Work Text:
He must’ve said Eddie’s name half a million times by now, mourned him with every syllable. He’s gone to funerals and celebrations of life and remembrance parties. He’s counted anniversaries one month turning into a year, a year into two, into six. He blew out birthday candles in his empty kitchen, making wishes for someone who wasn’t there.
But it felt like he was there, every day, tethered to his side. He said his name thinking he might respond — screamed it until his throat was raw and the sounds tasted bitter in his mouth. The only reply was his house echoing back to him. He’s gotten used to the goosebumps lining his left arm, to the hairs that seemed to stand on end no matter how much he pushed them down.
It was strange, walking through the day with the feeling that someone was beside him, and not being able to see them. To speak to them. His grocery cart only had enough food to feed one person, though he kept his right side closest to the shelves, leaving space.
He found he was leaving space a lot, after Robin brought it up to him. They’d been out to lunch, sitting across from each other at a vinyl booth.
“Is something wrong with you?” She’d blurted, her bottom lip smudged with ketchup.
Steve stared at her, bewildered. “What? No. Why would you say that?”
Robin shrugged in that easy way of hers. “You act weird sometimes, Steve.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do,” Robin insisted.
“Like what?”
“Like now!” She gestured emphatically towards Steve. “You have a whole bench to yourself and you’re sitting on the edge.”
Steve frowned, turning to look at his left side. No one was beside him. No one was taking up the space he’d left for another person, but it felt like there was someone there. It felt like the space was occupied.
Steve shrugged, turning back to Robin. “There’s a draft on that side.”
Robin frowned at him, staring suspiciously between Steve and the empty space. Before they left the diner, Robin slid into Steve’s side of the booth, all the way to the left. She looked at him like she’d proven something.
“There's no draft.” She grinned.
“They probably turned the AC off,” Steve said, waving away her protests.
It hadn’t made him stop leaving space, but it’s made him aware of it. He began noticing the barrenness of the left side of his sink, of the indent that was only on the right side of the couch, how uncomfortable he’d become driving because his left side was pressed against the door. Then one night, Steve rolled over in his bed, and realized the left side was cold, the sheets smooth, the pillow untouched and he decided that this had gone on for long enough.
Friday nights were still hellfire nights, but the group had downsized to just the kids and had moved to Steve’s place. He’d moved into an apartment a year after Vecna died and a year after that he’d saved enough for a house and out of all the kid's parents, he’d been the only person willing to put up with their seven-hour sessions and constant yelling. personally, Steve thought he’d been played.
“Do not fucking attack right now, Mike.”
“Language,” Steve droned.
Dustin cut him a glare. “You know I’m turning 21 this year, right?”
Steve grinned, patronizing, from his spot on the couch. “Oh sure, buddy.”
Dustin muttered something under his breath that Steve generously ignored.
“If I don’t attack now, then we’ll lose our advantage!” Mike yelled, slamming his hands down on the table.
Will's lips had curled into an evil smile behind his board, watching with barely concealed glee.
“If we do attack now, then we’re going in blind!” Dustin yelled back
“Mike’s right, we have to take this chance to weaken him,” Lucas cut in. He sided with Mike more often than not.
Dustin groaned, pulling at his hair. “You’re going to get us all killed,” he groused.
“Can’t we roll for that thing that tells us their intentions?” Max had started playing sometime in the last year or two. Steve was fairly certain she understood the game better than she acted like she did.
“Insight,” the group coursed.
“And no,” Dustin continued, “We don’t have time.”
“We should attack—“
“Oh, would you babies just roll already?” Erica muttered, pulling her sleeve back to check her watch. “You’re going to make me late for my date.”
Lucas’ face twisted in disgust, groaning loudly. “I do not want to hear about you going on dates.”
“Then play the game.”
“Attack, Mike,” Lucas ordered.
Mike rolled to the loudest groan Dustin could’ve possibly produced. Steve rolled his eyes.
Turns out, the monster had been some sort of poltergeist, and attacking it had done nothing but piss it off. Dustin was insufferable for the rest of the night.
When the clock hit 11:30, Eleven showed up for dinner. She’d been banned from Hellfire meetings for cheating on her behalf, and others. To be honest, Steve didn’t think she minded much. Sometimes he wished he could’ve been banned too, and it was his own house.
He served pasta with uneven meatballs and, like every Friday night, told them no DnD talk at the dinner table. Like every Friday night, they didn’t listen.
“I fucking told you!” Dustin cried.
“Yes, yes I know,” Mike said, flapping a hand in Dustin’s face.
“If Erica were still here, she’d tell you to shut up. So on her behalf: shut up.” Max said, flinging a spaghetti noodle across the table. “We all lived. No harm done.”
Mike grinned, triumphant.
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have listened though,” Max added, wiping the smile from Mike’s face.
Will shrugged easily, “I thought it was a good game,” his words muffled around a bite of pasta.
Lucas was filling El in on what’d happened in the game, as someone did nearly every week. It was sweet, though entirely biased to the arguments, Steve was sure.
“Do you think ghosts are real?” He interrupted a while later, when most of the bowls were empty and cold.
Dustin looked at him, incredulous. “Do I think ghosts are real? El created an entire dimension with her mind. We fought monsters. Of course, ghosts are real.”
“Woah woah woah,” Lucas interrupted, “the Upside Down and the afterlife are two totally different things.”
“Not really,” Max said, “They’re both different planes of existence.”
A fight broke out rather quickly, interrupting only to explain various theories of death to Eleven when she didn’t get the reference. Will contributed nothing to the argument, though, he just watched Steve, a curious wondering in his eyes.
“What is it?”
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Will asked, throwing Steve’s question back at him.
Steve picked at a notch in the table he’d gotten second-hand from Joyce as a moving-in present. “You’ll need somewhere to sit all those kids,” she’d said quietly.
“I don’t know,” he mused quietly. “Maybe.”
Will nodded. He was wise, beyond his years. His eyes had seen more than any kids should have to. “Sometimes,” he said, “I feel things when I’m here.”
Steve’s eyes shot up, locking on Wills. “What do you mean?” His heart thudded in his chest and he might’ve been imagining things, but he thought the goosebumps on his arm grew colder, the weight closer.
Will shrugged, uncertain. “It feels like someone is here. It feels like…” He trailed off, the person unnamed.
Will had never gotten to meet Eddie. He’d died in the Upside Down, just minutes before Vecna, and it’d haunted Steve every night for months. If he could’ve just killed Vecna a little faster, if El had gotten there a little sooner. But will had heard so much about him over the years, before and after Vecna, that sometimes he would bring something up, some memory of him, and say it like he’d been the one there to witness it.
“Like,” Steve swallowed thickly, “like Eddie?”
Will nodded, slow, his eyes wide. “You feel it too?”
Steve pressed his lips into a thin line. “Yeah. All the time.”
Will was somber for the rest of dinner, lost in his thoughts. The kids never came to an agreement on whether ghosts were real, but Steve felt like he’d accomplished something, like he was closer to figuring out the answer to a question he couldn’t remember being asked.
Most weeks, Mike drove the gang to Steve’s and took them home after. His parents had given him the van when he turned eighteen. It was limping along, and Steve had put more money into making sure the car wouldn’t fall apart than he probably should’ve.
Lucas, Dustin, and el still lived at home but Mike had moved out with Will the very day he turned twenty and a few months later, Max had taken up residence in their spare bedroom. It was only supposed to be for a few weeks, but she was still there almost a year later.
Steve saw them to the door, grumbling about how they always leave his place a mess, never cleaning up their dishes or their game, which stayed permanently at Steve’s now. He didn’t bring it up because he didn’t really want them to take it. It was a promise that they’d come back next week.
Will was the last to leave, hovering unsure in the doorway. “His,” Will hesitated over his next words before settling on “His presence feels stronger when we play DnD.”
Steve stared at him, trying to think of what to say.
