Chapter Text
Eddie Munson died.
This is something he knows to be true.
He remembers his life rolling out of his mouth like cigarette smoke. He remembers Dustin, crouched over him, holding him, how fucking unfair it had been on the kid to do that. He remembers his mom curled over his dad like a question mark on their grimy kitchen floor, her scream reverberating in him for years, in his final moments like the toll of a bell. The tick of a clock.
He doesn’t remember how he got out of the Upside Down.
There is a girl, with a short shock of dark hair and a kind, round face. She isn’t really there. She presses a palm flat to his chest, and he breathes. His lungs—full of molasses, full of cotton—are suddenly clear, the pain a dull, throbbing ache, and when he opens his eyes without closing them the lights above him buzz. A heart monitor chimes, strong and steady. One. Two. Three.
Nancy Wheeler is sitting in an orange hospital chair, asleep on her palm. Her eyes snap open wide when he starts to choke on the tube in his throat. She stares at him with that startled gaze for a moment, then darts out of the room.
Some time later, Steve Harrington trudges in—a shift change. He presses a pile of denim to Eddie’s chest with a somber expression.
Eddie’s mouth is full of sand.
“Keep it. It suits you.”
Steve rolls his lips. Nods. Hooks the vest very gently over the back of the chair.
They don’t speak. Eddie dozes in and out, unable to decide whether he belongs with the living or the dead. Every time he wakes, Steve is watching, brow furrowed over the top of his magazine. His shirt rides up a little at the stomach. Eddie reaches—as best he can—to pluck at the smooth, white bandage hidden under his preppy stripes.
“We match,” he says.
“Lie back down, Eddie.”
“Okay, dear.”
It takes him three weeks to walk again. Hellfire—currently nameless, for the sake of a tentative peace treaty between Eddie and the general Hawkins populus—pools some money together to get him a walking stick. It has a raven on the handle, and he feels enough like a wizard that he doesn’t feel embarrassed using it.
He learns how to walk with three clicks instead of two. How to smile instead of grimace at the pain. How to feel grateful for Lucas’ lies, rather than sick when he thinks of Jason Carver torn in two. The kid had been nothing but awful to him, after all, but somebody had loved him.
He switches off the news when they talk about Jason and his final, failed, satanic ritual. He smiles at the secret service agents posted up outside his new government-provided home. He nods when people apologize. Shrugs when Uncle Wayne hugs him and says, “I knew it wasn’t you, my boy. I knew you couldn’t have done it.”
Somebody is tapping on Eddie’s window.
He almost doesn’t hear it over the Judas Priest tape playing through his Walkman. It had been a thank fuck you’re not dead gift from Uncle Wayne, but it’s secondhand and a bit crappy, so it crackles out into a tinny silence when the wire is twisted wrong.
It’s in one of these moments when he hears it. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.
His chest goes cold for a second. Chrissy blinks at him from the ceiling, eyes wide and white and unseeing.
He blinks hard and rolls his head to the side. A brunette head bobs over the windowsill, and he locks eyes with Steve Harrington, lifting himself up over the sill to peer inside. His forearms shift and flex with the effort.
Eddie sits up. Steve nods at the latch.
Eddie raises his hands and shrugs. Steve huffs and disappears below the window.
A small pebble hits the middle of the glass. And another. And another.
What, pray tell, the fuck?
Eddie discards the Walkman on his makeshift moving box nightstand and swings his feet to the carpet. The pebbles are still hitting the window— tap, tap, tap— as he unlatches it.
He leans out on crossed forearms. Steve’s next projectile, thankfully, goes right over his head.
“Hello,” Eddie says.
“Hi,” Steve replies, “can I come in?”
He’s wearing nothing but a thin t-shirt and sweatpants that ride low. Not even shoes: his socks definitely aren’t white anymore, standing in the dirt outside Eddie’s bedroom window.
“Sure.”
Eddie ducks back inside. The house is only one storey, but Steve has to take a running jump to reach the sill and dive in through the window. He tumbles onto the carpet with none of the grace of a Hawkins High swimming champion and lands—a little winded—with his back against the wall.
Eddie crosses his arms. “Y’know the government’s still watching the house, right? Some fuckin’ CIA agent probably saw you do that.”
Steve screws up his nose. “Then why are you sleeping with your curtains open? Pervert.”
“Wasn’t sleeping,” Eddie grumbles, and goes back to shut the window.
He digs his toes into Steve’s side. Steve hisses and smacks him in the back of the knee.
He makes sure the window is latched and glances out into the cold Hawkins night, getting real close to the edge of the window to check on the black DeLorean still parked up on the corner of the street. The lights are off, but the hot red end of a cigarette pulses in the darkness of the driver’s seat.
He hadn’t been sure if they were posted up for protection or surveillance. Considering they didn’t interrupt Steve’s performance, he supposes he knows the answer; he hasn’t tried sneaking out yet, but he figures it wouldn’t go as smoothly.
Steve has moved to his bed, sitting on the edge like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Eddie leans back against the windowsill and chews on a twisted strand of his hair. It’s a gross habit. He hopes Steve notices.
He doesn’t. At least, he doesn’t say anything about it.
“What are we doing?” Eddie asks, because Steve’s blank expression is fucking killing him. “Did you want… like… drugs, or something? Because I don’t do that shit anymore, man, you know that.”
