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Steve reaches down behind the tattered couch and picks up a soda can, something sticky dripping out of it into the no-man’s-land between the couch and the wall. “Gross,” he says, flicking his wrist and sinking the can into the trash bag that’s wilting on the coffee table.

It’s all Dustin’s fault, like everything else that goes wrong in Steve’s life. He just had to have the fucking gargoyle club keep running over summer break, and Steve’s was apparently the only place in town that all the kids could gather. So Steve has to be in charge of six teenagers and Eddie Munson for a night every week, when he’s trying to get all his shit together to move up to Bloomington next month. And now the kids are gone, off to Wheeler’s for a sleepover or something, and for some reason Eddie’s just—lingering. 

“You didn’t have to give them unlimited access to the Dew,” Eddie says. He’s sitting on Steve’s kitchen counter, not helping at all, even though he does have the roll of paper towels in his lap and he could wipe up some of the mess if he wanted. “You could have cut them off.”

“You could have cut them off,” Steve points out. He wasn’t even supposed to be supervising, tonight, but apparently Eddie is just as much of a child as the rest of them. “You could also fucking help, you know.”

“I could.” Eddie’s chewing on his hair, flipping through one of the folders the kids left behind. He twirls his dumb Nokia in his other hand. Steve can’t believe this guy.

“It’s just,” Steve says, shaking the trash bag and letting the cans rattle around inside it, “I’m not sure why you’re still here, if you’re not going to help me clean.”

“Oh, does my presence offend you?” Eddie reaches behind him, to where the box of Diet Coke is sitting, and pulls a can out. “Gimme a second and I’ll sweep or whatever, I just need to make sure Max did her level-up correctly.”

Steve rolls his eyes. He snatches the broom from where it’s leaning against the living room wall and tosses it across the kitchen, and then watches as the world slows down to half-speed and the broom handle smacks Eddie’s hand right as Eddie cracks the can open. 

“Shit,” Steve says, as if that’s really going to help. The stain on Eddie’s (not pristine, but definitely beloved, from the way it’s worn in all the right places) white shirt is growing wider by the second. 

“Well Jesus, Harrington, if you wanted to get me out of my clothes you could have asked politely,” Eddie says, plucking his shirt away from his chest and frowning down at it. 

“I’m sorry, man, hold on,” Steve says. He hustles across the living room to the bedroom door, pushing it open—he always keeps it closed when the kids are here, doesn’t want them rummaging through all of his shit—and heading for the dresser. He tugs an old green t-shirt out of his shirt drawer and turns around to find Eddie somehow perching on the edge of his bed. “What are you doing in here?”

“Looking around,” Eddie says. “Never been in the king’s chambers before.”

“Stop fucking calling me that,” Steve says. “Why are you so obsessed with the high school bullshit. We’re 22.”

“I’m 23, actually. Last week,” Eddie says with a wink.

He’s in a bad mood, Steve is, because the kids were loud and annoying and he’d already had a headache brewing when they arrived and now Eddie’s just lingering here for some reason. Steve had things he wanted to get to, tonight, Craigslist ads to scroll through, furniture to get rid of. He’s moving in 27 days. He really doesn’t have time to be hosting these game nights—especially because they never let him play. Not that he’d want to play, of course. 

“And, well, some of us never matured past high school,” Eddie says. 

And then he tugs his coke-splattered shirt right over his head.

Steve tries to avert his eyes, he really does, or at least pull his gaze away before Eddie catches him staring, but—well. In his defense, he’s tired and overstimulated and Eddie’s naked chest is just right fucking there. 

Eddie’s naked chest is right fucking there.

“This shirt is ridiculous,” Eddie says, standing up now, so close to Steve. “I can’t believe you poured Diet Coke all over me and now you’re making me wear your fucking Hawkins Basketball shirt.”

“Alright, then fucking give it back,” Steve says. He reaches out to grab the offending shirt back, ignoring the heat he feels when his fingers brush against Eddie’s. 

“No, absolutely not, I’m not driving home shirtless,” Eddie says.

There’s a half-hearted tug of war at play, now. “Then stop complaining, maybe?”

“How well do you know me? I’ll never stop complaining,” Eddie says, and he reaches his hand out to slide a finger underneath the hem of the shirt Steve is wearing. 

“Clearly not very well,” Steve says. 

“Would have thought you’d give me the shirt off your back,” Eddie says. His voice is low, his eyes dark. 

“Then clearly you don’t know me very well either,” Steve says. He needs a slap, or something. It’s dangerous, to be here in his bedroom at close to midnight with a half-naked Eddie Munson staring at him with those eyes, that voice, standing so close to him, acting like a fucking asshole, smelling like Diet Coke and weed. 

“Oh, Stevie, I don’t think I know you very well at all,” Eddie says.

Less than a handprint of distance between them, Steve thinks, and it’s all filled with electricity, and it’s too much. It’s too fucking much.

He leans in.

They have their hands on each other almost immediately, and Steve crowds Eddie backwards, Eddie’s thighs hitting the mattress as Steve pushes him down, gets on top of him. Eddie’s hands are cold as he pushes Steve’s shirt up and Steve can feel his nipples reacting, poking out like shards of rock. Steve tugs at Eddie’s waistband, gets the button open and the zipper down at the same time that Eddie gets Steve’s shirt all the way up to his shoulders. He shrugs through it, ignoring the way the neckline catches on his nose, his hands finding their way back to Eddie’s hips the second they’re out of the arm holes.

Eddie’s hand—grabbing at Steve—tugging his jeans down, his boxers too, pulling Steve down closer to him; Steve’s hand on Eddie, jerking, squeezing, both of them moaning into each other. Eddie’s hair is in his mouth, Eddie’s breath hot on Steve’s neck, Eddie’s teeth scraping against his collarbone as he moves his way down Steve’s body. And then Eddie’s pulling back, his hands moving to Steve’s shoulders, and Steve is being manhandled, flipped over so that his back is on the bed, and Eddie’s stupid pink mouth is making its stupid pink way towards Steve’s dick, and oh, god, that’s good.

They both come, way too fast.

Steve heads to the bathroom, getting a washcloth from the drawer and running warm water over it. When he makes his way back to the bedroom Eddie’s sitting up and smirking. “Enjoy yourself, your highness?”

“I told you to fuck off with that high school stuff, Munson,” Steve says. God, Eddie’s irritating.

“Whatever you say, my liege,” Eddie says. He takes his time putting his clothes back on, slipping into the Hawkins Basketball shirt with a grin. “Wash my shirt for me and give it back next week?”

“Fine,” Steve says. “We can trade back after your next goblin session.”

“You know what it’s called, don’t lie,” Eddie says. 

“But this,” Steve says, waving his hands between the two of them, “this is a one-time thing.”

Steve could swear he sees a flash of hurt across Eddie’s face, but it’s gone before he can be sure.

“Alright,” Eddie says.

“Not because you’re a dude.” Steve needs to make that clear. “Just so you know. It’s entirely because it’s you, because you’re so fucking annoying.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Eddie says, and at least he’s smiling now. He gathers the folders and his box of dice and whatever the fuck else he keeps bringing into Steve’s apartment. “Later, man.”

He lets himself out.

Steve drops back onto the bed, ignoring the abandoned wet washcloth and the drying sticky spot. He grabs his phone, flicks through it aimlessly, throws it back onto the side table. If he thinks about Eddie as he falls asleep, that’s no one’s business but his own.

— 

It happens again next week.

It doesn’t mean anything. 

Eddie’s only in town for a month before he goes back up to Indy and then Steve is moving to Bloomington, starting his junior year at IU now that he’s finished the gen eds at the local community college. It’s not a big deal. They’re having fun while they can, right?

— 

It’s maybe a big deal, Steve thinks, his hand around Eddie’s dick and tugging as furiously as he can without yanking it right off. 

“Fuck, Steve, Jesus,” Eddie hisses between moans. “Yeah, just like that.”

“I wanna—fuck,” Steve whispers, the heat of the moment melting his brain.

“What,” Eddie says, mouthing at Steve’s collarbone again. 

“I wanna blow you,” Steve manages to get out. 

“Then fucking do it,” Eddie says, and could he be any more obnoxious?

—

July comes and July goes and Eddie ends the campaign on a cliffhanger, Dustin and the rest of them howling so loud the downstairs neighbor starts pounding on the ceiling with her broom. Even Steve can feel himself getting hyped for it, even without the context. Maybe it’s just the way Eddie looks when he’s cackling like that, up on his feet, his arms spread wide. He’s just got that air about him. The part of Steve that has some sort of Eddie Munson-related brain infection wants to walk over there, take one of Eddie’s hands in his own, twirl his stupid rings around his fingers and giggle like a fucking schoolgirl. 

He only just manages to hold himself together.

“You’re leaving tomorrow, yeah?” Steve asks, later, sweaty and breathless as Eddie pushes those fingers into him.

“Bright and early,” Eddie says. “When do you—uff—when do you move?”

“Thursday,” Steve spits out. The third finger’s a surprise. His back arches up off the mattress. 

“I don’t actually care,” Eddie says. He presses his mouth onto Steve’s chest, pushing him back down. 

“Then—ah—why’d you ask?”

Eddie finishes the hickey he’s started with a nasty smack of his lips. “Just wanna rile you up.”

“Glad we’re never—fuck—doing this again, then,” Steve says.

“Absolutely,” Eddie whispers, before pulling his fingers out to get the condom packet open.

—

And suddenly it’s a Monday at the end of October, the leaves golden and orange and falling all over Bloomington; the patio outside Honeycomb, the lesbian bar that Steve’s been spending most of his evenings at, is full of flannel and wool jackets and mittens. It’s not that late but it is dark, the streetlights soft and moody. Steve lights a cigarette. His friend Monica won’t stop talking.

(“You remind me of my best friend,” he’d told her the first week they met in their shared statistics class. 

He’d been worried, after a gap year that turned into two gap years that turned into struggling his way through gen eds at the community college, worried that he’d missed his chance, missed whatever train it was that took people out of Hawkins and turned them into real, un-stunted adults. And when Robin went away to Smith, he’d worried that he’d never find a friend like her again. But Monica had sat next to him, had taken one look at the little rainbow flag he had pinned to his backpack and whatever confused expression had settled on his face as he gazed at the whiteboard, and slid right into that hole in his heart.

