Chapter Text
November, 1986
Starting in 1983, November became Steve’s least favorite month of the year.
The weather’s gross and gray, with autumn’s gentle winds blustered aside by winter tumbling in. The sky became a gray mass of heavy, foreboding clouds, blocking any feeble rays of sunlight in their mulish overcast. The worst of Steve’s nightmares reared their ugly, flower-faced heads, brought upon by sporadic power outages and the creeping chills of the night filling every shadowy corner.
But, worst of all, the unfortunate residents of Hawkins began renting Christmas movies.
“It’s not even a week past Halloween,” Steve seethes, angrily rewinding A Charlie Brown Christmas for the fifth time, “and Carol, across the street—you remember Carol, right, Robin? Condescending Casserole Carol?”
“Yes.” Robin sighs back tiredly from the break room.
“She’s got a tree already .” Steve chucks the VHS into a cart at random. “Can you believe that? Like, where the fuck did she get a Christmas tree?”
Robin comes out of the back room with the same overworked, exasperated look she gets when some pushy, beehive-haired old bat in her seventies complains about the nudity in the adult section. Or the carpet. Or the candy selection. “People decorate for Christmas in July, Steve.” She says, slinging her bag over one shoulder and green vest over another. “Just because you’re too much of a Grinch to understand the meaning of holiday cheer doesn’t mean the rest of us are too.”
Steve gapes, affronted, as Robin heads towards the door with a two-finger salute and a snarky grin, throwing a “Merry Christmas!” over her shoulder.
“It’s November!” Steve yells as she swings out the door, leaving Steve behind for the closing shift. “Grinch my ass.” He grumbles to himself, grumpily wheeling the cart around with a teeth-grinding screech. Unfortunately for him, the can of WD-40 in the back room is, just like every time Steve remembers he needs to use it, still empty.
He watches her zoom out of the parking lot on her bike, sighs, and turns back to shelving tapes.
Wednesday closing shifts are the worst, to the point where Steve and Robin alternate buying each other sympathy milkshakes (or hot chocolates, depending on the weather) whenever one of them gets stuck with the stupid shift. It’s too quiet to warrant more than one employee, so it’s usually either Steve or Robin, unless some other poor schmuck gets saddled with it. Family Video turns into a stagnant dead zone, too early for weekend renting and too late for returns, and with how early the sun’s started to set, the empty aisles grow more and more desolate the longer the evening goes.
The point is, it’s long and boring and Steve’s expecting marshmallows with his hot chocolate tomorrow. Maybe even whipped cream and chocolate syrup, since Robin took off twenty minutes early for her date with Nancy.
It’s not that Steve’s not happy for his best friend. He’s over the moon, honestly; ecstatic that Robin’s got someone like Nancy in her corner, someone other than Steve. Because Robin didn’t just score a girl friend after the near-apocalypse, she got a girlfriend. Someone who understands her nearly as well as Steve does, someone who also flinches when the lights flicker and keeps a lighter on the bedside table. Someone who knows what to say, what to do, when the nightmares come tearing through, bloody and relentless. Someone to just talk to, to be normal with, when normalcy feels uncomfortably alien.
After Starcourt, Steve had Robin and Robin had him, and that was about it, until Spring of 1986 rolled around. The cliche rings true; Robin’s his other half, his best friend, long-lost twin, the person he’s never letting go of now that he’s got her. And he loves Robin, loves her with everything he's got, but she needs more than just Steve at the end of the day. So he’s Robin and Nancy’s number one cheerleader, even if it means he’s stuck in a musty, dusty video rental store at six p.m. on a Wednesday night.
The lingering gloom follows him as the shift passes in relative silence and solitude. Steve’s personal mixtape plays from the stereo, a nice mix with Duran Duran and Billy Ocean, leavening the steadily-saddening atmosphere brought upon by gusty Autumn winds and a bruised-up sky. A few people trickle in and out, one of whom being Steve’s neighbor from down the street (Esther, not Carol, thank God) who ropes him into a torturously long conversation about her cats, Muffin and Pip, and whether or not Steve could feed them the following weekend for her.
(Steve agrees. He actually loves Muffin and Pip, even if the faint smell of catnip and litter follows him home every time.)
By the time the clock’s minute hand creeps past eight-thirty, Steve’s spinning idly on the front desk stool, half out of his mind with boredom and genuinely considering bringing a book the next time his Wednesday shift comes around. Maybe he should ask Eddie for a recommendation. Dustin’s always going on and on about the guy’s literary inspirations in his music and campaigns; he’s gotta know something.
As if on cue, a pair of headlights and a guttural rumble swings into the parking lot, screeching to a haphazard halt beside the Bimmer with an ominous lurch. Steve doesn’t have to guess who it is, based on the music blasting loud enough to be heard in the store and the shape of the headlights.
Eddie swings inside the store, and Steve’s boredom dissipates.
“Steve!” He crows, a broad grin spreads across his face as he waves two movies in the air, rings glinting and hair flouncing as he bounces over to the desk. He’s like a metal spring come to life, in Steve’s opinion, loose-limbed and wiggly.
“Those are late.” Steve says as Eddie slams the tapes on the desk and slides them across, one hand planted on each.
Eddie raises an eyebrow, shifting to rest on his elbows. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’ve never once turned something in on time.” Steve replies, taking the movies and checking them back in the system. “Also, it’s Wednesday.”
Eddie leans forwards. “Yeah, but I get the friend and family discount, right?”
“Eddie, that discount doesn’t exist.”
“Sure it does. Does our relationship mean nothing to you, Steve?”
Steve sighs and waives the late fee notice with resignation and no sign of a guilty conscience. Keith can’t fire him; Steve’s one of his only reliable employees, and it’s not like he’ll find out about it anyway.
“Toldya,” Eddie says cheekily.
Steve huffs, slumping onto the spinny stool again and mirroring Eddie’s position against the counter. “What else are you here for?”
