Chapter Text
March 1986—July 1986
Nothing prepares him for Eddie Munson. What possibly could have? Metalhead, Dungeon Master, rockstar, nerd. Steve remembers him from high school, but barely. Steve had bigger things to worry about than “the Freak,” and if he thought of him at all, it was only as their best option for drugs. It didn’t prepare him for the dramatic, beautiful, intelligent, charismatic man that Eddie actually is. Eddie’s also—a little unfathomably for high school Steve, King Steve— deeply important to him.
It’s not them being friends that surprises him. Of course not. That tends to happen with the people who learn about the Upside Down. They’re all close, their collective trauma-bond unbreakable, but there are sub-groups within the whole, people who just naturally gravitate towards one another in interest and personality. None of it would have happened without the Party as a backbone, but then Nancy and Jonathan and Hopper and Joyce, they fell together both before and after the first brush with the underworld. But that didn’t extend to Steve right away, not even when he and Nancy were still together. Not until Dustin named him the de-facto babysitter. Even though he had moments where he realized having a 13-year-old best friend was hopelessly lame, he eventually considered himself lucky to have at least one person in his corner. King Steve’s reputation was hard to shake, but not with the kids. Once he was in with Dustin, he was in with them all, even fierce, scary little Max. The next year Robin appeared, in her goofy knee-high socks and little Scoops Ahoy hat, and he’d lost his platonic-with-a-capital-P heart.
Eddie’s different, though. Eddie’s different and Steve can’t put a finger on why. He knows there’s a fair chance that the quick depth of their friendship happens because the last time in the Upside Down is different. The near-death experiences were kind of old hat to the '83 veterans, but then Eddie and Max actually really die. Not close calls or rescues by the skin of their teeth. Max is gone until El brings her back and Steve remembers (will never forget) the sight of Dustin covered in Eddie’s blood, the way it pours over Steve’s hands, hot and red and thick, too much of it.
Getting Eddie out of the Upside Down is a blur in his head. Dustin’s ankle broken; he, Robin, and Nancy barely keeping it together after the battle. But somehow, they manhandle Eddie into the trailer, back up through the gate, and then the fucker has the nerve to die on the way to the hospital. Steve remembers just when Eddie’s heart stops beating under his hand, when his lungs stop contracting, when the blood stops in his veins.
He doesn’t remember much after that, except a vague recollection of carrying Eddie into the emergency room, covered in his blood, screaming for someone to help, and now he thinks maybe that part is a dream.
In the waiting room, they learn about Max. She’s alive, with shattered limbs. Alive but will probably never see again. Alive, but in a coma.
They wait and they cry, and after a few hours a harried doctor tells them that Eddie’s heart is beating again, but he isn’t out of the woods yet.
Time drags and Steve looks at the faces of his friends, his family, around him. Robin and Nancy bruised and dirty and singed after the fight with Vecna; Dustin tear streaked and grimy and all three of them drenched in Eddie’s blood; Lucas, face shattered by Jason Carver, and Erica, both safe now but grief-stricken. Eventually, they push a bunch of the couches and chairs together, snuggling close, drifting into fitful bursts of sleep as they wait.
Eddie survives the night, his chances of a full recovery improving by 20% just for managing that feat alone. From Max, no change, but the doctors assure them that no change is good. Steve isn’t sure about that, but it’s better than the alternative.
They take shifts after that. One of them sitting with Max and Eddie for two hours at a time, so their friends have no chance of waking up alone. Steve’s not there when Eddie wakes, but Dustin and his Uncle Wayne are with him, and that seems right. Eddie’s still too out-of-it on pain meds and hooked to machines to be truly coherent, but he basically died in Dustin’s arms, so being with him now has to be some comfort to the kid.
It’s two full days before Steve is present while Eddie is conscious, but he’s still asleep when Steve arrives to takeover for Dustin. He sinks down into the orange plastic of the chair at Eddie’s bedside, trying not to panic about how shocked white pale the metalhead still is (that’s normal, right? He lost a lot of blood, of course he’s pale…but hasn’t enough time passed for his color to be up? What if he isn’t okay? What if one of the transfusions went wrong? What if Eddie is about to die again?)
“Head’s up!” Dustin whisper-shrieks, but Steve’s too locked into his worries to heed the warning.
The hard edge of a paperback book thwacks him in his sternum. His bat bites aren’t healed enough for it, and all the air explodes out of his lungs with pain.
“What the hell, Henderson?” He rubs the spot where the binding made contact.
“He likes it when you read to him. Book One, Chapter Eight!” Dustin hisses, apology nowhere in sight, before sprinting away to Max’s room.