“Good,” she’d said.)

“Anyway, all of the bars on this block are going in on a league fee at the softball field and I really feel like we’d have a good lesbian edge, but we need a coach. And that’s where you come in, because you’re a fucking jock, but we don’t want you on the field ruining the look.”

“Right,” Steve says. “Are you done insulting me?”

“That depends—will you coach us or not?” Monica asks, stealing his beer and taking a sip.

His phone buzzes and he pulls it out of his pocket. He’s down to 14% battery. He really needs a new charger. It’s a text from Dustin—I gave Eddie your phone number JSYK—and before he gets a chance to finish reading it a call from an Indianapolis number is coming in. 

“Sorry,” he says to Monica, as he picks up. “Hello?”

“Harrington,” Eddie says, his voice syrupy and maybe a little drunk. 

“Hey,” Steve says. “What’s up?”

“Just saying hi,” Eddie says. “Actually, no I’m not. The band booked a last minute show in Bloomington tomorrow night, some venue on Walnut.”

“The Bluebird?”

“Yeah, sounds right. Anyway, there’s two tickets for you at will call if you want ‘em.”

“Oh! Shit,” Steve says. 

“Sorry, I should’ve—if you’re busy, it’s not a big—”

“I’m not busy,” Steve says. “Just stats homework.” He turns to Monica, tilts the phone away from his face. “You busy tomorrow?”

She shakes her head.

“Nice,” Eddie says. “Good. You’ve never come see me play before.”

Steve hasn’t, actually. He’s listened to the albums, but Eddie was always Dustin’s friend. Robin’s friend, too, in high school. He knows Eddie was in another band, too, during high school, that he’d quit at the same time he dropped out, when he moved up to Indy to join this band. Steve’s never actually been invited to one of Eddie’s shows, but he’s not going to say that on the phone with the guy. “I’ll be there, man, of course.”

“Great. Alright. Tootles, Stevie,” Eddie says, and then he hangs up.

Steve stares at his phone. “Tootles?”

“Where are we going?” Monica asks, her own phone open. 

“My, uh, friend? From high school. Not really my friend. He’s a friend of a friend—or, like, the other babysitter of the kid I used to babysit. I guess he’s my friend,” Steve starts, and he can’t believe he’s already botching this. “He’s in a metal band. They have a show tomorrow night.”

“Your friend’s metal band is big enough to play at the Bluebird?”

“Oh, they were on a fucking national tour in the spring. They opened for some British band, they’re annoyingly big,” Steve says. “They’re called Hellfire.”

“Are you kidding me. I know Hellfire, you moron,” Monica says. “I have both of their albums.”

“Oh, really? Well, that makes this easier. He put aside two tickets for me and I know you like heavy shit, so do you wanna come? He’s gay, by the way, so he doesn’t suck completely.” He cringes, realizes he’s babbling like a maniac but he’s somehow incapable of stopping.

“What the fuck,” Monica says, her eyebrow halfway up her forehead. “Are you on drugs?”

Steve pulls a powerbar out of his backpack, yanking the wrapper open. “No. Jesus. I just—you know, I don’t talk to this guy much and he’s a little, like, weird, I guess, and we had kind of a weird thing over the summer before I moved up here and it’s actually totally fine? There’s nothing weird there anymore. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Monica says. “Sure. Don’t choke on your powerbar.”

—

When he and Monica roll up to the Bluebird there’s already a line halfway down the block. College kids, mostly, in denim and leather, looking just like Eddie. Monica waves to damn near half the line. She’s a junior, like Steve technically is, but she’d started here at IU, and she’s extroverted and involved in clubs, so it feels like she knows half the campus. She’s been a good spirit guide, so far. 

Steve shoulders his way through the line to will call, where there are indeed two tickets under his name. “Free,” the guy working the booth says. “You’re on the band’s list.”

“Oh, sick,” the kid holding court first in line says. “You know the band?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says, but Monica pulls him away before he has a chance to get mobbed.

“And you’re telling me you’ve never seen him play live?” Monica asks, as they return to the back of the line. 

“He never invited me,” Steve complains. “Until tonight, for some reason.”

“And this was a surprise show,” Monica says. She waggles her eyebrows.

“What are you doing that for?”

“Nothing,” she says. “Just thinking about how dumb you are.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Steve asks, but the line is moving, and they head into the building.

Monica gets drinks, lets Steve hold a position up front near the barricade. “You’re bigger than me,” she offers by way of explanation. “So that’s your job.”

“Whatever,” Steve says. He stays there, waiting, pulling his phone out to flip through Instagram as the building fills up.

A group of dudes in Hellfire shirts squish in next to him, so he spreads his arms a little wider on the barricade. 

“Sorry,” he says, “saving a spot for my friend.”

One of them nods at him, looking at his shirt. “You like Death?”

“What?” Steve asks.

“The band.” The guy points at the logo on Steve’s shirt. “You’re wearing a Death shirt.”

Steve looks down at it. It’s Eddie’s shirt, the one Steve had so unceremoniously made him spill Diet Coke all over. He can’t even figure out what the logo says. “Yeah. It’s the guitarist’s shirt, actually.”

“The… guitarist? Of Death? He’s dead,” the guy says.

“No, the guitarist of Hellfire,” Steve says. “He left it at my place over the summer.”

The guy opens and closes his mouth like a fish.

Monica comes back, then, two plastic cups in her hands. “This was twenty dollars,” she says. “For two fucking PBRs. You owe me.”

“Free tickets, Mon,” Steve says, and before she can argue back, the lights go down.

There’s no opener, since it was such a last-minute show, and Steve’s still a little shocked just how packed this place is—at least a hundred people. For a show announced yesterday! He doesn’t get much time to think about it, though, before something low and droning comes over the speakers, and the lights on the stage start flickering. The crowd loses it, and Steve sticks two fingers in his mouth, adds a whistle to the choir. 

Then shadows move across the stage, and the droning music goes silent, and the stage lights come up. 

Sure, Steve’s listened to their albums, once or twice, but he’s never really paid attention before. He’s not a metal guy. This is very much not his scene. He doesn’t like the harsh vocals and the drums are too loud and people are, like, smashing into his back as he stands at this barricade. But when he looks up at the stage, sees this version of Eddie that everyone else sees, the version of Eddie that isn’t a fucking nerd knocking dice around his coffee table or selling him overpriced weed in the woods behind the school or borrowing Robin’s trumpet to blast it in Steve’s ear while Steve works a soul-crushing afternoon shift at Family Video—instead, this Eddie is in skin-tight black pants and boots and his hair is shining in the stage lights and his guitar looks more like a weapon than an instrument, and half this room looks like they’re trying to emulate him. It’s like Steve has walked into a whole different universe. 

Another thing Steve realizes, as the music shifts and moves, is that Eddie sings. The harsh vocals are coming from the keyboardist but Eddie’s the one singing little lines on the bridges, his voice floating over the guttural noise. And he sounds fucking good. 

He’s so hot it’s annoying. 

After an encore the show finally ends—finally, because Steve feels like if one more person crashes into him he’ll break a rib on the damn barricade—and the lights come up and the crowd starts to disperse. Steve feels his phone buzz in his pocket.

U cn come back stage, it says. His phone’s down to 10%, now. He slides it onto low battery mode and tugs at Monica’s sleeve. “We got a backstage pass,” he says, ignoring the group of metal nerds that have been standing next to them all night who now swivel their heads around at him. 

They slip their way through the departing crowd, trying not to wear the dregs of their beers. 

The backstage door opens before they get there, just a crack at first and then widening enough to let them through, and Steve has just enough time to feel his stomach drop, to let the fear that maybe he and Eddie are on different wavelengths, here, that maybe he shouldn’t have come creep in, before a ringed hand is grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him forward into the dark.

“Harrington!” Eddie shouts, and it echoes around the hallway, and then a door opens up next to them and they spill into the green room, and all of the doubts evaporate while Steve and Monica and this metal band mingle.

Steve can feel Monica’s glare burning a hole through his hair, through his skull, right into his brain, but he ignores it. Sure, Eddie’s a little manic, but he always is, vibrating and moving like a wind up toy that never shuts off. Eddie hops a little closer to him, his hands spreading wide as he annotates his anecdote, and then he lifts his leg right up and kicks his shoe directly into the wall next to Steve’s elbow. And then he leans into it, resting his arm on his knee in a position that Steve is sure can’t be comfortable for any normal person.

Eddie’s not a normal person, though.

“Glad you finally fucking made it to a show, though,” Eddie’s saying, flicking Steve right in the collarbone. “In my own shirt, no less.”

“Only thing I had that was stylish enough for this scene,” Steve says. “Anyway, you’ve literally never invited me to a show, before. I was just being polite.”

Eddie scoffs. “Oh, sorry, Harrington, didn’t realize I had to explicitly invite you. Everyone else figured out the memo just fine.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Munson,” Steve says. He looks at the way Eddie’s shoe is bouncing on the wall, lets his gaze linger on those stupidly tight pants, slowly drags his eyes back up to Eddie’s face. Eddie’s smirking. 

“Listen,” Monica says into Steve’s ear, and she’s suddenly right next to him. Steve realizes he has no idea what she’s been doing for the past ten minutes, but he can’t really find it in him to feel bad about it. Eddie’s staring at him, eyes dark. “I’m going to go, because I have my lab first thing tomorrow, and whatever you have going on here is weird as hell.”

“Nah, Mon, you can stay, it’s no big,” Steve says, finding it hard to tear his eyes away from Eddie’s.

“Seems pretty big!” She shakes her purse, looking for her keys or something. “See you tomorrow, loser. Have fun with this guy you’re totally not into.”

And then she’s gone.

Steve looks around and realizes the rest of the band has dispersed, too, off in the opposite corner talking to someone else. It’s just the two of them, now, and Eddie reaches his hand into his pocket and pulls out a squashed pack of Camels and a lighter. “Outside?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and it comes out as more of a whisper. 

