Work Text:
It’s weird, being back here. The air is cold and the wind is rustling his hair but something inside him feels strangely warm, leaving the L station, seeing the cars drive down the street and the people on the sidewalk. It’s a little like coming home. Even though he hasn’t lived here in over six years.
“Steve!” a voice reaches his ears and Steve spins around and the smile is on his face before his brain had a chance to think about whose voice it is. He just knows. Robin flings herself into his arms, wraps herself around his body and Steve just lets go of his duffel bag, pulls her close, hugs her and buries his face in her neck. Sometimes he still can’t really grasp the way he loves her. Sometimes he still wonders if Robin is even real or if his brain just made her up because how can someone fit so perfectly in his life and just always stay? How can someone understand every aspect about him without even having to have him trying to explain it to them? How can someone love him, really love him, and not expect anything in return from him?
“Hi,” he whispers and pulls her tighter once more before letting her go to breathe and Robin is smiling and laughing and saying “hi” back to him and Steve smiles just as widely.
“I missed you,” he says and Robin grins, hooks her arm around Steve’s and bumps their shoulders together. “Right back at ya,” she says, grabs his duffel bag (Steve doesn’t even try to complain; he knows it won’t change a thing, Robin’ll just give him her 'I’m a strong woman, perfectly capable of carrying your bag for you once in a while' speech, and well…she is. So.) and pulls him towards the street. There’s taxis and traffic lights and so many people, and Steve lives in New York, so he’s used to it, but somehow it feels different here. He misses the way it feels here.
“How was the ride up?” Robin asks and Steve shrugs. “Nothing special. Even though there was this conductor who I bought peanuts from-” “Oh Steve, you know they are overpriced.” “-and she was really cute, she had this beautiful dark hair but I didn’t get her number, she said she lived in Connecticut, even though I don’t know if that was true or she just didn’t-”
“Steve.” Robin sighs and throws him a slightly disappointed look. “I thought you were seeing your coworker, this…Lucy girl from your school.”
“I was,” Steve says. “It just…didn’t work out.”
Robin keeps looking at him. They stop at a traffic light.
“What?” Steve shrugs. “I don’t know, Robin, what do you want me to say? I didn’t screw it up or anything, it just wasn’t right. Maybe I’m just not…cut out for love? It doesn’t matter, I don’t need a relationship right now anyway. I’m fine, I’m happy.”
Robin looks like she doesn’t really believe him, but why? It’s the truth. Steve is very happy. Sure, sometimes he feels like there’s…something that’s been missing and some lonely nights he wonders what it is, what that feeling means but…other than that…
He’s got a great job, great coworkers and ever since the world ended about four times he’s got a great family. So why complain about his stupid love life? It really doesn’t matter.
Even less when he’s here. This city always makes him feel so at ease, it’s insane.
“Rob,” he says, pointedly, “can we just not talk about my love life, please? I’m here to spend time with you!”
“Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry,” she says, smiles back and leans a little more into his side, fitting right into it like only she can. “Let’s focus on my love life instead.”
Steve gasps dramatically, because after so many years as Robin’s soulmate he can practically read her mind. “Robin Eve Buckley,” he exclaims. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Mayyybe,” she says and stretches the first syllable. A grin makes its way onto her face and Steve gasps. “Oh my god,” he exclaims. “You’re totally planning to propose.”
Robin purses her lips and scrunches her nose happily and Steve’s mouth drops open before she can even say it. “I was, but- she beat me to it.” She shrieks a little, a happy sound, and shows Steve her hand. A subtle but very pretty engagement ring sparkles in the sunlight.
“Holy shit,” Steve breathes, and catches her hand to look at it. His gaze shifts from her hand to her face and Robin sparkles just like her ring does.
“I mean, it won’t be legal, of course, but…”
“It’s still real,” Steve interrupts, stops them and pulls her into another hug. “Congratulations, Rob. I’m so, so, so happy for you.” He pulls away to look at her and takes a deep breath, because Jesus, he’s getting emotional. “God, if that girl in the Starcourt bathroom could see you now.”
Robin laughs and it comes out a little wetly. “Yeah, she was convinced she’d never find love.”
“And look at her now.”
“Look at her now,” she repeats and they hug again, Steve presses her close to his chest and for a moment he wants to never let her go.
He has to, though, he knows that. He has to.
“Man, I never imagined Pam would be the one proposing.”
“Me neither,” Robin says and they untangle (at least a little bit, enough to start walking again, but not fully, because…honestly, it’s Steve and Robin, they’re entangled for life), “which is what makes it so much better.”
“She didn’t get down on one knee, did she?”
Robin shakes her head. “No,” she says. “She just…we were watching TV and she just randomly was like, ‘hey you know how we talked about getting married?’ And I was like ‘um…no?’ And she pulled this ring up, out of nowhere and was like ‘should we?’”
Robin is beaming. Steve’s heart practically bursts with love for her. “That’s so romantic.”
“I know, right? But, like, to the perfect amount, not too much. Ugh, I love that woman to death.”
Robin’s eyes well up and Steve’s do too, and they both just send each other capital L Looks and smile and giggle. “So tonight we just wanted to have a little engagement dinner with you.” They round the last corner and Robin reaches into her pockets for her keys. “And before you say anything, it was Pam’s idea. She loves you almost as much as I do and doesn’t need this to be a thing with just the two of us.”
Steve nods. He knows that. He loves Pam for it. Robin’s ex didn’t understand their weird codependent soulmateship and Steve kinda hates and kinda loves how that’s probably one of the reasons they ended up not working. Pam’s different. She gets them.
“And then I thought,” Robin says as she fumbles with her keys to find the right one and stops in front of their door, “tomorrow we could go to the Troubadour and have a little karaoke session and drink our asses off?”
