Archive of Our Own ^beta

1)

The phone is ringing. 

Since his return from the Upside Down and the subsequent trauma that resurfaced once no longer submerged in unhealthy doses of adrenaline, Eddie Munson has learnt to value a good night’s sleep. 

Such good nights only happen if a certain condition is fulfilled. A bartered deal with his consciousness, it begs for only one thing alone—a warm body. And not just any old body, Eddie’s not some hussy. No way, his tastes were refined and his standards were high. Any self-respecting man should agree. He studies this exception now, takes a deep inhale of the fruity shampoo he’s grown to like so much as a scent that Eddie could drink it by the gallon. 

Steve Harrington stirs from his place in Eddie’s arms, warm back pressed flush against the curvature of his body as they spoon. Spooning—a concept Eddie had never really fantasized about before, not until he started going steady with the old king of Hawkin’s High. Now? It’s his favorite thing. It’s right up there with warmed blueberry muffins and a well-rolled blunt, nesting at the top of his long list of Steve-related obsessions. Spooning keeps Eddie going through the working day; the promise of it when five o’clock rolled around, releasing him like a prince from a tower into the arms of Prince Charming.

Oh, spooning. Though he favored being the big spoon, being able to keep his arms snaked around Steve, keeping him close and there and undeniably real, Eddie wasn’t picky. Some nights Steve needed to hold onto him, some nights Eddie needed to be held. Spooning was an ancient ritual, Eddie’s letter of love to domesticity and long-term relationships, closure and security. Spooning was not to be interrupted until the morning came, workdays with it. 

Which was why Eddie was pissed. Two very important things, awfully interrupted with the shrill, screaming ring of the Harrington residence’s phone downstairs. Sleep and spooning. 

“What the fuck ,” Came his warm-breathed whisper against the base of Steve’s neck, pressing a firm kiss to the nape, the hot flesh there. “What fucking time is it, Stevie?”

With a low grumble, Steve flails a gangly, pale arm out to his bedside table, snatching Eddie’s watch from where it sat beside his collection of rings. It was nice, putting all of his little trinkets and belongings on Steve’s furniture. Like a claim staked, a show of Eddie existing here, in Steve’s orbit. It’s also convenient for when some asshole is repeatedly ringing the phone off the hook at god-knows-what hour.

Steve pushes himself off of the mattress with a groan, placing Eddie’s watch back down with a touching amount of caution considering the clear delirious exhaustion he was experiencing. Feeling his insides squeeze and twist with giddy fondness, Eddie reaches to brush the tips of his fingers on the firm, round muscle of Steve’s upper arm, guiding, beckoning silently. With a heavy sigh, Steve’s shoulders slump where he’s sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “It’s three in the goddamn morning,” He eventually growls, nice and deep in his throat in the way he always does when his voice is rough from sleep. 

“Ignore them,” Eddie suggests, curling his hand around the same spot he’d been gently pawing at, trying to pull him back to their previous position. “Who cares, they’ll give it up eventually. Probably just some…” He squints, thinking. “Losers prank calling. Harass the freak into the land of the wakeful…”

That seems to stir some thought into Steve’s pinched expression, cold realization flooding his features into smooth certainty. The phone begins to ring again. “No. Only one asshole would ring this persistently. Stay here,” Seeming to sense Eddie’s displeasure, his boyfriend arches over where he lies, boneless and vaguely aggravated, and peppers kisses up his chest. Once reaching the slope of his collarbones, Steve takes Eddie’s face by the chin, rubs the ends of their noses together, and lightly brushes their lips. “ Stay. If nothing’s on fire, I’ll be back in a sec,”

Flopping back into the bed, Eddie watches him walk away with an appreciative hum, momentarily reveling in the fact that he can do that. He can watch the way Steve’s loose, plaid pajama pants sit low on his hips, hug his v-line pleasantly, and can look and appreciate it because it’s his. It’s all the more disappointing when he leaves the room, though; robbed of his eye-candy and his human heater. The pillow Steve’s lovely head of hair had been resting on acts as an apt replacement for all of five minutes, face pressed into the material, clinging to the scent of his boyfriend in his absence.

Eddie picks up his watch, glares at it. Twenty sleepy, slow minutes have passed since Steve left to pick up the phone. After another five, he resists the urge to bite into the mattress out of sheer frustration, and pushes himself out of bed slowly.

Scratching the bare patch of skin just above the worst area of scarring on his chest, Eddie quietly pads his way down the Harrington house’s fancy staircase, adjusting his stolen contraband—a pair of Steve’s sweatpants. He’s not entirely sure what he’s expecting to discover the hold-up is, but he’s ready to drag his boyfriend back upstairs if needs be. They can’t fall asleep without one another—separated, they’re both suffering.

But then Eddie hears voices coming from the lounge—and presses himself up against the kitchen wall, listening. Just a little terrified, a bit paranoid that, maybe, somehow the Harringtons have decided to make a quick pit stop back to their house. At three in the morning. And finding Steve with a scraggly, half-naked guy in their lovely home just might cause a bit too much heat for either of them to handle. 

Better to hide. 

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Eddie hears Steve furiously whisper, accompanied by what sounds like someone bumping into a wall. “Hey, hey-hey-hey, shoes off, pipsqueak. Wasted or not you are not trekking shit through my carpets,”

The new guest hiccups. “I called ahead, you can’t be mad!”

“Oh? I can't be mad? That you rang me from a pay phone to ask if you could crash at my house because you’re drunk and you don’t want Claudia to find out? You little shit?” Whatever efforts Steve was making to try and keep his voice low are haphazardly abandoned for the sake of his frustration. 

Claudia. Oh, shit. This is Dustin. Eddie resists the urge to laugh aloud, continuing to eavesdrop instead.

Dustin, drunk as a skunk, seems miserable about the circumstances. “I’m—mhm, sorry, Steveeee,”

“Jesus Christ. And did you cycle here? Do you know how dangerous that is? Why did you hang up before telling me where you were? I could’ve come and picked you up, asshole,” Despite his hardassery, Eddie knows that Steve is clearly worked up for the right reasons—no doubt he’s had his own fair share of stupid drunk decisions. Things he’d never wish on Dustin, ever. “Who were you with? Who even bought you alcohol?”

There’s a pause, likely Dustin considering his best move. All probabilities suggesting that his inebriation hindered this ability would be highly accurate, because the little bastard goes on to, ironically, declare: “Eddie! I… s’was with Eddie.”

Silence is thick in the following moments. An opportune time to make this all the more hilarious. 

Eddie steps into the doorway, leaning up against it with a stupid, wide grin on his face. “Oh yeah? We were together tonight, Dusty? That’s so nice. What did we do?”

Almost falling on his ass if it weren’t for the sake of Steve’s firm hand on his shoulder, Dustin whirls around, the picture of horror. “ Eddie! What… what’re y’ doing here?” Then continues nervously laughing. “This is… this is soooo. Crazy! Coincidences, am I… right,”

“Yeah, my man. What were we doing tonight?” Eddie’s expression is sharp, maybe a little mean. “I’m sure Stevie wants to know. Don’t you Stevie?”

Steve’s face is stern. “Yeah, sure do. Because I must be mistaken, but I’m almost sure Eddie’s been with me all evening, Henderson.” Dustin frantically looks between them, searching for some form of empathy, maybe a peace offering. He receives neither. 

“Were we doing drugs, Dusty? Did you enjoy all the cocaine we did? I liked the heroin a little more, to be honest. Was nice,” Sighing fondly, Eddie stalks over, clasping a hand on the kid’s shoulder. 

“Did you like all the drugs you did with Eddie, Dustin?” Steve prompts, cool and calculated—it’s almost sexy how serious he’s taking this. Eddie wants to bite him, just a little bit. “Go on. Answer,”

Fumbling over his heavy tongue, Dustin looks like a deer in headlights. “No! No, no… nooo. No drugs!”

“We didn’t do any drugs? Damn, we’re fucking losers,” Eddie says folornly, relishing in the sheer, abject horror colouring Dustin’s features. 

Steve seems to be gearing up to make another harsh comment at the mildly distressed boy between them—but then Dustin stumbles, groaning loudly and clutching at his stomach. Alarm bells ring out like a homing beacon to Eddie’s highschool party days, he jumps into action—only to find his boyfriend already three steps ahead. 

Wrangling Dustin towards the bathroom after a long string of urgent scolds and light encouragement, Steve carefully takes him into the next room. He doesn’t shout or recoil when the boy finds himself bent over the Harrington’s very, very nice, pastel-blue downstairs toilet, only rubs his palm in sympathetic circles while he gags. 

“It’s okay,” Steve says, consoling Dustin’s drunken sickness even though he’s tired; exhausted. Eddie leans against the sofa in the center of the living room, fingers tracing the warm velvet whilst he studies Steve with affection, watching the way his boyfriend nurtures so willingly. Takes care of Dustin without hesitance or hold-up, even though it’s gone three in the morning, even when he should be pissed and he definitely is, but won’t take it out on Dustin now, not when he needs him. 

They sit together on the plush couch, Dustin squeezed between them while Steve casts a hand through slightly damp curls, Eddie with his arm around them both. All three of them are tired, but Eddie knows Steve wants to at least get the debrief on what the hell happened—because otherwise it’ll gnaw at him the way problems with the kids do. 

Eddie glances to where his boyfriend gently pets Dustin’s head, takes in the small pinch of his brow, the deep, ruminating ripple swimming through the brown of his eyes. Steve is trying to put some kind of puzzle together out of this situation, catastrophizing, spiralling. Eddie wants to reach out, massage the frown away from his face with the careful tap of his fingertips. 

Having known him long enough, Eddie can smell the fear on Steve. Can almost hear his thoughts through their contact, trickling in through the warmth of his shoulder under Eddie’s palm. 

What if he’s drinking to cope? The teeth gnawing away at his lip say. 

Eddie knows why he’s worried. Knows that there was a period of time, early on in their relationship where sometimes he’d come over, late in the night to see Steve. Find him collapsed unconscious somewhere he shouldn’t be, clutching the neck of a bottle of something too strong to be drunk straight. Knows how long it took for the two of them to work it out of him, find their alternatives, their outlets. If they drank, they did it together. If they got high, it would be side by side, tangled limbs and shared laughter. 

The best thing was this. Was time. Time together, time in pockets and spaces that weren’t corrupted by grief and survivor’s guilt. Affection and acts of service, normalcy—of their own kind. 

Which was why Steve was so terrified, and Eddie could feel it. Feel the cool, damp sweat of it ruling over him with an iron fist, taunting him with the possibility that one of his kids as he so often describes was struggling this much.

“Mike, Mike—got Gareth’s buyin’ us… some,” Dustin eventually admits, head rolling back and forth like the Earth on its axis. “Lossa bet,”

Pushing his fingertips down into Steve’s shoulder to try and tether him to the land of the calm and sensible, Eddie prays for Gareth. Because man, if Steve comes across Gareth at any point in the next few months, there’s no doubt the guy is gonna get an earful for this. Whether he was coerced by the devil children or not, they’re Steve’s devil children, and not even Eddie can save him from the sheer paternal force of the lecture his boyfriend is going to doll out to every last individual involved in this situation. 

“Gareth’s seventeen,” Steve says, closing his eyes and breathing heavily out of his nose. “How did Gareth buy you anything?”

“Fake,” Eddie offers at the same time as Dustin tries to suggest he cast a spell on the cashier. 

Wafting his hand aggressively at both of them, Steve sweeps it up to his face, pinching his nose. “Okay! Okay. Whatever, magic, fake ID, seduction , I don’t care. Why the hell were you out in the middle of the night, getting—off your tits drunk,”

Steve is interrupted due to his use of vocabulary. Dustin curls up into Eddie, trying to muffle his contagious giggles in his shoulder—giving Eddie, in turn, a real hard time keeping a straight face. Which is bad, because Eddie knows how important this conversation is to Steve, knows that he can’t crack and play good cop right now, not when his boyfriend is trying to make a point, makes sure Dustin is okay and healthy and all other things along those lines. 

“Dustin,” Eddie says, firm, though he knows his eyes give away their shared humor. “Come on, man. You’ve woke us up, shithead. It’s the middle of the night. Give pops here,” Steve’s arm gets a helpful pat, “some peace of mind.” 

It’s a smidge of hypocrisy, Eddie and Steve being the people to try and teach Dustin the dangers of underage drinking. Though, he supposes, they have the right to teach from experience. Eddie knows that his first good-old classic binge-drinking session was at fifteen, though he’d had beers and sneaky sips of Wayne’s drinks before then, too. 

He also knows that Steve’s first experience like this one was when he was eleven, when his mom was riding one of her higher, more manic moods. Knows because Steve told him about his mom, her strange tendencies—about how sometimes he worries he might slip into them occasionally, too. Knows that he’d almost had a whole bottle of wine because she’d given him a glass and just kept refilling it, like they were old school friends, not a mother and her child. 

Eddie knows that Steve has a weird relationship with alcohol. Reasons that this isn’t hypocrisy, not really—this is Steve trying to make sure he’s not fostering the behavior he’d played with when he was younger. So Eddie carefully draws circles into Steve’s bare skin with his fingers, tries to ease what he knows is his boyfriend rapidly working himself up to the point of no return.

Rubbing his eyes and letting his body flop to the other side like a dead fish, Dustin moans, lightly, clutching his stomach. Steve immediately stiffens, eyes widening as he seems to be preparing to throw the little guy over his shoulder in one sweep of his really nice arms—but the threat dissipates, Dustin’s expression evening out. 

“Just wanna—just wanted to try, y’know? Luke—Lucas said he’s drunk before, ‘n Mike hadn’t ‘n I hadn’t ‘n Will didn’t wanna,” Judging by the sad little expression on Dustin’s face, Eddie assumes this is more of a highschool inferiority thing than an Upside Down fear thing. Steve seems to reach a similar conclusion, the soft sigh slipping from his lips coated in the varnish of relief. 

“Okay,” Steve says, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. “But this, this is not happening again. You pull a stunt like this and I’m driving you home to Claudia, Dustin, and I mean it. You can’t do this to her—you can’t do this to us. And say sorry to Eddie, you shit,” At the sound of his name, Eddie lifts his head, bringing a finger to point at himself, mouthing me? 

Hands on his hips as he stands, taking that stance; displeased and yet also inflexible with his endless pits of concern, Steve gawks at him. “Yes, you, he just tried to accuse you of underage drinking with him, Ed!”

Eddie chuckles; regrets it when Steve glares at him. “Oh, yeah,” He smacks Dustin lightly on the back of the head. “You shithead. You think I’m in the business of endangering minors? Steve would hang me out of a tree by my toes. Like, full on piñata style. He’d get a baton, too, and—,”

Silenced when his boyfriend rolls his eyes and presses a hand over his mouth, Eddie presses a kiss to the palm, rubbing his face into it eagerly. Steve melts, trying his best to shoot him a withering look—it doesn’t work, far more angry-kitten then pissed-off-significant-other. “Message received,” Eddie says, between the gaps in Steve’s fingers, readily resting his chin in his hand, glancing up at him in the way that always has Steve complaining about deers or puppies and whatever else he can compare Eddie to. 

Then, with a sad, pathetic little hiccup, Dustin collapses against Eddie and wraps his sweaty arms around him, squeezing as tight as a very, very drunk teenager can. (Very tight, for the record—once Eddie got stuck in a tree, blackout, and managed to stay there until morning purely because of his drunken arm strength.)

“Sorry, Eddie,” Dustin mewls, stuffing his face into his underarm. “Forgive me!”

Oh, it’s so hard not to laugh. But Steve’s arms are folded, and Eddie would really like to keep spooning soon. So he doesn’t. “It’s fine, asshole. We’ll duke it out in the morning,” 

Dustin nods nobly, like a man instructed to duel at sundown. Steve rolls his eyes, reaching to ruffle his curls again. “Wait—is Mike okay? Did someone take him home, or should I go back out there and find him, shit,” Then he seems to look around like an agitated meerkat, probably for car keys, fully willing to go outside in the middle of the night to collect another little asshole. 

“S’Nancy was on her way,” Dustin says, and Eddie watches the tension melt away from Steve like a candle in a campfire. 

“Okay,” Steve says, before taking a step forwards, sweeping Eddie’s bangs away from his forehead to press a nice, firm kiss there, fingertips tracing the underneath of his jaw for just a minute. “I’ll take him upstairs, get him in bed. Stay here,” 

And Eddie can’t be pissed about the two of them being demoted to the couch for Dustin, not when it makes his heart squeeze, being reminded of just how much Steve cares. Seeing it ooze from him like a tonic, a liquor, oiling his joints like a loving machine. So Eddie just nods, smiles with just a small spoonful of the oceans of affection he feels lapping up at his insides, and falls back on the couch cushion, propping up his feet. 

With a little struggle, Steve manages to get Dustin into a full bridal carry, jaw set and face strained with effort. Eddie knows it probably hurts him, pulls at the taut clusters of scarring on his torso, yet he also knows that he needs this. Needs to do this, to dote on the kids, do everything in his power to make sure that they know he loves them, knows that he will always be there. 

Eddie knows it helps Steve cope, more than the alcohol ever did. Being a pillar of strength, of support for the gang of urchins, being able to scoop them up like they’re still ten, or twelve, not almost fifteen and sixteen and getting way too heavy for Steve’s weary, Upside Down-worn body. So he doesn’t interfere, just props up some cushions, tries to make the plush sofa as comfortable as it possibly can be for two tall, gangly guys to sleep on.

Time passes, enough for the first licks of sunrise to stream into the wide windows of the Harrington’s lounge, warm on Eddie’s bare chest. And when there’s no sign of Steve or a sheet for them to bundle under on the couch, Eddie smiles at the sun, pushes himself up onto his feet and quietly climbs the carpeted stairs of the house he’s begun to learn every inch of.

Standing in the room he’d carefully claimed as his own with his belongings and his body over the previous few months, Eddie’s eyes are drawn to the focal point, the eye of the storm—and he supposes that he’s willing to share the space. Like the sun, everything in Eddie’s focus orbits around where Dustin is passed out on his side in Steve’s bed, pillow plumped and propped under his drooling face. 

One arm is limp at the bedside, and Eddie knows it’ll be numb and tingly in the morning, can already hear Dustin complaining about it, amongst the other symptoms of a boy’s first hangover. Maybe if he was feeling generous, he’d pop it back up on the bed—but Dustin did try to implicate him in his mess.

But Eddie’s not just mean. That arm is connected to Steve’s, who’s holding Dustin’s hand, dead to the world. His body is held up by the side of the bed, head loose and limp as he snores, lightly, in comparison to the loud, growling ones that echo from Dustin’s open mouth. 

Eddie wishes he had a camera; some way to keep this moment with him forever. But he doesn’t, so he just stands in the doorway, smiling hard enough for his face to hurt—watching his two favorite people sleep safely, soundly. 

Eventually he finds the Harrington’s linen closet, takes out a folded sheet and pads back across the landing. Eddie tucks it under his boyfriend’s chin, sitting beside him and tucking his body into the curve of Steve’s posture, dropping his head to his shoulder. 

It’s unlikely Eddie will sleep well like this, but he doesn’t really care. He pulls the sheet over them both, passes a glance back to where Dustin stays soundly asleep, safe and cared for even in the midst of his stupid decisions thanks to Steve.

That thought is like a blanket, itself—knowing that Eddie, somehow, after years of believing he’d end up alone for his taboo wants and feelings and urges, has managed to find someone. Someone who cares so deeply—not just about him, about a whole gaggle of little idiots and their whims and wants. Enough to give up his bed in the middle of the night because Dustin got drunk for the first time in some 7/11 parking lot.

Though he doesn’t sleep for long, Eddie does rest. Secure and safe at the side of someone he’s not entirely sure isn’t the proof of a higher power working in his favor.

2)

They’re shamelessly shotgunning. 

Hey, they have the right to. They’re dating. They’re going steady. 

Not that they didn’t shotgun when they weren’t—in fact they definitely did, multiple times, when Eddie was hopeless and maybe a bit pathetic, and Steve was definitely trying to leave him hints that couldn’t be more obvious and blunt if he tried. Hints like that—repeatedly pressing their mouths together to share smoke, and air, and unhealthy amounts of tension—should’ve been obvious, in hindsight.

But Eddie is the world’s most talented denier, so naturally it took a bit more of Steve throwing himself at him and a lot more forceful kissing for him to get the message.

But that message was now received—so now they could do whatever they pleased. Like shotgunning. 

Shotgunning. Almost as good as spooning, really, and brought with it a similar warmth, the fondness between lovers as they shared space. Steve, a hand on his jaw, the other moving back and forth between the joint and Eddie’s thigh. Eddie, always happy to close the distance between them, pressing his nose to Steve’s cheek, touching and counting the moles on the pale column of his neck or the supple skin of his forearms. They share smoke like they share time, passed between them through breaths and laughter, lost when they teeter over the edge of their impulse control and kiss.

It’s a challenge, a game they play without consequence for the loser. Though one might believe Eddie to be the more reckless, the more impulsive, he finds Steve slipping away from his control far more than he does. Finds his hands fisting in his hair as he scrambles to get closer; be closer, sitting himself in Eddie’s lap and bringing them together in a steady rhythm, smoke lost between gasps for air and peppered kisses that become desperate, firm, entangling. 

Eddie feels light and feathery even with Steve’s weight pinning him to the bed, takes one long draw from the joint before carelessly depositing its remains in the ashtray on the nearest surface. He slips his hands around Steve’s small waist, enjoys the way his fingers spread across his middle, his rings taking in the heat of his body. Eddie rolls them, drinks in the way Steve breathlessly chuckles, nuzzles their noses together as Eddie clambers on top of him, sits on his hips and nips at his jaw. 

It’s all perfect, their skin brushing and mingling with one another’s body heat, thoughts liquid and cool in Eddie’s head as he leans into his pleasant dizziness, high on a mix of high-quality weed and Steve, Steve who is beautiful and funny and right, Steve who smiles and who smells good and is happy and welcome under his touch. 

