Chapter Text
Chapter One: Eddie
Eddie sat in his van outside the club, willing himself to go in.
From the parking lot, he could see the door, colorful groups of people slipping in and sometimes out, offering up IDs or sliding cigarettes out from pockets. 21 Club was the nearest gay bar to Hawkins, which was to say that it was forty minutes away, and he always spent the entirety of the ride psyching himself up to enter.
He loved it, he really did, but it still took a fair amount of confidence to walk into the door like he belonged there. Eddie was confident in other places— when it came to D&D, when it came to his band, and even when it came to actual hookups, but here everything was out in the open, and that still scared him sometimes. He’d never been brave, after all, and being out in public was something he was still getting used to. On his lonelier nights, he wondered if he’d ever be brave enough to do something so scary as falling in love.
He needed a drink.
Eddie flipped down the visor to check his hair, fluffing it over his shoulders before he slammed the visor back up and forced himself to evacuate the van. The bouncer scrawled a fat X in black marker on the back of his hand when he saw that Eddie was still shy of his 21st birthday, but he lifted his arm up to lick it off as he approached the bar.
A shot of tequila later and a beer in hand, he started feeling a little bit better. Eddie took a sip of his drink and turned around to assess the room. Almost immediately, he was shoved out of place by other people approaching the bar, and he let himself drift toward the wall as he took in the scene. And just as he hesitated before coming in every time, he always relaxed at this point, happiness washing over him as he enjoyed the feeling of being around others who understood. Others who thought the way he did, felt the way he did. Eddie thought that maybe the gay club was a little bit like church to him, which made him laugh into his drink.
It was hot in his leather jacket, but he kept it on, still using the studded leather and the wall of his hair to hide comfortably as he got his bearings. Most of the club was a dance floor, and the lights that pulsed over the dancing bodies shifted from red to purple to gold, making everybody beautiful even as they were covered in sweat. He glanced over the crowd, taking in women dancing together, men without their shirts on, men with mustaches and women in harnesses and… and.
Steve fucking Harrington?
“No fucking way,” Eddie breathed, squinting his eyes as though that would help him see any better.
Steve Harrington, the king of Hawkins High, was in the middle of the dance floor. He was dancing, his eyes shut and a glazed expression on his face that could only come from alcohol. He was drunk, he was dancing, and he was as beautiful as ever. But how could he be gay? The guy who had mowed through every pretty girl in school, who had lettered in two different sports, who had run the group of popular kids that made Eddie’s life in high school hell? Because Eddie and his friends were…. were freaks?
Eddie saw red.
It made sense, in a fucked up kind of way. He knew all about the cruel kind of projection that happened with self-hating queer people. But Steve didn’t seem self-hating now. He looked more confident than Eddie had ever been, happy and hot and fuck Eddie wanted to pin him down and make him regret every moment that he or his friends had knocked Eddie’s books to the ground, stepped on his shoes, called him names. Scene after scene played in his head of the bullying, of Steve throwing insults across the cafeteria, of the kids from Dungeons and Dragons who would come in late, quiet, their hair wet from a swirly. And now Steve just got to have fun and dance and — and now there was a man sliding up to him, a man with messy hair and a fucking leather jacket and Steve was laughing, accepting a drink….
No fucking way. Eddie abandoned his beer and stormed out, abandoning ship before he was spotted. He didn’t want Steve to see him, and he certainly didn’t want to see Steve dancing with that other guy— sweating and pressing against each other— didn’t want to see Steve kiss that guy— he probably kissed like a pro, the way he’d kissed all those girls— didn’t… didn’t….
Except, the guilty voice inside his head reminded him, he’d always wanted something from Steve Harrington, hadn’t he?
Hadn’t he watched the guy in class, adorably confused and somehow passing more classes than Eddie did? Hadn’t he lingered by the swim meets, looking out of the corner of his eye as Steve accumulated more chest hair each year, body honed in his regulation swim trunks? Hadn’t he jerked off guiltily the one time that Steve had shoved him into a locker, until his mind twisted it up and he couldn’t think of anything but shoving Steve into a locker, holding him there, holding him up and making him come apart?
Steve fucking Harrington.
Eddie started the van, glad he hadn’t finished his second drink. It was a long drive back, and he hadn’t actually even been at the bar long enough to justify the drive, but the urge to get back home, back to the place he felt most comfortable, was strong.