“That’s how I knew it was him, Eddie.” Will continued.
Steve felt tears threatening behind his eyes so he pulled Will forward, wrapping him in a hug before they could spill over. He’d sprouted up that year he was in California and he grew a few more inches after that until he was only half an inch shorter than Steve. Still, he tucked his head under Steve's chin, and he was grateful at least one of them still acted like a kid.
“Thank you,” Steve whispered, pulling away.
Will smiled, soft and understanding. They’d all lost people, who cared if this was how he was coping.
He looked out the open door at the rest of the kids piling into the van. Max’s hand was on the driver's door. “Don’t let her drive,” Steve muttered, pushing Will out the door. “I’m not paying for it if she totals the thing.”
Will laughed, waved Steve goodbye, and wrestled Max away from the door with Mike's help.
That night, when the dishes were drying by the sink and the living room had been reorganized, the game tucked safely away in the trunk against the wall, Steve pulled an old box down from the attic. It was full of things no one had wanted to part with but hadn’t wanted to keep either, and Steve had grown sentimental over the years and let everyone store their shit in his attic. He didn’t have enough to fill it anyway. He pulled out a dusty record, cleaned it off, and set the needle of the record player on the first song.
He’d never listened to metal before, but he reasoned that it wasn’t for him. When he finally went to bed, the last dregs of the record playing downstairs, the left side of his bed felt a little less empty.
In between shifts at his new job, he replayed the record until he knew the order by heart and heard the lyrics even when they weren’t playing. Keith had fired him two years after Vecna died and Robin had walked in support. They’d bounced around at a few places, a laundromat; a cafe; a very brief three days at a restaurant; an even shorter six hours at a bank; and a bookstore until they settled down a year ago at a hair salon. Robin worked reception and Steve shadowed the hairdressers for a while until they trusted him enough to wash the clients' hair and offer them products.
It was more work than family video but less than the bank and he didn’t mind it too much. He enjoyed it and Robin stuck around because she got to bury her head in a new sketchbook every week and draw. He didn’t know what she was planning on doing with that, she only shrugged when he asked and told him that she was allowed to have hobbies without needing to make money off it, looking pointedly at the shampoo suds on his wrists. Steve had flicked the bubbles at her but he hadn’t brought it up again. Her words made him feel like his dad, so he kept his mouth shut.
Steve bought movies from the store rather than renting them, partly because he couldn’t stand the sight of Keith but also because last time he’d gone there Keith had refused him service anyway.
By Tuesday he had gone through every horror movie he could get his hands on and had moved onto sci-fi. Truthfully, he didn’t know what kinds of movies Eddie liked to watch, didn’t even know if he was actually watching them or if Steve was just suffering through Back to the Future — sober, this time — for no reason.
His left side felt heavier though, as if a weight were pressed against his hip at all hours of the day. The sheets on the left side of the bed had started to wrinkle and the left couch cushion sagged just slightly. He wrote it off, but he hoped.
On Thursday Steve dragged himself through his doorway, tossing a bag of movies and new records on the floor. He’d worked a double today, stretching himself between reception and the sinks because Robin called out, fake coughing, to say she was too sick to work. Steve had heard Vickie in the background and he said nothing, out of loyalty to Robin and because she’d waited until he was already clocked in to call.
At his first apartment, he’d lived with Robin. He didn’t mind it, spending every day with his best friend. It’d been nice, a change of pace and a reprieve for the loneliness he usually associated with coming home. But Vickie was over more often than not and Steve knew Robin would never ask him to leave so he’d saved and done it himself and told Robin to have Vickie move in to cover his half of the rent. They were still living there, five years later.
Steve kicked off his shoes, vowed to give Robin hell tomorrow for the blisters on his heels, and slumped down on the couch to sort through the growing stack of movies. He didn’t think he’d ever seen so many movies in his life, not even when he’d been working at Family Video.
He was halfway through the second Back to the Future movie — Steve could not believe they’d made another one when the first had hardly made sense — when the lid of the trunk swung open. Steve startled, letting out a scream he would deny if anyone had been there to hear him.
Steve stared the trunk down, waiting, and when nothing else happened he got up and slowly made his way to it. His heart thudded against his chest and he couldn’t decide if it was from anxiety or excitement.
Nothing in the trunk looked amiss, all the kids' DnD stuff was still packed away and organized the same way he did it every week. Steve looked around the room, a cursory glance for anything else out of place but he couldn’t find a single thing. Then he felt it, a coolness against his arm, making his hair raise on the back of his neck. Eddie.
Steve swallowed, let out a shaky breath, and bent down to scoop up the first DnD book he could find. It was buried under bags of dice and miniature figurines and cardboard rooms but, eventually, he pulled it free, staring down at the giant red dragon on the cover.
“You… want to play DnD?” He asked. The sound of the movie was his only answer. Steve cleared his throat. “I’ll listen to your screechy music and bad movies but I’m not playing DnD.”
The trunk lid snapped closed with a resounding bang, making Steve jump away from it. He laughed, manic and breathless, his eyes wide. “Jesus Christ, man.” He couldn’t help the smile pulling at the corners of his lips. Even dead, Eddie was dramatic. “I said I wasn’t going to play. I’ll still read your stupid book.”
He waved the book in the air and made a show of opening up the cover. He turned down the volume on the movie and propped his feet on the coffee table and read it, cover to cover, out loud.
The credits rolled by on the screen and the record player had long since gone silent. The clock read four am and Steve’s voice was the only sound in the room. In the world, it felt like. But he didn’t stop until he’d flipped the last page and snapped the cover closed.
“I didn’t understand a single thing I just read,” he announced, dropping the book on the coffee table. The book flipped open, back to the first page. Steve laughed and kicked the book off the table with his foot. “I’m not reading it again.”
He called out on Friday and his boss, Laura, begged him to come in but Robin stole the phone back from her and, mind reader she was, told Steve to go back to bed. He forgave her for Thursday just for that and as he crawled back under the covers, he felt the sheets on the other side of the bed shift too.
The kids were less forgiving of Steve’s tiredness. His voice felt raw from the hours of reading aloud his eyes were sore from staring at a book for so long in the dim light of his living room. He hadn’t been able to stand being in a room with overhead lights for more than a few minutes without a headache setting in. Hopper said it was probably all the head trauma he sustained and Joyce had tried to make him go to the hospital to no avail. In the end, she’d turned off all the big lights and switched on the lamps every time he came over. It made his heart warm and full to feel loved in such a small way.
“I cannot believe you are trying to attack again without knowing what’s behind that door!” Dustin screeched.
“It’s the best move! Whatever it is, it has Erica!” Mike yelled back.
“Lady Applejack,” Erica corrected.
“There's no use yelling, he’s not going to listen to us, Dustin,” Max muttered, throwing a glare across the table at Lucas, who had taken Mike's side. Again.
“It’s worth a try!” Dustin seethed, turning to Erica, he said, “sorry you’re gonna die.”
Erica shrugged, seemingly unbothered. “I can handle myself.”
Mike rolled, successfully saving Erica but getting hit for twenty points. He pouted over it the rest of the game until Will gave his hand a reassuring pat and whispered something in his ear that made him perk up.
“I swear to god if you told him where another secret chest is—“ Dustin started.
“I know where you sleep.” Max finished, glaring at them.
Lucas said nothing, but Steve didn’t miss the slip of paper Mike passed to him a few minutes later. Cheaters.
Tonight, Steve ordered pizza, because the kids were making his headache pound and his left side was nearing numbness with how much pressure seemed to be pressed against it. He’d hidden all the movies and records before the kids had shown up, not wanting the shakedown as to why he’d suddenly become interested in horror and sci-fi and rock metal. Still, Dustin gave him a questioning look when he turned the TV on, and Back to the Future Part II was still on the VCR.
“Not a word,” he’d threatened, pointing a finger at him.
