Chapter Text
Eddie Munson was a well known celebrity chaos gremlin.
A lot of it was good deeds and charity, but done in whatever crazy way he chose. Anything from performing an acoustic show for a small town middle school’s drama club fundraiser, to sending hundreds of couriers to a politicians’ office to deliver individual wooden blocks to create a massive copy of a letter expressing his opinion. The first three of those were expressions of severe outrage over ‘protect the children’ type censorship laws.
Then came the poor freshman congressman who went on Fox and tore up a homophobe so hard they cut the feed. He saw the first couriers arrive and was, justifiably, scared and confused; he didn’t think that he’d done anything to upset the only guy who did this. By the time that puzzle was assembled, it was a 10 foot mural yelling GOOD JOB KEEP IT UP.
There had been a lot more since then.
Several senators had a pavlovian fear of one company’s uniform.
Growing up broke meant Eddie was allergic to wealth. He got itchy whenever he thought about how much money was in his accounts. Chrissy, bless her, hid it from him as much as possible. Most of it was in trusts that kicked out dividends to various charities. One was a trust to pay for his life when he retired: she refused to show him that one.
There was also an account specifically earmarked for his chaotic gremlin moods. He chose those himself. Sure, Chrissy would text him links to things she thought he’d enjoy or want to know about, but it was him hitting the button. When it was a simple charity or donation - completing a crowdfunding goal, paying off debts - he did it anonymously. Otherwise? Well. For scale, he had a favorite skywriting guy.
The last four and a half years had been meteoric for him. He’d gone from third shift warehouse work while posting videos of his music recorded on his cracked phone, to international, sold out, stadium-scale tours, with two Grammys in his first year.
It hadn’t stopped since.
It also hadn’t increased much - thank christ - he was already exhausted. He’d inadvertently made metal music mainstream. His stuff wasn’t full heavy metal like he’d expected to do as a teenager, but the roots were obvious, and the longer he spent on the charts, the more pure metal bands picked up fans. That meant on top of making his own music, he was the face of a genre, which meant more interviews.
Eddie scrolled through the links that Chrissy sent while he sipped on a strawberry mango daiquiri in his hotel room after an interview and photoshoot in NYC. It came with a flower that was now stuck behind his ear. Screw you, he was a superstar, with a scary rock star persona, he could drink his fruity, girly, overly decorated, sugary cocktails if he wanted.
Today, she’d sent a list of his least favorite people’s recent fuck ups, a news article about the completion of a skatepark he funded by shipping thousands of small boxes of quarters to the city council that claimed they couldn’t fund it, and a copy of an email that had gone to their not-entirely-public-not-really-a-secret account.
A wedding invite email.
Those happened pretty often, and Eddie would scroll the couple’s social media, decide whether they sucked, and if they seemed like good people, he’d send the weirdest item on their registry.
This one came with a note from Chrissy.
Make sure you look at this one.
I think you’ve mentioned the name before?
-C
“Shit,” he cursed, setting down the daiquiri and scrubbing at his face.
Yeah, he knew that name. He hadn’t mentioned it much to Chrissy, maybe three times ever, never with context, but she was incredible, so she remembered.
Steve Harrington.
One-time love of his life, and the man who broke his heart five months before he became famous. Arguably, Steve was the reason that Eddie wrote anything worth listening to back then.
Agony was an exquisite muse.
They’d been living together for half a year, struggling to pay bills and cover Steve’s tuition and neurologist, saving up for his hearing aids, and to fix Eddie’s van. They were dancing on the edge of eviction, they were juggling overdue bills, they were masters of grocery coupons, and it wasn’t enough. They both knew that, and wouldn’t say it out loud.
They loved like wildfire: awe-inspiring, all-consuming, destroying everything it touched.
Steve caught him on the way out the door with his sweetheart in March, planning to pawn his beloved guitar. Steve had run out of his ‘as-needed’ prescription after a week-long migraine wiped out his supply. Steve wouldn’t let him sell the warlock, and was still trying to hide that it was lingering five days past that. It didn’t work. When Steve was hurting, it was all Eddie could see or think about.
Steve fully rejected his parents’ demands that he break it off with the ‘trashy drug dealer’ after four months of complaining, and Eddie promised that he’d take care of him. He’d never match the luxurious upper class life he’d known, but Eddie swore he’d always give Steve the love he deserved.
Steve’s parents never hit him, but then again, they’d have to be around him longer than a few minutes to do that, and the Harringtons couldn’t be bothered. Their love was never really on offer, but their significant financial support was; conditional on Steve checking the right boxes. His early childhood education major didn’t check the box, but might have been forgiven if it wasn’t for Eddie in the picture. The problem wasn’t the fact that he was a guy, but that he was a broke, triple-senior, aspiring musician with a criminal record and no plan to get a degree.
After they cut him off, in a fight that left Steve spiraling about being worthless, Eddie made him promise that he wouldn’t go back to them. That no matter what, he wouldn’t give them control over him again. More than anything, he knew that Steve would be destroyed by it. If he let his parents have any fraction of control, they’d erode him away until he was a shell.
