Chapter Text
"So, uh, the thing is…" Eddie’s saying, "the thing is, I’m kind of, uh. Into dudes."
It’s a pleasant summer evening. End of summer, the kids are about to go back to school in a couple of weeks, which is how they managed to bully Steve and Eddie into driving them all the way out here, so Dustin could work on his mega giant radio thing, and then call Suzie and… whatever. Commemorate the end of another summer. In the case of this particular bunch of munchkins, Steve supposes they deserve it. Making it through another year is not something they can just take for granted, unfortunately.
He hopes next year is monster-free. He does not have much faith that it will be.
The point is, they’re in the back of Eddie’s van, doors open to let in the early evening air, sprawled together on the floor after having smoked half a joint together. The sky is at that particularly vivid stage before sunset where it’s no longer blue, wild streaks of purple and pink and orange, the wind blowing softly, finally some movement in the air after what felt like months and months of standing still.
Which is why it takes Steve a moment. He’s not very stoned, just lightly, pleasantly buzzed, but he did allow himself to drop his guard down for a moment there. He can afford to do it these days. Since Eddie is around, and it’s not just him and the troublemakers.
"You’re…" he says slowly, tracing the conversation back to its source, tracing the smoke from what little remained of the joint as it curls up, up. "You said…"
Eddie barks a sudden, humorless laugh and shakes his head. It makes Steve dizzy just to watch him do it.
"Never mind, man. Forget I said anything."
"No, no, hang on." Steve sits up. Eddie sits up. The world is a lot less magical like that, no direct view of the sky, only the two of them sitting in an open van in the middle of a grassy hill and smoking to pass the time. "I didn’t mean…"
Steve didn’t mean to botch it. When Robin came out to him — he thinks that when Robin came out to him he handled it pretty well, all things considered. She told him that, later, in that blessedly boring period of time when they thought no one had to worry about the Russians any longer. That it was sweet, the way he reacted. He made her feel safe. It made Steve feel proud of himself, which doesn’t happen as often as one might think. It made him feel good about it.
"I heard you," he says, and he tries to keep his tone careful but also open. Accepting. Not make a big deal about it. "You’re into dudes. That’s fine. That’s cool."
For a moment, Eddie just stares at him. Steve worries he might’ve said the wrong thing. He and Eddie have been spending a lot of time together this summer, more than would make sense, at first glance, given how different the two of them are. Steve likes to think that they’re friends now. That Eddie found himself a place in their small, fucked-up group of way too traumatized teenagers. And Erica, who’s technically not yet a teen. Steve honestly doesn’t know how she does it, but he thinks she’s maybe mentally stronger than all of them. More adjusted. Anyway.
Eddie won’t say anything and it’s making Steve nervous.
"I mean it," he continues, because what else is he supposed to say? With Robin, he… he joked about Tammy Thompson. Is there anyone Eddie likes? Is there any way Steve can convey that it’s fine, it really, really is? He doesn’t want to out Robin. Doesn’t want to come out and say, "My best friend is gay, actually," though he feels it coming on, the panic trying to push the words out, any words.
Thankfully Eddie opens his mouth before Steve says anything truly disastrous.
"That’s… great, yeah, good." He lets out a long breath. His fingers are twitching. Eddie is always moving, Steve noticed. He thought at first it had something to do with the whole wanted fugitive thing, but, no, Eddie is just like that. Always in motion, always awake. Like his brain is operating on frequencies Steve can only imagine, something faster and more complicated than Dustin’s radio at the top of the hill.
Steve elbows him. He aims for a kind of friendly jostle, except Eddie flinches when Steve makes contact, withdraws tightly into himself, which makes Steve nearly overbalance and the whole thing ends up being embarrassingly awkward. Eddie laughs again, that same sharp bark from before, nothing funny about it at all. The only time Steve heard him come close to making this awful sound was when they told him he was a wanted man. And that his worst nightmares were real, actually, sorry to drop this on you so suddenly. Though he doesn’t recall them really bothering to apologize.
That was then. Back when the world was ending. The world isn’t ending now, and Steve… Steve isn’t really an expert on people coming out to him, but he isn’t completely clueless on human interactions either, so he shuffles closer to Eddie and tries again, gentler this time. His elbow nudging Eddie’s arm, a soft brush of skin against skin.
"Thanks for telling me, man. I promise it’s cool."
Eddie shakes his head but he’s smiling at least, before his hair falls down and covers his face. He does that on purpose sometimes. Pulling on the strands, taking them into his mouth or letting them fall around his head like a curtain, like now, so that he’s covered, shielded from the world outside. Steve has the urge to tug on them, to tell Eddie to stop hiding. Everything’s fine.
"You really… You’re really just fine with it."
