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Eddie sure as shit was not prepared to die on that field. Unfortunately, he also forgot that at this point in time, being publicly alive isn’t really an option, either.
“Yeah, great job, Henderson,” Steve says. This is directed both at Dustin and the room at large, which is Mike Wheeler’s basement. “Risk your life for the ticking time bomb. I don’t foresee a way this can go wrong at all.”
“Uh, no man left behind,” Dustin argues, which would be kinda sweet, except, “even the ones with a hundred murder charges.”
“Thanks, dude,” Eddie says to him, anyway. In his peripheral, Steve rolls his eyes.
“Ten thousand dollars,” Mike reads aloud, from the WANTED flyer. It’s about the umpteenth time he’s repeated it, as though perhaps the group of them had missed it the first seven or eight times. Eddie’ll be the first to admit that there’s really no activity like saving – or, rather, not saving – the world from immanent evil danger that brings people together, specifically the sentient mind-crawly kind of danger that snaps limbs and exists in a mirror universe, but he kinda missed the boat with that on Mike, and the two of them are still playing catch-up.
And then, of course, there are the two brothers he knows fuckall about, who just kinda hang around now: Will and Jonathan (who will not respond to Jonny, as Eddie has learned). Will used to play D&D with the others before they came to Hawkins High, and Jonathan… dates Nancy. That’s all Eddie knows.
(Or—that’s all feels like an understatement. Jonathan does not just date Nancy: Jonathan brings a furrow between Steve’s eyebrows, and a weird awkwardness whenever the three of them share space. Jonathan was the weird loner kid in Eddie’s Calc class that took photographs, whose brother died for a bit, and then un-died, who took precious prissy Nancy Wheeler from out kingpin Steve Harrington’s thumb. Or something. Eddie doesn’t pay that shit much attention. Or, he didn’t, until it infiltrated his cool new gang that saved the world and shit, and now he has to sit face-to-face with it whenever they all hang out.)
Anyway: Mike says, “ten thousand dollars,” and Lucas says, “imagine what you could do with that,” and they all, insultingly, look like they’re imagining it for a moment, as though ten thousand dollars doesn’t come at the price of Eddie behind bars.
“Uh, hello?” Eddie says. “No ten thousand dollars.”
“We’re just saying, man,” Robin says. “We have incentive.” She punctuates this with a particularly hard tug on the string she’s currently cat’s cradling, and then frowns, like it didn’t go the way she expected. Long-sufferingly, Nancy leans over to untangle her fingers.
“We’re not going to turn Eddie in,” she says, which is why Eddie likes her, even if she is involved in whatever dry-ass love triangle bullshit with Jonathan and Steve. “We just need a place where he can… lie low for the time being, until things blow over.”
Everyone fixes her with looks of varying disbelief. Even Eddie. “Nancy,” Dustin says, “Vecna’s still out there, and half of Hawkins is a gate to the Underworld. This isn’t going to just blow over.”
“I know that,” Nancy says, a little huffily. “I just mean—it’s a figure of speech, okay? Until we can sort this out, and clear Eddie’s name.”
To Dustin, Steve says, “You should have just left him to the bats.”
Eddie flips him off, and Steve rolls his eyes again. Eddie is mostly certain this is just banter—mostly. He can never be sure with Steve; still hasn’t quite figured out if he likes him or not. To be fair, he’s not sure if Steve likes anything, or if he just sort of tolerably withstands whatever happens to him with the air of a long-suffering single mother. The only people he knows for certain Steve likes is Robin, who went on a food run for Eddie and came back with three cans of squeezy cheese and some tinned sweetcorn, and has now definitely gotten her fingers tangled in a cat’s cradle—and Nancy, who sits across the room from him with her knee against Jonathan’s, curly hair clipped back on one side with a barrette, not making eye contact with either of them.
There is something about Nancy that Eddie finds a little difficult to like. It sits sour beneath his breastbone; he tells himself it’s because he’s an anarchist and she interned for the local paper.
Not that it matters if Steve likes him or not. They fought together, and both are begrudgingly fond of Henderson, so they’re at least allies. Friendship at this point means fuckall. Besides, it’s not punk rock to care, he reminds himself, as he cares, very deeply.
“Again,” Dustin says, “no man left behind.”
“Or woman,” Nancy corrects.
“Not even one man?” Steve says, and Dustin kicks at his pearly white sneakers, which predictably results in Steve trying to give him a wedgie. Eddie wonders how Steve can trek through bat shit and viscera and still be prissy about the whiteness of his shoes.
“We still need a place to hide him,” says Lucas. It’s a rare moment that he’s with them, and Eddie thinks it’s only because the hospital mandated he keep away for at least ten hours a week. The stink of grief clings to him; he hasn’t properly smiled since Max was Vecna’d.
Will raises his hand. “We could keep him with El in Hopper’s cabin?”
“Who?” Eddie says, but immediately Mike is shaking his head.
“No way, it’s too risky,” he says. “El’s wanted too, remember? And the town had a funeral for Hopper and everything. It would raise too many questions if Eddie was there too; we can’t risk any of them being caught.”
Belatedly, Eddie thinks, Chief Hopper?, but mostly reminisces nostalgically on a time when his circle of peers contained no wanted parties, let alone two, one of whom apparently has magic powers. He still hasn’t met El yet properly, considering neither of them can really leave their respective prisons, only at least El has a prison, and probably one that isn’t populated by spotty adolescents and squeezy cheese. (Thanks, Robin.)
“Can’t he just stay down here?” Dustin says. “I mean, we harboured El here for a while.”
Mike actually considers this, but it’s Nancy who shakes her head. “No,” she says. “After the earthquake Mom has gone into total doomsday prepper mode. She’s down here at least twice a day stocking up on baked beans and canned fruit.”
Half of which Eddie has eaten. He decides not to bring this up lest this hurt his chances of staying.
“Anyone else got any spare rooms?” Dustin says. “Attics? Basements? Sheds?” His voice gets a little more desperate as each option is greeted with silence. “Boat shacks?”
“Preferably not a boat shack,” Eddie chimes in. “The last one was pretty average.”
“Oh, now he gets choosy,” Steve mutters.
“Fuck off, man,” Eddie says, but he fits his teeth around his thumbnail anyway, a little too close to the quick. He’s gotten good at roughing it, and he put on a good face for the others, but—fuck. He can’t do another night in the woods. He can’t live his life under Skull Rock. All he fucking wants is just a warm bed.
Dustin glances around. “Seriously?” he says. “No one?” Eddie’s heartrate quickens. “Robin? Lucas?”
“Sorry, Eddie,” Robin says, and actually sounds like she means it. Of everyone, aside from maybe Dustin, Robin’s probably the person with whom Eddie gets along best. “Our house is tiny – we’d have nowhere to put you.”
“Us too,” Lucas says. “I couldn’t even hide my porn mags from my parents, let alone a whole person.”
Which, gross, but he looks so sad at the thought, like now that Max is comatose in a hospital bed he might have to start bringing them out again, that Eddie doesn’t comment, just bites down on his thumbnail and steels his face when his nail tears too close to the nailbed. Dustin’s face gets more and more desperate as he wheels on Will and Jonathan. “What about you guys? Joyce knows about Vecna, right—that Eddie’s innocent? He can stay with you?”
Will and Jonathan exchange looks. Eddie doesn’t know how to categorise the discomfort that rises in him at the thought—he’d never voice it aloud, of course, he’s not fucking stupid enough to turn his nose up at a roof over his head and probably a bed, too—but he doesn’t know these people. Jonathan is a face in a yearbook; Will is a face in a newspaper cutting that he had on his wall because he thought zombie boy was a badass nickname. And he trusts that they’re good, that they’re kind, because in pieces along the way he picked up how Will was lost in the Upside Down a couple of years ago, how his mom nearly went mad trying to get him out, how Steve Harrington vandalised a movie theatre billboard and Jonathan got arrested for breaking his nose defending Nancy’s honour—
But they’re strangers. They arrived too late in a pizza van with Mike Wheeler and the magic girl, and now Will on occasion breaks out in gooseflesh he claims is Vecna – because of fucking course it is – and Jonathan’s knee against Nancy’s is making Steve’s forehead wrinkle up, and they wouldn’t want him there, not really. He’ll take it, because it’s not like he has many other options, but.
But.
Thankfully—or maybe not thankfully—it’s Will who says, “We’re still staying in a motel, Dustin. Mom blew pretty much her entire savings on rescuing Hopper. There’s no way we’d be able to keep Eddie with us without someone finding him.”
It’s relief, the first thing that Eddie feels at that—and then immense guilt. And then mostly stupidity, because fucking idiot, that was probably his only chance.
Dustin scrubs a hand through his hair. “Fuck,” he says. He looks properly stressed.
“Can’t he stay with you?” Nancy asks.
Eddie had privately been wondering the same thing, but the way the boys’ eyes all widen pretty much tells him all he needs to know. “At Dustin’s?” Mike repeats. “His mom would find him within the first day.”
“The first hour,” says Lucas.
“The first minute,” Will corrects.
Dustin looked like he’d been about to argue the same, but he crosses his arms obstinately. “Hey, what are you implying about my mom?”
“Nothing,” Mike says. “Dusty-Bun.”
Will sniggers, and even Lucas smiles a little. Dustin’s ears go pink. “Just because we get along,” he grumbles, cheeks red. Adorably, he quickly glances at Eddie, like he’s checking this new fact hasn’t damaged his street-cred in his eyes, which it absolutely has, but the kid also rescued him from fucking mutant bats two days ago, so Eddie takes the high road and nods like this is extremely cool. Dustin nods back, relieved.
Steve rolls his eyes again, like he always does, and Eddie’s just about to snark something back, because he’s fucking done with him, until he says, long-sufferingly, “He can stay with me.”
The room goes very, very quiet.
“With,” Robin says, eventually, “you?”
Dustin looks like he’s thinking the same thing. Steve, evidently sensing the disbelief, bristles a little, folding his arms. “Yeah,” he says, “with me. We have a basement that we never use.”
Robin does a poor job of pretending she’s not watching Eddie for his reaction. Nancy, delicately, says, “Is that… a good idea?”