Out in the back alley it’s frigid, Steve realizing way too late that it’s almost November and he left his jacket at home and he definitely doesn’t have mittens with him. Eddie’s worse off, though, stick thin and his sleeves cut off. 

“You’ll freeze to death,” he says, his mouth working faster than his brain, and his brain still hasn’t caught up by the time he finishes with, “you’ve got no padding on you.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t dignify that with a response. “Cup your hands for me,” he says instead, and lights the two cigarettes between his lips before handing one over to Steve. 

“It was a good show, man,” Steve says. “Thought you played well.”

“Thanks.” Eddie exhales, smoke rippling through the soft light of the alley. “We haven’t played live in months, it was more of a rehearsal than anything to see if we still have it. And we do, so that’s nice. God, there was one part in Ghost Father—you know that one? The—” He lifts his hands, mimes playing his guitar, hums a riff that Steve vaguely recognizes from the show. “That one, almost went total train wreck with that, I missed a cue and then Ben, our bassist, missed a cue and then Carey, our drummer, saved us by the skin of his teeth and I think some people noticed but a lot fewer than I’d expected—”

“Don’t you ever shut the fuck up?” Steve asks.

Eddie snorts. “You should know by now that I don’t.” 

“Are you staying in Bloomington tonight?” Steve asks, just to keep some semblance of conversation going. 

Eddie shuffles up next to him, pressing their shoulders together, and Steve realizes he’s shivering. He has to physically stop himself from pulling the shirt off his back to wrap around Eddie’s arms. “I didn’t get a hotel,” he says. “Planned to just drive back to Indy. But now I’m kinda drunk.”

Steve feels like he’s having an out of body experience. He didn’t come here with the intention of getting laid. He really believed what happened over the summer was temporary, just two not-friends getting each other off, but it’s like his brain is being eaten by moths, here, so the compulsive caretaker inside him goes and opens his mouth and says, “My apartment’s just around the corner.”

Eddie smiles, slowly, like a shark. “Guess I’m staying with you, then, babe.”

“Well, come on, then,” Steve says. “I’m freezing my fucking ass off.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Eddie says, pushing away from the wall. “It’s your second best asset, after all.”

Steve feels lightheaded, goosebumps all up and down his arms, not from the cold.

— — — 

Eddie takes his time poking around Steve’s little studio apartment; partially because he’s curious, partially because he can’t believe his stupid little plan worked and now he’s standing here with his finger in the CD drive in Steve’s stupidly fancy stereo system as Steve crashes around the kitchen behind him, trying to find—

“Aha,” Steve calls. “Schnapps.”

“I’m not drinking schnapps,” Eddie says. “But you can knock yourself out.”

“No fun if you’re not having some,” Steve says. He slides the bottle back into the cupboard he’d pulled it out of. “You need clothes or anything? Snacks?”

“Hey,” Eddie says, pulling his finger out of the stereo, very nearly getting it stuck in the process. “Are we having a fucking slumber party here?”

There’s a clatter in the kitchen, and then Steve is next to him, a weird look on his face. If Eddie didn’t know any better, he’d think Steve was upset. “Sorry,” Steve says. “Got my hosting brain on.”

“Well, turn it off,” Eddie says. He reaches out, hooking his finger into the waistband of Steve’s jeans. “If I get hungry I’ll eat your food and you can get mad at me later. You don’t need to put out a fucking spread.”

“I wouldn’t get mad at you,” Steve says, brushing his stupid hair away from his face. “I invited you here.”

“Whatever.” Eddie pulls him closer, gets the button on his jeans undone. “Why isn’t your tongue down my throat yet?”

“Right,” Steve says. He cups Eddie’s face in his hands and smashes their mouths together. 

They do a round right there next to the stereo, Eddie on his knees knocking over a stack of albums piled up next to the shelf as he pulls off just in time, Steve’s head knocking into the cinderblock wall as he comes. 

“Your aim got worse,” Eddie says, wiping Steve off of his mouth and chin. 

“You could’ve swallowed,” Steve says.

“Fuck off,” Eddie gets out, before Steve is pushing him backwards across the room and hauling him unceremoniously onto the bed. 

Round two is sweatier, slower, Steve taking his time sucking Eddie off. Eddie cards his fingers through Steve’s hair, exactly the way he knows Steve fucking hates, giving his scalp a scritch before tugging and crashing Steve’s face back down into him. Eddie has hobbies, sure, he has things he loves doing, but right now he can’t think of anything more fun, more exhilarating, than this stupid game that the two of them are playing. 

Eddie wakes up to sunlight streaming in. He checks his phone—trusty old Nokia still has 75% battery even after being on all night. He could kiss it. He does kiss it, because it deserves that kind of love and affection. He’s halfway on top of Steve, naked torso to naked torso, and he stays there while he painstakingly responds to a text and tries to plan out the rest of his day. He’s restless and hungry and he has to pee but he also doesn’t want to get up from this perfectly-shaped human cushion he’s on top of. 

Steve finally stretches out, making some obscene noises as he wakes up and then shoves Eddie off of him. Worth it, Eddie thinks, and he scuttles off to the bathroom to make himself look like less like he rose from the dead. 

“My phone’s dead,” Steve mumbles as Eddie comes back. He holds up a charger that looks like a rabbit’s been gnawing on it. “You need to split?”

“I have some time,” Eddie says. The kitchen is calling his name, so he follows her siren song and starts rifling through the fridge. “Wanna go out?”

From the corner of his eye he watches Steve pick up a little day planner and flip through it. “Yeah, my Wednesday classes don’t start until noon. We could go get breakfast before you go.”

Breakfast is—good, Eddie supposes. They manage not to kill each other, settling into easy banter and friendly sniping rather than biting each others’ heads off. By the time they make it back to Steve’s apartment Eddie’s got an itch that he can only scratch with one thing. Steve’s willing. Eager, even. 

This time will definitely be the last, Eddie’s sure about that much.

“You back to Indy, then?” Steve asks, as Eddie piles his guitars up next to the door. The rest of his shit went back last night with his bassist, who owed him one after a particularly gruesome vomiting incident in San Diego last spring. 

“Yep,” Eddie says. “First show of the tour.”

“Last night wasn’t your first show of the tour?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Nah, last night was more of a dress rehearsal. Last minute thing, remember? Figured if we were going to run through the set we might as well get paid for it.”

“Why Bloomington?” Steve asks, and his face is doing that thing where he’s trying to work something out.

Eddie’s caught between the long answer—money, markets, ticket sales, boring—and the short answer—you—and settles on something in the middle. “Needed a smaller venue that would still draw a crowd,” he says, tossing his keys and just barely catching them before they clatter to the floor. 

“Gonna be on the road for a while?” Steve asks.

“Just a little midwest thing,” Eddie says. He draws a little circle in the air, connecting the imaginary cities on the band’s route. “Back in time for Thanksgiving.”

“Hawkins?”

“You better believe it.”

They stare at each other for a minute, the words hanging in the air.

“Maybe I’ll see you,” Steve says. 

“Maybe.” 

Eddie takes his leave, vibrating a little more than he maybe wants to.

—

Maybe he should stop saying last, he thinks, sometime late in the afternoon on Black Friday, both of them having foregone the extravagant sales at the rebuilt Starcourt for some good old fashioned fucking. Cheapens the word. He’s said it so many times in this exact circumstance that it’s lost all meaning now.

—

Because for some reason instead of arguing, even playfully, now they’re spending the hours after fucking each other senseless just—chatting. Talking. Joking. Having fun. It’s weird. Eddie’s not sure whether he wants to let himself in on the knowledge that whatever feelings he has have gone beyond “carnal” and “annoyance”.

Sometimes he drops down to Bloomington on a whim, to chat with the director of the radio station or to drop off a box of the most recent album at the cool record store. Sure, that’s their manager’s job, but he’ll take one for the team if it puts him in the area. And every time he does Steve gladly pulls his apartment door open for Eddie, welcomes him in, offers him a drink, sucks him off better than Eddie’s ever been sucked off before. And Eddie’s somehow fallen into a new little game with himself, the game of trying to make Steve Harrington laugh, and he wins more often than not. 

One such night they’re lying in Steve’s bed in the haze of the after and Steve runs his fingers through Eddie’s hair and then mumbles something about how, next time, they should go to this bar he really likes, and Eddie is suddenly fully awake.

Right.

Next time.

— — —

In January Monica sets Steve up with her straight friend Carly and Steve very nearly walks her into Honeycomb before remembering that it’s a fucking lesbian bar and turning her, last minute, into the bar across the street. This one’s more of a dive, less his scene, but she seems to find the weird artwork on the walls charming instead of fucked up, so overall it’s a win-win. It’s just that he goes to Honeycomb almost every day, and he’d spent most of the afternoon thinking about how much he wants Eddie to experience it, to meet all his rude little softball friends, but this isn’t Eddie, is it. This is Carly, and she’s staring across the booth expectantly at him, and he’s totally just spaced out while she was trying to talk to him, hasn’t he?

She’s actually really interesting and cool, which makes it all the stupider that Steve is ending the night with a hug and nothing else, but at least when he looks into her eyes and realizes they’re almost the exact same shade of brown as Eddie’s he understands the sinking feeling in his stomach. 

— — —

Eddie’s been fucking around with this riff for months, a riff and a bass line and a few lyrics, and as it coagulates inside his head and he notices what he’s writing about he wants to smack himself in the face with a wet towel. 

Things take a turn when they start to talk on the phone, because it’s one thing to spend the night with someone and have them leave the next day with no real concrete plans for later. 

But suddenly Steve is calling him—calling, not texting, because even without Eddie telling him explicitly he seems to understand how much Eddie hates texting on the Nokia’s tiny keypad—calling just to say he saw a stupid sign in a window, that Eddie would have found it funny, or just to have a conversation about what he did in his lab, leaving voicemails while Eddie’s in the studio laying down tracks. 

And Eddie is calling him back, describing the cat fight outside his garden-level apartment in Indy in excruciating detail, doing voices for each of the cats participating, leaving his own rambling messages into Steve’s voicemail while Steve is in those labs. And sometimes they talk for hours, late into the night, and when Eddie hangs up the phone, lets it drop off the bed with a clatter because it’s indestructible, he has to moan and clench his fist around himself and come with a muffled scream into his pillow, lest the cats outside hear.

