Archive of Our Own ^beta

As punishment for flunking out of senior year the second time in a row, Wayne forces Eddie to get a job. A real, actual job, in his words, and not just dealing for Rick or going around town fixing old appliances for people who can’t be assed to call a handyman; as if baked goods and pats on the shoulder shouldn’t be considered legitimate forms of payment.

Whatever.

Wayne mentions that the body shop is always hiring, but most of Eddie’s experience with cars is of the criminal variety, and any time he gets anywhere near the guts of one he is violently reminded of his father who is currently in the clink for GTA. So he figures that’s kind of a no-go. 

Eddie then contemplates joining a landscaping company, mowing lawns and shit because it’ll keep him active and distracted from the general mundanity of stewing alone in his trailer. But he hates being out in the sun for too long, tends to burn bright pink, and he can’t imagine the upper-middle class bourgeois of Hawkins would be too thrilled to look out their windows and see Eddie Munson pruning their bushes. 

He takes one step inside Starcourt's shockingly pathetic Sam Goody and immediately turns up his nose. They don’t even have a metal section—it’s just mixed in with the rest of the rock music like that is a normal and acceptable business practice. As much as Eddie loves music, he imagines it gets kind of redundant, sorting cassettes into the same old slots and bins and telling preppy kids that reek of hairspray where they can find the latest WHAM! release. He hates the mall and everything it stands for, anyway.

It feels a little bit like fate that he’s leaving Starcourt after evaluating the measly job pickings and he proceedingly stumbles upon a firework stand on the side of the road. 

It’s not too far from the mall but still a little out of the way, too, on a backroad surrounded by cornfields that peter out into the roving woodsy cul-de-sacs of Loch Nora. There’s a guy asleep behind the counter when Eddie hops out of the van to inspect the place. Behind him are stacks of all kinds of different fireworks: the kiddie kinds that come in big sets, bundles of multi-colored sparklers, and then the huge ones with intimidating designs and names that actually sound pretty metal, like Satan’s Baby. 

The stand isn't the nicest by any means but it'll do, with shade from the blazing sun and a few different battery-powered fans placed strategically to provide relief from the oppressive humidity. It doesn’t look like it gets a lot of business, but it’s still the end of May. June will be busier, most likely, especially as they near the Fourth.

“Hey,” Eddie calls, slapping a hand down on the counter and startling the guy awake.

Eddie’s, like, 99% sure that the guy is Ian Wright, the farmer’s son. He was a few grades above Eddie so they never really talked, but Eddie’s got nothing against the guy and he assumes Ian’s got nothing against him, either. At least for now. 

Ian scowls and scrubs a hand over his face to wipe away the drool. “Jesus, what the hell? What do you want?”

“What if I wanted to buy some fireworks but was warded away by your severe lack of professionalism?” Eddie cracks.

He snorts, looks Eddie up and down. “Yeah, right, Munson. Like you give a shit about any of that. Why’re you here?”

“I want a job,” Eddie says.

Ian just looks at him.

“Promise I won’t steal from the lockbox,” Eddie says, unconvincingly, with his fingers crossed behind his back.

He sighs. “Yeah, sure. Why not? Who does interviews anymore? You can work the afternoon shift. Come back tomorrow at noon.”

This is how Eddie finds himself sat behind the pathetic desk of a shoddy firework stand every weekday evening, bored out of his gourd but still somehow making money. 

Wayne is appeased for now anyway, as long as Eddie studies in his downtime. Which doesn't even really make sense, since the school year is effectively over with Eddie having flunked out yet again, but Wayne just grumbles about getting a head start for next year. Eddie hates disappointing Wayne even though he's prone to it, so he gives in to that request, too. Or he tries to. During his first shift he'd glimpsed the introductory chapter of the textbook for the chem class he'd failed last semester and then promptly gave up in favor of writing out sixteen pages for a campaign idea that’s been coming to him in flashes and daydreams. 

Even though he made approximately zero sales, it wasn’t an entirely unproductive day. Repetitiveness usually bugs the hell out of him, and the cyclical nature of these summer days should rub him wrong enough to chafe but he finds himself enjoying the freedom. Even if the pay is absolutely abysmal.

He gets used to it, is the point. Gets comfortable and cozy, settles into the shitty little firework stand like a hermit crab might with a nice shell.

One day in early June finds Steve the Hair Harrington pulling over directly across from the stand and putting his car in park. 

This, in and of itself, is not shocking: Eddie had recognized his expensive Bimmer from day one as he drove out of Starcourt, presumably going home after a long day of whatever part-time job he managed to snag for himself the summer before he goes away for college. He sees Steve’s car almost every evening, actually, and hasn’t really thought much of it. 

He and Steve didn’t exactly exist in the same social circles for the last four years, and his posse of annoying preps never really bothered Eddie that much—probably because they all know he has a pocket knife tucked in his shoe which he’d pulled on a junior on his first day of freshman year for trying to shove his head in the toilet. What they don’t know is that it’s fake, stolen from the deteriorating prop room of the theater department, and that Eddie poses as much of a threat as a wet kitten on a good day.

Anyway, Eddie doesn’t know Steve all that well. What he does know is that according to the general Hawkins High hearsay, Nancy Wheeler had reportedly cheated on him with Jonathan Byers, of all people, last fall. It kind of makes sense because Byers has just always been there, off in the distance and looking at Wheeler like she hung the moon and stars in the sky, but it also doesn’t make sense because after winter break the three of them all just started hanging out like the whole cheating scandal hadn’t even happened. Eddie had assumed that at some point Harrington would have flown into a barbarian-jock rage and either attacked Jonathan with his bare fists or maybe keyed his car. It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised when he does neither and appears to make polite small talk with him in the cafeteria instead.

Eddie thinks that he’s probably judged Steve too quickly. He thinks Steve’s probably full of surprises, if the past two years are anything to go by.

And then, of course, Steve just has to prove him right by stepping out of his BMW in a full sailor suit fantasy that not even the most depraved recesses of Eddie’s mind could have cooked up. Jesus. He’s got the little hat and everything. Cute tiny shorts, too, that are regrettably not as short as the ones included in the Hawkins High gym uniform, but still short enough for Eddie to be able to appreciate Steve’s legs. He has nice legs. Good knees. White socks pulled halfway up his calves, for some reason, stark against his golden tan skin. Wispy little hairs that probably go up his thighs. Eddie needs to stop looking at his legs.

“Eddie Munson,” Steve calls as he approaches, his voice all easy and light like they’re actually friends. “Hi.”

Eddie blinks at him. He wasn’t aware that Steve even knew his name. They’ve never spoken before. “Uh, hi?”

“I was told where to find you by the guy who works at Orange Julius over at Starcourt?” Steve says, sounding very uncertain about it. “I forgot his name but he was short and he looked like he hated me.”

“That would be Gareth,” Eddie surmises. Gareth’s mom forced him to get a job as soon as Starcourt opened and now all he does is lament about the cruelty of the customer service experience while doling out free smoothie samples to snotty children. “He is short and he does hate you. But you can’t let him get to you, Harrington. That’s how he wins.”

“Oh. Okay,” Steve says. He shuffles on his feet, tugs on the end of stupid red tie-ascot thing which is ridiculous. Eddie wants to tug on it, too, dammit. With his teeth, probably. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he needs to get a grip.

“What’re you here for?” Eddie asks, leaning back in his fold-up chair. “We got fireworks. Some sparklers. More fireworks. But, um, if you were looking for me specifically then you were probably looking for a different, more illicit kind of product that I offer, in which case I’ll have to tell you to come back to my trailer later because I regrettably do not deal at my place of work.”

“Huh?” Steve blinks at him. “Deal… what?”

“What?” Eddie says. “Nothing. Nevermind.”

Steve must not know about the whole dealing hustle that Eddie has going on. Which makes sense, actually, because he kinda just started this past year, right about when Steve fell out of favor with his royal court and began slumming it with the rest of the losers and nerds. Eddie has sold overpriced weed many a time to a sneering Tommy H, but never to Steve Harrington himself. 

“Okay,” Steve says, trailing off.

“What do you want?” Eddie asks bluntly. Like, forgive him for being a little bit rude about it, but if Steve is not here to buy weed then Eddie honest to God has no fucking clue why he’d be looking for him.