In return, Steve made him promise that, no matter what, no matter how bad it got, he wouldn’t go back to dealing. Eddie had made a few jokes after they moved in together that got a little farther from joking with each overdue bill. Steve always shut it down. With his misdemeanor charges as a teenager, another strike would see him hit with a mandatory minimum.
Eddie kept his word.
Steve didn’t.
One day in April, the overdue notices stopped. The landlord stopped sending certified mail. Like a miracle. Eddie was ecstatic when he asked if they were fucked, and Steve told him he’d paid off everything. He thought one of the grants or scholarships Steve applied to had come through, thought that Steve had won big on a scratcher ticket, thought some eccentric rich guy at the restaurant where Steve waited tables had left a five figure tip.
At least Steve didn’t try to lie when Eddie giddily asked how he did it.
They fought viciously, and months of accumulated stress and anxiety meant they went straight for fatal hits.
He never could remember much of what they said that day. In the moment, it was a rush of emotion, and his mouth ran away without him. There were pieces. Steve said something about refusing to give up what mattered. Somewhere in there he told Steve that Eddie was giving him everything he had, and if that wasn’t enough, then fuck you.
He didn’t know - he’d never know - if that was the moment that ended it, but when he came home the next day after back-to-back shifts at the coffee shop then warehouse, Steve was gone, and all his stuff with him. He left behind the paid off bills and the rent prepaid for the next three months.
Angry and aching, Eddie immediately blocked him on social media, blocked his phone number, and between tears, wrote the song that would go on to be his first single.
Nothing Left to Love
So yeah, he knew the name Steve Harrington, and had hoped he’d never hear it again. Five years on, seeing it in writing was enough to twist his gut and tighten his throat. That was before he processed that he was looking at a wedding invitation.
Mr and Mrs Richard Harrington
invite you to celebrate the union of their son,
Steven Richard Harrington
to his bride
Kate Elizabeth Winkler
It wasn’t directly from Steve, but from someone calling themself Steve’s brother. Oh, it was from Dustin, that made sense then. Not actually related, and four years younger than him, but very close.
During the almost-year they’d dated, Dustin, a senior in high school, had been too busy with classes and college applications and some kind of advanced internship and his rocky relationship with his girlfriend to pay attention to sleep or food, let alone have time to visit or talk to Steve. Eddie never got to meet the kid, but heard about how much Steve loved him.
It was crazy how relieved Eddie was to know that it really was temporary, and Steve had Dustin in his life again.
In his life, but obviously not privy to all the relevant information from that gap.
The email from Dustin talked about how Eddie was his favorite musician in the world, and that his older brother always bought actual, physical copies of all of Eddie’s albums, and that it would be so cool if he came to the wedding. Specifically mentioned that he and his brother would rather he show up than get sent a gift.
He pushed away the sharp spike of emotion at the idea that Steve was a fan. Steve was always his biggest supporter, it wasn’t a surprise that he liked the music.
Normally, this kind of shot-in-the-dark wedding invite, with a personal story, got Eddie to buy something, and then move on. Maybe send a note or an autograph if they seemed like real fans.
This was really fucking far from normal.
This was a really bad fucking idea is what it was.
It was a bad idea six months ago when he saved a copy of the wedding information. It was a bad idea three months ago when he spent a night a few sips shy of drunk, scrolling through the enormous, extensive, ridiculous registry, insulting the style of almost everything in it. It was a bad idea a month ago when he bought a plane ticket and car reservation.
It was such a goddamn bad idea as he walked into the church the morning of the ceremony to look around, and try to convince his brain to listen to reason.
The wedding invite came with a link to the wedding website - apparently that was a thing people did - and even though Eddie restrained himself for a few weeks, he eventually caved and clicked. There were photos of the couple dating, and photos of the proposal, and photos of the wedding planning, and an engagement shoot. Not selfies. An actual photographer had documented all of it, edited it to look perfect, and uploaded it into slideshows.
At first, he was masochistically curious about who the hell this woman was. He wanted to know who had managed to fit into the venn diagram of people Steve would marry, and people his parents would approve.
Kate was gorgeous. Eddie spent enough time at rich-people-and-celebrity-parties to know that if her beauty was store bought, and he didn’t think it was, those surgeons were expensive as hell. Her hair was silky and dark, was in a constant Brazilian blowout by the look of things, and looked like a model in every photo. They were professionally done, but he could tell she was just like that.
But in looking at her, Eddie also saw Steve. Hair even shorter than the first time he saw him. Still fashionable, but corporate acceptable. He’d taken out the piercing in his ear. Athletic as ever based on the photos of them on ski slopes and mountain trails and beaches. In one photo he could just see a hearing aid. They were edited out of the rest.
She was a socialite and headed a charitable organization working with coffee farmers. Steve was… actually, Eddie couldn’t tell what his job was. If he got his degree and was teaching, it didn’t pass muster for the curated story the website told.
That made sense.