“Your kind-hearted customer service.”
“Ha, ha.”
Eddie shrugs, casting his eyes over Steve’s shoulder and up to the ceiling, like he’s interested in the water stains up there. Robin says one of them looks like Mel Brooks, but Steve disagrees. He thinks it’s more Freddy Krueger. “Wayne’s out tonight, so. Figured I might snag some stuff to keep my dear, lonely soul company.”
“What about, uh, the D&D thing?” Steve asks. “The new campaign, or whatever? Dustin won’t shut up about it.”
Eddie’s smile goes tight. His eyes dart to Steve’s face and away again. “Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s coming. But even the best of us Dungeon Masters need to melt our brains with shitty television every once in a while.”
He’s deflecting, but Steve doesn’t press. “Xanadu’s in aisle six.” He says instead, and Eddie snorts.
“Great. Thanks, Steve.” He says, pushing off the counter and meandering over to Comedy, the opposite direction of Steve’s suggestion.
In the eight months following Vecna’s near victory in tearing apart the entirety of Hawkins, Eddie made himself scarce, both in the town itself and in their newfound friend group. Steve could probably count the amount of times Eddie’s shown up to Party barbecues, movie nights, sleepovers, or other Upside Down survivor get-togethers and stayed longer than an hour. He still hosts D&D every week or so, usually at Steve’s since he’s the one with a fourteen-seater dining room, and he’ll drive Dustin and the rest of the kids around just as much as Steve does, but their conversations rarely stray from common ground to breach into personal territories. He comes to Family Video just to bug Steve and Robin, but won’t stay long enough for anything more than a few snarky jabs, and he and Steve sometimes hang around Skull Rock for a smoke and a light chat, but once the smoke clears away, Eddie does too.
He’s there, orbiting around just enough to say he was, and then he’s gone, still adrift outside the circle Steve wants to pull him into.
He watches as Eddie peruses the aisles, throwing out movie suggestions at random just so Eddie will shoot him a scrunchy look, or better yet, a snide comment on Steve’s preferred film genre. He walks with a limp, leaning more on his right side. The skin on his throat is still shiny and pink, pulling his already-lopsided grin even more off center. His chest and stomach bear the marks of tiny teeth, claws, and hasty, half-assed stitches. He’s wearing long sleeves to combat the cold, covering the scars splotching his triceps and backs of both forearms, and Steve knows, from mornings of wrapping bandages and the painful hiss of antiseptic, that his hands still hold a tremor from the damage.
He’s still Eddie, Dungeon Master and dramatics connoisseur, still decorated in leather and chains and a sharkbite smile, but there’s something missing to him. Like something that made him tick got lost and left behind, rusted in the fusebox.
When he winds his way back to the counter again, Labyrinth in one hand and Jaws in the other, Steve sees the shadows under his eyes.
His fingertips tap a rhythm against the counter while Steve rings up the movies. It’s quiet, except for the music, which Eddie shockingly doesn’t comment on. Considering it’s the Eurythmics, it’s a feat of its own.
“Hey, you wanna do something tomorrow tonight? After my shift?” Steve asks casually, sliding the movies across the counter. He’s got a half-formed plan in his head, because he’s bored as all hell and he knows what Eddie’s doing to himself, with the drifting and the isolation. Like if no one notices him, he won’t notice himself, and maybe everything’ll be okay again. Like everything will somehow go back to normal.
Also, it’s November. Steve hates being alone in November.
Eddie, halfway through grabbing the movies, blinks. “What?”
Steve leans forward on his elbows. “Tomorrow. Are you busy? I’m off at four.”
Eddie’s expression is something in between incredulity and suspicion. The cheery persona he put on in his entrance is gone, a performance mask fallen away. “Yeah, I got that. Why?”
Steve shrugs. “I don’t have plans yet.”
Eddie folds his arms defensively. “And you’re just assuming I don’t either?”
“Do you?” Steve counters.
Eddie’s eyes flicker away and back again, and he lets out a little huff. “You got me there, Stevie.” He says, almost begrudging.
“Alright, cool. Let’s hang out.”
“Why?”
It might be Steve’s imagination, but Eddie’s guarded look seems to loosen. He shrugs. “It’s been a while since I actually got to relax for once, you know? Wouldn’t mind some company.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows, dubious. “And you want that precious company to be me, out of anyone else?”
Steve props his cheek on his fist. “Yeah.”
Eddie looks at him, like Steve’s lost part of his mind. Steve can’t really blame him, honestly. “Sure. Fine, fuck it, let’s hang out. What d’you wanna do?”
Steve swivels the stool side to side, thumping the legs with his heels. “Shoot the shit. Chill, watch a movie, go for a drive.” He says, trying not to seem overeager or pushy, or otherwise so bored out of his mind for company that Eddie pulls away again. “We can go for a hike, if you want. Skinny dip in a lake, really get one with nature—”
“Fuck off,” Eddie says, but he snickers. He rubs the back of his neck, swaying side to side where he stands. He’s always in motion, one way or another. “Uh, movies work. For me.”
“Alright,” Steve says with an easy smile. “Five o’clock sound okay?”
The awkwardness fades and Eddie gives him a wry smile, hands dropping to his sides. “It’s not like I’ve got anything going on, as you so graciously pointed out. What about Buckley? Don’t you two have to be in a two-mile radius of each other at all times or you’ll die of separation anxiety, or something?”
Steve frowns. “We aren’t that bad.”
Eddie’s expression flattens, saying otherwise.
Steve sighs. “She’s on a date tonight and tomorrow, since Nancy’s home for a bit. Reading break, or something? I don’t know, I didn’t ask too many questions.”
“Reading break, huh.” Eddie muses. “I think it’s a cover for something else.”
Steve wrinkles his nose, and Eddie shoots him a knowing grin. “Five works for me,” he says, scooping up his movies and walking backwards towards the door, “you know where I live.”
