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Eddie fuckin’ hates that kid. The Harrington brat, who’d been driven to today’s tournament in a new sports car, the paint unchipped and leather seats unblemished. Eddie had watched him get out and had gotten this ache in his teeth, a primal instinct to bite and maim the boy.
He’s fourteen and shivering with rage as he swipes his USFA keycard on the scanner. It had come in the post not two days ago, and it’s been his prized possession since. He puts it back into his wallet and looks for a place to set his gear. All borrowed, all in sizes varying from kid’s large to adult medium, but nothing small enough to hug his slender frame. And there is the Harrington boy, wearing a lamé that shines under the fluorescents, HARRINGTON printed in blue block letters on its back. Eddie’s jacket says MYERS. Not his last name, not his jacket. He isn’t himself here, surrounded by rich boys who wield polychrome sabres and have rolling wheels on their bags.
Eddie hefts his bag over his shoulder and onto the ground beside his feet, then reaches up to tie his hair into a bun.
“Ed!” someone shouts. He turns on his heel, breathless— and Wayne is sitting in the stands, hands clasped neatly in his lap, and Eddie knows he is feeling the same thing Eddie is. Like they’re in a museum, they are careful around everything that might break. But Wayne is here, like he’d promised he would be, and Eddie can’t help the grin that spreads across his face, every single one of his teeth on display. Wayne grins back.
Eyes bore into the back of his skull and when he turns, the Harrington boy is watching him. Those hazel eyes, ringed with thick, full lashes, stare at him almost desperately. Trying to drink Eddie in. Eddie stares back at him, and the boy turns pink and looks away.
Later, when he’s pulling his cord through the arm of his lamé a year after the fact, Eddie will think back to that look and realize that the superiority he thought he’d seen in those eyes was actually sadness, envy, even, but for now he just sneers and leans down to unzip his bag.
“Steve Harrington,” calls the ref. She puts Eddie on edge immediately with her impeccable blonde hair and fitted suit. Steve bounds over to her, overeager, and Eddie feels that familiar competitive spirit rise in him once again. Harrington will not be wearing a gold medal when his stupid, expensive car comes to pick him up; Eddie will make sure of that.
“Eddie Munson,” she calls. He wanders over, raises a hand for her to see. She barely glances at him before ticking him off on her score sheet. “You’re number five. Please go stand by strip two.”
Strip two is not actually a strip but a long stretch of marked tile that has been sectioned off with blue tape in the shape of a fencing strip. Eddie goes to stand beside it and waits until the other four boys in his pool have been found and corralled, but he can’t help but notice Steve across the room at strip one. He is already looking at Eddie, mouth thin and nervous, and Eddie wonders just how long he’s been being dissected. He raises an eyebrow and Steve frowns back at him.
“Five and one on strip,” says the ref, and then Eddie is being clipped to the strip and the only thing he can focus on is the next touch and the sound of Wayne’s roaring in his ears.
He and Steve fence for first place about an hour later, but there’s something defeated about the way Steve fences. He reaches eight touches before Eddie, and before the ref has even called for a break Wayne is already there, an uncapped bottle of water thrust in front of him.
“You’re two points behind, you’ll get him in no time son,” Wayne says fiercely.
Eddie just nods at him, but his eyes have already slid to Steve, who is standing alone in a corner drinking grape Gatorade so slowly it’s as if he’s pacing himself against his gag reflex. There is no one who runs to him, no one to uncap his drink and to quietly whisper words of encouragement to him, and for a brief moment Eddie almost feels bad for him. But then he remembers that Gatorade is a dollar more expensive than water, and that is the main reason why Eddie himself isn’t drinking one right now. Who cares if Steve Harrington’s parents happen to be busy today if it means that Steve will wheel his fancy bag out the doors with another Gatorade bottle in its pouch at the end of the evening? He has everything Eddie could ever want, and yet he still wears those pathetic puppy-dog eyes.
Wayne turns out to be right because the score evens itself out to 15:13 in Eddie’s favor. Steve stands next to him in front of the white wall outside the gym, silver medal slung around his neck and placid expression painted onto his face.
“Sucks to lose, right?” chirps Eddie.
