Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He knew immediately that he’d fucked up. 

Steve dressed how Steve always dressed. But then he’d stepped outside, and it was fucking hot. 

Of course it was hot, Hawkins was a hellscape, and nothing had really changed. It was quiet, for a minute, at least, but it was still Hawkins.

It had to be the armpit of America.

Regardless of his internal monologuing about the heat and how much he hated the place, Steve knocked on the door of the trailer, waiting for Eddie Munson of all people to answer and let him in. If someone had told him a year ago he’d be here, he wouldn’t have believed it. Then again, there was a lot of unbelievable shit about the last few years of Steve’s life.

Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington had gone from a bunch of friends he didn’t even really like but who were cool to being best friends with a lesbian he’d once had a crush on and a whole bunch of nerdy-ass children. And now he was volunteering to spend time with Eddie fucking Munson of all people. 

Sure, Eddie wasn’t someone he’d ever have elected to spend time with before. He was fine though.

Or… Steve liked him, actually. As completely unforeseen as it all was, Eddie was a good guy. Sort of like Steve had come to like the kids. Or even Jonathan, though he liked the kids objectively better than he did Jonathan. 

It was a whole other lifetime, actually.

He couldn’t remember who he used to be.

“Greetings and salutations, Harrington!” 

And there he was. Just as in your face and over the top as ever.

Only he looked… different. He looked like fucking Bon Jovi. Jeans so ripped they may as well just be shorts and a crop top and hair pulled back into a bun with loose bits falling around his face. In some weird way, the jeans almost seemed more revealing than shorts. They weren’t, of course, Steve couldn’t see the backs of Eddie’s legs or his left knee or either calf, but there was so much open ripping around his thighs that almost seemed more… teasing. 

“Holy shit, I can see your whole face.” Steve mumbled out, lips parted in genuine surprise, instantly reaching out to try to touch the bun at the crown of his head.

Eddie batted him away.

“Oh, har-har, so fuckin’ funny. Some of us dress for the weather, Harrington.” He turned on his heel to walk back into the trailer and Steve just sort of… watched. 

He stared absentmindedly at how different Eddie looked, the more pronounced curve of his jaw. His long, sun-freckled arms — Steve hadn’t seen his bare arms before. The soft part where waist met hip, exposed beneath the crop top. 

If he was any kind of smart, he’d stop looking before—

“Look, I know I’m gorgeous, but you’re not much good to me out there, so do you wanna at least come stare inside the disgusting trailer?”

Well, fuck. That was embarrassing. 

Steve had been caught staring. Or… why was he even staring anyway? So Munson owned a crop top, big fucking deal. Steve had owned one or two when he was younger, before Dustin and Lucas had started following him around giving him shit about growing hair.

They were only fourteen, he was sure a lot would change in a few years, but still. 

Anyway, he’d seen people in crop tops before, male and female. He wasn’t usually quite so easily distracted.

It was Munson. 

It was obviously just because it was Munson, serial killer suspect and self-appointed rocker. He just wasn’t expecting to see him in something so… exposed. He normally had on layers. Shirts and jackets and vests and the hair covered half his face on a good day.

It was just out of the ordinary, that was all. He’d stare if he saw Nancy in a nun’s outfit or something too. Unusual things caught the eye. Duh.

He tore his eyes away and walked inside, looking around. At the ridiculous amount of mugs on the mantle, at the shit laying around everywhere, at the handcuffs on the wall. He blinked at the room, then back at Eddie, forcing himself not to get distracted again.

“Dude. There is so fucking much going on in here apart from the need for a new coat of paint.” He scoffed, “What are we painting it anyway?”

“It’s just white,” Eddie told him with a scoff, kicking a mop out of the way. “I don’t live on my own, so a lot of this shit isn’t actually mine.”

Right. 

Steve was being stupid. Getting distracted by stupid things and—

“So are the handcuffs yours?” 

Jesus christ. Honestly, Steve might be okay with it if one of those demonic bat fucks crawled out of the walls and ate him right then and there. 

He used to be good at things. He used to be Steve Harrington, popular guy, okay at school, charming or whatever. Now he embarrassed himself in Eddie Munson’s trailer while asking about fucking handcuffs. 

“Yeah, they’re mine.” Eddie glanced at him, sort of careful and intent. Like he was waiting to see Steve’s reaction. How was Steve meant to react? Other than choking on his own spit, of course, which he promptly did. 

“And why do you—?”

“Well, Stephen—”

“Steve.”

“When two people love each others’s’ bodies very much—”

“I hate you.”

“Sometimes one of them might decide to handcuff the other to the bed—”

“Please stop talking.”

“Or table or chair or hell, shower and—”

“C’mon, man!”

“Well, you know the rest.” Steve had never seen Eddie looking quite so proud of himself. His face looked different without hair covering all of it, but still kind of… oddly pretty. Or… something. He clearly thought he was hilarious, and Steve had spent too much time around the little snots, because he was looking for Dustin or Max’s ears to cover instinctively. 

“Did you give yourself that nickname?” Steve asked flatly.

“Come again?”

“The freak.” Steve’s voice was level, brows raising. “Like, is that just your whole thing? Being aggressively out there and dramatic? Do you want people to be weirded out?”

Because it sure seemed like Eddie was trying to get a reaction from Steve. And there were plenty of things about Eddie that Steve wanted to react to in that moment, but that would require a whole lot of understanding Steve didn’t currently possess, so he’d much rather be irritated instead. 

“I didn’t give myself the nickname.” Eddie said with a roll of his eyes, moving to pick up a paint brush that was in his sink, talking though he no longer looked at Steve. Why was it so annoying talking to someone who wouldn’t look at you? “And believe it or not, I don’t have to work at being different, it just happens. And if it gets a reaction out of popular little golden boy types, then that’s fine too.”

Steve’s brows raised. “I’m not made of lego, y’know.” He said flatly, “Like, I’m not a ken doll, I have a life outside of the reputation I had in school at sixteen.”

“Oh, I know, Harrington, I saw you bite the head of a bat.” Eddie answered, and his eyes turned back to Steve. Steve hated the way it made him instinctively stand a little straighter, like he had something he had to prove. 

“So then why are you acting like I’m gonna be scared of you or somethin’. I know you’re no murderer or actual freak.” If Eddie wanted to tease him, Steve could do it back. “Besides, I've worn your clothes, man. Basically blood brothers now or some shit.”

Eddie flashed a wide, sarcastic grin, “Ain’t nothing brotherly about the way you looked at me when you got here.” He turned away then, slapping some paint onto the stained wall beside him, leaving Steve to stand there gawking like a moron. “Surprised you didn’t bring Wheeler here with you.” 

Now that comment felt… pointed? Although he was sure that Eddie and Nancy got on fine now, after all, there had to be some kind of bond that came from parading around Creepy Blue Hawkins together. And all the shit they had fought down there together. Things were quiet now, but once you were in on something like this, there really wasn’t any going back.

Like Erica, Eddie had just caught himself on a fun one way ticket into the absolute horror of their lives. Just like Steve had back when he had been obsessed with trying to keep Nancy. That, too, felt like a lifetime ago. Sometimes he thought maybe there was still something, but ultimately, he knew it wasn’t true. 

He didn’t want Nancy. Not like he used to. He just missed her. As a friend, more than anything.

“Did you invite Nance?” Steve asked dumbly.

Eddie glanced back. “Nah. Should I have? Only asked you.” 

Steve’s mind went reeling like a teenager trying to figure out what it meant when someone passed you a note in class saying the bare minimum. Whether you were reading too much into things or it really was the way it felt. Steve hadn’t done that since. Well, since Nancy, actually. Since he’d sat up on the phone at night trying to convince her to hang out with him, his stomach all fluttery and nervous, worried that she’d decide he was too stupid for her.

He knew how people saw him. He knew people thought he was… well, a douchebag. But he also thought people had him all wrong, and he’d thought… things were different with her. She hadn’t wanted him, not like he’d wanted her, but he remembered how that felt. The nerves and excitement.

The feeling of something being on fire in your stomach, something that set your teeth on edge and made you so nervous and shy and fluttery and stupid, the way it consumed your thoughts and made you feel all airy and dumb. 

But none of that applied to Eddie. So why was he overthinking that comment so hard? What did it even mean?

“As opposed to like… Dustin or Mike or Lucas?” He asked, brows raising. Why was he pushing it? Why did he even care? 

He used to be so much more witty. Now he was just… saying stupid shit. 

Okay, maybe he always said stupid shit. 

Eddie glanced back at him again. “Do you want me to paint your face?” He asked with a scoff. “I asked you.” 

Which clarified… nothing. Clarified approximately zero things. He still had no idea why he was asked to be there. Or, a better question, why he had gone. And why was he just standing uselessly looking at Eddie. 

When he stretched up to paint, Steve could see a lot of his back, could see the muscles move under his skin. He wasn’t sure he’d been this bad at speaking since he was like, fourteen and hadn’t kissed a girl yet.

Not that he wanted to kiss Eddie. He definitely did not want to kiss Eddie. 

“Are you going to help or…?”

And Steve did. He got to work trying to distract himself with literally anything other than whatever confusing thing was happening inside his head and/or stomach at that point.

He kept getting distracted though, and he knew he needed to keep his back to Eddie or he’d get distracted again.

Why was he so distracted? It’d been a while since he had a good date, but surely not long enough that… 

He cut himself off, telling himself he could have a panic later in the privacy of his own car.

They kept talking though. About Eddie’s favourite bands. About Steve’s hair (that was a weird one, and mostly full of teasing). About the kids and about Eddie’s DND campaigns. They spoke briefly about Nancy and Robin, about how Steve had come to be friends with Robin. They argued briefly about Steve’s favourite music, and Eddie mocked him relentlessly about that for a bit.

Eddie was asking him questions about the demogorgons when Steve heard his voice strain.He looked around to see what was happening, and saw Eddie reaching up to the ceiling, stretching and holding a longer roller to paint over the ceiling, where the hole was closed up, things looking mostly normal. 

Except, stretching up to the ceiling at that angle, Steve could see his stomach and — Jesus christ, what was wrong with him?

He turned sharply again, returning to the wall he was painting before he’d noticed.

“So you were really doing all of this… during school? All of you? And no one… knew?” 

Steve laughed, “I mean, some people knew. But most people… nah. I mean, I guess people will find excuses to not see what they don’t want to see, right?” He commented halfheartedly, “I’m not sure I would’ve ever noticed if I hadn’t been fucking attacked.” 

“Yeah, well, at least you’re not a murder suspect.” Eddie commented snarkily. 

Steve scoffed, “Yeah, almost been murdered a whole bunch of times though.”

“Yeah, same.”

“More than you though.” He answered, just as quick, looking back over his shoulder at Eddie, who was looking back at him. They stared at each other for a moment, and though Steve wasn’t sure what it meant, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Was there subtext? Why were they staring?

“I’m fuckin’ boiling.” Steve grumbled, shaking his head. 

Eddie scoffed, “And you made jokes about what I’m wearing. Why would you wear that? Are you seriously so concerned with looking cool?” 

“I’m not concerned with looking cool,” He argued, shaking his head. “I just didn’t think about the weather, I dressed how I always dressed when I’m not in like, gym class.” He shook his head, feeling weirdly self-conscious of his clothes, though that seemed like a stupid feeling to have. 

“You can borrow a shirt, if you want to.”

And a few minutes later, Steve was also wearing a cropped singlet. And he felt… very exposed. Although really, he just expected Eddie to mock him for it. He didn’t. He just stared at Steve appraisingly for a minute and then went back to painting without a word. The whole thing was painfully confusing for Steve, who couldn’t decide what the look meant. Did he look bad? Stupid? Why did he even care what Munson thought of him? Since when did he care what Munson thought? Especially of his physical appearance. It wasn’t like it mattered. 

It was a little while later that Steve watched as Eddie went to brush hair back from his face, watched as he realised with his hand close to his face that he had paint all over his hands and that if he wiped his hair back, he’d be inadvertently painting bits of it white, and probably his forehead too. 

“Wait.” Steve said, taking a few quick steps forward. His own hands weren’t covered in paint, and it only made sense to help. It definitely wasn’t that he wanted to push some of the fluffy, wavy hair away from his face. It definitely wasn’t that he wondered if it was as soft as it looked. It definitely wasn’t curiosity to see if he had product in his hair or if it was just naturally like that. It definitely wasn’t an excuse to be closer. 

Pushing the hair back was… odd. It felt sort of wrong, but also not at all wrong. The bit of hair was soft, he thought, but it was hard to tell from just brushing it back, and he sort of wished it was out again. Not that he could just stand there and touch Eddie’s hair anyway. 

His hand fell back by his side, and he found that he couldn’t focus on Eddie’s face, maybe because he was suddenly nervous about what the other boy might say or do. 

“I should probably split.” Steve said awkwardly, turning back away and pushing his sleeves up. “I’m— I’ve gotta work later. And y’know, I’m meant to pick Robin up on the way, so…”

Eddie rested a hand on his own arm, leaving a white handprint behind when he did. “You and Robin…” 

Steve frowned. He wasn’t going to out Robin. He didn’t do that. He would never do that to her. But he wanted to make it clear that Eddie shouldn’t go chasing that particular avenue. He swallowed, shrugging his shoulders.

“Dude, I’ll never get done telling people this I’m sure, but we’re… Capital P Platonic.” Those were her words, but they worked just fine, so Steve figured he’d just co-opt them. “I’m uh, not sure you’re exactly her type though, man.” That was vague enough, right?

Of course, Eddie just laughed. “Yeah, uh, she’s not mine either, King Harrington.” He laughed, and maybe there was some joke that Steve wasn’t in on, but if he hung around here any longer, he was going to fully spiral, and he had no time for that, he dealt with enough bullshit with the kids without his brain caving in on him too. Things were simple with Robin. Easy. He never over thought every word and action with her.

“Yeah, whatever, Munson. I’ll, uh, see you later.”

*

A few hours and some benign conversation with Robin later, but Steve was still stuck in a weird place in his mind. He kept thinking about, of all the stupid things, Eddie’s hair. How it had looked up in that bun. How it had looked falling out around his face, and how it had felt to push it back behind his hair.

What the hell any of it meant, he didn’t know. Which was, of course, probably why it wouldn’t leave his mind. It was simple, he told himself, just a quick attempt to help out. He’d have done the same thing for anyone else. For any of his friends or any of the kids. Helped them out so they didn’t get paint on their face. So why was he overthinking it? And why was he overthinking the way he’d been distracted by Eddie's outfit? Why was he even still thinking about any of this? Munson had become a new friend. That was fine, Steve didn’t give a shit about popularity anymore.

But it wasn’t shame. He wasn’t embarrassed of being friends with Munson. 

He just couldn’t stop thinking about Munson. 

He wanted to touch his hair again. 

He was used to people wanting to touch his hair, he wasn’t so used to wanting to touch someone else’s. He should just ask. It was weirder that he was scared to ask, right? He was making it weird. He was the one making it weird. 

“Hello? Earth to Stephen Edward Harrington?” 

Steve’s eyes snapped up to Robin.

“That’s not even my full name.”

“But it got your attention, didn’t it?” Robin asked him, smirking rather proudly.

God, he was surrounded by sarcastic and smug people. Which was probably why he fit in with them, he supposed. Still. He was constantly filled with the desire to bang his head against something.

“What were you talking about?” He asked, brows raising.

“I was asking you if you’ve spoken to Nancy recently.” She shook her head, “Honestly, Steve, I think she was really bothered when she thought there might’ve been something between you guys, so if there’s something—”

“Oh my god, we’re not doing this again.” He said quickly, shaking his head rapidly back and forth. “I know, Robin, I get it, I know you’re trying to help me, but I did not ask to be set up with her. I do not want to be set up with her. I do not have feelings for her. Period. Maybe she was jealous of you instead of me.” He commented, mostly just trying to get her off his back, though, he’d be lying if he said the thought hadn’t occurred to him. Nancy and Robin had gotten along like a house on fire. And while that had felt weird at first, the idea had grown on him. They both deserved to be happy. And he knew they’d be good to each other. In a weird way, it seemed kinda perfect. 

“I… I have been successfully put in my place, my apologies.” She snarked.

There was a moment of calm and casual silence, before Steve let slip a thought he really hadn’t meant to actually ask. 

“How did you know you were gay?” His voice was quiet, but he knew the second it came out of his mouth the mistake he’d made. He could see it on her face.

She stared at him.

“Well,” She began, and he couldn’t help the itching feeling she was about to start mocking him. “As you so pertinently and intelligently pointed out to me not so long ago, I like boobies.” Steve immediately began to laugh, but she just spoke louder over the top of him. “And I pretty much always liked boobies. I think I always kinda knew, on some level, it was more about being brave enough to look at it, y’know. To name it for what it was. To stop kinda letting it sit in the corner of my mind like a ghost or something. But then I looked at it and… I don’t know, it was still hard. But it got easier when I stopped pretending.”

Well, that was a… surprisingly thoughtful answer. Maybe more thoughtful than he’d expected. He’d really expected to get mocked.

“Is this why you’re wearing Eddie Munson’s shirt?” 

Steve choked on nothing but air.

“I dressed stupidly for painting.” He answered, sounding a little too defensive.

“Oh my god, Steve.” It was less mocking and more intent. “Steve. Steve.” 

He couldn’t look at her. God, why was this so hard? 

“What?” He asked, feigning innocence.

“ Steve!” She repeated, tugging on the singlet he wore. “Tell me I’m reading this silence right. I need this to be true. I need it like I need air and sugar, please.”

“He asked me if we were dating today.” Steve answered, still avoiding her eyes. “I just said no. Obviously. And that I wasn’t sure he would be your type. Nothing more specific.”

She was grinning, he could feel it, even without looking.

“I’m not his type either, Steve.”

Steve actually did look at her then. “That’s what he said too!”

She burst out laughing, and she looked so happy it was hard to resist laughing with her. Of course, he had no good reason to laugh, because he felt like he was being made fun of here.

“Yeah, no shit, Harrington. Oh my god.” She couldn’t stop grinning. “And you’re wearing his shirt. Did you like…?”

“No!” Steve burst out again, shaking his head. “No, god, Robin. No. Nothing… happened. What would happen? I don’t… I’m not…” His nose pinched up. “I like boobies, Robin.”

He could feel her trying not to laugh, like something in his bones. 

“Okay.” She nodded. “Do you also like… his boobies?” She asked, smiling a little, conspiratorial and amused. 

“He doesn’t—” Steve cut himself off. “Robin.” He was pleading with her, confused and freaked out and embarrassed all at once. He felt like he was being left out of a conversation he was definitely supposed to be a part of. 

“It’s okay, Steve.” Robin told him, resting a hand on his wrist while he drove. “It’s okay. It’s not like you’re around people who wouldn’t understand. I mean, there’s me obviously. But also Will and Mike. And Eddie. It’s not like you’d be alone in any of this. You know, and maybe I’m totally off base, and I’m sorry if I am, I shouldn’t be laughing, it’s just so…” She cut herself off again, taking a deep breath as if to recenter on being serious about it. “It’s okay to like both.” 

He felt really stupid all of a sudden. Because he knew, objectively, that there were people who did like both, but… it wasn’t exactly like people were open about their preferences in a town like Hawkins, where dressing wrong could get you attacked in the streets. Where the main insult growing up was based purely around equating being bad with being gay. It felt… abstract. He knew it wasn’t bad, he knew that. But he also knew his parents wouldn’t like it and… 

“That’s a thing I can do?” He asked, and he sounded… young and scared. He sounded like a kid. He felt like a kid. 

Robin was smiling now, much more genuinely. “Yeah, Steve. That’s a thing you can do. And there’s nothing wrong with it either, no matter what anyone says.”

Steve was quiet for a minute, pondering that. Both. He could like both. Or all. Or whatever. He could just like… people, regardless. 

They were quiet for a while, and then the teasing started back up again. Now that Steve had had his actual moment to ponder on what Robin had said, Robin had gone back to teasing, because it wasn’t just that Steve was having confusing feelings about a boy, it was that that boy was Eddie fucking Munson. 

“Oh my god, you wore his vest.” She grinned, “I bet he was into it when you wore his vest.” 

She was sitting on the counter at the video shop, and Steve was ready to tackle her if she didn’t stop before someone they knew came in and heard it. 

“He was trying to set me up with Nance.”

“Mhm.” She was smirking. “This is hilarious. I bet he just hates being into King Steve. I bet he hates that he’s just like everyone else in Hawkins, fawning all over The Hair.” She couldn’t stop grinning. He could see it on her. “And he gave you the most revealing top to wear too.” 

Steve glanced up at her again from where he’d been trying to distract himself stacking movies. “Robin. Please.”

“Oh my god, Dustin is going to be insufferable. Promise me I can be there when he finds out. Actually, no! Promise me you’ll warn me so I can leave Hawkins before he finds out.” She was laughing again, and Steve was wishing the ground would swallow him up.

“For the— Robin.” He shook his head, dropping it into his arms, which folded over the counter. “There’s nothing going on, please.”

“Still wearing my shirt, Harrington?” 

It had been less than five hours since he’d last seen Eddie, but there he was again.

And this time, Robin was standing right there. Standing right there watching Steve. Steve, who couldn’t pry his own eyes away from Eddie. Eddie’s hair, which had been released back out in fluffy loose curls around his face. Eddie’s leather jacket, back over his shoulders, though he wore that same crop top beneath it. Steve forced himself to look away from the toned stomach, the hint of a ‘v’ rising above his jeans, the line of hair from beneath his naval. He forced himself not to look at any of Eddie, because all of it was distracting, and now that he’d admitted that to Robin, it was banging around in his head yelling at him.

It felt just like what she’d said. Like now that he’d looked at it, that ghost in the corner of his mind, it wasn’t a ghost anymore. It was a fully formed feeling. A fully formed desire. For Eddie fucking Munson, apparently.

He walked right past Steve into the shop, walking about like he knew where every single thing was. 

Robin was mouthing at him, general obscenities and encouragement. Steve was mouthing at her right back, only he was begging her to shut the fuck up, before Eddie noticed.

They were mouthing yells back and forth when they were cut off by Eddie, who was back at the counter far too quickly.

He cleared his throat loudly and dramatically.

“What time do you get off work, Harrington?”

Steve blinked. And then, listlessly, “Ten.”

Eddie slapped the vhs tape down on the counter. “You seen this movie?”

He didn’t even have to read the title. Just from the cover, even upside down, he knew he hadn’t. It looked like the kind of sci-fi slasher thing that Dustin would’ve tried to get him to watch, that he would’ve refused vehemently. He shook his head, not speaking. 

Robin was uncharacteristically silent.

“Right. Come over when you knock off. I need my shirt back.” He didn’t wait for Steve to answer, instead, shooting a wink in Steve’s direction and walking off, completely casual and at ease.

Steve felt like he might be about to vomit.

He turned on the spot, raising his hand to point at Robin. “Don’t even think about it!” 

Chapter Text

Eddie had promised himself that he wasn’t going to do this. He had sworn to himself. 

And then, when Harrington had thrown his shirt at him in that stupid boat and he realised he was in danger. And when Steve had stared at him in his trailer the day they painted… he knew he was absolutely fucked (or perhaps Steve was); he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t do it again. Because it was embarrassing enough realising that he didn’t hate Harrington as a person, but actively liking him? Worse, being attracted to him? No, Eddie hated that.

How had he spent his entire life refusing to conform only to fall apart when Steve Harrington paid attention to him for five minutes? 

Absolutely not. It was pathetic. And ‘the Hair’ was a terrible nickname. His hair was objectively great, but it was a stupid nickname.

He also had a square face, an ego the size of the statue of liberty and about seven thousand girls following him at any given time. He was rich and popular and smarmy and everything that Eddie did not believe in. 

He had told himself that right up until they’d wound up on his gross mattress, sweaty and panting and barely looking at each other for fear they might actually have to acknowledge what they’d done. 

And Steve was… well, it was obvious why he was so popular. He was engaging and hot and he knew what he was doing. He kissed like the world was on fire and it might be his last moment alive. It would be too easy to get carried away with him.

And it was fun. For a one time thing.

But since then, they’d returned to being friends. Or whatever stilted thing they were. Mostly, they only hung out when Wheeler and Robin were there. They laughed and talked and pretended like Eddie didn’t know what it felt like to… No. No. He was not going to become just one more person pining over Steve Harrington. He refused. On principle if nothing else.

Or at least he told himself he did, until Steve approached him in Family Video to ask if he could come over. Just him. It’d been weeks, and Eddie hadn’t looked at him like that since. Or at least, he told himself he hadn’t. 

But it was just human to see him, wasn’t it? In that stupid little vest, with carefully stray pieces of hair loose in his eyes and freckles and moles splattered like constellations over his cheeks. He was objectively pretty, and Eddie seeing that was not Eddie falling for his charm. He simply refused to accept that.

So he’d agreed. He’d agreed to meet Steve at his house later. 

He hadn’t been to Steve’s house. He knew of it, knew it was a big house, much nicer than his own. Knew he wouldn’t fit in there. But hey, maybe it would be nice to have a newer bed beneath him. And after all, why else would Steve Harrington want Eddie Munson in his house alone?

Eddie pretended he didn’t put any extra thought into what he’d wear, and settled on wearing what he always did. Dark, ripped jeans, Hellfire shirt, jacket, vest. He wasn’t going to dress up. Or down, based on how Steve had reacted last time. He was sure Steve wouldn’t. 

He rocked up in his shitty van and his shitty clothes and tried not to think about how he felt like a feral animal against the cleanliness of Steve’s place. There was only one car out front, thankfully, and Eddie realised he probably wouldn’t have gone in if Steve’s parents were home.

He barely knew them personally, but he knew enough. He knew Steve’s Mom was a high flying barrister. Something he knew because Steve’s Mom had taken his case after they’d (at least temporarily) sorted things out with the Upside Down. And he didn’t doubt that it was temporary. But it gave Eleven and the rest of them time to get ready. And, apparently, Steve time to enlist his Mom to help Eddie.

He was grateful, but he couldn’t stand the woman. She was humourless and conceited and she looked at Eddie like he really was a murderer. Actually, Steve resembled his parents very little, from what Eddie had seen. Steve was, for however annoying it was, a genuinely nice person. He loved the kids, and clearly loved Nancy and Robin, and he’d run headlong into danger again and again. He was brave and oddly personable up close. Steve’s mother was really nothing at all like him.

His Dad was also ineffectual and detached. He spoke like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, and Eddie didn’t doubt that was because of him. Maybe they were both perfectly loving parents, but it was hard to imagine. 

He knocked on the door and waited, trying to pretend like this whole thing hadn’t thrown him for a loop a bit. It was all so new. 

A few weeks ago, Harrington had been the painfully, obnoxiously perfect person his little nerdlet friend idolised. Now… well, now he had no fucking idea.

The door swung open, and Harrington stood there in all his stupid high school jock glory. All hair and smiles and just a little bit taller than Eddie himself. 

“You came.” He seemed a little surprised. Was it bad for Eddie to be a little glad? “Come in, my parents are away.”

“Damn, Harrington, not even going to offer me a drink first?”

Steve scoffed — there he was — and shut the door behind him. “This isn’t that kind of visit.”

“Oh?” Oh.

“I have a favour to ask you.” 

That was unexpected. He wasn’t even sure what he had to offer Steve. 

“I’m not giving you free drugs.” 

Steve scoffed, “Been drugged enough for a lifetime, thanks.” Eddie shot him a look. What in the fuck did that mean? Been drugged? He was constantly reminded how little he really knew about these people, even now. 

“What then…?” He asked, “I’m not gonna murder someone for you.”

Eddie’s mind jumped to a thousand possibilities of things. To borrow his van. To borrow his guitars. To get some kind of intel for him? He really had no good ideas. They were friends, kind of, but it’d been weird ever since they’d slept together, and rich, popular, charismatic Steve Harrington needing something from him seemed… unlikely. 

“Please, you’re a complete marshmallow, don’t pretend like I don’t know you.” 

Eddie’s brows pinched together. Well, he wasn’t thrilled about that characterisation, but it wasn’t untrue either. He was kind of all bark and no bite. For all the people thinking he’d murdered a bunch of people, he really didn’t have a violent streak. Not even a hint of one. Unless it was Upside Down Monsters, he supposed. 

He didn’t say more, waiting for Steve.

“Date me.”

Eddie blinked. “Come again?”

“I mean— fake date me. Pretend to date me. Please.” He stumbled over his words, and Eddie just stared at him, completely lost and confused. Fake date me. Eddie couldn’t pretend to have any idea what was going on there— or why his stomach was clenched uncomfortably. He felt the weird kind of nerves you got when you accidentally thought about going to the dentist or paying taxes. A kind of abstract, far away dread settling over him that seemed irrational.

“Now why in the actual, ever-loving fuck would you want me to pretend to date you?” He asked, his brows pinched. “What could you possibly gain from associating yourself with a freak?” 

Steve’s brows shot up. “Oi, I don’t think you’re a freak, don’t put that on me.” He began, shaking his head. He was pacing, wandering around the house like he was panicking about even saying the words. Eddie followed after him, eyes blown wide. He didn’t understand a goddamn thing that was happening. “It’s stupid. Like, it’s really fucking stupid. But I had this whole giant fight with my parents about my image or whatever, and how I used to make them so proud back when I dated Nancy Wheeler or whatever. Which, frankly, is insane, because they barely ever spoke to her, I think it’s just because she has a good reputation or whatever, but it really, really annoyed me. And I got thinking about what would piss them off more than anything else and… y’know, the third-time senior covered in tats who was just suspected of cult killings is maybe the thing they would hate the most in the world. And, like, I know you hated my parents. I thought…”

“Jesus Christ, I’m flattered…” He grumbled sarcastically, shaking his head.

Steve jumped in, eyes wide, “I didn’t mean it like that, but I thought you’d love the chance to freak some people out. I mean, isn’t it kind of your thing? The non-conformist, hate people like me… thing?”

Eddie just glared at him. He considered maybe saying that he didn’t hate Steve, but he kind of didn’t want to be that nice to him in that moment. 

Steve took a deep breath, and tried again. “My parents. They’re shallow and shitty and selfish. You are a good person. But they’re too fuckin’ stubborn and elitist to see that.” He said quickly. “But I thought maybe you’d wanna help me teach them a lesson. And, y’know, we can… hang out. In the meantime.”

His brows raised. Hang out. 

His mind wandered. He didn’t mean for his mind to wander, but it did.

Steve had turned up at his trailer that night at nearly eleven. He’d been so visibly nervous about it all, and Eddie had made a show of being calm and cool and unaffected. Of not caring about the fact that he was Steve fucking Harrington, and any self respecting person attracted to men had wanted him in high school. He’d made a show of putting the movie on and sitting at Steve’s side, calm and easy.

Except… It wasn't calm and easy. He was weirdly scared. And Steve being so visibly nervous made it worse.

He had told himself he was going to kiss Steve three separate times before he did. And it had been messy and weird at first when he finally did, and they’d jumped apart at the horror score a moment later.

They’d sat, silent and tense for what felt like hours, but was barely moments. And then, like a moth to a flame, they’d come back together again.

And then all of that weird and scary shit, who they were or their reputations or whatever, it was all gone. Steve wasn’t looking at him like a freak when Eddie moaned out his name. He didn’t shy away from the tattoos or scars or any of the rest of it. He was singularly focused, and patient, and passionate and when Eddie pinned his hands above his head, Steve laughed, breathless and wanting and low in a way that made Eddie’s head spin. 

It was good. It was really good. Harrington could be dense and annoying and cocky, but he was also attentive and earnest and so much fun to draw those noises out of. Even inexperienced with men, Steve was good at what he did. When Eddie had expected him to pull away, to vacate, to return to calling him bro or chicken out, Steve had smiled up at him and wiped his chin. 

It was weird— the culmination of some high school fantasy he didn’t even realise he’d had. Breathless moans and wandering hands and warm mouths and surprisingly soft lips. 

But then Steve had had work in the morning and Eddie had had D&D with the kids, so Steve had driven home and that was that. When next they saw each other, they didn’t discuss it.

They hadn’t discussed it. Till now, that was. Till Steve needed him. To use his freak status to get at his prissy, asshole parents. 

And Eddie did hate his parents, Steve was right about that. 

He tried not to think about that night. Tried not to think about how many nights he’d spent thinking about it since. Steve Harrington was what Eddie had always known he was. He was a player. He could afford to be. So what? Eddie hadn’t wanted more anyway. He hoped if he told himself that enough, he’d stop feeling the need to prove it to himself. 