Steve left Eddie, so his parents must have let him keep his dream job.
Eddie tried to stay in the general relationship pictures, but it was a slideshow, and eventually he saw the proposal.
It was in a Michelin star restaurant.
And that…
Well, that was when Eddie should have realized he was going to do something stupid.
But in his defense, it was a red flag. Steve hated that kind of thing. He was barely okay with it when Eddie, at one of the rare open mic performances he did, in front of ten people, would dedicate a song to him. He loved that Eddie loved him so proudly, but that kind of performative love reminded him of his parents, who only pretended they cared about him if there was an audience. Eddie wanted the audience; Steve never did.
Steve wouldn’t propose in public. He never hid his affection in public, but the important moments? He didn’t like to share those.
If Eddie was a smart man, or if he kept a more intense tour schedule, he wouldn’t have dug into the rest of the damn website.
He did.
Steve didn’t like sushi. There was a series of pictures of Kate feeding him bites from her chopsticks.
Steve didn’t want a big, religious, church wedding. His was being held in a damn cathedral.
Maybe, Eddie tried to justify to himself, maybe Steve had changed. It was five years since he saw him last. They were young then. Steve was twenty two. People changed. Shit, Eddie’s life was unrecognizable now, even though he liked to think he was the same person in all the important ways. Steve was different now too. Of course he was.
Or maybe, Steve was in love with her. Wait, no, he had to be, Steve was marrying her, of course he loved her. Steve wouldn’t marry someone unless he loved them, no matter how hard his parents pushed.
Steve did lots of things for Eddie just because they were together. He never played D&D, but he’d listen to Eddie talk about it for hours because it was something that Eddie loved. This was the same. This was who Steve was. If some compromises would make his partner happier, he’d always make that choice.
When he loved, it was with his whole being. Everything he had. Right up until he stopped, and then he left it all behind.
So that had to explain it. That had to be why the guy in those photos, and why the wedding they’d planned, didn’t look like the man Eddie once loved. Steve was in love with Kate, and he loved her enough to give her the things that made her happy. He had changed.
He got his heart to accept that fact after a few weeks. It tore open old wounds, but he got it done.
His stupid, broken brain?
No matter how many times Eddie swore to himself that he’d anonymously send something off the registry, let Steve live his now happy life, he couldn’t stop picking at it.
Eddie tried to find a way to sate the itch to go via gremlining. Contemplated sending a puzzle collage during the reception, but couldn’t figure out what it would say, or how to do it without it being obviously from him.
Tragically, his brain wouldn’t settle for shenanigans.
He needed to see for himself. So. Plane ticket. Hotel room. His best undercover rockstar look. He never RSVPd, but he wasn’t going to stay for the ceremony and reception. No fucking way. He’d find proof that Steve had happily, genuinely changed, make his brain stop obsessing, and then he’d get the fuck out before Steve saw him. Rationally, he knew that Steve wasn’t going to care all that much if he did see Eddie, but screw you, Eddie had enough pride that he didn’t want his ex to know that he was a bit obsessive after all this time.
Shit, there hadn’t even been rumors of a relationship for Eddie, not even in the tabloids that claimed he was an actual, literal demon. No. Steve absolutely couldn’t see Eddie there or he might think it was something it wasn’t.
Go in, look around, get confirmation to shut up his brain, and bail.
Except he failed during step two.
There was a crew doing final set up in the cathedral, and the flowers along the pews and set up in a display by the doors were white roses, baby’s breath, and lavender.
Fucking lavender.
All over the place, and Eddie knew as soon as he saw it that the reception would be the same. The color palette was a deep purple, white, and gold. The flowers matched it beautifully.
Except.
Steve was allergic to fucking lavender.
It gave him a terrible rash if he touched it, the smell made him stressed from worrying about the rash, and if the smell was too strong and he was around it too long, it gave him a fucking migraine.
Eddie was failing on step two, so, what was one more bad idea for the day?
Was it called back of house if it wasn’t a stage? Eddie wasn’t sure, and didn’t particularly care. He was sneaking around in it, looking for… fuck if he knew what, but looking.
Whatever mysterious flashing neon answer he thought he’d stumble upon, instead, he found Dustin.
Instagram stalking Steve turned up nothing useful. Dustin, however, was a frequent poster, mentioned Steve from time to time, and thus, Eddie was very familiar with what he looked like.
The suit was a bit much, and the bow tie was a mess, but the curls made it easy. Even if Eddie hadn’t recognized him though, the reaction was enough.
“Oh my god, you’re Eddie Munson,” he squeaked, “Oh my god, oh my god, you came? You didn’t RSVP! I mean, I’m sure we can make it work since you’re you, but I sent you the invitation for a reason, you're supposed to respond if you’re going to show up!’
“Uh, hi, yeah, I’m here, sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure I would. Eddie Munson,” he held out his hand.
“Oh my god, I’m shaking Eddie Munson’s hand,” he whispered in awe, then caught himself, “I’m Dustin Henderson, I sent you the invitation, and I need to say that I did not think you’d actually show, and this is the best day of my life. Mike is going to lose his shit when I tell him.”
