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The phone rings.
“Eddie, it’s for you.” Wayne calls out.
“Who is it?”
“Just come get the phone!”
Eddie sighs. He gets up out of bed. Eddie walks into the living area with his hands thrown up in confusion and a barely there whisper of, “who is it?”
Wayne hands him the phone and pats him on the back. Leaving him to manage whoever was on the other end of the line by himself.
After a moment's hesitation, “Y’ello?”
“Hey, Eds, its Robin, I was wondering if you were gonna be free Friday?”
Friday… Friday…
“Yeah, the 28th right, I’ve got an opening.” Eddie says, suddenly his hands are sweaty, he swipes them across his denim jeans, “ah, what are you planning?”
“Movie night, just you, me, and Steve”
“I-is Steve okay with that, I mean he knows I’m coming that’s why you’re asking me, unless he doesn’t and you’re inviting me anyway cause then I think that might not be a good idea.”
“Hey, Eds, you’re invited and welcome,”
Then why didn’t Steve call? He can’t help the ungrateful thought. There were a plethora of reasons why Steve didn’t call Eddie and personally invite him, that don’t start and end with: Eddie’s the antagonist in his story. No, not even the antagonist, just an antagonist. But he can’t help the ungrateful thought: Why didn’t he call me?
Eddie tries very hard not to sound as ungrateful as his thoughts. “Okay, alright, count me in.”
*
Robin can’t make it. She’s come down with some 24-hour something. Won’t be there. Eddie wishes she’d called him first.
He wouldn’t have come.
The movie is watching them, and that seems to — used to — happen a lot. Now it’s not as sweet as it used to be. It might even be a good movie, but Eddie hasn’t been able to pay attention to it.
There was no conversation going between them, just the bittersweet of silence. Of nothing to say. No catching up to do. Eddie thinks; He’s broken them; beyond wanting to protect himself from hurt and heartache.
Eddie had broken them, not only squandered their romantic prospects, but smashed up comfortable silence, the kind broken up by jokes, and occasional laughter. He’d broken them, and their friendship.
Eddie can’t help but wonder if leaving might be the better thing to do, than to bear this discomfort, than to bear their silence. Their empty in the wake of his impulse self-preservation.
It’s hard to regret the forethought that had kept you breathing, but he regretted it. Wished he’d remained naive enough to spare himself this heartache. Just enough to hold onto what others had taken from him: his trust, maybe even pieces of his heart. Wishes they’d left just enough of his innocence so that he’d been able to believe that Steve wanted him. Left just enough so that he’d felt worthy of that love — enough not to second-guess it.
No — assume something of it, make monsters out of the press of Steve’s lips to his.
He wants to say ‘sorry’; wants too, and doesn’t. It's not enough, to say it, and want to mean it, not now. When Steve looks, he looks at Eddie like he had shot the sun out of the sky. And in a way he has, plunged them into an eternal winter, devoid of warmth. It’s so empty between them that the air had chilled.
If Eddie could take everything back, he'd find a way, but he has no time and no funds to invent time travel. So, he's stuck in this moment, and he's been stuck in these moments with Steve, and without him, where it feels like screaming, but he's breathless and choked up, and this close to begging.
For forgiveness. Begging for air, or second chances, or maybe those things might be the same thing.
“Steve,” It tastes foreign in his mouth, spoken like the beginning of forgiveness he doesn’t care if he looks stupid begging for; he doesn’t get to say ‘I’m sorry’.
Steve sighs. He cards his hands through his hair, pulling it down his neck, and he sighed so hard his eyes shut with the weight of it. "Look it's fine, I was that kind of person, I deserved it."
No Steve didn’t; he just leaned across the sofa and kissed Eddie like boys who did.
Eddie swallows the urge to scream, "Steve—fuck, please, let's actually talk."
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Steve says.
Wet and watery, Eddie says, "Seriously?" Eddie would plead, beg, he’d get on his knees if he had to. But if there was nothing left for them to talk about, then…
"No! … I was in love with you" Steve says.
And it fills Eddie with Joy: it breaks his heart.
"Was?" Eddie whispers, he's afraid to hear himself speak.
"Eddie" Steve says, like not now or never again.
Eddie sighs. "Steve, I’m — " he doesn’t get to say ‘sorry’.
“You should get going, the movies over."
Eddie wants to cry, his head is in the sky with it (you know that feeling you get when you’re going up a hill and your ears are holding in old air), and his hands are clammy, and he's so fucking tired of this nightmare-waltz. He wonders: does Steve want to cry too? Is that why he seems so desperate to be away from here.
"Don’t just leave," Eddie says, quietly because it fought through all the other things he wanted to say, and he doesn't even mean to say it.
(Steve scoffs, and it feels like losing because he keeps fucking up, feels like winning because its something else, but Steve doesn't say anything, doesn't respond, and it's not what Eddie really wants, if he even knows what that is at this point.) Steve scoffs, and gets up, and walks up the stairs, disappearing behind closed doors.
Eddie’s eyes wet with tears, a few drip down his face. He wipes them away with his palms, holding his face in his hands, then smooths his hair, and gathers himself up, making himself decent by the glow of the blue TV screensaver.