“What if other people find out?” Eddie asked. He might be off the hook now, thanks to the Harringtons and Hopper, but most people hadn’t actually accepted he was anything other than a cultist satan-worshipper. And while he wasn’t ashamed of being gay, he really didn’t need another reason to get harassed in the street.

Steve shrugged, “You think the two of them are going to be running around dying to tell everyone that their son is into boys? Don’t think so.” He looked painfully uncomfortable. His eyes wouldn’t come anywhere near Eddie’s. “No one will find out.”

“And if they do, Harrington? A night of experimentation or whatever is one thing, but we’re talking about people potentially thinking we’re actually together,” Eddie insisted. And he didn’t mind being experimented with either, but he couldn’t imagine King Steve wanted to be associated with him in that way.

“They won’t.” Steve insisted. 

He was looking at Eddie with those big eyes, and Eddie couldn’t stop thinking about the Upside Down. How Steve had volunteered — insisted — on jumping in on his own. How he’d sent everyone else through the portal ahead of him. How he seemed to keep pushing other people behind him.

He liked Steve as a person, and that was probably the worst part. This was dangerous. He knew what it was. It was a rebellious phase. Steve would wake up eventually and go back to his regular life with some pretty, normal girl. Eddie would not delude himself into imagining any other outcome. 

“You owe me, Harrington.”

Chapter Text

“You recognise that this is a terrible idea, right? I don’t like, need to tell you that. You do know?” 

Steve sighed deeply, nodding his head, because yes, he knew, and he really wished she’d stop being logical and just get on his page about it. 

“I’m feeling really judged right now, Rob.” He commented in frustration, moving to put one of the videos back on the shelf with a dramatic sigh in her direction. Just for effect.

“Well, that would make sense, because I am absolutely judging you.” Robin told him with a scoff. “Why? In what universe is this going to help? Best case scenario is your parents are totally heinous about it to you behind his back. Worst case scenario is you get kicked out of home.” She held her hands up dramatically, like he was an absolute moron for suggesting this. In fairness, he was, but he was not going to be changing his mind now. It had gone too far. He’d already asked Eddie Munson, there was no going back on that. 

And who better to scare the pretentious out of his parents than the alleged murderer his parents had helped to get off the hook? Or, to look at it another way, the first man Steve had ever kissed. 

“Okay, so I get kicked out of home. So what?”

Robin just stared at him with wide, round eyes. “Steve. Steven—“

“… Why?”

“You’re being stupid, Steve, a total dingus, you don’t want to get kicked out of home. You don’t make enough money to get kicked out of home. Where do you think you’re gonna go if…?”

Steve groaned, turning to face Robin properly, giving her his undivided attention. “Rob, relax, alright? They’re not gonna kick me out. You really think they wanna have to explain to people why they cut their son off? Even if they completely distance themselves from me, they’d see it as a blot on their flawless reputations. No, they won’t wanna ruin the King Steve bullshit. They won’t kick me out, they’ll put a crazy amount of pressure on me to keep it secret or dump him.”

She was just frowning at him, lips pursed. “I thought you said they hated you?”

“They do.” He shrugged, putting another tape back. “But that’s an internal matter. To the outside world, I’m the perfect son.” He explained. “I took a few years off to mentor some kids and then I’m going to take over my fathers’ business. Or… some bullshit.”

She frowned, “And Eddie? What if it comes back on him?”

He blinked, a bit confused. “How?” He asked skeptically, “It was my Mom who cleared his name. How would it look to admit now that they were wrong? Nah, they won’t go after him either.” He shrugged, “It’ll be about trying to get me to come to my senses or whatever.”

She stared at him a few moments longer, that judgemental stare never leaving her face. “Can I ask you a real, very serious question, Steve?”

“Mm.” He relented, though whatever it was, he was sure he didn’t want to know. It would almost certainly make him feel more like an idiot. He could already feel it in her gaze that he was being judged. And while she was pretty much always right, he didn’t want it. 

She paused for a moment, leaning on the counter and lowering her voice like she was telling him a secret, though the store was well and truly empty. “Why don’t you just… ask him on an actual date? I mean, the two of you got along really well last time you hung out and then you just… like, never did it again. What even happened there?”

He blinked at that. Actually, it kind of was a fair question. If only he had a good answer.

“Mm, I sort of did, actually.” Her eyes widened. “I mean, no, I didn’t. I said date me at first and when he answered ‘come again’, I panicked and said fake date. But, I mean, I meant to ask him to fake date me in the first place so it doesn’t really count.”

She blinked at him. He waited for the explosion. 

“Dingus! What the fuck?” The door dinged open. They glanced at each other, then Steve made his way over to help. He did his usual. Being charming. Relying on very little actual movie knowledge and his smile to get him through it. It pretty much always worked, especially because it tended to be clumps of girls coming in to see him on a Friday evening shift. 

When they left with a giggle and a fading sweet smell, Steve waited with his back to Robin for the immediate:

“You did not tell me you were going to try actually asking him out!”

“That’s not what I—”

“I mean, shit, dude, that’s a totally different conversation. Is that what this is? Are you trying to like, soft launch dating him to your parents or something? Or — oh my god — to him?”

He sighed. “Robin, it’s not like that, I—”

“Wait, but he said come again? Come again isn’t no, Steve!” 

“I didn’t actually say I even like him and—?”

“Steve!” She rounded out from behind the counter, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking. “You’re being an idiot, Steve! You like him! He likes you! You already know you’re…” She gesticulated wildly, “Compatable! In bed!”

“Robin, jesus…”

“Oh my god, I bet he likes you too. I bet he’s kicking himself for agreeing because now he has to pretend and he probably thinks you don’t like him! Steve,” She slapped his arm repeatedly, all energy and excitement and Steve sighed. 

“For the love of…”

“What happened after the crop top incident?” She asked. “Like, what actually happened? I know you like, both got up and left the next morning or whatever, but like, I don’t know details.”

He just stared at her, mouth wide, eyes a little horrified. “I am not giving you details on my sex life, Buckley.”

She wrinkled her nose, looking disgusted. “No, I… ew. But after. Like, you obviously slept over, right? Was there like…?” She was waving her arms again.

Steve had gotten very used to Robin’s rambling and dramatics over the years of their friendship, and he adored her, truly, he did, but this was on a whole other level he did not want to deal with. The rambling wasn’t usually about something that made him feel so… vulnerable. Not that there was anything to even be vulnerable about. 

“Honestly, Robin — and it’s your fault I’m about to say this — I was pretty exhausted after. I think we just both fell asleep.”

She frowned, “You’re telling me there was no cuddling at all?” 

“Nope. None.” He told her, brushing her arm away when she began slapping his shoulder again. 

“Steve!” The word was more of an exasperated groan this time. Steve sighed and went back to work, ignoring her frustrations with him.

While what he said wasn’t entirely untrue, it wasn’t entirely true either. He did wake up tucked into Eddie’s side with his nose in Eddie’s hair, essentially curled into his neck. He could still remember how he smelt, actually. Like that grocery store two-in-one shampoo he’d used before he became known as ‘The Hair’, which smelled distinctly of vanilla and cinnamon. Of that stupid vest, which always smelled slightly damp, and of sweat. He found, even in remembering it to himself, that it sounded much less appealing than it was. 

Didn’t mean anything though, Steve was bound to remember something as significant as his first time with a guy. 

Anyway, he wasn’t going to tell Robin that, partly because it was none of her business and partly because she’d make something out of it that wasn’t there. They’d just fallen asleep that way, there wasn’t any conscious cuddling. Didn’t count if it wasn’t conscious in his eyes. And he knew how Robin would be about it. She’d start making wedding preparations. 

“I just don’t get why you didn’t just ask him, dingus.” 

He sighed, “Because I didn’t mean to ask him that. Fake dating. I want him to freak my parents out. That’s it. That’s all.”

She sighed, “Okay, fine. Stupid, but go on. You’re going forth with this truly imbecilic plan to fake date someone you’ve already slept with.”

“Why is that relevant?”

“Because you’re attracted to each other. Duh.” She said it like it was obvious, eyes wide. “This only ends one way, Harrington. With the two of you in love or one of you heartbroken.” A pause. “Don’t break his heart.”

“What?” Steve spluttered. “You’re my best friend, for starters, you should be protecting me from him. Also, can’t it just end in us being platonic friends who did something funny together.”

“Nope. Not possible.” She stared straight at him, challenging, and he sighed.

“Honestly, Rob, what’s the point of having a platonic soulmate if all you do is try to protect other people from me.”

“He’s not other people. He’s Eddie. And he’s a lot more… I don’t know. Human than people act like he is.” Steve didn’t know what to make of that. A lot more human? Wasn’t Steve human too? Why did that mean Eddie needed protecting from him? He was the one who kept shutting down like a candle being doused whenever Eddie flirted with him. If anyone needed protecting, it was definitely him.

Not that… 

He cut his own line of thought off, turning back to her.

“I’m not going to hurt Eddie. He’s a big boy, he’ll be fine. Appreciate the thought though.”

It was a few hours later when Eddie rocked up to the store, and Robin greeted him like she was so excited to see him, and Steve really did wonder if he was being replaced. Figured if he was going to get replaced it would be by someone with bigger hair than him. 

But Eddie, on the other hand, seemed perfectly unperturbed by the whole thing. He dropped his forearms down onto the counter, leaning over with his hip cocked to one side, just about exuding confidence. 

He and Steve might be different in almost every way, but Steve knew they had that in common. They were good at at least looking confident. But he was pretty sure they saw through each other. At least, he always felt like Eddie saw right through him.

He jumped up onto the counter like he worked there too and Robin leaned next to him. Steve went about doing his job, ignoring the two of them for the moment. He and Steve had agreed to talk about it all, but Steve really hadn’t realised that meant Eddie rocking up at Family Video. Because then he would’ve had to realise that Eddie and Robin ganging up against him again would be a thing.

They were painful together. Steve couldn’t believe how hard he’d come to third wheel with a gay man and lesbian woman, but he tended to try to ignore them both when this happened. 

Occasionally, he would zone back in to hear them talking about some dumb thing or another. Their favourite songs and how incompatible they were. At one point, he could’ve sworn he even heard Robin threaten Eddie, which only made Eddie cackle laughing in response. 

He didn’t actually start listening at all until he heard his name.

“Hey Harrington, come settle a bet.” He turned back, having been the most productive at a job he’d maybe… ever been in his life, to see the two of them sitting cross legged on the floor behind the counter like children playing clapping games. His brows raised at them, but he made his way back over, leaning against the counter. “Who would be a hotter girl, you or me.” 

Steve just blinked at them. “Do I get to know who’s on which side?” He wasn’t even surprised when they answered with an aggressive ‘no!’ in unison. It was like being with the little shitheads again. Always the babysitter, and they apparently regressed each other to ten year olds on a playground. He tried to be irritated by it, but actually, he was just glad. They were in school together, and he knew Robin had always struggled to make friends. He knew that she felt like people always left her if she was too much herself. He knew what it was to her that he hadn’t left her — and frankly, the same was true the other way around — so he wasn’t going to begrudge her any new friend who made her feel understood and happy. Even if he felt a little left out with them sometimes. “Um… Dunno. Probably him.” He nodded towards Eddie, “My face is too square.”

Robin and Eddie looked at each other and nodded, but didn’t divulge who had said what or why. 

Maybe he did begrudge them a little bit.

“Didn’t you come here to plan with me?” Steve finally asked, brows raising.

Eddie scoffed, leaning back onto his hands and smirking. “Okay, then come plan with me, Harrington. Robin’s obviously aware of your… proposition anyway, so…” He waved one arm, the other still holding him up. Steve nodded, not really wanting to discuss all of it in front of Robin for the sheer embarrassment of it all, but figuring he had no good reasons to say no. “So what did you want to plan? How we got together? Who sleeps on what side of the bed? What names you call my nipples?”

Steve choked on absolutely fucking nothing.

Robin cackled like it was absolutely hilarious, and Steve regretted absolutely every single decision he’d ever made in his life to lead him to this point.

“Relax, you’ve seen me naked.” Eddie deadpanned, which did absolutely zero to help Steve with his breathing difficulty. 

He’d always been so confident where it pertained to his love life, but then, his love life had never included anyone like Eddie before. Not that it entirely did now, but he supposed it was true that he had seen Eddie naked before. Eddie had a way of saying things that caught him off guard, that made him go all red and flustered. Steve had spent his whole life having that effect on other people, and having Eddie do it to him was oddly humbling. Or, to put it another way, totally humiliating. 

“Well, while you’re choking, I’m going to start spitballing.” Eddie spoke again. “Best plan for lying is always to build on the truth. I’m a fantastic fuckin’ storyteller, just as Hellfire Club. Anyway. We hooked up because I wore a crop top and you turned into a fuckin’ puddle. Turns out even the great King Steve is not above a bad boy. You made an honest man out of me or whatever after that. I always sleep on the left side and my nipples are named PB and J.” He shrugged, “Anything else?”

Steve could feel his ears burning when he answered. “Um… I know I said I wanted to freak my parents out but talking about your nipples might be a bit much.”

“It’s a bit much for me,” Robin added helpfully, and Steve nodded a thanks at her.

Eddie shrugged, completely casual. “I was being thorough. Is there anything else we need to plan out?”

Steve wracked his absolutely useless brain for anything else that he was going to try to talk through with Eddie before they did this ridiculous thing. “Um…” God, what the fuck? He wasn’t exactly a wordsmith, but he wasn’t usually quite this bad. He’d done a shit enough job of actually asking Eddie for this help in the first instance. “I doubt they’ll say anything bad to you, but if they do, feel free to just walk out.” Eddie saluted him in acknowledgement of that. “How, uh, how serious are we meant to be?”

Eddie scoffed, “Not very.”

Both Robin and Steve gave him a look. He had been so quick to answer. Like, too quick to answer. Like, why was he so fucking quick to answer?

“Look, when people like you date people like me,” Eddie began, as though dating someone like him was a frequent occurrence for him. Maybe it was. “It’s never because it’s serious. It’s because they’re going through a mild rebellious stage where the drug dealer with tattoos seems like a good idea to like, branch out and stop being Mommy’s Little Baby Boy or whatever. It’s a passing fascination. I’m like a…” He snapped his fingers, “I’m an acquired taste. More something most people do when they’re on holidays than something they want to bring back to their real life.”

Steve really didn’t know what to do with that. Eddie had said it completely casually, like it was a funny joke and just something they should laugh off. Robin laughed, but something about it rubbed Steve the wrong way. He hadn’t explicitly said anything negative about himself, Steve supposed, but the impression he got was that Eddie couldn’t imagine anyone different thinking he was worth more. That, that, pissed him off. Steve hated the idea that Eddie thought he was using him. 

He was, sort of, but it wasn’t intentional. They were friends, it wasn’t like he’d gone and asked some random person to help him. They were friends and they’d helped save the kids together. They’d hung out before. Steve wasn’t treating him like some passing phase. He had slept with him one time weeks before and then not again. But that was as much Eddie’s doing as his own… right? 

He must’ve looked worried, because Eddie raised his hands in surrender. “It’s fine, Steve-o. Don’t worry. I’m just saying you’re better off with something new and intense than something stable and serious. They’re less likely to believe it.”

Was it really so hard to believe that Steve might like Eddie? 

He didn’t, of course, they were just friends, but… he could. Why didn’t Eddie think that he could?

Chapter Text

Eddie regretted his life choices.

Because it was Sunday, which meant that it was the day he was going to meet Steve’s parents.

To meet them again would be more apt. He’d done this before, obviously, back when Mrs Harrington had first taken on his case. They’d looked at him like he was guilty, and he’d known immediately that Steve had made it happen. That his parents wouldn’t ever have helped Eddie of their own accord.

And it just added to the plethora of ways in which Eddie would never stop owing Steve, which was… frankly, fucking rude. He kept turning up when Eddie was in danger to help. He kept putting himself in the line of fire. Even down to him jumping out of that stupid fucking boat or ripping the bat apart with his bare hands. And then after all that, he’d gotten his parents to get Eddie’s case dropped too.

Maybe that was part of why Eddie had agreed to any of this to begin with. 

Or maybe, the far more terrifying option, he was just stupid enough to decide spending a bit of time with Steve the hair Harrington was worth also spending time with his asshole parents.

Of course, it was ridiculous. What kind of idiot did he have to be to think spending time with Harrington was going to get him anywhere? It wouldn’t, that was clear.

Because Eddie might be stupid, but he wasn’t that kind of stupid. It was enough that Harrington was handsome and charming and rich and popular, but to find out that he was this… self-sacrificial guardian of a bunch of kids he had no relation to, that Henderson hadn’t been full of shit when he’d gone on about what a badass Harrington was… that just about did it.

He wasn’t stupid. There was no reality in which this didn’t end with Harrington meeting a girl and returning to normal life. 

Someone like Steve Harrington was destined only to cross Eddie’s path in a brief flash of light, enough to leave permanent scars behind Eddie’s eyes, enough to change everything, but ultimately nothing more than a memory of a warmer place.

And he was going through with the truly masochistic plan of fake dating him. 

He was half expecting Steve’s parents to send his life up in smoke again, but Steve swore up and down that they wouldn’t. He had to assume Steve knew his own parents better than Eddie did, though truthfully, it seemed unlikely that this wasn’t going to end terribly. 

Eddie was meant to wait for Steve to pick him up. It should feel like being talked down to, but Eddie was nearly a thousand percent certain that Steve was doing it out of a weird kind of protectiveness. Like he didn’t want Eddie to ever risk being alone with his parents. Which was… something. 

By the time Steve knocked on the door of his trailer, Eddie was pretty sure that he had thought the whole thing over at least a thousand times. 

He’d dressed appropriately to piss them off. Steve’s mother had specifically told him to stop wearing the Hellfire shirts. That it was a bad look, that it only reminded people of the allegations made against him. 

Eddie was wearing it. 

He was also wearing the same holey jeans he’d worn when Steve had helped him paint. Partly because it was fucking hot and it was enough that he was wearing a long sleeved shirt, but also because he could already feel the disapproval from Steve’s parents.

It had absolutely nothing to do with what Steve had said about them the last time Eddie had worn them. 

He couldn’t still hear Steve laughing breathlessly in his ear and calling him a fucking tease. He couldn’t still hear the way it was more of a moan than a statement.

That had nothing to do with it.

Still, when Steve knocked on the door, Eddie forced himself to at least act calm. It’d worked last time. Last time, he’d simply told Steve to come over, and Steve had. He’d turned up all jittery and surprisingly bashful about it all at first. 

Eddie was sure he could emulate his own coolness. 

“Evening, Harrington.” He began, looking Steve up and down appraisingly. Eddie hated that he could make the most disgustingly hegemonic polo shirts attractive. “Ready to give your parents a few new frown lines? Nothing some good eye cream can’t fix, I’m sure.” He sounded sarcastic and a little mean, but Steve knew Eddie. He’d obviously asked because he wanted someone who presented a certain image. Eddie was living up to that.

He was half expecting Steve to do the typical thing: get protective of his parents. Act like he hated them but then get all weird and tense when Eddie didn’t like these people who obviously looked down on him.

Instead, Steve laughed. 

Eddie tried not to be a little gratified about it.

“Yeah, I’m so ready.” His eyes scanned down to Eddie’s legs and back up. “C’mon, Munson. You look perfect, by the way, my mother will freak out.”

It was actually embarrassing in a sense. It made Eddie feel weirdly transparent. Like he was sure it must be visible. Written all over him. He was sure Steve must be able to look at him and simply see a heart thundering away. 

“Just what I always wanted, Steve the hair Harrington to tell me I’m perfect to freak his mother out.” He let himself steer into his usual dramatics, the way he’d always liked to joke about things to avoid having to be too vulnerable about any of it. Easier to mock Steve about this than to acknowledge that he kind of wished… Nope. 

Steve snorted, “Oh, I’m sorry, you look like a babe, is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Much better.” 

They got into the car, and Eddie tried not to overthink any of it. He tried not to think about seeing Harrington’s parents again, or what it might mean for Steve to see his parents react as badly as they were inevitably going to react. 

And it was an inevitability. Even if they weren’t upset at the notion of their son liking boys — and he was positive they would be — they would certainly be upset at the notion of their son being interested in alleged satanist and murderer, Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson. 

Steve had said that was exactly what he wanted. That he’d chosen Eddie for that reason. That was almost certainly true, but Eddie wasn’t sure he was as ready for it as he thought he was. 

It was easy to think you wanted something like that… he wasn’t so sure you ever really knew until you’d lived it.

He and Steve bickered about movies almost the entire way there (Steve’s knowledge of horror movies was sorely lacking), but Eddie was finding it hard to think about much else than what was coming. 

And walking into Steve’s house, he couldn’t stop thinking about all of it. About being in Steve’s mother’s office, and listening to her talk about his reputation, and how important it was that he showed them that he’d changed, that he was a reformed member of society. She’d told him how it would be better he could get a proper job, that he needed to be seen graduating and helping out.

She’d told him to consider joining a sporting team. 

Eddie wasn’t sure how to tell her he’d rather literally die.

When he walked into Steve’s house, he could smell her perfume. 

It smelled like condescension and upper middle class. 

And then he saw them. 

Lorraine Harrington looked like she’d never slouched over anything in her life. She always looked sort of untouched by the elements, with hair blonder than Steve’s, and far neater. She was significantly shorter than Steve and his father, but had the presence of a woman who had appointed herself matriarch and could strike someone down with lightning for the sheer force of her own will. She was beautiful, in a weird, statuesque sort of way. But wrong though. Her face didn’t have the character that Steve’s did.

Percy Harrington was pretty much the most stereotypical asshole looking man on the planet. Actually, he was largely what Eddie had believed Steve would be like from a distance. He was snide and rude. He had Steve’s eyes, which should’ve endeared Eddie to him more, but on him, they looked like shark eyes. Cold and dark and empty. Eddie hadn’t ever seen him in anything less than a three piece suit, like some villain from a Bond movie or something.

And they were both looking at Eddie like a piece of gum they’d found on the bottom of their shoes. 

Eddie was sure his shiteating grin wasn’t helping.

“Steven, I thought you told us you were bringing home a new girlfriend?” Percy’s eyes ran over him judgmentally, catching on the shirt Lorraine had specifically told him not to wear. He was talking to Steve, but his eyes didn’t leave Eddie. It was clear what he thought. 

Steve’s arm slung over his shoulder, heavy and casual. Eddie made it a point to smirk wider in response, to ignore the instant response in his chest. “I said I was bringing a new partner home for dinner. Definitely not girlfriend.”

“Though I can see why you might think that, I’m very pretty,” Eddie told them, all teeth and dimples. 

There was a long, awkward silence. Steve didn’t move and neither did Eddie. He was painfully aware of how close they were together, painfully aware of the disgust on Steve’s parents’ faces. He wasn’t sure whether it was his gender or his actual personhood, but honestly, it could easily be both. He was waiting for the inevitable explosion though. For something to happen. For someone to break.

It felt like a game of chicken and the game was who was more terrified by the idea of being close to him. But Steve? Steve wasn’t budging. Eddie tried not to think about that, because it seemed pathetic to be glad someone wasn’t as repulsed by you as their parents were. 

“Don’t be childish, Steve, you’re a grown man.”

“I’m not… This isn’t a joke.” His tone was clipped, and Eddie got the sense his annoyance was genuine, despite the relationship being fake. 

“The two of you?” Percy gestured between them, peering up at them both over his glasses like he couldn’t believe it. “Inane joke. He is not your type, Steven, I know my own son.”

Well. He was partly right. He knew he wasn’t actually Steve’s type, but that hadn’t stopped Eddie from getting him naked, so he considered that a partial win. 

Steve frowned, “Apparently not. He is my type. Clearly.”

The clock ticked loudly on the wall, like a stampede against a defeating silence. 

“Steven, dear, you know we want you to be happy. But this…” Eddie braced himself for Lorraine’s next words, inevitably horrifying. “It makes me look very unprofessional if my son dates someone I’ve represented. It could call into question my biases towards Edward.” Eddie’s nose wrinkled. “If you’re looking to… experiment with… whatever this is, that’s your… business, but can you please not do it with a business associate?”

Whatever Eddie was expecting, that wasn’t it. It was obvious her suggestion he experiment was a completely empty platitude, but he was expecting far more outward vitriol and far less… well, selfishness. It was all about her career. 

It was easy to see why Steve spoke to and about them like they were strangers. They acted like he was their annoying roommate. There was no warmth. There was no affection.

Eddie didn’t often feel lucky when he thought about his childhood, but Wayne was nothing like this. 

“It’s not an experiment.” He said flatly, “Actually, the experiment was weeks ago. Experiment done. Answer found.” He sort of pulled Eddie in closer, and Eddie went willingly, wrapping an arm back around Steve’s middle and trying to make it look like he belonged there. He reminded himself that he was good at that. Hell, he could be a fucking actor with the amount of time he spent putting on voices and shows for those kids as Dungeon Master. 

She tutted, “Sure, sweetheart.” She said sweetheart like you might say asshole. It was full of venom and judgement. Her eyes fixed on Eddie then, cold and shallow and angry. He could see the desire to kick him out. He could feel it coursing through every pore of his body. “Are you staying for dinner, dear?” 

Poisonous. If looks could kill, Eddie would be six feet under and rotting already. 

“Yeah, thank you.” Eddie gave another toothy grin. He knew that he could just be rude. That would piss them off plenty. But he also knew that nothing pissed off judgemental parents more than when he was polite. When he took all their ammunition away before they could fire it. 

A few minutes of painfully awkward silence and glares that seemed to be tangibly heavy on his back, the four of them sat around a wooden table. It was made up nicely. Pretty china sets and multiple pieces of cutlery. It wasn’t a bit the microwave meals he ate in front of the tv sets while Wayne did shift work. 

Instead, it was a casserole and homemade bread rolls, gravy and lemonade. It was proper. Eddie wondered if they’d hoped he’d bring Wheeler home again. Or someone like her at least. Certainly not him. 

He watched the way they watched him, the way Percy Harrington’s dark eyes trailed Eddie’s hands when he cut his bread, staring at his black nails and heavy silver rings. He watched the way Lorraine Harrington silently sneered at the bats inked on Eddie’s forearm. 

There was nothing but the sound of metal on porcelain and chewing. Nothing but the sound of four people trying to eat through their awkwardness. It wasn’t working. 

“So. How was work today?” Steve sounded a little sarcastic when he said it, almost as though he was amused by the silence of it all. That was usually more Eddie’s speed, but he thought there was an actual chance that one of them might throw something at him. 

Percy slammed his fork down against the table. “We’re not going to sit and chat like you’re not trying to punish us by dating some loser.”

“Ouch.” Eddie grumbled, right as Steve dropped his own fork, seemingly completely ready for such a thing. 

“It’s not about you.” He snapped, “And Eddie’s not a loser. Not being like you doesn’t make someone a loser.” 

“No, being a twenty year old senior in high school who dresses like a good-for-nothing rock wannabe makes him a loser.” Steve’s father snapped. 

Steve had given Eddie permission to leave if this happened, but Eddie was too busy making sarcastic and slightly inflammatory noises in response to what was being said to go anywhere. Not that it was his fight though. He was happy just pouting sarcastically at Steve’s father, who looked ready to throttle him. 

“I’m twenty-one, actually.” He said, popping another bite of food into his mouth. 

Steve was speaking before Eddie was even done. “Yeah, having interests outside of the things you deem acceptable obviously makes someone a loser. Anyway, it’s no one’s fucking business who I date. He’s a good, normal person who doesn’t treat people like shit.” 

It would be nicer if it wasn’t total bullshit. 

“Already answered that one.” His father was arguing, “He’s a deviant and a bad influence.”

“A deviant…” Eddie echoed quietly, smiling a little. That part was probably not entirely wrong, actually. 

“I’m not sure what we’ve done to make you feel so resentful of us and all that we’ve given you that you would slum it with some loser.” Percy hissed. “Remember when you actually had some promise? Captaining three sports teams. Dating the Wheeler girl. You had prospects. You had a future. Colleges were scouting you, people were always asking us about you. Then you started missing school, stopped showing up to your events. Hanging out with those stupid kids and turning up bruised. I don’t know what criminal behaviour this miscreant has gotten you into, but it’s a waste. You weren’t always such a disappointment, Steven.” 

“But you always were.” Steve spit back, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape and getting to his feet, pausing only to hold a hand out to Eddie, which he took and got to his feet. “We’re going upstairs.”

He basically dragged Eddie up the stairs behind him, and Eddie went willingly. Frankly, that was more than enough of that for him, and he knew it’d only keep escalating.

Frankly, he was one insult directed at Steve from actually firing back. He had always been better at copping criticism for himself than for other people. And Steve was, actually, a good person. He didn’t deserve that bullshit when he’d been out there helping save the world or whatever. 

Steve didn’t stop until he’d dragged Eddie into his room and slammed the door behind them both. There were a lot of things Eddie wanted to say, but instead, he found himself staring around at Steve’s room, a little fascinated. 

“Poster of a half naked girl. I’m shocked, Harrington, truly.” He was better at distractions than legitimate comfort anyway. It wasn’t like the Munson household was one where talking about feelings was exactly normal. “And a framed picture of a car. Such depth I didn’t know you had.” 

Steve looked tired and stressed. He flopped backward onto his bed, hands stretching up to rub over his face.

“Mm, yeah, haven’t redecorated since I was fourteen.” He grumbled, his words muffled by his hands. “And even then, I didn’t pick the poster or the car, my dad did.”

That sounded right.

Eddie looked at his desk, which was mostly empty, save for a few scraps of official looking paper and some doodles of shapes. Some Hawkins High team flags pinned to a corkboard, along with a work roster. It was… mostly kind of empty actually. The wallpaper was busy and annoying, but the room itself was tidy and looked kind of cold. It didn’t look like Steve belonged to it, really.

Steve was so warm, he had so much personality, it radiated off him in waves every time he pulled some stupid face and put his hands on his hips. But this room? There was so little personality in it.

Eddie’s walls were covered in drawings and posters and pictures. He had banners and posters, whatever he could manage to squish on there. There wasn’t a spot in the room that wasn’t filled with something of his. He couldn’t imagine living in a room so empty of identity. 

“Doesn’t really look like you.” Eddie told him casually, flopping down beside him on the bed and stretching his arms back, looking up at the ceiling. 

Steve peeked one dark eye through his fingers. “What, the room?”

“Yeah.” Eddie nodded, “It looks so empty. Like, where’s all your shit, man?”

Steve’s hands pulled away entirely, looking around the room and then back at Eddie. “In the wardrobe?” He asked, skeptically. 

“Do you just not… own anything?”

There was a long moment where they just maintained eye contact, Eddie only partly trying to make Steve open up, partly just actually asking him questions out of curiosity. But then they both started to laugh, and thank god too, because Eddie was going to choke on that silence at some point if left alone with it. 

They laughed too long and too hard for Eddie’s not-even-a-joke, but Eddie was pretty sure a lot of it was just… tiredness. Being tired from the heightened emotions of the dinner. 

Honestly, Eddie’s only regret was not shovelling more food in when he’d had the chance, because there was no way they were going back down now. 

“I own stuff.” Steve finally defended. All it took was raised eyebrows for him to laugh again. 

“Are you okay?” Eddie didn’t mean to break the comfortable quiet and laughter, exactly. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to check in with Steve. What he had witnessed had been… pretty brutal. Tough or not, Steve was human. 

“Am I okay?” Steve asked, frowning sideways at him. “I was gonna ask you the same question.”

“Me? Pfft,” Eddie waved a hand, head tipping to the left to watch Steve where he lay. “You think that’s the first time some upper-middle class snobs with delusions of grandeur have called me a loser? Please. Doesn’t even crack the top ten.” A pause. “No offence.”

Steve just stared at him for a moment, nose wrinkled and lips pursed. Eddie really tried not to think it was cute, he really made a valiant effort, but Eddie was only fucking human, and Steve was the ex-King for a reason. It was way harder to resist now that he knew he actually liked him as a person too. 

“None taken.” He stared back up at the ceiling, half smiling. “They’re wrong though, y’know?”

Eddie should stop staring. He should definitely stop looking at Steve’s jaw. And his cheekbones. And his lips… 

“Huh?”

“What they said about you? They’re wrong.” He repeated, and Eddie heard it properly that time. Steve was trying to compliment him. Telling him he wasn’t a loser. It was a nice idea, but not strictly true.

He was a third year senior. He was an alleged murderer and he did spend his time playing a tabletop game with kids and learning sick guitar solos. But, like, he didn’t really care if people thought that made him a loser. It probably did. But what did it change, really? He was never going to be some serious lawyer like Steve’s mother. He was never going to be the normal guy people wanted him to be. So why the fuck even pretend? At least he knew who he was. At least he didn’t make himself miserable trying to be what he was meant to be or whatever. 