Steve turns his face up to look at him. They’re the same height but Steve is looking at him all demure, careful, as he says, “Yeah. You were really good.”
That feeling of intense sympathy is back. Eddie blinks it away and scoots closer to him when asked. And if his arm digs into Steve’s stomach a little harsher than it needs to, then that’s nobody’s business but his.
*
They’re saying that Indiana University wants Steve. It’s sophomore year and Steve is wearing an IU sweatshirt like it’s the spring before college starts. Eddie tries not to notice how well maroon suits his complexion and how the sleeves of the sweater brush his knuckles.
“It’s bullshit, is what it is,” says Jeff. He’s never fenced a touch in his fourteen years, but he protects Eddie fiercely enough that you can almost pretend he’s a four-time Olympian in the sport. Doesn’t even fuckin’ know what attack in prep means yet calls it in Eddie’s favor in every video they watch. Eddie swallows around his spoon to hide his grin, and the unchewed granola bumps down his throat uncomfortably.
“You can say that again,” he mutters.
“It’s bullshit,” says Jeff sincerely. Eddie laughs.
Jeff is sitting in for Wayne tonight since Eddie’s uncle has a shift at the power plant that he can’t miss. They’re both leaning against the bleachers at Sacred Heart, watching as Steve leads his team in high knees across the polished wooden floors. His hair flops in his eyes with each kick.
Selfishly, Eddie hopes that the dents he’s been putting in Steve’s legacy stick. IU might have wanted him when he had an unsullied winning record, but this season he and Eddie are neck and neck for both gold medals and consecutive bouts won. Even with the fancy scholarship IU will no doubt offer Steve, Eddie wouldn’t be able to attend IU if it was given to him. Five thousand dollars for room and board? Unthinkable.
Steve’s head jerks up and suddenly their eyes have met from across the gym. Steve has lost a lot of weight this year – a worrying amount, if Eddie is honest. He looks rail-thin and haggard, beaten to the bone.
A few weeks ago Eddie had come back home to Wayne drinking a beer in front of the TV. There was a tall, handsome man on the screen, his fist pressed against the podium of which he was using the microphone attached to it. At his side was Steve, dressed in a neat suit. He looked handsome too, a mini version of the man beside him.
Wayne tutted disapprovingly. “They’ve started using that poor boy.”
“Huh?” said Eddie, dropping his fencing bag on the floor and meandering over. He probably smelled like sweat and hormones, but Wayne graciously kept quiet as his nephew set his chin on the back of his armchair.
“Their kid. Fifteen now, right? Senator Harrington started bringin’ him up in his speeches. Trying to give himself some humanity.” Shaking his head, Wayne continued, “Feel bad for that boy. You can tell no one's givin’ him any love at home.”
Eddie scoffed. “Please. That’s Steve Harrington. He’s getting whatever he wants at home.”
“You’ll see what I mean when you get older,” said Wayne, and then started to complain about how badly Eddie stunk.
Maybe that’s part of the reason why IU had reached out so early. Steve’s dad’s alma mater. God, if Eddie’s life was that ruled by optics, he’d have offed himself by now.
Which is maybe not the joke it sounds like in his head, because the longer he looks at Steve, the longer he worries about his mental state. Sure, Eddie is dirt poor and constantly made fun of at his school, but at least he has Wayne. Steve might not have anyone.
The memory of Steve’s eyes boring into him at the first tournament fills his head. Yeah, it looks like it’s just Steve versus the world.
How lonely.
Jeff pinches his side, grinning meanly. “See something you like?”
“Ew, Harrington? Never!”
They collapse into laughter, but as he turns his head to wipe at his eyes, he catches a blur of maroon racing to the bathroom, and the backs of Steve’s ears are red to match.
*
“Come on, come on,” he hisses, shifting from foot to foot.
“Well, I can call it now, Mr. Munson,” says the ref. She’s giving him this strange look, and yeah, Eddie does look like a crazy person because who would deny a gold medal at an RYC without having to fence for it? But it has been two long years since he and Steve fell into orbit, and Eddie doesn’t feel complete without him, not really, not when it comes to fencing.
He will not take handouts.
“Please let me look for him,” he begs, “please, if he’s not ready in ten, I’ll tell bout committee myself.”
She raises a thin eyebrow. “Alright.”
