Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Hawk's marquee buzzed and flickered overhead. Half the letters had already fallen out, making "THROWBACK FRIDAY: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD" read more like: NI_HT OF T_E L_VING D_AD. Steve stood beneath it with two tickets already in hand, watching the street and parking lot fill up with a mix of couples and clusters of friends.

No sign of Eddie's van.

He checked his watch. Six forty-five. Plenty of time. Eddie had said he'd be here, and Steve was choosing to believe him, even if every passing minute sent another ripple of doubt through his gut.

He'd gotten here embarrassingly early. Twenty minutes of sitting in his car, fiddling with the radio and checking his hair in the rearview before finally forcing himself inside to buy the tickets. Two, because he'd already decided he was paying. Not in some grand, look-at-me gesture, but because even if he couldn’t call this a date out loud he could at least make it feel like one.

Six forty-eight.

Steve shifted his weight, the tickets going soft between his clammy fingers where his thumb kept wearing the same nervous track across the print.

A couple from school walked past, the girl's eyes lingering on Steve for a beat or two longer than necessary before she leaned into her date and whispered something. Steve pretended not to notice. He was getting pretty good at that.

Six fifty-four, and Steve was starting to make peace with the idea of seeing a black and white movie alone on a Friday night like the world's most pathetic horror fan—or cutting his losses and going home to spend some quality time with a spoon and tub of peanut butter ripple ice cream—when a battered white van swung into the lot with all the grace of a shopping cart with a bad wheel. It lurched into a space near the back, engine cutting out with a startlingly loud bang as it backfired.

Eddie climbed out looking like he'd gotten dressed in a hurry, or maybe that was just how he always looked. His Slipknot shirt was wrinkled, his jacket slightly askew, and his hair was doing its usual untamed thing, curls springing in every direction like they each had somewhere more important to be.

He spotted Steve on the sidewalk and hesitated, just for a second, before shoving his hands into his pockets and crossing to him.

"Buckley?" Eddie asked by way of greeting, glancing around like Robin might materialize from behind a trash can.

"Sick," Steve said, keeping his voice easy. Casual. Definitely not rehearsed in the mirror that afternoon. "She called me a couple hours ago. Sounded awful. But she said we should still go without her."

It wasn't a complete a lie. Robin had called. She'd sounded perfectly fine, and what she'd actually said was, "You owe me for this, Harrington. I expect a full report and at least one embarrassing detail I can hold over your head forever."

Eddie's throat worked around a swallow. "So it's just... us."

"Just us," Steve confirmed with a careful smile. "That okay?"

Something flickered behind Eddie's eyes—that same deer-in-headlights look from the picnic table, there and gone in a flash. Then he hitched one shoulder in a shrug that didn't quite land as nonchalant. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

Ringing endorsement.

Steve held up the tickets, fanning them between two fingers. "Already got these. You want popcorn? Candy? I'm buying."

Eddie frowned. "You don't have to—"

"I know. I want to." Steve was already moving toward the concession stand, trusting that Eddie would follow. A gamble, but one that paid off when he heard the scuff of boots on carpet behind him.

The kid working the counter looked about fourteen and deeply uninterested in being alive. Steve ordered a large popcorn, two Cokes, and then turned to Eddie. "What do you want?"

"Dude, seriously, you don't—"

"Munson. Pick a candy or I'll pick for you and you don’t strike me as a Raisinets kinda guy."

Eddie pressed his lips together, visibly wrestling with himself. His eyes darted across the display case, lingering on the brightly colored boxes with an expression that reminded Steve so sharply of Dustin staring at the candy aisle at Bradley’s that something warm and tender ached behind Steve’s ribs.

"Sour Patch Kids," Eddie said at last, almost grudgingly. "If you're gonna twist my arm about it."

"Sour Patch Kids," Steve repeated to the cashier, sliding a few bills across the counter. "The big box."

They loaded up and headed for the theater. The auditorium was maybe a third full, scattered groups claiming seats toward the middle and front. Steve paused at the entrance, arms full of snacks, and assessed the landscape.

The back row sat empty. Dark and removed, far enough from the nearest occupied seats to feel almost private. If he led them up there it would look like—well, it would look like exactly what it was. Two people who wanted to sit away from everyone else.

Together.

In the dark.

The back row would send a message. Steve knew that. Everyone knew what the back row meant at the movies, and the last thing he wanted was to spook Eddie before the opening credits even rolled.

But he also really, really wanted to sit in the back row with him.

Screw it.

"Back row?" Steve suggested, already angling toward the aisle stairs.

Eddie shot him a look, one eyebrow arched. "The back row?"

"Best view of the whole screen."

"That is objectively not true."