“Nah.” He moved to sit, turning to walk around Steve’s room, focusing on different things around the room, though there wasn’t that much to look at really. “That’s why I’m good for this kind of thing.”

Steve sat up too, frowning. “I didn’t… that’s not why I asked you.”

Eddie smiled at him, shaking his head. “Relax, Harrington. I’m fine,” He said quickly, “Didn’t realise you lost scholarship opportunities.” Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, but he didn’t want to continue down the same line they were on. Steve trying to make him feel better was just too weird, and he didn’t need comforting. 

Steve sighed, “Mm.” He shrugged, “Well, funny thing about adopting a bunch of random kids and deciding to fight monsters. You miss a fuckload of games and meets and things. It’s not a big thing, really, I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do at college anyway. I was a shit student. And where would I have gone? Couldn’t leave Hawkins. Couldn’t leave all of that behind, y’know? The kids and Nance and then Robin.” 

It sounded a helluva lot like he was making excuses. Eddie didn’t look back at him though, wasn’t ready to, maybe. How stupid, for them to be sitting here being awkward over a fake relationship. It was Eddie’s fault, really, allowing himself to get caught up, even a little, in all of this. 

“What would you have done? Swimming, running or basketball?”

Steve just snorted, “Swimming.” He answered halfheartedly, “Wasn’t anywhere near good enough at basketball. Running, I loved, but wasn’t that fast. Despite what happened in that fuckin’ boat, I actually am a good swimmer.”

Eddie raised a hand to his chest, turning to face Steve with overdramatised sincerity. “Oh, I believe you, Steve-o. Scout’s honour. Couldn’t’ve paid me to volunteer to be first. Though Wheeler and Buckley seemed quite distressed by it. You matter a lot to a lotta people, Harrington. Doubt they’d consider it disappointing that you didn’t go to college when you staying’s saved their bacon. A lot, by the sounds of things.”

Steve was eyeing him intently, and Eddie hated not knowing what he was thinking. Probably just trying to figure out how to dismiss the compliment, like he always did. 

“What?” Eddie asked after the moment of silence went on longer than expected. 

Steve shook his head, “You’re a weird dude, Munson.”

Eddie actually laughed at that. “Jesus, no shit, Harrington. They don’t call me a freak for nothin’.”

He shook his head, looking right at Eddie. He hated to feel seen, but Steve was really looking, and he struggled not to squirm beneath his gaze. His eyes were big, and Steve seemed intent. 

“Not what I meant.” He said, shaking his head. “You’re just… like, nicer than I was expecting. I think I still forget sometimes.”

“You called me a marshmallow like, three days ago.”

“And was I wrong?”

“So you’re not going to go back to swimming? Be the big boy on campus all over again? Resurrection of King Steve?” Eddie raised his hands to the top of his head, wiggling his fingers up like some kind of makeshift crown. 

Steve rolled his eyes. “No, I think that ship has well and truly sailed.” 

“Are you sure? Because I bet you could charm your way in,” he teased, flopping onto the bed again beside Steve, smiling. “Maybe I should bounce on the bed. Y’know, let them think I’m up here debauching their precious Steven.” 

Steve rolled his eyes, but halfheartedly bounced on the bed a few times, as if playing along with the joke. “Not precious anymore— didn’t you hear? I’m a disappointment.” 

“Should I be sorry?”

Steve shook his head, snorting, “I was a disappointment long before this, trust me.” There was a long pause where Eddie really tried not to overthink everything that had happened. He was an idiot, that was for sure. Anyone with any self preservation would not go getting attached to Steve Harrington. “Thanks, by the way. For doing this with me.”

Eddie stopped bothering with trying to keep his eyes away from Steve’s face. At least now he had a good reason to look. “Nah, I get it. I’m your friendly neighbourhood loser.”

“Stop that,” Steve sounded genuinely irritated, and Eddie could picture the way he stood with his hands on his hips, all frustration and sass, despite the fact that he was laying flat on a bed beside Eddie. “I didn’t ask you because I thought you were a loser. I asked you because…” He sighed, “If you ever repeat that I said this, I swear to fucking god, I will cut your hair off in your sleep. I asked you because you’re kind of… safe. And I guess maybe I wanted, like… company or something.” 

Eddie’s heart was basically flatlining in his chest at that point, eyes wide, staring at Steve like he’d grown a second head. Safe? Since when did anyone in the entire world think of Steve as safe? He was, at best, mildly menacing to most people, but never safe. 

And wanting company? What did that even mean? That he wanted to tell his parents but didn’t want to do it alone? That he thought having Eddie there might soften it? 

The truth was, Eddie was pretty sure he knew the word Steve was looking for. 

Support.

Steve wanted support. 

He wasn’t entirely certain why anyone wanted to talk to their parents, especially when their parents were raging dickheads like Steve’s, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar concept. 

He’d never had to tell Uncle Wayne, but he also knew that his Uncle wouldn’t care. It had never even been a question. Wayne had always made it clear that their relationship was unconditional. 

Steve’s relationship with his parents seemed… conditional. To say the least. 

Eddie was tentative about it, but he moved his hand a little, letting the back of his palm bump against Steve’s. “It’s fine, Steve. You don’t have to thank me. It’s all good.”

“I should’ve been more sensitive about it,” He tipped to face Eddie again, but then, before Eddie could tell him to drop it, Steve was smiling. “What did you fail anyway?” He asked, obviously referring to high school. 

This was easier to talk about - easier to joke off. And Eddie was more than happy to joke things off.

“First year I failed history and Phyd Ed. Now just Phys Ed.” He answered, already prepared for Steve’s inevitable reaction. Steve basically was Phys Ed in a person, after all. Captained three teams, like his parents had said. He was the guy Eddie could remember fronting all those stupid pep rallies and things. It was funny, in hindsight, because at the time, he’d resented the hell out of Steve, assumed the absolute worst in him. Now, he would take him over Jason any day. Turned out Steve actually didn’t suck as a person, but Jason? Eddie couldn’t stand that guy. 

Steve’s jaw dropped. “What?” 

There it was. “You heard me.”

“How do you even fail PE? It’s like, the easiest subject by a fuckin’ mile!” He was exaggerated, hands raised in the air, exasperated like Eddie had just said he still believed in Santa. “Eddie, Eddie, Edward, that’s ridiculous. Like, even if you’re absolutely terrible at all things sports, you can still do it. I mean, Robin can barely walk straight half the time and she’s doing well at PE!”

Eddie raised his hands back, but more in defense than anything. “I refuse to run. I refuse, Steve. Look at me? Do I look like I’m built to run?” 

Steve was laughing before he was even done talking. He was laughing properly too, loud and bright, his head tipped back, eyes shut. Eddie wanted him to keep laughing like that. He wanted to bottle that sound to play later on. He wanted to be the reason Steve kept laughing like that. 

He was an absolute fucking idiot, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted it to continue.

“I live my life in ripped jeans and a leather jacket. This hair? Doesn’t look good sweaty. Doesn’t fit my image. Doesn’t fit the mystique. Better men than you have tried to make me run, Steve-o, it won’t happen. It’ll never happen. Can’t make me.”

Steve turned onto his side, his smile still wide, his eyes narrowed by the sheer brightness of the smile and the laugh. Maybe he was a little hysterical or something still after all that had happened that evening, but if Eddie making jokes at his own expense would make Steve laugh like that, Eddie would happily keep doing it. Still, he grabbed one of Eddie’s wrists, shaking it stubbornly.

“You’re an idiot, Eddie,” He gasped, still laughing, “Just do some fucking running, it’s not going to kill you, man. Do you even need to run? I mean, surely there are only a few physical things you have to do in order to be able to graduate?”

Eddie shook his head, “I’ve been trying to do as much as I can. Turns out I absolutely loathe sports, Steve. Loathe them. Doesn’t go with my aesthetic. Doesn’t match my style.” Steve was still laughing, and Eddie couldn’t keep from grinning.

“What are the things you even have to do?”

“I’m not telling you, because you’re going to make fun of me for not wanting to do them.”

“I’m not going to make fun of you.”

“You’re a dirty, rotten liar, you’re really telling me you’re not going to laugh at me not wanting to ballroom dance.”

That was enough to send Steve into hysterics all over again, and shit, he probably would run a mile if it meant more of this.

Chapter Text

“The problem is that I’m just not even surprised anymore, Harrington! Like, of course that’s one of your favourite songs! Of course it is. Why am I even remotely surprised?”

Steve couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t that funny really, but he’d had the giggles for what felt like hours now, and the harder he tried to be quiet, the worse it got.

He had no idea what time it was, only that the two of them had been laying in various ridiculous positions all evening talking, listening to music and falling into hysterical fits of laughter.

“Honestly, Munson, I don’t even believe you that you don’t like it, I think you’re just trying to be special and cool and different.” He tried to say it seriously, tried to say it like someone who was making a solid and good point, but then they were both giggling again, the wheezing, breathless laughter that took over when you were truly hysterical but trying to be quiet about it. 

It was at least partly the events of earlier that evening, but it was also partly just he and Eddie. Their conversations regressed very quickly into madness, and it was hard to keep a straight face laying upside down on a bed, feet propped up against the wall, while Eddie tried to demonstrate what a metal cover of Bowie or Rick Springfield might sound like. It had been hard to stop laughing when Eddie had tried to headbang to ABBA and fallen straight off the bed. Eddie had actually had legitimate tears coming out of his eyes when Steve had tried to sing one of his favourite songs, going on and on about how tone deaf he was.

“You don’t believe me? Why? Because you like it and therefore it must be good?” Eddie argued, but he was still smiling, all dimples and teeth, and his hair looked like a rats nest because they’d both been laying all around the room at different parts of the evening like hyperactive children, and it was hard for Steve to believe only a few hours ago, his parents had called him a disappointment. 

Steve scoffed, “No, Edward, because it’s good.” 

Steve rolled off the bed, nearly knocking over a lamp with his foot as he went, which only made Eddie laugh more, his head tipped back. And Steve watched him, upside down on the bed in a pair of Steve’s basketball shorts and his hellfire shirt, and it really was hard not to feel… something. It was hard to say what, because it had only been a few weeks since he’d even acknowledged to himself that he could be into other guys, but it felt sort of… crystal. 

Like sometimes in his life, there were moments for steve that almost felt like memories before they ever were. Moments that felt so alive and so full and so warm. With the window open and Eddie’s hair splayed out against his bed and Steve dancing along to Abba dramatically in socks and his gym shorts, nearly tripping as he went because he was an objectively terrible dancer. It felt like a wholly complete moment. Like something good and fun and right in the world. It was all Eddie, that was the thing. He knew how to make Steve laugh. More than almost anyone, he thought.

And sure, he was literally always making fun of Steve, but Steve gave as good as he got, and with Eddie, it never felt like there was any malice behind it. It felt like a joke they were both in on.

“But now it isn’t true…” Eddie was right, Steve was a terrible singer. “Now everything is new, and all I’ve heard is overturned, I beg of you…” Eddie was still laughing, but he was also staring at Steve, and maybe he was completely and totally misreading it, but… 

He held out grabby hands to Eddie, virtually dragging him to his feet. Eddie was trying to look annoyed, but his face had gone a little red and he couldn’t quite put that dimple away. Instead, Steve tried to spin Eddie. It was a little awkward, because he clearly had no idea what Steve was trying to do, but they got there in the end, with only a mild bashing of Eddie’s forehead against Steve’s forearm mid spin. 

Don’t go wasting your emotions, lay all your love on me.

Steve went to dip Eddie, and Eddie shook his head in protest, managing to flip their positions and throw Steve back instead. It was clumsy and awkward, with Steve very nearly slipping right off of his socks, but Eddie held him up and Steve was laughing so hard he thought he might actually be getting the more visible abs of his youth back. Eddie was grinning too, and Steve didn’t miss the grumble about how Steve should just let him lead.

It was like shooting a sitting duck, a little small talk, a smile, and baby I was stuck.

They completely bumped into each other, knocking knees and sort of barging chests against each other. They were still laughing, and Eddie threw his head back, his laugh getting a little louder. Steve shushed him through his own laughter, but found himself holding Eddie around the waist to make sure that he didn’t completely topple over. 

I feel a kind of fear, when I don't have you near, unsatisfied, I skip my pride, I beg you, dear…

He tried to spin Steve out, and thought Steve went, his legs got sort of twisted and he fell back into Eddie again, his head dropping down into the shoulder of Eddie’s Hellfire shirt, only laughing harder when his forehead sort of banged against Eddie’s collarbone. 

Don't go sharing your devotion, lay all your love on me.

“Your music is still terrible,” Eddie told him quietly, breathlessly, when they collapsed back onto the bed.

Steve shook his head, “Um, no, no takesies-backsies, you’ve danced with me to ABBA at…” He reached for Eddie’s wrist, lifting it so he could see the watch he literally always had on. “Fuckin’ four-thirty in the morning. You’re an ABBA fan now. There’s just nothing you can do about that now.”

Eddie’s head tipped to the side, grinning at Steve, his breathing still unusually heavy from the awful dancing. 

They were so close together, and it would be so easy to lean over and kiss him. He remembered exactly what it had been like last time. Steve had felt so deeply scared going over to Eddie’s, in a way he never had with women. It was all so new and terrifying. How at ease Eddie had seemed. How he’d rested both hands on either side of Steve’s face when he’d kissed him, held him in place like he might be about to disappear. How grounding that had felt for Steve, and how it had helped to kick him into gear. Reminded him that he knew how to kiss. Of all the things in the world he knew he was pretty good at, he’d never been unconfident with his romantic or sexual prowess. Well, not before Nancy Wheeler anyway. His sexual prowess, then. The romantic had gotten to be a little more… tentative. 

But once it had started, it had felt so easy with Eddie. 

He hadn’t been afraid of judgement, really. Hadn’t been afraid of not being listened to or of what might happen after. It was what he’d told him earlier. Eddie felt kind of safe to him. Someone who, despite what other people seemed to think, he was completely certain wouldn’t ever intentionally hurt anyone, him included. It had all been so new to him, but Eddie had made it all easy and safe and Steve had felt drawn to him. 

Still did, though he reminded himself that they were friends, that Eddie had acted like nothing ever happened.

“Are you actually okay…?” Any thoughts Steve had of kissing Eddie were dashed, and instead, he glanced up at the ceiling. It had been hours since Eddie had last tried to check in with him, and he seemed to understand that Steve didn’t want to do this. Maybe he thought it needed to be done. Steve didn’t think so, he would really prefer not to do this. 

“I mean, yeah.” He raised his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s not like I’ve ever been close to ‘em.”

Eddie did that same thing he’d done earlier. He brushed the back of his hand against Steve’s. What the hell was that? Every time he did it, Steve felt goosebumps right up to his forearm. But Eddie never did anything else with it, and Steve was left wondering whether he was mad to imagine that maybe Eddie was going to hold his hand. Because he kept not doing it, so at a certain point, Steve had to wonder if he didn’t intend to do it. Maybe it was the equivalent of a fistbump or something. An act of bro solidarity or whatever.

Did you fuck someone as a bro? Steve certainly didn’t — or hadn’t, at least. He supposed his options had opened up in that regard. But, in all honesty, he hadn’t really thought about hooking up with another guy since. He was covered in bat scars, and frankly, he was terrified of what it might look like to show someone else what they looked like. 

Eddie didn’t seem to care, but he didn’t even know if that was genuine. Maybe he spent the whole time cringing and thinking how awful it looked. After all, how the hell would Steve know? For all he knew, that was why Eddie never called him back.

Eddie shrugged, “That doesn’t mean they can’t do things that hurt you,” He looked concerned. Steve could say that much with certainty. Eddie was looking at him like he was deeply and genuinely concerned about him. It was sweet, if a little unsettling.

*

When Steve’s eyes flickered open the following morning, the first thing he noticed was that he had no idea what he was cuddling. 

It didn’t seem like a person, but it also seemed distinctly… person-y.

“Scratchy…” He grumbled, his voice deep and crackly first thing in the morning. God, how long could he have been asleep? Not long enough, clearly. 

There was a scoff from what was very much the wrong end of the bed. “That’s because you’re hugging a calf.” Eddie’s voice sounded just as murky as Steve’s did, but craning his head, Steve could see what had happened. They’d fallen asleep at opposite ends of the bed.

Steve didn’t recall falling asleep. He didn’t recall anything past a certain point. There was talking, he knew that, then there was… nothing. The fading of one world into another. Him and Eddie curled around each other, in the least sexy or romantic conceivable way. Eddie hugged Steve’s legs too, he realised, and there was something oddly nice about it.

Of all the awful things to happen lately, there was something sweet about falling asleep in faded t-shirts in the wee small hours of the morning, hugging a friend in such an innocent way.

He tried not to be disappointed it wasn’t anything else.

“So. Harrington.” Eddie had let go of him, and he stretched up above his head, something in his shoulders cracking several times as he did. Probably not the most comfortable way to sleep. Come to think of it, Steve’s neck didn’t feel so hot either. “Guess it’s my turn to ask for a favour, huh?” 

Steve’s brows shot up. 

“Relax, my favour’s way more fun than yours. My favour is based purely on humour.” He had that same sort of shit-eating grin on his face that made Steve both worried and maybe a little bit excited. 

“I mean, I guess I… owe you.” He said, a little wary. “What?”

Eddie’s grin stretched out like the Cheshire Cat.

*

“This is a terrible idea.”

“You’re a terrible idea.”

Steve snorted, “That’s a terrible comeback.”

Eddie grinned sideways at him, shaking his head. Eddie was right, at least, that it could be funny. It was also kinda dangerous, if you asked Steve, but Eddie insisted that even if it got out, no one would believe it, so it didn’t really matter. 

Really, Steve just figured that he owed Eddie. Not only had he stuck around while Steve’s family were absolutely assholes to the both of them, he’d wound up crashing at Steve’s that evening so that he wasn’t stuck on his own either. Not just that, he’d managed to get Steve laughing for almost the entire night. Which was, honestly, pretty impressive, considering how completely wrecked the whole thing had left Steve feeling.

He felt stupid for being so sad about it, especially when he knew that it was going to happen. He knew. It was ridiculously stupid to be upset about something he’d known for a long time. And his relationship with his parents was shit anyway. Worse still, probably, than what he let anyone in on. But it had helped. Having Eddie there had helped, in a way Steve hadn’t even really anticipated. Not just because Eddie hadn’t buckled under it — in fact, he’d kept being a sarcastic shit the whole dinner — but also because he hadn’t just ditched Steve in it after.

So if this was what Eddie wanted to do, shit, who was Steve to say no?

“Okay, so, remind me of their names again then.”

Eddie was still grinning, he’d barely stopped since he’d suggested this god-awful idea to Steve. “Gareth’s the one with the sort of curly short hair, kinda like mini-Wheeler’s, he’s on drums. Jeff’s on electric guitar, has short cropped hair. PJ’s the taller one, plays bass, also shorter curly hair.” Steve wasn’t sure how he was meant to make heads or tails of those descriptions, but he tried to commit the names to memory at least. Gareth, Jeff and PJ. At least they were fairly simple names. 

“No one’s expecting you to know their names, Steve.” He commented, patting Steve’s shoulder in a way that felt distinctly condescending.

“I mean, I’m assuming if you’re introducing me as your boyfriend that they’re going to think you’ve at least mentioned them to me.” Steve deadpanned back, brows raised. Actually, he wasn’t thrilled about any of this, and not just because he knew these guys were friends with the little shitheads. There was also the fact that these were a group of school kids who were probably very purposefully not fans of people like Steve. It felt kind of like a set-up.

Eddie glanced up, nodding as though acknowledging Steve actually had a point with that. “Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean you care enough to know their names though, does it?”

“So what? I’m a bad boyfriend in this scenario?”

Eddie rolled his eyes dramatically. “Steve, please, in what universe are you actually interested in knowing the names of the people in my band.”

Steve’s brows pinched. “I mean, I’m only here pretending to be your boyfriend and I’m trying to learn them now, is it really so much of a stretch that I’d want to know if we were together?” He asked, knowing he looked a bit offended. Maybe he kinda was a bit offended.

Eddie stopped dead in his tracks, glancing up at Steve. “Yes, sweetheart, it is that much of a stretch, because it’s a stretch that we’d actually be dating to begin with, but for you to be like, an attentive partner? Big fucking stretch.”

Okay, well, now Steve was just actually kind of annoyed. “Why is it such a huge stretch that we’d be dating?” He asked flatly. “Not like we haven’t fucked already.”

Eddie rolled his eyes again. “You’re so fucking annoying sometimes.” 

Steve bumped his shoulder into Eddie as they walked. “I’m annoying? You’re the one insisting that the only way your friends are gonna believe we’re together is if I’m an asshole about it. Yeah, well, fuck you. Not only am I gonna convince them we’re together, I’m going to convince them I think the sun shines out your ass and that I know your friends names, because I listen to you talk about all your shit constantly. And for the record, I only know about The Hobbit and Black Sabbath because of you, and now I know about how Ozzy Osbourne bit a bat’s head off on stage, and I know they call him the Prince of Darkness and I know like three of their songs, so you can fuck right off with acting like I’m some dickhead just because I played basketball.”

Eddie was looking at him suddenly, incisive and attentive, like he was trying to unravel him. Steve fucking hated how he did that. But then Eddie was grinning bright, like the sun actually did shine out of his ass, and it was hard for Steve to stay mad. After a moment, they were both laughing again.

They were both still laughing when Eddie told them they were only around the corner from the rehearsal space. He put a hand into Steve’s hair like it was the most natural thing in the world, mucking it up a bit. “For effect.” He told Steve as they took off walking.

Predictably, it was awkward as hell.

The three guys, who, as it turned out, were most recognisable by the instruments Eddie had assigned them to, just stared at Steve like he had three heads when he walked in behind Eddie. 

“Eddie, I think a jock followed you home.” The guitarist — PJ? — was the first to speak. Steve was surprised they even recognised that. He looked down at himself. Sneakers, blue jeans, polo shirt. Was he inherently jock in this? He wasn’t Eddie’s type, obviously, but how did they get jock? 

“Relax, guys, he’s cool.” Eddie chimed casually, moving to pick up a guitar that was propped up on the old, peeling-leather lounge by the corner of the garage. 

Steve yanked his hands from his pockets, making to hold his hand out when he introduced himself. “Hey, I’m—”

“King Steve.” Jeff answered. “You didn’t graduate that long ago. Everyone knows who you are.”

Oh. 

“Right,” He turned and held his hand out to Jeff, “You’re Jeff, right?”

Jeff didn’t take his hand, and Steve eventually dropped it. Jesus, at least Steve had introduced Eddie himself, not left him to fend for himself. Eddie’s back was turned to Steve, but Steve would bet a thousand dollars he was smirking about it. 

“Yeah. Why are you here?” It was so blunt, Steve almost laughed. No wonder Eddie was friends with these people. 

“Eddie?” Steve asked, glancing back at him. He wasn’t doing this entirely alone, so help him. 

Eddie stood back up with a dramatic flip of his hair, turning to face the group. Much like Steve had done the night before, he threw an arm around Steve’s shoulder, smirking widely. “Stevie’s my boyfriend.”

Steve could barely keep track of what was being said. He was positive he got bullshit, no way and you fucking liar out of the intense responses though. It was only three people, but between them, it felt a little bit like being yelled at by a whole sports team. One thing was apparent though. Disbelief. Eddie had been right about that, apparently.

“Babe?” Eddie was looking at him, and they were so close together that Steve genuinely wondered whether it’d be easiest to just…

Steve blinked, thinking for a moment. “He has a tattoo on his left ass cheek.” He said, as though trying to provide proof. 

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Eddie’s quiet laughter, before the arguments started back up. 

“He could’ve just told you that!”

“We can’t actually verify that!”

“Still doesn’t actually mean dating.” 

“Oh, for the love of—“ Steve cut himself off with a huff, yanking Eddie forward by the shirt, crushing their lips together. He knew they could easily say it still didn’t prove anything; but he figured it was reasonably hard to argue with. He wasn’t sure how many former Kings — or whatever the fuck — of Hawkins High would be willing to play pretend at this anyway. In theory, Eddie would probably have to have a lot over them. And even then… 

As it happened, the few weeks between hadn’t done anything to sully whatever spark there was between them physically. Because even though Steve had pulled Eddie to him rough, the kiss had quickly taken shape into something that felt more real. Eddie’s arm was still around him, and he used it to pull Steve in tight, to hold him in place. 

One of Steve’s hands moved to grip at Eddie’s hip, and in a moment, Steve had let out a breath and Eddie’s tongue was in his mouth. 

He was affected. He was too affected, which was why he hoisted himself away as quickly as he did. He was still in Eddie’s arms, and still holding him, but he was breathing a little heavier and looking up into his eyes instead. 

Steve knew the look, he’d seen it before, and he knew it would be way too easy to fall back into what had happened that night after they’d painted. Romantic or not, the sexual chemistry was still going strong. It felt like a current between them. Like Steve knew he could shock himself if he got close enough, but he wanted to anyway. It was stupid. It was stupid anyway, but it was especially stupid in front of Eddie’s band.

Eddie assured Steve that his band had been together since they were small. That his band had seen Eddie through some bad years, and that they didn’t care that Eddie didn’t like who Hawkins felt he was supposed to like. He said the shock wouldn’t be him with a boy, but him with that specific boy. Because the others might not be in Eddie’s year at school, but they certainly had been around when Eddie’s galavanting on tables yelling at jocks thing had seen Steve on the end of the rant and not someone else. 

He took a few seconds just to breathe before he risked a glance at the other three. PJ looked outright stunned. Gareth looked mildly irritated. Jeff looked outright skeptical. 

“How did this happen?” The one with the bass — PJ — asked them. Or at least, he said it broadly, but he looked right at Steve, like he might morph into the actual, literal devil at any moment. 

High school was fucking weird, because so many more people had been aware of Steve than Steve had been aware of. And he knew that, kind of, from a distance. But since leaving school and getting to know Robin and Eddie, and even just meeting these guys, he was realising how deeply rooted all of it was.

To Steve, he had been living in his little bubble, not seeing the point in interacting with people outside of it. 

To those outside of it, Steve had been the apex predator, capable of taking any of them in or taking any of them down. To them, he had the asshole right at the top, who didn’t deign to look at anyone beneath him. 

He could see it now, why they thought that. The actual answer wasn’t that Steve had ever been a bully — though, he should have stopped a lot of bullying he didn’t — but that Steve was completely oblivious to the world around him. By choice, no doubt. He still had culpability, but he hadn’t seen it, because it was easy not to see a privilege when you were sat on higher ground. It just seemed like where you belonged.

In Steve’s head, that was just his place. He’d never stopped to think about how it might feel in other places.

It was hard to ignore these days.

Seeing how absolutely terrified Robin was of being abandoned. 

How shaken Eddie was when he realised that he was being hunted by a town he had done nothing to hurt.

He had seen Dustin, terrified of never fitting in.

Seen Lucas, trying his best to fight his way into the same spot Steve had been, to be left alone. 

He wished he had realised back then. He wished he had seen some of that power. The truth, of course, was that it didn’t matter. Steve’s power was only skin deep, and if he’d really tried to rebel, he would’ve been no different from the other.

He didn’t conform because he was cruel, he did it because he was a coward.

These people weren’t. He respected that.

“His dickhead parents took my case after the…” Steve slid his hand down into Eddie’s as he talked, squeezing it. Despite the fakeness of this all, the gesture was real. He knew how much Chrissy’s death had shattered Eddie’s worldview. “Anyway, we spent a lot of time together. Realised we had more in common than we thought.”

“Why?” Gareth looked a bit disgusted, like Eddie was sleeping with the enemy. Maybe in their minds, Steve was the enemy.

“He’s not like Jason.” Eddie’s voice was a little less… dramatic. Steve had seen it plenty of times, the difference between Eddie’s stage voice and his real one. When he was dramatic and outgoing and guarded and when he was real and vulnerable. He was being, surprisingly, quite sincere about it. “He helped me. A lot more than he had to.”

Steve squeezed his hand again, and after a moment, Eddie squeezed back. His skin was calloused from guitar playing, and was cooler to the touch than Steve’s. But Steve had always run hot. 

Steve found he didn’t mind being so close to Eddie at all. And he wasn’t lying when he talked about it, either.

“I, uh, kinda thought he was weird. That you all were. No offence. But uh, shit’s changed a lot since high school. I know the kind of guy you probably all think I am, but… I do actually like him as a person.” His voice was a little less sincere sounding, he sounded more defensive, more like he was slipping back into the King Steve persona. But that always was a defence, wasn’t it? As much as Eddie’s freak status was. 

Gareth sighed, stood from the drums and held out a hand to Steve. Steve dropped Eddie’s, and shook Gareth’s. It was smaller, not nearly as calloused, and clammy. When Steve smiled at him, it was genuine. 

“You like metal?”

Steve snorted, “Honestly, not really, but I’m learning. Been on a Black Sabbath streak since Eddie compared me to Ozzy.”

Three sets of eyes flickered to Eddie. Steve wasn’t entirely sure he could read why, but it was obvious that that was significant. 

There was a kind of eruption of laughter, some jostling of Eddie, and while Steve didn’t entirely follow, the gist he got was, if Eddie was comparing someone to Ozzy, he was as good as a goner for them.

Steve knew that wasn’t true, things would be different if it was, but it was easy, hanging out with these people, to forget.

They went about rehearsing fairly amiably after that. When they took a break, Eddie dropped unceremoniously into Steve’s lap, sweaty and gross, and insisted Steve tie his hair up for him.

Steve did, and only mocked him a little when he found an actual twig in Eddie’s hair. Which, given he’d slept at Steve’s the night before, was mildly concerning. 

He got chatting with Eddie’s three bandmates a lot, and he did actually like them. They were reluctant at first, but they started giving him shit about not knowing metal, and then about DnD, and then about being friends with the kids. Soon enough, it was… actually nice.

Steve felt, for the first time in a really long time, what it was really like to be amongst actual friends when the world wasn’t ending around you.

It was really nice.

Chapter Text

“Harrington?” 

How was it possible that he was actually hearing Steve’s name everywhere he fucking went now? He didn’t go to Hawkins High anymore, yet somehow he was everywhere. 

He was an institution in the place. And not just because the kids were all fucking obsessed. 

He glanced up, trying to see who was talking about him and why, but was met instead with the actual sight of the actual Steve Harrington, tall and sturdy, his hair just as iconic as it always had been, shining a lighter brown in the sun. 

God, he hated himself for thinking of him like that. 

So, okay, Eddie definitely didn’t have anything to do with this one. He was at fault for a lot of the weird stuff with him and Steve lately, but not this one. Steve, standing on the track of Hawkins High was as shocking to him as everyone else standing there confused.

Coach Ricker greeted him before Eddie himself tried to, looking as excited as if Steve was an actual athlete and not an alum who worked at a video store. Not that Eddie judged Steve for it, it was just weird how his Phys Ed teacher acted like he was some kind of deity. He tried to imagine what it must be like to be physically coordinated enough to have a Phys Ed teacher like you, but ultimately decided even imagining enjoying sports was too unrealistic. He couldn’t think of much worse than going for a run. Like, sure, health, but at what cost?

So much so that Steve shook his hand, before standing beside him with hands rested on his hips, the same way he always did when he was trying to get the kids to listen to him, except that he looked significantly less annoyed. 

He did, however, find Eddie’s eyes and smirk unmistakably.

Eddie could still remember so clearly the way Steve had called him a tease that night in his trailer because of his jeans. 

And he understood now. Because Steve… Steve was wearing those painfully short little gym shorts and looking like something out of a dream Eddie had approximately two to three times a week since they’d hooked up. He looked like the walking wet dream of a sad, gay senior. Like someone put together in a lab to make Eddie lose his damn mind.

Bastard. 

The teacher was talking, and Eddie really wasn’t listening at all, because Steve was still holding his eyes, and Eddie couldn’t decide whether this was something he was doing to be nice, or whether he was actually trying to punish Eddie for taking him to meet his band, because he was pretty sure he knew exactly where this was going.

Harrington was about to make him run the fucking mile. Literally. He had turned up at Hawkins High to make Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson run the fucking mile.

People had to be noticing that they were still just watching each other, right? There was no way it could go unnoticed that they hadn’t broken eye contact since the teacher had started talking?

Maybe people would assume they hated each other. All the jocks hated Eddie, right?

