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Eddie
“Boyfriend! Hi!” the girl suddenly standing in Eddie’s way exclaims as she grabs him by the shoulders and yanks him into a hug.
He stumbles forward with a startled yelp, soda splashing over the lip of his plastic cup, and he’s about to shrug her off — tell her he’s far too gay and far too sober for whatever this shit is — when she squeezes him tighter and starts talking a mile a minute, whispering fiercely in his ear, “Please just play along. This creep won’t stop following me and I can’t find Stevie and I am really starting to freak out.”
Eddie looks over the girl’s shoulder. He doesn’t know who Stevie is, but he’s almost positive it’s not the sweaty fucker hovering in the shadows just a few feet away, looking every bit the hungry dog with a juicy steak in front of his face. Eddie’s not even sure how this guy got past the bouncer, to be honest. He looks about thirty years older than everyone else in the club, with a receding hairline and a mustache that should count as a fucking misdemeanor and a beer gut hanging out of the bottom of his too-tight Bud Light t-shirt.
Christ, buddy.
Eddie tucks the girl’s hair behind her ear, mutters ‘I gotcha’ and places his lips to her neck, making pointed eye contact with the creep until he scowls at them both and retreats back into the pulse of the crowd.
“God, you're lucky I do theater,” Eddie spits as he pulls away. The taste of the girl’s grossly floral perfume is clinging to his tongue like a stray cat hair. He wipes his mouth against his sleeve.
The girl laughs at him. “My hero,” she says and rolls her eyes. “Robin Buckley.”
“Eddie Munson.”
She gives a playful bow, bending low and sweeping imagined coattails out of the way, so Eddie returns it with a pantomimed curtsy, and they’re both laughing when their hands meet in a firm, friendly shake.
“Knew you were my people.” She smiles and drops his hand.
Eddie raises a brow. “Your people?”
“Yeah,” she says, flicking one of the smaller, more subtle pins on his vest. “Friend of Dorothy, right?”
“Right…” Eddie nods.
“I mean, most guys wouldn’t have looked so nauseous about getting to pretend to give a hot girl a hickey, you know.”
“Wow,” he laughs, “someone’s real confident.”
“Shut up,” she grins. She slurps at her straw, giving her cup a disappointed shake when she realizes there’s nothing but ice left in it, and says, “Damn. Well, come on then.”
“Huh?”
“Let me buy you a drink!” She grabs his wrist and tugs him toward the bar.
Eddie plants his feet to halt her momentum, and she looks over her shoulder, eyes expectant and wide.
“Uh. Flattered though I am, Lady Buckley, I thought we just established that you’re not my type?”
“Not your… oh, my god, as a thank you, Eddie, jeez.” She rolls her eyes and starts tugging at him again, muttering mockery under her breath. “‘Not my type.’ As if you’re my type. Please.”
Eddie shrugs. A free drink’s a free drink.
Not that he can really drink tonight — he promised Gareth he’d DD as payment for tripping and knocking a hole in one of his drum heads at practice last week (and like, honestly? Screw that kid. Dragging Eddie to a club and immediately ditching him to go chase after some chick. Eddie ought to fuck up the whole kit next time) — but Robin buys him a root beer, and it’s nice. She’s nice. Awkward as hell, so clearly out of place here, but it’s strangely endearing. Eddie’s Bo Peep instincts are kicking in hard.
“Well, um, uh—” she stammers when it’s time to part ways.
“Do you want to hang out for a bit?”
“Oh, thank god. Yes, please.”
—
Robin
“Okay, I’m just gonna say it,” Robin says once they’ve settled into a quieter corner of the bar, because her brain is in full blurting mode and it’s not going to stop blurting until she blurts something about it. “Am I being, like, very weird right now?”
Eddie levels her with a look from the opposite side of the booth. It’s a calm look, steady — a kind of crazy amount of direct eye contact if she’s honest, and wow, his eyes are huge. Like. Baby cow eyes if the baby cow could peer into your very essence. Robin feels a bit like her soul is posing naked in a window front on fifth avenue, because Eddie just keeps looking, doesn’t break his gaze even as he dips his head to suck his straw between his lips, and oh my god please SAY something already—!