Steve looks uncomfortable. Like, insanely uncomfortable. A little constipated as he grits out, “Well, I just… I asked around, which was extremely embarrassing, for the record, but I’ve got some friends who will be high school freshmen next year, and—that’s not important. They play D&D and they’ve been bugging me to join their game for months now, and I always say no. I tell them it’s because it’s nerdy as hell, and it is, but I’m also kind of lying. The real reason is because I don’t know anything about it. Like, what the fuck is even a paladin? Why do I need to know what dexterity is? And it’s embarrassing, you know, to not know anything and be made fun of by a bunch of fourteen-year-olds about it, and Robin Buckley told me that you run the D&D club at school. Which I didn’t even know was a thing—but anyway, do you think you might be able to teach me the basics?”

Eddie cannot help but gape at him. Steve twiddles his thumbs and looks anywhere but directly into Eddie’s eyes. He looks nervous, like there’s a lot riding on Eddie’s decision, which is baffling. His hair glints in the setting sunlight. Did he get blond highlights? He’s all frosted and honey-glazed, deliciously tan and golden. And he’s asking Eddie to tutor him in D&D. What the hell is even happening here?

“Is this a prank?” Eddie leans out the front window of the stand and into Steve’s personal space to glance either way and see if anyone is waiting to catch him in an embarrassing moment of weakness, as if it is common knowledge that he cannot say no to Steve Harrington’s ridiculous warm brown choco puppy eyes. There is nary a person in sight. This is incredibly alarming and also somehow a little reassuring. It’s nice to know that Steve hasn’t reverted back to his asshole ways and has instead changed enough over the course of the past couple of years to want to learn how to play D&D with a bunch of nerdy tweens.

“...No?” Steve sighs, his shoulders falling. He doesn’t back away despite Eddie’s proximity, which feels important. “Look, I know I was probably a dick to you in high school, so you don’t have to. I just wanted to do this for them.”

Eddie peers at him. He is at a loss for what to say, which practically never happens. He sits back down and steeples his fingers. “There are guidebooks, you know. It'll probably be a lot less humiliating for you to learn how to play through them.”

Steve grimaces. “Yeah, I know. I, uh, tried reading those. But the text is so small and I’ve never been all that great at reading, so I gave up on the introduction of the Monster Manual. I’m much better when people, like, explain it to me. And draw pictures and shit. Demonstrate. You know?”

“Sure,” Eddie says warily. “Yeah, I get it. So you want me to, like, tutor you. In… Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Yeah, if you could. It would mean the world to me. And the kids I babysit.”

This is dangerous. This is a slippery slope. If Eddie were to say yes, which he almost certainly will due to his poor sense of self-preservation, then this would mean oodles of one-on-one time with Hawkins’ resident heartthrob slash prom king. This means Eddie staring at Steve Harrington for hours at a time while pretending to care about his education re:tabletop roleplaying games. It means looking at the strong line of his nose and jaw, of the gentle curls of hair at the nape of his neck, at his bare knees and elbows and pretty fingers and wide hands and the moles that dot his cheeks and neck like they’re punctuating his beauty. 

This could mean bad things for Eddie. It could mean horrible things for Steve’s already sinking reputation, if he’s caught alone with the town freak and their only good explanation for it is that Eddie’s teaching Steve how to entrench himself in the beginnings of complete and utter dweebdom.

“And you’d really be okay with slumming it with me?” Eddie blurts before he can help it. Like, yeah, he tries not to care what people think about him, and for the most part he succeeds. But it’s hard sometimes, especially when it comes to cute boys. He wants Steve to think he’s cool, is the thing. He definitely already doesn’t, but Eddie can’t help this need that keeps bubbling up in his gut, making itself known periodically throughout their conversation.

Steve tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not exactly the most popular guy in town, Steve. People have said all sorts of shit about me and while I don’t necessarily care, it might affect the way they view you. They might say things about you too, you know? Spread some rumors.”

Steve continues to completely blindside Eddie by saying, “Man, who gives a shit about all of that? I stopped caring about stupid shit like that, like, two years ago.”

“Oh. Okay then. Well, might I ask what’s in it for me?”

“I could pay you,” Steve offers immediately. “It won’t be much, because my job pays minimum wage, but still—it’s something?”

“No,” Eddie says, surprising both Steve and himself. “Look, we don’t even have to discuss that right now. How about—you’ll just owe me one.”

“Owe you one,” Steve repeats skeptically.

“Yeah. Like if Powell or Callahan come sniffing where they shouldn’t and I need you to be standing by with a getaway car. Or maybe you could just give me a lifetime supply of ice cream. You do work at Scoops, right? Scoops Ahoy? Either that or you have a very specific fetish.” He gestures to Steve’s outfit.

Steve huffs. It sounds close to a laugh. “Yes, I work at Scoops Ahoy, asshole. And I already owe many people a lifetime supply of ice cream just because I work there, so what’s one more?”

“Cool,” Eddie says. He sits back in his chair. “Alright, that settles it. One-on-one D&D tutoring sessions with Steve Harrington in exchange for one favor I get to redeem whenever and wherever I’d like, at my own discretion.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

Eddie nods. Checks Steve out again, head to toe, just because he can, delighting in the way he crosses his arms over his chest because shit, his pecs and biceps are absolutely insane even under the gaudiness of his uniform.

“This all feels like a very weird dream I had once. What days are good for you, sailor?”

June isn’t real.

Or it is but it doesn’t feel like it. It all feels like one big lucid dream, tinged with warmth and brightness and other beautiful things.

Eddie’s always hated the summer. It’s too hot and the trailer doesn’t have working AC. He used to go and hang out at the public library but Marissa the mean librarian has banned him indefinitely for being, quote unquote, “much too disruptive.” He’s pretty sure she keeps a Xeroxed copy of his yearbook photo like a mugshot behind the circulation desk just in case he attempts to sneak in to further his education or something. Buzzkill. And the pool was fun at one point, except Billy Hargrove works there now and he’s a raging piece of shit who has taken to making Eddie’s life hell just because he can, so that’s out, too. 

Summer means no school and normally that’s a good thing, but it also means nothing to do. Jeff always goes away to his fancy summer house on the lake and Grant goes to sleep-away camp and Gareth gets whatever part-time summer job his mother forces him into and Eddie always winds up alone.

This year is different. 1985 is different. Eddie gets a pseudo-job. He occupies himself with catch-up work that bores him to tears—nonetheless he pushes through, feeling motivated for the first time in years to do well in school. And somehow, impossibly and inexplicably, Steve Harrington comes around the firework stand every Tuesday and Thursday after his morning shift at Scoops Ahoy to study D&D. 

It’s cramped inside even with just Eddie occupying the stand, and Steve is not a small guy by any means, so they don’t have a lot of elbow room. Steve doesn’t seem to care, though. He just sits his perky ass down in the spare plastic chair and brings out an actual notepad and pen to write down all of Eddie’s most important points about the game. All of the basics and essential stuff, rules and the specifics of stat modifiers and spell slots. He stares at Eddie and actively listens with his little head-nods and hms and ahs, and he asks questions and only looks a little embarrassed about being incredibly invested in the answers. 

Mostly he just looks intensely earnest about the whole thing. He’s startlingly sincere. Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever seen Steve look like this, even in classes where he had an actual teacher. Then again, Eddie supposes he gets it: it’s different when it’s something like this, something fun, and something to learn for other people. There’s intent there. Purpose.

It’s more than a little distracting, how dedicated Steve is. He’s distracting in general, anyway—not just because of his brand new attitude that is significantly less shitty than the one he had in junior year, but also because he’s a veritable Adonis in every possible respect. He’s always been, really, but before it was kinda hard to get past the mean friends and the film of popularity he wore like a second skin, all plasticky and glaringly fake. 

Now that all that has been taken away, Eddie can’t seem to stop fucking looking at the guy.

Whenever Steve drops by he never cares enough to change out of his uniform, and the scent of Scoops Ahoy clings to him almost as scandalously as his clothes do: he smells sweet like sugar and cream. His eyelashes are, like, ridiculously long. Sinfully. Criminally, even. His skin glows even where tan lines are revealed as his shorts ride up and his shirt slips down. His eyes are huge and luminous and honestly a little sad in this inherent kind of way that Eddie can’t quite parse. 

It makes Eddie want to know him.

It all feels too good to be true, basically. Like, this is exactly the kinda stuff that Eddie fantasized about in the back of O’Donnell’s classes while she droned on and on about shit that ultimately didn’t matter. Steve, sitting one row in front of him, wearing bright colorblock and coordinated Nike sneakers and pushing his long hair behind his ears. Eddie would dream up a ridiculous amount of scenarios, all of which involved Steve talking to him and not being an asshole about it. He’d think about Steve turning around and asking him a question that neither one of them knew the answer to. Asking him to be his partner for a bullshit project and the work never winds up getting done. Steve choosing to sit in the empty seat to his right instead of shuffling to his usual seat, head down, like maybe that’ll stop Tommy Hagan and Billy Hargrove and Jonathan Byers from glancing at him, each one with different but equally intense things in their eyes.