All the jocks except Steve, who spent long periods of time trying to keep Eddie alive and away from cops once. Steve, who’d rocked up here, even though it was surely better for him to have not. Even though he couldn’t possibly actually want to be seen publicly with Eddie. It was enough for him to have gone out of his way to get Eddie off the hook for what had happened and able to try to graduate at all. But now showing up to try to help him graduate… Eddie was weak, that was the thing, and how the fuck was he meant to just move on from all of this when Steve did shit like that? How was he meant to go back to regular life when Steve inevitably got bored and moved on from everything. 

Hell, maybe even got close to his parents again. Eddie had seen weirder shit. 

“Look like you’ve seen a ghost, Munson.” It happened all at once. One second Steve had been up the front standing beside his teacher while they explained the stupid workout they were doing and why it was a valuable part of their education or some shit, and the next, Steve was standing right in front of him, hands still on his hips, brows raised, looking at Eddie like the cat that just caught the canary. 

Bastard. 

“What are you doing here, Harrington?”

It was a useless question really. He knew. He knew. He had seen the way Steve had lost it in hysterical giggles when he’d learned that Eddie kept on failing Phys Ed. Maybe ordinarily, they’d let him just pass with a shit grade or something, but Eddie had been consistently failing by non-attempts as well as, usually, failing something else too. He wasn’t really a model student in anything, but he suspected the problem with PE was that he didn’t even try. He didn’t want to try. Fuck PE. Fuck Harrington for turning up in his stupid shorts and thinking that Eddie would drop everything and run after him like some show dog chasing a mechanical rabbit it wouldn’t ever catch. 

“Don’t play stupid, Eds.” Steve told him, all smirks and grating self assurance.

“Eds?” Did Eddie sound as stupid as he felt? He was pretty sure he sounded as stupid as he felt.

Steve glanced up at him, totally nonplussed, stretching his arms up over his head and jogging on the spot. Eddie’s eyes followed his biceps, before he forced himself to look away again. This absolute colossal prick knew what he was doing. Eddie was so sure this was some kind of joke. Some kind of torture.

“Mm. What about it?” He asked, looking at Eddie like he dared him to say something else about it. Why did this feel like a fucking minefield? And why the fuck was it happening in a public place? Steve dropped down into a lunge, and Eddie wasn’t proud of the way his eyes followed. He wasn’t proud of how well Steve’s stupid fucking plan was working, because normally he’d be hiding in the toilets by now with a cigarette and a comic or a book. But there he stood, trying not to ogle Steve Harrington too obviously while he stretched on the side of the track like he was one of them, despite not going to their school anymore.

“Okay, why are you doing this? I can’t decide if you’re trying to help me or fuck with me.” Eddie grumbled, brows furrowing slightly in Steve’s direction. Steve was still smiling. Of course Steve was still fucking smiling. He had swapped sides for his stupid lunges too, and was stretching his arms over the other way. Eddie was probably meant to be doing that, but Eddie was still wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He was lucky that it was unseasonably cool, because there was no way he was going to go running in front of all these people in a fucking t-shirt. He didn’t even care if leather was weird and loud to run in.

Not that he was running.

He was not going to run just because Steve Harrington showed up. No fucking way.

“I spoke to Ricker. He says he’ll pass you if you jog it. No outright running required, no time limits, nothin’. All you have to do is jog a mile with me. Four laps. It’s easy, I know you can run. I’ve seen you do it. Do you have running clothes with you?” 

Eddie blinked at Steve, who was apparently stretching his calves like the physically fit loser that he was. “No, Steve, no, I do not. Since, as I told you, I refuse, on principle, to run.”

Steve sighed, “C’mon, man, this is your last chance to graduate. I had to talk him into saying he’d pass you if you just ran this. Isn’t this your last subject to pass?”

“I’m only barely passing history.” Eddie grumbled, but eventually nodded. He had been actually studying for his other subjects too. Almost dying did that to a person, suddenly, spending some time studying didn’t feel so bad. But running? It was just so… not him.

Steve was staring at him with those big eyes, with a look that told Eddie that Steve would literally try to drag him if he didn’t just suck it up and do it. 

“I’m not going to run run.” Eddie said after a moment, breathing heavily in horrible anticipation. He looked around, found that a few people were outright watching them, but most people had already returned to their own conversations, like there was nothing all that weird about an alum coming back to their high school to force the school freak to run a fucking mile. “I’ll… I’ll jog. Fine. Fine.” 

Steve was beaming, and Eddie really couldn’t decide whether he’d rather kiss him or punch him. 

“Aren’t you like, worried about people seeing us?” Eddie grimaced, apparently actually starting to jog on the spot, the best he could offer himself in terms of pretending he was in any way fit or coordinated enough for this. Or even close to properly motivated. 

Steve’s brows raised. “My best friend is a senior in band.” He reminded, rolling his eyes. “I don’t give a shit about your reputation, Eds, how many fucking times do I have to say it? Now, hurry up. We don’t want to get left be—” Steve must’ve seen the look on Eddie’s face, because he sighed. “We’re really going to run at the back?”

“Yes, Harrington, but it’s really cute that you thought I was gonna compete with the other sheep.” He grinned, “Might be good for you to learn to run at the back with the losers anyway. Gotta be new for someone like King Steve, huh?”

Steve rolled his eyes, but watched without movement as the other kids began running, giving the teacher a nod of acknowledgement, as if to confirm that yes, he was going to be making Eddie run. Eddie hated his life, he really did. He thought saving the world sucked, but he at least thought that might afford hi some freedom from whatever the fuck this was. Like, if you went off and did the heroic shit, didn’t that mean you like, got to bask in that a little bit? Since when did the hero have to go run a fucking mile? It was mundane, and bullshit, and he had fought fucking bats, why did he have to do this too?

Steve let him hold back for approximately one full minute before he began to run, looking back at Eddie to make sure he was following.

Fucking Harrington. Didn’t he know Eddie would fucking follow him anywhere? Like some lost, sad puppy who knew he was falling for something that would never be true?

Harrington was running backwards. Running backwards and grinning at Eddie as he did, cocky and smug and so effortlessly fucking perfect. But hadn’t he always been? Wasn’t that always Harrington?

Because Eddie could still remember him as some stupid freshman. He could still remember the bad haircut he’d had in freshman year and how he had made it work for him. Made it a trend, even. He could remember the rumours about Harrington spreading within the first few weeks. About his parents. About him. About his girlfriends, or whatever. He remembered how he always had that boyish grin and the square jaw. How he’d always had the air of someone so at ease with themselves. He knew Steve better now, but he still saw glimpses. 

Still saw Harrington leading their stupid fucking pep rallies as a Junior, because of course he was a junior and a varsity captain. He remembered Harrington sitting at that stupid lunch table with Carol and Tommy Hagan, leaning back and grinning easily like the whole world was rolled out in front of him.

It sucked to realise just how much he remembered, because it made it nearly impossible to deny that he’d been watching. That he’d been watching all along, and that this little crush was nowhere near as new as he wanted it to be.

Of course, it was worse now. Someone, somewhere, would probably suggest it had been a good idea for Eddie to fuck Steve, that he would get it out of his system, that it wouldn’t live up to the hype, that he could move on and say he’d had the experience or whatever. Better to have boned and lost than never boned at all or whatever.

Anyone who subscribed to that school of thought was a fucking idiot in Eddie’s eyes, because knowing hadn’t stopped the wanting. If anything, he wanted it more. Because he remembered what Steve tasted like. Remembered what he felt like. He remembered so clearly how he sounded. 

And Steve turning up there, tiny shorts and all, ready to help Eddie out of nothing but basic human decency, that… that was the most unbearable part of all.

Steve had always been gorgeous. He’d always been sort of captivating, and intensely charming, and unattainable, but finding out he was nice? And not just save the kids nice. Not just throw himself in front of Buckley and Wheeler nice. Not just convince his parents to help the cult leader nice. Oh no, he was so much worse. He was turn up at Hawkins High at 2pm on a random Tuesday and convince a teacher to be lenient with Eddie nice. He was the kind of person who actually, genuinely fucking cared about people.

And worse, Eddie wasn’t sure he even realised it. He wasn’t sure that Steve was even aware of how painfully good he was. The way he talked about himself made Eddie wonder if he had self esteem issues that didn’t present to the naked eye. But how could he? How could he when he wandered around every day with his stupid square head and his stupid hero bat scars? 

“You’re really annoying, y’know that?” Eddie asked grumpily, running along behind Steve, watching the way his feet moved, and how confident he was to run the track backwards like a fucking freak of nature. 

Steve snorted a laugh, and Eddie tried not to mimic his smile. “Is that kind of like a ‘thank you, Steve, for giving up your day off to help me graduate’?” 

“Yeah.” Eddie nodded, wondering if sweat could be poisonous. “Yeah, kind of like that.

*

It had sucked. Truly and completely sucked. The teacher had tried to convince the class to cheer Eddie and Steve on when they finally passed the finish line, but the other students pointedly ignored him — bless them — and Eddie only kind of wished he could push the teacher over. 

He wanted to be grumpy, he really did, but it was hard, because what Steve had done really was so sweet, and maybe runners high was real, because despite not running, he did feel really good. The teacher had confirmed that that was enough to scrape him through on a wing and a prayer for his final report, and if he didn’t fail anything else, that meant he actually would graduate.

Steve had barely stopped grinning the entire time too, had even jogged circles around Eddie at one point like the jerk he was. 

Eddie was so fucked. 

Steve’s car smelled of sweat and hairspray. Because of course it did. 

He’d offered Eddie a lift home after the class ended, and Eddie had taken in, because despite his van still being at the school, he was incredibly weak, and he would rather just catch the bus back the following morning than turn down extra time alone in a car with Steve.

He really thought he was over the stupid high schooler trait of having a crush on someone so desperately out of his league, but apparently not.

When they turned up at his trailer, Eddie was glad that Wayne’s car wasn’t there, because really, the presence of Steve wasn’t something he wanted to explain. Wayne, like his bandmates, wouldn’t be surprised by Steve’s gender, but rather by his last name. Eddie had only bitched about the Harringtons like… constantly after they had helped with his case. It was ungrateful, probably, but it wasn’t his fault that he just, like, fucking hated them. They were assholes, in fairness to him. And Wayne had known Percy Harrington, so he was hardly surprised by Eddie’s distaste for the man. Despite that, Wayne had reminded him more than once that he should be grateful, because he might have gone to jail otherwise. And thank god that hadn’t happened. 

Eddie would grumble that he’d rather go to jail, but he was full of shit. He was glad he was still free and with Wayne. He knew how hard it would be on his uncle if he didn’t come home.

They sort of only had each other. It was Wayne who had always advocated for Eddie, even when it was clear he wasn’t comfortable doing so. Wayne hadn’t had to take Eddie in, but he did. And small and dingy or not, their home was a home. He hadn’t realised exactly how much until he’d been confronted with the hostile, uncomfortable place that was the Harrington House. 

Even when his parents weren’t there, the Harrington House was hidden by a black cloud of judgement and fear and resentment from his parents. It weighed heavily, tangible despite not being real, and Eddie was sure Steve was just as uncomfortable there as him. Which was, honestly, sort of a tragic thought.

After an hour, the two of them had gotten comfortable. Eddie sat on the floor with his back to the couch, and Steve was sprawled across it, feet up because he was too long for it. 

“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”

Steve rolled his eyes at Eddie, whose head was tipped back against Steve’s thigh to look up at him. 

“Jesus Christ, Munson, you’d think it was Grease or something. It’s a movie about a shark. Who cares?”

Eddie gaped up at him. “Are you implying that Grease is a more important film than Jaws?” 

Steve threw a piece of popcorn at him, and Eddie sucked it up off the side of the couch shamelessly, grinning when Steve ew’d him for it. “I’m implying that a movie about a shark is less interesting than Grease, yes. I mean, shit man, this isn’t even accurate. Sharks are like… giant toddlers. They just nibble on things.”

Eddie blinked up at him. “Excuse me?”

“Sharks. They’re like giant toddlers. They have bad eyesight, so they nibble things. That’s why most people who get bitten don’t die. Because they don’t want to eat us, they’re just trying to figure out what we are.” Steve said it so matter-of-factly, as though Eddie was stupid for not knowing. As if he hadn’t just pulled out some really random knowledge on sharks like it was nothing.

Eddie blinked at him, “I thought you weren’t interested in sharks. Now you’re spitting shark facts at me like it’s nothing?”

“No,” Steve shook his head stubbornly, “I like sharks. I never said I don’t like sharks. My problem is with the movie.”

Eddie was fascinated. Of all the things he’d expected to learn Steve had a weird affinity for, sharks weren’t high on the list. “Tell me more.” He said, turning to face Steve, leaning his elbows on the edge of the couch and his chin in his elbows, grinning up.

“Oh, shut up. Some kids are dinosaur kids, some kids are train kids. I was a sea creature kid.”

Eddie pondered that. “I think I was a creepy kid. I liked… I don’t know. Monsters and snakes and spiders.”

“‘Course you were.”

Eddie went off to the bathroom, and when he returned, it was to… something he really wasn’t expecting. Wayne and Steve, sitting side by side on the couch, talking in surprisingly serious voices.

Eddie immediately sprung into action, moving to intercept whatever the fuck this was.

“He’s just a friend, Wayne!” He basically shouted, causing the two of them to jerk their heads up towards Eddie. He should’ve waited. He should’ve tried to hear what they were saying.

“I know,” Wayne answered gruffly, glancing at Eddie, then back to Steve, who he smiled at. “Steve here was just tellin’ me that. We were just havin’ a chat.”

Eddie stared at the both of them for a long moment. Steve’s expression was unreadably blank, and Wayne looked politely disinterested in Eddie’s reaction, which was fairly standard. Not that he was disinterested in Eddie, but he was used to Eddie, and his antics didn’t usually get too much of a rise from Wayne. But Wayne didn’t usually sit on the couch with someone Eddie brought over having a chat.

How much could they even have realistically gotten through while Eddie was at the bathroom? 

“What about?” It seemed safest just to ask, right?

“Never you mind, Edward.” As soon as Wayne said it, Steve shot Eddie a smug sort of smile, and Eddie just grimaced. “Now, Steve, you staying for dinner, son?”

Steve’s eyes flitted away from Eddie, but they never found Wayne. Instead, he stared at his own knees, seemingly fixated there. Now, Eddie couldn’t understand getting fixated on Steve’s legs, but somehow he doubted that was what was happening.

“No thanks, Mr Munson. I better be getting home. Thank you though.”

Just like that, Steve was gone. Out the door so fast if it was a cartoon, there’d have been lines and skid marks left behind him. 

Wayne was weirdly evasive, but Eddie found himself following his uncle around, trying to figure out what the absolute fuck had just happened.

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

Eddie pouted, “You know what I’m asking, Wayne, why did Steve just run out of here like he’d seen a ghost?”

Wayne sighed deeply, turned to face Eddie properly. “I don’t know.” He said gruffly, “You know much about his family, kid?”

Eddie’s brows pinched. Steve was about the least sharing person on the planet, he never talked about anything close to him. He was a locked box, only ever sharing what he wanted to share. Why would Wayne know anything about his family at all?

“Um, I know they’re absolute fuck-knuckles, if that’s what you mean.” Wayne tutted, but said nothing. He’d long since stopped trying to convince Eddie not to swear so much. “Why, is there something else I should know?”

Wayne simply shrugged, and Eddie was convinced he wouldn’t tell him even if he did know something. Which he must, because why else would he say anything at all? “Good kid, that one. Look after him.”

Eddie blinked. Now that was really new. Wayne had never offered an opinion on anyone that Eddie had dated before. Not that they were dating, but… he didn’t offer opinions on Eddie’s company. He let Eddie live his life. The whole thing was so jarring that Eddie almost felt like it had to be Upside Down related. Of course, he knew it wasn’t. But it felt that way. Weird and off-base and totally unprecedented. 

“We’re not together.” Eddie repeated weakly.

Wayne sighed, “No, I know that.” He half smiled, “Told me what you did for him though. You’re a good kid too, for what it’s worth.”

What? What did that mean? “About his parents? I’ve done that for a lot of people.”

“Mm, I know.”

“So why is it different?”

Wayne shrugged and took himself off to go shower without another word, leaving Eddie to ponder if Wayne was secretly a lot more emotionally perceptive than he gave him credit for.

Chapter Text

“I just don’t understand why you’re both being so weird about it.” 

Steve rolled his eyes stubbornly, shaking his head. “It isn’t that interesting. There’s nothing fascinating or secretive about it, alright? He just… he was just telling me that if I needed anything, that I should call him. That’s it.”

So… Eddie seemed a little thrown for a loop.

“He said what?” Wasn't this humiliating enough before Eddie reacting this way? “Based on what? Did you complain to him about your parents or…?”

Steve shook his head, shoulders raising into a shrug. “Eddie, I’m telling you, you didn’t miss that much. I told him we weren’t dating and he told me that he knew my Dad and that if I needed anything, I should call him.”

Technically, Steve wasn’t lying. He wasn’t strictly telling the whole truth either, but it wasn’t a lie. Because Wayne hadn’t said much more, but he’d insinuated more. 

He’d put his hand on Steve’s left shoulder, looked him dead in the eye. He’d talked slow and careful when he told Steve he knew the Harringtons weren’t attentive parents. He said he knew about how often Steve was alone, and that he knew how harsh Steve’s parents were, and that he wouldn’t blame Steve for needing to get free. He said he didn’t want Steve to feel like he didn’t have other options, because he did.

All in all, he didn’t really mention Eddie. Steve was expecting him to. He was expecting a threat or something. A warning. Maybe even something as poisonous ws what his own parents had said to Eddie and him when they claimed to be dating.

But Wayne Munson seemed completely indifferent to whether or not they were together. He seemed indifferent to Steve’s reputation or to judging him by his parents’. Steve felt like maybe he’d been holding it in before. Maybe he was the type to adopt any strays he found. 

Steve could relate to that.

He thought Eddie probably could too.

“I… that man is still an enigma to me.” Eddie told him, and it seemed a little like he was trying to act normal. Like he was actually desperate to know more. 

Steve ignored him, picking some of the tapes up off the counter and walking to put them away. Eddie followed him stubbornly. “It’s just that Wayne doesn’t do shit like this, y’know? He’s always kinda politely ignored my friends. And I just don’t know why you would be different.

Steve sighed, turned on his heel, watching as Eddie skidded to a stop directly in front of him, nearly bumping right into Steve. “I don’t know, Eddie, maybe he’s super fascinated by my hair.” He grumbled sarcastically. 

“Are you two physically joined at the hip now?” Robin asked from where she sat at the counter, absentmindedly filing her nails. The store was pretty much completely empty in the early afternoon, and so Eddie could get away with following Steve around like a bad smell wherever he went. 

“No,” Steve answered, right as Eddie said the opposite. Steve glared at him, and Eddie grinned back. 

“Well, you see, Buckley, your boy toy here cannot physically restrain himself from inserting himself into my life at this point. He’s meeting my band, showing up in my PE classes, hell, he’s even got my uncle won over.” He smirked right at Steve, brows raising like he was challenging Steve to disagree with anything he was saying. It was hard to though, because absolutely everything he’d just said was technically true. Except the uncle thing, but he couldn’t dispute that Wayne had been kind to him. And the turning up at Hawkins High, that had been entirely him. Entirely him and with no good explanation.

“Jesus Christ, Munson, you make it really hard to help you, y’know that?” Steve grumbled, but Robin laughed louder.

“Yeah, I heard about you showing up at Hawkins, actually.” Robin admitted, watching the two of them with something akin to childish glee at that point. “Some girl was talking about it in my fifth period class. She called it a loser outreach program.” She raised her brows at Eddie, smirking at him like it was some inside joke.

Eddie threw his head back in a laugh, shaking his head. “Absolutely classic. See, Stevie? I told you it wouldn’t matter if people thought we were dating or not. You could write it across our fucking foreheads and the small minded assholes of this town wouldn’t believe it, because how could someone like you; tall, athletic, pretty Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington be dating me? It doesn’t matter what we say, it’ll all get swept under the rug anyway. Only one that’ll cop any consequence is me, and I’ve done this before, so.” He raised his shoulders in a shrug, like it was all absolutely nothing.

And there the fuck it was again. That bullshit about how unbelievable it was that Steve could actually like Eddie. Like there was something inherently unlovable about him. In theory, it sounded like he was arguing that Steve was above him, but the way he said it was something else too. Like he couldn’t decide whether he was putting Steve or himself down. Couldn’t decide whether to claim Steve was shallow and simple or that Eddie was simply not worth his time. Steve had an awful feeling he knew which was true and which was the defence mechanism, and it just kind of pissed him off. 

“I wish you’d stop with that,” Steve huffed, putting another of the tapes in his arms back. Eddie plucked one from in his arms and walked off to put it away, apparently helping for free now.

“Why? What’s it to you, Harrington? People not believing it works in your favour, after all.” He said casually, waving his arms dramatically and repeating the same sentiment he’d been spitting since Steve first brought this up.

“In my favour? Why are you so determined that I don’t want to be seen with you? As you pointed out, I turned up at fucking high school, even though I already graduated to help you so that you can graduate too. Whereabouts in that version of events did you convince yourself that I didn’t want to be seen with you? Because I think you might need to get your eyes checked.” He sounded more pissed than he meant to. But maybe he was pissed. Maybe it was fucking annoying having someone he did care about act like Steve was some shallow dickhead who didn’t care. Maybe it was annoying having Eddie insist that Steve couldn’t be interested in him even though Steve had had a full-on sexuality crisis because of him and his dumb hair. 

Steve marched towards him, irritated. “It’s almost like you only made a move in the first place because I was into you. It’s almost like it was my idea to make people think we were a couple. It’s almost like I kissed you to convince your friends to believe I liked you. It’s almost like I turned up at school to help you, not giving a shit who saw.” He stopped right in front of Eddie, “So why exactly is it so wild to believe that I might actually like you as a person?” He snapped.

“Oh my god, it’s fucking true.” 

“Language.” Steve snapped without thinking, before it clicked what he’d said and who he’d said it to. 

Because… fucking hell. Dustin, Max, Lucas, Will, El and Mike stood in the doorway of Family Video, the group of them staring at Eddie and Steve. Eddie and Steve, who were stood toe to toe, staring at each other. He pulled his eyes away from Eddie, stepped away from him too, and glanced down at the kids.

Well, fuck. 

Because it was one thing to lie to his parents or to Eddie’s band, but the kids? They’d sworn that they weren’t going to involve the kids in any of this. They’d sworn that they wouldn’t let it get that far. Eddie had sworn he would tell his band that it wasn’t true.

“You owe me ten bucks,” Max pointed aggressively at Dustin, who pushed her hand away. 

“I told you I could see it,” Will exclaimed, looking at Lucas, who was slack jawed and wide eyed in their direction.

El was just giggling, amused at the way the group looked at each other. Robin had joined her, but Steve could guess that it was for completely different reasons. Because this was way harder to untangle.

“I thought you were going to tell your band it wasn’t true.” Steve told Eddie without looking at him. Eddie was looking at the kids too, Steve could tell out of his periphery. 

“I did tell them it wasn’t true.” Eddie insisted, and the group of teenagers kept staring back up at them with prying eyes and various levels of horror or amusement. This was so much worse than telling his parents. Or the band. This was by far the worst of all of it.

“I can’t believe I had to find out from fucking Gareth that my parents are actually together!” Dustin looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be excited or angry. Which was, frankly, a dangerous combination from a boy who was so sarcastic even when he wasn’t actually irritated. Especially with Steve and Eddie, who he was altogether too comfortable talking down to these days. 

“No, hang on, hang on—” Steve began, hands raising in front of himself in surrender. 

Lucas was shaking his head, “I found out from Jared. Jared doesn’t even know either of you personally, he’s just on the basketball team.” He was chastising them. They were being chastised. By the children they had ill-advisedly adopted. 

“Personally, I’m not surprised at all,” Will interjected, “I mean, obviously I don’t know Eddie — Hi Eddie — but Steve being into guys? Not surprising.”

“Woah, what?” Steve asked, his attention suddenly fixed entirely on the kid, who grinned up at him, a little teasing.

“Really, Eddie? Steve?” Mike blew up, hands rested on his hips, and Steve grimaced back at him in actual offence. 

“I’m sorry— what?!” 

“Okay, all of you need to take it down like, a thousand notches.” Eddie tried, hands raised just like Steve’s had been a moment before, “We are not together. Sorry to burst your bubbles, you presumptuous little shitheads, but this has all been a big prank that the lot of you were never even meant to find out about. It’s not real. It’s fake. It’s all a big joke. You all need to fuckin’ relax.”

There was a long moment of silence, and Steve really, really wanted the ground to open up and eat him. Hell, he’d go into the Upside Down instead of stay here in the middle of this. Although, he did kind of want to know what the fuck Mike’s problem with him was, considering how much time Steve spent carting the kid around and talking to him about his problems. 

“Gareth said he saw you two kissing. And then Jared told Lucas that you ran the mile holding hands with him yesterday.” Dustin sounded unconvinced. Steve wanted to bang his head against a wall.

“There was no hand holding. And Gareth didn’t see us kissing, we kissed as a part of a prank, because they didn’t believe us when we pretended to be dating.” Eddie defended, blinking owlishly at the kids. He looked about as thrown off as Steve personally felt. And he felt mighty fucking confused by all of it, and by all of their reactions.

Max shook her head, “Uh-uh.” She was looking between them, and Steve suddenly had a horrible thought. “I live next door, I saw Steve come over at like, eleven at night a few weeks ago. He didn’t leave till morning. I knew it was weird then, but I didn’t think…”

That was enough to cause another eruption, and four presumptuous kids yelling at them. Eleven and Will, bless them and their cotton socks, were fairly quiet, mostly just exchanging hushed words between the two of them. They really could pass for twins, Steve thought. 

“Guys, seriously.” Steve was basically yelling to be heard over the top of them. “This is my place of work. This is Robin’s place of work. If you little assholes want me to keep driving you around, I’m going to need to be able to afford gas, huh? Eddie’s given you your answer. We’re not dating. It was a joke, you lot have been taken in by the stupid joke, okay? We’re not together.”

“So then, what were you doing at Eddie’s house that night?” Max challenged. Goddamn Max. She was one of Steve’s favourites too, and now she was betraying him like this. 

There was a moment’s hesitation between them both, and Steve realised the game was lost the second that moment stretched even a little in front of them. 

“No way, there’s no way,” Dustin said again, and he took a few steps forward, shooting the two of them a glare. “As if you wouldn’t tell me yourselves. I’m genuinely offended. You two are supposed to be like, my parents.”

“We are not your parents—”

“I mean, if my own parents can lie to me like this, how will I ever trust anyone ever again? I mean, you two, really. Was I really so fucking blind? I had no idea.” It was so fucking dramatic, and Steve was suddenly convinced that Dustin was spending way too much time with Eddie, because he was picking up some of his more annoyingly dramatic traits. 

But then something else hit him and—

“You guys don’t… mind…?” He asked finally. He could feel Eddie gaze over at him, and he wasn’t game to meet his eyes. He was sort of afraid of what he might find there. 

“Mind?” He wasn’t even sure which of them echoed him, his heart was pounding in his ears, and until that exact moment, he hadn’t even realised that he was afraid of what the kids’ reactions to him being bisexual might be. In fact, he felt a little physically ill. He felt worse than he had telling his own parents. He felt… way worse.

Actually, he hadn’t realised how bad his stomach hurt, but now he wasn’t sure how he’d missed it. Ever since he was a little kid, he’d been getting stomach aches whenever he was stressed. And now… now was bad. Because there were six sets of eyes staring up at him, each inquisitive and curious and incredibly hard to predict.

He knew that Will and Mike weren’t really in a position to say anything, given the two had been together a little while, but he had no clue what the others might say. He hoped they wouldn’t care, given they hadn’t cared when it came to Mike and Will — or at least, they’d gotten over any reservations they’d had pretty quickly. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of fear. Fear that it would diminish the way they saw him somehow.

He hadn’t had a lot of family in his life, not really. His parents were absent and shitty and hadn’t really ever given a shit about him. The closest thing he’d ever really had to family was surrounding him in the store. Robin and the kids. Robin and the kids. And hadn’t he done as much as he could to be family to them too?

Hadn’t he driven the kids around since he’d met them? Hadn’t he protected them every time the situation arose? Hadn’t he taken hits and weapons and bites for them? Hadn’t he been family to them in every way he was capable of being? 

What if the way they looked at him, like he was their big brother or something, what if that changed now? What if it went away? What if everything changed? The same way it had with his parents. The same way things always changed. 

The emotion smacked him like a brick in the face, the realisation that this was a thousand times more scary than his own biological family, than facing Russian spies, than fighting Billy Hargrove, than throwing firecrackers at a Mind Flayer. Because this… this mattered. They mattered to him. And he was terrified to lose them too. They looked up to him, and he was terrified that they wouldn’t anymore.

“I don’t care if you like boys, but I care that you’re dating Eddie and you didn’t tell me. My Eddie.” Dustin rolled his eyes, like it was obvious and he had every reason in the world to be pissed at Steve. 

“Aw, Henderson, you’re such a nerd.” Eddie teased, almost instinctively. Steve got the distinct feeling that he was trying to… help. That he was trying to soften the moment. Could he feel the panic in Steve’s chest? Could he hear his heart pounding in his ears? “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Like I said, I always thought you liked people and not just girls.” Will said casually, raising his shoulders and then letting them fall again. 

If it was a Hallmark movie, they might all have said something sweet to him, but instead, they went back into bickering about how offended they were that they didn’t know first, or who knew what first. That, honestly, was fine. It was kind of a relief. It was, at least, fairly normal for them and their pure chaotic force of being.

He caught Eddie’s eyes briefly, and neither of them actually moved, but he could feel it. He could feel what Eddie was trying to communicate with his eyes. 

Are you okay? 

Steve tried to send back an answer. Eddie’s eyebrows lifted, and Steve was pretty sure that one was: are you sure?

Steve nodded once, minutely, then gave him another look he couldn’t explain even to himself. Eddie seemed to get it. Thank you. 

“Okay, alright, I hate to rain on your parade, but we’re really not dating.” Eddie attempted again.

“Robin can back us up.” Steve suddenly realised. Eight pairs of eyes stared over at Robin, who was grinning like it was Christmas morning and she’d just gotten the puppy she’d always wanted. Steve suddenly knew that calling on her was a mistake, especially when she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, guys, I can’t hide your love anymore.” She managed to get out, barely restraining laughter. Steve sighed deeply, shaking his head at her.

“I’m gonna get you back for this, traitor,” He told her, over the top of more questions being shot at them. Robin just shrugged like she was too amused to do anything else with it. 

Steve spent what felt like the next two hours (but was more like thirty minutes), trying to convince the kids to fucking go home. 

It was Max and El who left first, getting on their bikes and declaring happily that they were going to go get ice cream. Star Court hadn’t been rebuilt yet, but there were other places popping up now. 

Will and Mike left next, but not before Mike shot Eddie a forlorn look, and then Steve an irritated one. “Stop dating everyone in my life.” He whined, before shaking his head and leaving. 

Dustin and Lucas kept on shooting questions that no one would answer. How long had they been together? Were they in love? Why hadn’t they been told? Why did the band know first? Were they going to move out together? Were they going to be together publicly? 

Eddie and Steve kept insisting they couldn’t answer, because it wasn’t true, but they didn’t get anywhere. It took way too long for the two of them to give up and go home, but Dustin promised on the way out that he was going to be harassing them about it later. Steve did not need convincing of that, because he was completely positive that Dustin was telling the truth about that— that he would certainly be annoying them both for answers for the coming… fucking months, probably.

But, eventually, Dustin and Lucas left too. 

When it was just the three of them again, Steve and Eddie were both left demanding answers out of Robin, who resolutely had not backed them up. 

“It was just too funny,” She told them, still giggling a little. “I mean, c’mon, their reasoning is pretty solid. They’ve heard or seen things from three different sources. Which, by the way, was neither of you going to tell me you kissed again?” She shook her head, “Absolutely no loyalty is there. You deserved it for that alone, Steve.” She scoffed then, leaning her head in her hand.

Steve glared at her. “Because it wasn’t a real kiss, it was just us trying to convince his friends. It’s not the fucking same.”

She kept teasing them, kept taking jabs as the day went on.

“Hey, when are we gonna talk about Mike’s little crush on Eddie, by the way?”

Chapter Text

He’d made a terrible fucking mistake. 

Because it was absolutely freezing outside, unusually so, and peeing down rain, and Eddie was back late at Hawkins High after Hellfire and he realised his mistake. 