He knows something’s really wrong with him when he finds himself in Bloomington on a warm spring afternoon, sitting on metal bleachers while the softball team that Steve has found himself coaching scores a run, and he can’t help himself, he’s jumping and cheering with the rest of the crowd of drunk co-eds, and Steve in his tight little baseball pants—he literally didn’t have to wear them, he’s the coach and it’s a rec league, for god’s sake—wheels around from where he’s standing at the dugout to point his finger at Eddie and scream, “All for you, baby!”

“Jesus H. Christ,” he says to himself. 

—

Before the whole “next time” revelation, when there hadn’t been a “next time”—sure, Eddie was flirting with him, but he’s physiologically incapable of not flirting with Steve. Riling him up. Pissing him off. But now he has to contend with the fact that it fucking worked. Steve Harrington fucking likes him. And Eddie likes that.

Part of him wants to keep the bit going as long as he can. It’s funny, after all, to pretend to be annoyed, to act disgusted and peeved even though at this point they’re making plans for the next time one of them will drive the hour between apartments when they’re still in bed together. But Eddie’s a closet romantic and by the way Steve is looking at him, expectantly, with a gift bag in his hand, on the afternoon of Eddie’s 24th birthday, he thinks maybe Steve might be, too. 

“What’s this,” Eddie asks, taking the bag.

“A birthday present, Munson,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, I fucking got that part.” Eddie tugs the tissue paper out of the way, reaches his hand inside. It’s tiny, whatever it is, and he has to chase it around the bottom of the bag until he gets his fingers around it.

It’s a key.

He stares at it, a little stupidly, seeing but not understanding.

“To my apartment,” Steve says. “So you don’t have to text me when you get here, since I know you hate texting.”

It’s so small, and yet so significant.

“And, you know, it can just be a convenience thing,” Steve says, and the timbre of his voice has changed ever so slightly. “But, it could also be—you know—an ‘I really like you’ kind of thing. Because I think we’re kind of past the point of just being friends, or fuck buddies, or whatever it is we’ve been. And—if you don’t want to, that’s cool, but I’d really like it if you—”

“Yes, Jesus, fuck, yes,” Eddie says, finally getting his brain fully online and loaded. “I’ll be your boyfriend, shit.” He digs into his pocket, pulls out his key ring, sticks his nail in between the loops of metal to wind the key onto it. 

“Imagine if that wasn’t what I was gonna ask,” Steve says. He reaches out to tuck a lock of Eddie’s hair behind his ear. “Imagine if I was going to ask you to fix my bathtub drain or some shit.”

“Tough,” Eddie says. “You fucked up. You’re stuck with me, now.”

— — —

Steve starts his senior year at IU happy. Really happy, even. Monica’s in his capstone seminar. Robin, fresh off her Smith graduation, is in Chicago, now, and never too busy to come down for a quick weekend. Dustin’s at Urbana-Champaign and that drive’s not too bad, either, especially since Dustin’s ecstatic that his two favorite people are dating, now. 

Eddie’s only home for a few days before he’s out on tour again—three weeks opening for some band Steve’s never heard of, something Buried and Between or whatever, in big venues, and another four weeks headlining smaller clubs in between festivals all over the goddamn country—but in between shows, from the tour van, from the motel rooms, he manages to call Steve more often than not. And Steve calls back, in between shifts at the peer support center and his final lab and gym days with the softball team. 

For most of fall semester it’s just like that—days getting shorter, nights getting longer, voicemails getting more explicit as the tour season drags on. 

Before all this, when they were just two not-even-friends who were just hooking up, it was easy to push the things that bothered Steve aside, but now that he’s been in a relationship with the guy for five months and gotten to spend a grand total of a week with him, the little things are starting to pile up.

—

“Are you drunk,” Steve hisses into his phone, pressing a pillow over his face. The bulb on his lamp burned out the other day and he hasn’t had time to go to the store, yet, so it’s either the harsh overhead light in his studio or pitch blackness, and either way, he’s getting a headache. Eddie acting like an idiot on the other end of the line isn’t helping, either.

“It’s not even midnight, babe,” Eddie says, too loud.

“For you, maybe,” Steve says. He holds his phone up, squints at the screen. It’s almost 3 am. “Where the fuck even are you?”

“Sacramento.” Eddie’s humming along to something in the background. “Did you wait up for me?”

“I tried,” Steve says. “I have my early lab in five hours. Jesus.”

“Oh, shit,” Eddie says, and at least now he has the decency to sound contrite. “Time zones.”

“Yeah, time zones.” Steve wants to hang up. Instead he stands, walks to the bathroom, rummages around in the medicine cabinet. He pulls the big bottle of ibuprofen down, shakes three out into his hand. “How was the show?”

“Fucking incredible,” Eddie says, and he’s off on a ramble about the drive and the opener and whatever else. 

Steve slips back under the covers, wrapping himself up nice and tight, and he puts Eddie on speaker and turns the volume down before plugging his useless charger in and setting the phone on his pillow next to him and trying to fall back asleep.

—

Yeah, it was easier to deal with when they were just fucking each other, but now when things get weird they have to actually work it out, and that’s a real head-scratcher. Now he’s trying to make something real out of something that was originally a joke and it feels like if he pushes too hard it’ll all come crashing down around him like one of Dustin’s robotics experiments. 

Steve’s parents fly to the Virgin Islands for Christmas and he stays in Bloomington, not wanting to take time off from the peer support center, especially since the other admin has some family obligation to attend to. Instead Eddie drives down and they spend a perfect day fucking each other senseless, eating cereal and watching A Muppet Christmas Carol. And then they both wake up on the wrong side of the bed the next morning. Great.

The way Eddie laughs things off, important things, is so annoying. And Steve knows he’s no better.

“You say some really fucking hurtful shit sometimes, you know that?” Eddie tells him one night after Steve has stepped in it again, his mouth a flat line, and Steve is immediately ashamed. 

It’s just so easy to fall back into patterns.

—

Spring semester starts and Steve hits the ground running. In a blind panic he emails his capstone draft to Nancy Wheeler, of all people, and she sends it back a week later with edits he never would have thought of and a polite request not to do that again. He has no labs this semester but he does have an internship, and now he’s on the hook to show up at 7 am at the group home down the street on Tuesdays and Thursdays to work the breakfast shift and help get six kids into the van and off to school without losing any of their homework, and it’s just like the summers he spent babysitting Dustin and his lame little friends, only now with much higher stakes. And of course there’s the softball league, and his hours at the peer center, reduced this semester but not to zero because he still has to pay his rent. 

Eddie’s band is in the middle of recording their third album and so he’s calling less, too. 

It’s harder to drive up to Indy, now, because Steve really needs to focus on his homework, and it’s hard to find a free weekend, and an hour used to not seem like a big deal but now it really does, now that he keeps having to pull his phone out and hit the voice memo app to remind himself of something he wanted to say in his capstone. 

—

The first weekend of March is finally free on both of their calendars and Steve could drop to his knees and cry. First thing on Saturday morning he tosses his laptop and his overnight bag into his car and peels out of Bloomington, barely remembering to turn off the lights in his apartment. He can’t wait to jump into bed with Eddie, suck his brains out through his dick, hog an entire bowl and smoke himself silly, and then do it all again later after dinner and a movie.

When he pulls up outside Eddie’s building, Eddie’s car is gone.

He calls, and no one answers. Where you at, he texts, and there’s no response. 

He punches the code into the building’s keypad and then clomps down the stairs, his boots echoing ominously in the stairwell. Eddie’s front door is locked, and he doesn’t answer when Steve knocks.  Steve pulls his key ring out, rifling through it until he finds the one Eddie had given him as a gag gift for his birthday, and pushes the door open.

No one’s home.

I’m here, he texts Eddie, and he tries calling again. Still no answer.

He makes himself at home, stealing a Topo Chico from the fridge and flopping down onto Eddie’s couch. He shoves the hash pipe and the guitar picks and the mini figurines off the coffee table so he can have some room. He pulls his laptop out of his bag, thinking maybe he’ll get some work done, and instead stares at his screen for half an hour, trying and failing not to imagine every horrible way Eddie could be dead or dying.

He’s finally interrupted by his phone vibrating next to him. Eddie. At last.

“Shit, fuck, I’m so—is it Saturday? I’m sorry, Steve, I fucking spaced it,” Eddie says, voice tinged with panic, and Steve is just so glad he’s alive that he forgets to be mad. “Last minute thing came up at the studio, we’re being filmed today, I’ll try to get out of here soon.”

Soon turns into an hour, then two.

He calls Robin, talks for an hour.

He calls Dustin, talks for an hour.

He cleans Eddie’s bathroom, getting several months’ worth of grime off the sides of the sink.

He stares at his capstone draft.

At 4:00 he gets a text—wrapping up home soon—and orders takeout.

At 4:45 the takeout arrives. 

By 7:00 he’s eaten all the lo mein and half the fried rice and he’s starting to think about whether microwaved crab rangoons would be better than reheating them in the oven, and then he starts thinking about whether it’s crab rangoons or crabs rangoon or something else entirely, and he’s also maybe starting to think that Eddie’s just fucking with him at this point, because he’s been alone in this apartment for ten hours, now, and maybe he should just go back to Bloomington.

There’s the sound of a key in the lock and then the door pushes open, and there’s Eddie, guitar in one hand, six pack in the other. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. He drops the beer on the counter, props the guitar up against the wall. His hair falls into his face and he takes it in his hands, twirls it, sticks it into his mouth, the way Steve knows he always does when he’s nervous.

“Food’s cold,” Steve says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Sorry,” Eddie groans. “We got a call about a video interview yesterday and I thought it was Thursday so I agreed and then by the time you got here we’d started. And, you know, every time there’s video involved things just take three times longer than they need to.”

“That’s… cool, I guess,” Steve says. “Kinda fucking sucked hanging out all day. I have to leave early tomorrow, you knew that.”

Eddie starts pacing. “I knew that, but I told you, I got my days mixed up. Jesus.”

