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Eddie always gravitated towards music, regardless of the genre. He prefers metal and rock, being a self proclaimed metalhead and all. His uncle Wayne was the one to introduce him to metal and rock. After he was thrown out of his fathers house and stuck into Wayne’s home, he didn’t have any way of coping with his emotions. He locked himself away in his room. At the young age of 15, he was already closing himself off from the one person that seemed to care about him.
One day while he was trying to do homework, he heard music coming from outside his door. Curious to find out what it was, he walked out of his room and found his uncle listening to music from his old record player.
Wayne said it was a metal band called Black Sabbath. And as cheesy as it sounds, it was a turning point for Eddie. He began listening to all of his uncle's music. Black Sabbath, Metallica, Dio, Judas Priest, anything he can get his hands on. He branched out more, listening to music outside his uncle’s taste by going to the nearby record store. Years later, while he still listened to the music he started out with, he became enraptured by all kinds of music.
He discovered ZTEEV on accident in his senior year. His second senior year. He was listening to his little radio on his bed, coming up with ideas for his next DND campaign. The beginning of a song he didn’t recognize began, and he felt the need to stop everything he was doing to stop and listen to the song. He waited for the song to end for the radio host to say anything about the song. “And that was Hesitation by ZTEEV! Honestly, Gene, while I still don’t know how to pronounce his name correctly, I do know that he is the future of music. Next up we have…”
Before the host finished speaking, he jumped out of his bed and immediately made his way to the nearby record store. He ran inside, ignoring the greeting from the girl behind the counter. He runs to the end of the rows of records to find ZTEEV, and when he does, he grabs the first one he sees and scrambles to the counter to pay for it. She eyes him suspiciously, slowly ringing him up without taking her eyes off him. He was practically vibrating in place he was so excited. He thanks her and runs out of the store, going back home to listen to the record. He placed the record on his player and delicately let the needle drop onto it. The first song to play wasn’t Hesitation, but instead was a song titled Heliotrope. He went through the whole album without stopping, enraptured by the musical genius of this guy.
With his newfound obsession, he naturally needed to tell all his friends. The first victim is Robin, who was sitting alone under a tree on the campus of Hawkins High. She was reading comfortably, likely a sci-fi novel. He ran up to meet her, squatting right in front of her. “Buckley!” he yells, trying to get her attention. She startled, her eyes widening and bringing the book to her chest. When she realized it was only Eddie, she cursed him out while hitting him with the book in her hands. “Stop, stop! I’ve made an incredible discovery!” Eddie laughs out, blocking her hits. Robin only huffs in response and lowered her book. She shook her head as if to say ‘get on with it.’
“So I was just listening to music, as I often do, and I found this band. I’ve never heard anything like them, and I’ve been completely obsessed with it. God, his music is just… I can’t even describe how much I like this band,” he bursts out, like the words were just spilling out his mouth at an unprecedented rate, but Robin nods along at every one of his words. “What’s the band?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.
“ZTEEV. I seem to be the only person to–” Eddie begins, but is cut off by the girl, who started laughing out loud. He stared at her, his eyebrows suddenly furrowed and a confused frown on his face. Robin was never one to laugh at others for talking about something they loved, she usually only laughed at people if they’re being stupid, and Eddie didn’t think he said or did anything stupid in the moment.
“How did you pronounce that? Please say it again,” she calms down to say. He is silent for another few seconds, before saying the band's name again, to which she started laughing uncontrollably again. “Did you pronounce it as zee-tee-vee? Seriously?”
“I don’t know how to say it! How do you say it?” Eddie gasps. She shakes her head, and calms her laughter again. He waits for her to stop, but she continues to shake her head at him. “I’m not saying a word,” Robin adds, a wild grin on her face.
“It’s not like I can call him by his name! He’s very secretive with his identity and the only name I can remotely find is just the name of his band.”
“That is not my problem, Eds. I’m not telling you how to pronounce it. This is just too good.”
“Oh whatever, Robin. I’m assuming you’ve listened to his music since you clearly know how to pronounce the band’s name?”
“Yup. Big fan,” she drawed out her words. She was being sarcastic.
Eddie just rolls his eyes, going on his phone to see if there were any updates on ZTEEV. He always checked the social media accounts for the band, waiting for anything new. Robin went back to her book, trying her best to not start laughing at Eddie again.
“I’ll see you ‘round, Rob,” Eddie says sharply, but with no true malice.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
During Eddie’s lunch period, he always sat with his bandmates. This lunch, they were discussing what the song list will be at their next gig, which was in a week and they were extremely unprepared. “I keep saying we should do a ZTEEV cover. This one song, Heliotrope, would fit in with the rest of our songs.”