“Do you think you’re being weird?”
Only always. She gives a nervous chuckle in response, a kind of eh-heh-he-hEh? thing that ticks up a full octave on the tail end, and Eddie hums, nods. Gets up out of his seat.
Great. Just great, he’s leaving now because you’re a big weird loser who can’t stop being annoying for twelve seconds. Shit. Scheiße. Merde.
Eddie slides into her side of the booth. “Budge over, Buckles.”
“It’s Buckley.”
“Potato, tomato.” He shrugs and throws an arm around her shoulders. It’s kinda nice, even if he does smell like cigarette smoke. The leather of his jacket is warm and soft, buttery smooth from years of wear, and the pins and chains on the cuff make a satisfying clinking jangle against the rivets on her jean jacket.
She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
“For the record, I don’t think you’re being weird,” Eddie says, tilting his head to tap it against the top of hers in a comforting gesture that is so ridiculously Steve, and where is that idiot anyway? “You just seem— well. Forgive me, but if I may be so bold, you seem a little stuck in your own head.”
“Oh, really?” she scoffs weakly, spinning her rings around on her fingers. “What gave you that impression?”
“Your upper lip is sweating.”
Robin’s hands fly up to cover her… perfectly dry face. “Liar!” she gasps and slaps at Eddie’s chest with the back of her hand.
Eddie giggles like a fourth grader who just got away with pulling a girl’s pigtails. “Got you to loosen up a bit, though, didn’t it?”
He moves his arm off her shoulders; reaches inside his jacket. Ugh. Please don’t be pulling out cigarettes. “You want to play cards? Seeing as we’re both on babysitting duty,” he adds, flicking Robin’s plastic soda cup.
She’s not, actually — on driving duty, that is. She could drink more if she wanted to.
…Except not really because she drank a single mojito when they first got here, and her anxiety crept in with the buzz like a pesky wasp through open patio doors, flitting around her head and convincing her that everything she said was stupid and she was making a total fool of herself.
Which she probably was. It’s not, like, an infrequent occurrence in her life, so…
“Buckley?” Eddie shakes the cards in front of her face. “Bucks, Buckwheat, Buckingham Palace, hello?”
Speaking of pesky wasps. “Alright already!” She bats the cards out of her face, slouching over the table to rest her cheek against her arms while Eddie mutters to himself, “Shit. Shoulda said ‘Buckleberry Ferry.’”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“I don’t really know any card games,” she tells him. “I mean, other than War, but that one’s…”
“Kinda boring?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie cuts and shuffles the deck. His rings are cool. “We could play War and Peace instead?”
“What’s that?”
“A joke, mostly.” He shuffles again. “And a poorly named one at that, because the last time my buddies and I played, two of them got in a fist fight.”
Robin feels her eyes widen in alarm. Eddie laughs at her, big and bright and charming. “Not to worry. I highly doubt you and I are gonna throw down the gauntlet over our conflicting crushes on a former head cheerleader. Anyway, the game’s basically War combined with Twenty Questions. Whoever plays the higher card gets to ask a question.”
“Any question?”
“Sure.”
“What if it’s personal?”
“Standard rules would say that if you pass I get to pinch you as hard as I want right above your elbow,” he smirks, “but we can ignore that one.”
“Afraid of how hard I can pinch?”
“Uh huh,” he snorts. “You caught me.”
He deals the deck out between them until they’re both holding an even stack of cards, and Robin wins the first flip. “Okay, first question: what is Eddie short for?”
“Oof. Shoulda just let you pinch me.”
“What’s it for?”
“Nothing, it’s just Eddie.”
“That’s not true.”
“Or maybe it’s Eddy with a Y, like a babbling brook.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Ah-! No new questions ‘til you flip again.”
Robin waits through five whole rounds of suspiciously inoffensive ice breaker questions before she gets another turn to ask. “Okay, don’t lie this time, or I really will pinch you. What’s it short for?”