“Okay, fuck you, what’s with all the judgment?” Steve says, like the judgment isn’t making itself, like he’s not Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington with the white sneakers, who could have any friend he wanted but chose Robin Buckley, who he refuses to date, and a handful of nerdy fifteen-year-olds—like he hasn’t spent the entire group meeting loudly wondering why Eddie wasn’t left to the mercy of the bats. “Eddie’s fine with it—right, man?”
Steve’s a good guy—Eddie knows this. He’s seen it time and time again. But this feels out of character.
Still, everyone’s watching him for his reaction, Dustin and Robin peering at him from on either side like gargoyles—even Will and Jonathan glancing between him and Steve, anticipating whatever is to come—and Eddie has always loved a performance. He shrugs; kicks his feet up on the table, one ankle over the other. “I don’t know,” he says. “Does the deal come with breakfast?”
Steve rolls his eyes so hard it looks like it hurts. “You won’t starve, is that good enough?”
It is—it really fucking is. A place to stay that isn’t the mulchy outdoors, or his drug dealer’s drippy boatshed—a place to stay that’s warm, and dry, and sheltered. A place to stay in Steve Harrington’s basement, sure – but mirror universes and evil bats and magic girls have put a lot of things in perspective as of late.
“Feels passable,” he says, and pushes himself up onto his feet. Robin and Dustin, either side of him on the Wheelers’ wheezy couch, cave inwards and bump heads. “Sounds like a plan, Steve Harrington.”
He holds out his hand. Steve eyes it for five long seconds, before he sighs and shakes it.
“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. “Don’t cream yourself.”
*
Steve Harrington’s basement is three square feet, carpeted like a counsellor’s office, and—thank everything that is holy—kitted out with a bed.
“I mean, it’s not the Ritz,” Steve says, “but, you know. Should keep you alive and not in prison, so…”
Eddie surveys the place, which is roughly twice the size of his bedroom in his uncle’s camper with probably one hundred percent less mould. “I suppose it’ll have to do,” he says, and drops down experimentally on the bed. It’s down here for a reason; the mattress has several hard springs, makes an ominous creaking sound when he puts his full weight on it, and one of the posters is missing its round knob, leaving just a screw – but it is nine fucking yards from a canoe or the great outdoors. “What’s the bathroom sitch like?”
Steve holds his gaze, and nudges forward a mop bucket. Eddie can’t tell if he’s kidding or not, but shrugs anyway. “Okay, good,” he says, “because I’m fuckin’ dying for a shit—”
He stands, makes a move to unbuckle his pants, before Steve cuts him off. “Jesus Christ, man,” he says, and Eddie zips his pants back up with a grin. “The bathroom’s upstairs. Don’t actually shit in a bucket.”
“I would have done it,” Eddie says.
“Yeah, I know,” Steve says. “Don’t do that. Just—yeah, bathroom’s upstairs, on the landing.” Then again, like he’s afraid if he doesn’t reiterate it might miss him: “Please do not shit in the mop bucket.”
“No promises,” Eddie says, and winks, because he likes the way it makes Steve’s ears go a little pink. “What if I bump into one of your parents? Can I tell them I’m the fugitive friend you’re harbouring that’s wanted for roughly three cases of ritualistic murder?”
“Okay, well, firstly,” Steve says, “you could afford to sound less excited by that.” Which is fucking rich of him to say, because, yeah, being sequestered to a tiny counsellor-carpet basement isn’t exactly his idea of fun either, but there’s nothing more fucking metal than being accused of ritual murder. And he fucking shredded Metallica in a mirror universe as a honing signal for evil bat creatures. He means, hello! “Also, that—won’t really be a problem.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Not to fuckin’ toot my own horn or anything here, man, but I’m not exactly un-distinctive. I’m sort of famous, in case you’ve forgotten. Pretty sure them catching me lurking on their landing using their double-ply isn’t gonna fly.”
Mmmm. Double-ply. The Harringtons definitely feel like the kind of motherfuckers to spend their money on the fancy toilet paper—maybe even quilted, too.
He’s so busy dreaming about toilet roll that won’t feel like sandpaper against his asshole that he almost misses the way Steve’s expression falters, infinitesimally. Almost. It’s so quick he’s half convinced he’s made it up, but then Steve speaks. “No, I mean—my parents are usually pretty busy with work, so they’re not around that much. Obviously stay in the basement, but—you know. You’ll probably be safe to get to the bathroom and back.”
A memory hits Eddie, all of a sudden: Steve Harrington. No parents, big house. It almost became his tagline, and for the school body popular enough to be invited to socials but not popular enough to be his friend, that was all they had to know about him. No parents. Big house.
Best fucking parties.
They shared a class, he and Steve. Many classes, probably, but the one Eddie knows for sure was Social Studies, because Steve was two seats in front of him, and Eddie used to try and arc his spitballs over his impressive hair to get to Casey Watkins in the front row.
No parents. Big house. Big enough to hide a fugitive. Empty enough for him to stay awhile.
Eddie’s not in the business for really feeling sorry for people – leaves that to the Christians and Nancy Wheelers – especially not people like Steve Harrington. But.
But.
“Can I do my morning streak, too?” he says.
“If you want public indecency added to your charges, sure,” Steve says. “Might add another year to the five life sentences.”
Eddie pretends to think. “Another year? That’s tough.”
“I’m sure,” Steve says, nonplussed. He folds his arms again; unfurls one, and gestures around the room. It’s his arm with the watch on, and Eddie tries not to pay attention to the way his forearm, dusted with dark hair and dark scabby scrapes, tapers to his wrist; the way his fingers are dusted with the same hair. “Listen, just… make yourself comfortable, okay? We can—I don’t know, get you some clothes, or something from your old place.” Eddie becomes acutely aware that he’s been wearing these pants for about a week now, and his shirt is beginning to feel almost filmy with grime and sweat. “Dustin’s probably already working out a babysitting schedule, so you’ll be okay for food and company.”
Eddie can’t help himself. “Aw, you’re not gonna stay down here with me?”
“Sorry, Munsen, but I do actually have a life,” Steve says, snotty, which is cute, because Eddie knows for a fact his ‘life’ is working with Robin at Blockbuster and chauffeuring the boys around to their various extracurriculars. “I don’t have time to babysit.”
“Mm,” Eddie says. “Tell Dustin I say hi, next time you drop him off at Mathletes.”
Steve’s ears go a little pink again. It’s a delicious sight. “Whatever, man,” he snits, turning on his heel out the door. “Take a shower, you smell like shit.”
“You’re not gonna join me?” Eddie calls after him, because he’s playing with fire anyway. Steve slams the door in response, and Eddie grins.
It feels a little like fuck you – which is also not no.
*
Eddie’s awoken the next morning, abruptly, by a can in the stomach. Then there is the thud of footsteps and a whispered, “Shh, you’ll wake him!”
“Yeah,” Eddie manages. His eyes aren’t even open yet. “The noise. That’s what’s waking me right now.”
“Sorry, man,” Dustin’s voice says, guiltily, and Eddie properly opens his eyes to find him crouched frankly much too close, wide dark eyes scant inches away from his own. Eddie tries not to startle back at the proximity, but weeks of this sort of shit has meant he’s a light sleeper anyway, so it’s a near thing. “Robin has bad aim.”
“Yeah, I was trying for your face,” says another voice, from behind Dustin, and then Robin’s shaggy head appears from behind him, grinning. She waves. “Morning, Eddie. Good sleep?”
“…Morning,” Eddie says. Somehow of all the situations he’s woken up to find himself in in the past month, this has been one of the most surreal. “Uh. Yeah. You know. Until I got nailed in the gut with a can.”
She rolls her eyes. “Jeez, so dramatic. I said sorry.”
“You didn’t, actually,” Eddie says, but then she’s bending down to dislodge a backpack from her shoulder, unzipping it. “Did Steve let you in?”
“Yep,” Dustin says. “Or—he didn’t, but we all have keys to his house now, so we can access you at any time.”
Eddie frowns. “That’s… concerning.”
Dustin grins. “You know it!”
“Okay, so we have a variety,” Robin says, as she empties the backpack. Dozens more cans unearth, rolling across the floor. “We have peaches—grapes—green beans—peas—more peaches—more peas—chopped carrots, those looked fun—and diced tomatoes.” With each can she lists off she rolls them towards Eddie, and he barely manages to lean off the mattress to catch them before they can roll, irretrievably, beneath the bedframe. “Also squeezy cheese.”
This she importantly bestows upon him like a magic wand. “Score,” Eddie says, as he takes it. Maybe it’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking, but fuck has squeezy cheese grown on him in these past few days. “Did you get beer?”
“None of us had ID,” Robin says. “So we got you fruit juice.”
She produces a six-pack of apple juice cartons. This, Eddie is considerably less excited about. “Wow. Thanks.”
“I tried to use my fake ID,” Dustin tells him loyally, “but I don’t even think the cashier believed I was fifteen, let alone twenty-one.”
Eddie looks at Robin. “You let the cabbage patch kid be the one to flash the fake ID?”
“Lucas is the only one who looks old enough and he’s mourning,” Robin says hotly. “I couldn’t take advantage of him like that. Besides, fruit juice is good for you. See?” She taps the label. “Not from concentrate. I’m looking out for your health here, Munson.”
Dustin prises away the plastic packaging as she speaks, helping himself to a carton. Eddie thinks about protesting, but decides it’s probably not worth it. “Where’s Steve?” he says.
“He’s at the school,” Dustin says, around his straw. “We’re all volunteering with search and rescue and donations and stuff. They’ve cleared out the school hall for triaging.”
Eddie feels his eyebrows lift. He’s been kept indoors pretty much since Dustin dragged him back from the Upside Down, but he’d heard choppers and police sirens all night from the Wheelers’ basement, and Mike has been keeping him staunchly updated on everyone who has packed up their stuff and left.
It makes Max that bit more devastating: she is just one of many.
“Good thing I’m down here then, huh?” he says, through a thick throat. He mimics devil horns with his fingers. “Wouldn’t want to wreak any more havoc on the impressionable youth of Hawkins any more than I have.”
“You didn’t wreak any havoc,” Dustin tells him, nicely, “you just got blamed for it.”
“No way,” Robin says, sounding upset. She puts down the can she was studying. “These peaches are basically candy. Have you seen the sugar content?”
“They’re fruit, Robin,” Dustin says. “Fruit has sugar.”