“Asshole,” Steve mutters, still rubbing the spot.
The book, something called The Fellowship of the Ring, has a worn blue cover, the pages inside soft from repeated readings. It’s clearly much loved, and a lump forms in Steve’s throat.
“One of your favorites, huh?” He asks without expecting an answer. His voice is thick.
Steve cracks the spine, thumbing to Chapter Eight. It’s weird to start a book this far along, but he still manages to get sucked in, despite the talk of Hobbits and Wraiths and Rings. He’s invested enough in the story that he starts doing voices for all the characters, taking particular care for Merry and Pippin.
He reads a line of dialogue in the whimsical voice he chose for Pippin and is met with the sound of a weak, scratchy laugh.
“Something funny, Munson?” The words tremble and he knows it isn’t from reading out loud for hours.
“That’s your Pippin?” Despite having been actually dead seventy-two hours before, Eddie’s face stretches into a goofy grin.
“Yeah, c’mon. I sort of imagine him as Dustin.”
Eddie huffs another laugh, but the smile disappears behind a sharp wince. “Ah, fuck, Harrington, you gotta stop making me laugh. Turns out getting eaten by bats hurts.”
“You’re telling me,” Steve agrees. “Need anything?”
“Water?”
Steve nods and fills a plastic cup from a plastic pitcher and helps Eddie sit up enough to take small sips from the straw. Steve hovers close, hand gently on Eddie’s shoulder to steady him as he drinks. His long curly hair is lank, hanging in his face, catching on his lips, on the straw. Steve brushes some strands behind Eddie’s ear, his thumb barely glancing against the apple of his cheek as he does. The other man’s eyelids flutter, and Steve’s stomach goes tight in a way he doesn’t quite understand.
Once he drinks his fill, Eddie leans back against his pillows with a sigh, and Steve knows that he’s already exhausted the little energy his healing body has left.
“Want me to keep going?” he asks. He waggles the book in the air between them.
“Yes, please,” Eddie whispers. “Can’t wait to hear your Gollum.”
“What the fuck is a Gollum?”
Eddie chokes out a laugh and then winces. “Ah, fuck, Harrington.” He shakes his head. “You’ll have to keep reading and see.”
So, Steve does.
***
Eddie heals and Max doesn’t wake up.
Owens is here now, and he swears to them that, despite how it seems (El still can’t find her), Max is doing okay. Her broken bones heal nicely, and her eyes are…well, they’ve cleared a little bit. Owens and his governmental colleagues think that Max’s coma isn’t because of any physical injury to her brain, but because of Vecna’s psychological torment. Steve doesn’t really understand what that means—you don’t fall into a coma without a reason—but Nancy says it means that Max’s brain is coping with her trauma by going dormant.
The group waits for their friends, and when they aren’t at the hospital, they wait at Steve’s. All of them. The Hawkins group, and El, Will, Mike, Jonathan, and Argyle when they return from California. And suddenly, shockingly, Joyce, Murray Bauman, and fucking Hopper. The fact that Hopper is alive, had been in Russian prison for the better part of a year, and made it back to them in one piece—even after fighting Demogorgons—is so earthshattering that Steve can't stand to comprehend it just yet. His mind fully can’t cope, so he and his brain make a deal to work through that particular trauma later.
The adults, the real adults don’t stay at Steve’s, but all the kids do. Robin basically lives there already, has stuff slowly accumulating in a guest room, and Nancy, Jonathan, and Argyle join in as though they have no other choice. They don’t, not really. They all know from experience that it’s hard to be alone after an encounter with the Upside Down, this one more than ever.
So, they stay at Steve’s when they aren’t at the hospital, and there are always bright lights, and laughter, and a blaring TV, or someone’s music played loud through the stereo. They fall asleep, all of them, in a mound on the couch, like puppies, and for the first time in maybe forever, Steve’s giant house actually feels like home.
After a week, Steve, Jonathan, and Robin go shopping. They buy three giant ottomans and enough bedding to fill four shopping carts, and when they get back to Steve’s, they shove the ottomans against his couch and pile the whole thing with blankets and pillows.
It’s where they sleep, where they watch movies, where the kids make blanket forts and wrestle around and have pillow fights; doing the things kids are supposed to do and not—for once, for just a second—worried about saving the world. Joyce and Hopper and Murray and Wayne Munson, after Eddie breaks his NDA and fills him in and when he doesn’t have to work, sit around the dining room table and smoke and supervise until they all shuffle off just after 9pm (Joyce and Hopper go to Hopper’s cabin, Wayne to the hotel room the government is paying for, but nobody is totally sure where Murray goes off to), while Robin, Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve try to keep some kind of calm. And when the kids drift off to sleep, one-by-one in a limb tangled lump, with a movie still playing on TV, the others help Steve clean up, before they too join the couch pile.
