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Steve is dead asleep when it finally happens. He’s been a light sleeper his entire life - a disposition only exacerbated by the events of the last few years. Right now, though. He’s asleep. Not even dreaming. The window is open, cool October air slowly drifting through the room. Eddie is asleep next to him, or rather, on top of him. No matter what position they fall asleep in, it always ends up with Steve on his stomach and Eddie draped across his back like some kind of koala or something. That’s been their sleeping arrangement for about five months, when they both gave up on attempting to sleep alone. The relationship part has been around for about five weeks.
He sleeps well like this. It’s a comfort, the weight of another person. Even comforting still, that this person shows him such constant love and affection, and welcomes all of Steve’s weird clinginess in return. Needless to say, he’s been sleeping ridiculously well lately. That’s why it’s so violent when the rumble of the garage door opening below his room rips him out of sleep.
Steve flails, sending Eddie and himself flying off opposite sides of the bed, respectively.
“Ow, what the fuck, dude,” Eddie groans from the other side of the bed. Steve barely has ears for it. He knows exactly what the fuck. His heart is pounding, and he’s trying to keep his breathing steady as he sits up and makes eye contact with Eddie across the bed.
Eddie is rubbing his shoulder, almost laughing before he gets a better look at Steve’s face. The garage door finishes opening, and the noise stops. “Garage door,” Steve finally says. No one uses the garage door. Steve doesn’t have a remote, the only one in existence travels out of town with his parents every time they leave. Everyone in the party knows that.
“Fuck,” Eddie is suddenly diving across the floor, throwing whatever clothes he can find on over the boxers he slept in. “Shit, shit,” he bounces on one leg as he pulls his jeans on.
“Eddie.” Steve is still on the floor.
Eddie’s putting his shoes on, rambling, “I can, uh, I can climb out the window? Surely you’ve done that before, right? Call me later, okay? It’ll be fine, uh, I’ll head back to the house and -”
“Eddie,” he says a little louder, and Eddie shuts up. “Your van’s on the driveway. It’s literally blocking the garage.”
Steve’s still on the floor, and Eddie’s just standing in the middle of his room holding a shoe and looking a little bit like he still might dive out the window any second. He isn’t looking at Steve when he finally says, “You can just tell them you had a party or something and I ended up crashing here, right?”
“There’s no way to make this look like anything other than exactly what it is.” Eddie drops his shoe, covering his face with both hands. Steve finally stands and goes to him, wrapping him up in his arms and pulling Eddie’s covered face to his chest. “It’ll be okay, though. Yeah?”
“Steve, what if -”
“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupts. “We still have Wayne, and Joyce and Hop, and the kids, and everyone else.”
Eddie sighs, shifts and lifts his head like he’s about to speak, but he’s interrupted by Steve’s mom, calling up the stairs.
“Steve, honey? Are you home?”
-
Steve was ten years old when he realized something wasn’t right with his parents.
Before that, he spent almost all of his time with his Nana and Pop-pop, his mom’s parents. He loved Nana and Pop-pop’s house, and he went there almost every day after school. Most afternoons, he’d sit at the kitchen table doing his homework while his Nana worked on dinner. The three of them would eat together, Steve talking about his day and Nana and Pop-pop keeping him up to speed on the neighborhood gossip. On the weekends Pop-pop would take him fishing, or practice swimming down at Lover’s Lake, or sometimes they’d even go to the movies. Steve basically only saw his mom for bedtime, and he saw his dad even less. But he didn’t know any better, he was just a kid.
Pop-pop died when he was almost ten, and Nana followed soon after. His mom said their love was true love and Nana didn’t want to stick around while Pop-pop was gone. That sounded terribly romantic to Steve, but life without Nana and Pop-pop was nearly unbearable, and he didn’t handle it well.
Steve was inconsolable for weeks. His mom really tried to help him, though. She changed her schedule, making sure she was home from work every day when Steve got home from school. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she tried. She rented movies, came up with fun little crafts, took him to the park, bought him ice cream, and made him hot chocolate. Every night at bedtime, she’d curl up in bed with him, stroking his hair, and tell him a new story about his Nana and Pop-pop. How they met, their first date, the clothes Nana used to make herself from scratch.
It all helped, a little. But what really helped was that Steve had a mother that loved him, and he felt safe and taken care of.
Steve’s dad would scoff and roll his eyes, but his mom always good naturedly shooed him away, protecting Steve from the mean opinions of an unhappy man.
But a week after his tenth birthday, six weeks after Nana passed, Steve’s dad screamed at his mom in front of him. He doesn’t remember much about it, just the abject terror flowing through his little body as he watched his dad be nasty and vile, watched his mom flinch away from him, crowding Steve out of the room. They left for Tommy Hagan’s sleepover birthday party a few minutes later, and his mom was uncharacteristically still and silent in the car on the way there. She kissed Steve on the cheek when she dropped him off on the driveway, and neither of them spoke about what had happened.