“Oh that sounds just about fucking perfect,” Steve replies and follows her in, when she pushes the door open and immediately reaches for his arm again. “Bill still there?”
“You know it. They’re gonna have to tear that bar out of his cold dead hands, before that man ever even thinks about leaving or retiring.”
“Just like old times then,” Steve chuckles and they climb the stairs to apartment 3C.
When Robin unlocks the door, there’s an immediate shriek coming from the living room before they’ve even really entered the apartment and then, so fast Steve’s eyes only register a bundle of long limbs, perfect blonde waves and way too much energy, Pamela tackles him into a hug. He laughs and hugs Robin’s fiancée back (that’s her goddamn fiancée! His best friend’s engaged!).
“You’re here,” Pam says, smiles her toothpaste commercial smile and gently hits Steve’s shoulder. She really is just gorgeous, Robin really landed the fucking jackpot with her. Steve couldn’t be happier about it.
“M’here,” he confirms and smiles back.
“I’ve missed you. The city’s missed you.”
“What does that even mean?”
Pam shrugs, smiles more, reaches for Robin and lets herself get wrapped in a soft hug. “I don’t know, that’s for you to figure out.”
Robin kisses her, makes her forget Steve for a second and Steve internally lets out a little sigh. Fiancées. Really, he can’t quite wrap his head around that. For a second there’s something in his chest that resembles jealousy, but it can’t be. Why would he be jealous? He’s just happy for them. He doesn’t know where to store all this happiness, that must be it.
“Okay, come on, now, we need to get you settled in.” Pam gestures at him to take off his jacket and just five minutes later they’re in the cozy little kitchen of their apartment, Pam pouring herself and Steve a coffee and Robin a green tea. She said she still needs to get some work done, but she’ll allow herself a little coffee break with them.
“So, what’s new, what’s up, how are you?” She puts the mug in front of Steve, leans against the kitchen counter and softly blows into her own.
“That’s where you wanna start? With me and my boring life? Not with, oh, I don’t know, your engagement?”
Pam giggles and Robin pulls her close and kisses her. Again. Steve rolls his eyes fondly. “Congratulations,” he says, earnestly.
“Thank you,” Pam says and pulls herself up onto the kitchen counter, “and your life’s not boring, you idiot. I wanna know everything. Thank god you’re staying the whole weekend, we have so much to cover.”
“Agreed,” Robin agrees, her hand finding its place on her fiancées thigh. (Apparently, Steve keeps circling back to that word. He doesn’t know why.) “Oh, Steve, you’re gonna help me with dinner later, right? I wanted to make your special lasagna.”
“Of course.”
“Oh, by the way, Robin, babe, did you tell him already?” Pam says and smiles widely, “Eddie’s coming too. He’s in town, they’re playing a show here tomorrow night and he said he’d stop by for dinner.”
Steve’s heart stops for a second at the mention of his name.
“Eddie’s coming?” His eyes light up and there’s a warm feeling swirling up in his stomach, when the information sinks in. “Really? That’s great! Man, I haven’t seen him in so long.”
Years, actually. It kinda stings Steve to think about it. Because when Eddie moved out back then, he was sad, of course, but Eddie was just following his dreams and who was Steve to stand in the way of that? He just didn’t think their friendship would suffer so greatly from it.
But then Eddie called less and less and a couple of months later Steve moved out of Chicago too, because it just wasn’t the same.
And then the world started seeing Eddie the way Steve did, as their shining star, and Eddie couldn’t even schedule being around at Christmas and Thanksgiving or for birthdays, at least never around the same time as Steve. He would always come a couple days prior or later, as his “tour lifestyle allowed him”, at least that’s what Joyce said.
Steve shakes his head, a little lost in his thoughts, when Robin suddenly sits down next to him and puts a hand on his arm as if to calm him.
“Yeah, actually…I’ve been wanting to ask you this for a while now.”
Steve frowns. Because Robin looks serious and a little scared too, Steve feels almost thrown back more than ten years ago, to that Starcourt bathroom, where they became what they are now.
“Ask what?”
“Why?” she says. “You guys were so close. I mean you lived together for a little more than four years. And then you just…fell outta touch? How does that happen?”
Steve looks at her. He takes a deep breath. Something inside his chest pangs, starts aching. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know, Robin, he just…he kinda shut off from me. Or maybe I didn’t do enough, put in enough effort, I don’t know, I mean, he was the busy one. It just…I used to wonder that too, you know, all the time, but now…I’m fine, right? I miss him, sure, but people grow apart sometimes, it just happens.”
Robin looks at him. Steve swallows. He feels her eyes boring right into his soul. “Right?” he adds, unsure all of a sudden.
Robin takes a deep breath and bites her lip. “Sure,” she says, nods. “It just happens.”
Steve drops his gaze to his mug, runs his thumb over the chipped edge. He feels weird. Like there’s something he’s been missing, overlooking for the past ten years. Like there’s some sort of truth he can’t grasp, something right in front of him but out of his reach.
He doesn’t like this.
Robin seems to feel it and swiftly changes the subject.
The dull ache in Steve’s chest stays.
_____
Steve doesn’t hear it when the bell rings.
Robin and him are still in the kitchen, busy laughing at Robin’s latest work gossip, drinking their favorite wine and waiting for the timer for the lasagna to go off, when suddenly there are Pam’s footsteps crossing the hall and the sound of their apartment door opening and then,
“Pamela! How’s my second favorite lesbian? Still keeping our little birdie happy, I hope?”
Pam laughs and replies something along the lines of, “doing my best!”, but Steve can’t focus. He can’t even breathe. Eddie’s here.