Steve presses his hands flat to the bedspread and shakes his head maniacally. “No! No, I don’t want drugs, Eddie, Christ.”
“Just Eddie is fine.”
Steve rolls his eyes, and there’s a reaction Eddie wants. He takes a half-step forward, and when Steve doesn’t back away he takes another. Their toes are almost touching—Eddie’s socks are odd and threadbare, Steve’s are matching and pristine other than the garden dirt.
“Seriously, man,” Eddie says, dropping his hair, “what’s goin’ on? Sneaking in my window in the dead of night dressed like you just rolled out of bed. You could give a guy the wrong impression.”
It might be too far.
Steve sighs. Shakes his head. Laughs. He looks very timid and gentle in the warm lamplight. Eddie wants to touch him, so he plops down on the bed next to him, crosses his legs up, and tucks his hands underneath his thighs instead.
“It’s stupid,” Steve says.
“Try me.”
“I’ve been talking to Dustin.”
Eddie hums. “Terrible start. Continue.”
Steve huffs out a laugh, but it’s almost sad.
“He said that you, uh… that you did what you did”—he gestures vaguely to Eddie’s cane, leaning up next to the door—“for us. That you sacrificed yourself to give us more time.”
“Hm. I suppose so.” Eddie reclines until he hits the headboard. “I am very heroic, you know.”
“Eddie, please. Can we just…” Steve sighs, pinched. “Can we just be serious, for like, two seconds? Because I fuckin’ left you behind, and I can’t stop thinking about it. You did that for us and we just left you there, ran like hell, and if it hadn’t been for El and the kids…”
Eddie straightens up, because Steve’s voice is getting tight. “Steve. Hey. C’mon, man.”
Steve looks at him. His eyes are big and wet. He hasn’t done his hair, and it’s scruffy and pushed back and sort of in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be,” Eddie says. “You don’t have to be. I would’a done it whether you’d been there or not. Funnily enough, I didn’t actually count on you having a little friend with Revivify prepared.”
Steve scowls, figuring that out. Eddie leans forward, puts a hand on his knee. “You saved the world, Stevie. One silly little freak is nothing compared to that.”
For a long moment, Steve is very quiet.
“You’re not a freak.”
“Steve.”
“Eddie.” Steve puts his hand over Eddie’s, looks down at them. “You’re not. Not to me.”
He wets his lips. Eddie feels restless all of a sudden, but he doesn’t want to move in case he breaks this. Whatever this is.
“Steve,” he says, because what else?
“You’re worth much more than you give yourself credit for, Eds. Seriously. You’re, like… super metal.”
Eddie can’t help but laugh at that.
“You sound like a dork.”
Steve laughs, too. “I don’t know what I’m doing, man. Will you just say you forgive me so I can stop making a fool of myself and go home?”
“I forgive you, but don’t go.”
Steve’s mouth moves silently for a moment. “What?”
The look on Steve’s face tells him exactly how much it had sounded like stay with me, please. His mouth is dry. Steve doesn’t need this as much as he does, Steve doesn’t need him at all, but he’s here. He’s here anyway, even though he doesn’t need Eddie, he came anyway.
“Well, you came all this way, didn’t ya?” Eddie says, lighter. “And Starsky & Hutch out there might not let it slide a second time.”
Steve can see right through him. He has to.
He squeezes Eddie’s hand and says, “Alright. Alright, yeah. What’re you listening to?”
“Oh, man!”
Eddie springs across the bed, far too spry for what his body is currently capable of, and grabs his Walkman. He pops the cassette out and hands it over.
“Judas Priest, Rocka Rolla, 1974, it’s their first album. The sound quality is kinda shitty because it was produced by Roger Bain, who also produced Black Sabbath’s early stuff, so you think he’d be good but he, like, totally screwed them over. It’s got some pretty good stuff anyway, but I think you’d be better off starting out with British Steel if you wanted to get into them; it’s a bit more radio friendly, but still has that metal fee—”
Steve kisses him. It’s clumsy, because Eddie’s mouth is open and the room is dark and Eddie’s brain immediately shuts down because holy shit, holy shit.
Steve touches his face and his hair and for a moment Eddie wonders where he put the cassette, because it really is one of his favorites, but Steve hums into his mouth and drags him closer and, really, who are Judas Priest anyway?
Eddie realizes absently that he should be kissing Steve back.
He tilts his head and licks across the seam of Steve’s lips. Steve sighs, jaw slack, and Eddie licks behind his teeth. Loops their tongues together. Focuses on trying to press Steve’s tongue down, up, sideways, until Steve moans—low and long and breathy—into his mouth and tugs him in.
He’s used to doing this with girls, it seems, because he tries to get Eddie into his lap.
Eddie goes. Of course he does. He chucks one leg over Steve’s thighs and shifts until his bad leg isn’t strained. Steve holds his hips and seemingly tries to replicate what Eddie had done with his tongue, pinning it against the roof of his mouth. Eddie grins. Their teeth clack together.
Steve’s hands slip beneath his shirt. Like all of his clothes, it’s soft and thinned with age enough that it doesn’t make much difference to the warmth of Steve’s hands against his skin. He presses up, though, with intention, and Eddie can’t help but gasp.
“Yeah?” Steve asks into his mouth.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Please.”