But when Steve isn’t with the kids or working at the video store, he’s at the hospital. With Max for a few hours, and then with Eddie for as long as Eddie can stand him (which, it turns out, is a pretty long time).
It starts with Steve continuing to read The Fellowship and then Eddie very politely asks if Steve will read the other two books in the trilogy, and god help him, but he’s enjoying himself and can’t say no to Eddie, anyway. (He decides Gollum will sound like Kermit the Frog. It makes Eddie laugh so hard, that Steve can’t ever change it).
It happens one day in the middle of Steve reading The Two Towers. They’re in one of the chapters where Sam, Frodo, and Gollum walk and argue when Eddie interrupts. That’s a regular occurrence, Eddie complains about pronunciation or Steve going too fast, or not using the right voice, but this time is different.
“I’m gay,” Eddie says when Steve pauses for breath.
Steve almost keeps reading, not fully processing Eddie's words.
“Okay,” he says. His heart pounds, the page under his fingers growing damp from the sudden sweat on his hands.
“Okay?” Eddie asks. His shoulders are back and he’s not fidgeting with his hair, but he is nibbling at his bottom lip, enough that a small pinprick of blood draws up through the skin.
“Yeah, Munson.” Steve pauses, wets his lips. “Thanks for telling me. It’s, you know. Brave, or whatever.”
Eddie turns a red so bright it hurts Steve’s eyes a little. “Okay,” Eddie squeaks out.
“Okay.” Steve gives a firm nod of his chin and keeps reading. He's proud to have come so far, to be so important, that Eddie wants him to know this secret, trusts him even. Steve's not sure he deserves it, after everything he's done, but he'll die before he ever hurts Eddie.
***
Three more weeks pass.
Max still isn’t awake, but Owens tells them she’s healing, that there is brain activity, that they have every reason to expect her to wake up.
Everyone still lives at Steve’s. Well, more or less.
And today, Eddie’s getting released.
Wayne has a shift at the plant, Steve knows. He isn’t sure how Eddie plans to get home, but Steve makes himself available. Just in case.
Turns out to be a good call because Steve hears Dustin Henderson yelling about something as soon as the elevator doors open on Eddie’s floor.
Steve walks in the room to find Henderson gesticulating wildly, Eddie sitting in his hospital bed with a patient smile on his face, but when his eyes meet Steve’s, there’s a flash of naked panic in those deep brown depths.
“Hey, Henderson,” Steve wraps his arm around the kid’s shoulders.
“Hi, Ste—“Dustin does a double-take. “Steve! What are you doing here?”
“Seeing if Munson needs a ride. What are you doing?”
“I had this cool idea for a campaign! See, now that Will is back, I thought we could—”
“Ah, ah,” Steve tightens his grip. “Slow down, kid. Eddie’s getting out of the hospital today. And because we’re his friends, we’re going to let him rest and recuperate before we make him play Dungeons and Dorks, okay?”
“But!”
Steve puts his forehead against Dustin’s springy curls. “Henderson, if you leave him alone right now, I’ll take all of you to the arcade tomorrow.”
“Can we stay for at least four hours?”
It takes a lot of energy to not role his eyes. “Yes, Dustin. I’ll take you and all your annoying friends to the arcade, where you can stay for at least four hours.”
Dustin’s eyes flash. “Promise?”
“Cross my heart.” Steve and Eddie lock gazes again. Steve winks and a soft flush colors Eddie’s cheeks. “Now, get out of here, your mom’s waiting in the lobby.”
“She is?” Dustin whips his head back and forth hard enough to give himself whiplash before sprinting out the door, calling “I’ll see you tonight! You better keep your promise about the arcade!”
“His mom’s here?” Eddie asks as soon as Dustin’s voice fades.
Steve smirks. “Yeah, I called her before I came over to see where he was and then gently encouraged her to pick him up.”
Eddie blinks once, twice, before doubling over in helpless laughter. “You’re never what I expect, Harrington,” he says when he can speak again.
They have to wait a while, for Eddie’s release to be official, and then they make Steve wheel him out in a wheelchair, but Steve races it through the halls and makes Eddie shout and squeal and giggle.
Steve’s heart pounds and he knows it isn’t from running.
They get Eddie in the car with little fanfare, and Steve drives out of the parking lot with no clear idea of where to go. The government confiscated the Munsons’ trailer, what with the gate to another dimension in the ceiling, and all. Steve’s pretty sure that the very same government probably provided a more than adequate replacement, but he doesn’t know if Eddie knows that. And really this is mostly the illusion of choice since he should just stay at Steve’s, anyway.