“Eddie’s here,” Robin says and it’s such a regular occurrence, her saying Steve’s exact thoughts out loud in the exact phrasing of his mind, he stopped questioning it a long time ago. Her eyes light up though and she practically leaps out of her chair and Steve still can’t breathe.
Why, he doesn’t really know. He follows Robin on autopilot, stands up, walks into the hallway and there he is. In the flesh. Eddie Munson.
He’s gorgeous, flicks through Steve’s mind and Steve blinks. He doesn’t know why exactly that thought felt so weird, but…well, it’s certainly true. He is gorgeous. Over the years Eddie seemed to have grown into his personality and into his body and the confidence he’s radiating nowadays sends a shiver down Steve’s spine.
He’s in black jeans, a plain brown long sleeve rolled up to his elbows, showing off the tattoos on his forearms. Chains wrapped around his waist and left wrist, and his hair, god, his hair. His bangs fall into his face messily and the rest of it curls past his shoulders, slightly shorter than the last time Steve’s seen him, but it looks so soft. Not as frizzy as in the 80s but still wild and just…he’s beautiful.
Eddie’s lips stretch into a wide smile, dimples in his cheeks as he’s hugging Robin tight, his leather jacket already up on the coat rack.
Steve takes a deep breath. Forces himself to smile.
“Hey man,” he says and it comes out softer than he expected. Nothing of the weirdness he’s feeling made it past his lips, there’s only the gentle, fond tone of his voice.
Eddie’s head whips around, finds him immediately. He pulls out of the hug with Robin and, “oh.”
There seem to be a hundred different emotions flickering over his face that Steve can’t read and that realization cuts him deeply for a second. He used to be able to read Eddie like that. Knew him like the back of his hand, knew how he was feeling from one look, could tell if it was just morning grumpiness or something really bothering him from one grunt over his coffee and now-
They’re so estranged.
“Steve.” Eddie clears his throat. “I didn’t, uh, I didn’t know you…would be here.”
“Oh. Yeah, I mean, Pam just told me this morning, but…” Steve smiles and tries to shake off this weird feeling. The awkwardness of the moment, the strangeness of it all. “But it’s great to see you, man.” He ignores the weird pile of something standing between them, just steps over it with two quick strides and- hugs him.
Eddie smells the same. Not the exact same, there’s a note of a slightly different cologne, but- but the distinct Eddie smell, it’s there. It’s familiar. Soft. Hits Steve hard and takes him right back to six years ago when it meant coming home.
For a second Steve lets himself stay there. In the past. In the comfort of the home they had together.
Eddie only hesitantly hugs him back and Steve swallows down the disappointment washing over him.
He’s fine, he can do this. It’s just Eddie. Right?
Just. Eddie.
“Yeah, uh. Hi. I guess,” Eddie says and when Steve pulls back and finds Eddie’s eyes on him, he feels another weird shiver running down his back. Eddie looks at him with such…distance. Like he’s caged off, like Eddie hasn’t thought about Steve in a long time. Like he’s an actual, real fucking stranger to him.
Steve kinda can’t cope with that.
_____
It’s a pretty weird dinner. Especially considering how close they were. Because with Pam and Robin Eddie’s how he always is and always was. Fucking ecstatic about they’re engagement, so obviously happy to see them and catch up with them and so comfortable. How you’re supposed to be with old friends.
Steve can see Eddie at a random gala or interview or even just a normal day to day conversation, saying things like ‘Oh, me and Robin? Yeah, we go way back’ with a fond smile on his lips.
And then there’s him. Eddie’s tense around him, keeps sending him little glances, like he knows that it’s weird if he doesn’t look at Steve at all, but that it’s hard for him to not pretend he isn’t there. That it’s not natural for him to know how many times to look at Steve would be a normal amount to look at someone you’re at a dinner table with. That it makes him uncomfortable that Steve’s there. Keeps building up a little bit of that facade again, when Robin and Pam just knocked it down.
Steve hates it.
He imagines if he were to come up in that same fictional conversation, Eddie would just kinda shrug him off, like ‘oh yeah, I lived with that guy for a while’.
Like he’s an afterthought.
Like he wouldn’t even be mentioned in Eddie’s biography.
Like he never mattered.
It gets better over the evening though. Maybe Eddie just needed to warm up to him again, or maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s both. But he keeps looking at Steve longer, when Steve is talking, even responding with the edges of his mouth pulling into a soft smile or raising an interested eyebrow or nodding to signal he’s listening. The longer they’re in the same room, the easier it gets and the more Steve feels like he can breathe again.
By the time they’re having dessert (Pam’s tiramisu is to die for) Eddie’s laughed at two of Steve’s jokes and even made a teasing remark about Steve’s contribution to dinner (“Can’t not be involved into making food, can ya?”). Which Steve takes as a huge win, because Eddie actually acknowledged their time together.
Pam insisted on being the one who does the washing up – “Steve and Eddie, you are guests, don’t you dare help me" – so Robin, Steve and Eddie retreat to the living room, put some music on in the background and keep talking and drinking a little.
Eddie complains about Robin’s music choices, Robin bites back and Steve laughs, watching their back and forth and-
And suddenly it’s so easy. It’s just like it was back then, when the three of them were all living here and would spend their nights just like this more often than not. When Robin would nod off on their couch and Steve pulled a blanket over her, before Eddie and him retreated to their rooms, or when they would all fall asleep in a tangled mess of limbs on one of their beds and wake up even more cuddled together, or just-
Just the three of them and Chicago.
Their group dynamic’s back, Eddie feels like Eddie again and Steve’s cheeks hurt from smiling. He’s happier than he’s been in a long time.