Eddie wants to live in this moment forever, wants to become a Polaroid picture, a pocket of space and time written into the very fabric of reality. Eddie knows he will make this moment eternal, later, when Steve is likely tucked into his side in Eddie’s bed, will write another song about him, scraps of notebook paper rising and falling with Steve’s sleeping chest. Sing of his hair and his skin and his eyes and his lips and his nose and his chest and his smell and his breath and his arms and his hips and every last mole in the constellation of his boyfriend’s perfect body, perfect presence, perfect space he occupies in the disaster of Eddie’s life.

Curving his grip to bring Steve up against him, Eddie slots their noses together like a jigsaw puzzle depicting their touches and the way their bodies just fit, made to mingle and splice, weave together like a braid, mesh and create a lattice of love and truth and every good thing Eddie never thought he could get, let alone have. 

“I love you,” Eddie says when Steve’s hands cradle his face, when he feels the confession tightening around his neck like a noose, choking it from him, forcing it to tumble from love-bitten lips and pool in the shock of Steve’s deep, brown eyes. 

Shit. Shit. 

Stomach turning when surprise colours Steve’s face, Steve who’s had far too many issues in his life with those three words, Steve who he knows has been avoiding them, who Eddie’s been avoiding them for. He feels like he’s just stepped on a landmine, just tossed Steve from a bowl of water and left him to gasp for air like a sad, sad little goldfish. 

Steve opens his mouth to say something. There’s a hard knock on Eddie’s door. 

“Are you boys decent?” It’s Uncle Wayne, ever Eddie’s savior since he appeared on his doorstep as a preteen, with no more than the stuffed animal he’d had since he was born. 

(Mr Squiggles. A very mangy, slightly mangled ginger cat. He lives in a shoebox under Eddie’s bed. Steve found him once, and had treated the wretched thing so gently that Eddie thought he might hurl, cry or just eat fistfuls of his own hair. Steve continued to make Eddie feel insane with love in every small, stupid little gesture possible.)

“Yes!” Eddie takes the opportunity to swiftly de-tangle himself from Steve, crawling off of him despite the lingering presence of his boyfriend’s hand sliding down his body as he moves away, tearing himself from their warmth. 

Wayne coughs, lightly, but only to make a point. Eddie grins at him, batting his eyelashes. “Open a goddamn window, next time, kid, I’m gonna collapse here,” 

Stiff and obedient in the way Steve can’t help but be around any form of father-like figure, Eddie watches his boyfriend readily bounce up from the bed to prop open the window. Wayne looks at him, tired and gruff and fond, smiling hard enough to deepen the wrinkles in his face. “Thanks, kid. Anyway, just came ‘ere to say that I’m ‘eading off to work,”

Eddie nods, and salutes. “See ya later, sailor!” 

Wayne scoffs. “Only one person in this room’s a sailor, it ain’t me,”

The Munsons look at Steve. Steve, who then groans and drags both hands down his face. “I still can’t believe you told him about that,”

“Who could resist? Stevie in a little sailor’s suit with his ice creams and his sprinkles? I couldn’t not disclose that part of your life to him, Stevie, it would be neglect,” Solemnly said, Eddie puts a hand over his heart. 

“Neglect?” Steve deadpans, pursing his lips like he’s just sucked on a lemon. “What kind of neglect would it be, not telling your uncle about my shitty job uniform?”

“Uncleglect. Unglect.” Eddie supplies gracefully.

After a pause where they both seem to consider this, Wayne sighs, shakes his head and knocks his knuckles on the side of Eddie’s door. “I’m goin’ before this nonsense develops any further.” And then with one foot out the doorway, Wayne pauses. “Oh, and that Mayfield girl—the ginger one, y’know? Redhead,” He makes a gesture that seems like he’s trying to give himself braids. 

“Yeah?” Steve says, standing from where he’d been leaning against one of Eddie’s posters. Called to attention at the mere mention of one of the kids. 

“She’s pacing around outside the trailer again. Thought maybe she’s thinkin’ bout knocking. See you boys later,” And then Wayne leaves, followed shortly by the sound of the trailer’s front door swinging open and closing. A handful of polite, awkward chatter—no doubt Wayne saying goodbye to Max, who probably then pretends she’s doing anything but awkwardly hanging around outside. 

Steve and Eddie are out of his bedroom almost immediately, the stress between them palpable. What’s wrong, Steve’s expression screams. Who’s hurt? Says the tension in his shoulders. Eddie wants to pull him close, work it out of him with firm, massaging hands—but admittedly, he’s just a bit concerned too.

Out of all the kids, Max and Dustin are the two he’s probably closest to. If you merged the two of them together, they’d make the perfect match of Eddie’s younger self—angsty yet excitable, full of thoughts they can’t keep their mouth shut about, even when it’s probably better they do so. Max reaches a part of Eddie’s heart he didn’t even know was still there—stubborn, teenage rebellion and inner turmoil. 

She’s the picture of that ideal now, standing on Eddie’s makeshift doorstep, frowning up at him when he swings the door open just as Max goes to knock. 

“Hi,” Eddie says, bumping his hip up against the door to keep it open. Max looks nonplussed. 

“Is Steve here?” The girl asks, looking Eddie up and down—who just laughs, clutches at his heart and bends over like she’s just shot him. “Oh, give it up, Munson. I just need to talk to him. You can listen if you have to, you fucking baby,”

Eddie clicks his tongue, moving his hand to sit on his waist. “Consider my feelings hurt and my life destroyed, Max, you’ve left me a ruined man. I may never recover and when historians wonder why—,”

Max’s glare deepens. She reaches to lightly punch him on the arm, eliciting a feigned yelp of mock-pain from her victim. Eddie just grins in the face of her fire. “ Is your stupid boyfriend here, or is this one of the five minutes per week you two aren’t attached at the hip?” 

Steve pokes his head around Eddie as casually as he can, not as if he was just waiting, anxiously, for her to tell them the town was burning down. Brushing his arm against Eddie’s softly as he does. “Choosing to ignore that stupid stuffed in there, Max. What do you need me for?”

Jostling her way past them, Max readily makes herself at home, immediately tossing herself down on Eddie’s scrappy sofa. When she’s not followed, she grants the two of them the honor of being on the receiving end of one of her more withering looks.

“I need to talk,” Max says, before raising her eyebrows at Steve. 

Steve pads over to Eddie’s kitchen sink, swiftly splashing his face and rubbing at it ferociously as if that could deplete the remaining dregs of his high. Eddie watches him with a catty smile, folding his arms across his chest before knocking the front door closed with his ass. Clearly Max isn’t going anywhere fast. 

“Okay,” Steve says, shaking his head like a dog and using the sleeve of Eddie’s shirt he’s stolen to dry his face. Making his way over to sit beside the girl on the sofa, Max already sat as far in the corner of the couch as possible. “What are we talking about?” 

Eddie’s preparing to sit down—and then Steve slaps his own thighs and takes a seat, and Eddie has to take a minute just to process how dad-like it was. Max seems to share his sentiment—she shoots Eddie a disdainful look, one that beckons a short laugh out of him. “Can you stop hovering?” She snaps at him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Raising his hands in surrender, Eddie meanders across the short space, chuckling to himself as he plops himself down clumsily by Steve, bumping their legs. 

Clearly she’s wound up about something, though that much is a given, considering her pacing back and forth outside of the trailer long enough for Wayne to notice. Eddie’s mostly just glad it’s not something Upside Down related—or, if it is, it’s gotta be pretty minor. No way would Max mince her words here if it wasn’t—nor would she specially request Steve.

Eddie’s best bet? It’s something to do with Lucas. Something embarrassing that he’ll lose his head for trying to comment on. He’s the silent audience to this conversation—maybe it’ll be excruciating enough that he can watch Steve cringe and enjoy his utter mortification. 

“Just—,” Max begins, folding her arms so tight it’s a wonder she has any blood flow in them at all. “You can’t— judge me. For this,”

Blinking, Steve slowly nods his head. “Right. One question, you’re not… pregnant?”

“ What? No!” Max cries.

“It’s an understandable— question, the way you’re talking—,” 

“Oh my god, Steve, what the fuck is wrong with you?!” Max stands, hands flying up in the air as she angrily gesticulates.

Oh, man. This is so entertaining already. 

Seemingly too offended to stay within five feet of him, Max stalks over to the armchair—Wayne’s—across the room, brings her knees up to her chin there instead. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, eventually, pinching his nose. “No judgement,”

Max glared at him. “ No questions, either,”

Eddie glances at Steve. Gives him a supportive pat on the thigh. 

“No questions,” Steve agrees begrudgingly. 

There’s another awkward, long stretch of silence.

“I love Lucas,” Max says, brash and cutting, like tossing a piece of pottery against a hardwood floor, hoping it’ll bounce. She leaves just a pause between that declaration and her next spat-out, hunched-shoulders sentence. “Like—I do. I like him so much. He’s my boyfriend and I don’t want that to—change,”

The small knot between Steve’s eyebrow deepens; Eddie watches those big, stupid brown eyes drown in a thousand possibilities rippling through his boyfriend’s mind. “Yeah, that’s—is everything okay with Lucas?” 

“Yes, everything is perfect with Lucas, he’s—Lucas isn’t the problem,” Then Max draws in a sharp breath, her scrappy nails scratching at the denim on her legs. “It’s— me. There’s something wrong with me Steve,”

Oh, man. If Eddie’s stomach plummeted at that sentence, it took a skydive when he saw the look on Steve’s face. Wounded, aching—Steve takes on the kids’ problems and wears them like a faux fur coat, though forever aware of just what animal had to die for him to wear it. 

That metaphor didn’t really make sense, but cut Eddie some slack—his boyfriend’s face makes out like someone’s just killed a puppy in front of him. 

“Max,” Steve starts, swallowing thickly. “Whatever’s—going on, you know you can tell me. Right? No judgement, like—you said. I know maybe there’s… stuff you feel like could be embarrassing or totally weird to tell people, but, it’s—I’d never, ever, like—,”

Raising her hand up to tug at her own braid, Max gnaws at her lip. “I know Steve. That’s why I came to you,”

Eddie curls his fist into the hem of the shirt Steve wears, reminding him that he’s there if needs be. Trying to tether him to sense so he doesn’t fly off the handle if something really, really bad is about to be put on the table in front of them. Eddie doesn’t really know what to expect anymore—he’d hoped it was some weird, kiddy question about kissing or other awkward, growing up stuff they all seem to cluster around Steve for.

But the heat in Max’s face is shame, bright and clear, as blatant as a blue sky after a thunderstorm. Eddie knows it; recognizes it. Remembers it the first time he found his eyes wandering in gym class, but not to the growing girls and their nice ponytails. To boys, their arms and their legs and their nice, broad shoulders. Their long necks and sharp jaws. 

Eddie remembers hating himself for it. Still does, though only in pockets of time, moments of doubt that can be kissed away like a paper plane in the wind. 

There’s something here. Something delicate. And though Steve, with his big, clumsy hands, his thick, lovely skull, might not be thought capable of gentle touch—

Eddie knows that when it comes to the kids, Steve may as well be standing there with packaging stuffing, ready to wrap them up and set them on the mend. 

“It’s about El,” Max says, eyes boring into her scuffed, red sneakers. El. Super powers girl, with her silly smiles and open, confused eyes, always curious and unabashed. Steve seems to know something; see something, because he shifts by Eddie, bumps their knees. 

Steve nods, slowly, dipping his head like he’s approaching a pipe bomb, the slightest move able to set Max off. “Alright,” He says, forever reaffirming.

Tapping her fingers against her jeans, Max continues to avoid eye contact. “I think—I might. Like, only—only a bit, but,” Frustrated with her own inability to spit it out, the girl smacks her fist into the armchair. Steve startles. “I like her, Steve. Like— like her, like her,”

A beat passes. Steve takes Eddie’s hand into his, takes them, joined together, into his lap, and almost looks proud. “You know that’s okay, Max. We’d never judge you for that, kid,”

Oh, Jesus Christ. Eddie thinks he could eat Steve, pop him in one of those afternoon tea finger cakes rich people have and just put him in his mouth. He seems so distant from the Steve Eddie would avoid in freshman year, Steve with the pretty eyes and nice moles and nice, nice hair. Steve, ever the bystander, watching his friends spit slurs and punch kids who dressed a little differently, maybe didn’t look at them the right way. 

Steve had been a bystander for so long. And when he did lash out, it was never even out of his own passion or want to be cruel—he was pushed by Tommy, or stupid with the love he had for Nancy. But he was bad. Not to the core, or to the bones—but he was rotting away. Festering under the vitriol of Tommy and Carol, destined for a time of spectating his own life. Working for his father, marrying some nice suburbia girl with the right parents and having a pretty, perfect nuclear family. 

Imagining it sometimes, Eddie would sit and think about Steve, middle-aged, hating himself and his life, just wishing he’d spoken up and done something, fought with the scraps of good will fighting against his need for acceptance from people who didn’t deserve to be donning it out.

Eddie knows when Steve began to shift. Knew it was always possible, but buried under years of needing to feel loved and safe behind the rampant hatred of his friends. Eddie knows when Steve didn’t listen to Nancy Wheeler when she told him to run, back when the Demogorgon would’ve killed both herself and Jonathan Byers if he hadn’t come back, freed himself from the bystander box he was so dedicated to. 

Knows it was a snowball effect from there—unable to sit back and watch, always having to be involved, be in control, know the kids were safe before even beginning to consider himself, if he did at all.

Eddie knows that Steve, freshman year Steve, with Tommy licking at his heels like a fugly little pug, would never sit on a bathroom floor with a band geek like Robin Buckley. Knows that he would never take her secret and keep it safe, cradle it to his chest like an infant, nurture it, make sure it was safe to grow amongst the trusted individuals close to her when she was ready. 

But this Steve would. The Steve Eddie fell in love with, the Steve who has a stupid, Star Wars handshake with Dustin, the Steve who plays basketball with Lucas on Sundays, the Steve who drives Erica to the forest and watches over her while she hunts for cool mushrooms and fairy rings. 

Steve, who immediately jumps to let Max know that she’s accepted, and safe.

“I know that,” Max says, but it’s soft, even a touch frustrated. “But I like Lucas too,”

Eddie’s hand is gripped a bit harder. Steve smiles, though tense. “Well—that’s okay, too. Like David Bowie, right, that guy—he’s like us, he’s uh, the uh… twisexual. Twosexual?”

Though he promised he wouldn’t jump in, Eddie gives Steve’s thigh a good, firm pat and says, “Bisexual,” To Max, who rolls her eyes at them both. 

“That’s not what I’m trying to say,” 

Watching Steve gradually become more confused with every obstacle he hits is as amusing as it is a little pathetic. Eddie loves it. “Okay,” His boyfriend nods, trying to seem as open as he can. 

“It’s just—ugh, like,” Max grips both of her knees, dropping her chin to her chest, then sits up straight again, rigid. “I love Lucas. I think I love El too. Like—both of them. At the same time.”

Something clicks for Steve. Eddie knows the exact moment that it does—sees his vacant, perplexed expression become smooth with relief and realization. “Oh,” Steve smiles, warm and oozing with fondness. “ Oh.”

“Yeah, I know it’s bad, but I can’t help it and I don’t know what to do about it, it’s fucking terrible and I don’t wanna pick between them because what if it’s awkward forever and everything gets fucking ruined, Steve!” Max’s hands gesticulate with all the aggression of a cat in a pet carrier that’s been shaken up and down. 

“Woah, woah,” Standing, Steve paces towards her, crouches, and points a finger in her face. “Slow your roll, Mayfield. Nobody said that. You’re the only one in here thinking that.”

Max reaches, fists her hand in the stolen shirt Steve wears. After twisting the fabric a little, she releases it, and finally makes eye contact with him. “But it’s weird. It’s not—normal. Loving two people at once. Nobody else feels like that,”

Eddie watches Steve’s shoulders tense, then relax, in the same handful of expressions. Studies the careful way his boyfriend reaches to gently tap Max’s knee. “I did,”

It’s not a shocking, horrifying revelation. Steve and Eddie had spoken about it before, though it was always a bit of a touchy topic—not so much anymore, now that Steve loves Nancy in the same way he loves Robin. But Max looks stunned, glances at Eddie across the room like he might scream or cry. He gives her a loose grin, one thumb up. 

Max appears to relax in the absence of Eddie’s disgust. “Who—when? What?”

“A long time ago, now,” Steve says, scratching the back of his neck. “After I fought the Demogorgon with Nancy and Jonathan. We all kinda… circled each other for a while. But I think, we all weren’t…” Tongue nipping out just to wet his lips as he thinks, Eddie watches Steve’s mind turn, gathering something to say. “Not a lot of talking happened. I don’t think Jonathan would’ve—ever thought. That I liked him, shit I didn’t know.”

Easing away from the peak of her stress and self-frustration, Max looks to Steve, narrowed eyes opening, letting him in. “But you’re… okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, giving her knee a squeeze. “It was shit for a long time. Nancy bouncing between us, ‘cuz we never talked that shit out. It wore us all down, and now none of us feel that way about each other anymore,” Then he smiles, not an inch of regret in his voice, his face, his posture. “I’m happy where I ended up. I know Nancy is too, and Jonathan’s on his way to, like… figuring his stuff. He’s got a good friend in that Argyle guy, too,”

Then Steve glances over his shoulder, to Eddie, and he feels his heart squeeze. His boyfriend, his boyfriend, smiles at him so deeply, so unfathomable affectionately, and Eddie can’t ever be jealous about Nancy, or Jonathan. Eddie knows every time Steve’s eyes find him—he’s irrevocably his. 

“You just gotta talk it out with them,” Steve adds, sure and steady. “Nobody’s gonna get mad, nobody’s gonna yell—and if they do, they don’t deserve you anyway,” His smile is quick, kind, knowing. “Sinclair and El aren’t the shouting types. Definitely not when it comes to you, Mayfield,”

Max threads her fingers together, still unsure. “But what if they don’t understand?”

“Then they don’t understand. You find another way to explain it,” Steve puts his hand on her shoulder, as if to balance her on the teetering pillar of self-hatred and self-acceptance she struggles to stay upright on. “Or we work things out another way. You won’t be alone when you do, Mayfield,” 

Eddie’s breath leaves him, chest tight, because Steve’s stare lands on him again. 

“Sometimes when things go wrong, too, you can find something right out of it. And it’ll suck for a bit, sure,” Steve stands, slowly shifting his body in the careful way he does when he knows his scar tissue might ache or pull in a certain position. “But you know Lucas. You know El,”

Max smiles, finally, though uncharacteristically weary. “They probably won’t yell at me,”

“They probably won’t yell at you,” Steve reaffirms.

With his help, Max gets on her feet, no longer curled up in the depth of Wayne’s armchair. In the way Steve often does with the kids, there’s something unspoken between them—a closure that has Max on her way to the door. The conversation, finished, whatever she came to seek Steve for, found. 

Steve opens it for her, ever the gentleman. Max elbows him on her way out, flips him off on their not-doorstep, and strikes Eddie as a girl very much ready to take on the world. If the world in this case was having a crush on two people in her life. And Eddie’s happy watching her go—not just because he and Steve can return to their previous activities. But because Eddie can see the conflict in her, remember it from years that feel as distant as they do close these days. 

And Steve—his boyfriend, Steve, can ease that. In a way that Wayne had always tried to, though clumsily, with love. 

Max stops halfway across the patch of grass between the trailers, turning around to look back at where Steve and Eddie are watching her go, making sure she gets back in there safely. “Thanks, shitheads!” Comes her call, flipping them both off jovially and jogging the rest of the distance, messy plaits flicking from side to side as she does so.

“Little asshole,” Steve says fondly, before reaching to curve an arm around Eddie’s waist, to his surprise, who almost topples over in his own doorway. It invites a laugh from out of Steve, who turns, kicks the door closed with a bump on his ankle. (One that Eddie knows hurt more than he’d intended, by the stupid wince he tries to hide.)

Nonetheless, Eddie ends up with his back to it, Steve tangling their legs and using both of those clumsy hands to cup his face. Eddie doesn’t even have the time to make a snarky comment, though he does manage a muffled laugh, chuckling openly against Steve’s mouth, into Steve’s mouth, once again sharing their air and their stupidity. 

When Steve gets handsy and Eddie’s knees buckle, sliding them both down the door, he decides to give Steve a good shove, sending him stumbling backwards away from him, eyebrows raised and face the picture of amused surprise. Eddie doesn’t give him the time to bitch at him for it, only grins, wolfishly, before jogging, maybe even skipping after him—spreading his fingers across the stretch of his chest to give him another push. This time he has Steve fall backwards over the arm of the couch, sprawled out across the patchy sofa cushions, face warm and lips parted. 

With a quick, “Whup!” Eddie vaults over the sofa arm, landing on Steve in a painful collision and subsequent tangle of limbs, shuffling his way up his boyfriend’s groaning body until he’s happily sat on his hips. 

“I take it back,” Steve grumbles, pinching Eddie’s side. “You’re the little asshole,”

Arching his back to lean down and take Steve’s bottom lip into his teeth, Eddie tugs at it, teasing, before fisting his hand into Steve’s hair, tugging it to give him leverage for a proper, deep kiss. 

“Mmh,” Steve hums, punch-drunk. “Bit less of an asshole,” 

“Yeah?” Eddie wriggles on his hips, drumming his fingers along Steve’s collarbones. 

When he catches Steve’s eyes again, and finds them ruminating with undeniable affection, Eddie can’t help but laugh, low and breathless from his chest. And then Steve says, “You’re an asshole who loves me,” Soft, like he was barraging Eddie softly with handfuls of cotton wool, a highly ineffective weapon in theory, but… Eddie melts. Feeling embarrassment bringing the blood to his face. 

“I was high,” Eddie whines, slowly stretching out until he’s lying on top of Steve, face pressed into the crook of his neck. Steve adjusts, fingers curling their way into Eddie’s disastrous mop of hair. 