He’d taken Steve’s bag. He’d taken Steve’s bag and he hadn’t even fucking noticed because all his school stuff was in his locked, He’d taken Steve’s bag, which meant Steve’s jacket.

Steve’s jacket, green and white, with Steve stitched into the front in cursive and ‘Harrington’ printed onto the back, big and bold above the Tigers logo. 

Eddie had a very specific fashion sense anyway, but the morning had started off hot. It had started off humid and sticky, with a grey sky and an atmosphere thick enough to choke on. 

He knew the heat was meant to break, that there was going to be some killer storm when it did. That was why he’d brought a bag with a jacket at all, but somehow he’d wound up with Harrington’s fucking bag and Steve Harrington’s fucking jacket. 

And maybe this was just proof he was spending too much damn time with Steve Harrington, because why was this happening?! At the very least, pretty much everyone had left the school for the day, so almost no one would see him. 

That was about as much as he could ask for.

He’d told his band and the kids a thousand times that he and Steve weren’t anything, but he didn’t really want anyone else to know, just in case. Wearing Steve’s jacket around was kind of like sticking a big rainbow on his forehead and writing the word ‘queer’ below it, because it literally had his name on it, and because that was something high school couples had always done. He could remember seeing Chrissy walk around with Jason’s name on her back. 

It was an accepted high school ritual, like shoving freshman into lockers or telling younger students someone got suspended for putting a cow in the building. Something expected. 

Being at school meant seeing at least three people try to pierce themselves in the toilet, at least five promposals so dramatic they may as well get married on the spot and at least one incarnation of a girl walking around in the jacket of a King Steve type.

Steve hadn’t ever actually partaken in that trend, not that Eddie could remember, and Eddie wasn’t sure if it was because he’d famously slept around or because Nancy Wheeler wasn’t the type to wear his jacket, but he wasn’t so sure Steve would be cool with anyone thinking he was wearing it around that way now either.

It wasn’t like most people would be accepting or even tolerant of a couple like Steve and Eddie either. 

He was seriously considering just being cold until the force of the wind hit him, and then he had to give up. All he had to do was walk across the school to the parking lot, get in his van, and it would be over.

He could do that. 

He slid Steve’s jacket onto his shoulders and tried to force himself to ignore the rush of pure embarrassment that came over him. He felt weirdly watched even though he was alone. Weird and jittery. Like a twelve year old meeting eyes with their crush across the classroom. Fucking hell, it was pathetic. He was pathetic. 

But Steve’s jacket was warm and weirdly familiar, even though he’d never worn a letterman before. It was thick and a little too big for Eddie, who realised it was almost certainly because Steve had always been a solid guy, more solid than Eddie himself. It smelled like Steve too. Like his room had that night, like such intense deja vu for what it was like to be with Steve. 

Steve walking right by his side in the Upside Down. Steve turning up at Eddie’s trailer to help paint. Steve beneath him, eyes squeezed shut with his hands pinned above his head. Steve with his arm slung around Eddie in his parents’ dining room. Steve kissing him hard in Gareth’s garage. Just… Steve. 

And he felt so weirdly seen by it. Or by himself, maybe. Like he was setting himself up for a loss so wide and so complete that it would swallow him whole, because he was the freak, and Harrington was a hero, and dammit, the world just didn’t work like that. 

Someone like Steve Harrington didn’t stay in someone like Eddie’s life. It just didn’t happen. Even now, even knowing that Steve was a good person, that he cared about people, Eddie still couldn’t shake the paranoia that he was being mocked somehow. That Steve didn’t actually care about him, that Tommy H. was about to appear from the woodworks to laugh at him and call him a freak or whatever the fuck.

He trusted Steve, he did, but this wasn’t about Steve. Not really. It was about him, and people like Steve just didn’t… they didn’t just choose to stick with people like Eddie. He felt like he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. And maybe Harrington really was the exception. Maybe he really was that fucking nice and Eddie really was doomed for the rest of his life, but in a way, that was worse. Because he would never, ever forget. Steve would probably go back to Nancy, or some other girl just like her, and Eddie would be left occasionally catching a hint of that smell somewhere and going right back to being twenty and smitten with a dumb jock all over again.

“You gotta earn those jackets, Freak.” 

He was halfway to his van when he heard the voice and… fuck, he knew that voice. Fucking Jason Carver. 

That was the thing about Chrissy Cunningham. He didn’t hate her, not by any stretch, and he was sure he’d feel deeply, resoundingly sad any time he thought of her from now on, because she had been kind to him, and because he had watched her die so tragically. But he also couldn’t ever quite make his peace with the fact that she was dating the biggest bully in Hawkins. And sure, he’d gotten significantly worse since her death, but frankly, he hadn’t ever been good. He’d been calling Eddie ‘freak’ for as long as Eddie could remember. 

Eddie turned to face him.

Him and two of his sidekicks stood there looking at him with hands on hips like they were some kind of cute little uniform, all wearing the same green and white jackets Eddie had on. Of course, theirs all belonged to them, and Eddie’s was resolutely not his.

“It’s a primitive high school ritual, Carver, I’m sure it won’t kill anyone to have me wear it for one day.” He ought to just walk away. He’d never been good at that, especially when this prick had been leading a fuckin’ army to try to kill him or whatever without any proof he’d done anything wrong. His crime had been being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, that and selling drugs, but considering almost everyone bought from him, even Harrington back in the day, he wasn’t sure that was actually their problem. It wasn’t ever really that.

“Is that a threat, Munson?”

His brows lifted, “What? No, obviously not.” He rolled his eyes dramatically, “Don’t you worry that pretty little head, Carver, I won’t be wearing it again.” He snarked, taking a few steps backwards, though he didn’t take his eyes off the jocks in front of him.

He should stop making it worse, but it was too easy. 

“Nah, nah, nah.” He shook that stupid blond head, staring at Eddie with the kind of murderous gaze he’d gotten really used to lately. “Too late for that, freak, I’ve already seen it.” His friends were doing that thing they did. Eddie had seen it before, the way they fanned out to circle him, to make sure he couldn’t just bolt. Not that it would stop him trying if he needed to. He’d fought worse than them now. 

“Jesus Christ, do you even know him? He doesn’t even go here anymore, who cares if I’m wearing his fucking jacket?” Eddie babbled, though he knew full well it wasn’t about the jacket. Not really. It was about who Eddie was. Maybe even about the implications of him wearing a man’s jacket. Carver would find any excuse to do this, that was obvious. But Eddie had handed him one on a silver platter.

“You steal that jacket, freak?” He asked, eyes narrowing at Eddie. “Harrington know that you’re stealing his clothes?” 

“I didn’t—” Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Jason, I know you hate me. I get that. Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of you either, kinda think you’re a raging douchebag, don’t understand the appeal. But I didn’t steal this jacket, Steve is my friend and—”

“Your friend? ‘Cause the way I remember it, Harrington and Hagan hated you just as much as we do. The way I remember it, you were just as much of a fucking asshole to him. Jumpin’ up on tables, trying to get everyone’s attention like the loser you are. What’s wrong, Munson, mommy and daddy didn’t pay enough attention to you?”

“Some people grow up, King Jason. He’d hate you, by the way.”

That seemed only to piss him off more, and Eddie knew he was making this worse by not just… taking the jacket off or running away or staying quiet. He was riling him up more, arguing about how Steve would hate him. And sure, Eddie was sure he was right about that. But he also knew enough to know how much worse it would make things. Because he knew that Steve had been Jason’s captain once. That Jason had probably looked up to him just like all the other baby jocks. That Jason had probably based his whole image around Steve at one point and now there Eddie was, wearing his jacket like it was nothing.

He wondered if, to Jason, it looked like Eddie was trying to piss him off. Of course, Jason had no idea any of what had gone down between him and Steve. He was sure it would shake Jason’s entire little world more than everything else already had.

“Oh, really, Munson? Because I actually knew him. Just because his parents got you off the hook doesn’t mean the two of you are friends.” He took another step towards Eddie, threatening and angry. “Take it off.”

Eddie should just do it and… “Jesus, Carver, if you wanted to get me naked, you could’ve just asked.”

He couldn’t help it. His words had been his only weapon for a long-ass time, and he knew he should be laying low now, that things had changed, that the Harringtons would be pissed if he got into a fight, even if it wasn’t his fault, but… 

“Oh, is that what it is, freak?” Carver hissed, taking a sharp step forward and shoving Eddie to the wet ground. “You’re that kinda freak, huh, Munson? That why you’re wearing his jacket? You some kind of fucking pervert?!” 

Uh-oh.

Eddie had been here before. This never ended well. This line of questioning went in bad directions.

His ass hurt from where he’d hit the asphalt, and he clambered back a little, trying to get some space to himself again. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to fight back, he did — even if he would surely get his ass beat when it was him against three jocks — but he knew what would happen. He knew how it would come back on him. How the popular, conventional athlete types would say it was Eddie would did the wrong thing, and how everyone would believe him, even if he had been completely cleared and all charges had been dropped. 

He opened his mouth to speak.

“What’s going on here, boys?” 

Well, that was a voice he wasn’t expecting to hear then and there.

“We’re just teaching Munson here a lesson about being a fuckin’ deviant.”

He craned his neck back to get a look at Steve, and Steve looked… well, he looked like some action hero. They’d been lucky to avoid the rain for the most part since they’d been out here, but it was starting to spit again, and Steve’s hair had little droplets of water highlighting it.

“Deviant?” Steve asked, hands rested on his hips. He looked like King Steve again, Eddie thought fondly. Not that asshole version of him that Eddie had hated, but the best version. The guy who ran around with a bunch of lost kids like some self-appointed big brother. The guy who cut off Tommy H. and Carol and got into serious fights with Billy Hargrove. The version of him that Eddie liked best. “You got any proof of that, Carver? Because there’s a protection order on Munson here, and I suspect you know that my mother is his legal representative.”

Eddie glanced back, and Jason looked… a little stunned. It was raining properly again, and Eddie tried not to think about the wet patch in his jeans from where he’d hit the cold, wet ground. 

“He’s obviously stolen your jacket, Steve. We’re just trying to teach him a lesson.” He sounded… younger, Eddie thought. Like he was genuinely nervous about pissing Steve off. He wondered just how much of Jason’s image he’d based purely off of Steve. Just how much he’d wanted to be him? And now… Now Steve stood there like some beautiful Greek god, defending Eddie, of all fucking people. 

Eddie wanted to bend him over a table and make him see stars.

Steve took a step forward, reached a hand down to Eddie to help him up, and Eddie took it, getting back to his feet, his fringe starting to hang in his eyes a little as it got wetter. 

“And what if he didn’t? What if I gave him my jacket? Hm?”

Jason looked thrown for a loop. His friends did too, though Jason was standing his ground a little better than the other two, who looked a little skittish now, and who Eddie thought might be quite useless if this did come to a fight. He’d never seen Andy, who was normally the biggest asshole of the bunch, look quite so quiet. 

Steve had some height on all three of them, but Eddie didn’t think it was about that. It was the status. It was who Steve was and what he represented.

“Why would you give the freak your jacket?” Okay, so Jason wasn’t going to just drop it. Maybe Steve had been hoping that too, because he looked deeply disappointed. 

“The freak is my friend.” Steve answered, arms folding over his chest. He overenunciated his words, like he was daring the younger boys to say anything about that. 

“Oh, so it’s true, is it?” Jason asked, taking another step forward. “Why would you be friends with that disgusting little pervert? Or are you just like him, Harrington? Just another little—”

*

Eddie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Steve, who rolled his eyes while Eddie fussed over him. 

“I’m fine, Munson.” He’d said the same thing about eighteen times in a row, but Eddie was resolutely not listening. “Really. It’s fine. I’ve had so much worse.”

“I know, that’s not the point. Although it’s a good argument for why we shouldn’t ignore any more head trauma.” Eddie grumbled, wincing in sympathy when he cleaned the cut on Steve’s check, below his already purpling eye. 

“It wasn’t really head trauma. He got much worse head trauma than me.”

“Yes, sweetheart, I know, you’re very big and strong.” Eddie placated, moving to press a bag of frozen peas to Steve’s face. After a few long moments of silence, Eddie finally spoke again. “Why were you even there?”

Steve scoffed at that, “Ironically, trying to prevent that from happening. Realised I had your jacket, figured assholes probably wouldn’t take well to you wearing mine, figured I ought to come get you. Make sure you were okay. And then I saw Carver shove you. The dickhead.”

Eddie really, really tried not to be completely enamoured with him. He made it fucking hard when he was all protective of Eddie like that. All it had taken was that one word over the line and Steve was cocking his fist back. 

He tried not to think about it too much, about how protective Steve had been, the way he’d stepped in front of him. And sure, Eddie didn’t need protection. Not really. He’d been in plenty of fist fights, and while he wasn’t really a fighter, he was scrappy, and he tended to give as good as he got. But in the past, he’d always been alone in those moments. Not once, not in all that time, had someone else thrown the first punch on his behalf. Defended him.

That was what Steve was doing. He was defending Eddie. He had come there for Eddie. He had done what he could do to protect Eddie from those assholes. Just like he’d convinced his parents to defend Eddie to the town. Just like he’d argued back to his parents not in defence of himself, but arguing that Eddie wasn’t a loser. 

Eddie wanted him so bad it hurt. He wanted to press his face into that jacket and breathe in hard, wanted to hold his stupid hand and kiss his stupid face and thank him properly for bothering to show up at that stupid fucking high school again to try to protect him of all fucking people. He wanted to sleep in Steve’s bed properly, not upside down this time, but with a proper pillow and Steve in his arms. He wanted to wake up in the morning and see his doe eyes blink open, wanted to pat down his ridiculous hair and tell him to go back to sleep. He wanted to sit shotgun while Steve drove him to school like he used to do Nancy Wheeler, kiss him goodbye in the mornings.

Because whether he needed protection or not was never the point. It was the fact that no one had ever gone into bat like that for him before. Ever. And Steve had done it so naturally, he hadn’t needed a prompt, or even a look from Eddie, he’d just jumped in before Jason could continue. 

“Well, you probably just lost one of your favourite little protegees right there. You used to be his mentor or somethin’, right?” Eddie asked. He was fishing it, there was no denying that. He was curious, and he wanted to know if Steve was going to resent him for the undeniable extra nail in the coffin of the person he used to be. 

Steve just scoffed at him, his eyes scanning Eddie’s face like he was searching for something. Eddie was leaning over towards him, holding the ice there. By all rights, he should probably give the peas to Steve and move back. But Steve made no move to take the bag, and Eddie made no move to let go. “Fuck him.” He basically grunted.

“Y’know, Harrington, if a little thirteen year old Eddie could see what had just happened, I think he might just about die of shock that the Steve Harrington was protecting him of all people.” Why was he still fishing? What did he want? He wasn’t even sure. Or maybe he was. But he wasn’t going to get that, so why was he bothering at all with this?

“Knock it off,” Steve laughed a little, shaking his head and giving Eddie’s shoulder a gentle shove, “we both know it’s all bullshit.”

“God, you two are lucky that Keith never comes to check up on us on shifts.” The door dinged open as Robin spoke, and she walked like she was completely unsurprised by the sight in front of her, Eddie and Steve sitting behind the counter, Eddie with a bag of frozen vegetables to Steve’s black eye. “Do I even want to know?”

“You should see the other guy.” Steve’s reaction was instantaneous. He was making a joke out of it. He made jokes out of everything. Eddie often wondered if there was something to that, how bad he was at taking compliments or concern, but now wasn’t the time. Not when he owed Steve, if anything. 

Robin snorted, “I’ve seen you fight before, Steve.”

“Hey, I won that fight with the Russians!” 

“No, actually,” Eddie was quick to intercept. “He’s telling the truth, Carver fared way worse than him in this one. He was lucky to get in one good hit.”

It was only true, but he was rewarded with a smile from Steve, fond and warm. Something clenched uncomfortably in his stomach, but he didn’t comment on it any further.

“Well, good for you, dingus.” She teased, “What happened?”

One short explanation later, Eddie and Robin were ganging up on Steve. Telling him to go nap. They had a back area with a small couch in it, and if anyone should be there, it was Steve. Even if he said it wasn’t that bad, he had been in a fight not long before, and he couldn’t be feeling good. 

Plus, Robin kept going on about symptoms Eddie hadn’t even known Steve had. Mostly, she talked about migraines. She said something about how the doctor had told Steve that if he was getting dizzy, he should be going to lay down, and not trying to push through it, and despite Steve’s arguing, he didn’t hold up very well against Robin’s aggressive love for him, and within a few minutes, he was gone round the back, leaving Eddie and Robin together. 

Which, frankly, he suspected was dangerous, but was better than Steve trying to work and pushing through everything just like he always did. 

“So.” Robin began pretty much as soon as she was back from forcing Steve to lay down. “What the fuck happened here?” She asked, her expression somewhere between conspiratorial and concerned. It was… concerning, but then, Eddie wasn’t surprised at this point. He never got over the way his new friends were, how deeply invested and involved they all were in each others’ lives. It was vastly different from Eddie himself, who had always been secretive, even from his close friends, but there wasn’t really any running away from it, even if he’d wanted to. 

“It’s stupid, really,” Eddie said, shaking his head as he went about doing Steve’s job for him, putting some tapes away and organising one of the racks. “Harrington and I accidentally swapped bags. It was freezing, so I put on his jacket. The basketballers saw me, acted like absolute fucking eggs about it. They’d shoved me over and then Steve showed up, the way he always does, like he has some kind of homing beacon to anyone he… y’know, anyone in his life who is in any kind of strife. Carver started saying some shit about me stealing his jacket and… yeah, Steve clocked him. It was over pretty quick, really, I guess some high schoolers aren’t much compared to… Russians and monsters. Which… someone, eventually, is going to have to tell me about the goddamn Russians, people keep mentioning it.”

Robin snorted a laugh, shook her head. “It was a whole thing. Dustin accidentally heard some secret Russian communications in Star Court Mall. We tried to hack into them, wound up getting ourselves kidnapped.” She was shrugging like it was nothing, but Eddie was a bit horrified. They had been kidnapped by fucking Russian spies? Since when? Why did no one ever tell him anything? Had all this shit been going on while he was at home preparing his DnD campaigns? Was he really that fucking oblivious? “We came pretty close to dying in there, I think.” She sounded… too peppy. Like she was trying to pretend it was fine when it wasn’t. He wasn’t exactly shocked that she wasn’t actually fine about something like that, considering how deeply fucked up it was. 

“I’m sorry— what?” He asked, head shaking. “You lot… never fail to surprise me, Buckley. Let me guess, did you two do all this in those cute little sailor outfits?”

Her brows lifted at Eddie. “How do you know about that?”

“Well, for starters, I live in Hawkins. I know things.” He said casually, trying to play it down, because Robin was far too perceptive, and she was already giving him that look. “I used to come hang out in there sometimes, that’s all. I remember the two of you working there.”

She let out a huff, like she was deeply lost in thought, “Well, yes, it did. And if that mall hadn’t burned down, we’d both have been fucked, because we both good blood and vomit on those outfits.”

Well, that about ruined that fantasy. Eddie winced. “Jesus, blood and vomit? Was it that bad?”

“We got tortured,” She told him blankly. Then, after a moment and a long glance at the back door, “He got tortured. We both got drugged. I thought they’d killed him at one point…” She had gone somewhere else. She was talking to Eddie, but not really, because her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and Eddie wondered if she was remembering what it had been like. How bad it would have to be for her to assume that Steve was dead. The thought hit him hard, and he sighed.

“I’m sorry that happened.” It was unlike Eddie, to answer seriously, but it was obvious that there was a deep trauma there, and who was Eddie to joke that away? He wasn’t even one of them back then. 

“Nah, it’s fine, it’s…” She shrugged. “We’re both fine, so.”

He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know more. “Is that where he got the… head trauma from? The migraines and dizziness?”

Her expression turned a little darker. “Some of it, probably.” She said softly, “From what I hear, he had some other pretty fucked experiences before I got involved too, so maybe not entirely. If nothing else, I’m sure it didn’t help…” 

Eddie turned to glance at the closed door Steve was laying behind, and he tried to imagine going through all this for years. He had only been part of it for a few months, and already he felt like he was on the brink of a meltdown all the time. But Steve had been doing this for years. And he had the physical repercussions to prove it, apparently. He knew from experience that he thought about it too. Remembered things Steve had mentioned in quiet moments, or calm moments. He wished he could do more. He was struck again with the desire to be there, to lay beside him and help when the nightmares came, rather than knowing from a distance that he was struggling.

“Can I ask you a question, Eddie?” He had a bad feeling about that, but he nodded an assent, and she went on. “What’s going on here? You and him?”

Eddie shrugged, “Nothing’s going on. He asked me for help and I agreed. It’s all done now, game over. He just came to get me because I had his jacket and he was worried — rightfully, apparently — that people would lose their collective tiny minds about it.” 

Robin stared at him for a moment. Eddie wished the ground would eat him.

“Oh my god, you’re in love with him.” She said it in a stage whisper, and Eddie could only sigh in response. 

“Jesus, Buckley, you’re just noticing? And here I thought you were meant to be the smart one.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she stared at him like he’d just grown a second head. Honestly, Eddie had sort of assumed that Robin already knew that. He’d known for a long time, but he’d been denying it to himself for just as long. But her? She had no reason to ignore it. Frankly, he thought she’d clocked it back in the Upside Down all that time ago. 

“Steve?” She asked skeptically.

“Yes, Steve. Isn’t he your best friend?”

She was still staring at him with her mouth open. Eddie tried not to feel too self-conscious, but he knew he was failing hard.

“Yeah. I mean, yeah! I love Steve, Steve is like my favourite person in the world, but… Steve?!” 

He winced, “Shut up, will you? If he overhears, you and I are not going to be friends anymore.” What was he meant to say? What was he meant to do? All he could muster was a frown. “Yes, Robin. Steve. Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington. Steve who laughed along with his stupid friends when they called me a freak, and who sat there like a hot imbecile in every single class, and who would’ve probably knocked me on my ass if he’d realised. The guy who hated people like you and I and who sat around laughing with his other pretty, popular, vapid friends and who was basically just a reminder of everything that I would never have. That Steve.” He took another sharp breath. “But also… not that Steve. Because that Steve… yeah, he was gorgeous and whatever, but… We’re also not talking about the Steve, not really. Because it turns out that that Steve isn’t actually Steve. Because it turned out, Steve is the guy who adopts a bunch of random loser kids and makes it his mission in life to keep them safe. It turns out, Steve is the kind of guy who insists that he be the one to jump into a monster infested lake in the middle of the night knowing full well he may not come back. It turns out that Steve is a guy who turns up to high school to help me run or shows up to give me my jacket back in case it starts shit. It turns out that Steve is the guy who fake dates a freak and stays close friends with his exes and cares about people even when they’re not popular or rich or special. And… yeah, I’m not fucking proud of it, but it turns out that I’ve been a fucking pathetic goner since way before I knew he was a decent person and now that I do, I dunno how to pretend it isn’t there.” 

There was a long moment of silence, where Robin just stared right at him, like she was finally seeing him clearly. Like something had just clicked right into place. He sort of wished it hadn’t. He felt safer before she’d realised this, especially given that she was Robin, and Steve was her best friend. He wasn’t even sure she was capable of keeping secrets from him. 

“You were… oh.” She frowned at him for a moment, “Since before… Oh, Eddie.”

He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pity me. I am just fine, Robin. So what? I had a dumb, ill advised crush through high school that became something else after. It’s fine.” 

She looked so sad. She looked so deeply sad. “Was he mean to you in high school?” She asked, like she didn’t want to ask, but had to know. 

He laughed a little, sort of sadly. “You know, I think that’s the worst part. I can trace this… thing back right to middle school. I remember it so clearly. The absolute baseline, most bare minimum fucking thing. That fuckwit Tommy Hagan was standing over me, shoving me back whenever I tried to walk away. Steve Harrington walks in like some twelve year old messiah or something, grabs Hagan by the scruff of the neck and tells him to hurry up because they’re late to class. Steve turns back, nods once at me like… like an apology or… an acknowledgement or something. And they both walk off. Like it was nothing. I mean, it really was just… just… the bar was so fucking low. But that was nicer to me than any popular kid had ever been, and he was already just there with his dumb hair and his dumb freckles and…” He shook his head.

“Why… why would you agree to pretend to date him?” She asked, and though the question felt a little judgemental, she asked it with pure concern. With worry. That told him everything he needed to know. If he had a snowball’s chance in hell, Robin wouldn’t be looking at him like he was an ant professing his love for a giant. He had no fucking chance. He never had. He knew that. 

So why did it fucking hurt?

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you’re going to drive my car. You can’t crash my car.”

Eddie just rolled his eyes, and Steve stared like he couldn’t quite believe it. This was real life. He, Steve Harrington, was going to get into his own car, driven by Eddie Munson, because he had a bag of fucking peas against his eye. Which, come to think of it, where the fuck did Eddie even get peas? Where was he keeping those at the school?

“Just be grateful that I’m driving you, because you clearly have head trauma issues, and I’m not going to have that on my conscience if you crash your car, alright? So sit down, shut up and enjoy the ride.”

The idea of it being like a ride was exactly what Steve didn’t want.

“You really don’t need to do this.” Steve tried again, because if there was one thing in the world he hated, it was pity. 

Eddie rolled his eyes, turning in the drivers’ seat to face Steve. He didn’t speak, but he lifted his brows, giving Steve a look that was hard to misinterpret. It seemed to tell him to shut up, but in kind of a… nice way. 

If such a thing was possible.

Steve didn’t speak either, but he tipped his head forward at Eddie and raised his brows, trying to argue right on back. He didn’t need to do it. Steve didn’t need to be babied. Eddie had done enough for him.

The truth was, Steve hadn’t even thought about it when he’d hit Jason Carver. Hadn’t even considered it. 

He remembered being on Carver’s end of something like that. He’d like to think he’d never been that bad, but he recalled following Jonathan Byers down the alleyway, prodding at him and trying to get a reaction. Of course, he’d wanted to get hit that day. He had been spiralling and angry and emotional and he hadn’t known how to take it out in any way other than physical. 

But when he’d hit Jason Carver, he hadn’t been thinking of the things he’d done. He’d been thinking of Eddie. Of Eddie Munson in the Upside Down with them, helping them fight demo-bats and teaching them to say SOS in morse code. He’d been thinking of Eddie in his bed, laughing about Steve’s music and how bad it apparently was. He’d been thinking of how cruel and unfair it was that Eddie was still getting blamed.

He’d been thinking how, if there was any justice, people would know who he really was. A good, kind person. 

He’d been thinking that Jason Carver deserved a good punch for pulling language like that out at someone like Eddie.

But now Eddie was looking at him with those same big, stupid eyes, all concern and genuine attentiveness and all Steve could think was, since when did Eddie look like that? 

He had always been good looking, just sort of objectively. His style wasn’t really up Steve’s alley, but he had pretty eyes and full lips and his hair was kinda nice, in a Bon Jovi kind of way. 

But lately he looked different to Steve. He knew what was happening, kind of, Eddie’s personality was seeping into his face in Steve’s mind, and it was terrifyingly positive. He couldn’t stop noticing the way his dimples carved into his cheeks when he grinned, how long his eyelashes looked when he looked down. He kept noticing the way he held his hands, the laugh he did when he was really happy, and the one that escaped in the dead of night when he was desperately trying not to be too loud. Wheezing and soft and somehow precious, something real and tangible Steve wanted to… own or something. 

He wasn’t sure whether it was a new thing or he just couldn’t recall it happening before, but Steve really had gone from tolerating Eddie to genuinely caring about him in such a short period of time. 

And when Eddie sat beside him tapping his fingers in Steve’s steering wheel and watching Steve nervously, it was obvious how far they’d come in what felt like the blink of an eye. 

Steve broke their eye contact first, and Eddie put the car in reverse.

He wanted to be annoyed, to assure someone that he wasn’t really smitten, because that was embarrassing, and he didn’t care, and goddamnit, wasn’t he always telling Dustin not to show he cared too much back in the day? He wanted to remind someone that they were just friends, even though there was no one to tell, and no one watching.

“How come you never talk about the head trauma stuff?”

Steve was completely snapped from his thoughts, dark eyes flicking to Eddie, who seemed perfectly casual as he tapped on his steering wheel and watched the road, so far not as terrible at driving as they’d all expected. 

His brows lifted, “Because I don’t… need to?”

Eddie looked like he wanted to bang his head against a wall. Steve knew that look well. “Harrington, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I thought you were smarter than just another dumbass football bro.” 

Steve’s brows actually shot up and he had to restrain the urge to burst out laughing. Eddie did have a way of getting to Steve like that, and while Steve never talked about this stuff, Eddie had proven that he did actually… care. Somewhat, at least. And they were supposed to be friends.

“Okay, alright, calm down. I just don’t like talking about it, I guess. I’m not good at talking about stuff like that in general, but it’d also only worry people — and they have enough shit to worry about.” That part was true, mostly, but he was downplaying it a bit. It was just that Steve didn’t really like being taken care of. 

Or maybe he wasn’t used to it. Didn’t matter which, really, because he wasn’t asking for Eddie of all people to look after him. As if Eddie hadn’t been through enough all on his own. 

Plus, the only person who knew any of it was Robin, and mostly only because she was with him when symptoms acted up. 

Eddie broke Steve from his spiralling with a titter, “Okay, so what? You get dizzy or something, Robin said? What else?”

Steve sighed, “Nothing that bad. Migraines, sometimes. Or like, my ears hurt. But it’s nothing, like, important.” He knew how he sounded, he could hear it on himself. Like he was desperate for Eddie to leave him be and not question it any further, desperate not to have to talk about something that obviously got to him. And it did. How could it not? The reminders of everything else? Of the demogorgan or the demodogs or the bats or any of it. It all just felt like death and trauma, of weakness. 

“You shouldn’t be picking fights if it’s already that bad.”

Steve had never handled criticism like this all that well.

“Oh? Because I was defending you.” 

Eddie’s brows shot up, and he glanced briefly at Steve before returning to the road. “Relax, Harrington, I’m not accusing you of anything. Just, y’know, don’t tell anyone I told you this, but some of us actually care if you make it till you’re old enough to drink.” His words dropped with sarcasm, and Steve took the moment to watch him.

His fringe had gotten sort of stringy from the rain earlier, and Steve could see more of his face behind it. Long eyelashes and big eyes and the ghost of stubble along his jaw. Steve could still sort of picture him as a kid. The buzzed hair, how he’d been even lankier and skinnier than Mike, how his eyes had looked huge against his pale skin back then. He’d looked like some kind of little alien back then. He’d grown into himself so much.

“I’m fine, I promise.” His voice had gone soft, and he slumped backward into his chair, too tired to put up the persona anymore. “Really. I take some medication for the migraines, and I’ve got glasses for my eyes. I promise, I am managing it.” Did Eddie really care? Could he? Steve certainly didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t done enough. That was the thing. Steve’s hands still weren’t clean. 

Eddie didn’t look up, but he reached one hand across to brush against Steve’s knee supportively. Like it was the most normal and natural thing in the world. Steve’s skin felt funny beneath his jeans. 

“I’m not trying to push, but also I don’t think you’d listen to me if I didn’t push, so maybe I am trying to push.” Eddie seemed amused, and he kept his eyes ahead, no longer glancing over at Steve. 

Steve tried to laugh it off. “Better men than you have tried,” He joked.

“No one’s better than me.”

“Spoken like someone with a grandiose sense of self importance.” Steve told him flatly.

Eddie’s laughter was big and bright and Steve thought he might have swallowed the sun or something. How could someone with so much bad shit going on around him be so… bright? 

“I’m sorry, did you get that toilet paper that has like, ‘word of the day’ on it or something?” Eddie asked him, barely containing little fits of laughter that felt like they were shoving their way inside of Steve’s ribcage and trying to suffocate him. He knew what it meant, and that was the scariest part. Because the last time it had been like that… well, it hadn’t ended well for him.

“Shut the fuck up, Munson, alright, I’m not that fucking stupid.”

-

“I still can’t believe you punched him for me,” Eddie whispered, turned onto his side, head propped in one hand. His eyes were softer than Steve saw them mostly, looking at Steve like he… trusted him.

Steve realised he did. 

And wasn’t that just the wildest thing ever, because Steve had been working his ass off to be seen as anything other than an asshole for years, but he constantly felt like he was flirting between characterisation as a moron or an asshole.

Someone like Eddie Munson, who so often seemed to be sharp edges and witty one liners, trusting him, laying on his bed with him, it was… almost intoxicating, actually.

Hard for Steve not to dissolve into a happy place with it, because he felt like he’d really earned something. That Eddie had every right and every reason to hate him and instead they were… this.