"It's where I always sit," Steve countered, which was also not true. He used to sit dead center, four rows from the front, because Tommy insisted it was "the perfect spot”, but Eddie didn't need to know that.

Eddie studied him for another second, then shook his head with something that might have been a laugh if he’d committed a little harder. "Sure, why not. Back row it is. Lead the way, Harrington."

They settled into their seats, the worn velvet cushions sagging under their weight. Steve set the popcorn on the floor between them—neutral territory—and handed Eddie his Coke.

"So," Eddie said, tearing open his Sour Patch Kids with his teeth. "You a horror guy?"

"I dabble," Steve said, with the confidence of someone who had, in fact, seen a good number of horror movies and thought that qualified him.

He wasn’t a cinema buff by any stretch, but horror and rom-coms made up roughly ninety percent of Steve's movie diet. The other ten was whatever Jonathan put on when it was his turn to pick.

Eddie tipped a few of the candies into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Name your top three. Go."

Steve blew out a long breath. Three. He could do three. "Scream. The Thing. And—"

He drew a blank. Not because he didn't have other answers, but because every movie that popped into his head suddenly felt like the wrong one. He'd liked Poltergeist. Enjoyed Nightmare on Elm Street. Thought Jaws was fun but wasn't sure if that counted.

"—Alien," he landed on, mostly because Sigourney Weaver was a badass.

"Solid. Basic, but solid."

"Basic?" Steve twisted in his seat. "How is The Thing basic?"

"I said solid! Solid is a compliment." Eddie popped another Sour Patch Kid into his mouth, rubbing his fingers together to brush off the sugar coating they left behind. "It's just very… safe. Very mainstream horror-bro picks."

"Alright, hotshot. What's your top three?"

Eddie held up a ringed finger. "Nosferatu." A second finger. "The Shining." A third. "Texas Chain Saw Massacre—the original, obviously."

"Obviously," Steve echoed, as if he'd known there was more than one.

"See, those are picks with range. Atmosphere, style, raw unfiltered terror." Eddie gestured broadly with the box of candy, nearly clipping Steve's ear. "Yours are just—competent. Well-made. Respected."

"You just described good movies."

"I described safe movies, Harrington. There's a difference." But Eddie was fighting a grin, the corners of his mouth twitching against his will, and Steve realized with a jolt that this was easy. The back and forth, the teasing, the way Eddie's guard slipped when he got passionate enough to forget it was there.

He tried not to think about what might have happened if the Hawk had been showing Pretty in Pink for throwback night instead. Whether he'd have had the nerve to ask Eddie to that, and what Eddie's face might have done when he did.

Probably would've been worth it just to find out.

It hit him suddenly too how starved he'd been for this. Not just Eddie, but this kind of connection. Where you could argue about something as trivial as horror movies and it felt like flirting. Where every traded jab drew you closer instead of pushing you apart.

He must have been staring, because Eddie's grin faltered.

"This is weird," Eddie said, as if arriving at the thought mid-sentence. He looked away, eyes fixed somewhere around the middle distance of the half-empty theater. His fingers found one of the rings on his hand and started turning it. "You know that, right?"

Steve considered his options. He could deflect, crack a joke, steer them back to safer ground.

Instead he said, "It doesn't have to be."

Four words. Simple, quiet enough that they almost got lost under the low murmur of the other moviegoers and the tinny music piping through the speakers.

Eddie's mouth opened, then closed. His hand stilled its fidgeting. For once in what Steve suspected was a rare occurrence, Eddie Munson had absolutely nothing to say.

Steve let the silence breathe. Didn't rush to fill it, didn't backpedal or laugh it off. Just sat there, steady, and let Eddie do with it what he would.

After a long moment, Eddie exhaled, slow and deliberate like he was releasing something he'd been holding onto and sank a little deeper into his seat. He didn't reply, but he didn't bolt either, and his hand drifted back to the box of Sour Patch Kids, fishing one out and biting into it like it required his full concentration.

Steve counted that as a win.

The lights dimmed, and the screen flickered to life with a preview for some slasher sequel that looked terrible in all the best ways. Steve felt the shift in the air immediately, that particular electricity that only existed in a dark theater beside someone who made your pulse race and your heart do stupid things. Every accidental brush of Eddie's arm against his on the shared armrest sent a current skittering up to his shoulder. The space between their knees—barely two inches of stale, popcorn-scented air—felt charged, like the gap between two wires waiting for a spark.

He wondered if Eddie felt it too. If he was tracking the distance between them with the same obsessive awareness, cataloging every near-touch the way Steve was.

Probably not.

Probably Eddie was just watching the previews like a normal person who didn't have a stomach full of butterflies and a heart lodged somewhere around his tonsils.

