Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eddie hears things. Gossip, he supposes, he should probably despise (especially since a lot of it is about him) but he loves to know things about the royalty of Hawkins High. Especially when it’s dirty, salacious, who’s fucking who, especially when it’s dark and bloody and doesn’t match the cream polos and khakis and shiny cars and white, toothy smiles. He loves the stuff.

So now he’s looking across the table at Tommy H. and he wants to ask, desperately , he wants to ask, but he won’t. Because it might lose him a customer. (Because he’s afraid of the answer.) He just passes across the weed, gets the money tossed in front of him with a sneer (and he knows it’s Harrington’s money, wonders if it’s as dirty as everyone says) and watches Hagan walk away in his light blue jeans and polo and he wants to shout after him did Steve Harrington kill Barbara Holland? but he doesn’t. He’s too much of a coward.

*

Eddie watches Harrington and thinks about all that he’s heard. He knew Barb, she was in band, kept to herself, was a bit awkward, sure, but nice enough. Knew her well enough to nod hello and get an awkward sort of yes I recognise you, please don’t speak to me polite smile back. He thinks about the rumours. A drunken night got out of hand, Harrington money going in the right pockets to get it all smoothed over — because there had been search parties for Will Byers for days, even after he had ‘died’ at the quarry, someone must have been looking, because he was found — and no one even looked after Barb’s car was found.

Harrington money, dirty money , money that meant Hawkins had a trailer park and all that land was sold up to the lab. Harrington money — blood money , some said, all land money was blood money. Especially from massive land owners like the Harringtons.

But there’s Nancy, still under Steve’s arm, and Eddie might not have known Barb well, but he knew she was Barb’s best friend. And if she was still with Steve, surely — Unless the night had gone that bad. He can imagine it. He’s been to Harrington’s house when there was a rager, seen the cream carpets and bland tasteful art on the walls, seen keg stands and knives for shotgunning and he’s seen — sold people — coke snorted off of girl’s breasts and seen people fucking in Harrington’s parents’ bedroom. He’s seen it, the dirty underbelly of Hawkins royalty. He’s seen what passes for fair in that court.

He can imagine it. Spray of blood across one of those modern, white art pieces. Perhaps she fell, too drunk, and smashed open her head. Perhaps Nancy pushed her into the pool and she didn’t come back up for air. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps —

But there go the king and his ice queen, her under his arm, in their pastels and creams with their happy smiles. Barb , he wants desperately to ask, what happened? I won’t tell the cops. He doesn’t ask though, just watches, as Nancy’s face glazes over, staring at nothing. How when he stands on the table, arms wide to the court of unsmiling faces, the flinch of anger and disdain on Harrington’s face flashes like he’s peeling back a mask, and he doesn’t know if it’s a killer’s face underneath, but it could be.

*

It’s a while later — after he’s analysed every bruise and beating Harrington’s ever taken, seen him fall and Hargrove’s rule, catalogued every black eye and beaten in face like it might tell him something, after he’s seen that the world is a little bigger than he expected, dimensions bigger — that he even gets a chance to ask.

They’re sitting there, monsters defeated, wounds tended, outside a hospital room waiting for Robin to get a gnarly head wound seen to. He looks at Steve, his mostly clean now face, the pained frown between his eyebrows, the faraway blankness to his droopy eyes. He wants to ask and is still afraid of the answer. Will it be I saw her torn limb from limb by a creature from another dimension or maybe even I don’t know what happened, she really went missing like Byers or maybe it really will be she died, I killed her, or Nance killed her, or Tommy H. did, party got too wild . He doesn’t know how he will react to any answer, doesn’t know how Steve lives in that house, when the last sighting of Barbara Holland was by his pool — because he remembers, even if everyone else doesn’t, that Jonathon Byers didn’t just have pictures of Nancy Wheeler in her bra. He doesn’t know which one he wants to hear, if any of them will make it better. He doesn’t want to hurt those eyes as they settle on him finally and ask “Have you even got anywhere to go, man?”

He blinks. “Home. The trailer, I guess.” The portal thing should have closed by now, the weird girl said so. “Uncle Wayne called, said he was in some motel, or something, but was moving back there tonight. I guess if I’m not going into custody…” Chief Hopper — miraculously alive — had come back, was working his influence at the station, and government officials were crawling all over Hawkins, some woman had come to the hospital and given him a pardon, said some story was being worked on relating to the murder house and the Creel family.

“You going to be okay going back to the murder trailer?” Steve pulls a face.

You go home, everyday, to the place where Barbara Holland went missing, or died, or something, something happened and I don’t know what. “I’ll be okay.”

Steve’s face pinches and he opens his mouth —

Robin comes barrelling out of the hospital room and straight into Steve’s arms. He remembers wondering before, about how Robin would have known Barb too, at least in passing, about how Steve hung around with all those kids and what he used to hear from them about what a great guy he was (remembers how he had tried not to listen, as Dustin gushed) and wondered if this was Steve’s repentance for Barb. “ Steve, Steve,” Robin is saying, “please let me come back to yours, I was going crazy in there with you out here and I don’t think I can be alone —”

The nurse comes out after her and winks at Eddie all commiserating like young love, huh, sorry you’re third wheeling .

