-jerk reaction to defend Steve kicking in. He wasn’t sure if Wheeler knew about the dyslexia, knew about Steve’s whole history with schooling. If he did it was entirely possible this wasn’t the type of comment that bothered Steve, but it also felt like someone should correct the record. It was worth it, too, for the soft little look Steve offered him, the way he nudged his elbow against Eddie’s arm, briefly, almost a show of thanks.
“Look,” Hop said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Steve and Eddie are consenting adults and whatever they’re sneaking off to do, they are more than allowed to do, and more than free to do, and it’s really none of my business and I want no additional details about it, ever.”
This was not a subtle way to phrase it, Eddie thought. Hop really could have made it sound less obvious. Steve sent his not-quite-father a look that clearly also said that. Joyce was looking between the three of them, an amused look on her face like she’d started to cotton on, too.
The little wink she sent Eddie confirmed she’d definitely cottoned on. He could feel himself go red. This was mortifying.
Luckily, though, the rest of the group seemed to be distracted, having devolved into snarking at Mike for being, as Max eloquently put it, “a rat bitch.”
He shared a look with Steve. Steve shrugged, loose, like looks like we’re in the clear.
Okay, then — they’d gotten away with it for now. Perfect.
Then, abruptly and at nearly the top of her lungs, Max shouted, “wait, oh my god, you two are FUCKING!”
Steve’s shoulders slumped, and he dropped his face into the palm of his hand.
“What?” Dustin demanded, at somehow an even higher pitch than Max. Dog-whistle pitch. Stray cat in heat pitch.
“Hop said consenting adults and they keep rooming together and they’ve both been so weird the past few days,” Max said, like she was the Nancy Drew of figuring out who was sleeping together. “And also, Eddie totally has a hickey.”
Eddie was just smart enough to not clap a hand over the place where Steve had definitely left one last night. Well, and also Steve reached out and gently clasped a hand around his wrist, which definitely didn’t help them prove Max wrong, if the way Lucas’ eyebrows skyrocketed to the top of his forehead proved anything.
“Holy shit,” Sinclair said. “But you hate each other!”
“We don’t hate each other,” Steve protested.
“Obviously not,” Max said, with a little shit-eating grin.
“Ugh,” Mike spat, parsing all of this. “So, what, you two are boyfriends now?”
“Don’t be homophobic, Mike,” Will snipped. And then, in a much kinder tone of voice, “I think it’s sweet.” Mike spluttered a bit indignantly.
“We’re not boyfriends,” Eddie said, perhaps slightly too loudly. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Steve wince, probably at the sheer volume. He was really not keeping his cool.
El frowned at him, like this made no sense to her. “So Max is wrong?”
“I’m not wrong,” Max said. She was looking between the two of them with a furrow in her brow. “I’m definitely not wrong.”
“Max is not wrong,” Steve said, around a sigh. “And. . . and also we’re not boyfriends. It’s just, it’s. . .” he trailed off, looking a bit helpless, suddenly. “It’s casual,” he said, after a pause. He looked up at Robin. Eddie followed his gaze.
And, god, she looked so sad, it was bizarre. What did she have to be so sad about? Was she trying to protect Eddie’s heart that badly?
If so, that was sort of nice. It was just also sort of confusing. He tried to meet her eye to get more information, but she wasn’t looking at him, she was just looking at Steve — and then when Steve looked away, she turned her gaze down at her shoes.
“So, you’re casually sleeping together,” Gareth cut in, voice sounding a little deadly. Eddie turned a helpless look on him, now, like, uh oh! My bad!
Gareth just shook his head like Eddie was a moron. Which he was, of course. Jeff, who was a much better friend, gave him a little thumbs up.
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Steve said, sounding a bit defensive. “It isn’t a big deal, really. Which is why we didn’t say anything.” He tossed his hands up. “It’s just a tour thing, right? It can just. . .” he trailed off, again. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes some things,” Dustin said, a little icy. Oh, shit. He was definitely pissed they hadn’t told him.
“Dustin—” Eddie started, trying to keep some sort of peace.
“No, I mean, it’s — we’re all on this tour together, you can’t just keep big secrets, or whatever,” Henderson continued, voice pitching up in anger. “We’re a team, we need to tell each other things.”
“Sure,” Steve said, “when it’s relevant to everyone. This was — we didn’t want this, okay, where it became a big deal, because—” he stuttered a bit here, oddly, “—because it isn’t.”
Dustin looked like he really doubted this. “So, what,” he said. “You two are really just friends who happen to be sleeping together? No risk of feelings? No risk of big blow out fights that turn back into the terrible Steve and Eddie hate each other shit?”
“Yes,” Eddie said, as quickly as he could. Because if he left a second of doubt, a moment of hesitation, the kids would light upon it like sharks sensing blood in the water. “We’re just friends. It’s casual.”
“Yeah,” Steve added, half a beat behind. “The hating each other stuff is in the past, really. This is — it’s just. It’s fine.” And then, after half a beat. “And private, also. You don’t need to go butting into our personal lives.”
Dustin snorted like this was patently ridiculous. “Steve, your personal life is a mess.”
Steve shot a glare at him. “Sure, and you meddling in it has always been super helpful, thanks,” he said, pure sarcasm. “All of the weird dates you’ve set me up on have been great.”
Dustin glared back. Eddie got the sense this was about to devolve into some juvenile little fight, possibly ending with Steve giving Dustin a very un-dignified Wet Willy, but luckily Joyce stepped in before it got there, clearing her throat very pointedly. “Look,” she said, gentle but firm, “it’s close quarters, and we’re all family, but Steve’s right. He’s got a right to his privacy. So as much as we might think we’re helping by sticking our nose here. . . we’re not.” She gave a very pointed look to Dustin, Max, and Mike in that order. Dustin scowled, Max rolled her eyes, and Mike wrinkled his nose like it was all gross.
From the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Lucas offer El and Will twin fist bumps for not getting called out in the mess. Truly, the best of the kids.
“I never want to talk about this again,” Hopper said, seriously. “Until this moment I assumed Harrington was a virgin and I’d like to go back to that world.” Robin laughed inelegantly, and then ignored the little death glare Hopper sent her in return. “Let’s all go to our rooms, and if this comes up at dinner I will drive a butter knife into my ear, okay? Okay.”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Jim,” Joyce said around an eye roll of her own, and then they all set off from their rooms without another word. Dustin, in particular, turned on his heel and stomped away. Eddie was just smart enough to know that was a problem he’d have to tackle, soon. It couldn’t have felt good to be left out, even if the thing he was being left out of was Steve and Eddie’s Casual-Except-For-Eddie’s-Horrifingly-Embarassing-Feelings Relationship. Henderson viewed Steve and Eddie as his brothers; that his brothers cut him out? Not fun.
Steve was silent as they walked towards their room. Not for the first time Eddie wished he had some sort of machine that would let him read the other man’s mind. It wasn’t until they got to the room that Eddie finally spoke, a half-sigh, and said, “I’m sorry.”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
He frowned. Didn’t Steve know? “I mean,” Eddie started, “I know that—” And then he cut himself off with a little headshake. “I guess I’m sorry everyone found out,” he said after a pause. “We weren’t really being careful, right?”
It was the best opening he’d had had since they’d started sleeping together to say okay, let’s stop and talk about this. To set those boundaries he understood, logically, that he needed desparately, to stop himself from falling ass over heels into this and never, ever recovering. It was a perfect moment to say what are we doing here?
“Oh,” Steve said, before Eddie could continue on. “It’s okay. I, uh. I don’t mind that they know.” There was an odd look on Steve’s face, almost shy, a small smile.
Eddie blinked at him. He really thought this would be a bridge too far for Steve, a real breaking of whatever casual meant. But. . . maybe not? Maybe Steve really could separate sex and feelings, could split these thoughts entirely apart, could manage to not care what the kids thought about it.
“Really?” he asked. And then, realizing it sounded a little too awestruck, perhaps, he tacked on, “because Dustin seems kind of pissed, which is probably mostly going to suck for you, here, considering your extra decade of history.”
Steve sighed. “Friends don’t lie,” he said, in a dead serious tone. “That was their whole refrain during summer camp. Even though those little dorks lied to me all of the time.”
“It wasn’t lying, technically” Eddie pointed out. “It was just, you know. . . not telling him everything the moment it happened.”
“In Henderson’s mind, that’s basically the same thing. Besides, he’s, you know,” and here he shrugged again, “very protective of you.”
“Of me?” Eddie smacked Steve in the chest, lightly. “What about you? I really thought he was gonna kill me after that fight we had, you know?”
“Okay, sure,” Steve agreed, with a chuckle. “He’s protective of both of us. So, I guess we’ll both get different, weird shovel talks.”
The idea of Henderson very self-seriously telling Eddie not to break Steve’s heart was almost too much to bear. He couldn’t stop himself from breaking out into stupid little giggles, which he supposed was better than the alternative and breaking into sudden, unexpected tears.
Steve opened his mouth — probably to ask what the hell was so funny, which Eddie couldn’t even really answer — but they were interrupted by a pounding on the door.
“Hey idiots,” Mike snapped from the other side, “stop having weird gross sex in there and let’s go get food.”
Steve rolled his eyes expressively. “I’m gonna tell Will you’re being homophobic again, Wheeler!” he called back.
Mike made a strangled noise of pure frustration. “It’s not gross sex because you’re men, it’s gross sex because you’re you!”
“I take it back,” Steve said, deadpan. “Them knowing is a total disaster.”
“Yeah, well, get used to it Harrington,” Eddie said.
Steve smiled, big and genuine, and tugged Eddie by the sleeve to drag them out of the room and back to the others, while Eddie sat back and let himself feel so, so confused as to what the hell was going on in the other man’s head.
Notes:
eddie's understanding of what a "boundary" is is . . . loose, to say the least.
mike's not actually homophobic, he's just the friend who most leaves himself up the joking accusations of homophobia. the first time dustin made the joke, back in like early high school, mike panicked and called will half in tears later in the day to reassure him he wasn't homophobic and will was very nice and tried very hard not to laugh out loud while mike was in distress
anyway, i can hear you all already, bemoaning in the comments -- liars, please, how much longer must we take these two morons being morons? why won't they just fucking TALK? and i assure you: it's not going to be that much longer. but in-universe it's only been about two days, you gotta let eddie have at least three days of stupidity or else it's not in character. that's actually in the stranger things series bible, the duffer brothers showed me.
(genuinely, this is a short arc within this fic, i promise!! i wouldn't lie to you. you know. despite my name.)
Chapter 24: San Francisco-Los Angeles (THROW YOUR CAMERAS IN THE AIR)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
They made a mistake in San Francisco, after the show, although Eddie wouldn’t learn it was a mistake — he wouldn’t even know it happened, really — until later.
(Corroded Coffin had grown a lot over the years, no question about it, but they were far from famous. And while Steve had been famous, the decade that had passed since the height of his career had dulled a lot of the flame. Sure, there were the people who’d shown up desparate to gawk at his new act, but that had slowed down, and it wasn’t like he was getting recognized most places they went.
Later, Eddie would realize that it wasn’t that Steve wasn’t getting recognized; it was just that people weren’t coming up to talk to him, to ask him questions, to confirm their suspicions on who he was. They were still seeing him, though. They were still putting together a picture in their minds. It turned out many of them loved when they were presented with something like a mystery — loved to play to detective, to string photos together on a corkboard, to spend an hour in someone’s Instagram comments pretending they were Olivia Benson. And it turned out Instagram stories and posts didn’t flag on Google Alerts. No social media website flagged on Google Alerts. Who knew?)
After the show, Steve had clearly attempted some sort of conversation with Dustin, who still had an air of anger hovering vaguely around his head — which really didn’t suit him, Henderson was way too goofy to sustain anger in Eddie’s opinion, but whatever. Eddie wasn’t around for the talk, but he saw the aftermath of it, Dustin stomping away while Steve slumped his shoulders, all defeated.
If Eddie was a better person — if he was the person he wanted to be in his head, the type of guy who always paid his bills on time and in full, who did laundry before it reached critical mass, who kept up with old friends without needing to be reminded — if he was that guy, he would have gone after Henderson. It was, after all, the right thing to do. The kid needed to be reassured, probably, that things hadn’t changed, that things wouldn’t change. He needed something Steve couldn’t give him, maybe, something that their long history together muddled, the two of them too close to fully step away from each other and focus on a bigger pitcture.
But Eddie wasn’t that guy. He was selfish and short sighted and a bit of a coward, and the idea of facing the wrath of Dustin was so not pleasant sounding, at the moment. So he moved towards Steve, instead, right as the man ducked out of the front of the venue. Caught him as he fumbled with a cigarette, lighter clacking uselessly in his hands. Eddie pulled a move he thought was pretty smooth, sidling up and flicking his lighter out all at once, holding the flame out to Harrington with a cheeky grin and a wink. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Steve smiled back, but it was tired. Almost sad, a little. He took the light and then a long drag, looking away and pointedly not answering Eddie’s question for a moment. Then two moments. Then three.
Eddie had half a mind to ask again, and half a mind to tuck tail and run — sorry, man, not my business because, hell, it wasn’t like Steve owed him an explanation or anything — when Steve finally spoke.
“He’s pissed,” was all he said. Which was, you know, sort of stating the obvious, and not exactly offering new information. Eddie opened his mouth to say just that, but Steve held a hand up to stop him, with a small smirk and an eye roll, like he already knew what Eddie was going to say. “It’s . . . complicated. I think he’s mostly mad we didn’t tell him, but I also think a part of him is worried I’ll screw it up.” He balked, for half a beat, for a reason Eddie couldn’t figure, and then tacked on, “the, uh, serenity of the tour, I mean.”
Eddie snorted. “Right, because of the two of us you’re famously the screw-up, Harrington.”
“I kind of am,” Steve said, with a humorless laugh.
Eddie sized him up for a minute, took in the morose look on his face. “Did Dustin say this?” he said, finally. “Or is this you throwing yourself a little pity party?”
This time Steve’s laugh was slightly brighter, even if he was shaking his head like Eddie was being a nuisance. “You know Henderson has called me a screw-up before, okay? Like, many, many times.” The implication there being, of course, that this time he actually hadn’t. Point one for Munson: dude knew a pity party when he saw one, okay? He was king of that shit.
“Sure,” Eddie agreed, “but you’re not the one who nearly ruined this whole thing four shows in by being a weird, hate-filled asshole, you know?” He shrugged. “If you forgave me for that, it stands to reason you’re definitely not the one who’s going to mess up tour if this whole . . . thing falls apart.” It felt a bit lame, just saying thing, but he still lacked the proper words to say what they were. Fuckbuddies sounded crass, now, sort of hurt his heart to say out loud, and anything else would probably give it all away. “I’d bet you twenty bucks he stays mad until I reassure him that I’m not gonna blow a gasket if things get a little wonky.”
Steve raised a perfect little eyebrow, as if to say, and will you be reassuring him of this any time soon, or? Eddie winced. “Yeah, yeah, okay, fine, I’ll talk to him, I just — Henderson can be a real pill when he’s not peeved at me, you know? I’m not really known for throwing myself in front of speeding trains unless I have to. I’m peaceful. Non-confrontational.”
Steve snorted like this was the single most ridiculous thing he’d heard all day. “Since when are you non-confrontational? As you just pointed out, you spent the whole first week we knew each other being extremely confrontational!”
“That was, technically, the third week we knew each other,” Eddie said, huffily. Steve leveled him with a look so unimpressed it reminded Eddie of his middle school principal. He raised his hands up, defensive. “Okay, okay, fine, I’m confrontational, shit! I just avoid fights I don’t think I can win, alright? And Henderson can be scary dude.”
“You’re saying you find Dustin scarier than me?” Steve asked, genuinely slightly offended sounding.
Eddie clapped him on the shoulder. “Stevie. Darling. Yes.” Steve tossed his hands up like this was insane. “You know that meme? That, like, looks like a cinnamon roll but could kill you versus looks like he could kill you but is a cinnamon roll meme? That’s Dustin and you. Kid looks sweet and packs a punch, you look like you could pack a punch but spend nearly all of your free time teaching kids how to play guitar and braiding their hair and making Lucas go on vocal rest and drink lots of water because you’re worried about him straining himself. You’re a puppy dog. Dustin is a monster.” He shook his head and waited a beat. “And you and Robin are a video of two otters floating down a riverbank holding hands.”
Steve scrunched his whole face at Eddie, then. “What? What are you even talking about?”
“Otters, Harrington,” Eddie said, with as much seriousness as possible. “Google it. Trust me.”
“You’ve changed the subject,” Steve noted.
“Caught that, did you?” Eddie tugged at a strand of his hair and sighed. So, okay, yes, he was mildly afraid of Dustin, but his options here were fairly limited. Wait and see if Henderson naturally cooled down, a thing that would likely take days if the kid was normal mad and could take an entire human lifetime if the kid was trying to prove a point to my asshole friends mad. Dustin, when fueled by pure self-righteousness, could be a real stubborn prick. Option two was suck it up, face his fears, and hope he could convince Dustin that either 1) this entire thing was going to be fine or that 2) if it did go badly it wouldn’t matter. Which would be tough, because Eddie himself wasn’t even sure that was true. If Steve accidentally broke his heart on this tour he had no way of knowing how normal he could play it. He hoped it wouldn’t go wrong, and he hoped if it did he could be totally normal about it, but he didn’t know. And Dustin was smart, okay, so the odds that Eddie could manage to get through that entire conversation without Henderson lighting on the big feelings thing felt low to start. And surely, once that cat was out of it’s proverbial bag, Henderson would demand the entire thing stop immediately to prevent it from getting any worse, the wound of love getting infected and festering and forcing them to amputate his leg, or whatever.
Wait, no. Not wound of love. Wound of, uh. Crush? Whatever.
Once again, you’re sitting in a grave dug by your own actions, Munson.
He looked up and caught Steve’s eye again, the man’s expressive, slightly disappointed frown, and sighed. Maybe Eddie could last a couple weeks dodging Dustin’s misplaced anger, but Steve sure as hell couldn’t, and the terrible, horrendous truth was that Eddie would probably do whatever it took to get Steve to smile, again, to erase that look on his face.
“I’ll talk to him,” he promised, more seriously, this time, and he did not miss the way Steve’s posture relaxed minutely, immediately. “Maybe after the L.A. show. We’ll all get a little post show joy going, and a beer or two in us, and then I’ll ride that wave and convince the kid that nothing bad is going to happen.” He knocked their shoulders together. “It’ll all be fine, Stevie. Promise.”
A promise he had no idea if he could keep, really, but Steve smiled again, and that was enough, for now.
And that was the mistake, also: the moment of it. At Steve’s smile, soft and warm, Eddie couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward to kiss him. There was a small, bright light, vaguely spotted behind Eddie’s closed eyes, but he didn’t really notice it, didn’t pay attention. Didn’t pay attention to the group of college girls laughing to each other as they passed the bar. So, no, he didn’t know until later that it was a mistake; that it was the beginning of a rock slide he wouldn’t be able to stop.
---
After the LA show, Henderson was hovering around the bar looking sullenly into beers and refusing to talk to anyone. Eddie sighed, and steeled himself for the conversation.
Well. Sort of.
He was serious about needing a beer or two before broaching the thing.
A beer or four. And a handful of shots. Whatever.
So, yes, okay, he was a little bit drunk, so what? He was great at being drunk. When he first moved to Philly his friends had made a party trick of getting him shitfaced and then demanding he play random guitar riffs, and he always aced that.
Granted, he’d been, like, twenty-one when he did that, and four beers and two (three?) whiskey shots really hit a lot harder in the back half of your twenties than the front half, but whatever. He was fine. This was fine. This was a perfectly acceptable state to be in to talk to Dustin.
He sauntered over the table the kid had been sitting at, alone, glowering into a beer and pointedly ignoring every other member of their group in the bar. “Dusty,” he said, all sing-song.
Henderson glared. “Are you drunk?” he said, like this was morally offensive, despite the fact that Eddie had done shots with him, like, three nights earlier and the kid was actively drinking a beer. Hypocrite!
“Possibly,” Eddie admitted. “And you’re angies.”
“Don’t say angies,” Dustin groaned. “You sound like a fucking idiot.”
“And you look like that cat meme. Hence. . . angy.” He reached over and flicked Dustin on the nose. Henderson swatted at his hand, clearly annoyed. “Why so angy, my sweet, sweet Dusty?”
“You know why,” the kid snapped. “You and Steve are being dumb. Especially Steve.”
Woah, wait. Especially Steve?
Eddie scoffed audibly. “Steve’s not being dumb,” he declared. “I’m being dumber than Steve.”
“Don’t sound so proud of that,” Dustin snipped. “It’s not an idiot competition. And trust me, you’re not. Steve. . .” and here the kid sighed, deep and kind of sad. “Nevermind,” he finished. “It doesn’t matter. Just trust me, will you? He’s being dumb.”
“No,” Eddie said. Maybe he was a little too drunk, he usually wasn’t quite so beligerent with Dustin. But also, it turned out people calling Steve dumb was a weird little thing for Eddie, something he couldn’t quite stand to hear, something that went from a small spark to a flashover of anger in is chest quite quickly. “No, trust me, Dustin, Steve’s. . . Steve’s golden here. He’s being totally normal levels of dumb. Now, me? I’ve dug myself into a little hole, and I’ll never really get out of it, and I know this will end with my heart shattered on the floor in a stupid million pieces, and even though I knew that I suggested the whole thing anyway!” He smacked his hand on the table, triumphantly proud that he’d made a good argument. “So clearly I’m being dumb.”
Dustin was looking at him intensely, eyes growing wide with revelation.
Oh.
Oh shit.
“Wait,” Eddie said, flapping his hands wildly, “wait, wait, I didn’t mean to — Dustin, pretend I never said any of that, seriously, I’m drunk, I didn’t—”
Henderson cut him off. “Oh my god,” he said. “Oh my god, you’re both idiots, holy shit.” He didn’t seem upset by this, though. Instead all of his anger from moments ago had vanished entirely, tears in the rain, time to die, whatever. He reached across the table and grabbed Eddie by the collar of his shirt, forceful. “Eddie. Eddie. You have feelings for Steve?”
“No,” Eddie insisted, fruitlessly, desperately trying to backpedal. “No, I’m just, I’m drunk and I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“You have to tell him,” Dustin said.
Oh my god, what? Bad idea! Terrible idea! He pulled Henderson’s hand off his collar with a scoff. “Dude, I don’t know how things work in your world, but usually a declaration of feelings puts a pretty solid end to a casual thing, okay?”
“Exactly!” Dustin said.
Oh. Ouch, that actually kind of hurt. “You hate the idea of us together that much?”
Henderson sighed again, dropping his face into his palms like Eddie was being obtuse. Which, really, just proved Eddie’s point about which of them was the stupid one, between him and Steve. When Dustin looked back up, there was a very serious expression his face. “No, I don’t — I’m not mad because I hate the idea, or anything, I promise. I talked to Steve and I. . . I misunderstood something. We misunderstood something, both he and I. Do you get it?”
“No,” Eddie said. His brain felt like mush. He thought if he turned his head to the side he might hear the beer he drank sloshing around in the empty shell of his skull. “You’re not making any sense at all.”
“God, you are drunk,” Dustin groaned. He shook his head, and then clearly decided to try another tactic. “Look, you trust me, right?”
“With my life,” Eddie confirmed.
“Good. So: trust me. Tell Steve how you feel.” He held a hand up to cut off Eddie’s already primed protest. “Whatever you think is going to happen isn’t going to happen okay? I know. Don’t ask me how I know, and don’t ask me to prove it, because I can’t. Just trust me.”
Normally, Eddie would have scoffed again. But Dustin was being so serious. This wasn’t trust me I can totally restring your guitar even though I’ve never done it before or trust me you’ll like this weird guy I met at Lollapallooza who happens to live in Upper Manhattan (and actually, maybe Eddie should trust Dustin a bit less?). This was something else.
“Maybe wait until you’re sober,” Dustin tacked on.
“Ugh,” Eddie whined. “It’s just so much easier to talk about these things when you’re drunk, though.”
“I know. But I’m serious, Steve won’t — it’ll be better, if you’re sober.” Dustin held up a pinky, face very stern. “Eddie. Please. Promise me you’ll talk to him, okay? Promise me you’ll tell him how you feel?”
Eddie considered the pinky for a long time. An oddly ominious pinky. A pinky portending change.
But he did trust Dustin. If this would lead to Eddie being miserable and heartbroken, then surely Dustin wouldn’t demand it of him, right? And if this wouldn’t lead to Eddie being miserable and heartbroken, then that had to be—
Well. That had to mean—
“Wait,” Eddie said, still staring at Dustin’s pinky. “Wait, hold on, I’m drunk, I’m processing slow, I’m — are you saying that Steve feels the same way about me?” The kid stayed totally silent. Eddie felt suddenly, horribly sober, a strange mixture of panic and excitement and energy and some other, unnamable gurgle pooling deep in his stomach. “Is that. . . that’s not possible, that’s not. . .”
Dustin had this smile on his face that was sort of odd looking — he was smiling like Eddie was an absolute lost cause, the way a person who just got a puppy might smile at a puddle of piss on the ground. One of those oh, look, he’s so cute and also so pathetic smiles. “Eddie,” Henderson said, “as previously mentioned, I can neither officially confirm or deny that. But. . . trust me.”
“No,” Eddie said, half-automatically. “Why would Steve be into me? Why would Steve have feelings for me? I mean, I’m awful!”
“Who fucking knows!” Dustin said, abandoning the pinky promise to throw his hand into the air in exasperation. “He has iconically terrible taste, it’s half people who are outright mean to him and half people who weirdly worship the ground he walks on, and somehow you managed to be both, which is impressive, by the way, never saw anyone do that before.” He rolled his eyes incredibly hard, here. “I knew when I introduced you two that there was a shot he’d be into you, you’re so his type, but you were so aggressively cruel to him I figured you snuffed those chances. But, of course you didn’t, because Steve’s fucking weird. I knew he was hitting on you during that whole bowling alley fiasco, but you seemed so oblivious that I thought maybe it was on purpose and you were just trying to be nice, but, no! It just somehow took you ages to figure it out even though I’m pretty sure Steve was dropping hints big enough to see from space. I honestly thought you weren’t that into him, and that you were just sleeping with him because you were, I don’t know, horny or bored or whatever. That’s why I thought Steve was being stupid, because this is like, the number one way to break his own heart.”
“Why would you think that?” Eddie said, voice near-hysterical. “I’m — why would you think that I’m not into him?” He’d felt he’d been so transparent, but maybe he’d gone too far the other way?
“Dude. Besides the whole hating him for weeks thing? I mean, you—” Dustin started, but he was interrupted by the sound of Eddie’s phone vibrating against the table.
PETEY THE MYSTIC, it said, accompanied by the truly terrible hyper close up of Pete sticking his tounge out that had been his contact photo for, like, three full years now. Eddie hit decline and turned back to Dustin. “Wait, wait, so you’re saying — I mean, does Steve think that I don’t, that I’m not—”
The phone started vibrating again.
Shit, a double call? No voicemail? Maybe his cat was sick or something. God, he really hoped the guy wasn’t drunk dialing him. “Hold on,” Eddie said to Dustin, and moved to answer. “Look, Petey, this isn’t a great time—”
“What the fuck!” Pete screeched on the other end. “You’re replacing me with your fucking boyfriend!?”
Wayne was a big fan of war movies, which was probably not a surprising thing, in the end — middle aged white guys loved war movies, right? Anyway, that meant that growing up Eddie had watched a bunch of them, and he got used to seeing some of the tropes that appeared in them, over and over again. For instance, most of them featured a moment where the protagonist got blown off his feet by some sort of bomb or explosion, and then afterwards had to crawl back to standing, staggered and out of sorts. To really nail down the realism the movies were always going for, the music and sound would drop out and get replaced by sort of a high pitched whine sound, to let you know that the protagonist had, at least briefly, lost his hearing (although inevitably this would not affect him for the rest of the movie, no matter what, which probably wrecked the realism angle, in the end).
This was like that, a bit. A sudden, horrifying rush of blood to Eddie’s ears and then a strange, surreal silence, the noise of the bar dropping out entirely. Something horrible must have been happening to his face, because across the table Dustin’s expression had changed and the kid was asking something, but Eddie literally couldn’t hear him, could only see his mouth moving vaguely.
“What?” he asked, dumbly, into the phone. “Petey, I — what? What? What are you talking about?”
Petey actually growled on the other end, more pissed than Eddie had ever heard him before. “I’m talking about this fucking gossip magazine’s article about how your boyfriend Steve Harrington is now your new bassist!”
Oh god.
Oh god.
Eddie was going to vomit. He was 100% absolutely going to hurl. What the fuck? What the fuck?!
Pete was still talking. “Look, man, I know the BMX thing was shitty, and I’m sorry about it, and I get that you’re pissed, but — we’ve been friends for ages, this is a really awful way to do this—”
“Pete,” Eddie said, voice sounding all sorts of cracked and strange. Pete stopped talking immediately. “Where did you read this?”
There was a pause on the other end. “I mean, dude. . . everywhere. I saw it in Celeb Weekly, but lots of places are posting it now. This Instagram chick has pictures, and I guess she's been posting about you for weeks, apparently, not that I saw any of it. I would have told you, if I had, man, I mean, obviously." He paused, for just a second. "Did you. . . not know?"
“Oh my god,” Eddie said, entirely too dumbfounded to say anything else. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
“Dude, are you—”
“Petey, I know that you need me to reassure you of a bunch of shit right now, and I am so sorry, but I have to hang up on you, because this is like — DEFCON 5, man, this is fucking bad, okay?” He paused, just slightly, and then added on “you are still my bassist. I am not replacing you. I will call you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone before Petey could say another word. Across the table Dustin looked freaked out. “Dustin,” he said. “Get Steve. And Robin. Fuck, get everyone. Now.”
The kid bolted out of his seat and across the bar, and Eddie let his head fall onto the sticky tabletop and willed himself not to panic.
Notes:
told you you wouldn't have to wait much longer for eddie to stop being an idiot! it's just now he's got, you know, other problems. much, much bigger problems. probably a bit silly of him to assume the whole "steve used to be famous" thing would have no further consequences beyond that one sold out show with those drunk swim team fans, huh?
i have no idea why this is the chapter where eddie referenced so many memes, except to say that all of the drives are getting a lot longer and you have to assume when eddie's not driving he's probably scrolling aimlessly on his phone through tiktok and reddit (he's the type of guy who claimed for ages that he was too old for tiktok but then dustin made him get one and now he's such a scroller)
also, okay, i, liars, know that defcon 5 is actually the "peace" status and defcon 1 is the "nuclear war is literally already happening" status and i spent a truly wild amount of time arguing with myself in my head about if eddie would know that or not. i landed on "not," but i'm more than willing to hear debates to contrary. dustin, however, definitely knows, and if things weren't so dire straits right now he'd absolutely have corrected eddie.
chapter title is from (coffee's for closers) by Fall Out Boy
Chapter 25: Interlude (STEDDIE IS REAL AND I HAVE PROOF)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Instagram: @AskAngela
Bio: AskAngela is THE best Instagram for all things celebrity gossip. Angela is a former professional gossip journalist with 10+ years experience who’s stepped away from old media and into the new age of social media. Submit blind items and questions via the form in the link, and Angela will respond ASAP. Merch available there too!