Steve never used to look at Eddie.

Now he can feel Steve watching him, sometimes, and it feels weird. Off. Wrong. 

Impossible.

Eddie cannot and should not dare to hope.

“What?” Eddie will ask, when he catches Steve’s intense gaze. Then he’ll pull an incredibly unattractive face, tongue out and eyes crossed or something, and ask, “Something on my face?” just to hear Steve laugh. He has the best laugh, Eddie has discovered; he doesn’t think he’s ever heard it before now. The real one, anyway. The ugly one, all pitchy and kinda like a cackle. Sometimes he’ll snort and it feels like Eddie’s won the fucking lottery.

“Nah,” Steve will answer, the smile lingering. 

He never really says why he was staring in the first place.

“Wait, so what’s the difference between a cleric and a paladin?” Steve asks, scanning his little notepad like it contains all of the world’s answers. His handwriting is all loopy and pretty. He insists on writing in cursive for some reason. The fact that he’s taking notes at all is still shocking. It’s ridiculously cute, how dedicated he is to this. Then again, Eddie’s weak for the guy, so he supposes he’d find anything he does cute.

“Well, they both serve deities,” Eddie answers, doodling nonsense on a spare sheet of loose-leaf paper. He's trying his best to put everything into terms that are palatable to a guy who’s never read a fantasy novel and spends the grand majority of his free time playing some type of sportsball game instead. It's a lot harder than he thought it would be. “The simplest way to put it is that clerics are priests and paladins are warriors. Clerics typically use a lot of magic. And their alignment doesn’t have to be any one thing. But paladins are usually gonna be lawful good.”

“So clerics can serve gods that aren’t necessarily good?” Steve asks.

“Sure,” Eddie responds easily. “It’s kinda fun to switch things up like that, you know? Playing a character with an alignment that isn’t good. Or even introducing an NPC into the campaign like that. It keeps party members entertained and shit when there’s a twist.”

Steve hums. “A twist. Right.”

Eddie’s babbling, “But the great thing about D&D is that it’s a roleplay game, right, and each campaign has different rules based on your DM’s preferences. And it’s all pretty relaxed, anyway. Like sure, there are rulebooks, but I like to think of them more as guidelines that can be ignored when warranted. It’s all up to your party and your DM.”

Steve doesn’t answer and when Eddie looks up at him it seems like he’s zoning out. His eyes have this faraway kind of look to them and suddenly it’s like he’s not even there.

“...You okay?” Eddie asks after a beat.

Steve blinks and he’s back. He smiles winningly and Eddie’s heart traitorously skips a beat. “Oh. Yeah. I'm fine.” He looks back down at his hands. “Just thinking. About what it would be like if this was real life, you know?”

Eddie tilts his head. Then he grins. “You wanna fight monsters, Steve?”

Steve surprises him by vehemently shaking his head. “God, no. Like, it might seem like it’s fun at first, but it’s really scary. Or, uh, I mean, it’d probably really scary. Right?” He looks away, tapping the end of his pencil against the notebook paper over and over again. “I’d be really boring if D&D was real. I’d want to just be, like, a regular old villager or something. A farmer or a shopkeeper or whatever.”

Something unfurls in Eddie’s chest. A farmer or a shopkeeper. Unexpected. Absolutely unexpected and it just—it rocks Eddie’s being, his body and soul and his heart, obviously his heart, how much he likes Steve. This part of Steve, mostly, when he’s all loose-lipped and open, telling Eddie things about himself that he’s probably never told anyone else. Speaking in fantasy terms about a life he maybe would've wanted to live if D&D were not just some tabletop roleplay game.

“How about a barmaid?” Eddie proposes, just for the sake of levity. And maybe to hear Steve laugh again, too.

Steve snort-laughs. Fuck yeah. “Sure. Yeah. A barmaid.”

“The fairest barmaid in the whole realm, Sir Steven of House Harrington. You help party members on their quests and then you serve the rest of the townspeople, and once that’s done you go home and go to sleep and do it all over again the next day. No detours, no adventuring, no unsolicited scariness of any kind. Just… mundanity at its finest in a fantasy setting.”

Steve smiles at him. It’s not just his regular close-mouthed smile, though—this one’s all straight white teeth and laugh lines beneath his eyes and Jesus H Christ, Eddie cannot possibly become more obsessed with him, can he? It’s physically impossible, probably. His soul wouldn’t allow it. Too much too fast, he’d explode with all of the feeling currently snowballing in his chest.

“Sounds nice,” Steve admits. “Wish I could do that in real life, too.”

“Who says you can’t?”

“Oh, I don’t know. My dad. My family in general. And society, too, probably. Haven’t exactly seen any barmaid positions available in the classifieds, but if you happen to see one, by all means, let me know.”

Eddie pillows his face in his arms. “And what exactly do you call your current position over at the finest dairy establishment this side of Hawkins?”

“My official title is Associate Scooper,” Steve says imperiously, and then he sniffs distastefully. God, he’s such a little asshole. A priss, too, although a lot of it is played up for a reaction. As much as Steve denies it, he definitely has a penchant for drama and will almost certainly do well whenever he finally decides to join his children's latest campaign.

Eddie hides his smile. It’s easy. “Thought it was sailor.”

“No, I’m the captain.”

Eddie can’t hide his laugh. “Hate to break it to you, Steve, but if you’re working with Robin Buckley then there is no way in hell that you’re the captain.”

Steve opens his mouth like he’s about to argue, but then he nods and gives in. “You’re probably right. She keeps bossing me around and calling me dingus. Like, what is this, the sixth grade?”

“God, please don’t say that, the last thing I need right now is a flashback to middle school. Dingus was probably the nicest thing people called me back then.” It’s probably said a little too seriously because the mood immediately shifts and Eddie feels like an idiot for it. Steve is staring at him with his ridiculously sad-looking big brown eyes. Eddie pretends to find his spare sheet of doodle paper exceptionally interesting.

“I don’t remember you in middle school,” Steve says after a beat, and he doesn’t say it to be mean. He looks frustrated about it, actually. That he can’t place Eddie in his memories.

“Thank God for that,” Eddie mumbles with a shudder, his mind conjuring up images of himself against his will, when he was smaller and skinnier with a buzzcut and the world’s largest chip on his shoulder. “I was a hot fucking mess.”

“Who wasn’t?” Steve says, shrugging. “It was middle school.”

“Look, Harrington, cut the bullshit. I distinctly remember you looking your usual brand of preppy and perfect in the eighth grade, which is completely unfair, I'll have you know. You should’ve had cystic acne and repressed daddy issues like the rest of us.”

Steve blinks at him. “I had acne,” he protests. “And daddy issues, probably. And I didn’t have any real friends and I hated being a part of the basketball team and I hated all of my classes, too. I was, like, so miserable in the eighth grade. I know it might be hard to believe but—I was.”

“Alright, alright,” Eddie relents, raising his hands up in defeat. “Fine. We’re not competing over who had a worse time in middle school. I would win, obviously, but it’s not a competition.” Steve gives him a look. Eddie points at him, saying, “And anyway, you’re distracting me from teaching the material, Harrington, don’t think I haven’t noticed."

"Me? How did I—"

"Quiet, heathen. Let's talk familiars."

“Hey, so, uh, you know the fair?”

“The Roane County Fourth of July Fair?” Steve answers immediately, and his tone is bitchy as hell, like, duh, Munson, I’ve been living in this town just as long as you, haven’t I?

Eddie asks, stupidly stumbling over his own words, “Are—are you going?”

Steve sighs. “I don’t know. I mean, I heard Mayor Kline’s going all out this year, springing for a bunch of stuff they’ve never had before. Cool rides and food and shit. It sounds fun. But the only people that go are families with kids or couples on dates, and I don’t need a reminder of all the things I don’t currently have.”

Jesus Christ, this guy’s issues run deeper than Sattler’s Quarry and Eddie likes him, like, so much. An incomprehensible amount, in all honesty. More than he has in the past, and more than he ever thought he would.