“I know,” Steve says, kissing the top of his head. “But did you mean it?”

Eddie doesn’t hesitate. Eddie hates lying to Steve, especially about feelings, about things that could build up and rot beneath their feet over time. “Yeah. I did. I really did,”

“That’s good,” Steve says, dragging his fingertips over Eddie’s scalp in the way he knows he likes. Their legs are tangled, Steve’s thigh between Eddie’s, as close to one another as they could possibly be without Eddie carving Steve open and just climbing inside. “You know I do too, right?”

A part of Eddie does. Another doubts. “It’s nice to hear you say it like that,” He admits, running his nails along the hot, bare skin of Steve’s midriff, where his shirt has ridden up. 

“I’ll say the words properly,” Steve promises, kissing Eddie’s temple. “But I want it to be right. I don’t want you to like, think… I’m just saying it because you did. But I do,” 

When Eddie doesn’t immediately respond, Steve nips at his jaw. Eddie retaliates by shifting to prop himself up over him, quickly licking a strip up Steve’s neck, base to face. 

“Eugh, Eddie, really? You’re so gross,” Steve complains, though he doesn’t move to scrub at his neck, nor does he shove him off. Despite the cringe of his face, his voice is so, so affectionate.

Something jumps in Eddie’s gut—an instinct, a confirmation. He grins, knows his eyes are wild by the way Steve blinks. “You love me,” He says, giddy, jittery. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, casting a hand up to root itself in Eddie’s hair. “I do,”

“Steve Harrington loves me. And he’s going to say it one day, all romantic,” Eddie jostles him, then, gleefully cackling away as he flings out his limbs, bouncing up and down on Steve, flinging his hair from side to side in what feels like the best high of his life. 

Eddie almost falls off the sofa. Steve chases after him, catching his arm and pulling him back onto his chest, rolling his eyes.

3)

Eddie’s van sputters a final gasp of smoke from its exhaust as he pulls into the car park of the outdoor basketball pitch.

It’s on the outskirts of town—mostly forgotten, not many people would choose to practice the sport on asphalt and harsh tarmac, but that makes it all the more suitable for what it’s used for. It’s a safe haven. It’s a space that’s been cultivated to one specific individual, his own pocket of Hawkins. 

Lucas Sinclair. 

Arguably the kid Eddie understands the least out of them all—yet, thankfully, seems to be the one Steve gets the most naturally. Eddie can see why, see the glimmers of the surface-level details, the sports and the battles with popularity, masculinity and other such things Eddie’s not so in touch with. Steve’s a figure for Lucas, someone who he can relate to.

But it’s also more than that. 

Eddie knows the basics of Billy. Knows that since Steve stood between him and Sinclair, there’s been some struggle with guilt, some underlying pain that resurfaces every time Lucas so much as hears anything about Steve getting a headache, or any other symptom that might not even be related to his head injuries.

“Greetings, my Lady Applejack,” Eddie says to the girl sitting on the further corner of the court, a notebook and several scraps of paper scattered around. She’s fiddling with a fuzzy pink pen. 

“Hey nerd,” She quips, flicking her wrist for him to air kiss. Eddie does—and then reaches to bump his fist against her hand, Erica readily responding with the complicated, ten-step ritual of their secret handshake. 

It ends with jazz hands. As per her request.

Eddie shuffles his way into as comfortable a position he can manage on the solid, gritty ground, gangly knees parting into a cross-legged sit. “Steve said you wanted help with your character sheet, m’lady?” 

That’s not the only reason why Eddie’s decided to watch Lucas and Steve practice basketball at eight in the goddamn morning on a Sunday, no. It was a good incentive, alongside the glaringly obvious reason that was Steve and sweat and light, breathable clothing. But in actuality, his Uncle Wayne was taking Claudia Henderson on a breakfast date—and no way was Eddie gonna get in the way of whatever his uncle had planned for her. 

It was sweet. It made Eddie’s face ache to think about. 

But Erica scoffs, all the same. “No way. You can look over it if you want, but I just told Lucas that cuz otherwise he’d find some excuse for me not to come and watch this circus,”

Eddie raises his eyebrows. “You… wanna watch this?” 

“Yeah,” Erica says, eyes hard as she looks him up and down. “I do. You got any problems with my personal schedule, Munson?”

Shaking his head loosely, Eddie chuckles airily. “Not at all, Lady Applejack. What you choose to spend your Sunday mornings doing is none of my business,” Erica glares at him.

“Whatever, loser. I know why you’re here. You wanna see Steve all gross and sticky, which is so ew,” The younger girl makes an exaggerated effort of gagging at him, screwing up her features and clutching her knees for proper emphasis. 

Eddie knocks their shoulders together. “Yeah, yeah, but you’re far more satisfying. What is,” He wafts his hand at her, “All of this? Sisterly love?” 

With a groan, Erica smacks her character sheet down, pointing her fuzzy pen at Eddie like a weapon. “Shut your mouth. I’m trying to listen, and be subtle. Lucas has been weird all week. Look,”

Following the point of her pen, Eddie’s eyes catch on Lucas and Steve, the two of them battling it out for the ball. Instead of the usual playful way they would do so, tossing insults and jests and jabs at one another every time someone would score over the other or stumble and lose their grip on the ball, something was different. 

Lucas was stiff, cold, and angry. 

Steve was concerned, clumsy and unsure. 

Barging him out of the way, Lucas jumps up to land another ball in the hoop. Steve goes to congratulate him, exhausted and sweating—but instead of a high-five, or a bump of their shoulders, Lucas slams the basketball down and flings his arms up in the air, voice raised.

It’s difficult to strain enough to hear what’s being said—but both him and Erica are trying very hard.

“I don’t get it!” Lucas says, arms smacking back down to his sides. “Why are we even doing this?”

Steve looks perplexed—Eddie can feel his frown from across the court. “Doing what? Practice?”

“ Yes, why the hell do you care? You don’t need practice, you don’t even play anymore, and I’m better than you, no offense, so it’s not teaching me anything!” Lucas’ hands find his hips, stance defensive, uncertain—and Eddie knows that this is probably not just one thing, but a whole lot of feelings built up over time. It just so happens that Steve is the unfortunate outlet here. 

“Okay, ow, but also—,” Steve pulls up the hem of his shirt to wipe his brow, Eddie losing a few words exchanged due to the dizzy spell he immediately suffers as a result. 

Lucas stomps one of his feet, pacing in a small circle for a moment. “ Why? You could be doing so many other things, not just… wasting your time with me,”

Oh, man. Eddie can sort of understand where this might be going. 

“Wasting my time?” Steve echoes, confusion shoved aside to make room for the harsh posture he takes on when he’s pissed off. “What the fuck, Sinclair?” 

Erica is fluttering at Eddie’s side, as if she wants to go over there. “We really hurt his feelings,” Suddenly slips out of her mouth, knee bouncing. 

Tapping his fingers on her shoulder, Eddie keeps his eyes on the two arguing, though Erica holds a handful of his fleeting attention. “Who’s we?” When he isn’t immediately given a response, he turns his head to find the younger girl giving him a sharp look. 

“The campaign. Lucas’ game. Not moving it?” Erica sighs, folding her arms across her chest, the rainbow stripes on her shirt distorting as the material wrinkles. “And then those loser friends of him asked me to stand-in for him, and I ditched his most important game for you nerds,” 

Eddie swallows thickly. “And he’s… really hung up over that?”

Another overly-dramatic exhale echoes from Erica. “ Yes, Eddie. He’s ‘hung up’ over that,” After making quotation marks in the air with her pastel-nail painted fingers, the girl bites at her lip. “Like—think, hmm… if you’d spent months and months writing a really cool campaign. You were so sure it was gonna go well because you’d spent so much time making it, and you’re excited for the people you care about to be a part of it,”

Following along, Eddie nods, slowly. 

“And then on the night, nobody shows up,” Erica murmurs, face solemn. “And all the time you spent feels like it was for nothing. You know the campaign was great, but there’s nobody there to tell you that it was, make sure that you know it was.”

Yeah. As embarrassing as it may be, that puts it into perspective for Eddie, who thinks, just maybe, he does understand Lucas a bit better. Eddie, who feels like shit for not swallowing his pride and moving the campaign, for making Lucas feel like he had to pick between his interests. If he had to pick between band and D&D, that’d be totally shit, let alone impossible. Eddie made Lucas out to be some kind of traitor.

Damn. He’s an asshole. And he says as much. 

“Yeah, maybe, but we’re bigger assholes,” Erica says, bringing her knees up to her chest, fiddling with the bright yellow wool of her tights. “You were just this cool guy those loser boys wanted to impress. Those loser boys are my brother’s best friends. They should’ve known better, should’ve totally blown you off,”

Eddie laughs, quietly, but nods. Erica’s expression grows solemn with damp, heavy guilt. “And if they’re bigger assholes—I’m the biggest. I’m his sister. I wasn’t even there to see his big game, even if I did think he was gonna be a benchwarmer for l-i-f-e, I still should’ve been there,” 

“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie says, bumping their shoulders again. “But you’re here now, right?”

Before turning back to watch Lucas, Erica smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she does. “Yeah, I guess I am,”

While they were talking, the situation hadn’t drastically improved—but Lucas wasn’t pacing or shouting anymore, just standing there, holding his elbows and fidgeting as Steve tried to talk him down from whatever ledge he was at the edge of. 

“I’m not wasting my time, Cas,” Steve says to Lucas, taking a small step towards him. “Don’t you get it? I wanna do this shit with you. Playing with you is fun as shit, kid, you’re good. You give me a run for my money every time,”

Lucas’ posture begins to ease, a bit more open. “Yeah, but—why all of my games? Nobody else does that,”

“Yeah, well— because nobody did it for me, and I know that totally fucking sucks,” Steve admits with a shrug, reaching to rub his nose in the way he always does when he’s saying something nonchalantly that matters a whole, metric fuckton to him. 

“Oh,” Lucas says, the last few dregs of his anger slipping away from him. “And—you really want to?”

Steve makes a face. “ Duh. Why the fuck else would I get up at seven in the morning every Sunday? Nobody can make me do anything I don’t wanna,” 

Decisively untrue, Eddie thinks. Just last week Mike had peer pressured Steve into chugging four milkshakes, who then spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to pass out and die of milkshake-nausea. Lucas agrees, and if the look on his face didn’t say enough, he adds a sarcastic, “Yeah?”

Steve nods. Lucas scoffs. “Max literally made you try and do a kickflip yesterday. You refused and then she called you a pussy so you tried it and ate absolute shit,”

To make his statement all the more clear, he points to the bandaid on Steve’s elbow. 

“Okay. Maybe,” Steve says, hand wafting through the air when he tries to find the point he was making. “But that’s not what I’m doing here. Listen, kid, you’re—you’re really good,”

“I know,”

“Shut up,” Steve points at Lucas, eyebrows raised. The kid, wisely, closes his mouth. Erica giggles quietly by Eddie’s ear. “You’re good. And you enjoy it. And sometimes shit makes you forget that you enjoy it. I don’t want you to give up just because nobody came to see you,”

Lucas’ shoulders loosen, posture slumping. Steve puts his hands on either one, giving him physical stability, drawing his attention. Making his point. “So I’m gonna keep coming to watch you play. We’re gonna do these stupid practices and you’re gonna kick my ass every time,”

“And hey, maybe,” Steve’s face moves with his grin, shrugging into the open air. “Maybe you’ll give it up when you finish school. Or maybe you’ll play for a team at college. Maybe you’ll do it at college, or get a sports scholarship or something—no matter what, I’m gonna come and watch you play,” He punctuates that with one finger, jabbing into the center of Lucas’ chest. 

Steve dips his head, giving Lucas a sharp look. “You got that, Sinclair?” 

The court is silent, Erica tense and unsure under her bright clothes and strange patterns. Eddie finds himself holding his breath, uncomfortably caged in his chest, hot and bothered in the confines of his ribs. He’s not sure when he became so invested in this conversation—but he supposes that’s the side effect to dating Steve. He’s a package deal, comes with seven, give or take, emotionally underdeveloped children. 

Saving the world as a kid more than once can’t be easy. Eddie only had to do it once and now he’s irrationally scared of looking up at ceilings, just in case there’s a gate, or a girl. 

He almost got a coverup tattoo for the bats he’s got inked. Instead, Steve came home with them tatted on the small of his back, making some ridiculous speech about how the bats were something they had in common, not to be scared of. 

It was really dumb. But it was what pushed Eddie to throw aside every fear of rejection he’d ever had to plant a big ol’ kiss on the mouth of Steve Harrington, speech extraordinaire. 

Hence the sheer relief palpable between him and Erica like pulp in orange juice when her brother stuttered forwards, throwing his arms around Steve in what can only be described as a frantic, overly enthusiastic hug. Lucas is getting a little tall for the way he tosses himself at Steve—yet he’s still caught, squeezed, comforted. Only Eddie sees Steve wince a fraction as he undoubtedly stretches out his scar tissue, pushing through the sting to make sure Lucas felt how much he cared.

Steve gives good hugs. It’s a well known fact across the board. Robin sometimes preaches sonnets about them to Eddie whenever they get together. 

Maybe that’s why it lasts a really, really long time, Steve patting the back of Lucas’ head while they sort of sway—and then Eddie notices that Lucas’ shoulders are trembling, his frame hunched. 

“He’s crying,” Erica says, voice soft and a touch guilty. Her wide, clever eyes turn to Eddie, boring into him, casting him open and searching for support, for confirmation. 

Eddie just gives her an awkward smile, because while he knows how to talk to Dustin most of the time, and occasionally can say the right thing to Max every other blue moon—crying has always been a weaker area. People cry and Eddie wants to run in the other direction. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he does, but tears bring out the very depths of his social inadequacy, make him fumble and say the first things that come to mind. 

As most things happen to be, Steve is his only exception. Eddie knows how to comfort Steve, and if he doesn’t, he’d follow him to the ends of the earth just to figure it out. 

Then Eddie glances back up to find Steve’s arm around Lucas’ shoulder, who’s laughing and rolling his eyes at something that he’s been told—and the minor terror that had seeped into Eddie and crystallized into a hard, steel alloy becomes molten with relief.

“Steve’s got him,” Eddie says to Erica, before slowly shifting to point something out on her character sheet with a lazy smile. 

They go for breakfast and milkshakes later. 

Something about Steve still being in debt to Erica over a lifetime supply of free ice cream, and since the untimely demise of Scoops Ahoy (and Eddie being able to see the uniform) there’s been a bit of a struggle in demand of their deal.

So Erica now sits in Mim’s Diner, one chocolate, one strawberry and one banana milkshake stood together like neapolitan ice cream. Every time Lucas tries to dip one of his fries (which he swears count as a breakfast food) in any of the three, his sister smacks his hand away with the force of a thousand suns.

“ Ow, Erica!” Lucas groans, again, nursing his palm against his chest. 

Steve, tucked against Eddie’s side and now wearing his leather jacket over the loose sportswear he’d been admiring, takes a loud breath and pushes his own milkshake across the table. “Jesus, Cas. Just take mine before she rolls her nerdy dice and casts a spell against you,”

“Lady Applejack is not a mage, big-hair small-brain!” 

“Erica,” Lucas hisses, throwing a fry at her. 

With what can only be heralded as sheer talent, his younger sister catches the potato javelin in her mouth, snapping it up like a furious alligator. 

“Oh,” Steve breaks the stunned silence that follows. 

Eddie bursts into shrieks of laughter, reaching his hand across the table to launch into their secret handshake, Erica glowing under the praise and surprise of the small table. “Oh, Lady Applejack, you are the very star of this diner. They should name a sundae after you, Am-Erica’s Delight. Because that shit? Unlike any talent I’ve ever seen,”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t, you’re gonna make her head literally explode,” Lucas complains, landing his face in his hands, elbows propped up on the sticky surface of the table. 

Steve nudges Eddie. “He’s right, Ed, I can see it swelling already. We might need to find a bunker to hide in before she blows,”

“You two are losers. This is why Munson is my favorite,” 

Her comment sparks outrage in both Steve and Lucas, the two of them arguing ferociously for why they should be her favorite for various, obvious reasons, such as saving her life in a Russian base or being literally related to her. Eddie doesn’t really tune into it all that much—only to interrupt when there’s slander put on his name as a means of trying to discredit him. 

No, Eddie sits back. Listens to the childish argument and basks in the feeling of how familial it is. 

Growing up, Eddie had always imagined having an older sister or brother. Someone to protect him when his dad would yell or his mom would start to run from things that weren’t there, stand between him and the cruelty of middle school. A person to nurture his interests; not infallible but always there to try and patch things up with him. Someone who’d encourage his interests, even if they didn’t really get them. 

Eddie looks and listens to the Sinclairs, and hopes they’re grateful for one another—knows that they are. 

Knows that Lucas had been talking about Erica since the start of Hellfire, absentmindedly mentioning that she’d been learning how to play, slipping his sister and her characters into the sparse one on one conversation he’d have with Eddie. Knows that Erica tells her friends, especially Tina, all about how her brother’s a basketball star, because the one time Eddie had given the two girls a lift to the public pool, Tina had been nattering on and on about how she wanted to play basketball, just like Lucas. 

Knows that Lucas would fight a million creatures from the Upside Down, just to keep her safe. Knows that Erica would stab every one of the assholes on the basketball team to death with her poisoned kukri knife in her imagination and reality, the second she got her paws on one. 

“ Hell —o?” And there’s a hand in his face, waving with enough passion to generate energy for the whole of Hawkins. 

“Hi,” Eddie says, bringing up a hand to rub his eyes. 

Lucas shoots Steve a look from across the table. “Steve, your boyfriend is about to collapse and die if you keep making him get up so early. Look at him. His eyebags have actual eyebags,” 

Blinking, Eddie reaches up to tap under his eyes, only a little self consciously. “You wound me, Sinclair. Next campaign? Watch out,”

There’s a beat, and then Lucas fiddles with another fry. “Next campaign?” 

“Yeah, man, Eddie’s been writing it for months. Since all the Vecna stuff, like… went down, think he just didn’t want to push you guys into it too fast,” Steve helpfully supplies, acting as something of a buffer between them, one hand firmly perched on Eddie’s shoulder. 

Lucas pushes his fry down into the ketchup in the basket. It crumbles under his grip. “Yeah. Like—I get that… part, but, uh,” Then his hand goes up, scratches the back of his neck, and all of a sudden Steve’s hand lifts from Eddie’s shoulder. It curves around his waist instead, shifting him to the side while Steve stands and clambers over him to get out of the booth, beckoning Erica with one wiggle of his index finger. 

“Come on. Mim loves me, I’m sure I can convince her to make you some atrocity of ice cream that isn’t on the menu, Erica,” Steve says, giving Eddie a look absent of subtlety. He gestures to Lucas, then pretends to cast his hand through his hair. “Just turn on the my little pony eyes, kid, she’ll roll over,”

Watching forlornly as Steve takes Erica away to the front of the diner, Eddie curses ever choosing to stick his tongue down the throat of someone emotionally intelligent. Sure, he’s blunt, and clumsy with it—but Steve is making a statement here. The statement says, fix your shit with Sinclair, and it’s written in large, glittery block text. Probably using one of Erica’s nice, fuzzy pens that Eddie sort of wants to chew on. 

So he braves himself, forces his eyes to flick up to where Lucas is sitting, his face the exact picture Eddie imagines his pain is presenting as, too. 

“You’re okay with your boyfriend flirting with old women to get my little sister some crazy ice cream combination?” Lucas says, voice strained in a way that suggests he’s attempting comedy. Eddie, forever generous, chokes out an equally awkward laugh. 

“Yeah, man,” Taking one of his curls, Eddie twists it around his finger, only for it to get stuck in the sharp point of the skull ring at the base. Not wanting to make a huge deal out of it, Eddie just rests his face in his palm. “We get free food whenever we go out to eat, like, all the time. He’s a cougar magnet.”

Lucas scrunches his nose at that. “That’s gross.”

“Yeah, maybe, but free food is alllllso,” Eddie reaches over to steal a fry from Lucas’ basket. “Pretty great,”

“Sometimes El gets us more ketchup packets from different tables when Max uses them all up for her burger,” Lucas recounts—it feels a bit like an offer of common ground, however hilarious that is. At the same time, Eddie finds himself smiling at the thought of the three of them going out to eat together after Max’s visit the other week.

Twisting a fry in his hand not imprisoned by his own hair, Eddie taps it against his own nose. “Going on a date with a superpowered girl has its perks, I suppose. Steve’s superpower is just looking like a lost puppy all the time, really has the ladies reaching for their purses.”

“I dunno, man, you’ve got that kind of going on too,” Lucas suggests, squinting at Eddie. “Yeah. Like, hopeless deer abandoned in the middle of the road kind of thing,”

And what’s a guy supposed to say to that? Eddie thought these kids were meant to be all sad and flailing, Steve’s unhappy little family, following him around like ducklings. Why were all of them so mean? 

“Damn,” Eddie says, pretending to smoke another of Lucas’ fries like a cigarette. “Yeah, well, you kids are the lost sheep, remember? I scooped you up for a reason, those sad, sad lost eyes,”

The stilted joking ends there, Lucas tensing up enough to have Eddie wonder if he’s just thrown something at his head and forgotten about it. It’s not entirely implausible. After Vecna, after being half-eaten and having to recover in the scariest hospital-lab place Eddie’s ever frequented (not that he’s been in a lot of hospital-labs), Eddie’s brain has served him just as well as a plate of scrambled eggs could. There are times where Steve finds him again staring off into space, lost in half-thoughts and the fuzz of being in between his brain trying to suppress trauma or rehash it all over again. Maybe this is why he’s missed something here.

“Am I, though?” Lucas prompts, as if sensing Eddie’s confusion. “One of your… lost sheep,” 

To his utter self-frustration, Eddie can’t really just get what Lucas is trying to say. He’s not Steve, he doesn’t have a list of their insecurities and troubles ingrained into his brain like a mother’s instinct. The problem is that he wants to understand. 