Eddie, on principle, does not talk about his love life with Uncle Wayne. Not since Whitney had almost also become a murder charge, instead of one of Eddie’s bad decisions.
However, he has no one else to talk about his love life with but Uncle Wayne in this moment. Gareth and Jeff won’t hear it until he actually apologizes.
(He hasn’t told them that it’s like expecting him to convince their middle school band teacher, who also coordinates with the local gospel choir, to let him play electric guitar in Silent Night instead of violin. AKA he’d have more luck at basketball tryouts.)
Wayne drops his spoon in his soup, “Alright, quit your staring, just spit it out.”
Eddie wasn’t staring, he was thinking, but still he sighs, “I fucked up.”
“What kind of fucked up?” Uncle Wayne asks.
Because that’s Eddie’s go-to for almost everything bad that’s ever happened.
“Not anything crazy — romance stuff”
Uncle Wayne nods, “Oh, the Harrington boy.”
“No.” Eddie says, quickly, then “Yes,”
“Well, not like it wasn’t obvious.”
“It was not!”
“Anyone without blinders on could see you two making eyes at each other. What stopped him coming around?”
“Me” Eddie says.
“Ah, can’t help ya with that.”
“I just,” Eddie wants to throw himself out of his chair, but he just sinks lower into it, “If I had a time machine.”
“You don’t”
Eddie’s hand comes up to cover his eyes, and he tries not to imagine time machine schematics (blue and white, the time machine shaped like his van), “Don’t remind me.”
“So, do your best to make it better now,”
“But —”
“Look kid, the one thing I know about this stuff is you’re not gonna get what you want, so you might as well do your best to save what you have. And sit up straight, you’re gonna destroy your back.”
Mike Wheeler’s mom walks into the store. Which isn’t surprising. She’s been in the store a few times, on account of it being one of the few record and tape shops in Hawkins, and one of the better ones at that.
Mike walks in behind her, branching off to loiter around the counter by Eddie. “Did you apologize to Steve yet?”
It takes Eddie a couple seconds to register Mike’s words; he sputters: “What?”
“Did you apologize to Steve yet?”
“No, I-” Eddie pauses to collect his thoughts, then, “Did Dustin put you up to this?”
Because he’s had this conversation, no less than five times, during Hellfire and Casserole night at the Henderson’s house in the past three weeks. Which was becoming a more common occurrence as Uncle Wayne and Ms. Henderson became … well, he’ll get back to that thought some other time.
“What are you talking about?” Mike says.
“What are you talking about?” Eddie says, more accusation than question, still, he’s joking more than anything else.
“Look — just — apologize to Steve, okay, it’s making things weird.”
“It’s not that easy,”
“Sure it is,”
Eddie sighs.
“Seriously, just figure it out. We survived together, so whatever you do, just figure it out.”
The radio is singing behind him — something he can’t hear. His mind is elsewhere. In the dark of a Thursday night, sitting beside Steve, bathed in the glow of a bad movie.
Steve leans in to plant one on him, and Eddie, well, he ruins it. In hindsight — it was the first time someone had ever leaned over to kiss him and wanted to be around him after it.
In that moment — it was more of the same.
Eddie had been kissed exactly three times on that sofa; not a single one of them meant him well afterward.
Whitney wore his Letterman jacket over, he was eighteen, a senior — Eddie was fourteen. Whitney was stupid; a stupid decision, a stupid guy, a stupid secret, but he brought weed, and his undivided attention. He leaned over to kiss Eddie, and that’s what it was. His hand came to Eddie’s waist, meant to hold him there, trapping him down. Eddie’s uncle walked in a second after. The trailer door closing behind him. Exposing him to all, not exactly all, of Eddie’s bad decisions.
Wayne turned his tired-from-work gaze upon all this stupid that Eddie had brought into their home, and Whitney ripped himself away. Fear, or rage, made his face red. He was gone as quickly as he could be, hadn’t shut the door behind him. Left his Letterman slung on Uncle Wayne’s chair.
On the next school day, he’d punched Eddie in the face.
Gabriel had a girlfriend in the same grade as Eddie, he was a year older than them and two grades above, on track to graduate early. His girlfriend, Faith, wore her purity ring just below the promise ring he’d given her, and liked to talk about their future marriage often.
Gabriel’s dad was more pastor than father and loved communion wine more than his family. Every time Eddie had been over to Gabriel’s house, he’d have to take off his face and wear a different one. Eddie might call him his first boyfriend, and for a time it had been like that. Gabriel only came over to Eddie’s house once. Sat on the other side of the sofa.
Gabriel had kissed him like devouring, wanting for more than a kiss. He got what he wanted.
Gabriel left quickly when he could, slipping out in the night. He left scrawled scripture on Eddie’s nightstand and told Faith not to speak to him. Tempestuous sinner.
Faith called him a faggot.
Ethan was supposed to be different. Eddie thought he’d be different.
He wasn’t.
Ethan had jet black hair — he dyed it himself — and a gap between his front teeth. He liked Iron Maiden and Quiet Riot, and stealing from Colombia House. Whenever he came over, he’d bring beer and music.
Ethan leaned over to kiss Eddie, chasing the taste of him. Kissed Eddie so hard, it brought ruddiness to his cheeks. Kissed Eddie so messy that when he pulled away, he had to wipe his mouth afterwards, slick with a mix of their saliva.