“Of course Rob, of course.” He soothes a hand down her back and Eddie can’t look at the way she’s sitting all the way in his lap, knees either side of his thighs. It’s almost embarrassing, the intensity of their love on full show for the whole hospital to see. He wonders if this is how people feel about him on a daily basis, Gareth had said to him once when he was out of his mind high Eddie, man, I don’t know how you do it, you’re too loud, draw so much attention to yourself, you’re like blood in the water man, vulnerable to the sharks (he had been beyond high, actually, thinking about it). “Eddie’s coming too.”

He jumps. “I am?”

Steve levels him with a stare. “I’m not letting you go back to that place. There was a portal. In the ceiling ,” he stresses. And then, looking away from him, “A girl died there. You’re coming with us.”

He imagines walking through the door to the trailer without the burning intensity of adrenaline. He imagines looking up at the ceiling, where Chrissy had risen up, up. He squeezes his eyes tight shut.

A hand — Robin’s — settles on his shoulder. “Come with us,” she says, “Steve’s got a very comfy bed.”

He doesn’t want to know how she knows that. Slowly, he nods. “Okay. Lets go to the castle.”

Steve rolls his eyes at him but he stands, holding Robin’s hand, and lets Eddie follow him home.

*

In Steve’s house, Robin immediately makes a beeline for the kitchen like she knows her way around and opens the fridge to pull out a box of leftovers. “We made this, what, three nights ago? Will it still be good to eat?”

Steve shrugs. “It was in the fridge, doesn’t that mean it’s okay?”

“Things can go mouldy in the fridge.”

“Does it look mouldy?”

“Nah.”

“We’re fine then.”

And they get three forks and gather round the island and eat cold pasta straight out of the leftovers box and Eddie didn’t realise how hungry he was until he’s fighting Robin’s fork for the last piece of pasta and laughing as Steve stuffs a whole slice of dry bread into his mouth. He’s in the Harringtons posh kitchen, where he’s seen Tommy Hagan snort coke off Carol’s tits and watched the man in front of him do a keg stand, eating pasta with Robin Buckley. What a crazy time they live in.

Steve lets him use the phone to call Wayne who’s now back at the trailer to let him know he’s staying with a friend while everything blows over — because he now remembers he’s still wanted for murder by the hicks and nutjobs of Hawkins — and then corrals him and Robin up the stairs.

They’d had showers at the hospital, ordered by the nurses before their wounds got any more infected, so creaking and groaning Eddie pulls on the proffered sweats and fucking Duran Duran shirt (really, Steve?) in Steve’s en suite bathroom (Jesus fucking Christ, an en suite ) while Robin and Steve change in his bedroom. He doesn’t think about that, about them , about what they’ll do once he leaves the room. It really weirds him out, Buckley — band freak Buckley — and Harrington fucking Harrington .

He comes out to find Robin splayed out across the bed wearing a t-shirt that proclaims her a participant at some swimming meet four years ago, Steve standing by the window, pulling the curtains. “Where should I sleep?” he says, suddenly desperately tired.

“Here,” says Robin, immediately. “We’re all sleeping in here.”

Huh . “Huh?”

“Here,” Robin repeats.

“Don’t you two want to uhm…”

“What?” says Robin.

“Fuck,” says Steve, “he means fuck.” He sounds weirdly amused and simultaneously grossed out.

“Ew.”

“You two aren’t…?”

Robin glares at him. “Most definitely not . Platonic with a capital ‘p’.”

“Oh.” He stares at them. It makes a certain amount of weird sense.

“So sleep here,” she says.

And when he hesitates, Steve says, “You’ll get nightmares dude.” His eyes are gentle across the room. “Stay here.”

*

When he shakes awake once or twice in the night, scared for reasons he can half remember, he can hear Robin’s light snores, see her face smashed into the pillow next to him. See Steve on her other side, twitching slightly like he t o o is in the throes of a nightmare. It slows his breathing, calms him in ways he doesn’t want to explain, not when these are two people he hardly knows, not when he is suddenly desperate to stay right here . Right here where it’s safe. Can’t go back to life before this where his bed was always empty and his friends were great, but they weren’t family .

*

When it’s finally sunshine that wakes him, he wakes up warm, his arm half trapped underneath someone, and a low argument happening right next to him.

“Get off,” Robin is saying, “you’re crushing me.” Eddie opens his eye slightly to see that Steve is indeed half on top of her, his head under her chin, Eddie’s arm caught underneath them both. “Steve.”

“No,” Steve mumbles back, sounding half awake.

“Your boner is digging into me,” says Robin, and Steve snorts a tired sort of laugh.

“I don’t have a —”

“You do, I can feel it. Gross.”