The film opened on a grainy, washed-out frame, a car winding down a lonely road, the kind of desolate nowhere that made Steve instinctively grateful for Hawkins and all its flaws. There was something about seeing it on the big screen that the small TV in his living room could never replicate. The shadows were deeper, the silence between dialogue heavier, and every creak and groan of the old farmhouse rattled through the theater's sound system like it was coming from inside the walls.

Eddie, predictably, was riveted. He sat forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, Sour Patch Kids forgotten in his lap. Every few minutes he'd mutter something under his breath — half to Steve, half to himself — a running commentary that should have been annoying but wasn't.

"See, this, this right here is what modern horror gets wrong," Eddie whispered as the first zombie shambled into frame. "No soundtrack. No jump scare. Just dread."

Steve nodded like he had strong opinions on the matter.

He was enjoying the movie well enough, but his attention kept drifting sideways. The way the screen's shifting light played across Eddie's profile, painting him in washes of silver and shadow. How his lips moved silently along to dialogue he clearly knew by heart. The sharp line of his jaw when he tilted his head, the flash of his eyes when something on screen delighted him.

Steve leaned down, reaching for the popcorn at the same time Eddie did. Their fingers bumped in the dark, knuckles grazing, and Eddie yanked his hand back like he'd touched a hot stove.

"Sorry," Eddie muttered, barely audible.

"All yours," Steve said, pulling his own hand away and settling it on his thigh instead. His fingertips tingled where they'd made contact. Such a small, stupid thing. Knuckles in a popcorn bucket. It shouldn't have made his chest feel like this — tight and full and aching all at once.

On screen, the situation in the farmhouse was deteriorating. The survivors argued, turned on each other, made terrible decisions born of fear and desperation. Eddie's commentary picked back up, more animated now.

"See, that's the real horror," he said, leaning close enough that Steve caught a whiff of sour candy and cigarette smoke on his breath. "It was never about the zombies. It's people. People are the monsters."

"Cheerful."

"Realistic." Eddie flashed him a grin in the dark, there and gone, and settled back into his seat. But closer than before, Steve noticed. Not by much — half an inch, maybe less — but the warmth of Eddie's shoulder was suddenly right there, near enough to feel without quite touching.

Steve held perfectly still, afraid that if he moved, even to breathe too deeply, he'd break whatever spell had closed that distance.

They stayed like that through the rest of the film. Not touching, but close. Sharing space in a deliberate way on both sides, even if neither of them acknowledged it. Eddie kept up his commentary in murmured fragments, and Steve kept offering responses that were probably too vague to fool anyone who was actually paying attention, but Eddie didn't seem to mind. Or maybe he just liked having an audience. Either way, their voices wove together in the dark, low and private.

When the credits rolled — stark white text on black, the theater still heavy with the film's bleak ending — neither of them moved right away. The house lights came up in stages, a slow brightening that felt almost rude after ninety minutes of comfortable darkness.

Eddie blinked against the light, stretching his arms overhead with a groan that cracked something in his spine. "So? Verdict?"

"Dark," Steve said.

"It's a zombie movie."

"No, I mean the ending. They just—" He waved a hand at the screen, still processing. "After everything he survived, they just shoot him?"

Eddie's expression softened into something almost fond. "Yeah. That's the point. Romero wasn't interested in happy endings. He wanted you to leave the theater pissed off."

"Mission accomplished." Steve stood, gathering their empty cups and the decimated popcorn bucket.

They shuffled out of the row and down the aisle, falling into step together as they pushed through the lobby and out into the night. The parking lot had thinned out considerably, only a handful of cars left under the buzzing orange streetlights.

Steve tossed their trash into the bin outside the door, and they both slowed to a stop on the sidewalk, that awkward end-of-the-night moment where neither person wanted to be the first to say goodbye.

"That was fun," Steve offered, and meant it.

"Yeah." Eddie scuffed his boot against the concrete, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets. "It actually was."

Neither of them moved toward their cars. Steve was acutely aware of that fact — that they were just standing there on the sidewalk outside the Hawk like two people with nowhere else to be on a Friday night. Which, in Steve's case at least, was entirely true.

Crickets sang from somewhere in the scrubby landscaping along the building's foundation.

"I'm not really ready to call it a night," Steve admitted, testing the waters. "You?"

Eddie chewed on that for a second, teeth working at his bottom lip. Then something shifted in his posture, a squaring of the shoulders, a lift of the chin, like he was daring himself.

"Well, you set up the first half of the night. Only fair I handle the second half." The grin that followed was crooked and adorable and just a little bit dangerous. "If you're up for it?"

It took everything Steve had not to punch the air in excitement. "I'm up for it."

"Follow me, then." Eddie jerked his head toward his van, already walking backward across the lot, and Steve's stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with zombies.