“Where should I drop you off?” Steve asks. “I know Wayne’s been ‘relocated’ and if you wanna go there, I totally understand, but everyone’s kind of been crashing at my place, and you’re one of us now, so…”
He glances over to the passenger side to see that Eddie’s long limbs are tucked as high up in the seat of the Beemer as they can get, shoulders hunched, his ringless fingers covering his face.
Steve’s gone through it enough times by now, knows how much it fucks you up, that he doesn’t hesitate, just stops off to the side of the road. He gets out of the car and sprints to the other side, opening the door and kneeling.
Eddie’s shoulders shake.
“Shit, shit, dude, come here.” Steve takes the other man into his arms because it’s the best kind of comfort he knows to offer. “Is this okay?” He asks.
Eddie’s response is to rope his arms around Steve’s neck and press his face into Steve’s chest. Steve rubs soothing circles against his friend’s spine, twining one hand through his long hair to massage his scalp. Eddie’s heart races against Steve’s ribcage and he breathes out in sobbing pants.
“Breathe with me, okay?” Steve coaxes. “Like this,” he takes a measured deep breath, holding it in for a few beats, before letting it go in a slow burst. Eddie tries to follow, but Steve already knows that the panic holds him too tight.
They breathe together, Eddie slowly coming down, until his heart normalizes, and his sobs turn to hiccups.
“Sorry,” Eddie says. “I think I got snot on your nice polo.”
Steve snorts. “You just had a breakdown on the side of the road, but you still find time to mock my fashion choices? That’s low, Munson.”
Eddie chuckles, before adjusting away from Steve (though, not out of his arms entirely), and using the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe down his wet face.
“Does it get any better?” He asks. His big brown eyes are red and narrowed from tears, his long hair mussed and frizzed (which is mostly, Steve recognizes, his fault).
This conversation is more Nancy’s forte—or, hell, Dustin’s—but Eddie didn’t ask for any of this. For Chrissy to die on his ceiling, to get pulled into the Upside Down, for his heart to literally stop beating, and for that, Steve owes it to the man to try.
“The nightmares will slow down, sure. The panic attacks will too. But it doesn’t go away entirely. At least, it hasn’t yet for me. Or any of the others. But we stick together, help each other out. It’s better not going through it alone.”
“But you’re all—” Eddie gestures in a way that Steve thinks means something like “seasoned veterans” but maybe it’s just “calm.”
“Nah, dude, I’m not.” Steve grabs the back of his neck, rubbing at his nape. “You know how Family Video has those shitty fluorescents? One goes out about every three weeks or something, buzzing and flickering and shit, so about every three weeks, I’m crouching behind the counter, losing my fucking mind that a Demogorgon is about to crash through the glass, and I don’t have my nail bat close.
“Last time, after the Russians—” Eddie raises an eyebrow— “Oh, right, we haven’t told you about the Russians yet. Anyway, it was four months before Robin and I could sleep in separate beds. It’s pretty much that way for all of us. So, we try not to go through it alone. It helps.”
Steve still holds Eddie, one hand at the back of his neck, the other around his waist, Eddie’s side flush with Steve’s torso. Every point their bodies make contact burns into Steve with a low, pleasant heat.
“You said everyone is at your house?”
“The whole crew,” Steve nods. “Jonathan, Robin, and I made this giant couch where we all crash. We want you there too.” Steve swallows around a sudden onslaught of dry mouth. “I’d like it if you were there.”
“Okay, yeah, that’d be good.”
“Welcome to the worst club in Hawkins,” Steve says, as he finally disentangles himself from Eddie.
Eddie laughs, a little quiet, a little subdued, but enough like himself that some of Steve’s concern ebbs.
He gets back in the car, popping it into gear, maneuvering back on the road. As they get on their way, Eddie asks, “so, you mentioned—the Russians?”
And Steve tells him about Starcourt and Scoops Ahoy and Dustin intercepting a secret Russian transmission and Robin’s translation skills and sending Erica into the vents to get to the terrifying secret elevator that led to the secret base. But he keeps it light, glossing over the beating and the drugging, making sure to highlight the funny and stupid parts of the story over the horrifying ones. He thinks he does a pretty good job, until they get out of the car, and Eddie says, “that’s a good story, Harrington. And one day I want to hear the real version.”
Steve blinks at that, at being so thoroughly seen through in a way that usually only Robin can do, and then Eddie gives him this smile that makes his stomach tumble down to his toes and his cheeks go red.
“Aren’t you going to welcome me to your castle, King Steve?” Eddie asks breaking the tension.
Steve rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. C’mon in.”