“Hey, Eddie?” Steve calls, as Eddie’s about to push out the door, and Eddie turns. “Just, uh. I’m here, if you need anything. Got my walkie on me, always.” He wiggles the walkie for emphasis.
Eddie pauses with one hand on the door. He looks like he’s on the verge of saying something, but he just bites a smile instead. “Right. See you tomorrow, Steve.”
And then he’s gone, clanging out the door and vanishing into the dark, cloudy evening.
Steve watches the van’s headlights swing out of the parking lot, something odd unfurling in his chest.
It’s still there forty-five minutes later, weird and weighted, as he finally locks the doors to Family Video and starts the cold drive home.
Last June, three weeks after the Class of 1986 Graduation Ceremony, eight weeks after the dust finally settled, and three and a half years after the world of Hawkins first flipped on its head, Steve was presented with a TRC-214 walkie-talkie and told “No more telephones.”
With the way Dustin was looking at him, tired and burdened in the ways no fifteen-year-old should ever be, Steve couldn’t do anything more than agree.
It was a good rule, no more telephones. Or, reduced usage of phone lines in favor of hand-held, portable radio-wave based communication, as Dustin explained.
Everyone “in the know” got their own walkie, gifted by the original Party of Will, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, after a backyard barbecue held more for the sake of feeling normal than for the sake of celebration. In the Byers’ new living room, the four boys handed the wrapped presents over to Steve, Nancy, Robin and Eddie with an almost ceremonial air.
“House phones are too unreliable.” Will explained, as they opened their gifts. “This way, it’s easier to communicate with everyone. We’ve used them for years,” he said, gesturing to Mike, Lucas, and Dustin, “and it’s really saved us a lot of trouble. We thought everyone should have one.”
“It’s kinda what kept us together, as the Party.” Lucas added with a sheepish laugh. “Since no matter where you are, pretty much, everyone can be found.”
Beside Steve’s spot on the couch, Eddie turned his walkie over, somewhat shakily, in his hands. White bandages still covered his arms, gauze padding thick against the back of his forearms and biceps. He sat stiffly upright from the tight wrappings holding his torso together, on the edge of the couch even though he couldn’t bolt for the front door if he tried. Steve knew; he was the one to dress and undress Eddie’s wounds morning and night. At least, when Wayne wasn’t able to.
“So this is, like, a rite of passage or something?” He asked, a rasp still slurring the tail end of his words.
Mike shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Steve set his new walkie on the table, stood up, and pulled all four boys into a hug, blinking back the heat behind his eyes.
He kept his walkie on the bedside table at night, in the center console when he was driving, and clipped to his belt when he’s not. It sat behind the counter at Family Video, Robin’s right beside his. She decorated hers in stickers and scribbles, half of them smudged to hell from where her palms pressed. Steve’s was plain, except for a little Sharpie bat done by Eddie.
They didn’t use their walkies that often, in comparison to the kids. Steve and Robin were usually in orbiting proximity to one another, Eddie rarely used his, and with Nancy up in Boston, there really wasn’t much of a point.
Tonight, though, Steve’s half-asleep in bed when there’s a staticky crackle from the bedside table.
“—eve?”
Steve blinks, jerking out of his daze and rolling over, frowning. The kids don’t really chat this time of night; it’s far too late for them, and they’ve got their own little radio-system set up anyway. Robin’s with Nancy, so she wouldn’t need to radio Steve, and the voice doesn’t sound like her, either.
“Steve, you there?”
It’s Eddie.
“If you’re up, uh, can you—can you copy?”
Eddie’s voice is tinny and tense, as though he’s changing his mind halfway through each word. “Jesus, this is dumb. You know what, sorry, man, if you hear this.”
Steve snatches up the walkie. “Eddie?”
There’s a fumble and a swear. “Shit—Steve, uh, hey.”
Steve lays back on his side. “Hey.”
“Hi. Sorry.”
Steve frowns. It’s not like Eddie to radio in on his walkie, considering how little he actually talks to them all with it. “You okay?”
A shaky laugh crackles through. “Nope. I’m fine, sorry.”
“Dude, you just said two completely opposite things.” Steve says, uneasy with the stress Eddie’s trying to tamp down in his tone. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, well, none of this shit makes sense, so, gin rummy, Harrington.”
Steve stares at the walkie, like Eddie can see his concerned confusion through the radio waves. “Go Fish?”
Eddie laughs, a short burst of breathy, anxious giggles. He’s trying to sound calm, but the tremor in his voice and the cinched tone betrays him. “You’re funny, I’ll give you that.”
“Seriously, man, you okay?” Steve asks, starting to get genuinely worried. It’s one thing for Eddie to use his walkie in the middle of the night, but it’s another for him to sound so terrified at the same time.
“No,” he says, followed by a sniff, “just can’t fucking sleep. And Wayne’s out tonight, so. Needed—needed to hear a living voice, you know? Instead of just my own. And you said, y’know. Call whenever.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, “I uh, I get that. It gets pretty noiseless here at night, sometimes, especially in winter. Then the silence gets too loud.”
Eddie snorts. “Steve,” he says, “you just said two completely opposite things. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Oh, fuck you.” Steve jabs back, but he’s smiling, a bit of relief washing over him at Eddie’s more mellowed tone. If he’s calm enough now to poke fun at Steve, whatever’s got him spooked is probably starting to fade.
Eddie doesn't say anything back right away, and there's a few quiet seconds of faint radio static, and the occasional shaky exhale makes it through.
"Steve?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for, uh, picking up. Wasn't sure if you would."
"'Course, man," Steve says, laying on the gentle voice he uses for the kids, "anytime. You need anything? I can drive over, if you don't want to be alone?"
"No, no, I'm good," Eddie replies hurriedly. "I’m not a damsel in distress, whatever you may think.”
“Coulda fooled me.” Steve says, and he’s relieved when Eddie huffs a short laugh. “Are you sure? I don’t mind, dude, seriously. I can’t sleep either.”