“I spent ten hours on your couch,” Steve says. “Except the hour I spent cleaning your bathroom. Don’t you ever tidy up?”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Eddie says. “You could have gone home.”

Steve takes a step back, feeling his calf hit the coffee table. “We haven’t seen each other in almost a month, Eddie. I kind of thought maybe you would reschedule your thing.”

“This is my job, Stevie. I can’t reschedule an interview with the station,” Eddie says. “First of all that’s a band decision, not a me decision, and second of all they’re the ones calling the shots.”

“Yeah, but—you could’ve told them you had a prior commitment.”

“I would have, if I’d known what fucking day it was,” Eddie says, throwing his hands up in the air. 

“I reminded you I was coming fucking yesterday,” Steve says. 

Eddie is yanking on his hair, pacing again. “It’s just—you never think about the fact that this is my livelihood, dude. You want to play all domestic with me but you only ever think about your work and your schedule.”

“A month, Eddie, it’s been a fucking month since I’ve seen you and you blow me off for some dumb band shit because you forgot I was coming.”

“Dumb band shit? Oh, fuck off,” Eddie says. “Maybe if you came up more often this wouldn’t be such a problem. You always make me come to you. You haven’t been up here since December. This isn’t all on me.”

“Every time I try to come up here you’re out doing something! I mean, come on, Eddie, an apology would be nice."

“Well, I’m fucking sorry,” Eddie says, almost shouting now. “Sorry I didn’t reschedule a giant fucking video shoot because the guy I’m fucking finally decided to come visit me for once.”

All the breath feels like it’s been knocked out of him. Steve scrubs his hand across his mouth, begging the tears he knows are forming to stay inside his head for once. “Is that all you think of me as? The guy you’re fucking?”

Eddie is finally still, now, his eyes huge. “Fuck, you know I didn’t mean it like that, Jesus.”

Steve blinks at him. “No, I kind of think you did,” he says. He grabs his laptop, unplugs his phone charger, and dumps them into his bag. “I’ll see you around.”

—

By the time he gets back to Bloomington he feels cried out.

The quiet inside his apartment is overwhelming, threatening to choke him as he stands there in the doorway, so he dumps his bag and turns on his heel, heading down the sidewalk to Honeycomb, where at least there’ll be some noise. He slides into his usual stool at the bar, waits for Hannah to bring him his usual beer. 

“Thought you were in Indy tonight,” Monica says as she drops down next to him. She must see the look on his face, because she seems to immediately sober up. “Oh, shit, Steve.”

The next few weeks grind by in a sludge of schoolwork, internship paperwork, softball practice, and crying. He takes the other admin at the peer center up on her offer to swap shifts, since he figures students needing someone to talk to probably don’t want to set up appointments with someone who is visibly sniffling over the appointment book. 

Dustin calls him, and when Steve picks up the first thing out of Dustin’s mouth is “What did you do?” 

And Steve can’t help himself, he just hangs up and drops his head into his hands. 

Dustin calls back ten minutes later, apologetic now. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t know why I assumed it was your fault.”

“Usually is,” Steve says, curling up into his bed. “I don’t think it was this time, though.”

“Maybe you guys just need some space,” Dustin says, carefully.

“Maybe,” Steve says. “Or maybe we were better off hating each other.”

“Don’t say that,” Dustin says. “I really hate being wrong.”

“Me too, buddy.”

— — —

Eddie’s in a hell of his own making. He can’t even look at the song he’s been working on without wanting to kick a hole right through the studio wall, but of course he’s already committed to putting it on the album and everyone’s ready to track and he still needs to finish the bridge. 

He feels like an idiot. Like, wow! Dumb! All of this could have been avoided if he’d looked at a fucking calendar for once. 

The first night after the fight he’d tried to convince himself that it was just the sex he’d be missing, but by the time 4 a.m. rolled around and he wasn’t any closer to sleep he had to give in to the knowledge that he was more than a little bit in love, and he’d just broken his own stupid idiot heart.

He’s spending a late evening in the studio, trying to finish the bridge while he has a little privacy. The only other person here is Kevin, the producer of another band on the same label as Hellfire, and Kevin’s hotboxing the booth, so Eddie’s all alone in a practice room, lying on the couch holding his guitar and trying to think about anything that isn’t Steve Harrington. 

Part of him just wants to call Steve, to lay it all out on the table, scream and cry and beg. But he’s trying to be emotionally mature, now—not like he’s ever been that before, but maybe now he can try it out. Because he knows it wouldn’t be good for either of them. They can’t communicate. They annoy each other. In the back of Eddie’s head he knows that even if they did get back together it would just be a waiting game until Steve got tired of him. And that’s ignoring the way that Eddie was feeling about Steve’s casual dismissal of Eddie, and his music, his life, his career choices. Steve never took the band seriously, or thought about what it meant for them—the recording deadlines, the tours, the way they cut into their plans.

It’s better this way, he thinks.

Still hurts, though.

— — —

And after all that—the work, the pain, the sweat and blood and tears and heartbreak—Steve graduates from IU with a sociology degree, a handful of student loans, and a permanent crick in his neck.

The graduation ceremony’s in the morning, and then his parents take him out to lunch, do that awkward dance with the cards and a gift—a watch, not his style but he won’t complain—and a hearty pat on the back before they drive back to Hawkins and leave him to it. 

Robin texts him as he’s leaving the restaurant. Grown-up arcade NOW, the message says.

What if I were busy, he texts back.

You aren’t

NOW

The arcade in question is a ten minute drive and he spends the whole thing wondering which of his people will show. Robin’s a given—she’s staying at his apartment tonight—and Dustin, most likely. The softball girls from Honeycomb. Not his parents—Robin probably didn’t even invite them. 

There’s a tiny burning ball of hope in his chest, but every time it threatens to rise to the surface he pushes it back down. He doesn’t want to be disappointed.

He’s immediately assaulted by balloons and party streamers and stupid little noisemakers slapping him right in the face. There’s a cake, there’s his friends from work and his classes, there’s the entire softball team, there’s all six of the children he used to babysit in high school. (Not children anymore, he realizes—they’re all college kids, now.) And in the middle of it all stands Robin, her arms folded across her chest, looking smug as hell.

“Congratulations, bud,” Robin says, handing him a beer. She pulls him in for a hug, squashing his head against her so she can whisper in his ear. “You deserve all this. I’m so fucking proud of you.”

“Thanks, Robin,” he says. “You’re gonna make me cry.”

Robin and Monica, together, have managed to pull almost every person he loves into a room together, and he can’t help feeling a little emotional as he thinks about the fact that it’s all for him. Those two are menaces. He’s glad he introduced them.

There’s only one thing missing.

Once he’s three beers in Steve gives the others the slip, circling around the arcade until he finds an out-of-order skee-ball machine tucked away in a corner. He crouches down behind it and pulls his phone out of his pocket, swiping through his contacts and hitting call before he can change his mind.

Eddie answers on the first ring. 

“Steve,” he says, his voice crackling over the line. The reception in here probably isn’t great. “Are you okay?”

Steve is just tipsy enough that his inhibitions are gone. “I’m drunk,” he says. “You didn’t come to my party."

Eddie huffs. “Jesus. I thought you were fucking dying or something.” He’s quiet for a minute, and Steve is worried he’s hung up, but then he says, “I didn’t know you were having a party, dude.”

Steve nods, then remembers that Eddie can’t see him. “The Honeybees showed up for their favorite coach,” he says. “And Robin’s here. And the kids. I guess I thought Dustin would have told you.”

Eddie’s quiet again. “Yeah,” he says. “You graduated, didn’t you.”

“I did.” Steve chews on his lip. “Fucking—cum laude and everything.”

“It’s pronounced cum loudly,” Eddie says.

“Oh, okay,” Steve says. “I’ll go tell everyone I cum loudly.”

Eddie hums into the phone. The vibration is nice in Steve’s eardrum. 

“I was just thinking,” Steve says.

“Dangerous.”

“Shut up, you don’t get to be mean to me yet.” 

There’s an exhale on the other end of the line. “Yeah, you’re right,” Eddie says. “I’m sorry.”

Steve forges ahead. “You promised me a graduation present.”

“Jesus. Fuck. I did, didn’t I.”

“Something about a really nasty blowjob.”

“Oh, right, that,” Eddie says. It sounds like he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t. “Well, I’m sure you can find someone to do that at wherever you are. Unless—oh, shit, you’re not at Honeycomb, are you?”

“No,” Steve says. “Barcade. Bar-arcade. Arcade with drinks.”

“What? That seems random.”

“Kids are here,” Steve says. “Seemed like the best compromise.”

“Right. The kids.” 

Steve shifts, squishing himself further behind the skee-ball machine. “I’m not—I can’t just find someone else.”

“What?”

“There isn’t anyone else, there isn’t going to be anyone else, I don’t want anyone else,” Steve says. In the back of his mind he can hear Robin’s voice screaming ABORT! But he can’t stop. “Maybe it’s been easy for you to move on but it hasn’t been. Not for me.”

He hears Eddie suck in a breath. “You really think it’s been easy for me? Any of this?”

Steve knows it hasn’t, but he’s still hurt and he’s still drunk and he misses Eddie so goddamn much. “Seemed like it was easy enough for you to just—let go of me. Like you did.”

Eddie’s silent. 

“Eddie,” Steve says, and he’s worried he’s pushed too hard.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “I can’t talk to you about this right now, because you’re drunk and it isn’t fair.”

Steve can feel himself choking up, the ocean of feelings rising to high tide in the back of his throat. Eddie’s starting to say something else but Steve is faster. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry for calling, Eddie, I guess I—I don’t know. I’ll see you around, maybe.”

“Steve—” Eddie says, but Steve hangs up.

He’s still curled up behind the skee-ball machine ten minutes later when Robin’s shoes enter his field of vision. 

“Hey,” she says. “My guest of honor has disappeared. Any idea where he went?”

“I think,” he says, wiping his face, “I think he might be having a hard time.”

“Oh, Steve,” she says, dropping down to her knees and reaching her arms around him. “Come here.”

— — —

Eddie stares at his phone. 

He’s on a deadline because he kept pushing recording back and back and back and now he has 48 hours to track the bridge of this song and this non-conversation has totally fucked him to the moon and back. Jesus. 