In the middle of the night that night, Steve got up to use the bathroom and caught Tommy’s parents slow dancing in the kitchen to no music. He watched from the doorway, unnoticed, as Tommy’s dad spun his mom out and back in, the two of them quietly laughing. He felt a pang in his chest as he wished, for the first time, that his dad would be nicer to his mom.
-
The memory hits him in the chest, Tommy Hagan’s parents slow dancing in the kitchen, while he stands in his bedroom clutching Eddie against him. He almost can’t find his voice to reply, but he’s able to call out a shaky, “Yeah, mom, one sec,” before he lets go of Eddie and steps back. He throws on a t-shirt before turning back to Eddie, gripping his shoulder for a second as he says, “be right back.”
He doesn’t immediately see his mom when he comes downstairs, but he hears her in the kitchen, so that’s where he goes.
Steve’s never really gotten over how pretty his mom is. He’s struck by it now, seeing her leaning against the counter top while she works the cork out of a bottle of wine. She’s wearing tapered jeans and a white button-down shirt, and her hair is wilder than he thinks he’s ever seen it. He thinks it looks a little like his right now, and he realizes for the first time that he probably gets his hair from his mom. She’s so young, he suddenly thinks. Barely eighteen when she had him, which he can appreciate now more than ever as a nineteen year old in charge of a gaggle of smart-mouthed teenagers.
His brain is rerouted back to the bottle in her hand when she uncorks it with a triumphant huff.
“Mom, it’s,” he checks the clock over the stove, “not even nine in the morning?” He can’t really explain why, but he feels a little bit like he needs to move and speak slowly so he doesn’t spook her.
When she realizes he’s there, she immediately sets the bottle down, reaching out and grabbing his face with both hands. “Hi, honey,” she smiles at him with squinting eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Uh, hi,” is his bewildered reply, “I missed you too.” Neither of them mention his dad, who could be in the bathroom or still grabbing bags from the car for all he knows.
His mom releases his face, turning away from him and grabbing wine glasses from the cabinet as she continues on like there’s nothing weird happening, “So, what are your plans for today? I heard there’s a new exhibit at that little art gallery downtown, would you want to come with me?” She passes one of the three glasses she pours to him.
“Sure,” Steve replies, right before knocking back half of the glass, trying to hide his absolute confusion over this entire situation. His mom has literally never given him alcohol before, and the only thing he can think to do is really lean into this twilight zone of a situation happening at breakfast-time in his kitchen.
“Why don’t you go grab your friend?” Steve chokes on his wine, definitely getting it on the Black Sabbath t-shirt he grabbed off of the floor earlier.
“Jesus, Steve,” his mom laughs, “slow down.” She passes him a dish towel. “Now, whose van is that on my driveway? I don’t want to completely ruin your plans, whoever’s up there could come with us if you want to… introduce me?” She emphasizes the word introduce with a sly grin and her eyes momentarily flicking down to look at what is probably a hickey on his neck.
A rock settles in his stomach as he looks up from wiping his shirt off, making eye contact with his mom. He pretends to weigh his options for a moment, although he already knows he’s not going to hide anything from her. He’s a bad liar, and he loves his mom. He really loves his mom. And this could be the last amicable conversation he has with her, but at least it would be an honest one. His exhale is shaky as he sets the glass and towel down without looking away from his mom.
“It’s Eddie, mom. Eddie Munson is upstairs.”
-
Steve and his mom stayed close, after Nana and Pop-pop passed. She lost the last of her family and he caught a glimpse of the lack of a relationship she had with her husband.
For years, he told her everything. When Steve was twelve and he got his first kiss, behind the school while waiting for the bus, he couldn’t wait to run home from the bus stop and tell his mom. He shared school gossip with her, ranted about teachers, and asked her all of the questions about life he could think of. Any time there was a new exhibit in the art gallery downtown, they’d get dressed up together and Steve would be her date. At least once a week before school they woke up extra early and went to Benny’s Diner to eat huge stacks of pancakes covered in syrup and fruit.
The elephant in the room, the person almost never mentioned, was Steve’s dad.
Steve’s dad was a quiet, stoic, workaholic of a man. When Pop-pop had retired, Steve’s dad took over the real estate business he’d founded. He worked long hours, and he made a lot of money. For most of Steve’s childhood, that was all he knew about his dad.