When Eddie tried to kiss him later; he said:
“You know, I definitely don’t swing that way.”
Eddie laughs, but it tumbles out of his lips, and it never wanted to be laughter anyway.
He said:
“You’re cool. I just, earlier, was like, just something I wanted to try.”
*
A young woman's: “Excuse me,” brings Eddie from his mind, back to the present.
He can finally hear the radio playing sixties hits, set that way by the owner of the shop.
“Yeah, sorry, how can I help you?”
It’s dark and cool, and damp from the earlier rain. The crickets are chirping, and moths are gathering around the screen door enraptured by the light from inside Eddie’s trailer.
Will, Red, Erica, and El were picked up by Hopper, the girls were having a sleepover, leaving Lucas, Dustin, and Mike, gawking at them from Steve’s car.
Steve is sitting on the hood of his car, waiting for Eddie to comeback with a couple of mixtapes for Mike, who was developing a wicked taste in music as of late, which Eddie eagerly fostered.
Eddie hands off the tapes through the window to Mike, who had loudly called shotgun a few minutes earlier, then the window is rolled back up, leaving it open just a crack.
“Hey, can we talk before you leave” Eddie says, quietly. So only Steve can hear, he can see Dustin trying really hard not to look like he’s trying to eavesdrop, and the kid has been trying to learn to read lips too.
So, keeping Dustin, and therefore everyone else, out of their conversations was a matter of positioning as well as keeping his voice low.
“I really have to get everyone home” Steve says, at a regular volume because he can’t see everyone trying extra hard to listen in. The passenger seat window slips down slowly, as if that would make it less noticeable.
“Please. And without an audience”
Steve crosses his arms, and for a moment Eddie thinks he’s going to say no, get in his car, and leave. Steve looks around, searching, and in thought. Before his head drops down, with a little shake, and he sighs. “Alright”
They step inside of Eddie’s trailer, accompanied by one or two of the moths that had gathered by the door. Eddie swats passively at the one that had swooped down to flutter around his face.
Eddie had a well-thought-out plan. But now that Steve’s actually here, it seems a little harder to execute than it had been in his head.
“I just wanted to say that I am sorry” Eddie says, because really, there was nothing else for him to say. Not now, when he was keeping Steve here, really. Asking for a few spare moments.
“It’s okay, I shouldn’t have just kissed you like that, I really shouldn’t even be mad, but…” What Steve was going to say trails off, becoming nothing but silence.
Which is not ‘I forgive you’. Not that Eddie expected Steve to forgive him, it’s just not… He can make things worse in one night; a couple sentences more like it, but not better, and that hurts, a bit, actually. Because he desperately wants things to be normal — as usual — before Steve kissed him normal; or after they’d reconciled the first time, but before he’d shown that he was full of assumptions, incorrect ones at that, normal; but he’d settle for ‘things are better than they have been’.
“I didn’t mind” Eddie says.
Steve exhales, it sounds like a replacement for laughter; like Eddie told him a joke he doesn’t find funny. He looks away, into the empty parts of the trailer away from Eddie.
“I’m sorry” Eddie says, again, because he did mind, and then he didn’t. Because he knows things now, and the Eddie that knows things now very much did not mind that Steve kissed him, but, yes, Eddie did mind before.
But an earnest apology doesn’t undo the hurt. Still, Eddie kind of keeps apologizing. Not to beat Steve into submission with it, but because that’s mostly all he’d set out to do, and now that he’d done it, it just doesn’t stop.
“I’m sorry, that I assumed. I shouldn’t have, it was a shitty thing to do… I hurt you and I’m sorry, but I’m also sorry because-”
“Okay,” Steve says, and it sounds like: stop. “Um … I’m still upset with you, so, I hear you, you’re sorry, and I appreciate it, but I’m still upset with you. And I have to figure that out … myself.”
“Oh, yeah, take all the time you need, I won’t bother you” Eddie says, quickly.
Steve stands there for a moment, contemplating, then he leans in for the worst best hug Eddie’s ever gotten. Steve wraps an arm around his shoulder blades and pulls him in, mostly just crashes into him softly, and he’s gone before Eddie can wrap his arms around him and hug him back. Maybe that was intentional.
“This is not goodbye, okay” Steve says.
And then Eddie is alone in his trailer.
It’s been a month.
Not that Eddie had been counting. He’d spoken to Robin again, swung by Family Video to see her, a couple of times. They were okay, better than that really. He’d hosted DnD nights for his own campaign, and helped Dustin plan another one of his for the next wave of Hellfire Club initiates. His band even got a regular gig performing at a billiards and bikers club, nothing much, just a couple of songs on Friday nights, but it was exposure and a steady paycheck. And the owner didn’t give a shit if customers wanted or bought some of Eddie’s … stash, as long as no sale happened in the building.
Things just kept going. It wasn’t like Eddie would never see Steve, he was there at Family Video, and he was still the designated driver until Lucas got the license he was working toward, or until Red got a car.
But it had been a month, a little more than a month, since they’d properly spoken.
In truth, Eddie hadn’t noticed, because he hadn’t been counting. But he flipped up the calendar, and it was almost the 30th.