Linktree.com/askangela
Question Submitted May 27th, 2022: Hi Angela! Long time reader, first time writer. This is so random, but I have a friend who SWEARS that she saw Steve Harrington from that old band Swim Team playing in a metal band in Columbus last night?? Wondering if you have any word on if it’s true?
Answer: Oh! Now this is interesting, I haven’t heard that name in ages. Let me do some digging.
Posted May 28th 2022: CONFIRMED. Swim Team’s own Steve Harrington is in currently on tour with a metal band called Corroded Coffin. No idea why! Maybe it’s a new direction? My sources say there’s no talk of a Swim Team reunion, and that Steve is essentially retired from music. Guess he’s not /that/ retired, though!
Question Submitted May 28th, 2022: Wait, who’s confirming no Swim Team reunion? I have a friend who has a friend who knows Tommy Hagan and Tommy says they’re going back to the studio soon!
Answer: Oh, honey, I love the enthusiasm, but your “friend of a friend who knows Tommy” is likely full of it. Take it from me: anyone who claims to know someone famous without any actual proof usually doesn’t. That said, I don’t have official confirmation on the Swim Team reunion rumors one way or the other; anyone in the know want to submit a blind?
BLIND ITEM Submitted May 29th, 2022: Hi Angela. Two things! 1) I drove out to Detroit to catch Corroded Coffin and as the former president of my local chapter of the Swim Team Official Fan Club I can def confirm that it’s Steve Harrington on stage. I’d know that face anywhere. 2) There’s no chance of a Steve solo career. I know you say “friends of friends aren’t reliable,” but I used to sleep with a guy who was, like, the fifth assistant to someone at Loch Nora Records, and I guess the contract is really thorny. Plus, he always said Steve’s dad was a crazy hardass, so I highly doubt the guy is gonna let his kid run off and do something completely out of left field like a metal album.
Answer: Interesting. Unrelilable! But interesting. I will say, I heard plenty of rumors about Christopher Harrington back when I was still working for the mags, and very, very few of them were nice. That said: I still want something more official before I call the Swim Team reunion rumors DEBUNKED.
BLIND ITEM Submitted May 30th, 2022: Hi Angela. ANON PLEASE. If this ever gets out I’m so fired. I’m currently [REDACTED FOR PRIVACY REASONS] but a few years ago I was [REDACTED] and I can confirm that Steve Harrington will likely never have a solo career. The contract stuff is really fucked up (and. . . maybe illegal? I’m not a lawyer, so idk). There was an original contract when Steve was sixteen which his mother signed on his behalf as his legal guardian, and then a second contract Steve signed at eighteen. And they’re both VERY, VERY tight. As far as I understand, any music Steve makes has to be for Swim Team. So, no: there won’t be a Steve Harrington solo career unless the contract has changed (which I doubt, given there’s no album) or more Swim Team albums materialize. Not sure how he’s in this other band, to be honest.
Answer: Redcating for privacy reasons, but this source sent me evidence that they are who they say they are and would have access to the info they’re claiming to have so I’m trusting this as CONFIRMED information. As for the second half, a cursorary glance at Corroded Coffin’s discography lists another name under the bassist for the albums. Sounds like Steve is filling in; maybe he’s just friends with the band? I’d bet he’s still fairly well-connected in the industry.
BLIND ITEM Submitted May 31st, 2022: Oh, I know why Steve Harrington is in that metal band, by the way. Went to go see them in Chicago last night and I can say with 100% confidence that he is absolutely fucking the lead singer. Source: my own two goddamn eyes. I thought they were gonna start making out right in front of us!
Answer: Wow. Does anyone have any video to support this from the show? Or any actual evidence? (Not that I don’t trust your eyesight, babes! I’m just a sucker for proof!) Also, in case you’re not caught up on this, for reference sake it’s worth noting that the lead singer of Corroded Coffin is a man. Which would make this tour, what. . . a coming out party for Steve? Bold move if so! But, still, we’re a ways off from confirming this rumor.
Question Submitted May 31st, 2022: THERE IS NO WAY STEVE HARRINGTON IS GAY. WHAT THE FUCK??? ARE YOU FUCKING [REDACTED]?? HE DATED BLAIR VANCE FOR GOD’S SAKE??
Answer: Firstly, watch your language! Secondly, as I said: I’m awaiting proof! We all know that fangirls have a tendency to see what they want to see (has anyone ever forgotten Larry Stylison? Come on.) But I don’t write off blind items without evidence either. I’m just here to get to the truth! Also, you can date women and men, my love. It’s 2022.
Posted June 1st, 2022: NOT YET CONFIRMED. Thank you to the several of you who sent me some video of Corroded Coffin’s Chicago show (and some of the other ones, too!). I can see where the fangirls are getting their ideas, but I’m sorry to say there’s nothing conclusive on tape. Definitely some banter, which you could /maybe/ call flirting, but not enough for me to say this rumor is true.
Comment from @larryytrash4ever: reactivating my ancient fandom account to say that I cannot believe a new contender for “are these bandmates fucking” ships has re-emerged in this, the year of our lord 2022. god bless these handsome men. my god.
Reply to @larryytrash4everr from @pattycake99: RPF is gross. These are real people, and you’re totally invading their privacy.
Reply to @pattycake99 from @larryytrash4everr: it’s not RPF if they’re /actually dating/ patricia!!!!
Reply to @larryytrash4everr from @jennamartine: okay, but angela herself is saying she can’t confirm they’re dating.
Reply to @jennamartine from @lizardlady1999: wait, this is a good question. is it RPF until they’re confirmed dating? is it RPF even after they are confirmed dating? what are the rules????
Reply to @lizardlady1999 from @larryytrash4everr: it’s only RPF if it’s on AO3; otherwise it’s just “gossip”
Reply to @larryytrash4everr from @lizardlady1999: it’s only RPF if it’s from the “real person” region of france, otherwise it’s just sparkling “being a bit of a creeper”
Reply to @lizardlady1999 from @becky123456789: i am praying for all of your souls to be saved
Reply to @becky123456789 from @larryytrash4everr: you know what becky? that’s fair.
Question posted Monday, June 6th, 2022: Angela please whatever happened to the whole “is Steve Harrington secretly gay and in a metal band” thing?? Any updates?? Me and my Tumblr girlies have got to know.
Answer: No news is no news! I appreciate your enthusiasm and I read all your comments, but alas; the best I have is a guess that Steve is doing a friend a favor. Trust me, if someone sends me a video of them making out on stage, I’ll post it for you.
BLIND ITEM submitted Wednesday, June 8th, 2022: ANON PLEASE. Steve Harrington absolutely fucks men. My source is that I am a man who has fucked him. We dated for a few weeks last year, and then we broke up (he’s kind of uptight, honestly! And a total privacy freak, he wouldn’t officially introduce me to any of his friends or let me take or post any pictures of us). Afterwards I thought, what the hell, I’d make a little cash talking to a tabloid, because it’s juicy, right? But when I DM’d a journalist I, quite suddenly, got a call from the personal lawyers of the Harrington family. They offered me quite a bit of money to not spill Steve’s dirty secrets. I guess him and his daddy don’t want anyone to know what he gets up to after dark. Again, really, keep this ANON. I have no idea what happens if I break an NDA.
Answer: NOT CONFIRMED. Sure, you slept with Steve Harrington. And I slept with Prince Harry once, but I had to sign an NDA too. I’m not saying I /don’t/ believe you, I’m just saying . . . okay, I’m saying I don’t believe you.
Comment from @lenabobeenafofeena: if this IS true. . . you really were gonna sell out someone you “dated” to a tabloid? public outing? for, what, a little bit of money? go fuck yourself
Comment from @lizardlady1999: what an asshole. if this is real, it sounds like steve had plenty of reason to dump you, scum sucker.
Comment from @jennamartine: uhhhh bad things happen if you break an nda!!! don’t break an nda oh my god what the hell
Question Submitted Saturday, June 11th, 2022: I was at a bar last night in Denver and this drunk dude kept insisting that someone named Eddie Munson was a devil worshipper and a cult leader and a murderer. I was like, “this name sounds familiar”, and then I realized it’s Eddie Munson, like the lead singer in that band Steve Harrington is in now?? There’s no way that’s true, right?
Answer: NOT CONFIRMED. I can’t find anything when I Google Eddie Munson that suggests he’s a murderer. Maybe this guy mixed up Manson and Munson? I take drunk people in bars with an even larger grain of salt than “friends of friends.”
BLIND ITEM Submitted Saturday, June 11th, 2022: I can actually talk more to the “Eddie Munson murderer” thing, because I grew up in the next town over from him. I don't think he actually killed anyone; some girl in that town ran away and there was a total freak show mess over it. Real torch and pitchfork stuff, but as far as I know he didn’t do anything beyond being kind of a weird guy, which was apparently enough to get him chased out of town back in 2012, or whatever.
Answer: Sheesh. The lack of specifics here means I have to mark this as NOT CONFIRMED, only because I’m not going to spend four hours on an otherwise lovely Saturday trying to find out of a girl ran away from home a decade ago. But, still, thanks for the interesting tidbit!
Comment from @larryytrash4everr: lmao what is this 1986?? satanic panic is alive and well people
Comment from @diehardmetalchick: oooooh metal band scary, metal man must be murderer, why else he wear black??? satan real!!!!
Reply to @diehardmetalchick from @angelbaby22: maybe if you don’t want to be associated with murder you shouldn’t sing about murder? he has a song called “cheerleader’s corpse” for god’s sake
Reply to @angelbaby22 from @diehardmetalchick: suck my fucking dick, karen
Comment from @Meggie1995: uhhh @chrissyc1111
Reply to @Meggie1995 from @chrissyc1111: oh my god
BLIND ITEM submitted Sunday, June 12th, 2022: How’s this for your proof that Steddie is real? My friend took this video in a club in Seattle last night — tell me that’s not Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson getting close and personal on the dancefloor?
Answer: NOT CONFIRMED. Sorry, I’m not posting this video because, to be honest, I really can’t tell if these two people are Steve and Eddie. Dark videos in dark clubs do not make good evidence! Also, I guess these two have gotten to the Larry point after all if you’re making ship names? I’m starting to feel bad, I’m not really sure either of these guys are famous enough to justify this attention. Well, maybe Steve is.
Comment from @larryytrash4everr: ANGELA PLEASE POST THE VIDEO I’M FUCKING BEGGING YOU
Reply from @lizardlady1999 to @larryytrash4everr: angie has no idea how deeply she’s shaken the foundations of our group chat, oh my god
Comment from @diehardmetalchick: is it bad that I don’t want these rumors to be true only because I personally want to climb Eddie Munson like a tree?
Reply to @diehardmetalchick from @jewlerybyjojo: no girl this just makes you real as fuck
BLIND ITEM Submitted Wednesday, June 15th: Heard you on dark videos in dark bars, so I turned the flash on for this photo. Steddie is CONFIRMED. That’s 100% Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson fully making out, in public, on the streets of San Francisco. Got some photos before and after The Kiss without flash too, for corroboration. And peep the concert marquee behind them; CORRODED COFFIN WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE PARTY. My friends and I camped out to try a catch a glimpse of them IRL, and it was so, so worth it. (Also, the band is pretty good! Metal’s not my scene but the opener was wild, did you know they have a violinist???)
Answer: Alright, alright, you all win. This is CONFIRMED. Posting the photo evidence as well. Looks like after weeks of rumors, we can safely say that Steve Harrington is on tour with his boyfriend. Steddie fangirls: feel free to rejoice in the comments.
Comment from @larryytrash4everr: @lizardbaby1999 OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD
Reply to @larryytrash4everr from @lizardbaby1999: GOD IS REAL AND SHE IS A FANGIRL
Comment from @diehardmetalchick: aww, I take back my old comment about not wanting this to be real, they look so cute!!! Good for them
Comment from @angelbaby22: this is sinful. we’re promoting this deviant behavior on this page now?
Reply to @angelbaby22 from @diehardmetalchick: once again: suck my fucking dick karen
Reply to @diehardmetalchick from @larryytrash4everr: do you want to join our group chat you seem so cool
---
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:24am ET
Freddie,
I know you have been telling me for weeks that we don’t have enough “evidence” on the Steve Harrington from Swim Team doing a coming out tour with his boyfriend’s band, but that gossip Instagram girl just confirmed it this morning. She’s got photo proof. Can’t we run this now?
XOXO,
Kali
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:36am ET
Kali,
Firstly, don’t call me Freddie.
Secondly, the photo is good, but I want a quote from a source close to them confirming. We’re not Instagrammers; we can get sued for libel. Haven’t you heard all the horror stories about Christopher Harrington? I don’t want him to have an inch of leverage. Do your job, contact his reps.
Best,
Fred
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:24pm ET
Freddie,
Firstly, no.
Secondly, this took all day, so I hope you’re happy: got someone to swing by the show tonight and ask one of the members of their opening band to confirm, which he did. Happy? I don’t think he’s got any reps – can’t find any evidence anywhere that he does.
XOXO,
Kali
P.S. Is it true that Christopher’s gonna send us a shit ton of money not to post this? Because, I mean, mama could use a vacay.
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:25pm ET
Did your “someone” disclose they were a journalist? Or, at the very least, that they were on the payroll of a journalist? (You have got to stop Venmoing your weird Discord friends to do this, by the way.)
Also, I know this seems like a stupid, terrible tabloid, but I have some spine, Kali. No payoffs. Just raw, unfiltered news. Christopher Harrington can’t buy us out.
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:31pm ET
Shit. I don’t think so. Now what?
P.S. (I don’t think celebrity sex scandals are exactly the Panama Papers, Freddie-baby, but okay.)
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:35pm ET
Eh, let’s just make the source anon and just say it’s “someone close to the band.” Should cover our bases. This will go live tonight. Good work.
Also, Freddie-baby is MILES WORSE.
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:36pm ET
FREDDIE, was that COMPLIMENT? Be still my beating heart. I remember why this job is worth it.
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wendesday, June 15th, 10:38pm ET
I hate you.
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject Line: RE: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Sent: Wednesday, June 15th, 10:40pm ET
NO YOU DON’T, BITCH :P
Post on celebweekly.com:
Tour Romance Confirmed! By Kali Prasad
Posted: Wednesday, June 15th, 11pm ET
Rumors have been swirling for weeks, but now Celeb Weekly can officially and exclusively confirm that love is in the air for former teen heartthrob Steve Harrington! Harrington is the new bassist for metal band Corroded Coffin, and was recently spotted swapping spit with lead singer and guitarist Eddie Munson on the streets of San Francisco. A source close to the band has confirmed their relationship, saying “yeah, they’re totally in love and getting married.” Aww! Congrats to the happy couple, and good luck to the band on the rest of their tour!
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MISSED CALL from DO NOT ANSWER: 8:09pm PT
MISSED CALL from DO NOT ANSWER: 9:15pm PT
MISSED CALL from DO NOT ANSWER: 10:00pm PT
VOICEMAIL from DO NOT ANSWER: 10:05pm PT
VOICEMAIL DELETED
Notes:
a little double header for you, as this chapter ties in so directly to the last one and also doesn't really advance the plot so it felt strange to post it solo. but my GOD did i have fun writing it.
apologies to, in no particular order: deuxmoi, anyone who ever shipped larry, people who work for gossip magazines, anyone who's real instagram username i maybe accidentally used (i tried to check them all but who knows if i did it right)
the little cameos in this chapter are likely all terribly out of character, but i love a little cameo.
next week: the fallout begins.
Chapter 26: Las Vegas (YOU WANT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO START AS SOON AS POSSIBLE)
Notes:
we have more backstory, so the usual "christopher harrington" tws come out: homophobia, emotional manipulation, general dickbaginess. steve's past drug use is also mentioned again in passing.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Who the fuck even is Ask Angela?” Robin asked, for approximately the fourth time in twenty-four hours. Her hair was a mess, sticking out randomly as she tugged her fingers through it again. Next to her, Steve reached over and grasped her wrist, lightly, pulling her hand away from her head. “I mean, I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s not your fault, Robin,” Steve reassured her, again, for the fourth time.
They were camped out in a single motel room in Vegas, having arrived an hour or so before. The night before had been — well, it hadn’t gone great, exactly. Eddie wasn’t sure he’d ever forget the look on Steve’s face as he read that stupid article on Eddie’s phone; sheer, total blankness, followed by a twist of sadness and discomfort in his mouth that Eddie wanted to kiss off but wasn’t sure he was allowed to, anymore, if he’d ever even really been allowed to in the first place.
They hadn’t talked, yet, just the two of them. They hadn’t had time. Dustin had declared “triage” last night, but it mostly meant the whole group spent an hour in the bar scrolling through the internet to find the things Robin’s Google Alert had missed — the gossip Instagrammer and the fangirls following them for weeks, the photos and videos people had snuck of them together, through the whole tour.
(Eddie and Steve dancing too close together in Seattle; Eddie grinning adoringly at Steve as they left the venue in Wisconsin; and, of course, them kissing in San Francisco, public and open and so, so fucking stupid.)
When “triage” had gotten to the point of mostly pointless wallowing, Hopper had forced them all to go to bed, which should have given Eddie a chance, except that Steve had, apparently, asked to swap rooms with Max and Lucas at some point and gone to crash with Robin.
Lucas had patted him on the shoulder and told him not to worry. “I think Steve’s worried Robin’s beating herself up about missing this, honestly. I don’t think it’s about you.”
Max had crossed her arms and leveled Eddie with a very serious look. “Are you upset about this?”
He hadn’t really known how to respond to that. He was upset, of course. He was upset Steve got outed without being able to control the narrative. He was upset that the article had jumped to defining a relationship he, himself, had not gotten to define yet. He was upset this was all happening right when maybe, just maybe he’d been getting confident enough to actually define said relationship, to tell Steve how he felt. And now, instead, he felt they were sort of back at square one. That by getting called boyfriends publicly, Steve would retreat into a turtle shell and give up on all of this. Would decide it wasn’t worth it.
None of that was appropriate to say to Max. None of that was what she was asking either, he didn’t think. He thought, maybe, she was asking are you going to be a horrendous dick about all of this?
“It’s not how I wanted to have this conversation,” he’d admitted. She’d just nodded, like that was answer enough, and then gone and hugged him, which really gave him an idea of how deeply pathetic he must have looked.
And then, in the morning, they were back in group formation for the drive to Vegas, and Robin had dragged Steve over to Hop and Joyce’s car while Eddie had been powerless to interrupt and just had to watch them go, Lucas once again wincing at him in sympathy. They hadn’t even split the rooms up, yet; when they arrived Dustin had just wrangled them all into one group for more triage, even though there was really nothing to be fucking done as far as Eddie could figure. They’d pulled the rabbit out of the hat, and no amount of frantically trying to shove it back would make the audience forget they’d seen it, up on stage.
Everyone seemed to be realizing that, though, because except for Dustin no had been offering any solutions. And Dustin’s had mostly been unrealistic to start, like calling to demand the magazine retract the story.
“Who even is this source close to the band?” Dustin demanded, voice piercing.
Eddie blinked. “It’s not. . . made up?” He cast a glance around the room. “I just assumed it was made up.”
“I don’t think they would have made up a source,” Joyce said, smiling at Eddie with more kindness than he felt he deserved, at this moment.
“So who is it? I mean, it’s not one of us.” Dustin said.
Across the room, Mike dropped his water bottle. It clanked, stupidly, onto the ground, a loud metal crashing.
Everyone looked at him.
He looked wild-eyed around the room, once, catching Eddie’s eye for half a second and then immediately crumpling. “I didn’t know—” he started.
“Mike, what the hell?” Will hissed.
“She didn’t say she was a journalist! She said she was just a fan and she was wondering if something was going on, and I was — I was being sarcastic! I told her to fuck off, after!”
“Dude,” Lucas said, with a sigh, “come on, you know better than that.”
“Steve always told us to be careful who we spoke to,” El added, face very stern.
“WHAT THE FUCK,” Dustin howled. He looked like he was ready to go and sock Wheeler in the face. Joyce put her hand on his shoulder as if to calm him.
Mike’s face was twisted in real, actual misery. He tugged at his hair, a bit pathetically. “I know, I know, I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” Steve said, softly. The sound of his voice, alone, was enough to silence everyone else in the room. “Come on, lay off, it was an accident. It’s okay, Mike, I know you didn’t mean to.”
Mike cut a look to Eddie.
Oh, shit, right, he was part of this too. “Yeah, man, no, uh, no worries,” he muttered. Great. Excellent work, definitely would communicate to Steve how intensely Eddie felt about everything.
Next to Steve, there was a low buzzing noise, not for the first time. Steve picked up his phone and silenced it.
“How many times has he called?” Eddie asked. He didn’t need to look to know that it would be DO NOT ANSWER. Because, duh. Of course it would.
For the first time all day, Steve looked up and met Eddie’s eye. Eddie felt his heart leap into his throat. He hoped his face looked normal, but he had no way of knowing. “Uh,” Steve said. “Ten. Total, from last night and tonight. He also left a voicemail, but I didn’t listen to it.”
“Shit,” Robin groaned.
Hopper, always a man of action, crossed the room and picked up Steve’s phone. He held it in his hand for a moment and then shut it off, dropping it back onto the table decisively. “Everyone who needs to call you is in this room,” he said to Steve, barely holding back the anger that was clearly seeping through him. “You should change your number.”
“Sure, but what if my mom dies?” Steve said. It sounded like it was supposed to be a joke, but it landed horribly, and was met with total silence. Abruptly, Steve stood up. “Sorry, I just — I need some air, okay?” He bolted for the door.
Eddie waited for exactly two beats after the door swung back shut before scrambling up, realizing his best opportunity to talk to Steve had just planted itself directly in his lap. “I’m gonna—” he said, pointlessly.
“Go,” Joyce said, so soft, and Eddie took her permission and darted after Steve.
There were picnic tables set up, to the side of the motel. Steve was sitting at one, flipping his lighter in his hands. Eddie approached, slowly, giving Steve time to — to what? See him? Tell him to fuck off? He wasn’t sure, but either way Steve stayed silent as Eddie approached, didn’t turn to face him as he sat down, on the same side of the bench but with a little space between them.
They sat there in silence for a moment, Eddie searching desparately for something to say — something smart and comforting and meaningful, fucking anything.
But, as he tended to, Steve beat Eddie to the punch. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What?” Eddie said. Steve shook his head a little bitterly, but didn’t repeat himself or clarify at all. “Wait, no, seriously, I — why? You have nothing to be sorry for.” It had been Eddie, after all, who’d kissed Steve in public like that; Eddie who’d flirted onstage; Eddie who’d suggested they keep sleeping together despite all of his stupid feelings. And Eddie wasn’t the one who’s father was blowing up his phone, wasn’t the one with a “career” that other people felt entitled to, wasn’t the one with a vested interest in keeping his private life private. Steve said nothing, wasn’t meeting Eddie’s eye, so Eddie reached across the gap he’d left between them and grasped Steve around the arm. Steve jumped a bit, clearly startled by the touch. “Listen, none of this is your fault.”
For a second or two Steve just looked at Eddie’s hand, clasped against his arm. Finally, though, he looked up and met Eddie’s eye. “I don’t mean that it’s my fault,” he said, slowly. “I mean . . . I’m sorry that you got roped into it. I’m sorry they said your name online like that. Said we were, uh,” he stammered, just a bit, “together?” He looked away, then, but Eddie didn’t move his hand. He felt stuck to Steve, a bit, like if he let go the other man would vanish into smoke. “I know you didn’t want that,” Steve finished. “Probably broke someone’s heart in Brooklyn, huh?”
Oh, god, did he think there was someone else? That somehow, of the two of them, Eddie was the one with admirers, with options? What the hell? “There’s no one in Brooklyn,” he said, quickly. “No one’s heartbroken.” Except for the little bit of Eddie’s own heart that felt broken, now.
But you can fix that, he thought, if you stop being a fucking coward. He thought of Dustin’s outstretched pinky. Steve and I, we both misunderstood something. The serious way the kid had said trust me. The awful, sad look that had been on Steve’s face since late last night.
Alright then. Game time. Nut up or shut up, Munson.
“There’s just you,” he said, very soft.
Well that got Steve to turn back to him, although the look on his face was mostly confusion. Right, because Eddie was being fucking vague.
He closed his eyes.
In front of him he saw the lake from his childhood again, his legs skinny and clad only in boxers, shaking and nervous but steeling himself for the cold of the water.
He took a breath and he jumped.
“I don’t mind that the article said we were dating,” he said, opening his eyes. Steve still looked confused, mouth quirked in a little frown. “I know it was supposed to be casual, or whatever, but you shoud know that my feelings for you are, uh. Decidedly uncasual.” He took in Steve’s truly shocked expressed for a beat.
“What?” Steve asked. He stood up, breaking free from Eddie’s grip, finally, and Eddie tried not to panic that Steve’s first move had been putting space between them. “What are you saying? You want to date me?”
“Yeah,” he said back. “I mean, shit, Steve. Cards on the table I’ve wanted that from the jump.” He frowned at the other man. “I honestly figured you didn’t want to date me.”
Steve ran a hand through his hair, a truly wild expression on his face. “Of course I want to date you, Eddie! What the hell? I mean this whole time — I didn’t think you liked me like that,” Steve said, an incredulous look on his face. “I had this entire, ridiculous plan to, like, seduce you while we were doing this casual thing!”
“You were going to secude me?” He couldn’t help but smile, feeling oddly lightheaded at the feeling. “Dude, seriously, I’m like, fucking obsessed with you. I thought I was being so obvious.”
Steve scoffed, hands on his hips, like Eddie was being ridiculous. “Obvious? Okay, well, I made the first move. I told you I wanted to kiss you, and then I kissed you. And then I told you I’d thought about us, you know, sleeping together, to which you just asked me what I’d thought about — you didn’t say you’d been thinking about me at all. And then after sex you got all. . . quiet, and you slept about as far away from me as possible, and so I just. . .” He looked down at his feet, here, oddly shy. “I spent all night thinking you regretted it, you know? That I’d come on too strong, I guess.” Then, his eyes back on Eddie, “and I was going to ask in the morning, but then Robin came in and you blurted that it was just sex, that we weren’t. . . dating, or whatever, so. I don’t know, I sort of figured you were just fulfilling your stupid teenaged fantasy about me, and that was it.”
Are you fucking him over? Robin had asked. Some people just want to fuck a celebrity.
God, god, he was so goddamn dumb.
There was a sad little expression on Steve’s face. Eddie hated himself, a bit, for being the person who put it there. He swore he’d never put it there again, not if he could help it.
“I took the hints, I guess,” Steve continued. “That you weren’t really into me. That’s why I said we had to stop. I didn’t want to get my heart broken by you. And then you suggested we just keep sleeping together, and I. . .” He laughed here, although it wasn’t a very humous sound; it was more like an exhale after getting punched. “I liked you so much I just said yes, even though I wanted more, because I thought I’d just take what I could get, you know? But I thought you just wanted sex. I mean, you told Robin multiple times you weren’t into me. I’m stupid but I’m not that stupid, Eddie. But then I thought, you know, I could . . . charm you? Into wanting more?” He looked embarrassed, by this last bit. “I mean, I told you I didn’t mind the kids knew, wasn’t that me being obvious?”
Oh. Well. When it was laid out all like that, it did sound like Eddie wasn’t interested in Steve at all. And was, perhaps, legally blind. Like, emotionally blind. Legally emotionally blind? Would they have to mark that on his driver’s license?
He’d been trying to play his cards close to the chest and had, instead, nearly forfeited the entire game. God, he was so lucky Steve hadn’t just given up, thrown in the towel, walked away. If he had, Eddie would have been hung up on a guy he had every chance in the world with for, what? Years, maybe.
“Oh my god,” Eddie said, dropping his face into his hands. “You’re not stupid, I’m stupid. What the fuck? I’m the stupidest person on Earth.” He looked up and forced himself to meet Steve’s eye. “I thought. . . you saying we shouldn’t have sex again, after that first time, I thought that was you letting me down easy. You called me Munson afterwards, and I guess that made it feel like. . . I don’t know, a separation? Like you weren’t interested?” he said, realizing it sounded ridiculous.
Steve scoffed, again. “I always call you Munson!”
“I was, maybe, being a little overdramatic. You know, as I am wont to do.” Which got Steve to roll his eyes, but there was a look on his face, a sort of reluctant fondness. Hope flared in Eddie’s chest, a small spark but a bright one. “I suggested a casual thing because I couldn’t only fuck you once, you know? It, like, changed the natural course of my life.” He looked up and stood from the picnic table to move towards Steve, who had his arms around his middle, his back straight. Maybe a little guarded. Protecting himself from Eddie, a bit. That wouldn’t do. “I just,” he said, “I thought there was no way you’d be into me. I mean, look at you.”
“Look at you,” Steve shot back, but his posture had relaxed, a little, as Eddie had gotten closer. “I keep saying, you’re the next big thing — I mean it. I’m old news.”
“You’re really, really not,” Eddie said. “You’re the hottest groupie a boy could ask for.” This, finally, got Steve to laugh, posture relaxing a bit more. He sighed, and then reached up to cup Steve’s face in his hands, thumbs on the slopes of Steve’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, Stevie. That I made you feel that I didn’t want this. I want it so bad it makes me dumb, I swear to god.”
“Makes you dumb?” Steve said, with a smile. “Yesterday I misspelled Wednesday in a text to Robin because I was thinking about something you said.”
“There’s a weird n in there, to be fair,” Eddie said. Then he cleared his throat. “For the record, officially, I do want this. I want you. I want to date you, and everything, buy you dinner and hold your hand and talk about nothing all day. I want it really, really badly.”
And god the smile Steve sent him at that — blinding, brilliant, beautiful. Eddie moved forward to kiss him — soft and gentle, like he’d thought about doing at fucking Culver’s all those days ago, like he could do, now, as much as he wanted, maybe.
When they pulled apart, Steve’s expression shifted, slightly, something like guilt falling over it. Eddie still had his hands on his face, rubbing a gentle thumb across his cheekbone; Steve’s hands were loose on Eddie’s hips, fisting in the fabric of his shirt. “My dad,” Steve started, and then sighed. “Me being bisexual, it was something he worked so hard to not let out to the public. It’s got to be why he’s been calling me so much; he’s already trying to do damage control, to get me to deny it. I don’t really know what he’s going to do, if it’s out there, and we’re saying it’s true. Saying you’re, you know—” he stammered, again, maybe a bit shy?, “my boyfriend.”