And maybe that meant Steve was allowed some kind of reprieve, because Eddie’s trust and friendship felt like some huge achievement. Something to celebrate. 

He felt sort of giddy.

“Yeah, well, he fucking deserved it.” Steve grumbled, feigning a kind of annoyance he didn’t have, certainly not for eddie. 

“Do you have some kind of spidey sense for rocking up to save me?”

“What the fuck is a spidey sense?”

Eddie just rolled his eyes like Steve was an absolute moron, not even bothering to elaborate, just leaning forward to take the cold pack Steve had on his face and turn it over, before returning it to Steve. 

“I just can’t believe you turned up when you did. It was like something out of an action flick. Maybe you should be an actor,” Eddie was clearly teasing him, but Steve couldn’t help but grin right back, like it was completely infectious. It was. Eddie had a knack for that. With those deep-set dimples, a big smile from him felt like the sun shining through a storm cloud. 

Steve rolled his eyes again, but playfully. God, Eddie made him feel so… was he shy? There was no way he was shy. He didn’t get shy. Or he did, but not… not ever like this. Hadn’t he always been confident? Hadn’t he always been popular? The guy people looked at all the time? He’d always had eyes on him, whether it was basketball or just a lunch time. Why were Eddie’s ridiculous doe eyes any different?

“Me? An actor…?” He scoffed, “Please. I’d be completely stiff.”

“Well, that’d be a whole other kind of movie.”

Steve just stared at him. “Did you just make a porno joke at me, Edward? Disgusting. I am a good boy, I would never!”

That alone sent Eddie into hysterics, and Steve could feel his cheeks flush. Something about Eddie laughing so earnestly at his jokes just… made him happy. He’d always tried to be funny, but people hadn’t always been receptive to his humour. Often he found people weren’t really listening to him at all. 

“You are not a good boy, Steve Harrington. I would say I’ve heard what you get up to, but I’ve also had the Harrington experience first hand. You’re good at what you do, but a good boy? Never.” It was completely flirtatious in a way Steve hadn’t been quite expecting Eddie to go back to.

But maybe it was just the reminder of before. Maybe it was just the reminder of Steve ripping Eddie’s shirt up over his head. Or of Eddie pinning Steve to the wall on his way to the bedroom. Maybe Steve was totally misreading Eddie’s amused eyes and pretty dimples. 

“Careful, Munson, this feels an awful lot like a challenge.” Steve’s voice was a little lower, kind of precise, gaze leveled right at Eddie, not shying away. 

Eddie’s eyes were still on Steve. 

If Steve didn’t break eye contact soon, he was going to do something stupid, like kiss Eddie. Again. They were friends. They’d agreed on friends. It was all fake. 

Except that Steve thought about how he’d felt when he’d walked up on Jason and his asshole circling around Eddie like he was some kind of wounded animal.

It wasn’t that Eddie needed his protection, but Steve would still rather that he had it. He felt better knowing that those same guys knew for sure Steve would be throwing punches on his behalf. 

Thing was, Steve hadn’t been intending it to be “just friends” even back in the beginning. He liked Eddie. Had liked him, anyway. He’d been telling himself it was an expired feeling. Because Eddie had been so weird that first morning, and Steve had gone to work, and the next time they saw each other, Eddie acted like nothing had happened. Like him and his stupid hair and his stupid hipbones hadn’t altered Steve’s entire view of the world irreparably. 

But now it had been weeks. Now they’d pretended to date. Now they’d had time to really see the lengths to which they were totally incompatible. 

If he was smart, he’d focus on those.

They liked different music, had different hobbies. Eddie was still in school, and liked to scare people. He tried to find more things, but aside from the obvious aesthetic differences, the truth was… there wasn’t much.

They both loved those kids. 

They were both the kinds of men who would risk their lives again and again for those little assholes.

They were both idealistic, and though they showed them differently, their ideals were very similar.

They were both social outcasts who were willing to stay that way to embody what they believed in. 

Eddie was funny and warm and genuinely kind of intelligent, especially when you got him talking about his hobbies and interests. 

“A challenge for what…?” Eddie asked softly, his voice a little hushed, almost more… intimate? “What can you do that would demonstrate that you’re capable of being a good boy…?”

It was hard not to notice. The way Eddie had leaned in closer. The way his dark eyes ran over Steve’s face, like committing it to memory. How intently he listened and watched. 

It was hard not to notice how pretty his lips were. Hard not to notice the intense, wide-eyed gaze that resembled a cartoon- in the best way. Hard not to notice the way he smelled. Even after being shoved over in the rain, he still smelled familiar. Weed and cigarettes and a specific cologne Steve didn’t know the name of. 

And then there was the jacket. Steve’s letterman, a tiny bit too long in the sleeves for Eddie. Maybe it was something entirely animal, a primal instinct, but something about seeing Eddie wander around with Steve’s name etched in his back, it got to him. 

The trend of asking your girl to wear your letterman had been around forever. Steve finally got the appeal. 

How… weirdly proud he felt that Eddie didn’t mind being seen in his name.

Steve barely considered it when he brought his lips to Eddie’s, slower and more intentional than any of their other kisses. 

It was a shot in the dark, really, because Steve had no idea whether Eddie would be even a little bit interested in this. In something more… real. But he focused on this, on bringing his hand to rest against the side of Eddie’s neck, his thumb brushing against the soft skin of Eddie’s cheek.

Steve felt it, the pleasant warmth in his stomach, the fondness of Eddie being so close, all of it against the quiet of the house. 

These kisses were different. Slower, gentler, soft hands and soft tongues and a kind of intimate closeness Steve hadn’t experiment in a long, long time. 

This wasn’t just being hot for each other. It couldn’t be. Not when it was so different. Steve wanted to melt into him. He wanted to feel Eddie’s hands all over him, to touch Eddie all over, but not in the same hungry way. He wanted to appreciate all of him. Take in all the tiny intricacies of him, all the things special to him. He wanted to make Eddie feel… well, just feel. 

Eddie shifted forward, leaning over Steve just slightly to completely change the tone of the kiss. Suddenly it was hard and wanting and frantic. 

Steve had never opposed kissing that was clearly going somewhere — he did want to go back there too — but this was a little different. It was too quick, too clumsy for Steve. It made him feel like something was wrong.

Though Eddie’s hands and his tongue and his hips touching him was wildly distracting, Steve still felt like something was wrong.

And anyway, they could get to hungry and frantic and horny, Steve wanted something else. He wanted soft. He wanted loving. 

He shoved Eddie back, leaning half his body on top of Eddie, pulling back enough to be gentler again. To press warm and affectionate kisses to his lips, not exactly chaste, but certainly not heated. 

“Stop it.” Eddie hissed.

Steve was halfway across the room in a heartbeat, like he’d been burned. “Did I do something wrong?” He asked, almost instant. 

“I… yes. Or no. But yes.” Well, that clarified precisely nothing.

“Did I lean on you wrong or something?” He asked cluelessly, genuinely confused about what had just happened and why Eddie had suddenly reacted as though Steve was hurting him.

“Stop acting like we’re in love.” 

And fuck if that didn’t hurt like a punch to the gut — something he’d had plenty of times. He could be back in that bathroom again. He could feel the shitty fluorescent lights overhead. He could hear the muted music through the door. Could see Nancy. Beautiful Nancy, who Steve had adored in another life, staring up at him like he’d murdered her best friend with his bare hands. Had he? Her big eyes red and sad and so angry, spitting those words back at him. It’s bullshit. 

“I—” No. He was not going to give anyone else the satisfaction of being a wounded animal because he had the misfortune to be this unloveable, desperate creature. What a plot twist: King Steve, who turned out to be a court jester all along. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

That was a lie. Blatant and obvious and not even well concealed. It wasn’t an accident. He wanted that. Hadn’t he always wanted that? It wasn’t just that he wanted to be loved either. He wanted to love. 

He wanted to hold someone when they were cold and celebrate with them when they had successes. Cry with them when everything felt insurmountable. He wanted a teammate. He wanted a friend. He wanted all that love and trust and he wanted to make someone else happy. He wanted to make Eddie happy. That was the scariest part. It wasn’t general. When he pictured that life, a teammate, a lover, a best friend, Eddie fit into the place he’d built in his mind like it was always Eddie Munson shaped. Like it was meant to be him. 

Eddie pinched his nose. “Look, I just… do you even remember how I started getting called a freak, Steve? Do you remember who started it?”

Steve had no idea where this was going. He knew it wasn’t him. He had always assumed it was people in the year above. He simply shook his head, dumbfounded.

“It was Hagan. Your old pal. I know you aren’t close anymore, but you were back then. And that absolute toilet brush of a man, he was really protective of you back then, Stevie boy. Really protective.” Steve still didn’t understand. Tommy was an asshole, they both knew that, but Eddie also knew Steve had intentionally cut him off for that very reason. “So when he saw me doodling a picture of you in a shared class in middle school, he snatched it. Showed the whole class. Called me a whole bunch of shitty names. The freak was just the one that stuck.” 

He spat the words at Eddie and Steve wanted to crumble. He wanted to apologise and cry and try to help. But he didn’t quite understand. He had no idea what his part in that was, or why the story was important right then. He sure as hell hadn’t been there for that. 

“I… I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m really fuckin’ sorry that Hagan did that to you, he’s a piece of shit. He’s always been a piece of shit. And I’m sorry for not doing something about it earlier, but… but I didn’t do that to you.” Steve attempted, not quite understanding what was happening. 

Eddie stared at Steve like he’d grown a second head. Like he was missing something so obvious. Steve didn’t understand what it was. 

“I’d like to say if I had been there I’d have stopped it.” Steve began, “I don’t know if I would have. I was a fuckin’ coward back then, but I…” He trailed off again, shrugging listlessly. 

“You’d have called me a freak too, Steve. Just like everybody else.” 

Steve was still confused, “I didn’t bully you.” He said after a moment, “I know I’m not blameless, I know I should’ve helped you, but I wasn’t one of the people who—”

“I know that!” Eddie snapped, shaking his head. “Just… look. You’re not who I thought you were. You’re not the absolute piece of shit I assumed. That’s on me. But let’s not pretend we don’t both know what this is, alright? So just… let’s stop. No more pretending. I don’t want to fake it anymore, okay? It’s too much. Being friends… being friends was better, let’s just do that. I don’t need you to…” He trailed off, shaking his head sharply.

Steve was so fucking confused. He couldn’t make heads or tails of what Eddie was trying to tell him.

“Eds, we… we are friends. Aren’t we?” He asked, confused. “I just… I thought that this… that we…” He thought whatever he felt was mutual. He thought Eddie had felt it too. All those moments of… Maybe he was just that fucking deluded that he’d walked into this again. 

“Look, I’m not going to be anyone’s consolation prize.” He snapped. 

Now that had Steve reeling. Consolation prize? When had he ever said or implied that? 

“I don’t… Of course you’re not, but why would you—?”

“I’m not her. And I’m not going to ever be something normal or that you can be proud of. I know how this works, alright? It’s not the first time I’ve been someone’s experiment and… I’m not doing that shit again. Not even for you, Harrington.”

Steve felt like they were having a whole conversation but he was missing one side. He had no fucking idea what Eddie was talking about. 

“You’re not my fucking experiment, Eddie, I like you.” Steve finally piped up, because fuck if the whole thing wasn’t just annoying, frankly. Hadn’t he already explained this more than once? Hadn’t he told Eddie that he wasn’t fucking with him? That it wasn’t some game or experiment? That he’d asked him this because he felt safe with him, not for any malicious reason. 

Eddie stared at him for a long moment, then pulling himself back to his feet, shaking his head like Steve had said something offensive. Steve got not wanting to be used or experimented with, but hadn’t he also agreed to do it for a joke with Eddie’s band? Hadn’t he proven that he liked him? Gotten into a fight with a guy who had once idolised him? 

“Eddie, I really don’t understand what’s going on right now,” Steve told him seriously, “I’m not kissing you for some experiment or because I feel sorry for you or whatever and I certainly don’t think you’re a freak, I don’t get why you’re being like this. I’m sorry for any part I played in what happened to you and how you were treated, but I… I wasn’t the one who did that and I care about you. Haven’t I shown that I care about you?” 

Eddie kept staring at him, unscrupulous, like Steve was speaking another language or trying to convince him to believe in aliens — although, maybe that wouldn’t be as far-fetched as what they did go through together. 

“I have to go.” Eddie said suddenly, turning to leave. 

Steve practically jumped forward towards Eddie, eyes big. “Wait, what?” He asked.

It didn’t matter what he said though, Eddie was taking the stairs two steps at a time while Steve was still barely out the bedroom door, shocked and confused. He couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it, he only knew that Eddie was leaving. He’d tried to get real, and Eddie was leaving. 

“Wait, Eds.” He followed after, but the door swung open, and despite Steve catching it before it slammed, there was no stopping Eddie as he took off down the road, completely ignoring Steve like he was never even there to begin with. Like he never had been.

Steve was left standing on the doorstep, heart in his hands, wondering what was going on and what he did wrong. 

He wasn’t left to wonder for long though, because his father’s voice nearly scared him to death. 

He hadn’t even heard them get home.

“Christ, Steven, this is a new low.” 

Steve could feel his heart pounding in his chest, instant and killer. He knew. He knew. His mother was calculating and underhanded, but his father? His father was a whole other monster. His father didn’t have the tact to be subtle. 

It was a basic fact of Steve’s life. His parents didn’t want to be parents. They wanted to be the best parents. They wanted the gold star. They wanted all the whispers about their perfect house and perfect jobs and perfect kids. 

But Steve himself? He hadn’t been of any interest to them, not when he started to show personality traits of his own. Most particularly those that didn’t uphold the perfect image the Harrington’s had carved out for themselves in Hawkins. 

But Steve hadn’t ever been perfect, hadn’t ever belonged in that family or that house. He wasn’t smart enough for them, that was a start. He’d known that when he was ten years old and they’d had him tested. He was smart, they’d said. He understood the concepts in front of him when they were explained, but he got confused. He found it hard to read and to spell. He was only ten, and the word dyslexia sounded like a burn to him, especially when his parents insisted it was wrong. Steve didn’t need special help, because his parents didn’t need special help, and he couldn’t be a failure or disappointment to the Harringtons. 

Steve hadn’t actually stopped trying for years after that. He kept trying to impress them, kept trying to be what they wanted. 

Until he found another way.

Sport. He wasn’t good at academics, but he was good at sport. 

State ranked at running.

State ranked at running.

Captain of the basketball team.

Captain of the baseball team. 

Steve could do that. 

And for a while, that was enough. Or… it was enough to spare him the blind hate of his parents, to notch it down to just the most basic indifference. It didn’t make them like him, but it made them ignore him. And that was fine. He could handle that. Being ignored was better than being hated. 

But then there was Nancy and the Upside Down and Barbara Holland and all the failures he could never put into words and all of a sudden, he couldn’t even hang on to all those sports teams anymore. He was missing meets, competitions, games, and when he was there, he wasn’t really there. 

This? His father’s pointed rage at him, it wasn’t exactly new or surprising. 

“Don’t.” Steve muttered, turning back into the house and shoving past his father.

He knew, of course, that his father wasn’t just going to let him pass like that.

“Really, Steven, is this what you’ve sunken to? You used to date that pretty Wheeler girl and captain all those teams and now you can’t even keep the town freak?” 

What the fuck was Steve meant to say to that? He’d known for a long time that the little voice inside his head belonged to his father, and hadn’t he already heard that voice whisper those same thoughts? Not that he’d ever call Eddie a freak, or that he believed he was, but that this was history repeating. That neither Nancy nor Eddie had cared about him the same way he did for them, that that wasn’t ever going to change. He just wasn’t the person that people loved and he never had been. 

“Eddie isn’t any kind of freak, okay?!” Steve snapped, “And it isn’t like that, so just… could you not? Can we not do this?” He just wanted to escape. He wanted to stop whatever this was from happening, because he knew what it meant. He knew how it would escalate, how his father could make him snap like nearly no one else could. How his father would prod and prod at Steve until he would snap, so that his father had a reason to paint Steve out like the villain, himself as the concerned father. He was desperately afraid of it working, afraid of the way it fucked with his head. The way he’d find himself wondering whether it really was his fault. Whether his father was just right about him, that he was rotten and broken.

“Isn’t like what?” Percy Harrington stood a little straighter, and despite being a little shorter than Steve himself, Steve felt about a foot tall in front of him. “It isn’t like you had some disgusting fling with a pariah to punish your parents? After everything we’ve done for you? Really, Steven, it’s childish. And somehow, you couldn’t even follow through on that. I would be embarrassed if it wasn’t exactly what I expected.” It was ice cold, intended to sting. He was going for the jugular. 

“Everything you’ve done for me?” Steve spat, “You barely even live in the same house as me, Dad!”

Fuck. He’d fucked up. This was exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do. Fighting back was just giving his father free reign to go off at him. He should stay silent. He should stay silent and let his father tire himself out. It would piss him off ten times worse if Steve didn’t fight back. But Steve couldn’t help fighting back. 

That was the part of him that was most like his father. It made him sick, anything about him that was like his Dad.

He’d heard it all before. It still fucking sucked.

Freak. Loser. Disappointment. Accident. Idiot. Mistake. Waste. 

Some new choice words Steve refused ever to say. Hateful things he himself didn’t care to repeat. 

He managed to stay dead silent through much of it, knowing that answering would only make it worse. Knowing there was no good outcome to this. 

“And what’s worse, even a murderous, loser, freak thinks you’re a worthless fuck-up.” Even for his father, that was extreme. 

He tried to steel himself. 

“Leave him out this.” He defended quietly.

“Excuse me? Would you like to speak up, sport? You know how I hate it when you fucking mumble like some little girl.”

He winced. He wondered what his father would think if he knew the three biggest badasses Steve had ever met were women. 

“You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.” Steve was so angry he felt like he might vomit. “You don’t know me, you don’t know him, and you wouldn’t have a fucking clue about what it meant to be a good parent, you’ve never been one!” 

“Now, boys—” His mother would always try to act reasonable right before she completely backed his father up and put him down in worse, more insidious ways. Steve didn’t want to hear it. 

“Don’t.” He barked at her too. “I’ve had enough of both of you. You think I care that you don’t approve of Eddie? I don’t. Every single way in which he’s not like you is a win. And me… do you know a thing about me? Either of you? Who’s my best friend? Where do I work? What colour are my glasses? Did you even know I wore glasses?” He shook his head, skeptical and angry. He was so fucking angry. He could go on forever, but he knew they wouldn’t listen. He knew it was a waste of his own breath.

“Stevie…” His mother hadn’t called him that since he was a child. She stepped towards him, not waiting to be asked before she yanked him in tight, hugging him like she thought he’d crumble.

And he wanted to. He wanted to collapse onto his Mom’s shoulders and cry to her about how he just wanted Eddie to come back, how much it hurt to have someone walk out on you like that. Again. How he’d tried to be a good son. How desperately he’d tried. He wanted to apologise for being such a failure.

He wanted to grovel to be worthy of their love.

“This is for the best. Now you can find a nice girl. Someone who represents our… interests better. Maybe someone who can help you study. Get you into college.”

Any desire Steve had to fall into his mother’s trap disappeared in an instant. The way she emphasised girl, the pointed way she made it about them. About college. 

Because that’s all it would ever be about. They didn’t want Steve to be happy. They wanted him to be good from the outside. Shiny and cold and hard just like them. They wanted to kill off everything that made him him. 

“And what if it isn’t a girl, Mom? What if it’s a nice boy?” 

His mother opened her mouth to speak, but his father cut her off. “Then you best be getting a job that can pay you well enough to get the fuck out of our town.” 

Of all the things Steve had expected, that was… extreme. Then again, his father was a hair trigger. Always had been. It was Lorraine who had the wit, Percy just had the confidence. The luxury of having that confidence. Lorraine had had to be smarter to be successful, he’d walked right into it. 

“That what you want too, Mom? For me to disappear out of your lives forever if I don’t want who you think I should want?”

Lorraine looked torn. He could see her cogs working. See her formulating the right response. 

“I want my son back.” She told him, putting on a show of sadness in her voice. “I want the real you back.”

“What if this is the real me though?” He asked, “What if the real me is in love with him?”

He asked it as a hypothetical, but he wasn’t so sure it was hypothetical anymore. Not when he could feel the uncomfortable clench of his heart at the way Eddie had walked out. The knowledge that all he wanted to do was talk to Eddie about all this. He wouldn’t care if they were laying upside down in bed again or sitting in a car together or what, he just wanted to talk to him specifically. The realisation that protecting Eddie from those guys hadn’t even been a choice, but a pure instinct. A necessity. It had been all fun and games, all of it. Looking for him, protecting him, pretending to date him. It was so easy. Right up till he’d seen that look on Eddie’s face when he’d walked out. It wasn’t fun and games anymore when he felt just as shattered as he had when Nancy had looked him in the eye and told him their love was bullshit.

“Don’t be silly, that’s not the real you.” Lorraine said quickly, holding up a hand to silence her husband before he could talk.

Steve just stared at her. “Mom. What’s my best friend’s name?”

“Honey, you’ve been best friends with little Tommy Hagan since you were in diapers. He’s a good boy, doesn’t give his parents grief.” And didn’t that just about take the cake? He hadn’t spoken to Tommy Hagan since halfway through his senior year. It had been over a year since they’d even acknowledged each other. 

He had half a mind to tell them about how he and Tommy had occasionally kissed as ‘practice’ when they were thirteen years old. He’d been totally naive to how not practice it had been until after his fling with Eddie, but still.

As much as Tommy Hagan was a piece of shit, Steve wasn’t trying to out anyone, and he wasn’t trying to get anyone else hurt. Not even him.

“Fuck this.” Steve grumbled, pushing past his father to get to the stairs, but stopping only when his father grabbed him by the upper arm, squeezing tight.

He was going to just try to pull away, right up until he heard the words his father spit at him. The absolute hatred with which he spit them. 

*

Steve leaned against the doorframe, holding a tissue to his still occasionally bleeding split lip, waiting for the door to open. Hoping it would open.

When it did, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t know where else to go.”

Chapter Text

“I was hopin’ you’d show up here, Kid.” Hopper clapped him in the shoulder like they were closer than they were, and Steve hated that he’d flinched without considering how it might look. 

“What’d’ya mean?” Steve asked,  conscious of how… out of place he felt. 

It wasn’t like he didn’t know Hopper. He did. They’d fought awful things together. They shared a group of dumb kids they both protected and loved. Even so, they hadn’t talked directly very often. And when they had, it wasn’t with any depth. 

But he’d gone through a list of places he could go, and he’d come up pretty short. 

There was Robin, but her parents were still convinced, despite their best efforts, that Steve and her were a couple. They weren’t entirely opposed to the idea, exactly, but if Steve turned up on a school night looking for a place to stay, they would quickly become opposed. 

There was Nancy, but he doubted Karen and Ted Wheeler would take too well to him being there, and climbing in her window was just too weird, given all of their joint history. 

He could go to Jonathan. He really could. He imagined Joyce Byers would take him in in a heartbeat. She was too kind to leave any kid out — but even with them being sort of friends now, it felt like too much. Too much to expect Jonathan Byers to understand everything that was going on in his world. Maybe he was just too scared. Either way, he didn’t go there.

And Eddie… Eddie had made it clear that he didn’t want this. He didn’t want Steve.

Stop acting like we’re in love.

Like we’re in love and we’re partying.

Steve loved Robin. He loved the kids. Hell, he still loved Nancy. But he wasn’t fucking blind. 

Hadn’t Robin had a whiteboard with ‘you suck’ written over it for a whole summer? Hadn’t she told him what an asshole he was? Hadn’t she called him dingus constantly since meeting? He loved her. Maybe more than he’d ever loved anyone. But he wasn’t blind to the way she had always taken her opportunities to remind him of all the bad parts of him. On good days, he would tell himself she was only joking. On good days, he would tell himself it was how she protected herself, how she showed love.

On bad days, he just felt… unlovable. Stupid and an asshole and all the things he’d been desperately trying not to be for so long.

Dustin. He knew Dustin looked up to him. He knew the kid wanted to be more like him in some ways. He also knew that Dustin saw him as stupid. That he was just muscle and brawn and backup. Even then, Dustin never missed an opportunity to point out all the fights he’d lost. All the times he’d tried and failed to protect them. On good days, he’d tell himself that it was all joking. That it was banter. That it was just what he and Dustin did. 

On bad days, he was reminded of how fragile his position within their group was. He was getting physically weaker with every injury and concussion, and soon he’d be completely surplus in their group dynamic. 

Nancy. He loved her too, but she always looked at him with that smile, like he was too stupid to understand. Or worse, the pitying smile. The one that reminded him that she’d stepped on his heart so bad that if he let himself think about it enough, even still, he’d start crying. How every girl he’d dated since had been a cheap way to try to close the gaping wound she’d left inside of him. On good days, he reminded himself that they just weren’t suited to each other, and that she felt guilty for the way it had ended.

On bad days, he remembered the way his father had laughed when he’d confirmed that Nancy had ended things, told Steve it was no great shock.

He wasn’t going to go to Eddie. 

He didn’t hate him for that rejection, but he couldn’t spend his life chasing people who were trying to run away from him. He held on and held on and in the end, all he got was this. Standing on the doorstep of a man he barely knew because even his own parents didn’t want him around. 

“El has a tendency to check in on her friends.” He explained, glancing back over his shoulder, to where El was sitting cross-legged on the couch, popping a piece of popcorn into her mouth and watching some TV drama. She was politely not noticing Steve’s presence.

He appreciated that. 

“Oh.” He paused, frowning for a moment, “Isn’t that a bit…?”

“Risky? Invasive? Weird? Yeah, kid, it is.” Hopper told him, moving back to allow Steve into their house. It was old, and kind of dingy, but Steve knew they’d found a new rental when Hopper had come back again, that they’d decided it was important to have some time living normally again, father and daughter. He felt bad interrupting that, but he was desperate. 

Still, Steve went in, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

“Hi, El.” He greeted, trying hard to sound completely normal.

“Hello, Steve.” She didn’t even look up. Steve sort of smiled at the way she didn’t seem to care much. It was endearing, in a weird way. 

“What if she sees something…?” He trailed off, not wanting to specify to Hopper what he meant. But hell, she could easily have caught him in compromising positions. He couldn’t imagine that would be any different for Nancy or Jonathan or hell, Eddie, even. Not that El knew him all that well anyway.

He blew a breath out through his nose, and Steve had the sense Hopper had asked all these same questions, maybe more than once. “Yeah, I’ve said all that. She insists she’s careful, says she doesn’t stick around more than a few seconds unless someone seems like they’re in danger.”

Steve glanced at El. How much time did that kid spend thinking about everyone else? She was, what, fourteen? At max? And she spent her whole life running around after other people… Trying to save the world. It made him deeply sad to consider, but he was sure nothing he could say to Hopper would be something he hadn’t already thought of. He wondered if Hopper wished sometimes that El hadn’t gotten her powers back.

He turned back to Hopper. “So you haven’t… tried to stop her from doing that…?”

Hopper snorted, shaking his head. He lowered his voice when he spoke again, but Steve doubted El was listening anyway. “You’ve spent enough time with these kids by now that I’m sure you know the secret. The thing all parents know. We have no damn control.”

“But I’m not a—”

“I know that, kid. But you spend your whole time runnin’ round looking after ‘em. Trying to keep ‘em safe. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Don’t think we haven’t.” It took Steve a moment to realise that Hopper meant Joyce. His brows furrowed. It really hadn’t occurred to him even a little bit that Joyce and Hopper thought about what he did with the kids. Will and El weren’t with him all that often for whatever reason, but even so, they had their own shit to worry about. 

“It’s nothing weird.” Steve said after a moment, a bit nervous of what the police chief might think. 

“I know that, Steve.” He patted him on the shoulder again. “Seen you go to crazy lengths for them, same as any of us.” Steve didn’t know what to say to that. What was he supposed to say to that?

“Listen, let’s go talk in the kitchen, yeah?” Hopper began gruffly, and Steve wondered if he struggled to talk about this stuff. He would have to do it a lot, given his job, but a teenager turning up in his living room in the middle of the night can’t have been the most normal thing he’d ever experienced. Either way, Steve followed Hopper into the kitchen. It was only separated from where El sat by a swinging door that looked like it belonged in an old timey saloon, but it gave the illusion of privacy.

Which, anyway, Steve was realising he’d never had from El.

“What’s goin’ on, kid? You’re welcome here, but I need to know more.” Hopper began, yanking out an old looking silver and red chair with a screech along the linoleum floor. 

Steve sighed, before moving to sit too, his leg bouncing uncomfortably as soon as he was situated. He fucking hated this. He didn’t talk to people about the bad parts of his life. That wasn’t something he did. It wasn’t something that he wanted to do.

“My Dad. He…” Where did he even fucking start? “He didn’t approve of who I was dating.” That was something of an understatement, and not even really what had started this particular fight, but it seemed as good a way as any to introduce the conflict to Hopper, who he’d never spoken to about any of this anymore.

“The Buckley girl?” Hopper asked instantly, leaning a little across the table like he was listening intently, with every fibre of his being. 

Steve squirmed in his seat. “Uh, no. No, not Robin.” Although, he was sure his father would give him shit about that too. He didn’t know what, but Percy Harrington always found something bad to say. “No, it’s… he…”

Hopper took a long, deep sigh that left Steve in complete silence, his eyes locked on the taller man. 

“Listen, you don’t have to tell me anything. Not if you don’t want to. But whatever you do say will stay between us. I only want to know so that I can help. That’s it.” He sounded like a cop. More like a cop than he usually did when Steve interacted with him, however briefly. But he had that particular tone of voice on, the neutral and trustworthy voice that Steve was sure was meant to put him at ease. Not that he’d ever been at ease around cops. Was anyone?

Still, it was Hopper.

The same Hopper who took El in when she had no one. Same guy who had been tortured by Russians for eight months or whatever it was while the town believed he was dead. He’d been through some shit. For them. For the town. 

Steve figured he could trust him. He had to. Not that he’d had much look with parental figures in his life.

He cleared his throat, hard. “I… can’t say who it was.” He admitted quietly, “But uh… it was… it was a he.” 

That alone was terrifying to say.

Hopper’s eyes widened a little, but he corrected quickly, returning to his same concerned but neutral expression. “Say no more.” He said with a quick nod. “And… those,” He nodded towards the black eyes Steve sported. “Those come from him?”

“One did.” Steve said after a moment, lifting his shoulders into a half hearted shrug. What else was he meant to say? His father, absolute bastard that he was, couldn’t even go for the same eye that Jason had gone for. Pair of assholes, the both of them. Robin would lose her mind if she could see him. “Other one came from a fight with some high schooler asshole that was harassing Munson.” He hoped that if he went by Eddie’s last name, then maybe Hopper wouldn’t put the obvious together. He sure as shit wasn’t trying to out Eddie without his permission. But it wasn’t out of character for Steve to get into fights to protect the people in his life. Hadn’t he turned up covered in bruises a thousand times before? It wasn’t abnormal.

If Hopper gathered anything from that, he had the sense not to comment. Instead, he nodded. “Special place in hell for any parent who hits their kid.” He said finally, “‘Specially for something stupid like that.”

The rush of relief Steve felt at his words was completely unexpected. He hadn’t realised that he cared so much. Hadn’t realised that he wanted someone to tell him it was okay. Needed someone to, maybe. 

“Now, would I be right in assuming that… well, that he has a matching face?” 

Steve hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. “Yeah.”

Hopper would undoubtedly find out either way, and it wasn’t like Steve wasn’t justified. Right? But all the police chief did was nod at that.

Steve didn’t mean to, but he found himself muttering, “Probably sue me for it too.”

Hopper didn’t seem even a tiny bit surprised by this information. Completely unphased. Maybe he knew the Harringtons better than Steve had realised. He seemed unsurprised by most of this, actually. The biggest reaction Steve had gotten was from revealing it had been over him seeing a guy, and even then, all he’d done was look mildly surprised for a split second. Either he was better at schooling his expressions than Steve realised, or he had had a genuine inkling about all of this. Maybe both.

“Technically you’re not a minor anymore, so I can’t go at him for abusing a minor, not for this. But I could go at him for other things, assault and—”

“No way to prove who swung first.” Steve interrupted with a frown, “And I also swung on a student today. I had a good reason, but his family is rich as hell too, they might come after me as well.”

Hopper sighed at that, “I’ll put the fear of god in anyone who tries to say anything about you.” It wasn’t a question, and even if Steve wanted to protest this idea, he doubted that Hopper would listen. “You’re not going to get in trouble for defending an innocent kid, and not for defending yourself against your own father either. I can promise you that. Won’t let ‘em.”