“You’re really not great at picking up on boundaries, are you?”
“You chose to play a game of truth with a stranger! Now fess up!”
Eddie heaves a huge, put-upon sigh. “It’s Edward.”
“Hmm.”
“What is hmm?” he demands, making a comically bitchy face at her.
“Nothing! That’s just not even that bad.”
“No, it’s worse than bad, it’s boring.”
“I guess. I like Eddy-with-a-Y better, anyway. Makes your mom sound like a hippie.”
“Well, I’m told she was, so...”
Oh. Robin flips her next card. Ten of clubs to Eddie’s eight of diamonds. She hesitates, chewing her lip.
Eddie sighs again, quieter. Real. “You can ask,” he says, drumming his fingers on the table.
“Did you… um. Did you like your mom?” she asks instead, because it suddenly feels a little too blunt to ask if he knew her at all, even though he kind of just implied that he didn’t.
“I’m sure I would have. I like the stories I’ve heard about her, at least. She died when I was pretty young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Robin plays her next card face down, and Eddie quirks a brow at her in silent question.
“Ask me anything,” she says, bracing herself for a hard hitter.
Eddie leans in, eyes too intense again as he holds her gaze. After a moment he says, “Be honest.”
Robin gulps. “Promise.”
“…Did you eat stale popcorn out of the popcorn machine in the lobby?”
A horrible, startled snort-laugh explodes out of her so forcefully it kinda rattles her sinuses. “I meant you could ask a real question!”
“Oh, that’s a very real question. I don’t think I can be friends with someone who’s too prideful to admit they scarfed down a handful of that buttery garbage when no one was looking.”
“I totally did,” she admits on a laugh, and Eddie laughs, too.
“I know, I saw you do it.”
“Oh, my god! Stalker!”
“Hardly. Thought you were a hot guy from the back,” he shrugs, and that’s… huh.
Robin ignores the pleased flutter in her gut. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Not at all, I’m having a great time.”
They flip another card. Eddie wins. “Okay, actual very real question: why are you sitting here with me instead of dancing with Stevie? That’s who you came here with, right?”
“Right.” She scowls. “Stevie is off somewhere getting laid, probably.”
“And that’s a… bad thing?” he hedges, trying to feel her out.
“No,” she sighs, because her friend is allowed to have needs that she can’t fulfill, and there’s really no good reason for her to be so moody about it. There isn’t. “Probably for the best, honestly.”
Eddie hums, runs his tongue over his top lip in consideration, then lets it go and flips another card.
It goes like that for what feels like hours: back and forth, tit for tat, no question off limits, no stone unturned. Robin feels a slot open up in the heart-shaped locket in her mind where she keeps a copy of Steve — and maybe she’s still the teensiest bit tipsy because what a truly and utterly bizarre thing to think — but she commits to etching the lines of Eddie’s face into the gold plating just the same.
“Why’d you pick me?” Eddie asks on his next turn.
“Hmm?”
“To rescue you earlier. Could’ve picked anyone.”
Because you seemed strangely sweet under all that leather and hair. Because I felt like I could trust you.
“Thought you were a hot girl from the front,” she jokes.
“Shut the fuck up!”
“No, actually, I– I don’t know. You seemed, like… Okay, stop looking at me; I’m trying to think of how to word this without being wildly offensive and you’re being distracting!”
“Who, me?” he teases, batting his lashes and leaning in so close their noses almost touch. Any passerby who saw them would almost certainly assume they’re about to kiss.
So of course that’s the moment Steve decides to reappear.
—
Steve
“Robbie??” he shouts, voice cracking like a freshman. “What the fuck?”
Robin’s snuggled up in a booth with some denim and leather clad punk looking dude, all safety pins and ripped jeans and a devil-may-care grin that makes his dimples pop out; the kind of guy that Mike Wheeler would obsess over and pretend like it didn’t mean anything. And like—
Disregarding the fact that this guy looks like… like that, he’s, uh.
He’s a guy.
