Chapter Text
“The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning”
Send a heartbeat to
The void that cries through you
Relive the pictures that have come to pass
For now we stand alone
The world is lost and blown
And we are flesh and blood disintegrate
With no more to hate
Is it bright where you are
Now the people changed?
Does it make you happy, you're so strange
And in your darkest hour
I hold secret's flame
We can watch the world devoured in its pain
- The Smashing Pumpkins
Part Three
Once upon a time. you were broken and I was lost. I was a man without North, and you were missing pieces. And I could feel you all my life, every moment. I didn’t know what to call you. This feeling in my heart was you, and my heart was broken from birth. I dreamed of you in so many faces and I heard you speak a dozen languages and I watched you die a hundred deaths and I couldn’t touch you. I would wake and hear you crying but I couldn’t find you fast enough. You left pieces of yourself all over this country and I’ve been chasing them forever. And then, you found me. You touched me and I loved you and there was no going back. You let me touch you and the world knew we belonged together. And all your broken pieces are set with my blood and you are my North star. You’re mine and I’m yours and I will never lose you because we will always find each other.
It's a story told a thousand ways, always little changes here and there, but he knows the story back to front, inside and out, he could tell it with his dying breath. It’s all there behind his eyes when he closes them, it’s in his cells, skin and soul. Their story lives in them, and Eddie Munson is the sole container of it in this world.
The Velvet Underground is playing in the memory of the last time he saw Steve.
That night.
The air tastes of metal and snow in summer. They’re parked up outside the zoo, headlights on full, and Steve is mad, he’s so furious with Eddie and he can’t calm down, he can’t get level and that’s Eddie’s fault for breaking the rules.
His boy’s all blue on a red night.
Eddie’s fault.
Seventh ring, he knows the rules.
It’s his fault when Steve punches him so hard it actually cuts the inside of his mouth and he chokes on the blood and now he can’t get the story out quick enough, such a stupid delay that costs them dearly.
It’s always the little things.
The little fuck-ups and failures, they can’t erase them. Each one becomes a part of their sky, stars born to make maps of, to find their way home.
Steve puts metal in him.
It tastes righteous blue, like small town love from an angry boy who doesn’t know better, he’s still Captain America in his heart and Eddie wasn’t good enough, quick enough.
It’s a lovely blade, goes in like butter, no need for the force Steve puts behind it, and all Eddie’s worried about is his boy. He’s trying to get him to listen, to calm down. Eddie has gentle hands on Steve’s face while he bled out, trying to talk him home, it’s not Steve’s fault. It’s just…
It’s a red night.
See, it doesn’t matter how much you think you know someone, how well prepared you think you are… the universe is strange and sly, it’ll fuck you up just for fun.
Eddie broke the rules.
And a red night came unexpected.
It was his fault.
When they’re picked up by some fuck-ass patrolman, mortifying, Steve is still blue, he’s sky blue and Eddie can’t risk the idiot cop getting skittish, he’s already called for backup.
So he goes pliant, he plays nice, even while Steve is still trying to finish what he started with the knife.
Eddie’s trying to tell him the story even when they’re put in cuffs, and what’s worse is it’s starting to work just as the patrolman clocks who they are.
The wounds don’t heal for a long time.
Cuts from his boy don’t heal like other kinds. Eddie keeps hands on them when he’s alone after beatdowns, after they fuck him up and spit on him and call him cop killer and then do worse, because he didn’t cry.
Eddie doesn’t cry for anyone but his boy.
And two of them die trying to make him.
He waits for Steve to forgive him.
It’s unbearable, being separated.
They won’t even tell him about Steve, nothing.
The world turns grey, it’s a drain.
Eddie’s mechanisms slow, he forces them to, waiting.
Time ages them both, it moves while they’re still and stationary. The trial is fun, at least, and he got to see Steve for the first time.
They cut all his hair off. All his pretty hair, they changed his body without his consent.
Eddie finds out who did it.
A cut for a cut, it’s chaos.
But even with blood on his teeth, throat flesh spat to the ground, Steve won’t look at him.
He’s still mad.
That shocks Eddie, truly.
He wonders if the blue infected him, if something got stuck where it shouldn’t be. He knows his boy is waiting for something, he’s been patient this entire time waiting for the highly televised trial but now… now he won’t even look his way.
Close enough to catch scent, he’s not blue, it’s his boy.
His beautiful wild thing.
But he’s angry, quiet and resentful.
Eddie broke the rules.
It’s on him to make it right now.
After the trial, Eddie starts to send his boy roses, but they all come back in little pieces. He gets it wrong and what might have been right before has lost meaning because he hurt Steve, even though he’s the one with the scars, and it’ll take something real special to make it better now.
Years pass in excruciating agony.
Nothing but time. A decade of memories to replay.
The negative space of the man he loves surrounds him, ghost-like and dogged. Eddie does what he can to avoid the death penalty but it’s dull as fuck not killing people to pass the time and they won’t give his letters to Steve, no phone calls, not even a lawyer message.
Eddie feels him even so.
And all he has to send is roses.
Plenty grow, they’re not hard to find, are they?
After a year or so, people come to visit him under the guise of counsel sometimes. It’s funny to him how the prison guards didn’t realise that women were disguising themselves just to come look at Eddie Munson.
He was receptive, of course.
He sends them to Steve.
Nothing.
Sometimes they come back, sometimes he almost catches the scent of Steve on them, but most can’t handle it, and they crumble as do most pretty things of the earth. His boy would always show him the strong ones, the hardy ones. Without Steve to show him, Eddie is stabbing in the dark.
Then one day, two dull years later, Eddie’s replaying a memory from Nevada nine years ago, yellow, and a man comes to visit with security and a lawyer of his own.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he asks Eddie, who shrugs, playing disinterested. Of course he knows who this fucker is. He loved that show. ‘Well, my name’s David and I’ve come today because I want to discuss a vision I have.’
‘A vision?’ Eddie echoes, looking the middle aged man over. ‘One of you Hollywood hacks has a vision?’
He explains about his ideas for the show.
And a little curl of light strokes Eddie’s insides.
It’s a beacon, newborn.
There hasn’t been white light for a long time.
‘Fuck no,’ he laughs, getting up. ‘Take me back.’
David returns three more times.
Eddie remains aloof, disinterested and unreachable.
Until David begins to get desperate. He starts negotiating, against the advice of his people, and that’s what Eddie has been waiting for.
‘We want creative input.’
‘They’d never allow that.’
‘Off the record, as and when we decide to offer it. You’re free to refuse.’ Eddie cocks his head. ‘It’s your vision after all.’
‘People can’t know.’
‘I understand.’
‘If they know I’m even here talking to you—’
‘I understand, David,’ he cuts across, his organs crawling to put this name in his mouth and spit it back out again with manners. ‘What we discuss is always between us.’
The older man likes that, seems mollified. The deal they craft is complex, but Eddie’s careful not to let David realise it. He offers information and asks nothing in exchange, but then gives practically nothing, saves it for down the line. He knows David only came for permission and he gets even more than that, but Eddie casually slips in something right at the end.
‘I want final say on casting.’
David was packing up, they only get so much time. ‘Sorry?’
‘Final say.’
‘That’s… I’m sorry but there’s no way I could ever—’
‘Unofficially, of course,’ Eddie presses, holding the older man’s gaze.
‘Why?’
Eddie choses his words. ‘We have an eye for talent.’
‘We’d have to narrow it down ourselves. Maybe I could uh.’ David throws a look to the left. ‘I could bring you the final choices for your… input?’
‘Sounds good. Bring headshots.’ Eddie grins, leaning. ‘I like headshots.’
David seems to be pretending he didn’t hear that. ‘All right,’ he says hesitantly. ‘I suppose that could work, unofficially.’
Months later, David will try to skirt it.
He’ll attempt to go behind Eddie’s request.
The casting director is killed in a tragic car crash.
Eddie reads all about it, terrible accident.
David returns to Eddie, hair longer, growing out a beard that suits him. He apologises for not coming sooner, cites delays. ‘I have potentials for both characters for you to… consider,’ he tells Eddie, not quite meeting his gaze.
‘That’s so nice of you,’ Eddie purrs. ‘You’ll let Steve choose his own.’
David winces. ‘I don’t like going—’
‘Tough.’ Eddie licks his lips, scanning what he sees. ‘Hmm, show me that one.’
‘This one?’ David picks up a photograph, it was beneath the others, but still stood out. ‘He read for Steve today.’
Eddie stares.
And see, he’s not got his boy’s talent for this stuff. He’ll never understand it the way Steve does, but he’s got some instincts and when he claps eyes on that one headshot, he gets that feeling.
‘Him,’ he says. ‘Try him out.’
‘We already—’
‘For me.’
‘You?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He looks nothing like you.’
‘That’s why god invented wigs,’ Eddie simply says, holding David’s gaze in a flat, calm way. ‘Try him out.’
Eddie dreams of fields of yellow roses and all of them edible and his boy’s naked in the grass on the highest hill and all he has to do is say sorry the right way.
Steve is a riddle to everyone else but Eddie, but even he struggles sometimes.
He has to find a way to make it right.
Not with blood, not this time.
But with flowers.
His people come to him, the following. Eddie thinks it’s adorable that people love him. Assembling an accidental cult without ever meaning to is the funniest thing in a long time, but hey, who is he to complain that a lonely, malcontent millionaire has taken a shine to them both? He’s never explicit with what he wants, only vague discussions but they understand him well, and they carry out his wishes in pleasingly efficient ways.
They tell him about Jason.
About the other, the one Steve chose.
The name is familiar, somehow.
It prickles like a song he forgot the words to.
Eddie wonders if it’s the one Steve never told him about.
The palm scar.
He thinks it probably is.
It’s so like Steve to punish him in such a unique way.
There is no one like his boy.
David stops coming by entirely once the show is cast.
Eddie gets a letter from an old friend. The lawyers who aren’t lawyers give it to him and though it’s very coded and vague, Eddie grins, knows right away who it is.
Steve will be so glad.
Eddie doesn’t make calls or reach out to David after that. He knows that their deal is unofficial and he doesn’t need David right now, he has his people doing what he wants in the shadows.
It’s not enough.
He misses Steve the way drowning men dream of air in those last final moments. Eddie replays his memories and tells the story and feels what he can of his boy with all that distance, walls and metal between them.
He’s patient.
And then he gets a call from David.
‘Jason wants to meet you.’
Eddie smiles into the receiver. ‘Does he now?’
‘He wants to ask you a few things. Do you…?’ David pauses, and Eddie can practically taste the longing through the wires. ‘Do you think you’d consider it? For the show?’
‘Unofficially?’
‘Yes, of course. You know our deal. You don’t mention me.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Eddie says seriously, offers lucid reassurance that David will respond to. ‘Send him over.’
And in person, Eddie knows he made the right choice about this boy, this Jason Carver, because maybe he can’t see in shades the way his boy does, but he recognises a good one when he sees it.
You have to know what to see.
He sends him to Steve.
The real world is sharpening again, coming into focus.
He hopes Steve likes what he sent, but deep down knows even his sulky boy isn’t strong enough to refuse what Eddie’s found for him, not this time.
And four years is a long time to be mad.
Eddie tells himself the story.
He knows it well by now.
And prepares for the new one about to unfold.
*
“The Killing Moon”
Under blue moon, I saw you
So soon you'll take me
Up in your arms, too late to beg you
Or cancel it, though I know it must be
The killing time
Unwillingly mine
Fate
Up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him
-Echo & the Bunnymen
Jason is nervous.
There’s something just… off and he can’t nail it.
Can’t narrow down what it is.
It’s like he’s left an iron on at home or something. This constant niggling in the back of his head, you’re forgetting something, but whatever it is, eludes him. He blames the lack of sleep, he blames worrying about Billy.
Drinks better coffee, tries to stay level.
But the sketch has messed him up.
He can’t bear to look at it.
To see the scar, all the details of himself. Billy must have been terrified when he saw it. It sends a weird, wrong way shiver up his spine.
Billy’s getting dressed. Jason watches him, fingers tapping lightly against his thigh. ‘It’s all gonna be OK.’
Billy nods. ‘I know.’
The feeling thickens. ‘Was it… not good?’
‘It’s all fine, baby.’ Billy’s voice is low and soothing, but he’s not looking at Jason and that’s… that’s not good.
Jason folds clothes just for something to do, a little spiral coiling within to pull everything round and round the merry go round. He tries not to think about what he may have (definitely) did wrong, tells himself Billy liked it too, that they roleplay this stuff a lot and never judge.
It just feels like… like this time, Billy didn’t like it.
Once his boots are laced, Billy gets up.
Jason reads him as much as he can, but gets very little.
Though Billy is very honest, he’s a good liar. An exceptional actor. Jason knows a part of why, now.
Billy smiles at his boyfriend. ‘Baby, you look like you’re about to spin off into another dimension.’
Jason laughs, this tremulous and wobbly thing, his hands shaking. ‘I… did I do something wrong?’
‘No,’ Billy answers, too quick. ‘It’s all gonna be fine.’
‘Yeah, I know. I just… you seemed distant.’
Billy grabs his jacket. ‘I was right there.’
‘No, I know.’ Jason’s lungs are locking up. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I did something you didn’t like and you didn’t tell me.’
His boyfriend looks at him for a few beats, and then sets his jacket down on the rumpled, messy bed. He takes Jason in his arms. ‘I love you.’
Jason clings hard. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you and I’m not gonna let you go, OK?’
It helps a little. Jason breathes deeply and finds a level place in warm, strong arms. ‘I guess we need to talk to David.’
‘Yeah, we will.’ Billy kisses his hair. ‘We will.’ He draws back enough to kiss Jason properly, to put lips on lips and show he loves him and Jason is desperate for it, to feel that everything really is OK.
‘I don’t wanna be without you.’
‘You won’t.’
‘I’m scared when you leave.’
‘I’m not leaving, baby. We’re staying together.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, really.’ Billy’s eyes move between his own, thumb rubbing over his jaw. ‘You’re mine. And I’m not leaving your side until this is done.’
It’s what he needs to breathe properly.
Jason sags against him, almost dizzy with relief.
‘Thank you.’
‘I got you,’ Billy promises. ‘I won’t let go.’
*
They meet with David together. He takes the sketches seriously, says they’re all going to be analysed and traced. Jason holds Billy’s hand under the table they sit around. He discusses their safety, and agrees to all of Billy’s requests but the safety elements are very much a precursor to him for the meat of what he wants to discuss.
‘So,’ David says, undeniably excited despite everything. His hands are clasped together over a fair amount of paperwork. ‘I’ve been liaising back and forth between legal teams and the prosecutors. They consider it a spectacle, but pertinent information has already been released as a sign of good faith from Munson. He gave up the location of a body way out in Nevada. It’s expected that they’ll reveal all locations in exchange for the interview.’ David clears his throat, looks down at a page of notes. ‘Obviously, we’ll spare no expense with security and the fullest precautions we can take, but they have requested that you two do the interview.’
Jason tightens his grip on Billy’s hand. ‘What?’
‘They’d like you two to ask the questions.’
‘We’re actors,’ Billy says curtly and Jason can tell he’s mad. ‘We’re not fucking journalists, we’re not—’
‘You’ll have full security, they’ll be cuffed hands and feet and it’ll take place in Munson’s prison. No place on earth safer.’
‘They just want to see each other,’ Billy points out, says what surely everyone else is thinking. ‘You get that right?’
‘That’s the incentive, of course. But they’ll be surrounded at all times, immobile and locked up.’
‘With us,’ Billy says shaking his head. ‘It’s a split room?’
‘We’ll make sure you’re both completely safe. I’ll be there, Hopper will be there.’
‘It’s not live, right?’
David laughs. ‘God, no. We’ll have to cut and edit everything and the prosecution teams get full access to all intelligence first. We wouldn’t be able to release the interview for at least eight months.’
Jason knows what he’s thinking.
Perfect timing for releasing the show.
‘Does this psycho have a list of questions he wants us to ask?’
David taps the pile of notes. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ve vetted them?’
‘They will be thoroughly vetted, not only by me.’ David looks at Jason. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think… it’s a huge risk,’ Jason answers slowly. ‘But I think we should do it, so long as we’re both safe.’
He just wishes he could remember what it is he’s forgotten, what’s niggling at him.
Something.
Somewhere.
Fucking god, he’s getting a migraine.
He looks at Billy. ‘What do you think?’
Billy nods, thumb making circles over his knuckle. ‘I agree. When do they want to do it?’
*
It takes a while for everything to get set up, so the interview is a week away. During that time, the show continues to shoot. There’s only one scene they’re both dreading the filming of and everyone knows it.
The night they were caught.
There’s dread because this is one of the most prolific elements of the Steve and Eddie story, and if they fuck up, it’ll be critiqued hard.
Jason spends hours going over the story with Billy. They’ve very loosely written parts of it into the script, though Billy was firm that they change some parts and Jason cannot help but agree. Where before he wanted it bad enough to go see Eddie Munson in person, now he thinks that this story should only ever be heard by… them.
They both submit notes and the majority of their notes are taken on board, but David insists they keep the opening lines of it.
‘Why do you think he did it?’
Jason looks up, he’s in full Munson makeup, hair and outfit and Billy is wearing Steve like a second skin.
It’s always risky, shooting the last scenes last.
‘What do you mean?’
Billy looks at the knife in his hand. ‘Why’d he stab him?’
Jason shakes his head. ‘I—sorry, I don’t—’
Billy moves closer, drops into the voice and says, ‘Why did I stab you? What did you do?’
It’s fucked up that Jason understands immediately and that Billy knew to do that, slip into them.
‘I hurt you,’ he answers helplessly. The bleed this past week is off the charts. David is helping them both obscure it from the crew, has even assigned Jason a personal assistant for the first time who often stands around with a copy of the script as if keeping him in character. ‘I broke the rules.’
He looks down at the temporary transfers that look so real, such beautiful art, so ugly in places. On each of his ten fingers is an inky ring put there by Steve and each one is a promise. The seventh finger is the rule he broke.
You never kill anyone without me.
Steve’s fingers have nine rings. His little left is bare.