Jeff and Austin groaned in unison while Gareth just scoffed amusedly. “Eddie, what is your obsession with him? I mean… I like ZTEEV too, but dude. You’re wearing his merch,” Kirsten spoke up, eyeing him up and down.
“If I give you guys the notes for the song, can you guys just give it a chance? If you really hate it, we’ll do something different,” he whines, giving an unconvincing pout. The rest of the band eye each other, raising eyebrows and scrunched up noses between the four of them. “Fine,” Gareth and Austin mumble. Kirsten just nods, while Jeff just goes back to looking through all their songs to pick the rest of the list.
“Maybe we could do-” Austin starts, but stops himself when he sees someone approaching their table. Eddie turns to see who was so shocking that Austin shut up. His eyebrows raise in surprise to see Steve Harrington with a dumb smile on his face. “Hey Munson! Nice shirt,” he complimented, his eyes darting between the shirt and Eddie’s eyes. The silence that followed was painful. When his compliment processed through Eddie’s head, he just scoffed. “Fuck off, Harrington. We know you’ve got shit taste in music.”
Kirsten let out a snort, putting her hand over her mouth so as to not make another noise. Steve’s smile was gone by that point, replaced by a slightly dropped jaw. “Whatever man,” he just mumbled before speed walking past their table.
“Well that was quite the interruption. As I was saying, I think we should play The Celebrated Promises. It’s usually a hit…” For the first time that day, Jeff is nodding along and agreeing with him.
Later in the afternoon, when the bell rang for everyone to go home, Corroded Coffin all piled into Eddie’s van and they took off to Jeff’s house for practice.
“I looked over the song and as much as I hate to admit that you’re right… I think it’s a good addition to the set list for next week,” Austin said as he pulled his guitar over his head. Eddie grins happily, looking towards the rest of the band to get their opinion. Gareth and Kirsten agreed to do it, but they were more neutral on their stance than anything else. Jeff was the one that needed convincing. “It’s a love song, Eds. I don’t think that it’s for us,” he argues.
“It’s not just a love song! It’s about facing something you’re afraid of and going for it anyway. It’s a song about devotion to something you’re passionate about. What are we passionate about? Oh, that’s right, this band!” he counters, wiggling his finger in front of Jeff’s face, but he was unimused and rolled his eyes. “We’ll do Heliotrope… but only if we do Eloquence,” he says, which leads to the rest of the band groaning.
“Deal!” Eddie quickly responds before anyone else can object.
As they started their warm up, a car pulled up to the edge of the driveway. It was a dark BMW, not strange to see in Jeff’s neighborhood, but definitely to Eddie. The strangest part of all of it was Harrington and Robin exiting the car. “Whatcha doing here, Harrington?” Eddie asked, taking his guitar off himself and placing it on the stand.
“What, you immediately are suspicious of me, but not this one?” Steve pointed towards Robin, joking as if they were friends. Robin pushes him lightly, an amused grin taking over. “I heard you were having practice today, so I’m sitting in and watching. I brought Steve since, how did you put it? He has shit taste in music?” she explained, sitting on an empty table on the other side of the garage.
“Uh, okay? Maybe he’ll learn a thing or two,” Eddie draws out, shrugging his shoulders.
They begin with an original song of theirs, Sweet Passenger. Steve leaned against the table next to Robin, intently listening to them. Many times throughout the song, however, Eddie kept making eye contact with the other boy. He didn’t know what it was, but he had this good feeling going on inside him knowing that Steve wasn’t fucking around but genuinely listening to them. And once they finished the first song, the audience of two were clapping, and Eddie couldn’t hold back his smile. “Why thank you, thank you,” he says and takes a small bow. From behind him, Kirsten lets out a snort of amusement. He looks back and she’s already giving him a knowing look. It freaks him out that she knows things about others before they even know, especially himself.
“We should really practice Heliotrope. Let’s do that before more of our songs,” Jeff says, prepping his hands to start playing the song. The rest of the band mumble out agreements and in the matter of seconds they slowly start playing out the song, trying to get a hang of it. There’s a few whispers and laughs coming from Robin and Steve, and Eddie is trying his best to ignore them. After getting halfway through the song and many more whispers between the two, Eddie suddenly stops and glares at them. “I thought you were going to sit silently while we were practicing? You’re throwing us off our game,” he snaps, but all his attention is going directly towards Steve.