He wants to ask about maybe upgrading his nickname—King Steve brings a hot rush of shame to his face—but it’s forgotten in the enthusiasm at Eddie’s arrival.
Eddie fits in with the group just like Steve knows he will; like he’s the second-to-last piece of a puzzle that needed to click into place for them to become whole. He immediately makes himself at home on the giant couch, starting Goonies with El and Mike, promising Will they’d work on a DnD campaign together, leaping up to help Steve get dinner ready in the kitchen, despite Steve’s insistence that Eddie needs to rest.
And that evening, the very first one, as Steve stands at the end of the big couch, coordinating bedtime routines with his hands on his hips, he catches Eddie watching him with those big, Bambi eyes, and it’s like Eddie can see through him, down to his most elemental parts, but still hasn’t figured him out yet. Steve tears his gaze away, and when he looks back Eddie is talking to Robin, and Steve thinks he imagined the whole thing.
***
Another month passes and Max still isn’t awake, but Owens promises that it could be any time. That her vital signs are favorable, her broken bones mending, that there’s no reason for her to remain comatose, especially since she’s reacting to external stimuli now.
Everyone still lives at Steve’s, and he’d be a liar if he said it isn’t perfect. He loves all of them there, filling his dumb house with laughter and play and fun. He can’t remember it ever having any of those things, even when he was a little boy.
They—his whole goddamn family—fall into a perfect routine grounded by the fact that, it turns out, Eddie is pretty handy in the kitchen. Steve always watched those lovingly chaotic kitchen scenes in sitcoms and whatever and wondered what it would be like to have a family like that. Filled with people who occupy space together unthinking, who love in petty squabbles and silly asides, gleeful in each other’s space. His parents were certainly never like that, never interacted with him or each other with anything close to joy. So, he knows how to prepare food in the most functional way possible, but Eddie can cook. He grabs things from Steve’s fridge and pantry and creates fucking art. Probably more significantly, at least to Steve, is the way they move around each other like they’ve been living together for years, not just a handful of weeks. In a lot of ways, it’s like what he has with Robin—he and Eddie just get each other in that fundamental, inexplicable way, where words aren’t always necessary.
And while it’s mostly perfect, nights are the hardest. They always are. But the benefit to all sleeping close is that when one of them wakes up screaming, there’s no short of comfort. Steve routinely holds Robin, Jonathan and Nancy rush to Lucas and Erica. Mike and El sandwich Will to their sides, and that continues in every configuration imaginable every night and will until the nightmares subside into something more manageable.
On his very first night, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Eddie curls up close to Steve. That makes it totally understandable when, the first time Eddie has a nightmare, it’s Steve who slides closer on the couch, who presses his body against Eddie’s, who cards his fingers through all the long, curly hair until Eddie’s panic subsides. And the next night, when they arrange themselves around the already sleeping kids, Steve’s fingers reach out until they brush Eddie’s, until they twine together. From then on, they don’t sleep without touching, usually holding hands, but sometimes Eddie’s arm will rest across Steve’s chest, or Steve will wake grasping at the sweatpants fabric that bunches at Eddie’s hips.
It’s only for comfort, Steve tells himself. Tells himself that it’s natural for your heart to race when you wake up kind of sort of in your new best friend’s arms.
The thing is, Steve hasn’t actually slept for more than two hours at a time since 1983. He can’t cope with the nightmares, with reliving the trauma over and over again in his subconscious. So, he just doesn’t. He learned how to wake himself up as soon as a nightmare started, before he started screaming, and then he lay awake for a few hours before starting the entire process again. Anyway, It’s fine. He’s coping.
But see, when he falls asleep with Eddie close, he actually fucking sleeps. And for weeks, he doesn’t dream at all—he supposes it’s his body’s way of making up for all the years of lost rest—until one night he does.
Red lightning flashes across the red sky, strobing the blue soaked landscape. Eddie lies unmoving in a pile of demobats and vines with blood on his teeth and covering his torso, it still gushes out of the wounds on his sides. Steve falls to his knees, using his hands to try to stop the rushing onslaught, but there’s so much of it and it’s so hot and so red and so thick. Eddie’s going to die, Steve knows. There’s too much blood on the outside and not enough on the inside, and—
Steve comes to, whimpering at the edge of the couch. It’s only a dream, he knows it, knows that the heat at his back is Eddie, alive, next to him, but it doesn’t make the fear subside. Before he can move, can bury his face in his pillow to muffle his sobs, Eddie is there, pressing into him, an arm wrapping around his chest to draw them even closer together.
“It’s okay, baby,” Eddie’s voice is rough with sleep. He’s close enough that the words tickle at the shell of Steve’s ear. He shivers as the dream is driven further from his consciousness.