“I am absolutely your boyfriend,” Eddie said, defensively. “And we are never doing a big dumb miscommunication thing ever again, for the record. I’m going to walk into rooms and tell you exactly what I’m thinking for the rest of our lives just to make sure we understand each other.”
“Our whole lives?” Steve asked, half teasing and half sort of awe-struck sounding.
“You’re not getting rid of me,” Eddie said. “I’m like a parasite. Munsonitis. Besides, I gotta make up for every day where I accidentally broke your heart a little bit.”
“That was only, like, five days,” Steve pointed out.
“Well, okay, those five days and all those days I was mean to you.” He frowned. “Wow, I’ve been a huge asshole basically the entire time we’ve known each other, huh? You sure you want to date me?”
“Yes,” Steve said, very quickly. Eddie grinned at him. “And, look, I don’t think it counts as being an asshole if you weren’t doing it on purpose.”
“Agree to disagree,” he said back. “Plus, I was being an asshole on purpose at first.”
“Sure, but you’re hot when you’re mean,” Steve said.
Eddie just stared at him. He thought about the condoms and lube Steve had packed, the way he’d said kinda hoping and looked at Eddie. “No,” he said. “Wait, stop, are you telling me you wanted to fuck me when I actively hated you?” Steve shrugged, but there was an arrogance to it, a bit of jokey looseness. Eddie shook his head. “Dustin’s right, we gotta work on your type.”
“Nah,” Steve said, “I like my type fine.” And then he kissed Eddie again.
When they pulled apart a second time, Steve kept his eyes closed for a long minute. He looked, a bit, like he was steeling himself for something. “Look, if we’re going to — if we’re going to do this, you and me, really do this, there’s something I got to tell you.”
“Okay,” Eddie said. He worked hard to keep wariness out of his tone, even though this was, objectively, a very worrying sentence to start a story with. But he really, really didn’t want Steve to think he had second thoughts, not after all his dumbassery.
“You remember,” Steve said, slow, opening his eyes, now, “that I told you my dad paid off one of my boyfriends? Mark?” Eddie nodded. “Well, I sort of. . . left part of that out. He actually paid Mark off to leave me.”
Eddie couldn’t help it; he felt his mouth drop open a little bit. Like, shit, he knew Steve’s dad was an asshole, but that was — that was beyond asshole. That was something else all together.
Steve winced, a bitter, miserable little twist of his mouth that Eddie hated. “I know,” he said. Then he jutted his chin back towards the picnic table behind them. “It’s kind of a long story. Maybe we should sit?”
Eddie nodded, and let himself be pulled towards the table. When they sat, he made sure he was close enough their knees knocked together. Steve pressed them together intently, like the point of contact mattered, and took another breath. “I met him at a party when I was nineteen. Before him, I’d only ever had one serious partner — Nancy, Mike’s sister. My high school sweetheart; we dated for a year or so, right as my dad started getting the band together. Every love song on that album is about her. It was good, when things were still normal, but then Swim Team took off, and she hated all of it. The fame, the parties, who I was when I was around other people, industry people, people my dad found important. She got plastered at some stupid party my dad dragged us to and told me the whole thing was bullshit, that I was bullshit, and that was sort of the end of that.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Eddie grabbed his lighter from his pocket and lit it for him, and Steve shot him a small, grateful smile. “But — she was right, I think. It wasn’t ever going to work out between us, you know? We were too different, and I was wrong to drag her into that life, when she didn’t want that. And I’m glad we’re friends, now. I don’t have hard feelings about any of it.
“After that, though, I got this terrible writer’s block. I mean I couldn’t make a song at all. My dad bugged me every day to demand I work on the second album, trying to shove songwriters down my throat, saying it didn’t matter if I could write because they’d do it for me. I didn’t want to work with a songwriter, though, I wanted it to be mine. But it wasn’t — it didn’t feel right anymore, without Nancy, without anyone. I didn’t have love songs in me, and Swim Team needed to be love songs. There was no version of a second album that wasn’t just more of the first one, you know? I couldn’t grow, couldn’t let the band get older with me. Which, I mean. . . I think I was starting to figure it out, you know? About my dad. That he saw me more as a business opportunity than, like, his son. But my therapist would tell me that was in my head, you know, that he was my dad and of course he loved me and—” he cut it off in a sharp laugh.
“Well, anyway. That’s when I started doing a lot of coke, partying with weird people. And then I met Mark at one of those parties. And he was just so — I mean lovely you know? When you meet someone and they’re just so pretty, and they’re so nice, and they do this thing where the light up the room and you can’t stop looking at them?”
Eddie knew. Dear god did Eddie know. He couldn’t look away from the sharp profile Steve cut in the mid-afternoon daylight, the way his nose extended from his face, the sloping curve of his jaw.
Eddie knew.
Steve clearly didn’t expect an answer, though, because he kept talking. “Mark was like that. And we clicked, immediately. And you know, I’m dumb, I’d always liked girls so I just figure — this is like, a super intense male friendship, right? Like the type I’d just never happened to have before?” Steve huffed a laugh, less bitter than his last one. “And then one day, like three weeks later, we were hanging out at my place and he kissed me, and it, like, all started to make sense, in my head. Like my whole life I’d been wearing this — this mask, acting like how people thought I should act, being who they expected me to be — who my dad expected me to be. And suddenly I was aware that it was a lie and that I was someone else. That I wanted something else.”
He turned and met Eddie’s eye directly, like he was implying something like you. Eddie’s stomach swooped. Jesus Christ. He clamped down the urge to reach over and kiss Steve in the middle of this awful story about heartbreak. Settled for intertwining their hands, instead. Steve smiled softly at him.
“Anyway,” Steve said, turning back to look out at the horizon. “Things with Mark were good, so finally my writer’s block vanished, and I was actually writing the stuff my dad wanted me to write — love songs. God I wrote so many love songs, they were downright embarrassing. I was so naïve. Like, I thought I could just give my dad an album of songs about his eyes and his smile and he’d be just as happy. I was a fucking idiot.”
He trailed off, staring into the middle distance. The place he disappeared to, sometimes, the place that freaked Eddie out, like Steve was going to vanish there one day and never come back. Eddie nudged him, just slightly. “Then what, Stevie?”
Steve snapped back, shaking his head out. “Right. Well. Then my dad walked in on me and Mark making out on my couch and everything blew up. I thought he’d be mad, honestly, but he wasn’t, he just—” He stopped for a long moment, hip lip quivering a bit. “Well, you know this part. Midwstern mothers, and all that.”
Eddie thought he really, truly, hated Steve’s father.
“And the dumbest part,” Steve continued, “is that I didn’t care. I told him to drop me from the band, replace me, whatever. I’d leave the contract, I’d leave the label, I’d leave music — none of it mattered like Mark mattered, you know? I loved him more than anything.” Steve took another drag and then tilted his head up, towards the sky. Their shoulders pressed together, soft, grounding. They were still holding hands.
Steve was silent for a long time. Eddie, despite knowing the arc of the story, knowing how it ended, felt unprepared to hear it, almost. Like he’d never be really, truly prepared to hear all the ways Steve’s dad broke his heart.
Finally, Steve cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Behind my back, my dad offered Mark $25k to leave me, sign an NDA, and agree to never contact or speak to me again. And Mark took the money. I tried for weeks to get in touch with him and I just — nothing. He changed his number. My dad did it to prove his point. That people would just try to use me, and that’d be worse if I was openly bisexual. That no one would ever really love me. Except him, I guess.” He sighed, watery. “And that’s when my dad told me, you know — about the contract. I couldn’t just leave Swim Team. I’d promised him three albums. As Swim Team. Any new music I wrote was his, and he got a say if it was good enough to go out, and I could never work for anyone else but him. I couldn’t do it. And I realized, you know. He didn’t love me, my dad. He wanted a machine — something to make him money and do what he said. He didn’t really want a son, especially not one as flawed as me. So I spiraled. That’s when I got, you know. Pretty depressed. Rock bottom shit.”
Eddie squeezed Steve’s hand. Steve looked back at him, tears swimming in his eyes, and smiled. It was a weak little thing — a smile unworthy of Steve’s face.
“I think I could have handled my dad not loving me, and I think I could have handled Mark not loving me, but both at the same time, it was. It was a lot,” Steve said. “And uh, to know that I really wasn’t worth anything, you know, that they were all right, Nancy, and Mark, and my dad — I was just. Bullshit. Pretty face, no talent, nothing worth fighting for.”
Eddie knocked their shoulders together once, frowning. “Don’t say that like it’s true, baby.”
Steve smiled up at him, then, a real, true smile, and god, he really was the most beautiful person Eddie had ever seen. “I know that now. I told my therapist everything, and she suggested I go no contact with my dad, which I did. But I still couldn’t write, or handle music at all, and so she suggested doing something related to music but not, you know, the same thing I’d been doing. Something to make me love it again that my dad couldn’t take from me, couldn’t make his own.”
Eddie couldn’t help but grin. “That fucking music camp.”
“That fucking music camp,” Steve said, laughing back. “Without a doubt Dustin Henderson and those little weirdos saved my goddamn life, man. I was on this absolute warpath to just — total self destruction, and then this twerp with no front teeth saunters up to me on day one of summer camp and demands I teach him how to play the piano to impress some girl he liked who only wanted to date classical musicians and that was, like, all she wrote.”
Eddie laughed too. They were silent for a long moment. “I’ve never told anyone besides Robin that whole story, before,” Steve said, finally. “Not even Hopper and Joyce.” He stubbed out the cigarette with a sound — not quite a sigh, but something halfway there, a little wistful, a little sad. “Anyway, that’s — you should know, who we’re dealing with. He’s probably spent a lot of money over the years trying to clean up after me, make sure I never did anything that could permanently wreck my career, or whatever. This being public, and out there. . . it’s going to piss him off. Really piss him off, in a way the session work and this tour probably didn’t.”
A part of Eddie wanted to respond immediately, assure Steve none of it mattered, but he knew better. This was heavy, and serious, and it deserved to be thought about, not just reacted to. Hell, Steve deserved to be thought about — his safety, and his life, and what it meant for him. So he sat, for a long moment, and really considered the situation they were in. “Look, Stevie — if you want your dad off your back, if it’s easier to just go public and deny it or say we lost a bet, or whatever. I’ll do that. I’m following your lead, here. I’m happy with this being just an us thing, or whatever. I don’t need spectale.”
“Eddie, please, you love spectacle.” Okay, true, but he’d forgo it for Steve, really. “Besides, I don’t think those Instagram girls are going to believe I was making out with my buddy as a bit,” Steve said, dryly.
“Aren’t the kids these days all about kissing the homies?”
Steve wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, don’t say homie, it’s so weird out of your mouth.” He paused and looked Eddie, a serious, heavy stare. “To tell you the truth, it’s kind of. . . freeing? To have it out there. Most of the Instagram comments were nice. And I was talking with Robin, last night, and. . . at first I think I just wanted to make her feel better, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what I was telling her was true. I’ve spent the past, like, decade letting him control my life. Never got social media. Never really took pictures with anyone I dated, never bothered to date too seriously. Accepted I was just going to always be under his thumb, I guess, until he got tired and gave up. So it felt. . . it felt kind of good. To let part of myself out there. A real part.”
Christ, that little speech practically brought Eddie to tears. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll figure it out, then. Whatever he tries to do next, you got me. You got all of us. He wants to try and hurt you he’s going to have to go through basically a whole army. Can you imagine how powerful Dustin and Robin would be if they put their heads together? Lucas and Max? Hell, Hopper and Joyce? Plus, you got Jeff and Gareth now! Not sure they’ll be useful, though. Unless you need someone to play beer pong against your dad. Jeff is ace at beer pong.”
Steve laughed, dropping his forehead onto Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie carded a hand through his hair, resting it on the curve of the back of his his head, near the nape of his neck, gentle. “It’s you and me, baby,” Eddie said again, firmly. “Your dad can go fuck himself.”
Which caused Steve to look up and kiss Eddie again. Sweet, at first, but then Eddie lost any semblance of impulse control he had and pulled Steve closer to him, deepening it, mussing his hair up just cause he could, because Steve was his fucking boyfriend and he was allowed to do this.
Finally Steve pulled back, on a laugh. “We should probably go back to the motel room before they send out a search party,” he said, bumping their noses together, still in Eddie’s space, like he was reluctant to get too far. “We got a show to play later, after all.”
Eddie hummed, and slipped his hand into Steve’s as he did so. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Hey, you wanna bunk with me tonight?”
“I’m pretty sure with this hotel we’ll need to have Dustin with us, too.” Steve pointed out. “He’ll freak out if he even thinks you’re copping a feel. He gets very prudish about my sex life, says it’s gross.”
“Well Dustin will just have to deal, because I’m absolutely going to cop a feel,” Eddie said, and then pressed another short kiss to Steve’s lips before tugging him by the hand, up away from the table and back towards the room.
Robin saw them first as they entered, her eyes catching on their linked hands, and actually screamed in joy. “Oh my god, finally, did you idiots figure it out?”
Steve rolled his eyes, face flushed with embarrassment, which was so cute, ugh. “Yeah, yeah,” he said to Robin.
Eddie squeezed his hand, just a little. “I’m the idiot, really. Steve was, retrospectively, pretty obvious. I’m just, you know,” he waved his free hand, “dumb of ass, tragically.”
Across the room, Jeff fist pumped into a truly ridiculous manner, and then turned to Gareth, face triumphant. “Best man!” he crowed.
“Do I wanna know what that’s about?” Steve asked, a single eyebrow raised.
“No,” Eddie said, very quickly. “Not at all.”
“You really are a dumbass,” Max scoffed, turning to Eddie. “Steve’s the most heart on his sleeve guy I’ve ever met. I thought I was gonna have to beat you up to protect his honor, or whatever.”
“It’s true, you’re sort of willfully ignorant, huh?” Dustin added.
Eddie narrowed his eyes at the two of them. “Yes, yes, I get it, I’m a moron. To make up for lost time, we’re bunking together for the rest of this tour.”
Dustin squawked in protest, declaring this arrangement extremely unfair, while Robin hissed that Eddie couldn’t be a Steve-hog. Their reactions caused Steve to laugh, loud and bright, and then Eddie was laughing too. He couldn’t help it, happiness expanding in his chest.
He knew there was a storm cloud on the horizon — Steve was right about his dad, almost certainly. But for this moment, in a stupid, ugly motel room in Vegas, Eddie found he didn’t quite care. He was living in the present, the sound of Steve’s laughter as Robin teased him, the argument already sparking between Dustin, Mike, Lucas, and Will as Dustin tried to negotiate a new, better way to rotate hotel rooms so he’d have to sleep with as few couples as possible, the sound of Hopper groaning, yet again, that they were all morons while Joyce patted him comfortingly on the shoulder.
It might be a rough road ahead, but for now Eddie was light, and happy, and holding hands with a beautiful boy, and everything was alright.
Notes:
awww look at them!! they talked it out!!! boyfriends baby it's HAPPENING!!
i love to do three chapters of awful miscommunication and then have them immediately communicate so much. that's growth.
chapter title is from When Harry Met Sally.
Chapter 27: Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson (JENNY'S ON THE HIGHWAY HITCHING A RIDE)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Here was a thing that had never happened to Eddie before:
There were paparazzi outside the venue in Vegas. Not, like, a ton — really just four dudes with Nikons, one of whom was pretty blatantly hitting a joint — but still. And they were here to see Eddie, at least in part, which became obvious when one of them called out, “Steve, Eddie, how’s the honeymoon?”
Eddie had half a mind to shout back we’re not married, dipshit, but Robin clamped a hand over his mouth before he could. “No fucking comment, remember?” she hissed, smiling tightly.
Ah, yes, right. The media strategy. They’d decided it back in the motel room, led by Robin, because she was the expert. And her expert strategy? Simple:
Don’t comment.
Say nothing.
“We have no way of knowing what the angle is for anyone who shows up. It’s possible some of them could work for Steve’s dad, or just generally sleazy publications that won’t be nice or queer-friendly, and they could twist what you say against you. So, we say nothing until we’re talking to someone we know, in a controlled location.” She’d cut a look to Steve. “If we choose to do that.”
Right, because there’d been a bit of a debate, on that part. Granted, the debate was mostly Robin muttering under her breath to herself, while everyone just sort of watched and Eddie surreptitiously played footsie with Steve, sat across from him at the shitty table the motel provided as an eating area. Eventually, though, she’d turned to Steve and cleared her throat loudly, and Steve had pulled his foot away and sat up straighter like he was being addressed in school, or something.
Those two were ridiculous, really. Eddie was completely obsessed with them.
“Okay, so, pros of leading with our own article. We get to control the narrative, for a little bit. You get to tell your own story, which is nice. We put your dad on the defensive, which means he might make a mistake, or let something slip.” Robin was tapping a finger against her chin, restlessly.
“And the cons?” Steve asked.
“Well, being on the offense is kind of a con. It can leave us open to stuff — your dad coming out and refuting your story, or leaking stuff from your past that he’s covered up for you, stuff like that. If we make the first move, we know he’s going to attack. Right now, we kind of have him between a rock and a hard place, I guess. He can’t really come out and say, ‘yeah, I’m a total homophobic dickbag,’ right? So, theoretically, you know, we have him there. No need to give up ground until he forces us to.”
It went unsaid just how Christopher might force them to.
“Plus,” she tacked on, finally, “I don’t even really know who’d I go to with this story. I don’t exactly have a media relations kit for you, babe, I’m sorry.”
Steve had been quiet for a long moment, clearly weighing out the options in his mind, before he’d eventually just shrugged and gone “I don’t know. I’ve never really fought him before. Maybe it’s best to . . . not start now?” He cast a look around the room. “I don’t want him to come after you all. If he’s stuck, let’s just . . . keep him stuck.”
There’d been a moment of tense silence, after that. Eddie looked around and realized the silence was everyone else in the room clenching their jaws, saying nothing. Hopper, for one, looked like he had many thoughts about this, but eventually he’d cleared his throat and said, “yeah, kid, whatever you feel is best.”
Oh. Of course. It made sense, finally, to Eddie, why Hopper had backed off on his requests that Steve get a lawyer, why Robin never suggested a public coming out even when she knew the whole story. They were restraining themselves for Steve’s sake. Because Steve didn’t want to have the fight. But they wanted to have the fight. Every one of them, if given the chance, would have it any day. He could see it in the set of Max’s shoulders, the way Lucas’ hands were clenching and unclenching into fists, the way Dustin and Will were exchanging an extremely not subtle glance, and El had slumped over, a little, to rest her head in her hand. Hell, even Mike Wheeler looked about one minute from saying something, stopped seemingly only by the gentle hand Will put on his knee, as if to say not yet.
A part of Eddie wanted to speak up, then, to say, “please, Stevie, let us fucking kill him,” but he, too, clenched his jaw. The most important thing was Steve’s comfort, right?
But, how comfortable could Steve be, stuck like he was? It was an awful contradiction, in Eddie’s mind, and one he hadn’t quite gotten over by the time they’d gotten to the venue, or played the show, or returned to the motel room.
(Dustin did room with them, in the end, and complained loudly any time Steve and Eddie so much as brushed hands, which was truly absurd. To retaliate, Eddie pressed Steve against the closed door of the bathroom and made out with him for a stupid long time while the kid banged ceaselessly on the door, demanding to be let in so he could brush his teeth.)
Still, Eddie let it slide. He did! He said nothing as they left Vegas, and nothing at the show in Phoenix—
(He and Steve managed a room alone, in Phoenix, and spent the night talking about nothing at all, light and sweet, the blush of a new relationship, and he hadn’t wanted to ruin it with the weight of the thing.)
—and nothing on the miserable ride from Phoenix to Tucson, the van’s sort of terrible air conditioning blasting as much as possible because this part of the country was the devil’s fucking armpit.
“It should be illegal for it to get this hot,” Max whined from the passenger seat. In the back, Gareth grunted listlessly and Mike thunked his head against the window.
Eddie was inclined to agree with them. That people willingly chose to live here was a mystery to him, and he overpaid for an apartment in a city where more than one friend of his had had an actual rat in their own apartments, so.
Another van pulled alongside him, in the left lane, Steve driving, and Robin flipped him the bird as they overtook, the heat apparently not dulling them whatsoever. Un-fucking-fair. In the drivers seat, Steve waggled his fingers in an absurd little wave and smile — and it was nice, to see him smiling so wide, to see his boyfriend smiling so wide.
“Ugh,” Max groaned. “It’s too hot for you to look so sappy.”
“Shut it, Mayfield,” he said back agreeably, and then slammed the van a good ten miles an hour over the speed limit to pass Steve again.
By the time they got to the venue in Tucson, Eddie had decided he could be fine with the strategy, really. Steve, at least, seemed to be more at ease. There was only one photographer, this time, and he didn’t bother to shout anything at them as they passed — just snagged a few pictures. Eddie resisted the urge he had to place his hand on the small of Steve’s back, to show him sort of reassurance, even though he wanted to because — because it was against the strategy. And he was following the strategy. He was.
Next to him, Dustin was scowling at the guy as they entered. “This is dumb,” he said, petulant. “I wish we were doing something.”
Well, that was relatable.
But he quashed the feeling, shoved it down, and it was mostly a normal pre-show run; they tuned their instruments, chatted with the sound guys, and then the Party headed off for soundcheck and Eddie went to grab a beer.
The bartender was chatting with a woman who was sitting at the bar. Which was weird, because the venue wasn’t open yet, and Eddie didn’t recognize her as one of the bar staff he’d been introduced to before.
“You’re Munson, right?” the bartender asked. “This is weird, but this is my friend—”
And then the woman at the bar looked up, and Eddie caught her eye, and he recognized her immediately, even after all this time.
“Your hair’s different,” Chrissy Cunningham said, with a small smile.
“So’s yours,” Eddie said, dumbfounded. Because it was — her hair had been long and flowing in high school, perpetually tied back into a ponytail even when she wasn’t cheerleading. Now it was cropped short, a fashionable little pixie, although it was still a shiny, summery blonde. She’d gained some weight, too — in a good way, like she’d grown into her body, become more comfortable in it. She was wearing dangling turquoise earrings because of course she was, they were in fucking Tucson, she WAS IN FUCKING TUCSON, and suddenly he felt dumb that he’d opened up by mentioning her hair, what the hell? “You’re alive, holy shit?” he tacked on. “I thought. . .”
He trailed off. What had he thought? He’d hoped she’d lived; he’d assumed she hadn’t. Partially because a part of him thought he’d have heard from someone if she had, but hell, he didn’t have Facebook. He couldn’t be the only person on Earth slightly off the grid.
Her smile went a little sad at the edges. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” The bartender dropped a can of PBR in front of Eddie and then immediately made herself scarce, clearly understanding that they needed time. Chrissy gestured at her retreating back. “Sorry, Ellen’s an old girlfriend of my roommate, Meg, and when we figured out who you were, that you were playing here, we called in a favor to crash your rehearsal. I just. I knew I had to talk to you.”
He sat down at a barstool next to her. “Why are you in Tucson?” he asked, finally. It felt like sort of a dumb question to lead with, but — like, seriously, how many people even lived in Tucson?
“Desert’s quiet,” she said, with a small laugh, some inside joke he couldn’t catch. “I didn’t plan to end up here, actually. My first plan was Los Angeles — I thought. . . well, I don’t know. Hollywood, you know? New York seemed too dirty, and too loud, and Chicago was too close, and I didn’t really know any other cities, if I’m being honest.” She drummed the tips of her fingernails against her glass, a small, clinking sound emitting from them. Eddie found the noise oddly relaxing; he couldn’t figure why. “That ketamine you sold me — I sold it to some idiot banker guy I’d met in Indianapolis, for about three times what you charged me, with a fake ID he threw in on top because, honestly, I think he wanted to sleep with me. And then I started hitchhiking.” She shrugged, like a teenaged girl sticking her thumb out for rides on a highway in middle America wasn’t the beginning of hundreds of horror stories; was, instead, just a silly thing she’d done, long ago. “The thing about hitchhiking is that beggars can’t be choosers, so my route wasn’t exactly expedient. Plus, I had to be careful who I got into cars with. I wore baggy clothes, covered my hair a lot, tried to pass for boy, or at least, you know,” she gestured vaguely here, “not pretty, whatever. Mostly people were nice, though; turns out a lot of long-haul truckers are just lonely weirdos. And I was a lonely weirdo too, so . . . we were sort of kin.”
“Christ,” Eddie said, with half a laugh, taking a shaking sip of beer. “You befriending long-haul truckers. Now I’ve heard everything.”
She laughed brighter than he had, shaking her head again. Her earrings sparkled a bit, even in the dull light of the bar. “Anyway, I ran out of money around Albuquerque and had to set down roots, for a bit. Roots meaning a room in a women’s shelter and putting that fake ID to good use. I made a few friends, though, and some cash waitressing, and when one of my coworkers decided to go to the University of Arizona she asked me to come with and live with her, and now. . . here I am.” She gestured around her.
“What are you doing, now?” It seemed dumb, maybe, to wonder about her job, but Eddie supposed the question accompanied a bit more than that, actually. Like he was trying to figure out the whole arc of her life, really.
“Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that,” she said, waving her hand again. “I’m sort of a permanent waitress, but I like it. It’s nice to talk to people. I teach yoga sometimes, too, which is fun, and I’ve been making the costumes at a community theater by me, which is really fun. Meg’s trying to convince me to go back to college, actually, fashion design, but I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Not sure it’s worth trying to make something I find fun into something that makes me money, you know?”
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said, which was sort of an inappropriate reaction, but like. Jesus Christ. Chrissy Cunningham was alive and she was making costumes for a community theater.
“I know,” she said, not unsympathetically.
At that moment, quite out of nowhere, Steve appeared at Eddie’s elbow. “Hey, the light guy had a question for you—” he started, before clearly seeing Eddie wasn’t alone. The little dip in his brow was fucking adorable, and did the job of bringing Eddie back down to Earth quite rapidly, oddly enough. Steve and his eyebrows were Eddie’s constant, apparently, like that one episode of Lost or whatever. “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No, you’re okay,” Eddie said. “Steve this is, uh,” and he couldn’t stop the small laugh that bubbled out of him, “this is Chrissy Cunningham.”
Steve blinked once, twice, and then his jaw actually dropped. “No way,” he said.
“Carpenter, these days, actually,” Chrissy said, sticking out her hand for Steve to shake, which of course he did, the normie little boy scout. Eddie resisted the urge to lean over and bite his neck. Not the time! “Like Karen? I kind of stole it.”
“Good name to steal,” Steve said, like he really meant it.
“This is Steve,” Eddie said. “My, uh—” and then he decided, well, fuck it, Chrissy wasn’t the press, “my boyfriend.”
“Oh, I know Steve,” she said, with a mischievous little smile. “I was a big fan of your band.” She turned that wicked smile onto Eddie. “Didn’t peg you for a fan, though, Mr. Pop Music only exists to brainwash you into buying overly expensive jeans.”
An actual rant he’d given, once, perched on a table in a cafeteria. He had no idea Chrissy had even been there to hear it. He sniffed, going for a mock, high-brow fake offense. “I’m a man of varying tastes, thank you.”
Chrissy laughed again. She had a really lovely laugh, actually — Eddie was delighted he got to know how it sounded, got to hear it again.
Steve clapped Eddie on the shoulder. “I’ll deal with the light guy, you two catch up.” Eddie sent him a grateful smile, and Steve squeezed his shoulder, just a bit, before retreating back to the stage.
“God, he’s even cuter in real life,” Chrissy said, sounding genuinely shocked by this fact. “You scored there, Munson.”
“Are you implying I’m not cute?” he shot back, and she rolled her eyes and ignored him, which was fair enough. “No, I, uh — he’s great, really, it’s. . . it’s been great.” It had actually, mostly been sort of ridiculously complicated, but even that had, in a way, been great, and he had a feeling it was only going to get better as it went on, which should have been terrifying but wasn’t, for whatever reason.
“I’m glad,” she said, and he knew she meant it, really meant it. “Honestly, I came here because — well, I think I owe you an apology.” He met her eye, baffled at this; her face was all twisted pain and regret. “I had no idea about you getting run out of town by Jason. I really never thought he’d do that; I didn’t think your name would come into it at all. I just . . . I couldn’t live in that house with my mother another day. Running felt like less of a death sentence then staying, at that point.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Eddie said. “It wasn’t your fault, it was — Jason, all those small-town hicks, they jumped to a stupid conclusion. Even the police thought you ran. They just. . . needed a boogeyman.” He dragged a hand up and down his body, like, and no shit it was going to be me.
This didn’t seem to make Chrissy feel that much better, all told. “Once I changed my name I never looked back, really; I only heard about the whole thing because Meg’s obsessed with all of those gossip blogs and stuff, and suddenly your name was in it, and I was like, ‘oh, that’s funny, I went to high school with a guy named Eddie Munson.’ And then it turned out to be you, and—” she sighed. “I just had to come and see you. To apologize, really apologize.”
“Well, it’s not accepted, only because I really don’t need it,” Eddie said. “It was — I turned out fine. Honestly, getting chased out of town. . . I don’t know. It sucked at the time, but I can’t, like, look back and be too upset about it, because if it had never happened, who knows. Maybe I never make that first EP, maybe I never really throw myself into music, maybe I never meet Gareth and Jeff and Petey.”
Maybe he never meets Dustin Henderson. Maybe he never meets Steve Harrington. It wasn’t a thought path worth entertaining, because Eddie had ended up in a place he quite liked, in the end.
Finally, Chrissy seemed to be a little reassured, the pain slipping off her face and replaced with a soft sort of look, fond. She was quiet, for a moment, before she spoke again. “I listened to your albums, when I realized it was you. Not to sound totally self-centered, but. . . Cheerleader’s Corpse. It’s about me, right?”
“It’s a little obvious,” he allowed. “Guess I wanted to give you a happy ending in song, in case you didn’t get to have one in real life.”
“I liked it,” Chrissy said, very softly. “I liked how hopeful it was. Even when you didn’t know what happened.” She paused, running a finger around the rim of her beer glass slowly. “You made it sound like — like running away was fighting. I’d never seen it that way. I always thought I was just a coward.”
Eddie felt the strange, clanging feeling in his chest of being seen. Of finding someone, other than yourself, who somehow knew the things inside you, too. “I always thought I was a coward for leaving town,” he admitted, as softly as she had.
She smiled, that gentle, sweet smile. “So running is brave when I do it and cowardly when you do it? Doesn’t seem very fair, Eddie.”