He’s been trying to push everything down, shut it away, so he can finish his work, and when the album is done—then and only then he’ll let himself fall apart. 

But he can’t hold it in anymore. 

“Hey,” Carey says, pushing the booth door open. His beard is full of crumbs. No snacks in the booth, Eddie wants to lecture, but he’s been stress-eating chips in there all month, so he’s not one to talk. “You done out there? We’re running out of time.”

The problem with still having a fucking Nokia brick in this day and age is that everybody wants to text, now, and his screen only displays so many characters at a time, so he has to scroll twice to get to the end of the message.

Sorry about last night. No excuses. Won’t happen again is all it says.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m done,” Eddie says. “Let’s knock this fucker out.”

“That’s the spirit,” Carey says. “Then I can get my weekends back.”

—

Eddie is in the cereal aisle of Bradley’s, back in Hawkins for a week to visit Wayne and maybe Dustin too before he has to go back up to Indianapolis to start the album promotion grind. He’s got his earbuds in, listening to some good old fashioned Judas Priest as he drags the cart along with him. 

He’s halfway through the General Mills section before he realizes Kellogs was back the other way, and instead of turning around he decides to back up, and of course he manages to back right into the only other person in the aisle.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, yanking his earbuds out, reaching a hand out to catch the person he’s smashed into before they crack their head open on the shelf.

And of course it’s fucking Steve. 

He’s standing there holding a box of Kix, reading the back of the box like it’s a newspaper. His hair looks atrocious, like he hasn’t even been trying. And worst of all he’s wearing Eddie’s shirt, his Death shirt with the Coke stain on it from almost two years ago, and his biceps are popping out of the sleeves. The fluorescents are extra bright, and they have to be the reason Eddie can feel sweat prickling on his hairline.

This has to be the worst morning of Eddie’s life.

Steve looks him up and down, clearly going through the same mental math that Eddie’s doing too. Then he chuckles. “Gotta watch where you’re going, man, can’t ruin the face,” he says, gesturing to himself and then wincing, as if he’s just realized how fucking stupid he sounds.

Eddie can’t stop staring at Steve. He just—he’s missed looking at him so much. He hadn’t realize until right this very second how much. He has pictures of the two of them saved on his hard drive but it’s not the same. 

Steve clears his throat.

Right. Conversations. They’re supposed to go back and forth. “Sorry, man. Didn’t realize you were in town.”

Steve nods. “Lease ended at the end of June and I don’t move to the new place until August first,” he says. 

“Oh,” Eddie says.

The thing is—even when they hated each other, and even when they “hated” each other, they were always talking. Even just nonsense. So it’s weird, now, that they just don’t know what to say. Eddie’s terrified of letting out every single feeling he has, of having a full-on crying breakdown right here in the cereal aisle at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning, so instead he grinds his jaw shut, keeps his mouth closed. A protective mechanism, he thinks.

“Well,” Steve says, nodding his head. “I’m gonna go buy groceries, now. See you.”

Eddie doesn’t breathe until Steve’s cart has turned away down Aisle 8.

— — — 

“Henderson, you little shit,” Steve mutters as he stares down Eddie’s car in Dustin’s driveway. 

Apparently Eddie’s still inside it, too, which makes it all the worse, because he’s clearly seen Steve pulling in behind him, can clearly see Steve through the windshield as Eddie pushes his own door open and gets out. 

If Steve had known that Dustin was trying to pull a Parent Trap—well, whatever. He gets out of his car, grabbing the bottle of white that he’d brought for Claudia. “Fancy seeing you here,” he calls to Eddie.

Eddie grunts in return. 

“Boys!” Claudia calls from the front door, and then Dustin is pushing past her, jogging down the steps.

“Heyyy, guys,” Dustin says, the manic grin on his face shrinking as he looks between Eddie’s stormy face and whatever expression Steve is wearing. “Whoops. Double booked you. Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry,” Steve says.

“I’m a little sorry,” Dustin says.

“Whatever,” Eddie spits. He smacks a wrapped box into Dustin’s hands and stomps up the flagstone path to the porch. “Hey, Claudia. Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“Okay, now I’m sorry,” Dustin says, quietly, just for Steve. 

“It’s fine,” Steve lies. “We’ll get through it. It’s just dinner, how bad could it be?”

—

It’s awkward as hell, he’ll give Dustin that. He spends half the evening trying to make small talk with Claudia and the other half trying to look at anything other than Eddie’s face. By the time Claudia brings out a plate of chocolate chip cookies the air in the room feels like someone’s sucked all the oxygen out with a vacuum, or however that works. 

“I’ll be right back,” Eddie says, as Steve starts gathering the dishes, and he hustles away for the front door.

“Here,” Steve mutters, dropping the plates into Dustin’s hands. “I’m gonna—” 

“Yeah, go,” Dustin says. His eyes flick towards the door that Eddie’s just left through. 

The walk from the dining room to the front door has never felt longer. The creak that the hinges give have never felt louder.

Eddie’s pacing on the front porch, and Steve is a little worried he’s going to make a break for it. Sure, Steve blocked him in on the driveway, but he wouldn’t put it past Eddie to try a Mad Max-style escape across the grass. 

“Come on, Dustin, this was a fucking ambush,” Eddie says around his cigarette, before he looks up and realizes it’s Steve. “Oh.”

“It was an ambush for me, too, don’t worry,” Steve says. “Can we talk?”

Eddie stares at him, long and searching. “I dunno, can we?”

“Come on,” Steve says. “Not here, but like…” He trails off, not sure where to offer. He doesn’t even live in Hawkins, anymore. This town has left him behind. 

Eddie takes a breath, looking up at the stars as they rise beyond the woods. “Quarry? Half an hour?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. Yeah, that works.”

—

He spends the drive to the quarry surfing the radio, since his aux cable has finally given up the ghost. He really needs to make a trip to the store. He settles on classic rock right as Aerosmith comes on and sings along. 

Eddie’s already there as he pulls up, leaning against the hood of his car, illuminated in the pale moonlight. Steve stares at the line of his back, his neck, his hair. There’s a knot in his throat, another one in his stomach. He gets out of the car.

They’re both silent for a minute. Steve’s gathering himself; he thinks—hopes—Eddie might be, too.

“Nice night,” Steve finally gets out.

Eddie nods. 

“Those were some good cookies,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Just the way I like them.”

The classic rock station was a bad idea. Steven Tyler is inside his head, now, wailing about not wanting to miss a thing, and boy Steve wishes he would shut the fuck up.

Small talk should be easy, Steve thinks, but whatever this is isn’t easy at all. He wants to tell Eddie about the job he got, about the new apartment, about the fact that the new apartment is in Indianapolis, not too far from Eddie’s studio, but he can’t get the words out. It’s so hard to say anything that isn’t I love you or I miss you or I fucked up, I wasn’t showing you how serious I was, how serious I could be, how much I care about you and your art. Even harder is not saying it really hurt me, how easily you let go of us. 

So he sticks to the idle chit-chat.

“Are we going to talk about anything substantial, or did you just want to come out to the quarry at almost midnight to talk about Dustin’s freshman year of college?” Eddie asks. His eyes are so bright in the moonlight.

Don’t wanna close my eyes, Steven-Tyler-in-his-head yelps.

Steve opens his mouth, the answer sticking in the back of it, but before he can say anything his phone buzzes.

It’s Robin, a giant screed popping up, the three little dots making it clear she isn’t finished yet. He types back I’ll call you later, but by the time he’s slid his phone back into his pocket, Eddie’s got his car door open and is sliding into the driver’s seat. 

“Oh,” Steve says.

“I gotta get back,” Eddie says. “See you around, Harrington.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “See you.”

—

They don’t see each other again.

—

Another August, another move. It’s by turns easier—Steve’s done this before, he knows how to stack the U-Haul just right this time; and harder—because he’s driving it north alone, and six months ago he’d thought—well, he’d thought he wouldn’t be. 

The apartment is fine. No complaints.

The job starts fine. He’s overwhelmed. The guy training him is two years younger than he is. What a feeling. 

At the end of his third day at the job he pulls his phone out in the parking lot, zooming in on Maps until he finds what he’s looking for. Ten minute drive. A little out of the way. No big deal.

The record store is definitely more Eddie’s scene than his. The kid behind the counter is wearing a shirt with an indecipherable logo on it and he’s bobbing his head to the music playing over the speakers, something way too heavy for Steve’s tastes. “Help you with something?” he asks, giving Steve a once-over.

“The new Hellfire album,” Steve says. “I think it’s supposed to come out this month.”

The clerk nods. “You want to preorder?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Steve says. 

“Most people just do a digital download these days, but I prefer hard copies. And you get the cool booklet with the preorder, too.” The clerk spins his iPad around, lets Steve fill in the text fields. “You a big Hellfire fan? They’re local, you know. Indiana’s finest.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I, uh, used to—well, I went to high school with the guitarist.”

“Oh, shit, that’s cool,” the clerk says. “Long hair guy? He’s a beast.”

Steve hands the iPad back. “Sure is,” he says. He swipes his credit card. “I just come pick it up on the release date?”

The clerk prints off a receipt, handing it over. “Yep. Hope you like it.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, and he slides out of the record store before he impulse-buys anything else.

—

The album drops on a Tuesday, and of course the record store doesn’t open until Steve’s already at work.

Girl, the text from Monica reads.

What, he texts back.

You haven’t listened to it yet?

I’m at work, he replies. Picking it up on my way home.

She still lives in Bloomington, but they see each other regularly, and text daily. Just like Robin. For some reason he’s always been better at staying in contact with his lesbian friends than with the people he dates. Just another mark to add to the You Suck column in his mind.

Girl you’re about to get your shit rocked!

OK, he texts back.

Track 9 is the last thing she writes before the little purple Do Not Disturb sign pops up.

As soon as the clock hits noon he gets an incoming call from Dustin.

“What now,” Steve groans.

Dustin is already shrieking into the phone. “Have you listened to it yet?”

“God, not you, too,” Steve says. “I preordered a hard copy and I don’t get off until 5 so unless you want to drive up to the record store for me and pick it up you’ll just have to wait for my esteemed opinion, okay, Henderson?”