“Okay, but it’s only a little one,” he says in a small voice which sounds like he’s impersonating someone.

“Are you ever going to let that go? I peed a little bit when the Russians got the torture devices out, okay?” She sounds amused, though.

Eddie jolts. “Russian torture devices?”

Robin carries on like she didn’t hear him but Steve catches his eye and he’s grinning. “How do you even have a boner dude? You were definitely having a nightmare I know your twitching means a nightmare… Did you have a boner over Vecna ?”

Steve starts properly laughing, even though it’s definitely hurting his bat bites because Eddie is laughing too and it’s definitely hurting his, and rolls off of Robin. “Jesus, Rob, I swear I don’t have a boner! Don’t feel me up!” he squeals as she starts patting him up and down under the covers, he’s still laughing and Eddie’s still laughing and it’s so painful. “Stop it, or I will get a boner.”

“Don’t threaten me with your boner,” says Robin.

“Put down the weapon, Buckley, I can sense it ready to shoot,” says Eddie through gasps of laughter.

“Ew!” she shouts, cackling so loudly Eddie can feel it shaking the mattress. “Oh, it was just your hip. Why are you so boney?”

“You should know this, we’ve had enough cuddles,” says Steve.

Robin hits him. “Don’t say ‘cuddles’.”

And it’s not Robin Buckley from band — when he used to do band, before he realised it really wasn’t going to help him because he wanted to do metal , not marching band — who blushed when she fell over a music stand, it’s not Robin Buckley who ducked her head when he shouted in the cafeteria as if she, like Gareth, could sense the sharks circling (he remembers Hargrove, who did more than sneer at him). And it’s not Steve Harrington who might have killed a girl three years ago, it’s not King Steve .

They eat cereal in his big kitchen and Eddie judges the amount of bran he owns. Robin shows him Steve’s music collection and they judge it loudly together while Steve flops face first on the sofa and growls at them occasionally when they hit a soft spot. Eddie has a good morning, there’s not any hicks blaming him for murder, there’s no monsters from alternate dimension, Nancy Wheeler doesn’t show up with a gun and tell them to answer their radio or anything . Robin has a great cackle, Steve has a great smile, Eddie would go as far as to say he falls a little bit in platonic with a capital ‘p’ in love with the both of them.

They’re all lying on Steve’s couch when Eddie says, hesitantly, because he doesn’t want to wreck this, “So, Russian torture?”

Robin and Steve exchange glances, and then Steve starts talking.

He talks about the Demogorgon, him and Nancy and Jonathon at the Byers house, he talks about Dustin taking a Demodog for a pet, and saving the kids, and moonlight in the junkyard, Billy Hargrove, and tunnels underneath Hawkins, and then the mall and Robin joins in, the job at Scoops, the message they picked up in code, the elevator — “janky as hell,” says Robin, “they could not build a worse elevator” — the Russians, saving the kids, drugs and Steve’s face getting beaten in, and the kids saving them, a monster made of people, “and you know the rest”.

He stares at them. Beaten down veterans. “Holy shit,” he says.

Robin starts laughing, even though nothing is funny. “Holy shit,” she repeats, eyes on Steve.

And then Steve is laughing, “Holy shit,” he says, and then to Eddie’s confused look, “inside joke, sorry man. But that’s what you’re in for, I guess, once you save the world together, you stay together.”

It feels warm, and safe, and like nothing Eddie has ever had.

*

After that, Steve’s house becomes something of a home to Eddie, completely by accident. It’s slow moving to get everything about Eddie’s murder accusations get smoothed over, there’s a big story that headlines about he and Steve, with their matching scars around their necks from the bats, fighting off Henry Creel, crazed kid from the murder house, and saving a bunch of kids, but some people still suspect him (the same way people still suspect Steve of Barb, but worse because Steve is a rich kid and no one will actually even say it, Eddie is trailer trash and they’ll do more than say it). The trailer too isn’t fun, the government buy them a new one after Eddie signs an NDA form, even though Wayne tries to refuse government payout, and the new one is fine , but it looks almost identical and the trailer park still sounds the same as the night Chrissy died, still smells the same.

Steve’s place often has Robin, has the kids when Steve decides (begrudgingly) to let them have a couple of D&D games there, and has Steve . It’s never too quiet, he thinks because Steve hates how big and empty the place is (he’s felt it when Steve’s been at work, the dull void of the place) and always has his music turned up loud, or the TV on, or people over. When Steve is home he’s always in the same room as Eddie, even once followed him all the way to the bathroom until Eddie pointedly turned the shower on and started stripping, and he kind of loves never feeling lonely.

He only really notices when one night Steve doesn’t ask him to stay, doesn’t even need to toss him pyjamas, just expects him to spend the night. He just thinks Eddie is going to stay, here in Steve’s room, and Eddie hardly even notices until he’s taking off his rings and putting them beside the bed and —

“Sorry,” he says.

“Huh?” says Steve, shirt half over his head.