"Of course." Why wouldn’t Steve be? Eddie shakes his head again and Steve feels like he’s missing something, like he’s suddenly on unstable ground. Eddie’s hand twitches again — the one holding the stub of the joint this time, burnt down completely by now. He still grinds it against the naked wall of the van, like there’s anything to snuff out. It takes Steve a moment to realize that the motion gave Eddie an excuse to distance himself away from Steve again.
It’s not like Steve minds. It’s just, Eddie is a tactile kind of guy. Steve would never try to touch Robin when she’s upset, he knows better than that, but he thought… Does Eddie think Steve might not want to touch him? Because Steve knows he’s gay now? That’s… That’s bullshit.
Steve crosses his arms and tries his best not to feel insulted. He doesn’t try to touch Eddie again.
Eddie groans and rubs his face with his hands, squeezing them into fists and pressing hard into his eyes. "Ugh, Harrington, you’re really… You’re so horribly straight, aren’t you."
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Steve doesn’t try to hide the fact he’s insulted anymore. Just because he maybe doesn’t know how to react — he and Robin never practiced this, okay? She’d probably be able to tell him what he’s doing wrong, but Steve wasn’t prepared for this, and he doesn’t think he made such a horrible job supporting Eddie overall, so why…
And what’s so bad about him being straight? It isn’t his fault. Not like it’s a choice. He knows that much. If it applies to gay people, it should apply to straight people too, that only makes sense.
"It means…" Eddie drops his hands and takes a deep breath and when he looks at Steve his face looks… different. None of that usual Eddie attitude. In a voice much softer, eyes cast low, he says, "It means, when a guy tells another guy that they’re gay, it’s often because… Jesus fucking Christ." He sighs, rubs his hand over his jeans, swallows. "I’m into you. That’s all. But, I realize now that was an incredibly stupid thing to confess to, so, we can just… forget about it. If you please." He waves his hand grandiosely through the air as he says it, if you please, purposefully theatrical.
"Oh," Steve says.
He and Robin definitely never prepared for something like this.
"I’m sorry," Steve’s mouth continues, though he’s not really sure what he’s apologizing for. Being straight? Giving Eddie a reason to think that… that he might have a chance? Has Steve been leading him on? Eddie told Steve he should get back with Nancy only a few months ago. Not that Steve listened to him — not that he’d have any choice in the matter even if he did listen, because Nancy is her own person and she made her own choice, but…
This time it’s Eddie who reaches out, Eddie who slaps the back of his hand quickly against Steve’s shoulder before pulling it back.
"It’s… whatever, dude. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have said anything."
"I’m glad you told me," Steve blurts. He is. If he stops to think about it there’s a tiny part of it that stings, just a tiny bit, that Eddie only chose to tell him because he’s into Steve, and not because they’re friends, because he wanted Steve to know about him. But that’s not fair, Eddie probably can’t separate the two things, and Christ, Steve can’t go that way, can’t start thinking about Eddie looking at him and thinking… whatever it is gay men think. When they look at other men. That they’re… into.
The point is, Steve really is glad. And he really is sorry.
"I’m sure it’ll, like, pass, you know." No one has ever been into Steve for long. "I’m sorry it’s not… yeah. That I’m not… you know."
"Yeah." Eddie lets out a loud exhale, exploding out of his lungs and his throat and his lips. He still looks tense, his body pulled taut. "It’s getting dark." The twitchiness is back, probably for a whole other reason this time. They don’t like being out in the open when it’s dark. "We should round up the kids."
*
Later that night Steve lies awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.
His parents are away — not a business trip this time, a vacation, something that’ll last them through the summer and spare them the humiliation of not saying goodbye when Steve doesn’t leave for college another year, since who had time to think about essays and application forms and admission deadlines when the world was ending?
Some people had, apparently. But not Steve. Steve didn’t do a thing to invest in his future, except maybe not get fired from Family Video. Although the real achievement here is that Family Video didn’t fall apart when half the town did. Better luck than the mall, and maybe that should count for something.
He’s hot, hot and restless. Alone in the house. Robin slept over yesterday, and the night before that Steve spent on the floor in Nancy’s room, almost like old times, but he has this rule — this stupid, made-up rule — about sleeping alone. Something on how he should prove to himself that he’s capable of doing it. It builds character, or something, and that thought comes out in a voice that sounds an awful lot like his dad.
Steve is having a hard time remembering why he’s so insistent on being able to sleep alone when all too often being alone in the house at night means he doesn’t sleep. He and Eddie almost talked about it, once — more like, mentioned it in passing, since neither of them likes to talk about the whole thing. Implications of all the shit that they went through. Even with Robin or Nancy, Steve doesn’t really talk about it. It just feels easier to offer support to the girls. To say, "Sure, I’ll stay over, whatever you need," and not talk about what it is, exactly, that’s needed, or why.