“So you’re the superfan then, huh? Using your brother’s wedding as an excuse?”
If Eddie didn’t know Steve, if these were strangers, Eddie would be cackling with glee. Inviting the world’s most infamous chaos agent to a fancy wedding that didn’t care about him was exactly his style. He’d have shown up with the scar prosthetics from that one music video with the bats, and the most lavish gift he could come up with. Custom Chihuly chandelier, maybe.
“Uh, no, not an excuse, but I am a fan, so I know all of the cool things you’ve done. I knew you’d enjoy showing up to something like this - I should have known you wouldn’t RSVP, that would have let Kate plan for it, and that is not your style. I mean come on! You’re you! Now that I think about it, I’m shocked you didn’t land in a helicopter on the patio during the reception. Wait! Is that how you’re going to leave? Holy shit, that’s going to look amazing. Tell the pilot that there’s a bridge over the pond and if they drop a ladder you could totally pull it off. I can place a call and get some pyro effects set up.”
No wonder Steve loved this kid, he was great. However, it was impossible to look cool with long hair next to a helicopter.
“Did you warn anyone you invited me?” He fished.
Dustin snorted, “No, obviously. I had to steal Steve’s laptop to get admin access to their weird wedding website so I could send you that invite in the first place. And you can’t tell them that I sent you that invite, Kate would kill me.”
“Theft? Hacking? Deceit? My, my, one might almost think that I’ve been a bad influence on the nation’s youth. What would your parents say? What would your brother say?”
Another snort.
“Steve’s parents would flip their shit, my mom would just tell me that not everyone enjoys surprises.”
“And your brother?”
“Oh, he’s not actually my brother. Not by blood. He’s just Steve.”
“Okay, so what would —”
“He’s my best friend. We met because I lost my cat and I was totally freaking out, and he ditched a date with my other best friend’s older sister to help me look for Mews, and we ended up getting chased by coyotes, and never found Mews. But he took me to adopt Tews the next weekend.”
“Right, so—”
Dustin cut him off again before Eddie could trick him into giving any kind of useful answer.
“Nancy broke up with him over it, but he told me once, like, four years ago? That he’s glad he helped me look for Mews instead of going on that date. No one ever believes me anymore, not since he started at the firm, but he’s a total softy. He said meeting me in high school is what made him want to be a teacher before.”
Fuck, Steve was working at his dad’s firm? That had to be what Dustin meant. That was always the top of the list of the Harrington Checklist of Expectations, and the top of the list of Things Steve Never Wanted. Did they let him finish his degree? Did he get to decorate a classroom even once with those little glow in the dark stars and a cork board for them to pin up the projects they were most proud of?
No, he was not indulging that thought process. He was looking for confirmation, and this — it hurt like hell, but this was a confirmation. His brother/best friend didn’t think it was a problem.
“Look, kid—”
“Hey, I’m twenty-three!”
“Kid, Steve sounds like a good guy, I don’t want to ruin his wedding day. So I can sign something for you, and send a gift, and no one has to know but you and me.”
“What the Jesus fuck!? No! You can’t just fucking leave!”
One of the church staff glared at Dustin, either for the volume or the blasphemy. Eddie yanked him into an empty room, some kind of office, and shut the door.
“Look, Eddie, I know it probably seems like I only sent an invitation to this wedding so I can meet you, and this is amazing, but I promise, this would make Steve’s day.”
“It’s his wedding, dude. The day should already be made.”
“Yeah? So? You’re Eddie Munson. I told you, he has every album. Streaming and CD. He has them on vinyl too. He has that special limited release one with the acoustic tracks, and he won’t let me touch it. I haven’t even heard it. He said his favorite song is on there, and he won’t even tell me the name, and for some reason no one else who got one of them has ever put a copy online. I’m a fan, I’m a huge fan, but Steve? No contest.”
Okay.
Shit.
That answer might not match the other confirmations he’d gleaned about Steve. It was a lot of dedication if Steve was fully living this new, different life.
There were only ten copies made of that recording. Steve must have bought it from, or through, someone else since Eddie met all ten buyers. A set of acoustic recordings of Eddie’s favorite songs. Not the same list as his biggest hits; these ones were Eddie’s favorites. He’d bet his right hand that he knew which was Steve’s favorite. It was, after all, the song Eddie wrote for him while they were together, and hadn't played in public since.
“Well,” Eddie stalled, “Shit, if he could afford one of those, why hasn’t he bought a VIP pass to come meet me after a show? Would have been easier than this.”
“Ugh, cause he’s a loser, and he always said that he doesn’t like crowds, or that he has a big deadline, or that it’ll give him a migraine or that his hearing aids would glitch. Then he met Kate, and all the work I’d done to convince him to get us tickets? Gone.” The kid sighed, put upon, then jolted. “But trust me! He wants to meet you! Well, no, he’s going to be super weird about it because he’s always awkward about stuff like this. He pretends he isn’t, but he’s my brother and I totally know he is, but meeting you will make his year.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Ughhh, it's so annoying, he thinks he’s supposed to be a ‘real adult’ now, whatever that means, so he gets… squirrely… about all these things that I know he loves —”
Dustin had no problem filling up a silence, and Eddie needed a minute. He let him keep going, autopilot nodding and hmm-ing to keep up the facade.