“I’ve sort of… moved in… accidentally.”

Steve laughs. “Don’t worry, I like company.”

I know you do , he almost says, but it feels too intimate, tinged by bedside lamps in Steve’s clothes.

*

Robin comes over after shifts sometimes and Eddie watches her and Steve dance in the kitchen. He likes the way they move, like they know the other will always catch them. They waltz sometimes. Or scream the lyrics right in each others faces. One time it was Somebody To Love and right as they reached a climax of find me somebody where the words felt like more than words, they turned to him and he felt it like a blow to the solar plexus “ somebody to love ” — right in his face, like they really wanted him to stay.

And later Robin said, “These pillows smell like you” as she wormed her way between them. “Stop having sleepovers without me.”

“We will when you stop being so boney,” says Eddie, putting his arm under his head and narrowly dodging her elbow. “We’re damaged war heroes, don’t you read the papers?”

Robin smacks a big kiss on the side of Steve’s head and nestles down. “ My war heroes.”

Steve’s face gets this soft look which pulls at his already droopy eyes and makes him look worn like a favourite t-shirt. “Don’t get soppy on me, Buckley,” he murmurs.

Eddie doesn’t know how to cope with them sometimes, how to cope with the knowledge he might one day be without them.

*

They’re smoking a joint in Steve’s garden, the moon is up and shining so silver they don’t need any lights on and the forest beyond the edge of the patio is gloomy. The pool laps quietly, like the question Eddie can’t ask, and the end of the joint crackles softly.

Barb , he thinks, must have disappeared on a colder night than this .

“You ever wish none of this ever happened?” Eddie asks, instead of saying that.

Steve looks at him in the moonlight. “Sometimes, for the sanity of the kids. But… nah. I like who I am, the people I know, now. I was a douchebag before.”

“Yeah.” He looks at Steve and Steve smiles at him and Eddie thinks oh no. Because he is not getting a crush on the guy who he depends on for his mental stability and housing arrangements right now. “You were, just a little bit.”

“I wasn’t ever… to you, was I?” And Eddie thinks it’s the fact he can’t remember which maybe should rub him the wrong way.

“Nah not really.” He takes a drag, passes it over. “You were just… dismissive, I guess.”

“Sorry anyway,” says Steve.

He jumps up and walks over to the dark pool, where he can hardly see the water. “So, I’ve been to many a Harrington party, where royalty walked these very stones and bathed in these very waters, and I demand to see a Harrington keg stand. I need to relive my days as the court drug dealer, waiting in the dark to watch my king perform.”

Steve snorts and all Eddie can see of him is the bright point of the joint. “You got a keg, man?”

“A shotgun, then,” Eddie wheedles as he looks at the guy whose bed he’ll sleep in tonight, who he’s almost certain he’s in danger of falling in something beyond a crush with.

He can see his smile around the joint now in the moonlight. “Maybe one day, Munson.”

Eddie sighs, drops to the ground like he’s been shot. “You’re killing me, Harrington, I’ve been wanting to see you do one of those for years. Hargrove just didn’t do it the same as you did.” He gets to his feet as Steve laughs. “Don’t! I’m serious! He was a much worse king than you were.”

“Jesus, ‘king’, you’re as obsessed with it as Hargrove was,” says Steve. “That’s the only thing he used to say to me. ‘King Steve.’ That and call me pretty.” He chuckles, smooth in the dark.

“‘Pretty’,” repeats Eddie, pretty.

“‘Pretty boy’,” says Steve in some approximation of that Californian drawl. “I think he thought it was insulting.” Steve laughs. “What? You don’t think it was a good word to describe me?”

Eddie doesn’t know how they got into such dangerous territory so soon after he’s realised he finds Steve Harrington maybe a little attractive. “The ladies certainly think so. And Hargrove, apparently. He never called me pretty, that’s rude.”

“Oh, did he give you shit?”

Eddie shrugged. “Not as tolerant a king as you, your majesty.”

Steve laughs “Shut up, man.”

“When I heard you to had fought I was sorry to hear you lost.”

“I might have, Max didn’t,” says Steve. “Threatened him with my nail bat and drugged him. She’s a scary kid.”

Eddie grins in the night, just imagining it. “You left that out of your retelling.”

“There was a lot to retell,” says Steve. “You want some more of this or are you gonna stand over there all night?” He waves the joint at Eddie and once again he doesn’t ask about what else Steve left out: Barb.

*

“This is weird,” complains Dustin, “you opening the door to Steve’s house.”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Super weird.”

Lucas just rolls his eyes and pushes past them. “Are we playing, or what?”

“I don’t know, don’t you have basketball?” says Mike and Eddie closes his eyes against his annoyance as Dustin shrieks at Mike and follows them in.

He opens his eyes again to one last boy standing on the step, staring up at him. “You must be Will,” he says. “You’re here for a couple of weeks, right?”

Will nods.

“Good, we’ll need time for this campaign.”