“Uh—yeah?” Eddie tries, biting the head off of his cigarette-fry. “You, Wheeler and Henderson. You’re my sheep. Henderson is my Weird Al sheep, Wheeler is my awful button-up sheep. You’re my basketball jersey sheep,”

Lucas looks at him blankly—but gives him a sympathy laugh all the same. “Dude, that makes no sense,”

“Think of it like a comic strip. I’m Little Bo Eddie, you’re my little sheeps,” Picturing it just makes him chuckle to himself, almost hysterically. “But I think we’ll probably get, like… further in this conversation if you say what you wanna say, Sinclair. Feelings on the tables. The fry is yours,” Eddie tilts a fry towards Lucas like a microphone. 

“Just—,” Lucas takes a short breath. “The campaign.”

“Oh,” Eddie starts, blinking. “It should be in the summer, still, but if you need me to move it, or something, can do,”

With a few stunned blinks, Lucas tentatively takes the microphone-fry. “Uh, no—thanks? The season doesn’t start until school does, but…? You’d really move a session?”

“Mhm,” Eddie says, forgetting for a second that his hair was tangled in his rings, wincing when he attempted to dislodge his face from his palm. In the end, he gives up and keeps it stuck there for the sake of the emotional credibility staying in this conversation. “You’re a member of Hellfire, Sinclair. Though I should say Demobats’ Dungeon, now,”

“Demobats’ Dungeon?” Lucas echoes, frowning.

With a chuckle, Eddie knicks another fry. “Yeah. Can't really keep using Hellfire if I don’t want to invite the Hawkins townsfolk to change their minds about my innocence all over again. Nancy and Robin are gonna make whatever Little Byers designs into some shirts for us,”

“That’s cool,” Lucas says, nodding along. “But—you’re not pissed about the whole… basketball, thing?”

The other shoe drops. Eddie thinks back to his conversation with Erica earlier in the morning and takes the falling shoe into his mind, ties the laces real tight so he won’t slip away from the point this time. “Shit, man, no way. Listen—that shit was stupid to begin with. I liked to stand on tables and preach about conformity and then fuck, man. I made it seem like you had to pick between two interests to conform with us, which is just…”

Eddie knocks his fist lightly against the diner’s table. “Stupid. Reaaaal dumb. Undermines my own goddamn point. I just—I’ve taken shit from jocks my whole life. Seeing you want to try your hand at sport shouldn’t have been a war declaration to me, that’s my own shit, not yours. And well, now,” 

He turns his head to look at where Steve is helping Erica scoop a load of different ice cream flavors onto a plate that’s way too small. Eddie lifts his hand to point to the two of them. “Now I’m dating one of the biggest jocks to ever jock in the history of Hawkins High.”

Lucas laughs at that, really laughs, not tense or awkward or forced. “Yeah, guess that’s true,”

“What I’m—trying to say, Sinclair,” Eddie clicks his tongue, tilting his head further into his hand. “Is that I’m sorry. And you should never have felt unwelcome in Hellfire, man. That’s the opposite of what we’re tryna put down,”

Shifting in the seat across from him, Lucas’ smile slowly grows into a grin, just a tiny bit giddy. Eddie knows that grin. It’s the grin of knowing your interest is in safe hands, the grin of something being settled. Eddie likes that grin. Eddie thinks Lucas should wear it more. “So we’re cool?”

“We’re way more than cool,” Eddie reaffirms, using his free hand to reach across the table and bump his fist against Lucas’.

“Well that’s good, but Lucas you need to be a lot cooler,” Steve says after walking the stretch of space the diner has to offer in the form of black and white tiles. “Erica wants you to go eat the ice cream bowl she’s made up for you,”

“That was a terrible attempt at a pun,” Lucas says, shaking his head as he rises from the booth, shooting Eddie a finger gun, “Duty calls,” And then beams at Steve on his way over to where his sister has set the two of them up for a serious stomach ache later. 

Bumping his hip against Eddie’s, Steve forces him into the corner of the booth, where he knows there isn’t as much visibility. With a chuckle, Eddie allows it to happen, slowly sliding his elbow along the table, face still stuck to his palm, unwilling to tear an entire handful of hair out just to free him.

“You two okay?” Steve prompts, moving his thumb to carefully run along Eddie’s chapped bottom lip. 

Shivering lightly, Eddie nips at Steve, chuckling softly when his expression fumbles, flusters. “You gonna tell me what that was?” Though he can imagine, can feel the way Steve was trying to fit him and Sinclair together like a puzzle, rooting out any remaining tension. Eddie knows that the kids are crucial to Steve, knows he orbits his life around them, just as he circles Eddie like the sun in his own solar system. Steve needs Eddie to keep their gravity steady, fit into the circuit, slip into the ragtag group like he was always there in the first place. 

“Lucas was worried you didn’t like him,” Steve fesses up, running his nails along the underside of Eddie’s jaw. “You get along with Dustin, obviously. Pretty sure you might be Mike’s favorite person, and Will was immediately under your wing the second you guys meet,” As if sensing Eddie’s interjection, Steve thumbs his chin. “I know why, we both do. But then there’s Max and El, and even his sister, man, and I could just tell…”

Eddie follows Steve’s eyes across the diner to where Lucas now sits with his sister, shoveling ice cream into his mouth with an easygoing grin. “Lucas needs that kinda assurance, man. Likes to be told people don’t hate him.”

It’s hard to ignore how Steve could possibly be able to know that; sense that in another person. Eddie’s chest aches, heart swelling as he uses his free hand to cup the side of his boyfriend’s face. “I don’t hate him,” 

“Good,” Steve says, dropping his head into Eddie’s palm. “That’d be my only dealbreaker,” Which incites a laugh out of him, because they both know that—but it’s still funny, in a charming, fond way. Steve and his kids, with Eddie beginning to feel almost like a step-parent. 

“Yeah?” Eddie says, pinching Steve’s cheek. “Serial killing okay?” 

Rolling his eyes, Steve scooches forward on the booth’s chair, nose bumping against Eddie’s. Absentmindedly, Eddie thinks about how he smells of strawberry, no doubt from a few stolen scoops of Erica’s ice cream, a sip of her milkshake. “Not sure. More acceptable than putting those spaghetti hoops on toast for breakfast,”

“Hey,” Eddie knocks their foreheads together. “Spaghetti hoops on toast is a comfort food, Stevie. Don’t bash it. And I have it for more than just breakfast,”

“That’s worse,” Steve jabs, poking his fingers into Eddie’s side. Then, eyes flicking around the room to make sure of no prying stares—Steve’s lips curl in the corners. “Kiss me,” He demands, dark eyes twinkling like a stray lamplight on a stretch of lonely road. 

Eddie feels his stomach bottom out. “I really, really want to,”

“Nobody can see us,” Steve comforts, brows knitting together. 

Chuffing out a quiet laugh, Eddie’s face crinkles lightly with affection. “I know that. My hair is tangled in my rings, I can’t move my face,”

Surprise and disbelief washes over Steve’s loving expression, twinged with fond irritation around the edges. “You’re an idiot,” He says, shifting to take Eddie’s tangled fingers an inch away from his hair, clicking his tongue when he gets an eyeful of the damage. “Luckily for you, Mim likes Erica so much that we probably have a decent hour to free you,”

“Yeah?” Eddie smiles, sinking the brown of his eyes into Steve’s, mingling, swimming together like natural cocoa, sweet and raw. “Get on with saving me then, hero,”

4)

Sleepovers at the Harrington house are actually a pretty common affair, though not just for Eddie. 

They happen when the kids are too worn out to cycle home, when Steve doesn’t want them out and about at night, when it’s late and Eddie knows he’s worried about driving them whilst he’s tired. After a day of fun, or a long campaign, maybe hours spent in the pool or the sun or the wind and the rain, weather-worn and a little sunburnt. It’s a learnt practice, an occasional occurrence, the numbers of every parent scrawled on a small scrap of paper stuck to the wall by the phone. 

Steve always dials them up in a certain order. Hopper, first, as sometimes there are nights where he’ll come to collect Eleven if he’s just finished a shift. There are nights where Hopper needs her at home, needs to know she’s near. More often than not, he’s begrudgingly okay with it—knows his daughter is safe with Steve, entirely too aware of the lengths Steve would go to for the sake of her protection. Eddie knows all too well how much that trust means to Steve, has no doubt he tosses and turns in bed with worry that he may fail it one day, stumble and fall and lose it all. 

Joyce is always next, the scars of Will’s disappearance forever etched into her like a sixth sense, a constant worry of his whereabouts, needing to know where he is and who he’s with. Eddie can’t fault her for that, remembering occasionally strolling through the woods by the trailer park back in ‘83, searching for disturbed dirt or unusual mounds in the earth, just in case. Little Byers’ vanishing was the first of many troubles to come from Hawkins, had even the more deplorable townsfolk such as himself listening, looking, hoping. Steve is forever quick to reassure her, let her know what they’ve spent the day doing, how Will is feeling. Sometimes he’ll speak to Jonathan, too, loose and casual and careful, knowing he worries almost as much as his mother does. 

If she’s in a state to pick up the phone, Steve rings up Ms Mayfield. When she’d first heard of Max staying with Steve, she’d been wary—as any mother should to hear her daughter was sleeping over at the house of an older guy. But then Steve stayed as a constant, taking Max to school, dropping her home as soon as her mother asked. Eddie knows that she told Steve where the spare key to their trailer is, and heard from Max that sometimes Steve will help her mother lie down, make sure she’s safe on her side, clean up bottles or cans or other consequences of her drinking. Steve goes to Max’s on the weekends, bringing with him food shopping or using what’s in their fridge to lay out a series of meals for both of them over the week. Eddie knows Ms Mayfield likes Steve, can’t resist his charms—but more importantly grew to trust him with her daughter more than she trusts herself with Max, sometimes. 

The Sinclairs are usually after the Mayfield call—often because Steve has both of their children over, double the amount of concern to fend off. After the Hellfire witch-hunt, the Sinclair family were always cautious to ensure Lucas and Erica were somewhere safe, watched over and looked after, not to mention the ‘mall fire’ and Billy Hargrove. The Sinclairs had, time and time again, heard of their children being at risk—yet in every situation, Steve had been an active player in their protection. Steve, fending off Billy at the price of his own health. Steve, making sure Erica ‘escaped the fire’ and shielding Lucas from the ‘rubble’ according to their account of events. The Sinclairs never minded Lucas and Erica staying over at the Harrington house—so long as they knew where they were. Eddie has heard many times that Charles and Susan Sinclair tried to hand Steve babysitting money, too, sparking a common, lighthearted argument every time Steve would turn it down, insisting it was no trouble. 

Then came Claudia Henderson, who would often assume that Dustin was with Steve if he didn’t explicitly say otherwise. To Claudia, Eddie and Steve were shining lights in the darkness, boys to be put on pedestals for their active role in Dustin’s safety. The pair of them would usually spend an evening over at the Henderson house for dinner every week, anyway, even more so now that Wayne and Claudia were going steady. Steve ringing up was a courtesy more than anything, a routine to follow, though Eddie knew the woman always appreciated the confirmation. 

Karen Wheeler came last, to no surprise—while Steve insisted she did care about her kids, honestly, she just got a little distracted by the stresses of her perfect suburban life. Apparently Holly was her main focus too, so she trusted Mike and Nancy to get home or wherever fine and safe with few complications. Either way, Eddie would watch Steve dial her up, leaning against the wall and playing with the cord whilst waiting for her to put down whatever she was cooking up to natter at him for a bit. Despite his transgressions with her daughter, Mrs Wheeler did like Steve. Liked his charm, his car, and the way he spoke. Though Eddie was definitely growing on her, Steve would always smell like money, Eddie still marred with the molten stick of trailer trash. 

Nonetheless, today was one of the days where all the parents were far too happy to have homes empty of rowdy teenagers. A warm Friday night, a chance for them to catch up on a sitcom or a bottle of whisky, maybe even spend some man-wife time with one another, if they could bear it. 

So while their homes were free of mud on the shag, shouts in the basement, small heads crowded in front of the TV set, the Harrington household was large in life, a youthful, kinetic energy keeping the air hot and rife with excitement. Eddie had been hosting a D&D session, the first proper one since the unfortunate stains of Vecna on his previous campaign—and it had gone well. Very well. One of the best openers he’d managed in his career as a DM; Gareth, Jeff, Howard in attendance, too, despite their tensions and uncertainty with being in King Steve’s lovely home. They’d left just short of an hour ago, rosy-cheeked and hoarse-voiced, the stiffness between Eddie and the rest of his band like water through fingers after the success of the campaign’s beginning. 

Other new players included Robin, Nancy, Eleven and Max, though Steve had explained the famed ‘Scoops Troop’ had, in fact, played a few times with Erica and Dustin at the helm of their discovery journey into the world of D&D. 

Eddie had made one too many jokes about Steve’s Dungeons and Dragons’ virginity being taken before they met, (the whore), but there was an unspoken understanding between them that Steve much preferred watching, listening, observing. It was a time where Steve looked at him the most intently—Eddie narrating the perilous journey of the Party, glancing up to find his boyfriend hooked on his every word. Steve liked being able to appreciate the storytelling without having to worry about having to do something next, never really digging the whole character thing. Eddie knew that it hurt his head to split his focus in too many places at once, especially if one of those factors was the character sheet Steve didn’t really know how to read very well. 

Besides, it meant they could lie in bed together in the evenings after, Eddie answering Steve’s every fervent question, weaving through what concepts he didn’t understand or plot points he wanted to know more about. Steve being able to listen leads to a Steve who can have long, winding conversations with Eddie about his passion projects, have the two of them talking themselves silly into the stupid hours of the morning. 

So while Dustin may get on Steve’s back for his reluctance to be an active part of Eddie’s campaigns, Eddie can’t say he’d have it any other way. 

Because it gives him moments like this.

‘Moments like this’ meaning the way Steve is curled up in the crook of Eddie’s arm, dead to the world and snoring softly against the warm flesh of his chest. They’re in his bed, limbs interlocked and sprawled out across the plush dip of his high-quality mattress, silk sheets tangled between their mingling body heat. Eddie is only awake to listen to him breathe, relish in the constant lift and deflate of his boyfriend’s chest, fond and familiar. There’s no doubt he’s kissing the beginnings of sleep, feels it lull and pull at his remaining autonomy, the kindly lips of its dark embrace touching up his spine in hot tingles, pins and needles and pretty promises.

Steve had fallen asleep mid-conversation, following his line of questioning about the monster-infested caves the Party had ended the first session of the campaign in. Eddie was fondly trying to explain without giving too much away, not wanting to spoil the rest of the story, but Steve never took no for an answer so easily. Instead, he’d continued to push and nuzzle and nip at his unwillingness to splurge on the details—forcing Eddie’s hand. That hand found Steve’s hair, nursed it’s way back and forth through thick, soft tresses until the body flush against his was supple and limp with sleep. 

And now here they were. Steve, asleep, safe—Eddie soon to follow. The Harrington House quiet and acting as shelter for the Party, a warm beacon after an afternoon and evening’s worth of perilous adventure. 

Eddie knew where each of the kids were when they left them. Had learnt of the spots Steve had carved out for them in his house; which ones they always flocked to, curled up in. 

His spare room across the landing from his own was always made up for Robin and Nancy. It was floral, gaudy and just as ugly as Steve’s had been before they’d torn down the plaid wallpaper over the summer break and fixed it up to be more bearable. Nonetheless, the girls still made it their own little lover’s den, learning to love the horrific glass lampshades and the sickly-pink-painted dressers. 

There were two pullout sofas downstairs, facing each other by the not-so humble TV in the sitting room. They rarely stayed as separate entities, often touching at the ends and becoming a dangerous collision course of blankets and duvets and pillows. Dustin would usually sprawl out in a happy star in the center of the space, despite the constant complaints from the other boys about it, with Lucas usually sticking himself to his side, rolling him over when he hogged the sofa’s mattress too much. Despite there already being enough space for Will, Mike, Lucas and Dustin, Steve always dragged out another futon to put nearby, finding at least one or two of the boys collapsed on his hardwood floor one too many times. 

That extra futon had been where Will and Mike were tangled up when Eddie had begun to climb the stairs, sharing their own collection of couch cushions and wooly blankets. It was sweet. It was new. He wasn’t going to touch it, not while it was open and fresh. 

It made him smile all the same.

It had been while he climbed the stairs that he heard Erica, Eleven and Max giggling away in Steve’s mother’s extra bedroom, the one the woman would hide herself away in when her husband strayed from their marital bed. When the girls were here, it wasn’t a hiding place, full of girlish chatter and relentless teasing. The three of them would squeeze into Mrs Harrington’s big queen bed, snuggle under the covers and usually be the first to rise in the morning, demanding waffles from the packet or handmade by Steve himself. 

Everyone had a place in Steve’s house. When they were there, it became a home, not just an empty vessel, a necessary expense. 

Which was why the house took in a breath of air when one of its occupants went from tossing and turning to wailing and screaming. 

Startling away from sleep like a man who’d just become aware he was millimeters from the edge of the Grand Canyon, Eddie doesn’t even have the chance to alert Steve—his boyfriend almost knocks him out of bed. Sitting upright with so much force it’ll be a wonder if neither of them are bruised come morning light, Steve’s eyes are wide and wild—their delicate brown now hard and sharp, weaponized. 

“Steve—,” Eddie begins, though to no avail, Steve slips from under him and lands on his bedroom floor with a concerning thump, followed by cat-like scrabbles in the carpet. Spine evening out from its curved stance, Steve stands from where he’d fallen with what Eddie almost considers another limb in times like this—his nailed bat. “ Steve,” 

Any attempt to calm down the fervent, animalistic way Steve travels across the luxurious space of his room is a waste of Eddie’s time and energy. By the time he’s managed to remove himself from the tangle of the plaid sheets, Steve has already whipped his door open, descending the stairs with nothing but his bat and those loose pajama pants. 

Robin and Nancy are trying to gather themselves at the top of the staircase, Eddie soon joining them as he scrapes his hair back—from experience he’s found that it’s difficult to fight monsters with it down. Too easy to grab. Nancy, in the now expected but still horrifying turn of events, is loading a small handgun she must’ve brought in her purse—Robin chattering away as she tries to talk her down, suggesting it’s a false alarm.

With this group of people, it’s never really a false alarm. 

Nonetheless, if there’s a monster downstairs, Steve’s probably already swinging at it. 

Eddie climbs down to the bottom floor with Nancy in front of him and Robin clinging to his forearm, her bony fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to hurt. They’re all silent—hesitance and palpable fear thick and harsh between the three of them, sandpaper, glass friction grazing supple skin. It’s a familiar feeling, parallel to the way they stayed close to one another in the Upside Down’s version of the Wheeler house, side by side and bike by bike throughout the godforsaken hellscape that had stripped them of everything but the base human instinct to seek; take companionship and swallow it whole. They all spat it back out in the shape of lifelong, trauma-forged friendship. 

But there’s no monster. Nothing with claws, no large, hulking form with wisps of dark skin stretched too thin over sharp, jagged bones. Nothing to screech or scream; no blood slick over thousands of teeth, no petals rippling like a siren’s voice over smooth, dead water. 

No. Stood in the center of Steve’s sitting room is Eleven. Her head is tilted back to the extent where Eddie worries for her neck, eyes rolled into an unsteady, flickering white. Her arms are splayed out by her side, feet so rooted in the ground he fears it could swallow her whole. 

She’s screaming—mouth open and contorted too far, like the strange painting Eddie had seen in a history textbook, once. Eleven isn’t alone, though, as Max is too—falling quiet only when Lucas tucks her into his side, when Robin stumbles to aid him, anxiously petting the top of her head like a mothering bird. 

Steve’s abandoned his bat, Eddie notices. It’s been tossed to the other end of the room, in a similar way to Nancy swiftly stuffing her loaded gun into her pajama pant pocket, as if that could convince her witnesses that she’d never had it at all. As if anyone could forget that Nancy Wheeler keeps herself locked and loaded at all times. 

“She’s having a nightmare,” Mike eventually supplies from where he and Will are standing reluctantly at the sidelines, clearly ordered to do so by one babysitter. Dustin, as usual, is not at all listening—incomprehensible as he babbles away at Steve from his place on the sofa bed. Erica, wisely, is keeping herself at a reasonable distance from all supernatural girls in the room.

A vase takes itself off of the Harrington’s mantelpiece and surreptitiously explodes against the farthest wall by Eddie’s head. 

“Right,” He says, fishing a chunk of porcelain out of his hair. “Do you usually have a—plan? For these kinds of, uh… events?” Eddie ignores the subsequent sharp look he gets from Mike, turning his attention to Will instead. 

Will glances at the way Steve is practically dancing around El like a ballerina on steroids. “Not really.”

“Great,” Robin says, tapping the pads of her fingers into Eddie’s arm, still. “Wonder if there’s some sort of special tea we could give her. My mom used to drink herbal teas before she went to sleep,”

Eddie shoots her a glance. Robin rolls her eyes. “Not like that. Like, jasmine and incense and shit,”

“You can’t drink incense,” Mike quips, clearly wound up by the state of Eleven—or just being his usual cheery self. Before the topic can devolve into a heated debate, Eleven inadvertently shuts them up when one of the large, barely-touched novels dislodges itself from a bookshelf and slams into the plasterboard a few centimeters away from Robin’s chin. 

Eddie swallows, eyes glued to the now-broken spine of the thick book, before peeling them away to stick to his boyfriend, who is still attempting to pull a girl with bone-crushing capabilities out of a horrific nightmare. 

“El,” Steve is trying to reach her, cautious yet still somehow clumsy. His eyes are wide and his face is set, determined, worried. “Hey—it’s just a nightmare, Eleven, wake up!”

“I think he’s really an idiot,” Says Robin, breathless by Eddie’s ear, beginning to hug his arm as opposed to just holding it in her vice grip. 