Eddie was here because his brain wouldn’t shut up, and he thought that if he could just see some evidence that Steve had changed, get some kind of confirmation that Steve was this person, and was happy, then his brain would stop. He could put down the mental pen he’d been clicking for months. He never really thought about what he’d do if he didn’t find that. What he’d do if he found the reverse.
Steve broke Eddie’s heart.
Steve was supposed to be fine now, maybe not living the life Eddie would have built for him, but he had to be happy and thriving if he was getting married, and Eddie was to confirm that. Eddie was the one who got broken up with, betrayed, left without an explanation. Eddie got the broken heart, so it was acceptable that he still carried a tiny little torch for the guy that he never managed to fully extinguish.
He came here for confirmation.
He really, truly, didn’t think he’d find anything different.
“—I know everyone says that you grow up and turn into your parents, but come on, Richard?! Ugh! Couldn’t he have turned into Emily instead? At least she’s slightly better than Dick!” Dustin’s voice got shrill as he yelled. Maybe, if Eddie wasn’t having an itsy bitsy breakdown, he’d have thought to shush him before he reached that pitch.
“Dustin? Where are you? I can hear you.”
Steve’s grumpy voice carried down the hallway. Dustin’s eyes lit up.
Eddie tried to say something to stop him, but six different pleas tried to leave his mouth all at once, and the garbled noise that created didn’t prevent a damn thing.
“In here, Steve! I’ve got a surprise for you!” A big, cheesy grin turned from Eddie to the door.
“And that surprise couldn’t be going to help Robin get the rest of the cards like—” Steve’s voice carried well, and he kept talking as he opened the door, “— you said you were going to do for me while I got dressed?”
“No, this is an actual surprise.”
“Dude. She’s in a cast.”
“And I brought you someone you love even more than Robin,” Dustin announced, impatient for Steve to turn to the rest of the room.
Steve looked over, and the mild annoyance on his face turned blank, other than the slight widening of his eyes.
He was in his wedding suit. Deep grey, well tailored, with a pressed white shirt, french cuffs, gold links, and a carefully arranged pocket square, white with a band of gold, and a spray of baby’s breath and lavender.
Fucking lavender.
Eddie had read a lot of descriptions and seen a lot of versions of something that could be called Uncanny Valley. That wasn’t the right word, but it was the closest he could come up with in the moment. It was Steve, undeniably, irrefutably - Eddie would have known him from a hundred feet away. From a blurry photo in a newspaper taken from a hundred feet away.
And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything he could point to, nothing he could name, but it was wrong, so wrong that it made his stomach twist. He couldn’t even think of him as beautiful, even though he knew he was, because his whole mind was eaten up with fear at what he saw.
He came to get a confirmation, and fuck, if this was who Steve was now, if this was what he was leaving with, he hated himself for coming.
“What? Ugh,” Dustin groaned, “come on! I know you’re the most awkward human being on the planet, Steve, but even you have to be excited to meet your favorite artist! You can say hi! You could try, I don’t know, smiling, maybe? Handshake? Steve? Maybe you could blink? Eddie freaking Munson came all the way here as my present for your wedding, and you’re just going to stand there gawking at him?”
Steve tightened his hands into fists and released them, then started to flick his thumb over the inside of his ring finger. Which was bare. Of course it was. Even if he had been wearing an engagement ring — which wasn’t all that common for men — he’d have it off right now so it would be ready for the ceremony. Fussing at a missing ring was normal. Eddie did it all the time when he took his off. Steve was probably used to wearing it because he probably wore it all the time, and probably loved having it on, because he loved his fiancee and he missed it being there to remind him of her.
“Do I have to do everything around here?” Dustin sighed, stepping closer to Eddie and gesturing dramatically as he spoke. “Steven Harrington, my best friend, my brother, I’m happy to introduce you to your favorite artist in all of music who you have been crazy about forever, Eddie Munson. Eddie, please meet Steve Harrington, your biggest fan, who collects all your albums, and who is currently trying to impress you with his impersonation of a Cockatrice’s victim. Maybe a Beholder.”
Silence stretched. Painfully.
If Eddie threw a chair through the stained glass behind him and escaped out of it, Dustin would chalk it up to his reputation as a crazy person, Steve could explain his bizarre reaction however he needed to, and then Chrissy would send a donation to whatever group owned the church as an apology. That one fan who ran a tracker of all the chaotic shit he did would somehow hear about it and send a tweet.
Eddie could keep it together until he was somewhere private, and then he could have a nice breakdown, and then he could start lying to himself that he was okay with knowing what Steve looked like when he loved someone else.