Will grins. “Cool. I haven’t been able to play for a while.” Then he’s following the others in.

Eddie finds he misses Gareth and Jeff and the others as he watches the boys set up at the Harrington dining table. They haven’t been in contact much since they got beat up by Jason and since Eddie sold out the freaks and started hanging with Steve fucking Harrington. He drops down at the head of the table where he’s already set up and misses his throne too.

Steve comes in with a massive plate of snacks. “Will!” he says. “Nice to see you back in Hawkins, bud.”

Will smiles self consciously.

“What the hell are you wearing?” says Mike.

Steve looks down, Eddie looks up. He’s just wearing — oh right, that’s one of Eddie’s tops. Huh, he hadn’t even realised. He looks down and realises, though it might not look it, the plain grey t-shirt he’s wearing is far to o high quality to be his. Since when has he been wearing Steve’s clothes.

“Eddie’s t-shirt?” Steve shrugs, like this doesn’t phase him, and drops the plate in the middle of the table.

“But why are you wearing Eddie’s shirt?” says Lucas, raising an eyebrow.

“It was by the bed when I woke up.” Steve raises an eyebrow back.

“‘The bed’,” repeats Mike.

Dustin’s eyes are wide as he looks between them. “Are you two —”

“No,” says Steve, slapping him around the back of the head. “I am not fucking Robin. I am not fucking Eddie. Will you horny teenage shits calm down?” He points at each of them in turn. “Not that there would be anything wrong with me and Eddie having a loving sexual relationship —”

“Steve,” says Dustin, “gross.”

“Why is it gross, Henderson, I —”

“You’re my brothers, it’s weird.”

“Aw,” says Lucas, “Dusty-bun.”

Dustin blushes bright red.

Eddie, finally snapping out of the hole loving sexual relationship had bored through his skull ( a nd the fact that, apparently, Steve wouldn’t violently assault him for being gay), clicks his fingers at Dustin. “Me and Steve are your parents, Henderson, and it’s perfectly okay for your mother and father to be deeply in love —”

Dustin, head in his hands, groans. “Stop it.”

“Get ready to have a sibling, Steve’s got a bun in the —”

“Man,” says Mike, looking like he’s about to slide under the table in embarrassment. “Stop it. It’s literally like if my parents started —” Then he blushes too.

“Aw, Michael,” says Lucas, “Eddie and Steve are your —”

“I’ve heard you and Max,” hisses Mike, still the colour of a tomato, “you think Steve is like —”

Lucas claps a hand over Mike’s mouth and grins around at the table unconvincingly.

Will, who has been very quiet the whole time, starts giggling, and it’s probably one of the best laughs Eddie has ever heard. The kids around the table all stare at him for a moment, like it’s a sound they haven’t heard in ages, and then they’re grinning so big Eddie thinks their faces might crack in two. He looks up and sees the look on Steve’s face — so fond , Eddie thinks he might cry — and thinks maybe if he doesn’t get a hold on this thing soon he and Steve are either getting a divorce or things are going to be very awkward, because he won’t be able to control this crush in close quarters if Steve keeps making that face .

They play and Eddie gets caught up in the game, parading himself, being the kind of flamboyant he loves to be. It’s the most fun he’s had playing D&D in a while, Will really fills out the dynamic that’s been missing from the other three the whole time, something he hadn’t noticed until Will is there, smoothing out the jagged gaps between them.

When the kids are heading out, down to Jonathon’s car which is parked on the sidewalk, Eddie sighs, “I’m ready for bed, Jesus.”

“Ooh, bed,” says Lucas, pulling on his shoes with a smirk. “Mom and dad getting it on.”

Steve scowls at him. “Me and Eddie are not fucking.”

“Just like you and Robin aren’t,” says Dustin, sourly, “which I still don’t believe.”

“Henderson,” says Steve, with a groan.

“They actually aren’t fucking,” says Eddie, “it surprised me as well.”

“I’m not fucking anyone,” whines Steve, like this is a painful conversation for him. “And I’m not going to, for a while.”

“You need to get a girlfriend,” says Mike, “it’s kinda sad, me and Dustin and Lucas all have girlfriends and we’re younger than you by like, a lot.”

“Or a boyfriend,” says Lucas, doubtfully, “because it’s looking that desperate. I don’t think you could get a boyfriend though.”

“A boyfriend wouldn’t be my last resort,” says Steve, snorting, “it’s not like you run out of girls and just say ‘reckon I should move onto the other half of the population now’.” Which is weird, because it sounds like Steve is saying he’s attracted to men anyway, in a sort of roundabout way without actually saying it. “And I could definitely get a guy, you little shit.”

Will is staring at him, like he’s never seen him before. “And it would be okay to get a boyfriend?”

All the boys peek glances at Will and then their eyes widen and they’re stumbling over themselves to say oh yeah, totally and Eddie suddenly gets it. They all know about Will, in a way Will probably doesn’t know. He stares at the kid and, yeah, he sees it.