“Ha ha, Steve. My knight in shining armor.” He says dryly. “We’ve got plans already, right? I don’t wanna wring you dry just yet.”
“You won’t.” Steve replies. He knows, intimately, how the nightmares claw their way to the surface, lingering long after he’s awake. He knows the cold sweat and pounding heartbeat, the bone-shaking fear and fear of something in the shadows. He knows how he held a trembling Robin after Starcourt, two weeks after the mall burned to ashes, when he could still taste iron and smoke on his battered tongue.
He wishes he could pull Eddie into a safety bubble in the same way.
“What do you need, Eddie?” He asks, as soft as he can.
Eddie makes a weird sound, like he’s halfway through a choked-up laugh. “A fucking time machine? I don’t know."
“Eddie.”
There’s a shaky inhale, and Eddie’s voice trembles. "I don’t know.”
Steve pushes himself upright, swings his legs over the side of the bed. “Eddie, do you want to be alone right now?”
Eddie doesn’t answer, not right away.
Steve counts the seconds.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” Steve says simply, shuffling into a pair of slippers. It’s true; he’s not gonna get any sleep tonight regardless, and by the sounds of it neither will Eddie, so they may as well ride the night out together. “We can start that movie marathon early.”
Eddie doesn’t reply until Steve’s stuffing his keys in his pocket with a backpack over his shoulder. “My, uh. My window’s open. Front door’s locked and I ain't moving my ass.”
“Sneaking through the window? Damn, Eddie, maybe you really are a maiden.”
Eddie’s snort crackles through. “Slow your roll, Romeo, I’m not that easy. Takes more than three days to fall in love with me.”
He smiles, even though Eddie can’t see him. The chill of the Beemer’s leather seat seeps through his thin pajama pants. “I’m on the way. Want me to keep talking?”
Eddie exhales shakily. “Yeah. That’d, um. Thanks.”
So Steve does.
After examining the gaping, interdimensional hole in the ceiling, Owens and his government goons deemed the trailer unsafe for further habitation, and kindly moved Eddie and Wayne to a small ranch house at the edge of Hawkins, where the forest thinned to rolling countryside and the term “neighbor” was more of a loose, general application than a definition. It’s a cute little place, a bit of a drive from downtown, but easy enough to make in a pinch. Steve, along with the rest of their Upside Down survivor club (they should make group t-shirts, honestly) helped with the move-in process, since Eddie was still under doctor’s orders preventing him from any strenuous activity, and Wayne’s only one guy.
He remembers unpacking all Eddie’s music stuff, amps and guitars and boxes of records. He remembers Eddie’s face lighting up when Steve dug up an old shoebox of cassettes, how the smile that spread across his face was one of the first real ones since he woke up in a hospital bed. They set up the living room to an old Led Zeppelin vinyl, and with the new house filled with the noise of music, bickering from the kids, the thuds and thumps of furniture and hollers of does this look right? Steve almost felt normal.
The house looks well-lived now, or at least Steve thinks so from the few times he’s been over since the three days of moving in. The grassy driveway’s got well-worn tire tracks from the van and Wayne’s truck, there’s polka-dot cigarette burns on the porch railing around an overflowing ashtray, and the rusty mailbox has a large, purple “M” painted on the side. Wayne even got a garden started over summer, growing haphazardly out of control in front of the house, even in the beginning throes of November. From what Steve knows, Wayne’s smitten with his garden.
True to his word, Eddie’s bedroom light is on and the window unlatched. Steve taps a quick rhythm to get Eddie’s attention, before sliding up the window and less-than-gracefully tumbling through, his backpack of goodies nearly getting caught on the sill and slippers in danger of falling off.
Eddie’s sitting on the edge of his bed, watching Steve clamber upright, a half-smoked joint between his lips.
“Hi,” Steve says, somewhat breathless, “I brought some shit.”
Eddie takes a drag, eyeing Steve with a somewhat bemused expression. “You know, Romeo, for a former swim captain, it figures you’d be so agile.”
Steve shuts the window with a snap. “Yeah, well. Sorry my skills are rusty.” He says, stepping over the piles of clothes and various knick knacks strewn across the floor and settling next to Eddie on the bed. Eddie silently offers the joint, and the cherry flares red when Steve takes pull.
He doesn’t speak while Steve lets the heat fill his mouth and lungs, pausing before exhaling smoke into the quiet air, forming a comfortable space for the two of them. He hands the joint back, taking the moment to settle into Eddie’s space, letting their personal bubbles converge into one.
Eddie’s room is, in Steve’s opinion, what the inside of Eddie’s brain probably looks like. Posters of bands, movies, and various automotive diagrams cover every inch of wallspace, with artwork of fantastical creatures and characters, most of it probably being Eddie’s own work, filling in the gaps. The massive CORRODED COFFIN tapestry hangs proud and tattered on the ceiling above his bed, and Steve can make out four scrawled signatures in the bottom left corner. Open notebooks, magazines, coffee mugs, dice and other bits and bobs cover every flat, available surface, from Eddie’s side dresser to his desk. He’s got a bookshelf groaning under the weight of vinyls, novels, and D&D manuals by his bed, a record player sitting atop with the shoebox of cassettes right next to it. Books lay face-up on the bedspread behind them, one of which Steve recognizes as a D&D handbook, and the other as some fantasy novel Dustin’s probably mentioned at some point or another. It’s a cluttered, chaotic mess, but it’s comfortable and deeply, unapologetically Eddie.
“You okay?” Steve asks after a few minutes of shared smoke and silence.
Eddie gives a noncommittal shrug. He’s still got his walkie held loose in one hand, and Steve can see the redness rimming his eyes. “Usual shit. Bats, blood, my life leaking out of me into an interdimensional wasteland.” He sucks a long, slow drag, speaks through the fog in his mouth. “Gets kind of boring, if I’m being honest.”