Steve wasn’t sure that he could promise that, but somehow he felt a little reassured anyway. Hopper looked tired and angry, though notably not at Steve. Thank god for that too, because Steve just wasn’t sure he could handle anyone else being angry at him today. 

“I’m sorry.” Steve said quietly, even though he really couldn’t say why he was apologising. For turning up. For causing trouble. For… existing, maybe. God, it all felt so… overwhelming sometimes. Would El go off and tell the other kids about this? About Steve rocking up with a black eye a parent gave him? The idea made him so uncomfortable he might be sick.

“Don’t be stupid, kid.” Hopper scoffed, getting to his feet and putting hot water into a rusty kettle before setting it down on the stove. Steve didn’t know if it was for him or for Hopper himself, but it didn’t matter. It broke the silence for a moment, broke the eye contact and the concerned gazes, and that was a blessing. Steve didn’t know how to be worried about. He didn’t know how to accept that. 

He frowned, “Can I… crash on the couch or something? Just for tonight, I promise and then I’ll—”

“Don’t be stupid, kid.” Hopper repeated gruffly, shaking his head like Steve had offended him in some way. Steve’s nose pinched up, and he braced himself for something bad. Got himself ready to argue back, to defend himself, to act like he didn’t care, because Steve Harrington never just took it, not from anyone, but it never came. “You’ll take my room and I’ll take the couch. Rent’s on a week by week basis, so we’ll start lookin’ for a place with three bedrooms rather than two tomorrow. I’ll go out and check out the ads in the paper first thing.”

Steve had been expecting something entirely different, but now he was just… dumbfounded. A place with three bedrooms? Was Hopper insinuating that he wanted Steve to stay there full time? That he wanted to get a second room for him? It was one thing for Hopper to have taken in El, a twelve year old kid with no one else in the world, but the adult son of one of the most reputable families in town was something else entirely, and something Steve couldn’t wrap his head around.

“You don’t have to do that, I can find my own place or—”

Hopper snorted, and it would’ve been offensive how stupid he clearly thought that statement was if Steve himself didn’t realise it was ridiculous. “You make, what, seven bucks fifty at family video? Willing to bet you spend at least half of that on those kids too. Don’t tell me I’m wrong, they’re always telling me how you drove ‘em here or there, how you gave them free ice cream or movies or somethin’ else. I’m willing to take a bet right here and now on my car that none of things are free at all. They’re coming out of your paycheck. Am I right?”

He made significantly less than that, actually, but it seemed like absolutely the wrong time to point that out when he was trying to pretend he could do any of it on his own. 

Steve didn’t answer right away, and Hopper smiled.

“I told you. I notice things, Steve.” He told him with a half smile, “So forget looking for your own place, because that’s ridiculous, and focus on getting okay. Alright? Now, I’m not telling you what to do, I’m not your Dad, but if I were you, I’d think about going back to school. Take a bridging class to get you into college, and do something you’re actually good at. Be a teacher. Be a medic. Be a goddamn stripper if you want, I don’t care, but figure out what you actually want from life and do that, because you can’t be living your entire life to take care of other people and not yourself, or you’re gonna tear yourself apart.” He scrubbed a hand down his face as he went about preparing two cups of coffee. “God, I sound like Joyce.” He grumbled to himself.

Steve really didn’t know what the fuck to say to that. It was completely surreal. Hopper was inviting him to stay. Inviting him to stay long term, to live there and study and go back to school and figure out a future for himself and… 

Steve couldn’t handle it.

“Why are you doing this?” He asked, “I’m— I’m not a kid and I have a job and you barely know me and I really don’t need you to—”

Hopper basically slapped a cup of coffee down in front of him, spilling a little on the stained table as he went. Steve wondered how often he slammed that coffee down and splashed a bit over the edges. 

“You’re not foolin’ me, Harrington.” 

Steve baulked. Fooling him? 

“You’ve got those kids convinced you’re an adult, like the rest of us. That you’re some superhero who can keep taking hits, can keep giving up everything and fighting and getting hit over and over and keep getting back up strong. But they’re kids. They don’t understand the value of money, not really. They don’t understand how taking that many hits has lasting repercussions. They don’t understand what it is to get tortured by Russian soldiers and think you’re going to die.”

Steve met Hopper’s eyes. He wondered if they were the only two people in Hawkins who could understand what that was.

“I know your secret, Steve. You’re not some superhuman. You’re not even an adult, not really. You’re a nineteen year old kid with a medical record the size of my arm and a history of being the victim of violence, both in and out of the home.”

Steve just stared. It was brutal. Completely forward, completely blunt. But when was the last time anyone referred to Steve as a kid in a way that insinuated he deserved better? When his parents called him a kid, they were telling him that he had no power, that he was stupid and useless and couldn’t have a say. But that wasn’t what Hopper was saying when he called him a kid. Steve could hear that in his voice.

“I’ve been looking into you, kiddo. Your Dad’s history of making things go away. Your Mom’s history of backing any story he presents. The amount that they travel, leaving you alone. I know the Holland girl died in your backyard. I know you were beaten by Byers in your senior year and then by Hargrove later that same year. I know you were tortured by Russians. Bitten to hell by those monsters in the Upside Down. I’ve been making note of all of it.” Steve didn’t know what to say to that, he just stared dumbly at Hopper. “Is it a coincidence that the Buckley girl walked away from that day with no physical injuries to her body, or did you volunteer?”

Steve’s eyes fell to the table, picking at the edge of the plastic covering, and he heard Hopper huff out a breath.

“You remind me a lot of me, kid.” Hopper said softly. Steve’s eyes flickered up, and Hopper was smiling at him. “And I say that as flattery to myself.” He paused, taking a sip of the coffee and breathing out like he had really needed it. “I wasn’t dissimilar to you. I was a popular kid back in the day. Popular, but stupid. At least, y’know, about my priorities. I cut classes, got caught smoking pot under the bleachers, gave my parents grief, threw big parties. Hell, even bullied some kids. I’m not proud of it, but it didn’t last. Like you, I got forced to grow up pretty fuckin’ fast.” Steve was surprised he swore, though he wasn’t sure why exactly, it wasn’t like Jim Hopper was the pinnacle of professionalism. “I got drafted, served, married young, watched my friends die, the whole nine yards. Just like you. Different kinda war, for sure, but same result. Same pain. Same… trauma.” He was gruff, speaking like it physically pained him to get the words out. Steve wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Hopper say so many words in a row before. And he wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that Hopper was like that, given his reputation around town, but it was still interesting. “You’re different though. Because you didn’t get forced into any of this. I had no choice, I was drafted. But you, you picked this. Not like the Wheeler girl, whose brother was part of it. Or Jonathan Byers, who nearly lost his little brother again and again. Not even like those other kids, whose best friends were at risk. You had no reason to stay. But here you are. Still. And I know it isn’t because of Wheeler either, don’t bullshit me.”

Steve was not planning on bullshitting him.

“I’m a lot like you, I think, which means I know what you’re probably thinking.” Steve severely doubted that. “You’re thinking I’m wrong about you. You’re thinking that it’s dumb luck. That you’re still a bad person anyway. That anyone in your position would do the same and you aren’t special.” Well, fuck him. He stood corrected. “I thought all that same shit. Still do. But you’re wrong. Not everyone would do what you did. Not even close. Not everyone would throw themselves into danger for kids they don’t even know. Not everyone would risk it all again and again, or come back even after doctors tell ‘em that they’re facing serious repercussions from head trauma.”

Steve blinked at him. “You know, looking up someone else’s medical records is a massive invasion of privacy.” Hopper barked a laugh at that, but he was still smiling even when he stopped. Smiling like was… proud or something. Of Steve? No fucking way.

“El wanted me to convince you to come sooner.” He explained, “I told her it had to be your choice.”

How had he been so completely unaware of this? Honestly, he hadn’t even been entirely sure that Hopper had known his name, let alone known so much about him. The idea of El and Hopper sitting around worrying about him was surreal. So far out of the realm of normalcy that Steve didn’t know what to do with it, not even close. 

“I don’t understand why you’re doing all this.” Steve said softly, totally nonplussed. He wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t some dream. That he hadn’t actually passed out after his Dad had clocked him.

“Because you’re a good person, kiddo. Doesn’t take a genius to see it. And because you are still a kid.” He nodded towards the coffee in front of Steve, and Steve took a swig, trying not to wince at how strong Hopper had made it. It was good, he needed it, even if he hated the taste. “Now, I mean it, you’re taking my bed till we can find another place, but we’ll start looking in the morning. When you wanna go back and get your stuff, I’ll be coming with you. No harm in them realising that there are people in this town who’ll protect you right back.” 

And really, that… that was pretty much the nicest thing another human being had ever said to Steve.

Chapter Text

“Oi, Munson.” 

Eddie wasn’t particularly looking forward to facing the repercussions of his actions yet, but he’d had a few days of peace, and he knew it was coming. 

“What, Buckley?” He asked, continuing to walk past Robin and towards his van. She didn’t talk to him much at school, not usually anyway, so this was odd. But then, he knew how protective she was of Steve. Maybe she was mad at Eddie for… what, rejecting him?

“Have you spoken to Steve in the last couple days?” 

So that wasn’t really what Eddie was expecting. He was expecting for her to… be mad at him, maybe? Have something to say about him hurting Steve, but instead, she just seemed kind of… concerned. She didn’t seem like she knew at all, actually. 

It had been a few days, nearly a week, and surely Steve would have told Robin. Didn’t they tell each other everything? Didn’t they just about share a brain?

“No?” Eddie answered instantly, brows lifting. “Aren’t you his like, fraternal twin?” He asked, “Shouldn’t you have heard from him long before me?”

She sucked in both of her lips, her eyes fixed ahead. This was the wrong answer. He’d only worried her more.

He’d made it worse. 

“He hasn’t been coming in to work.” She told Eddie with a frown.

“So?” Eddie asked, “Maybe he’s sick.”

Robin pinched the bridge of her nose, looking at Eddie like he had betrayed her by even suggesting such a thing.

“Edward Munson,” Eddie sighed at that. “You’ve met Steve, yes? You’ve seen him cop a punch right in the face and say he’s fine, right? He doesn’t do calling in sick. Like, ever.” 

Actually, she made a good point. Eddie hadn’t ever seen Steve call in sick to anything. He’d never, ever missed school (Eddie wished he couldn’t say that with confidence). He never missed sports practices. He’d never missed… anything. He’d gone into work the same day that Jason had hit him. 

“Okay, but… maybe he’s like, sneezing a ton and can’t see.”

She rolled her eyes like he was a moron. “I called his house.” She snapped. “He isn’t there. His mom said he was just out for the day, but I… I don’t believe her.”

“Okay, so…” Why was Eddie pushing this so hard? He could just say he didn’t know and be done with it, but… “So maybe he’s off with some girl. Or Nancy even.”

Robin’s look turned from unamused to outright irritated. “Hey, Munson? Cut the shit, would you? Because you might not care that something is clearly wrong here, but I do. And maybe I misjudged you, but it seems weird that you’re acting like you don’t care when you told me not that long ago that you loved him.”

It was like a slap in the face. And sure, Robin didn’t know. She didn’t understand. But Eddie did. Eddie understood why he was acting the way he was and why him loving Steve was exactly the reason he was doing this. Because sure, it might hurt Steve to lose a friend, but it wasn’t anything like signing yourself up to inevitably get your heart broken by someone you love. 

“Yeah, well. I was being dramatic, wasn’t I, Buckley? You know that’s how I am, I get dramatic about things. I was… exaggerating. Pretending to feel something for the drama.” It just didn’t even sound convincing. He only hoped it sounded better from an outside perspective. 

“What the hell is going on with you?” She snapped, her eyes searching Eddie’s face. “Did you have a fight? Is that why he’s gone radio silent and you’ve… you’re doing whatever this little routine is?”

It was insulting, but also kind of not wrong.

“Steve wouldn’t disappear because we fought.”

“So you did fight!”

“No.” Eddie snapped. “I mean… kind of. Maybe. No. It just… it’s over, y’know? This weird game thing that was going on. It’s just done… It wasn’t like he was actually into me anyway, it was all fake.” He wasn’t sure exactly which one of them he was trying to convince, but he was also pretty sure the answer was ultimately neither. Robin was looking at him like a moron.

“Where did he go, Eddie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, something happened, so you must know something.” 

There was an uncomfortable kind of weight on his chest, like someone was sitting on him while he tried to breathe. Because no, Steve was fine, obviously. Steve was fine because if Steve wasn’t fine, then it was Eddie’s fault. And Eddie refused that. Because that meant Steve cared and that meant Eddie had just fucked up royally. 

“He was at home when I last saw him. His parents got home as I left. That’s it. That’s all I know.” Eddie told her quickly, feeling oddly guilty. 

“Tell me what happened.” Robin snapped. Honestly, Eddie didn’t think Robin was a scary person. She was smart as all hell, and very capable, but she was also awkward and fidgety and like, generally a nice person. But right at that moment, she was just a little terrifying. 

Steve was very clearly her person, and Eddie could understand that. Even if he knew she would probably be mad at him about this. 

Eddie took a deep sigh, “He kissed me. Like… a different kind. The… y’know, the other kind. And I got frustrated because of… well. Anyway. I got pissed off and told him I wasn’t going to be a consolation prize and stomped off.” 

“A consolation prize?”

They stared at each other for a few long moments before Robin turned on her heel and stalked off. 

*

Steve hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. 

He’d gotten Hopper and El to agree not to mention to anyone that he was there. 

It seemed safest and frankly, he just wanted to lick his own wounds in private. It was a lot of rejection all in one go, and while Steve had come down from the extreme emotion he’d been feeling at the time it all went down, he still wasn’t feeling so great.

He probably should’ve been more upfront with his friends, explained what was going on, but he was… overwhelmed. Exhausted. He needed the break and the privacy. He needed some time to deal with all of it.

He’d called in sick to the video store, holed up in the room that had been Hopper’s and was now his, and tried to work out what he wanted. Hopper had given him good advice, and Steve was really trying to embody it. 

To figure out what he wanted from life. He found that at night, El, Hopper and him would play cards together, or watch TV. The place was small and crappy, but it was closer to a home than anything Steve had ever had. Whenever Hopper or El arrived home from being out, they’d immediately call out a hello to everyone else. Whenever someone made a hot chocolate or poured a juice, they’d call out an offer to the others. 

Hopper would announce whenever a new show or movie was starting out loud to offer Steve or El to come join in watching it. 

It was weird, the difference it all made. Being with people who… cared. Steve was still confused by it.

He knew Hopper had noticed too. 

Because Hopper was kind of… careful with him. 

When he’d ruffle El’s hair fondly or pat her on the shoulder, he did it with a kind of ease. He’d started doing it to Steve too, only with Steve, he’d hover for a moment first. Wait for a second to ensure Steve had time to process what he was doing. To make sure that Steve had time to stop it if he wanted to. 

Steve didn’t stop it. 

Actually, he found that he liked it. He found that he remembered why people liked the physical contact thing, even if he told himself that he was not one of those people. 

He was and he knew it. 

There was El, too. Steve hadn’t ever known her well, but it turned out that he really liked her. She was smart and insightful, genuinely funny. You could still tell how much she’d missed out on, but it was also clear how bright she was despite that. 

It had been a few days, and even though Steve still offered to leave and find his own way at least twice a day, he meant the offer less and less every time:

He wanted to stay. 

He felt like he was discovering something everyone else had had for ages. 

He was discovering what it might be like for someone like Jonathan, with siblings and a parent who loved him. Even Nancy, whose family he knew was complicated, but who at least had the love of her mother and Mike and Holly. Or Dustin and his mother. Or Lucas and his entire family. 

And then there was him. And Steve really hadn’t ever realised that he was missing anything there. He hadn’t really realised how abnormal his own family was. How detached they always had been and how alone Steve had been for so long.

He loved his friends. He loved all of them. Even the ones he knew didn’t love him as much. But he also knew what he was. He knew that he’d never really make amends. Knew he’d never stop hearing how much of an asshole he’d been. Knew he’d never stop hearing how stupid he was by comparison. He loved them all, but he also knew he was the least of them.

At least with El and Hopper, no one reminded him as a joke over and over. 

He made it through five whole days when that tentatively comfortable dynamic had been shattered again. 

It came in the form of Steve overhearing Robin ranting to Hopper from the inside of his new (thankfully not plaid) bedroom. 

“I just want El to find him for me! How do you know he’s not gone? Or taken? Or dead?! What if Vecna has him?! What if his father murdered him?! Because I know Mr Harrington seems to priss to murder but you haven’t seen the bedroom they put him in and if you had, you’d understand the kind of cruel and unusual punishment they’re capable of inflicting upon him! You’re a cop, for crying out loud and—“

“Robin, jesus, give it a rest.” Steve snapped, standing in the doorway. He was still wearing pajamas and he’d been doing so since his third day in the Hopper household. His hair flopped down into his eyes, unsculpted. He knew how… off he probably looked. The yellowing around his left eye was hardly noticeable (Jason hadn’t done that much damage anyway), but the faded remains of his fathers’ blow were still clear enough. They weren’t bad in any way, but anyone looking would still see.

“Steve?!” She looked like she wasn’t sure whether to hit him or hug him. Steve understood. It wasn’t like him. He didn’t dip. He never dipped. But he was with El, so he knew everyone was safe. And anyway, he just… ran out of steam. Ran out of fire.

Being a Harrington fucking sucked. 

“C’mon. Let’s talk.”

Steve didn’t talk again till Robin was sat on the bed, cross legged, staring up at him like he’d grown a second — maybe even a third — head. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been… quiet. I needed a minute.” He began, keeping his voice neutral. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so exhausted, especially with Robin. He probably loved her most in the world (barring maybe Dustin), and he had all the time in the world for her. But… 

She began instantly, a crackle of electricity in a quiet night sky. “Where’ve you been? Why didn’t you show up to work? What happened? What happened to your eye? What happened with Eddie? Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you call me?!” 

Steve simply sighed, before sitting on the ground facing the bed, looking up at Robin. 

“I needed a break.” 

“A break?! From me?! Why?!” She sounded almost hysterical. Steve felt genuinely guilty about that. He didn’t want to hurt Robin, he really didn’t. He just wanted to catch his breath away from all the people he was constantly trying to protect. And catch his breath away from the underlying reality that no matter what he did, he would never stop being King Steve to people. That people would never stop pointing out how much he had sucked before. Or how stupid he was by comparison. He didn’t want to be bullshit anymore.

“Not— not from you.” Steve said quietly, rubbing the back of his neck, eyes on the ground. “Just… from everything.”

“What did Eddie do?”

“It’s not about Eddie.” Because it wasn’t. That had hurt, for sure, but none of this was really about romance. The fundamental inadequacy that he felt right down to his bones wasn’t from Nancy or from Eddie. Not entirely at least. It came from the fact that even the people he loved thought he was a dumbass. It came from the fact that no matter what he did, he was still going to be the person who went down into the trenches first. Cannon fodder. And he was fine with that. He tried to tell himself he was fine with that.

“Then what’s it about?”

She was listening. She was listening but she looked extremely stressed. Her blue eyes were blown wide, staring at him with such intensity that he wasn’t entirely confident he wouldn’t burst into flames at any moment. 

How did he even explain? He loved Robin. And he knew Robin loved him. He knew Dustin did too. And Max, and Nancy, and all the other people he chose to think of as his family. But he also knew they looked down on him. And there was no easy way to put that into words. 

His eyes stung. Absolutely not. He was not going to do this. He was not going to cry in front of anyone. He didn’t do that. He didn’t let himself do that. Ever since he was born, he’d had the importance of appearances drilled into him. Been told how respect was everything, how nobody would respect you if they thought you were weak. He’d learned how to protect himself. He’d watched other kids cry and crumble and he’d never, ever, been the one to do it. Not where anyone could see him. Not even her.

“My parents kicked me out.”

She went to hug him, and a part of Steve wanted to accept the hug, but he couldn’t. He held up a hand to stave her off, because he couldn’t. Because he would cry then. And if he hadn’t cried in front of her when he was very nearly tortured to death, he wasn’t going to do it here either. 

“I don’t care. I really don’t. They were never a family to me anyway and Hopper— Hopper’s been really good about letting me stay here. He won’t let me give any money towards rent, but I’m going to start buying groceries or something to repay it and—”

“Steve, how did this happen? Is this because of you and Eddie?”

Steve shrugged at that, forcing out a deep, shaky breath. “There is no me and Eddie. It’s because they’re not my family. They don’t know me. They sure as hell don’t like me. My Dad… started calling me names and I threw a punch and I knew when I did it…” He sighed, trailed off. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I just needed a break. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it and I don’t need anyone’s sympathy. Right?”

Robin was still frowning at him, and that sympathy was all over her face and god fucking damn it, this was why he was hiding. 

“Is that it?” She asked softly, “Is it just your parents or… is something else going on? Because you’ve… like, always hated your parents, but this kind of feels like something else…?”

Steve really was trying. But he really couldn’t find the right words. 

“I’m just… tired of being… this.” He said softly, and he knew in his heart that there wasn’t anyone on the planet he could even begin to say this to besides Robin. “I’m tired of trying to… to make amends all the time. I’m tired of… being told what a douchebag I am. I’m tired of people acting like I’m a moron or— or morally… bankrupt or something. I’m just… I’m sick of it. And it’s fine, y’know, because I am a douchebag, and I am a moron, I’m just… it’s just…” 

He had no time to push her away this time, her arms were around him in a second, and he could tell by the lock she had on him that he wasn’t getting away without an actual fight. Which, frankly, he didn’t have in him. Any fight he’d had left felt like it was being drained away.

He was reminded of his Mom. Of how affection from her always meant guilt. It always meant caving. It always meant folding himself into the shape they wanted him to be, apologising for not being the person that they wanted him to be. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t like that with Robin. That she wasn’t going to turn this on him. That she wasn’t going to tell him it was his fault. She wouldn’t make him feel worse. Wouldn’t tell him that if he was just the person she wanted him to be then he wouldn’t feel this way… He tried to tell himself he was safe.

But he didn’t feel it. He felt… so vulnerable and fragile. He felt like one well aimed blow would shatter him into a thousand irreparable pieces. 

All of a sudden, it felt like maybe he’d been glueing pieces back into place for a very long time.

“I’m sorry.” 

Steve wasn’t expecting that. He wasn’t expecting an apology because no one ever apologised to him. Because that affection he got from his mother was weaponised, not apologetic. 

“For what?” He asked. He tried to lift his head, but Robin basically had him in a hug headlock, and she wasn’t letting go.

“Because you’re not a moron and you’re not a douchebag and you don’t have anything to make amends for and I hate that I’ve made you feel like that. I know— I know I can be mean and prickly sometimes but it’s a defence mechanism and I— I never realised it was hurting you but you always seemed so— so confident. I didn’t think it bothered you, I didn’t realise—“

Steve cut her off, shaking his head again though he couldn’t sit up straight because she was still holding onto him. 

“Robin, you didn’t—“

“I know I’ve made bad jokes, I know I’m— I know I’m not a perfect friend but I don’t— I don’t think you’re stupid and—“

“Are you crying?” 

Steve tried to wriggle his way out of her grip so that he could look at her, but she still wasn’t letting go. 

“I just didn’t— I didn’t even think about how I might be hurting your feelings and—“

He managed to pull himself free, sitting opposite her with pink cheeks and slightly red eyes. She actually was crying, and her eyes looked huge when they were welling with tears. He felt a pang of guilt for causing that to happen, for making her cry. He wanted to fix it, to stop it. He had never meant for his sharing to make things worse for her, but… 

“Robin, hey, it’s okay.” He grabbed for her hands, clenching them in his own. “I’m sorry, it’s— I shouldn’t have brought any of this up, I really shouldn’t have—“

“No.” She cut him off, shaking her head. “No, I’m so glad you told me, Steve.” She squeezed his hands back, staring at him with all this emotion and intensity that Steve didn’t know how to read or handle. “Because I haven’t been good enough. I haven’t been a good enough friend in that way. I should’ve realised and I didn’t.” Her voice was small and her eyes were on him. “You’re smart! You are! In a different way to say, Dustin, but you are smart. You’re practical and brave and fantastic with the kids and I just… I love you so much. I made a shitload of assumptions about you when we first met and I was trying to protect myself because I still saw you as King Steve, but you’re not. You’re not and I didn’t even really know you before that, but the person I know now? You’re my favourite person, Steve. You’re my best friend.”

His chest felt like it was on fire. He felt like he was falling apart. He felt like crying and he hated it and he hated feeling weak but maybe shedding what his parents had taught him was good. Maybe it was necessary. Maybe if there was anywhere in the world he was safe to show the cracks in his armour, it was here. With her. 

“You’re my best friend.” He answered, voice quiet and tearful. 

“Tell me more about what happened.” She said softly, squeezing his hands tight. 

For the first time in a long time, he really wanted someone to understand.

Chapter Text

It had been nearly two weeks since Eddie had stopped going round to see Steve or Robin. He’d cut the kids off when they asked about it, insisted on returning to their game. 

He didn’t talk to his friends when they asked either, save for telling PJ that it wasn’t Steve’s fault when he assumed that Steve had done something awful. 

In short, he’d returned to life pre the Worst Days of His Life. 

It should be easier. No more of Harrington’s stupid parents. Jason Carver had been leaving him alone for the most part. People still avoided him, but it wasn’t that different, really.

He still had the kids. Now even Will had joined them too. 

Problem was… it sucked. 

It should have been way better, way easier, but he couldn’t un-know what he knew. He tried to go back to hating all jocks and cheerleaders and popular kids and all their stupid, conformist shit, but… 

But it was too late, actually.

Because Steve, the jock he’d once loathed so much, was a guy with permanent brain damage from defending kids and being tortured. 

Because Nancy, the most pristine girl in their school, owned several guns and knew how to use them. She was tough and strong and not even half the priss he thought she was.

Because Robin, who was in band and got perfect grades, was the sort of person who’d walked right into all this danger with no obligation because her best friend did too. 

He was wrong. 

Loathe though he was to admit it, Eddie was wrong.

And if he was wrong about that, he could be wrong about anything.

He tried again and again to tell himself that maybe he was wrong about Steve liking him — actually liking him — but some part of him just wouldn’t let him believe it.

He couldn’t go back to not knowing what he knew and that included the asshole villain of his high school fantasies being a genuinely good person. It included Nancy Wheeler, who he’d once loathed on principle, being a badass. 

So, okay, it had been two weeks since Eddie had seen or heard from Steve, Robin or Nancy and he was going a bit stir crazy. 

He’d been so careful at first: cold turkey, he couldn’t go running back if he didn’t see or hear from or even acknowledge the existence of Harrington. 

For maybe the first week he’d been resolute.

For the second week, though, he’d been forcing himself. Reminding himself constantly why he was separating himself from his new monster hunter friends. It wasn’t even just the Steve in the room, he missed the other two as well.

But Robin and Nancy were both ignoring him just as resolutely as he was ignoring them when they ran into each other at school. 

You could easily believe they’d never known each other at all. 

Except that they had. They had and Eddie knew too much to go back and it was shit. It was shit how much he missed these people he’d only known for such a short period of time. 

The first person he broke the silence to was Dustin, of all people. 

“So…” Eddie tapped awkwardly against the lunch table, leaning in closer so he wouldn’t be overheard amongst the chaos of the other boys eating lunch. “How’s Harrington?”

Dustin had given him an incredulous sort of look. “Ask him yourself.” 

Eddie had just sort of pouted back at him. Because that answered nothing. It didn’t even confirm whether Dustin knew what had gone down between them, because he’d have been just as dismissive if he thought they were together as if he he was mad at Eddie for breaking things off with Steve.

Not that there was anything to break off, not really. 

His next attempt had been El. That one was more by sheer happenstance than anything else.

Max and El were sitting with them during Hellfire, not playing, but hanging around anyway. 

He’d found a moment to talk to just her. Orchestrated one, really. 

“So, uh… you see much of Steve, Robin and Nancy?”

She gave him her usual mortifyingly unamused look. 

“I go to school with Nancy and Robin. I see them every day.”

She was so literal, and he hadn’t even gotten the answer he actually wanted. Frankly, he could bang his head against a table. 

The third and final time was the time he had gotten the most desperate.

It was pathetic and he knew it, but after just over two weeks, he’d given up. 

He jogged to catch up with Nancy on the way to the bus, falling into step beside her. 

“Hey, Wheeler.” He tried really hard to sound casual. Like he hadn’t gone from totally icing them all to actively trying to catch up with a girl he had very little in common with. 

She glanced up at him, and he could see it in her eyes. She was judging him. She knew. What she knew, Eddie didn’t know, but she knew. 

“Eddie.” She answered politely, still walking quickly. 

“You know, you don’t have to get the bus, I could just drive you home.” He offered, trying hard to act like everything was totally and completely normal between them. 

She wasn’t buying it. Nancy’s eyes flickered up to him and she stopped walking, looking irritated. “What do you want, Eddie?”

What did he want? To go back to before he’d walked out on Steve? To before he’d been a shithead to Robin? Both. Definitely both. But he’d settle for something smaller. 

“I just… I miss you guys.” 

She rolled her eyes up at him, shaking her head. “Where’s the van?”

Eddie blinked a few times, but pointed towards it, jogging again to catch up as she sped up off in the other direction. 

When they were safely inside the van, Nancy rounded on him once more. 

“What do you actually want, Eddie? Because you upset Robin and Steve, so you’ve upset me.” There was something sweet about that, and if he wasn’t so busy being pissed at himself about that, he might think it was cute that she’d said that to him at all. That she was so visibly, outwardly protective of these two people that were so completely different from her in every way. 

“I just…” He took a deep breath, trying for honesty. “I… don’t like not being a part of their lives.” He said the words slowly, trying to figure out where he was going as he went there. “I want to make sure they’re okay. Neither of them are speaking to me, but Robin told me she couldn’t find Steve and the kids aren’t giving me proper answers and I just… I just want to know he’s okay.”

That did not placate her, clearly. “Robin asked for your help and you told her you didn’t care where he was.” She answered, voice flat and annoyed. 

He frowned at her, “How much do you… know anyway?” He asked, suddenly wondering if he might be about to accidentally out Steve to his ex-girlfriend, something he had no intention of doing. 

She scoffed, “Well, one day everything was fine, then my little brother mentioned you and Steve were dating, then all of a sudden Steve’s going all hermit and refusing to speak to anyone and Robin’s freaking out because her best friend has gone ghost.” She told him, her tone completely detached. “Don’t know the circumstances. I’m not sure whether Robin does or not because we both know she wouldn’t betray Steve’s trust anyway.”

Eddie swallowed. Right. So pretty much what he knew, except that he knew exactly what he’d done to cause this.

“I panicked.” He told her slowly. “I panicked and I pushed him away because I thought it would be easier than waiting for him to lose interest.”

Nancy sighed, but finally looked at him properly. Like he was her friend too and not just a mutual acquaintance she didn’t want to deal with right then and there. 

“Okay, tell me exactly what actually happened or I’m not helping you.”

He didn’t want to do that, but it was a fair enough request. And as tough as Nancy Wheeler was, Eddie knew no one was more protective of Steve Harrington than Robin Buckley. He wasn’t typically scared of Robin in any capacity, but if she was going to kill him, it would be because of how he’d handled this shit. 

“We fake dated. Steve asked me to fake date him to piss off his parents and like, make a point or whatever. His parents, by the way, fucking suck.” She gave him a look — she already knew — so he pressed on. “Except, like, I’m not pleased about it, because… well, y’know, but Steve’s… very different than what I’d expected. Even after the Upside Down, y’know. ‘Cause like, self-sacrificing hero boy with the hair and the arms, y’know? I thought he’d be like… okay, maybe a nice person, but like, super into himself.”

Nancy’s brows lifted delicately at him. He took it as a sign to hurry up with the story.

“We… spent more time together. He met my band, he made me run the fuckin’ mile, he got into a fight with Carver and… and then he tried to kiss me. Properly, y’know. Really kiss me.” He chewed on the end of his hair, wishing the ground would swallow him up before he had to get to the part of the story that really made him feel like an asshole. “I went off at him. Told him to stop acting like we were in love and… that I didn’t want to do it anymore. That I didn’t want to be his consolation. I stormed off and then… well, that’s it, really. You’re up to date on my idiocy.” 

Nancy took a long, deep sigh, so aggravated that Eddie truly thought a stranger might think Eddie had just told her that he kicked her puppy. 