Eddie is unhooking himself before she’s even finished speaking. The cord snaps loudly against the strip but he’s off like a bolt of lightning, racing through the gathered crowd and into the changing room.
He knows what this feeling is. Knows that he spent last night watching Snapchat stories from the Sacred Heart party he wasn’t invited to, remembers the ugly roiling of his gut as he watched Steve lean in too close to a girl with pretty red curls in the background of Robin’s story. Eddie just isn’t ready to say it. But his uncle has always said that actions speak louder than words.
“Fuuuuuck,” Steve groans into the toilet bowl.
Eddie unfastens the velcro of his lamé and crouches beside him. He can feel the heat radiating off the boy’s skin. Pink colors his cheeks like roses. Only Eddie could wax poetic about a boy who hates his guts, especially when that boy is puking his breakfast up right in front of him.
“What the fuck,” he says, to Steve but also maybe a little to himself, “what’s wrong with you?”
Steve makes a vague upsetting sound, and Eddie reaches forward and brushes his hair back. He sort of wants to sit here and take care of Steve, but he forces himself up and outside to his bag.
He’d bought a fancy rolling one two months ago; it’s black with red piping, the one he’d been eyeing on Absolute Fencing’s website for about a year now. In the front pocket is a small gray towel that he usually uses to wipe his sweat when he’s changing, but he grabs it now and heads back into the bathroom.
“Munson,” Steve moans, quietly, softly. Eddie turns on the faucet and wets the towel for longer than necessary.
Then he walks over, leans down, and smacks it over Steve’s forehead.
“Ow,” Steve complains.
“Stop complaining.”
He wipes at the corners of Steve’s eyes, ignoring the trails of wetness that have settled on his cheeks. “I wanna go home,” slurs Steve.
“You’re not going anywhere,” says Eddie, gripped by the dual urge to keep Steve here with him and to somehow punish him (for what? For dancing with a pretty girl? For not realizing how much Eddie cares about him? For running away?). “Not when you owe me a bout. Where’s your fire?”
It takes another three minutes before Steve is ready to stand and another two before he’s being hooked onto the strip, and of course the bout is dogshit when he’s in such a state, but Eddie hangs his medal around his neck and is vehemently glad that he’d taken the time to drag Steve out of his hiding place anyway. If it means that Steve is next to him, still clammy but smiling that nervous smile of his, anything will have been worth it.
*
He doesn’t really… do this often.
But when he does, it’s always about Steve. Sometimes he tries to think about the pornstars with huge boobs that he sees in all those spam emails. Sometimes he tries to think about pretty people he knows from school: Chrissy Cunningham with her princess blonde curls and wide blue eyes, Jared Thompson with his deep skin and warm laugh, even Billy Hargrove that one time. But it never works. He always comes back to Steve.
Steve Harrington. God, Eddie has never felt so wired from a simple look before. He still gets a little thrill at the sight of their names together, their faces side by side on fencing blog posts.
Steve Harrington. Silky bronze waves, big straight nose, those huge droopy eyes that are lined with the darkest lashes Eddie has ever seen. His skin golden in the summer and pearlescent in the winter, his teeth lined up like picket fence posts. How he’d put on some extra width this spring, making him wider than Eddie, bigger and stronger. But also how he has to look up at Eddie now, how his mouth goes a little slack when Eddie trash talks him. Wide and pink and wet. Eddie doesn’t know where that mouth has been— but he wants to think about where it could be—
Steve Harrington in his IU maroons, how everything he does is a bit too posed, too perfect. It makes Eddie want to mess him up, take him apart piece by piece and lick the crevices in between them before putting him all back together. Steve Harrington, who always goes a little dumb, a little hot-headed when Eddie is brought up, like he just can’t help the outpour of emotions when it comes to their rivalry.
So. Eddie doesn’t do this often, but when he does…
(He slides his palm down his stomach, nails scratching at his happy trail. Tries to imagine the surprised, embarrassed look Steve might be giving him if it were the other boy’s hand instead.)
…when he does, he thinks about Steve.
*
“Ah,” whispers Eddie.
Wayne presses his thigh next to his, quiet but remorseful, and Steve’s face flashes on screen once more.