“Can you breathe with me?” Eddie asks.
“Yeah,” Steve answers. He sounds small and afraid, but right now those are accurate descriptions, and he forces down the shame that wants to rise up.
Eddie must know, or sense it, as he always does, because the hand loosely resting on Steve’s sternum moves up to draw slow, gentle circles over his heart. Steve’s blood zips through his veins and it’s harder to draw in air than it should be. Eddie’s grip doesn’t loosen, though, and the methodical drawing of shapes against his chest does eventually settle Steve down.
Falling asleep again after a nightmare isn’t his usual, but Eddie’s warmth and the soft touches have his eyelids slipping down towards his cheeks. He isn’t sure at what point he actually drifts off to sleep, just that when he does, Eddie is softly singing "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" in his ear.
The next morning, they don’t wake up touching each other. No, they’re fully in each other’s arms, nestled close, limbs entwined. And it’s so fucking nice that Steve doesn’t move, lets Eddie’s warmth soak into him, draws comfort from the heaviness of being held in place. It doesn’t really matter, Steve thinks, that his heart is banging a drumline against his ribcage.
Eddie wakes up a few minutes later, murmuring, “Mornin,’ Sunshine,” against Steve’s forehead, before he disentangles himself to use the bathroom. Something about the guy’s sleep rough voice calling Steve “sunshine” sends a warm ripple over his spine, but it’s quickly forgotten as the kids wake up and demand breakfast.
Robin bumps his hip with hers as he flips pancakes. “What the hell, Buckley, I almost dropped that one on the floor.”
“But you didn’t!” She smiles. “We all know Steve Harrington is way to smooth.”
He narrows his eyes. “What are you buttering me up for?”
“I’m not buttering you up.”
“Uh, you’re being nice to me. You’re never nice to me.”
“That’s so not true, Steve! I’m nice to you all the time.”
“Your nickname for me is dingus!”
Her lips quake with suppressed laughter. “Yeah, well stop being such a dingus and you’ll get a new one.”
He snorts. “You’re a jerk. You can make your own pancakes.”
“Nooo,” she grabs onto his shirt and tugs. “I can’t ever get them right! I either burn them because I forget to flip them in time, or I think they’re done but they’re still gooey in the middle. This one time they were burnt and gooey at the same time, which I didn’t think was possible, and anyway, you’re so much better at it than me.”
“Okay, Okay,” Steve lifts the spatula in surrender. “What’s up with you?”
Robin fidgets with the sweatshirt she stole from his closet. “Well, I couldn’t help but notice that you and Eddie got pretty cozy last night.” She waggles her eyebrow.
“Buckley…” he says in warning.
“What? I’m just saying.”
“I had a nightmare,” he answers, whispering because he doesn’t want any of the others to worry. “He was comforting me. It was nothing.”
“Hmm,” Robin chews at her cheek. “If you say so.”
“You’re so weird. First it was Nancy and now Eddie? I can have platonically intimate interactions with people, Robs.”
“Yeah, there’s a first time for everything, I guess,” she snarks back.
Before Steve can think of a response, Eddie hops up onto the counter next to them, swirling a spoon in the waiting pancake batter. “What’cha talking about?” He leans into Steve’s shoulder, which Steve ignores to flip the finished pancakes onto a plate.
“What a menace you are,” Steve answers.
“Yeah, but you love it,” Eddie says, banging into Steve a little bit.
Steve mumbles something, but doesn’t move, sort of enjoying being sandwiched between his two best friends, who bicker about the benefits of using strawberry preserves as a pancake topping. So, despite the return of his nightmares, and his increasing reliance on Eddie’s physical presence, things are going okay. And one thing Steve learned a long time ago is to trust the good times as they come.
***
Steve isn’t sleeping again.
He goes to bed with everyone, of course. But he lays next to Eddie and Robin, wide-eyed as their breathing slows, as they drift off. He watches shadows on the ceiling and tries to ease his mind, but anytime he starts to slip, he remembers watching Eddie die again, and he knows that sleep won’t happen anytime soon.
He gets up after a few hours of futile flopping around, sliding a cigarette out of Eddie’s pack on the side table. He slips out to the backyard, not sparing a glance for the swimming pool his parents still pay to maintain.
It’s summer, but it’s late enough that it’s on the cold side of chilly and Steve shivers a little before putting the cigarette between his lips and lighting it with a practiced flick.
The smoke of the first drag fills his lungs, and he closes his eyes, savoring the nicotine tingle in his veins.
“You good, Harrington?” Someone calls from behind him.