“No,” he agreed. “I guess it doesn’t.”
She looked at him a moment longer. “I came here to apologize first, but I also came here to thank you, you know.” That baffled him even more than the apology, all told, but she didn’t give him a chance to interrupt her this time. “You saved my life, Eddie Munson.”
It was a sentiment that brought tears to his eyes almost immediately, an unexpected shockwave of emotion. He laughed, wetly. “I sold you ketamine.”
She laid her hand against his shoulder, soft and sweet. “Ketamine I really, really needed,” she said, like that was the final word. “Without that money, well. . . well I don’t know. We’d both have ended up on different paths, I guess.”
“I’m glad we didn’t,” he said.
“Me too,” she said, softly, and then held her glass up for a toast, which he met gladly.
She changed the subject lightly, clearly giving him a moment to compose himself, asking questions about the tour, the cities he’d been in, the people he was traveling with. The chatted like this for awhile, actually; dimly he was aware the Party had started soundcheck, officially, could hear them playing in the background. Knew that he’d be needed soon, that this strange little reunion was coming to an end.
There was a lull in the conversation, and he let it hang for a moment as Chrissy looked at him, consideringly. “You know,” she said, “what I really learned from everything? From running away, and hitchhiking, and starting all over?” He shook his head, unsure of where she was going. “It’s always worth it, to fight for happiness.” She cast a significant glance back over is shoulder — he turned, and realized that she was looking towards Steve, where he was leaning against a wall chatting lightly with Robin, Hop and Joyce a few feet away in their own conversation.
“I’m happy,” Eddie said, turning back to reassure her. “Really, it’s . . . I’m happy.”
She laughed, that same light, twinkling sound, and shook her head. “I know, Eddie, I believe you. But that’s not exactly what I mean.” She shrugged, airy. “I’m just saying. It’s always easier to fight for other people than it is to fight for ourselves. I’ve found that’s a bit of a universal truth.” She jutted her chin back towards Steve. “Applies to everyone.”
He considered that, for a beat. Steve, back straight, spine steely, never, ever, ever really fighting this, even though he’d fought so much else in his life.
It’s always worth it.
An urge overtook him, a question he needed answered, suddenly, immediately. “You’ll stay for the show?” he asked Chrissy, abrupt. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“You’ve gotta go see about a boy?” Chrissy asked, smiling. She nodded, then. “Of course, Eddie, I’ll hang around. Go.”
Eddie took her permission, turned, and darted back towards the back of the bar to Steve and Robin. They both looked up as he approached.
Right. Go time.
“Look, you guys, I — fuck the strategy. Fuck staying quiet, fuck letting Christoper make the first move.” He threw his hands up, all manic energy. “Fuck being on the defensive! Let’s go on the offensive. Let’s really, actually fight him.”
Steve sighed, scratching at the back of his neck, a nervous tic that Eddie had picked up on over the course of the past few weeks. “Eddie, it’s not that simple. He’s—”
But Eddie couldn’t sit here and listen to Steve make another defense for doing nothing, he couldn’t. He cut in. “Steve, why haven’t you ever fought your dad before? Like really fought, pushed back, not just stayed quiet?” he asked. Steve frowned at him, like he didn’t understand the question. Eddie tugged a hand through his hair, feeling oddly crazed. “You’re a fighter, dude. You took a plate to the head for those kids, but this — the stuff with your dad, the openly queer thing, the stuck in your contract thing, that’s where you tucked your tail and ran? You’re not a runner, Steve, you’re just not, so. . . so why this?”
Steve paused and looked at him. For a brief moment, Eddie felt strangely terrified that the man would just tell him to fuck off, because — well, because it was a bit of a fuck off sentence, wasn’t it? Eddie calling Steve a coward? Where’d he get off?
But Steve didn’t say fuck off. Instead, when he spoke, it was to say, very quietly, “I don’t know.” He scratched at his chin. “I mean, I guess — it’s just. I thought I wouldn’t win it, so why fight?”
“You’re telling me you thought you’d win against Billy? That when he broke into your apartment you seriously, truly thought, I could kick this guys ass? You thought you could seriously beat my high school bully when he showed up in that parking lot in Denver?”
Steve’s expression shifted again — it wasn’t hard, not exactly, but it was very serious, and almost wary. “That’s different,” he said, voice a bit guarded. “That’s — Billy was going after the kids, that was totally different. Jason was going to hurt you.”
“Right,” Eddie said, snapping his fingers wildly. Robin looked at him like he was insane. Hopper and Joyce, clearly having caught that something was happening, were now approaching the conversation as well, slowly. Eddie was glad to have them, actually; they’d agree with him, he knew they would, he’d seen their faces in the motel room. “You don’t think your own happiness is worth fighting for, but you think all of ours is. You won’t fight to get yourself out the contract, to be yourself publicly, but you dropped everything and risked so much exposure to do this stupid tour, why? Because it helped the kids. Because they needed you, and you’d do anything for them if they asked.”
The look on Steve’s face was almost shaken, like Eddie had carefully peeled away layers of his skin. Which, hah, turnabout is fair play there, Harrington. “That’s . . . what’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s crap, Steve.” He’d almost said bullshit, really, but he swerved at the last moment, remembered the way Steve had said the word like it was gospel, like it was true. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be free, and this — all of us, the only reason any of us aren’t fighting for that right now, for you, is because we all think you don’t want that. And we all —“ he stopped himself, right before he said love you, because, holy shit, too soon, what? — “care about you so much that we’re, what? Sitting around and doing nothing, even though I can tell every single person on this tour is dying for the fight.” Steve looked shocked at this, mouth a little open, eyes wide. “You don’t have to fight it alone, Steve. You don’t. You’re not alone. And you’d do the same for us, any day of the week, so. . . so let us fight this, Steve. For you. Let us. Let us throw the first punch.” He shook his head. “Let us make him pay, Steve. Let us fucking kill him.”
Steve didn’t respond for a long moment. He tore his gaze away from Eddie and looked away, down at his feet. Like he could sense the man retreating, Hop cleared his throat and spoke. “Munson’s right. Hell, Harrington, I’ve wanted this fight since I met you. Your dad is a punk ass bitch. You give us the go and we will give him hell.”
“Of course we will,” Joyce added. “You’re family, Steve. We’ll follow your lead, here, but. . . if you let us, we’ll fight.”
“No shit,” Robin scoffed. “We love you dingus, we’d do anything for you.”
Steve had looked at each of them, in turn, as they spoke, and now he turned back to Eddie, like he understood the ending of the argument would land there, at his feet. “Please, Stevie,” he said, at gently as he could manage. “Please let us fight this with you. He shouldn’t get to own you anymore.”
He still looked unconvinced. “Look,” Joyce said, cutting back in. “If you won’t do it for yourself — do it for every kid who’s watching, okay? All of the ones who’ll see you fight this and know they can fight it too. Isn’t that worth it?”
Steve jerked back, a bit like she’d hit him, but he was smiling, soft and so fondly at her. “Ouch, Joyce, you had to go for the heart, huh?”
“You’re the one who’s always called me a killer, sweetie,” she said back.
He looked at Eddie again, eyes wide and soft. “Okay,” he said, very quietly. And then, clearing his throat, a bit louder, “yeah, okay. Fuck it. Fuck him. If you’re all sure then. . . then let’s do it.”
Robin threw her hands up and cheered. Steve laughed at her, purely delighted. Then, he frowned again. “Uh,” he said, “but . . . how do we fight this?”
Hop shrugged. “He’s always wanted you to hide, right? So you stop hiding.”
“We didn’t retract the story,” Joyce said. “So maybe we come out and confirm it. Say you’re together, and you’re happy.”
“I have some ideas on how we can do that,” Eddie said, waggling his eyebrows as flirtatiously as he could.
Robin, meanwhile, had turned to rifle through her bag — she emerged, now, triumphantly, with a black sharpie. “Take off your shirt,” she demanded. Steve looked down at his shirt — just a plain white t-shirt, today, but a little tight on him in all the right ways, — and then scoffed. Robin crossed her arms and glowered at him, and he sighed, and took his shirt off, because fundamentally when it came to Robin the man was weak as hell.
Eddie stared openly. Because he was only human, you know? Steve rolled his eyes at him. “Don’t blame me, Stevie, you’re the one who can’t hold his own against the pint sized lesbian.”
“She’s 5’8!” Steve defended, crossing his arms over his glorious tits like a self-conscious fool. Like Eddie hadn’t literally fucked him in the ass before. As if he could tell Eddie was thinking about that, Steve reached over and shoved him in the shoulder. Eddie stumbled back more dramatically than he needed to, and even though Steve was rolling his eyes he was also smiling, like he couldn’t help it.
“Done!” Robin declared. She handed Steve his shirt back — scrawled on it in her blocky, all-caps handwriting, in black sharpie was YOU CANNOT ERASE US. “Gets a point across,” she said, easily.
“Not gay as in happy,” Steve said, with a smile, pulling it on.
“But queer as in fuck you,” she finished, grinning back at him. “People will know where you stand. That you’re not hiding it, that you’re not the one paying your exes off.” She shrugged. “After that, we see what he does.”
Steve pulled at his shirt, like he couldn’t really believe he was wearing it. He looked up, again, and caught their eyes. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said. Like he was still giving them an out, Jesus Christ, this guy.
“Harrington, I have never been easy a single day in my life,” Eddie said. “Why the fuck would I start now?”
The kids emerged from sound check, then, clambering back towards them, Jeff and Gareth a few steps behind. Max caught Steve’s shirt and grinned. “Oh, holy shit,” she said, all glee. “Wait, is it finally time?”
“Time for what?” Steve asked.
Dustin scoffed. “Dude. Time for Operation: Fuck Steve’s Dad, duh.”
Steve looked astounded at that. “There’s an Operation?”
“There’s been an Operation since the third week of summer camp,” Lucas said, with a soft smile. “Ever since Will illegally hooked us up to the wifi from the main cabin to Google you.”
Steve looked like he might cry, although he was smiling, too. “I knew you shits were secretly on the wifi,” he said, voice cracking. No one brought it up, though.
Abruptly, Mike stripped his shirt off. He thrust it towards Robin. “Write something on mine,” he said. He caught Steve’s eye. “We’re in this together, man.”
“Hell yeah,” Robin said. She scrawled PROTECT QUEER KIDS on Mike’s shirt; and then PRIDE WAS A RIOT on Will’s, when offered. Jeff, too, stripped his shirt, and was graced with then FUCK TERFS. “Not a plain shirt in the house,” she said, capping her marker off when it was all done.
“Alright,” Hopper said, with a grin. “So, Operation: Fuck Steve’s Dad is officially a go.”
“It does sound a little like one of you is gonna have sex with Steve’s dad, you know,” Gareth said. Jeff smacked him upside the head. “Yeah, that’s fair,” he said, rubbing at the spot of contact.
“You’re gonna say something crazy on-stage, aren’t you?” Steve asked Eddie.
Eddie shrugged. “Not if it’ll make you uncomfortable. But. . . I really, really want to. I fucking hate your dad, babe.”
Steve laughed, shaking his head like he found this all so unbelievable — like a part of him still felt he didn’t deserve this ragtag family who’d fight tooth and nail for him. “No, no,” he said. “Say what you’re gonna say. You’re right. Let’s fight.”
So: onstage, after the Party went on, in a break between songs, Eddie said what he wanted to say.
“Hiya folks,” he started with. The crowd was a mass of faceless forms, blocked by the lights. But he knew Chrissy was out there, somewhere, and that emboldened him, strangely. “We’re Corroded Coffin. Some of you might be here because you’re fans of us; some of you might be here because you’re fans of metal. And I imagine at least a few of you are here because you read some pretty salacious gossip in the papers the other day and wanted to find out if it was true.”
Somewhere in the back there was a single scattered cheer. Steve laughed, quietly, when he heard it, and that emboldened Eddie even more.
“Well,” he said, “I’m here to tell you that the gossip mags got one thing wrong. Pete Jones is still in this band. But we do have the lovely Steve Harrington so graciously filling in for him. The mags were right, however, about the fact that I, Eddie Munson, am, in fact, gay as hell for this man.”
Steve hummed thoughtfully. “Does that make me bisexual as hell for you?” he said. “Doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way.”
“I like it,” Eddie said, with a grin. “On drums you’ve got Gareth Taylor, who says he’s straight but I have my doubts—“ Gareth made a light protesting noise at this, mostly downed out by the crowd laughing, “and on the other guitar is Jeff Monroe, who’ll sleep with anyone who’ll give him the time of day, really.”
“Fuck off, Munson,” Jeff said, laughing.
Eddie leaned back into the mic. “As a lesbian I love with all my heart said to me a few hours ago, it’s not gay as in happy — it’s queer as in fuck you. And if you’re — and, I’m just spitballing here, really, hypothetically — if you’re a massive record producer who’s spent millions of his own dollars trying desparately to force your son into a closet so he doesn’t damage your bottom line? Well then you, well and truly, can fuck off and die too.”
Next to him Steve laughed. “You’re insane,” he said, pulling away from the mic, but still smiling. “He could sue you!”
“Let him,” Eddie whispered back. And then he crossed the stage, grabbed at Steve’s collar, and kissed him on the mouth, fierce and fast. “Take that to your gossip Instagram,” he said, when he got back to his mic, Steve still laughing next to him. “This next song is gay as hell, it’s called Drive-In Movies.”
As Jeff counted them in and the show began again, Eddie waited for the fear to set in. Waited for the fact that Steve was right to scare him — waited to want to run, away from the fight he started, away from the big bad at the end of the dungeon. But the fear didn’t come. Eddie Munson had finally found something to be brave about, it turned out. He wasn’t going to run from this. Not a chance.
In the crowd, near the last song, he finally spotted Chrissy. She shot him a wink, smile wide, and he couldn’t help but grin back.
Notes:
awww hi chrissy! thanks for coming by and making steve actually fight his dumbass dad, we appreciate it for story reasons
there was an original draft of this story where chrissy died in high school instead of running away and then i just realized i can't not give chrissy a happy ending in my fics. she deserves it!!!! she deserves to become one of those women who lives in the desert and makes her own jewelry!! let her have it!!
this chapter is sponsored by me, a person who really, really isn't 100% sure how to spell tucson, no matter how many times i googled it. i'm still not entirely sure i got it, if i'm being really honest with you.
Chapter 28: Tucson-Austin (BLEEDING ME DRY LIKE A GODDAMN VAMPIRE)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The immediate aftermath of the Tucson show was nothing short of amazing. People stuck around for long after they were done, keeping the drinks flowing and coming up to congratulate Steve and Eddie regularly.
People called him brave. To his face! Him! Eddie Munson! BRAVE! Stranger things had literally not happened in his philosophy, or whatever-the-fuck that quote from Hamlet was.
Chrissy hung out, too, as promised, and immediately got along with Steve in a way that made Eddie a bit terrified that at the end of the day his ultimate type both romantic-and-platonically was very charismatic and pretty preps, which was so against the image he cultivated that it was almost embarrassing.
Only almost embarrassing, because then Steve would put an arm around his waist, or press a kiss into his cheek, or grab a second beer when he went to get his own and deposit it in front of Eddie, and Eddie got to lean into the touch, and grin and turn his face into the kiss, and say thanks babe and, honestly, he couldn’t be embarrassed about getting to do any of that shit, okay? That shit ruled. Eddie was planning to do that shit for as long as Steve would let him, really.
Chrissy got along with everyone, actually, particularly, of all people, Robin, who was clearly badly flirting with her but which Chrissy kept responding to by laughing like she found this charming, which was fascinating information to tuck away for later.
(Max frowned at the interaction. “Doesn’t Robin have a girlfriend?”
Steve snorted a sort of ugly laugh into his beer. “It’s complicated”)
When the bar finally kicked them out and they parted ways, Chrissy pulled him into a tight hug, pressed their cheeks together, and then immediately stole his phone out of his back pocket to put her number in it. “Maybe I’ll come to New York one day,” she said, with a wink.
“You absolutely should,” he said, smiling widely, and then he’d hugged her again, just because he could.
Outside of the bar he was sure there’d been some reaction to their little performance. Robin had, however, pulled them all around when the set had ended and suggested they all kindly not check tonight. “Let’s just have one, celebratory evening before we go back into battle strategy, yeah?”
It was a good idea, he thought, and an easy enough one to follow. He wasn’t eager to Google himself, or to Google Steve, to see what the weird vultures circling their lives were saying. He was much more content to pull Steve into their quiet motel room, to kiss him softly and sweetly for as long as he wanted, Steve grinning into his mouth by the end of it.
“Chrissy got you all soft,” Steve said, teasing, when he pulled away.
“I mean, I can get hard if you want me to, baby,” Eddie purred, licking a stripe up Steve’s cheek.
Steve shoved at him, laughing delightedly. “Aw, gross! That was a terrible line and you know it, Eds, Jesus.”
“Do my terrible lines work on you?” Eddie asked, with an eye waggle.
“They just might,” Steve replied, voice gentle and face filled with — Christ, something like adoration, which was almost blinding. He put his index fingers into two of Eddie’s belt loops and dragged them close together, pressed up knees to knees and chest to chest, leaning heavily against the motel door. “Thanks for the pep talk, earlier,” he said, after a moment. “You’re right, it’s — it’s a fight worth having.” He took a hand and held it up to Eddie’s face, rubbing a thumb along his jawline almost reverently. “Got something worth fighting for now, I think.”
Which — oh, okay, wow. He had never been more wrong in his life than he was about his fervent belief that he was the only person Stupid Overwhelming Feelings Island, because if Steve was saying that — saying that this new, fresh relationship with Eddie was worth facing the biggest fight of his life, implying that while he never thought any of those other relationships would last, he felt like this one might — well, if he was saying all that then Steve was definitely there, too, on the Island. They were on the Island together, which was great, really, still filled him with a bubbling elation, deep in his chest.
But he couldn’t just let Steve suggest that this fight was only worth having for Eddie, because it wasn’t, it really, really, wasn’t. “You always had something worth fighting for, baby,” he said. Steve’s eyes welled with tears, and he moved to bury them in the juncture of Eddie’s neck and shoulder, and for a long moment they just held each other, like that.
Finally, Steve spoke, words murmured gently into Eddie’s skin. “Take me to bed, Munson?”
And, well, how could Eddie refuse a request like that?
So far the sex with Steve had always been good — more than good, actually, sort of mind-blowingly great, really — but it was different, in Tucson. Softer, a bit, more tender, infused with feeling. The type of sex that one of those chicks on Sex and the City would call making love, a phrase that caused Eddie to make expressive gagging noises most of the time but felt oddly fitting, here, Steve on top of him, riding him so fucking slowly it was the like the best of all possible methods of torture. Suddenly a part of Eddie maybe got it, the differences between fucking and sex and (still, kind of ugh) making love. Understood that there could be emotion behind the act of leaning up and sucking a brutal hickey into the soft meat of someone’s pec (which he did, obviously, because he was only human, and really, seriously, Steve’s chest hair drove him to a point of near insanity.)
When he woke up the next morning, curled around Steve’s body, he thought I could do this every morning, forever.
And look, he knew, logically, that it was too early for thoughts like that, but: fuck it! Eddie was dramatic; he lived for subverting expectations. Plus, sure, maybe it took Harry and Sally 12 years to fall in love, but it only took the dude and chick in 27 Dresses the time to write a single New York Times article, and how long could that be? Like, three weeks tops?
(It occurred to him that referencing so many romcoms in his internal monologues was probably not pretty metal, but then he pictured Lars Ulrich crying to the end of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie and made himself laugh so hard he woke Steve up.)
Still, one thing to think thoughts like that, entirely different thing to say them out loud and scare his literally brand new boyfriend to death by being a weirdo, so he kept them inside. Spent a stupid little morning goofing around with Steve until they had to leave to get to Austin (because it was a twelve hour drive, Jesus Fucking Christ), and then decided to call shotgun and sit in Steve’s van anyway, because he liked spending time with the guy, alright? Sue him!
(Hell, Christopher Harrington might actually sue him for that, he realized.)
It was such a lovely day — Eddie aware of the painfully besotted looks he was shooting Steve, while Steve sang along to FUCKING STEELY DAN, of all awful bands, and Gareth very obviously was mocking him silently from the back seat — that it didn’t even occur to him to be nervous about what they’d done the night before. Besides, well — he thought they’d have more time, really, a few days to let it marinate, but as usual he was wrong; it came to a head nearly immediately, at the venue in Austin the next night, just after that stupid, sweet little day of driving, because: well, because of course it did.
(They’d all crashed in their varying motel rooms to sleep immediately upon arrival. Eddie was genuinely too tired to even consider having sex, which was fine, because instead Steve just crawled next to him in bed and curled against his back and kissed the back of his neck, and that was actually as wonderful a way to spend a night as sex was, it turned out.
God, he was screwed.)
Anyway, the next day, just before the show:
The Party had wrapped their soundcheck, and Corroded Coffin had just filed onto stage, were tuning their instruments, when Eddie heard a bit of a commotion in the front of the bar, near the entrance.
“This is a closed rehearsal, dude, you can’t just be in here!” someone — the manager, maybe — was shouting, and Eddie realized what was about to happen just before it did.
He didn’t actually know what Christopher Harrington looked like, really. Record execs weren’t usually the most photographed people at parties or events, and Eddie had never bothered to Google the guy, just pictured a vague silent-film villain in his place, twirling a mustache evilly. As the man entered the room, Eddie thought that he maybe could have picked him out in a police lineup as Steve’s dad. The jawline was similar, the nose, the hair color. There were differences — he was older, obviously, but also a bit shorter, a bit stockier, certainly less pretty. But mostly it was Steve if Steve’s soul was a void, if Steve was so corporate there was nothing else to him, Steve if Steve had no charisma at all. The man felt like a black hole; he consumed the joy and life in the room entirely. Everyone was silent, completely and totally silent. The manager flailed to a useless stop, before clearly making a decision and bolting towards the back door, towards the parking lot, where Robin, Joyce and Hopper had gone a few minutes earlier to make some calls back home and check in on the office.
Good — getting Hopper and Joyce in here, that would be good. They’d know what to do.
Christopher’s back was ramrod straight, and he was in a suit and cufflinks, and he looked around the room with such open disdain, until finally his eyes landed on Steve.
“Steven,” he said.
“Dad,” Steve said back, voice absolutely flat.
Christopher glanced over at him, a small, cold smirk twitching at his lip. “And you must be Eddie,” he said. Eddie hadn’t heard someone say his name with such naked hatred since Jason Carver, all those years ago. (Jason in the parking lot had been a bit too drunk to land the same affect.)
Eddie opened his mouth to say something back — something snarky and ill-advised, just to make the man flinch a bit, but Steve beat him to the punch. “Don’t speak to him.” Steve had never sounded so venomous, so angry, not even when Eddie was tormenting him back at the start of tour. It was a little terrifying.
It was also, honestly, a little sexy.
Christopher sighed and shook his head, like he found this all sort of vaguely embarrassing. “Enough of this, Steven, enough of all of this.” He turned and raised an unimpressed eyebrow to the other members of Corroded Coffin, and to the members of The Party who’d stumbled onto the stage from the green room, probably having heard the manager yell. Joyce was entering the room too, now, Robin and Hopper close behind, all of them vibrating with nervous energy (except Hopper, who’s energy was closer to riotously angry, really). Steve’s dad spoke again, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You owe me work. You are under contract. And you’re coming with me, tonight, back to New York to get started on it. I’ve had enough of this PR nightmare you’ve been dragging me through.” He paused, working his jaw for a minute like the next part was actually painful to say. “You’ve made your point, about how you . . . identify, or whatever. What do you want me to say? That I was wrong? It was a different time—”
“What do I want you to say?” Steve cut in, voice absolutely incredulous. “I don’t know, maybe I’m sorry, to fucking start!”
"I’m not sorry,” Christopher snapped. “Everything I did, I did to protect you—”
“Everything you did was to protect King Steve,” Steve said, voice dropping to a deadly tone. “Everything you did to protect your bottom line, don’t pretend for a minute it was about me.”
Christopher seemed to consider this for a moment, before shaking his head like the thought was beneath him to even address. “Look, I have let you make me look like a fool at industry events, make your mother look disconnected—” Steve scoffed, a bit, here, but didn’t interrupt — “let it seem like we couldn’t control our only son. But I’m done, now, letting you put this ridiculous little act on.” He gestured. “A metal band? This isn’t you, this is teenaged rebellion you’ve been clinging onto for a decade. You and I are going to the studio tonight."
Hopper looked about five seconds away from throwing a punch. “He’s not going with you,” he grit out.
Christopher turned as if noticing him for the first time. “Ah, Jim,” he said, and there it was again — condescension so practiced and perfect it hit straight between the ribs. Like everyone else on Earth was an ant beneath his heel. “Still here playing at being in the music industry, I see. Never got over your fifteen minutes, hm? What was your little project called again? Russian Prison Break?” He waved a dismissive hand at Hop. “You have your own acts to live vicariously through, you can manage without playing father figure to my deadbeat son on top of it.”
“He’s not a deadbeat,” Eddie said. It snapped out of him, sudden and fierce. He hadn’t actually meant to say it, but — but it had to be said. “He’s talented, and he’s brilliant, and Hop’s right. He’s not going with you.”
Another small, cold little smile, this time aimed directly at Eddie. Then Christopher looked away — like Eddie wasn’t even worth considering in this equation. “Steven. I have been very patient. I gave you time. I gave you space. And now my patience has run thin. This latest,” and here, another glance to Eddie, the slightest flash of pure curdled disgust slipping through before the polite, corporate mask slipped back on, “encounter of yours is too much. I will not let you embarrass yourself or this family any longer. This is not a discussion, and it is not optional. Pack your bag.”
Eddie shot a look at Steve. His face was pure fury, his back stiff, his hands clenched around his bass. “No,” Steve said, voice measured and calm despite all of the anger obviously coursing through him. “You can’t make me.”
“You are not a child anymore Steven,” his father shot back. “Stop throwing temper tantrums.”
“The only one here throwing a temper tantrum right now is you, dude,” Dustin sneered from the back of the stage.
Christopher ignored him, thankfully — Eddie didn’t think either Steve or he would react well if the man had turned on Dustin. “I have given you everything you could ever want on a silver platter. Music lessons, a record deal, state of the art recording equipment, money and cars and women. And I am done with this petulant, childish behavior because it wasn’t enough for you.”
“Wasn’t enough for me?” Steve echoed back. “You think — what, that I left because I wanted more money?” And then he laughed. Like, hysterical, stark raving laughter. It was a horrible sound — Eddie loved Steve’s laugh, loved the way it overtook his whole body, but this seemed more like the start of a panic attack. Eddie set his guitar down and moved to his boyfriend, pressing a gentle, grounding hand into his shoulder. Used the other hand to free the bass from Steve’s hand and lay it to the side. Steve had a wide, manic smile spread on his face. “You locked me in a tower like, like, goddamn Rapunzel,” he continued, not registering Eddie’s touch or presence at all. “The money, the music, the record deals, it was all poison because it was from you. It was all stuff to keep me in line, doing what you wanted. I can’t live like that, I can’t. I am not the person you wanted me to be, and I am so fucking thankful for that I can barely breathe sometimes.”
Christopher’s face had hardened, stony and solid. “I didn’t think I raised you be this ungrateful,” he snapped.
“You didn’t raise me at all,” Steve said. “I mean, god, it was all European nannies and music school teachers until I was old enough for you to leave me alone, and then I was alone until I was old enough for you to sell me as the next teen idol. I saw you, what, once a year from ages five to sixteen? You think that makes you Father of the Year?”
“The things I gave you, the things I provided you with—”
“Were a trap!” Steve was yelling, now. Eddie squeezed his shoulder a bit tighter. Steve took a shaky breath, shook his head, lowered his voice. “That contract, my music, it was all — I have only ever been useful to you as something that makes you richer. You don’t love me. I’m not your son. I’m an investment.”
“Oh boo hoo,” Christopher said back, the façade of cold professionalism slipping into something nastier, crueler. “You had everything you could ever want and you’re sitting here whining that I didn’t love you enough? I didn’t realize I’d raised such a pathetic little brat.”
Steve flinched like he’d been slapped.
“Enough,” Hopper shouted, now, echoing through the hall. He walked forward, all menace. “You need to leave before I call the authorities. You are not welcome here. You are never welcome here again. If you even try to contact him—”
“You are not involved in this family,” Christopher said back, icy, “so I suggest staying out of this.” He turned to Steve. “Getting your guard dogs on me?” He seemed to expect Steve to respond, here, but instead Steve averted his gaze, stared coldly over the man’s shoulder. “I came here as an olive branch, Steven. I came here as a last chance effort to give you the option to do the right thing. I could have had you blacklisted years ago — you think anyone will want to work with you once I get finished telling them not to? Goodbye to your session work and your tour gigs — you’d have none of this without me, and God knows you’re too stupid to ever pick up any real-life skills.”
Eddie was growing increasingly worried that he was going to do something incredibly dumb, like hop off the stage and punch this guy in the fucking face. The only thing that stopped him was that Steve reached out, finally, a single finger through his belt loop, again, as if to say don’t.
Across the room, Hopper, too, looked like he was about to escalate things. There was no Steve to stop him, though, so that might be a bad sign.
“He’s got us,” Joyce said, sternly. Because, right, duh, Joyce was Hopper’s Steve. “He can always work with us, no matter what you do.”
Christopher barked out a mean, acidic laugh. “You were Grammy-nominated Steven. And now what? You’re going to spend the rest of your life doing grunt work for losers and,” his eye dipped to Eddie, “freaks—”
Eddie’s flinch was nearly reflexive, at this point.
“Don’t call him that,” Steve snarled.
His father continued on, undeterred, “—because of some grudge you have about the way I raised you? Be serious. These people will not be here forever. I have more patience for you than anyone on Earth — I put up with the drugs and the foolishness and the plain stupidity and stubbornness for years. You think these people will? You think they won’t leave you the minute it gets hard? Drop the act, Steven. Come back with me.”
“No,” Steve said back. It was final, definitive. It was the end of the conversation.
Or, it should have been the end of the conversation. But Christopher made no move to leave. Instead he sighed, long-suffering, rubbing the bridge of his nose like Steve was being ridiculous. “Fine,” he said, finally. “If you’re insisting on continuing this, then I don’t have a choice. You’re wrong. I can make you.” Steve jolted; Eddie did too, unsure of what the hell the man could be talking about. “You’re in contract with me, a contract you’ve spent a decade neglecting. I’m suing you for obligations unfulfilled; you’ll pay damages you truly can’t afford, or you’ll make me those albums, one way or another.”
It felt like a weight had dropped into Eddie’s gut, a weight made of pure, swirling fear. Shit. Would he actually do that? Could he actually do that? If he could, why hadn’t he done it ever before, why hadn’t he pulled this trump card in the years prior?