Pam joins them after she’s done in the kitchen, but excuses herself to bed just a little while later and Robin follows her to “spend a little more time with the wife before she falls asleep” (Robin loves her so much and Steve loves both of them so much.)
Which leaves Eddie and Steve alone. But Steve’s not even concerned for a second that it will go back to being weird, because Eddie’s sunken into the couch, relaxed and loose, comfortable around Steve. Soft. His real self, the Eddie Steve knows and loves.
He’s his Eddie again.
And now they’re alone, but alone together and that’s Steve’s favorite kind of alone. The only kind of alone he likes. When he gets to share it with Eddie.
They’ve talked about their friends, they’ve talked about their lives for a bit (Eddie lives in LA, the tour will be over in a couple of weeks, they want to take some time off) and now they’ve fallen down a pit of nonsensical topics. Like back when Eddie would smoke too much and ask Steve the weirdest, but most interesting kind of questions.
And now they’re giggling and Steve’s not even sure about what, maybe they were talking about giraffes? Who knows, but…but they’re laughing and Eddie is looking at him again, giving him all of his attention and it fills Steve with a warmth that he can’t describe but reaches every part of his body, up until his fingertips.
Their laughing softly washes out and then they’re just smiling at each other and Eddie- he seems so content and happy, relaxed into Robin’s couch and Steve almost sighs to himself, because suddenly…suddenly it comes crashing down on him. That he’s missed this.
He’s missed this so much.
He’s missed Eddie so much.
Steve shakes his head, suddenly a little more serious. He feels sober but so intoxicated at the same time. Eddie’s kind of like a drug to him.
“What happened?” he hears himself say, quietly and soft, but there’s a graveness to his words. He didn’t even realize he was talking, but the question’s out.
Eddie’s smile turns into a little frown and Steve’s sure that it’s one of the expressions all of Eddies lovers agree looks cute. Has to be. It’s still a little amused, but serious and so- god, so attentive.
“What do you mean?” he asks, matching Steve’s quiet tone.
“What happened to this?” Steve clarifies. “To us? I don’t-…how did it fall apart? I mean-”
“Steve,” Eddie immediately says, shaking his head, sitting up a little, and Steve can see it in his eyes, the defensive walls coming up again, Eddie shutting him out. The fortress of years apart Steve worked so hard to tear down rebuilding in seconds, the light atmosphere vanishing, making space for uncomfortable tension Steve doesn’t like. “Let’s not-”
“No, Eddie, I wanna know. We were so…close, right? And this…this city…it’s…” He scrambles for words, because nothing even really comes close to what he’s trying to describe.
“Look. It always feels like there’s something missing in my life and every time I was here it felt closer and now…now with you here, it…it doesn’t feel like something’s missing at all.” He tries a small smile, but Eddie dodges his gaze. Looks down at the floor and breathes loudly through his nose.
“Steve, I,” he tries again, and even stands up from the couch, but Steve doesn’t let him talk, stands up too, following him.
“No, Eddie, don’t do this. Please. Don’t you miss our friendship? I was the happiest I ever was in Chicago and I-”
“You really still haven’t figured it out, have you?” Eddie looks up at him, and when his eyes meet Steve’s he flinches a little from the hurt painted in them. “You genuinely don’t know.”
“Figured…figured out what?” Steve asks and his voice sounds small. He feels small too. Because there’s this sinking feeling he always gets when he can sense that he’s about to get hurt. He had it when his father locked him in his room the first time, had it when Nancy called them bullshit. He had it last month when Dustin told him he wouldn’t make it to his birthday because he had to see Eddie and his schedule was tighter than Steve’s.
He had it six years ago when Eddie told him he’d move out.
“Why I left,” Eddie says. “Why I…didn’t just stay here with you.”
Steve furrows his brows and blinks twice. He swallows the lump in his throat. He’s scared. “What do you mean? You had to follow your dreams, Eddie.”
“No.” Eddie shakes his head. “No, Steve, that’s not the reason.”
“What?” His voice is so quiet. It always gets this quiet. In moments like these, it always gets this quiet.
Eddie takes a deep breath. It’s trembling and he sighs, and for a second Steve’s just glad that this seems to be affecting him just as much. That he doesn’t go back to look at Steve like he’s a stranger again. That he still acknowledges their past.
“Steve, I didn’t just leave Chicago,” he says. “I left you.”
Something cracks open deep inside of Steve. It cracks open and hurt spills out, spills out and over until his whole chest is filled and it feels as though he’s sinking into the ground. His voice is barely there, just a ghost of him, when he asks, “What do you mean?”
“You broke my heart.” Eddie’s voice is quiet, too. He’s hurting, too. “Every day. Steve, I left, because I was in love with you. And you can never love me back and that is okay, but I just couldn’t stay in the illusion of us. Because it almost convinced me. That maybe…maybe one day you’d wake up and feel the same. But you never did. Of course not. And I knew that but I…I mean the way we…lived together, the way we were happy together, it just kept showing me every day…what I couldn’t have.”
“What?” Steve breathes, or maybe he doesn’t, he’s not sure. He’s not sure of a lot of things right now. Eddie loved him?
Steve has no idea what’s going on. He feels dizzy, strange, and…and he can’t figure out why, but the past tense in Eddie’s confession feels like barbed wire tightening around his chest.
Eddie loved him.
“Look, I was the happiest I ever was in Chicago too,” Eddie goes on, like he didn’t just shift everything Steve’s thought he knew, “but it was breaking me. It wasn’t enough. So no.”
His eyes soften, like he knows what he’s about to say is gonna hurt (as if Steve isn’t already feeling like pain personified) and his tone leaves no space to argue, is nothing if not final, when he adds, “As much as I miss you…I can’t be friends with you. Not anymore, never…never again. I’m sorry, Steve.”