Steve is just everything. Kind beneath the facade of his decaying popularity, pretty like stained glass when the sun hits him just right. Pretty all of the time, anyway. Strong in a lot of ways. Endlessly patient, even after working an eight-hour shift slinging ice cream for grubby toddlers. Caring. So, so caring about all of the strangest little things: his troupe of six nerdy pipsqueaks, his slow-thawing acquaintance with band geek and coworker Robin Buckley, whether or not Eddie slept well last night (he didn’t) or what kind of music he listens to (pretty much all genres, with a preference for heavy metal and also blues) or what he’s getting his uncle for his upcoming birthday (something boring and practical because Wayne doesn’t care for anything too flashy. Probably a hat to add to his collection. A mug if he’s feeling particularly fancy.)

It doesn’t make sense but Eddie’s starting to get the idea that it doesn’t have to. It just is.

Eddie hums. Shrugs. Tries to ignore the annoying staccato of his heart beating out of his chest. “But, like, do you want to? Do you want—do you want to go?”

Steve looks up at him. Squints. “Why?” he asks slowly.

Eddie opens his mouth and hopes that this time he’ll be brave. That it’ll be different this time: that he’ll be all suave and charming, that he’ll be able to ask Steve Harrington out to this stupid fucking fair without spontaneously bursting into flames or making a complete and utter fool of himself. That maybe he’ll be so smooth about it that Steve will instantly fall in love with him and implore him to take him away from this stupid town to a country that’s infinitely more gay-friendly, probably somewhere in Europe, and they’ll exist there together with a horde of cats and maybe children one day and be overwhelmingly and unquantifiably happy.

He isn’t. No surprise there.

Instead, he says, “No reason. Just wondering, is all.”

Steve keeps staring at him with that strange look he gets sometimes, the one that makes Eddie a little uneasy, so he busies himself with packing all of his shit up, locking the lockbox and stowing it away safely. He closes the window and pretends like he can’t feel Steve’s gaze, pretends like it doesn’t burn into his back with its intensity. It could mean one thing but it could mean another and Eddie’s always been a huge coward so he’d rather not face it at all, in all honesty.

With everything put away, he stands up and makes to leave through the empty back doorway. “You coming? I gotta lock up.”

Steve nods. Gets his backpack and slings it over his shoulder, and then grabs his cute little notepad and pen. He makes to pass Eddie and then stops short in the doorway.

They’re both standing there in the cramped space. Steve’s shoulder is brushing Eddie’s chest. He’s warm, of course. There’s a little bead of sweat trailing down the side of his neck, and Eddie can only see it because Steve has just brushed his hair behind his ear again. Eddie wants to do that. Gently tug the particularly long and stubbornly curly lock on the left side of his head behind his ear. He also wants to lick up the drop of sweat that has made its way beneath the collar of his uniform, but that’s neither here nor there.

Without looking up from the ground, Steve says, meaningfully, “I would wanna go, I think.” He pauses. Glances up at Eddie and makes eye contact for just a quick second but it’s enough to do Eddie’s head and heart entirely in. “If I had someone to go with.”

Then he leaves, walking away toward his Bimmer and calling, “See you next week, Eddie.”

“Bye,” Eddie stutters at his retreating back, not entirely sure of what just happened, left in the dust that Steve’s car kicks up as he drives away.

So Eddie goes and buys two tickets to the fair with whatever meager firework stand savings he has left after he contributes some to rent and utilities—he’s not a monster, especially not where Wayne is factored—and he doesn’t think about it all that much. If he allows himself to, then he knows he’ll somehow talk himself out of it. But Steve had seemed pretty clear about the whole thing, he thinks.

Well, neither one of them explicitly asked something, or even agreed to something. The something wasn’t even verbalized at any point, but Eddie’s, like, 70, maybe 75% sure that he and Steve are kind of going on a date.

Or maybe he’s just misreading everything, because even if Steve took quite a tumble from grace and is no longer King of Hawkins High, and even though they’d discussed their prospective dream careers in a D&D setting, well—

At the end of the day, Steve still has royalty in his blood. And Eddie’s a court jester if anything. Or maybe a bard busking on the streets of the town for a living while Steve sits in a castle made of gilded marble and stone and looks out at the world sprawled out in its entirety, just waiting to be his.

It would be nice if that weren’t the case, though. In another world, they’re just two regular old commoners who work hard for a living. Eddie is a blacksmith and Steve is a farmer or a schoolteacher or a barmaid, and Eddie can court Steve, or Steve can court Eddie, and they can get married and fall in love and have babies and all of that other sappy romantic bullshit that he pretends he doesn’t want, if only to protect his stupid vulnerable heart.

The following Tuesday, two days before the Fourth, Steve only swings by the stand for a few minutes. He seems frazzled, distracted, and generally unlike his usual self. He tells Eddie, “Look, I’m sorry, but something’s come up and I don’t think I’ll be able to stay today. Sorry.”

“No worries,” Eddie waves him off. “You alright?”

Steve smiles but it’s not the one Eddie’s become so used to—it’s thin, waxy. He looks like the version of himself in high school but, like, infinitely sadder, more faraway, too, and Eddie immediately doesn’t like it.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, very obviously lying, and something uneasy begins to take root in Eddie’s gut. “Just—some stuff going on, you know? Dustin’s back, for one thing, and he just—there’s a lot going on.”

“Listen, Steve, I know I’m not—I know we—I know I’m probably not your first choice to talk to about—well, whatever’s going on with you, but you know you can talk to me, right? About anything. You can talk to me.”

Steve’s face goes all soft again. “I know,” he says gently. Hey lays a large and excessively gentle hand on Eddie’s forearm. “You’re good like that.”

Oh. That’s—well. Nobody’s ever called Eddie good before. And Steve’s hand is like a fucking brand on his skin, burning through to the bone in this early July heat. 

“Okay,” Eddie kind of squeaks, feeling a little stupid with lovesickness. Then, tentatively, because he’s still not one hundred percent sure, “I’ll see you on Thursday, then? For, uh…”

“Yeah,” Steve answers. His face goes all rosy. “Yeah. What time are you officially done here?”

“I’m off around 6:30. Working a little later in the spirit of the holiday and all.”

“Cool. We can leave straight from here. And I’ll bring a change of clothes so you don’t have to be seen with me in a dorky sailor uniform in front of half the county.”

Eddie’s heart soars in his chest, something he hadn’t thought it was capable of doing. He was right. Even though neither one of them has said it explicitly, he’s going to the Roane County Fair with Steve Harrington. Like a date. But even if it isn’t, even if they’re just hanging out as friends, Eddie will be fine. He’ll be okay with that. He’s more than satisfied with the fact that Steve actually wants to meet up with him outside of their silly little informational D&D tutoring sessions.

“I don’t know, sailor, the uniform kinda does it for me,” Eddie teases. He can’t help it.

Steve scoffs, rolls his eyes, but his cheeks are all red. “It’s captain. And, well—you’d be the first.”

“There is absolutely no way that is true,” Eddie immediately protests, leaning in. “The socks, man, the socks—”

“Shut up,” Steve says, and he pushes Eddie’s face away but he’s laughing. 

Then he jogs back to his car, looks back over his shoulder and waves goodbye before, surprisingly, making his way back to Starcourt.

At 6:25 PM on the fourth of July, Eddie closes up shop. He hums a song below his breath and doesn’t realize it’s not his usual choice of heavy metal until he’s leaning up against the side of the stand and waiting for Steve to show up in his car. It’s a fucking pop song. From that new movie he hasn’t seen. He remembers Steve humming it the other day—it must’ve been on the radio.

It’s 6:30 now. Eddie digs into his vest pocket for his pack of cigarettes, draws one out, and lights it up.

He waits.

And he waits.

And he waits some more.

Eventually it gets late enough that he just decides to pack it all up and head home, glaringly Steve-less and feeling very much like a pathetic kicked puppy. Like, sure, this is fine. It’s all fine. It’s whatever. It’s totally fine. Whatever. 

He should’ve known better.

There are barely any queer men his age in Hawkins that aren’t horribly repressed and it was dumb to think that Steve Harrington might’ve been one of them. That he’d look at Eddie and see something bigger and better and brighter than he’d ever been, and that he’d want to be with him in any capacity beyond the boundaries of their D&D study sessions. Not even as a friend, probably.

Eddie shouldn’t be as upset as he actually is, realistically, because this is the very sad reality of what it means to be him, and he’s been dealing with this shit from the minute he was born, basically. The awful feelings curled in his gut, replacing the short-lived and naive joy he'd been soaking in since early June. The inescapable and ever-present disappointment. 

And yet.

He drives home and holes himself up in his room. Ignores Wayne’s questioning glance from the living area and shuts the door behind him, flopping down on his bed and turning up the new Megadeth album on his Walkman. Blasts it so loud he can’t hear his own thoughts. Then he remembers the tickets to the fair sitting in his pocket. He digs them out, crumples them up and tosses them on the floor to get lost in the general mess of his belongings.