Jason never got to ask what Steve’s rules were, if they were rules at all, but he knows all of Eddie’s.
Billy touches the finger Jason’s looking at.
‘It’s more than that.’
They both know it is. Jason privately thinks that Steve is schizophrenic, multiple personalities. He thinks that Eddie was managing them with the story. That Steve would experience temporary memory loss and this was their anchor to bring him back, stabilise him.
But even that doesn’t quite fit.
He supposes he’ll never know.
Jason looks up, forces himself out of it.
‘So long as I don’t hurt you,’ he tells Billy, ‘I don’t care.’
His boyfriend looks up at him from beneath Steve Harrington, expression softening into something far more Billy Hargrove.
‘Yeah,’ he says, winking. ‘Me neither.’
The scenes are incredibly hard to shoot.
The fight leaves Jason shaken and nauseous, and he goes to David over and over, says, ‘This isn’t right, I—Eddie would never hurt him. It’s not a fight.’
‘The cop who arrested them—’
‘I know what he saw, but it’s wrong. Eddie would never hurt Steve like this.’
David refuses to budge.
Billy consoles Jason later, but it gets emotional, it’s like a sickness burrowing deep down, so wrong.
‘I’d never hurt you unless you asked me to,’ he says and Billy doesn’t even comment on the slip. ‘I know.’
Jason throws himself into the other scenes.
Into killing the cops who come to his cell.
He fucks up, genuinely hurts one of the actors and he can’t even apologise at first, he has to walk off set, breathing deep, red, red, red all around him.
His assistant follows and he starkly tells her to stay back. It’s only Billy, watching filming, not in this scene, who can talk him down, has to get hands on his face, whispering in the voice.
Eddie—Jason comes back to himself.
He apologises to the actor, who doesn’t seem to realise that him walking off wasn’t out of horrendous guilt, but irritation at being denied the finisher, and pats him on the back, tells him he’s an incredible actor.
He wants to laugh. At this point, all his skill as an actor is going into being Jason Carver.
The interview date edges closer.
Jason and Billy are staying together at Billy’s place, he insisted, and Jason likes the view of the ocean so he relents. They have security outside at all times and James Hopper comes inside to check twice a day whether they’re there or not. David is becoming increasingly excited about the interview, and though he assures them both that all questions were vetted thoroughly, there doesn’t seem to be a single one missing from Eddie’s own “suggestions”.
The only time he feels peace is at night when he’s inside Billy, when they’re kissing and fucking and touching and tangled and Jason finds himself saying more and more fucked up shit that makes him come insanely hard and he can’t stop, he cannot stop loving him, his boy.
It's all fucked up.
Billy goes with it, but Jason knows even if he said no roleplay, just us tonight, he’d still be moaning Stevie when he comes.
The only thing he has to hold onto now is that this will be over soon. Shooting, filming, makeup, sets, scripts, it’ll be done soon and they can go away together like they keep talking about.
After the interview, of course.
The last night of shooting is brutal.
Jason is drowning in it.
He gets Billy out to the car in the lot afterwards, away from the celebrating crew, cast and David, and in a joyless frenzy, he pulls Billy on top of him and begs for something he thinks will be the reason Billy finally walks away.
‘I want you to hold me down,’ he tells him in between kisses. ‘I want you to make me.’
Billy draws back quick, so clear minded Jason envies him. ‘No. No way.’
‘Please.’
‘Jason—'
‘Yeah, I wanna be him.’
Billy stares at him. ‘What?’
‘I want to be Jason. Make me feel like him,’ he begs, tears rolling down his temples. ‘M-make me feel it, please. Make me come while I say no.’
Billy seems to be telling himself to breathe, just breathe. Jason can’t let go, his desperation is an upward spiral and he’s scared to look over the edge and see the drop.
‘You want this?’
‘I need it.’
You—fuck, I… Jason.’ Billy’s voice cracks and Jason kisses him, desperate and small and lost, but for the bright light that is his boyfriend. ‘Please?’
Billy shakes his head but says yes. ‘Safe words?’
‘Yes, anything, anything.’
‘And colour check?’
‘No.’ Jason swallows, cannot explain why he doesn’t want colours in this car, hidden from the sky. ‘No, um. Tapping?’
Billy agrees, and this… this is so fucked up.
But Jason can’t breathe.
He’s forgotten too much.
And this… pain is always a reminder of who he is, where he comes from, what a knife feels like, what the director said to him and how he said it, what his Momma wore the day she left, how mouldy bread tastes, and how it is to be crushed so hard he shines.
‘I love you,’ Billy tells him into the kiss, and it’s him, it’s Billy Hargrove, the only person on earth Jason is safe with.
The only person he could ever ask.
Trust.
In the back of the car, Jason squirms and sobs and they play what he knows from the internet is CNC but it doesn’t feel like a game, it’s like forcing heavy rusted cogs to life in his middle, coaxing movement from dormant engines and making fires in the night.
Billy makes him come, no penetration, just rubbing and forcing pleasure where Jason pretends not to want it, not to need it and there… there he finds a little piece.
Buried.
Drowning.
Hurting.
Jason Carver.
A good, mediocre midwestern boy.
Iowa boy. Mount Vernon. Full ride to Cornell that he blew on a dream, dragged himself out here to be something, to be what he wanted ever since he was a kid.
An actor.
A star.
It all goes black, velvet darkness reunites him with what he’d lost while Billy strokes his hair and kisses his skin and tells him he loves him no matter what and that he’s sorry and he won’t let him go, he won’t ever let him go.
But in the darkness, even holding that piece of himself, Jason hears other voices.
This soft radio interference of voices and presence.
He hears laughter, he hears singing, he can feel colours.
I was lost and you were missing pieces.
When he comes back, the guilt of it hits him hard.
Billy didn’t want to do this.
Jason cannot understand what’s happening.
He feels small in the scheme of things, forgetful and distant, bystander to his own life in the most benign way possible.
But Billy kisses him and says, ‘I love you, Jason Carver,’ and it brightens the little piece inside enough for Jason to smile shakily, swallow the strange taste on his tongue and kiss him in turn.
They can pretend things are fine, for now.
They’re actors, after all.
*
Filming has wrapped.
The interview is today.
Billy helps him in the shower.
He’s mostly just holding him, because Jason’s hands are shaky and his movements are disjointed.
‘It’s gonna be OK,’ Billy promises and Jason holds it like a lifeline. ‘I won’t let you go.’
Jason nods and bites a soft kiss into Billy’s skin.
He sees blood when he looks down, circling the drain and for one dizzying, awful moment he thinks he’s bitten through, hit a vein, made him bleed.
‘Hey, what’s—?’ he asks, lifting his gaze to Billy’s.
‘It’s just my hand,’ Billy tells him calmly, like there’s nothing wrong. Jason knows sometimes Billy overcompensates when he lies and this tranquillity is absolutely too much.
‘Show me?’
Billy does.
His palm is bleeding.
The line there… the scar is bleeding.
‘What? It’s… no.’ Jason takes hold of it, frowning as he examines it closely, desperate to understand. ‘Did you cut it?’
‘Yeah,’ Billy says but that’s a lie too, or… maybe not? Hard to tell. ‘It was an accident. C’mon, I’ll wrap it up and we’ll get dressed.’
*
Jason’s headache is ripe behind his eyes and he takes four painkillers without water, wincing. It’s stress from the last week of filming, it’s the heat, it’s the lack of restful sleep, or the storm they say is rolling in that evening, pressure from storms always give him headaches.
He tells himself a dozen lies.
And holds Billy’s hand in the limo.
They’re both wearing comfortable clothes, nothing fancy. Billy’s a classic jeans and nice shirt kinda guy, three buttons open with the shark-tooth necklace he loves. Jason’s in cargos and a t-shirt with a jacket. The tattoo transfers are mostly gone, but a few remain in faded outlines around his fingers.
David is meeting them there with, what he assured them, was a “fuck tonne” of security. James Hopper has been a mainstay for a long time now in their lives so it feels, and Jason takes comfort from his presence as he parks up and shadows them into the oppressively grey building.
Billy holds Jason’s hand.
Anyone could see.
Smiling faintly, Jason squeezes it, and lets the little curl of warmth do what it can for his otherwise clammy-cold insides. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you more, Jase.’
They endure a very thorough body search and the guards let Billy keep the necklace only because the tooth is blunted from millions of years bobbing around the ocean floor and the chain itself is thin, couldn’t be used to strangle anyone, it’d snap so easily. Jason has nothing on him but his phone and keys, both of which are taken to be collected when they leave.
They’re led to a room where Jason can see the sun setting through bars. David is inside along with a few crew members Jason definitely recognises. The camera set up is smart. Two main cameras on either side, but several smaller ones placed around also. The lights are on already, it’ll be dark soon. Jason hates that they insisted on doing this later rather than earlier, but it’s Steve’s request.
He wanted the full moon.
Nancy Wheeler is there in the corner speaking to a few other lawyers Jason recognises by now. She gives him a polite wave but otherwise carries on with her discussion, holding a file open, occasionally tapping something for emphasis.
Three chairs are in the centre of the spacious room. Two on one side, one on the other. There is absolutely no divide whatsoever beyond a table.
Billy stares at it and Jason is sure he’s thinking the same.
That this isn’t safe.
David comes over, hugs them both in greeting.
‘How are my boys feeling?’ he asks, rubbing Jason’s shoulders. ‘You ready to make history?’
Jason has always looked up to David, has dreamed of working with him but in this moment… he feels a little disgusted with him, disappointed even.
Hack, he thinks once and then dismisses it quickly.
‘Of course,’ Jason says, forcing himself to seem eager.
He’s not not eager.
But the part of him that wants this is not something he thinks he could show David or anyone.
‘Good, good, good.’
‘One chair?’ Billy asks, pointing.
David scowls. ‘Warden point blank refused to let us interview them both together at the same time. I was under the assumption he’d recognise the gravity of the situation but,’ he sighs, rolling his eyes, ‘we can only interview one at a time.’
Jason exhales, genuinely relieved. ‘I think that’s for the best.’
‘Me too,’ Billy says. ‘Are we splitting the questions then or asking the same ones each?’
‘It’s a mixture. All questions will be on the teleprompter behind them and you have notes in front of you too. If, for any reason, you want to stop,’ he adds in a louder voice, and Nancy looks over, ‘all you have to do is say stop. If you feel unsafe, say stop. If you need to pee, if you need to sneeze, anything,’ he says smiling, likely thinks he really broke the ice there, ‘just say stop. It’s the magic word.’
Jason thinks sullenly of how much he said it to that fucking director and how it wasn’t so magic back then, but that was in the past and he’s not in the past.
He tries to be here and now.
Billy’s hand in his own helps.
Billy runs so warm.
‘What about security?’
‘Well,’ David explains, gesturing all around. ‘This room is glass on both sides. We’ll have four guards inside, eight outside and all eyes on them,’ he adds, pointing at the many cameras in the corners, sat there like dark spiders. Billy squeezes Jason’s hand a little harder and Jason knows why. ‘James Hopper will be three feet away from you at all times. I’ll be right in your eyeline.’
‘There’s no glass divide.’
David flounders slightly before recovering fast. ‘It wouldn’t work for the sound, not to mention glare as we need the lights on. I promise, if anything you’re safer this way.’
Jason’s stomach clenches tight and he feels a little dizzy. It’s only for a moment but he hides it well. He wonders if he didn’t eat enough, but he knows he did. Billy made him lunch. They ate together.
Eggs.
Billy loves eggs.
Big protein lover, Jason teases him sometimes and Billy chuckles wryly, gets a hand under his upper thigh around the back and picks Jason up, lifts him with one hand and says, ‘don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, sweetness,’ and then Jason would kiss him, whisper things into his boyfriend’s mouth and they’d usually end up on the floor.
It seems like weeks ago now.
What day is it?
‘Jason? Hey, Jase?’
He blinks, shakes himself back into the moment. ‘Hmm? Sorry, what?’
Billy pulls them to the side near the window, away from watching eyes. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Like… faint. Lost in the supermarket, you know?’ Jason answers honestly, looking at his boyfriend and trying to hold fast to what feels real. ‘You?’
Billy’s throat bobs and he brushes Jason’s hair back as if he’s a child, like he’s getting him ready for school. ‘I’m not gonna let you get lost, baby. It’s one hour. We can do this.’
Jason nods. ‘I won’t let you get lost, either.’
Billy brings both Jason’s hands up and kisses his knuckles, soft and unused, Jason’s never thrown a punch in his life. People must see it, Jason knows they do. Billy doesn’t seem to care. ‘It’s gonna be all right.’
The guards hover around the doors, one hand on their guns. Billy peers despite himself and Jason remembers he’s never seen Eddie in the flesh, doesn’t know how it feels.
Jason scans him thoroughly, body supplying adrenaline
to keep him sharp, to notice things he might miss otherwise.
Eddie Munson is in bright, vivid orange.
His hair is tied back.
Wrists and ankles in chains.
He seems calm, docile and entirely benign.
The guards surround him, one is loudly warning him of the rules in this room. No sudden movements, no reaching across the table, no touching, no taking the Lord’s name in vain. He replies promptly when asked, tacks a sir on the end.
It makes Jason incredibly nervous.
Billy is openly staring. David watches from the back, stood with the lawyers. Eddie’s nodding, seems to be listening intently to all instructions. He’s barefooted, only the orange suit and chains and whatever hair tie they let him have. Jason sees all his inky rings, intact if a little blown out over time. He looks down at his own and when he raises his gaze, he finds Eddie watching him.
The murderer winks.
Jason breathes slowly, in and out, watching Eddie be led to the table and his chair. James Hopper is explaining that the table is drilled into the floor as he attaches Eddie’s chains to something on the underside as well as the ground.
‘You got it, Chief,’ Munson quips easily.
He then sits like a schoolboy awaiting the presence of a teacher, innocent and chill and unassuming. ‘This is a nice room,’ he comments pleasantly. ‘So many cameras.’ His dark eyes track each one. ‘It’s always amazing to me how far we’ve come and how fast since daguerreotypes. The effort that went into capturing a single image and now… any loser with a phone can win a Hasselblad. Overexposure, inundation, forced wide community when we’re only meant to see maybe two hundred humans in our lifetime.’ He smiles, comfortable and unbothered by the guards. ‘No wonder we’re all so fucked, huh?’
Jason looks at Billy. ‘You ready?’
Billy is pale. ‘No. You?’
‘Definitely not.’
Everyone now seems to be waiting for them to sit. Even the guards shoot curious looks back and forth. Eddie leans back and yawns.
It's almost dark outside.
Jason tastes metal on the air.
Ozone.
The guards get something over their radio.
‘10-12. Harrington is on site.’
The room goes deathly silent, save for the guard who replies, ‘10-4. Take him to holding. Strip search and circle the block. We’re doing Munson first.’
Jason stares ahead, unseeingly, he cannot bear to look at Eddie when Steve has been mentioned, knowing Steve is now here on site.
This is fucked.
This is so fucked up.
David asks the guards if Jason and Billy can take a seat and when confirmed yes, he makes a come here motion with two fingers and Jason forces his legs into motion.
Outside, it starts to rain.
A guard is reminding them all of the rules, all three. The table’s big, no way for anyone to reach across and touch anybody else, but the lack of glass between Billy and Eddie makes Jason even more nervous.
Billy sits first dead opposite Eddie, Jason sits beside him. They’re all looking at one another, it’s so fucking strange and jarring until Eddie laughs softly,.
‘Well, this is awkward, huh?’
Jason stares.
He can’t believe the degree to which Eddie is acting right now because whatever else, he knows this man.
He’s been playing him for months now.
And this… this is an act.
‘Hello, Eddie,’ Jason says. ‘This is Billy.’
Eddie Munson’s gaze is flatly animated, an entire underwater world beneath glass. ‘Hello, Billy.’ He slaps his hands down on the table and the entire room flinches. ‘So!’ he barks cheerfully. ‘Where shall we begin?’
‘Uh,’ Jason says. He and Billy have notes, teleprompter on behind Eddie, though out of shot. ‘Well, firstly, thank you for meeting with us.’
‘Pleasure’s all mine, Jase.’
Jase.
Billy goes stiff. They can’t hold hands for this but Jason feels a wave of protective energy coming off his boyfriend and wishes he could.
Just one hour, he tells himself, headache blooming.
‘So.’ He glances down at the notes. ‘The first question we’d like to ask is, why did you start killing?’
Eddie sighs and lifts clasped hands onto the table, chains rattling loudly when he drops them. He only has enough leeway to rest them right at the edge. ‘A better question is when.’
Jason bites back the retort he wants to throw; you wrote the fucking questions. He stays neutral. He’s Jason Carver.
Jason Carver doesn’t lose his temper.
‘Sure, when did you start killing?’
‘I was thirteen the first time,’ Eddie explains conversationally chill, and the sight of him, out in the wild, is just somehow fucking mesmerising. ‘I killed a man who tried to rape me. I broke his skull like a duck egg, but I didn’t mean to.’
‘Was that the only accident?’ Billy asks.
Dark eyes snap onto Billy. ‘Meanin’ what, pretty boy?’
‘Don’t call him that,’ Jason snaps before he can help it.
‘Stop. Cut ten seconds,’ David says clearly. ‘Take a breath, reset. Nice and neutral, Jason, please. Three, two, go.’
Billy covers for Jason, whose anger towards David is swelling like a tumour. ‘Was that the only time you killed someone accidentally?’
‘Have you ever killed someone accidentally?’
‘No.’
‘How’d you know? You could have tossed a banana skin, never looked back and some poor old gal slipped on it and broke her neck.’
‘That you’re aware of.’
Eddie smirks, he is far too comfortable.
Like he’s playing, and Jason knows he is.
‘Every death since the first has been intentional.’
It’s raining so hard outside Jason can hear the drops hitting the glass, he’s got ozone in the back of his throat.
He tastes metal, kinda.
‘Why?’
‘Because death isn’t to be fucked with,’ Eddie tells Billy, watching him without blinking. ‘If you’re gonna meet with her, and look her in the eye, you’d better be wearing your big boy boots.’
‘No swearing,’ a guard warns while David shakes his head, quietly says they’ll bleep it out. The guard doubles down. ‘No swearing, Munson.’