“Not like this! They’re basically swimming in syrup.” She looks down at the array of cans around her like spoils of war, and something afraid enters her gaze. Eddie decides to nip it in the bud before she starts taking them back.
“I’ll think I’ll survive,” he says, dryly. “But thanks for looking out for me.” He tosses a can in the air. “Me and my peaches will do great.”
“I’m bringing you broccoli next time,” Robin threatens, as she climbs to her feet. “Mountains of broccoli. And asparagus. And iceberg lettuce.”
“Put in a request for Steve’s private chef,” he calls after her, and she flaps her hand at him as she shoulders her backpack and turns on her heel, leaving just he and Dustin. He leans back against the wall, legs dangling off the end of the bed; turns the can round and round in his hand as he watches Dustin stand in the middle of the room, surveying it, hands on his hips like he’s a realtor or something. “How’d you like the new digs?”
“It’s nice,” Dustin says; even steps up to the wall and hits it with the palm of his heel, as if checking sturdiness. “Soundproof.”
“I mean, it’s underground.”
“That means nothing,” Dustin says, which—is fair, actually. It’s more surprising the wall didn’t cave beneath Dustin’s hand and reveal a secret tunnel leading to a third parallel universe. He does another pivot, taking in every square inch of the bare walls and ugly blue carpet. “It’s really nice of Steve to let you stay with him.”
Eddie feels kinda itchy all of a sudden. “Yeah, well.” He tugs at his sleeve; pushes it back up. Twists a ring. “You know Steve. Nice Guy Steve.”
Maybe it sounds like resentment. He’s not sure if he means for it to. But Dustin either doesn’t notice, or does, and doesn’t point it out. “We’ll get you out of here in no time,” he promises. “This is only temporary. Then we’ll clear your name and you’ll be safe to go home.”
I don’t even know where home is. “I can’t wait.”
“Until then, we’ll come with stock every day,” Dustin promises. He empties his own backpack. “Here, I brought you my first edition of Star Reach. I’ll bring the others later so you’ll have something to do.”
Eddie is genuinely touched by this. “Henderson.”
“Try not bend the pages too much, though,” Dustin adds hurriedly. “It’s expensive.” From his bag he also produces a bright pink Tamagotchi – “courtesy of Erica,” he says, and Eddie wasn’t going to say anything, but the clarification is nice – as well as a pack of cards and a notepad and pen. “In case you feel inspired to write something of your own,” he says, and Eddie hasn’t willingly put pen to paper since he had to print out his ABCs to pass first grade, but he accepts them graciously anyway.
“Thanks, man,” he says. “Seriously.”
Dustin smiles at him. “Anytime,” he says, as he shoulders his bag again. “Uh—I’ll be back tonight, probably, and then I think Mike has you tomorrow, but tell me what you think about Star Reach!”
“I will,” Eddie says.
What the fuck else does he have to do?
*
Days pass.
Eddie was never a straight A student – pretty much the opposite, in fact, hence why he’s turning twenty and still in high school, and at this rate will forever remain, in perpetuity. But there was one book assignment he had to do in English class once, a book about a lady locked in a room who went crazy and started hallucinating shit in the wallpaper. Eddie only actually read the thing because it was under one hundred pages and about madness, which he’s always been kinda interested in, and it ended up being a lot sadder and more feministy than gory or luridly interesting like he’d imagined when he initially picked it, but—
Well. After a week of staring up at Steve’s popcorn ceiling, he kinda gets it.
There are no windows in the basement, so he can’t measure time except by counting the seconds in his head. Dustin, bless that fucking kid, actually did work out a schedule like Steve had guessed, but the gate opening had caused more damage than Eddie had expected, and everyone’s been so preoccupied with volunteering and search and rescue efforts that at most they stop by for twenty minutes before and after stints at the high school organising donated clothes or making sandwiches.
And it’s—
It’s fucking boring, for one. But Eddie’s always prized himself as a lone wolf, someone that can survive for eons by himself—which was true, when he could be by himself in his room, or out in the woods, or sat on top of Uncle Wayne’s camper getting high. But down here, in this same fucking room day in and day out, he’s properly, truly alone. The dangerous kind of alone, where he’s run out of things like the constellations on the popcorn ceiling and the pathways on the counsellor carpet to acquaint himself with and now is left with only his own stewing brain.
He's lonely, is what it is. He’s really, really lonely.
But he doesn’t say this, because he also knows that right now, his comfort is really not top priority. Max is in the hospital, Hawkins is apparently almost entirely destroyed, Vecna’s still out there somewhere and he’s—what, sad? Yeah, right. Get it together, Munson.
But Christ. What he’d give for some pot right now. Just to take the edge off.
The only way he can tell that days have passed is Steve: Steve, who visits every night like clockwork. He’d mix up days, if Steve didn’t wear a different coloured polo every time. Burnt orange. White. White with green stripes. Red. White with blue stripes. Yellow. Burnt orange again. Blue. Yellow. Always tucked into a pair of blue jeans, but probably different ones, because Steve Harrington would be the kind to have eight pairs of the same blue jeans. Also always with shoes on, like he’s a guest in his own house, or maybe just doesn’t want to touch the scuzzy carpet with his bare feet. White socks. On good days Eddie catches a glimpse of a hairy calf, too.
Steve visiting always means dinner. Eddie pretty much lives off canned food for the rest of the day – peaches, peas, carrots, Spaghettios – but dinner comes steaming on a tray, with a fork. Eddie didn’t really know what he was expecting at Casa de Harrington in terms of food – wildly sort of envisioned a private chef, before remembering they live in fucking Hawkins, Indiana – but TV dinners, straight out the microwave, is not one of them.
No parents, big house. Big enough to harbour a fugitive; empty enough that Steve eats dinner alone every night, something from the refrigerator because no one taught him how to cook.
He seems used to it, though, enough so that for the first couple of nights he hands Eddie his dinner and then leaves, probably to eat his own by himself in his bedroom. And for the first couple of nights Eddie doesn’t mention it, because he’s still unsure where he stands with Steve, and of everything that’s happened he thinks sitting across from Steve Harrington in a basement for twenty minutes eating microwaved lasagne would be what broke him—
But then the days keep coming. But then Dustin can only visit for twenty minutes at a time, and Mike spends his entire visits mooning up at the ceiling talking about El, and Lucas doesn’t come at all because he’s in the hospital—
And Eddie just really fucking needs someone to talk to.
“You don’t want to stay?” he says, one night, when Steve is doing his routine prison-guard drop-off. It’s the thirteenth day he’s been down here, he thinks: he’s been thinking about carving tally marks into the wall to keep track like they do in movies. The last time he saw sunlight was two days ago, when he went to the bathroom during the daytime and cracked open the window to inhale fresh air; the last time he spoke to someone was Robin three days ago, when she came for half an hour and they spent the whole time trying to learn how to do headstands.
Steve raises an eyebrow that disappears under the swoosh of his hair. Eddie thinks, inanely, whether it does that naturally, or whether he’s had to train it like those bushes that people train into shapes like rabbits and love hearts. “Do you want me to stay?”
“Oh, don’t give me that, man,” Eddie says, because the last thing he wants to do is boost Steve Harrington’s ego about his company. At this point he’d take anything so long as it could reciprocate conversation. “I’ve been stuck down here forever, I’m going absolutely batshit insane with nothing to do. The least you can do is humour me before I start, like, fuckin’ kicking shit.”
“You kick shit anyway,” Steve says, but to Eddie’s surprise he takes a seat on the ground on the other side of the room, back against the wall. It’s weirdly intimate, both of them across from each other, forced to make eye contact, so Eddie looks down at his plastic tray instead: mash, sausages, peas and gravy, everything the kind of piping hot that means it’s just come fresh from the microwave.
“I mean,” Steve continues, and Eddie looks up, “you’re already gonna serve about four hundred years in prison, so the least I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about destruction of property. But here we are.”
He’s talking about the two matching holes in the wall, about a foot apart from each other, above his head. Sat below them he looks like an inconvenienced security guard.
“In my defence, those weren’t me,” Eddie says. When he gets kicky, he makes sure to put all the holes behind the bed where Steve can’t find them. “That was Robin.”
Steve raises his eyebrows, but looks wholly unsurprised. “Robin?”
“Yeah, we were teaching each other how to do headstands. She kicked off too hard and her feet went through the wall.” He sniggers a little at the memory, of the O of her mouth as her feet kept falling instead of bracing against the wall; how she’d crumpled like a hermit trying to extricate them. “She had to go home early, though, I think she spent too much time upside down and was gonna throw up.”
Steve snorts, but there’s a genuine smile at his lips too. “That checks out.”
The sincerity of it disarms Eddie a little – he thinks he can probably count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Steve Harrington actually smile, and most of them have been to do with Robin. He hesitates, and then pushes his tray to the side, rolling on his stomach and propping his chin in one hand. “Okay, I have to ask. What’s the deal with you two?”
Steve frowns. “What?”
Eddie gestures with his spare hand. “You and Robin. What’s the deal? Have you tapped that yet?”
Steve actually blushes a little. “Dude, no.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t like each other like that?”
Ugh. Eddie flops onto his back. “I don’t get it,” he says. “She’s, like, the only person you look like hanging out with doesn’t cause you actual pain. And you’re always whispering and being secretive. You’re telling me you’re not together?”
He can’t see Steve, but he would bet his entire bounty on him rolling his eyes. “No.”
“But why? Do you have genital warts?” He rolls back onto his stomach, fixes Steve with a look. “There’s no shame in admitting you have dick pimples, man. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.”
“I have never believed anyone less,” Steve says, which is fair, because if Steve Harrington had dick pimples Eddie would tell everyone. Or—he might have, once. Now that they’ve faced death together, he’d still do it, but he’d probably feel bad about it. “And no, I don’t.”
“Okay, so what is it?” Eddie prods. “Are you not into girls, or…”
He says it mostly to rattle him, because if Steve Harrington’s a homo then he’s a fucking donkey, and he knows how the Steve Harringtons of the world get when accused of something like that, but Steve’s face goes through so many microreactions in the span of about a second that it actually gives him pause.
“You’re…”
“No,” Steve says, quickly. “It’s not that. Can you just drop it?”
“Oookay,” Eddie sings, but he picks up his fork. “Touchy subject. I get it.”
Steve sighs. “Look, why does it matter? Robin and I are just friends.”