Maybe he had been counting. Not in days because it had genuinely shocked him when he realized that it had been a month, but maybe in moments. In glances, in missed chances, in awkward silences that maintained until Robin returned to the counter, in idle lines that wanted to be ‘I didn’t get to finish in the trailer, but I was in love with you that night’ but weren’t because it felt cheap when Steve couldn’t leave. So, he’d been counting in moments.
And in this moment, with the calendar tucked between two fingers because he needed to know if he could make practice tomorrow. All the moments become time.
It’s been a month.
“Dude! Can. You. Make. it.” Jeff says, from the other end of the line.
“Ah, y-yeah, I’m free.”
“You don’t sound free?” Jeff says, mocking, but concerned.
“I’m… free” Eddie says, “Just… It’s stupid,”
“Dude, you only say that when you’re moping about, we-know-who, just kiss and make up.” Jeff says, because he gets that Eddie has these feelings about Steve, but he doesn’t understand why when Steve has only ever been an insufferable, rich, pretty boy, but if it makes Eddie happy, then whatever, dude, love you man.
“Yeah, everyone keeps saying that.”
“And they’re right.”
“I tried”
“Try again”
Eddie exhales, forcing air out of his lungs. This conversation is making him angry, because it is the twentieth time he’s had this conversation, and each iteration is just, ‘try again’ and ‘try harder’.
“Wait, Gareth wants in.”
“Guys” Eddie says, because he’d rather hang up than have this conversation: Gareth Edition, right now.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I think you should write him a song” Gareth says.
“What?”
“Write him a song,” Gareth says, “You’re good at that,”
Not like it’s a stupid idea, and he’s been suggested worse by his manager, who surprisingly gave enough shits (because she has a knack for these things, her words) to tell Eddie to never let go, and find him* (Manager said, “her”) wherever he was and confess. But, She’d been married for forty years and met her “prince charming” as she lovingly called him, when she was fourteen, when that kind of thing made sense to do. Or maybe it was the idea of never letting go, that really bothered Eddie. That kind of thing makes sense, maybe, if the feelings are shared.
It made sense before. Eddie’s all mouth and instincts. Instincts first, usually. He can talk and survive, and sometimes his mouth might get him into bruises, but it’s never killed him. So then, before, confessing made sense, because he knew the worst Steve could do was rough him up, and leave him a little bloody, and he knew Steve wouldn’t do that anyway. Confessing to some undying love, it no longer makes sense. However, writing him a song… maybe that does.
“You’re being serious?” Eddie says.
“Deadly, also pick up chips, Jeff doesn’t buy barbecue.”
“It’s too sweet.” Jeff says,
“It’s too sweet” Gareth mocks, and the phone is discarded for (what sounds like) a scuffle.
Eddie leans up against the counters and cabinets, his head thunks against the wood, Ms. Henderson’s special two veggie casserole discarded beside him.
“Just apologize,” Dustin says.
Comics, for inspiration, are scattered across the dining room table, along with DnD mini figures, designed by Eddie. All for Dustin’s newest Hellfire Club campaign. Next to Dustin, his DM journal (a composition notebook with a construction paper hellfire club logo pasted on the front).
“It’s not that easy” Eddie says. Which isn’t ‘I already did’, because he doesn’t know how to explain that he already did, and that it wasn’t (rightfully so) enough. That some things take time and not effort, or some things take more time than effort.
“No, this is not easy,” Dustin gestures to his hoard, then picks up his DM journal, holder of all his ideas, and waves it before Eddie, then points it at him, “All you need to do is apologize.”
Eddie can’t help but think ‘he doesn’t get it.’ To Dustin, in absence of the honest truth, the Steve and Eddie predicament, as Dustin had taken to calling it, was something they could solve as friends because they were friends. It was something easily undone.
“It’s. not. that. simple,” Eddie says, because it isn’t.
“Isn’t it?”
“No, this is Steve we’re talking about!” Eddie says, because he can’t be honest. He can’t say: ‘No, I’m in love and I fucked up.’ Can’t say that Steve is different, that this is different. He can’t say any of that.
“Exactly! Apologizing to Steve is a piece of cake, just mean it.”
“Okay, should I bring flowers too, or is that too much?” Eddie jokes, because it’s easier than stewing in frustration. Easier than listening to how easy it is to apologize to Steve. Also, because he would if that meant Steve might not hang up on him. Show up at Steve’s doorstep with a bouquet of picked wildflowers, and beer, and hope he believed in second chances.
“If you want?” Dustin says, with a hint of laughter, like it’s a funny idea, and not a desperate one disguised as a joke. Because he doesn’t get that Eddie is asking Steve to try trusting him one more time — not to stay longer at band practice or invite him over for beers again.
“His favorites are Myosotis, aka Forget-Me-Nots.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s come up” Dustin says.
“When?”
The mirror has been unkind to him. Or, Eddie supposes, he’s been unkind to the mirror. He tries not to stare at himself: he can’t help but take himself in. Sections of his torso are scarred, chewed up and healed over. His hand travels the expanse of his healed flesh on his arm. Where some of the wounds have healed, he is missing chunks of himself and can feel the shape of teeth in those absences.
He can almost hear the flapping of leather wings around him, feel the puncturing and tearing of his skin as he swats and flails, teeth in his flesh intent on stealing his life from him, of devouring him.