As if he’d had the same thought, Hopper spoke up, sharp, definitive. “Then fucking sue him, Harrington,” he snapped. “I’m calling your bluff. That contract is bullshit and you know it; it won’t withstand a second of actual legal scrutiny with lawyers who aren’t on your payroll. That’s why you’ve never sued before, and it’s why you won’t sue now.”
Christopher seemed genuinely taken aback by Hopper’s vehemence. He recovered, though, slipped the condescending veneer back on like a pair of well-worn shoes. “You think? Are you willing to bet on it? Bet on the lawyers you’ll need to hire to defend him, to defend everyone I subpoena? Willing to bet on all those fees? Tell me, Jim, do you think the bank will let you take out a second mortgage while Upside Down is still in the red?”
Hop laughed, a short, disgusted huff of a sound. “You don’t scare me. You’re a little man in a big suit trying to play king.” He jabbed a finger into Christopher’s chest. “Get out of here. And if you’re bringing lawyers into this those are the only people allowed to contact Steve anymore. You are fucking done talking to him, and calling him, and harassing him, okay? You’re done.”
Christopher looked at Hopper, then back to Steve, a single eyebrow raised in total disdain. “Fine. I really didn’t want it to come to this, you know. But if you insist. You’ll be hearing from my people.” And then he turned briskly, and walked out of the room like nothing had even happened.
There was a long, awful silence. Eddie looked at Steve. Steve was looking at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he whispered finally.
Eddie balked. “Stevie, baby, why are you sorry?”
“That dude is a fucking monster,” Lucas said, nearly a whisper.
Max was nodding, jaw set in rage. “I mean, he’s so awful.”
“I cannot believe you are related,” El said, her eyes wide and wet with tears.
“I want to kill him,” Dustin said, and it was cold, cold in a way Dustin never, ever was, but Eddie understood, understood acutely.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said again, and he slumped down into a crouch, hands pressed into his eyes.
"Baby, hey,” Eddie said, dropping down next to him. “None of this is your fault."
“I shouldn’t have talked to the tabloid,” Mike said, almost under his breath behind them. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
Eddie looked up in time to catch Will and El each take one of Mike’s hands and squeeze, reassuringly.
“Enough,” Hopper said, wearily. “None of this is anybody’s fault except that asshole who’s still pretending he’s your dad.” He stood and walked over to Steve, crouched in front of him, hands on shoulders. Steve looked so small, so young. “You don’t owe him anything, Steve. Not one thing.”
For a moment Steve still said there, hands pressing into his eyes. Finally, though, he pulled his head away from his hands to look Hopper in the eye, face serious. “He’s going to ruin our lives. That’s the thing he’s best at.”
Hopper shook his head, fiercely. “No, he won’t. Because we’re going to get the best lawyer I know, and we are going to fight him. And we are going to get you out of this fucking contract, and you are never going to have to see him again.”
Steve looked like he might cry again. Eddie pictured it, pictured all of it — pictured Steve, seven or eight years old alone in his house with some nanny, shaking from a nightmare, desperate for his mother. Steve at eleven, the nanny dismissed, sitting by himself in a big, empty mansion. Steve at sixteen, drinking at parties, doing drugs, under the watchful eye of a man who didn’t really love him, who wanted him only to be a persona, to be something that printed money. Steve and Mark breaking up, Mark leaving him for a payday, Steve running, crashing into rock bottom. Steve, alone, alone, always alone, alone through everything until Dustin Henderson showed up. Until a family formed around him. Because he was brilliant, and he was bright, and he was endlessly, absolutely lovable, and he deserved that love, and other people saw it. And here Steve was, again, looking small and childlike, lonely and haunted, shattered to nothing by someone who was supposed to love him but who just couldn’t manage to.
“Do you promise?” Steve asked, very soft. A question a kid would ask. A question where the only answer was a lie — because no one could ever promise you anything like that, not really. No one could ever promise you everything would work out, in the end.
But Hopper met his gaze, steady and sure. “I promise,” he said. And when he said it, amazingly, it didn’t sound like a lie at all. It just sounded like a promise.
Notes:
ah, steve's dad is finally here to Fuck Shit Up. naturally! you knew he had to show up at some point. luckily steve has a secret weapon (the love and admiration of a family he built himself) to save the day!
we're rapidly approaching the end here but i'm still tweaking the last few chapters so no final chapter count yet. but it's approaching! can you believe it? i sort of can't. i'm not sure what i'll do with myself when this over. hyperfixate on something else?
chapter title is from Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo. rip to steve harrington, you would have loved olivia rodrigo babe. you would have LOVED HER. all american bitch is such a steve song, tell me i'm wrong (you cannot)
Chapter 29: New Orleans-Gainesville-Athens (A PLACE WHERE I BELONG)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It was strange — with this brand-new Sword of Damocles hanging over them, Eddie half expected the energy of tour to sour, the vibe to shift into something quieter and sadder. But it didn’t. And it wasn’t like they were ignoring it either, wasn’t like everyone was pretending everything was fine and nothing had happened. Instead, it was like: okay, this big, terrifying thing is happening, but also we’re still just us and we’re still just on this tour and we’re still going to have a good time.
If anything there was almost more energy, now. He’d thought, once, that this stretch of the tour would be where exhaustion set in. But, instead, it was like having a new thing to fight gave everyone a renewed bit of fire. The Austin show, despite all the drama, actually went well.
(Eddie had offered Steve an out; said that they could manage without a bassist if he needed a night to himself, but Steve had refused. “I think playing a bunch of extremely angry metal songs is actually the best thing I could do, right now,” he’d said with a laugh, and hell, that made a lot of sense.)
After the show there’d been more people congratulating them; a few folks stopped by the merch table to say they only came after they’d seen the video from the Tucson performance, which buoyed Eddie’s whole mood, and seemed to hit Steve somewhere soft, too.
And then the next day they were driving, again, seven and a half hours. “You couldn’t have given us more stops in the South?” he groaned to Hop. “All these just driving days are going to be killer on my back, man.”
Hop had scoffed. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I hadn’t planned this massive tour to your exact liking, Munson. Not enough stops for you?”
“We could swap off driving,” Steve had said, but Steve had done the whole twelve hours to Austin by himself, and Eddie sort of desperately wanted him to relax for a bit, take a nap, prop his feet on the dashboard, so he’d swatted that option away entirely.
“Steve didn’t even call shotgun!” Dustin protested when Eddie held the door open for him.
Steve had laughed a bit meanly at this. “Boyfriend privileges, Henderson, duh.”
“Yeah,” Eddie agreed. “Stevie gets to be passenger princess for the rest of my time driving.”
Dustin wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Oh, nevermind. I’m not riding with you two if you’re going to be weird.”
Steve caught his eye, mouthed princess? Eddie just shrugged, but he didn’t miss the light smattering of pink on Steve’s cheeks as he did so.
It was the blush, actually, that got him thinking. No matter how much Eddie had complained, Hop actually had planned this part of the tour alright; sure, there were these long, seven-to-twelve hour drives, but there was always a night off at the end of them. They were never backed up with a show, which meant they’d roll into New Orleans and get the chance to relax a bit, instead of being forced straight to a venue still smelling of the van.
He sat and thought about that blush for a long time on that terrible seven-and-a-half hour drive, Steve dozing lightly in the passenger seat despite the oddly loud argument Gareth and Jeff were having about which James Bond movie was best in the back.
(“Since when do either of you even care about James Bond?” Eddie had cut in, finally.
They’d paused to consider this. “I think it’s less that we care, and more that it’s fun to have a stupid fight about something,” Jeff admitted, eventually, which, alright. Fair enough.)
The thing was: Steve deserved to have nice things. Eddie wanted to give Steve nice things, to show him a nice time, to have fun with him. He wanted to make Steve’s face turn that wonderful little shade of pink as much as possible.
They were dating now, officially, but they hadn’t actually gone on a date, had they? When had they had time? It was close quarters, sure, it was tons of time spent together, but it wasn’t tons of alone time, really, even when they managed a room to themselves. He’d never really been a super romantic guy, before, but something about Steve made him want to be one, now. And a night off in New Orleans, objectively one of the most romantic cities in the US, well — how could he resist that?
Which was why, later that night, at the hotel, when Hop was bouncing around dinner suggestions, he cut in with, “oh, Steve and I aren’t coming to dinner with you guys.”
Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “We aren’t?”
“Nah,” he said, grinning back. “I’m taking you out.” And then, a weird little spike of self-doubt, like maybe Steve didn’t actually want to split off the group? Maybe he was sick of all the time he was already spending with Eddie? “If you want, I mean,” he tacked on, fully aware he was blushing and unable to stop it.
“I want,” Steve said, very quickly, smiling very softly.
Robin made an expressive gagging noise. “God, you two are so gross and obsessed with each other. You’re moving at the speed of light. Lesbian speed.” She gasped, eyes going wide. “Oh my god, you’re in lesbians with each other!”
“The only person I’m in lesbians with is you, Robbie,” Steve said, quite seriously, leaning to press a gross, wet kiss into her cheek. She flailed and screeched in protest.
“Also, we’re not moving at lesbian speed,” Eddie said, trying to regain some honor in the face of how embarrassing it was to openly have feelings in front of other people. “This is technically our first date, really.”
“Oh? That’s funny, I was sure Steve would say your first date was—” Robin began, but she was cut off by Steve clamping a hand over her mouth with a glare.
Eddie’s eyebrows raised. What, had Steve thought of anything else they’d done as a date? He thought back, recasting those little late night talks, suddenly, now that he understood how Steve felt. Re-contextualized them. What, had Steve thought those were. . . dates?
“Aww, Stevie, who knew you were so sentimental?” he cooed. Steve’s face flushed again. Ah-fucking-dorable, goddamn.
Robin clearly licked Steve’s hand, because he pulled back with a horrified sound. “Ugh, what are you, twelve?” he snapped at her.
“Yes,” Robin said, simply. Then she reached and flicked him in the forehead. “Go get ready for your date, you gay disaster.”
“That is so pot-kettle,” Steve said. “Or was that someone else texting three different girls last night?”
“That makes me a gay success, Steven!” Robin said.
“You’re both gay and annoying, how’s that?” Mike cut in, with a faux little smile.
“You just love to leave yourself open to the homophobia allegations,” Max said to him with a sigh.
Will shook his head with a mock sense of long-suffering. “You never learn, Michael.”
“Oh god damnit,” Mike snapped, throwing his hands up, and then, as always, the conversation devolved into stupid, petty bickering.
God, Eddie loved these weirdos.
Eventually, though, he had to drag Steve away from them for date night, pulling him out of the motel while the kids jeered and catcalled after them, and Max, horrifyingly, screamed use protection!
“What did I say about discussing Harrington’s sex life?!” Hopper was groaning as the door shut on the the group.
For a moment Steve and Eddie both just smiled at the door, and then they were smiling at each other, and actually Eddie felt pretty reassured that it would be a perfectly wonderful evening if they just spent it leaned up against the hallway wall, talking about nothing. But that wasn’t the plan. This was romance! This was wooing! This was Eddie trying! So he tugged at Steve’s sleeve, again, to get him to follow out of the lobby and out into the city.
“What are we even doing?” Steve asked.
“Okay, so — and you can totally veto this if it’s like lame or boring or whatever—” Here, Steve knocked their shoulders together, once, like, I’m not gonna think that, which did bolster Eddie’s confidence just slightly — “but I was thinking maybe a ghost tour? And then dinner?”
“A ghost tour?” Steve looked oddly delighted by this. “You love that spooky stuff, huh?”
“I, myself, am strange and unusual,” Eddie intoned, grinning.
“Hm, indeed,” Steve said, pressing a gentle kiss into the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “You gonna hold my hand if the ghosts scare me, Munson?”
“Oh, darling, of course,” Eddie said, grabbing his hand and twining their fingers together.
The ghost tour was, in all honesty, a touch ridiculous, their tour guide talking in a dramatically over the top voice while the other guests (a bachelorette party, an older couple and their two adult children, and a couple of obviously wasted college kids) giggled and oohed and ahhhed politely. Eddie kept his promise and held onto Steve’s hand the entire tour, the two of them whispering jokes back and forth the whole time.
Eventually, the bachelorette party asked if Steve could take a group picture for them, which he did, of course, because that’s just who Steve was, all selfless and charming and pretty to look at. Eddie watched him go, knowing there was some horrendously sappy look on his face. The older woman grinned at him, conspiratorily. “Honeymoon?” she asked.
Oh! That — oh. Was that the impression they were giving? Huh. That made his heart beat very quickly, for half a second, not quite panic but something else, something sort of like the mortifying ordeal of being called out by an older lady who was otherwise an absolute stranger to you. “Uh, first date, actually. Technically,” he said. “We’ve sort of. . . danced around each other, for a bit.”
“How sweet,” she said, seemingly not bothered or even surprised at all by how different she assumed their timeline was. “Me and mine were like that for a while, too,” she said, jutting her chin towards her husband, who was engrossed in a headstone a bit away. “Got my head out of my ass eventually and realized he was perfect for me, though.”
“Wow, same, actually,” Eddie said, with a laugh. “I spent like, a stupid amount of time being really, really stubborn about it, honestly.” He paused and looked at Steve again, taking a final shot as the bachelorettes cheered wildly. “Glad I didn’t miss my chance.”
“Glad you didn’t miss your chance either,” she said, with a wink, and then Steve was back and linking their arms together, and the tour went on.
After the tour they went to dinner — Eddie hadn’t bothered to Google anything, naturally (“improvisation is the spice of life, Stevie!”) so they mostly wandered around the French Quarter until they found a place to get po'boys, where they huddled into a booth and just . . . talked. They knew a lot about each other, already, so there wasn’t any of the usual, terrible first date chatter about siblings or where they grew up or their jobs or their hobbies. Instead, Steve told a story about Robin and him getting blacklisted from a bar in LA because they got drunk and he dared her to steal a signed photo of some LA Dodger off the wall (“it’s still hanging up in our apartment, actually, on the stolen things wall.” “The. . . stolen things wall?” “Oh, do you not know about the stolen things wall?!”). Eddie told a story about Dustin dragging him to fucking Terminal 5 to see some god-awful poser band that was almost bad enough that Eddie straight up stopped speaking to him, and then of course they derailed into a solid twenty-five straight minutes of Dustin stories, each increasingly dumber than the last.
“He literally built a working radio at summer camp,” Steve said, with a fond eyeroll. “Like, this was music camp and he was out there doing science experiments for some reason?”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Eddie scoffed. “He once tried to convince me he could scale the side of my apartment building and ended up falling and breaking his ankle.”
“That’s how he broke his ankle?” Steve said. “He told me he tripped down the subway stairs, that little shit!”
It was nice, just passing aimless time with Steve. They never really ran out of anything to talk about, and they probably could have sat in that booth all night if it didn’t become raringly obvious they were being assholes by taking the seats up this long after they’d finished eating and they decided to leave. But they still didn’t go back, instead wandering again, chatting, until they found a bar with a brass band (because, duh: New Orleans), where they sat and listened to good music and drank whatever the fuck a Sazerac was, and Steve rested his hand on Eddie’s thigh the entire time.
And then it got late, and they did have to play a show the next day, and they were bunking with Robin again tonight who would absolutely be a terror if they got back too late and interrupted her near-mandatory eight hours of sleep, so they headed back. In the hallway, but before they entered the room to face The Wrath of Buckley, Steve grabbed Eddie and pressed him against a wall to kiss him soundly for a long moment. When he pulled away, there was a soft look in his eye. “I—” he started, and then stopped himself, ducking his chin, a bit. Eddie put a hand on his jaw to make their eyes meet, again. “I really like you, Eddie,” Steve said, finally. “I, like. I really like you.”
Eddie felt — Christ how did he feel? Like his blood was carnbonated. Like his entire body was filled with bubbles, a static feeling of joy from his toes through his fingertips. Like he’d stolen fizzy lifty drink and was going to float right up off the ground. “I really, really like you too, Steve,” he said.
“Good,” Steve replied, with a smile and another kiss. “Good.” And for awhile they just stood there, kissing, until eventually Eddie yawned into Steve’s mouth, and they decided it was probably time for bed.
---
New Orleans went well, and then they headed off to Gainesville—
(“Why are we even bothering with Florida?” Mike had sneered.
Eddie had taken pure offense. “The metal and punk scene in Gainesville is one of the most pivotal in the country, Wheeler.”
“Plus, Tom Petty’s from here,” Steve had said, and Eddie had launched the tab of his can of Coke at the guy in retaliation, because ugh, Tom Petty?!)
—and then from one college town to the next, Athens in Georgia.
(“You really went big on colleges, huh?” Eddie asked Hopper, as they packed up the vans.
“The kids love you Munson, what can I say,” Hop had said back, dry. “You relate to them. Very fuck the system, you know?”)
There was still no official word from Christopher. Steve had shrugged. “Maybe he really is bluffing,” he offered, but there was a look on his face like he doubted it.
“Well, your little speech in Tucson definitely worked,” Robin said. “Nearly every comment on the videos I’ve seen is positive. Lots of people are calling Steve brave.” She nudged an elbow into his ribs, and he winced overdramatically. “And Abby in accounting says that Corroded Coffin record sales are up across the board, so Petey can’t be too pissed about the brief rumor that Steve was replacing him in the band.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Eddie groaned. He was still spending at least three texts a day reassuring Petey that no one was getting replaced.
(“But you are dating him?” Petey had said, finally, at the tail end of a phone call in Florida.
“Yeah. We are, in fact. . . dating.” It still felt surreal to say, and Eddie was privately glad no one else could see the stupid, gross little grin on his face.
“And you’re happy?” Petey asked.
“Yeah, man. Yeah, I’m happy.”
Petey made a noise like this was good to hear, and then immediately launched into another round of telling Eddie that learning that via tabloids was a dick move.)
“Tour is selling well too,” Hop chimed in. “We’re sold out again tonight, and it looks like by the time we get to Philly and Brooklyn those shows are gonna be nearly full.”
“The Big Gay Tour,” Will said, grinning widely.
Eddie snorted, because, God, his life was ridiculous.
Sure enough, though, the Athens show was packed, and Eddie could tell even in the blinding lights of the stage that the crowd was pretty visibly queer. Hard to tell how many of them even liked metal, and how many of them were just showing support for something they really believed in, but hell, a ticket sale was a ticket sale. He’d take it.
It was after the show, though, that things got interesting. He’d ducked back into the green room for half a minute while both the bands went out to the bar to mingle and sell merch, expecting to find it empty. It wasn’t, though — Joyce was there, arms around a guy around his age that Eddie sort of vaguely recognized. Floppy hair, sharp jaw, sort of an unkept, artist-like appearance.
Joyce pulled away from the hug and caught Eddie’s eye. Her grin split even wider. “Eddie, hon!” she cooed, beckoning him closer. “You haven’t met my Jonathan yet, have you?”
Oh! Jonathan Byers, of course — Joyce’s much spoken of, little seen eldest son.
Well, little seen by Eddie, at least. He knew the guy religiously came back to town on the holidays and that all the kids and Steve and Robin knew him. He was a freelance photographer, apparently rather highly in demand, which meant for most of the time Eddie had been hanging around with Joyce and Will, Jonathan had been on some sort of assignment out of town. He’d seen the pictures in Byers-Hopper house on the exactly two occasions he’d been over (he’d been invited more but always gently declined, assuming the invitations were polite in nature and not actually meant, which, yes, thanks for asking, was fucking dumb of him!), but he’d never actually met the guy face-to-face.
He stuck out a hand, which Jonathan gamely shook, a little smile curling across his lips. “Eddie Munson, in the flesh,” he said, half-joking. “The internet is very into you these days.”
“Yeah, well,” Eddie started, and then felt at a loss for words for how to respond, so he just sort of . . . stopped talking. And then, realizing how awkward that was, he picked it up with a not-at-all-subtle diversion. “What the hell are you doing in Athens, man?”
Joyce and Jonathan shared a glance, half-conspiratorial, and then both looked away with equally fake smiles at him. Ohkay, odd. “It’s kind of a long story,” Not-Quite-Baby Byers said. “Lemme say hi to everyone and then we can get into it.”
Alright, a diversion of his own. Eddie could respect that. It didn’t seem harmful, whatever reason Jonathan had for being here. It wasn’t Will or El’s birthdays, though, and as far as he knew Jonathan’s last assignment had been trailing some irritating gonzo writer around on an unclear story path — Joyce had gotten a little tipsy a few nights ago and told him about it at length. The dude seemed like a real pill.
Joyce linked her arm in Jonathan’s, and then twisted to link her other through Eddie’s, and said, “let’s go, boys,” and Eddie realized that, right — he was part of this family, now, which meant he got Jonathan, too, didn’t he? He barely knew the guy but that was a nice thought, really — how many more people he got to have, to keep close, to invite to big events and see at family dinners and text on weekends.
He’d been so lonely once, was the thing. Seeing Chrissy had reminded him of that, as nice as it was to see her. He’d never been lonelier in his life than he was sitting in his trailer, Jason Carver outside with a gun, thinking that he’d maybe gotten a girl killed.
He thought he’d maybe never be that lonely again, actually.
He’d had a conversation with Hop, outside the venue in Gainesville. It had been sort of an accident — Eddie ducking out for a breath of fresh air to discover Hop, already there, cigarette in hand.
“Don’t tell Joyce,” he’d said, immediately.
Eddie scoffed. “I’m not lying to Joyce. She’s gonna smell it on you anyway.”
Hop had rolled his eyes, but it had been affectionate. “Fine, fine, you’re right.” And then he’d gestured. “Join me?”
Which Eddie had done. He’d figured he was due for a shovel talk from Hop — the type of serious dad-conversation the man hadn’t given him yet. All clichéd and stuff, like, you break his heart, I break your face.
But Hop hadn’t done that. He’d just leaned over to offer the cigarette to Eddie, all stern and silent.
“If you’re here to give me the don’t fuck him over speech, you should know Robin’s beat you to it,” Eddie said, easy, taking the offered cigarette and then a long drag.
Hop scoffed, and then reached over to pluck it out of his mouth and take a drag himself. “Nah, that’s not it,” he said, as he exhaled. He handed the smoke back to Eddie and took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, “you’re part of this now, you know? The Upside Down family. So. . . if it doesn’t work out, you and Steve. I want you to know that. He’d never ask us to turn our backs on you, and we never would.”
Eddie felt floored by that. Such an unexpected thing to hear said out loud, codified in words. “What?” he said, dumb.
Hop shrugged. “Just sayin’. Tour’s a bit of a bubble. You might get back to the real world and find it’s not all so easy. And it might not work out. And as long as you don’t do anything inhumane and unforgivable — which I doubt you would, cause I know you — you’re always gonna have a place at our table. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He hit Eddie with a look. “Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.”
There was a long moment where Eddie processed this, feeling giddy and delighted with the truth of it. That he was part of something, that he had these people forever, no matter what happened to his burgeoning relationship with Steve.
He should have just said Thanks, Hop, or something, appreciated the gesture and taken it for what it was.
What he said, instead, was, “thanks, but I think it will work out, you know?”
Hop raised an eyebrow.
Eddie felt a bit silly, for saying it out loud. Because it was too early to say it out loud, and also because Munson Doctrine included the tried and true advice of don’t jinx it, you moron! “I know it’s fast, I know,” he continued, tripping over the words a little, flushed with embarrassment. “I just. . . it feels like it might be a forever thing. For me, at least. Like I could spend the rest of my life watching him fold his laundry, you know?” He winced, suddenly aware of how young he was, how much experience Hopper had over him, how much life Hop had lived, dreams crushed and remade and all that shit. “Is that dumb? Am I being dumb?”
He wanted Hop to actually answer, to tell him a harsh truth. He wanted to know if his hope was so misplaced, if his gut instinct could be wrong. He wanted to know how he looked to Hop, then — like a kid who didn’t know what he was doing?
There was a long moment of silence, on Hop’s end. “You know when I fell in love with Joyce?” he said, finally. Eddie shook his head. “Junior year of high school. We had the same free period, so we’d go out on the quad and smoke together. She was so smart, and cutting and funny. Back then she was with Lonnie Byers, and I was seeing someone else, but I remember watching her smoke a cigarette and thinking I wanted to do her dishes, you know? Felt wrong to say, then, though, so I never did. And then time passed, and I left town for my stupid music career, and I met a girl on the road. And she was great, really, and I knew Joyce and Lonnie had gotten married, so that was just. . . some dumb dream I had, back as a kid. So I married Diane. Which was more realistic, more in front of me. And then Joyce had kids, and I had a daughter.” Eddie tried to hold back a flinch of actual shock. He knew, of course, about Sarah, but in all the years he’d known Jim Hopper the man had never spoken of her once.
Suddenly, Eddie wondered if he should have been the one to say something. Hopper must have always been thinking of her. Maybe everyone politely avoiding the topic only made it worse.
Hop kept going, though, pushing past the topic with the startling ease of tragedy long lived-in. “And then my daughter died, and my marriage fell apart, and my career never took off, and I ended up drunk and alone back in my hometown. And El came into my life, and then Joyce came back into my life, too, and. . .” he trailed off. “It took a lot of work to get to where we are, but I knew I would love her forever the second time she ever lit a cigarette for me. I always knew, and I pretended I didn’t. So, no, Munson. I don’t think it’s dumb. But that also doesn’t mean I think it’ll be easy.”
“I don’t care about easy,” Eddie said, truthfully. “Like I keep saying — I’ve never been easy a day in my life, Hop.”
Which got the older man to laugh and shake his head. “You say that like I don’t know, kid.” He stubbed the useless, ashed end of the cigarette out on the wall. “I’m just telling you, ‘cause somebody’s gotta tell you. This thing with everyone doesn’t end, even if this thing with Steve maybe does.”
Eddie had half a mind to contradict, again, but he decided not to. He knew what Hop meant, and even if a part of him thought that there really wasn’t ever going going to be a time in his life after Steve, he got the point, felt it settle into his chest, warm and loving.
“Thanks, Hop,” he’d said, and then they’d gone inside for a beer.
So, yeah. Here, in Athens, arms linked with a Byers he’d known for years and one he’d known for minutes, Eddie felt that again. Like it didn’t matter how dumb he was and how often he fucked shit up; it didn’t matter that he and Steve were probably due for a number of massive, blow-out fights that would end in sincere forgiveness, hard-earned but better because it was; this was his family, and as much as Jonathan was here to see Joyce and Will and El and Hop, he was also here to see Steve and Robin and Lucas and Max and Dustin and Mike, and by that nature he was also, now, here to see Eddie, and Jeff and Gareth, a weird little makeshift family built from the blueprints of a record company that was really, truthfully, so much more than that.
He rode that stupid little high out into the bar, watching as everyone lighted on the three of them and noticed Jonathan for the first time. El and Will literally sprang from their seats to nearly tackle the guy in hugs, and Steve was grinning like a maniac, making his way over behind the wonder twins.
“John, what the hell?” Steve said, extending a hand that Jonathan rolled his eyes at, grabbing it to pull Steve into a hug.
Eddie got the distinct feeling that Steve Harrington might have been the only person in the world allowed to call Jonathan Byers John.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, the prodigal son returns,” Byers said, still smirking. He cut an unsubtle look to Eddie, and the back to Steve.
Steve’s cheeks went a delightful shade of red. “Oh, uh, Jonathan, this is Eddie—”
“We met,” Eddie cut in, faux-prim. “He showed me all the baby pictures already.”
Steve crinkled his nose in distaste. “I don’t think I have any baby pictures.”
Johnathan’s smirked dropped into a look of pure sympathy, and suddenly Eddie had a clear view of Steve’s life, so far — the way these people learned about his circumstances and took him in, like a baby bird with a broken wing, someone to be protected.
Steve, always game to subvert the expectation, rolled his eyes and batted a hand in Jonathan’s direction. “Oh, not like that, come on, it’s — this is not Get Sad About Steve’s Shitty Childhood time, alright, we’re here to celebrate!” And the he looked at Jonathan with slightly more scrutiny. “Actually, are we here to celebrate? Why are you here?”
It was Jonathan’s turn to wince, now, a sheepish look crossing over his face. “Okay, full disclosure? It’s sort of a Get Sad About Steve’s Shitty Childhood situation.”
Steve groaned, dropping his face into his hands. “Aw, man, come on, please don’t tell me you drove all the way out here to ask me if I’m sad about my dad.”
Byers held up a hand. “Firstly, you know how I feel about you referring to him as your dad.” This earned an eye roll from Steve, but also the tug of a smile, just slightly. “Secondly, I was already in Atlanta, believe it or not, so it wasn’t that long of a drive. Thirdly,” and here he paused to sigh. “Okay, look, how much has my mom told you about that guy I was working for?”
“The asshole?” Steve said, brow furrowed in confusion.
“Murray,” Jonathan corrected. “He’s not as much of an asshole as I thought, actually, just. . . particular. Anyway, he’s this real sort of weirdo, thinks he’s Hunter S. Thompson, but the point is that he has a sort of regular gig at Rolling Stone.” Jonathan let the sheepish look return for just a minute; Eddie could practically see the gears in Steve’s head turning.
“Oh, no,” Steve said, slowly, “tell me you didn’t—”
“I did,” Jonathan said, holding his hands up.
“Did what?” Eddie asked, the last to get it.
“I told him I knew Steve,” Jonathan clarified. “That we were close, that he had an interesting story worth hearing out.”
Steve’s face was back in his hands, his whole body curled over himself. “John,” he said, exasperated.
“No, man, no!” Jonathan cut in. “I’ve sat by and been quiet and let you do this at your own pace, but I saw the Tucson video, okay? You’re ready for the fight, right? Well, if you want to fight this, really fight it, Murray’s a good guy to talk to. He’s not cloying or pitying, he’ll ask tough questions, but he’s fair. And he’s not a fan of big record executives, and he was curious about all the stuff we don’t know.” Jonathan bent, lowering his whole body so Steve was forced to meet his eyes, when he finally pulled his face out of his hands. “I know this is tough, and awful, and you can say no, but I’m telling you that Murray wants to talk to you and he’s a good guy to talk to. To get it all out. To really end it.”
Steve said nothing for a moment, not quite meeting Jonathan’s eye, gazing steadily out into the room instead. Eddie thought he maybe needed a push — still needed someone to talk him into the swing here, just a bit. “What would it require of Steve? Talking to him, I mean,” he asked.
Jonathan turned to Eddie, not looking at all surprised that he’d stepped in. “Nothing, man. Look, there’s a shot Murray won’t even want to write the story, but he said he’d like to do a preliminary chat. Officially off the record, just hear the beginning of it, over the phone. Then if he’s interested, he’ll probably fly out and see some of the end of the tour, do some real interviews with you and everyone.” Jonathan paused and tried to catch Steve’s eye again. “If he’s interested, he’ll dig into sources. People who were around back then, who saw your dad, who know about the contract.”