He squeezes his body up into a ball and sighs.

Fucking figures.

Wayne busts down Eddie’s door two hours later, around when the fireworks have just begun to die down, and he leans in the doorway just to stare at Eddie judgmentally. Eddie sighs and takes off his headphones so that he can reassure his uncle that he’s not about to go toss himself headfirst in the quarry or anything.

“You’re on the floor,” Wayne states.

“Yup,” Eddie replies, from where he’s cocooned himself in his sheets on the floor of his bedroom, having migrated from the bed because the floor just feels better. Safer.

“You only do that when you’re upset.”

“Yeah, well.” He doesn’t say anything else.

Wayne is silent for another moment. Then he says, “Tilly called.” 

Tilly is a waitress at the diner Wayne frequents before and after his shifts at the plant. She’s the closest thing Wayne’s had to a steady girlfriend since—well, as long as Eddie’s known him, really. They flirt constantly in that Wayne always compliments her eyes or her dress and Tilly always slides him an extra slice of pie. 

Eddie likes Tilly just fine. Nothing all that remarkable about her, really, but she’s good to Wayne so that’s really all that matters.

“O–kay. And why are you telling me?” Eddie asks. “Don’t you two call all the time?”

Wayne rolls his eyes. “You know she works real close to the new mall.”

Eddie squints. “Starcourt? Yeah.”

“She said it’s up in flames,” Wayne tells him, and Eddie—

He stops fucking breathing. 

“What?” he whispers.

Wayne says, “She said it's in the process of burning to the ground. She tried to get close but they wouldn’t let her. Looked like a real crime scene, apparently. Lots of police and firefighters and shit. Feds, too.”

“Up in flames?” Eddie croaks weakly, feeling pure dread begin to pool in his gut.

“Yeah. That’s what she said.”

“Shit,” Eddie says. He stands up, or tries to, anyway, but his sheets are wrapped so tight around his body that he fails horrifically and just ends up falling flat on his face. He’s wriggling on the floor like an idiot and Steve Harrington might be trapped, burning alive in Starcourt and Eddie just left him there because he thought he was being stood up and was too wrapped up in his own disappointment and self-deprecating bullshit and to even consider the idea Steve might’ve been in some kind of trouble. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“Ed, what the hell’re you doing,” Wayne asks, his voice flat as Eddie finally manages to kick off the sheet and scramble his way into the living area, scrabbling for his car keys on the kitchen table.

“I gotta go,” he says, hurrying to the door. “I gotta go to Starcourt, Wayne.”

“What? Ed, no, you oughta stay away from there—”

“Yeah, see, I would in any other scenario, right, except, well, this guy works there,” Eddie stutters, tripping over his own words. “This guy that I really like, and we were supposed to go out tonight, and he didn’t show so I just figured he stood me up or something, because I’m me and he’s him and we’re so different and he’s all popular and rich and shit, so I thought he didn’t want—but he might be—he might—Wayne, he might be in there.”

Wayne shakes his head, and Eddie thinks for one heartbreaking moment that he’s not gonna let him go. 

“You’re a mess. Let me drive,” he says instead, and Eddie’s never been more grateful for his uncle before in his life. He tosses Wayne the keys.

Tilly was right, as it turns out—Starcourt is a literal fucking crime scene.

Plumes of smoke billow up and out into the air. The fire looks just about done but the mall has been massacred. Unsalvageable. 

Eddie struggles to breathe right as they pull into the parking lot. There are ambulances all over, EMTs and firemen and people of all sorts of emergency occupations rushing around. They’re tending to people in the back of the ambulances, most of whom look like they got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It looks like there are a lot of helicopters, too, and a bunch of people in fucking fatigues, even more in polished-looking suits with badges strung around their necks. Eddie has no idea what the fuck is happening.

He doesn’t even wait for Wayne to put the van in park before he shoves the door open and stumbles out of the passenger seat. He nearly falls flat on his face again for the second time that night but he doesn’t give a shit. He’s off like a shot, rushing over to the clump of ambulances just outside the mall’s main entrance, blackened with ash.

He checks nearly all of them. One EMT tells him he can’t be here and he brushes them off before rushing off to the next one. Asks, desperately, “Is Steve Harrington here? Steve Harrington—he works at Scoops Ahoy.”

Finally someone stops and fucking listens to him. “Scoops Ahoy, the ice cream place?” a kind-faced firefighter asks, and Eddie nods. “There’s a kid over there in a sailor getup. Think that might be your Steve.” She’s pointing over at an ambulance. Eddie trips his way over.

Sure enough, Steve is there. Eddie’s knees buckle in relief at the sight of him. 

He’s sitting with his legs dangling out the back of the ambulance, Robin Buckley at his side, tucked up against him, her eyes closed. They’re both still in their uniforms.

They look like they’ve been through hell.

Besides the general grime staining their clothing and bodies, Steve’s face is purple and blue and swollen. He has a nasty black eye and a split lip. There are stains on his uniform, dark patches of blood and other fluids Eddie can’t hope to discern. His knuckles are split and his hands are trembling in his lap.

He looks awful. Like he’s been put through the fucking wringer.

“Steve,” Eddie calls, his voice wavering, and Steve’s neck cracks with the force of his head whipping toward Eddie’s direction and he winces.

“Eddie,” he croaks, his voice sounds shot to shit, and Eddie scrambles over as Steve shakes Robin gently, gets her to sit up so that he can get to his feet, too.

When Eddie’s close enough he reaches over to grab at Steve’s wrists—gently, though. Upon closer look he sees that they’re bruised. Little rings of purple around his wrists, the skin around them rubbed red and chafed.

“What the fuck, are you okay?” Eddie asks frantically, checking him all over. He’s got dried flakes of blood all over his face, too. His skin is all discolored. Purple and red and green and yellow. No pretty pink skin peeking through at all and the sight of it just fucking kills Eddie. “What—what happened? Who did this—what the fuck—”

“I’m sorry,” is what Steve says, and, like—what?

“What?” Eddie says, entirely confused. “What are you—”

“I said I’m sorry,” Steve says, and he sounds really sad, too. “I’m sorry. We had a date planned and I didn’t show.”

Eddie gapes at him for what feels like an eternity as both indignation and utter confusion war for dominance in his chest. He gives into both. “What the hell—baby, what are you apologizing for? Do you see yourself, Steve? The mall is burning to the ground, you don’t have to—clearly, you got caught up with something else, and even if you didn’t it would’ve been fine, alright? You just—you don’t have to worry about that. We’ll reschedule, okay? Raincheck.”

“But there’s only one Fourth of July fair,” Steve laments miserably, his swollen lower lip jutting out and his eyes are huge and round and Jesus Christ, is he on something? Was he, at some point? “And I wanted to go with you, Eddie. Really bad.”

Eddie wants nothing more than to steal Steve away from here, away from the fire and smoke and ash. Bring him back to the trailer and tuck him into bed and perch watchfully at his bedside, make sure he sleeps through the night and that nothing else gets to him. Not tonight. Not ever.

Eddie laughs, choked up, and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about that, sweetheart. Not right now,” he says. “We’ll find something else to do once you’ve recovered. Alright?”

“‘Kay,” Steve says, and then he pitches forward and basically collapses into Eddie’s body.

“There you go,” Eddie says, catching him around the middle. “You’re alright, big boy.”

“I’m alright,” Steve repeats.

“You’re safe now.”

“Yeah. I am.” He closes his eyes.

“Good.” Eddie looks up and sees Robin sitting there staring at them. She’s smiling even though she looks absolutely exhausted.

“Hey, Buckley,” Eddie says, guiding Steve over to the edge of the ambulance so that he can sit back down. He goes easily but he’s still leaning into Eddie’s body, his forehead pressing into his stomach. Eddie lets himself run his hands over and through Steve’s hair like he’s wanted to for years, smoothing it away from his face and behind his ears. 

“Hi,” Robin replies.

“You alright?”

“Never better,” she answers airily, and for some reason she sounds like she means it. Her eyes cut to Steve. “He doesn’t have anyone to stay with tonight.”

“What?”

“My parents are coming to pick me up,” she says. “The paramedics called Steve’s parents but nobody’s home. They’re off somewhere. Paris, I think. Or maybe it was Corsica? I don’t know, somewhere in Europe. They’re not coming back, is the thing. Not for a while. And I want him with me because I know I’ll feel all wrong the moment we’re separated, but my parents are seriously freaking out and I don’t know if they’ll let him stay with us, seeing as he is, regrettably, a guy—“

“I’ll take him,” Eddie says easily. “I’ll take him. Of course I will.”