Then he’d write another album. He could feel it starting. It wasn’t words yet, or melodies, or even notes, but he knew when his muse was rising.
“Steve, has your awkwardness become transmissible now? He was talking and normal a minute ago and you broke him. Look, at least stand next to each other so I can take a photo for you or something.”
“Dustin, get out,” Steve said.
“Steve, come on, even if you aren’t as excited as you should be about meeting your idol, he’s my favorite too and it's—”
“Dustin, do you remember right before you graduated high school?” Steve hadn’t looked away.
“Yes, Steve, of course I remember when you moved in with — wait,” Dustin stopped, realized something Eddie didn’t understand, then groaned in a remarkable combination of despair and outrage, “Reallly?!!? And you never told me? You left that out??”
“I’ll tell you about it later, dork.”
“What, you’re gonna call and tell me from your honeymoon in the Maldives?” Dustin was pushing his luck, based on the twitch in Steve’s eye.
“I’ll tell you later,” Steve repeated, nerves visibly fraying.
Steve didn’t like the important things to happen with an audience. Eddie knew that.
He had a tool that Steve did not.
“Dustin,” he grabbed a card from his pocket with Chrissy’s contact info, “if you stop talking and leave right now I’ll get you VIP passes to any concert you want, for life.”
That worked. Dustin shut the door behind him.
They hadn’t looked away from each other, and the real conversation they needed to have required an elegance of opening that Eddie lacked, so he went after the immediate offense he could fix.
“You’re allergic to lavender.”
“What? I’m — yeah, but only if —”
Eddie knew from the first word where that sentence was going. He closed the distance and reached out to rip the thing from his breast pocket, then thought better of it. The pollen wasn’t the problem, it was the oil, which was present on the fresh flowers, and easily transferred from skin, to other surfaces, back to skin. There was a box of tissues on the table, so Eddie grabbed one to remove the stupid flower thing from Steve’s stupid, stupid suit.
Despite the impulse to crumple it up, he set the flowers on the desk carefully. He didn’t have any right to fuck up Steve’s wedding.
“You didn’t have to do that. I was being careful not to touch it.”
“You shouldn’t have something you’re allergic to pinned onto you.”
“I’m going to need to put that back on,” Steve said.
Fucking hell, his next album was going to win a lot of awards.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, shaking it off, “I shouldn’t have come. You weren’t supposed to know I was here.”
“Dustin sent you an invitation, didn’t he? I guess that explains the counting error in the spreadsheet. It’s been making Robin crazy. She hand counted emails and couldn’t find it.”
“Look. Of course you can tell your brother whatever you need to, or want to, but if I need to match the story, you should probably tell Chrissy whatever it is so—”
“I don’t lie to him.”
Eddie gave him a look. Dustin didn’t even know about them. It prompted a half-hearted smirk and eyeroll.
“I didn’t tell him your name because he’s a little shit and would have stalked you on socials and you didn’t deserve all that, but he knows everything else.”
That stung, and Eddie was drawn too taut to keep his mouth shut. “Guess you learned about honesty after what you did to me.”
Steve’s eyes fluttered closed, and his mouth tightened into a flat line while he sharply exhaled, then slowly inhaled. That was always how he clamped down on emotions, but five years ago, Eddie was the exemption. He got to know what it was, and Steve never closed off if they were alone.
“Sorry,” Eddie rushed to say, “forget I said that. Forget — nevermind. Look, I’ll clear your registry as an apology — except for that awful vase that looks like a tortured mandrill, that thing is terrifying. I mean, I’m gonna buy it because it’s one of a kind, but I’m going to gift it to Chrissy’s ex because he’ll feel obligated to keep it on display.”
“Don’t do that,” he sighed, “Except the vase thing. I can afford to buy out the registry myself.”
“Yeah, I bet you can,” Eddie snapped, then caught himself, “Fuck. No. Ignore that. Forget that part too.” He clapped his palms over his eyes, digging in the heels until patterns sparkled behind his eyelids. “I gotta leave. It’s your wedding, you don’t want me here and I’m making it weird. I’m sorry, again. Bye.”
He quit his escape attempt as soon as Steve shifted to stop him.
“You can stay if you want,” he blurted out, “Uh, Robin never solved the spreadsheet, so there’s an extra seat at the reception and plenty of spare meals. It isn’t at a great table, but we could shuffle. I can get you a suit so you don’t stand out. Unless you want to stand out. You can stay. I mean,” he laughed ironically, “even our guest list doesn’t fill all the pews. There’s a place for you.”
Confirmation, that’s what that was.
Eddie wanted confirmation that Steve was changed and was happy. If he was happy enough, confident enough in his happiness, to invite Eddie to stay and watch the damn wedding, then that was plenty of proof, no matter to any other strange pieces.
Eddie could leave now. Got what he came for. Should.
“Come on, I know this is a little strange because of… but it’s an open bar? You could stay. It’s almost noon. I could have someone bring you something. You can hang out with Dustin the whole time. They could do a chocolate martini, or that strawberry mango daiquiri you always wanted to try? He knows as much about D&D as you do.”