Dustin put his hands up in mock surrender, pizza grease on his fingertips. Somewhere, distant and echoing, Steve thought he heard a laugh.
The pressure seemed to get worse over the weekend. He read through every DnD book, twice, at the instance of who he assumed was Eddie flipping the front cover back open. There was no one else to do it.
He played through every record, and sometimes one of the songs would skip or another would play twice in a row, and after a few times, Steve sat watching the needle move on the record player and screaming with a finger pointed at it when it moved on its own.
He stopped hearing Master of Puppets play. He didn’t mind the lack of a reminder.
Somewhere between Friday and Sunday evening, a handful of movies went missing. He called the kids, accusing all of them in turn, starting with Dustin and ending with Eleven, and none of them had even known he owned a movie other than Grease, which hurt more than he thought it would.
“So do you just not like those movies?” Steve asked, slamming the phone down on the receiver. “Because I paid money for those and there has to be a better way for you to tell me that than hiding them.”
The TV flicked on in reply, a steady hum of static on the empty channel.
“No answer?” Steve called.
The tv switched channels, a music video running on the screen. Steve made his way over to it. channel 43, The Box.
“You a big fan of…” Steve squinted at the screen but couldn’t figure out what music video it was, “Whoever that is?”
The channel flipped again. 11 this time, static.
Steve frowned, his eyebrows furrowed.
It flipped again, channel 0 this time, more static.
“I don’t understand,” he said after a long minute.
It started again. 43. 11. 0. And again. 43. 11. 0.
Steve pulled out the channel directory from the junk drawer in this kitchen, the channels flickering in the background. Music, static, static. He circled the three channels in pen and then wrote them down together on the bottom of the pamphlet. 43110. It meant nothing to him. He tried it backward. 01134. Nothing.
In the living room, the channels kept changing. Music, static, static. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say!” Steve said, marching into the room with the directory clutched in his hand. His voice wavered, cracking.
Steve slumped on the couch, laying the directory out in front of him and staring blankly at the scribbles. He considered that they might be coordinates or some sort of math problem but he wasn’t great with directions and he’d failed algebra twice in high school so he just stared at the five numbers.
Slowly, the directory turned on the table until it was upside down. It still looked like nothing, mostly, but the one that was backward read hello.
Steve felt tears burn at the corners of his eyes. “Hi,” he mumbled quietly. The TV channels stopped changing.
Come Monday, Steve had no desire to go to work. He’d stayed up most of the night trying to assign numbers to letters. Some were easier than others, but by three am he had most of them figured out. He wrote down the pairings on a piece of old notebook paper he found crumpled under the couch — notes from a dnd game on one side — and hung it beside the TV.
The channels didn’t switch, but he was too tired to decipher anything anyway.
“You look like death,” Robin said, leaning across the reception desk.
“I feel dead,” Steve answered dryly. His arm prickled at the response, as if he were being insensitive.
Robin wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Fun night?”
He was tempted to tell her, explain what was going on, but something kept him from saying anything. From explaining that he hadn’t gone on a date in five years because he never felt like he was alone. Because when a girl sat on his left side instead of his right something felt off-kilter and he couldn’t deal with it. And it was easier, being alone with the feeling of someone else there. It was easier seeing the kids on Friday and Robin every day from nine to six. He was content, happy, and every date he went on only seemed to disrupt the ease in his home, his life.
Instead, all he said was “something like that,” and let his small smile be for himself and Eddie, if he were there.
Eddie was beginning to make his opinions on Steve’s movie choices known. Certain scenes would reply a handful of times until Steve was begging him to stop because he got it, he understood that he thought it was funny or gross or a good part. Sometimes the VCR would spit the tape out without Steve pressing the button and would continue to do so until he dropped it back in the case and picked another. Once, he came back to the missing tapes torn apart, the film pulled out and tangled and he’d gathered them up, dropped them in a garbage bag, and said “Happy now?”
The TV flicked to the channels 25, 5, and 19. It took Steve two hours to figure out that Eddie had created his own letter to number association that — loath as Steve was to admit it — was much simpler than his own.
“Yes?” he asked, incredulous, when he figured out that the numbers corresponded to the letters place in the alphabet. “I cannot believe I’ve wasted my entire night doing this.”
He took the bag of destroyed tapes out to the garbage and kicked the bin to ease his frustration. When he came back the channels flicked to spell out “sorry”
Steve turned the TV off with a heavy sigh and made a new sheet, mostly for himself, to hang beside the TV. “No more destroying my things, even if you don’t like them,” he said, taping the paper to the wall.
The TV turned back on, flashing the channels 15 and 11. “Ok.”
On Wednesday morning, Steve stumbled out of his shower, not feeling any more awake than he had before he’d stood under the boiling water, watching his skin turn pink. The mirror was foggy and steam lingered in the air, but he didn’t miss the two circles drawn on the mirror, connected by a half oval beside a thumbs up.
Steve was grateful he’d stood under the shower long enough for his cheeks to already be red. He swiped his hand over the drawing and threw an accusing look around the room. “Don’t be a pervert.”
It became a regular occurrence, the channel code, and bathroom hieroglyphics. Between the two, Steve and Eddie had a handful of stilted, monosyllabic conversations a day. Sometimes Steve would sit with the TV on static waiting for a message or run the shower on hot for a half hour and wait on the toilet for a picture. Usually, Eddie delivered but sometimes he didn’t say anything and Steve had to leave the room feeling a deep dread settling in his stomach, a worry that Eddie was gone for good this time, that he wasn’t going to come back.
Will stayed back again that Friday, a soft smile on his face. He’d seen that paper posted beside the TV and gave Steve a meaningful look from behind his DM board.
“He’s been stronger, I think,” Will said softly.
Steve couldn’t bite back his toothy grin. “I think so too.”
Later, the TV spelled out “bath” and Steve sprinted up the stairs to set the room to boiling steam. After twenty minutes spent watching the mirror fog over, a stick figure with curly hair appeared, the arms drawn with massive muscles. Steve leaned over the sink to draw his own figure of Eddie, his arms nubs.
Steve’s grin was wild, his chest full. He’d been there and he was cracking jokes. His drawing lasted on the mirror, completed for a whole three seconds before it was wiped clean. In the clear part of the mirror, Steve saw Eddie standing just to his left, his arm hooked around Steve’s.
Steve met his eyes in the mirror, both of their eyebrows rising. He whipped his head around, heart stuttering in his chest, but he couldn’t see him. When he looked back to the mirror, the space had already fogged over and no matter how much he tried to wipe it away, Eddie didn’t come back.
He couldn’t sleep that night, staring up at the ceiling of his dark room. He needed to figure something else out because this wasn’t enough, one-word conversations and silly doodles. He’d seen him. Knew for sure, for the first time in six years, that it had been Eddie with him this whole time.
At seven am on Saturday, when the sun had barely broken over the horizon and Steve hadn’t slept a single minute, he pounced on the phone to call Robin.
“Do you think seances are real?” He asked before she could yell at him for calling so early on their day off.
“I don’t know, Steve. I’m not a medium or a psychic or whatever.”
“Right, but hypothetically, would it work?”
Robin groaned on the other end. “Let me call around. Vickie knows some weird people.”
“Thank you,” Steve breathed and hung up the phone. He didn’t need to explain that his hypothetical meant literal and that his asking meant he wanted to try.
“Up for a seance?” Steve asked the living room TV.
19, 21, 18, 5. “Sure.”
Steve grinned, read a few chapters of the lord of the rings, a book that Dustin had mentioned Eddie used to love, once upon a time. It’d taken him so long to get it mostly because he couldn’t muster the courage to enter the bookstore again after knocking over every shelf on the right side of the store and subsequently getting fired. When he had scrounged up the courage, his old boss, Jeanie, had made him stay at the front while she got the set of books for him.
Around 1, his phone rang.