“She’s kinda hot,” Eddie offers. He doesn’t really swing that way himself, but he can see how people would. “In, like. A feral forest child way.”
“Just stop talking,” Steve says, and Eddie, recognising when he should just leave something be, mimes zipping his lips. They eat the rest of their dinner in silence, but Eddie doesn’t miss the way Steve’s fist is a little white-knuckled around his fork, his movements slower, lost in his thoughts.
The next morning, he’s awoken to a clatter, and he blearily blinks awake to see what looks a lot like Steve dragging a television down the stairs. He doesn’t say anything, just owlishly watches from his bed as Steve, grunting with effort, carries the television into the room, dumps it on the ground, and then disappears back upstairs, to reappear moments later with a handful of extension cords. It’s a few more trips back and forth until everything has been successfully plugged in, and then he switches it on, fiddling with the antennae until the signal is clear enough that there’s only a little bit of static and the image is decently clear.
“Good morning,” Eddie says, mostly bemused.
“Morning,” Steve says. The TV futzes out, briefly; he nudges it with a white sneaker and it jerks back to life. “So you don’t keep kicking holes in my wall.”
His polo is blue today; unbuttoned just low enough that Eddie catches a glimpse of chest hair. He’s a little disconcerted at how touched he is at the gesture. “Thanks, man.”
Steve shrugs. “Don’t get too much of an ego about how much you’re on the news,” is all he says, which means you’re welcome. Eddie thinks he might be forgiven for last night. “Dustin’s stopping by later with some more food—radio him with what you want.”
Eddie switches on the walkie-talkie lying by his bed and says, “Beer.” There is a five-second pause before Dustin says, loudly, on the other end, “No, Mom, I said beans,” and the line goes dead.
“I love that kid,” Eddie says.
“Whatever,” Steve says. “Have fun with your TV.”
“Can I get you to bring me some music, too?” Eddie says. “You know, for safety. What if I get Vecna’d?”
Steve responds to this by leaving. Eddie just grins and drops back down onto bed, reaching for the remote.
At least it’s not Star Reach.
*
The visitor system works better at times than others.
Namely, Jonathan Byers.
Out of everyone, Eddie knows the least about Jonathan Byers. It’s probably objectively strange considering he knows he and Jonathan shared several classes in high school (Jonathan graduated, is the difference, and Eddie… did not), but an unforeseen consequence of trying to save the world alongside half a dozen losers is that he’s stuck with them, now, even if he was only really friends with three of them beforehand. And it’s not been so bad in some cases, like Robin, who is a fucking hoot, but Eddie still isn’t really friends with most of them – like what the fuck are he and Nancy Wheeler meant to talk about? – and bonding through near-death can only cover so much ground.
Also – he did not nearly-die with Jonathan. Jonathan was across the country doing whatever it is while Eddie was nearly-dying with a fifteen-year-old from his D&D campaign.
But because they’re a team, or whatever, it means no one has been exempt from Dustin’s visiting system. And Jonathan’s dodged most of them so far, because he’s got a job now as a delivery driver for earthquake relief, but today is Eddie’s lucky day, apparently, because there are footsteps coming down the stairs, and then instead of Mike, or Lucas, the figure that appears in the stairway is decidedly shaggier and pinched-looking and Jonathan Byers-shaped.
“…Hi,” Eddie says, through a mouthful of SpaghettiOs, when Jonathan Byers doesn’t say anything.
“Hi,” says Jonathan Byers.
There is silence. Eddie doesn’t really know what else to do other than offer him the tin. “Uh. SpaghettiO?”
“Um, no, thanks,” says Jonathan. He shuffles into the room; awkwardly lowers himself into the stool Steve sits on when they have dinner. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Eddie would credit this to the whole Vecna situation, only he’s pretty sure Jonathan has always looked like this.
“Suit yourself,” Eddie says, and turns back to the TV. The only channels that play down here is the news and some South American channel that only broadcasts in Spanish. Eddie never has any idea what’s going on, but he likes to guess based on inflection and facial expressions. With this particular series he thinks that Penelope’s husband has just cheated on her with her sister, who is also her best friend and apparently not even her real sister.
They stay like this the whole day, both of them just silently watching Spanish TV that neither of them can understand, and then at 3pm Jonathan leaves. It’s certainly one of the odder days Eddie’s spent down here, and he feels a little like he’s just been visited by a surly ghost that’s a little too shy to do anything except haunt the corner of the room. When Steve comes down for dinner – purple polo, tonight, and it doesn’t really suit him, but the scabs on his face feel bluer, somehow – Eddie tells him, “Jonathan visited me today.”
“Byers?” Steve says, as though they know any other Jonathans. Or maybe he does. Eddie doesn’t know his life. “How was that?”
Eddie isn’t sure if Steve likes him, but he’s all but certain Steve does not like Jonathan. Not that it’s hard to figure out why, with the Nancy of it all, but he kinda wants to ask about it; see if maybe he can irk him a little. He’s found one of his finest forms of entertainment down here is getting under Steve Harrington’s skin.
He doesn’t though, for some reason; just says, “Okay.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
He could not be more transparent if he fucking tried. Eddie grins, puts his chin in his hands like a pin-up girl, and says, breathily, “Well, none other than you of course, Steve Harrington.”
Steve fixes him with an unimpressed look. Eddie rolls his eyes.
“Jeez, okay, someone’s having a good day,” he says. “Pretty much nothing.” He catches a carrot slice in his mouth. “Not much of a talker, that Jonny Byers, is he?”
“Apparently not,” Steve says. He nudges a potato wedge across his plate. Eddie waits, but he doesn’t say anymore.
“Didn’t you guys beat each other up at one point?” he says.
“Once, like, years ago. We’re over it now.”
Eddie totally believes that Steve believes that. “Who won?”
Steve rolls his eyes.
“C’mon, Harrington,” Eddie says. “I’m bored down here. You gotta give me something.”
“I brought you a fuckin’ TV.”
“Yeah, that shows me the news.” He flutters his eyelashes. “Give me storiiiieeees.”
“You’re so fucking whiny,” Steve grouches. “Neither of us won. It got broken up by the cops like thirty seconds in.”
Eddie is a little disappointed by this answer, but he takes it in his stride anyway. He spears a potato with his fork; tries to sound nonchalant when he says, “What was it over?”
Steve sighs. “Come on, man—”
“I’m just being curious.”
“Yeah, you ever hear what that does to the cat?”
“It was Nancy,” Eddie says. It’s mostly a guess, but by the way Steve drops his head back against the wall tells him he’s got it pretty spot fucking on. “Wasn’t it?”
There’s a long pause, before Steve says, “Yeah.”
“What’s happening with that, by the way? You and her?” Eddie pops the potato in his mouth. “You sure looked cosy before the Byers came back to town.”
He keeps his tone carefully light; watches Steve for a reaction out of the corner of his eye as he hacks his chicken into pieces. Steve keeps his head knocked back against the wall, eyes fixed up at the ceiling, and the silence stretches so long that for a moment Eddie doesn’t think he’s going to answer – until, finally, he says, “Nothing’s happening with that.”
He doesn’t say it like he said it with Robin. Nothing doesn’t just sound like an absence, in his mouth: it sounds like a loss.
“Oh,” Eddie says. “Um. Are you… sad about that, or…”
“No,” Steve says, reflexively; then, “I don’t know,” and then he groans and hides his face in his hands. “Fuck. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Well, what did happen?”
Steve glances up at him, long enough to give him a wary eyeball and then exhale. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” he mutters, half to himself, before he sits up. “I don’t know. I knew she and Jonathan were together, but… she never talked about him. Ever, you know? And Mike went to Lenora Hills to visit El, and we all kinda thought Nancy would go with him to see Jonathan, but she didn’t. So I… I don’t know. I thought that maybe they’d broken up, or at least were on their way there, and I just—spending all this time with her again made me remember how cool she is, and we’d dated once before, right? So it was like old muscle memory. Liking her, being her boyfriend. It was easy.”
“And then?”
“And then I told her, like a fucking idiot. About—you know. My fantasy. Of the future; six kids, white picket fence, holidaying in the summer, the whole nine yards. And then we got interrupted, and it was also literally right before we fought Vecna, so I knew I wasn’t gonna get an answer immediately, but—” He sighs. “It’s been three weeks since then. And she hasn’t said anything.”
Eddie doesn’t even know where to begin. “You want six kids?”
Steve cuts him an unimpressed look. “That’s the part you’re focusing on?”
“Uh, yeah, man. Six kids? I mean, Jesus Christ, Harrington, you tryna raise a soccer team or something?”
Another unimpressed look. “A soccer team has eleven players.”
Eddie waves him off. “I don’t watch soccer. But Jesus Christ.” He flops onto his back. He’s not on the bed, this time—every dinner, he inches a little closer and closer to Steve across the room. He’s not sure if Steve’s realised yet. “Maybe that’s why she hasn’t said anything.”
“Fuck you, man,” Steve says, but he’s beginning to smile a little. “How many kids do you want?”
“I don’t know, two? Like a reasonable person?”
“Two? That’s nothing.”
“Right, I forgot I was talking to Steve ‘The Harem’ Harrington.”
Steve throws a carrot at him. Eddie throws one back.
“Knew I shouldn’t have said anything to you,” Steve says. “You’re the worst confidant ever. You’re not even trying to make me feel better.”
“What do you want me to say? Yeah, definitely tell the girl you like you want her to have six kids. A+ flirting there, Harrington.”
Steve throws another carrot at him, that Eddie this time manages to catch in his mouth.
“Asshole,” Steve says. “Tell me what to do.”
For the first time, it looks like he’s genuinely asking for his input. Eddie pushes himself up on his elbow so he can properly meet his eyes. “I mean, I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe give her a bit more time. She’s probably just confused, man—a few weeks ago her hot ex was all over her, and now her estranged boyfriend is back. That’s gotta trip anyone up. Just give her some space. And if she still doesn’t come to you, then…” He shrugs. “It’s shitty, but that’s your answer.”
Steve’s quiet for a moment as he digests this, nudging his food around his plate. Finally, he says, “You think I’m hot, Munson?”
“Oh, fuck you, man,” Eddie says, and drops back down on the floor, closing his eyes. “I knew you’d focus on that.”
“No, no,” Steve says, “go on, please. My self-esteem is low.”