Time seemed to stretch on around them, kids yelling as they walked to their cars or buses, the car park slowly emptying. Nancy said nothing.

It felt rather like time had simply stopped. Eddie wondered just how fatal his own stupidity really was. In what universe, in what actual realm of the world, was Eddie fucking Munson having to explain to Nancy fucking Wheeler how he rejected Steve fucking Harrington. 

It was too stupid to be real. Too fucking unreasonable. Because there was no universe, no reality, no actual logical timeline in which Steve Harrington wanted him. 

Wasn’t that always the fear?

Hadn’t Eddie spent the last six odd years crushing on Steve Harrington and lying to himself about it because he knew how stupid and unrealistic it was? 

“When Steve and I were still dating,” Nancy began and Eddie wrinkled his nose. The idea of the two of them together still annoyed him, even if he knew he had no damn right to be annoyed. “We went to this party. My best friend was dead and he had given up his throne and… it was a really weird time. For us both. I don’t think either of us knew who to be. In hindsight, I understand what he was trying to do by taking me there. One of the many ways we weren’t suited to each other, but… I understand it now.”

She paused, chewing on her lip for a long moment. Eddie tried not to stare. He wanted more information desperately, but he had a tendency to be a little… too intense. 

“Okay?” Eddie prompted, basically bouncing in his seat in anticipation of whatever Nancy was deigning to tell him when she hadn’t even been speaking to him five minutes before.

“I got really drunk. He was trying to stop me getting too drunk. Alcohol was spilled and… it took a long time for the memories to really come back. I remembered that we fought. I remembered that Steve asked Jonathan to take me home… But I remember it all now. And the aftermath of it. I was drunk and angry and trying to get punch out of my white cardigan. He was… fumbling through my grief. We were both too damn young for those feelings and…” She shook her head. “I feel a lot of guilt over what I said. I told him that he was bullshit. Everything about him. That our… relationship was bullshit. I told him we were pretending to be in love.”

It hit Eddie like a brick to the face. A wave of ice cold washing right through him. Now that she’d said it, he understood. He understood so much more. Now that she’d said it, the memory of Steve’s face when he’d said it came into sharp focus.

Stop kissing me like we’re in love.

He could see it. The ghost of it passing over Steve’s features and colouring his reaction and… God, he had just left. He’d walked out and left and…

“It got worse after that. Before it got better. Before we became… friends. Whatever we are now. I know that there’s a… distance between him and I. I think it’ll always be there. I think maybe I…” She trailed off, and Eddie couldn’t help but wonder just how smart Nancy Wheeler truly was. 

Because sure, what she’d said was mean. It was immature and irrational and biting. But she was a kid. And so was he. And it would be so easy for Steve and Nancy to hate each other. To see nothing but bad endings and blood and the worst case scenario.

It was actually kind of remarkable they were still… friends. 

It felt like something deeper. Not anything romantic, he saw that now, but something deeper than friends too. Like they were permanently wound together in a way. 

Maybe nearly dying together did that to people.

Maybe they were all tied together in some horrific, unbreakable way.

Maybe that was the beauty and the pain of what they did. There would be no forgetting. 

“So what you’re saying is that I fucked up so royally that rolling a D-20 in everything wouldn’t save me?” He asked, a little glum.

She sighed. Eddie was expecting her to ask what that meant but… “I’m saying you better come up with a really good way to make it better.”

So Nancy knew DnD. Add that to the long list of things he was still processing about her.

He drove Nancy home because he felt he owed her that much, and she told him on her way out that she thought if he wanted a shot at making all this work, he needed to simply accept that who he was before all this didn’t matter anymore. The Freak, she told him, was irrelevant. Because life had evolved past high school and name-calling and popularity. Because they’d watched friends die and people who should be enemies save the world. They’d watched everything that should be rational and logical unravel. It didn’t matter, she told him, as long as he found a way to live with the bad.

He tried to make sense of her advice and what it meant in relation to his situation and… he thought he knew.

He had to reconstruct his image of Steve Harrington.

Since he was thirteen years old, he’d had Harrington somewhere between a pedestal and a burrow. Simultaneously held to a far higher standard, but with a presumed low worth. Eddie both treated him like he was something more than a regular person and like he was scum. 

He was learning, finally, that that had very little to do with Steve himself and everything to do with what Steve represented.

So he began constructing a new list of who King Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington was.

Starting from the very beginning.

Steve Harrington was the kid who’d stopped Tommy Hagan from bullying him when he was twelve.

He was the teenager who’d ignored anyone beneath his station.

He was the guy who’d laugh at Hagan and Carol’s bullshit antics, but never engage with them.

He was the guy who bought weed from Eddie when he was fifteen.

He was the guy who kept turning up to school with black eyes.

The guy who abandoned his station and started sitting alone, even copping bullying from his former friends.

The guy who adopted a group of kids he had no relation to, after he and Nancy had broken up. (It was easy for Eddie to relate to the loser kids, he was the loser kid, but Steve? He’d abandoned all his own regular status in high school and become best friends with a twelve year old smartass.)

The guy who jumped in the lake first.

The guy who poked him with an oar.

The guy who bit into a bat and spat out its blood.

The guy who convinced his parents to advocate for Eddie.

The guy who wanted so badly to learn all his friends names.

The guy who kept telling Eddie that he genuinely liked him, that it was never some game and it wasn’t unrealistic.

And… fuck, Eddie was a fucking idiot.

Steve had been showing him all along who he was and Eddie had been so caught up in high school and in his own fear of abandonment and ostracisation that he’d refused to see it.

He’d been so scared of Steve seeing him as a high school loser that he hadn’t considered the way he was still seeing Steve as a high school bully. 

He went to Steve’s house next, figuring it was time, 

Knocking on the door had been bold anyway, but it being answered by Steve’s mother? An unfortunate event, to be sure, 

“Mr Munson. To what do we owe this pleasure?”

Eddie really, really hated Lorraine Harrington. She was so sanitised all the time. So careful and controlled. It was nothing like Steve, with his hands on his hips, wearing muddy clothing, lecturing the thousands of teens he’d decided to protect with his life.

It was perfectly clear that Lorraine Harrington lived for Lorraine Harrington. He was sure even Percy was expendable. 

“I’m looking for Stevie-boy, care to help a guy out?” He kept a smirk firmly on his face because yeah, fuck these people, and fuck the way Steve’s parents treated him. 

Lorraine surveilled him with the cold, calculating gaze of a woman who might literally be contemplating murder. It would make their family famous, that was for sure. 

“Mm— Since when do you not know where Steven is?” She asked, measured. Eddie thought she may be trying to gauge what Eddie thought. Or even, in fact, what Eddie knew. 

He had no especially witty answer (god forbid). 

“As much as I do always love our playful back-and-forth, Lorraine, I’m really only here to see the best looking Harrington, thank you.” Eddie was getting more and more irritated as the day wore on, only partly because he was realising the giant whopping mistake he’d made.

The same mistake he’d hated others for for years. He’d always thought it was so stupid, the way everyone fawned all over Steve like he was more spectacle than man. But hadn’t he done it too? Hadn’t he gotten so caught up in the belief that the Steve Harrington couldn’t want him back that he’d just… done the same shit everyone else did? 

He’d been so convinced that Steve was some otherworldly thing, too good for him, that he hadn’t seen what was right in front of him. And maybe Steve was too good for him, but he had wanted Eddie. And Eddie had been too stupid to take that for what it was. Too stupid to believe him. 

Too scared to not be enough. Maybe they both were. Wasn’t that a kicker?

“Let me give you some advice, counsel to client, Mr Munson. This rebellious streak that my son is on is going to end one of two ways. The first option is this: Steven will wake up and come to his senses. He’ll reintegrate himself into the life he had and take a job working for his father; eventually take over the family business. I would have preferred him to follow my footsteps, but he’s never been bright enough for that. Takes after his father.” It made total sense that Steve was the way he was. That popularity had done nothing to curb the obvious self-esteem issues he had. “He’ll marry a nice girl, live a good life, and you will be the punchline of a joke he tells when he has a little too much to drink after work.”

Eddie told himself that Steve’s mother was being cruel. That she was being manipulative. That she was trying to get into his head. She certainly had clocked him though, poking all the right insecurities. But no. Eddie wasn’t going to believe the voice in his head. He wasn’t going to believe the voice in Steve’s either. It was apparent the extent to which Steve’s mother was the cruel voice in his head. His father too, probably. Eddie could relate to that.

“The second option… is that Steven truly has gone off the deep end. That he truly has allowed himself to give up the hope and the future that he had in favour of being… well, for lack of a better term, a voluntary pariah. In which case, my advice to you is simple. Run away. You have a chance at a normal life if you get out of Hawkins and away from people who remember the story of the supposed Munson Murders. If you stay here, you go down with him. You’re still my client. I advise you to stay far away from anyone who will drag you down with them, and if my son doesn’t come home, he’s just another sinking ship.”

Chapter Text

So Eddie had pissed off Nancy, Robin and Steve and he also had no choice but to be Lorraine Harrington’s worst enemy until the end of time. 

Even after he left the Harrington residence, the ringing of her words was stuck in his ears. He’s just another sinking ship. 

Who said shit like that about their own son? And about Steve, no less? Eddie couldn’t even fathom knowing so little about your son as to think one of the most genuinely kind people he’d ever met was actually a sinking ship. 

Which, frankly, left him with what he saw to be the most dangerous option at getting to Steve.

Robin. 

She’d definitely know by now where Steve was, but she’d also probably be ready to lash out significantly harder than Nancy had. Which meant that if Eddie wanted a shot here, he’d need to be ready to dramatically fall on his sword. Which, really, he could totally do. 

Dramatics were his thing, and he figured he probably owed Steve some of them in his favour. 

Ever since he’d spoken to Nancy, he kept on thinking about Steve’s face when Eddie had told him to stop kissing him like they were in love. He felt like there was a whole new horrible context to what he’d seen. To what he’d done. And though he’d had absolutely no idea of what he’d done, he had still done it, no doubt about that. 

Anyway, he figured maybe Steve needed it right back. A big gesture or something. That maybe he’d had enough of assholes acting like he wasn’t worth their time or energy. He could fucking picture Steve’s calculating mother and the look on her face as he’d walked away. 

After she’d told him Steve was a sinking ship, he’d just turned to leave. He’d just… figured there was nothing to be gained. But he had seen it on her face. The satisfaction. The desire to push him further away. To get into his head. Maybe she thought she’d done a good job. That she’d have hit all the right notes to scare Eddie away from all of it. If she did, she had no idea who she was up against, because all she’d done was solidify in Eddie’s mind that Steve deserved a bit of kindness. Direct kindness. The actual words. 

If anything, he found that he’d never wanted to fix things with Steve more.

When Robin poked her head out the window, she looked like she might be about to smack Eddie. This was exactly why he’d gone straight to her window. Sure, rocks on a window was a bit of a cliche, but she’d ignore him if he rang the bell. She’d be too scared about the fate of her window to ignore him that way. 

“Go away, Munson.”

He shook his head, “Sorry, Buckley, can’t do that.” He answered immediately, “I’ve gone on the world’s worst quest trying to figure out where the hell Steve is today and at this point, if you don’t give me a real answer, I’m going to start going door to door.”

She rolled her eyes. “Wait there.” 

In the minutes that passed between her leaving her window and her arriving in her front yard to talk to him, Eddie wondered if she actually was coming downstairs so that she could yell at him more effectively. If that was the case, well… he’d cop it if he had to. He was hoping it was going to be more of a stern talking to where he could explain more effectively what he was trying to do here.

“C’mon, Munson, haven’t you dicked him around enough? Whatever it is I said that made you think I’d still want to be best buddies after that shit you pulled last time, please know that it was absolutely accidental. I’m thoroughly not willing to ignore this.” Her voice was sharp, blue eyes fixed on him with a kind of intensity that had him wondering if she was Medusa in a past life. At least he thought he’d have made a cool lawn ornament. 

“C’mon, Rob, we both know—”

“Don’t call me that.” 

He sighed deeply, “We both know I lashed out because I was scared, that I didn’t mean it and—”

“Yeah, Eddie,” She snapped, “Yeah. I do know. I know now and I knew then. You got scared of being rejected so you rejected him first. I’m not actually a moron, it was fairly obvious.” Her hands rested on her hips, and Eddie wondered if she and Steve were starting to do that thing best friends did where they picked up each others’ mannerisms. Like with Nancy earlier, he found himself thinking it would be cute if they weren’t angry with him. “Problem is, I don’t care. I don’t care that your feelings were at risk or whatever, because so were his. He was the one putting himself out there, Munson. You get that, right? Because you might have hit on him first when he helped paint your trailer a couple weeks ago, but everything since has been him. It was him who asked you to help him out. He told you outright that he asked you because he felt safe with you. It was him who kept reminding you that he liked you and wasn’t using you — I was there, I saw that part with my own eyes. It was him who turned up to run the mile. Who defended you from Carver… And then when it was him who took the risk by trying to make things a little more real, you ran away.” Her eyes were huge, and Eddie thought there must be some right answer that he was supposed to say, but he had no idea what it was. 

“I know.”

What else was there?

“You know?” She asked again. Demanded, really. “You know, do you? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Munson, I don’t think you know shit about him. I don’t think you understand him at all, because if you did, you wouldn’t have done that shit.” 

“I know.” He repeated again, and he tried not to sound annoyed, because he wasn’t. Not at her, anyway. At himself, maybe. She was right. Honestly, he didn’t want to hear it, but he knew she had every right to be mad. “You’re right.” He told her with a slow shrug. “I protected myself at the cost of his feelings and it was shitty. It was shitty and bad and I regret it. But I want a chance to at least say sorry for doing it. I just… I don’t want him to go on believing I just wasn’t interested or something, because he really doesn’t deserve that.” His voice was soft, and he was really hoping that Robin could see in his face how serious he was.

“Nancy told me you spoke to her.” She told him flatly.

“Then you already knew why I did what I did?” He asked.

Robin simply nodded, “Mm, I know. And I don’t care. I don’t care that it scared you because… shit, Eddie…” She ran a hand through her hair, chewing at her lip like she was trying to figure out what to say. “Because he got kicked out. Right after you kicked him right in the trauma.” 

Eddie’s eyes widened, his mouth dropping open. 

“Wait, what? He got— he got kicked out? His Mom didn’t—”

“You went to see his Mom? Why the fuck did you do that?” She snapped.

“Because no one else seemed to know where he was and I thought— I didn’t know if—” 

“You didn’t want to ask me.” It was less of a snap and more of a grumble this time. Almost like acquiescing. Like she understood why he had made that choice.

“Honestly, I thought I might get more out of her than you… I knew she was an icy snake lady, but I thought maybe…”

Robin smiled a little, but it was immeasurably sad. “You thought maybe she was an icy snake lady who did actually love her son?” She asked. Eddie nodded. “Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to be parents at all.” She said softly. Eddie was sort of glad to hear her say it. Because Eddie felt so much anger for the things he’d heard Lorraine Harrington say. He couldn’t help wondering since what it was that his uncle knew that made him reach out to Steve the way he had. He said he’d had dealings with Percy Harrington in business. What had he done to let Wayne know that Steve might need an out? 

He nodded slowly, “For the life of me, I cannot figure out how those two krakens managed to produce him.”

She shrugged, “He’s good despite them, not because of them.”

And didn’t that just completely summarise it. It made him really fucking sad, but it was also a testament to Steve. To who he’d chosen to be. Eddie thought it was maybe the most lovable thing about him. 

“He’s with Hopper.” 

Eddie looked up, genuinely shocked that Robin had given him that information at all.

“I’m not telling you because you deserve to see him. I’m telling you because he deserves to know people love him.” Once again, Eddie was left dealing with how… genuinely sweet their friendship was. How much they loved each other. He wondered if Steve actually did have any idea how much they loved him? All of them? “Listen, I… probably shouldn’t tell you this, okay? But I am, because I’m concerned about him. But he’s, y’know, he’s better. Since he’s been with El and Hopper, he is better. But he’s been in his head a lot about feeling like… well, like he’s never going to be enough to make up for who he was in high school, y’know?”

Eddie frowned. He’d contributed to that, he knew he had. He was such an asshole. 

“Can I get Hopper’s address from you?” He asked softly, glad Robin had taken some pity on him. “For whatever it’s worth, I really… I really am sorry, y’know? Didn’t you ever… I mean, didn’t you ever look at Nancy and Steve and wonder how the hell you got there? Like, you’re… you’re more like me, right? We’re… losers. We’re not them. It’s hard to believe it’s not all some big joke or…”

She gave him another long, hard-to-read stare. “Yeah.” She nodded, “When I first met Steve, we got along right away, but I was always… trying to put him in his place. Like I was trying to defend from an attack. It took me a really long time to realise that the attack wasn’t actually coming.” She paused, “That the only one attacking was me.” She wet her lips. “Don’t do it again.”

That was enough of a threat for him, he wasn’t planning to.

He was full steam ahead on driving to Hopper’s place until he actually pulled up out front of the old house that Robin had given him directions to. Because then it occurred to him that he hadn’t actually planned what he’d wanted to say. Not even a little bit. 

Also that he was wearing his dumbass ripped jeans and Hellfire shirt. To knock on the Sheriff’s door. The sheriff who very likely knew he was a drug dealer. And also… had taken in someone Eddie had pissed off. Did that mean the sheriff was also pissed off with him? Because Eddie didn’t usually deal well with being around cops even when he wasn’t trying to date their new… wards? 

What the hell did he say if Hopper opened the door? What if Hopper opened the door and told him to get lost? He simply didn’t have the time or the energy to be held back by it and yet… It took him a solid three laps of his car before he walked to the front door and actually managed to knock. 

“Munson.” The door swung open and Hopper was just as huge and generally unamused looking as ever. Eddie wasn’t exactly short, but Hopper was taller. And just generally wider. And also had a gun. 

“Um… Hi, sir. Chief. Sheriff… Policeman…?” He should know this by now, right? He’d only lived in Hawkins his entire fucking life. 

Hopper just stared down at him, unmoving. He didn’t let Eddie pass. Eddie couldn’t blame him, but he could be massively uncomfortable about it. 

“What’d’you want, kid?” His voice was gruff. And deep. Why was it so deep? Why had Steve chosen the fucking police chief to live with anyway? God, Eddie was not equipped for this. 

“I’m, uh, I’m looking for Steve.” Eddie managed to get out. 

Hopper didn’t quit his staring.

“Does he know you’re comin’?”

“Mm.” The grumbled response didn’t fill Eddie with confidence, nor did the door closing in his face again. He assumed that that meant he was going to get Steve, but he could just as easily have decided Eddie wasn’t coming in at all. 

How long did he stand there at the door before it was weird anyway?

Long moments stretched into minutes and Eddie bounced awkwardly on his heels, wondering if this was some kind of a test.

Eventually, the door opened back up again. It was still Hopper.

“Says you can go see him.” He answered grumpily, like maybe part of him hoped Eddie wasn’t going to still be there when he opened the door. “Don’t give my kids drugs.” He basically grunted that part, and if Eddie weren’t so busy noticing the plural, he might panic that Hopper knew he sold drugs. 

Instead, he was busy catching up on kids. My kids. 

Steve had been with him all of two weeks if Robin’s timeline was right, and he was already calling Steve his kid? Eddie smiled. Hatred of cops or no, Steve deserved someone who loved him that way. Someone who wanted to protect him. Even if they were trying to protect him from Eddie himself. 

Eddie started to walk by, but Hopper’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. 

“Do I even need to say it?” Hopper asked, and his tone told Eddie everything he needed to know. Steve had a new protector alright, and one who seemed very unsure of Eddie. He’d be offended, but he’d earned it, and anyway, it was time someone acted like Steve was something to be protected. 

“No, sir.” Eddie answered dutifully, eyes up on the tired looking man. 

“Not gonna break my boy’s heart?”

“No, sir.” Eddie answered again, a little heartened by the way Hopper spoke of him. Let Hopper be suspicious of him. Eddie would win him over eventually. And in the meantime, it was just nice to know Steve hadn’t been alone since he’d left the Harrington House. 

“Go on then.” He nodded Eddie on by, and Eddie followed the line of the house down the hallway to an open door, where a light was on and soft music played.

ABBA. 

“Steve…?” 

Steve was sprawled out on the bed in the centre of the room, laying on his stomach, arms curled under his pillow. 

Eddie couldn’t immediately see his face, but he’d know that back and those constellations of moles anywhere. 

He wore grey sweatpants and no shirt, and his hair was flicked back in a way that suggested no effort at all, when Eddie knew that couldn’t be the case. No one’s hair was naturally that nice. No one. 

“Why’re you here, Eddie?” 

He didn’t sound… receptive. He sounded tired and bored and something else Eddie didn’t have a word for. He didn’t turn to look, and Eddie ventured another step into the house. 

“To talk. I’ve been making the rounds trying to find you.” He admitted, sounding a little sheepish. 

“Yeah, well. Here I am. Didn’t know where else to go, so…” Eddie pondered Steve’s statement. Surely there was Robin or Nancy or one of the kids or… 

“I thought Wayne told you—“

He cut himself off, realising the obvious.

“You made it pretty clear you wanted to see a lot less of me.” He didn’t sound sad or hurt, he sounded bored. Steve knew better. Robin, Nancy, even Hopper… they wouldn’t be trying to protect Steve from him if Eddie hadn’t really hurt him. 

“I’m a fuckin’ idiot, ask anyone. That’s why I’ve failed school so many times.” Eddie wanted Steve to laugh. He said it as a joke. But it settled in the air like a lead balloon, and Eddie had no idea how to thaw the ice that had settled between them in the air. “I’m chicken shit, is the thing.”

Steve didn’t turn, but he did scoff. A scoff was close to a laugh, right? 

“I’m an absolute coward. I run, y’know? Away from my problems. Ran away from my Dad back in the day. Ran from my fear of the future. From Chrissy. From you. I run. It’s what I do.”

There was another long silence, but Eddie waited. Steve would have something to say. He just felt sure. 

“I thought you failed school all these years because you didn’t run.”

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “I failed all these years because failing by choice was easier than failing because I wasn’t good enough even when I really did try.”

Steve turned back to look at him. Finally, finally, and Eddie could kiss him. If he didn’t think Steve might throw him out for it, that was. 

“See, I’m absolute chicken shit. Terrified of not being good enough. Of not passing when I really do try. Of being rejected by someone I really care about. Of being seen as just myself and that not being right.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I was scared that if I dropped my ‘freak’ thing, that if I really opened up and let myself just… be happy… then I’d lose everything. I was scared that if I left you kiss me… really kiss me, then… it’d break my heart when you eventually realised I wasn’t actually worth it.”

Steve stared blankly at him.  

“I talked to Nancy. And your Mom. And Robin. And… a little bit of Hopper.” 

He looked horrified. “You… why would you talk to my Mom?” He asked. Eddie had suspected that one may not go over as well. That was a risk he had foreseen. 

“I was looking for you. She really sucks, y’know?” 

Steve glared again.

“But you know, for the life of me, I just can’t figure it out.” He paused, moving to sit on the side of Steve’s bed. “How two such awful fucking people managed to raise you.” He paused, “But y’know, it’s interesting. Because the two of them, they’re nothing like you. Nothing at all. I mean, your Mom is made of heat seeking missiles trying to target any insecurity. And your Dad is all ego and reputation and bullshit. And it’s weird as hell, y’know, because I always thought the perfect popular kids must have perfectly loyal parents. And every time I met them and they were assholes I kept… I kept thinking it must just be me or something.” 

Steve just sighed, “Listen, what you’re trying to do right now, it’s nice, but it’s really unnecessary, alright? What happened with my parents had nothing to do with you, not really. It's a me thing and the last thing I need is pity from you too.” 

Of course Steve would assume it was pity. Eddie would too, if roles were reversed.

“No, no, it’s not— that’s not what this is. I’ve been looking for you, before I knew about your parents at all. I was… looking for you.” 

He moved forward, hands raised a little in a kind of surrender. He wanted Steve to know he wasn’t meaning any harm, which seemed silly, but even emotional harm was something he’d already done to Steve. He sat beside him on the bed, a little stiff and awkward. 

Steve shifted to sit as well, legs folded in front of himself. 

“Listen, I… I’m about to have a monologue here and I need you to just… let me, okay? Just let me get what I have to say out. Is that okay?”

Steve’s nose wrinkled, but he agreed, and Eddie wound himself up to say all the things he had been too afraid to. 

“Your parents fucking suck. I mean, I know you know that, but just… my parents weren’t anything like yours, but they weren’t good either. I know what it does to hear that bullshit day in and day out. I want to tell you how I feel, because I think that’s important too, but I also know that how I feel isn’t all that matters so…” He cleared his throat, took a deep breath.

“Dustin Henderson started telling me about you first. How cool and badass and awesome you were — his words. I thought he was full of shit at first, but it wasn’t just him. Lucas was next. He told me how you fought a racist for him. None of them ever gave me many details but I gathered it was Hargrove. Little Wheeler was next. Started reluctant, but all that same shit. A badass. A good dude. Someone they all looked up to. Trusted. Henderson, especially, talked about you like you were his actual hero. Something out of a comic book.

“Nancy Wheeler never even talked to me a day in my life before the Upsie Whoopsie. I knew about her, of course, and I’m sure she knew me, but we weren’t even casual associates. And even during all of that, we became friends, y’know, but only kind of. Only from a distance. When Robin got mad at me, and you did, she stopped talking to me too. When I talked to her, she… told me some things I think we should talk about, but she also looked at me like she wanted to skin me alive for hurting your feelings. I kept thinking how crazy it was that you two even… managed to stay friends, all things considered.

“Hopper… honestly, I don’t know the man. I really don’t. I only ever knew him from a distance, but I did speak to him today. You know what he said? He said ‘don’t give my kids drugs’. My kids, Steve. Hopper’s only had you for like two weeks and you’re one of his kids… Ain’t that just the darndest thing.

“And Robin… you already know. Nothing I can say that you won’t already know, but uh… I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people more… soulmate than you two. I’m not entirely certain she isn’t going to murder me for upsetting you. But today, earlier, she said you were good in spite of your parents and not because of them. It’s true, you know.

“Because Steve, I know what your parents did. I know you feel alone. And like a failure. I know you picked me to fake date because you thought I’d… be able to protect you. To give you somewhere soft to land. To help remind you that even without them, there was good after. I get it know. I thought it was because you saw me as a loser that would upset them, but it wasn’t, was it? It was because I never hid myself, right? Because you wanted to learn how to stop hiding yourself and you knew I wouldn’t judge or leave you for it because I’m different in the same way… 

“But they know, Steve. Robin, Nancy, the kids, Hopper, they know you. Way fuckin’ better than your asshole parents do. They know you for who you actually are. For who you choose to be. And they fuckin’ love you. All of them. So much. Enough to try to help. Enough to try to shield you from getting hurt. By me, which… I’m not proud of. But… your parents, the shit they’ve said, the shit they’ve done… it’s terrible. But it doesn’t reflect you, because they don’t even know you. I see more of you in these people than your parents by a metric ass-tonne. Your parents are wrong. You’re not a disappointment or a loser, you’re a fucking hero, Steve. And if you weren’t, none of these… frankly, incredible people would love you the way they do.” 

A long moment of silence followed. A long moment of nothing. Eddie knew maybe he should leave, maybe he’d done enough, he’d tried to help and now he should walk away, but it was hard. Because like the others, he didn’t want to leave Steve. 

He told Steve about everyone else because he knew he had no right to love Steve how he did. He knew he’d fucked up, that Steve would probably dismiss whatever he could say about how he felt.

But it wasn’t about what Eddie wanted. It was about what Steve deserved to hear after the way his shithead family had treated him. 

Eddie loved Steve, and he had to love him enough for that to be the priority, regardless of how badly he might want to try to convince Steve to feel better because of his love. 

“Anyway.” Eddie knew hanging around making a menace of himself wouldn’t help. “That’s really what I needed to say. Just… every kid in the world should have a parent who loves them unconditionally. Every kid should have a Hopper or a Wayne or a Joyce. But not every kid does. That doesn’t mean the kid deserves it any less. It just means… maybe you have to wait a little longer to find someone who’ll love you how you deserve to be loved.”

He got to his feet, and was halfway to the door when Steve actually spoke again. Eddie hadn’t been expecting an answer. 

“Why are you doing this?” His voice was a little frisky, and Eddie noticed for the first time how glassy Steve’s eyes were. He was almost certainly holding back tears, and Eddie hoped they were the good kind. Hoped what he’d said had helped even a little.

“Because you deserve it.” Eddie said finally. “You kept trying to tell me how you felt and I kept making assumptions that you were shallower or crueller than you were. But it wasn’t about you. It wasn’t… you didn’t do anything to justify me believing that. I was wrong. I wanted you to know that I was wrong. And that your parents are too.”

Steve frowned, staring down at his knees like if he stared there long enough, he might force all the emotion to dry up and go away. Eddie knew that game. He knew it didn’t work.

“Why did I do it?”

The words were small, and Eddie was genuinely concerned. 

“What?”

“Why?” Steve repeated, eyes fluttering up to Eddie. His eyelashes had all clumped together. He looked tired and sad and a little dazed. He was beautiful. “Why did I ask you to do this?”

“Because you needed me.” Eddie answered softly. “And you trusted me not to judge you or to make assumptions, because you knew I’d spent my whole life being judged and having assumptions made about me. I’m sorry I failed.”

Steve shook his head, still seeming deeply sad. “Partly.” He admitted, “But only partly. I was the asshole everyone thinks, y’know. I… I try so hard to be better. To be… different.” His voice cracked a little. “But I’m impatient and insecure and sometimes mean even when I don’t want to be anymore. I didn’t consider how it would feel to you. Me asking you after…” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

Eddie shook his head again. He just wanted to hug Steve. It was stupid, all of this was, and he just wanted to hug him, because dammit, he’d had shit parents. He’d had dark ass days. He knew how it felt and he wanted to help. 

“Nah. I thought I could be cool with just being friends with the middle school love of my tiny pubescent little world, while pretending to date him, but that’s my own stupid fault.” Eddie tried to joke it all off, but he did want Steve to know. He wanted him to understand. 

Steve blinked at him like he’d said his mother was an alien. “Wait, huh? I thought you hated me before the Upside Down stuff?”

There was a moment of prolonged silence where Eddie wondered if he could run. If he could pretend he hadn’t said it. But he’d come here to be honest and brave. No more running away. He tried to emulate Steve jumping into that lake. 

“I first realised I had a crush on you when you stopped that little fuck-knuckle Hagan from pushing me around. You were twelve. I spent the next near decade trying to tell myself I was over it. But then I saw you looking at me in that trailer. Who knew all it took was a coat of paint and a carefully cropped singlet? I should’ve called you the next day. I should’ve taken you on a real date — if you’d let me. I should’ve believed you when you told me you wanted my friends to know you cared. I should’ve believed you when you ran the mile with me, or punched Carver, or kissed me in your room, and I’m sorry I let my insecurity cloud my judgement. I should’ve kissed you back like we were in love.”

He saw the look that flashed over Steve’s face. The fear. The memory. He wondered if Steve could infer the obvious. That Nancy had told him what those words meant. 

“I shouldn’t have asked you to fake date me.” Steve was basically whispering, fidgeting and picking at the skin of his left thumb. “I didn’t know, but it was still mean. I never meant to use you.”

Eddie shook his head slowly, just glad Steve was listening at all. 

“I know that now.” 

Eddie counted the ticks of the clock on the wall he could hear, echoing louder than his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears, a reminder of how horrifically terrifying this all was, and how it was his final attempt. 

The ticks felt like sand falling through an hourglass, threatening to suffocate him inside the longer he stayed in silence with Steve Harrington. 

Not The Hair. Not King Steve. Not a bully or a school icon or a monster fighter, but a person. A real, proper, complex man Eddie genuinely loved.

He got to his feet, because he couldn’t drown under the falling sand any longer, but he barely made it a few steps before Steve’s words cut him off.

“You could do it now, y’know.” He said, his voice slow and deep. 

“Huh?” Eddie turned back, trying hard not to feel even a sliver of hope. He knew it would eat him alive anyway.

“Take me on a real date. You could do it now.” He sounded nervous. He sounded young. 

He sounded like a kid who couldn’t even legally drink yet and who had the entire weight of the world on his back. A boy whose parents had just abandoned him, who had been cheated on and left behind, who had been misjudged and pigeon holed one way or another as long as Eddie had known him. 

“I love you.” Eddie said the words slow and careful, like he was scared to startle a wild animal. 

“I love you too,” Steve answered softly, “So a real date seems like a good place to start.”