He huffs a laugh, not truly surprised that it’s Eddie. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I might grab a smoke and clear my head.”
“Care to share?” Eddie sidles up next to him, a wheedling tone and bright smile on his face.
“Your cigarette,” Steve shrugs. He moves it from between his lips and offers it to his friend.
Eddie’s laugh is loud and sharp in the night air. “Of course, it’s mine. Is this how you tax your peasants, King Steve? Stealing their tobacco in the middle of the night?” He puts a hand on his heart and widens his eyes in a mockery of despair.
Steve rolls his eyes. “I hate that nickname, you know.”
“Please forgive me, my liege,” Eddie bows with a smirk.
“Fuck you, Munson,” but Steve laughs as he says it.
Eddie takes his first drag, closing his eyes and breathing deep, and Steve is struck, all of a sudden, by Eddie’s full mouth puckered around the same filter that Steve just had between his lips.
The other man exhales a cloud of smoke, and Steve forces his gaze to the sky.
“Can I ask you something?” Eddie’s voice cuts the comfortable silence.
Steve turns to study his face, but Eddie’s watching the lapping water of the pool. “Yeah,” he answers.
Eddie passes him the cigarette before speaking, “Where are you parents, man?”
Out of all the things he expects Eddie to ask, this isn’t it—though somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that this is the obvious question. He’s 20 years old and lives in a fucking mansion by himself. Still, he sucks in a deep, shocked breath, his cheeks and throat flaring red.
“Uhm,” he scratches at his neck.
“Shit, dude,” Eddie drops his head. “I didn’t mean to, like, spring it on you like that. It’s just—this is insane?” He gestures at the house and pool. “All of this and you’re just one guy? And you never talk about them, and they don’t call you, and I just—my parents were shit too, you know? And I get it. Is all I’m trying to say.” Eddie’s face is crimson, even in the dark.
Steve squeezes his eyes shut, takes a deep breath around the old, familiar ache. “I haven’t seen them in six months.”
“They didn’t—” Eddie pauses, licks his lips and for a second Steve forgets that he doesn’t really want to have this conversation. “When they heard about the earthquakes, the rifts, they didn’t call?”
“Nope,” Steve says. He sucks at the cigarette, willing the chemicals to relax the buzzing in his brain. “They haven’t been around, not really, since I was thirteen. It was just business trips at first, but then they’d go on vacations, or whatever. Eventually, when they decided I was too much of a disappointment to bother with anymore, they started spending more and more time in Chicago. They have an apartment.”
“Stevie…” Eddie closes the distance between them, pressing his chest to Steve’s side.
“It is what it is.” Steve shrugs, tries to mean it. “Anyway, if they were here, we wouldn’t have this.” He gestures back towards the living room where all their friends are asleep.
Eddie doesn’t respond aside from taking the cigarette from between Steve’s lips.
“What about yours, man?” Steve breaks the silence, refusing to let his gaze linger on Eddie’s reaction to the question.
“Hmm, tit for tat, fair.” Eddie nods, takes a drag. “Dear ol’ dad has been in prison since I was eleven. Boosting cars. Assault. Some other petty shit,” he answers the unasked question. “My mom—she couldn’t cope, you know? Young herself with a little kid, husband put away for a long time. She left me with Wayne while she tried to find a job in Chicago. Never came back.”
“Shit, dude. I’m sorry.”
Eddie smirks. “Like you said, it is what it is. Wayne’s my dad in all the ways that really matter.”
Steve tries not to wonder what it would be like to have that—a parental figure that is present and cares—but it’s hard to smother the thought. Instead, he says, “I’m glad you have him,” too soft and too meaningful.
It’s a little hard for him to meet Eddie’s eyes now, afraid of judgement and of being seen too well. Except, Eddie’s got that look on his face again, where his dark brown eyes get all focused like he can read everything Steve’s ever thought but can’t make it add up.
“Why do you look at me like that?”
“Like what?” Eddie blinks a rapid series like he needs the time to focus on anything other than studying Steve’s face.
“I don’t know, like you’re writing a song and I’m the chord you can’t figure out.”
Eddie coughs out a plume of smoke. “That was fucking poetry, Harrington.”
“Shut-up,” Steve rolls his eyes and hopes the shadows hide his furious blush.
“Remember when we were in the Upside Down and I said I couldn’t believe you were a good guy?”
Steve nods. “You also mentioned something about Nancy being my true love.”
“Yeah, well. Can’t blame me for trying to play cupid while we’re facing down almost certain death.” Eddie gives him a crooked, apologetic smile. “It still hits me sometimes, that you’re nothing like I expect. You say you’re a fucking chord I can’t figure out, and then I have to wrap my mind around King-fucking-Steve saying shit like that.”