“Like mirrors are constantly cracking around you. You know you’re hot shit, Harrington.” He cracks open an eye to peer at him. “At least I know why you’re constantly single. It’s because you can’t flirt for shit.”
“Fuck you, I can flirt.”
“Oh, Nancy Wheeler, let me tell you about the six children I want you to have for me. Robin Buckley, I’m probably in love with you too but for some reason we refuse to date. It’s kinda sad at this point, Steve.”
“I’m not in love with Robin,” Steve says, like clockwork.
Eddie smiles to himself. “So you keep saying.”
“And besides, you’re not one to talk. It’s not like you’re drowning in girls, either.”
“Well, wait until I’m exonerated and outta here,” Eddie says, not bothering to correct the assumption. “They’ll come in fuckin’ droves. Everyone loves a bad boy.”
“I think there’s a small line between bad boy and murderous boy.”
“Yeah, but I’ll be exonerated. Then it’s poor wrongly-accused Eddie Munson, tell me all about how Steve Harrington locked you in his basement while I wipe away your tears and jerk you off.”
Steve makes a pained sound. “Jesus,” he mutters, over Eddie’s laughter. “That’s just circumstantial, though. You can’t have good game based on circumstance.”
“Uh, if I’m gonna stay hidden away for months, yeah I can, man. I’m gonna milk it for all it’s worth.” Eddie rolls onto his stomach, kicks his legs up. The roll has accidentally brought him closer, enough so that if he reached out he could curl his fingers around the stiff denim hem of Steve’s jeans, but he keeps his hands to himself. “But I don’t need it, either. I have great game.”
Steve raises an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Totally.”
“Which is why I’ve seen you date… how many girls, again?”
“Okay, well,” Eddie says, “you didn’t know me until like a two weeks ago, so that doesn’t count.” Steve’s eyebrows somehow lift impossibly higher, entirely unimpressed. “And I’m not into girls, so that’s not a fair comparison.”
He says it casually, like it’s not a big deal. And it’s not, not really—or it shouldn’t be. He’s pretty sure most of the school knows that he likes boys, and it’s something he’s never shied away from; wore it like a badge, in fact, or the way he wore his nail-studded shield. He was Eddie Munson, weird and troublemaking and difficult and now also a fag. It was another facet to the pill that made him harder to swallow.
But somehow, Steve missed this memo, and now Eddie has to correct him, just the two of them, and somehow this is so much worse. At least before he never had to lose anyone because of it, because they’d befriend him knowing. Not that he and Steve are friends, really, but—
He lives in the dude’s basement. If Steve kicks him out, he has literally nowhere else to go.
Pretending he can’t feel his heart race in his chest, he watches Steve’s face for a reaction. It does many things, in the span of only a couple of seconds: change with surprise, and then desperately attempt to pretend it hasn’t. But there’s something in his eyes, something new, and it’s not—bad, but Eddie also can’t tell if it’s good.
“Oh,” Steve says, is all he says, and Eddie wants to shake him and say fucking oh? That’s it? And then he clears his throat and says, “Okay, well, how many boys have you dated, then?”
Eddie—blinks. “Uh.”
Steve raises an eyebrow. It’s not amused, but—almost. His blue shirt makes his dark eyes even darker. Eddie has a weird urge to hug him, or something. “Uh?”
“Fuck you,” Eddie says, on instinct, and it’s mostly relieved. “Three. I’ve dated three. Unless we’re counting the number we’ve hooked up with?”
And—fucking score. Steve blushes. “No, just—just dating’s good. Two. For me.”
Eddie feels his eyebrows rise in disbelief. “Just two?”
Steve smiles. “What, you think I’m some kind of slut, Munson?”
“I mean, yeah, sorta,” Eddie says, and Steve snorts. “Aren’t you some kind of player? How have you only dated two girls?”
“I’ve been on a bunch of first dates and stuff. But only two that I properly dated.”
“Did you love them?”
It’s out before Eddie has time to think. If he’s surprised by it, or notices the way Eddie is dying in mortification, Steve doesn’t let it show.
“Well, the first was Deborah Keene in sixth grade, for like four months, so probably no. But Nancy… yeah. I think so.”
There’s that weird sour feeling beneath his breastbone again. “I’m sorry. About her now.”
Steve shrugs. “I’ve survived Nancy Wheeler once. I can do it again.”
Eddie rolls his head back to look up at the ceiling. “Death by Nancy Wheeler,” he says. He wonders if Steve can hear the bitterness in his voice at her name. “There are worse ways to go.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, and there’s something in the way he says it that has Eddie rolling his back to peer at him – but his eyes are fixed on his plate, gaze somewhere distant. “There are.”
*
“Steve tells me you like boys,” Robin says.
Eddie needs to start seriously locking the basement door. “Is this how I’m doomed to wake up from now on?” he says aloud, in the direction of the ceiling. “Not even a good morning?”
“Good morning,” Robin says. “Steve tells me you like boys.”
Grouchily, Eddie squints his eyes open, to find Robin sat cross-legged at the end of his bed. He didn’t even hear her come in, is the weirdest thing, but at this point he doesn’t think Robin has ever entered this room normally. He’s counting down the days until he wakes up to find her hanging upside down from the ceiling like a bat. “Good morning, Robin,” he says, stifling a yawn as he rubs at one of his eyes. “How are you today? Nice weather outside?”
“It’s raining,” Robin says, and nudges him with the toe of her boot. “Is it true?”
“That it’s raining?”
“That you like boys.”
“Would be a weird thing for Steve to tell you if it wasn’t,” Eddie says mildly, and Robin brightens.
“Oh, cool,” she says, and holds up her hand for a high-five. Eddie’s not even been awake for five minutes at this point, but he obligingly indulges her anyway, even though he’s not sure what they’re high-fiving. Him liking boys? Her breaking into his room? The fact that her socks have little pirates on them? “Me too, by the way. Steve didn’t just tell me for no reason.”
“You too, what?” Eddie says.
“I’m—I like girls too. That’s why Steve told me.”
Eddie—blinks. “Oh,” he says. “That’s cool.”
It starts putting a lot into perspective. He thinks of the way the two of them fell on each other in the Upside Down, how her hand had scrabbled for purchase somewhere at his chest, and he’d internally braced himself for a grope, but she’d simply pushed off him. He thinks of Steve and Robin’s closeness, Steve’s constant reiteration of how they were just friends.
He also thinks how Steve could have easily put Eddie’s probing questions to bay with one answer, but didn’t.
“Steve told me that you told him,” Robin continues. “And he didn’t send me to come talk to you about it or anything, I just decided to come, but if you’re worried about him telling he won’t. I also thought it would be kinda nice for us to maybe talk about it, if you wanted.”
Eddie still feels a little whiplashed, but he still manages to raise an eyebrow. “This isn’t a recent revelation, Robin. I have gay friends.”
“Yeah, but,” and at this Robin breaks eye contact, pulling at a loose string on her pants. “Um. I don’t, really.”
Suddenly Eddie feels like the world’s biggest asshole. This wasn’t Robin coming in to welcome him to the club – this was her hoping for him to welcome her. “Oh, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry—yeah, of course we can talk about it, if you want.”
Robin smiles at him, a little relieved. “I don’t really know anyone else like—me. Us.”
Is that why Steve told her about him? Considerate son of a bitch. “Well, I’m queer as a three-dollar bill. And—how convenient—I’ve happened upon a huge stretch of endless free time. So whenever you want to come talk about it, or whatever, I’m your guy.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” Robin says. She’s always been sorta gangly, all tall unwieldly limbs and little control over them, but folded like a little origami bird at the end of his bed in pirate socks she’s never lived up more to her namesake.
He’s insatiably curious, though. “Can I ask something?”
Her eyebrows lift, a little surprised. “Go for it.”
“Were you and Steve ever…”
“What! Gross!” she says, immediately, which makes Eddie grin. “No, definitely not. I mean, he wanted to, but—well.” She gestures to herself. “That didn’t happen.”
Eddie smirks, but his brain is still caught on the first half of her sentence. “Did Steve… like you?”
Robin screws up her face. “It’s kinda crazy to think about now, because he’s my best friend, and, again, gross, but—yeah. Between you and me, I’m not sure he ever really liked me like that; I was just someone he got along with who was a girl, and at that point I’m not sure he knew how to tell the difference. The Nancy Wheeler effect.” She mimes a gun pointing into the soft skin beneath her jaw, mimics an explosion noise. “But it worked out. We stopped a Russian invasion together, so that kinda brings people together.”
“What the fuck,” Eddie says. This isn’t even the most insane thing that has been nonchalantly dropped into conversation by these fuckers; at this point he should be used to it, but he’d set his barometer somewhere in the magical realm. Russians. Those are real. Or allegedly, anyway. “What is wrong with you people?”
Robin grins, properly. “To be fair, a year ago I was you. You spend long enough running with wolves you become one.” She frowns. “I think that’s the saying.”
Eddie isn’t so sure about that, but it’s fitting regardless. As much as being caged in Steve Harrington’s basement sucks ass, he can’t ever imagine putting on horse blinders and going to work in a corporate office after this. How could he, when Hawkins has a mirror town filled with magic dust that he literally climbed in and out of via a hole in his ceiling? He doesn’t know how Steve wakes up every day and still chooses to put on those douche polos every day. He feels like he needs to start wearing tunics.
“Well,” Eddie says, “I’m happy to be a sidekick with you,” and Robin’s smile gentles a little. “To getting dragged into this shit.”
“To being wanted for three charges of ritualistic murder,” she says. “And homosexuality.”
Eddie grins. “I’ll toast you to that.”
They still don’t have beer, so Robin unearths two more cartons of juice—orange, this time—and they clink them together. “For what it’s worth,” Robin says, after she’s had a long, noisy slurp of her straw, “I’m happy you’re here, Eddie.”
Eddie is so fucking fond of her. “Get your shoes off my bed, you freak.”
Robin aims them both for his face, and he squirts her with orange juice. Still, even as she begrudgingly swivels her ass to unlace her boots off the end of his bed, swiping at the juice in her hair, he can’t quite fight the smile – nor the way Steve Harrington and his fucking thoughtfulness lingers in the periphery of his mind.
*
Day forty-nine. It’s a Jonathan Byers day again.
And Eddie’s sick of it.