‘Sorry, boss,’ Eddie says, easy as pie. ‘Won’t happen again.’
The next question is Jason’s to ask, but Billy taps the paper subtly, a little system they devised. This tap means hold off. When Jason looks back, Edde is watching him with bright, unsettling interest. ‘What about you, Jase? You ever kill anyone?’
‘No.’
‘You ever wish you did?’
Yes.
‘No.’ He glances down at the next question. ‘You’ve talked briefly about how the two of you met before, would you tell me what stands out about that day?’
‘We met the day I came to his town. He was on the side of the road by the gas station, sitting on the curb. You’ve never seen a lovelier thing in your life. He saw me first, had those light browns on me when he said, “You lost?”’ Eddie smiles and bites his lip, ‘and I was. I was so lost.’
‘What stood out?’ Jason repeats, because Eddie didn’t quite answer the question.
‘He had no shoes. I remember that crystal clear.’
Billy rubs the palm of his hand through the bandage wrap. Jason can hear the rain against the window too hard, too loud. He’s worried about flash floods, but it’s a distant worry, similar to the nagging feeling of forgetting something important.
‘Steve was fourteen,’ Jason confirms, it’s in the notes. ‘You were seventeen?’
‘Right on the edge.’
‘Who did you first kill together?’ Billy asks when Jason is quiet, forgets his line—the next question.
‘That’s not for me to tell,’ Eddie says, giving Billy a slow look up and down. ‘He wouldn’t like that.’
The hairs on Jason’s arms prickle right before lightning flashes outside. Three seconds later a massive crack of thunder shakes the walls.
The lights flicker, but otherwise hold.
Billy puts his bandaged hand under the table, wincing slightly.
Jason’s insides are cold.
Like he hasn’t eaten in days, when he knows he has.
But he can’t remember what it was.
Everyone seems unnerved by the lightning, except of course Eddie, who goes on talking as if nothing happened. ‘Save that one for him. He’ll tell you all about it.’
Jason swallows hard. ‘What do you regret?’
‘Regret?’ Eddie echoes, a little line between his eyes. ‘About what?’
‘The murders,’ Billy clarifies.
‘You mean people who got away?’
Jason stares, feels briefly unmoored. It’s never felt so clear before. His own humanity shining within, a lighthouse in otherwise pitch and heavy black, and Eddie is the dark.
‘No. Not people who got away from you. Do you regret anything about…?’ He looks down at these questions.
Eddie wrote them.
He gave them to David.
The teleprompter has the same.
Jason thinks fuck it, temper fraying.
He pushes the notes aside.
‘Was it worth it to lose him?’
A guard clears his throat and Eddie goes still.
‘Say again, little rose?’ he whispers.
‘My name is Jason,’ he says clearly, has to hold onto the memory of Billy in the car and all his pain, of times he cried so hard he thought he’d throw up, ‘and I asked you, Eddie, if it was worth it to lose him? If all this killing was worth losing him? You could have lived normal lives and been together even now.’ He leans closer. ‘Was. It. Worth. It?’
Billy puts his bandaged hand on Jason’s thigh, quietly pleading a slow-down, for Jason to stay calm, but it’s getting harder and harder.
Jason doesn’t have a temper, but…
Eddie’s eyes are so dark he can’t tell the difference between black and brown, they’re all melting together.
He is at that moment less human than Jason has ever seen him. Humans can’t be this still, this strange, a world of buzzing things beneath a meat suit, Jason’s spine crawls as Eddie’s smile splits wider.
‘Who says I’ve lost him?’
‘We’ll cut the last ten seconds,’ David says, and lightning flashes again, barely a moment later followed by a crash of thunder that Jason feels in all his hollow places. ‘Can we get back to the pre-approved questions, Jason? Deep breath and reset, OK?’
‘I do,’ Jason tells Eddie, completely ignoring David. ‘I say you’ve lost him.’
Eddie leans in, drops his voice to a hypnotic whisper. ‘You wanna bet?’ His left incisor is chipped, it’s the one he tongues frequently. Jason wonders how it feels to have something broken in your mouth, to touch it with your tongue whenever you want.
‘That’s enough,’ Billy warns.
Eddie’s gaze unwillingly flicks onto Billy, expression turning cold. ‘Show me your hand.’
‘Can we get a reset on the questions? Countdown and reset, please?’
‘No, let’s take a break.’
‘Miss Wheeler, I appreciate your input, but we—’
‘Show me your hand, Hargrove.’
Lightning strikes again.
Jason sees the flash behind his eyes.
He feels static crawling over his skin.
‘Jason? Jase, are you OK?’
‘Hey, why is he bleeding? OK, cut. Cut right now.’
‘Keep the secondaries rolling. Billy, Jason, let’s regroup.’
The thunder cracks in his bones.
It hurts.
Leaves the calcium structures sore.
His bones shouldn’t hurt, should they?
‘I… Billy… I can’t…’
‘Hey, he needs help here.’
‘Jason?’
‘Give him space and keep that fucker away!’
The room feels far away.
Jason can taste the lightning gathering, it’s on his tongue, in his blood, he sees it behind his lids. His body locks tight and lightning strikes and he hears soft, hyena laughter as if it’s coming from his own throat.
‘There’s something wrong with me.’
Eddie Munson’s got blood on his cheek, long dried, and he held Steve all night, he held him through it, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, baby boy.’
‘I don’t think I’m normal.’
He’s older, this boy. Rough, raw, sharp. He sees everything in this world and nowhere else. Eddie tips his chin up, noses his cheek as if scenting him and though he is sharp, clever and keen, in this moment… he’s tired. ‘Wouldn’t love you so damned much if you were.’
‘Jason! Call the medics. Get him out of here!’
‘It’s all right, we’ll move him back to holding for now, but we can pick it up in half an hour maybe—’
‘DAVID SHUT THE FUCK UP AND HELP ME!’
Billy’s hands are on his face.
Not Eddie’s.
‘Stay with me, baby.’
‘Munson, don’t you move!’
‘Jase, open your eyes, please.’
Jase. Jason. Jason Carver.
What’s his middle name? He can’t recall.
‘Munson I am warning you!’
It’s Billy he loves but oh… that’s there too.
Inside.
He can see Billy Hargrove… younger, scrappy and lovely with golden curls and dirt on his face and skinned knees and it’s all framed with love, just like Jason’s own regard, but this is a different love.
It stirs in his cells.
Love.
Love is symmetry.
Symmetry is solidarity.
It is obsession.
A mirror.
I love you, I love you, I’ll keep you, I will become you.
His spine arches, mouth falling open as lightning strikes overhead, trying to get inside the building, but it can only find the powerlines.
Someone screams.
Nancy Wheeler.
Jason can’t see anything, even with his eyes open.
Things are happening all around him.
The world is ending maybe.
Chaos.
‘We like a little useable chaos, don’t we baby boy?’
Someone yells, a guard.
Gunshots are fired.
Lightning hits again.
Everything is dark.
Powerline songs are silent.
Just the stars and the storm.
And all these people doing silly things.
Mad.
It’s a mad world.
Jason laughs.
It’s not the way he would laugh.
Not the way Steve would either.
He holds fast to the pain.
The pain of his own life, his own body.
But it’s water in his hands.
It’ll get out.
It’ll find a way.
His tooth feels sharper.
He gets in everywhere, doesn’t he?
The inky black is beneath him.
Bright moon above.
Caught between worlds.
Jason tries to remember the last time he felt happy.
He knows it was with Billy.
Billy.
He holds tight to the memory and then… he falls.
*
“Black Blood Red Kiss”
Lay back, keep quiet, let me twist it a little deeper
Just fucking call it
I'll suck the words from your head until you spill black
So stuck in your head
(So stuck in your head)
Until the black blood runs through and we can all just start over
Relax, we'll bathe in the dark
The black sun is claiming your heart
With just that killer eclipse, we can weather this winter
(I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop)
My cold, black blood, red kiss
-Gunship
Billy Hargrove can see in the dark better than most. He can’t explain why, and telling people sounds like something a twelve year old would brag about so he never has, but for some reason, he can just… see a little better than others when all the lights go out.
So when the big strike hits, he closes his eyes.
Shields against night blindness.
And then opens them to find the world submerged in dark grey, as everything erupts into utter chaos.
Gunshots burn briefly yellow and the lawyers are yelling and a guard is shouting, ‘10-98, immediate assistance required!’ and Billy is pulling Jason into a corner, trying to shield him.
‘It’s OK, you’re OK,’ he says, covering Jason’s body as it shudders beneath him, like he’s going into shock. Billy feels him all over, terrified of finding a wet spot, but he’s dry, no holes, no blood. ‘I’ve got’cha, baby.’
More gunshots.
Radio codes coming in hot.
An alarm is blaring.
Someone down the radio is screaming.
Jason’s silent, his body spasming.
Billy cries and kisses his cheek, holding him tight.
‘I won’t let you go.’
Six rapid-fire gunshots and then…
‘Everybody take a breath, nice and calm, then sound off.’
Eddie Munson is shockingly calm.
‘Please,’ someone chokes out, David.
‘That’s one. Who else is alive in here? Don’t make me blind shoot to see who squeals.’
A few more people call out.
‘Hargrove?’ Eddie calls, all singsong sweet. ‘I know you didn’t catch a stray, so where’s that pretty voice, hmm?’
Billy grits his teeth, weighing options quickly but he’s not stupid enough to try and outsmart this psycho.
‘I’m here.’
‘Good boy. Where’s the little rose?’
‘Jason’s here too. He needs help, he’s—’
‘We’ll get him help,’ Eddie says, so level. ‘Once the generators kick—ah, there we go.’
A low level light fills the room, medium grey but enough to see. Billy strokes Jason’s hair back. He’s not wracked with tremors like before, but still unconscious in the most taut way Billy’s ever seen, the slits of his eyes revealing pure white and he is rigid to the touch.
A kind of seizure.
Billy wants to pretend he doesn’t have at least some idea of what’s happening. He wants to cling to science and fact, to the daylight world he built for himself after he got away from Steve Harrington with only a scar that is currently wide open, has been since this morning…
But he’s also not stupid.
‘Mr Director, let’s have you front and centre,’ Eddie is saying. ‘Miss Lawyer, I want you to go around and get all the handcuffs, ammunition and radios off the bodies. Hargrove.’ It’s the same musical voice, light and teasing and terrifying. ‘How’s our boy doing?’
‘He’s not your boy!’
‘You watch your tone with me. Is he conscious?’
‘No.’
‘Good. You can carry him?’
‘I… yeah.’ Billy forces himself to turn and look behind him. He had his back to the entire room, shielding Jason.
It’s… fucking god.
All the guards are dead.
Every single one.
But the others, the crew, David, Eddie, Nancy and a few other lawyers are still alive, they’re slowly coming out from their hiding places, hands raised.
Billy scans them for injuries, sees none.
The precision with which Eddie took out the guards… in the dark… is deeply unsettling.
‘Everybody come out, hands up, very nice, just how we like it.’ Hopper seems to be checking everyone else is safe too, and then… James Hopper hands Eddie a handgun. ‘Thanks, Chief.’
Billy stares, and all the ground underneath him begins to crumble.
What.
Fucking what?
‘You…’
Hopper glances over, expression shuttered. Eddie checks the ammunition, cocks a bullet into the chamber. ‘It’s nothin’ personal,’ he says, tone clipped.
Eddie snorts. ‘I doubt he sees it that way.’ Cold, dark eyes land on Billy, set in a smirk. ‘C’mon, Hargrove. Bring your boy over. We’ve got ground to cover.’
‘You… you did this? You helped him?’ David is spluttering, pointing at Hopper with a bloody, trembling hand. ‘You fucking traitor! I took you in, I trusted you even with your dishonourable discharge!’
‘You’re hardly one to talk,’ Hopper fires back easily. ‘You did everything he asked and more. At least I got a reason.’
Eddie scans around, beckoning Billy closer with his two middle fingers. ‘We’ll heal your daughter as soon as we’re out.’
Hopper gives Eddie a cold look. ‘I know you will.’ He then looks at Billy. ‘I’ll carry him.’
‘Don’t you touch him!’
‘You’re five-nine, kiddo. I’ll carry him.’ Hopper crouches low and whispers, ‘They’re not gonna kill you, but he really doesn’t like you, so don’t give him a reason.’
Billy can’t let go of Jason, he promised. ‘No.’
The barrel of a gun is cold against his forehead.
‘On your feet, pretty boy.’
Billy swallows thickly.
He’s no good to Jason dead.
Fuck.
Hopper gets arms under Jason bridal style and lifts him easily. Billy turns and finds himself eye to eye with Eddie Munson.
He’s got blood across his face and all over his hands and wrists. His gaze is clear, focused and sharp as he gives Billy a once over.
‘Whatever you’re thinking, I already thought it. Don’t get smart, understand?’
‘What do you want?’
Eddie’s mouth curls slightly. His hair’s tied back but wild tendrils of dark, unruly waves hang around his face like tentacles. Lightning flashes outside again. ‘I want to put on a little show. It’s a full moon, after all.’ He moves closer, keeps the gun trained against Billy’s temple, ‘and you and your boy… you’re gonna be the stars.’
He's close enough that Billy can smell his sweat, count his lashes, feel the heat rolling off him.
‘Fuck you.’
Eddie’s tsks. ‘You’re not my type, Cali boy. Not yet.’ He addresses Hopper without looking at him. ‘You got him?’
‘I got him.’
‘Mr Director, I want you to know that if I shoot you, I’m gonna shoot you in the dick and it’ll go all the way through to your spine, blow right out your ass, so I’d think real hard before deciding to pull any hero shit, understood?’
David wipes his mouth. ‘I understand.’
‘Good.’ Eddie steps back. ‘Everyone in a line. We’re going to find my boy.’
Nancy brings him what she took from the bodies of the guards. Eddie takes all the ammo, two more guns and a radio, which he puts in front of Hopper.
‘This is James Hopper, head of security,’ he says into the speaker. ‘Does anyone read? Over.’
Billy watches Jason in Hopper’s arms.
He’s still shaking, but it’s getting less.
His body is ice cold.
The radio bursts to life, chaotic and cut through with gunfire. ‘—doors—can’t—backup!’
‘Do you have a twenty on Harrington? Over.’
‘Killed—cornered him in the rec room—backup right now!’
Another voice comes through, less fraught.
‘Is Munson secure?’
Hopper looks at Eddie. ‘He’s secure, I’ve got him locked down, but all the guards in here are dead. Over.’
‘Fucking Christ. Bring him down to holding if you can, but if he so much as moves wrong, put a bullet in his head.’
Eddie wrinkles his nose. ‘That’s not very Christian, is it?’
Hopper waits until he’s quiet before he replies, ‘10-4, on route. Over and out.’ His gaze cuts to Eddie again. Above them, the sprinklers burst to life, making rain inside. ‘Fuck. There’s a fire somewhere. Where do you wanna do it?’
‘Will the holding room buy us time?’
‘Minutes only.’
‘That’s not enough.’
‘Nowhere in this building will buy you more than a couple’a minutes before the doors come down.’
‘Then we need to get into the main prison building.’
‘Christ.’ Hopper glances at Nancy and the others. ‘You’d better keep them all alive.’
‘A hostage train, what fun,’ Eddie quips. He unzips his orange suit down to his waist, ties the arm around his middle, has on a black vest beneath. He then stows his two guns in the back of his newly made waistband. ‘All right everyone, no talking, no yelling, no screaming for help. First one that does bites the dust real nasty.’ He looks at Billy again, eyes bright in the gloom. ‘So,’ he says. ‘Let’s see if you got the range for this, pretty boy.’
He removes the ammunition from a handgun, bullet from the chamber and then hands the empty shell to Billy.
‘You’re gonna be my keeper, make it look like you got me under lock and key,’ Eddie tells him. ‘All the way down to find my boy. You do that, and yours gets to live.’
‘What do you want with us?’
The slow smile makes his blood run cold.
‘You’re happier not knowing,’ Eddie whispers, dropping a wink. ‘Now, pretty boy and me are up front, David is behind carrying supplies. Hopper’s way at the back with the little rose and everyone else goes choo choo in the middle. If I see anyone deviate from our destination, I’ll kill you slow, understood?’
A weak chorus of agreement bubbles up from the lawyer and remaining crew.
‘A little louder, team, come on!’ They obey, raising voices but not enthusiasm. ‘That’s better. All right, Hargrove.’ Eddie leers, tonguing his incisor. ‘Put your hands on me.’
*
The entire place is in chaos.
Billy had no idea to this extent.
He smells the fire before he sees it, thick smoke choking the back of his throat and even passing by the worst of the spreading burn hurts his skin. The sprinklers don’t seem to be doing shit beyond drenching everyone.
He cannot imagine the pain of being burned alive.
Billy holds Eddie from behind, empty gun pressed to his head, thinking only of Jason.
Along the way, they encounter several guards who come to help. Eddie kills them all.
Billy has to spit the bile that crawls up into his throat, his hand throbbing so bad it’s unbearable.
Eddie teases him as he stockpiles fresh ammunition, weapons and a keycard. ‘Aww, come on now. Not your first dead body, surely?’
‘Fuck you, you fucking monster.’
‘Rude. Hop, how’s our boy?’
‘Can’t last much longer.’
Eddie gives a smart nod, takes it seriously. ‘We’re almost there. Let’s pick up the pace.’
Billy takes hold of him again, tears rolling down his cheeks as he whispers, ‘I’m gonna kill you myself.’
Eddie only laughs.
Soft, knowing, calm.
He rests his hand atop Billy’s forearm curled around his front. God, Billy wishes he could get it across his windpipe and squeeze. ‘You give it your best, pretty boy.’
Four more guards dead and they make it to holding.
The fire is creeping slowly inside, can’t get a grip on the outside world deluged in rain, but within… there’s tinder, kindling, perishables.
Eddie discards the act the moment one of six guards standing outside the door leading to the holding room tries to take hold of him. He kills quick, methodical and brutal.
It’s just how Jason said.
How he played it.
Hopper sets Jason down by the door, goes to help Eddie and Billy wastes no time in covering Jason, touching him.