He does not like what he sees in the mirror. He does not like what he feels beneath his fingers. He does not like the memories that do not cease, that he thinks unfailingly when he sees himself.
His under-eye is gray with sleeplessness.
Many days, he is either not sleeping or sleeping too much. Today he has slept, his body forcing itself into unconsciousness as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. He awoke — a short time later — thinking of portals that lead to unknown horrors, thinking of Chrissy contorted before him. A scream ripped itself from his throat.
No one else is home.
He crawled from his bed, and found himself here, before his bathroom mirror.
He cannot stay in his home: he has nowhere else to go.
He gets in his car and goes anyway; anywhere. Driving to take himself away, rather than to arrive.
Eventually, he circles back to his home.
His head lights illuminate Red, sitting crisscross on the lawn chair in her yard, beneath the stars. She turns to see him, what she can after death nearly stole her eyesight and despite his headlights. Unlike him, she’d actually died. He’d almost been but hadn’t been killed. In unfortunate ways, it gave them something in common, beyond shared friends, and shared neighbors.
He pulls up to his trailer, parking the van, and then gets out. The night air sweeps across him, chills his skin through his thin-fabric clothes, he’d should have put on more than his pajamas before he left.
He walks across the way, from his house to hers, and sits on the end of the lawn chair.
He doesn’t say anything. Sometimes they talk; about nothing meaningful, talking around the reason they’re really out in the middle of the night on an old lawn chair. But he never has much to say. They sit in silence together, observing the stars, taking in existence, being alive. Continuance. Feel the air on their skin; breath in their lungs. All in the comfort of silence.
Eventually they will part ways, and he hopes that she gets better sleep than he does.
It’s comfortably the afternoon, the sky is pink and orange hue, and cotton candy clouds float lazily along.
Eddie picks up the phone and decides he’s gonna call Steve.
The line rings a few times, and then “Harrington Residence, how can I help you” but it’s not Steve on the other end of the line, it’s a girl, not Robin though.
Eddie swallows, visualizes a pros and cons list where this isn’t a big ‘hang up the phone and pretend you never called’ con, “Who is this?”
“Oh, um, one moment please”
“Hello?” Steve’s voice.
“So, um, you and Nicholas are…?” the question fizzles out on his tongue.
“Oh, no, no — She’s not, no,” Steve says, quickly, then, quietly, like his secret to keep “…we’re still together,”
“Ah,” Eddie says, tries not to sound disappointed, “who was that?” tries not to say ‘then’. If not Nicholas, then who; if not a lover, then why not him?
“Sasha, you wouldn’t know her, we’re working on a group project for English.”
“I didn’t know you’d started school yet,”
That felt like something he should know. Would know if he hadn’t… but he tries not to think about that.
“Yeah,” Steve says, like ‘that sounds about right’. “Just a few summer courses, you know, what I can afford by myself.”
“Ah,” Eddie chews his bottom lip, “How have you been?”
“I’ve been good.” Steve says, each word pouring from his lip slowly like separate thoughts, like he wasn’t sure it was the truth.
“Ah.” Eddie almost says, ‘I haven’t’, almost. It sits there in his mouth.
Instead, he replies to Steve with silence.
“Look, Eddie, I’m- I can’t talk right now,”
“Yeah, okay, talk to you later?” Eddie says.
“Yeah!”
Then the line goes dead.
Steve calls at 1:20 in the morning and Eddie is glad it’s just him there on Tuesday nights. Not that it would have been too disruptive, Uncle Wayne had adjusted to late night, early morning phone calls when Eddie was recovering, when it helped a whole lot more to talk to people that understood.
“Hello,” Eddie says.
“Hey, can I… come over?”
“Yeah, sure, yes” Eddie says, “… Is everything, okay?”
The line goes dead.
*
Steve is ashen. His skin has taken on a gray pallor, devoid of rosy glow, devoid of life. Like something had snatched it out of him. Steve had a healthier glow when he was running a fever so hot it turned into delirium after one of his demo-bat bites had gotten infected.
He walks into the trailer and just stands against the door.
“Are you okay?”
Steve places his hands over his eyes, “I’m fine.”
Eddie’s known Steve long enough to know that means: no. He’s not sure if it’s his place to help anymore. Still, he says.
“I’ll get some blankets and a pillow.”
*
Steve sits on the sofa, the farthest end of it, wrapped in a clean comforter, pillow discarded where Eddie had set it down for him.
It takes three whole minutes, for Eddie to ask again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Because he knows that Steve is not, and he still has wants. He still wants to be someone Steve can be honest with.
“I’m fine really.”
“You don’t have to be. I’m just surprised you called me first.”
Silence.
Steve’s gaze meets his, then darts away.
“I still enjoy your company.”
“Great, I want us to be normal again.”
Steve sighs, “Here is better than home,”
“Sometimes, after the nightmares I can’t stand to be by myself.” Eddie says.
Steve laughs. It’s not laughter, maybe the hollow of it, something that intones like laughter, joylessly.
“Right now, it would be easier to be home by myself,”
“It shouldn’t be” Eddie says, after a moment.
Steve huffs.
“I just need to be somewhere else until my parents catch the train at 12:00”
Eddie nods, “you’re welcome to stay here until then.”