“All right, man,” he says, their second hour into silently watching Spanish TV neither of them can understand. It’s kinda admirable, how Jonathan will stay for the full four hours of allotted time. He’s pretty much the only one, as far as Eddie knows: everyone else is beholden to their own schedules, and come and go whenever they please, except Jonathan, who comes at eleven and leaves at three. “Music. You gotta like music.”
Jonathan blinks at him, owlishly. “I… yeah?”
“What are you into? Rock and roll? Rap? Heavy metal?”
“I like The Clash,” Jonathan says. “Some David Bowie.”
Okay. Not great, but not terrible. Eddie knows a few Clash and Bowie songs. “Metallica? Led Zeppelin?” Jonathan shakes his head. “Black Sabbath?”
“I’m not a huge heavy metal guy,” Jonathan says.
“Of course you’re not,” Eddie mutters. He rolls onto his back; lets his head drop off the end of the bed, so Jonathan is upside-down in his vision, perched on Steve’s stool like he’s afraid Eddie might pounce if he makes any sudden movement. “That’s okay. We can work with this. Favourite movie?”
“The Evil Dead.”
Eddie perks up a little at this. Or, down. Gravity. “No way, mine too! Or, not my favourite, but one of them.” He then properly thinks about it, and winces. “Though I guess with everything that’s happened demonic possession is maybe kinda on the nose.”
Jonathan actually smiles at this. “Yeah, wait until you’re chased through a hospital by a zombie. Haven’t really been able to watch it since.”
Eddie rolls over to give him a look. “Oh, word?”
Jonathan flaps his hand. “Last year,” he says, vaguely. Eddie tries to categorise this in the poorly-assembled timeline he has in his head – last year Will went missing. Or maybe that was the year before. What was last year? Was that Billy Hargrove? He should maybe start writing this down. “Me and Nancy.”
Nancy. “Oh?” Eddie says, as subtly as possible.
Jonathan shrugs again. Eddie can almost see him slip back into his shell, and he internally shouts. Not yet! He was doing so well!
“How are things going with the two of you?” he attempts, which was definitely the wrong move, because if anything Jonathan becomes more shrunken in.
“They’re okay,” he says. Fuck, he’s hitting all the wrong hills here.
“Okay?” Eddie says. “That’s it?”
Jonathan shrugs. “Pretty much.”
“You’re really not gonna give me anything? You’d rather watch a Spanish show you can’t understand then talk to me about your girlfriend?” The look Jonathan cuts him is the most pointed out of anything he’s given him thus far. Eddie deflates. “Come on, man. I feel like we don’t know anything about each other.”
“We had World History together,” Jonathan says.
Eddie resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Okay, I spent most of World History high, so that means nothing. We’ve got hours together, don’t you want to get know each other a little better?”
“And that means me telling you about Nancy?”
“I mean—shit, not if you don’t want to. I just thought—you know. Girlfriend. Might be a way to break the ice.” It occurs to him, belatedly, as he watches Jonathan’s lips wryly tick upwards, that they’re currently in Steve Harrington’s house—the same Steve Harrington who once beat the shit out of Jonathan—discussing the girl Jonathan is dating, who used to date Steve Harrington, and he realises that maybe Jonathan’s reticence isn’t just awkwardness. Fuck. These politics! This is why he avoids this shit like the plague. “Fuck. If only Henderson came through with the alcohol. Beer is a great icebreaker.”
Jonathan smiles a little at that; still thinly, but Eddie thinks it’s genuine. “Is your solution to most things just getting drunk?”
“Usually,” Eddie says. “Or high. But I’m not gonna make the kid be my drug mule – gotta draw the line somewhere.”
He directs this with a grin to Jonathan, but Jonathan looks a little thoughtful.
“You smoke, right?” he says, which is not what Eddie was expecting him to say. Still, he takes this in his stride.
“Weed? Of course.”
Jonathan produces a rolled joint from the pocket of his shirt with an awkward, crooked grin. “Want to just get really fucking high?”
Eddie cannot fucking believe his ears. A smile stretches across his face. “Absolutely, yes.”
Jonathan lights up the joint, and within minutes they’re lying side-by-side on the floor, lazily passing it between them. The first hit sends delicious shivers down Eddie’s spine – fuck, it’s been so long since he’s been high, and this is some good shit. Jonathan Byers: who fucking knew.
“It’s like,” Jonathan says, “I feel like we’re going in two different directions, you know?” Stoned Jonathan is a chatty Jonathan, as it turns out. Eddie’s not sure he’s ever heard this many words from him. “Like, she has all these plans about going to Emerson, and we’ve always talked about going together, but—I don’t know if that’s me, you know? I didn’t even fucking apply.” He hides his face in his hands, and Eddie just manages to pluck the joint from between his fingers before he accidentally uses his eye as an ashtray. “Instead, what did I do? Apply for Lenora Community College. Which I probably won’t even be able to attend because we’ve moved back to Hawkins. The whole thing is just a shitshow.”
“Hm,” Eddie says.
“But I love her so much. And I think—I think she loves me too. I just. I just don’t know if that’s enough, you know? And then there’s the whole Steve of it all.”
He says Steve so plaintively Eddie starts to laugh.
“Hey,” Jonathan protests feebly.
“No, sorry,” Eddie says, still bubbling with laughter, though he himself has to repeat, “Steve” in the same way just to get it out of his system. Man, it feels good coming out of his mouth. Would probably feel good going in as well. (What the fuck?) “Tell me. What’s the Steve of it all?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan says. He sounds so sad Eddie passes the blunt back. “I trust Nancy. I don’t think anything happened between them—she’d tell me if it did. But I just—I have a feeling that he’s not over her. And how am I meant to compare to Steve Harrington? If he made her choose, I don’t know she’d pick me.”
“You compared once,” Eddie says. “Right?” That’s also on his timeline. After Will’s disappearance, but before Billy. Max is also in there somewhere.
“But Steve was dick back then,” Jonathan says. “You knew Steve, before.”
Did he? Eddie tries to think back. He knew the legend of Steve Harrington, of course, but Eddie’s always been so far removed from high school politics that outside of his name he doesn’t think he would have been able to say single thing about Steve, even with a gun to his head. He doesn’t doubt Steve’s grown up a hell of a lot, because people like Jason Carver don’t become top of the food chain by chauffeuring around middle schoolers and befriending local weirdos, but he’s not sure he ever knew past Steve.
He'll take Jonathan’s word for it, though. “I knew of him.”
“He was an asshole,” Jonathan says. “Like, proper asshole. But he’s—” He sighs, irritably. “He’s changed now. He’s better. The sort of guy who would be worth Nancy.”
“I think,” Eddie says, sagely, “you should stop comparing yourself to Steve.”
“I can’t help it.” Jonathan rolls his head over to look at him. “And you’d know, right? You were with them. Everything Nancy tells me about what you guys were up to in Hawkins, Steve’s always there. Always me and Steve. Us and Steve. I don’t want to be that boyfriend who gets insecure, but—it’s Steve Harrington. How can I not?”
“Have you asked Nancy about this?”
Jonathan’s quiet for a moment. “Not really.”
“Maybe you should,” Eddie says. Fuck, he forgets how wise he gets when he’s stoned. He feels like he could write a chapter of the Bible right now. “You know? Clear the air. Otherwise it’ll, like, fester.”
There’s another moment of quiet. “I can’t tell her about Lenora.”
“You gotta, man,” Eddie says. “Your relationship can’t be built on lies. Just be honest with her. Say, hey, I don’t really want to go to Emerson. Hey, I’m kinda insecure about Steve Harrington.”
“But do you think she likes him?”
It’s been three weeks, and nothing. Maybe Nancy’s a bitch who likes stringing people along—or maybe she’s just quietly made her choice. “If I’m honest, man? No.”
“Hm,” Jonathan says.
“Honesty is key, dude,” Eddie says, wisely, and plucks the joint out from Jonathan’s fingers. Jonathan relinquishes it easily, gaze unfocused in thought. (Or maybe he’s just really high.)
“Yeah,” he decides, finally, and Eddie glances at him. “I’m gonna tell her. Honesty is key.”
“Honesty is key.”
“Thanks, man,” Jonathan says, and Eddie glances at him, to find Jonathan already watching him. His narrowed tired eyes are a little damp with emotion, which is kinda embarrassing, but a little sweet, too. “I’ve been kinda keeping this all bottled up, but I’m really glad I could talk about it with someone. You’re a good friend, Eddie.”
Eddie feels weirdly shy at the attention. “Well, keep bringing me good weed, Byers, and I can be a good friend any day.”
Jonathan snorts, and the moment passes as he takes the joint from Eddie again. Back and forth they pass it until it’s been burnt down to a stub, shooting the shit about absolutely nothing. Eddie doesn’t even realise how much time has passed until Jonathan’s watch beeps for the fourth or fifth time, and then the basement door creaks open and Steve pokes his head in.
“Hey, man,” he begins, and then he catches sight of Jonathan on the floor. “Uh. Hey.”
“Oh, hey dude,” Eddie says, when the silence stretches long. “Jonathan’s here.”
“I can see that,” Steve says. He’s a little stiff. He’s in the orange polo today—it’s always been Eddie’s personal favourite on him. “Uh. Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Jonathan says. He’s also a little stiff, quickly sitting up and scrubbing a hand through his hair, like he’s only now just realising he had been on Steve Harrington’s floor for about three hours. “Sorry, we lost track of time.”
“I’m not his keeper,” Steve says. “I don’t care.”
“He makes me stick to a curfew and everything,” Eddie tells Jonathan, and Steve rolls his eyes. Jonathan titters, a little nervously.
“He’s kidding,” Steve says. “Jonathan, do you need me to drop you home? Are you…” His nose wrinkles, as presumably the stench of weed hits him. “Are you, uh, in a condition to be walking?”
Eddie smirks to himself. Jonathan pushes himself to his feet. “I’ll be fine,” he says, “but, uh, thanks. The motel’s just down the road.” He adjusts his shirt, shoots Eddie an awkward wave. “Uh, see you around, man. You too, Steve.”
“See you, Jonny,” Eddie says, and just catches Jonathan’s look of distaste as he disappears through the door. He’d kinda thought several hours of them smoking and shooting the shit would have elevated him to Jonny status, but apparently not. He decides that if that won’t do it, he’s not sure anything will. “Worth a try,” he says, half to himself.