His body is shockingly cold.
‘No, no, no,’ he utters, voice cracking. Behind him, someone screams gutturally and a fine spray of something warm ghosts over Billy, who ignores it, only focused on Jason. He’s fully unconscious by now, shallow breathing, cold and clammy. ‘No, no, baby, you gotta stay with me.’
‘What’s happening to him?’ Nancy asks, crouching beside him. ‘Does he have epilepsy?’
‘No.’ Billy throws a look over his shoulder in time to witness Eddie ripping something clean out of the body of a man.
Billy stares, astonished.
He just… tore someone’s throat out.
Eddie spits, drops it and scans around, dark gaze landing on Billy as Hopper kicks the door open, but this is the moment David decides to make a break for it.
The director drops what he was carrying and in a frenzy, he bolts for the deceptively clear path leading out to the visitor’s centre from where they just came. Billy yells at him to get down, come back, but David must feel like he’s already there because he keeps on running.
Eddie fires a shot.
Exactly where he said.
Only it’s from behind.
Billy winces, looks away and tries to shut out the awful sounds David makes, writhing on the floor. ‘What are they going to do?’ Nancy asks Billy urgently, gripping his hand.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, trying to keep Jason warm with his own body but it’s not helping. ‘I don’t—’
‘Up and at’em, friends and family,’ Eddie calls out. ‘No Irish Goodbye’s for anybody.’
He waves Billy over and Hopper comes to retrieve Jason. ‘Inside, quick,’ he tells Billy and Nancy. ‘Stay low.’
The remaining crew and lawyers trail behind.
Eddie goes first now, gun in hand.
The door inside is marked Holding.
Billy stays beside Hopper, his fingers linked with Jason’s.
The alarm blares on, hurts his ears.
The generator lights are faint.
The sprinklers rain down.
And outside, the storm rages on.
Eddie flattens himself against the wall beside the door, gun raised, he nods at Hopper.
The older man yells through the door.
‘OPEN UP!’
‘Who is it?’
‘I’m James Hopper, head of security for the VIPs. I’ve got injured people here. Open the door.’
‘Where’s Munson?’
‘He’s dead.’
The door unlocks, opens.
Hopper goes inside, carrying Jason.
Nancy and the others follow, shooting Eddie nervous looks, no one knows what he’ll do, except Billy… Billy thinks he’s going to—
Eddie slips quickly in between a crew member and Billy himself, ducking to be hidden as they pour inside. The sprinklers massively reduce visibility, everyone’s squint-blinking, the generator lights are low.
It doesn’t excuse the catastrophic failure, but it explains it.
Eddie uses Nancy as a human shield when he executes five of the six guards, each of them headshots.
He aims the gun at the last. ‘Don’t move,’ he warns, voice clear. ‘Gun down. Hands up. Good.’
‘Munson, you got no way out of here, you—!’
Eddie shoots him in the leg, upper thigh, right in the meat. ‘No one wants to hear you squeal, pig.’
He’s searching the room.
It’s darker in here.
There are bodies all around.
Billy notices the blank face of Doctor Owens, expression vacant as he stares up, bloody and dead. All but the one remaining injured guard are dead.
Billy knows who he’s searching for.
A flash of lightning from outside shows a slumped figure in the corner behind an overturned table used for cover.
Hopper puts Jason down, pulls out his gun and trains it on Billy and the others while Eddie goes to the body.
For some reason, Billy feels irrationally terrified that Steve is actually dead. He tells himself it’s because he’s afraid of the fallout.
That’s what he tells himself.
‘Baby,’ Eddie is saying, pulling the body onto his back.
Billy’s mouth goes dry when he sees blood across Steve’s front. His jumpsuit is white. It shows every stain.
‘It’s all right, baby boy, come back to me,’ Eddie’s saying, no trace of fear or worry. ‘I’m here now.’
‘Please just let us go,’ Nancy begs Hopper.
The older man says, ‘You run, you’re dead.’
‘Why are we going into the prison? They could get out, the front entrance is—’
‘Surrounded by cops, S.W.A.T and choppers overhead by now,’ Hopper cuts across efficiently. ‘For now, we’re all one tight knit little family.’
‘We’re not family,’ Nancy spits, voice trembling. ‘All this time you were working for them.’
Hopper makes a derisive sound. ‘You ever have a kid, you let me know how it feels when the Doctors tell you there’s nothin’ to do but pray.’
Billy cradles Jason’s face.
He’s barely breathing.
Eddie’s singing something.
He can hear Steve’s voice, all crackly and weak.
‘Eddie.’
‘I’m here.’ The relief in Eddie’s voice could never be described. Billy almost feels it himself, such is the strength of it. ‘I’m right here, baby. I’ve got’cha.’
‘Can he walk?’ Hopper asks.
‘You walk, baby?’ Eddie asks, helping Steve to sit.
Steve is visibly groggy, but he nods and then looks at Eddie like it’s the first time he’s seeing him.
His expression goes slack, he blinks like a child.
And then he smiles.
It wrenches things in Billy’s own chest.
He remembers how it felt to have Steve smile at you like that, but never quite in this way.
He’s not here yet, I need to wait, Steve had said when they were kids and Billy never knew who he was talking about, thought he was crazy, but now… now he knows it was real.
Eddie mutters something, forehead to Steve’s own and Steve sobs, flinging himself around Eddie, who holds him tight in his lap.
‘We do not have time for that,’ Hopper informs them dryly, but neither seems to hear it.
Steve crushes their lips together, open mouthed as he cries and Eddie kisses him like he’s drinking water, it’s graceless and wild and bloody and tangled and Billy can’t look away despite himself.
‘Daddy,’ Steve sobs.
‘I’m here now, baby boy. I got’cha. I’ll never let you down again, never, I swear it.’
‘I forgive you,’ Steve moans, sucking the skin of Eddie’s throat and then biting hard enough to break the skin. ‘I forgive you, Daddy.’
‘Can’t fuck you here, baby,’ Eddie tells him, stern around a smile. ‘Later, promise.’
Steve whines, smacks his chest. ‘Bitch.’
‘Brat.’
Hopper clears his throat. ‘I said—’
‘Where are they?’ Steve asks, looking over Eddie’s shoulder and Billy’s blood turns to salt water, because…
‘Oh my god.’
His eyes…
His fucking eyes are not brown.
Billy can see in the dark better than most.
Steve’s eyes are blue.
They’re Billy’s own shade of greeny blue ocean.
He’s got Eddie Munson’s blood around his mouth, dripping down his chin as he stares at Eddie, low lidded.
‘Little rose?’
‘He’s fading fast. We need to be quick.’
Steve pouts, leans back to look at Eddie again with a fucked up little scowl. ‘Didn’t know you were gonna take so long,’ he complains. ‘You stopped to kill too many.’
‘I killed them to get to you, baby,’ Eddie explains reasonably. ‘This yours?’ he asks, touching the blood of his jumpsuit. Steve shakes his head. ‘That’s my boy. Up we get, c’mon.’
Eddie pulls Steve up and kisses him again, deep and filthy, they’re like animals. Then he taps Steve’s cheek. ‘Stay focused for Daddy, OK? No games, there’s no time.’
Steve smiles and laughs before he licks over Eddie’s mouth. ‘10-4, Daddy.’
‘Good boy. We’re going into the cell blocks.’
Steve nods, approaching Jason.
Billy goes rigid. ‘Don’t touch him.’
‘Nice to see you again, Hargrove.’
‘I mean it, don’t touch him!’
Steve crouches down on the other side of Jason, those strange blue eyes on the man Billy loves. ‘He’s perfect.’
Billy blinks tears down his face. ‘Don’t. Please don’t. Whatever you’re gonna do, you can do to me.’
Steve looks up at him. ‘Oh I will,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t worry. You’re both so special.’ He then closes his eyes, winces and holds himself around the middle.
Eddie’s gathering ammo, glances at Steve.
‘What colour’s the world, baby?’
‘R-red,’ Steve utters, expression twisted in a grimace. ‘We can’t wait, though.’
‘Fucking full moon, really? We could’a done this a week ago.’
‘You know we couldn’t. It wouldn’t take. Besides, I needed her strength for the storm.’
Nancy Wheeler shakes her head. ‘You’re fucking crazy.’
Eddie looks sharply at her. ‘Watch your mouth, Little Miss Priss. You wanna get out of this alive, you stay quiet. Baby, you good to go?’
Steve touches Jason.
Billy shivers, shudders hard before he smacks his hand away. Steve’s hand is bleeding too.
His palm… it’s dripping blood.
‘You’re…’
Steve glances at him.
It’s like all Billy’s nightmares.
He just doesn’t look quite like how he should.
Steve lifts his index finger to his lips. ‘Shhh.’
Eddie checks outside and Hopper tells Billy and Steve to carry Jason, he needs to cover Eddie.
Billy has to accept Steve bleeding all over Jason.
Between the two, they can carry him.
Nancy and the crew go in between.
‘What are you gonna do?’
They’re headed into the prison.
Up ahead, Hopper pretends he has Eddie in custody to get them through, says there are survivors. It’s all a chaotic mess and then there’s gunshots and screaming and Billy just holds onto Jason.
He wonders if David’s dead yet.
It’s just… noise.
Steve doesn’t answer his question.
His hair is a little lighter than it should be.
Billy wants to cry.
‘Are you gonna kill us?’
‘No,’ Steve says, watching Eddie rip through a man like he’s butter. He smiles fondly. ‘We’re not gonna kill you. My lilac wouldn’t let me.’
‘But someone is?’
‘Not if you’re smart.’
‘It was all real then? What I saw… when you…?’
‘Are these my interview questions?’ Steve asks, adjusting his shared grip of Jason. ‘Or are you asking as my friend?’
‘Tell me.’
Steve smiles with love in his eyes. ‘Every bad thing you’ve ever dreamed is real, Billy. Somewhere.’
Someone from up front tries to run, headed right past Billy and Steve at the back. Steve steps out into the man, clotheslines him and then, with inhuman grace, drops low over the body and jams his hand down the man’s throat all the way, deeper and deeper until—
Billy looks away, almost loses hold of Jason he comes over so sick, so fast, feels faint. Jason is all he has to hold onto.
He takes a few clumsy steps left, finds a wall for them both to lean against as he breathes.
His skin is crawling like there’s spiders all over him.
Like the big dead house is eating him alive.
‘God,’ he whispers, doesn’t believe, but he wishes.
He really fucking wishes.
Steve is laughing and Eddie is calling his name and the fire seems to be spreading, it’s chasing them. Billy doesn’t know when the sprinklers turned off but it gives no reprieve.
Jason is so cold.
Barely holding on.
‘I won’t let go,’ Billy croaks, thinks of the stupid movie Jason loves and succumbs to a sob that wracks him. ‘I’ll never let go,’ he says just because it would have made Jason smile.
Hands are on him, pulling him away.
He lashes out without thinking, swings an arm and lands a backhanded punch to Eddie’s jaw and though it clearly takes him by surprise, Eddie is hardly bowled over.
He whoops like Billy’s a wild steer and then he gets Billy by the face, slams him against the wall. Jason slides down to the sopping floor.
‘Little bitch has fire, huh?’ Eddie says hotly, eyes too bright, they’re…
Blue.
They’re blue.
No.
He has Billy by the throat, merciless grip, Billy can’t move or think or breathe, he’s just looking into eyes that don’t belong to Eddie Munson.
‘Daddy,’ Steve calls out and then, when ignored, sharpens his tone, ‘Eddie!’
‘This is the one you never told me about,’ Eddie leers, genuine loathing writ large all over him. ‘The one who had your blood first.’
Steve is standing behind him. ‘Drop him, now!’
‘Maybe I should fuck him first,’ Eddie rumbles, hot words offset by ice cold hatred in those eyes that belong to Jason. ‘We can all share, hmm?’
‘There’s no need to be mean,’ Steve reasons lightly. ‘And don’t touch what’s mine.’
Eddie growls like a dog and viciously lets Billy drop hard to the ground, wheezing and choking. ‘What’s yours is mine.’
‘Not him.’
‘Yes him. I’m gonna fuck all that Hargrove blood right outta you, baby boy. Gonna breed you good and make it take and drink his blood when you come. Find him next time and make him pay, huh?’
Billy was moments away from passing out so his focus comes back slowly and his first impression is this weird sort of indignant anger that they’re talking dirty right in front of him about him. It fades quickly, nuance returns to his terror and he pulls Jason against him, trying not to cry and failing dismally.
‘I said no,’ Steve whispers and then they’re kissing, Billy can hear the noises, so wet and rough.
‘Munson!’ Hopper snaps. ‘Move your ass! They’re gettin’ ready to storm the building!’
Eddie sighs and lets go of Steve before dragging Billy up by the hair. ‘Let’s get this show on the road then.’
*
The closer they get to the interior of the prison, the inmates thankfully locked up still, the more Hopper takes charge. Billy watches with suspicious confusion as Hopper falls back to whisper to two of the crew, ‘Run, now!’ and lets them go. Eddie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care or, more likely, knows.
Billy can’t fathom why he’d want that.
But when there’s only Nancy left, Hopper drops sharply back, gets her by the wrists and says, ‘Go straight out, hands up, tell ‘em everything.’
‘Why?’ she asks, clearly terrified. ‘What is this?’
‘Just go. Now!’
His voice is lowered, like he doesn’t want Eddie to notice but Billy knows there’s nothing Eddie doesn’t notice. Nancy runs, throwing Billy a final look. ‘I’ll send help,’ she mouths silently.
Billy watches.
Neither Steve nor Eddie seem to care.
Hopper takes over with Jason, and Billy lets him because his arms were numb.
They come to a holding cell, padded walls inside.
The dull roar of other inmates is deafening.
Hopper takes keys from a dead guard and they go in.
He sets Jason down.
The lights are on above. Hopper locks the door from the inside.
They’re all in now.
Jason, Billy, Steve, Eddie and James Hopper.
‘How long?’ Eddie asks, stripping off.
‘I’d say maybe ten minutes, but I can’t be sure. They’ll delay when Wheeler comes out, adjust their intel.’ He looks at the door, key jammed in it from this side. ‘Should hold for at least three.’ Hopper crouches low in the corner of the room. ‘I’d hurry your ass up if I were you.’
Billy’s kneeling by Jason, who is shock white.
‘What are you gonna do?’ he asks, his own voice betraying him. ‘Don’t hurt him, please.’
‘Really?’ Eddie asks Steve, naked now. ‘This one?’
‘You should talk,’ Steve replies, doing the same.
Billy feels a cold thread of primal fear at the sight of them stripping naked. He looks to Hopper, but the older man is now decidedly watching the door and nothing else.
‘Knife,’ Eddie says. Hopper throws it over.
Eddie straddles Jason and Billy can’t take it, he starts hitting Eddie, trying to shove him off, get him away, maybe kill him if he could get thumbs in his sockets.
Steve gets Billy around the middle, drags him away.
‘We can’t interfere,’ he whispers, lips on Billy’s skin.
‘I fucking hate you,’ Billy scathes, he’s panting harshly, vision swaying the more he struggles. ‘I’ll ruin you, I swear to god.’
Eddie lifts Jason’s limp hand and cuts it open with the knife. Billy screams and Steve clamps a hand over his mouth. His palm is bleeding and Billy gags on the blood. ‘Don’t make it difficult.’
Steve is surprisingly strong, or maybe Billy is just weak from all the fucking horror, either way, Steve wrestles him down and gets on top.
Billy goes still, strength fading. All his workouts, all the weights… for nothing. ‘I won’t let you take him,’ he slurs.
‘Don’t worry.’ Steve cocks his head, bends low until they’re nose to nose, ‘I’ll give him back.’
*
“Court of the Crimson King”
The keeper of the city keys
Put shutters on the dreams.
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes.
The black queen chants the funeral march,
The cracked brass bells will ring;
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king
-King Crimson
Steve Harrington isn’t like other boys.
Or men, or women, or girls, or people.
He’s not really like anyone.
He never has been.
He’s always felt other.
Apart.
Separate.
He sees the world in colours, and those colours change as the months evolve. He can’t track it, but around the age of thirteen, when Billy Hargrove leaves him behind in the house, his dreams become far more vivid, and what small threads of humanity he has left are one by one, stripping away, snapping, like a piano hanging by fraying rope.
He coughs up blood, doesn’t bother to clean it anymore.
People come by, they board up the windows of the house. The local cop, Jim Hopper, he calls out for Steve sometimes and Steve watches from the woods. It’s tempting, but he knows he cannot afford to be taken away and put with nice people. Once they find out his parents are dead, it’ll all be over and Steve knows he has to stay here.
Waiting.
Waiting for him.
For the one he dreams of.
The name eludes him in waking hours, but when he sleeps in the cold forest, under stolen blankets surrounded by stolen wrappers, he whispers the name like drizzling warm honey over broken glass.
He is missing things, Steve thinks.
Parts of himself.
And he knows he just has to wait for the day he comes.
Hopper leaves food out for him sometimes, like he’s an animal. He’s got a little girl, just a baby. Steve crept close enough to his cabin one night, heard him on the phone.
The baby is from a busted lab, some horror show only a few miles away, and Hopper keeps saying, ‘She’s dead, I told you, they all died in the fire,’ but it’s not true.
Steve doesn’t really care.
He’s just waiting.
He misses Billy.
Sometimes he opens the cut, anger curling in his blood, even though he knows Billy did the right thing.
He’d be sad to kill him.
And Steve has killed so many at this point, he’s not sure he can control it. His parents were the first.
Accidents, like the others.
Not Tommy, though.
Tommy got what was coming to him.
Steve sees the world in colours that never settle and he hears songs he doesn’t know the words to and sometimes when he wakes, he has to vomit blood, insides on fire, shifting and slicing and shaping themselves without his consent and he knows… he’s not like other boys.
He thinks of killing himself.
He could do it, he wouldn’t be scared.
What gives him pause… is surviving.
What if he survives in some horrific way?
No.
He’ll wait.
He waits a year.
A whole year.
And then one day, he’s playing with a bottlecap on the side of the road outside the gas station when a car pulls up and the engine sounds familiar and he looks.
Oh.
He smiles softly.
The world reshapes itself.