“Shit, sorry. I just didn’t expect you guys to play that song,” he says, cheeks and ears burning a beautiful pink from what Eddie assumes is embarrassment. “Yeah, well… just let us practice,” Eddie finally mumbles, before going back to his guitar.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Eddie didn’t expect it, hell, he doesn’t think anyone expected it, but he was warming up to Harrington. Apparently, he wasn’t a sack of shit, and it caught him off guard. What didn’t help was his friends also warming up to him. Kirsten was always talking to him whenever he came by their lunch table or whenever they were in class. She wasn’t always the type to just immediately gravitate and warm up to people she doesn’t know well, so he wasn’t sure what about Harrington did it for her.
Everywhere he went, he would see Steve. The mall, his neighborhood, school, and even his record store. He’s bumped into him at the record store a few times lately. Eddie thinks it’s odd that he’s seeing him more there since he’s never seen him in the store before, but he just chalks that up to never going at the same time as him. This time when he bumped into him there, they were both in the last section. The Z section.
“Hey Eddie! How’s it going?” Steve asks when he notices his presence. He was looking through the records leisurely, not as if he was looking for something specific. He smiled at Eddie, like he was the embodiment of sunshine, and it made his stomach flip every time . “Harrington. I’m just peachy, how ‘bout yourself?”
His response is lost on Eddie when he notices the shortness of Steve’s shirt. God, how did he never know that Steve owned a cropped shirt? His body went against him and made his cheeks and ears burn a viscous red, it wasn’t subtle. And since when was Steve the type of person to own such a shirt? His thoughts were cut off by his name being repeated by the boy in front of him. His head snapped up to look him in his eyes, his blush only getting darker. “What are you here for?” Steve asked, not accusatory in any way, but genuinely curious.
“I was actually looking for the new ZTEEV album. It dropped yesterday and I’ve been dying to listen to it,” Eddie responds, his excitement getting the best of him. Steve only nods, opening his mouth every other second. He looked like he wanted to say something, but his hesitation made Eddie on edge. “You know you get very quiet whenever I mention him right?”
Steve’s eyes bulge out of his head. “Who?”
“Um… ZTEEV.”
“Oh. Oh! It’s nothing. I just. I… I don’t know actually,” he laughs out, amused by his own embarrassment. It was endearing in a way, to laugh at yourself when you’re embarrassing yourself. Eddie presses his lips together to stifle his smile as best he could. He turns to look for the album, and when he finds it he turns his head back to the other boy. “Well, I found it. I’ll see you around, Harrington.”
“Steve. Please just call me Steve. I think we’re past last names.”
It leaves Eddie breathless. This time he doesn’t hide his smile when he’s nodding to him and saying a final see you later.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It didn’t take long for Eddie to fall head over heels for Steve. He was so easy to love and Steve has so much love to give out. He hasn’t formally said anything to him yet, but he has his suspicions that he knows. Steve’s been much more touchy as of late and it’s been driving him crazy. His heart would clench and his stomach would flip at anything he did anyways, but touching was much less common, so for him to do it more often made Eddie believe that not only did Steve know about his undying love for him, but also that he may reciprocate those same feelings. They’d also been hanging out by themselves a lot more, listening to music and talking.
They made plans to hang out again today, but this time at Eddie’s place rather than out in public or school. Steve said he’d come by around three, and it was currently two-forty, and Eddie was frantically cleaning his room. He was too busy picking out the music to bother to clean his room. He chose a mixtape he thought would set the mood if he felt bold enough to make a move on the other boy.
As he was putting his final pieces of clothing into a random drawer, a knock sounded from his door. He cursed and stood up too quickly, bumping his head against the open drawer above him. He pushed the drawers closed and stumbled his way to the door. He opened it, a frantic look on his face. His shoulders fell in relief when he only saw his uncle in the doorway.
“There’s a boy at the door for you, Ed. Shane, I think his name was?” Wayne said, a chuckle leaving his mouth before he could finish the sentence. Eddie rolled his eyes, affectionately of course, and pushed his uncle's shoulder. “You know his name is Steve,” Eddie breathes out, to which his uncle just raises his hands in surrender. He walks past his uncle to get the door where he’s prepared this time to see Steve.
When he opens the door, he’s greeted by Steve in, once again, Eddie’s favorite cropped shirt and holding a container of mystery food. He eyes him up and down, simply taking in his presence. “Well hello to you too, Eddie,” the boy laughs out. Eddie swats at him and moves to the side to let him in, which he does, but brushes against his shoulder for good measure. And he isn’t ashamed to say he let out a shaky breath when he does so.