Across the room, Steve scoffs, and Eddie glances up to meet his gaze, which is a mixture of unimpressed and something like bemusement. “Did you hotbox my basement with Jonathan Byers?” he says.
“The hotboxing wasn’t intentional,” Eddie says. “There are just no windows.” Steve raises an eyebrow. “But yes.”
“Huh,” is all Steve says, instead of the lecture Eddie was anticipating. “I didn’t peg him for the type.”
“He’s a man of surprises,” Eddie says. “Like an onion.” He’s probably still a little stoned himself – which is also probably he says what he says next. “We talked a little about Nancy.”
Steve’s expression flattens in surprise, though he does his best to disguise it mere moments later. “Really,” he says, and his voice is carefully, controlledly, flat. “What… what did he say?”
The tightness to his shoulders and the way he’s gripping his elbows as though they may shatter in his hands makes Eddie feel suddenly, nakedly sober. He sits up properly; runs a hand across the carpet as he tries to figure out how to word it. “I, uh. I think Nancy’s made her choice.”
It’s a second, before Steve gets it, and his expression goes carefully flat – but not before something almost like grief, and a little heartbreakingly, understanding, passes it. Like maybe he’d already made his peace with it. “Oh,” is all he says.
“I’m really sorry, man,” Eddie says. He doesn’t know what else to say.
“That’s okay,” Steve says. His voice is a little thick—he clears his throat, tips his head back. In the naked bulb of the ceiling light, Eddie catches a faint sheen of tears. “Um. I was just—coming down to check if you wanted KFC for dinner tonight.”
Eddie watches him, but Steve is stoutly avoiding eye contact; eyes fixed on the ceiling, like it might keep the tears from falling. “Yeah,” he says, finally, when it becomes clear Steve isn’t going to say anything else. “I could do KFC.”
“Cool,” Steve says. “Uh—I’ll get us a bucket to share?”
“Sounds good,” Eddie says, and Steve nods once, before disappearing back up the stairs. Eddie waits until he hears the front door slam before he groans, and drops back against the floor, digging his hands into his eyes.
He shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not his business whatever happens between Jonathan, Nancy and Steve – he’s always done his best to keep away from that sort of shit. But then he got himself involved and now Steve is—
Fuck.
He counts fifteen hundred seconds in his head before the front door opens again, and another one hundred and six before there are footsteps down the basement steps. Steve appears in the doorway, cradling a bucket of chicken and two bottles of Coke in his arms—and if his eyes are a little red, Eddie doesn’t mention it.
“Thank you, man,” Eddie says, when he settles down, spreading their food on the floor. Steve shrugs, but doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Of course,” he says. “Anytime.”
Except anytime sounds a lot like when he said nothing’s happening with that: like loss.
*
Somehow, the basement has become the main base of operations for Mission: Destroy Vecna.
“He’s licking his wounds right now,” Dustin says, knuckle-deep in one of Eddie’s tins of melon. “But he’ll be back, and we need to be prepared for when he does.”
“We don’t even know what he wants,” says Mike. Several of the Mission: Destroy Vecna meetings have been about catching him and Jonathan up to speed with what’s going on. “I mean, does he just want Hawkins destroyed?”
“Pretty much,” Dustin says.
“How do we know he’s not after world domination?”
Dustin pauses around a cube of melon. Steve is the one to cut in, “Let’s not jump to worst case scenario right now, okay? For now, we just need to focus on saving Hawkins.”
“Okay, but how?” That’s Nancy, who for some reason is next to Robin on the bed with Eddie. Jonathan is not here, which is probably for the best, because Steve still hasn’t managed to make eye contact with her yet, and they’ve been here uselessly brainstorming for about an hour and a half so far. “Half the town is already up in flames. He’s opened gates across town—I mean, is there even anything left we can do?”
“Well, killing Vecna won’t hurt,” Dustin snits.
“But how? We set him on fire, and I shot him four times.”
“We’ll need El,” Mike says, decisively. “She defeated him once. She can do it again.”
Eddie decides this is his time to interject. “Uh, no offence,” he says, raising his hand, “but isn’t she the reason we have Vecna at all?”
Mike glares at him. Loyally, Dustin says, “She’s the only one of us who stands a chance, Eddie. Unless anyone else here has magic powers we don’t know about?”
There’s silence. “I can lick my elbow,” Robin offers.
“Thanks, Robin,” Dustin says, and Robin winks. “Look, if we want any chance of winning this and saving Hawkins, we’re going to need El. Besides, she said that she nearly got him when she was in Max’s head.”
“Yeah, nearly.” That’s Lucas. “And look where that got us.”
The room falls uncomfortably, frigidly quiet. “Lucas—” Mike tries.
“No, Mike,” Lucas says. His voice brooks absolutely no argument. “I know El’s our best bet, but she can only access him in other people’s heads, and we’re not fucking doing that again. It’s too risky. Not when Max—” He cuts off, abruptly; bites his lip. Nancy reaches forward and squeezes his shoulder.
“She could still wake up,” she says, softly.
“Yeah, maybe,” Lucas says, unconvinced. He pushes himself to his feet, and Nancy’s hand falls from his shoulder. “I need some air.”
And then he’s gone.
“Uh,” Dustin says, awkwardly, into the silence. “Meeting adjourned, I guess.”
Everyone trails, dejected, from the room. Eddie stays sat on the bed, arms wrapped around his crossed legs, as Robin wrestles on her boots on the floor. Nancy hovers next to her, awkwardly.
“Steve?” she says, softly, and Steve, still sat on his stool, glances up. “Can we talk, just for a sec?”
Robin pauses, and looks up at her, but Nancy’s gaze is kept firmly on Steve, who looks like he’d rather do anything else. Still, even with his shoulders one harsh line by his ears, he manages a nod. “Sure,” he says. He gestures towards the door, and the two of them stiffly follow one another up the stairs.
“…Yikes,” Robin says, into the silence, and her frankness is enough to make Eddie snort. “Wonder what that’s about.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea,” Eddie says. He can’t stop glancing at the empty doorway they disappeared into, as though they’re about re-materialise through it. As though she can maybe sense it, Robin’s hand pauses from where she’s lacing up her boots, and she crawls back onto the bed.
“Want to play noughts and crosses?” she offers. “I’m pretty lethal.”
Eddie glances at her, and her wide imploring eyes. Her earnestness makes him smile. “Sure,” he says. “I have paper.”
They’re on their eleventh round – Robin, somehow, actually is pretty lethal at noughts and crosses – when the door opens, and Steve comes in, alone, with a twelve-pack of Coors. “Who wants to get fucking hammered,” he says, in lieu of a hello, so Eddie takes it the talk went well.
Still, he is also nothing if not an enthusiastic supporter. “Count me the fuck in,” he says, and catches the beer that Steve throws at him. “Robin?”
“Why the hell not,” she says. The beer Steve throws her way gets fumbled and dropped to the ground.
Like this, Eddie can almost pretend that things are normal: just three friends getting shit-faced in someone’s basement. That it’s just a regular Tuesday, and the town around him isn’t on fire, and one of their friends isn’t comatose in hospital. But it’s not a regular Tuesday—probably not even a Tuesday—and the town is on fire, and Max has spent nearly sixty days in a coma and Lucas says the doctors are getting less and less confident in her odds the more time that passes—
The first, second and third beers go down easily. The fourth is even easier.
Robin taps out at two, not a huge drinker and also needing to get home for dinner, but it just means there’s more to go around for the rest of them. Eddie isn’t even aware of her leaving; vaguely remembers her pressing kisses to both of their heads, but one moment she’s next to him and the next Steve is instead and she’s nowhere to be seen.
“This,” Eddie says, “is so much better than apple juice.”
Steve doesn’t respond; just sways a little, looking down at the rim of his bottle. The one part of Eddie’s brain that hasn’t already been dissolved in alcohol feels a twinge of concern.
“You okay, man?” he says, gently.
“You were right,” Steve says. “About Nancy.”
Eddie puts his beer down. Steve still isn’t looking at him, but his hand has tightened around his own bottle. “What did you guys talk about?”
Steve scoffs. “What do you think?” he says. “She said—she said she cared about me. But that she was in love with Jonathan. That they’d hit a rough patch and she’d been confused, but that they’re working it out she’s not confused anymore.”
Honesty is key, Eddie had sagely told Jonathan, who had nodded like this was scripture. Though he feels a little proud of Jonathan for following his advice, his heart breaks for Steve. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” Steve has another long swig of his beer, and then hiccups. “Not your fault that I’m stupid. Not your fault I was reading into Nancy just being—fucking nice to me. She cares about me, Eddie. Like a friend. I’m the fucking idiot who—who thought it was more than that.”
Eddie’s simultaneously not sober nor drunk enough for this. “You’re not a fucking idiot.”
“I am,” Steve says. “Fuck.” He puts his head in his hands. The scabs on his arms have all but completely healed now; there are just thin patches in the dusting of hair on his forearms that haven’t grown back yet. “You know what Robin said to me once? After I told her I fuckin’—loved her in the Star Mall bathrooms?”
“What?”
“That she thought maybe I was—I was so desperate—hic—to be in love again that I’d sometimes wilfully misread friendships. Twist them in my head so I think they’re more than what they are. Ugh.” Steve drops his head against the wall. His throat is long and white; their knees are touching on the bedspread. This feels really fucking dangerous. “I mean, that’s me, right? Player Steve Harrington. Who goes on a hundred first dates but only two second dates because he just wants to find someone so bad.”
“Steve,” Eddie says, but Steve’s on a roll.
“The worst part is, she’s right. I really liked her, Eddie—I really liked Robin. I thought I was in love with her. I liked hanging out with her and I liked solving puzzles with her and I liked slinging ice cream with her but I think deep down I knew I didn’t love her, like that, but she was so easy to get along with that I was like, it won’t be hard to pretend. You know? Like, I could grow to it, maybe. But she didn’t like me like that and we’re friends now and it’s the best decision of my life because we’re so much better as friends but I see her with Vickie and I just think—fuck. I want that. When is it my turn to have that?”
“Steve,” Eddie says, again, and Steve turns to look at him, and they’re—a lot closer than Eddie had realised.