The colours settle.
He can see them individually again.
The songs go quiet.
It’s him.
This older boy, long raven curls and sharp eyes, he’s in a leather jacket, back jeans and cowboy boots, cross earring.
Steve’s world levels out.
The boy looks at him.
He frowns a little as the smile takes shape.
Steve says, ‘You lost?’ and it’s the first two words he’s spoken in a very long time.
He’s taller than Steve, has maybe a couple of years on him and when he crouches down, he cocks his head at Steve with naked curiosity. He picks up a bottlecap from the little pile Steve has been amassing, he just likes them.
‘You missing somethin’?’
It’s like all these years Steve has been dreaming of this life, he’s been in stasis and now finally… he’s caught up.
He is here in the present moment.
And for the first time in his life, he feels real.
He feels—no stop, quiet, let it happen, don’t fight it—like he’s alive, in his body, present.
Eddie buys him lunch at a little diner after they swap names. The people there stare at him.
They’ve seen him around, but no one can ever get close enough to catch. He sees a waitress making a call.
Steve watches Eddie devour a cheeseburger, encouraging Steve to do the same to all the food before him. ‘Gotta eat up, sweetheart,’ he says earnestly, wiping his mouth with his wrist. ‘Look like a strong wind would topple you.’
‘It wouldn’t,’ Steve says, mousy quiet. ‘The wind likes me.’
Eddie’s smile is slow, real. ‘I can see why. Here. Try the pancakes.’
‘They’re dry.’
‘Tsk, fussy, huh?’ Eddie gets his milkshake, strawberry with whipped cream, and offers Steve the cherry which he takes, before pouring it over the pancakes. ‘Try now.’
Steve blinks slowly, samples what Eddie nudges towards him and finds it exquisite, some unreal version of ice cream cake but much softer, sweeter. He finishes the entire plate by the time Chief Hopper comes inside, nodding at the waitress. Eddie follows Steve’s gaze and his hand goes to his pocket very subtly.
‘Trouble?’ he asks Steve, who wonders what he has in there, which kind of metal it is.
‘Just say you’re my cousin,’ Steve utters softly.
‘Harrington,’ Hopper greets in an upbeat, non-threatening way. ‘It’s good to see you, son. Who’s your friend?’
‘This is my cousin.’
Hopper gives Eddie a once over. ‘I see. You know, everyone’s been keeping an eye out for you. Where’ve you been?’
Steve eats a fry, dips it in the shake too.
Eddie winks at him.
‘Camping,’ he says. ‘I was waiting for my cousin to come get me.’
‘Well, I’d really like it if you’d come on down to the station.’
‘No,’ Steve simply says, ‘That’s not gonna happen.’
‘I’m taking him home,’ Eddie says, has known Steve for all for half an hour. ‘We’ve got an Aunt out in upstate New York.’
‘I can’t let you just leave town,’ Hopper says, helps himself to a fry. ‘Why don’t you just come in, I can take a statement and then I’ll have your Aunt come get you herself.’
‘She sent me. I’m eighteen.’
‘You got ID?’
‘Not on me.’
‘Then no dice, James Dean.’ Hopper looks at Steve, something gently imploring. ‘I’ve been real worried about you, son. Few kids have gone missing the last few years. ‘Tommy Hagan drowned, I’m sure you remember.’
‘I remember.’
‘So let’s just make sure everything is in order.’
Eddie looks out the window.
There’s a cop car outside.
Another one pulling into the lot.
Steve feels small.
Eddie’s hand goes to his pocket again but Steve beats him to it, says, ‘OK, Chief. Sounds good, if my cousin can come too?’
‘We’ll have to hold you overnight. Got a comfy cot out back. Your cousin can sleep in his car if he’s got one.’
Eddie’s dark eyes move between Steve and the cop. Steve kicks him under the table.
‘Sure,’ he agrees pleasantly.
It’s what Steve expected.
Social worker with a clipboard.
They have no intention of letting him go.
But Eddie is waiting out there.
Steve is not gonna let him get away.
Not this time.
Hopper gives him his jacket in a secure room that’s barely more than a half decent cell and says tomorrow everything will be fixed. Steve pretends to sleep.
Then he creeps out of the cot bed and goes to the barred window. Eddie’s outside.
‘Hi,’ Steve whispers, smiling wide as they link hands, Eddie reaching in. ‘Thanks for waiting.’
‘Wasn’t gonna leave you with these fuckers,’ Eddie says. ‘I’m gonna bend the bars. Can you get through?’
Steve is skinny from months of nothing.
He nods, and watches with rapt fascination as Eddie ties rope between the bars, slips a crowbar between them and then twists, over and over, he flips it until the bars bend.
Steve thinks it’s amazing that even metal can be bent, reshaped, forced without fire.
Eddie repeats the process several times until there’s a gap for Steve to climb up and slip through.
Eddie catches him, he’ll always—no, shhh, let it happen—he’ll always catch him.
Always.
Steve’s first kiss is in the back of a stolen car.
Eddie’s fingers are linked with his.
They’re parked up at the quarry.
And there, on the leather, they tell secrets.
They tell secrets and share spit and Steve realises he’s been alone his entire life… until now.
‘I dreamed of you,’ Steve tells him.
Eddie smiles, kisses him again. ‘I missed you.’
The world is new.
Everything is new.
Indiana is big, and Eddie’s lying low.
Steve loves when Eddie tells him of his crimes, all the things he did to get warrants in his name, Eddie makes stories of his life and Steve lets them settle inside himself.
They share blood after two weeks.
Eddie’s good with knives, and Steve is weirdly drawn to the clever lines Eddie makes. He says, ‘Give me a scar,’ and Eddie doesn’t hesitate. He sterilises the blade, cleans it and then carves something into Steve’s blank canvas.
‘What’s this from?’ he asks of Steve’s palm. He’s letting it heal now, no longer splitting it on purpose.
Steve shrugs, won’t tell him.
Eddie won’t fuck him, tells him not yet and Steve laughs like a dark thing, asks if he’s shy, they’re pushing at some boundary, testing one another.
It’s barely been a month when it happens for the first time.
She’s full overhead, the moon.
And Steve starts feeling the world turn red.
He hasn’t felt it like this since he met Eddie and his life sharpened into glorious technicolour once more, but now… now it’s happening, and far worse than before.
Steve is coughing blood, his bones hurt and Eddie thinks he’s dying, he keeps asking what’s wrong and Steve… oh god, he doesn’t want to kill him, he can’t, he won’t…
‘I’m not normal,’ he gasps, clinging to the older boy who makes the world clear, the one he’s been waiting for. ‘I’m—don’t let me hurt you.’
Eddie frowns, but he seems to understand. ‘I won’t. I promise.’
The first time fully is an awful, agonising thing, it—stop it now, you have to let it in, you have to know how it felt, yes you do, don’t try to look away, it’s happening like it or not—hurts more than any other time and Steve thinks he’ll die.
He doesn’t though.
Eddie holds him under the moon.
And a piece of him… slips through the cracks.
Drawn there by Eddie, Steve thinks, because in the moments his mind threatens to fly apart at the seams like a bird on a string, he realises that there’s nowhere he wouldn’t find Eddie now. Nowhere he wouldn’t go to be with him.
This little piece of himself from… somewhere else… gets inside him and it’s like oil and water, his body rejects it, his psyche rejects it.
Eddie, god… the first time, he doesn’t know what to do.
He just holds Steve and kisses him and tells him those stories Steve loves so much of all the bad things he did, all the cool shit he stole, this cop whose nose he broke, the man in Iowa he stabbed to death before he came here.
The stories make an anchor.
And the piece settles.
They blend, and they bleed.
Steve comes back… but when he does, he’s not quite himself. Eddie is staring at him with total astonishment.
Only it’s not Eddie.
Steve sits up slowly.
He looks down at his hands and—listen now, no listen closely, are you listening because you need to know this and there’s no second recital—finds himself changed.
Transformed.
Like a mirror came alive, only his hands are not his own either. No. These knuckles are rough, they’ve known many fights and Steve’s barely thrown a punch in his entire life.
He waits.
He waits for Eddie to show fear, disgust, confusion.
But Eddie… in Steve’s own skin, just kisses him.
Kisses himself.
It’s so fucked up, it’s funny.
Steve’s first time is under the moon, and there’s blood all over them, hard to tell whose, but it doesn’t matter. Eddie breaks the skin of his throat and Steve says, ‘I love you,’ and nothing will ever be the same again.
It’s a ritual.
It’s a spell.
It’s love.
The world is orange around the edges, it’s soft and soothing and Eddie stays inside him for a while after, staring into his eyes as if seeing into deep places.
‘What are you?’ he asks with affectionate curiosity, this reverent whisper without a trace of fear.
Steve smiles, all sleepy and sore and strange.
‘Yours,’ he simply says, and it’s true.
They stay together.
They belong together.
Eddie becomes obsessed with Steve in a way that should scare Steve, that would frighten anyone else. Steve revels in it, he finds the love he’s dreamed of, and they become an insular unit with their backs to the world, focused, obsessed, in love, caught in an orbit that takes them far from the sun.
‘You’re my Pluto,’ Steve tells him with blood around his mouth, Eddie’s blood tastes like blackened copper and salt. ‘Pulling me out to sea.’
‘And you’re my little monster,’ Eddie whispers right back, playing with Steve’s new scars, he adds them gradually, takes care to clean them so they heal well. Eddie wants to test this thing Steve can do, know it, map it, learn all he can about Steve, inside and out. ‘My North star.’
—Listen now, sweetheart. Are you listening?—
He scars Steve and lets Steve scar him in turn, learning this artform of sharp things and skin that seeks to contain the light that is their souls.
But Steve’s skin, Eddie tells him, is mysterious.
Sometimes, if Steve really concentrates, he can force the cut to close. It’s a dangerous realisation for them both, especially once Steve tests it out on Eddie.
His nose bleeds and his ears ring and he gets a migraine for days but after an hour, he can force the cells out of their dormant evolutionary slumber, he can make fireworks in the space deep down where there is nothing, nothing, no thing.
‘How do you do that?’ Eddie asks, kissing him like he wants inside, like he’d crawl there and live if he could. ‘Huh? How?’
‘I just…’ Steve gasps, clinging hard, rolling his hips, greedy and needy, he sucks on Eddie’s tongue as strong hands roam his body, catching on sticky smears of blood. ‘I find the dark place and make light.’
Eddie mutters unholy things and fucks Steve to dry orgasm, teeth in his neck, jeans around his thighs.
What scars Steve keeps, stay put.
They don’t swap.
Eddie tests it over and over and fuck, it still hurts, oh god it hurts so much, but never so much as that first time. Steve likes it best when they’re fucking, he’ll stir the change and make the engines transform and the cells mimic and they have the secret, the code, the blueprint because Eddie has Steve’s blood and Steve has Eddie’s blood, they share everything and Steve will arch his spine, fingernails breaking Eddie’s skin as he moan-screams his pleasure as the shift takes hold. There’s a point of no return, a tipping point whereby even if he wanted to stop it he couldn’t. Downhill, he likes that part best as his bones, blood, muscle, veins, water, flesh, nerves, hair, sinew… all of it bend to their games… and mimic.
Steve will open his eyes and see himself, with Eddie inside and he laughs and Eddie groans like an animal and comes deep inside himself and they bite and play and the scars—focus, love—the scars don’t move.
Eddie still has all his scars, even when his body transforms to mirror Steve’s own and Steve still has his scars when he’s Eddie. He’s not sure why, but Eddie talks purple prose about how the skin is once bitten, twice shy, already transformed to heal, won’t do it again and Steve kisses him and says put love inside me, make it grow, put a baby in me, and then all Eddie’s prose recentres and they fuck under the sky and Eddie draws blood, gets it on his tongue and Steve might heal it, he might not.
Scars stay put, but tattoos don’t.
It’s a strange thing, and like all other elements, Eddie becomes obsessed. When they shift, Eddie’s ink vanishes, Steve has none of his own yet so there’s no change.
When they change back, Eddie’s ink resurfaces like oil rising to the surface in water. ‘I don’t understand,’ he says again and again, and Steve watches him with affectionate patience, but he doesn’t really care. ‘We have to test it more.’
Steve lets him do whatever he likes.
Their life in Indiana, hiding out in quieter towns, living out of Eddie’s car and stealing what they need, is a beautiful thing and Steve is too happy to say no to anything.
Eddie puts ink in Steve, stick and poke, he’s methodical and surprisingly good. Steve watches each sharp, wet press and sighs happily as the shape comes together.
‘Such an artist,’ he murmurs, playing with Eddie’s pierced nipple while his boyfriend methodically puts a perfectly round black moon into Steve’s inner wrist. ‘My Pluto sway.’
‘Don’t turn me on while I’m inking you, baby boy,’ Eddie complains wryly.
‘Inking me, I like that. Gonna wrap around me like a squid?’
‘Stevie.’
‘Choke me and smother me and force all that black inside until I’m swollen with it?’
Eddie claps his cheek. ‘Focus.’ Steve laughs. Eddie’s obsession is relentless, it’s better just to let him test his theories and anyway, Steve likes the pain of the tattoo, finds it exquisitely effective at making all the world go quiet.
After a week of healing, Steve initiates the shift and Eddie, who doesn’t vomit anymore after the transformation, spits blood and then examines their skin.
He watches with tremulous fascination as Steve’s moon appears on the inside of his wrist and Steve looks down to see fragments of Eddie’s tattoos coming through.
‘The ink,’ Eddie says, touching the sore, raw skin, always leaves them sensitive like newborns at first. ‘It’s keeping the ink.’ He looks up Steve, wearing Steve. ‘If we have the same amount of ink—’
‘You’re such a dork,’ Steve complains around a resigned laugh as he pushes Eddie over onto his back. ‘I want you to choke me till I come while you fuck me and you just wanna make notes, huh?’
Over time, Eddie puts more a more ink into Steve and teaches Steve to do the same. It reaches a point where, when they shift, almost all of Eddie’s ink will swirl, form and settle into the shapes made by sharp objects, as if pain is the glue and Steve’s magic is the glitter.
Once he’s ascertained what he needed to, Eddie eases off, although Steve knows he is only quietly mapping rather than loudly now.
The shift becomes an academic thing between them, Eddie has built lore around it, rules. He discovers it’s much harder to do if they haven’t shared blood recently, maps the toll it takes on Steve even though Steve doesn’t care. He reinforces positive habits which is just shit like eating, drinking water, sleeping enough. Steve snorts softly, puts his index and middle fingers into Eddie’s mouth and says, ‘Are you my Daddy now?’ and Eddie’s desire drops into a deep roll right before Steve’s eyes and that one word becomes a sly hook in Eddie’s naval that will drag him from whatever he was doing to come and absolutely ruin Steve until he’s crying, until he’s pleading and Eddie will only stop if Steve says red, which he hasn’t yet.
Eddie discovers the dream sharing because Steve struggles to recall his dreams. Eddie helps him to focus, he makes a wall of his arms, a cage of flesh and bone so Steve feels safer while he sleeps and dreams. Eddie puts love in Steve however he can. Food, kisses, spit, water, come, blood, words, cuddles, warmth, dreams, memories, stories.
They live in Eddie’s car, stealing what they need, circling the forests of Indiana, skirting towns and living small.
But when, after months of bloody bliss, Steve begins to experience that pain again, Eddie’s concern tightens far more than it ever did about the shift.
It comes like a fever, always around the full moon, though not every full moon as there were several in between he almost forgot about what had happened last time.
Steve becomes cold, achy, weak.
The world is slowly darkening into shades of blood red.
Eddie makes a nest of blankets in the car, feeds him soup and kisses his forehead as it gets worse and worse until Steve slips… away.
Just away somewhere.
He goes where it’s quiet and milky white.
Where the moon sings songs and the stars tell stories.
And when he comes back, he finds Eddie fraught, worried, almost afraid.
‘You weren’t you,’ Eddie tells him when Steve asks what’s wrong. He can’t hear so well, takes a while to return to normal. ‘You were… you didn’t know me.’
Steve cradles his face. ‘I’d know you anywhere.’
Eddie kisses the moon on his wrist, the first one, but not the last, there are so many now. ‘But you didn’t.’
They are separate things.
The shift is something Eddie can handle easily, it becomes a game between them, it’s like a second language and they’re both comfortably fluent to speak in slang and idioglossia, they dominate this element of strangeness.
But the colours… this thing Eddie is unsure of what to name… that takes a while. They don’t know yet that it only happens a few times a year, hard to predict in advance.
After that second time, Steve slips down to where it’s darkest inside himself, the place he goes to heal (if ever) and feels around. It takes a while, but eventually, he detects something new. When he focuses, the impression it gives off is a colour, distinct and temperate.
Light, cool blue.
It's him.
Only a fragment.
But… from somewhere else.
Eddie watches him sometimes, and Steve can feel his worry, the way he dislikes he can’t get a handle on it the way he did for the shift.
They stay in Indiana for those first few years. The state is huge, it’s wild in parts and disconnected. One faceless crime doesn’t follow them town to town and they stay careful.
The first time they kill someone together, Steve is sixteen and Eddie’s living out his last days of being a teenager. They’re in a Denny’s and Eddie tips the waitress with stolen money, he loved the cheeseburger and then Steve gets this feeling, like fingers up his spine.
He turns, frowning, and sees a man… surrounded by colour. By a strange and unnatural light.
And within, that little piece of blue goes ice cold with fear.
‘What is it?’ Eddie asks quietly as Steve stares.
He’s never seen the man before.
But oh… he recognises something.
The fear bleeds into him from that little sliver of summer sky blue and Steve has the knife in his hand before Eddie can stop him.
His first kill with a blade is messy, it’s hard fucking work to stab a full grown man to death and the people in the diner are screaming, running, no one tries to help.
Eddie pries Steve off, the pair of them bloody.
‘Baby, baby, look at me!’
‘No, no he’s still alive!’ Steve cries, frightened and small and he will not allow that. The blue sliver hides and Steve forces the knife in so hard it breaks bone and sends a fountain of red up so high it hits the ceiling.
That’s the one that does it.