As they start making their short trip to Eddie’s room, Steve turns to him and lifts his container. “I made cookies, by the way,” he whispers.
“Don’t tell Wayne, he has a sweet tooth,” he whispers back, opening the container and stealing a cookie. “You realize you do too, right?” Steve giggles, fucking giggles . He lets out a gasp and feigns offense, holding a hand up in front of his face. “I resent that!”
Steve has an infectious laugh. He has a beautiful laugh, but it also makes everyone around him want to laugh too, himself included. He walks through his door and closes it when Steve walks in. He immediately heads for his cassette player, looking for the mixtape he made specifically for them hanging out. He grabs it and pops it into the player, the music beginning to play. The first song was N.I.B by Black Sabbath, which slowly filled the room with noise. Steve looks over at him and smiles shyly, as if to tell him that he approves of the song choice, or if he knows the reason why he chose the song, and it kills him that he doesn’t know which one it is. Eddie flops onto his bed and lets out a loud sigh. He looks over to see what Steve was doing, and he catches him lightly touching his guitar. He touches as if it would shatter into pieces if he was too aggressive with it.
“You know I can play the guitar? Learned myself,” Steve mumbles out, loud enough for Eddie to hear though.
“No shit! Really? You have to show me!” Eddie exclaims, pulling his body up to sit up on his bed. The other boy continues to look at the guitar, but shakes his head anyways. He sits on the other side of his bed and says, “Maybe one of these days.”
“Steve!” he whines, grabbing his forearm and shaking him. “You can’t say you can play and then not play! That’s not proper guest etiquette.” He lets out a surprised breath which turns into another set of giggles.
“Eddie Munson, telling me about proper guest etiquette. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“You wish, Munson,” he whispers, leaning in closer to Eddie so he can hear him. He instinctively leans in with him, their faces impossibly close. They sit there for a second, staring at each other, waiting for the other to make a move. Eddie swallows the lump in his throat, managing to speak up. “Am I reading this right?”
“I hope you are,” Steve responds, looking down at his lips. They both lean in and their lips land on each other. And suddenly, Steve proved everyone right when they said he was a god at kissing, because fucking hell was Eddie enjoying himself. He felt Steve grab the side of his jaw to bring them closer. He moved his body to be closer to him, to soak in every molecule of the other boy. The Black Sabbath song faded out, and what came next was Steady Monsoon by ZTEEV. The moment the first cord played, Steve stuttered backwards in shock.
They stared at each other, Eddie in confusion and Steve in astonishment. “What?” he whispered out, trying to get a read on what Steve was feeling. He was looking over at the cassette player, his face continuing to be unreadable. “Steve… what?” Eddie pushes, his voice now wavering.
Steve looks back at Eddie, his eyes widening. “Oh shit, no. I was just caught off guard by the song. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he reassured, grabbing onto his upper arm gently. He lets out a shaky breath that he genuinely didn’t know he was holding. His eyes flicker between his eyes and his lips, asking Steve if he could kiss him again but not saying a word in the process. When he nods ever so slightly, he goes in again. By the time Steve leaves his home that night, they were officially dating.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was their fourth month anniversary when Steve was making Eddie wait all day for his gift. He didn’t even get Steve a gift, he didn’t know he needed to give a gift for a four month anniversary. Steve reassured him that he was going to give him the gift regardless of their anniversary, which settles him down only a little bit. He was waiting all day because they both had shifts at work they couldn’t put off, Steve at Family Video with Robin, and Eddie at the music store by his trailer. He has been talking about a summer job the entire school year, and now that he and Steve both graduated, he wanted to save money so they could find a possible apartment together in the near future. Dustin and his gaggle of preteened friends asked if it was too soon for them to be moving in together, and Eddie found himself not hesitating to say no. He loved Steve longer than they started dating, and he knows he’ll love him for the rest of his life.
Eddie copes by listening to ZTEEV during his shift.
After what felt like a lifetime, Eddie clocks out and immediately drives over to Steve’s house, who he knows will be there since he gets off slightly before he does. He parks his van in front of Steve’s garage and knocks on the door repeatedly until the door opens. Once it does, Eddie tackles Steve with a kiss and immediately asks what his gift is.
“What? You only using me for my money, Munson?” Steve jokes, but not pulling away from Eddie one bit.
“You know it, baby,” Eddie says before giving him another deep kiss. He pulled back and put a hand on Steve’s chest so he couldn’t go in for another. “I want my present.”