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that. Not when he’s holding his breath. And he feels terrible, because it’s Eleven—she’s a kid, head stuffed with curiosity and kindness and a fervent love for her friends. She’s fun and she’s excitable and sharp, so full of life despite being deprived of so much. Eleven is amazing, inspiring—but Eddie is still scared of her. Undeniably terrified. She has the power to kill any one of them with one twist of her wrist, a tilt of her head. And he doesn’t think that she would, not consciously—but Eddie also doesn’t believe she’d so happily destroy Steve’s living room. She’s not aware. She’s not with them, she’s in whatever horrifying place her memories can take her, whatever chaos a fractured, supernatural psyche can conjure up.

Steve is standing in the eye of a hurricane.

 A dinner plate crashes against the wooden banister of the stairs. They all startle.

And what would they do if something did go wrong? What would they do if Eleven accidentally killed Steve here, now, and woke up to find her friends in different shades of horror and outcry? What could she do, what could they do? How would she live with herself? How could anyone convince her it wasn’t her fault? How could they forgive her? Sure, Eddie knows the kids would, could—it’d be him, he thinks. He’s not so good, not so pure. Eddie’s a little rotten on the inside. If Steve died, here, he doesn’t think he could ever look at Eleven the same way ever again. 

“ Steve,” Eddie hisses, feeling the purr of worry and agitation roll through his voice like a fresh carpet over mildewed wooden floors. 

Steve looks at him, with those eyes. The eyes that say sorry, the eyes that are so pathetic and kind and stupid that every single time he makes that sort of face Eddie has to restrain himself, has to try and hold himself back from eating the plasterboard straight out of the walls, wallpaper be damned. There are so many things about Steve that get Eddie weak in the knees, heart, throat, brain—but nothing like his eyes. His eyes are a pit to fall in, barbed wire coiled on the top of a fence. They’re a trap, able to silence every protest Eddie can find, logical or otherwise, and stuff them back down his throat with such a force he can feel the flesh there burning, coiling, shriveling, dying.

“El,” Comes Steve’s plea, soft and raw, open and honest. He’s scared, no doubt about it. Eddie doesn’t believe for a second that it’s for the right reasons. Not the normal, human reasons, the ones you’re born with in the hind of your brain, instinctive and wired there for the sake of evolution, or something. The coding that’s meant to keep you alive, working in good condition. Then again, maybe every hit Steve has taken to his head has gradually loosened it into a tangled mess of red, blues and greens, maybe he took to them with pliers and cut whatever one he fancied, uncaring to the notion that he may just set off the bomb, not defuse it. 

It explodes, though. Steve puts his hand on Eleven’s shoulder with the delicate force of a pen dotting a page to end a sentence. 

He ends up on the other side of the room. Not the room they’re in, no—Steve ends up on the other side of the kitchen, having broken through the wall that stretches to separate its bland-coloured tiles from the warmer tones of the lounge. 

For a moment, nobody moves. And like a spell broken, the air shifts, items dropping to the nearest surface beneath them, Eleven dropping to the stacked mattress at her feet. Nobody moves, not until Max does, tossing herself to Eleven’s side as if it were the most natural thing in the world; the way of the universe. Lucas follows after her as if tethered, as if she held his heart like a kindly prisoner, distance too far like an ache deep in his limbs. The others break off from their small gathering like fragments from an asteroid, Mike, Nancy and Will to Eleven. Erica, Dustin, Robin and Eddie to Steve.

Steve, who’s sprawled out across black-white-checkered floors, arms spread and head limp like a doll fallen from a shelf. There’s a halo of dust and plaster wept from the remains of the wall around his body like a chalk outline on a crime scene—all things considered, it just might be. He looks beautiful, still, even like this, eyes closed and face quiet; peaceful. It makes Eddie want to hurl, hurl up blood and guts and every stupid microwave meal he’s ever had in his life because nobody should be that still. Especially not Steve; Steve who can’t stop tossing and turning in bed to save his life, blanket-stealing limb-flailing Steve, Steve who always has a leg bouncing when he’s sitting, Steve who is always shifting and fussing and fiddling. 

Eddie’s knees collide with the hard floor like a fist to teeth, dropping to Steve’s quiet body within the same instant of Robin. The way they move is practiced, orbiting Steve in shifting lines of longitude and latitude, sharing his space and always knowing where his gravity will pull the other. Eddie and Robin are supernovas within themselves, disastrous and colliding with everything in life in clumsy, planet-ending phenomena. But not with Steve. Steve is their pocket universe, the galaxy they occupy without ever catching one another’s atmospheres, without burning up or carving up into each other’s separate environments that grow in their relationships with Steve.

Then there’s Dustin. Dustin, who’s all elbows and pushy questions, a meteor blazing through the sky and everything in his path. It’s chaos, though not unwelcome, even when Eddie and Steve groan and complain and tease him for the way he so competently barrages his way through life. He does it now, smacking his shoulder into Eddie’s as he clambers onto Steve, leg kicking out and knocking Robin a little off her axis.

Erica is hovering, Eddie feels her circling them like a curious satellite. Watching, observing. Too mature to panic—too mature, period. It scares him, sometimes, just how much she’s had to grow from the things she’s had to see, to witness. But she stays there, worried but stern.

“Steve,” It’s so tender, rich with worry. Eddie’s not sure if it came from him or Robin, not while they intermesh and tangle in one another’s tangible distress. A part of him feels a kinship with Robin, beyond just the obvious—but when Steve’s hurt, it’s a different feeling. An open wound they both bleed from, just as they do now.

Carefully, Eddie cups his hand under the heat of Steve’s neck, touching for damage, collecting a stray droplet of blood that had run a stark, scarlet trail down the sharp line of his jaw with his thumb. “Steve, get up,” Eddie knows that came from his mouth; feels it wet and worn on his lips. Robin is uttering things under her breath in an array of gnawing prayers, hoping to chisel away at Steve’s unconscious like a woodchuck. Dustin, far less tactful, is prodding at Steve’s chest, chin, face. Clearly his tactic is aggravation—it’s worked before, Eddie knows it has. In times when Steve has been seriously injured, wafting in and out of the waking world, bleeding from far too many places and slurring words like an aunt at Christmas. 

It works now—or maybe it was Robin’s incessant hissing, Eddie’s fraying patience. Nonetheless, Steve’s thick eyelashes flutter like a moth at a streetlight, breath wheezing and heavy beneath his chest. Drearily, he wafts a hand to try and dismiss Dustin’s determined prodding, smacks his lips and squints at Eddie and Robin as if they were somehow responsible for his deliberate and oftentimes shocking stupidity.

“Idiot. Are you okay?” Robin prompts, taking Steve’s face into her hand, squeezing it as she tilts it her way. Eddie smacks her away, tugging Steve’s hair lightly until that bewildered expression is pointed his way, deep, slightly misty eyes wide and maybe what someone could call ruminating, if they wanted to be scholarly like that. Eddie wasn’t really in much of a waffling, mystical mood. He wasn’t feeling like reciting poetry about Steve’s stupid face and stupid eyes and stupid self. Mostly he just wanted to jostle him about a bit, see if there were any marbles still left to jingle about in that head full of air.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. But then again, Eddie wasn’t in much of a fair mood either. “You’re an idiot, she’s right. Were you even thinking? She’s a mage, she could’ve folded you in half like one of those stupid sunbeds all the moms in your stupid fucking neighborhood have in their back gardens. You could be mush right now, Steve,”

“ Mush,” Dustin echoes, in that loyal way Eddie just wants to pinch him fondly for.

“If someone knew what was in the gardens of the moms in this neighborhood?” Steve says, smiling lazily like an alley cat, “It’d be me, Eddie. I’m good,” And then he sits up far too fast, planting a fat, happy kiss dead-center on Eddie’s forehead. Robin groans, but grips Steve’s arm firmly when he begins to sway.

“You’re disgusting,” Eddie says, knowing it sounds like a love confession. “Deplorable, even. Maybe disgraceful,” With every word he’s screaming I love you, hoping Steve can feel it in his bones, in their marrow, too. Hoping it sits and broths over in their joints like jelly. “You’re also bleeding from your head, shocker,” Licking the tip of his finger, Eddie tries to swipe away some of the red that has gathered at Steve’s temple—ignoring the way he winces, though still keeping it tucked away in the large treasure chest of deep concerns Eddie has for the state of Steve’s battered brain.

Robin sighs, slaps her knees and stands up with all the grace of a geriatric woman on roller skates coated in baking grease. Erica joins her, flocking to her side and folding her arms petulantly, mimicking Robin’s posture within seconds of the older girl taking up that stance. She’s begun to do that, Eddie’s noticed—taken to Robin like a role model of sorts. Even in fashion—Erica wore suspenders to their last character-sheet-writing meet and it almost knocked him out of the stratosphere.

It’s charming, definitely. Something he’ll no doubt talk to Steve about when he’s sure his boyfriend’s kitchen floor isn’t about to be stained by his own brains. “Yeah,” Says aforementioned boyfriend, just a little dreamily, but wry enough to not be as much of a cause for concern. “You love me though, so maybe that says more about you,”

“ Gross. You two are so gross it’s making me sick. I’m gagging,” Erica punctuates this protest with obscene sound effects, clutching her stomach as she does so with serious enthusiasm. “I hope you don’t get the deposit back for your wall,”

Both Robin and Steve look confused. “I’m not sure you know what that means,” Says one as the other says, “This isn’t a rental,”

Dustin appears appropriately bemused. “I’m usually disinclined to agree with Lady Applejack, but if dingus here isn’t permanently damaged, I’m gonna check on El,” The use of the insult has Eddie ponder the influence Robin has over the kids these days. Maybe she’s the coolest one now—when did that happen? When did Dustin stop heralding him, Eddie the Not-So Banished, and turn to his dear companion Robin the Suspendered? A cruel world, indeed.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, a glare sat like a fat cat on his reluctant features. “Go for it,”

“Are you sure? You are fine?” Comes a quiet mutter from the doorway, or what’s left of it. Eleven is practically hugging the broken plasterboard, hair already speckled with its white dust. And the funny thing is, seeing her, Eddie isn’t angry, or scared. Even though Steve is definitely hurt, maybe more than he’s noticed. He’s not feeling even a scrap of resentment toward her, and it surprises him. Maybe that’s poor—maybe he’s an asshole for even considering those feelings in the first place. All the same, Eddie sees the shy, guilty way Eleven hovers in the forceful gap made between Steve’s lounge and kitchen and all he wants to do is comfort her, cursing himself for not knowing how.

Shifting with a pinched expression Eddie knows means Steve is swallowing down a groan, his boyfriend leans on him, unconsciously asking for help to stand. It’s a sixth sense in this point, the way Eddie pushes up from the floor in a quiet creak of leather and cotton to bear some of Steve’s weight on his arm, tether the two of them together, keep him up and breathing. “I’m fine,” Steve says, body arched like a disturbed cat, no doubt shielding sore ribs. “El, hey, I’m all good. You see me? I’m good.”

“You always say this.” Comes Eleven’s fair objection. “You say you are fine. You are not fine. I have hurt you.” Her face is twisted, marred with what can only be a lifetime of self-condemnation for a weapon she never chose to use, or be. “You saved me. I hurt you.”

Steve frowns, then, Eddie knows he does because he’s looking, studying his every move to the most minute detail. “What do you mean, Ellie? I saved you?” And then comes the nickname—those nicknames, the kids all have them, Eddie’s not even sure Steve knows when he uses them. They slip out as easily as a greeting does. “When did I save you?”

“In my dream,” Eleven says. She takes a tentative step forward. “You saved me. In my dream. Papa was chasing me. You stopped him. You hit him with your bat.” 

“Good.” Steve says, and Eddie feels the urge to nod just as Robin begins to do so. Fuck that guy, from what Eddie’s heard about him. “Brenner’s dead, Ellie. But if he ever came after you again? I’d get him. I swear,”

Eleven’s steps are more sure, especially now that Steve begins to stand taller, whether he’s feeling better or if he feels like he has to stay strong in the face of her fear. “I know. You did. But then he tried to hurt you. I tried to save you.” She looks around; looks at the damage. Looks at Steve, at the wall. “I was just trying to save you. I did not know I was dreaming.”

They share a glance, Steve and Eddie. It’s one of those moments where it’s just them, when Steve just needs to see Eddie, make sure he’s still there in case he stumbles backwards and just falls apart. They have those moments time and time again, but the kids—when the kids say things like that, Steve can’t do it without him, not these days. And maybe Eddie should be flattered. Maybe he should feel happy, to be so wanted. Part of him is, though most of him just feels open; empty to make space for all Steve has to carry. The looks between them offer just a handful for Eddie to take from the gaping burden his boyfriend shoulders every day. 

Eddie knows he’d do it with or without him. Knows Steve can’t stop himself, knows these kids are everything to him, knows he’s everything to them. But when given the opportunity? Eddie will take anything he can to try and balance some of that weight. 

Fingers trailing down the side of his arm as Steve begins to part from him, Eddie coils his limb back to his chest like a snake placed back in a basket. Steve moves away from him, though Eddie doesn’t feel the distance, doesn’t feel abandoned. He watches Steve carefully, as if handling precious pottery, curling himself around Eleven, drawing her near and dear like there was nothing else in the world more natural, more instinctual. 

“I’m fine,” Steve repeats into her mess of curls, thumb running firm circles into her shoulder, steadying her. “I promise. Friends don’t lie, right, that’s what you guys—,” He makes a gesture to the kids, who’ve gathered in a scattered little star in the danger-zone doorway. “You guys say, right?” 

Eleven glances over to Eddie, against all odds and entirely out of left field. After a second of flailing panic, he supposes that if anyone were to know Steve was a complete and utter liar it would be him, or maybe she expects Eddie to be able to sense his pain. Maybe Eddie can. Sometimes it feels like it, noticing the twinges and flinches in Steve’s face, the ones nobody else really looks for long enough to see. Eddie knows that Steve gets headaches so bad that they make him sick, knows that it only takes a gentle bump to have his nose bleed—and knows that the only reason he does know is because of the sheer volume of time they spend together these days. Maybe that’s why Eleven looks at him.

Or maybe Eddie, by extension of Steve and Dustin, has become someone Eleven can trust. Eddie thinks that scares him more as a prospect, that this scared little girl thinks he’s someone she can rely on. He wants to be. If he didn’t think himself unworthy, too incompetent for the job, he’d take the chance in a heartbeat.

Nevertheless, Eddie raises an awkward thumb in Eleven’s direction. He’s fine. He tries to say with his face. Maybe Steve is fine, maybe he isn’t. If he’s not, Eddie and Robin will tend to him later, scold him, cuss him out and love him all over again. They’ll find a time to do so, one that doesn’t hold years worth of a little girl’s guilt and self-loathing in the balance. 

Steve’s the kind of hero Eddie thinks these kids deserve. Steve can go into the dreams of supernatural girls and fight off their worst enemies. Maybe one day, months ago, Eddie would’ve been bitter, jealous or even resentful. Maybe he would try to hate Steve for standing so tall, forever free of hesitation even in the face of the world’s worst horrors.

Now, all Eddie feels is an overwhelming fondness. One so thick and sweet it burns in his chest like a prideful liquor.

5)

They’re in the middle of a fight when the call comes.

Fight might be an overstatement, maybe even an understatement. Eddie’s not really sure what it is. Nothing good, absolutely nothing close to it—the tension between them is brash and harsh, cutting like thick sheets of sandpaper kneading in the space separating them now like a particularly sour-tasting dough. 

There’s no vocal argument happening. No anything happening, actually, because Steve, for all his beautiful, stand-out qualities Eddie admires about him, sometimes has the emotional maturity of a fucking handful of dirt. He’s acting like a petulant child and Eddie doesn’t have the energy to pander to him like one, not for things like this. So, in a true display of everything Eddie just described, Steve was refusing to talk to him. 

It was unbearably immature. And also just unbearable. 

Eddie likes to talk. Especially to Steve, someone he knows loves to listen, someone enthused by the ridiculously specific topics Eddie enjoys rambling about. Steve makes him feel comfortable, is either actively engaged or happily relaxed while Eddie openly tosses every thought he’s ever had into the open air above their heads like a tennis ball. They always have something to say to one another, and if not vocally, they speak in different ways; gentle touches or stupid, grandiose acts of affection. Maybe Eddie will play his guitar. Maybe Steve will braid his hair.

Steve is so angry he won’t even look at him, let alone speak. And usually, when they fight, their most helpful mediator (though not their most enthusiastic) is Robin. Unfortunately, for Eddie, the entire reason for this display of stubborn silent treatment revolves almost entirely around Robin, though more specifically, Eddie’s unwillingness to agree with Steve that she’s in the wrong. Furthermore, that awkward, the just-sorta-slipped-out kind of information that Eddie knew. Eddie knew—not much earlier than Steve found out, but he knew, and even if he only knew for a minute longer than Steve did, Eddie knows it would be taken personally. And it has been.

So personally that when Eddie sat down on Steve’s sofa, his boyfriend got up and sat on the arm chair across the room.

The worst thing is, Eddie does understand. He understands every stage of Steve’s reaction, and can associate it with every aspect of the situation they’re currently in. It’s just annoying. And Eddie isn’t mad at Steve, not really, he’s just pissed that when things like this happen, Steve can’t handle the process of sitting down and talking about why he’s hurting—also knows that it’s almost entirely a product of his childhood, knows that he’s scared of being mocked and rejected. 

So Eddie isn’t sure if Steve’s home phone suddenly screaming into the silence between them is a blessing, or a curse. 

He can imagine what it is for Steve, considering how fast he’s up and across the room. Maybe that’s not entirely fair—phone calls these days can mean any number of shitty, terrifying things. Subsequently, it could also just be Dustin demanding a lift someplace, or just wanting to bother Steve about any random topic, often assuming Eddie will be there to pester, too. This time Eddie isn’t really in the mood to find out. 

So he stays sat, legs crossed, still wearing Steve’s clothes, not yet reluctantly back in their own closet—because Steve’s mad, but he’s not that mad. Eddie sighs and rests his head back against the plush cushions of the Harrington’s sofa cushions, knocking his knuckles against his knees as he tries to think of something to say that’ll break their stalemate. It’s not like he hasn’t tried—when he got here he just spoke as if nothing had happened, ranting away about how some guy had cut him off and flipped him the bird on his way over here. Steve, despite being the one who’d invited him over in the first place, had continued to stay quiet.

Maybe Steve had been building himself up to fly off the handle, or something. Maybe he’d invited Eddie over with the intention of a good, heated argument, lost his nerve the second he saw him. Maybe that’s sort of charming, knowing that his face is just that pretty.

In truth, Eddie just thinks Steve is confused, too. So he just sits, bouncing his leg, not-so patiently waiting for his boyfriend to pick one of the endless options Eddie is conjuring in his mind.

The one he ends up acting upon was on Eddie’s list, as Steve suddenly slams the phone back down and turns on his heel, facing him with a newfound determination blazing like a stray shot of caramel in a sea of pleasant chocolate. “Get in the car.” Steve barks, finally breaking his vow of silence to cast Eddie out of his home for good.

“My van?” Eddie questions, one eyebrow raising at Steve’s phrasing.

Something softens in Steve’s expression, a pinch of foggy confusion, eyes cloudy with it. He frowns at Eddie; not cruelly, just perplexed. “No?” Comes the lighter tone of his voice, raising his keys upwards, hanging from his index finger like a wind chime on a door frame. “My car. Karen called, she needs us over there now, pronto, double-time,” The relief Eddie feels he can practically taste, but as is his confusion.

“Us?” Eddie echoes, face twisted with a pug-like doubt. “I do believe Eddie the Banished to be preeetty unwelcome in the Wheeler home, Stevie,”

Steve sighs, though not in aggravation or frustration. He just looks tired. “Something’s wrong with Mike, I couldn’t really get a lot of what she was saying. She sounded pretty crazy.” Then he gives Eddie a look, real kicked-puppy like. “Said we would understand,”

“We?” Comes Eddie’s loyal chime. Then he pauses. “Like we, we, or just… you and me, we?”

Teeth catching his lip and gnawing at it for a moment, Steve hums. “Oui,” Comes the reluctant play on words that Eddie misses in the midst of his bafflement, slowly standing and tugging down the pair of Steve’s sweatpants he’s stolen from where they’ve climbed past his ankles. “I don’t think Mike would’ve said anything, but…”

“One of the kids is in peril,” Eddie says, reaching to open Steve’s front door. “I get it,” It’s said with enough fondness to leave Steve smiling for just a few seconds, momentarily choosing to forget their argument. “Let’s go get ‘em,”

The truce is a little more shaky in the car ride over, Steve suddenly quiet again where he’d usually be running Eddie through every possible scenario that could require a call so urgent. It only means he’s beating himself up about every possibility in his head, throwing his mind into each one and their worst outcome like a man on a mission. 

Tears For Fears is playing into the tense silence. Usually, Eddie would laugh. And he tries, because Eddie isn’t built for situations like this—for all Steve’s emotional immaturity, Eddie’s rivalling him in his own area: emotional awkwardness. The choked out chuckle that manages to strangle its way out of his dry throat is only acknowledged by a sharp intake of breath through Steve’s nose. 

It’s not unfamiliar territory—Steve and Eddie argue all the time. Just not like this, not genuine, stiff-silence arguing that feels like it could be world-ending, life-shifting. Usually their arguments act as a sort of preamble to better things. Eddie makes a curt comment Steve doesn’t like, Steve says something without thinking, they bicker and then they push each other back and forth a little until one of them’s backed up against a wall and every minor detail they might’ve previously worried about forgotten. Forgotten in charged kisses and hot hands. 

Eddie wishes he could kiss Steve now, kiss the anger off of his face, make use of the way it’s perched on his countenance in a prissy, stupid little pout. But driving safely is key right now, obviously. Definitely not because this feels like one of those moments in a TV series where the relationship hits the rocks.