“Wish I could say the same.” Steve says, eyeing the Motorhead poster stuck lopsided to the wall. “I don’t think my brain’s ever gonna run out of new material.”
Eddie blows a lopsided smoke ring. It wobbles, holding its shape for only a second before dissolving. “For once, I can’t say I’m jealous of you.”
Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, so he lets the silence blanket them again.
“I used to love being a Dungeon Master.” Eddie says when the joint’s nearing its end, and he would sound almost wistful if it weren’t for the disdain hidden underneath. “Pulling out all the stops. Make it uphill both ways, you know? All the monsters, all the twists, every fuckin’ thing I could shove into one to make it really, really hurt. Sadistic, is what Henderson called it.” He lets out a short laugh, but it’s flat and humorless. “Mike’s character died in the last session before Spring Break, and I thought it was the funniest thing. Vecna was the villain then, too, if you can believe it. So this,” he motions at his room, waves his hand by his head, “feels like some fucked up karma, honestly.”
Steve takes the roach of a joint, lets the smoke settle in his lungs. “Yeah, but. We didn’t deserve this.”
Eddie watches him, unreadable. His eyes are dark, bottomless and hollow in the low light of his bedside lamp, the only source of brightness in the room. “Right.” He says tonelessly, with a hard-bitten, sarcastic smile, sliding the joint between his lips. The tip of it glows bright again.
“I’m serious.” Steve says, dropping his tone to the gentle, yet firm one he uses for the kids. They’re not kids anymore, they haven’t been for a while—hell, they’re as old as Steve was when the Upside Down first came for them, which is fucking terrifying—but in his head, they’ll always be the thirteen-year-old superheroes Steve met in a junkyard.
They have a habit of blaming themselves, Steve’s noticed. Lucas, for failing to recognize Max’s hurt leading her into danger; Dustin, for letting Eddie cut the rope in the Upside Down. El, most of all, for starting all this shit to begin with, like she had a choice in the first place. It hurts Steve, seeing his kids beat themselves up over things so far out of their control, like they could’ve stopped an avalanche when it was already starting to tumble.
“It’s not your fault.” He says, because he knows why Eddie’s using himself as his own personal punching bag. “You couldn’t do anything.”
“How d’you know that?” Eddie shoots back, angry regret seeping into his tone. His mouth is a flat, pinched line, and he looks at Steve in cold provocation, like he wants Steve to push back. “You don’t. She needed someone, and I was there, and I did jack shit.”
"Oh, really?" Steve says, raising his eyebrows. "What would you have done?"
It’s kind of mean, poking a bruise like that, but Eddie’s been twisting a knife into his own gut for a while, so Steve really doesn’t care. He’d rather Eddie be angry with him than beat himself to bits out of survivor’s guilt.
Eddie's face twists into something angry and tired, the hollowness of his eyes amplified by the dark circles bruising underneath. It’s nothing like the jovial facade he wore in Family Video; it’s harsh and sore and real.
"Fuck you, Steve.” He says, barbed. “You don't get to make me feel like shit for failing her."
"But you didn't," Steve presses, empathy welling up and aching in his chest. “That's the point! You didn't, because there wasn't anything you could've done! You made the right choices, you were kind, you—you gave a shit. You didn't just blow her off."
Eddie's eyes bore into him, the snappish anger in them cooling into something tired and mournful. He exhales a stream of smoke, stubbing out the roach. He sighs, long and drawn, hanging his head between his shoulders. "This isn't just about Chrissy, is it?"
Steve swallows harshly, years-old guilt floating to the surface like some ugly monster who just won't sink. "No." He answers, slumping over and pressing his palms into his eye sockets until stars bloom and spark. If he presses his own bruises just hard enough, maybe Barb's face, dusty and frozen in time on her parents’ fireplace, will disappear. “No, it’s not, but I’m still right. About you.”
“Yeah.” Eddie says, barely audible. He falls back against his bedspread, hands over his face. “Tell me whatever the hell you want. And tell yourself while you’re at it. The fuck-ups get fucked up, that’s the way it goes.”
He sounds drained, exhausted, and it hurts Steve somewhere deep. Twists a knife Steve didn’t know was stuck in him.
Slowly, Steve turns to lay down on his front, keeping a fair amount of distance between the tense line of Eddie’s body and his own. He ruminates on what he might say, dredging up memories buried under his own old scars still sore to the touch. Eddie’s words sting, a thorn deep in Steve’s stomach, because yeah, Eddie was just a witness to an unstoppable crime, but Steve? Steve had a choice. A two-word, two-second sentence he chose not to say, and when the curtain fell, it became the line between selflessness and the life of an innocent girl.
“It feels like some sort of…fucked-up redemption.” He says quietly, as Barbara Holland flashes in his mind. “Doesn’t it?”
Barb, arm-in-arm with Nancy in the hallways. Barb, reluctantly on his doorstep, alone in the crowd by his pool. Barb, stuck in time, forever fifteen in the dusty pictures on a dustier mantelpiece.
Eddie doesn’t say anything, but his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.
“The nightmares. Like, it’s not your fault.” Steve continues, watching Eddie out of the corner of his eye. “But you were there, right? So what if, right? But you didn’t do anything. Or say anything. And it’s not your fault, because you didn’t know and shit happens, but she’s still gone.”
Eddie stares at the ceiling, jaw flexing like he’s chewing on his words. “I tell myself that. She had an inevitable target on her back, I was just in the wrong place, y’know, all that. But then I’m thinking, why me, right?” His voice wobbles, anger and grief mixing into a voice cracking with the pressure of blame and regret. “Why’d I have to be there, why’d he wait until he got a witness? And maybe the bats woulda gone a bit deeper. Maybe they should have. Maybe the freak’s just a fuck-up after all. Maybe this, all this bullshit, is just some divine punishment for me and all my fucking sins, and it meant she had to die.”
“Eddie,” Steve says, and Eddie lets out a derisive, high-pitched chuckle.