“Vickie has a friend whose aunt is a medium. She agreed to do a seance for you but she won’t be back in the state till next month.”
Steve felt disappointment infect his bones. “There’s no one who can do it, I don’t know, now?”
Robin sighed on the other line. “Are you really being picky when I’ve spent the last… Six hours cold calling random people and asking if they know anyone in tune with the spiritual realm?”
Steve was silent.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
“You can thank me by telling me who you want to do a seance for.”
Steve bit the inside of his cheek, staring at the black screen of the TV. “No one specific. Just curious.”
Robin hummed unbelievably. “Well, you could also get an ouija board.”
“A what?”
Steve heard a long sigh and he couldn’t tell if it was coming from Robin or right beside his left ear.
Nancy was, surprisingly, the person who brought Steve the ouija board on Sunday. He gave her a questioning look as she handed over the box.
Nancy rolled her eyes. “I tried talking to barb a couple of times after…” She waved her hand through the air.
Steve nodded solemnly. “Did you ever get to talk to her?” He hoped she did, selfishly, because it meant that maybe it would work with Eddie.
Nancy’s eyes had gone glassy and faraway, focused somewhere over his shoulder. “I think so,” she said after a long while. She gave Steve a small smile. “It brought me some closure either way.”
Steve nodded, and he was glad, unselfishly, that Nancy had found some answers. She’d never been quite the same after that party, and he’d blamed himself for it even though she’d promised him it wasn’t his fault. He hoped she didn’t blame herself anymore, either.
“Thanks,” he said quietly.
“No problem,” she looked back over her shoulder to where Jonathan was waiting in the car for her, half leaning out the driver's window. He gave a short wave to Steve. Steve waved back, tucking the box on his right hip. When Nancy turned back, there was a warm smile on her face. “I hope you find some closure too,” she said.
He huffed, “I'll try,” from inside the house, he heard the TV turn on, the static loud. “I will,” he amended and the volume turned down.
“I also wanted to tell you, since I'm here…” Nancy held up her left hand, flashing a small diamond on her finger. “We haven't set a date yet, but I was hoping you’d be one of my best men.”
“Of course,” he choked out, letting the ouija board fall to the floor in favor of wrapping Nancy in a tight hug. “I'd be honored,” he mumbled into her hair.
They’d patched things up a long time ago, the three of them. And though Nancy and Jonathan had been rocky from the start, they’d gravitated back together every time. Over Nancy’s shoulder, Steve flashed Jonathan a wide smile and a thumbs up. Jonathan returned it with two thumbs up and an enthusiastic shake of his like can you believe it? After all this time! And Steve could. He really could.
Steve didn’t know anything about ouija boards except the little explanation that Robin had given him over the phone and the directions covered in teardrops tucked in the box.
He laid the board out on the coffee table, placed the planchette at the top and two fingers on the edges, and stared hard at the clear plastic in the center of the piece. He was supposed to ask questions and Eddie would move it to give him answers. He didn’t really know how it was any different than the TV or the mirror but the responses would be more immediate, he guessed.
He laughed, feeling awkward. “You there, Eddie?”
He expected the planchette to move to yes, a simple question to start. Instead, it moved across the letters, spelling out “Obviously,” and that was better than just a yes.
Steve smiled, “Hi.”
The planchette moved to the “Hello.”
“So…” Steve started, staring down at the wooden planchette where his fingers rested. Somewhere, Eddie’s fingers were rested on it too. “You’re dead?”
The planchette hesitated before spelling out “Very astute.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Steve groused. “So you’re like, a ghost, then?”
“Apparently,” the board read.
Steve sighed, biting at his cheek. He didn’t know what to say, talking to Eddie like this. They hadn’t been close when he was alive, had barely had time to talk when Eddie was being hunted by a band of crazed jocks and then beating back Vecna. Steve felt closer to him now, like he knew him better. He couldn’t wait to come home after work or for the kids to leave on Friday just so he could sit in his silent living room or sweat in the bathroom, hoping for a message. But those all took time, effort to translate and make available. Now they could just talk, in actual letters and words.
The planchette moving across the board broke him out of his thoughts. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
Steve laughed. “Are the movies and stuff helping?”
“I think so.”
“Can I do anything else?”
“You’re eager.”
Steve swiped the planchette off the board. “Never mind.”
The TV flipped on, the channels flicking between 19, 15, 18 twice, and 25. “Sorry.” Steve knew that one without having to consult the paper. Eddie said it a lot.
Steve rolled his eyes, dramatic, and dropped down on the floor again, setting the planchette back on the board. “What do you want?”
“Can you call my uncle?”
Steve blinked quickly to keep the tears from falling. “Yeah,” he said, his voice breaking. “We can call him tonight.”
He lost track of time, talking to Eddie. He found out that using the mirror and TV took energy out of him but the board was easy. “I feel more grounded with it,” he’d explained. Steve promised they could use the board more. Eddie had made some quip about not wanting to talk to him that much.
Steve had a list of movies Eddie wanted to see, and records he wanted steve to play. He told him to pass along a message to Hellfire club that their most recent campaign was lame and predictable and that he could’ve come up with something better in his sleep. He asked Steve if he knew where his guitar had gone and steve didn’t, but he said he’d ask his uncle.
Around 2 am, Eddie confessed to kind of being stuck to Steve and apologized for crashing all his dates and seeing him naked and, once, breaking the sink at the hair salon.
Steve told him it was okay and hoped the single lamp in the living room was dim enough to hide the flush that crawled up his collar.
They talked about that day in the mirror for a long time, coming up with theories and speculations. Neither of them had any concrete answers but Steve thought, to himself, that maybe one day, Steve would be able to see Eddie all the time, feel him in more places than just pressed along his left side.
He fell asleep at some point, his back to the couch, and when he woke up there was a warm pressure on his chest that lulled him back to sleep.
He called out of work again the next day, or, more accurately, he slept through half his shift and called to apologize. Robin told him to stay home, a warning that she’d be questioning him later in her voice and Laura mourned him like he was dying because he’d missed two days in the past couple of weeks.
In place of work, Steve dragged a table by the phone and set the ouija board on it. He called Dustin to test it, asking some bullshit questions about what movies were playing that week at the theatre where Dustin worked. He held the phone every way he could think of, twisting his wrist awkwardly so that he could still talk into one end and hear out the other but far enough away that Eddie could get close enough to hear, too.
When his hand was bent nearly in half, Eddie said it was perfect on the board. Steve had the feeling that Eddie was messing with him on purpose but he dutifully held the phone exactly where Eddie told him to when he called Wayne.
Steve sat on the phone with Wayne for two and a half hours, asking him about his life, and how he was holding up. He had a boyfriend, apparently, and the ease with which he told Steve healed a small part of himself he didn’t know was broken. He’d figured out a few years ago he wasn’t just attracted to women, but it hadn’t been something he’d bothered to tell anyone else. If he found a boy he liked, he’d tell them then.
He asked about Eddie’s guitar and Wayne said he could bring it by if Steve wanted, it had apparently been gathering dust in the back of his closet because the sight of it was too much for him to bear. The planchette moved rapidly over the “yes” again and again and Steve had to swallow a laugh before asking where Wayne lived now so he could pick it up.
He didn’t bring up the fact that Eddie was a ghost, that he had been for the past six years and had, apparently, been lingering at Steve’s side for every minute of it. Eddie hadn’t said he wanted Steve to tell him and their unspoken agreement to keep this between the two of them wasn’t something Steve was going to break. He didn’t think anyone would believe him anyway.
On Tuesday after work, Steve swung by Wayne's house to pick up the guitar. Wayne looked happy, all things considered. His boyfriend worked nights so he was gone but Wayne insisted steve stay for dinner and he did, if only because of the light pinch he felt at his left side.
Later, when he got back in his car, setting the guitar carefully in the passenger seat, he heard the strings play a single note, echoing in the emptiness. And there was a laugh, quiet and barely there that followed the out-of-tune noise.