And with that he just…
Steve can’t breathe. He watches, helplessly, just like he did back then, as Eddie simply turns around. And leaves. His boots sounding heavy against the wooden floor, echoing in Steve’s ears, the sound of the door clicking shut even louder than last time.
And Steve…Steve just stands there.
Alone, arms wrapped around himself, just static in his ears. White noise. He can’t process anything.
Flashes of six years ago suddenly come back to haunt him. There’s them living together. All those mornings Steve brought Eddie a coffee and stole a shirt, there’s them in the Troubadour and in Robin’s apartment and there’s all the evenings of just the two of them together at the beach, looking at the sun dive into the skyline of the city and then wandering around in the waves of Lake Michigan, their shoes in their hands.
Steve can’t believe that Eddie loved him. All that time. He loved him. And Steve thought they were the best of friends.
He takes deep breaths, or tries at least, and fails, wraps his arms tighter around himself. His vision’s sort of blurry and he hears doors opening and closing, but it’s dull and like it’s far away and then there are hands on his arms, a tight grip, grounding him.
“Robin,” he gets out, “Robin, I can’t- I can’t breathe.”
“Shhh hey, it's okay,” she soothes him, rubs her hands up and down Steve’s arms. She guides him to sit down, orders him to keep breathing, gets him to drink something.
After a couple minutes, when Steve doesn’t feel like he might die anymore, he slumps into the couch, closing his eyes.
“Eddie left,” he says, a little nonsensically, because Robin isn’t stupid, she’s one of the smartest people he knows actually, and she knows this, obviously, but he still feels like he needs to say it. And she just nods. Says, “yeah.”
“Again,” Steve adds. And Robin sighs. It’s deep and sad and exactly how Steve is feeling right now.
“I’m sorry.”
Steve doesn’t say anything. Robin just sits there with him though, doesn’t expect him to talk. Is there for him, in the silence.
“You know I used to think you knew,” she murmurs after a while.
Steve frowns, looks over to her. “Knew what?”
For the fraction of a second he thinks she’s gonna say ‘that he was in love with you’. She doesn’t. It’s way worse.
Robin shrugs. “That you’re in love with him. I always just figured you weren’t ready to talk about it. Might never be. But then I started to realize that you actually had no idea and I just-” She sighs again.
Steve feels like he’s thrown into cold water. He blinks. And then he starts to feel incredibly fucking stupid.
He didn’t realize. Not even now. Not after all of this, not after his pain was laid out right in front of his eyes, not after seeing Eddie took his breath away, not after he felt like daggers carved out his heart when Eddie told him he’d purposefully left him, not even then, did the thought cross his mind.
But Robin says it like it’s obvious and that’s because it is, Steve realizes, it’s so. painfully. obvious.
Of course he’s in love with Eddie.
That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? What it’s been about, for so, so long. Why he can’t keep a girlfriend, why he can’t seem to find the sense of home anywhere now, why he’s never as happy as when he’s here, why it’s been feeling like there’s just something missing, it’s…it’s so simple.
The pieces of his broken heart have been spelling out ‘you’re in love with Eddie Munson and he keeps leaving you’ in front of him and Steve- well. Unfortunately, Steve’s never been that great at reading.
He takes a deep breath. He looks at Robin and her devastated eyes and swallows. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
Robin sighs quietly and shrugs. “It was yours to figure out,” she whispers. “Plus, it just…seemed a little easier? I didn’t wanna break your heart, Steve, Eddie was already gone.”
Another hit. Right to his chest.
Steve tries taking another deep breath, but instead he just feels himself falling to pieces.
“Robin,” he wheezes out, as he’s crumbling right into his best friend’s loving arms, “Robin, what do I do?”
“I don’t know,” Robin says, and she sounds like she might be breaking right with him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
_____
The next couple of months Steve is distracted. All the time. He can’t focus on anything, so much that even his students have picked up on it. “Mr Harrington, what’s going on with you lately?”, “Mr Harrington, are you okay?”, he can’t deal with it.
He feels like he’s a witness to his own life, just a bystander, watching. That he can’t influence anything, that he’s made out of plastic and nothing is real. But it is, unfortunately. It is.
He’s in love with someone he can’t have. That’s the harsh reality.
He’s doomed to be alone for all time. (That might be a little dramatic.)
He’s sad. Heartbroken. (That’s another fact.)
At the end of a school day he’s started dreading going home a little bit.
It used to be his safe space, his little refuge, the cute apartment he found a couple years ago. He used to love how small and cozy it was, loved the silence when he came home and spent his evening on the couch, because no matter how much he loved his students they were Loud™️. And it used to be a different silence than back at his parents’ house, it used to be soft and relaxing, just Steve and his home and Cara the Cat purring on his chest and nothing else.
But now it weirdly started resembling how it’d felt back in Hawkins. Suffocating and harsh and not even Cara can help. It doesn’t feel like the peace and quiet he deserves after a long day at school, it feels hollow. Like a constant painful reminder of his loneliness. Of the utter and complete absence of Eddie Munson in his life.
It doesn’t feel like a home anymore, now that Steve’s been reminded what home feels like.
Because Eddie’s also Loud™. But it was never too much. Steve used to soak it up like he was a sponge, Eddie’s laughter, Eddie’s jokes, his teasing voice and his rough, raspy voice after he either smoked too many joints or played too many songs when Bill let him have the stage in the Troubadour for the evening.
And, even though Eddie was generally loud, he always had a way of sensing when to be quiet. When to be there for Steve and not say a word. When to hold him, because he was starting to have a migraine and just softly hum into his ear, intimate and gentle and like the soothing sound of a river.