After all, he needed to think.
Despite going home early and avoiding a hangover, Eddie was still late for band practice the next morning. He’d shot awake at 11:30, when he was supposed to be at Jeff’s garage at noon, and he still had to shower and scarf down some of Wayne’s leftover fries and find the cord for his guitar, which turned out to be somewhere under his couch for some fucking reason.
He wound up throwing the same clothes on as last night, minus the leather jacket, and he showed up a little sluttier than he normally would, right at the crack of 12:20.
“You’re late,” Gareth called, the van’s rumble audible even above the sounds of their warm-up songs. Eddie ducked under the half-lifted garage door, guitar slung over his shoulder, and went into an apologetic bow.
“My good friends, I do apologize.”
“Was the club a success, then?” Jeff snickered, taking in the tight pants and ripped shirt Eddie only wore into Indianapolis. “Up all night?” Ben and Gareth laughed with him, and Eddie flipped them off as he got plugged in.
“The club was not a success, I was home by curfew, even,” he sniffed. Alright, so he’d been up all night jerking off over the sight of a sweat-slicked Steve Harrington, so sue him, but they didn’t need to know that.
He was lucky they listened at all to his hookup stories, all of these guys having being picked on enough for their various freaky imperfections beside him in high school to not care who Eddie fucked. Corroded Coffin was a group of freaks, and they’d stuck together long before they became a band. Gareth had been bullied for his weight by the jocks, Jeff for his parents’ divorce, and Ben for a stutter that he’d managed to kick by middle school, but the social circles of a small town never changed their structure.
“Actually, you’ll never guess who I saw,” he offered, mostly as payment for his lateness.
Ben quirked his eyebrows, inviting Eddie to spill. “You gonna make us wait for that story, too? Christ, Munson, speed it up so we can play some music before I die of old age.”
Eddie made a rude gesture with his hand, a yeah, yeah because he knew this one was worth it. “King Harrington himself.”
“No,” Jeff said immediately, his bass swinging against his chest on its strap as he turned to the others. “I don’t buy it.”
“God, that fucking hypocrite,” Gareth fumed, from behind his drums. “Didn’t he always call you shit? I definitely heard he called Jonathan Byers a queer.”
“Before getting his ass kicked,” Ben put in, with no little satisfaction.
“It was him, alright.” Eddie strummed for a minute, tuning up. He glanced up to see that the guys were still watching him, waiting for more of the story. “That’s it, guys. I saw him, I freaked out, I bailed. Imagine if he’d seen me?”
“Imagine if he'd hit on you,” Jeff laughed. “It would be fucking sweet to turn that guy down.”
They all laughed with him, and then Eddie paused. Something was brewing in his brain the way a D&D campaign did: a wicked plot, solidifying in his imagination. “Actually… you know what would be better than rejecting him?” Ben shrugged, but Gareth had started to smirk. He knew the way Eddie’s mind worked. Eddie grinned at him as he finished the thought. “Breaking his fucking heart.”
Band practice was abandoned for a strategy session. The guys gathered around Jeff’s mom’s kitchen table, sodas making the Formica sticky between them. Eddie, as DM of the group, sat at the head of the table, leaning forward far enough that he had the chair tilted on its front legs. “Okay, so am I crazy or does this seem doable?”
“Look at the facts,” Gareth supplied, and began counting off everything they’d reviewed on his fingers. “One: he’s gay. Two: he was talking to a guy that had a similar look. Three: we know he used to sleep around, but he probably doesn’t have the chance to do that with guys around here, so he’ll be desperate.”
“We don’t have to say desperate—” Eddie countered, but Gareth wasn’t done.
“Four: we all know Eddie can talk people into shit. You persuaded the school to keep Hellfire on campus even though parents complained. You convinced Ben to learn the guitar when we needed another guitar player. You got all of us into metal. And Jeff’s mom is totally in love with you.”
“Fuck off, no she’s not,” Jeff interruped this time, but they all knew Eddie was the one who had charmed her into the use of the garage.
“It’s worth a try,” Ben cut in. “Go in strong. Figure out what he’s into. And when he’s hooked….”
Eddie smirked. “We get revenge on Steve Harrington.”