“Stevie!” He cut him off with a shout, “I am not going to stay here and watch you marry someone who doesn’t fucking care that you’re allergic to your own fucking wedding flowers! There’s not enough alcohol in the city to make me okay with watching that. Dustin seems great, you always said, and he is — I am not going to stay and watch.”
“It’s just some flowers,” he defended.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Why does it matter? It’s flowers. You aren’t allergic to lavender. You like lavender!”
“You went back to them! Steve, you went back to them because, what? We got in one fight? Coupons were too hard? The bills were stressing us out? And now you’re letting them run your life, and you promised me you wouldn’t do this. I told you. You swore that you wouldn’t let them have you back because we both knew they would do this, and you said you didn’t want this life, but I guess their bullshit didn’t cost as much as what I had left to give you.”
It was a lyric, almost. Steve would know which song Eddie was thinking about.
“What?”
“Nothing. Fuck. Forget that too. I didn’t say that. I have to go so I stop talking.” He thought he was over it. He really did. He didn’t wallow in his heartache, he wasn’t writing albums about it. There were two songs he wrote about Steve. Some of the others were prompted by experiences with him, but weren’t about him. He needed to leave before the rest of his - apparently still broken - heart collapsed.
“No, wait, hang on, wait just one — please, I need to say this, Eddie.”
Steve caught the sleeve of his leather jacket for a second, but let go as soon as Eddie stopped moving. He crossed his arms, then remembered the suit it would wrinkle, and let his hands fall to his sides.
“I didn’t go back to them,” he managed, then huffed, and took a step away from the door, like he expected Eddie to bolt, and was proving he wouldn’t stop him.
Little did he know that sentence had pinned him in place.
“Stevie, you’re getting married in a cathedral with how many hundred guests? You work at your dad’s firm, your hair is — you went back to them, you did, and I know they’ve been pressing you into their mold ever since, and I guess you were okay with that to get out of what we had.”
“I didn’t go back to them,” he repeated, softer, pitched like an apology, “until that fall.”
The answer made no sense. Steve left in April.
“Thank you, though, for coming today. I know why you’d show up like this, and… thank you. You didn’t need to, I am okay, but you came here even though you — I know what you said, but if you’ll come to the reception, I’d be happy to see you there.”
There was a strange inflection on the word ‘happy,’ but Eddie didn’t know why. He ignored it.
“What do you mean ‘that fall’? They paid off all our bills so you’d break up with me, and we fought, and I went to work, and I came home, and you were gone, and I loved you, and you didn’t even bother to say goodbye.” Steve’s lips pinched tight again, and Christ, Eddie hated to see the proof he was editing himself. “Never mind, you said thank you, so now I say you’re welcome, and we’ve both,” he swallowed, “checked the boxes. I’m gonna go.”
“No, that isn’t why —” He cut himself off, wincing.
“What, Steve?”
“That isn’t why I left. They didn’t pay off all our shit to make me leave you.”
Ah, cool, so his chest could hurt more, what a fun fact for Eddie to learn about himself.
Before, he had the soft shroud of parental demands to explain that brutal breakup. Now he had nothing but himself. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t familial threats. Steve just didn’t want to be with him anymore, so he made the best of his choice and simultaneously cleaned up his credit score. Right.
He knew it was a bad idea coming today; the only shock was the direction the hit came from.
Eddie shook his head and shoved it all down. Steve reached out, but didn’t touch.
“Do you remember what you told me when we fought?”
“It was five years ago, Steve. No, I don’t remember.”
“Yeah you do. You wrote it into a song you’ve performed hundreds of times. First verse.”
Eddie didn’t remember it from the fight, but that line came easily while he wrote the next day.
I’d rather give up everything than watch you give yourself away
“They gave us the money. Us. Both of us. They were going to support you too. They were going to cover rent and bills for us. So you could go back to having just one job, and doing open mic nights and posting clips until someone noticed how great you are. All you needed was a chance without working ninety hours a week, and I could give you that.” He smiled, a little bit bitchy, a little bit broken. “I was right. It didn’t take six months before you were on the radio.”
“If they didn’t make you, why did you…” he couldn’t finish the sentence.
“You know, I hate that song?” he half laughed, “Your breakout single? I was so happy that you made it, so proud and happy that you had your dream, but half of that song is what we said when we were fighting, and I hate it.”
“Steve, what?”
“Third verse,” Steve smirked bitterly, “‘I’d walk my daddy’s footsteps to keep you far away from yours’ Come on, all the lyrics sites have that one figured out, you’re not subtle. When we fought, you said something about it. And for months before that you— You were going to ruin your life, and any chance you had at happiness or success, because you wanted to protect me. Because you thought I was worth more than you, so you thought you were the only one allowed to sacrifice for us, and I couldn’t let you do that. I don’t know if it would have been dealing, or your guitars, or if you’d just kill yourself working so much, or if you’d realize you hated me one day for being the reason you’d given up on every dream.