She deflates and smiles wanly up at him. “Thank you, Eddie. You’re nice, you know? You’re a good person.”

“Me?” He looks behind him as if there were any other Eddie she could possibly be talking to. “You’re not being serious.”

“I am.” She leans forward, blue eyes all scrunched up. She has deep laugh lines carved just below them. “Steve told me all about you. About your little tutoring sessions and all that. He kept waxing poetic about how good you are. And I just kinda laughed him off, because really, Eddie Munson? I’ve heard the rumors.” She pauses. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Steve Harrington, it’s to let go of all of those shitty preconceived notions and to just let people surprise you. Because they will. Given the chance. He has. You have. You’re good, Eddie. Thank you for coming for him when nobody else did.”

If Eddie feels unfairly misty-eyed right now all because Robin fucking Buckley can apparently see right through his armor and skin and into the molten center of him, then that’s nobody’s business but his own.

“Thanks,” he says shortly. He’s sincere, though. He means it. He’s grateful. He breathes in and tries to shake off all of the emotion by saying, “That was a great monologue, by the way. You’re good at improv. You should join Hellfire.”

“And tank my already questionable social status? No thank you. Appreciate the offer, though. You wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

“Yeah, probably not.” He pauses. Actually looks at her, the way she hunches in on herself and the way her fingers keep tap-tap-tapping against her thigh. “Are you gonna be okay?”

She waves him off. “I’ll be fine. Honestly, I haven’t processed anything yet. Like, okay, the evil Russians were one thing—“

“What?”

“But then there was the portal to a hell dimension opening right under Starcourt—“

“Portal to—what?”

“And then the giant monster made of human flesh that almost ate us—“

“You’re fucking with me,” he realizes. “Christ, Buckley, how do you come up with this shit?”

Robin winks at him. “You said it yourself, Munson. I have insanely good improv skills.”

Steve continues to doze while they talk. Robin tells Eddie that he has to be woken up every couple of hours or so on account of his concussion. Also, if the ringing in his ears persists he might need to get them checked out. And he’s apparently got a lot of bruising all over, too, which will be super achy and tender and generally not fun to deal with come morning. In general, he’ll look a veritable mess for the next two to four weeks.

Eddie promises to take good care of him right before Robin’s finally whisked away by her fretful parents and then Eddie’s left with Steve. There are a few people still lingering, besides the feds and police and EMTs. Some kids all huddled together in the back of another ambulance. Jonathan Byers sitting with his little brother. Then, right next to him, Nancy Wheeler, who is staring at Eddie with her sharp blue eyes, her head tilted. Eddie doesn’t really know what to do about that, so he just nods at her, then gently rouses Steve.

“Come on, Stevie,” he says. “Up and at ‘em. Let's go home.”

“Home?” he asks, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t wanna go home. Where’s Robin?”

“Her parents took her. She’s safe. You can come home with me, is what I mean. If you want.”

“Go home with you?”

“Home as in my trailer. You know, in Forest Hills? Right by the park.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and then he melts. “Yeah. I would like that.”

Wayne has rendezvoused with a frantic-looking Tilly further down in the parking lot, where onlookers have begun to gather behind shoddily placed police barricades. Reporters are just arriving, setting up equipment. All of them are staring at the ruins of the once brand-new and shiny Starcourt. 

It's horrible of him, he knows, but Eddie thinks he probably won’t miss it. Not really. He’d never really been, beyond checking out Sam Goody that one time and pestering Gareth to give him free smoothie samples right along with the rest of the spoiled unsupervised children. He’ll only miss it because if it weren’t there, he maybe wouldn’t have been given the chance to talk to Steve. Would Steve have sought him out, Eddie wonders, if it hadn’t been super convenient, on his way home from work every other day? Would he just go about his day, continuing to pass Eddie by in the grocery stores or on the sidewalks downtown, barely allowing his gaze to linger?

Eddie would still linger. He can’t help it.

Wayne spots him approaching and leaves Tilly with a few whispered reassurances and a squeeze to her hand. Then he comes over and helps Eddie more or less carry Steve over to the van, buckle him in the backseat when his fingers scrabble uselessly at the seatbelt, still too trembly to do much. 

Wayne doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t ask who Steve is or how Eddie knows him, doesn’t ask where they’re going or why Steve’s face is beaten black and blue and why he’s sluggishly leaking blood all over their shitty seats.

He just drives home. Lowers the volume of the radio as well as the back window, in case Steve’s feeling a little motion sick. Wayne’s good like that.

The next hour or so is admittedly a little bit of a blur; they get home and Eddie immediately guides Steve into the shower, helps him out of his ruined sailor uniform, and sits down outside of the tub when Steve won’t let go of his hand. The blood comes away with the gentle rubbing of a washcloth and a bar of Irish Spring. Steve is coherent enough to complain about their lack of good conditioner, saying that his hair will get frizzy without it, which is good. Not the frizziness, although Eddie is admittedly indifferent about it, but his coherency. It's a good thing that he’s feeling well enough to gripe about something so completely mundane after going through whatever the hell he went through.

Eddie helps him dress in clothes taken from his own dresser when Steve can’t raise his arms above his head. His torso is mottled with bruises, the imprints of boots and hands and the line of what could be a rope or some other kind of restraint and Eddie feels sick looking at them. 

Clearly the situation at Starcourt is a lot more complicated than anyone has let on, and Eddie feels this insanely intense burning curiosity at his center, and wants so badly to ask a plethora of questions, but Steve needs to rest. So he doesn’t say anything, doesn't ask the questions that rest on the tip of his tongue. Steve doesn't volunteer any information, either.

He tries to offer Steve whatever food they have in the fridge or cabinets—a can of soup or whatever leftovers Wayne made or hell, even a bowl of cereal to tide over his stomach, but Steve looks like he might be sick at the mere mention of eating so they leave it be, for now.

Wayne heads off to work, although not without looking both Eddie and Steve in the eye and making them promise to give him a call at the plant should they need anything. After that Eddie guides Steve into his bedroom. It’s still a giant fucking disaster, and his sheets are on the floor from when he was having patented floor time, so he trudges over, picks them up and spreads them back out over the bed.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says sheepishly, kicking some magazines and the pair of handcuffs he managed to steal from Callahan under the bed. “Maid took the week off.”

Steve isn’t looking at the mess of his wrinkled sheets, though, or all of the shit scattered on the floor.

“You have so much stuff,” he says in awe, traversing the room and staring up at all of Eddie’s posters: Anthrax and Judas Priest and the shitty Corroded Coffin flag, made from one of Jeff’s spare bed sheets and two cans of spray paint. Then he reaches out and lets his hand ghost over everything else. His fingers trail across Eddie’s amps, a few prototype battle jackets that didn’t make the cut, and his guitars, the electric and the acoustic.

“This machine slays dragons,” he says, tilting his head in an unbearably endearing way to read the curved words painted on the surface.

“Woody Guthrie inspired,” Eddie supplies, shuffling on his feet.

Steve just nods. “Cool.”

It occurs to Eddie that this is maybe the first time he’s brought a boy back home. Gareth and Jeff and Grant have seen the place, of course, but they’re not—it’s not the same. Steve is a boy he really likes. Steve is also not from Eddie’s world. He’s not a fellow metalhead or nerd or self-proclaimed freak. He comes from a rich family and he lives in a big house on Cornwallis. He doesn’t sew patches onto his jackets and jeans to cover up holes. Everything in his room is probably all tidy. He probably doesn’t have a dragon’s hoard of random cheap tchotchkes like Eddie does, spread out all over his room in an explosion of color and disorganization.

Eddie feels intensely vulnerable showing all of this to him. Like he’s showing Steve his gross insides and waiting to see if he will wrinkle his nose in distaste or accept him for what he is. His palms have gone all clammy and sweaty and he keeps having to discreetly rub them on the outside of his jeans.

Steve is quiet for a while as he goes back to looking at everything. He picks up a mini figure that Eddie painted, squints at it with his one good eye. “Who’s this?” he asks. “Looks scary.”

“Vecna,” Eddie supplies, shifting from foot to foot. “He’s the big bad villain from a campaign I wanna play. I was thinking maybe next year—I don’t know.”

Steve nods again. Sets the figure down gently, like he’s afraid to break it.

“I like your stuff,” he says.

“Thanks,” Eddie replies.

“I mean it. My room feels fucking soulless compared to yours.”

That loosens something up in Eddie, the insecurity that had briefly made itself known, reared its ugly head. He snorts in response. “What you’re saying is that your room is clean and mine looks like a mess.”