He nods in surrender, pulling away from him to get his gift. After a few seconds, he sits down on the couch and Steve returns with a hand behind his back. Eddie leans over to try to see what it is but he moves just in time and wags his finger in disapproval. “Nope. You’re going to close your eyes and hold out your hands.” Eddie whines loudly, but closes his eyes and sticks his hands out anyways. He felt something light, like paper, delicately put into his hands. He kept his eyes closed, worried he’ll open them too early.
“Okay… open your eyes,” Steve whispers, sitting down next to him. Eddie opens his eyes slowly, peeking at the thing in his hand. It was a small piece of paper with the letters ZTEEV printed in bold letters in the middle. His jaw drops as he reads the rest of the text on the paper. It’s a fucking ticket to a ZTEEV concert, that night. Front fucking row seats. He snaps his head to Steve with his eye bulging out his face. His boyfriend sat there, a shy smile the only readable sign of how he felt on his face. “Oh my god, Steve. You got me ZTEEV tickets?” he whispers, unbelieving that this was happening to him.
“Yeah. It’s tonight in Indianapolis, and I took your favorite shirt and brought it over if you want to change into that,” Steve says, showing him his matching ticket and shirt. Eddie lets out a surprised breath, unable to speak he’s so excited.
“I love you so much, Steve Harrington. I love you!” Eddie yells, shaking his shoulder. He grabs the shirt, immediately taking off his jacket and current shirt to replace it with the other.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Eddie may have run a red light or two while driving to the concert. Or five. It may be the most exciting night of his life, he’s not going to take road laws seriously. That is until Steve tells him to slow down.
Just as they planned, they made it to the venue in slightly under an hour, plenty of time left to get in and get to the front of the venue to wait for the concert to begin. A girl with bright purple hair made her way to the front of the stage, putting together the main microphone. He immediately recognized her as Raven, the only person that ZTEEV would collaborate with. She was here . “Steve. Steve! It’s fucking Raven,” he yells into his boyfriends ear, trying to talk over the loud screaming of the crowd. Steve nodded, looking at the stage intently. He turns to Eddie and yells, “I’m going to go to the bathroom before it starts! I’ll be back.” He squeezes his hand before going against the crowd to make his way to the bathroom.
After a minute of Steve leaving, the lights dim on the stage and everyone begins screaming. A single stage light flickers on a figure facing away from the audience. The long untamed brown hair could be identified from miles away. The figure turns and the rest of the band is lit up, immediately going into the first song. One of the things he loved about ZTEEV was his outfits. His outlandish, androgynous looks caught attention everywhere. This outfit was a teal jumpsuit with the chest cut out and replaced with a long sleeve fishnet shirt. His boots and sunglasses were a darker shade of the jumpsuit, matching well with the rest of the outfit.
“Indianapolis! How are you?” ZTEEV yelled into the microphone. When he heard various whistles and screams, he tutted and shook his head. “No, no! I asked how the fuck are ya?” he yells again, causing the crowd to go absolutely insane. He nods, accepting this answer. As they continued with the song, Eddie swore ZTEEV kept making eye contact with him. He got butterflies in his stomach every time it happened, but always felt the need to look for Steve to see if he came back.
When the song ended, ZTEEV exited the stage, and out came Raven again. She started talking to the audience, hyping them up for the next song, which was going to be a solo by her. As she prepared herself for the song, Steve came back. “Where were you? You missed the entire first song!” Eddie asked, his eyebrows furrowed. His boyfriend had the decency to look guilty, and opened his mouth to explain, but Raven started singing.
It was the same routine throughout the night. Steve would be there in between songs, leave when they were getting ready for the next song, and stayed whenever Raven was out. It was starting to piss Eddie off. No. It was infuriating him that he bought tickets for the both of them to enjoy Eddie’s favorite artist together, and he was completely pissing off whenever ZTEEV would actually start performing.
It was nearing the end of the concert, and Steve fucking left again . He didn’t even give an excuse this time, and Eddie felt like he was on the verge of tears. Out of anger or sadness, he didn’t know. ZTEEV walked onto stage, silent for the first time during the night. He held out his hand, signaling for the audience to quiet. When there were only whispers and a couple whistles heard from the crowd, he put his guitar around himself.
“This one's dedicated to the love of my life. Eds, I love you so much,” he says into the microphone, making direct eye contact with Eddie. The strum of the guitar filled the venue and the soft beginning Steady Monsoon streamed out.
And it clicked. It all made sense and nothing made sense. Steve never once broke eye contact with him, singing sweetly to him and only him. Tears did fall from Eddie’s eyes this time, but not from anger or sadness, but instead with pure love and devotion.