Steve sighed, shifting up to meet Byers’ gaze. “There are NDA’s, John—”
“Murray will figure it out.” There was a steely certainty to Jonathan, a straight-backed confidence that bolstered Eddie’s own. Steve’s, too, if the way he sat up even straighter was indication, expression serious but also clearly trusting. “Steve, I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t think it was a good idea. The man is a total weirdo, but he’s also a wild anti-establishment, fuck-the-record-companies, champion-of-the-underdog guy. He told me he’s been dying to take a guy like Christopher Harrington down for ages.” He paused. “You know you’re not the only one your dad has probably screwed over. You’re just the one he screwed over the worst.”
“Make him pay,” Steve said, half under his breath, cutting a glance to Eddie.
Eddie reached out and clasped him on his shoulder, squeezing once, a small reassurance. I’m still here. I’m not backing away from the fight.
“Okay,” Steve said, looking Eddie in the eye instead of Byers. And then, seeming to realize this, turning to Jonathan instead. “You’re right. I’m ready for the fight. Give me his number. I’ll call him.”
Jonathan actually fist pumped, and then lurched forward to grab Steve in a hug while the other man laughed, arms trapped against his sides. “Hell yes,” Byers said, pulling away. “I’ll text him right now.” He darted off, seemingly to do that, while the others devolved into excited chatter, Robin immediately launching loudly into another media strategy like she’d had anything to do with this plan at all.
Eddie caught Steve’s eye. Steve grinned at him, that charming smile that Eddie associated with Steve flirting, the one he’d spent stupid days misreading but felt so obvious now. “Got something on my face?” Steve asked. “’Cause you’re staring.”
Eddie bent down and kissed him, softly. Steve hummed, a pleased little noise like he still found it a bit surprising, being on the other end of Eddie’s affection. “Just proud of you,” he said, as he pulled away. Not too far, though, still crowded into Steve’s space, hovering above him as Steve sat on the barstool, hands gently cupping his jaw, noses just almost pressed together.
Steve hummed again. “Proud enough to buy me a beer?”
Eddie scoffed and shoved at his shoulder. “So demanding,” he said, but went to buy the guy a beer anyway because, hell — if anyone had earned it, it was Steve. When he got back, Jonathan had finished his call and returned, and was in the middle of a story, hands moving as he clearly got towards the good part. Eddie slipped into the spot left open next to Steve, and Steve slung an arm around his shoulders, and it struck him again: that feeling of belonging, of family. No one questioned that he deserved to be here, among them.
The thought made him a little misty eyed, which much have shown on his face because Steve bent over to whisper lowly in his ear. “Alright?”
Eddie nodded, turning to face him. “Just happy.”
Steve grinned back, and then leaned forward and kissed him softly for a long moment, until Dustin started pelting them with popcorn for being gross and everyone devolved into bickering as usual.
Best family a guy could ask for, really.
Notes:
everyone who thought murray would be the lawyer was so close but i simply cannot picture the man being anything other than who he is (an absolutely deranged journalist)
the best part about writing a modern AU is forcing everyone to make reference jokes the way my friends and i do irl (fitting in scott pilgrim, beetlejuice, and a totally-accidentally-by-eddie-he-didn't-mean-too taylor swift one all in one chapter? my dream)
also, this is probably going to wrap up around chapter 34 unless these last few chapters get entirely away from me which is possible because i'm still sort of not 100% pleased with them. can you believe it?? i honestly can't!!! we're so close to the end!
the chapter title is really just a phrase but you know what was going through my mind when i made it a chapter title was the song from the disney version of hercules. you just know that.
Chapter 30: Asheville-Raleigh-Washington DC (IT TAKES A VILLAGE)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Murray and Steve spoke over the phone before the Asheville show, and even though Steve had only been able to say the call “felt alright,” by the time they arrived in Raleigh he was there, demanding a ride from the airport.
“How is that my job?” Hop asked. “Can’t the guy just rent a car?”
“Because you love Steve and want him to get his story out there?” Joyce offered back, sweetly, and Hopper groaned but went to the airport anyway, because that was a hard point to dispute.
So now they were tuning up before the show in Raleigh and there was just. . . some guy there, watching. Kind of menacingly, Eddie felt, but Jonathan kept insisting that was just Murray’s vibe.
“It’s the beard. And the pure chaotic energy,” Byers said as he left them in Raleigh, already onto his next job. “He’s really a nice dude.” Then he paused, for a second. “Well, maybe not nice, exactly, but. You know.”
Eddie did not, in fact, know. In fact, as far as he saw the verdict was still out the guy even being alright, considering the man was in the back of the bar, leaning against a wall, arms crossed, wearing sunglasses inside. And somehow, behind the sunglasses, Eddie could just tell he was scowling. Which was impressive! A facial expression so strong it transcended sunglasses.
It hadn’t helped that he’d immediately declared that Eddie was, quote, the last person he wanted to speak to, end quote, which had raised his hackles a bit. Granted, Murray meant it literally — had rolled his eyes spectacularly at whatever Eddie’s expression had been and gone, “oh, come on,” like Eddie was being unreasonable. Which fine, maybe he was, whatever.
The reasoning behind this was, apparently, twofold — one, Eddie had literally known Steve for the least amount of time, and two, Eddie would probably be the most biased of all of them given the whole dating thing. Which Eddie felt was slightly unfair, because there was no way on Earth Robin Buckley or Dustin Henderson would be unbiased about Steve.
Murray had just ignored him when he pointed this out. The dude definitely hated his guts. How was Eddie supposed to convey how deep and serious Steve’s situation was to a dude who hated his guts? Maybe he’d be gracious and just cut Eddie out of the story entirely.
Mostly, so far, Murray had spent all of his time talking to Steve anyway. Which made sense — it was a profile of Steve, Steve should talk the most. But that also meant that since arriving in Raleigh Eddie hadn’t really talked to Steve a lot.
Which. Whatever. What was he, co-dependent? He could go a few hours without talking to Steve, that was normal.
“Dude, you are so, so hopelessly whipped,” Gareth said from behind the drum kit. Murray had signaled to Steve and Steve had gone to talk to him and Eddie maybe had sighed pathetically in his wake but whatever, that was his business.
He threw a guitar pick at Gareth.
One by one, in the hours leading up to the gig, Murray went and pulled people away. He asked questions lightly in big groups, too, listened in. There was an understanding that he had access — Robin had said it wasn’t a permanent on-the-record thing, but Murray was going to hang around the Raleigh and DC shows and if there was anything they didn’t want him to print it’d be smart to make sure they were saying it away from him.
Not that Eddie had secrets or anything, but he was about ten minutes into a rant about how much he disliked a certain Taylor Swift song before he remembered Murray was listening. “If you print this, teenaged girls might literally kill me,” he said to Murray.
“You say that like it’s my problem,” Murray had scoffed back.
See? Hated his guts!
The crowd was good in Asheville — they sold out, enough people showing up at the door to crowd the bar up nicely. Since Tucson Eddie had started to do a little spiel in the middle of the set. None of them were as inflammatory as the first, but for the first time in his life he had a thing that could maybe be considered a platform, and he was in a part of the country where the government was determined to suppress any vote against ultra-conservatism into the dust, so, hell. The very least he could do was remind the people packed into his shows that even on their darkest days they were never alone.
Community. Family. It was a hell of a thing to have, really.
In the aftermath of the show Murray hovered around the bar and observed, and by the end of the night he had still asked Eddie basically no questions.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Steve said in their hotel room, later. He said it with the type of eyeroll that mere weeks ago would have set Eddie’s heart afire with rage; now that simple, bitchy little motion made the man nearly melt.
Ugh, he’d gone all domestic.
Domesticity aside, he was still a bit of an asshole, and not one to lose a fight. “He doesn’t like me,” he snipped back.
“I don’t really think he likes anyone,” Steve offered. They were side by side in bed, Steve on his back and Eddie on his stomach, tracing a nonsense pattern into Steve’s chest with his pointer finger. “It’s not like he and I are friends or anything, I’m just. . . a case study, maybe, of a thing he already thought.” Eddie raised an eyebrow in confusion; Steve shuffled in a way that might have been a shrug if he wasn’t laying down. “Child stars get fucked over,” he said, plainly.
“You don’t exactly have to be Woodward and Bernstein to get that, though,” Eddie pointed out. They were moving away from his main point, though, which he brought them back to. “I’m just saying he’s not that interested in me. Which is fine, it’s your story. I guess I just hope I don’t come up, instead of getting an aside like Harrington’s misfit metalhead boyfriend, or some shit.”
Steve huffed a laugh. “He would definitely never say that.” He reached over and flicked Eddie on the nose, playful. “And you’re definitely getting mentioned. This whole thing is sort of your fault, you know.”
He didn’t say it like he blamed Eddie, though; he said it sort of reverently. A prayer, almost. Like Eddie had done a small miracle, had rescued Steve from the tower, had slayed the dragon.
Funny, because for most of his life Eddie had thought he was the dragon, really. Or, if not the dragon, one of those failed princes. The type who never even made it to the castle, too scared to face anything, even in the name of true love’s kiss.
Not anymore, though.
Silence fell between them, then, the type of soft, comfortable silence that he was starting to think was a bit dangerous. The type of silence that let him sit in his head just long enough to consider doing something truly stupid, like blurting I love you out into it, even though they had been officially dating for, by Eddie’s count, less than two weeks. Surely that’d be too much, even for Steve’s seemingly endless patience for all of Eddie’s bullshit. Surely that was a leap too far.
Right?
(The thing was, sometimes, in that silence, it almost felt like Steve was there too, already, and that was what made it really dangerous, because if he started to believe that then there was no real reason not to say it.)
He had some impulse control, apparently, because he didn’t say it. He shut himself up by kissing Steve, and then they got a bit lost in it, and by the time the dangerous silence fell again Steve was asleep and it was only Eddie, alone and stewing in it.
After Asheville they headed to DC, which was, by Eddie’s estimation, more of a punk town than a metal one, but whatever. Like he expected Hopper to know the intricacies of individual subculture scenes.
Hop scoffed when he said this out loud. “You know I’ve been in this industry longer than you’ve been alive, right Munson?”
“Yeah, but you made butt rock,” Eddie shot back, because he had a death wish, apparently. Hop sputtered; Murray, of all people cackled, an unexpected sound that made Eddie feel surprisingly proud of himself.
The pride withered into fear later, though — after five hours of driving they had a night off, and had ended up crowded together in an obnoxiously loud sports bar when Murray finally approached Eddie.
“Alright, metal boy,” the reporter said. “You ready to talk to me?”
Despite all his frustration at being ignored, Eddie felt rather distinctly like he was not ready to talk to Murray. He had chronic foot-in-mouth disease! There was no way he wasn’t going to say something stupid.
Across the bar Steve sent him a reassuring smile.
Ah, fuck it. Bravery deserved bravery, right?
He nodded at Murray and let the man drag him off to a secluded corner. He expected Murray to start with a softball — what’s your full name, for the record? or how did you meet Dustin Henderson? Instead, what Murray said was, “so you’re pretty hopelessly head over heels for Harrington, huh?”
Eddie spluttered in shock. If he’d taken a sip of beer he would have spit it out. “That’s not — I’m not — that’s!” he said, nonsensically.
Murray scoffed and took a sip of his own beer. “Oh please, you’re not subtle. Either of you, it’s very gross.”
“That’s homophobic,” Eddie said, automatically and a bit weakly. “I don’t — what do you even mean? Why are you even asking this? This can’t be for the article.”
“No,” Murray said, like Eddie was an idiot, “it was for my own personal entertainment. Keep up, Munson, you seemed smarter than this.”
“I am absolutely not smarter than this,” he said back. “Wait. Wait, don’t quote that—”
Murray rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m just busting your balls.” He reached for his phone, then, hit a few buttons, and turned it back so the screen was facing Eddie, with a clear record button on. “Now we’re talking, Eddie Munson. That short for Edward?”
“Edward Munson Jr, technically,” Eddie said. Murray raised an eyebrow, like he wanted to know more, the explicit details of Eddie's upbringing. The thought of sharing it sent a shudder down his spine. God, he didn't even know where his dad was — jail, he figured, but Wayne hadn't heard from the guy in years and Eddie wasn't exactly keen to follow up. Did the guy have access to Rolling Stone? Was there a version of this story that his dad would read? A version of him sitting in a bar somewhere watching Eddie talk about his shit childhood in black and white? That seemed unfair to the guy, even if Eddie sort of hated his guts. And besides the point, really. This was Steve's story. Why bring Eddie's backstory into it at all? He was supporting cast here, that's all. “All good with you I'd sort of. . . rather not talk about my parents, actually. I don’t think it’s super relevant.”
“Steve mentioned your uncle raised you,” Murray said. “Wayne, right?” At Eddie’s nod, he took another long sip of beer, like he was mulling something over before speaking. “Interesting, right? That you and Steve had that in common?”
Eddie felt himself frown. What was this guy on? Steve wasn't raised by an uncle — hell, Steve didn't even have any uncles, the only child of two only children, a long line of weird lonely kids in weird lonely houses.
Murray barreled on, clearly realizing Eddie had no idea what he was suggesting. “Just, you know — tough relationship with your father, taken in by a surrogate father, that whole thing.”
That was.
Oh.
Well.
Well he hadn’t ever actually thought about that, really. The similarities, there. Steve’s dad was so rich and powerful and present, present like a fucking tumor. Eddie’s was poor, and a nobody scumbag, and decidedly gone. He’d been in jail when Eddie was born; had gone back around his tenth birthday. His mother had died, and Wayne had been around to take him in. He was grateful, he supposed, to not end up in foster care, another kid in a thankless system, but he’d spent a long bit of his childhood resenting the absence of his father, a tooth lost too early, a gap his tongue couldn’t help but prod.
For the first time he considered who’d had it worse: him, with the father who hadn’t bothered to be in his life, or Steve, with the father who decided he had to control his son’s life.
The comparison made him uncomfortable. “I don’t think either of us had it worse,” he said, half defensive.
Murray looked at him, a bit baffled. “Never said one of you did.”
Oh. Right. That was a little journey went on all by himself. God, his brain was such a nightmare sometimes.
“All I was saying,” Murray continued, holding his hands up in mock surrender, “is that it’s an interesting comparison. On paper, you two don’t seem to have much in common. Wondered if you bonded over that.”
Eddie thought about it for a moment. “I mean,” he said, finally, “not. . . really? Steve and I spent a long time not bonding, actually. You know I spent the first few shows of this tour hating him, right?”
The look on Murray’s face said he did not know that. Eddie scoffed. Leave it to Steve to leave that bit out. Probably to try and help Eddie save face.
“It was — I was an idiot,” Eddie said. “I thought he’d be this rich kid asshole nepo baby yada yada yada. But he’s not. I mean, you know he’s not, you’ve talked to him.” He paused, considering. “I guess, if I can get one quote on the record in this whole thing, it’d be — I just want people to know that Steve isn’t who he seems like on paper. Like, I think it’s so easy to dismiss him, to scoff and roll your eyes when you see the story on Twitter, like — like who needs to feel anything for this kid who has everything, right? But then you meet Steve, you get to know him, and you see him. He’s someone who beat every odd — by every estimation he should be this careless jerk, right? But he’s not. He’s selfless — I mean, he went on this tour, he blew his whole life up, because some ex-campers of his needed him to.” And then he shook his head, going on a real roll, because that wasn’t even true. “Not even ex-campers, no, they’re basically this whole mini-family that Steve built by himself because he had no one else, you know? And your readers, I don’t know, they might not get it, why all these people love him so much but it’s just — Steve inspires that loyalty, you know? He’s just. . .” he trailed off, lacking a way to finish this that felt like he could say it all. “He’s good,” he finished, finally. “He’s just so good.”
Murray was silent for a long moment. “Wow,” he went with, eventually. “Tell us how you really feel, Munson.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie said, with no heat. Murray’s joke brought him down from the slightly manic fever pitch he’d hit at the end there. “Sorry, I just—”
Love him, he thought, but stopped himself from saying.
Murray seemed to take pity on him, and didn’t press. “You know, it’s funny,” the man said, instead. “You act like all this loyalty is specific to Steve, but Harrington and all those kids seemed pretty loyal to you, too.” He shrugged, like this was no big deal at all and not sort of an emotionally jarring thing for Eddie to hear. “Hell, Steve said if it wasn’t for you he probably would never have bothered to fight this contract thing at all.”
He thought about the show in Tucson, about Chrissy and her wide smile, and shook his head. “The thing is,” he said, after a moment, “that I have always been a coward, Murray.” He kept going, even thought it looked like Murray was about to interrupt — probably to ask what the hell this had to do with anything. “In this way, I am my father’s son. I run. I let them run me out of town in high school, and I ran from the town I ended up in the moment I could, and I — my bandmates literally called it intimacy issues okay? I’m a runner! It’s just who I am. But then I met Steve and it was like — like, okay. Here’s someone worth being brave for. And then I saw him running, sort of. Tucking his tail and accepting it and not fighting — because a part of Steve will always think he deserves this, you know? A part of Steve will always fundamentally believe that the things his father believes about him are true. They can you fuck you up like that, your parents. They can make the most selfless man I’ve ever met think he’s a talentless nobody that no one will ever fight for—” he cut himself off with a sigh. “I don’t even know what I’m saying, really, I just. Steve makes me want to be a better person.”
Murray considered this, and then reached over and visibly clicked the recorder off. “Not that it’s any of my business,” he said, oddly gentle. “But I think if Steve heard that, he’d say you make him want to be a better person, too.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, feeling oddly gutted by that.
Murray looked sympathetic. “You ever been in love before, kid?”
“No,” Eddie admitted.
“It fucking sucks,” Murray said, with the flatness of a multi-divorcee. “But it’s also the greatest thing that’ll ever happen to you. You’re lucky to have it.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Eddie said back. He gestured at the now dark phone. “Is the interview over?”
Murray shrugged. “For now. I’ll probably have more questions for you tomorrow. But, to be honest, at this point I’m in between a rock and hard place with this.” At Eddie’s confused brow furrow, he continued. “It’s a good story. A great story. But all it is right now is a story. I got all of you telling me one thing, but the minute I contact Loch Nora Records they’ll deny it, and I have no evidence for either side being right.” Eddie opened his mouth to protest, but Murray shook his head, holding a hand up to stop him. “I’m not saying you’re lying. I don’t think you are. Hell, Harrington has no good reason to whatsoever. But right now, all I have is hearsay. He said, he said. Those NDAs are airtight, and no one who’s allegedly signed one will talk to me. Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins haven’t gotten back to me. All all I have is a bunch of people who are — not to use your own words against you, kid — objectively biased towards Steve telling me Steve’s telling the truth.” He sighed, and tugged at his beard. “I need a break in the story that proves something. Something concrete. And there’s no way Christopher Harrington or Loch Nora Records are going to give it to me.”
“Shit,” Eddie said, eloquently.
“I know,” Murray said, not unsympathetically. Then he clapped his hands on the table. “But I’m not giving up! There’s no timeline here, not yet, anyway. I know a good story when I find one, and I’m like a bloodhound, my boy. I promise you that much.” Then, insanely enough, he reached over and clapped a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Now, Steve’s been looking like a lost puppy since you wandered off. So why don’t you go find your man and leave an old man to his beer and his notes, okay?”
The conversation felt unfinished. The story felt undone. It felt like Eddie was supposed to swing in here, with the smoking gun, the crucial thing that Steve needed. But he had nothing. He was not the prince at the tower ready to slay the dragon after all. He was just a man, with nothing to offer but good words and hope. Not a sword in sight.
Murray’s face twisted into a sardonic little smile. “Seriously,” he said. “Don’t overthink it, Munson. We'll get there. I promise. You go have fun.”
Reluctantly, Eddie stood up and left him. Went back to Steve, and drank his beer, and tried not to let the fact that he couldn’t rescue anyone in the end bother him.
---
Ah, but of course, this is not a story about one man saving another. This might be a love story about two people, yes, but it is also a love story much greater than that. It’s about many people, a whole family, who love each other more than anything. So, while Eddie sat and nursed a beer and he and Steve pretended that neither of them was nervous about the incoming storm they’d chosen to fight instead of flee, a series of things happened, beyond their control, beyond their knowledge, all at once.
First:
Email from [email protected] to [email protected]
Subject: A Favor For An Old Friend
Hi Carol,
You and I don’t know each other, so sorry for the cold email. I got your contact from a friend of a friend. I’m writing on behalf of my friend, Steve Harrington, who you used to be in a band with.
Okay, if you haven’t closed this email automatically I’m considering this a good sign!
I think that maybe a reporter named Murray Bauman has been trying to reach you. He’s writing a profile of Steve. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, if anything, but, well. Steve is fighting back against his dad. I don’t know the whole Swim Team story. Hell, I’m not even sure Steve knows it. But I do know that it’s really unlikely he was the only one of you screwed over by his dad.
I’m not saying you should talk to Murray on Steve’s behalf. Really, I’m not. If anything, if you want to talk, I’d do it for you. But I am asking you to consider it. I think you all deserve to tell the truth on record. I think you know there’s more to the story than this. And I think it’s scary to fight, but it’s worth it. So. That’s all I ask.
Sorry for bothering you. Hope you have a nice week.
Best,
Heather
And then:
Facebook Message FROM Nancy Wheeler
TO Tommy Hagan
Hi Tommy. Long time no talk! This is very random and I’m sorry for reaching out like this, but I’m wondering if a man named Murray Bauman has been in touch with you? He’s writing an article about Swim Team. I know you and Steve don’t speak anymore, but I saw you never unfriended me and I thought I should reach out. I can’t pretend to know what the experience was like for you, but I imagine it wasn’t pleasant. If you’re willing to talk, I think Murray is willing to listen.
And then, also:
TEXT
FROM Carol Perkins
TO Tommy Hagan
Hey. Been a bit, I know. Sorry for being hard to reach. I’d say it’s the ocean, but, well. You know me. You got ten minutes to talk soon? I got a weird email.
TEXT
FROM Tommy Hagan
TO Carol Perkins
wow hi! u kno i am always happy 2 hear from u care-bear. i got a weird facebook message, too. guessing it’s about the same thing? let’s chat tomorrow, i’m free at noonish.
And finally:
SIGNAL MESSAGE
FROM: SuzyQ
TO: Dustybun
It’s done. You know they really need to teach people better ways to catch phishing emails. That was too easy.
FROM: Dustybun
TO: SuzyQ
omg thank u. u r literally a lifesaver.
FROM: SuzyQ
TO: Dustybun
I don’t do illegal things for just any boy, you know. God’s definitely putting me in hell for this, Dusty.
FROM: Dustybun
TO: SuzyQ
it’s not 4 me! it’s 4 steve. god owes steve one!!!!
FROM: Dustybun
TO: SuzyQ
and no WAY god is on the side of chris harrington come on
FROM: SuzyQ
TO: Dustybun
I guess you’re right. He’s pretty evil.
FROM: Dustybun
TO: SuzyQ
seriously, i wouldn’t have asked u to do this if there was another way. ur helping so so so much. i love you
FROM: SuzyQ
TO: Dustybun
I love you too.
FROM: SuzyQ
TO: Dustybun
Tell Steve I say hi! And to enjoy the freedom. ;)
Notes:
hacker suzie is such an ideal deux ex machina thank you girl and your definitely not at all legal phishing schemes
so much of the end of this fic is eddie contemplating what it means to have a family and be loved unconditionally while also staunchly insisting it's too early to say the L world to steve. hilarious! he's close! but he's dumb!
Chapter 31: Philadelphia-Bumfuck Nowhere, Pennsylvania (YOU CAN BE YOUR OWN DAD)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Right after they arrived in Philadelphia Murray decamped — said he had other leads to chase. He was cagey about the whole thing, who exactly he was going to talk to and where, but he clamped a hand on Steve’s shoulder for a moment and said, “you know, kid, I think it’s going to be alright,” and then that was that.
(Dustin, too, was oddly cagey as Murray left, seemingly avoiding the man at all costs, but Dustin was a squirrely little fuck at the best of times, and Eddie had learned the hard way over and over that it was usually best to leave whatever the kid was up to alone unless he wanted to get dragged into some truly calamitous bullshit.)
Hopper, in the meantime, had gotten the promised lawyer — some old friend of his named Owens, who was happy enough to work on something called a contingency basis. “It means he thinks Steve will get a settlement,” Hop had said. “Which is a good thing. He thinks a win is likely.”
Unlike Murray, Owens didn’t bother coming by in person — Hop, Joyce, and Steve spent a few hours on the phone in a room, and when they emerged there was sort of a lightness to Steve that had been missing since the arrival of his father back in Austin. He smiled at Eddie in that sweet, soft way, and man Eddie was a fucking goner.
He was glad for the lightness, because it made the question Eddie had to ask seem less bone-chillingly terrifying.
Gareth rolled his eyes from behind the drumkit, probably at Eddie’s stupidly gooey expression as he made eyes at Steve, across the room discussing something idly with Jeff. “Dude, just ask him,” he said. “He’ll say yes.”
“Shut up,” Eddie said, because he was a paragon of maturity.
One of Eddie’s only contingencies for this tour had been a couple built in days off, right after this Philadelphia show, so he could go see Wayne. The plan had been to go alone — steal a van, drive to Bumfuck Nowhere, make sure to get in his designated I am a good son who remembers to call time, and then fuck back off for the last handful of shows. But the night after his conversation with Murray, Eddie had been unable to quite fall asleep, staring at Steve’s face as he slept next to him, thinking about what Murray had said about the similarities of their childhoods and their terrible dads and surrogate father figures, and he’d had the horrifyingly clear thought I want Wayne and Steve to meet.
It was, in all honesty, a bit of a terrifying prospect. Wayne had never met a boyfriend of Eddie’s before; hell, Eddie had put off the actual act of coming out for as long as he possibly could — not because he thought Wayne would hate him, or anything, but just because. Ugh. Talking about sex with Wayne? Nasty. He didn’t want Wayne to think he ever had sex, at all. As far as Wayne should be concerned, Eddie was going to die a virgin, which was honestly a fairly promising prospect for a long stretch of high school considering the murderer thing and then the weird new kid thing.
(He ultimately came out to Wayne in the most Eddie way humanly possible, by blurting it out in an otherwise unrelated conversation. It had been Thanksgiving, and football had been on TV, and Eddie had just half-shouted that guy’s kinda hot! and Wayne had grunted and said he’s probably got brain damage, you know, and that had been that.)
Introducing someone to Wayne was sort of the final wall in the seven-wall defense of the Kingdom of Eddie Munson’s Heart, if he thought about it. Prior to Steve, very few people had ever managed to knock down all the walls before, and none of those people had been romantic interests. Jeff and Gareth and Petey, obviously, had all gotten there. Dustin had met Wayne briefly the last time the old man was in town, but it was really more of a five minute meet and greet that Eddie had been fairly eager to end, largely because he hadn’t entirely planned for it to happen. (Dustin had shown up unannounced and then refused to leave for, like, twenty-five full minutes.)
It wasn’t that he was embarrassed of Wayne, although he knew some people thought that, sometimes. He got why they might — an obviously blue collar guy still living in a trailer park, pulling night shifts at the factory he’s always worked at. There were people in the world who found the idea of being from anything less than pure glamour mortifying — Eddie had once abruptly stopped talking to a hookup when the dude had said he’d never go back to a trailer park if he was from one while they were watching Raising Arizona.
(To be fair, the guy hadn’t known Eddie was from a trailer park, which was ridiculous considering, again, Eddie’s entire discography, but he supposed random booty calls weren’t obligated to listen to his Bandcamp page, in the end. Still, Eddie had a strict list of no’s for sexual partners: no fascists, no cops, no classist dickbags. It was a good list. He was proud of it.)
No, the much simplier reason so few people ever got to the meeting Wayne stage was that Wayne was the person on Earth who knew Eddie the best, who’d seen him at the absolute worst, and once you knew Wayne you, inherently, knew Eddie, past his armor, past his not-so-shiny exterior, under the skin and into the beating, bleeding heart of him. So, generally, Eddie didn’t let people meet Wayne until they already had gotten to that part of Eddie — until they knew about the tragic backstory and the pathetic cowardice and all the other nasty little parts. And he never really let a lot of people know that because, naturally, they’d leave once they knew it, right? Who’d stick around for a guy they knew was so pathetic?
Well, Steve, it turned out. He hadn’t flinched at any of Eddie’s baggage, had offered his own, had stuck out a hand like, here, let me carry some of that for you. So, sure, yes, maybe it was quick, but everything with Steve had been quick, and if Eddie was the type of guy to go for all that bullshit about having a soulmate he might have thought there was some sort of greater universal force, pulling them together. If he was one of those guys, which he wasn’t, he might sit up at night sometimes and wonder if Steve Harrington was inevitable, the tide rolling in at this beach of his heart, or something like that.
But he, uh, wasn’t that guy. So really, this was just — he just wanted the man to meet his uncle, alright? Meet the family. No greater reason than that. It seemed a fair enough deal, after all, because Eddie had already met all of Steve’s family — the real one, huddled in varying bars around the country, and the false father, too, the shiny nothing that had been the reason for all of Steve’s baggage.
(He wondered if he’d ever meet Steve’s mother. He had a feeling the answer might be no — that if she hadn’t bothered showing up now, she probably would never bother. But he supposed he could be proven wrong. He did think if she showed up, he probably wouldn’t be exactly forgiving of her, this woman who could somehow manage to never be there for her only son. Maybe she wasn’t as malicious as Christopher, but wasn’t inacation, in its own way, just as bad?)
So, yes, it seemed only fair to put Wayne and Steve in a room together, to let the two of them probably fight about football teams for some reason while Eddie let them because he was patient and good and it was hot when Steve got a little worked up about something that fundamentally didn’t really matter. And then, at the inverse, he’d let Wayne meet Steve, and be forced to suffer through Wayne’s knowing little glances about how stupid gone on the guy Eddie was, opening himself up to ages of Wayne mocking him lightly on the phone about stupid shit like grandchildren, all that good stuff. Eddie was going to put up with getting chirped for the rest of his life for love. Fundamentally, he was a saint.
It was just, before he could do any of that he had to ask Steve to come with, which he hadn’t quite managed the nerve to do, yet. It’s not like he really thought Steve would say no, or that Steve would make fun of him or anything, it was just. . . it was nerve wracking, okay! Even if he understood the nerves were illogical, it was just one of those things that it made sense to be nervous about. Hey, I know we’ve only been dating a few weeks, but do you want to meet the guy who raised me and who I’d do anything for? And if he hates you or you hate him I actually won’t know what to do about it??? NO PRESSURE!