“Fine!” Dustin hollers. “Not like there’s this thing called YouTube or, I dunno, streaming services!”

“Why do you want my opinion so much, anyway? Jesus. It’s my ex’s fucking metal band. If I wanted to listen to him saying something heartbreaking I’d just replay our breakup conversation in my head.”

“Jesus Christ, Steve,” Dustin says, voice immediately sobering. “I’m sorry.”

“No, man, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t put that on you,” Steve says. He picks at the sandwich he packed himself. “Anyway, Monica already told me that track 9 is going to rock my world or whatever.”

“Woof,” Dustin says. “Something like that. Hey, I gotta make a call. Let me know when you’ve heard it.”

“You have to make a call? What the fuck are you, fifty?”

“Love you, Mom,” Dustin sings, obnoxiously, into the phone, and then he hangs up.

He’s practically vibrating out of his skin as the clock ticks down to five. 

He flies out the door the minute his computer shuts off, waving Donna in Accounts off as she tries to tell him to drive safe. He does drive safe, of course, taking his time going through every intersection until he’s parallel parking in front of the record store and jogging inside. There’s a line, but they move fast, and finally he’s up at the counter, face to face with the same kid from a couple weeks ago.

“Hope you like it,” he says, and Steve turns the CD over in his hands.

The drive home is a blur, the CD burning a proverbial hole in the leather where it sits on his passenger seat. (He doesn’t want to put it on in here—doesn’t want to get interrupted ten minutes into the album.)

And then it’s being slid into his stereo, into the same slot that Eddie had stuck his finger in two years ago, right before blowing him on the floor of his old studio apartment. 

Steve shakes that memory away. No use thinking about that now.

The album is good, he has to admit. He listens on his couch, phone in one hand so he can scroll through Instagram when he gets bored, booklet in the other; he finds he’s not as bored as he expected, though. The first three tracks are loud and then the fourth slows it down; track five is long—thirteen minutes, what the fuck—and then six and seven pick the pace back up. Track eight isn’t really his thing, so he reads the back of the booklet as he listens. His eyes scan the acknowledgements section.

Eddie would like to thank: the Hawkins gang, every lesbian on earth, Chuck Schuldiner RIP, Wayne, and the guy who made Softball possible.

Softball. Steve flips the booklet over. That’s—

That’s track 9.

That’s—that’s up next, he thinks, panic flooding his brain. He almost wants to lean over and punch the stereo off before it can start, but then track eight is fading out and there’s a moment of silence before an acoustic guitar starts. 

And that’s Eddie singing.

Oh, shit, he’s in for it now.

At first it’s just Eddie, and Steve is sure of that because the liner notes say so. Steve’s eyes swim as he reads the lyrics along with the song. Then the drums and bass kick in, a little electric guitar, too, a little bit of synth, and the song takes off. 

It’s as fucking romantic as a metal song can get, he thinks. 

There’s something about the bridge that hits Steve right in the solar plexus, making him equal parts nauseous and alive again; it’s like Eddie’s come through the speakers, horror movie-style, to stare Steve down with his eyes bright and his soul bared, asking what were you thinking. 

Maybe it’s not for me, a wild little part of Steve wants to think, but he knows more than anything else that that’s not true.

The song ends. He doesn’t even listen to track 10, just shuts the whole thing off. He has his feet in his shoes and his body out the door before his mind catches up to what he’s doing.

And—what is he doing? Finding Eddie, right. Except, he realizes, halfway down the apartment building stairs, he has no idea if Eddie is even still living in the same place, even in Indianapolis at the moment. 

God, he’s fucked.

You were right, he texts Monica, and then he scrolls to Robin’s name and hits call.

“My favorite person,” Robin chirps.

“Oh, Rob, I’m fucked,” Steve says, dropping to sit heavily right there on the stairs.

“Uh-oh,” Robin says, and he can hear her leaving whatever busy room she’s in. “Explain.”

“Eddie wrote me a song,” Steve says, not even bothering to mask the emotion in his voice. “He wrote me a fucking song and he put it on the album, a good song, no yelling, it’s perfect, and I’m—” He’s two seconds from crying. He yelled at Eddie about being in the band and Eddie wrote him a song. “I’m going to explode.”

“Oh, shit, it’s album day, isn’t it,” Robin muses. “I haven’t listened to it.”

“It’s really good,” Steve says. “Or—well, that song is really good.”

“I’ll take your word for the rest of the album,” Robin says.

“You’re not going to listen?”

“I hate metal,” she says.

“But he’s your friend.” Steve picks at the sole of his shoe, trying to let his brain and his breath slow down for a minute.

“Eh,” Robin says. “Not like we’ve really talked since he dumped you.”

“It was a little more mutual than that,” Steve says, and he’s not sure why he’s trying to defend the guy.

“Whatever. You sound a little less manic.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says.

“So he wrote you a song. Are you going to do anything about it?”

“I want to,” Steve says, leaning back against the stairs, ignoring how much grime is probably working its way into his hair. “I just—don’t know what to do.”

“You could try calling him,” she says.

“I’d rather explode, thanks,” he says. He’d told her the night of the quarry just how awkward the encounter had been. “I don’t know if I could say anything even a quarter coherent right now.”

She hums into his ear. “Let me listen to the song. Then we can figure it out.”

“You’re the greatest best friend,” he says. “Thanks for picking up. I was about to go try to track him down in the city.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” she says. “I’ll call you tonight.”

— — —

Eddie spends album release day dissociating on his couch, sticking his finger into the mouthpiece of his hash pipe and ignoring the way his phone keeps lighting up. When he finally does lean over to grab it, he sees six missed calls from Dustin, and rolls his eyes before calling back.

“What do you want,” he sighs.

“It’s a good album, Eddie,” Dustin says. 

“Thanks,” Eddie says. He rolls off the couch and stands up, then crouches back down when the dizziness overtakes him. 

“I’m serious,” Dustin says. “Track six? The God of Nothing? That was incredible. The polyrhythms were really cool, and I liked the keyboard part a lot.”

Eddie sniffs the Taco Bell bag from his morning food run on the counter. He maybe should have put that in the fridge. He’s not sure what the food safety rules about tacos are. 

“And, uh, Softball?” Dustin whistles, long and slow. “Well, you sure do know how to emotionally devastate a man.”

“Those lyrics aren’t for you,” Eddie says. 

“Well, I can still like them,” Dustin says. “Anyway, have you seen Steve since he moved up to Indy?”

That stops Eddie in his tracks, halfway across the kitchen with the bag of possibly-still-good Taco Bell. “What. What? Since he what?”

“Since he… moved. To Indianapolis,” Dustin says, sounding all the words out like Eddie’s a child. “Because he got that job, and he graduated college.”

I didn’t know, Eddie wants to say, but instead he says, “No. I’ve been busy.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dustin says. “Well, onto my last question: any chance I can get VIP tickets for your Indy show next month?”

“I thought you were coming to Chicago,” Eddie says, his brain still stuck on the fact that Steve Harrington apparently lives in Indianapolis now and nobody was going to tell him.

“No, turns out I have a test the next day. Can I get two? I want to bring a date.”

“Taking a girl to a fucking death metal show? You’re either a genius or a moron,” Eddie says. “Sure, I’ll put you on the list. You fucking owe me one, though.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever your heart desires,” Dustin says. “I gotta go, the dining hall is closing. See you in a few weeks.”

“Bye, Dusty,” Eddie says.

He drops the Taco Bell bag into the trash.

— — —

“Do you,” Dustin says, drawing the words out.

“Oh, my god, why do I get the feeling I’m about to regret ever saying yes to babysitting you in the first place,” Steve says.

“Come on, man, let me finish. Do you have plans tomorrow night?”

“Why do I also get the feeling that you’ve hacked into my calendar and you already know the answer is no,” Steve says. He pulls his keys out of his pocket, shifting his grocery bag so it’s in the same hand as his phone, and unlocks his apartment door. 

“Good,” Dustin says. “I got tickets to Eddie’s show. Last night of the tour and everything. Can I crash on your couch, pretty please?”

Steve’s just, finally, gotten to the point where the mention of Eddie’s name doesn’t send him into a spiral. He does take a sharp little breath, though. 

It’s not like he’d forgotten about the tour for the new album, it’s just—he’s been trying not to pay attention. He unfollowed the band on Instagram, hasn’t been back to the record store. He’s been trying to breathe air that hasn’t just been in Eddie’s lungs. 

“God. Can’t you stay with him?”

“No, his couch sucks and I doubt he’d want to host me after a show anyway,” Dustin says. 

“Fine,” Steve says. He can never say no to Dustin. “But you owe me big time.”

“Would a VIP ticket to the show sweeten the deal?”

Jesus, Steve thinks, rubbing his temple. He shoves his groceries haphazardly into the fridge. “On one condition,” he says.

“What? Anything,” Dustin asks, too eager.

“Don’t try to Parent Trap us again, please,” Steve says. 

Dustin’s quiet.

“I mean it,” Steve says. “I don’t want to get, like, pushed into a situation, you know? It’s been hard for both of us. I think we just need a clean break at this point.”

“He wrote you a song,” Dustin says. “He wrote you the song that got the album an 8.6 on Pitchfork.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Steve says.

“I’m just saying. I don’t think a clean break is what you’re going to get.”

“Dustin,” Steve says, plaintively. 

“Fine,” Dustin says, and Steve can practically hear him throwing his hands up in the air. “I won’t do anything silly. Just come with me, we can sneak out after it’s over, you never have to be up close and personal with him.”

“Alright,” Steve says. “Fine.”

—

The plan doesn’t go according to plan, of course.

The VIP seats are up in the mezzanine, stage left, in spitting distance from where Steve knows Eddie will be standing in a few short minutes. “Dustin,” Steve squeaks, pointing furiously at the Warlock and the Explorer and the acoustic that rest in their stands on the stage. 

“Hm,” Dustin says, pursing his lips. “I thought we were going to be on the other side.”

“He’s going to see me,” Steve says. “I’m going to mess him up.”

“Nah, the lights are so bright, he’ll never notice. Come on, be brave about it.”