And it stayed like that, for a while. Steve hosted Hellfire and went to work and in between that he sat on the floor, his fingers pressed to the edges of the planchette, and talked to Eddie. His nine to six was suddenly excruciatingly long and Robin gave him looks when he ducked out at 5:59 to race home. Hellfire dragged and Will was too knowing, but he felt Eddie more solidly at his side on Friday nights so he didn’t mind too much.
He went out to the movies Eddie said he wanted to see and bought two seats. He braved the bookstore to ask for books Eddie mentioned he’d always wanted to read. Steve even invested in reader glasses, because his eyes had grown red-rimmed and blurry from all the late nights and strain from reading in the half-dark.
Steve bought new copies of DnD books when they were released, presenting them to Hellfire as a gift but Eddie would thank him, late at night, and Steve couldn’t pretend it wasn’t really for him.
He figured out how to tune Eddie’s guitar and replace the strings. He bought a box of pics, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to use them. The record player had become well-aquatinted to the new albums Black Sabbath and Dio and all of Eddie’s favorite bands released. Steve couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d listened to a song that didn’t have a heavy guitar solo or a movie that didn’t require elaborate costumes or special effects, and he found that he didn’t mind. He’d never been happier.
It was the night before Vickie's friend's aunt was supposed to be back in town for the seance when Eddie told him, sitting on the floor in front of the TV like always.
“Your bedsheets are itchy.”
Steve stalled, staring at the ‘y’ in the plastic ring of the planchette. “What?”
The planchette started again and Steve stopped it, pulling it to a corner of the board. “No. You can feel my bedsheets?”
Slowly, the planchette moved to “Yes,” then spelled out “Oh, shit.”
“What does that mean?” Steve asked.
There was a long pause before Eddie said “I don’t know.”
“Have you always been able to feel my bedsheets?”
“No.”
Steve’s heart was racing in his chest. Eddie could feel things, not even just physically but the texture. He knew his bedsheets were itchy, and it was true. They were cheap and four years old and about three months overdue for a wash, but Eddie could feel them.
“Can you feel anything else?” Steve asked, and he didn’t conceal the excitement in his voice.
The planchette shook slightly when Eddie moved it, like he might’ve been shaking. “The floor.” There was a long pause before it moved again. “I just realized.”
Steve swiped at his cheek, willing the hotness behind his eyes not to turn into tears. “Do you know what this means?” Steve asked.
Eddie moved the planchette to the “No.”
Steve didn’t know either, but he hoped.
The seance turned out to be a load of bull, but for a moment, in the reflection of the TV screen, Steve had seen Eddie sitting next to him. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, willing the candle the woman had placed on steve’s carpeted floor to move as she’d instructed. It didn’t flicker once. Steve had never seen a candle so still in his life.
Eddie leaned back against the couch after a few minutes, when the woman said they should try something else, and that was when he saw Steve. Their eyes met in the TV screen and Eddie grinned, big and wide, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He waved his left hand, the one not hooked around Steve’s arm. Steve smiled back and mouthed a quiet “hi.”
He’d been trying not to blink, afraid to miss him. He soaked up every line of his face. He looked exactly like he had the day he died, but the blood and dirt and sweat was gone and he looked rested and happy. When Steve’s eyes began to water and he couldn’t keep them open anymore, he blinked, a sadness already pooling in his chest.
Eddie was still there when he opened his eyes again.
Steve paid the woman $200 to tell him his friend was dead and had already passed over to the other side. She said he was sorry for Steve’s loss and that he should find comfort in knowing Eddie was somewhere better.
He sprinted to the ouija board the second the door was closed but Eddie had beat him there, the planchette moving quickly over the letters.
“What a poser,” he spelled out.
Steve met Eddie’s eyes in the TV screen and laughed.
He started collecting mirrors after that, hanging them on every spare wall in the house. Eddie said it freaked him out and everyone who came over agreed but Steve brushed them off because he could see Eddie. When they talked, Steve watched Eddie in the mirror or in the reflection of the TV. He wasn’t sure what the warmth in his chest meant, but he reveled in it.
He changed his bedsheets, bought black ones as Eddie had requested, and was rewarded with Eddie telling him that he no longer felt like he was laying on crumbs and old lint at night.
Robin was growing increasingly more suspicious as the weeks passed until she showed up at his house one Saturday evening. Steve was sitting on the floor, Eddie beside him, which he knew for sure now, courtesy of the mirror he had propped up beside the TV. They were watching a movie, one Steve had already forgotten the name of twenty minutes in because Eddie had slid the planchette across the board to say “This feels an awful lot like a date,” and Steve hadn’t been able to think about anything else.
Robin had her arms crossed over her chest when Steve answered the door, her eyebrows drawn low. “What is wrong with you?”
“What?” steve asked, stumbling to the side when she shoved her way in.
“Somethings up with you,” she accused, pointing a finger at him. “And I tried to be nice and let you tell me on your own but now I’m demanding to know.” She stomped her foot on the floor for emphasis. “So, spill.”
Steve looked to the closest mirror. Eddie shrugged at him and then rolled his wrist in a circle to hurry up.
Steve sighed, meeting Robin’s gaze. He didn’t know what the quickest way to get rid of her was. But he knew, without a doubt, that she wouldn’t believe any half-assed lie he gave her anyway. So he told her the truth. All of it.
Eddie pretended to be put out by it the whole night. Feigning that he was really interested in the movie but Steve knew, when he looked back at the ouija board, the planchette still resting on the last letter of the word date, that he was just upset Steve had been saved from responding.
It took a surprisingly small amount of evidence to convince Robin that Eddie was here and the rest of the night was spent with her talking to him on the ouija board and yelling at Steve for hogging Eddie for the last six years.
She ended up spending the night, curled up on Steve’s right side in his bed. And even though she was a living and breathing person, the weight on his left side felt more prominent.
Robin gracefully promised not to tell the kids until he and Eddie had figured out what was happening. Dustin didn’t deserve to have his heart broken over Eddie twice, Steve reasoned, but he knew and Robin knew and he was sure even Eddie knew that it was a weak excuse and he was just being selfish.
“Don’t wait too long,” Robin warned, wagging a finger at him. “And I better see you at work on Monday. No more calling out just because you stayed up late talking.” The way she said it made steve feel like she knew something he didn’t.
For two weeks, neither of them brought up the conversation Robin had interrupted, though their schedule stayed the same. They watched movies, listened to music, stared at planchettes and into mirrors, trying to read each other’s lips.
Steve thought that, eventually, he’d be able to hear Eddie. He’d heard him a few times, distant and light but it was becoming more frequent. The more he prompted Eddie to talk out loud, the more often he heard small parts of his words. Mostly sounds, laughs and groans, and long-sufferings sighs, but he’d heard Eddie say “Fine,” the other day, his tone one of dread, and steve had gasped so loud, he’d made Eddie scream.
Two days after that, Eddie passed the planchette over the board, interrupting the one night a week Steve got to pick the movie. Eddie was dead, Eddie had explained, so he should get to pick the movies. Steve had agreed mostly just to see him smile in the mirror.
“So,” the planchette started.
“So what?” Steve asked, glancing in the mirror.
Eddie looked nervous, his fingers twitched over the planchette. He smiled tightly. “Is this a date?”
Steve stared at the ouija board for a long moment, the movie running in the background but he couldn’t hear it over his heartbeat in his ears. He cleared his throat, finding Eddie in the mirror.
He looked nervous, his eyes searching Steve’s face. He supposed if he was dead and stuck to someone for all eternity, he’d be nervous about asking if they were on a date, too.
“We’re sitting on the floor,” Steve said.
Eddie scowled at him in the mirror, pulled at his ear — which Steve could only kind of feel — and turned to look at the planchette moving across the board.
“And?”