“Still surprised I don’t suck even after all this time?” Steve widens his eyes in mock hurt.
“That hasn’t been in question for a while, Harrington. It’s also that you’re caring and funny and so damn selfless. You’re raising a gaggle of children, opened your home to us—Robin and I basically live here!—and you want nothing from us.”
“Well,” Steve leans into Eddie a little more; Eddie who remembered to throw on his leather jacket and radiates warmth like a furnace. “I like that you’re all here. I like that this big stupid house can have a purpose.”
“See, there you go again, making it hard for me to believe you’re real.”
He’s close enough to Steve now that Steve can feel the words against the shell of his ear and the back of his neck. It makes Steve shiver and Eddie steps closer, surely thinking Steve is cold.
“Ready to go back in?” Eddie asks as he stubs out the spent cigarette.
Sure, Steve’s cold and his eyes itch from lost sleep, but he’s not ready to go inside. He hesitates to answer, but it’s enough time for an idea to take hold. It’s probably bad, but Steve isn’t one for that level of introspection.
“Almost. Think I might need something else to sleep.”
“What?” One of Eddie’s dark eyebrows disappears behind his bangs.
Steve twists against him, bracketing the other man’s waist with his arms. Eddie lets out a surprised sort of gasp but doesn’t move away, allowing Steve to quickly search the inner pocket of the leather jacket.
When he draws back, he holds a joint in his hand, waggling it in Eddie’s face. This close, Steve sees that Eddie’s face is slightly pink, his already big eyes stretched impossibly wide. He freezes for several seconds, long enough to make Steve nervous, think that he made a huge error in judgement (as he so often does).
Only, instead of erupting in anger, Eddie throws his head back, roaring with laughter. “You little thief, Harrington,” he growls.
“We don’t have to smoke it,” Steve hedges. His ears prickle with warmth, abashed by his impulse. “Just wanted to see if I could find anything.”
Eddie pulls a lighter from one of the jacket’s side pockets. “After you did all that work? It’d be wrong not reap the benefits.”
He sparks it up and takes a hit before popping it between Steve’s lips.
“C’mere,” Steve says. He crosses over to one of the lounge chairs, collapsing back into it, and patting the space beside him.
Eddie sits easily, stretching out next to him, their sides pressed together. Warmth that has nothing to do with the closeness pulses through Steve’s veins.
They pass the joint back and forth, and neither of them speaks. It isn’t tense silence, though. It’s easy, comfortable, intimate, and the longer they sit, the more they smoke, the more relaxed and boneless Steve becomes.
He doesn’t fully realize that he keeps his eyes closed longer and longer each time he blinks. It’s been so long since he slept, so many days, that he’s drifting without meaning to. He doesn’t know he’s nodded off until Eddie asks, “Falling asleep, baby?”
Steve’s skin prickles at the name, the second time Eddie’s used it, but he doesn’t have the energy to say much more than a mumbled, “yeah.”
Eddie laughs. “Alright, let’s get you inside. If we stay out here, we’ll freeze.”
“’Kay,” Steve says, He lets Eddie get him to his feet.
“You gonna help out at all here, Harrington?” Eddie huffs.
“Mmm,” Steve answers, but he does manage to shuffle himself to and through the sliding doors.
“Couch?”
“Bed.”
“You want me to put you to bed? Can do.”
The manage to get up the stairs without making too much noise, and Steve collapses into the bed he hasn’t visited in months.
“Stay with me?”
“You want me…to sleep in your bed with you?” Eddie’s voice squeaks and it makes Steve laugh.
“Wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
“You steal that joint just to get me in your bed?” Eddie asks. He sounds serious but Steve isn’t so high and exhausted that he doesn’t notice the other guy forcing back a smile.
“Did it work?”
Eddie huffs. “Fuck, yes. It worked.”
He settles onto the mattress next to Steve and, even though the bed is big, they slip together like they do on the couch they share with like ten other people.
“Wish I was immune to your charms, Harrington,” Eddie grumbles.
“No, you don’t,” Steve mutters, moving so that his head rests against Eddie’s chest. “You love it.”
For a second, Eddie stills under Steve’s head, but after a beat he gives a husky laugh.
“Got me pegged, don’t you, babe?” He whispers into Steve’s hair, but Steve’s already losing his fight with consciousness.
After that, they sleep together in Steve’s bed more often than not, waking up every morning wrapped so tightly in each other that sometimes Steve can’t tell where Eddie ends, and he begins.
Robin catches them coming downstairs together on more than one occasion, her eyes going impossibly wide.
“Don’t,” Steve hisses at her. “It’s nothing.”
He knows it’s something.