“Totally,” says Steve, like it’s nothing. “Alright, scram. Out of my house. Get gone with you.”

Will is smiling as they walk down the drive.

“Nicely done,” murmurs Eddie, as Steve shuts the door.

“Hm?”

“With Will. Is he… y’know?”

“Oh.” Steve looks at him for a long time. “Why, is that a problem?”

“Of course not,” he says, heart jackrabbiting.

Steve relaxes against the wall. “I think so. I mean, it’s hard to be certain, right? But I — Well, if you look at the way he looks at Mike…”

“Right.” He stares at Steve, Steve who said all those things just so a kid would start to maybe feel better about themselves. Just so the kids would realise they had to be more careful about the things they said. “You’re —” He sighs.

“What?” says Steve.

“An amazing dad,” Eddie says, grinning. He wants to say you’re incredible, Steve Harrington.

“Thought I was their mom.” Steve is grinning at him.

“Either way… great job.”

His smile softens. “Thanks, you too.”

Eddie wonders at it, as he packs away the game, the way the kids had accepted it all. The way Steve had implied several times that maybe all is not hopeless. And just… it’s 1986, and Eddie thinks — Eddie thinks maybe it’s not so bad after all.

*

He’s on the floor of Family Video (where he has to hide in case he scares people away from buying shit) behind the desk, picking at the carpet and trying to avoid the temptation to tie Robin and Steve’s shoelaces together.

Robin sighs as the bell rings, the customer leaving. “Jesus she was a —”

Steve hits her on the arm.

She jumps, looks down at Eddie, then her eyes widen and she’s scrambling. “— customer,” she finishes weakly.

Huh ?

Steve shoots her a look.

Eddie’s getting a crick in his neck from looking up at them. He’s got a great view of Steve’s nose hairs, maybe it will stop the whole crush situation that’s happening. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Robin squeaks.

“Nothing at all,” says Steve, smiling down at him but his eyes are a bit panicky.

She was a — Eddie thinks. The girl — the customer — hadn’t said much, flirted a little with Steve who had seemed at least slightly into it, but then just rented her video and gone. She was a — A what? A — oh . “A babe?” he asks. “She didn’t sound like a babe. Not that I would know what a babe sounds like. Uh —”

Robin is standing so frozen and Eddie doesn’t know what to do.

“I’m cool with it,” he tries. “Totally chill.”

“Right,” she says hoarsely.

Steve knows , says a part of his brain that has been carefully cataloguing everything about Steve. Steve knows about her and he doesn’t mind, she’s his best friend . “Really, I don’t.”

Steve is staring at them both with wide eyes. “You’re not allowed to tell anyone.” He had issued the same warning about Will.

“I know, I wouldn’t.”

“Good.” Steve frowns at him. Taps Robin’s arm. “Rob, Eddie’s okay.”

“I know,” she whispers, “it’s just never happened on accident before.”

“It sort of has,” says Steve gently, “you were coming down from truth serum when you told me. You even told me you’d pissed yourself.”

Robin huffs a laugh and squeezes Steve’s arm back.

Eddie feels stupid watching it all from this angle, on the floor with pins and needles in his ass. He can see the look on Robin’s face, stricken and scared and something beyond that, the sort of fear that only comes with a secret like this. “I —” It’s burning him, prickling up his spine and it’s so terrifying because it could mean no more sleeping in the same bed as Steve, could mean they don’t let him around the kids, “I… me too. Other, uhm, other direction.” Because he’s not a coward any more.

They both look down at him. For an agonizing moment, they don’t say a word.

“Oh,” says Robin, “that… makes sense.”

“I look like a queer to you, Buckley?”

She kicks him.

“Jesus, we really do find each other,” says Steve casually, and goes back to staring out of the window, like he’s not said the most terrifying thing in the world, like sweat isn’t still prickling under his arms.

Robin seems to catch his shocked expression. “You didn’t look that shocked about me,” she complains. “He likes both.”

“Right,” he says, weakly. “I… thought so, maybe.”

“Really?” Robin looks interested.

“He said some stuff to Will Byers.”

Robin laughs. “That bleeding heart of yours is going to out you, Steve Harrington.”

“Why is someone always on the floor when someone comes out?” muses Steve, like he hasn’t heard her. “Us, bathroom. Us, part two, my kitchen floor. And now look at Eddie.”

“You were on the floor in a bathroom? Gross,” says Eddie.

“Mall bathroom as well,” says Robin, pulling a face.

And that’s that.

Suddenly, they’re airing everything out. Everything except Barb.

*

He’s sitting in the diner with Gareth, sipping at a strawberry milkshake.

“So… you basically live with him now?”

“Pretty much.”

Gareth stares at him. “And… he’s cool?”

“Lets me host D&D games with the kids at his house,” says Eddie, shrugging. “He’s cool.” And it’s so true it almost hurts.

“Maybe, if he doesn’t mind, we could join some time.”