“I know,” he says, arms flopping out to the side, “I know, okay? I’m fucked up, we’re fucked up, Steve, that’s what this is all about. That’s why I’m smoking my brain outta my own head at two in the morning, right? That’s why you’re climbing through my fucking window.”
Steve shifts onto his side, gaze set on Eddie’s profile. There’s a weird feeling in his stomach, something heavy yet featherlight at the same time. Maybe it’s because they’re on the same wavelength of guilt and self-destruction, maybe because it’s that time of the night when nothing really feels real and they’re a little bit buzzed, maybe it’s because they’re two twenty year old teenage boys with matching scars and matching burdens. It’s familiarity, is what Steve thinks it might be. It’s heavy and it hurts, weighing in the pit of his stomach, but it’s…it feels like less, with Eddie.
“I think,” Steve says slowly, watching Eddie, “we should be in therapy.”
Eddie rolls his head to the side, meeting Steve’s gaze with a muddled frown. For a moment, they just stare at each other.
And then laughter bubbles up and out, and Eddie’s curling in on himself, cackling and clutching his stomach, and it must be contagious because suddenly Steve’s laughing too, pressing his face into the bedspread to muffle his giggles. It’s not funny, really, there’s nothing hilarious about it, but it’s the bizarre nature of the thing that has the both of them close to tears, hysterical and cackling like hyenas.
“Fucking—therapy.” Eddie wheezes, red-faced. “Steve, Stevie, oh my God.”
“Sorry.” Steve manages, wiping tears away. His face hurts, his lungs breathless from Stevie and stomach sore from laughter. “Sorry, but, like, am I wrong?”
“No!” Eddie practically howls, the back of one hand flying out to whack Steve’s shoulder.
It takes them a while to collect themselves, partially because they’d catch each other’s eye when the high would start to fade and dissolve into fits again, but mostly because Steve didn’t really want to stop. He hasn’t laughed that hard, for that long, in a while. Months, probably. It feels good, even though there’s a roiling weed garden of things left unsaid between them. It’s relieving, like the painful accumulation of anxiety and guilt clogging his head finally depressurized.
It’s still there. Just…looser.
Eventually, though, Eddie sits up and wipes his cheeks, face still red and eyes still shiny, but with a smile instead of a grimace. Steve hears him take a deep breath in and let it out slow.
“Jesus,” he mumbles, wiping his nose on the back of his hand, “I haven’t laughed that hard in so damn long. Christ, dude, my fuckin’ stomach hurts now.”
Steve almost says me too . He just grins to himself, one hand still flat on his own sore abdomen.
Eddie clears his throat. “So, uh, what’d you bring?” He asks in reference to Steve’s backpack.
Steve, still flat on his back, waves a hand at his bag, tossed somewhere on the floor. “Go for it.”
Eddie drags it up on the bed, turning his body sideways to plop the bag between them. “Bold move, Steve. What should I be expecting? Nail polish? A Cosmo magazine? I wasn’t planning on a girl’s night, but I can do your makeup if you’d like.” He wiggles his eyebrows at the last part, and Steve tamps down the flush creeping into his cheeks.
Steve pushes himself up on his elbows. “See for yourself. Also, Robin almost took my eye out the one time I let her put anything on my face, so, pass on the makeover.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows. “You let Buckley do your makeup?”
“Almost let her.” Steve corrects, folding his legs into criss-cross applesauce. “It was a disaster. She’s got, like, no coordination with eyeliner.”
Eddie looks like he wants to say something in response, but he just yanks open the zipper and starts to dig around instead.
“Dude, are these Ma Henderson’s chocolate chip cookies? Holy fuck, these are the best.”
“Uh-huh,” Steve smiles, taking the tub Eddie hands him and pulling open the lid, “I get a batch once a month, for driving Dustin everywhere and all that shit.”
Eddie takes a cookie and shoves it in his mouth. “You lucky bastard.” He mumbles grumpily around a mouth of chocolate, looking a fair resemblance to a chipmunk with a cookie stuffed in his mouth whilst rummaging through Steve’s bag. “Little shit’s never brought me cookies. Damn, Steve, both Indiana Jones movies! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a thing for Harrison Ford.”
Steve shrugs, nabbing a cookie for himself. “Who doesn’t?”
Either Eddie can’t talk with a full mouth, or Steve’s rendered him speechless. He gets a small zing of pleasure from the mix of perplexity, wonder, and surprise on Eddie’s face, ‘cause that’s a feat of itself.
Eddie manages some form of noise in response before swallowing. “So, uh. Movie night?”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Steve says. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not getting any more shut-eye tonight. There’s popcorn in there, too. It’s the nicer shit the kids like, because God knows they’ll complain otherwise.”
Eddie shakes his head in amusement, skimming the back of the VHS cases. “They’ve got you wrapped, man.”
Steve sighs. “Yeah, I know.”
“It’s cute. Like a mama goose with her flock.”
“Not a duck?” Steve asks, brushing aside the mom thing. It’s a badge of honor at this point. (Seriously, he’s been invited to monthly Sunday brunch with the Party moms and everything. Apparently Mrs. Wheeler makes a mean mimosa, according to Argyle, who’s a regular attendee for some reason.)
Eddie gives him a look. “You ever pissed off a goose?”
“...No.”
“Exactly. Don’t.”
Steve takes another cookie.
Eddie looks a bit better, Steve thinks, as they wrap up in blankets on the couch. They’ve got a large bowl of heavily-buttered popcorn squished between them and David Bowie glamorous on the screen, because Eddie insisted on Labyrinth , but Steve’s focus keeps drifting from the television. Eddie’s still pale in the face and his hands still shake when he scrabbles for popcorn, but he’s sitting up a little straighter instead of hunching forward like he’s trying to fall into himself. He’s a little bit brighter, maybe, like the shadow cloaking his demeanor shifted up and away.