“I won’t have to; I’ve got work at 9… but thanks.”
“I drank, can you come get me?” Steve says his voice is slightly drowned out by noise. The screams of poor unfortunate souls on
“Yeah, where are you?” Eddie replies, he grabs his keys off the counter, where they sit next to the hook Uncle Wayne had put up for them to hang there keys on.
“The fair.” Steve says.
“Anyone else with you?”
“Um, Sasha, Robin was here, but she left with Vicky, and Nick couldn’t make it.”
“Does Sasha need a ride too?”
“Yeah, her car is parked at my house, thank you for offering.”
“No problem,”
“Okay, we’ll wait for you in the parking lot Eds.”
“Alrighty, be there in a few”
*
Sasha is a lanky girl, with brown skin, brown eyes, and long braids. She climbs into the passenger’s seat, and Steve sprawls along the back seat.
“Hi, I’m Sasha, I don’t think we’ve met before.” She reaches out to shake his hand. “I’m Steve’s friend from school.”
“Yeah, we spoke on the phone.”
“Oh, that was you!”
“Yeah” Eddie says, and the conversation falls dead.
“What are you going to school for?” Eddie asks, because he has nothing interesting to ask her.
“Oh, I’m pre-law,” Sasha says.
“Oh,” Eddie says.
She laughs, “Not that kind of law, I’ve seen what the system can do to the little guy, I’m not gonna be another cog in the machine.” “Um …” She says, like she’s about to say something risky. “I’m the president of the local P-FLAG chapter near our school, I just, I want to change the world, so law it is.”
The conversations slips into silence again, more comfortable this time. Steve softly snores.
“Are you single?” Sasha asks.
“Oh, um, I- not that－” Eddie sputters.
“No!” she laughs, “not for me — I don’t — you’re not my type. N-not that you aren’t— Did Steve tell you how we met, because he’s told me all about you, not like all about you, but like enough to … infer.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make things awkward, I was just asking because, you know… Steve talks about you. I mean, Vicky also offered to drive us back.”
Sasha doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the car ride, and Eddie sits with her words.
They want you to live a quiet life. To cease to exist. They want you to die. They don’t have to say it. You can feel it. When they demand invisibility — the absence of you.
Eddie is in the bar. A bar, cobbled together by sinner’s hands in the empty of a hollowed-out factory. He is living in the ghost of something else, trying desperately to be invisible. The way that it is commanded of him.
Trying to be alive.
It’s funny, it feels like choking.
The air is thick with smoke from fat cigars, and the music is playing quiet. Eddie can hear his brain making thoughts. Sometimes it’s not like this, and Eddie wishes it was one of those times.
He’s nursing a drink he’s drowning in, some kind of ‘punch’ (Hits you in the back of the throat just like that: PUNCH) just as cobbled together as the club, if you’d like to call it that. It’s more a space, trying to be safe so close to a prison like Hawkins and the freedom of loud spaces protected by people willing to shed blood in places like Indie.
He’s nearly attached to the dark corner of the bar, watching the bartender dip into whatever is below with a red solo cup and pass it off as refreshments, wondering if being invisible is better than coming out to places like these (And the music isn’t even good).
Eddie’s attracting attention, the burn of some stranger's lustful gaze has dug its way beneath his skin. When he looks over and sees brown eyes and a sweet smile, it stings. Pours its way down his spine.
He takes another sip of his drink, looks away.
Eventually, that stranger makes his way over, slides up next to him.
Brown eyes. Brunette. Pretty pink lips. Wrong.
It’s wrong, he’s wrong.
The heat of whatever the fuck is in that punch has raged into a burn, turning his stomach. Or maybe, it's the thought of that sticky sweet smile, like getting syrup between your fingers. The residue of your dark fabric shirt caught up in all of it.
He finishes the last of his drink in one burning gulp. His eyes water, and he coughs, struggling over the drops that got caught in the wrong pipe.
Eddie walks out of the corner, and watches that smile drop, before it disappears from his mind.
*
The fresh air envelops him in warm, almost-wet heat. It pours over him, trying to drown him. The night air is so fresh it burns.
His eyes water: It’s either tears or the burn of the alcohol he accidentally inhaled settling into his lungs. It might be both.
He stumbles around block after empty lot after block, until he finds a payphone. He rummages through his pockets for a few quarters, finds two.
He dials the first number that comes to mind.
“Hello, Ms. Henderson”
“Oh! Oh, Eddie, it’s very late.”
“I know, I’m sorry to wake you—”
“Oh, you don’t have to be sorry.”
“But, I’m, I need a ride.”
“Oh! Where are you?”
“By the old warehouse,”
“Oh, you know what they say goes on in those areas on the radio.”
“I—”
“Now, don’t say anything, I’m coming to get you.”
“Thank you.”
*
Ms. Henderson arrives a little while later, slowly driving up to the side of the road, and rolling down her windows to wave. She’s still in her night dress, bundled in a pink robe.
Eddie hops into the passenger's seat. He knows that he stinks of alcohol, and he knows what people say on the radio about hell-bound youths around the abandoned warehouse, living sinner’s lives, trying to build community when they should be invisible.