It’s not Robin’s fault. Not really. And if it is, it’s only a tiny, tiny percentage of her fault. Which is the whole problem in the first place, Eddie thinks—he’s not willing to throw Robin under the bus for this one. Eddie supports her, supports her decision and supports her right to want more than this. Sometimes Eddie wants more. Sometimes Eddie knows Steve wants more, too, even if he’s not willing to accept it. 

They pull up onto the Wheelers’ overly-large driveway with the whining, opening tones of Head Over Heels quietly trickling through the stereo like honey out of a hive. When Steve swings the Beemer’s door open and makes his way swiftly to the front door where Karen Wheeler is hovering, Eddie starts to feel like he really has kicked a wasps’ nest. 

Steve and Robin are two people he would never want to be in the middle of in a fight. Mostly because they’re both pretty scrappy, Eddie can imagine coming out of that brawl missing handfuls of hair. But no—they’re so synced, always on the same level playing field that when situations like this pan out into some kind of brutal American football match—Eddie doesn’t know what to do. And not just because he doesn’t play sports. 

Robin and Steve are so close. It’s codependency, undeniable to the eye—and Eddie is no better, knows he’d probably collapse of heart failure within a day of distance from Steve. 

Karen Wheeler seems to have forgotten all her inhibitions about Eddie as he follows Steve up to the door, her slender, spindly arms fooling around his boyfriend and then him, encroaching and curling like a spider’s web-making. She hugs him, takes a deep breath like she’s breathing him in, and then promptly releases him, shakily wiping away a stray, dark, mascara-stained tear. 

“You wear the same cologne,” Mrs Wheeler says, voice shrill and sad. “Oh, how did I not notice sooner?” And then she bursts into a further round of fat, unhappy tears, fingers trembling where they try to shield her face. 

Feeling Steve shift beside him, Eddie loops his finger into his boyfriend’s belt hoop, keeping him close. “Who wears the same cologne?” It’s whatever Wayne used to wear, drugstore yet still warm and earthy. Used to be a bit out of their price range, but a bottle would last long enough once Wayne taught him how to use it properly. 

Breath heaving in her chest like a rattle in a cage, Mrs Wheeler seems a few shaky steps away from the edge of some Grand Canyon of total meltdown-mania. She wipes a few more tears from heavily-powdered cheeks before offering them an answer. “ Michael. He wears the same cologne as you do!” 

There’s a strange pause in which Steve just stares at Eddie, who, in return, musters an expression equally as perplexed. For a moment, Eddie wonders if there’s some sort of coded message tucked away in there, a language only suburban housewives speak. Or maybe there’s a hateful subtext he’s missing. Maybe Eddie’s being accused of having some kind of homoerotic cologne intended to attract men, but then that would imply that Mike was trying to do the same, and Mike, well, that’s—

Something cold prickles at the back of Eddie’s mind. Mike. That’s actually not out of the realms of possibility, is it? He knows it’s not.

And if the way Steve’s eyes are boring into the side of Eddie’s face is anything to go off of, his boyfriend has probably come to some sort of similar conclusion. “Is he—okay?” Steve says, voice low and a little gravelly, as if exchanging a sleepover-secret. 

“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Mrs Wheeler says, eyes wide and watery. “I was just surprised, Steve, I promise you. I don’t—I don’t mind. Or at least I’m—I’m trying not to mind.” Her tearful gaze slips awkwardly from Steve to Eddie; back to Steve again. “I don’t understand it, you, not really, but—I want to. I really, really do, and—and Ted won’t, won’t even try, so I can’t—,”

The woman steadies herself against her doorframe. “I’m so sorry to call you here so late. But if Ted knew, if he even got—got a tiny hint of anything like this going on, I don’t know—I don’t know what he’d do,” Karen Wheeler sucks in a wrecked gasp of air through a delicate gap between her two front teeth. “He wouldn’t try to understand.”

Steve’s brow, now knitted together like a grandma’s crochet, is so heavily furrowed that Eddie knows he’ll give himself a tension headache if he doesn’t manage to make things click in that lovely head of his. Unfortunately for Eddie, who’s had a conversation all-too like this before—he gets it. He has to get it. “So, Mike…? Is here, or are we talking to him?” 

“He ran off,” And then there's a new voice, the final piece of Steve’s puzzle. Will Byers, joining Karen Wheeler in the doorway. Bundled in a floral blanket, eyes red and raw. “I don't know where. I tried to follow him, but—,”

“Joyce would never forgive me if I let you out of my house into the night,” Karen scolds, sniffing indignantly. “What if you went missing? Or got hurt? The last time you left my basement—,” And then she cuts herself short, because both Steve and Will flinch, startled like they’ve just been joined in the conversation by an exceptionally large beetle. “I can’t have you both out there in the dark.”

Steve takes a breath in through his nose. “Will, get in the car.” Eddie looks at him. Steve doesn’t make an effort to return it. “Now. Car.”

Keeping the blanket tight around his shoulders, Will moves carefully past Mrs Wheeler, obediently making his way to the backseat of the Beemer. Shoulders leveling out, Steve shifts until his body is postured to shield Will from Mrs Wheeler’s view, almost as if he expects some kind of further hysteria, something to fizz up and explode when she decides she doesn’t want to try and understand after all. 

It’s not like that. Eddie knows that, knows that Steve likes Mrs Wheeler, even if he complains about her. Deep down, Eddie wonders if Steve sees something of himself in her, or something that could’ve been. Trapped in some suburban hellscape, spouse you don’t love but had enough money to appease absent, big shot parents and make use of a big, lonely house down the street. Finally quell the lifelong disappointment with some less-disappointing grandchildren. 

“What happened?” Steve says, without so much of an ounce of harshness. It’s gentle, careful and soft. Eddie feels the defensive nausea that had begun to build in his gut slowly subside. If Mrs Wheeler knows about them—them, like them, them—and it isn’t a threat to Steve, Steve who’s known her, knows her more than all of the other mothers who he knows enough to pretty much predict from woman to woman, maybe Eddie can contain his fear enough to at least not hurl it up on the Wheeler’s welcome mat. 

Suddenly, Steve curls his pinky finger around Eddie’s, and Eddie is reminded that even when he’s angry, hurt or a dangerous mix of both, Steve will never leave someone he loves to flounder about in their own fear, not alone. No, Steve is always the one to step up to the plate, brandish his foolhardy bravery and shield the cowards like Eddie relentlessly. 

And oh, Eddie loves him. Eddie meets Steve’s eyes, finds them there, deep and wet with concern and endless volumes of sincere affection. It’s boundless. Steve threads their fingers together, cocks his head just an inch in Karen’s direction, and gives his hand a squeeze. 

For Steve, Eddie forces himself to make eye contact with Mrs Wheeler, who, despite her best efforts, still seems pretty bewildered to see them actually acting like the two rampant homosexuals she’d no doubt been biting her lip about for days. With what he imagines is a poor show of confidence, Eddie smiles at her as sweetly as he can manage.

Mrs Wheeler still appears perturbed. Nonetheless, she speaks. “Will came over for dinner. He does that—he’s always done that. And has been welcome to, he’s—he’s just such a polite boy. He’s so sweet, oh, Joyce raised him so well, and—no matter what Ted says about him I know that she has,”

Steve has more patience than Eddie, at least when it comes to a woman like Mrs Wheeler. Eddie wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Her son is missing, he wants to remind her of it, they need the nitty gritty in the now, not whatever cushioning she’s attempting to make for herself when she inevitably breaks whatever subject matter had her own child fleeing into the night time of Hawkins, Indiana. Especially because that child of her’s knows exactly what can be found in that kind of night.  “Okay,” Is all Steve says, in the face of her wavering words. 

“I didn’t know,” Mrs Wheeler admits, her face the picture of heartache. “I walked in to bring them down some snacks, I’ve always—they’ve always liked snacks while they do those character sheets of yours, Edward, your—your campaigns make them both so happy,”

And it takes him by surprise, then, that Karen Wheeler knows any kind of terminology from D&D in the first place—but more so that she’s not jumping at the irresistible opportunity to blame her son’s presumed, newly-discovered… quirk on him. The guy she’s very clearly clocked as possessing a similar state of affairs. 

“They were kissing,” She comes out with it, squeaks as if by saying it she’s managed to surprise herself all over again. 

Steve holds Eddie’s hand a little harder. “ Oh, okay. Right, yes,” He says, doing a very poor effort of feigning shock. “Listen, I’m sure Mike just—I’m sure he’s worried. About all of it. You, Ted, Joyce—,”

“I reacted— poorly. I was surprised, but… I think he thought I might’ve been disgusted,” Karen admits, cheeks warm with shame. “And I wasn’t. I’m—not. I might’ve been, a long time ago. But these days—it feels like our boys are always in so much danger. I’m always going to be scared for Mike. Especially if—if this is something he’s going to pursue,”

Something hardens in her expression, then. A distant frustration. Maybe a somber sort of feeling. “I feel like I have more to be scared of than who Mike chooses to kiss. So much has happened to him, things I don’t know about, I can see it in him. And somewhere along the way I know he’s lost faith in me. He doesn’t tell me things anymore, I—I don’t even know where he would’ve gone, ran to,” Then she clasps her hands in front of her chest, presses her mouth, stained and fractured from a day-old coating of lipstick, into a thin, tense line. “So please bring him home to me, Steven. If anyone can, it’ll be you.”

Eddie feels the loss of Steve’s hand in his like a gunshot wound, fragments of a bullet splitting off from one another to cut deep into various segments of his flesh, making the ache worse until his arm feels dead where it hangs, useless. 

But then Steve uses that hand torn from his to reach and squeeze Karen’s shoulder, brings some life back to her sad, hooded eyes, and all Eddie feels is warmth. Hot, sweet blood flooding through his body in a euphoric ease, more than just pride or pleasure. Eddie watches the way Steve always just reaches, stretches the extra miles to try and ensure the people in his life can breathe a little easier. 

“We’ll find him,” Steve promises, in all shades of sincerity, rolling back onto his heels to bump against Eddie. “If I’m not back here with him in an hour, call Hopper, he’ll help me. But I think,” With a huff of breath, his boyfriend knocks some hair from his eyes with a hefty tilt of his head. “I think I know where he is. Or where he’d go.”

With an inquisitive glance to the side of Steve’s head, Eddie eventually blinks his confusion from his eyes like sleep to pose a different question. “Where’s Nancy?” He asks Mrs Wheeler, as if they should expect the girl to spontaneously appear, gun in hand ready to charge into the darkness.

“Oh, she’s with that girl, said she was having some boy troubles, I think,” Karen says, sniffling softly. “The lively one, oh—Robin, Buckley,” Patting at her cheeks again, the woman sighs. “She’s a very kind girl. It’s been so nice to see Nancy with a friend who’s a girl, again, after…”

Steve nods, likely all too aware of the fact that he is the ‘boy problem’. “Yeah, that. Do you want us to bring her home, too, or?” 

“No, no, better not,” Mrs Wheeler takes a big gulp of air from the night sky that blankets their conversation. “I would hate to interrupt their fun,” 

Eddie resists the urge to comment on the fact that she was all too ready to interrupt their fun, whether they were really having any or not. Nonetheless, even if she didn’t call, Nancy would’ve rung up Steve, and if she didn’t he would probably just be able to sense that one of the kids were in inherent danger like some secret superpower. No matter how it went down, it was highly unlikely that they would be spending their evening doing anything but scouring Hawkins in the night for one missing Mike Wheeler.

As Steve backs the Beemer down the drive, head over his shoulder as he reverses, Eddie takes the time to study Will in the rear view mirror. The kid looks tired, pale and sickly-looking, fingers white where they grip the floral blanket he dons like a lifeline. Though Wayne never walked in on Eddie with any of his trysts (as of yet) they did still have the dreaded conversation, the argument that could’ve left Eddie out on his ass in the cold if his uncle weren’t such a good man. And he is. He’s the best man—no matter how many friends Eddie finds himself with when the sun sets on the wild and wily life of Sir Edward Munson, nobody will ever come close to Wayne. 

Wayne, his best friend since forever. Wayne who was the only one who witnessed Eddie’s first steps, his parents long lost on some bender for the next week or so. Wayne, who tried to help Eddie with his spelling despite admitting that the words were always jumbled up for him. Wayne, who would always pick up Eddie from elementary and then middle school when he got into trouble, even though he had the night shift and needed the day to sleep. Wayne, who bought Eddie new shoes when his started to squeeze his feet or fall apart, just so he wouldn’t end up with forcibly deformed toes, angled to the side because nobody ever bought fresh kicks for Wayne when he was growing up. Wayne, with his microwave meals and his football games on the tiny television. Wayne, forever trying to understand and encourage Eddie’s interests. Wayne, with his cologne and his old band shirts and his records and his old guitar that he still loved like his baby even if his hands were too tired to play her anymore. 

Wayne, who opened his home and his heart to Eddie. 

And even then, their conversation— the conversation, it was hard. Not that it could ever be easy, a conversation like that. Eddie understands why Mike ran, why Will seems a good shake away from death. 

Wayne doesn’t mind, not now. Admits that it feels more natural to see Eddie with a man then a girl, tells him whenever he can that he’s so happy that he’s happy. Sometimes even mumbles here and there about times in the army where the men had found comfort in one another. Where Wayne had held and been held by his friends in ways that people might’ve frowned upon. Eddie doesn’t think he ever did mind—just thinks he was scared. Scared for Eddie, scared for what people could say and do to hurt him in a town like Hawkins.

And then they said much worse. Eddie became a satanic serial killer, instead of a rotten, cursed homosexual. 

Wayne isn’t scared about Eddie having a boyfriend anymore. Especially not, now that his boyfriend is Steve. Wayne likes Steve. Trusts Steve to take care of Eddie if things do go horrifically wrong, if they’re chased out of Indiana with pitchforks. 

Like Mrs Wheeler said—Wayne knows there are worse things they have to fear. Angry townsfolk have nothing on the twisted darkness of the Upside Down, no matter how limited their knowledge of it really is. 

Wayne came home to the body of Chrissy Cunningham. Had to see it, just as Eddie did.

They have so much more to fear.

But Will can’t comprehend that, not now, not when he’s been discovered by someone who could hold his life in her hands, not when his beau has up and fled into the dark that had once stolen Will away from everyone and everything familiar to him. 

“I don’t know where he’d go,” Will says, chest heaving. “I’m trying to think, but usually he’d—he’d just come to my house, but I think he’s worried his mom will tell mine, so I just—I don’t know,”

One leg bouncing from the passenger seat, Eddie turns his attention to Steve, who’s seemingly just driving. But then he recalls the assurance to Mrs Wheeler, and well. Steve then says, “I think I know,” In a way he doesn’t mean to be ominous, but still comes off that way to both of his passengers. 

“It’s gonna be fine, Baby Byers,” Eddie says, trying to smooth over the uncertainty radiating off of Will like a deadly toxin. “Swear. Mrs Wheeler’s not gonna tell anyone. And if she does, I’ll publically announce that I’m returning to my satanic rule and make sure everyone’s too distracted to hear anything about you,”

There’s a breathy laugh from the driver, one that sends a flurry of butterflies into Eddie’s gut. Will just releases some mix of a snort and a sob. “Please don’t do that,” The kid says, hugging his knees. “It was hard enough getting people to believe you weren’t a satan worshipper the first time around,”

“Yeah, well. If y’can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” Eddie happily announces, thrusting his arms up into the air, one of his hands out of the window to collect the chills of the nighttime air in his palm like a beacon. A call to come home, reaching for Mike, wherever he may be. 

“I really don’t think that’s what that means, Eddie,” Steve says his name like an endearment, his smile reluctant but all too obvious to hide. 

Will sniffs. “What was it you said the other day, Steve? Don’t cry over a box of frogs?”

“You hurt my feelings, William.” Steve says theatrically, almost a habit stolen from Eddie, grinning when Will makes a face about the full name. “I still think it sounds better like that,”

Eddie retracts his hand from outside, plonking it into his lap. “I don’t actually think I can tell what you were trying to say with that. And I’m meant to be fluent in whatever language you speak, apple of my eye, Stevie-pie,”

“Don’t cry over spilt milk, and, uhh…” Will frowns, itching his nose with the scratchy end of the blanket. “Mad as a box of frogs?”

“People say that?” Eddie queries, “The second one? Hey, I like that. Think I can reclaim it? Eddie Munson, Lord of the Box of Frogs?”

Steve rolls his eyes so hard it’s practically audible. “As long as you don’t actually bring a box of frogs home, you can call yourself whatever you want. But right now you’re Eddie Munson the Guy Who Stays, and that’s William Byers, the Ass Remains In Seater,” And then he abruptly turns down a quiet, narrow lane, pulling over by a clearing in the woods.

“Where the fuck are we?” Will says, rubbing his eyes. Eddie forgets just how much Joyce likes to swear until he hears it come out of her son instead.

“Language,” Steve scolds, wafting his hand at Will dismissively. “We’re in the woods,”

Eddie lifts his eyebrows. “You finally deciding to murder me Stevie?”

“Hah,” Steve says dryly, turning the ignition off. “I said I think I know where he would go and I meant it. Besides, if I was gonna murder you guys I’d be more creative, probably. The woods are so overdone,”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Will grumbles from the backseat, releasing his seatbelt to lie down over them both. 

“So then we’re in the woods, because…?” Eddie drawls, a catlike smile creeping up his face when Steve’s ears begin to go red.

“I said it’s because I know where he’d go,” Steve barks, twirling his car keys over his index finger with an agitation. 

Will sighs audibly in the backseat with enough drama and passion to rival Eddie in his younger years. “If you just know that he’s in the woods, we’re gonna be waiting a long time for you,” Then he rolls onto his side, face squished against the fine leather of Steve’s back seats. “We should just call Hopper, or El…” And then he goes quiet, face warm. “Maybe not El. I don’t know! You can’t just… stroll off into the woods, or…” Will pulls a face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Shifting in the passenger seat, Eddie moves to find Steve making even more of an aggrieved face. “I’m not just wandering off into the woods. I know what I’m doing and where I’m going,”

“And where is that?” Will says, eyes narrow enough to be sharp. 

Under his breath and with serious reluctance, Steve mumbles, “The treehouse,”

“The what house?” Comes Will’s curt reply. “What treehouse?”

Not entirely sure if he should jump to Steve’s aid in this harsh interrogation or stay quiet so he can fill his curious boots up, Eddie settles for just raising his eyebrows at Will. Subsequently, Steve groans and drags his hands down his face, like his arm is being twisted. “My treehouse. Listen, I always wanted one, my dad thought it was like, un… court, or something,”

“Uncouth,” Will supplies, only to be shushed.

“Yeah, whatever, that. I really, really wanted one, so I used to come out into the woods behind my house looking for a good, sturdy tree, y’know? If you’re gonna build a house in a tree, it’s gotta be a good tree.” Despite this additional commentary being entirely useless, Eddie still listens to Steve’s every word like he’s a preacher. “And I found one, about a couple miles out from my backyard. Huge. But I knew my dad wouldn’t make me one, so…”

Steve flicks down the sunvisor in his car, absentmindedly adjusting the picture he has pinned there, just overlapping with the mirror he then uses to scrape some hair out of his eyes. Eddie doesn’t have to look to know what the little polaroid is—he’s seen it a thousand times since Jonathan took it for them. Just a small square, a snapshot of Eddie and Steve, entangled together on the Byers’ patchy sofa, all limbs and love and languid happiness. Anytime Eddie finds himself in the Beemer he always flicks down the drivers’ sun visor, just to see it, make sure that it’s still there.

And it is still there, even if Steve holds this grudge about Robin forever. It makes him feel better.

“I started to build it on my own. And then one day I, like… fell out of it, bumped my knee really hard. Went back home and my nanny, Agnes, like… freaked,” Steve shakes his head, almost as if the memory itself was scolding him all over again. “Made me explain, while she patched me up, then laughed, like, you should have just said, and all, you did not have to sneak! And then she invited her husband over, didn’t tell my parents, obviously.” Rolling his wrist around like a globe on its axis, Steve breathlessly chuckles. “We spent most of summer out there, her husband helping me build it properly. She’d bring picnics, and we’d eat them in the woods until we could eat them in the treehouse. Sort of felt, like, I dunno. What families should do,”

Then Steve takes Eddie’s hand, whether he realises it or not. Rubs his thumb on the back of it in smooth, steady circles. “My mom accused Agnes of stealing something, I don’t really remember what. Some stupid earrings she’s probably never wore. Said I was too old for a babysitter, and plenty of boys can look after themselves at six,” Will is quiet, quiet in the way people are when they’re trying to be respectful, when someone’s broached a topic, peeling a bandaid off a wound. “I still had the tree house, though. I went a whole lot, especially whenever my folks were actually in Hawkins. Good place to hide, clear your head, think about stuff,”

Eddie pictures it: little Stevie, wiping wet eyes as he flees the Harrington house, squeezing through the gate behind his pool to run off into the darkness and the foliage like it was the better alternative. Trading warmth and luxury to go and hide out in what was no doubt a classic, wet and mildewed shelter in the middle of the woods. Little Stevie liked it better there, even when he would come home with a cold and a fever to take care of on his own.

“I didn’t go for ages, after all the stuff with the Upside Down, but then I started keeping supplies there, y’know? Gasoline and bats and fireworks, concerning stuff I couldn’t just… heap up in my garage,” Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand, then, as if expecting him to protest, reprimand him for being paranoid and prepared for the worst—as if they all weren’t doing the same thing in different shades. Nancy and her gun in purse. Robin and her dedication to learning Russian fluently. Jonathan always has a lighter in each pocket, for different purposes. Eddie forever waiting for the other shoe to drop, the tapes of every person he knows favourite song stacked up in his van.

Will meets Eddie’s eyes in the rearview mirror, almost as if he expects him to react suddenly, too. Eddie doesn’t—he stays hushed, for once holding his tongue so Steve can get whatever this dampness is off of his chest. 