God, fuck, Steve misses him so much.
He loves him so much.
The sudden sound of a window falling shut snaps Steve out of his thoughts and back into reality. He shakes his head and blinks his tears away. He’s still at school for god’s sake, he needs to get a grip. He gets out of his desk chair and closes his eyes for a second.
He’s been dragging out his afternoons in his classroom and sometimes the basketball court, pretending to assist the team’s practices (he gets along pretty well with Danny, he’d almost call the two of them friends) or just shooting some hoops by himself, simply to avoid going home.
But he won’t be able to do that forever, he does realize that.
He slides the window open again to check if everything still works and then closes it for good and just stays there for a moment, sighs, staring out of the window.
“Mr Harrington?”
He spins around and spots one of his students standing in the doorframe, lightly knocking against it.
“Oh,” he says, “uh, hi Brian, what are you still doing here?”
“I had football practice,” Brian says, frowning, probably because usually this is something Steve knows. “But I could ask you the same. I think I forgot my algebra textbook, that’s why I came up here, but what are you still doing here, Mr Harrington? It’s really late.”
“Oh, I just, uh…I was grading some papers,” Steve lies and walks back to his desk. He was actually trying to fill out the daily crossword puzzle (and failing spectacularly), even though he hates crossword puzzles (because he always fails spectacularly), but he just genuinely didn’t have anything else to do. All his papers are graded and he doesn’t exactly have a lot of hobbies.
He’s a little pathetic if he thinks about it.
“Oh sure. I…yeah.” Brian nods and goes to retrieve his textbook from the last row, but Steve frowns. He seems a little off.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I, uh…” Brian cuts himself off, sighs and leans against the desk closest to Steve. “It’s…it’s Chloe Harper.”
“Chloe Harper?” That’s the girl Steve assigned to tutor him in French last term. “What about her?”
Brian blushes. Which is the most adorable thing in the world, because the guy’s a quarterback and built like one. And then he shrugs. “I really like her. So much that I haven’t been able to focus lately and Coach is really unhappy with me all the time and I just…” He sighs again. “I just need to get over her.”
“Get over her?” Steve asks and leans against his own desk in a similar fashion, mirroring Brian. He takes great pride in this. That his students trust him, come to him with their problems. “She doesn’t like you back?”
Brian shakes his head. “No. She doesn’t like football and she barely pays any attention to me outside of tutoring. Plus, Mr Harrington, she’s head of the debate team. She’s so smart and she probably wants someone equally smart who she can have smart conversations with. Not the idiot she only met because he was too dumb for french class.”
Steve crosses his arms. “Okay, first of all Brian, you’re not dumb. People learn differently and at different paces and there are so many different types of intelligence, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re stupid, okay? Take me, for example, I barely scraped through high school. I wasn’t accepted into any colleges at first. I only stumbled into this job because my best friend kept insisting it would be the best thing for me and that I should try again and again. And she was right, I love my job. I’m a good teacher. So don’t ever think that about yourself, all right?”
Brian smiles. “Thank you, Mr Harrington.”
“And secondly…you’re convinced she doesn’t like you back, but…” Steve frowns and cocks his head. “You haven’t told her?”
“I, uh…well, no. Not exactly.”
Steve smiles. “Then how is she supposed to know?”
For a couple seconds Brian just looks at him. Then he bites in his bottom lip and looks down at his textbook. “I’m scared,” he admits quietly.
“And I get that,” Steve says empathically. “Rejection sucks. And it hurts so much. But if you don’t give her the chance to say no you also don’t give her the chance to say yes.”
Brian’s eyes widen and he looks at Steve like he just changed his worldview.
“Yeah, you’re…you’re right. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way yet.”
Steve just smiles at him and nods like well, there you go.
“Thanks, Mr Harrington,” Brian says and smiles back and straightens up, new vigor in him. “Really, thank you. I think this might’ve been what I needed.”
“Anytime, Brian,” Steve responds and feels a warm shiver run down his spine. He loves his students and he still sometimes can’t believe that he’s actually someone they look up to, someone they come to for advice. It’s crazy to him. It’s one of the greatest honors of his life to get to do this. Be a teacher.
Brian walks over to the door, calls a “bye Mr Harrington, see you Monday” and Steve watches him leave with a smile on his face.
It’s not until hours later, when he’s finally made it home, when he’s in the kitchen washing dishes, the radio quietly playing to drown out the silence, getting ready to flop down on his couch with an espresso and his cat on his lap, that he realizes, instead of talking to Brian, he could have just as well been talking to himself.
You haven’t told her?
Not exactly.
Well, then how is she supposed to know?
He blinks. “Wait,” he says out loud, even though there’s nobody there.
His hands still in the wet dishwater, he turns and stares at the picture on his fridge, the one he never took down, of him and Eddie in front of their apartment door, holding the keys into the camera, wide smiles in their faces. They took that one the day of their move in.
He’s been looking at that picture every single night for the past couple of months (after years of barely looking at it at all, because for some reason it always hurt too much) (well…he knows the reason now), wallowing in self-pity, thinking about how much it hurts to be in love with someone you can’t have, without being able to do something about it.
“I can,” he says, “I can do something about it. I never told him I love him back.”
To be fair, Eddie never said that he was still in love with him and it’s a pretty big branch of hope Steve’s clinging to but…but for now, it isn’t hopeless. Not as much as he’s made it out to be, at least. Chances are Eddie could still be in love with him, or could at least fall back into love with him and he-
He only ever said he can’t be friends with Steve anymore.
Steve’s not planning to be friends with him.