“No. What I’m saying is that I don’t have any posters or instruments or collections of anything, just a few trophies and a framed picture of a car that my dad got me and my wallpaper is plaid and it’s all so ugly. This is cool. It’s cool that you have so many things that you care about.”

Eddie swallows. “Yeah, I guess.”

Steve’s still looking around. His eyes catch on a stack of books. “Wait—is that the Hawkins Middle yearbook?”

“What? Where? No—hey, wait, Steve—”

But Steve is already pulling it out from where it’s wedged in the middle of the stack, between textbooks he'd never returned and used D&D guidebooks. He flips through the pages expertly, his eyes scanning each one until he eventually stops.

“You had Mr. Clarke for homeroom, right?”

“Maybe,” Eddie says weakly. 

“Found you!” Steve says triumphantly, his finger landing on the picture. Then he laughs. “Holy shit. Your hair.”

Eddie sighs.

“You had a buzzcut—oh my God, your ears!”

“I know, I know. Ginormous. Everyone made fun.”

Steve smiles down at the photo. His finger still lingers around its border. “I think they’re cute,” he says honestly. "You were really cute."

Eddie huffs and shakes his head, trying to dispel the butterflies lurching up from his stomach into his throat. “Well. You’d be the first to say so. Hey, you should really get some rest now, right?”

Steve hums. He looks at the picture again, staring at it for another long moment like he's trying to burn it into his brain, before closing the yearbook and setting it back down on the stack of books. He murmurs, “I don’t really feel like it. Like—I feel all keyed up. I usually feel like this after—” He stops himself short. “I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can sleep.”

“Didn’t say you had to sleep. But just—rest, right? You should lie down and rest.”

Steve relents. He lets Eddie corral him into his messy bed, doesn’t complain about how tangled up the sheets are or how lumpy his mattress is. He just sinks into it all and lets out a relaxed sigh.

Eddie smiles. “Okay. I’ll come back in an hour to wake you up.” Then he makes to leave the room.

Steve’s hand whips out and latches around Eddie’s wrist so quickly that Eddie doesn’t immediately process it. He just stares down at Steve’s wide tan hand gripping tightly around Eddie’s dumbly.

“Where are you going? Don’t go,” Steve says, pleads. “Stay here.”

Eddie’s incredibly weak to Steve Harrington even when he’s not begging, so his resolve immediately breaks and crumbles into a million tiny pieces. He nods once, then comes over and kneels at the bedside.

Steve’s face screws up. “The hell are you doing down there?”

“I thought—”

“You're so—stay up here with me, Eddie," Steve commands. He’s kind of bratty, honestly. Eddie kind of loves that about him.

He still hesitates. “Are you—”

“Eddie, if you don’t come up here within the next five seconds, I swear to God—”

“Alright, fine, fine, Jesus, calm down,” Eddie says. He hesitates just for a moment before kicking off his jeans and sliding in under the covers. Steve lets out another long sigh, burrowing his pretty frizzy hair into Eddie’s bleach-stained pillowcase. He’s still got his hand latched around Eddie’s wrist. He hasn’t let it go and it doesn’t feel like he plans to do so any time soon. Eddie’s not upset about it. He wants Steve to hold his hand, like, all of the time, so he’ll take what he can get where he can get it, regardless of the circumstances.

“Talk to me,” Steve asks, although it doesn't really sound like a question. His eyes keep fluttering but his voice sounds wide awake.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Everything.”

“Alright,” Eddie says. “Well. I suppose I am curious. After all of that tutoring we did, do you think you're feeling adequately prepared to officially join your kiddies’ campaign?”

Steve smiles. “Maybe,” he says. “I mean, I had a great tutor, don’t get me wrong—“

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, heard he’s a real studious guy. Passes all of his classes with flying colors. Projected to be the valedictorian for the class of ‘86, actually.”

“Yeah, exactly. He’s really smart. Like, insanely smart, actually, even though he tries not to come across that way. He’s really good at teaching other people. Dumbs it down enough to make you understand and doesn’t make you feel bad about asking stupid questions. Really patient. Loud but I like it. Caring. Kind.”

Eddie’s throat feels dry and his stomach is flipping. His heart refuses to slow down where it's beating out of his chest. Steve can maybe feel it underneath the steady width of his other hand, where he had pressed his palm into Eddie's chest a few moments ago. Eddie reaches up to hold his wrist gently with his own free hand, mindful of the thick red marks circled there in the skin. Strokes a path over them with his thumb with the intention of soothing and Steve shudders with the touch.

Eddie says, “I don’t know, I also heard he’s kind of a jackass, though. A little bit obnoxious, probably. And he likes a guy who’s, like, insanely out of his league.”

Steve is silent and Eddie momentarily worries that he’s misread everything; that Steve will sit up with a pinched expression and tell Eddie to fuck off and then he’ll leave and Eddie will be alone again. Which is stupid, anyway, because Steve is a mess and is concussed and he apparently doesn’t have anywhere else to go. But Eddie can’t help his useless anxious mind.

Steve just chuckles and Eddie's worries are dispelled. “I don’t know what gave you that idea. That I'm out of your league. I’m just a barmaid at the tavern in town.”

Eddie bites down at his lip to suppress an embarrassing sound. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And you’re a blacksmith.”

“That I am." He puts on an obnoxiously affected accent just because he can and says, “My name is Edward the Efficient and I craft all of the finest weaponry that Hawkins has seen at a truly impressive rate. I put all of the other blacksmiths in town out of business. My swords are sharp, my shields sturdy, and my resolve to become the world's greatest blacksmith is unbreakable.”

Because Steve is surprising and amazing and everything Eddie has ever wanted, he laughs goofily and then says, in an even more exaggerated accent that cannot actually be inspired by any existing language but is amusing all the same, “Oh, Edward, you are so talented at your craft. Do you also deal in fireworks?”

“Fireworks?” Eddie repeats. “Why, yes, Steve the Spectacular of House Harrington, I happen to deal in fireworks as well. They are perfectly adequate fireworks and will serve the town well during the annual festival celebrating a history that I never paid attention to in class.”

“This festival sounds fun.”

Eddie hums. “Too bad we missed it this year. It appears fate was not on our side, because Steve the barmaid was dragged into a dangerous quest even though he hates quests of any kind, and Eddie the blacksmith was feeling much too sorry for himself to join in the festivities alone.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Steve says sadly in his normal voice, accent abandoned.

Eddie follows suit and huffs. “I already told you not to be. Whatever happened to you—it’s not your fault. And it’s not your fault that we missed the fair, alright? There’s always next year.”

“I don't wanna wait that long,” Steve whines. "We should just go out next week or something. How about dinner and a movie?

Eddie pretends to think about it. “I don’t know, now that Starcourt’s kaput, we’d have to go to the Hawk, and that place is grody as hell.”

“There’s the drive-in, though. We can take my car.”

“Sure. Or we could take mine. It’s no BMW but it’s roomy. Got a mattress in the back.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Planning on getting lucky so quickly, Munson? I don’t put out on the first date.”

Eddie scoffs to distract from how blazing hot his face currently feels. Steve is ridiculous. “Absolutely not. I will leave your virtue intact, pinky promise. It would just be for the sake of legroom, of course.”

“Of course,” Steve echoes, amused. “What movie?”

“I don’t know. I like horror.”

“Rom-coms are better,” Steve protests, and he doesn’t even look embarrassed about it.

Eddie purses his lips. “Let’s compromise and watch an action slash adventure.”

“Deal. Where are we eating?”

“I don’t know. I miss Benny’s. Feels like every other place in town is so fucking expensive now.”

Steve hums. “I could make food and we can picnic somewhere.”

“You cook?” Eddie asks.

“Sometimes,” Steve answers cryptically. “Occasionally. I don’t hate it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eddie says. “Getting to try Steve Harrington’s home cooking. When? You still have to give yourself time to recover before you're out and about, you know.”

“Fine. Next Saturday, maybe, if my concussion isn’t too bad. Pick me up? Since you wanna take your roomy van with the mattress in the back and all.”

“Sure. I would tell you to wear your uniform, but considering the circumstances and the fact that it’s pretty fucking ruined, I guess any old preppy outfit will do in its stead.”

“You like it when I wear polos?”

Eddie sighs. “For reasons I cannot comprehend and refuse to explore, yes, I really do. Your colorblock just really does it for me.”

“Good.” And then Steve just leans in and lays a kiss on the corner of Eddie’s lips. Just like that, as easy as breathing. He kisses Eddie.