A wave of warmth and satisfaction comes over Steve, watching Eddie’s lamp-light profile as he runs a murmured commentary on the movie. He’s already seen the movie a bunch, hauling his ass to the theaters when it first came out, with Dustin, Erica, and Will in tow, and even though Steve would never choose a film like this for his own enjoyment, it’s good seeing Eddie in his comfort zone.
It feels good, seeing this little change in Eddie and knowing he made it happen . It’s like the sting in his palm after high-fiving El for an A on her science essay. Like the shared giddiness between him and Robin after she detailed her first kiss with Nancy to him, the morning after their first date. Like helping Max get back on her skateboard, wobbling a nerve-wracking amount until her old skills finally kicked in. Like so many things he loves and cherishes, holding dear to his heart because it might stop pumping without them.
Eddie’s smile sparks something else, though, little orange embers glimmering like fireflies in Steve’s stomach. There for a second, blinking joyous and bright, before poof! Gone. It’s an odd feeling, vaguely familiar in how it tickles the back of Steve’s brain. He’s not sure if he recognizes it. He’s not even sure if he wants to, yet.
He watches Eddie, and the fireflies spark.
It’s strange, what a little bit of light can do.
Robin arrives on Steve’s doorstep with a rat’s nest for hair and purpling love bites smattering her neck like leopard spots, carrying a hot chocolate and residual smugness in every crease of her wrinkled sweater.
“Reading break, huh?” Steve says dryly, taking the hot chocolate and eyeing the less-than-hidden leftover traces of lipstick and what might be an actual bite mark, just barely covered by her collar. Jesus. Nancy never got that into it with him, way back when.
Robin shoots him a cheeky grin and steps past him into the house, haphazardly kicking her shoes off and ignoring Steve’s protest when they hit the wall with two thumps . “Nancy Wheeler is an uncontainable force of femininity and gunpowder, Steve.” She says, echoing down the hallway, halfway to the kitchen where Steve knows she’s going to raid his snack shelf. “I would be a fool to deny such a thing to someone so terrifying.”
“Did you get any actual reading done?” Steve asks, following her down the hall.
Robin, now perched on the counter with a bag of Mike’s favorite chips, just looks at him. “Do you want an honest answer?”
“No, actually.”
“Yep. Loads. So many books, Steve, I was drowning in it.”
“Gross.” Steve says lightly, happy for her and Nance. “Doesn’t she have, like, studying and shit to do though?”
Robin shrugs, munching. “She’s a grade A genius. I think the studying needs her, actually.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” Steve sighs, setting down his hot chocolate and leaning next to her on the counter.
Robin pats his head like he’s a dog, ruffing his hair. Steve leans into her touch, knocking his head gently against her side, relishing the closeness. It’s one of the things he loves most about her: how seamlessly they fit together, two weird jigsaw pieces with three sides serrated and one worn to the threads, smushed and warped from knocking around (Steve) and getting knocked around (Robin) with and by the wrong sort of people. It took far too long for them to finally snap together; spite, reluctance, and the residue of grudge, apprehension, and anger like a magnetic field between them, holding them in a revolving orbit.
And then, well. It’s hard to spend a few hours underground in a Russian torture chamber, get drugged, and then kill a flesh monster and not come out of it relatively acquaintified.
Steve knew he was missing someone like Robin in his life, even before he kicked the bucket with Tommy and Carol and Nancy left him in the dust. He just didn’t realize how much he was missing.
Robin is snarky and bitchy and out of her own head ninety percent of the time. Her lack of spatial awareness has led to the demise of several rather ugly vases Steve knows his mom won’t miss, even if she noticed they were gone. Robin’s verbal filter is next to nonexistent, and the only thing that truly shuts her up is Nancy. She can’t drive for shit, possesses less boundary awareness than an overeager shih tzu, and is entirely responsible for the sheer amount of spilled concealer and setting powder staining the Bimmer’s passenger seat a permanent CoverGirl beige.
Steve loves her.
He loves her so fucking much, because the first time he got slammed with a migraine post-StarCourt, Robin was there, pulling the blackout-blinds closed. Leaving pain meds and glasses of water on his bedside table, speaking to him in a low, softened tone. Swapping out the ice packs every hour, pressing her thumbs into the pressure points along his nose and forehead, because my mom gets migraines, Steve, it might help .
He loves her, because her cutting, witty honesty keeps him grounded, tying him to an unsteady earth after drifting loose for so long. He was used to being untethered, sloping along in invisibility, content to wear masks and plastic visages so he didn’t have to touch the ground, until Robin yanked him back into gravity. And when he stumbled, shaky in a friendship after ghosting through so many for so long, she held him steady, grasping his hands tight before dragging him head first into the new best thing in his life.
He might’ve been alive before he met Robin, but he didn’t feel alive until she called him a bitch and stuck herself to his side like a barnacle.
And he loves her because she loves Nancy, even if she hasn’t said it yet. She doesn’t have to; Robin’s emotions live in her eyes, and Steve sees more than just high school infatuation filling them when she looks at Nancy.
Speaking of Nancy.
“How was your date?” Steve asks, and Robin’s ensuing giggle answers the question for him. He’s never met someone who gets so bubbly when they’re happy, and Robin’s got a specific laugh for when she’s truly, genuinely ecstatic. Steve didn’t hear it once in the first few months following Vecna, and when he did, it was Nancy’s doing that brought it back.
He looks at them, and he knows. He just knows. That’s what love is meant to look like.
Robin runs her fingers through Steve’s hair again. “It was good. Really, really good, oh my God. We went up to all these old shops, right, the ones that look kind of haunted by the ghosts of Victorian lesbians? And one of them was this feminist bookstore, and there was so much cool shit in there, Steve, you’d love it.” Robin picks up steam as she talks, if no one’s there to stop her. She goes and goes and goes until whatever she’s saying jumbles in her mouth or the engine runs out of gas, and then she’ll end her point with weird little duck-flaps of her hands.