Ms. Henderson shifts to look at Eddie, putting the car in park to really shift and look at him. She’s wearing her driving glasses, with thick, wide rims that give her a wizened look.
“You know Eddie, I think you’re a very fine boy and Dustin adores you.”
He gulps, his brow begins to prick with sweat like needle points at his temple and the sour of bile pools in the back of his throat.
“But, you… you have to be safe.”
“Yes, Ms. Henderson. I’m sorry it-, it won’t happen again.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday” Ms. Henderson says.
The tears are hot at the base of his eyes.
She continues, “You have to be a different kind of safe.”
The spill over, streaking down his face. He looks out of the window and sinks in his seat.
“Yes, Ms. Henderson.”
“I want you to be safe, Eddie, for your sake, Wayne’s sake, and Dustin’s sake.”
He just nods, wiping away tears, sucks in air, gasping quickly and then slipping back into silence.
Ms. Henderson puts her hands on the steering wheel for a moment and then she turns back, lifting her hand, then putting it back somewhat, and then tentatively, brushing Eddie’s hair back with her hand, smoothing over his hair the same way she would push Dustin’s curls out of his face to get a better look at him.
“You’re a good young man Eddie, so no more recklessness, for my sake.”
“Yes. Ms. Henderson”
She smiles brightly, “Good, let’s get home, I’m beat.”
*
Eddie wakes up to a blinding hangover, and he hadn’t even drunk that much. (Really he hadn’t.)
The smell of bacon and eggs wafts from the kitchen in the guest room. He walks out, feeling crusty in his yesterday clothes, the smell of smoke is still heavy in his hair and on his clothes.
He rubs crust from his eyes, stretches, and almost turns into the kitchen. He stops just short of the doorway, hushed whispers spilling into the hallway.
“He was very drunk last night. I- just that’s not a safe area, Wayne.”
“I glad he called you, and I’ll have a talk with him about it.”
“I just, I just want to keep you three safe. That’s all a mother wants to do. You know a boy was just short of mauled out there, and in God’s name. He just needs to be careful Wayne.”
“Claudia, I’ve been worried about that boy since he was a figment of Pam’s imagination. I damn near followed her around with a gun, if I could with my boy, I-.”
“Whoa, Eddie’s here!” Dustin shouts, “Perfect timing, I had the most amazing campaign idea, you have to hear it.”
Dustin rounds into the kitchen, “Wayne, are we still going out driving later?”
Wayne sucks his teeth, “Are you going to close your eyes when you change lanes?”
“That was one time, one time!”
“It was one time too many!”
Eddie slips into the kitchen quietly, and Ms. Henderson hands him breakfast and wraps her arms around his back and gets him in a hug. He slings his arms around her shoulders, and snickers.
“Let me show him how to parallel park.”
Everyone turns away with a sour look on their face, and quietly busies themselves with breakfast.
“What! I’m great at it.”
Dustin looks up, through his eyebrows, and the quickly back to his plate, shoveling eggs into his mouth. Then, “So, Wayne, are you up for it.” with an award-winning seal-the-deal smile.
It’s the things want to say and don’t that scare you. The words you swallow and stomach, though they are making you ill.
The nerves turn Eddie’s stomach, but he’s never going to get the courage again. Johnathan decided it was his turn to take everyone home, Robin couldn’t make it, and they are alone.
Steve is washing up, idly scrapping stuck on sauce from the last plate in the sink, before dipping it back into the soapy water.
“Steve,” Eddie says, as if it was the most important thing he would ever say. (Says, “Steve” with intention.”
“Yeah?” Steve says, setting that final dish onto the drying rack and wiping his hands down his jeans.
“We should talk.”
Steve’s gaze meets Eddie’s, searching for the purpose of all this, and he says, “About what?” He says it, hesitantly, like trusting that a bed of needles won’t prick him.
He knows what.
“I need to be honest, because if I never am, I’ll never move on—”
“Eddie”
“No, Steve, you scared me because no one has ever loved me nicely.”
Steve’s lips twitch into a frown, before he forces himself back into neutral with heartbreaking ease.
“Steve, I was in love with you too. I’m still in love with you. Knowing that there was a chance for us, and that I fucked it up—”
“Stop.” Steve says.
Eddie stops for a moment, chewing the skin of his bottom lip, “Are you in love with Nicholas.”
Steve inhales and exhales quickly. He snorts as his lips curl into an angry smile, and he looks away with a shake of his head, “Don’t ask me that.”
“Yes, or no?”
“Eddie.”
Eddie walks into Steve’s space, and Steve stays. His hands smoothing over Steve’s rosy cheeks, slipping under his hair, the press of Eddie fingertips on the back of Steve’s neck. He meets Steve’s gaze earnestly. Searching for the truth.
They’re so close they are sharing oxygen.
After a moment, Steve looks down and away, pulls Eddie hands from his cheeks, and steps back.
“Yes. I am in love with him.”
It hurts, like sheet music paper cuts, but he can’t resent the truth, just make peace with it.
Some nights there are no stars. Just the sky and the dark ash clouds, and a peak of the moon, here and there.
Eddie is alone in his trailer, as he is often alone there, especially at night.
He’s up waiting for the sun to rise, and writing, putting lyrics on scrap paper.