Not that he thought Wayne would hate Steve. Or that Steve would hate Wayne! They couldn’t hate each other, not with how good they both were.
Right?
“Doom spiral,” Gareth said, sing-song, breaking Eddie’s train of thought. Eddie turned to glare at him, but he wasn’t wrong. “If you don’t ask him in the next ten minutes I’m going to ask him. You’re driving me insane with your fidgeting, dude.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie said, and then sighed, because he knew Gareth actually would do it, the monster. “Fine, fine, I’m going, are you happy?”
“Thrilled,” Gareth deadpanned, and Eddie turned to flip him off even as he stomped towards Steve.
Jeff, wisely, made himself scarce immediately. Steve raised an eyebrow as the other man left, and then shot the skeptical look Eddie’s way. “I’m in trouble or something?” he asked.
“No, no, it’s—” and here he cut himself off with a sigh. “It’s dumb, I’m being dumb, I have a question to ask you and I blew it up into this whole big thing in my head, you know, and it really doesn’t need to be because it’s actually sort of straight forward, really—”
“Eddie,” Steve interrupted, voice laced with amusement.
Ah, shit, he’d been rambling.
“Do you wanna go to my uncle’s place with me?” Eddie blurted, all at once. Just — like a bandaid ripping off, right? Get it out there.
Steve blinked in a sort of shocked way, like he really hadn’t been anticipating the question. Which was fair, because it really had come out of left field. Shit, should Eddie have done some sort of build up? Sprinkled in fun facts about Wayne the past few days, mentioned that he was going more?
Before he could spiral again, Steve spoke. “Really?” The look on his face was nothing sort of delighted, although there was still a confused burrow to his brow that Eddie resisted the urge to physically poke with his index finger. “I mean — why?”
“Uh,” Eddie said, smartly. “Because we’re. . . dating? This a thing people do when they’re dating, right? Did sitcoms lie to me?”
Steve winced. “No — I mean, yes, I just. . .” he trailed off here, that slight kick of self-conciousness that sometimes hovered around him coming back. “Are you sure? I don’t want to take time away from you and your uncle, man.”
That wasn’t are you sure? Because it’s insanely early into this relationship and I’m starting to think maybe you’re more in it than I am, which, again, Eddie knew logically wasn’t going to be what Steve said but what he realized, now, he’d been so terrified Steve might say. For all that Eddie felt oddly reassured that mostly he and Steve were, in fact, on Stupid Overwhelming Feelings Island together, he still was terrified that he’d do something that was too much and would scare Steve off. He was, famously, a too much person — too loud, too needy, too distractable, yada, yada, yada.
Ah, shit, wait, maybe this is what Gareth and Jeff had been right about, when they’d harped on him for intimacy issues. Eddie had spent so long in every relationship he had being convinced that if he was too much of himself it would scare the other person off, which meant instead he was just cold and aloof and that, in turn, scared them off just fine.
Maybe the reason it’d been so easy with Steve was that they’d started off so poorly, so on the wrong foot — there was no way Steve walked into this thinking Eddie was cool, calm, and collected, not after being stared down the pure bitchiness of their first handful of days on tour.
Then again, here Steve was in front of him, looking a little nervous too, and he remembered that Steve had been convinced he liked Eddie more than Eddie liked him; that Eddie wanted casual, that Eddie wasn’t interested. So, here Eddie was, making a big, clear step: I want you to meet my Uncle. I am very much not casual about this.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure. You’re not taking time away from shit, Harrington. Wayne’ll be delighted he has someone who’ll actually understand his sports references, for one, and for two. . . he’s important to me. You’re, uh. Important to me. So.” He spread his hands out in a little jazz-hands movement, like, ta da, I’m being emotionally vunerable!
Steve grinned, bright and wide and beautiful. “I’m important to you?”
“Don’t fish for compliments, Harrington,” Eddie huffed back. “You know that.”
“Nice to hear,” Steve murmured, leaning forward to press a kiss to Eddie’s cheekbone. And then, “yeah, okay. I’ll come meet your uncle.”
And that was that.
---
The next day, as they pulled into the gravel in front of Wayne’s trailer in Bumfuck Nowhere Pennsylvania, Eddie was panicking.
Steve had patiently put up with the panic for the last 45 minutes, but Eddie could tell that patience had thinned to near non-existence. “I don’t get how you’re so calm,” he half-snapped at Steve. “I mean, this should be a big deal for you, too, right?”
Steve rolled his eyes, because of course he did. “I didn’t say I was calm, but it’s your uncle, it’s not like he’s going to kill us or something.” He paused here, frowning. “He’s not going to kill us, right? He’s not, like, one of those own-tens-guns guys, right?”
Eddie tried to picture Wayne putting Steve through a shotgun wedding treatment and snorted a laugh. “No, he’s not.”
Steve shrugged. “Then I’m not too worried.” He reached over to squeeze at Eddie’s knee. “The worst this can be is a little awkward, at first. I mean, what did he say when you told him I was coming?”
Eddie froze, hand halfway towards pulling the key out of the ignition.
He could feel Steve go stiff next to him. “. . .Eddie? What did he say when you told him I was coming?” he pressed, slightly more demanding sounding.
Ah, fuck. He knew he’d forgotten something.
Somehow, Steve read that thought perfectly across Eddie’s otherwise impeccable poker face (hah hah, as if, Eddie was so terrible at poker Jeff, Gareth, and Petey outright banned him from playing). “Oh god,” Steve said, panic edging into his voice, now. “He doesn’t know? You’re springing surprise boyfriend on him?!”
“In my defense, I used all my energy being nervous about asking you, so it makes sense that I might have dropped the second half of that equation!”
“No it doesn’t!” Steve yelped, smacking Eddie in the shoulder. “Oh my god, he’s gonna think I’m rude, he’s going to think, I, like, invited myself—”
“Is your big concern really being rude?” Eddie spluttered. “God, rich people really are obsessed with manners, huh.”
Steve leveled a glare at him.
“Are you two idiots planning on getting out of the car anytime soon?” Wayne’s voice cut in. Eddie and Steve both started. Wayne was standing on the trailer step, arms crossed in an unimpressed way, voice clear through Eddie’s open window. Which meant he probably heard everything they said, too.
“Oh my god,” Steve muttered. “Please kill me.”
Oddly, seeing Wayne made all of Eddie’s panic evaporate immediately. Wayne was just Wayne; a steady, unchanging constant in Eddie’s life. He’d had the same haircut since Eddie had first shown up on his doorstep with a social worker, head shaved and surly with attitude. Sure, maybe it was more grey now, but that was Wayne — the guy had taken one look at the twelve year old in front of him and taken him in no questions. Sacrificed the one bedroom and slept on the couch. Packed his bags when Eddie got run out of town.
Shit, he’d missed him. Sometimes Eddie forgot, given how often they talked and texted, how much time had passed since they’d seen each other in the flesh. But it’d been since Christmas, really. Way, way, too long.
“You’re not gonna die,” Eddie said, plainly. “It’s just Wayne.” He moved to get out of the car, bounding to toss his arms around his uncle.
Wayne huffed a sound like he was annoyed, but wrapped his arms back around Eddie. “Good to see you boy.”
“You too, old man.” He pulled back, and turned to gesture to Steve, walking up sheepishly behind him. “This is—”
“The famous Steve, of course,” Wayne said. “Eddie hasn’t shut up about you since this tour of yours started.” He raised an eyebrow at Eddie. “And don’t think I forgot about those Teen Vogue’s you hid in your room.”
Steve looked delighted. “Oh really, Teen Vogue?” he said to Eddie, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“I regret this,” Eddie said, firmly. “This was a giant mistake. Steve, get back in the car, we’re going back to Philly.”
“Too late,” Wayne and Steve said at the same time.
“Oh my god, I’ve created a monster.” Eddie dropped his face into his hands. “This must be how Dustin feels about introducing us.”
Steve patted his shoulder with faux-sympathy, but Wayne just grunted. “Thanks for the heads up on the plus one, boy,” he said. “Luckily for you, I didn’t plan a five course meal or nothin’.”
“Because that’s what we usually do, beef wellington a la Gordon Ramsey,” Eddie snarked, looking up to glower at Wayne.
“Maybe I turned a new leaf in the six months since I saw you last,” Wayne pointed out.
Steve winced. “Wow, six whole months, Eddie?”
“How long were you hiding in LA again, Harrington?” Eddie snipped back. Steve flicked him in the head.
“If you two are done,” Wayne said, “I believe I have a third degree to give your new boyfriend, Ed.” He leveled a look at Steve. “Eddie’s never brought a boy home before,” he continued, clearly on a one-man mission to humiliate Eddie to death. “Not really sure what I’m supposed to do next.”
“It’s been awhile since I met anyone’s parents,” Steve admitted, with a little shrug. “My high school girlfriend’s dad mostly sat in his recliner and grunted at me in a way that let me know he didn’t approve. Her mom pulled out a lot of embrassing baby photos, though.”
Wayne nodded, like this made perfect sense. “I might have a few good ones of Ed, here. He ever tell you about his homemade Gandalf Halloween costume?”
“Oh my god, no,” Steve said, as Wayne led him into the trailer and Eddie once again considered every life choice that led him here.
He held strong through a solid hour of Wayne telling enough embarrassing stories and showing enough embarrassing Halloween pictures that Steve had obviously taken pity on Eddie and shared a few embarrassing ones of his own.
(Dustin was, apparently, big on group costumes, and had forced Steve into a number of reference joke outfits that Steve only barely understood, including Poe Dameron and BB-8, Jake the Dog and Finn the Human, and Wirt and Greg from Over the Garden Wall, which was by far one of the funniest photos of Steve ever taken. “We have got to leak that to People,” he’d said seriously, and Steve flipped him off.)
Wayne mostly didn’t grill Steve, although there were a few — dare Eddie say pointed? — questions leveled in his direction.
The final of these questions came as the night was winding down, the three of them each nursing a beer slowly around Wayne’s cramped kitchen table. “So, Harrington,” Wayne said. “What exactly do you plan to do if you get out of this contract? Back to the studio?”
Eddie frowned. He thought the question was a bit rude — was about to open his mouth to say that to Wayne — but Steve placed a hand on his knee to stop him and smiled, warmly. “Nah,” he said, taking a sip. “I might sell some stuff I’ve written to other people, but I don’t. . . I think the period of my life where I’m in the spotlight is mostly over.” He shrugged. “I like playing live, but I don’t really ever want to be famous again, you know?”
“So then, what?” Wayne pressed. Eddie kicked him in the shin for good measure.
Steve frowned down at his beer, picking at the label pensively. “I actually don’t know. It seemed like such a faraway thing for so long — like, pointless to think about a world you don’t actually live in, right? Why bother to wonder how you’d spend lottery winnings?” Wayne shrugged, like he got this train of thought. “But I think. . . I’ve been thinking, it might be nice to teach?” He winced at this, like it was an embarrassing thing to say. “I mean, when I met the kids at the music camp. I don’t know. That was the first time in a long time I felt connected to music, and I. . . I think I’d like to have that, all the time. And to, you know, help kids learn how to navigate all this.” He gestured around his head in a way that clearly meant fame and money and tour and a thousand other things. Then he straightened up in his chair a little, met Wayne’s gaze head on. “I know that’s not exactly the most stable or, you know, money making of my options but. . . I think that’s what I want.”
Wayne nodded, arms crossed. “I think that’s a plenty good dream, Steve,” he said.
Eddie thought it was more than plenty good. Eddie thought it was fucking beautiful. It filled him with that same swirling, intense feeling he kept getting around Steve, that all over body warmth, that permanent feeling of giddiness that was probably, honestly, love. Steve taking the lessons of a shitty and terrible childhood and making sure it didn’t happen to anyone else; Steve taking everything he loved about music and putting it into the hands of the next generation; Steve, good, and smart, and trying so goddamn hard.
Eddie wanted to say something meaningful and profound, but instead what he said was, “all the kids are going to be so hot for teacher, damn.”
This time, Wayne kicked him, but Steve laughed, which was good enough for Eddie.
Wayne called it a night not too long after, and Steve and Eddie settled into the cramped and old mattress that Wayne had gamely surrendered to them for the night. There was silence for a moment, Steve resting his head on Eddie’s chest while Eddie played with his hair, content for the quiet. Finally, though, Steve broke it, softly. “You really don’t think it’s dumb? The, uh, music teacher thing?”
Eddie frowned down at the top of his beautiful head. “Dumb? Why would I think it’s dumb?”
Steve shrugged, dutifully avoiding the eye contact the way he did, sometimes, when he thought something he was going to say wouldn’t be well received. “I just — I know how much touring and recording and being in a band means to you, and I. . . I don’t know. I’m kind of throwing it all away, right? If I get out of the contract but don’t actually go back to music?”
“Okay, firstly,” Eddie said, tugging at Steve’s chin until Steve was forced to meet his eye. “We’re allowed to have different dreams, weirdo. I think we’re sort of supposed to, on account of us being two totally different people.” Steve rolled his eyes, but Eddie pressed on. “Secondly, you’re not throwing anything away. Getting out of the contract is about being free to do whatever you want, Stevie. You’ve spent your whole life under someone else’s control. I’d be a pretty shitty boyfriend if I got mad at you for enjoying the spoils of your newfound freedom.” Steve smiled, just a little, and Eddie tugged at his chin, again, until Steve complied and let himself be moved so Eddie could kiss him. “I want you to do what you want to do,” he finished. And then, because he was him, and he couldn’t help himself, “espescially if I remain on the top of the list of things you want to do.”
Steve groaned, dropping his forehead back onto Eddie’s chest. “That was horrible. And your uncle can probably hear us you pervert.”
“Your pervert,” Eddie said triumphantly, and Steve didn’t dignify that with an answer, but he also didn’t move away, so he considered it a win.
Silence fell again, but Eddie found he couldn’t sleep, a perilous set of words on the tip of his tongue. He held them there for a long time, until finally Steve’s breath evened out and he started snoring, softly. Then, in the safe quiet of the room, he finally murmured them into the soft of Steve’s hair.
“I am so fucking in love with you,” he said, and then he closed his eyes and prayed to a god he didn’t quite believe in that he’d have the courage to say it out loud, one of these days.
Notes:
the end of the last chapter probably had you frothing for more plot right? well that's too damn bad, here's a stupid fluff chapter because i can't not have a "wayne and steve meet" chapter in my steddie fics
we're getting close though! plot returns next week i promise (or maybe i'm lying lol)
in honor of tomorrow being halloween please comment other obvious "dustin made the group do them" halloween costumes and particularly other obvious "dustin made steve do them" costumes because i have so many fun thoughts on this as a topic. dustin is rigby and steve is mordecai. dustin is walter white and steve is jesse pinkman (and robin is saul goodman obviously). given the time period this is set in unfortunately Will, Dustin, Mike, and Lucas probably did South Park once, let's be real. robin and steve have also 100% done vincent vega and mia wallace from pulp fiction (yes this is a "maya hawke is uma thurman's daughter" joke what do you want from me).
chapter title is from End of the Summer by Joyce Manor
Chapter 32: Boston (NOW YOU DON'T SEEM SO PROUD)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
There was an angry brunette with the sharpest jawline Eddie had ever seen glowering at him in the back of a bar in Boston, Massachusetts.
She opened the conversation with a sharp (almost shrill, really) demand. “Eddie Munson,” she snapped, like she knew him, “just what exactly are your intentions towards Steve?”
“I’m—” Eddie started, at a loss. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
She rolled her eyes like this was a ridiculous question. “Guess,” she said, huffy.
Eddie took her in. The jaw, the nose, the expression of complete irritation. If Eddie didn’t know better, he’d say she was a dead ringer for Female Mike Wheeler—
WAIT.
“Oh my god, are you Nancy?” Eddie said. There was an odd feeling in his stomach, a mixture of excitement and pure, unadulterated fear.
(Mike had told a lot of Nancy stories since he and Steve had gotten together. Mostly about how she was a total hard-ass terror with a weird protective streak. “You know she owns a gun? She won a sharpshooter award in college,” Mike had offered, plainly, and Eddie had taken it for the Wheeler version of a Shovel Talk and been appropriately cowed by it, even though two hours later Max had informed him that there was no way in hell Emerson College offered sharpshooter awards. “It’s a film school, you idiot.")
Nancy was clearly trying to maintain the scowling look she’d been giving him, but the left side of her mouth quirked just a little, giving her away. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said, still haughtily but more obviously playful.
Hell, Eddie could get playful too. He clasped his hands to his chest. “My apologies, my dear lady Wheeler, I had no idea you’d be gracing us with your presence this fine evening.” He bent at the waist and offered his hand to her. She gave him hers, and he kissed it gently. “I assure you, m’lady, my intentions to your fine Sir Steven are nothing but pure. He is good of heart and magnificent of chest hair and I adore him truly.”
When he looked up Nancy was grinning widely, having given up the charade all together. “Mike said you were a bit ridiculous,” she said, with a laugh.
“How dare he undersell me like that!” Eddie scoffed, pulling back to his full height. “He also obviously didn’t warn me you were coming.”
“I told him not to,” she admitted. “I wanted to give you the third degree. And Barb wanted to surprise Steve.” She turned and jutted her chin back behind her shoulder. Eddie followed her gaze to where a pretty red-haired woman on two metal crutches was standing by the bar, talking with Mike Wheeler.
Steve, as if on cue, emerged from somewhere and saw her. “Barb!” he half-yelled, heading towards her.
“Steveeeeeee,” Barb said, giggling with delight, as Steve wrapped his hands around her waist and picked her up to spin her in a circle.
Eddie found the move a little shocking, considering Barb was obviously disabled. Nancy, as if she could read that, smiled at him. “He’s never treated her like she’s broken,” she said, soft. “Barb always appreciated that.”
“Barb’s Song,” he said, smartly, with no other context. Fucking conversationalist he was.
Nancy seemed to get it though, her smile going a little sad around the edges. “Steve always really blamed himself, for the accident. I didn’t make it easy on him, either. Took a lot of therapy for me to realize the person I actually blamed was myself, and Steve was just. . . an easy target.”
“He takes a lot of hits he thinks he deserves, even if he doesn’t,” Eddie agreed, with a sigh, remembering his own streak of blaming Steve for dumb shit.
“Luckily for us he’s also very forgiving,” Nancy said, like it was all so simple. And, well, maybe it was. “Come on, come meet Barb, you’ll adore her.”
“Nancy!” Steve said, as the two of them approached, wrapping her into her own hug. “I can’t believe Mike kept this from me, he’s usually such a shit liar.”
“Fuck you Harrington,” Mike said with a scowl eerily similar to his sisters. Steve stuck his tongue out.
“Language, twerp,” Nancy said back, but her smile hadn’t waned at all. “I had to make sure your paramour was pure of heart, Steve,” she continued, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, god, he’s got you talking all old timey,” Steve groaned. “Before I know it you’ll be doing, like, Zoom call D&D sessions and I’ll be the only cool person left that I know.”
“Since when have you been cool?” Barb scoffed, and Eddie decided he’d probably go to war for her, if she asked him to. She waved at him. “You must be Eddie! I’m Barb.”
“A pleasure, my fair maiden,” Eddie said, bending to kiss her hand too, as she giggled.
“Just me and a bunch of nerds,” Steve said.
“You literally did this to yourself,” Dustin pointed out, joining them. “You’re the one who decided the campers to imprint on were the indoor kids.”
“Every kid at music camp is a indoor kid,” Steve shot back. “And you imprinted on me you shithead!”
“You didn’t even know what imprint meant until I met you!” Dustin snapped, and as the two began to bicker Nancy shot Eddie a little look, like, boys, right? Eddie couldn’t stop himself from grinning back.
If he thought it’d be awkward meeting, him and Steve’s ex-girlfriend, it really wasn’t. She didn’t seem quite as integrated to the group as Jonathan might have been, but she clearly knew and had good rapport with everyone, particularly Robin, Max, and El. Barb, meanwhile, was clearly beloved by Will and Lucas in particular, who immediately set about demanding if she’d read the latest Sanderson novel and then roped Eddie into a long argument about whether or not it was ultimately worth the time commitment to read Wheel of Time. (Eddie had yet to bother, which Will said was his “crowning nerd failure,” although, really, Eddie figured flunking high school twice was probably always going to be his crowning nerd failure, which he politely didn’t say.)
It was a nice evening, buzzing with energy, and Eddie took a moment to appreciate how close they were to the end. Providence the night before, then Boston, then up to Portland in Maine, and then back down to Brooklyn to close out. A marathon month-long tour, finally sunsetting, and after all these long weeks Eddie got to return to his own bed with the sweet feeling of success, a couple hundred extra bucks, and a brand-new boyfriend. A great win, overall, no complaints.
He hated to get nostalgic for the moment he was in, but it was hard not to, sometimes. Hard not to look out at the room filled with people he loved and feel that ache in his heart, knowing that a moment like this might happen again but never quite like this, never quite as perfect as the memory. In a few months in the dark, dreary New York winter when he was once again scrambling to get cash for rent and fighting with the Bowery booker about set times he’d hold this moment in his heart as a constant reminder of why he did this, as the highest of highs. But feeling that way also meant he was missing it, and he hated missing it, which meant he needed to clear his head.
He waved his pack of cigarettes at Steve. “Wanna smoke?”
Nancy wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Ugh, not you too.” She turned to level a sharp glare at Steve. “You know, cancer statistics—”
“I’m quitting!” he protested, hands in the air in surrender. “Eddie’s his own person, he’s got free will.” Then he shot a sheepish look to Eddie. “But, I’ll, uh, pass.”
“I can’t believe you’re still whipped for your ex, dude,” Eddie scoffed.
“I can’t believe you’re an enabler,” Nancy sniffed back.
“I can’t believe I thought introducing you two wouldn’t be annoying,” Mike groused. Nancy smacked him upside the head. Freed from the pierce of her gaze, Eddie beat a hasty retreat, Steve grinning and winking at him as he dashed away.
The bar didn’t have a back area, just jutted out into the street, which was surprisingly empty at the moment. The venue had a sign, asking them not to smoke in front of it, and bouncer gestured to it vaguely as Eddie emerged. He conceded, walking about half a block down and leaning up against a wall there, lighting his cigarette and letting the night air bring him back to the present.
Blame the nostalgia, or blame the night time, or blame Eddie’s general lack of perception (-2 and disadvantage on all rolls, really), but he didn’t hear the sound of the too-nice black car pulling up in front of the venue, didn’t notice the figure getting out of the back of it and striding towards him, not until it was too late and the man was basically in front of him.
Christopher was smiling with all of his teeth, illuminated by the streetlight rather menacingly. Eddie felt a bit like a girl in a horror movie, cornered in an alleyway by a man with a big knife. No, Mr. Ghostface, please! I wanna be in the sequel!
“Eddie,” the elder Harrington said easily. Like they were friends. Like him being here wasn’t totally bizarre, unexpected, downright creepy. His voice felt slimy, in Eddie’s ears, strangely gross.
“Asshole,” he said back, with a curt nod, heart jackrabbiting. He darted his eyes down the block to try and find the bouncer, but the man must have ducked in at some point, and the handful of passerby on the street didn’t seem poised to stop and ask if everything was kosher. “Look, don’t make me get a protective order or some shit, alright? Why don’t you just buzz off, yeah? Why the fuck are you even here?”
Still, that smile, all teeth. A bit like a shark, Eddie thought, and then realized that was the point. The type of smile that would make you think twice about crossing the guy. Luckily, Eddie had never thought twice about anything in his life.
“Look,” Christopher said, “I’ll level with you. Because I think, Eddie, at the end of the day you’re a reasonable man, aren’t you?”
Actually not a thing too many people accused Eddie of, being reasonable, but he didn’t have any energy to joke with this fucker. He glanced back towards the door, hoping that someone would emerge to save him while also, oddly, hoping that Steve didn’t decide he did want a smoke, ex-girlfriend’s cancer stats be damned. But no one came, of course. He stubbed his cigarette and went to move — maybe inside he could sic the bouncer or the bartender on this guy. He began to head towards the door.
“You haven’t known my son very long,” Christopher continued, following after.
“I’ve known him long enough,” Eddie shot back, over his shoulder. He really, really didn’t like where this was going; he was debating breaking into an actual sprint to get away from whatever this man wanted to fucking say to him.
“You think you have,” Christopher said, plain, like he knew so much more than Eddie. Like he was so much smarter. It was maybe a tactic that worked in a board room, but here it just raised every last hair on the back of Eddie’s neck. Still, Christopher reached out and grasped his arm, lightly, pulling Eddie to a stop. Eddie twisted in his grip but couldn’t quite break it. “He’s fickle,” the man continued, like none of this weird invasion of personal space was happening, “and flighty, and he has a drug problem. Although perhaps he’s told you a bit, about that last part, to make you sympathetic.” He held the hand not gripping Eddie up, a surrender-like motion that felt very much the opposite. “I’ve spent a decade dealing with his antics, nothing he does surprises me anymore.”
“Steve is a good person,” Eddie bit out, rage clawing out his gut. He tugged his arm again, uselessly.
“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m only saying that you don’t know him like I do.” He paused, like he was considering Eddie for a long moment. “What is it that you want, Edward?”
“Right now? I want you to fuck off,” Eddie hissed.
Christopher had the gall to actually laugh at that, a sort of nasty sound, the laugh of a schoolyard bully. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I mean long-term. I mean, surely, you have goals and dreams with this band of yours, right?”
Eddie said nothing.
“I can make it happen for you,” Christopher continued, lightly, like it was nothing at all. “I mean, I’m influential. I could make a few phone calls and get you a record deal in a minute. Surely at some point in your life you’ve wanted that, no? A multi-million dollar record deal? Albums produced by men who’ve won Grammy’s?”
“You say that like there’s not a catch,” Eddie scoffed. “I’ve figured you out, man, you’re not that clever. It’s a fucking monkey’s paw, right? I make a wish and I don’t word it good and you curl the finger and you take something back. Quid pro quo, Clarice.”
Christopher shrugged, like, actually shrugged, like this was all sort of fun to him. “Oh, sure,” he said, “but that’s just business, Eddie. You’ll learn it soon enough, playing this game. So, I give you a record deal, make all your dreams come true. You get to buy your uncle a house. You get to win awards.”
“And let me guess,” Eddie hissed. “In exchange I, what? Break up with Steve and never see him again? Surprise, asshole, I know about all your little tricks. I’m not taking your money. Fuck you.”
Christopher chuckled, and his grip on Eddie’s arm tightening slightly. “You’re really going to throw all this away for Steve? I’m not trying to be mean, you know.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie said, flat.
The other man ignored him. “How long have you wanted to be a musician? A decade? God, two decades? And how long have you known Steve? Has it even been two months? I know it sounds cruel, but be reasonable. You’re going to give up the best opportunity you’ve ever had for success because of loyalty to a man who is, in essence, a stranger.” He held both his hands up, this time, finally freeing Eddie. But Eddie found himself strangely planted to the spot by Christopher’s words. “I know what he seems like on the surface, I do, but I know him. Three months from now he’ll be on to the next boy or girl or whatever catches his fancy. He’ll leave you behind, and you’ll be sitting on a ratty couch in wherever-the-hell you’re from and thinking god, I could have been somebody!”
“You don’t know him,” Eddie spat. “You had this all planned out, huh? If you couldn’t get him to cow to your threats you’d, what? Offer every person who loves him a record deal and hope they leave him alone? Isolate him so he’d have no choice but to come crawling back? That’s why you dropped the tutors, right? Made sure he didn’t get a high school diploma? Made that fucking contract? God forbid he has a way out of the glass cage you built him.” He shook his head, all anger. “You know your little operation’s about to come crumbling down, don’t you? We have a lawyer and there’s a journalist—”
He cut himself off, mid-sentence, suddenly letting all the pieces click into place in his head. Christopher, here in Boston, cornering Eddie outside a bar. Like in those nature documentaries, when the lion finally has the gazelle in his jaws and the creature gives one last, flailing, desperate kick to dislodge itself.
He’d gotten it wrong. Christopher wasn’t the shark. Not anymore.
“But you know that,” he said. Harrington’s gaze remained impassive, his posture impeccable, but Eddie saw the fingers on his his left hand twitch, just slightly, the smallest tell. “That’s why you’re here. I’m your last resort. You thought. . . what, you’d pay me off, I tell Murray that Steve and I made the whole thing up over drinks? Amityville Horror?”
“You reference an awful lot of very stupid things,” Christopher said, all ice. “I’m here as an olive branch.”
“You used that line before,” Eddie shot back, slightly wounded by that first comment. “Playbook’s getting old there, bud.” He let the truth of what this all meant crystalize fully, the revelation hitting him. “Murray has something. Something more than just Steve and us saying you did bad shit. He got people to talk. And you know, and you’re scared.”
“Men like me don’t get scared,” Christopher said, and it maybe would have been believable if he hadn’t been standing on the dirty street of some low-end dive bar in Boston, begging his son’s boyfriend to take his side in one last, desperate shot in the dark.
Eddie felt stupid that he’d ever been scared of the guy. There was no there there, nothing worth truly fearing. It was seeing a shadow at the edge of your room and turning on the light to realize it’d just been a jacket the whole time. All of Christopher’s power was tied up in the image he presented: unflinching, unkind, unbeatable. But the emperor didn’t have any clothes. And Christopher Harrington didn’t have any power, not really, not when push came to shove. Whatever Murray had would topple him entirely.
“You know,” he said, knowing in his heart it would be the last thing he ever said to the man, “the thing that still really makes me sad here? You didn’t have to do all this, man. You didn’t have to lock your son in a contract that screwed him over, and torture him with music he didn’t want to play, and bind him to you forever. You could have avoided all of this, kept all your power and your money, if you’d just been his dad. If you just loved him. He’d have written you as many albums as you wanted. He wouldn’t have hopped ship to some other label. You’re his dad! And he's the most loyal person I have literally ever met, so that could have extended to you too. But you don’t know what loyalty even is. Despite all of your best efforts, you raised somebody good, somebody a million times better than you, and you keep thinking he’s going to be like you when he’s not.”
What he didn’t say, but he knew to be true, was that it probably wasn’t too late. Eddie would never forgive the man, and surely neither would Dustin or Robin or Hopper or anyone else. But Steve probably would, if he bothered to try. Maybe he’d never write another Swim Team album, once bitten, twice shy and all that, but he’d probably call on Christmas, if Christopher tried to repair the broken bridge between them, really tried. He didn’t say it because he didn’t want Steve to let Christopher back in, to keep that door open. And because he knew, deep down, that this guy had no idea how to have a relationship with anybody that wasn’t at the end of the day of a business transaction, which meant no matter what he’d never actually do it.
“Have a nice rest of your life,” Eddie finished, curt. “If I see you again outside of a court of law, I’m getting a restraining order.” And then he turned and left the elder Harrington alone, out in the street, with his expensive suits and his priceless watch and nothing else at all.