A guy who’s glaring at Steve like Steve just insulted his mother. He throws a protective arm around Robin and practically snarls, “Is this guy bothering you, sweetheart?”
Steve snorts. Just a little. Tries to bite it back, can’t really help it; it’s too fucking much. The guy looks ready to fight him, and Robin is flitting her startled baby deer eyes from Steve to the guy and back to Steve, and Steve feels his nostrils flare and sees Robin’s lips quiver before they both fucking lose it. Steve laughs so hard his eyes water, Robin makes these hideous honking sounds like a pissed off mother goose, and this poor random dude looks so completely, hopelessly lost.
He’s fully pouting by the time they start to calm down, arms crossed defensively over his chest. “Taking critical damage to my ego here, Buckshot.”
Steve slides into the opposite side of the booth and works on breathing normally again.
“Sorry, sorry,” Robin laughs. She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye and pats the back of the guy’s hand, reassuring him that he’s a top-notch bodyguard, but, “I don’t need protection from Stevie.”
“Wait,” the guy says and stares dumbfounded at Steve before turning back to Rob. “This is Stevie?”
“Yeah…?”
“But– but I thought– Jesus Christ, I’m so confused.” He drops his head into his hands, his elbows slipping on the mess of playing cards scattered on the table.
Robin nudges him with her shoulder. “You thought what?”
“Nothing, fuck off.”
“No!” She jabs him a couple times in the side with her pointer finger until he squeaks a laugh and squirms away. “What happened to honesty?”
“You’re honestly terrible and I regret meeting you.”
“Likewise.”
He smiles fondly at her, those dimples peeking out again. “I thought Stevie was your ex-girlfriend or something. Like, I thought she ditched you and that’s why you were slumming it with me all night.”
Robin bleats another burst of over-caffeinated laughter. “That’s hilarious, but no. Steve is a guy–”
“Yeah, I can see that,” he interjects, eyes flicking over Steve. Steve flushes under the attention.
“–and also my platonic soulmate. Steve, this is Eddie. He rescued me from a weirdo earlier, and now we’re best friends.”
“I thought you and I were best friends!” Steve objects at the same time that Eddie says, “You fucking wish we were best friends.”
Eddie turns and smiles at him. They share a look and a laugh and yeah, Steve’s starting to see why Robin took to him so quickly. There’s something magnetic about the guy. “Good to meet you, man,” Steve says and extends a hand across the table.
The hands that envelop his are warm, the calloused fingers contrasting with the smooth bands of metal rings, and Steve’s grateful that his blush isn’t obvious in the dim light of the bar.
A waitress comes by the table then, three plastic cups of water balanced on a serving tray, and Steve turns his full attention to her, grateful for the distraction.
“Are you Steve?” she asks. She sounds… weirdly pissed off about it?
“Uh…”
Steve squints at her. He doesn’t recognize her; can’t imagine why she’d be mad at him. Then again, he was kind of a notoriously raging little shit back in the day, so who knows?
“...No?” he tries.
The girl sneers at him. “This is from Stacey.”
And then she lets her wrist tilt just enough to send a full cup of ice water sliding off the edge of her tray and spilling all over his lap.
“Oh, what the fuck!”
“Oops.” She throws him a nasty grin and teeters away.
Robin starts laughing, a monotone, panicked thing with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. The kind she does when she gets nervous or doesn’t know how to respond. “Sorry! Holy shit, sorry! I’m not laughing at you,” she laughs, and Eddie side-eyes her and stands up out of his seat, untying the flannel around his hips and handing it to Steve.
“That was fucked up,” he says mildly. “You good?”
“Yeah, man, I’m, uh—” freezing my nuts off, actually. He presses the flannel to his soaked jeans with a grateful sigh. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Robin’s still silently wheezing, red in the face and mouthing I’m sorry!
Steve slides her soda out of reach. “Okay, that’s enough caffeine for you.”
“The fuck was all that about?” Eddie asks as he sits back down.
“I’m assuming that was Becca.”
“Who is…?”