Steve’s stomach swooped and he ran a hand over his burning face. Aas this a date? It was a lousy one, if it was. Sitting on the floor, watching a movie Steve had seen half a dozen times already and Eddie hated.
But he wanted it to be a date. He’d been tripping over himself to get home and talk to Eddie for weeks. Had stopped seeing girls or bringing them over years ago, simply because he felt him there. Slowly, Steve dragged his eyes back to the mirror.
Eddie raised his eyebrows expectantly.
His cheeks were red, and he would’ve been embarrassed if a tinge of pink wasn’t crawling up Eddie’s pale skin, too. “I’ll take you on a better date this weekend,” he said quietly.
Eddie ducked his head, his hair falling to cover his face. The planchette scraped across the wooden board. “Finally.”
There wasn’t a lot that steve could think of them to do together. Most things Eddie could participate in were spectator activities. So steve took him to a drive-in theatre, and slid over to the passenger side of the car to make space for Eddie when he’d parked. Steve reached up to readjust the rearview mirror and smiled at Eddie, his head leaning against steve’s shoulder.
The movie wasn’t bad but Steve was still steadfast in his defense that Grease remained the best movie ever made. Eddie scratched the planchette across the board, adamantly disagreeing.
They went to the lake after, because steve hoped Eddie would be able to feel the water. And he could, whooping loud enough for Steve to hear as if it weren’t coming from a ghost. Steve grinned, happy and warm despite the cold night water, and told Eddie to stay still, the ripples in the water stalling. And there, between the shades of blue and black, were their reflections. Steve’s smile widened, turning his head from the water to the space beside him. For a moment, a blink of an eye, he saw Eddie smiling back at him, no reflection between them. Steve’s breath caught in his throat. He would have to tell Eddie later, that he saw him, but the moment was interrupted when Eddie’s face shifted to something nefarious in the water and his hand came down over their reflections, sending a spray of water at Steve’s face.
His car seats were soaked but Steve couldn’t find it in himself to care as he drove home, elated. The ouija board was propped up on the hood, the planchette moving across it, spelling words Steve only caught half of. From what he could read, having to turn his gaze back to the road every few seconds, Eddie was happy.
He crawled into bed late into the night, having stayed up until he’d air-dried, talking to Eddie on the floor of his bedroom. Steve rolled onto his side, facing the left side of the bed. He hoped he’d see Eddie again, he knew he was there. Steve reached a hand out to the center of the bed, his eyes beginning to droop when he felt the cool brush of fingers. He gasped, his eyes flying open to stare at the soft indent in the pillow, the sheets.
Steve stared, wide-eyed in the dim light, his breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat. Slowly, tentatively, he felt the cold brush of fingertips along his palm, threading through his fingers. Steve closed his hand around Eddie’s closing his eyes tightly, a burning tear falling down his cheek and dripping off the edge of his nose.
“Do you feel that?” He asked.
Eddie’s hand squeezed and Steve let out a soft sob, shuffling closer to tuck himself against Eddie’s chest. He kept his eyes closed, afraid to open them and see nothing. But he could feel him. The firm press of his chest against Steve’s cheek, his chin poking into the top of his head, one arm trapped between their bodies their fingers threaded together, and the other wrapped around his side, hand clenched tight on his shoulder.
Steve’s hand shook as he wrapped it around Eddie’s middle, his fingers bunching in the denim vest he always wore. He let out a shuddering breath and he felt the resounding sob echo in Eddie’s chest. Steve held him tighter, closer, until sleep dragged him under.
When he woke up, he could still feel Eddie wrapped around him and he woke up, slow, and cold, but it was comforting, knowing he was there. He didn’t know if he slept, it hadn’t come up in all their late-night conversations, or if Eddie just laid beside him at night, alone with his thoughts.
“Eddie?” Steve called quietly.
The hand settled on the small of his back moved to squeeze his side.
“Do you sleep?”
Eddie’s hand floundered and Steve felt the hand leave, the air whooshing up before he felt the cold press of the palm against his skin again. He imagined Eddie had thrown his hand up into the air and it drew a small laugh from him. They moved to the floor a while later and Eddie whizzed the planchette across the board.
“I don’t think I sleep,” he answered, “but I also don’t remember anything between when you fall asleep and wake up.”
Steve frowned, his eyebrows knit.
“So…” Steve started, having nothing to say after. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, frustrated. “What does that mean then?”
“Don’t know.”
“Okay, we know you’re connected to me,” Steve started, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Sure,” Eddie offered.
“But if you…” Steve waved a hand through the air, not knowing how to describe Eddie’s sleep experience, “then does that mean you’re not connected to me but my consciousness?”
There was a long silence, the planchette oddly still on the board. “Maybe,” he said after a long time.
Steve swallowed, thick and hard, “Then when I die, do you…” he trailed off, letting the unspoken word hang in the air between them.
Eddie’s hand squeed Steve’s thigh before the planchette moved across the board. “I don’t know, but we’d be together.”
Then Steve told him that he’d seen him last night at the lake and Eddie launched himself at Steve, his legs wrapped around Steve’s middle and his arms looped around his neck in a tight hug, and somewhere, Steve heard him whoop.
Nancy and Jonathan set a date for their wedding, Steve found out when he got the invitation to RSVP in the mail. Robin called shortly, screaming over the receiver only to yell at him that he’d known before she did and hadn’t told her. At Hellfire that Friday, Erica announced that she’d started going steady with a boy she’d been dating for the past month.
Lucas gagged, making a show of sticking his tongue out over the news.
“You only just became official?” Max questioned, a perfectly manicured eyebrow raised.
“Not just anyone gets to date Erica Sinclair,” Erica sniffed. “And I’m only telling you crazies because he,” she pointed an accusatory finger at Dustin, “has a loud mouth and saw us at the movies.”
Dustin didn’t look the least bit remorseful. “This group has nothing going for it anymore. Everyone is boring. Even Steve doesn’t date.”
“Hey! Leave me out of this,” he shot back, all too aware of Eddie’s chin propped on his shoulder. He hadn’t stopped touching Steve since that weekend. He hadn’t said it brought him comfort, but Steve was sure it did. He knew it brought him comfort to know that Eddie was there, even if he couldn’t see him.
Dustin waved his protest away. “Not the point. No one does anything anymore. You two settled down a year ago and haven’t had the decency to have even one single fight.” He threw a hand out toward Will and Mike.
Will’s cheeks heated warmly under the attention. The two boys had never explicitly announced their relationship, but everyone knew regardless.
“You’re mad at us for being stable?” Mike sputtered. “Maybe you’d have a girlfriend if you weren’t always taking advice from Steve.”
“Now–” Steve started but he was cut off by Dustin very loudly proclaiming Steve’s defense.
“Steve has pulled more ladies than you ever will.”
“Because I'm gay,” Mike answered emphatically.
“Steve could probably pull more guys than you too!”
Steve felt a huff of a laugh against his neck, the feeling sending shivers up his spine.
“I do not want to hear about Steve pulling anyone,” Max interjected, her statement backed up by Erica. “Sorry,” she offered him as an afterthought.
Steve shrugged, he didn’t really want his dating history laid out on the table anyway. It’d been rocky from the get-go and then it’d died out suddenly six years ago. And right when he was getting back into it, the only person he wanted was dead.
“I’m just saying,” Dustin backtracked, sitting back down in his chair, “there’s no drama in this group anymore.”
“And that’s so bad, why?” Lucas asked, “I’m glad we’re done with that whole running for our lives thing.”
Everyone but Dustin nodded sagely in agreement.
Lucas rolled his eyes. “Why are you so hung up on this?”
Dustin threw his hands up in the air. “Is it so bad for a guy to want something different once in a while?”
Steve felt a poke at his side and then a fingertip dragging along the skin of his stomach. “Tell them.”