_____
It’s a five and a half hour flight, but it feels like 5 minutes. Steve’s buzzing with anticipation, his nerves don’t give him a single calm minute. He probably annoys the shit out of the elderly lady next to him, because his knee keeps bouncing up and down for the whole goddamn flight.
And then he’s there, in LA, and holds on tight to the piece of paper with Eddie’s address on it.
He kind of can’t believe he’s actually doing this, actually here, so close to him, but it’s also-
It’s kind of the only logical thing.
The hope he’s feeling is a nasty thing, biting his way through his heart and his mind overshadowing everything else. Sure, usually there’s the entirety of the United States in between them, it’s not exactly ideal for a relationship, but if Eddie’ll have him, Steve’s willing to do anything, and he means anything, to make it work. Put in the effort. Move, if it’s necessary.
He loves this man, with every fiber of his being, and it’s only getting more and more clear with every mile the taxi drives and his heart leaps.
“Thanks,” he tells the driver and tips him generously and then. Well. Then there he is. In front of Eddie’s house. His mansion, almost.
It’s big and white and it feels…off. For some reason. Steve immediately gets a bad feeling. But the hope’s still clouding his judgement and stronger than his doubt, so he pushes the anxious thoughts and feelings away and just strides forward, presses his thumb on the door bell.
After a long couple of anxious seconds, there is the familiar static of the intercom and then a voice.
“Who is it?”
“Uhm,” Steve mutters, his heart racing, “it’s Steve.”
Silence. Steve blinks. Then the gate in front of him sets into motion with a noise, opens up. Steve takes a deep breath. This is so weird. He knew Eddie was well off, he was a goddamn rockstar but this…
It’s probably just necessary security measures, Steve, he tells himself, takes another deep breath and enters the premise.
The driveway is big and there are trees and gravel and it’s. Still weird. Steve counts four cars parked there. Four.
He walks up to the house, the big ass house, and before he can even walk up the three steps to the main entrance, the door’s being pulled open.
It’s Eddie, in sweatpants and a shirt, his hair in a messy bun and Steve’s heart tightens and about doubles in size at the same time. How had he ever not known how stupidly in love he was with this man?
“What happened, is everyone okay?” Eddie asks and sounds a little out of breath and concerned, so worried, Steve frowns a little.
“What? I-yeah,” he replies, a little confused, but reassuring because he knows this feeling all to well. “Yeah, everyone’s fine.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, shoulders sagging in relief, before he stands up a little straighter and clears his throat. “Okay? Then what…what are you doing here?”
It’s not exactly cold, his tone, but it isn’t exactly welcoming either. He doesn’t seem particularly happy to see Steve, that’s for sure.
“Uhm, I- I guess I…wanted to see you?” He’s not sure why he sounds so unsure, but he does. He feels that way to, if he thinks about it, so maybe it makes perfect sense.
Eddie sighs, crossing his arms in front of his body. Closing off again. Steve really seems to have a talent for bringing out that version of Eddie. It stings.
“Steve, I thought I was being clear.” He sounds defeated. Tired. Steve swallows. “I can’t-”
“No, I, I know,” Steve rushes to say, steps a little closer. “I know we can’t be friends, you- you said, but…could we maybe try something else?”
Eddie’s not following. It’s obvious on his face. He furrows his brows in confusion, leaning forward a little shaking his head. “What? What are you talking about?”
Okay. So. This is it.
Steve clears his throat. “Will you…Eddie, will you go out with me?”
Eddie blinks. For a couple of long, agonizing seconds he doesn’t say anything. “Steve, I-” he then says and laughs. It comes out a little hysterically.
“I have a boyfriend.”
Steve can hear his heart shattering. He’s sure. Four words and they cut right into him.
“Oh,” he can hear himself saying. He didn’t even…he didn’t even consider that. Why didn’t he consider that?
“And what are you even-? Steve, you’re-” Eddie huffs out a frustrated breath, shakes his head even more. “You’re not. You can’t. I-” He lets out another laugh and he looks so devastated for some reason, he looks just as confused and hurt as Steve’s feeling. “No. No, you don’t get to do this. You can’t just…show up here and, and, and, what? Tell me it wasn’t actually hopeless? All this time and you- No. I-I. I can’t deal with this. You can’t just show up in my life and- make everything messy again, I-” He looks at Steve, then closes his eyes and breathes loudly through his nose. “Not after it took me so long to try and get over you. Steve, I-”
He opens his eyes again and they’re so sad Steve can hardly bear it.
“Please leave,” Eddie says.
Steve’s breath hitches. His heart hurts. Everything hurts.
“Yeah, okay,” he breathes and tries to compose himself, tries pulling himself together. All he wants to do is curl up in Robin’s arms and cry. But he can’t. “I’m sorry,” he says and is aware of how weak his voice is, how defeated and broken he sounds, but he doesn’t fight it. It’s not like he can do anything against it.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats and turns around, the tears burning in his eyes. He presses them closed for a seconds, reminds himself to breathe, starts walking.
He doesn’t hear a door closing. Can feel Eddie’s gaze burning in his back, doesn’t turn around. He can’t. He just keeps walking. Step after step. The gravel crunches under his shoes and for a second Steve imagines it’s bones, the broken skeleton of Eddie’s love for him. Eddie’s love that died waiting.
And now there’s nothing left for Steve but the ghost of it that he’s been chasing.
This time, at least, it’s Steve who’s walking away.
Just not because he chose to.
_____
Steve’s miserable.
But now he at least has a real reason to be.
Because the love of his life happens to be the one that got away.
And they got away before he even figured out he was in love with them. And there’s nothing he can do.
Eddie has a boyfriend. And they seem happy.
Because as it turns out getting your heart broken forever can result in having a lot of time to kill at an airport. So now Steve’s proud owner of countless gossip magazines with Eddie in them. Eddie and his boyfriend.