“Of course, man.” Something inside him heals, a sore from missing them. “I’ll talk to Steve.”

Gareth grins at him.

“Sorry again for what Jason —”

“Not your fault, man. None of it was.”

*

They’re in Steve’s bed. He knows the way Steve’s weight feels on the mattress like a newly grown limb. “You okay?” asks Steve, in the darkness.

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” mumbles Steve, half asleep.

It takes all his courage to ask. “How did Barbara Holland die?”

On the other side of the bed, Steve’s body stiffens.

“You don’t have to —”

“Did you know her?”

“Sorta, in passing. Same way I used to know Robin.”

“Yeah.” He’s quiet. “Official story, she’s still missing. Unofficial story, she’s still missing. But we think we know what happened. We think the Demogorgon…” He pauses. “She cut her hand, shotgunning. We think the Demogorgon was like a shark, smelt her blood. We think she died in my pool, or the Upside Down version of it.” His voice is sad in a way Eddie can’t put a name to. “I don’t even remember what she looked like.”

Eddie doesn’t think Steve will cry because he isn’t much of a crier, but he reaches out a hand and grabs Steve’s anyway. “Sorry for asking.”

“It’s okay, I know the rumours,” says Steve mirthlessly. “Guess I’m just lucky I don’t live in a trailer park, or they’d have treated me the same way they did you.”

Eddie looks up at the unnameable darkness. “It’s okay, that’s not your fault, none of it is.”

Steve squeezes his hand in their bed, after the end of the world.

*

So now he knows, after all those years watching King Steve, that he wasn’t falling for a killer. Perfect. Amazing. It’s still Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington who “likes both” and Steve Harrington who kills monsters and Steve Harrington who looked at him across a party, dismissive, and sent Tommy H. to buy off him rather than dirty himself with the deal.

*

The kids are over for dinner, which Eddie would find weird if it wasn’t Steve Harrington’s house. Robin is there too, on babysitting duty with them, which she doesn’t look happy about. She’s sitting on the kitchen island while Dustin rehashes some oneshot they’d done with Will as DM to all three of them. Lucas and Max are sitting at the island, holding hands and talking quietly. Mike and Will and sitting at the table, Will looking faintly embarrassed any time Dustin starts gushing over his oneshot even though it does sound like it was rather good. El, even though she’s a superhero or something, looks weirdly normal in a massive shirt which can’t be hers and must be Hopper’s who he has gathered is her adoptive father, sitting beside Mike and gasping every time Dustin gets to a good bit.

Eddie would be paying more attention to how cute they all are if he wasn’t watching Steve cooking. It’s one of his favourite activities actually, even if he’s just microwaving TV dinners, or ordering a pizza, or boiling water for pasta. Eddie loves it. The kitchen is his element.

He looks up and Robin is grinning at him over Dustin’s head. “I see you,” she mouths.

“What?” he mouths back.

She glances at Steve, back at him.

He rolls his eyes.

She scowls back.

He shoots her a middle finger.

“Are you listening?” says Dustin.

“Sure,” says Eddie.

“I’m getting to the best bit.”

“Right, go on then.”

He watches as Steve reaches up and the hem of the shirt which isn’t his rides up to show a patch of skin about the waistline of his jeans.

“Stop staring at Steve and listen to me,” snaps Dustin.

Steve turns around and whatever he sees in Eddie’s face makes him laugh. Eddie doesn’t mind the embarrassment if it makes Steve laugh like that. “Shut up, Henderson,” he says.

“Don’t tell our son to shut up,” says Steve easily, “he’s getting to the best bit.”

“You’ve spoilt our son for too long.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have left me all those years.” Steve sniffs.

“I’m back now babe, doesn’t that count for something?”

“You were gone when it was important,” says Steve, lifting up his nose.

Eddie kicks his ass as he walks past. “We’re starting to sound too much like my parents.”

“You hear your parents say things? Crazy shit man, I don’t think I’ve been in the same room as mine for at least ten years,” he says.

The room is sort of quiet for a moment as Steve hums along to whatever shitty song is playing and Eddie realises not once has he seen hide nor hair of any other Harrington in the house.

“Oh don’t do that,” Steve snaps, “they’re assholes anyway.”

They burst back into uncertain chatter. Steve cooks, humming to himself.

Eddie catches Robin’s eye. She looks kind of sad but mouths at Eddie, “You were definitely flirting.”

He rolls his eyes, doesn’t reply.

*

Steve and Robin are doing the washing up, the kids are being lazy shits and lounging around the table saying how full they are. Eddie dries.

Robin holds up a fork and points it at Steve’s face. “Who do you work for?” she says in a bad Russian accent.

He jumps back, already laughing. “Scoops!” he yells. “Scoops Ahoy!” He leans into her now. “Your friend here needs a doctor, lucky for him, we have the best doctor .”

“The best doctor,” says Robin fondly, “he gave us the drugs.”

“Morons,” says Steve.

“Don’t start on that,” whines Dustin from the table, “it’s not funny. About fifteen of the scars on your face are from that.”