“Mike came over to my house this one time, knocked on the door cuz he wanted to get away from everything back at the Wheelers’. Ted giving him a hard time, Karen nagging, Holly throwing a tantrum, y’know, like… that sort of shit. But my parents, it was one of the weeks over the summer they spent a couple days here, just… poor timing.” Steve scratches the side of his face. “I had to pretend he’d lost his dog, or some shit. My dad had been…” His eyes flick to Eddie, pausing in what would no doubt be a comment that would make him want to scream bloody murder, maybe take up the weaponry Steve had been discussing to go and murder a guy for real this time. “My dad was being my dad, y’know, so I just…” 

Steve shrugs. Pats his car door. “Packed us both up in the Beemer and went for a drive. Drove around and around in circles so Mike could just, like… shout that shit out. Get it out of his system. And the whole time I was just driving, I was like… I wish there was a place, like. Somewhere he could go when he can’t come to mine for that shit. If I’m ever away, or…” The silence that follows that sentence causes a shift in tension, the air in the Beemer far thicker, heavier. Whether Steve means to say dead or gone doesn’t matter at all—those are the two words Eddie and Will no doubt fill the gap with in their heads.

“So I took him to the treehouse. Told him about it, and shit, like… got it fixed up properly over a couple weeks so it would be safe as hell, childproofed it to all shit,” Steve’s leg is bouncing again, hand tense and hot where it sits in Eddie’s palm, picking at his thumb with the finger on his other hand. “So I think I know where he is. And I’m gonna go… get him, now. So stay here,” And he leaves, closes the door behind him so swiftly and firmly the protest stuck in Eddie’s throat doesn’t even have the chance to bloom out of his mouth, just stays jammed in there, a thick stalk scratching away at the flesh in there. 

Eddie and Will find themselves sitting in the charged silence Steve left behind. 

Glancing back into the rearview mirror, Eddie stares at Will, blankly and blatantly. Because again, this is one of those moments, the moments Eddie has begun to feel encroaching upon him like an alien invasion from the skies. This is the moment Eddie is meant to turn and give Will Byers the most inspiring, optimistic, from-the-heart, gay-guy advice, changing his life for the better and forever becoming a figure of homosexual alliance, a leader in the forces of male affection and an advisary for all the Will-Byers of the universe.

Instead, Eddie turns around and asks, “Was it a good kiss, at least?”

And is met with a blanket to the face. “Shut up!” Will protests, face flaming.

Raising his hands in surrender, Eddie chuckles as he bundles the blanket back up into his arms, making a parcel to deliver back to Will, dodging the darting hands that try to reach and smack at him. “Hey, it’s a fair question, Will the Wise. If you’re to be banished as I once was, I hope it was at least for a good reason,” 

“Hah, you’re funny,” Will drawls, dripping with a sarcasm Eddie had grown to expect from him and his attitude. Ironically, Eddie had expected Will to be the calmest of the bunch—and sometimes he was. But that sharp tongue was a force to be reckoned with, something that took him by surprise the first time he was at its pointy end. “You wanna talk about relationships, Eddie the Banished? Fix your own,”

Eddie swiftly turns in the chair to give Will a very pointed eyebrow raise. “Oh?”

Colouring, Will goes a funny colour, turning to stare out the car window as opposed to facing Eddie directly. “Dustin told all of us that you guys were fighting,” He eventually rolls out like a mouldy old rug, earning a huff of breath from Eddie’s nose. “He doesn’t really know why. Something about Robin, or college, or something. Are you going to college, Eddie?”

Laughing wryly, Eddie gets comfortable in the passenger seat again. “Unless I pull a Marty McFly, no chance. Besides, the American education system just isn’t built to handle such inspiring citizens such as myself. They can’t handle my good looks, my valour, my intrigue, as you can imagine,” 

“Then is Steve going to college?” Will queries, picking at the lining of the carseat. 

“Not as far as I know,” Eddie says, and Eddie knows. While the party life may have once suited King Steve, no way was college the kind of scene Steve would want to subject himself to right now, if ever. College, while maybe better than highschool, just meant more grades, more rules, more classes and people. More dark hallways, large crowds and shadows Steve wouldn’t be able to ignore. It would mean away from the familiar, away from the kids and Eddie and Robin.

“So Robin’s going to college,” Will says, and Eddie can see something flicker in him, an interest, an understanding, from the rear view mirror.

Eddie sighs, brings his feet up onto the seat and shrugs his shoulders. “Yyyyyyep. Robin got accepted into her first choice college almost immediately. Full ride scholarship, accommodation and all, beautiful place and not so… sheltered. Pretty sure they even have gay bars over there,”

“Sick,” Will says, now pulling away the loose threads of Karen Wheeler’s blanket like a dormouse. “So what’s the problem? Shouldn’t you guys be happy for her? Why is Steve mad at you?” Then he frowns. “Maybe that’s why he was such an asshole the other day, when he picked us up from the arcade,”

Knocking his knee against the dash in a broken rhythm, Eddie’s teeth find his bottom lip. “He was hungover,” Comes the bitter remark, at first. And then he pauses, catches himself. “But he still came to pick you little rascals up, did he not? Cut him some slack. It’s not… so simple, Warlock Will,” Because it isn’t. As much as Eddie would love it to be so simple, Steve’s spiralling again, and is far too prideful to talk it out with anyone, Eddie included. He’s just… retreating. The moment Eddie came home from work and found Steve making friends with his parents’ expensive, untouchable wine supply from their cellar, Eddie knew that it was going to be a colossal disaster. Add in Eddie’s perceived betrayal—match, flame, boom. 

“I don’t get it,” Will says, just a little petulantly. “You guys can’t break up. You’re like… you,” 

Swinging his head to the side with so much force Eddie feels his neck try to disembark from the rest of his body, he contorts his body at an unnatural angle to gawk at the boy at the backseat. “ Woah. Woah-hoah, slow your roll Baby Byers, take a second and let me catch up there, haha, I don’t know where you’re headed, but nobody’s breaking up. Essssp—ecially not me and Stevie. No-way, he’d have to work way, way harder to kick me to the curb. I’m like a leech. Need a hot poker to crisp me off, flip me on a barbecue like a patty til I’m nice and burnt and slip me into a fluffy burn, dip me into criminal amounts of condiments and then feed me to the dogs,” 

Will, once again, has a sour look on his face. “You didn’t have to say… it like that . ”

“I really have to get my point across with you kids, with your wild ideas and gossipy natures. How many times did Dustin try to seduce that orc last session?” Eddie huffs air out through his nose, longs and itches for a cigarette. Steve would kill him for making the smell stick to the car interior, though. 

Laughing a little reluctantly, Will tries to make his face solemn again. “Yeah, but that’s Dustin. Also, we only talk about you guys because you’re our friends. Max didn’t see the Beemer outside of your new trailers for a few days and was convinced you guys had some tragic break-up,” When Eddie goes to try and speak again, Will wafts his hand at him dismissively with an indignant flair that could only have been learnt from Mike. “If you’re not breaking up, what did you do that made Steve mad? Robin’s the one going to college, and I don’t get why he’s mad about that either.”

Twisting the largest ring on his hand until he feels his finger become sore with the movement, Eddie tries to think, gathering some sort of reasoning for Will that won’t misrepresent any of them. When he comes up short, Eddie bites the bullet and settles for the natural ridiculousness Steve, Robin and himself seem to naturally attract—alternatively, he decides to just be honest. “Robin got accepted into college yonks ago. Like, months ago-yonks, not a couple weeks ago-yonks. And she didn’t tell Steve, cuz…” Scratching the side of his head, Eddie hesitates. “Well, this. Like, all of this happening right now. So she dropped it on him a few days ago, mid-shift. Which, like… bad. That sucks, right? But Steve had never asked her what she was doing with college and everything, so Robin never worked up the guts to tell him and I think he was too piss-terrified to want to know the answer.”

Eddie knocks his knuckles against the cool leather of the seat. “And now Robin is leaving for college next week, and I’m preeeetty sure she doesn’t plan on making a habit of coming back. Especially since then it came out that Nancy’s going to move out there in a few months to pick up an internship that offers a scholarship at the end of it for a college close by, and Steve…” What can he say? What words are there that could possibly begin to summarise the unfathomable grief Steve is feeling, the loss? “It’s like she’s leaving him, not trying to move away for the, like… bettering of her life. He feels like she’s abandoning him, and you know what they’re like,”

“Two halves of a person,” Will supplies, picking at his jeans. His eyes are wet with thought.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, careful. “It’s not, like… Robin isn’t going to ever speak to him again, or shit like that. It’s a distance, but… Steve has a car, we can both drive. It’s just a huge change, and… I don’t think Steve likes that shit, not even one bit. I mean, he gets pissed off when they don’t have the brand of sugary breakfast cereal he likes in the store.” Messing with the chipped polish on his thumb, Eddie finds himself fumbling with his words the way he does with the dark flakes painted there. “Steve loves her a lot. Like, she’s his soulmate. I know he wants her to be happy. I know he knows she can’t be happy here, but, like… I dunno. Shit like that gets messy. He just needs to come around before it’s too late,” Eddie sighs, sighs so hard he runs out of air, runs out of oxygen to give his brain anything to form words with other than base instinct. 

Will looks tired, but still stirs with a sad kind of pondering. Thinking, understanding. “I’ll miss her,” He says, eventually. “Robin. Nancy, too, but like… Hawkins always felt too small for them. For all of us, I think. And I’m happy to be back here from Cali, but I’m not… happy here, if that makes sense,”

“Yeah, it does,” Eddie says, meeting those sharp eyes in the rear view mirror. “It really does. But you’re gonna find a place, Will the Wise. Somewhere in this fucked up world? There’s gonna be somewhere with your name on it. And it’s gonna be worth allllll this shit. It’s gonna balance it out, and you’re gonna have a fucking amazing life, man,”

Despite his best efforts, Will ends up giving in to the small smile that creeps up onto his face like a spider out of snow. “Yeah? You pull a Marty McFly to tell me that?”

“I don’t need to,” And puffing up his chest, Eddie begins to sing, “I can seeee it in your eyes!” And then continues, to the sound of Will’s horrified laughing, “I can seee it in youuur smile!” 

With what can only be described as an embarrassed reluctance, Will meets eyes with Eddie, sighs heartily, and knocks his head back to sing, “You’re all I’ve ever wanted!” Before throwing his limbs across the backseat. “And my aaarms are open wide!”

“Scream it!” Eddie yells, pumping his fist up in the air. “Cause you know just what to say!”

“And you knooow just what to do!” Will sings, breathily and with as much passion as he can muster, voice hoarse and cracking. 

There’s a knock on the car window. 

“What the hell are you two doing?” It’s Steve, with a grave-looking Mike at his side. 

Refusing to fluster, despite the heat in his face, Eddie slides down in the passenger seat to grin at Steve, smooth and sultry, “And I waaant to tell you so muuuuch,” Batting his eyelashes ferociously, “I love youuuu,” To add a final touch, he pretends to strum a little guitar, smiling as sweetly as a man in the doghouse can. 

“Gross,” Mike says, looking sour and entirely displeased with Eddie’s very existence within a foot of him. “Can’t you make him walk home?” He says shortly to Steve, who just laughs, rubs his eyes and ruffles Mike’s hair, to his immense discontent. 

It’s only when Steve is packing Mike into the back of his car does Eddie notice how both of their faces look pink and purple, red and raw from what is no doubt a poor effort of rubbing away tears—how Steve checks not once, not twice, but thrice many times on Mike before beginning to pull away from the woods. How Mike curls up against Will’s side, who drapes the blanket over them both. Mike, rubbing his nose into the blanket for the smell of his family’s laundry detergent, then putting his face into the crook of Will’s neck for the smell of him, for the comfort of both familiarities. 

It hurts a little, seeing the way Mike sniffles when they pull up onto the Wheeler drive again, just because he knows he has to part from Will. To speak with his mom, despite Steve’s insistence that they could put it off—he could stay over with him, or Joyce, whoever he wanted. 

But then Mike gives Will’s hand a squeeze, bumps himself against Steve when he comes to open the door to the Beemer, nods curtly to Eddie as he starts his walk away from the car. Mike does what none of the three of them remaining could ever do with such bravery, with the confidence to keep his legs from buckling as he walks up his own drive like he has done a thousand times before. 

Mrs Wheeler is standing in her doorway, silk nightgown on, hair in rollers. Eddie expects her to hide herself away in embarrassment, swiftly close the door behind Mike with no further acknowledgement.

Eddie is proven wrong when Karen Wheeler flies out of the front door, running across the tarmac of her driveway with just the one slipper, bundles her boy up into her arms like there was never any doubt. Mike is her’s, will always be her’s, and she will never be ashamed to have him be her’s.

The drive home is quiet, but comfortable. Will nods off on the way across town, Steve noticing and slowly the Beemer’s crawl to the Byers’ house. Eddie hums lowly to Lionel Richie in his head, feeling the temptation of sleep kissing up his spine, crawling through his hair, thumbing at his chin. 

He only realises he gave in when Steve turns off the ignition, Eddie no longer coaxed by the low rumble of the engine.

“Oh,” Eddie says, staring up at the trailer park. 

Steve’s looking at him, eyes large and round and wet. “I’m really sorry,” He says, in the way he does when he’s trying to not let his voice shake. “I’ve been an asshole. I understand why she didn’t wanna tell me,” Then he reaches, fiddling with one of the rings that sits on his index finger, stolen from Eddie, no doubt. “And I shouldn’t have… been pissed with you for not telling me either.” 

“It wasn’t my place,” Eddie echoes, voice low and grumbly from his slight lapse in consciousness.

A hand settles on his thigh. “I know,” Steve says, eyes swimming with regret, guilt and affection. “I’m so sorry, Ed. I’m only bringing you home so I can…” He sighs, chest heavy. 

“Talk to Robin,” Eddie curls their fingers together, hand hugging the back of Steve’s. “You better, go-getter,”

“We’re fine?” Steve asks, tentative. Almost shy, in the way that he’s unsure. 

Grin creeping onto his face, Eddie curls his lip, nose slightly wrinkled. “We’re fine,” And then his stomach turns pleasantly, Steve’s hand settling on his lower neck, drawing him in until their foreheads touch, noses placed together like pieces in a jigsaw. “Very fine,” He says, a whisper against Steve’s lips, which purse, crinkling with a smile. 

Steve takes a shuddering breath, closing his eyes, lashes thick and wet. Eddie watches him, skin tingling and toes curling until the bullet is bitten and his boyfriend tilts his head up to brush their lips together, soft and tender until he catches Eddie’s lower lip with his teeth, gently tugging at it, drawing a sharp breath from out his chest. Fisting a hand in Steve’s hair, fingers down to the scalp, Eddie pulls, drags his head back to have him bare his neck, peppering kisses up the pale, freckled column. 

Smiling, Eddie leans forwards and pecks him softly. “Stop stalling, Romeo,” Reaching to release the seat belt, he basks in the wounded-puppy expression melting on Steve’s face, cupping his cheek and winking. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Go see her,” 

He’s halfway to his trailer when Steve suddenly leans out the car window to call, “Eddie!” Just a little too loud, making the both of them wince. 

“Yes?” Eddie says, stuffing his hands into his pockets with a wide smile biting at his face. 

Steve hesitates, mouth opening and closing. He almost looks confused, maybe with himself, when his body sags and he retreats from whatever he was going to say. “See you tomorrow,” And then he sits, face as sad as a little lost puppy dog, firing the Beemer back up to life. 

“See you,” Eddie says to the night time air, a confused sort of comfort settling over him like a blanket, nurturing him as he finds his footing once the headlights of the Beemer are nothing but another pair of lights in the nighttime sky, flickering, wavering, waning. 

Wayne thinks he’s just a little more insane than usual when he comes inside and says: “Where’s the nearest dog shelter?”

1

“It’s so ugly,” Comes Max’s expected snipe, arms folded stiffly across her chest as she gazes down at where the small gathering of white fur has collected itself by her feet. “Who’s an ugly girl? Oh, you’re an ugly girl, aren’t you? Yes you are!” 

Looking horrified when the strange-looking dog starts to wag her little tail, Erica gasps, falling to her knees to scoop her up in a bundle, squeezing her tight against the waistcoat she’s wearing, borrowed from Robin. It’s far too big, but she seems to be incredibly pleased all the same. “Shut up , Princess is not ugly, she’s just unique!”

“No way are we calling her Princess,” Max bickers, face contorting with disgust. “We’re calling her Kate, or Katie,”

Dustin snickers from across the room. “Or Bush,” And yelps when Max then uses a cushion to toss at his head like a projectile.

“Not cool man,” Says Lucas, though he had to choke down a laugh at the crude joke, feeling the scrutiny of his girlfriend like the harshest flames of hell. He glances at Eleven, who’s got one arm still linked with his, seemingly oblivious to what the problem is. “Isn’t Steve gonna name her? Or is this like adoption, we give him the dog with a name,”

“I’m pretty sure you can change the name of a baby you adopt, moron,” Max says, almost fond in her snarky nature. 

Lucas shrugs. “I don’t think she’s a baby. She’s a bit scraggly around the edges,”

“The shelter said they didn’t know how old she was. She came to them as a stray,” Claudia Henderson supplies, nursing a large cup of herbal tea to her chest, wrapped up in one of Wayne’s jackets. “They said the poor thing had been just tossed out of a moving car, probably bumped her little head, too, oh what a darling,” Making kissing noises from where she sits, the mother practically glows when the dog’s tail begins to wag with more excitement. She’d already spent the better part of a day discussing all the jumpers she was to knit for their new arrival.

Will nudges Mike, the two of them side by side, sharing the small space of the trailer’s armchair. “At least Steve will have that in common with her, then. Head injuries,” 

Erica gently sets the dog down on the carpet, the kids studying the odd little creature with fascination as she bounds through the Munson trailer with boundless energy, entirely unable to stay steady or straight as she staggers around on legs much too small for her disproportionate body. “That they will,” Comes Wayne’s voice from the kitchen, drying his hands on an old dishcloth as he crouches down to greet the dog he’d been lovingly addressing as ‘dinky.’ “Heya, Dinky. Hah, think they’ve got that hair going for ‘em too. She’s all fluff, just like your boy, Eds,”

Setting down the last of the plates he’d been drying, Eddie laughs, sudden and with glee, knocking his heels together as he skips up to where Steve’s present was running circles around his uncle’s ankles. “Hey, you might be right about that,” Then he presses his lips to his fingertips, whistling until the dog’s ears lift, her little head cocks and gawks at him in confusion. “C’mere,” And then she starts, almost tripping over herself in an effort to leap into Eddie’s arms—a feat she somehow miraculously manages despite her small stature.

It had been one of many things that drew Eddie to her in the dog shelter—so many messes of fur and tongues and crossbred disasters, yet she was the slightly-ugly, genetic catastrophe that shone through them all. He’d gone with Claudia and Wayne, crouching down at every cage and examining each of their occupants with a sharp focus—this dog had to be the dog. The perfect mix of basket case and lovable thing for Steve to pity and dote upon. 

Claudia had been enamoured with a chihuahua-cross near the start. Wayne loved the bigger dogs, despite Eddie’s insistence that the delicate Harrington household wouldn’t be able to cope. Eddie had loved them all, in truth, especially their fucked up little quirks. 

But the stupid little dog currently wriggling happily in his grip, light as a feather—well. She was just something else. With all of her paws in her water bowl when Eddie reached her cage, the dog had then proceeded to leap out with such a fervour that she’d tripped and fallen on her little face, spinning in a few excitable circles and shaking off her wet fur so vigorously she toppled back into the water bowl again. 

Basket case, check. Lovable thing was easily ticked when Eddie asked one of the volunteers to let him meet her, and then she’d jumped a few feet in the air just to come and greet him.

She was the one. Already chewed through several garments, impossible to scold when she does so. Determined to make everything a game of fetch, determined to play, to love and live, even with her history of being mistreated. She was the one. Eddie’s dog, Steve’s dog, soon to be their dog. Yappy and annoying and persistent, almost too stupid to be alive and near-impossible to discipline. Traits no doubt inherited from them both. Their little abomination.

“Morbid Angel,” Eddie had suggested as a name to Nancy, who’d turned up her nose and scoffed at him, pressing a kiss to the top of the dog’s head despite her insistence that she didn’t like dogs all that much, and the mere thought of animal fur or drool all over her clothes was just too horrifying. (Ironic, considering the sheer muck she’d faced in the Upside Down, but maybe that was the point. Dog hair is the most annoying thing to come across now she’s experienced guts and alien plant matter.) Iron Maiden as a name was also rejected.

Having pet the dog for another good few minutes, Nancy eventually suggested names like, “Lucy,” Which had been shot down, since Lucy Moorell had dated Steve in freshman year, then, “Sammy,” And Eddie had made a face, since Steve had been given her number two summers ago and never called because her voice was too nasally, “Clara,” Was Steve’s most turbulent middle school girlfriend, so that was a no-go, and when Nancy offered up, “Lola,” And Eddie winced, the two of them decided to just steer clear of classic girl’s names all together.

“He’s so promiscuous,” Nancy had declared, shaking her head at the dog that was now trying to gnaw on her ballet flats. “Nancy Wheeler’s a slut? What a joke, huh? Your dad’s a slut, peanut,” Then she’d burst into peals of laughter when the dog had started yapping at her, as if understanding. “There you go, Eddie. She’s already to jump to his defence,” 

Eddie had bumped his shoulder into Nancy’s, and reached to gently tap the dog on the nose. The thing had gone quiet, and her tail wagged uncontrollably as her eyes practically shone in thrilled expectation. “Good girl. Man’s best friend, right?” Then he scratched her ears, chuckling to himself. “Yeah, I’m so gonna train her to eat Demobats. Think she’s got some terrier in her?”

Now, as Eddie was watching the expected chaos of the whole Party in his trailer, Nancy was giving Robin a ride to Steve’s, under the impression of a movie night. In actuality, Steve was preparing a surprise good-luck party for Robin, and in actual actuality, it was going to be a surprise for them both, if they managed to wrangle the dog into the pet carrier.