“Right. So, uh. Yeah. Thank you, Eddie, for giving me a chance to say thank you for everything you did for me. I didn’t get to that night, too busy calling each other selfish cunts, I guess, and thank you for today, because it’s the same reason now. You don’t need to, though. I’m okay.”
Steve grabbed a tissue, and turned away from Eddie, picking up the flowers to put them back in place.
“What did you have to do?” His hands were twitching with the need to snatch the stupid thing and crush it into the carpet, even as part of his brain rambled about how doing that would release more of the oils and a stronger scent, and that would maybe give Steve a migraine and nothing was worth that.
“I changed majors,” he said, like it meant nothing to him, “and schools. Moved in with Dustin that April. I spent the summer working at a terrible ice cream shop hoping you’d unblock me so I could tell you about this back then. Which was stupid, I know you’re too stubborn for that. I met Robin at Scoops, got into Dad’s second choice, and I got the degree two years later.”
No point in asking what he changed to. Business and Finance.
Perfect for a venture capital firm.
Exactly what his dad wanted. Exactly what Steve hated. Gave up on something he wanted as much as Eddie wanted music, and talked about it like it meant nothing. He’d cried in Eddie’s arms for hours when they made his career an ultimatum. Now it barely merited a shrug.
“I was right too, you know,” Eddie whispered hoarsely. Steve glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t turn. “I was right about what would happen to you if you let them back in your life. Don’t thank me for any part of letting you do this.”
Eddie hadn’t thought about what he’d do if he showed up and found out that Steve wasn’t happy, but if he had, knowing himself, there would have been a guitar on his back with a new song written, a lookout in the hall, and a getaway car down the street. It would have been gloriously dramatic.
It would have been wasted.
He would have thought that if Steve was unhappy, was miserable, trapped by his parents and his fiancée, forced to become this alternate version of himself, and straining to be free, then he needed saving. Eddie would have come to save him.
This hurt so much more than that.
Steve wasn’t pressured to leave him five years ago. He left him.
He wasn’t cornered or baby-trapped into a marriage with some evil witch. He chose this.
He wasn’t happy, but he wouldn’t leave.
Steve’s hands squeezed tight, opened, and he turned to face Eddie with that same blank look.
This was worse than a confirmation that he was changed but happy, worse than finding he was miserable. Steve hadn’t changed. He was the man Eddie fell in love with, willing to sacrifice for the people he loved, willing to stand by his choice, even when it hurt him, and brave enough to tell the truth. He was still himself, but he’d scooped out everything that others didn’t want.
He wasn’t miserable, he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t anything.
He was a mannequin of the man he loved. He was exactly himself in every way, and so fucking wrong that Eddie couldn’t breathe.
“I need to get back to the dressing room, the groomsmen have some tradition about shoes, and I need to see if Rob finally got everything in from her car. It’s an open offer if you want to stay, I’d be… really happy to have you there.”
A new twist on the word that time, but Eddie couldn’t slow down his brain for that.
Five years ago, that first song fell out of his pen, directly onto the page. It was everything he’d offered, all of it rejected. All of his grief and rage at not being enough, at having the only thing he wanted more than music stolen from him.
Oh hey, more discoveries; turned out he wasn’t over, and wasn’t going to get over Steve Harrington in this life.
Like hell was he going to stay and watch.
“No, no,” Eddie hissed, “I’m not going to your fucking cathedral wedding or your fucking black tie party just so you can pretend that… Fuck you, Steve, enjoy your life, enjoy being a Venture Capitalist, enjoy your parents’ demands, enjoy all this fucking lavender all over the place, just be careful with it, right? Make sure you don’t touch it, or anything it touched, because that makes it better. We wouldn’t want you to have a rash during your honeymoon." He clawed back the anger, and twisted his voice towards the sincerity he wanted to feel. “Congratulations, Steve.”
He ripped the door open and walked directly into Dustin.
“Oh, shit, uhhhhh, I wassss, uhhhh,” Dustin mumbled.
“For fuck’s sake, Dustin, really?” Steve yelled, “All of it?”
Eddie moved Dustin out of the way with a grimace, and left him to Steve.
“Not all of it! I had to go grab my phone so I could text Robin!”
“So you were only listening in on most of my private conversation?”
Eddie didn’t look back as he reached the next hallway, needing to get out, get away, maybe get on a little prop plane and vanish into the Pacific like Amelia Earhart, so he could get eaten by crabs.
Behind him, echoing in the cathedral halls, he could hear shouting as he fled.
“Dingus!”
“Finally! Took you long enough!”
“Robs, where is your crutch?”
“What the fuck does Dustin mean you’re allergic to fucking lavender!? ”
The rental car had a ticket under the wiper when he climbed inside, and he didn’t bother to grab it. The thing blew away when he turned them on. They’d contact the service, who would pass the ticket to Chrissy, who would handle it.
Christ, he was going to have an album written by the end of the week, and he hoped, as he ran a red light, that Steve would be angry enough that he wouldn’t listen to this one.