“It’s a little bit funny, just a little bit though,” says Steve.

Robin starts laughing.

Eddie looks at them, reminded once again that they’re soldiers in a way. Veterans of a war no one will ever know about. He loves them more than a little bit for it.

*

“When am I going to see that shotgun?” says Eddie one night as he’s pulling on a fucking Wham! t-shirt which, really, Steve should not have a shirt for.

“Never,” says Steve.

“Oh, come on. I’ve waited years.”

“You’re so annoying.”

“That’s rude. You can’t say that to the father of your children.”

Steve laughs. “Yes I can.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“We’re getting a divorce,” says Eddie, can’t stop smiling.

Steve moves around the bed towards him, pulling on a Metallica shirt. “You wouldn’t want to break up with all this.”

He hums thoughtfully, looking Steve up and down. “I don’t know…”

“You don’t know?” Steve is very close now, his smile playful.

He’s feeling brave, more brave even than the floor of Family Video, or another dimension with bats filling the sky. “Well… I don’t really know what I’d be missing out on, if I left you.”

Steve grins, so sharp and sudden it sends a thrill down Eddie’s spine. “Oh,” he says, sounding pleased with himself.

“Maybe,” Eddie murmurs, “you could —”

Steve kisses him, it’s more gentle than he was expecting. “Like that?”

Eddie stares at him. “I was kind of close to being convinced you killed Barbara Holland several times over the years,” he blurts.

He smiles, sort of sad. “Dustin had to convince me you hadn’t killed Chrissy.”

They look at each other for a long moment. Eddie likes his eyes, the small studs of freckles on his nose, the firm set of his mouth. “Steve,” he breathes.

Steve kisses him again, hungrier. Eddie kisses him back, bathed in bedside lamplight.

*

He can tell the kids are watching them from the other side of the garden as they sit in the loungers, Robin on Steve’s curled up into his side, his arm around her.

“What are they looking at?” Eddie mutters, squinting against the sunshine. “Can’t we make them go away, I want to get drunk.”

“They’ll get bored eventually,” says Robin, “and Byers can pick them up.”

Steve yawns. “Probably talking about which of us they have a crush on.”

“Really? That’s gross,” says Robin.

“They’re children.”

“Horny teenagers, you mean,” says Steve. “They’re disgusting creatures.”

“You wanted to have them,” says Eddie, leaning over to poke him.

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Not in front of the kids,” says Robin.

“Can we talk loudly about how I was pounded into the mattress —” starts Eddie.

“No, no, no, definitely not in front of me,” Robin says, leaning over Steve to smack him.

“Or maybe they’re wondering which of us are dating,” says Steve, as if he hadn’t heard them.

“Oh, maybe,” says Eddie, grinning, “maybe they think we’re all fucking.”

“Really?” Robin frowns. “They would think that, actually, knowing them.”

“Reckon Dustin thinks me and you are both at it with Robin,” says Steve, “and Lucas is suggesting me and you as a joke but Max is a hundred percent not lying when she says me and you are fucking, Mike thinks me and Rob are… Will won’t say it but he hopes it’s me and you.”

“El probably doesn’t know what fucking is,” says Robin, “why can’t they all be like that.”

“Little monsters,” says Steve.

“Going back to the crushes,” muses Eddie, “Lucas and Max definitely both have a crush on you, Steve.”

“Really?”

“What did you think Mike was gonna say at D&D?”

“I don’t know. Is it weird I’m flattered it’s those two, they obviously have the best taste as the best couple.”

“Rude,” says Robin, smacking Steve’s chest, “me and Eddie are bad taste?”

Steve laughs and Robin thumps his chest again.

Eddie looks at them and he’s so fond he thinks he might be sick. “You two are such morons.”

That makes Robin and Steve both start cackling, the way only an inside joke set off by someone else can. Eddie watches them, falling even deeper in love with the life he’s built on the other side of the apocalypse.

Gossip, he supposes, he should despise. Especially when it’s about friends by a bunch of kids who are somehow also their friends. Especially when a lot of it’s about him and Chrissy Cunningham, all over town. When some of it is about his boyfriend and the ghost in his pool. But he loves it, especially when it’s about the gory and the dark, interdimensional beings and unbreakable bonds. He loves it when it’s all wrong, and it’s just kids being kids in Steve Harrington’s pool, and Steve’s wearing one of his black t-shirts and they should probably be more careful in a small town like Hawkins, Steve shouldn’t wear things that aren’t khakis and polos. But here they are, three queers in a garden while kids speculate about who fucks who, it doesn’t even matter, in the end.

Gossip, he supposes, he should despise. Except when it’s here, with the best kind of people.

He smiles up at the sun and feels Steve’s eyes on him, Robin’s grin he can imagine pressed into Steve’s temple. “I love you guys.”

“Don’t get soppy on us,” say Robin and Steve at exactly the same time.

It feels like I love you too all the same.