Eddie takes the guy’s wallet, pragmatic as ever, and Steve slowly lets himself relax, lets the warm water back in and the blue looks out, no longer afraid.
Cops are coming, Steve hears the sirens.
Eddie drags him out the back, they have to leave the car.
Into the woods they go, running, hiding, staying quiet.
And for a week, they avoid the cops.
Until one morning, they’re awoken by the click of a gun.
‘Harrington.’
It’s Hopper, only Hopper.
He cuffs Eddie first, looks Steve over worriedly. ‘Has he been hurting you?’
Steve shakes his head.
Eddie is very calm, he’s thinking slow and Steve knows he’s an escape artist, but sometimes it’s better to wait.
‘All right, well. We’re gonna take care of you now.’
Hopper takes them both in.
He makes a case for Steve, throws Eddie to the wolves.
They’re being fingerprinted when Steve focuses hard enough to just shift the skin on their fingers into something mottled and not right.
In the cells of the small town he thought he’d left behind, Steve stares up at the ceiling. Eddie’s four cells down. Tomorrow, they’ll be driven somewhere more secure, it’ll all be real.
Steve hears a soft sound coming from down the hall.
‘Chief?’
Hopper clears his throat. ‘Sorry, kid. You need something?’
He comes over to Steve’s cell. His eyes are red.
‘Why are you sad?’ Steve asks, reading, reading the story in between the lines. He drops his voice to a very low whisper. ‘Is it your little girl?’
The older man goes stiff. ‘How—I don’t—’
‘Is she sick?’ Steve asks, because this kind of grief, it emanates in a pinkish grey, the shade of despair.
Hopper wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah. Yeah, she is.’
Steve takes hold of the bars. ‘I can help her.’
‘What?’
‘I can help her. If you just—’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday, kid. Not letting you out.’
‘No. If you bring her to me, I can fix her.’
‘No one can fix what she has.’
Steve bites his bottom lip. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Elle.’
‘Bring her to me. You’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll be gone tomorrow.’
After a solid ten seconds of taut silence, Hopper mutters, ‘I must be out of my mind,’ and then an hour later returns with a toddler in a blanket, fast asleep with her cheek on his shoulder.
Steve reaches through the bars with one hand.
Hopper’s hesitation is writ large.
‘I won’t hurt her,’ Steve promises.
Hopper relents, and Steve feels that pink-grey ooze, the feeling made manifest of, she’ll die anyway.
The moment he touches her skin, he can feel it.
Cells growing where they shouldn’t.
This fungus, unnatural nature taking shape and causing chaos. Steve can dissolve it.
‘I can see it,’ he tells Hopper. ‘In her mind, her brain.’
‘How… I never even told—’
‘Chief,’ Steve says slowly, the way Eddie would, ‘I’m gonna need you to make a tiny cut in her hand and cut me too. We need to share blood.’
Hopper’s face crumples. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘I won’t hurt her.’
‘She’s so little.’
‘I know. I can fix it, I swear.’
Hopper cries in front of Steve when he nicks the tip of her finger and the pain wakes her. He softly tells her it’s all OK and then he roughly slices Steve’s index with trembling hands, kneeling by the bars.
Steve presses the little cuts together, two vertical slits, and then her blood mixes with his own.
He bites back a gasp.
Because her blood… it’s like his own, only… different.
This little one isn’t made to shift, she’s not missing pieces… but she is powerful. Steve wonders how it’ll manifest, but for now, he focuses on his task.
He goes to the clusters, brings the cells to life and the shakes them, dissolves them, destroys what delusional little parts of her body insist they need to build here, and he tells them no.
Steve passes out, doesn’t wake until the next day where he’s being cuffed and put in the back of a transport van with Eddie and two guards. There’s no sign of Hopper and were it not for the cut on his finger, he might think he dreamt it.
‘You healed her?’ Eddie asks quietly, his eyes on Steve as the van takes off.
‘Shut it,’ one of the guards warns.
Steve only nods.
He knows it worked.
Only hopes it lasts.
Her cells were thick with something unnatural, some kind of radiation, sickly green and forced.
They’re barely an hour into the drive when something slams into the van, sends it skidding sideways and Steve gets such bad whiplash, his eyes sting, breath knocked clean out of him. A single gunshot comes from somewhere upfront near the driver.
The doors open in the back, light floods in.
James Hopper shoots both guards dead.
Clean, perfect headshots.
Eddie’s jaw drops. ‘Wow.’
Hopper unlocks Steve’s handcuffs, gives him a set of car keys. Eddie’s car. ‘It’s parked up a block away. Don’t ever come back here.’ He hesitates, watching Steve for a beat. ‘Thank you for what you did.’
They leave Indiana together.
There was a little money in the car, it buys a motel room and a shower and they fuck until the sun rises, over and over, inside, no deeper, get inside and stay, live here, become me, love me, fuck me, choke me, make me beg, say red, never, breed me, marry me, be my Daddy, hold him still while I gut him, love me, love me till it hurts, cut me, press down, I can heal it, I can do anything, I can do anything.
They marry for the first time under the moon, she’s crescent and sharp and Eddie makes stories of their vows and Steve makes art with a blade and only heals what might become annoying, is always sure to let it scar.
He tells Eddie about the blue.
Eddie listens intently, stroking Steve’s face.
‘My boy,’ he murmurs, ‘always collecting strays, hmm? The prince of broken things.’
Steve chooses to think of it that way.
Stray pieces of himself, the way he keeps candy wrappers, and hair ties he finds, and bottlecaps, and pen lids, and apple cores, and gives them all names, because he wants a family, and they can’t have one.
‘Where do they come from?’ he wonders, looking up at the sky, sees shapes that aren’t there, constellations that don’t make sense.
‘Other places,’ Eddie guesses. ‘But don’t worry, we’ll make a home for all of ‘em.’
Their first kill together is something special.
Steve has been craving it ever since the diner.
Eddie too, they keep playing it, acting it out.
‘You should stab me,’ Steve begs, all low and bratty, ‘I know I could heal it.’
But Eddie is ironclad here, never allows it.
So they scout around two states over for a good kill.
A good kill is a bad person.
It’s not hard to find a bad person.
Steve is the bait.
Eddie watches from afar.
And together, in the alleyway shadows, they make art of death with sharp metal, they make meat of the man who thought he could rape Steve.
They fuck in the blood.
They shift into one another and it’s violent, brutal, they make new scars in the shift which they’ve never done before and the death sates something in Steve, and in Eddie too.
Though Eddie likes a clean kill more, Steve will come to learn, he’ll always play with his boy in the blood.
‘Where do you wanna go, baby?’ Eddie asks later, when they’re washing off in a nearby lake and Steve’s so warm with joy that he doesn’t even mind the bite of the water.
Steve looks at him, just looks.
‘Anywhere, with you.’
Time passes, they share every moment of it. Holding hands while driving, laughing while fucking, food from fingers, snuggling to sleep, ink in the skin and blood… blood always, they must be the same person by now, deep down. Steve hits eighteen and Eddie’s twenty one and they use fake I.Ds everywhere they go, never staying long. This country is their sandbox, open roads and local jurisdictions, small towns and wide open skies.
They steal what they need, kill who they like, fuck anywhere, everywhere, playing, testing, and sometimes they argue too. Sometimes all that love bubbles until it spills over the side and burns and Eddie is too worried still about the thing they have no name for, he tells Steve he doesn’t have to see when it happens, when some new part from another world joins with Steve and renders him briefly a stranger.
Steve sneers coldly, asks, ‘What do you expect me to do?’
He knows what Eddie wants.
To map it, learn it, study it the way he did with the shift, but this is different, this is something they both fear deep down so Steve pulls away, closes off.
A Friday finds them arguing so bad Steve slaps Eddie and shoves him until he stumbles. Steve then takes the car, driving it away and leaving Eddie in the dust.
He cries while he drives. Fighting hurts, he hates it, but there’s such anger inside him, deep and seething, unable to heal. Some pieces in the nowhere place are red, some blue, some yellow, some green, pink or orange. The best ones are purple or black, those pieces assimilate easier and his memories return faster.
But some… some are ultraviolet.
Some aren’t any colour at all.
At a truck stop, Steve plays innocent, plays sweet until the blood draws a shark.
He overestimates, he fucks up.
The guy is stronger than he is and when he tries to kill, he fails, he fails. The man beats him black and blue, takes what he wants, and leaves Steve out on the side of the road.
Full moon is above.
The worst time for the world to turn red.
When he wakes, it’s daylight and he’s in Eddie’s arms.
Eddie’s holding him through sleep, but not asleep himself. He has blood on his cheek, hair tied back.
‘Eddie,’ Steve croaks.
His husband lets out a slow breath. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’
It’s a sunny day in some town Steve doesn’t know the name of and he has no clue how Eddie found him, but he’s glad he did. With torn fingertips (the concrete, he was clawing to get away) he reaches up and touches Eddie’s face, the dried blood.
‘There’s something wrong with me.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, baby boy.’
‘I’m not normal.’
Eddie tips his chin up, noses his cheek to scent him. ‘Wouldn’t love you so damned much if you were.’
But he’s crying, and Steve is too.
‘Did you kill him?’
‘I killed everyone.’
‘In the bar?’
‘In the cells where they held him,’ Eddie—no, don’t look away, you look, you have to know what to see, no turning away now—says flatly. ‘I didn’t know which one he was, so I killed ‘em all.’
‘Before you found me?’
‘After.’
‘I… was it the moon thing?’
Eddie nods, kissing Steve’s cheek over and over, kitten kisses, like he’s a child. ‘Not a bad one, you were just so scared. I told you a story. It helped.’
‘What story?’
‘Our story,’ Eddie says, gently biting Steve’s jaw as if he’s a coin and Eddie will only take silver. ‘It brought you back quicker, but you passed out from the uh.’ He swallows, voice gone very low. ‘The blood loss.’
‘Oh.’ Steve tries to sit, finds it hurts so bad his eyes water. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘I killed everyone.’
Steve smiles weakly. ‘That’s my boy.’
Eddie cries loud and ugly, holding Steve so tight it makes new blossoms of pain and Steve will only ever see him cry a handful of times in all the years they have together in this world, but this is one of the worst. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I can’t lose you.’
‘Me neither.’
‘I… I need us to try, with the story. I think it works.’
‘OK, baby.’
Eddie crushes their mouths together, sex and pain go hand in hand and Steve needs it too, needs the bleed, the shift, the union. ‘I’m gonna figure this out.’
‘I know you will.’
‘We’ll map how you feel, what colour the world is, learn when it’s comin’ like a hurricane.’
They shift and for the first time, Eddie wearing Steve says, ‘I want you to rape me,’ and Steve wearing Eddie feels a splinter of pure, utmost sorrow in his heart because in all things they have bred this love from the soil of symmetry and he knows that Eddie needs to feel it too, he has to now.
‘Say red?’
‘I will if I need to.’
Red.
Red.
The best and worst of their lives.
New ways to play emerge from the grief and Steve heals both their bodies, but keeps the scars, because whatever else… it’s their story and Eddie seems to think the story will help.
In November, they marry in the woods with blood and knives and Eddie has now perfected a skeleton of their story which he dresses in different skins depending on what shade the new lost little piece of Steve Harrington is when it forces it’s way inside on a random full moon. He asks Steve, ‘What colour is the world, baby?’ in the week leading up to the full moon, the hours before especially and Steve will answer automatically, honestly, and together they map what they can, cartographers of a new horizon, a world with a population of two.
Eddie makes rules.
Steve makes his own.
They wear them in skin.
Rings, all.
Steve creates ten rules for Eddie.
Eddie makes nine for Steve.
‘Keepin’ this one spare,’ he says, kissing the empty ring finger after the others are sore, inky and intricately set, his art is always breathtaking. ‘I just got this feeling we’ll need a new rule one day.’
Steve is twenty the day he realises he can share his memories with Eddie. They’re fucking with the shift, pushing and hurting and healing and loving after a night spent killing, and Steve goes down deep into Eddie’s lovely, echoing dark, his place of nowhere and realises he can put more there than just light.
He forms himself.
And then cuts what forms to bleed.
He chooses.
Chooses what to share.
Eddie cries out, possessed, and Steve thinks for the first time that maybe he truly is a monster, a demon, a damned and fallen creation of a once loving father, because there is no other word to describe the implantation of his memories into another body—don’t cry, don’t cry, little rose, I promise it’ll be all right— he knows then… he’s impregnating Eddie.
They both orgasm explosively, no one hears the screams this far into the Colorado woods and when they come to, still in the shift, Eddie sobs his name and kisses him and begs for more.
Over time, Steve will share everything.
Everything except the years he was eleven until thirteen, because they belong to someone else, Billy’s secrets will always be safe with Steve. He promised.
That drives Eddie crazy, and Steve enjoys it.
Gives him all else, but likes how jealous Eddie is, how much worse it gets over time, how his obsession grows thick and steady, has no ability to wane.
They make art from carnage, they kill the people Steve’s glass menagerie of discarded parts whispers about, those who hurt them, those who did bad things, and sometimes just who it would be fun to kill because killing is just that. It is not a grim method to inflict justice—I know you wish it was, but it’s not—but a part of their life, interwoven and essential because all life is energy and all energy is visible to only one man on earth, and Steve decides he will curate the light he sees, however he wants.
Children have no such light.
They are malleable, shapable until a certain point and he would have no desire to kill a child any more than he would an animal.
But people… adults… oh, that’s fun.
Eddie pieces together from Steve’s memories more than Steve himself will ever know about this thing they cannot name. Eddie is the one who shows Steve that certain people with a certain light are people they knew from elsewhere.
He dreams of them.
So Eddie dreams of them too.
And his clear minded pragmatism puts all the broken bits together… and he makes an actual, physical map of the worlds they come from.
He pays someone to tattoo it properly into his back, a vertical design, from the nape of his neck down to the dip of his ass cheeks, it’s all there in the symbols only they know, in the colours that only make sense to them… Daddy has mapped the universe entire.
Their rules hold tight.
Life is beautiful.
And then one day, another argument (the same fucking argument) comes brewing again.
‘Tell me the story of your palm scar.’
‘It’s not yours to know.’
Eddie’s temper is a stunning thing, black hole of pure hatred for the phantom scent of another male who had Steve’s blood first, but he doesn’t know who, and Steve is certain if he did, Billy Hargrove would be long dead by now.
The argument simmers instead of scathes.
Steve lies about colours when asked, many of his glass menagerie have reasons to resent Eddie one way or another and when he feels anger, they all feel it.
Eddie storms off, he’s gone for hours.
They meet at the zoo; bodies in the trunk, Steve wants to feed the big cats but the moment he sees Eddie, he knows something is wrong.
‘You broke a rule.’
Eddie doesn’t even say sorry. ‘Did you love him?’
‘Who did you kill?’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Eddie—’
‘What’s his fucking name?’
‘You broke the seventh ring.’
The moon is reaching high point.
The world is coming red.
Steve shouldn’t have ignored it, but he thought he had more time, he so wanted to feed the tigers.
‘You must have loved him,’ Eddie snarls, getting Steve by the face, ‘because you bled for him! You loved him first, and I could take it if you’d tell me—’
Steve punches him.
He’s stronger now, faster, quick and clever, Daddy showed him how to deal death.
‘Fucking touch me when you broke the seventh ring, motherfucker!’
The moonsong hits that pitch.
Steve goes rigid.
Oh… no.
He’s never been this angry when the world turned red.
Maybe it’s why the clearest, bluest piece of him is drawn there now… maybe he caused it, maybe he called for the one shard of himself from elsewhere that hates Eddie Munson more than anything… but either way, his anger creates a twofold problem, in that he doesn’t slip away this time… he watches it all.
He remembers it all.
For a brief, disorienting moment, he can see into the place this sliver came from. He sees why this sea to shining sea blue shard of himself hates and fears Eddie Munson and is powerless to stop what happens next.
He stabs Eddie.
Eddie lets him, knows Steve can heal it later, he’s just trying to tell the story, to reach Steve and pull him out faster, quicker, make it right… but that’s when red and blue lights strike the air and Steve wants to laugh.
It’s the worst possible moment for a cop car to roll up.
—You see now, don’t you. You understand it now. Don’t cry, darling. Don’t look away. I promised to give you back and I will—
They are kept apart.
No blood.
No kisses.
No skin.
Something remains, but it’s thin.
A flickering neon thread.
Steve cannot force the shift and even if he could… what good would it do. Away from Eddie, the world loses focus and he has to dig out his pain to cling to. Men in uniforms violate him, they try to make him sorry. He only laughs, spits blood and says, ‘That the best you got, babycake?’ and if they weren’t so high profile, he would have been raped to death ten times over before the trial.
The blue shard remains angry.
It bleeds into all Steve’s blood, settles.
He saw it.
And Eddie broke a promise.
He decides to be patient.
He knows that’s what Daddy would want.
So he’s good. Sweet. Non-threatening.
Steve trusts in the universe to send a sign.
Years pass in lonely grey, a washed out clash of all colour without definition. Steve endures fewer than ever red episodes and those he does are met with only mild concern in the institution, they already think he’s crazy after all.
Sometimes, Eddie sends people to Steve.
He’s offering roses.
Gifts.
Eddie is not the only one Steve can force a shift onto.
He’s sending Steve ways to escape, people who if they got close enough to Steve might volunteer to share blood, fanatics, enthusiasts, Steve thinks it’s fucked up and he finds it so funny, a mad world indeed.
But he can tell right away that none of these would work, and even if they would, he cannot force his blood into them, even Owens would stop that. It’s simply not meant to be and these cold light people come away rattled by the force of his sight as he looks deeper into them than anyone ever has before.
A TV show is in the works.
A greedy visionary brings him a photograph of Billy Hargrove and for a while, Steve just looks at it, basking in the soft touch of the forgiving universe handing him everything he’s been waiting for.
The boy with his blood.
One of four people on the planet.
It’s so funny.
‘That one,’ he tells the greedy man. ‘For me.’
‘He uh,’ the man laughs. ‘He wanted to play Eddie.’
‘No, he’s mine,’ Steve simply says.
The man only returns once more.
And this time he has a new security guard.
James Hopper’s beard is salt and pepper grey but otherwise he looks the same as he did that day with the perfect headshots Eddie worked hard to learn.