Steve pushed through the butterflies flapping against his stomach, trapped somewhere between his organs. Will was watching him, his eyes narrowed slightly. Steve looked away from him before something on his face gave him away.
“I have something to tell you all,” Steve announced, schooling his face when everyone turned to look at him. He let a small grin pull at the corner of his mouth at their eager faces. “But you have to wait until Eleven gets here. Play your dumb game.”
Everyone collectively groaned except Will who raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Steve nodded, slight enough that he thought only Dustin noticed, who had been watching him with a thinly veiled suspicion.
The game started shortly after, going much in the same way it did every night. Lucas and Mike teamed up to argue with Dustin over how to play at a certain move. Erica steadfastly kept herself out of it while Max offered support sparingly between Dustin and Erica before reaching across the table to slap Lucas’ wrist.
That was new, and it drew Steve’s attention from where Eddie had been gripping at him in different ways to convey his feelings about the game. Steve’s shoulder was starting to get sore from where Eddie smacked it repeatedly every time he was excited over something.
“You’re being an idiot, Lucas. Your head is so far up Mike’s ass you can’t even see that he is very clearly leading you into a trap.”
Lucas stared at her, his mouth agape, before turning on Mike. “You’re what?”
Mike had the decency to try to play it off but Will was a poor actor and his bitten smile gave Mike away.
Eleven showed up at 11:30 as she always did, and the kids all demanded to know what it was Steve was going to tell them. He’d prepared dinner early, before the game had ended, and told them over the dinner table. Max, El, and Will believed him but the rest needed to ouija board to convince them.
Eddie told them the same thing he’d told Steve that first night. That their recent campaigns had been boring and the group had fallen to shambles without him. They yelled questions at the ouija board all night and Steve could feel Eddie’s hand shaking where it rested on his shoulder. The kids left late that night and Steve was glad they were all grown on he would’ve been getting several angry phone calls from parents for sending their kids home at three in the morning.
“I can’t believe you kept him from us for six years!” Dustin cried, turning on Steve.
Steve smiled sheepishly and tried to explain that he’d only figured out Eddie was there a couple of months ago.
“A couple of months too long,” Dustin said, shaking his head and closing the door in Steve’s face.
“You okay?” Steve asked, when he was clearing the plates from the table.
“More than,” Eddie answered, the planchette scraping along the board.
Steve smiled and leaned into the hand at his waist.
Over the next few weeks, Steve started hearing Eddie more often. He yelled loud at movies and muttered quiet thoughts during Hellfire nights. At work, he made comments about the client's hair and suggested products that Steve was surprised he even knew. It was just bits and pieces, but it was enough to get the gist of what he was saying.
It was late, again, and Steve was hovering just on the edge of sleep when Eddie said it – whole and uninterrupted – “I miss playing my guitar.”
Steve’s heart felt leaden in his chest. Every now and then he’d hear the strum of a few chords, but not enough for a whole song. Eddie said it took effort to interact with the world, with anything that wasn’t Steve or the ouija board.
“Maybe you’ll be able to soon. You’re a lot stronger than before.”
“I hope so,” Eddie mumbled quietly.
Steve smiled against Eddie’s chest. Two sentences, unbroken. They sounded like hope.
Steve kept hearing Eddie after that. Turns out, he was rarely ever silent, Steve just hadn’t been able to hear him. He talked constantly, about the movies they were watching or the new record Steve had bought for him to listen to. He talked all day at the hair salon, making comments about the small talk the women told the other hairdressers and spilling gossip about how many of them he used to sell to in high school. Robin insisted Steve tell her everything Eddie said and she’d stopped getting rides with Vickie after work just so Steve could fill her in on everything Eddie had said that day (and elaborated on while in the car). Hellfire nights had turned into much of the same. Steve was assigned the role of translator, saying Eddie’s every word and thought throughout the game.
A month later, when their latest campaign had finished and Mike and Dustin had one final argument over how to defeat the boss, the group suggested Eddie DM the next campaign. Steve wasn’t sure about it but Eddie was screaming and jumping up and down if the heel landing atop his foot was any indication.
“Yes! Say yes!”
Steve smiled, smitten, and said yes.
For the next week, he only talked about DnD, taking notes for Eddie religiously and referencing back to the books he’d read out loud so long ago. And then it was Friday, and he was sitting in the seat usually reserved for Will, a board in front of his face, a binder full of notes in front of him, and Eddie bouncing on his heels behind the chair, his hands braced on Steve’s shoulders.
“Stand up and spread your arms out and say ‘Welcome, comrades, to the Dark Woodland.’” Eddie instructed.
“I’m not doing that,” Steve said.
“You have to!”
“You’re denying a dead man his only wish?”
“Just do what he says.”
“Eddie’s the DM, not you.”
Steve scowled down the table at the kids heckling him. “Do I have no free will, then?”
“Nope,” Dustin said.
“Can he possess you?” Erica asked, “That would make this easier.”
“Tell them no,” Eddie said.
Steve frowned. “We don’t actually know that you can’t,” he said.
Eddie smacked him across the back of the head. “I’m DM, tell them I said no.”
Steve signed. “He says he’s not possessing me, and also,” he got to his feet, spreading his arms wide, “welcome to the Dark Woodland.”
“Welcome, comrades,” Eddie corrected.
Steve cleared his throat. “Sorry, Welcome, comrades, to the Dark Woodland.”
The kids cheered and behind him, Eddie joined in.
They had a new schedule now, the paper beside the TV packed away with the ouija board, no longer needed. Eddie talked to him all day, he didn’t need multiple ways to do it. The mirrors stayed up, though, because Steve only caught glimpses of Eddie outside them, and he couldn’t bear never being able to see him.
They went on dates and Steve leaned into the cold press of Eddie’s hands, letting his eyes fall closed. They slept with their legs tangled together and Steve tried not to think about how he’d look to someone else who couldn’t feel Eddie there.
It was a bleary Wednesday morning, the sun barely breaking through the window. Steve groaned, peeling himself out of Eddie’s arms. He pulled a long strand of black hair out of his mouth, wrinkling his nose and dropping it to the floor before he whipped around, fully awake now, to see Eddie sprawled out on the bed on top of the covers, his hair splayed across three separate pillows. He was sleeping, his eyes closed and softly fluttering behind his eyelids. Steve didn’t dare blink, he stared until his eyes watered, soaking up every line on Eddie’s face. The arch of his cheekbones, the dip above his lip. He counted and studied every ring on his hands and traced the scars on his sides from where his shirt had ridden up in the night.
Steve’s eyes burned and he blinked without meaning to, holding them shut once they were closed because he was afraid that Eddie wouldn’t be there when he opened them again. He said he didn’t sleep, that he woke when Steve woke. Maybe he was dreaming, then. Slowly, Steve peeled his eyes open to find Eddie peering up at him.
“Steve?” He whispered quietly, his hand reaching up but hesitating halfway to Steve’s cheek.
Steve hiccuped, his fingers wrapping around Eddie’s wrist to pull him up. “Eddie. Oh god, Eddie.”
Steve’s hands raced over Eddie’s face, tracing lines he’d only started seeing in the mirrors, had only begun to learn blind. He’d explored Eddie’s face before, when he couldn’t see him, but it was different now, his fingers tracing over dips and slopes and soft scars and seeing him.
Eddie’s eyes were shining and wet and Steve swiped away the tears as they fell. “You can see me,” he mumbled.
And it wasn’t a question, but Steve answered anyway. “I can see you,” he said, his hands stalling on either side of Eddie’s face. He let his eyes fall down to Eddie’s lips and then he was pulling him forward because this is what he’d been waiting for.
He’d just needed to see him and he was afraid to close his eyes, but when Eddie’s lips slotted into his, soft and cold, his eyes slipped closed anyway. It made it better when he pulled away, to see Eddie still there, his hands braced on Steve’s chest. He didn’t warm under Steve’s hands but he was willing to keep trying and if he never did, that was okay. One day, Steve would be cold, too.