Which was seeming like an impossibility; Max yelping and swearing as the dog wiggled, Erica giggling and gleefully chasing her round and round the small space, Dustin trying to corner her by the sofa, Mike leaping up in the air when she darted between his ankles, Will almost tripping over Lucas’ effort to tackle the dog out of motion, Eleven eventually putting them all out of their misery, having her gently float up into the air. Judging by the palpable, wriggling happiness on the dog, she was clearly enjoying her newfound ability to defy gravity. 

“Goodness,” Wayne said dryly, rolling his eyes at them all, plucking the dog from the air. “I’ll just hold ‘er, none of this fuss. We’re late already, load up in yer chosen vehicles, go, go,” And with a purposeful glance to Eddie, his uncle began to carry their surprise present to his van.

“We’re definitely sure that Steve likes dogs, right?” Lucas asks, poking his head into the front after Eddie turns on the ignition of the van. “What if he’s allergic?

Tapping his knuckles on the side of the wheel, Eddie huffs out a laugh. “While I’m suuure your concern comes from the very depths of your darling heart, Sinclair, and not an ulterior motive to steal Steve’s dog,” He makes sure to eye Erica, too, who’s got her arms folded so sharply her elbows could be weaponized, “I think I would know if Steve was allergic to dogs,” 

“Did you actually ask?” Max says, jutting out her head so hard one of her braids hits Eleven in the face, who then just giggles, taking it into her hands and fiddling with it. “Wouldn’t be the first time you do something impulsive without thinking. Like, I dunno, when you bought Steve that huge bouquet of flowers that one time at the height of allergy season, and he looked like he’d been punched in both eyes all week because he was determined to keep them?”

With a sigh so ferocious Eleven startles and stares at him with wide eyes, Eddie says, “No, I didn’t ask and those flowers were the best, Steve swooned like I’d hit him with a high charisma roll,” 

“Or maybe he just didn’t roll high enough to defend himself from your poison attack, Eddie The Stupid .” Erica says pettily, hands in the large pockets of her borrowed waistcoat. 

“I thought I was your favourite, Lady Applejack,” Eddie says, mournful. “It’ll be a shame when I suddenly kill you mid-campaign at the height of your character arc,” 

Wayne shakes his head in disapproval from beside him in the passenger seat. “Hey now, stop threatenin’ children with yer story game. I asked Steve if he had any dog problems,” 

Before he can be too impressed, Max shoots Wayne a look from the backseat. “Because your new sweetheart told you to?”

“Mmh, my new missus said Steve would tell me anythin’ I asked, din’t she?” With a hearty chuckle, Wayne smiles a little dreamily off into space. “Clever woman, my Claudia,”

It’s cute. Definitely. Eddie’s happy for them, even if it feels a tiny bit gag-worthy to hear Wayne all loved up. The other day his uncle spent a good ten minutes talking about the natural boyish charm Claudia had claimed he still had. 

“It’s so weird that old people can date,” Erica loudly declares to the van’s passengers, inciting a riot of laughter from its occupants, even the dog, who yaps in a sincere eagerness to be included.

Wayne, a little put out, ends up grumbling, “Y’can go back t’yer threatening now, Eds,” 

“Ran out of respectable ways to stall for time?” Eddie quips to Nancy, who’s busily trying to tuck her shirt back into her long, plaid skirt. Licking his thumb, he reaches to try and help scrub the slight smear of red lipstick on her pinkish shirt collar.

Flustering, Nancy glares at him without much heat, tossing her hair out of her face to gather around her neck, covering the evidence. “Well if you’d just done a better job of wrangling everyone here on time, Eddie, maybe I wouldn’t have to—,”

“Everything okay?” Asks a very peppy Robin, practically buzzing as she knocks into Eddie in greeting, rolling back and forth on the balls of her feet. It’s an incredibly difficult challenge, choking down the strangled laughter that fights for dominance with social acceptability when Nancy just melts, simpering at Robin like she was a very nice, open fire after a day-long hike through snow. 

“Perfect,” Nancy smiles, looping her arm around Robin’s and pulling her near, bodies pressed together as they walk in tandem up the Harrington drive. 

Only mildly bewildered in her loved-up haze, Robin raises an eyebrow when all the kids start running around the side of the house, letting themselves in through the side gate. “Why…?”

“Enough questions, Buckley,” Eddie says, grin contorting his face until it’s stretched unnaturally up both sides. “Just keep it moving,”

If she weren’t being shepherded by her girlfriend, Eddie has no doubt that Robin would’ve stopped to chew Eddie into little, mushy pieces over his deliberately vague, off putting nature, but thanks to the hand of god (one Miss Nancy Wheeler,) they continue their very brief climb. It’s only when they’re standing at the foot of Steve’s doorway do the nerves start to fray, Eddie’s not-so-carefully woven plan starting to feel like it could unravel entirely. What if Steve doesn’t like the dog after all? What if he was waiting to put his hand in wallet and put a few thousand down for a golden retriever, or something. What if Steve doesn’t get along with her, or she ends up biting just a bit too hard, terrorizing the peaceful suburbia of this neighborhood? What if the dog is actually centuries old, a vessel of Satan and Eddie is inviting the devil into Steve’s life?

Then Steve opens the door, smiles wide and bursting with the giddy excitement of his surprise party, and Eddie feels the thrill of his own surprise curdling in his gut. “Hey Stevie,”

“Hey Ed,” Steve says, his words curling up at the ends in the way they do when he’s trying his best to hide something. “Safe journey here?”

Robin narrows her eyes, moving to look from Eddie, to Steve, then Nancy. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Nancy asks, trying to force her lips to stay straight. Her cheeks are warm.

Incredulous, Robin aggressively postulates with her one free hand. “Steve just asked Eddie if his journey here was safe. He also looks like he’s just done a tab!” 

“You got us. This is actually a covert drugs operation. Steve’s been testing the supply,” Eddie salutes, stepping aside to invite Robin to take a few steps forward. “Sir yes sir, awaiting orders Cap’n Buckley!” 

Eyebrows ascending and descending on her face like a faulty escalator in a shopping mall, Robin eventually just subjects herself to whatever stupidity has been prepared, acting like stepping inside is the equivalent to walking the plank on a pirate ship. For her troubles, she gets a chorus of children gleefully screaming like the very bells of hell, their own disastrous rendition of happy birthday.

“Hi!” Robin shouts back, instinctively. “It’s not my birthday?”

Nancy looks bemused. “They know. It’s a surprise party, but Dustin told El about the happy birthday song being a right of passage for surprise parties, and, well…” The hand gesture she makes is essentially a more polite shrug. 

“What a terrifying little song. Thank you, all,” Bowing her head as Eleven gleefully attaches a party hat to the top of her head, Robin surfaces beaming, hands jittering at her sides. “Oh, man, are those sausage rolls? The fancy ones?”

Face the picture of disbelief, Steve scoffs. “It’s your going-away party , Robin. I wasn’t just going to buy you the cheap ones. Fancy sausage rolls, fancy fake champagne, fancy soda water, fancy finger biscuits, the whole red carpet event,” Flinging his hands up in the air, “Premium quality, Buckley!” 

“Ok, ok , yeez!” Robin laughs, falling into Steve, who squeezes her against him just a little tighter than usual, as if trying to indent the very feeling of her hug into him, like he’d forget. He catches Eddie’s eyes across the room. They’re sad, yet still gleaming with the familiar sort of warmth they catch when the whole Party is milling around the often-empty space of his home, taking up the stale air of the lonely rooms and breathing it back out hot and pleasant. 

Robin pops a sausage roll in her mouth. “ Mmmgh . The texture of these are just so much better than the cheap ones. God, I love rich people food,” 

Reaching to take one from the plate, Eleven is the first to shift out of their secondary-surprise positions, plucking a sausage roll and popping it in her mouth. “Mmh. I like these. Maybe this should be the name,”

There’s a pause. Steve, who always seems to drop everything to listen to every word Eleven has to say, raises a brow. “The name of what?” 

Eddie hears the door to his van opening again just as Erica indignantly shouts, “Her name is Princess!”

And then there’s the fateful meeting. It’s almost biblical, in Eddie’s mind, the way the dog bounds inside, legs moving far too fast for its fluffy little body. Steve, startling, his eyebrows practically touching the top of his hairline as he adjusts to the new company in the room, confusion as stark on his face as a clown with a big, red nose. 

This is the dog’s chance. The big one, win him over and be spoiled for life. 

Despite its described head injuries, the dog is far more clever than they seem to have assumed. Because the first person she runs to out of all of her new friends in the room is Steve. Hook, line and sinker—a dead set barrage in his direction. 

Steve falls to his knees just to catch the bundle of her in his arms. The dog nestles into his neck so naturally it’s as if they were soulmates, separated from one another for centuries. 

“Oh my god, what the shit?” Robin says, face lighting up like Christmas just came early. “Who’s little creature is that? Steve, has your neighbor's dog got out?” 

Already deeply enamored, Steve wrangles the dog into curling up in his lap, laughing involuntarily when she starts nipping at his fingers. “No, the only dogs on the block are the Clancy’s golden retrievers,”

Doing his best to not snort at his earlier accuracy, Eddie can barely contain his need to just splurge out all the information about the surprise—one look at Dustin, who seems about set to blow—confirms his needs are shared. “It’s not the neighbors dog,” 

Steve and Robin tilt their heads at him in scary synchronicity. “Then who’s dog is this?” Comes the question from Steve, interrupted by his own, low chuckles. 

Just as Eddie goes to say, he’s cut off by Erica, who’s holding a fluffy, pink collar. “Your dog, stupid.” 

Looking at her sharply, all of Eddie’s momentary frustration melts away when he notices just how excited the kids all seem to be about the dog, and their own separate surprises. It was a ticking time bomb—one that he clearly let explode. 

“ Erica!” Lucas snipes, elbowing her lightly in the side. 

Dustin just jumps to action, bouncing happily back and forth from foot to foot. “Do you like her? What are you gonna call her, we all have suggestions—,”

“—Jesus, give him a second to meet her,” Max cuts in, expression sharp yet still seeming anxious in a sense, like Steve could reject the dog entirely. 

Mike seems unimpressed. “It’s a dog, what’s there to meet? She licks and pisses and sniffs ass,” 

“ Gross, Mike!” Nancy scolds.

“She is more than that.” Eleven says, brow creased in mild displeasure. 

Seemingly in agreement with his sister, Will wrinkles his nose. “Yeah Mike, she’s cute,” 

“I guess,” Mike grumbles, leaning into his boyfriend with an almost apologetic nudge. 

Despite the shenanigans occurring on their side of the room, Eddie eventually manages to tear his attention from them, pushing down the electric nerves frazzling in his gut like a tumbling collection of lit fireworks to look at Steve. 

Steve, who is the picture of shock. Like, deadly levels of shock, not stubbed-my-toe-and-it-hurt, shock. So shocked that he’s so pale he’s almost blue. So shocked that Eddie expects an oncoming heart attack at any passing minute. 

Then something breaks on his face. Shock into warmth and disbelief, as if this could be some kind of trick. “She’s mine?” 

Eddie crouches beside him, knocking their knees together. The dog bounces between the two of them. “Yours, ours. When your parents are home, she’ll live with me and Wayne,” Who leans up against the doorway, arm around Claudia’s waist as she nestles herself against him. 

“What if she doesn’t like me?” Steve asks, eyes wide and wet, hands jittering at his sides. 

Robin chuckles from across the room, tilting her head until she’s practically sideways. “Seems like she likes you to me, dingus.” 

“Aha,” Steve replies, scrunching up his face and bouncing on his heels. His eyes won’t stop moving, darting around the room like he expects someone, anyone to make some sort of joke, like this is all a set up to have a laugh. Eddie puts his hand on his thigh, squirming when the dog leaps forth to lick at his fingers. “But what about—a bed, or food, I don’t even have a leash or toys, shit, man,”

Max rolls her eyes so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t send shockwaves across the surface of the earth. “We bought all of that. I got her a leash. It’s long and sturdy so she can move around a lot if she wants,”

“I got her collar!” Erica announces, tossing her arm up into the sky to make the pink, fluffy abomination she holds jangle happily. “I broke my piggy bank for it.”

Gesturing to Claudia, who sparks to attention, Dustin glows in the rosy-cheeked way both Hendersons do. “Mom and I bought her a massive bed, even though she’s so goddamn small,”

“I told Dusty it would be nice for her to have some space, spread herself out…” The woman supplies, bashful. 

“I did the research to check what kinda food she should get, bought a few bags of it to get you started,” Lucas adds, leaning up against the wall as casually as he can. “She’s greedy as hell , by the way. Tried to eat my breakfast this morning,”

Glowing with a buzzing sort of pride, Eleven hooks her arms with Will and Mike’s. “We went to the pet store. We bought a lot of toys together. Hopper gave me pocket money. They are very fun, I like the carrot toy the best.” She smiles wide enough to have Max grinning from across the room. “They make a terrible sound.”

Nancy, no-nonsense yet clearly just as pleased as the rest of the bunch, speaks up at the end to say, “I’ve drawn up a plan for pet insurance,” 

One hand in Steve’s hair and another petting the top of the dog’s head, Eddie attempts to coax him back to the land of the living from wherever he’s floated away to. “Hey. We can take it slow. Our little friend here is ready to go steady, sailor,”

“I’ve always wanted a dog,” Steve eventually utters, biting his lip so hard Eddie worries it’ll bleed. “Always. Like, my dad said they were no good mess, a waste of fur, and I just…” Gently scratching behind the dog’s ears, Steve leans down to press his forehead against hers, acknowledging that she’s real and this is happening. “I always thought the first, like… step to a family was a dog.”

And then he looks at Eddie, face warm and delightfully coloured with the sort of fondness that makes him want to tear the stuffing out of cushions and eat it relentlessly. It sets him on fire, that supple affection, malleable in his hands. “You’ve definitely got the ragtag family,” Eddie finally finds his voice, pinching Steve’s cheek. “And now you've got the dog,” 

“Now I’ve got the dog,” Steve says, having been far too aware of the ragtag family. 

“We got her so you’d stop whining about Robin being gone,” Mike says curtly, smirking at him. 

Nancy smacks him in the chest. “We are not replacing Robin with a dog. Think of it like… a therapy animal,”

“God knows he needs one,” Lucas teases, shaking his head. 

“Pretty sure we all do,” Max adds, reaching to take Eleven’s hand.

“Oh, my dears,” Claudia says softly, almost as if she intended to go and find a small zoo to purchase for them all. 

Steve cradles the dog in his arms, grinning contagiously at Eddie. “Let’s see how this one fares first. And nobody give Dustin another pet,”

“Hey!” Dustin cries out. “Dart saved us! Put respect on his name!” 

Hands on her hips, Robin twirls a small finger biscuit in her hand, tossing it up in the air and catching it again. “Are you going to give my doggy-replacement a name, dingus?” She snickers. “Maybe you should name her Dingus,” 

Something comes over Steve’s face. Robin sighs heavily. “I was joking, Steve, don’t actually do that,”

“Dingus!” Steve says, kissing his fingers and calling her. The dog jumps and wiggles with a fervent energy. “You’ve sealed her fate, Robin .”

“I’m not taking the blame for this!” Robin sing-songs, skipping off to the tape player to start playing some music. “It’s my party, I’m blameless for the evening. You and Dingus better not come running for child support!” 

“I’ll take you down, Robin. To the courtroom!” Steve says, sly in his good humor. 

“Nance’s insurance will protect me!” Robin squeals, tossing herself at her girlfriend, who catches her with a giggle.

Nancy presses a kiss to the top of her head as she says, “It actually doesn’t. You’re going to have to take some of my clothes to wear to court again,”

“Not the pinchy bras!” Robin moans as if shot. 

“Don’t talk about your boobs in front of Dingus!” Steve says, mocking offense as he clutches the dog to his chest like a baby. 

“Do my boobies upset thou?”

Batting his eyelashes, Eddie feigns a swoon. “They upset me , I’m a delicate flower, Buckley,” 

“They don’t upset me,” Nancy chuckles quietly, calmly taking her leave across the room. 

Pointing at Eddie, then Steve, Robin grins. “Her opinion? Worth way more than yours combined.” And then skips off after her. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, nestling up against Steve’s side like a drowning man to a kindly passing lifeboat. 

Tucking Dingus under his other arm, Steve kisses his temple and smiles at Eddie in a way that tells him they’ll talk more about all of this later, when he doesn’t have a party to run and kids to feed and entertain. That smile says thank you, has promises of things Steve doesn’t know how to say just yet to be whispered within private spaces, private lives. 

But until then, Wayne sets up the barbecue, teaches Dustin and Steve how to grill properly. Max dances with Robin, Lucas and Eddie in the center of the living room, Dingus yapping excitably. A few bad dance moves away from them sits Claudia, who is trying to teach Eleven and Nancy how to knit a small jumper for Dingus. Mike is in a heated debate with Erica about the best stats for an orc, neither of them noticing Will, who’s begun to cartoonishly sketch them out in a sketch pad Steve had bought him for his previous (admittedly disastrous) birthday. 

It’s a mess, even moreso when Joyce and Hopper swing by later with more soft drinks and some board games. Then Karen Wheeler, with a bottle of wine she shares and laughs with amongst adults. A film plays, popcorn burns, and Eddie Munson begins to realize that not only has he tricked fate into giving him Hawkin’s finest bachelor for a boyfriend, but they’re best, brightest and loudest for the most insane, self-chosen family he couldn’t have conjured up on the wildest trip of his life. 

And when the day comes where Steve and Robin pack up into Eddie’s van, surrounded by her haphazardly packed bags and belongings, Dingus the dog happily bundled into a basket on the backseat, nobody cries. They just shout song lyrics out into the vicious air of the highway as it soars by, watching the skies colour blue, orange, pink, indigo, so dark that it feels like a chasm above them, an empty void overhead, a gaping wound of endless possibility. 

It feels just a little like the beginning of the end. 

Eddie doesn’t dread it.

Robin standing on the steps of her new life, the precipice of a future she deserves spanning out before her, kissing at her fingertips and coaxing her forward, onward. Steve, waving so hard his hand loses colour, becoming a pale blur in the empty air, shouting a series of embarrassing, stupid things to her so she’ll keep laughing, even when she starts to turn. 

For a second, Eddie thinks she won’t look back. He feels sick with it, with excitement for her and with sadness for Steve, for him, for all the kids back home who’ll feel her absence. 

Then, promptly abandoning all of her fat, stuffed bags on the lonely pavement, Robin pivots, comes flying back towards them in a flurry of tears, peals of endless, open laughter and a lack of forethought, merely instinct. The door to his van is flung open, narrowly dodged by her eager body as she leaps back into the passenger side, throwing her arms around Steve and Eddie and clutching, holding, breathing them in as if it could be the last time, though it won’t. Their lives will be peppered with one another just as Robin shakes out a collection of little kisses over the two of them like stardust. 

“I love you guys,” Says Robin, breathless as she steps back onto the sidewalk, the distance so meagre and yet ineffably life-changing. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Steve replies, face the picture of transcendent, platonic adoration. “You’re my best friend. Get out of here before I take you back with me. Now, Buckley.”

Eddie, feeling a tidal wave of something beginning to sink into the sands of their farewells, smiles. “He means it, Buckley. Get to running before I become an accessory to your kidnapping,”

“You’re both morons,” Robin says, wetly, taking a heaving breath. “Bye,” 

“See—see you later,” Steve’s voice is held by the rumbling of Eddie’s engine coming to life. “Don’t forget to eat! And—don’t you dare just live off of cereal, Robin!” 

Her laughter echoing through the lot as Eddie swings the van out onto the main road, Robin calls after them with a final, “I’m poor , Steve!” 

And Steve, to his credit, makes it to the first junction on their journey home before his composure slips, uncontrollable, body-wracking sobs tipping over like Niagara Falls had been contained to a teacup. It’s such an indescribable, immeasurable display of grief; grief for all of the memories, grief for all of the possibilities, grief for all of the times, the yes’s and the no’s and every shared look, every in-joke, every late night call, every time of need and every time of want.

When Eddie’s vision starts to blur enough to obstruct his view of the road ahead, he pulls over at the nearest stop, books them a night in a motel, and holds Steve’s hand as they walk Dingus in the abandoned fields by the highway. And they walk, they walk stupidly far, only disturbed by the whistling of cars cutting through the air in the headlight-speckled nighttime, adding, not polluting, to their view of the stars. They walk so far that Eddie starts to feel as if they, themselves, could just step up into the sky, become one of the many pairs of celestial bodies that orbit one another, lightyears away from hurt and reality and times that won’t let them breathe the same air for the sake of normalcy. Too close, not close enough. Burning, luminous spheroids of plasma and their own pretty pattern of galaxies.

They lie in the collision of two single beds, their dog at their feet, the freckles on Steve’s back kissing Eddie’s fingertips as he creates his own constellations, attributes them to those who exist in the realm of their universe. The constellation of Robin. The constellation of Dustin. The constellation of Nancy, of Mike, of Lucas, of Max, of Erica, of Eleven, Will and Claudia, the constellation of Wayne and the home he’d built for Eddie, and now Steve. 

When Steve asks what he’s doing, Eddie tells him. Traces each constellation he’s made as if it were known, as if it were attributed to scripture. 

“I love you,” Is what Steve says in response, bathed in the cheap, flickering light of the motel room. With Steve under its artificial glow, it could be the sun, for all Eddie would know any different. Steve lies there and tells Eddie that he loves him, and the whole world slows, yet also moves, his stomach dropping and twisting with the unbearable exhilaration of being loved.

Even if the rest of their lives are swallowed by chasms of constant, chattering chaos, by a collection of kids bursting with energy and a tangible air of disaster, Eddie will be happy. Happy to see Steve go to them, pick up the pieces and make something better, no matter how far, no matter the time, the moment. Because Eddie knows, deep in his bones, that there will always be moments like this. 

Moments where he feels like he can touch fire. 

It’s not the beginning of the end. This is the end of their beginning.