He can’t even get himself to hate the guy. As much as he’d like to, Eddie’s smiles on those pictures are real and if that’s thanks the to the guy then, well. Steve just wants him to be happy.
Even if that means losing him. All over again.
He’s been crying himself to sleep for the last five weeks. It’s getting more and more pathetic. At least it’s gotten him a real friend, because Danny’s noticed and come over a couple times. First with beer, then with chocolate ice cream and a movie, which his girlfriend apparently calls the Get Over Him Starter Kit. Which means that Danny (and his girlfriend for that matter) are also completely fine with the fact that it’s a him Steve’s trying to get over.
So yes, Steve’s really grateful for him and for Robin of course, who’s been letting him cry to her on the phone like every other night, but-
Well. It’s just not like anything really helps.
Everything he wants is Eddie and Eddie’s-
Eddie’s out of reach.
At least Brian got the girl, Steve thinks, when one Thursday after school he sees them driving off together in Chloe’s Fiat. He’s happy for them. He really is. He smiles as he gets into his own car. But over the course of the drive it turns into he’s happy for them but even sadder for himself.
He gets home, makes dinner, eats in front of the tv, and then forces himself to get up and wash the dishes because he can’t lose full control over his life. Cara’s already been walking over him like he’s a piece of furniture for the last fifteen minutes, like he’s losing her respect, which he will not tolerate! (Even though, honestly, it’s not really like he ever had it, she’s a cat, after all.)
So he gets up and just as he’s rinsing the his plate there’s a knock on his apartment door.
Steve frowns. It’s past seven pm, who could that be?
Wow, I am old, he then thinks and just dries his hands off and walks over to the door. It’s probably just Nadine from 3F, asking for sugar or something.
When he opens the door, he freezes.
Because it’s not Nadine from 3F. Not at all.
Instead, it’s Eddie Munson.
Steve blinks. When it really hits him, it’s like he’s being struck by lightning, all of his senses collapsing, too much going on. There’s static in his ears again.
Eddie looks beautiful. Steve doesn’t know if he wants to cry, or fall into his arms, or scream, or do literally anything else.
“Hi Steve,” Eddie says and Steve blinks. This is real, he thinks. This is real, Eddie is really here, he just talked to me.
For a second Steve still just stands there, confused out of his mind, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Uhm. Hi,” he then says.
And then he sees it. Eddie’s- Eddie. Is holding. Flowers. Like. A bouquet. Of flowers.
Steve frowns. Blinks.
And then there’s this stupid son of a bitch hope again. It’s tentative, but it’s there. He takes a shaky breath and opens his mouth, to say something like, ‘what are you doing here?’, but Eddie beats him to it.
He lifts the flowers into the air a little bit, looks at Steve with the most beautiful, heart shattering look on his face and the softest, kindest eyes and says, “how about that date?”
And Steve doesn’t even dare to breathe to not shatter the illusion. Because this can’t be real. It can’t be. He lost Eddie. Forever. He was doomed to be alone till his dying breath, what just happened? He can’t keep up.
He can’t think.
“What about your boyfriend?” slips off his lips before he realizes he was talking.
Eddie shrugs one sided, with a half smile. “Broke up with him.”
And Steve stares at him. His hope starts swirling up, growing, making his stomach feel all jittery. “Because of me?”
Eddie chuckles and steps a little closer. He lifts his free hand and gently reaches for a strand of Steve’s hair, twists it around his finger. “Steve,” he says and his voice is soft but how he’s looking at Steve is even softer. “Everything I do is because of you.”
“What?” Steve breathes, because he can’t keep up.
“I’m sorry I left you,” Eddie says, instead of explaining and something in Steve finally settles. The fact that this is reality starts to sink in.
“It’s okay. I broke your heart.”
Eddie sighs and there’s a little regret in his eyes. “And apparently I broke yours right back.”
Steve looks down, fidgets, cracks his knuckles. “I mean, I- I didn’t have it figured out,” he admits. “For a long time.”
“No, but I still should have just talked to you,” Eddie counters. “I mean I lost you either way. Couldn’t have hurt. Not more than it did, anyway.” He sighs again. “That’s what I used to think, you know? That the ultimate rejection I had to face if I told you wouldn’t be as bad as just leaving.” He scoffs a little, shakes his head. “Turns out it was. Doesn’t matter how I lost you, but I lost you. And that hurt. Shit that hurt.”
For a moment they just look at each other.
“Eddie?”
“Mhm?”
“I think I love you.”
Eddie’s soft, slightly sad expression twists into a smile that could blind the world. He chuckles again, but this time it’s a little wet – a happy sound, though, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “Is that a yes to the date?”
Steve laughs softly, all of his tension and confusion melting off, finally making space for happiness to take over. Eddie throws the flowers onto the floor, wraps his arms tightly around Steve’s waist and-
Kisses him. Deeply.
Steve sighs into it, melts against Eddie, wraps his arms around his neck and lets himself be held and kissed and held. And kissed.
“The poor flowers,” he mumbles into the kiss after a while and Eddie shakes his head, pulls him even closer and whispers, “I love you, too.”
Steve laughs again, makes a gurgling happy sound and pushes his nose into Eddie’s cheek for a second, before claiming his lips again and kissing him with everything he has. It’s desperate and hungry and so full of feeling and it’s the best thing Steve’s ever felt. It’s everything he’s ever been looking for.
It’s Eddie.
He buries his hands deep in Eddie’s hair, loses himself in the feeling of lips and teeth and tongue and they stumble their way back into Steve’s apartment. Eddie kicks the door closed behind them.
They don’t make it to their date that night.