Eddie had spent so much time agonizing over coming off the wrong way, about Steve being potentially weirded out by all of his capital-N Nonsense, and about the 99% chance that Steve was straight and absolutely not into him. And then Steve just leans in and kisses him so damn easily, dispelling all of Eddie's worries, like there was never any doubt between the two of them in the first place.

Eddie hates to admit it, but Jesus H Christ—even after working a minimum wage job where he was made to wear a dorky little sailor’s getup and then willingly engaging in tutoring sessions about D&D all for the sake of a group of middle schoolers that he babysits without pay, and the irreparable damage that all of those things should have done to his social status—Steve Harrington is still ridiculously cool.

“Okay,” Steve says against his lips. He gives him another chaste kiss again, his lips soft and pillowy and warm. It's little more than a peck but it's still everything and it steals the breath right out of Eddie's lungs. Then he settles back down into the pillows and closes his eyes. “It’s a date.”

“It’s a date,” Eddie echoes. He lets go of Steve's wrist to tuck his hair behind his ear and Steve smacks his lips.

“You rule,” he mumbles. “One point for me. In your face, Robin.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Wake me up in an hour?” Steve says through a big yawn.

“Right, yeah, okay.” Eddie fumbles for his watch and clumsily sets an alarm in case he falls asleep before then.

“Thank you,” Steve breathes.

“Of course.”

“No, I meant, like—for everything. Not just for taking me in tonight. Thank you for even talking to me in the first place. For teaching me about D&D even though you didn’t have to. For being there for me. Thank you. It means a lot.”

Eddie melts. “Of course,” he repeats. “Get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Steve finally relents. And then he falls asleep, tucked into Eddie's body beneath his sheets, his hair still drying and his body completely relaxed. He's wearing Eddie's clothes. He called Middle School Eddie cute. They have a tentative date set for next week.

Eddie can't believe his life.

He stays up for a while afterward, counting each of the slow breaths Steve takes and watching the steady rising and falling of his chest until he, too, is eventually lulled into a brief but restful sleep.

+ 

“So you know how Dustin and Erica forced me and Robin into playing a one-shot with them after we trauma bonded in Starcourt as it actively burned to the ground?” Steve asks a few weeks later. 

He’s healing beautifully, just small hints of yellow lingering on his face, and his hearing isn’t great but it’s alright, and his concussion wasn’t that bad this time around, thank God. He’s sitting up on Eddie's kitchen counter like he belongs there in nothing but his old green gym shorts—shorter than the Scoops Ahoy uniform, fuck yeah—and an older Judas Priest t-shirt—one of Eddie's shirts, double fuck yeah.

They’ve been on a total of three dates so far, all of which went wonderfully. They see each other all of the time in between, at Eddie's place or Steve's house or in town or wherever they can go. Eddie has to wonder how the hell he was spending his summers before this one because now his days are filled to the brim with Steve motherfucking Harrington and his life has never felt more correct.

“I love how casually you use D&D lingo now like I didn’t have to forcibly beat it all into your brain over the course of June,” Eddie tells him, flipping the grilled cheese he’s making in its pan. “It really turns me on when you talk nerdy.”

Steve ignores him. “They were shocked that I actually knew anything about it, because Dustin’s always going on about how I never listen to him. You should’ve seen the look on his face when I pulled out the character sheet I made,” he says smugly. “Priceless.”

“You mean the one I helped you make,” Eddie says.

Steve waves him off. “Whatever. The point is that I totally schooled that little asshole. And I didn’t die, even though he clearly designed this one-shot just to kill the three of us. Really showed him.”

“It’s amazing,” Eddie remarks. “The lengths you will go just to fuck with your friend. Who is fourteen years old, might I add.”

“If you had a troupe of about seven of them constantly making fun of you and your intelligence stats, you’d understand,” Steve says. “Anyway, I played a game and now Dustin can get off of my ass about it and I won't have to play again. I just don't think this whole D&D thing is for me. Way too stressful.”

Eddie gapes at him, grilled cheese momentarily forgotten. “You—you made me tutor you for, like, a month and a half!”

Steve frowns. “It was just one month.”

“What the hell—what was the point of me crafting honest-to-God lesson plans if you were just gonna play one game? And it wasn’t even a fully-fledged campaign, by the way, but some homebrew oneshot that your dorky freshman friend cooked up just to fuck with you. What if I wanted to play with you? What about the rest of your brood, don’t they have a ton of campaigns they’ll wanna play with you, too?”

Steve purses his lips, then mumbles something unintelligible below his breath.

Eddie leans forward. “Sorry, didn’t catch that. What did you say?”

“I said,” Steve grumbles a little bit louder, “That yes, while I did kind of find you this summer because I wanted to learn how to play D&D, I mostly wanted to just talk to you.”

Eddie stares at him for, like, a solid thirty seconds, maybe, just trying to process this.

“The grilled cheese is burning,” Steve points out.

“What the hell do you mean, you just wanted to talk to me?” Eddie bursts. “You said—you specifically said you were looking for me because you wanted me to tutor you in D&D. You said you asked Robin who made you talk to Gareth in order to find me. You had no idea where I was.”

Steve rolls his eyes, hops down from the counter, and pushes Eddie away from the stove to take over. “Yes, I did say all of that. And I did go ask them, just for the sake of not coming across as a complete creep. But I didn’t need your friend Gareth to find you. I knew where you were.”

“You knew where I was,” Eddie repeats bluntly, as Steve turns off the stove and starts searching the cabinets for a plate.

“Yeah, Eddie. I passed that shitty firework stand on my way home from work every day. Of course I knew where you were.”

“And you just… wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah.” Steve plates the grilled cheese and cuts it into a perfect triangle. “Course I did. I had a crush on you.”

“You what,” Eddie says.

“I had a crush on you.”

Eddie looks up at the ceiling. “What is happening? Is this real life?” he asks. He looks back at Steve. “Since fucking when?”

“I don’t know. March, maybe? Definitely during spring semester. You were in O’Donnell’s class with me.”

“I know I was in O’Donnell’s class with you! How do you know that? I sat in the back row and you never even looked at me once!”

Steve looks peeved. “That is absolutely not true, baby. I looked at you all the time. I wanted to talk to you every day.”

“But you didn’t,” Eddie counters.

Steve shakes his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t really have an excuse to. Or I didn’t think of one until recently.”

They sit with that for a moment. Steve gives Eddie his half of the grilled cheese and then hops back up onto the counter to start eating his.

“Well. Even though I'm a little pissed that you didn't actually care as much as I thought you did to learn about D&D, I’m glad you finally talked to me,” Eddie tells him eventually, feeling a little calmer than he was just a minute ago. “I liked you for so long. Like, an embarrassingly long time. I remember what you looked like in middle school, so that should really paint the picture of how long-lasting and embarrassingly deep my feelings are for you.”

Steve smiles at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You have me now.”

“I do.” He leans in, grabs ahold of Steve's chin and kisses him. It’s a thing he can do now whenever he'd like—well, not in public, and not in front of anyone besides Robin and Wayne, who are both very happy for them even though they think the PDA is insufferable. But whenever they’re alone they can’t stay away from each other for very long. It’s too easy to be with one another. Eddie had no idea it could be this easy. To love and to be loved.

“So, Steve of House Harrington,” Eddie says, nudging at the tip of Steve’s nose with his own. “What’s next for you now that you can no longer call yourself an Associate Scooper?”

“Me and Robin were talking yesterday. She wants to apply to the Family Video,” Steve replies. His breath smells like cheese but so does Eddie’s so it’s alright. “Far my dream job, but it’ll keep me occupied. Hopefully nothing horrible will happen this year and I can avoid any and all quests that the citizens of Hawkins might be going on.”

“One can only hope,” Eddie says. “I don’t know, sailor, your kiddies are gonna start going to Hawkins High come September. According to you, they’re gonna wanna join Hellfire and we’ll finally meet. Seems like it’ll be a pretty eventful year for you, since your worlds are all forcibly colliding.”

“I think that’s a good thing,” Steve says with a decisive nod. “They’ll love you.”

Eddie grins. “You think so?”

“I know so. And then you’ll graduate and we can be together all the time and live out our little D&D fantasy.”

“The one where we’re both commoners and I’m a blacksmith and you’re a barmaid and we live in a little cottage with several cats and two dogs and maybe children one day if we think we can swing it?”

“Yeah,” Steve says with a horribly sappy look on his face. “That's the one. I love that one.”

Eddie hums. “Me too,” he tells him, and he leans in again to kiss the beautiful smile taking up Steve’s face. “Me too.”