“I’m being so brave,” Steve says, pulling his feet up onto the seat so he can drop his chin onto his knee. “I need more beer.”

“No you don’t, you want to be at least somewhat sober for this. And you still have to drive me home,” Dustin says.

The lights dim and the noise coming through the speakers is replaced by that low droning song. The crowd, predictably, loses their shit.

“You can hold my hand, if you’re going to be a baby about it,” Dustin whispers.

“Fuck off,” Steve says, but he takes the proffered hand. 

And then the show starts. 

Of course they choose Softball to close the set. Of course they do. Steve actually honestly thinks he’s going to get out of hearing it live, before Eddie grabs the acoustic and steps closer to center stage and everyone else in the band gets quiet. And, oh, fuck, does it hurt all the more when Eddie’s in front of him, singing clear as day, the lyrics pummeling Steve in the chest like they’re trying to resuscitate him. 

At least Dustin doesn’t seem to mind the vice-like grip Steve has on him. He also doesn’t comment on the fact that Steve’s cheeks are wetter than a windshield in a rainstorm.

“Steve,” Dustin whispers, as the lights come up. “We have backstage passes. Do you want to use them?”

“God,” Steve says, ignoring the way his voice cracks. “You’re killing me, here, Henderson.”

The employee-only mezzanine door swings open, just a hair, and a bald-headed bouncer sticks his face through. “Is one of you Henderson?”

“Me,” Dustin says, over the roar of the crowd. The band is coming back onstage, for an encore, Steve assumes. 

“Once the encore’s over, you and your date can come back,” the bouncer says. “Green room only.”

“Fucking… fine,” Steve says, already committing to it. “I hate you.”

“The best laid plans of mice and men,” Dustin says, giggling evilly.

“I highly doubt you were ever planning on walking out of here without dragging me backstage,” Steve says. 

“You’d be right about that.”

— — —

“No fuck ups! No train wrecks! No broken strings!” Eddie hollers as he runs through the dark corridor to the green room. 

“Don’t eat shit,” Ben warns from behind him.

“That would be my cosmic penance, wouldn’t it,” Eddie calls back. He slides into the green room and collapses on the couch. His fingers hurt. His feet hurt. He hasn’t gotten more than five hours of sleep in a week. But tonight was magic, tonight was the best fucking show he’s played in years, and that feeling alone is sending him to the stratosphere, no drugs necessary.

“No, man, I think this is your cosmic penance,” Ben says as he holds the door open for the people behind him. His eyes are wide, his mouth a line.

“What?” Eddie asks, pushing himself back up.

The bouncer he’d given Dustin’s name to enters first, and then Dustin walks in, and then—

Oh.

Steve Harrington nods, raising his hand in a universal “hi”. 

“Eddie!” Dustin yells, launching himself across the room and into Eddie’s arms.

“Hey, little man,” Eddie says into his hair, even though Dustin’s far from little these days. “What the fuck,” he whispers.

“My other date bailed,” Dustin says, all sneaky little smiles.

“I’ll kill you. Slowly and painfully,” Eddie says, as quiet as he can, but Dustin shakes it off, skips over to his bandmates. 

“Great show,” Dustin is saying as he rounds on the boys. “Parallax was the best you’ve ever played it, seriously, and oh my god, the live version of God of Nothing? Incredible.”

Steve’s eyes haven’t moved from Eddie’s since he walked in—and Eddie would know, since he’s been unable to tear his own from Steve’s. There’s no way he can get out of tonight without a talk, he knows. He nods to the exit door, holding up his pack of Camels.

If any of the band notices their departure, they’re kind enough not to say anything. 

“You—uh. You played well,” Steve says, hunching underneath the dim alley light.

“Thanks,” Eddie says. He lights a cigarette. “You want one?”

“Sure,” Steve says, and Eddie hands one over. He doesn’t light it first, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind. He just pulls his lighter out, flicks it open, and immediately starts talking. “I can’t—I can’t go another minute without telling you. Shit. First of all, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Eddie says, because he really doesn’t want to do this here, but Steve shakes his head.

“Not about coming to the show, about everything. About—I let the distance get to me. I never knew how to say what I felt, which is that, you know, even when we hated each other I never really hated you, and for two and a half years I’ve thought about you every single day, and, you know, you at your most annoying and nastiest—that version of you is better than a single day without any version of you, and the past eight months have been tearing me up, okay? And I wanted to say all of this before, but I didn’t have the words. I didn’t—” Steve pauses, takes a deep breath, and Eddie tries to pretend that he didn’t hear his voice break. “I didn’t really understand what loving someone felt like until you weaseled your way into my life, Eddie.”

Eddie isn’t moving. He’s barely even breathing. He doesn’t want to ruin this.

Steve stops talking, stops pacing.

Eddie’s still quiet.

“Well,” Steve says, laughing, and Eddie can hear the nervousness in it. “Anything to say, now that I’ve so carefully laid my insides out in front of you?”

Eddie’s still trying to get his mouth to catch up to his brain. 

“Fuck. Shit,” Steve mutters. “This was a mistake, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come tonight, I just thought—with the song—I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’ll go.”

He turns to grab the door handle and Eddie barely catches his wrist in time. “Wait a second, Steve, please,” he says, not proud of how small his voice is. “I need—fuck. I can’t fucking think when I’m around you.”

Steve is still underneath Eddie’s hand. He’s staring at the door, but he’s not moving anymore.

“Of course the song is for you. I figured that was obvious. You know subtlety isn’t my strong suit.”

Steve snorts, and Eddie can feel some of the tension in this alley release. 

“I wrote it before we—you know. That was going to be your graduation present.” Eddie doesn’t miss the way Steve’s eyes get shiny at that, and without thinking he blurts out, “Oh, baby, don’t cry.”

“I was really looking forward to that blow job,” Steve says, sniffling for real.

Eddie bites his lip. “You and me both, man.”

He knows this is it. He needs to tell Steve now, or the moment will be lost and he’ll never get it back, but the ground feels like it’s seconds away from lurching out from underneath him. Even though Steve just bared his soul in front of Eddie, that little demon of self doubt in the back of Eddie’s head is holding onto this all being—what was it? Right. His cosmic penance. He feels lightheaded.

“Steve, you fucking terrify me,” he says, taking a deep pull of his cigarette.

“What? Me? I don’t—”

“Just let me finish, please, or this is going to take all fucking night, man,” Eddie says. He kicks the gravel in front of him. “I know the stupid high school bullshit doesn’t matter in the real world but there was always—I don’t know, a stupid part of me that was kind of in shock that you ever wanted anything to do with me. And then all of a sudden you were trying to build this little domestic life and I felt like the Eddie you were trying to build it with wasn’t me. It felt like you didn’t want the real me, just this version of me that was living in your head. And, you know, having you, having this band—that’s all I’ve ever really wanted, but it felt like it could only be one or the other, because you’d resent me so much if I tried to be the real me. And if you want to be with me I need you to know that this is my life, and I want to do it forever. I can’t split myself in two for you.”

It’s all out there, now, and Eddie lets the words hang, heavy, in the air.

It’s out there, and Steve is just going to shake his head and walk away, Eddie knows it.

And then, against all odds, Steve grabs Eddie’s hand.

“I don’t want you to split yourself in two for me,” Steve says.

Eddie looks down at their hands clasped together, his fingers in Steve’s. 

“I want the whole you. If you’ll have me. I’ll—I mean, I might not enjoy it, not all of it, at least not all the time, but I don’t have to, you know? I just want to be with you. I can’t—I can’t spend another eight months without you. I can’t go home after this without you and be fine, Eddie.”

“Me either,” Eddie says. “Fuck.”

“I never said it before,” Steve starts, his voice shaking. “And I should have told you every fucking day. I’m in love with you, Eddie.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Eddie says, his heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to drop right out of his pelvic floor. “For what I said that day. For being a nightmare of a boyfriend. And—I’m sorry I never told you I’m in love with you, too.”

“God,” Steve says. “Fuck. I missed you so much.”

“Kiss me, idiot,” Eddie tells him, and Steve does.

Steve crashes into him, pushing him up against the brick behind them, and his mouth is everywhere all at once, lips to lips and lips to jaw and lips to throat, and Eddie whines into the autumn evening air, all the moths at the light overhead giving them privacy by some cosmic agreement. If this is penance, it’s pretty nice.

“But, just so you know, we’re never fucking doing this again,” Steve says, suddenly pulling back.

“What?”

“Breaking up, I mean.” Steve cups Eddie’s face, his hands warm and dry, and drags him in close, and Eddie lets himself go. “That fucking sucked. I don’t want to do it again.”

“You got it, big boy,” Eddie says, breathing Steve’s exhale deep into his lungs. 

— — —

“Hey,” Steve says, as Dustin steps out of the green room. He tosses Dustin his keys. “I’m, uh, going home with Eddie.”

Dustin looks at the key ring, then back up, letting his gaze flick between Eddie and Steve a few times. “And I’m not invited, I take it?”

“You can take my car back to my place,” Steve says, cutting in before Dustin’s howl of delight can hit too many decibels. “Henderson, if I find so much as a single scratch in the paint, I will personally decapitate you. You can eat whatever you want, but don’t touch my alcohol and don’t touch my weed, okay?”

Dustin’s grin is megawatt-bright. “I knew it, I fucking knew it, did I call it or what? God, I’m so smart. I’m the smartest person on earth, holy shit.”

“My god,” Eddie says, deadpan. “We should all prostrate ourselves in wonder at you.”

“Ego,” Steve warns, flicking Dustin on the nose. “I’ll be back in the morning. One more time: not a single—”

“Scratch, yes, I get it,” Dustin says. “I’m not a child. Have fun, you two. Make me a nephew or two.”

“I’m… not even going to dignify that with a response,” Steve says, carefully. He turns to look Eddie in the eye. “Want to go?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

Before they get too far down the hallway, though, Steve stops, grabbing Dustin’s shoulder and pulling him in for a quick hug. Because, like everything that goes right in Steve’s life, this one’s Dustin’s fault, too. “Thanks,” he mutters, and then he’s off, hand interlaced with Eddie’s.