Steve, of course, gives nothing away and Hopper seemed to expect as much. He lingers behind David, who is speaking to the idiotically friendly Doctor Owens about Steve’s psychological transcript and how much might be made available to him.
Hopper wastes no time.
‘Elle’s sick again.’
‘How long does she have?’
‘A year, maybe two.’ Oh, the stars are aligning. ‘I can’t bring her here.’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
Steve closes his eyes. He sees Daddy there, like always, where it’s dark. The negative space of the stars, the taste of blood, the joy of love.
‘Just be ready.’ Steve smiles blandly. ‘Be our man, Chief.’
And he is.
He really is.
—I know you’re sad about that, you liked him, I’m sorry. Deep breaths now, it’s almost over, can you feel me inside you? You’re so beautiful, so good, I promise I won’t keep you—
‘Ten-four,’ Hopper simply says.
That night, Steve lies on his bed, staring through the ceiling, all the way through concrete and metal until he sees the stars, the dark side of the moon where he sits with his glass menagerie and they whisper small comforts.
The prince of broken things.
He feels the scar on his palm.
Presses it.
It’s a strange twist of fate, to have Billy Hargrove be the key, from which dangle many strings, all of them red.
He laughs softly.
Lifts his hand and twirls his fingers.
Steve Harrington isn’t like other men.
He’s not like anyone and yet he’s not alone.
He was patient before, twice.
Waiting for Eddie.
But no more.
The monster inside opens its eyes, smiling in the dark, each tooth a glass shard of his rainbow collection and looks—at you, don’t be afraid, don’t blink, see… just see…that’s it, darling, good boy, do you see that tooth right there? Shh, don’t be afraid, look. It’s you. You, from elsewhere. I know, it hurts, but it’ll pass and I swore to him that I’d give you back. I want you to see it so you know that we are all connected, all of us. Parts, pieces, playing roles and telling stories. Don’t cry. I wanted you to know. It was personal. All of it, everything, every piece… is so very personal. And that’s what makes it art.’
*
“Cthulhu”
They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.
-Gunship, Corin Hardy
It’s a square.
But at their core, all squares are circles.
For even the sharpest point is an atom.
Atoms are spheres.
Round.
Circles.
Everything is a circle.
They make a square, but the flow moves through and through, bleeding, infecting, it’s a virus.
He’s dying.
He… what’s his name?
He can’t remember.
No wait.
All I want you to know is that I actually want you.
Not him, not them.
You .
When the curtain falls, I still wanna be with you.
Jason.
He’s Jason Carver.
He’s not Steve or Eddie.
Not them.
He’s Jason Carver… his eyes are bluey green… looking down at him from… oh god.
Oh god.
Jason is staring into his own eyes.
It’s still Eddie Munson… but barely.
‘Hi, Jase.’
Eddie’s face is shifting, hair lightening and shortening, and while this happens, Eddie is undressing him.
Jason flinches hard, strangled by primal fear.
He fights, palm bleeding, body hot like he’s speed running a deadly flu. Eddie forces his hands down, stripping him and Jason cries out, terrified.
‘No, no, no,’ a soft voice says coming from the side, and it’s… it’s Billy but it’s not… oh god, please. Please make this stop. ‘No, little rose, we’re not gonna hurt you like that. He just needs your clothes. We would never do that to you, would we, baby?’
Eddie smiles just like Jason, the chipped incisor is gone.
‘Never. Now hold still.’
Steve tsks, except… he’s barely Steve anymore. He looks… fucking god he is… Billy. He’s still wearing the bloody jumpsuit but as Jason watches, horribly hypnotised, he sees the last remaining traces of Steve melt away into Billy Hargrove.
Eddie watches him, smiling with what is undeniably grotesque amounts of love, and says, ‘I’m gonna do such awful things to you lookin’ like that, baby boy.’
Steve laughs happily and kisses him, open mouthed and confident, they collide joyfully, the way meteors must sing all the way down.
Eddie is changing slower than Steve.
Billy.
Where is…?
Jason turns his head, sees Hopper in one corner of the room. The older man is watching the door and nothing else. Jason opens his mouth to ask for help but he remembers now… he has the memories inside.
Hopper is their man.
He rolls to look the other way, tears sliding down his temples and across his nose. The pain in his body is everywhere, it’s fever pitch, so bad his brain’s supplying pity endorphins, thinks this is it for sure.
Billy is unconscious on the floor beside him only it’s not Billy. It’s Steve Harrington, in Billy’s clothes.
God.
This is so fucked.
But Jason sees the necklace, the blunted shark tooth, and clings to what he can. He sobs weakly as Eddie strips him bare but for underwear and feels the wet of a severe nosebleed. Steve, wearing Billy, gently shushes him and strokes his hair, says it’ll all be fine.
‘Baby, he’s so beautiful like you,’ Billy—Steve says, touching Jason’s mouth. ‘The way he suffers… so lovely.’
‘You gonna stab me again?’
‘You deserved it.’
‘Daddy was bad huh?’
‘Ah-hem,’ Hopper says from his corner, monitoring the radio. ‘Don’t waste time we don’t have.’
‘We have time,’ Steve says confidently, panting as he kisses Eddie loudly, messy and utterly animal. They’re licking into one another’s mouth and smiling and growling, it delays Eddie’s attempts to undress, but they get there eventually. Steve helps, biting him all over. Jason sees Eddie’s scars still on his body even though the rest of him is Jason, he doesn’t have the Nike tick and for some reason, that grounds him a little more.
They can’t take that away, at least.
Rough hands dress Jason in the orange suit and zip him up in it all the way. Eddie stays naked, no underwear. Jason looks away from the sight of his own half hard cock, dizzy. ‘Hair down, it suits him.’
‘He’s shorter than me.’
Steve giggles. ‘Is that your super cute way of telling me you never realised you’re short?’
‘I am not short, fuck you. Hargrove is short.’
‘Oh, baby, you’re so jealous, aren’t you? Gonna have to rape-fuck me till I’m sorry huh?’
Jason hears his own voice rumble a dark laugh, muttering ungodly things and he tries to shut it out, crawling painfully towards… Billy, who looks like Steve.
They didn’t take the scars.
That’s all he has that’s him.
Fucking god.
‘Please, please, please,’ he sobs brokenly, Eddie’s voice, it grates and his insides feel cut to ribbons. ‘Please be OK.’
‘He’s fine,’ Steve tells him, ‘the transference is just intense.’
‘Did he like my memories, baby boy?’
‘No he did not, but he wouldn’t be me unless he had you inside him, would he, Daddy?’
Jason gets hands on Billy, checks his breathing and finds it present, if shallow. He bends to press shaky kisses and apologise, over and over. ‘Billy, baby, wake up.’
‘Little rose,’ Steve calls out, melodic and sweet, ‘why don’t you undress him for us?
Jason cries, his face buried in the hollow of Billy’s neck and even though it’s Steve’s skin, Billy still smells the same. Jason could find him in the dark, he thinks.
‘Undress him or I will,’ Eddie warns coldly in between the kisses he gives, voice low and rough.
Jason fumbles clumsily with numb fingers that tingle as if waking from a bloodless slumber to undress Billy. Buttons, belt, the jeans, the boots. He leaves the necklace on, knows Billy wouldn’t want them wearing it, but everything else but underwear he throws over his shoulder.
Something is happening behind him.
He doesn’t want to look but he has to.
At first he thinks they’re fighting.
He thinks maybe they’re wrestling.
But then lightning flashes from outside through the high, barred window and he sees in awful detail what looks like him and Billy… fucking.
Only it’s not them.
But it sort of fucking is.
Jason’s never seen sex like it.
And it’s not really sex yet but that’s where it’s headed, because fucking Christ, the noises they’re making, like porn stars on crack, it’s all uhh fuck, want your fingers, put your blood inside me, open me up and force it in deep, I want you to make me scream, don’t you wanna hear him scream? And it’s also put your fingers down my throat, that’s it, hold onto Daddy and give me the knife, I’m gonna put the story in you while you look just like that, uhhh yeah, fuck you’re a little bitch aren’t you? my little bitch in heat, going red for Daddy, I feel it, I’ve got you, won’t let you go, need to mark you, breed you, Daddy’s gonna breed you so much you’ll be swollen with it, keep it inside and make you mine, mine, always mine, make it right, won’t ever let you down again, uhhhgh god fuck yes that’s it baby, put that knife in me, just a shallow one stick it in me, stab me slow, right in the ribs, ohh that’s my boy!
Jason feels so faint he might actually pass out, but he holds fast, has to keep Billy safe. They’re not dressing, they’re completely naked but one of them throws him the white, bloody suit and so Jason focuses on what practical thing he can do in the moment, dresses Billy in the suit and takes heart that the movement starts to wake him.
Billy stirs, his voice making crackly Steve noises. It’s so fucking weird, like they’ve slipped into a nightmare and can’t get out. Jason bends to kiss his cheeks, careful to avoid his bloody nose, and whispers urgently, ‘Don’t be scared, it’s me, it’s Jason.’ The voice absolutely betrays him, it’s Eddie fucking Munson’s voice. ‘It’s me, I p-promise.
It’s not blue eyes Jason sees when they open, they’re light brown. Billy stares up at Jason from the shroud of another skin, slowly coming back and then the eyes widen and he goes rigid, choking on a gargled breath. Billy scrambles to get away, and Jason shushes him, pleading for him to stay quiet, not that he thinks they would hear him anyway, the fucking noises they’re making.
‘It’s me, baby, it’s me, I swear.’
Billy’s eyes roll back as his throat lets out wet sounds of warning and Jason makes space for him to purge, helping him turn on his side. What he vomits is mostly bile, but a little blood too.
‘Fuck,’ he utters, crackly and barren. ‘I… Jason?’
Jason nods, crying. ‘They’ve changed us.’
Billy sobs in a broken way and stares at Jason, like his mind can accept it but his body cannot. ‘You…’ He casts around, sees them behind Jason and his jaw drops. ‘Oh my fucking god.’ He looks back at Jason. Everything is fraught, extreme, horribly charged. ‘Are you OK? Did they hurt you?’
Jason shakes his head. ‘You?’’
‘I mean…’ Billy says, pushing to sit, wincing as he does. Steve’s form isn’t anywhere near as muscular. ‘They stole my fucking body, so y’know.’
Him trying to make a little joke at that moment has Jason sobbing, arms around him, wishing he could hide. ‘I don’t think they actually… stole our bodies,’ Jason whispers when he has breath enough to speak. ‘I still have my scar. You’re wearing your necklace.’
Billy grips it, exhales shakily. ‘I think I always knew.’
‘You had his blood.’
‘You have it now too. We… you and me…’
Jason nods, petting his hair, so weird without the curls. ‘That doesn’t matter now.’
Grief blossoms like a crack in glass. ‘Baby, it was you sending me those sketches.’
Horror twists and spins like a web. ‘I was?’
Billy nods, wiping away tears. ‘They were from your journal. I couldn’t risk telling you in case he was controlling you, I—’
Jason kisses him.
‘It’s not your fault. I’m so fucking sorry.’
‘Not your fault either. Jason, I—’
A loud noise from behind causes them both to flinch, Billy pulling Jason against him protectively and Jason sees for the first time what he’s been dreading since these monsters started kissing.
They’re fucking right there on the floor of the padded cell, fighting for the top like warring animals, clawing and gripping and laughing, it’s all pure joy cut through with agonising pleasure and Jason is horrified to learn that he had it wrong, it’s not so much Steve being the “chatty” one, but Eddie, Eddie who cannot shut the hell up while fucking Steve so deep he’s surprised he doesn’t get all the way in, pop his balls inside too.
‘I’d kill everyone for you, baby boy, fuck you in the blood and entrails, make a pool of it and then kiss your tummy and grow life inside and teach our babies to fly ‘cause they’ll all have wings, they’re angels, angels, ahhh fuck, fuck, fuck, deeper, good boy, put the knife in deeper, I wannit, Daddy wants it inside, want you, god you’re fucking beautiful even when you look like him!’
Steve slaps his face, fingers in Eddie’s mouth like a hook as he takes control from the bottom. ‘Breed me, breed me so good I taste it in my throat!’
Eddie snarls, Jason’s never heard a human make that sound before. It raises all the hairs on his body.
Lightning smashes from outside.
James Hopper is on the radio, he’s talking but Jason can’t hear it over the din.
‘Hopper’s working for them,’ Jason tells Billy.
‘I know. The fucker. I saw it in Eddie’s memories.’
‘I saw it in Steve’s.’ Jason is shaking so much his teeth are chattering. ‘I g-guess we got what we wanted, huh?’
Billy hugs him tight, both arms wrapped around him fully. ‘Don’t you dare say that.’
‘What the fuck are they gonna do with us?’
‘Use us to get out. Fucking Christ,’ Billy mutters, looking around. ‘Sounds like the whole place is rioting.’
‘Billy,’ Jason says, in Eddie’s voice, looking into Steve’s eyes. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you more. We’re…’ Billy winces when Steve screams, but it’s his voice, his own scream. ‘We’re gonna get out of this.’
The wrestling, this ugly fight for dominance has them rolling into Jason and Billy, who try to get away, but Eddie reaches for Billy, holds him by the face while Steve fucks himself on top. They’re covered in blood.
‘No, look,’ Eddie says, laughing breathlessly while Steve grinds down, ‘I want you to see it.’
Steve’s hands are in his hair, body undulating except it’s Billy’s body, his skin, his hair, his tan, his cock, all of it.
All but the scars.
Jason frowns, looks down at his own arms.
No tattoos either.
None of them seem to have any tattoos, or maybe Jason just can’t see because of the blood.
Billy makes a low sound of distressed fury, smacks Eddie’s hand away, who laughs.
‘Come on now, pretty boy. We’re family.’
‘Fuck you!’
Eddie laughs, tongue out. ‘I am.’
Jason drags them both away as much as they can but there’s only so much room in here and their backs hit the padded door pretty much immediately.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he utters, threadbare. Eddie is bleeding from several places, stab wounds by the look, but Jason remembers what… what was given to him in the memories.
Steve can heal.
He can heal anything if they trade blood.
Eddie gets on top and this time, Steve lets him.
‘Daddy,’ he moans. ‘’S’all going red.’
‘I know baby,’ Eddie pants. ‘Warm welcome for the new little bit of my baby boy, don’t worry.’
He pins Steve’s hands over his head by the wrists, keeps on fucking him, but it has gentled now, like lions whose kill has finally gone still, and he licks over Steve’s mouth, fucking him slower, deeper, holding Steve down as he begins to truly writhe and make pained noises and then, Eddie… with Jason’s voice, tells the story.
‘Once upon a time. you were broken and I was lost.’
‘Daddy,’ Steve sobs, ‘I don’t wanna hurt you again.’
‘No, baby, you know I love it when you hurt me,’ Eddie tells him, reverent and patient and so very in control, like if god wore a man for a day, this is the soul he’d occupy. ‘What colour is it, baby? What kind?’
‘It’s…’ Steve’s back arches, eyes rolling all the way back. ‘I… Eddie, I can’t… it’s not… oh my god!’
‘Black?’
Steve shakes his head as vast, inhuman tremors begin to wrack his entire being and they are both still Jason and Billy but Jason thinks maybe… if he squints, he can see this weird light around them.
‘M-moon white,’ Steve gasps before he screams and Eddie bites his throat, draws blood, fucks him slowly.
‘I was a man without North, and you were missing pieces,’ Eddie recites, ‘and I’d dream about you, and miss you when I woke up, could never hold onto your name but you were here…’ He lifts Steve’s hand to his heart, presses it there. ‘In this broken place that never knew sunshine.’ His hips roll, back and forth, the physical manifestation of loving someone to death. ‘I would dream of you in a hundred skins, ways and worlds, and I watched you die a hundred times and I could hear you cryin’, but you weren’t there. I wanted to find you, I’ve been looking for you always and everywhere, and I found pieces… the pieces you scattered for me, baby, like bread crumbs from the other places, but it was you who found me.’
Steve screams proper, it’s the worst thing Jason has ever heard; pure and total unbridled agony that has his ears ringing in tangible sympathy.
‘I touched you, and you touched me and the stars smiled and the moon sang and we both knew we’d never be alone again, that there was no going back, never.’
From beneath, Steve thrashes wildly as if possessed. Eddie only kisses his skin, tells the story, fucking him and holding him down.
‘All your broken pieces are swimming in my blood and you are my North star, my compass. You are mine and I am yours and I will never lose you because we will always, always find each other. In the dark, in nothing, in space, in stars and silence, I’ll find you and I’ll love you.’
Steve goes still, breathing fast and heavy.
Eddie uses one hand to hold Steve’s face, peering intently into his eyes. ‘You’re safe. You are wanted. You’re loved.’
And Steve… or whatever the fuck it is… blinks unevenly up at Eddie before smiling in a way that only monsters can, Jason is sure of it.
The width of the smile makes his blood run cold.
The happy look of dark things.
‘There you are,’ Steve sighs, voice high and soft even though it’s fucking Billy’s voice.
Eddie smiles too and bends to kiss deep and dirty, resuming fucking his boy once more. ‘Welcome home.’
Steve lifts arms to encircle and it becomes sex again, only softer, sweeter, something Jason and Billy might have done before minus all the fucking blood.
They’re muttering things to one another, inaudible, only the voices and the stretched out vocal fry of their moans reaches Jason’s ears because behind them at the door, people are banging, trying to get inside.
‘Wrap it up,’ Hopper says in a clear, clipped way. He shoots out the lights from above, plunging them all into darkness, broken only by intermittent lightning. He then crosses the room, holds his hand over the letterbox slit in the door, only way to see inside, there’s no glass window. ‘You boys OK?’ he has the audacity to direct at Billy and Jason.
‘Go to fucking hell,’ Billy spits.
Hopper nods like it’s solid advice. ‘Not for a while yet. They’re gonna come inside and I’m going to hand you over to them, nice and pliant.’
‘No, no!’ Jason says, terror climbing higher than he previously thought. ‘No please—!’
‘They’ll shoot you both dead at the slightest hint of resistance, you understand? I will escort you both to safety but if you so much as take the lord’s name in vain, they’ll shoot you.’