Eddie almost stumbled on the why, that one time. They drove the kids to the arcade in the morning and Eddie looked like he didn’t get a wink of sleep and when Steve brought the two of them coffee from the diner across the street Eddie muttered, "Not sure how any of you guys ever get any sleep, Harrington. Tell me your secrets."
The secret is, they don’t sleep, or they sleep and it’s shitty, nightmare visions and a fear that sinks into your very soul and guilt, always guilt for things they could’ve done better — or maybe that part’s just Steve — and then they live with it. And not talk about it, because what is there to say, really? Nancy got it right back then. It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit.
So Steve just said, "I don’t think any one of us has had a good night’s sleep since ’83," and Eddie snorted and said, "Fuck," and Steve said, "Welcome to the club. It might be time we got some t-shirts made."
Then they bounced off some potential club names, resolutely ignoring the core of the problem.
Steve is lying sleepless in his bed and for a change, it’s not because of demogorgon nightmares or Russian torture trauma.
That’s refreshing. Maybe he should be grateful.
He can’t stop thinking about his and Eddie’s conversation. Keeps replaying it in his head. Trying to think what he could’ve said differently, done differently. Eddie calls him sometimes — has called him, a couple of times, maybe three, four, when he couldn’t sleep. He doesn’t have anyone in the gang close enough that he could ask to come sleep over, not anyone who isn’t younger, at least, and Eddie would never do that to one of the kids. Though, come to think, he’s the oldest of all of them, so maybe he’d feel uncomfortable no matter what. A kind of responsibility thing, though that doesn’t sound like Eddie. Either way, he doesn’t have people staying with him when the night gets rough, but he did call Steve, those few times. Shooting the shit, passing the time, until whatever it was that made him amped up and anxious abated and he could try again.
Steve kind of feels — he kind of wants to call Eddie now, not to talk about what happened earlier, just… to talk. To hear another person existing on the other end of the line and know he’s not completely alone in the world, drifting like his bed was floating in the middle of the sea, or maybe a void. The places El sometimes mentions. It feels like if he stops looking at the ceiling and closes his eyes he might just drift away.
It makes him nauseous.
He can’t call Eddie, of course, because that would make it seem like it’s a whole thing now, that Eddie came out to him, that Eddie… hit on him? Steve isn’t exactly sure what to call it. And he can’t call Robin either, because that’s not his secret to tell, and it would be incredibly shitty to do that to Eddie.
No. Steve has to deal with this all by himself. Good thing he’s got the entire night ahead of him, from the looks of it.
Eddie is into guys. Eddie said he was into Steve.
Steve remembers sitting — slumping — in a movie theater public bathroom when Robin revealed that she — that she wasn’t… The whole Tammy Thompson thing. He remembers sitting there and watching her be afraid, and wanting so badly to make it right between them. Knowing that this is something he does not get at all, an alien kind of thing, stranger than anything he’s ever encountered with the kids. But at the same time, it made him feel… grateful. Closer to Robin than he’d felt all summer, even after the torture, even when he thought they might have a shot together. Like Robin had given him this unique gift, her trust, and more than anything else Steve had gone through in his life until that moment, it made him want to be a better person. A person worthy of being trusted.
He thinks he’s doing a good job at that. And, god, he’s so grateful that Robin was brave enough to share that. He can’t imagine his life without her. Their friendship means everything to him.
Eddie was also being brave, coming out to him today. He didn’t have to come out to Steve, no Russian truth serum, no heartfelt bathroom confession. But he did it anyway.
That means something. It should mean something that Eddie felt safe enough to tell him. And maybe if it was just about being gay — maybe then Steve could feel about it like he did back then, with Robin. A closeness. He barely knew Eddie at all before spring break but they did go through several life threatening experiences together. It creates some kind of bond. And as nice as it is to be part of their large, fucked-up, tight-knit group, it also feels good to feel… special.
Like out of the whole crowd of them, Eddie chose Steve, particularly, to tell his secret to.
But then… there’s the rest of it.
When he talks, Eddie often has this tendency to make everything sound like a question. Even tonight when he came out to Steve, when Steve wasn’t entirely listening. The thing is, uh… I’m into dudes? With that upward lilt at the end of the sentence. It’s how Eddie talks, like he’s trying to convince the person listening, or maybe himself, in the truth of what he says. He’s not like that when he’s talking about D&D, Steve’s noticed, or about music, but the rest of the time… Usually, that’s how he’ll sound. It goes with the whole… essence of him, the lazy, low drawl, the distrust in the system. Steve wonders if it was always like this, a kind of rebellious, metal tendency, or if it’s the whole wanted fugitive thing. That’ll fuck up a person’s sense of security, he imagines.