Steve called out of work that day and didn’t stay on the phone long enough for Robin or Laura to protest his absence. He had a competition with himself to see how little he could blink, always afraid that this one would be the one where Eddie stopped standing beside him. But he never did. He remained there, visible, all day.
And Wednesday turned to Thursday, and Eddie stayed. The week continued on, the world kept turning, but now Steve could see Eddie’s feet on the floor, his rings glint on the lamplight, and his eyes crinkle when he smiled.
After two weeks, Steve finally took the mirrors down and Eddie celebrated by kissing him in the hallway and still being there when Steve pulled away.
The campaign ended the next week and Eddie proudly paraded around the table because they’d all lost to the villain he’d concocted and it meant that one day, he’d get to make a new campaign so they could try again. He’d started straying farther from Steve in the past few days, walking a few paces away just to test that he could. He said he wasn’t able to before.
“We’ll win next time!” Dustin vowed to the air.
Eddie grinned, sly and wicked. “I very highly doubt that.”
Steve heard him, like he always did now, but everyone else’s shoulders had gone still and stiff, and then Dustin’s eyes grew wide.
“Oh my fucking god!” He yelled.
Steve met Eddie’s wide eyes from across the table and they both shot looks at the rest of the kids, their faces morphing into something similar to Dustin’s.
“Eddie, I heard you!” Dustin screeched.
“Say something else!” Lucas added.
“Oh, um…” Eddie floundered, waving his hands in the air. “Hi?”
“Hi!” The group coursed back once they’d stopped yelling.
And so for the next campaign, Eddie DM’d, and he got to use his own voice. It added something to the game, Steve thought, that the DM was a disembodied narrator. The rest of the group agreed.
Robin started hearing him a week later, after he’d made a crude comment about the hairspray one of the women in the salon had just walked out with. Robin’s hand slapped over her mouth, her eyes wide above her fingers.
“I’m taking my break!” She’d announced to the salon, grabbing Steve’s wrist. “Steve, too!”
“No, not Steve! I need him to–” Laura’s words were cut off as Robin pushed him out the front doors and to his car.
She shoved him into the backseat and swatted him until he’d scooted all the way over to the right. “I just heard Eddie!” She yelled, a smile cracking her face in half. “Eddie say something else!”
Eddie was sandwiched between them in the center of the backseat. He’d had a glow about him the past couple of weeks, and Steve could see it now, the happy sparkle in his eye. He seemed more alive. “Hi, Buckley,” he offered.
“Eddie! Hi! I missed you!”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
Robin blew a breath of air out of her cheeks. “Well, I know! But Steve’s been holding you hostage.”
Eddie laughed and the sound filled the entire car. Steve couldn’t remember the last time his cheeks had hurt from smiling.
Eddie started farther from Steve as the weeks passed by, and it was hard, at first, to be away from him, but he always came back looking a little more solid around the edges, a little brighter behind the eyes. Slowly, the kids and Robin started to see him and feel him. Joyce and Hopper and Nancy and Jonathan were slower than the rest to start seeing and hearing him and everyone reasoned that it was probably just because they weren’t around him as much.
So that was how Friday night Hellfire became a dinner party that started at 11:30 when all the non-players showed up at Steve’s front door. Joyce brought another table since his first one was getting cramped around the sides. Nancy usually arrived early to help Steve cook and a few weeks into the arrangement, she bumped his hip at the counter and smiled up at him and Steve smiled back at her. They didn’t exchange any words, but he knew what she was saying. I’m happy for you. He hopes she heard his unspoken, I’m happy for you, too.
Joyce usually brought something for dessert, store-made after everyone had gotten sick on her attempted pie the first week. Two months before Nancy and Jonathan’s wedding, the whole gang sitting around the two mismatched tables pushed together, they all saw Eddie leaning forward on his elbows, waving his hands manically through the air as he explained some movie Steve knew he’d watched but couldn’t remember anything about.
And Joyce had cried and sent her chair tumbling to give him a hug. They hadn’t met before the Upside Down, but Steve thought she would’ve adopted him if she had. She’d adopted all the rest of them. Hopper patted him on the back so hard Eddie stumbled forward, and Nancy handed him a slip of paper, an outdated invitation to her wedding.
“I think I missed the RSVP deadline,” Eddie said, holding the paper in his hand. It still took a lot of effort to interact with things, he’d told Steve, but it was getting easier, slowly.
Nancy smiled, her eyes meeting Steve’s over Eddie’s shoulder. “I think Steve has a plus one, still.”
Eddie turned around then, a grin pulling at his lips. “You had a plus one this whole time and never asked me to be your date?”
Steve shrugged, pretend nonchalant. Truthfully, he never thought they’d get this far. Never thought Eddie would be standing here, in front of all their friends – their family – laughing and smiling and there. “I was hoping to get both meals for myself.”
“You can still have both meals, big boy, I can’t eat.”
So they went to Nancy’s wedding together, and Steve stood at the front, just beside the alter, and smiled at the boy in the third row, who only half the guests could see. And he danced with him and he learned that night what other people would think if they saw Steve with Eddie and he found he didn’t mind. Their strange glances did nothing to the unparalleled joy he felt bubbling in his chest. Robin butted in a half hour later, stealing Eddie away from him. Eddie gave him a salute as he spun Robin in a circle, making her stumble into an elderly woman and laugh.
Steve hovered by the buffet watching them, when Vickie sidled up next to him, a soft smile playing along her lips. She didn’t know everything, not fully, but she knew enough not to question Robin dancing on her own, knew that eventually Vickie would forget Eddie was ever invisible in the first place.
“I think I’m going to propose,” Vickie whispered.
Steve bit the inside of his cheek to keep from making a scene. “About time.”
Vickie huffed a laugh, shaking her head. She’d cut her hair shorter since high school. It suited her. “I know, I know. But I wanted to ask if you’d help me. She’s deceptively hard to surprise.”
Steve laughed. He didn’t think he’d ever once gotten something by Robin without her being suspicious of him from the very first second. “I’ll definitely try,” he offered.
Vickie nodded, understanding, “That’s all I could ask for.”
It took a long time, but slowly, Eddie started playing his guitar again. He couldn’t do it for long, but he kept at it and after a while, he was able to play an entire song. People he didn’t know and had never met started to see him and that scared Eddie, but Steve told him it was a good thing, that maybe one day he could get back up on stage, go see his uncle, get his GED.
Eddie had buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, his tears wet against his skin. “I think you saved me,” he confessed between hiccups.
Steve shook his head, his hands stalling where they’d been rubbing circles on Eddie’s back. “You were always here.”
Eddie pulled away, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “No. I think you brought me back to life, Stevie.” Eddie whispered, his eyes locked on Steve’s, imploring. Steve shook his head and Eddie stalled the movement with his hands pressed to either side of Steve’s face. “I’m serious,” he said.
Steve swallowed, his breathing shallow. “I don’t understand.” It seemed he never understood what was going on with Eddie. Every time he thought he’d gotten a handle on it, something new would happen and they’d be back to square one, trying to figure out what was happening.
“I was barely here, Steve, just… clinging to you, for life and then,” Eddie’s voice cracks, his eyes welling with tears, “you started playing those movies and those records and I started noticing things. I felt present for the first time in years, I guess.”
“Eddie, I–”
“And you kept doing things for me, finding new ways to ground me and include me and I think, I think you saved me. You brought me back to life.”
And Steve didn’t really understand, couldn’t imagine he’d saved someone–brought someone back to life–just by loving them. But he didn’t really care, because Eddie was here, with him, whole and solid and living in their house. His chest didn’t move with the sound of breathing and his heart never beat, but his lips grew warm when Steve kissed him now, and maybe one day, if Steve loved him enough, he would wake up with his head on Eddie’s chest and the rhythm of a heartbeat echoing against his ear.