When Steve was thirteen, his routine with his mom was disrupted for the first time, by his dad. They got in a screaming fight one night, loud enough that Steve could hear it from his bedroom. At this point, Steve was used to it. His mom had started arguing back at some point, creating sweeping, epic, screaming arguments about everything from his dad not taking out the trash to the color of lipstick his mom had chosen for that important dinner with those big clients. This was the first fight Steve had ever heard about himself. He did his best to shove his head under his pillow and fall asleep, but he did hear a few key things. According to his dad, his grandparents had babied him, a tradition his mom was now gleefully carrying on. Steve was going to grow up soft. He clutched the pillow tighter to his head and tried not to cry.
The next morning, his mom didn’t come out of their room until it was almost time for the bus to pick Steve up for school. She had a bruise on her cheek, but she quietly apologized to Steve for missing their breakfast date, and promised she’d make it up to him.
On the bus ride to school that morning, Steve decided he hated his dad.
-
His heart skips a beat as he looks away from his mom, blinking his burning eyes. When the fuck did he start crying? An unwelcome tear slips down his cheek and he quickly scrubs it away. He holds his breath.
Before he knows it, his mom is wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pulling him in and tucking his face into her shoulder. They stay like that, the only sound in the room is Steve’s shaky breath and his mom quietly shushing him as she pets his hair. After what feels like an eternity, she pulls back and gently wipes Steve’s cheeks with her thumbs. Then she pinches him and says, “So, do I get to meet this boy or not?”
Which is how Steve finds himself climbing the stairs in a daze, on his way up to his room to tell his boyfriend that not only is his mom apparently totally cool with the gay thing, but now she wants to meet said boyfriend. Like right now.
Eddie is on him the second he opens the door. “Baby are you okay? You were down there a while, what happened, did they ask about the van -”
Steve yanks him into a gripping hug, effectively shutting him up. He rocks them back and forth for a second. Eddie melts into it for a second, digging his nose into Steve’s collarbone before he takes a deep, dramatic sniff and asks, “Why do you smell like wine?” The absurdity of the situation hits Steve and he starts to laugh, which causes Eddie to laugh, and Steve drags him over to the edge of the bed where they plop down side by side.
When the giggles pass, Steve sighs and explains, “Yeah, uh, my mom’s apparently a day drinker now?” Eddie snorts, laying back against the bed. Steve lays back next to him and laces their fingers together. “And I told her about you.”
Eddie squeezes his fingers, and when Steve turns his head to look at his boyfriend, he’s already softly smiling at him. “That was brave of you. What did she say?”
“She hugged me. And then she teased me about this monster of a hickey you gave me, I mean, Jesus, dude.”
“I’m not apologizing for that,” Eddie laughs, “you were begging me for it!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Steve says but he’s blushing. “She also, uh… wants to take us out to breakfast? And to the art gallery downtown.”
Eddie sucks in a breath. “And your dad?”
“Uhh… it doesn’t seem like he’s here? I don’t know, I didn’t ask!” Steve gets up, heading over to his closet to grab something other than a wine-soaked Black Sabbath shirt.
“You didn’t ASK? Steve!”
“We don’t really talk about him,” Steve says quietly as he strips his shirt off and replaces it with a yellow sweater. “Like, ever.”
Sensing the mood change, Eddie props himself up on his elbow and asks, “How often do you talk? You’ve never really mentioned either of your parents except to say that they aren’t home.”
“I talk to my mom all of the time,” Steve looks up and catches Eddie’s surprised face. “Yeah, I know I don’t ever mention it. It’s just easier. She calls at least once a week, though.”
“That’s nice,” Eddie smiles.
“Yeah, it is.” Steve can’t help but smile now, too. He walks over to Eddie and offers a hand to pull him up, straight into his arms. “Let’s go get breakfast?”
-
Steve confronted his mom once, about his dad. He was almost sixteen, and they were out in the car alone on his last driving lesson before his birthday. It had been a good day. Great, even. They started out at the diner, then they went downtown and walked around all of the shops. Got lunch at a fast food restaurant before driving back downtown to the movie theater. Steve drove them everywhere, and his mom barely had to correct him on anything.
They were leaving the movies, walking back out to the car when he saw it. She’d rolled her sleeves up during the movie and forgotten to roll them back down, accidentally displaying a massive bruise on her forearm. A bruise that couldn’t have come from anything but the too-tight grip of an angry, drunk husband.
Steve finally brought up his dad, and it didn’t go well, at all. “Steve, it isn’t what you think,” she’d said. “It’s not what it looks like,” and “Your father loves us both very much, honey, please just drop it.”
When they pulled in the driveway, Steve said, “I wish you’d just leave him. I’d come with you.” He left his mom in the car and went upstairs to cry himself to sleep. They never talked about it again.
A week later, he got his driver’s license on his sixteenth birthday. He had a party with all of his dickhead friends that he couldn’t even enjoy because he couldn’t stop thinking about his asshole dad hitting his mom.