Eddie didn’t sound that way tonight when he talked about Steve. I’m into you. Period. Full stop. He had to have known Steve wouldn’t be able to reciprocate, but that didn’t shake him. Didn’t make it any less true.
Steve turns over and buries his face in the pillow. The air is muggy, because he didn’t bother turning on the air conditioning. There’s sweat sticking his hair to the nape of his neck, and now that he’s rolled over he gets the sweat-drenched odor right into his face. It’s disgusting.
He supposes, since he isn’t sleeping anyway, he might as well change the sheets. And turn on the air conditioning while he’s at it.
How did Eddie know? How could he have been so sure when — sure, they’re friends, but that’s new, and it’s mostly due to the kids, and…
Steve strips his mattress from the bedding, strips the pillows, finds new bedclothes. He’ll have to remember to do the laundry tomorrow. How glamorous his life has become, now that he’s no longer in mortal danger. Shifts at Family Video and house chores. At least his parents aren’t around, they’d make it even more unbearable, chew him out about it.
He grapples with the new sheets and then moves on to slide the pillows into their new pillowcases. Eddie Munson is gay, and he has a thing for him. For Steve. Steve Harrington, former king of Hawkins High, currently a bum, if you ask Steve’s dad.
It takes Steve a moment, hands on his hips, staring down at the freshly made bed, feeling hotter and more awake than he did before — forgot about the fucking air conditioning, of course. He’s too lazy to go into the hall and turn it on now, guess he’ll just sweat like a pig for the rest of the night. It takes him a moment, now that he’s free of distractions again and on his feet and far, far too awake for this time of the night, to realize what it is, exactly, that he’s feeling.
It’s not disgust. Thank god it’s not disgust, Robin would never let him hear the end of it. No, Steve Harrington is okay with gay people, and he’s even okay knowing that… knowing that a gay person is crushing on him, specifically.
It’s the why of it. The why of it that baffles him.
He flops down onto the bed, drawing his knees close to himself.
This isn’t something he allows himself to think often. He doesn’t talk about it, not even with Robin, though Robin definitely knows about it. He did tell her about Nancy and the Winnebago, that whole stupid fantasy going down the drain.
Steve’s never really had anyone who really wanted him. Someone who cared so much — who wanted him so much — that they were brave enough to come forward and confess to him.
It’s not entirely true — he’s making it into a whole thing up in his head, it’s nothing, it’s stupid, it’s ridiculous. The little Robin voice he’s got constantly in the back of his mind asks him, "Is it, though, Steve? Is it really?"
And, on the one hand, it definitely is stupid. He used to be King Steve, for fuck’s sake. He’s had many girls confess to him. Want him. Be miserable over him. And that makes Steve feel the old shame rise up again, knowing that back then, he didn’t care. Didn’t even care to notice the effect his actions had on other people. The way he behaved. The way he allowed others to behave with him.
At the same time, though, all those girls really wanted was just that — King Steve. Someone who didn’t really exist, a fantasy, a status symbol, nothing like a real person. And even if Steve did let them down, did toy with them in that disgusting way he used to be back in high school, it didn’t take any of those girls very long to get over it. Move on to the next shiny thing.
The one person who was different was Nancy. She knew him at his best, knew him at his worst, knew him. And in the end, she decided she wasn’t into it. Steve can’t blame her. It always did feel like a one-sided thing, like she was just pretending because she wanted to feel normal.
She got over it. Everyone eventually gets over it.
And now, there’s Eddie.
Eddie knows who Steve is and he still wanted him. Wants. It makes something funny, fuzzy, ugly, squirm at the bottom of Steve’s belly. Figures that the one time someone approaches him genuinely — the one time it should be simple, because they’re friends, there’s none of that stupid pretense Steve puts on for the rest of the world. This apparently just… grew, somehow, of itself, no flirting, no awkward dating rituals. The one time Steve feels like he might actually be wanted the way he’s always dreamed, it’s…
Well. It’s impossible, isn’t it? All because Eddie happens to be a dude.
Steve blows out a frustrated breath, unnaturally loud in the silence of his bedroom.
He wishes he could talk to Robin. There’s a part of him that worries that the moment he sees her tomorrow at work — he’s picking her up, so before that, even, the moment she sits down in his car — Steve is going to spill the beans. Except he absolutely can’t do that, unless…
Unless Eddie tells her. Eddie should definitely tell her, she’s way better at this crap than Steve is. And she’d be so thrilled — Steve smiles despite himself, because he just knows Robin will be insufferably bubbly if Eddie ever tells her. She would like that, knowing she isn’t the only one in their group who’s… different.
It’s so goddamn stupid that it’s different. That her life has to be harder because she likes boobies, even though boobies are objectively the best. Unless you’re Eddie, in which case you like…
Not boobies.
Steve.
God damn it.
It takes Steve ages to finally fall asleep.