“Stacey’s best friend. Who, before you ask, is the stage five clinger I spent nearly an hour trying to politely shake earlier before I finally snapped and told her to get lost. God.” He frowns down at the mess. “Wasn’t even trying to meet girls tonight. Fucking figures.”
Eddie arches a brow like ‘go on,’ but Steve’s not exactly ready to spill his guts about his bisexual awakening or whatever, so he drops his gaze back to the table and sulks in wet, mopey silence.
“Right,” Eddie says after a minute, rapping his knuckles on the table and standing up again. “Be right back. What do you want to drink?”
“Ooh! Coke, please,” Robin says.
“No.” Steve points a finger in her face.
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Okay,” Eddie interrupts. “One Sprite coming right up. And for you, Stevie boy?”
“Oh, uh– that’s okay, I can–”
“Stop.” Eddie holds up a hand.
Steve looks up at him. He has this, like… Hell. Steve doesn’t know. This sort of commanding presence, maybe. Coach gives you a play, you execute, that kind of thing.
“What do you want?” he asks again in a tone that brooks no argument.
“Whiskey coke, I guess,” Steve says, then adds, “Thanks, man. Really,” because the guy’s flannel shirt is still siphoning freezing cold water out of the crotch of his jeans.
“Isn’t he great?” Robin beams the second Eddie’s out of earshot. “I have never been more disappointed in my own lesbianism.”
“Yeah, he’s, uh… he’s cool.”
“‘Yeah, uh, he’s cool,’” she mocks, throwing her voice as low as she can. Her eyes narrow. “...Oh, my god, you like him!”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re blushing so much!”
“No, I’m not!” Steve runs his hands over his damp thighs, back and forth, chafing at the fabric to try and dry it more quickly. He doesn’t have a fucking crush. If anything, Eddie’s, like, a bit much.
…Ugh. That’s a lie.
“Okay, fine. He’s, um. He’s interesting or whatever. Can you drop it now, please?”
“Uh huh.” Robin smirks in a way that screams that she will be dropping it for seven minutes max and not a second longer. God damnit.
“What were you two even talking about this whole time?” he asks, mostly to distract her from making fun of him.
“Everything! We played this game that was, like, truth or dare with cards but without the dares, and he told me all about his band and his writing and his family and his guitar, and he told me he thought I looked like a hot guy from the back, and I’m so excited for you two to get to know each other, I think you’re really gonna hit it off.”
“Oh, cool, no pressure then.”
“I’m serious! He’s chill.”
“Sure he is.” Totally chill. Is that why he’s got Steve’s neck sweating just a little?
When Eddie comes back to the table, he has two drinks in hand and one extremely drunk dude clinging to his back.
“I got Stacey fired,” he announces as he hands them their drinks.
The drunk dude on his back hollers, “Onward, noble steed!”
“Garrett, shut the fuck up.”
Well, shit. Guess it doesn’t really matter if he and Eddie would have gotten along, because Eddie clearly has a boyfriend.
Which begs the question of like… why he spent the whole evening holed up in a booth with the gayest girl in the club, but whatever. The guy’s all over Eddie, climbing him like a fucking tree, and Steve does his best to wipe the sourpuss look off his face as he accepts the offered drink.
Robin thanks Eddie for the soda, and Eddie says ‘No problem’ and shucks Garrett off his back so he can start sweeping up the playing cards. A dumb decision in hindsight, because Garrett is hammered and the second Eddie lets go of him the guy careens sideways and goes stumbling right into Steve’s wet lap.
“Uh,” Steve blinks, eyes wide as they dart between the lump of booze-soaked boy in his lap and the boyfriend of said lump.
Garrett snuggles further in, wrapping a clumsy arm around Steve’s neck and stroking the top of his head with heavy, clunky pats. Steve feels like he’s being cuddled by a plastered bear. “Uh,” he says again, begging anyone to help.
Eddie throws a relaxed smirk at Steve and then turns to his boyfriend, snapping, “Hey, idiot! What did I tell you about petting strangers, huh?” He pops the guy on the back of the head and wrangles him up out of Steve’s lap in a move that weirdly makes Steve think of Dustin.