“We’re not really sure how this affects his upcoming season,” says the news lady. Her red lipstick is smeared against her two front teeth.
Eddie balls his hands up so he doesn’t do something stupid like punch the TV. Of course you don’t know, he thinks, he was just fencing half an hour ago. And now you’re telling the world that he broke his leg before his parents probably know.
He hates that that’s the case. That Steve’s parents don’t care enough about their son – their deeply fragile son – that they’re likely going to hear about this after Eddie has. Eddie hates that he wasn’t there, perhaps out of some morbid urge to see Steve hurt, but more honestly because he wishes he could have prevented it. He’s trying hard not to think about the upcoming season. He’s trying hard not to think about where this puts the two of them, if Eddie will even see him before next fall.
Feel bad for that boy. You can tell no one's givin’ him any love at home, Wayne had said all those years ago.
He gets it now. Wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, but somehow, of all people, Steve Harrington had ended up with his stars misaligned.
Eddie knows that they’re going to release footage of Steve getting wheeled into the ambulance at any moment. He can taste the tragedy on his tongue, can already see the thousands of Twitter replies either rejoicing or dispairing at the outcome. How dare they. They don’t know Steve.
But of course, no one really knows Steve, Eddie least of all. He feels like every time he gets close enough to peel back the layers, Steve is stitching himself back up again with fake smiles and half-hearted barbed comments.
“Born under a bad moon, that one,” says Wayne softly.
“He really was,” Eddie replies.
“You take good care of him.”
“I try.”
“Does he take good care of you?”
Eddie bites at his lips. Does he? Yes, probably. All the times Steve has taken his losses with grace when Eddie threw his wins in his face, how Steve always buys two grape Gatorades and leaves one beside Eddie’s bag. How Steve likes his Instagram posts within minutes of him posting, how Steve had told him two months ago that he was “a nice guy, really, and good looking too” as encouragement for him to ask some boy out. How the rivalry between them is paper thin everywhere but the strip because Steve Harrington is fucking nice.
“I guess.”
“Ed,” starts Wayne, “whatever the outcome of this… don’t do anything rash.”
“Rash? What does that mean?”
His uncle shrugs. “Anything that might not be exactly what you mean.”
He throws his hands up, standing from the couch. “I never know what you mean!”
“Eddie—”
Eddie stomps down the hallway and makes sure to slam the door behind him. Rash. What the fuck does that mean? When is Eddie anything but authentic to himself?
Two months later when Nancy Wheeler’s article comes out, he thinks he gets what Wayne meant. The article is sharp and cruel. He thinks of Steve, lying on his side in bed that morning, carefully reading each serif letter and thinking of how Eddie looked when he said all this.
As usual, Wayne is always right.
*
“Yeah,” says Steve easily, “anything you want.”
Eddie feels himself tense. There are so many things he wants; he wants Steve to take care of himself for once in his goddamn life. He wants to stop the car, push the seat down, and kiss Steve until his mouth is IU maroon and his eyes are sparkly with unshed tears. He wants to drive Steve to PT so his leg is healed well enough to fence Eddie next season. But he doesn’t say any of this. He just swallows tightly so the words don’t come out.
And then Steve is crying, or at least close to it, and Eddie decides that what he wants most of all is for Steve to be happy. Because with all the courage Eddie has, he doesn’t think he’d be able to be as brave as Steve Harrington has been all his life.
*
EXCLUSIVE! Steve Harrington reveals that he is QUITTING fencing!
Eddie can’t breathe. Everything feels too big and too tight and too much. Steve isn’t coming back— he’d said he was coming back—
Was that his plan all along? Finish off PT while selling Eddie the lie that they’d be fencing each other next season, then drop him right after he was a couple dozen miles away?
He’s trying to be understanding about all of this. Really.
He knows it’s not him, anyway. Steve’s parents are probably the major villains behind his decision, and it makes Eddie kind of sick realizing that not only are Richard and Linda Harrington taking Steve away from him, they’re taking Steve away from himself. Because now Eddie is getting why he didn’t really completely understand Steve before this. Steve doesn’t completely understand himself, not without fencing.
So he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Emails his head coach and asks – begs – for an emergency panel.
Tries to ignore the simmering hunger in his gut.
Mostly fails.