Steve moans loud and Eddie makes a guttural, monstrous sound of pleasure and lightning cracks cruelly outside, vicious and stunning.
Hopper looks at them.
‘They’re getting out no matter what. How many others die from here on out is up to you.’
‘You piece of shit motherfucking traitor!’ Jason snarls, uses Eddie’s voice to really feel it because whatever else, he has a voice made to growl.
‘Save it, I don’t care,’ Hopper simply says, looking back at them. Eddie and Steve are kissing now, just kissing, it seems to be over. ‘There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my little girl.’
‘Nancy will tell everyone what you did!’
‘No, she won’t,’ Hopper tells them, unbothered. ‘I told her to play along so I could keep her alive and keep you boys safe. She thinks I’m undercover. Hey!’ he calls out to Eddie and Steve. ‘Clothes, now! You’ve got maybe thirty seconds.’
Eddie helps Steve to dress, the pair laughing and kissing.
Hopper sighs. ‘Try to sell it, please.’
‘Sorry, Chief,’ Eddie chuckles and then adopts a terrified, distressed look. ‘My n-name is Jason Carver, please help us! How was that, little rose? Any tips?’
Jason can only stare.
He feels so small.
‘Why so sad?’ Eddie holds his gaze, using his own face, Jason’s own fucking face. ‘This is what you wanted, right?’
Billy grips Jason’s hand tighter.
Eddie drops a wink, ties Steve’s laces for him. All Jason and Billy have are the jumpsuits and their scars and a shark tooth necklace.
And each other.
No matter the shape.
Someone from outside shouts as loud as he can through the closed gap. ‘Who’s inside there?’
Hopper shoots Billy and Jason warning looks, pushes them away from the door and into the corner. ‘On your knees, hands on your heads,’ he directs quietly then raises his voice. ‘This is Hopper, I have them subdued but the actors are hurt, they need immediate medical attention!’
‘Can you open the door for us?’
‘Negative, they broke the key off in the door and tossed ‘em,’ Hopper yells. ‘You’ll have to break it down or cut through!’
‘10-4! Stand back and keep the convicts subdued!’
‘They’re gonna kill us,’ Jason utters, so scared, so fucking scared but Billy kisses him, holds him for a beat. They’re on their knees in the corner.
‘I won’t let them.’
Jason sobs, such grief and fear in his heart that the poor thing like it’ll give out entirely. ‘I love you so much.’
‘I love you, Jason.’
They’re battering the door down from outside.
BANG!
Eddie and Steve are almost entirely dressed.
They’re kissing, muttering soft things. They look over at the corner, watching Billy and Jason.
BANG!
The universe must be laughing.
Jason almost wants to.
It’s fucking insane.
He can see their colours.
All around them, this strange energy field, faint and transparent but undeniably a colour each.
BANG!
Eddie’s is dark green.
Steve’s is lavender.
They smile, hugging.
‘Remember what I promised,’ Steve tells Billy.
BANG!
The door flies off the hinges.
S.W.A.T pour inside.
Jason closes his eyes.
And for the first time since he was a child, he prays.
*
Billy knows enough of cops not to give them any excuse to shoot. He makes sure to keep his head down, hands way up, glancing to the side every now and then only to ensure Jason is OK as they’re surrounded, then pinned brutally and cuffed. He can’t see what’s happening elsewhere in the room, only hears Hopper giving a very military style explanation of how he ensured the safety of the men he was hired to protect, Jason Carver and Billy Hargrove, and that by playing along gave him that advantage.
He hears Eddie and Steve asking if everyone else is all right, and it’s… horribly accurate.
‘Hopper saved us,’ Eddie is saying, all shaken and sincere. ‘He saved so many.’
‘We’ve got med-evac waiting outside for you both, those are serious wounds, come on, let us help.’
Billy closes his eyes.
He lets himself be frog marched out into the insanely loud prison, the sound of it hurts his skull.
They throw him into a cell, something that must be solitary confinement because there isn’t even a window, no bed, nothing.
Only a grate in the corner, welded and secure.
He has this moment of intense and awful fear when the men who brought him here seem like they won’t go, but he hears Hopper’s voice call out, ‘Warden says there’s a riot in the medical wing!’ and the door slams home.
He’s still in cuffs.
The darkness is total.
He may as well be blind.
Another door slams close by.
Billy rests his head on the wall.
‘Jason?’
Nothing.
He raises his voice. ‘Jase?’
‘Billy?’
It’s faint, but there.
‘Yeah. You OK?’
‘They didn’t hurt me.’ Billy nods. ‘What’s… gonna happen to us?’
‘I don’t know. But we… we don’t have their tattoos. Someone has to notice something, right?’
‘Maybe he’ll change us back.’
Billy scowls in the dark. ‘They’ll be long gone, living new lives.’ Tears run down his face and his throat is thick with scalding rocks, traps the vitriol he would spit otherwise about them.
‘You think they’ll still air the show?’ Jason asks after a while.
Billy laughs.
Jason’s laughing too.
He presses cuffed hands against the wall between them. ‘Kinda doubt it now. David’s dead.’
‘He was helping them,’ Jason says slowly. ‘He met with Eddie, let him and Steve choose us. He was the one telling them shit from on set.’
‘Yeah. Jase, we’re gonna be OK. I promise.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Good. Because I never loved anyone like I love you, understand?’
‘Same.’
Billy smiles despite it all. ‘What the fuck was this shit while they were fucking?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jason says. ‘What did you see on your side, the memories?
‘I saw a lot of death, really brutal murder,’ he says, shuddering helplessly. ‘But I saw, like, the same thing. It’s…’ Billy reaches down deep for the memories, though it’s like putting his hands into a bucket of blood. ‘It’s parts of Steve, right? Possessing him? Or… joining him?’
‘Yeah, I think so. God. This is so fucked up. I just wanted to be an actor.’
It’s meant to be funny, but Billy can’t laugh. ‘You’re a great actor.’
‘You are too. I love you, Billy.’
‘I love you, Jason.’
It feels important to keep saying their names.
To hold onto what they have.
They keep talking, the sounds of the prison slowly dying out, and once or twice, Billy sees tiny passing hints of light under his door, but they are fleeting.
Jason goes quiet.
‘Jase?’
His voice sounds weird… slurred.
Billy starts to feel tired so suddenly he doesn’t even realise he’s passing out until it’s too late.
*
“Breaking Light”
So listen to the darkness, listen to the patterns
Listen to the breathing sea
Listen to the colours, carry them inside you
They will bring you back to me
Listen to the sirens, listen to the heartbeat
Listen to the turning tide
Listen to the murmurs, carry them inside you
‘til we’re on the other side
In the breaking light
-Vienna Teng
They’re holding hands, spinning, dancing, kissing.
‘I’m gonna put that tenth ring on you, baby boy.’
‘You are?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘What for? What’s the new promise, Daddy?’
Eddie kisses Steve.
They’re in the water.
Clean, chlorine fresh and cool.
The sun streams overhead.
‘That if I fuck up next time, kill me for real.’
Steve smiles, brown eyes looking into brown.
‘I could never do that, no matter the dreams.’
‘You did it elsewhere.’
‘Maybe. But not here.’
‘My boy,’ Eddie says, tears in his eyes, heavy things in his heart. ‘You’re what matters. You’re what matters to me.’
‘You’re what matters to me.’
‘I’m not ever gonna let you go, never again.’
‘I know. I won’t either. That’s the promise. To never let you go.’
Eddie smiles into the kiss. ‘Even if I try to get away?’
‘Yup.’
‘No escape.’
‘None.’
‘You’ll always find me.’
‘I will always find you.’
‘I’m yours and you’re mine.’
‘Always.’
‘Forever.’
‘Everywhere.’
‘Everywhere.’
They tread water, all tangled up in one another.
‘I wanna marry you, right here, all over again.’
‘Me too.’
‘But first,’ Eddie says, looking towards the house of the pool in which they’re treading water. It’s big, showy, white. Jason’s sure he recognises it from somewhere. ‘Let’s go finish what we started.’
Steve sighs happily. ‘I get final kill.’
‘Whatever my boy wants.’
Jason looks up at the light.
Everything is pure white.
Sound vanishes.
The world melts like ice cream.
French vanilla, his favourite.
Ivory silk slowly unravels.
‘I don’t care what it takes, do you hear me? Unless you want to get sued into the next century I suggest you—hello, Mr Carver! You’re back with us now? It’s all right, don’t worry, you’re going to get the best care available to you!’
Jason opens his eyes.
He can feel the sun on his face.
‘Billy,’ he whispers, swallowing thickly.
‘Mr Hargrove is fine, don’t worry. He’s in the next room, we’re just performing checks before we—’
‘No,’ Jason says, forcing himself upright. He’s in a medical room, equipment everywhere, wired glass letting the sun flow in. There are men all around him. Two in S.W.A.T gear, two in suits, one is very sweaty and stressed. ‘No, where is he? We’re not…’
He looks down his hands.
His arms.
His bare chest.
Jason looks up. ‘Am I… I’m…?’
He slips off the hospital bed and goes to a medical cabinet, looks into the glass.
A whistling breath fills his lungs.
He claps a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t cry.
It’s him.
His body.
Iowa boy, Jason Carver, no middle name, wished his name was Indiana like from the movie he watched on a loop during the four weeks in hospital from the drug store holdup that went wrong and the guy who had him from behind got tackled and the knife tore Jason up on the inside, lucky to be alive, they’d told him, Jason Carver who turned down the full ride, said no to his father’s dreams and I love you to his Mom and left to go where they make movies and TV and dreams come true, where they make stars of nobody boys from Iowa… it’s him.
Every inch.
‘Oh my god.’
‘You’re fine, honestly, those bruises will heal, I assure you,’ the man in a suit is saying, ‘and please let me be the first to apologise on behalf of everyone for mistaking you and Mr Hargrove for—’
‘I wanna see him,’ Jason says, headed for the door.
‘Well, of course, but maybe you should wait!’
He opens the door.
Billy is in the next room.
Billy.
Jason would know him anywhere.
Any skin.
Any place.
But this is him.
Whole, hale, a little banged up.
Those beautiful blues.
Jason staggers towards him and Billy slips down off the bed where he was sitting, bare feet dangling. They’re still in the jumpsuits. Billy was letting someone wrap his wrist, but he takes Jason in his arms, hugs him so tight he lifts him clean off the ground and turns them in a circle.
They don’t speak.
Just holding.
And the world feels brand new.
The warm and wonderful skies after a hideous storm.
Jason has his whole life ahead of him.
They both do.
Together.
*
Steve and Eddie are declared dead.
Photos of their bodies are splashed around the front pages of every article. Some enormous bloodbath in a big, white Hollywood house on the hills belonging to a very famous director.
Jason reads the name several times.
Each letter of the man who raped him.
Now dead.
Very dead.
Bits and pieces dead.
Several of his private security are dead too, but they managed to shoot and kill Steve and Eddie. The bodies were photographed by the crowds of people drawn to the incredibly public location before bagged and taken away.
No one seems to notice that the bodies in the photographs only have some of their tattoos on the arms. Scattered and faint, like chipped paint.
Mostly, the media is focused on the catastrophic mistake that allowed them to escape in the first place. Jason sees pictures of him and Billy coming out of the prison together, holding hands. He hears tales of gross incompetence and incumbent systemic change.
Despite testimony from Nancy Wheeler, James Hopper – who is nowhere to be found - is wanted man, but Jason feels confident a body will turn up sooner or later, that this following of Steve and Eddie Munson will help in that way, the same way they likely ensured no post-mortem took place on the inkless bodies supposed to be Steve and Eddie.
The show is canned forever, but raw cuts of it get out, make it onto the internet along with recovered footage of the aborted interview up until the fire took it all. The escape, the show, the actors and what followed will always be talked about, but so far, Hollywood seems to have learned it’s lesson.
For now.
Jason lives with Billy.
Their place on the beach in California, not acting right now, but who knows? Maybe… maybe in the future there might be something there for them.
It’s their craft, after all.
But for now, it’s more than enough to heal together, to be together, loving and accepting and working through the cold sweat nightmares.
They get a puppy, a wolfy little thing, and call him Loki because his paws are huge and Billy keeps saying he’ll be a towering monster soon, but Jason thinks he’ll always just be an adorable little doof.
‘I love you,’ Billy says all the time for no reason at all.
Jason smiles, touches Billy and basks in the joy it gives. ‘I love you so much.’
And if touch turns to kisses, and kisses turn to skin on skin, then that’s only more joy.
And if sex becomes play and play takes a weird little turn now and then, well… they’re actors. It’s in their nature to act out feelings, to explore them.
But when it gets close to the bleed, when it comes near to doing what they once did, Jason or Billy or both will curb it. They’ll course correct and come back to their own lives, own bodies, the selves they love and accept and embrace.
They walk it back and focus on their life in the sunshine and surf and sand and sea.
And if Jason still sees colours around people sometimes, he’ll pretend no he didn’t.
And if Billy sometimes slips into Steve’s voice without meaning to, no he didn’t.
And if Jason sometimes sees a flash of Eddie Munson in the mirror… no he really fucking didn’t.
Because maybe it’ll take a while to shake, but he will shake this off. There’s only room for one man in his heart, and no matter what his sound, sight or senses might say, Jason would really and truly know him anywhere.
It helps too, on their wedding day, after the quiet, private ceremony, that they carve small, sterile scars into one another’s arms. Careful. Loving. Neat.
‘Can’t lose you now,’ Jason says, kissing what he carved.
Billy smiles, he’s wearing the ring, took Jason’s name and let his own die. ‘Not like you were ever gonna.’
‘Well,’ Jason says, looking out the window. The ocean, the skies, the world. They’re still here. They get to stay. They get to choose. That’s not nothing. ‘You never know.’
‘I know,’ Billy tells him. ‘I know, baby.’
Jason sighs contentedly.
Closes his eyes.
So listen to the darkness, listen to the patterns
‘I love you, Billy.’
‘Love you, baby. You’re everything.’
Listen to the breathing sea
Somewhere out there, are two others who share their blood. Who carry pieces of them, blended and bonded.
Faint, yes.
But Jason can feel it, even so.
And he knows Billy can too.
Because they can feel each other.
They can feel one another, even in different rooms, different buildings, hours away. Jason will smile at some joke Billy told that he wasn’t present for. Billy will ask what went wrong around three PM when he gets back from his flight. They don’t really talk about it, but they both know it.
Listen to the colours, carry them inside you
Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson are faint and distant, but they’ll always be there. Jason can bear it. Billy can too.
They can shut it out, live their own lives and focus on joy, love, beauty and creation.
It only comes out when there’s blood.
When Billy will kiss too hard, too rough when Jason begs.
It’s there when they bleed.
But life is beautiful.
Love is rare.
And time is fleeting.
They will bring you back to me
They’re not going to waste a drop of it.
Epilogue
His whisper is louder than any scream.
And there are screams a-plenty down here, in this vile place, this titanium hub of mysterious funding, white coats and intellectual cruelty.
But all Eddie Munson hears is his boy, whispering his name, bidding him come.
He steps over bodies, carefully scanning for any signs of life, no fakers. He finds one, cracks the neck, stupid fucker.
‘Where’s my baby boy?’ he calls out softly, exhilarated and blissed out and clear minded, the way only a spree leaves him. No drug better than violent murder, maybe fucking his boy, but it’s different anyhow.
The alarm is dead, they cut that a while ago.
This underground place is thick with sterile static.
What kids were in the cells, Hopper already lead outside to safety. Poor little things with shaved heads and tattoos in their wrists, like animals.
His boy’s further on, gone to find the one Elle told him about from her dreams.
All the green is gone from her blood.
Few years on, she’d be old enough and powerful enough to come with them and help, but Hopper, whose new identity is holding fast, insists they’re not to involve her.
Eddie thinks that’s fair.
He just wishes, in the most wistful way, that he really could get his boy good and pregnant, they both long for it, in a way that tells Eddie somewhere, elsewhere, it is possible.
One of the bits knows it.
But not here, sadly.
For now, though, this lovely life is plenty.
He steps over another body and goes inside the room.
A man with white hair is on the floor, gutted bow to stern, unzipped. Steve is standing over him, has the new knife, the one Eddie chose for him when they got married last.
‘There he is,’ Eddie greets softly, leaning in the doorway.
Steve looks up.
He’s all bloody.
He is so beautiful.
God.
There’s just nothing and no one like him.
To Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington is the colour he’s been blind to all his life, he is ultraviolet, he’s the colour black.
Beyond compare.
Beyond comprehension.
His little monster.
‘He put up a fight?’ Steve nods, eyes low lidded. ‘Good, that’s what we want, huh?’
‘Daddy,’ Steve sighs, always needs a little centring to come back down from such a violent kill. He reaches for Eddie, who takes his hand and steps over the body, the entrails, the interior of a formerly alive being, what a waste of cells. ‘My Pluto sway.’
‘I’m here, baby.’ Eddie kisses his lips, gentle and chaste for now. ‘What colour’s the world, sweetheart?’
‘Hmm, yellow.’
Eddie hugs him, they slow dance in the blood.
‘My sunshine.’
‘I love you.’
‘Love you more.’
Eddie hums the song Steve loves.
They can both hear it in their heads sometimes.
Steve says he hears it when he sleeps.
Eddie’s voice.
He says it’s why they all come to him.
The pieces.
The shards.
Discarded self, broken bits that have nowhere to go except towards the song they know, the light they recognise, the self they feel.
‘Wanna play?’
He feels Steve smile.
His husband looks back, strokes his hair.
There’s no one like Steve.
Not even when they look like him.
The world stills.
The moon dreams of them.
The stars hold their breath.
And Steve laughs in that way he does.
Eddie’s so gone for him.
He’d die a million deaths just to make it here.
‘Tell me a story first?’
Eddie twirls him out, pulls him back in.
‘The story?’
Steve gets him by the hair, fire in his eyes.
Eddie’s steel toed boots nudge the cooling corpse of a bad man.
‘No,’ Steve whispers, it’s louder than any scream and Eddie would really, truly know it anywhere. ‘A new one.’
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