“What?” Steve says. His breath stinks of beer. His eyes are a little damp – but they unmistakeably flicker down to Eddie’s mouth. “What, Eddie?”
“Steve,” is all Eddie can say. Steve sways forward, eyes dark.
“When is it my turn,” Steve says, but it doesn’t feel like a question this time. His eyes match the black of his polo today; one hand, damp with condensation, lands on Eddie’s thigh. “Eddie.”
“Steve,” Eddie says, softly, “you’re gonna regret this.”
“No I won’t,” Steve says, but Eddie resists, because he can’t—he can’t—
“No, Steve,” he says, because Steve has to understand, “you don’t get it. I don’t think I’ll survive if you regret this.”
Steve sways impossibly closer. “You’re the only one talking about regret,” he says. He is unmistakeably, entirely drunk, but his dark eyes are lucid. “I want this. Do you?”
And Eddie should say so many things—you don’t actually want this—we’re both really drunk—you’re sad—I haven’t seen daylight in three days—you’ve never been with a dude—but then Steve’s hand hitches up just a little higher, and suddenly, abruptly, Eddie’s head is all white noise, except for one question.
Do you?
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I do.”
And Steve kisses him.
*
Eddie is awoken to his own name.
“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” someone that sounds like a lot like Dustin is chanting, and at this point Eddie has gotten so used to being greeted by someone first thing that he doesn’t even flinch; just keeps his eyes closed, recognises that it’s from the walkie-talkie by his bed, and blindly reaches for it.
It’s not until his hand wraps around it does another voice mumble, “Fuck, what time is it?”, this time from right next to him, that Eddie remembers last night, and thinks, with startling clarity: oh fuck.
“Eddie, are you there?” Dustin is demanding, and Steve’s body behind him goes tense as a fucking wire, and Eddie is still facing away from him with one hand around the walkie talkie, and he thinks, maybe I can pretend to be asleep, until Dustin says again, “Eddie!,” and Eddie sits up, doing his best to ignore Steve and Steve’s wide-eyed gaze on him; snaps, into the walkie-talkie, “What do you want, Henderson?”
“Oh, finally,” Dustin says; on his line, there is a hubbub of voices, the scratch of static. “Yes, he’s here—can you all shut up, I’m trying to—”
“Dustin,” Eddie says, “what’s going on?”
“Everyone, be quiet,” Dustin says, to everyone on his end. Eddie counts three terse seconds before Dustin’s voice comes louder, closer to the receiver. “Eddie, you and Steve need to get here as quickly as you can.”
Eddie can feel Steve’s eyes on his bare back like a brand. He closes his eyes to try ignore it. “What happened?”
Dustin’s voice is uncharacteristically, deadly, serious. “Max woke up.”
*
Things move fast, after that.
They don’t talk about it—of course they don’t. Steve slips out the room while Eddie’s still talking to Dustin on the walkie-talkie, returns twenty minutes later showered and in a high-neck jersey to hide the bruise Eddie had sucked below his jaw only six hours prior. They drive to the Wheelers’, and don’t talk about it then, either: not about the bite beneath the hinge of Steve’s jaw, or the finger-shaped bruises on Eddie’s hips—not about the fact they both still reek of a brewery, of each other—not about the fact they’re not talking about it, or at all.
They don’t talk about it when they get to the Wheelers’, or when Dustin, armed with a marker pen in each hand and surrounded by half a dozen maps of Hawkins, pairs them up together to go back into the Upside Down and visit the Creele house. They don’t talk about it when they drive to the trailer park and Steve kneels down to boost Eddie into the ceiling, and Eddie blushes, furiously, remembering the last time Steve’s mouth was that close to his crotch. They don’t talk about it when there’s only bike left in the Upside Down trailer park, and Eddie has to cling to Steve’s waist as he cycles down the main road, face pressed in the junction between his shoulder and the curve of his throat where he knows for certain he’d left a hickey the night before.
They don’t talk about it when they manage to get back through the gate by the skin of their fucking teeth before El closes them all for good, and Steve lands on top of Eddie, and for a moment they just hover there, in a new, saved world, their heaving chests pressed against each other, eyes dark, covered in sweat and blood and bat muck.
But Steve rolls off him, and Eddie’s fucking chest aches at the loss, and he thinks that they might not need to, for him to get the idea.
It was a mistake, and it’s not happening again.
It’s funny, how in the wake of Hawkins finally being at peace, all Eddie can think about is Steve.
*
It’s Jonathan, who drives him to the police station the next morning. Will’s in the back seat, for some reason, and the two of them are idly talking about some television programme they’d watched last night. Eddie just keeps his temple against the window and rehearses his story one more time in his head.
His name is Henry Creele. I’m innocent.
“You sure you want to do this, man?” Jonathan says, when they pull up to the front of the precinct. “It’s really risky.”
It is really risky—but what other choice does Eddie have? Live in Steve Harrington’s basement for the rest of time, in the room he touched Steve’s dick and kissed him for the first time? You couldn’t pay him.
“I’m sure,” Eddie says. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Uh, life in jail?” says Will, from the backseat.
Eddie’s smile feels brittle. “Then it’s one prison cell to the next.”
He and Jonathan bump fists—because they’re kinda friends now, he guesses—and Will nods at him in the rearview mirror. Then he steels himself, and steps out of the car.
He can do this.
It’s less painful than he’d anticipated. No one attacks him with stun guns or tasers when he walks in: he fills out his name, and a police officer escorts him to a briefing room. He is asked if he wants any coffee, and he says yes, because he spent the entire night lying awake in his bed remembering all the places Steve’s hot mouth had dragged over his body, and they bring it in a little Styrofoam cup. As he drinks, two more officers sit across from him, and ask for his story, and in between sips he carefully, fastidiously recounts the entire story Dustin and Robin had devised for him the night before.
I just play D&D. His name is Henry Creele. Chrissy and I were hanging out. It’s difficult to tell if the officers truly believe him, or if he just has a believable enough alibi. After the earthquake, it’s easy enough to shelve the deaths away as part of whatever caused it: radiation, some scientists say. Others say hallucinogenic gas. Others just say regular tectonic plates.
Eddie is informed he’ll probably be called in for further questioning; that at this point the only charge they probably could press was evasion of authorities. “It’s just a formality, at this point,” the chief tells him. He looks like he’s aged ten years in the past three weeks. “We need to charge someone for something, or the town will never settle. It’s not personal.”
“Of course not,” Eddie says; thinks to himself, fuck the police.
He’s allowed to leave, and somehow, even with everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours – sleeping with Steve Harrington and saving the world – crossing the threshold of the precinct, and stepping out into a balmy summer’s day, feeling the sun on his face for the first time in over two months—it feels like the proper end.
And then he sees Steve.
“You’re not Jonathan,” is all Eddie can say, as he descends the steps. Steve only gets more and more real-looking the closer he gets, which probably means he is real, and here, and the car he’s leaning against actually is his car and not just a similar one that Eddie’s brain plagues him with.
“Nope,” Steve says. His arms are folded; his hair still styled in that annoying swoop. Eddie kinda wants to plant his fingers in it.
“Uh,” Eddie says. “…Why are you not Jonathan?”
“Why am I not Jonathan?”
“Why are you here?”
Steve straightens; puts his weight on one foot, then the other. Still hasn’t let go of his elbows. “I wanted to see how it went.”
“Well, I’m here, so…”
“Yeah,” Steve says.
They’re quiet for a moment. The sun is bright overhead; Steve is wearing a T-shirt today, not a polo. The bruise Eddie left beneath his jaw is half-faded, pink, like a furling flower, and his arms emerge golden from the soft ends of the sleeves.
“What now, for you?” Steve says. “You’re a free man.”
“Free ish.”
“Free enough.”
“I don’t know,” Eddie says. This somehow feels like the biggest thing he could confess. “Finish high school, for one.”
Steve’s eyes are warm. “That sounds like a plan.”
“Maybe go on a run,” Eddie says. He feels addicted, with Steve’s gaze so intently on him. He wants in this moment nothing more then to keep it there. “Kiss a baby. Pat a dog. Smell a flower. Eat something that isn’t from a tin or a microwave.”
“They sound like good plans,” Steve says.
“Yeah.” Eddie’s throat is dry.
Steve adjusts his arms; refolds them, so the wrist with the watch is on the outside. Eddie can’t pull his eyes away from it. “I guess it also means you don’t have to stay in my basement any longer.”
Eddie’s chest—pangs. “No. I guess not.”
“Shame,” Steve says. “I was kinda getting used to you being there.”
Eddie doesn’t know how to respond. His palms are growing sweaty; he isn’t used to the warmth of the sun anymore.
“Where will you go?” Steve says. His voice is softer.
Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t… I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”
It feels like the rawest confession he could make. Steve’s gaze—complicates. Then uncomplicates. Eddie realises it’s never been that complicated, anyway; that every loaded gaze has been the opposite of nothing; of loss. It’s something. Gain. More.
“Maybe,” Steve says, “you can keep staying with me. If you’d want.”
Eddie’s snort startles out of him. “No offence, man, but I’m not spending a second longer in that fucking basement.”
“No, not the basement,” Steve says. “We have—bedrooms. Spare rooms we don’t use.” He shrugs, a little uncomfortably, like he’s preparing to be turned down. “It wouldn’t be much. And it would still be food from a microwave, from time to time. But you’d see the sun. You’d see flowers.”
I’d see you, Eddie doesn’t say. “And you?”
“Well, I’d be there too,” says Steve.
Eddie can’t quite believe this is happening to him. He feels like when Robin said, me, too; like when Jonathan pulled out the joint; like when Steve said, lowly, gently, Eddie.
But he needs one more answer. “And what about that night?” he says. “Are we gonna keep not talking about it?”
“No,” Steve says, fast and sure enough that whatever has been rabbiting in Eddie’s chest since they first kissed finally settles. “No, we will. Right now—or, whenever we want. But, uh. I was also kinda thinking that maybe we could give it another go, too. If that would be something you wanted.”
Eddie feels like he might start floating. Forget being Vecna’d – this is the real shit.
“We’re not having six kids, though,” he says. “Just so that’s clear.”
Steve grins, wide enough that he shows all his teeth, and slings an arm around Eddie’s waist—even though they’re in public. “Munson,” he says, warm and close enough that it may as well be darling, or lover. “We have all the time in the world.”