Inside the bar there was a shocking aura of chaos, at least for a group of people who had no way of knowing what Eddie had been through. Steve and Dustin were having a very heated discussion, which the others were obviously trying to interject into and failing at, fairly miserably. As Eddie approached he caught the tail end of it.
“—completely illegal Henderson!” Steve was doing that thing where he wasn’t quite yelling, but he was talking in a very tense tone of voice.
“It’s only illegal if we get caught,” Dustin said, like this was a perfectly reasonable line of thought. Then, noticing Eddie, he pointed at him. “Eddie told me that once!”
Oh. Shit. Yeah, wait, Eddie had told him that once, flagrantly breaking an open container law in Prospect Park on one of the very rare days someone managed to get him to do something like walk around a park.
Steve turned his terse look on Eddie. It fell off his face immediately, though, as he registered whatever expression Eddie himself was making. “Woah, are you okay? You look—”
“I’m fine,” he cut in, trying to put the conversation back on track. He could tell everyone about his encounter after. “What are we doing that’s illegal?”
Nancy sighed, rubbing at her eyebrow. “Murray called Steve to let him know that the story was ready to run in two days, which is obviously quite an accelerated timeline. But there was apparently a massive data leak from Loch Nora records that included tons of correspondence from Christopher regarding Steve and his contract, and Swim Team.”
“Leaked emails,” Steve said, glowering at Dustin. “Likely phishing attack, Murray said. Which just screams—”
“Henderson’s hacker girlfriend,” Eddie finished. He gaped at the kid, genuinely a bit impressed, even in the face of how obviously displeased Nancy and Steve were. And just Nancy and Steve, actually — Robin mostly seemed delighted but was trying to hide it, the Party and Barb were all openly grinning, and Joyce and Hopper were nowhere to be seen. “Hey, where are—”
“Final round of fact-checking,” Nancy answered, catching Eddie’s question before he could finish.
“We waited to accuse Dustin of crimes until after they left,” Lucas added, sagely.
“Alleged crimes,” Dustin said.
“I said accused, dumbass, that means the same thing,” Lucas snapped back.
“Can we get back to the matter at hand?” Nancy asked, waving her hands to regain attention. She turned and leveled Dustin with a real big sister look; Dustin, surprisingly, seemed to wilt a little under it. Across the table, Max caught Eddie’s eye, and mouthed big crush at him, and Eddie had to hide his laugh by pretending to cough. “Dustin, if this comes out that you did this, it could be actual jail time. Hacking attempts like this are no joke.”
“Well, it’d be jail time for Suzie-poo,” Max cut in, unhelpfully.
“We’re not going to get caught,” Dustin said, giving up the ghost entirely on the whole alleged thing. “Suzie’s the best hacker I know, she wouldn’t have done this if she couldn’t cover all her tracks.”
“It worked,” Eddie said, feeling a little bad that everyone was ganging up on the kid.
Nancy furrowed her brow at him. “I mean, it got Murray to push the story through, yes, but it’ll be some time before we can really see if public pressure impacts how Loch Nora treats Steve’s contract—”
“No,” Eddie broke in, shaking his head, needing them to know what he knew. “No, it worked. It—” He cut himself off to make eye contact with Steve. “Outside. When I was smoking. Your dad showed up.”
Steve’s face dropped, pure shock, which was quickly replaced with something sort of like rage. “What the fuck? Did he — shit, what did he do?”
“Nothing, not really,” Eddie reassured him. “Just another shot at offering me money. But I realized — he was doing it because he knows he’s screwed. He thinks the story is going to end him. Which means it will, I think. He’s like a fucking tulpa, dude, he’s only as powerful as you make him.”
“I don’t think that's quite what a tulpa does,” Will offered, before Lucas jabbed him in the ribs to shut him up.
“It worked,” Eddie reiterated, as strongly as he could, so certain in his convictions. “It’s not — it’s not over yet, and Dustin’s girlfriend might definitely go to jail—” he ignored Dustin’s hey!, shouted here — “but your dad is on his back foot, and he doesn’t know how to do that. He’s going to give up. He’s going to let you out of this contract. I just — I don’t know, I saw it in his eyes, man. It’s over.”
There was a moment where that sunk in, across the whole group, and Eddie was sure if he looked he could see it on each of their faces, but he wasn’t looking at any of them. He was only looking at Steve. It felt like for weeks he’d been only looking at Steve, really, and this was just the most distilled version of that feeling — like the two of them were alone in a room in the best possible way.
“It’s over?” Steve said, gentle, looking back at Eddie. His eyes were soft, and his mouth was twisted in a way — almost sad, but not quite. Maybe disbelief, or something like it.
“It’s over,” Eddie said back, and he meant I’m happy for you and he meant I’m not going anywhere, I promise and he meant I love you, but mostly, mostly, mostly, he just meant it’s over.
Their moment was interrupted, in classic fashion, by Robin Buckley slamming both her hands on the table abruptly, shaking all of the beers and knocking one to the floor, where the bottle shattered. She didn’t seem to care, eyes wide and wild. “It’s FUCKING OVER!” she cheered, half a howl, and the spell was broken, and suddenly everyone was laughing, and Nancy was blinking back tears in her eyes, and Barb had gone to pull Steve into a hug while Max and Lucas and Will and El spun in a circle and Dustin and Mike decided, naturally, to smash their own glasses on the floor like fucking hooligans.
Robin demanded shots, and the bartender let her buy them instead of kicking them out for all the chaos, and eventually, finally, Eddie found Steve again and Steve pulled him into a kiss and muttered, “it’s over,” again, into his mouth, and while that was true a part of Eddie felt like at this moment it felt more like something new and brilliant was starting instead, and when he kissed Steve back he was grinning.
Notes:
remember a few chapters ago when i said this would be "probably 34" chapters? i lied; next week is the last one. i was toying with an epilogue but didn't like how it stood on it's own, so i integrated it into the final chapter. which means eddie is right: in a way, it's over. one more week!!
christopher had to give one last shot here. i toyed with giving him a redemption arc, but i honestly think he doesn't deserve it given how straight up evil i have made him. sorry, chris.
eddie does make a lot of stupid reference jokes; i'm half tempted to line them all up at the end of this in my final notes but i think that would in and of itself be as long as a brand new chapter, lmao.
steve/barb friendship supremacy. a touchstone of all liars fics where she's alive, forever. it's probably slightly unclear in the narrative, but barb here is disabled from the car accident she got into when they were younger, mentioned earlier in this fic.
chapter title is from Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan.
see you all next for the finale. thanks for sticking with me!!
Chapter 33: Brooklyn (THE RETURN OF THE KING)
Notes:
"I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King.
Chapter Text
The article went live somewhere on the road back from Portland, towards Brooklyn. Robin read it aloud to them in the van, Eddie driving, Steve shotgun, her leaning up between the seats.
---
There’s a way you’re supposed to start these stories.
These interviews that portend to show you the deep side of a star you thought you knew, the other face, outside the face you see on screen — there’s a formula, really. A routine. To let you know what you’re getting into.
I’m supposed to start this with something like “Steve Harrington doesn’t seem nervous at all,” a sentence without any grander context that lets you know both who the subject is and that they are in a specific emotional state. That I’ve called out that emotional state implies that it’s not the state I thought they would be in, ergo, it’s not the state you thought they would be in. Steve Harrington should be nervous, you mutter to yourself, as I describe the food he’s ordered at some chic, hole-in-the-wall restaurant in one of America’s major cities. You’ll wonder about the order, what it means, what it says about him — a salad, perhaps he’s health conscious? A steak, to show he’s masculine? All the while, we’d be circling around this point, this main idea — Steve Harrington Is Not Nervous. He’s Eating a Salad and He’s Not Nervous, and you’d be waiting, with baited breath, for me to return back to it, to tell you just what he isn’t nervous about.
But the truth is, you can’t start Steve Harrington’s story that way. You can’t fall into the cliché with it, because it deserves better. Because the first, central point of any story about Steve Harrington shouldn’t be his present emotional state, or whatever he ordered for dinner. That’s not the misapprehension you have about him. The first sentence of any story about Steve Harrington should be this:
Steve Harrington is not who you think he is. His story is not what you think it is.
There is very little about him that is anywhere near what you think it will be. So you’re best to toss everything out the window right now, all your expectations for him, for this article, for the way things are meant to go. Because Steve has never done things the way he’s meant to, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to start for me.
—Excerpt from The Return of the King: The Rise, Fall, and Reappearance of a Former Teenaged Rock Star by Murray Bauman
---
The Brooklyn show was a total riot. In, like, the good way to have a riot.
It hadn’t been quite sold out before the article hit, but that changed quickly, and there was a massive crowd of people outside the venue obviously trying to sneak in, too. There were paparazzi there, as well, more of them than Eddie had ever seen, but this time, in the face of their camera flashes, Steve grabbed his hand, half-defiant, while the entirety of the Party (including El, hilariously) flipped them off.
A part of Eddie understood this wouldn’t last, the same way he’d understood that the first time he’d seen SOLD OUT on the tour. Eventually, the novelty of Steve and his contract woes would fade away; some new story would replace him, and unless Steve pressed to stay in the spotlight (which he wasn’t doing, no way), the cameras would stop showing up, would leave them alone. Steve would never be in Corroded Coffin again; Petey’s wrist would heal, and with their lineup back to normal he was sure their shows would go back to normal too. More fans, sure, gained along the tour, but not like this.
He expected to be a bit sad about it, but in truth he didn’t think he’d miss the brief glimpse of fame he’d gotten. At least fame like this, the grody kind where your private life is all exposed, where secrets are currency to be spent and sold to the highest bidder, where an ex might turn on you to a tabloid just to get a buck. He didn’t want to get his car chased by paparazzi, alright? He just wanted people to like this music, that was all.
So, he wouldn’t really miss it, no, but he also knew that if any magazine printed this photo of him and Steve holding hands while all the kids flipped the bird, he’d definitely get it framed.
The crowd was delighted to see them, knew more words to the songs than he thought they would, moshed respectfully, and when it was time for his now-regular Big Mid-Show Speech they all fell quiet with a hush close to reverence.
“So,” he said, casually, and this alone elicited a round of giggles from the crowd. Steve and Jeff were fiddling a little vamp tune on their instruments, and Gareth did a rimshot to underline the point. Eddie turned to shoot him a glare, before turning back. “Some of you probably read a pretty crazy article today in Rolling Stone.” Here, a round of elated cheers and applause, which quieted quickly so he could continue. “If you’ve been a fan of us for awhile, following us for the last couple weeks has probably been a bit weird. And if you’re a new fan — well, first off, welcome. It’s lovely to have you. I don’t gatekeep or anything, because I’m not a seventeen-year-old dickhead who’s convinced I’m the first person who’s ever heard of Metallica before. Well, not anymore at least. Second of all, I’m sure you’re here because of all that craziness. And while that craziness is a bit unique, this craziness—” and here he gestured to indicate, well, the nature of their live shows in general, he supposed — “is par for the course. I am very grateful for my dear, sweet Stevie for filling in for my good friend Pete for a bit.” Steve bowed his head, a little graceful acknowledgement. “But the next time you see us, Pete will be back, and Steve will be — well, somewhere looking very, very, sexy I’m sure.”
Steve rolled his eyes, but Eddie caught his blush in the stage lights, and felt only emboldened by it.
“I just wanna say, for as crazy as this has been, I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.” He paused, considering. “Well, no, actually I’d — there were a few moments, at the start, where I was being a dickhead that I’d probably do differently. But, you know, overall.”
“You gonna hurry this up, Eds?” Steve cut in, to more scattered laughter.
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there!” Eddie said back, laughing himself. “My point is that I have always thought of Corroded Coffin as a live band, which means that everything I do, everything I write, is ultimately best played the moment I get out on this stage, back in front of you incredibly lovely people. Your support means everything, and seeing you here is everything. You know, Jim Hopper, the head of my label, he was playing this song the other day on the road to Boston. The Hold Steady, which is middle-aged dad music, but that’s fine, because he’s someone’s middle aged dad.”
“He’s going to fucking kill you,” Jeff deadpanned.
“I’ll die happy,” Eddie allowed. “Anyway, they have this song, fuck if I know what it’s called, but it’s got this part I really liked, and I’m gonna say it for you fine people tonight, because I think it sort of encapsulates my point, and this whole tour, really.” He turned to Steve, grinning. “Stevie, you know it’s good to see you back in a bar band, baby.”
Steve smiled, a thousand glinting suns and all of that poetic bullshit, and Eddie forced himself to look away to face the fans, again.
“And to you lovely, lovely people, well — it’s great to see you’re still in the bars. Boys, let’s roll, this next one’s called Wasted!”
As the crowd cheered, the band moved into the next song, and Eddie let himself get carried on the elation of doing this, the thing he loved most in the world, with the people he loved most in the world.
---
Carol Perkins did not have a lot of time to speak to me — she’s playing in a band on a cruise ship, these days, and was due to set sail imminently. Her and Tommy Hagan, once romantically linked, speak on occasion as friends, but no longer maintain much contact. She told me she hasn’t spoken to Steve Harrington in ten years. “I was a kid, and I didn’t know what to do at the time, so I said nothing,” she said. “But Steve’s dad was an asshole. And he held our whole lives in his hands. Steve’s contract was the worst, by far, because our parents at least looked at ours, but ours weren’t better. Our parents weren’t lawyers, didn’t know to hire lawyers, you know? And I always held out hope that they’d work it out, somehow, Steve and his dad. That we could get back together and make something happen. But I should have said something, back then. Or I should have called Steve, afterwards. I don’t know.” She paused for a long time, after this. “I wish I’d been braver, back then. Because it was really wonderful, that first album. Working with Tommy and Steve. And I think a part of me never said anything because I wanted it back. But I don’t want it back, anymore. I just want to be free. And I want Steve to be free. And to be happy. And to not have this hanging over him anymore. So. Yeah. That’s my statement, I guess.”
Hagan, in the meantime, has always held out hope of a Swim Team reunion, and had been in contact with Christopher Harrington about the potential of a reunion as recently as earlier this year. He spoke to me at length over coffee in a Los Angeles suburb, equal parts nostalgic and remorseful. “I had, like, no idea about the gay shit,” he assured me, at one point. Then, wincing, he clarified, “oh, my girlfriend is gonna give me such shit for my phrasing on that, god. I just mean — I didn’t know, about Steve. His dad always made it seem like it was a drug thing, or just laziness or selfishness. So I started to resent him a lot, I guess. Blame him for the ways our career stalled out. But I get it now, that it was a tactic, or whatever.” When I told him that Carol spoke about her regrets, he seemed pensive. “I think,” he said, finally, “my biggest regret is that we didn’t just. . . I don’t know. Find a way to do it anyway. I’m not saying another Swim Team album, really, I’m saying. . . I’m saying that I think there’s a version of the story where Carol and I know everything, and we figure out a way to make it happen, a way to get out of it, and everyone ends up happily ever after.” He paused, after this, for another beat. “Maybe that’s naïve,” he offered, eventually.
“[Christopher Harrington] turned us against each other,” Perkins said. “Like we were dolls, or something, pieces he could play with. He knew what we were insecure about, and vulnerable about, and he held it against us and used it against us. He told us Steve was flighty and irresponsible and didn’t respect us. A diva. He told me Tommy was cheating. I don’t know what he told them about me, but I figure it’s not good.”
“He used to say that Carol was going to try and go solo,” Hagan confirmed. “That she didn’t need me, that she’d leave me for someone bigger and better. And then after the band was done, every time I’d ask the label about going back out into music on my own and getting let out of my contract he’d come back and tell me that he’d nearly convinced Steve to do the second album. Jesus, you’re telling me he made that up?”
Steve Harrington, for his part, read these quotes from his former friends with a twisted expression on his face that I can only call remorse. “I never even tried to call them,” he told me. “I always thought they hated me. It never even occurred to me that part of it was my dad turning them against me.”
A representative for Christopher Harrington issued the following statement: “While working for Swim Team, Steve Harrington, Carol Perkins, and Tommy Hagan were treated with the utmost professionalism and respect. That said, they were teenagers, and filled with fraught emotions at the time. While I do not discount their recollection of events, I can assure you wholeheartedly that none of these rumors came from me, or any other professional working with them, and that at all times we worked to maintain a healthy, happy environment for them.”
“Bullshit,” Perkins said via email, when informed of the statement.
Hagan merely laughed for an extended period of time, before offering, “sure, healthy environment. That’s a word for it.”
The stories of the former members of Swim Team seem to be confirmed by a cache of emails, leaked to me via an anonymous source. In the emails, many of which we at Rolling Stone are posting, un-redacted, in a separate piece, Harrington and other Loch Nora executives and higher-ups appear to foster the exact environment Steve Harrington, Carol Perkins, and Tommy Hagan described to me. In multiple emails, Christopher Harrington describes the three members of Swim Team by an extensive list of varying insults, derogatory terms, and, on occasion, outright slurs. In multiple emails, Christopher Harrington refers to his son’s sexuality as “a problem,” and describes extensive efforts to pay off various exes from his personal funds. (“Understand this is not a company manner,” one email reads, at which point a lawyer at Loch Nora advises he delete the email chain.)
When asked about the leaked emails, a Loch Nora representative said the following: “the leak of internal company communication is a massive security breach and in violation of several state and federal laws. We are planning to pursue and prosecute the hacker to the best of our abilities.”
They declined on multiple occasions, including just prior to publication of this story, to comment on the content of the emails.
A spokesperson for Christopher Harrington, clarifying that this statement was personal and not made on behalf of Loch Nora Records, said “the views reflected in these emails are not the personal views of Christopher Harrington. He has no recollection of composing, sending, or reading any of the emails leaked. He has always supported and loved his only son, Steve, and will continue to do so regardless of the nature of their professional relationship.”
I call Steve about an hour after getting that statement. He tells me he’s on the way up to Portland, Maine, stopped for gas, and I can hear the cars rushing past on the highway. We make small talk for longer than necessary, and I realize I’m stalling. I don’t want to tell him about his father’s statement. Even though I can’t see him, even though we’re in different states, I feel I know him well enough now that I can picture the crestfallen look his face will take on, when he hears, followed by the somewhat bitter twist of his mouth, nearly a smile, like everything could almost be funny, if you gave it enough time to stop being tragic.
In the end, though, I have to tell him about the statements, to give him a chance to respond.
When I’m done talking, Steve is quiet for a long time. Finally, when he speaks, he surprises me. “You know — once, when I was a kid, I got really sick. Pneumonia or something, I dunno. My nanny, she took me to the doctor, and he gave me this medicine, and it was just disgusting. So nasty, I refused to drink it. So my nanny, she’d hide it in milkshakes and root beer floats, stuff like that, so I’d take it. Well, when my dad came back, he was so pissed. He fired her, I think, but mostly what I remember is — he turned to her, and he snapped, he’s going to have to learn to take his medicine sometime.” Steve pauses, again, and I let there be silence for a moment, curious as to where this going. “He says he’s always loved and supported me. I don’t know. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s the only way he knows how to love — making me take bitter medicine. Paying off my exes so no one would out me. I mean. Maybe that is love. In it’s own way. What do you think?”
I tell him the truth — that I have no idea.
“Yeah,” Steve says, with a soft huff that’s almost laughter. “Yeah, me either.”
—Excerpt from The Return of the King: The Rise, Fall, and Reappearance of a Former Teenaged Rock Star by Murray Bauman
---
What will happen later is this:
Loch Nora will release a series of statements, criticizing the leak of proprietary internal information, claiming inaccuracies in the story, standing by Christopher Harrington and all of his business decisions. Each statement will be met with increasing cries on social media to #FreeSteve, which Loch Nora will do, quicker than anyone thought. “As a gesture of goodwill,” the corporate statement will read, the one that announces that Steve’s contract is null and void, that he no longer owes Loch Nora Records any future work, and that he will be paid back royalties for all of his work as Swim Team. After outcry, a smaller statement will announce that Carol Perkins and Tommy Hagan, too, have been released of their contracts and paid in full. Christopher Harrington will not resign, but the tarnish will never truly fade, and for the next several years Loch Nora will post declining revenue as artists quietly leave.
He will not call Steve again.
Every year on Steve’s birthday, a sizable anonymous donation will be made to the Trevor Project in his name. At first, Eddie will assume this is a cynical shot at goodwill from Christopher, but Steve will correct him, quiet, tears in his eyes, left unshed. “My mother.” She does not call either, but Eddie supposes at least it’s more than nothing.
Carol will go on to release a series of jazz albums, to critical acclaim. Tommy will get married to his girlfriend, and invite Steve, Eddie, and Carol. A photo of the “Swim Team reunion” will get leaked to TMZ by a party guest.
The old band will remain in touch, albeit sporadically, for a long time after.
With his royalty money, Steve will lease a spot in New York for his music school. During the school year he will teach individual classes; during the summer he’ll host a day camp. It’ll be well-reviewed, and graduates will have a direct line to Upside Down Records for the chance to record an EP, if they want. The school will also offer a class on navigating contracts, taught by a non-Upside Down affiliated lawyer, and a class on dealing with the economics of a life in the music industry.
Steve will also continue to write. His work will be picked up by several artists, including Lorde, Carly Rae Jepsen, Olivia Rodrigo, and, most notably, Adele. He’ll win his first Grammy with her.
He will not attend the show. On stage, Adele will say, “my greatest thanks to Steve Harrington, an absolute creative light in the darkness of the world,” and next to him, on the couch, in their sweatpants, Eddie will jab his toes into Steve’s thigh and say, “she’s got that right.” He’ll then make a joke about Steve cheating on him with Adele, and Steve tell him to shut him up, and then decide to just make him shut up, and they’ll get distracted and miss the moment, later in the night, when Steve wins his second Grammy with Adele as well.
Corroded Coffin will continue to write. Their next album, Nailbat, will feature a song Steve and Eddie write together. Eddie will want to call it Pretty Boy Blues and get booed out of a room by every other member of his band, the Party, and his own boyfriend. They’ll settle on Wrong at the Start. It’s a song about falling in love with someone you thought you hated. It’s not very subtle.
It will become their highest grossing single to date, and their first one to ever chart on the metal charts.
And then there’s more, after that; there’s an apartment, and then another apartment, and a dog. There’s more Grammy’s (although why spoil the surprise by letting you know if they are Steve’s or Eddie’s or, hell, the Party's?). There’s Christmases with Joyce and Hopper, Wayne invited to join the table; there are long weekends in Bumfuck, Nowhere PA where Eddie will have to nod gamely and pretend he knows who the fuck Jalen Hurts is. There are plenty of live shows by The Party, a few album releases, several glowing reviews, and a shockingly viral TikTok sound that catapults them to a weird semi-fame that they navigate gamely, with Steve’s help.
There are, mostly, a thousand aimless nights in bars with The Party, with Robin, with Jeff and Gareth and Petey, with Steve, laughing about nothing and telling the same stories over again, because that’s what a life is, really. It’s just a thousand nights with the people you love, all strung together until you can barely tell them apart, but you know all they all matter. You know it when they’re happening, and you know it after, and you treasure all of them, even the routine ones, even the slightly boring ones, because it’s gift to have them at all.
And yes, even then, there’s more. Down the road, there’s a rainy day in Seattle where Eddie is playing his last show at the end of his largest tour yet, and Steve will surprise him by showing up in person, and Eddie, so floored with love, will spring a proposal that he had planned to do later on him, down on a knee on the dingy carpet of some mid-level hotel, and Steve will laugh and say yes and it will be perfect, even though it didn’t go at all to plan, which is also something Eddie will say is true about their relationship, in his vows, which everyone will laugh at. There will be a thing very, very close to a happily ever after, if that’s the type of thing people get to have in real life. Anyway, it will be as close as anyone gets to have in real life.
(Oh, and, of course: Suzie will not go to jail. She really is the best hacker in the world.)
But that’s all later. We’re still in the now: they haven’t even said I love you yet. So, no need to get too far ahead of ourselves, really.
---
Eventually, I get the nerve to ask Harrington the question I’ve been meaning to ask since we’ve met. It felt premature, before this, but it’s a worthwhile question; one I want to know and one I assume the readers, too, will want to know. “If you do manage to get out of the contract, what will you do next?”
I have an answer I expect. I expect him to say that he’ll record more music, free from the burdens of Swim Team and the corporate label responsibilities he was attached to, free from the influence of his father. I expect him to say the record is essentially ready. I expect him to tell me it’s indie rock, or else it’s experimental folk, or else it’s annoying, Soundcloud white boy hip hop, or else it’s country. Something entirely different from Swim Team, the type of record he simply would never have been able to make before.
Harrington, as always, subverts my expectations.
“I don’t know,” he says, simply. He’s unashamed about not knowing, plain-faced with it. He doesn’t know in the way that many twenty-six year olds don’t know. But it’s also different. For many, that type of not knowing would be fearful — the not-knowing of someone fresh out of a masters program facing a global recession. The not-knowing of someone laid off from a job as profits dwindled and corporate pressures mounted. That type of not-knowing is anxiousness, nervousness. Fear of the future.
When Harrington says I don’t know, he sounds almost relieved about it. For Steve Harrington, born into the music industry, made famous at sixteen half against his will, there is joy in a future that he cannot predict. There is hope in a world where the answer is that he doesn’t know what he’ll do next.
“I’ve been thinking about teaching,” he continues, even though I don’t press. “And writing, maybe.” He shrugs, then, that loose, easy way he does sometimes. “Mostly, though? Mostly I think I’m going to try really, really hard to just be happy. Whatever that means for me.”
Well. Who can fault him for that?
—Excerpt from The Return of the King: The Rise, Fall, and Reappearance of a Former Teenaged Rock Star by Murray Bauman
---
Anyway, back to now:
After the show, the party rolled on, all of them crammed into a bar that paparazzi followed them to. Eddie managed to get Steve all the way in the back, as far from the windows as possible, and then insisted someone else buy him drinks all night. Partly to avoid the glare of the cameras, yes, but also partly because he deserved it.
Hop eventually called them all to order for a toast. “To one hell of a tour,” was all he said, with a wink, and they all exploded into cheers.
The night went long, and late, and for the first time in ages as it started to wind down Eddie felt a bit of anxiety. For the entirety of their relationship Steve and Eddie had been, essentially, sharing a bed. But here they were, back in the city where they both lived in separate apartments. He didn’t really want to go home alone, to suffer through the post-tour crash alone. But maybe Steve needed some time solo? To digest? To get back to reality? Did he invite Steve over? What if Steve said no? Or, what if Steve said no in a way that implied he wanted to go back to his own place but didn’t make it clear if that invitation included Eddie, and then Eddie went home alone and hurt Steve’s feelings? Wait, also, did he take the trash out before he left for tour? God, was his apartment habitable? Had the mice come back?
Eddie was saved from his spiral by the true savior of his life, the hero of the moment: Robin Buckley. She dropped herself into the seat across from the two of them and jerked a thumb over her shoulder where a pretty redhead girl waved shyly.
“So,” she said, “Vickie invited me back to her place, so I will be graciously out of the apartment tonight and you two can be all disgusting and gross on any surface that I did not jointly pay for, Harrington. And then tomorrow I’m going to buy earplugs. A lot of earplugs.”
Steve scowled at her, obviously at least half to cover his own blush. “You already own earplugs, we just went on tour, you’d go deaf otherwise.”
“Whatever,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him. “I also have an Uber for you two under my name a few blocks away, and I bribed the bartender to let us use their garbage exit so you can avoid the camera shitshow outside.” She grinned. “I’m your favorite person in the world, say it.”
Steve sighed, like this was a massive chore. “You’re my favorite person in the world.”
“You really thought of everything,” Eddie said, genuinely impressed.
“It’s my job,” she said, with a wink. “You two have fun tonight.” And then she reached over and grabbed them both into an awkward, over-the-table hug, and squealed, “when you move in with us rent is going to be so much less!” and then darted away before they could comment on that.
Steve’s face was bright red now. “Sorry, she, uh,” he stuttered, and then sighed and gave up. “Nevermind! You know her. She’s just. . . like that. You don’t have to move in.”
“Your place is probably nicer than mine,” Eddie said, like an idiot, but Steve just laughed like it was a joke. It sort of wasn’t. Eddie was suddenly really considering how fun it would be live with Steve and Robin. Like a permanent sleepover with your best friends. Where you also got to have sex! Although Robin would probably really get on them about the sex, actually.
“You don’t have to come over,” Steve said, softly, after a pause. “But, uh, I’d. . . I’d like you to. If you want.”
“I want,” Eddie said, quickly, and Steve laughed again, softer this time. For a moment they just sat there, quiet in the din of the bar, Max chanting shots somewhere in the background as Lucas groaned miserably.
Eddie looked at Steve, in the dim lighting, oddly romantic for a place with $4 Miller High Lifes, and felt so, so filled with affection that he just couldn’t not say it, anymore.
“I love you.”
It was as good a moment as any, Eddie figured. A fitting end to their tour. The thing was, it had been so scary to say it until he said it, and now that it was out there it was just happiness. He didn’t feel scared at all that Steve would reject him, or say it was too early, or any of that shit. It was Steve. He loved him because Steve wasn’t like that.
Indeed, Steve’s face didn’t show fear, or disgust, or panic. Instead, he grinned, wide and boyish and so, so joyful, cracked with it. “Really?” he said, softly.
“Yeah,” Eddie confirmed. “Yeah, of course.”
Steve leaned forward and kissed him, then, tender and sweet and so much. “I love you too, you know,” he said, when he pulled away. And Eddie hadn’t known, but he also had, maybe, because Steve put the people he loved first before all, showered them with that love, and Eddie had been at the end of that for weeks at this point. So, yes, of course. Of course Steve loved him. Of course.
(And maybe, here, Eddie could see it too: all those things that happen later, laid out in front of him like a perfect, glorious buffet that he’d get to eat at for the rest of his life.)
He was half tempted to ask so, now what? when they pulled apart, but he actually knew the answer to that, this time, reflected in Steve’s eyes.
“Should we go home?” Steve asked.
Eddie cast his eye across the bar, at their friends still gathered. Robin by the front door making out with Vicki; Joyce and Hopper curled together in a corner booth, in their own world; Max and Mike egging Dustin and Lucas to chug beers, while El and Will sipped from ridiculous, fifteen dollar cocktails that were more juice than not. He loved them all so, so much, and a part of him wanted to stay with them, in this moment, still technically on tour, forever.
But then he looked back at Steve, and he knew that there would be many nights like this, and that what he really wanted was to take advantage of an empty apartment and a night of gently spoken confessions, and get him alone now.
“Let’s go home, Harrington,” he said, and he and Steve slipped out of the back of the bar, into the night, giddy with joy and unseen by the cameras parked out front.
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