“Don’t mind my dipshit brother,” Eddie says, swinging an arm over Garrett’s shoulder.
Oh. “Your brother?”
“Notchyer br’ther,” Garrett slurs.
“Fine. Childhood friend I’ve adopted as kin, is that better? You’re a pain in my ass, is what you actually are. Robin, dearest, do you mind?”
Eddie gestures at the empty seat beside her, and Robin nods and lets him deposit Garrett onto the bench.
Garrett leans his head on her shoulder and wraps an arm around her waist. Jesus. This guy’s the clingiest drunk Steve’s ever seen.
“So, to be clear,” Robin asks him, “you’re not Eddie’s boyfriend?”
He scrunches up his face like he just sucked a lemon. “Barf.”
“Um-!” She tries to scoot away. “Are you going to, or—?”
“Unh-uh,” he slurs, rolling his forehead on her shoulder. “‘M good, just. Ew.”
Steve steals another glance at Eddie through his lashes. Finds the guy already studying him, a small smile stretched across his closed lips. There’s that dimple again.
Steve takes another drink. “What’s with all the cards, anyway?” he asks as Eddie scoops the last of them into a neat stack.
“They’re for ‘impressing dates with sleight of hand magic,’” Robin answers, giggling at her own words and then laughing harder when Garrett’s head slips off her shoulder and lands right in her lap.
Garrett gives a pained groan from under the table.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie mutters. “Never offering to DD again, I swear to—”
“Wait, you do magic?” Steve asks, his brain catching up to Robin’s words.
“Sure do.” Eddie rocks on his heels, his hands slipping into his back pockets as he stretches. Steve can see his ribs through his thin shirt. His mouth waters. “You wanna see a trick before I go, big boy?”
He fans the deck out and holds it out to Steve in offering. “Pick a card, any card.”
Steve grabs one at random, steals a quick peek at it and slides it back into the deck, trying his best to keep an eye on it as Eddie shuffles the cards. It’s hopeless. Eddie’s fingers are a kind of magic all their own — fanning and folding the deck with an almost artistic dexterity. Steve gives up on tracking his card and just focuses on the light glinting off Eddie’s rings, the satisfying thwip of a bridge collapsing back into a flat stack.
Eddie cuts the deck a final time and lays the stack facedown on the table. “I’ll need my lovely assistant for this next part.”
He pulls Garrett out of his seat, giving his cheek a few gentle taps to wake him up and saying, “Look alive, Gareth.”
“Hold up,” Steve says. “Are you saying Gareth? With a TH?”
“Like the– like the goblin king? With the–?” Robin gestures to her lap and crooks the pointer finger of her other hand to look like a limp dick.
“No, that’s Jareth,” Steve laughs.
Robin frowns. She’s still never forgiven him for subjecting her to ‘Bowie’s enormous spandex schlong.’
Gareth frowns harder, perking up just enough to tell them both to fuck off.
“Play nice,” Eddie says. He waves his hands over the card deck again, big and theatrical, and says, “Gareth, if you please.”
Gareth rolls his eyes. Paws at the deck with clumsy fingers and lifts the top card, slapping it into Steve’s hand and grumbling, “Is this your card?” like a man who cannot believe the dumb shit he has to do to get a ride home from the bar.
Steve holds the card in his palm, feels the weight of it, strangely anxious. This is stupid. He doesn’t believe in magic, but still. He can’t help but hope the trick works. Wants to see the excitement on everyone’s faces when it does.
He flips the card.
“Well?” Robin asks impatiently, leaning her entire upper half over the table to try to catch a glimpse.
Steve looks at Eddie.
It’s not his card. It’s not even close. Steve had drawn a seven of clubs; this is a two of hearts with the words ‘Call me -Eddie :)’ written in smudgy black ink under a hastily scrawled phone number.
But Eddie’s chewing his bottom lip, watching Steve with those big hopeful Bambi eyes, and Steve can’t help but think that the trick worked perfectly.
“Yeah, man.” He smiles softly and pockets the card. “Yeah, I guess it is.”