Three days later, he confronted his dad. He got his first-ever black eye for his trouble, and the next morning his mom went on his business trip with him for the first time. “I can keep an eye on him like this, and keep him away, so he won’t hurt you,” she’d explained. It still broke his heart.
Their visits home became more and more infrequent over the years, but the phone calls never did. When he got hurt, his mom would rush home and beg him to leave Hawkins with them. After the earthquake she’d threatened to sell the house out from under him and he’d threatened to go no-contact, leaving them at a stalemate. He loved his mom, but things were never the same after his sixteenth birthday.
-
They have to try three diners before they find one, almost forty minutes out of Hawkins, that will serve Eddie. It’s an awkward morning, to say the least. As much as Steve is certain his mom is okay with him bringing a boy home after how she acted this morning, he doesn’t really love the constant reminders that Eddie was accused of Satanic ritual murders earlier in the year. He’d convinced his mom of Eddie’s innocence over the phone months ago, but the whole thing was so distant to her, calling from Indianapolis. Here, she’s confronted with the fact that not only is her son gay, but the boy he’s with isn’t even welcome in many of the businesses in their hometown.
Not to mention how humiliating it is for Eddie. When the three of them finally slide into the sticky vinyl booth, it’s apparent to Steve that Eddie’s doing his best to put on a brave face for his mom. He’d never have put himself through this - he rarely ventures out nowadays, and if he wants food from a restaurant a lot of times Steve will go pick it up and they’ll eat at home or in the car.
But his mom continues to surprise him. Before someone has even come by to take their drink orders, she’s reaching across the table for Eddie’s hand and saying, “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Eddie. It’s obvious that you’re a sweet boy, and I’m sorry everyone can’t see it.”
Eddie, in an uncharacteristic bout of speechlessness, just nods his head while staring at a spot on the table. A waitress interrupts, his mom pulls her hand back, and they all order coffee and pancakes.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here, Steve, and I’ll get to that,” his mom says, “but first I just have to… I’m sorry if this kind of thing is hard for you, but Eddie, I feel like I should tell you that I was friends with your mom.”
This finally causes Eddie to raise his head, and there’s a look on his face Steve has never seen before. Steve presses his foot against Eddie’s under the booth, and Eddie presses back as he asks, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” his mom smiles. “We worked together bagging groceries in high school, and we worked together again at the temp agency when you and Steve were little. She was lovely.”
“Oh, that’s… Yeah, she was.” Eddie’s smiling but his hands are shaking, and Steve wants so badly to be able to hold him. He knows as much about Eddie’s family as Eddie knows about his - next to nothing. Just that his mom died when he was twelve and his dad was a dick.
She leans across the table conspiratorially, and whispers, “Also, she totally introduced me to pot and the first time I got high was with her,” causing Eddie to let out a big laugh.
“Mom!” Steve is laughing, too, “You’ve smoked?”
“Don’t say that so loud!” She smacks his arm.
Eddie is still recovering, giggling a little, when she continues, “Anyways, I say all of that to say this. You remind me of her, and I think she’d be proud of you. The whole,” she waves her hand, “dark clothes, heavy music, long hair rocker thing was definitely her style. She’d have loved that about you. And you seem sweet underneath it all, like her.”
Deadly serious, Eddie replies, “Thank you. No one’s ever said that to me before.”
The food arriving interrupts the moment, and they spend a while passing syrup and commenting on the low quality of the coffee and the high quality of the pancakes. Steve catches a glimpse of Eddie’s cheeks, glowing red. His mom catches him staring and winks at him. It’s a perfect meal.
When they leave the diner, Steve’s mom suggests they go for a walk in the small park across the street.
“Yeah, mom, sounds good to me,” Steve says.
She glances over to Eddie, who sweeps his arm forward in that dramatic way of his and says, “Lead the way, Mrs. H.”
Looping one arm through each of theirs, she does just that. About five minutes into their stroll, she breaks the silence, dropping a bomb.
“Steve, I’m leaving your father.”
Steve stops walking, and his arm disconnects from his mom’s. “What?”
“Yeah, honey,” She’s disconnected from Eddie and turned to face him, “it’s happening.”
“Oh my god.” Steve’s crying again. When did he start fucking crying. “Are you being serious?”
“So serious.”
They stand and stare at each other for a long moment. Peripherally, he’s aware that Eddie has inched away from his mom and is standing near him. He blindly reaches out and grabs his hand.
His mom takes a big breath before saying, “I’m so sorry. I should’ve done it sooner. I should’ve stayed here and taken care of you.”
He’s stepping forward to hug her, dragging Eddie right in with him, before she’s even done talking. “It’s okay. It’s okay, mom.”
They all hug for a very long time. There are a lot of tears.
Later, they go to the art museum, and Steve pretends he knows what the hell his mom and Eddie are going on about when they gush over the new exhibit.
He has his mom back. It’s a perfect day.