Steve just listens, letting her voice wash over him.
Robin goes on about the art museums, the café they got lunch at, how Nancy hooked their arms together as they walked along the river trail. “I didn’t know she was such a romantic, you know? But we get back and she’s just—” Robin makes a noise like a cat getting stepped on. “She’s—she’s so bristly, sometimes, kind of like a cute little pastel porcupine. But she’s so sweet, too, and it’s this super sexy balance of both qualities and it drives me crazy. She drives me crazy, Steve, I don’t think I’ll ever be just plain ole Robin again.”
Steve shifts his body so he’s got his back against the counter. “Yeah. She’s got that effect, huh?” Something like old guilt flashes in Robin’s eyes, and Steve, knowing what she’s going to try and apologize for, cuts her off before she can start. “And it’s a good thing, Robbie,” he says, nudging their shoulders together, “and yeah, we didn’t work, but you guys do, and that’s awesome. ‘Cause I can see it in her, too, how she’s crazy for you.”
“Yeah?” Robin asks, eyes wide and a hundred emotions filling them up. Love is at the forefront, strong and shining.
Steve grins at her. “Yeah. She’s a totally different person, when you’re around. You said she’s like a…a porcupine, right?”
Robin nods, chewing on her bottom lip.
Sometimes, Steve wishes he could be more eloquent, like Dustin or Robin or even Eddie. But the complex vocabulary such as the likes of Dustin or Robin or Eddie get caught in the limbo between his brain and his tongue or spider-leg around on the pages of whatever he’s reading, jumbling around like Scrabble letters in front of his eyes. He ends up spitting half-words or hitting a wall in the middle of a sentence, struggling to find what he’s trying to say in the first place.
But simplicity has its place, sometimes, and one of those places is keeping Robin’s head on straight. Her brain tumbles off the train tracks more often than not, and Steve takes the task of reducing the Robin brain-spiral very seriously.
Steve wiggles his fingers under Robin’s empty hand, squeezing once. “Yeah, so, it’s like, she’s got her quills up around everyone else, like she needs a precaution, right? Always on the defense side. And I think she’s always been like that. She was with me, anyway. But all that shit just goes away with you in the room, and she doesn’t do that unless she really trusts someone. You’re good for her, Robbie.”
Robin ducks her head, like it’ll hide the smile spreading across her face. “Dingus.”
Steve bumps their shoulders together again, swaying into her space. “Love you too, birdie.”
Robin pokes the squishy part of his side, making Steve squawk and Robin snicker. The ensuing scuffle nearly knocks over Steve’s hot chocolate, Robin launching herself off the countertop as they grapple like the children they are, ending up on the kitchen floor in a wheezing heap of messy hair and bony elbows.
They end up splitting the hot chocolate, even though it’s Steve’s, curling up on the couch with half-full mugs and far too many knitted blankets.
“You and Nance have a dinner date tonight, right?” Steve asks, watching Robin try (and fail) to lick a spot of whipped cream from the side of her face.
“Yeah,” Robin sighs wistfully, setting her mug down, “we’ve got dinner at six, so she sent me off to shower and change and I remembered the shirt I’m gonna wear is here, so I came to raid your closet. Why, do you have a date tonight or something?”
“Nah,” Steve says, yawning, “just watching movies with Eddie later. He booted me out this morning to shower and shit too, actually.”
Robin raises her eyebrows. “You were at Eddie’s today?”
“Yeah. Well, last night, really, but this morning too, I guess?”
Robin’s face is one of perplexity. “Why were you at Eddie’s last night?”
Steve shrugs. “We had a bit of a movie night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Steve says, sipping his hot chocolate. “He came in and rented Labyrinth. The goblin one with David Bowie? It’s pretty good, actually.”
“You watched Labyrinth with Eddie last night.” Robin states, eyebrows raised like she’s positive Steve is lying. “And you’re going back over tonight for…more movies.”
“Yeah.”
Robin stares at him, before setting down her mug and shaking out her hands. “Wait, okay. Hang on. When did you decide to watch Labyrinth with Eddie Munson and, more importantly, when did you two start having multi-day movie marathons? I’m feeling abandoned, Stevie.”
“Robin, you have a drawer of underwear in my room. You’re not abandoned.” Steve says, bumping her ankle with his. “Also, this is the first time it’s happened. He came into Family Video, we made plans, it got late and I stayed the night.”
It’s obviously not the whole truth, but Eddie radioing him in the middle of the night, half out of his mind with paranoia feels too personal, too intimate to share. Steve’s not wary of Robin being judgmental or anything, they’ve all got dreams riddled with slimy vines and flower-petal faces, but there are some things Steve holds close to his chest, hidden for only him to see. This feels like one of them.
Robin’s looking at him like she knows he’s withholding, but she doesn’t press him for it. She just shrugs and reaches for her cocoa mug, and Steve takes the opening to rudely shove her into almost falling off the couch with a yelp.
When he ends up at Eddie’s that night, they order pizza, crack open two icy beers, and fold onto the couch in a mirror of the morning, except Indiana Jones is flashing on the screen instead of David Bowie and the blanket’s different, one of the knitted types instead of this morning’s quilt, old and faded but soft all the same.
It’s the same, except Eddie’s face isn’t red and blotchy from scrubbed-away tears and his hair’s damp at the edges, the evergreen scent of his shampoo faint but fresh. It’s the same, except they’re not waiting for the sun to gleam through the curtains and burn away the shadows in their heads.
It’s the same, except it feels comfortable in a way that’s normal, and for a little bit, Steve can imagine that’s what they are.
There’s an epic car chase exploding on screen, and Eddie’s shins are bumping Steve’s knees as he jabs and jibes at the movie, gnawing on a pizza bone and gesturing dramatically at the TV. He speaks with his whole body, a loose-limbed language of expression and gesticulation Steve’s drawn to learning.
He watches Eddie, and the fireflies flicker just a little brighter inside.