Nights with no stars are the best nights to write songs. Although, he’s not having a very good go of that. There are more strikethroughs on the paper than there is space for a song, and what’s left — it’s all more poetic than metal.
Eventually, his hand cramps, he holds his pencil too tightly to write all night, and now to write another word.
It’s completely silent, even in his thoughts.
All he has left are the words he’d let leave him and take up space on his scrap paper.
I’ve become fined tuned to your absence. Your nothing has all my attention. I can’t keep my thoughts off that empty space that used to belong to you. This heart is so much emptier without you. In my daydreams, you’ll walk through that doorway and
It was hardly a song. Maybe that was Eddie’s fault for writing lyrics before a melody.
He stands up, stretching, then:
He grabs the phone, and dials Steve’s number.
“Hello?”
“Steve, hey, sorry if I woke you.”
“Nah, I was getting ready for a jog.”
“It’s dark out,”
“Yeah,”
Uncle Wayne used to tell Eddie he talked too much, sometimes he would because he was learning how to take care of Eddie and himself. He was trying to be a man that could raise an eleven-year-old boy, instead of a solider who survived or an older brother with a dead sister. Still, Eddie pushed so hard, wanted Wayne to hate him as much as his dad did, but all he’d ever say, was “you talk too much, boy”.
Sometimes, Uncle Wayne would say it, and he’d bite his tongue after. Tell Eddie to keep going, and all the words would just stop, but not in his head. Eddie would think so many things, and they would float around his head, and he would keep it all inside because he talked too much, and Uncle Wayne was tired. Eventually, Uncle Wayne stopped saying it. The thing is Eddie, well, sometimes he talks too much. He’s not great at saying nothing, if he has something to say, but now, he has nothing to say, just things he doesn’t want to say and still will.
“I wrote you a song,” it tumbles out, clunky. “I wrote you a song because I feel like I’m losing you, and it's all my fault, and even if you don’t love me, I miss you so much” it keeps coming.
“I-” Steve says, quick and tight like hurt, then he pauses, sighs, “I know, Eddie,” sounds a bit like: you talk too much, like trying to figure out how to make sense of him. “I miss you too.”
“Can we fix us?”
“Maybe,”
Eddie, quiet, “Can I fix us?”
Steve, quieter, like wind “maybe.”
“Then … maybe Friday, we could…”
“No, but I don’t have classes or work on Saturday.”
“I have a show Saturday in Indie,”
“I can be there.”
“We can go together, it’ll save gas.”
“Alright, I’ll pick you up.”
“I need my van to get everything to the venue.”
“Alright then, swing by whenever, unless there’s a dress code?”
“No, nothing like that, see you Saturday.”
The line goes dead. It feels like fresh air.
It’s the first time they’re getting paid good money to play their original stuff. Not just the something on the side from the weekly venue. Corroded Coffin was here, not because they’d worked hard but because their hard work had paid off.
The owner wanted them on this stage.
Eddie likes performing. The weight of the guitar strap around his shoulder. The heat of the spotlights, red this time, as if blood poured from the sky. He likes performing because it’s not just something he’s good at, but because performing and breathing were the same thing to him. He’s on stage to entertain, sing and play, and do exactly what he was made to do. Being good at it, that was for everyone else.
*
Their set comes to a close and now it’s time to pack up everything. The next rounds on Eddie, because they’re in the kind of place where IDs don’t get checked, and if the money is good the tap flows.
Eddie’s thirsty, and he’s glad he’d turned his tee into a tank and then some, mostly because it's always hot underneath the lights and he’s always insisted on the lights anyway. (Attention whore, Jeff calls him, but he just liked not being able to see the shadow-dark crowd.)
Eddie brings Steve a beer.
Leaning against the counter by his seat; people are looking, whispering, and looking, and looking away when he catches them.
“You were in your element up there.”
“Yeah, yeah” Eddie flusters, because it's one thing to know it and another to hear it from Steve Harrington, of all people.
“You wore my vest” Eddie says, because Steve looks good.
“Yeah, I’d been meaning to give it back, and it seemed appropriate to wear.”
Steve’s tongue darts across his thumb. He smudges away some of Eddie’s smeared kohl, which was smudged on purpose and then by the sweat, and he refused to buy waterproof stuff.
“Have you gotten taller?”
Eddie nods, “Wayne thinks so.”
“Who put this look together” Eddie finally asks.
Steve’s wearing a Hellfire club shirt (Dustin insisted he have one), Eddie’s vest, and light jeans with black boots. Eddie has seen him wear exactly two of these items, one of them is the Hellfire Club shirt.
Steve laughs, as if there’s a funny story there. “Robin, Sasha, Vicky, and Mike, actually”
“Mike? What about Nick?” Eddie says, because he doesn’t want to say, ‘whose things are these then’.
Steve’s face falls, and he stares absently at his beer, before setting it aside completely.
“We’re not together anymore.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t tell you.”
“Yeah,”
“I haven’t told anyone, actually, Robin knows, Sasha found out, still need to let everyone else know.”
“Who else is there to tell?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“So, no more Nick?”
“Eddie”
Eddie runs his fingers through his hair, tugging it back. “Jesus, Steve, can we — Maybe we could just start over? Like, Hi, I'm Eddie Munson, and I'm in love with you."
"Ha! You would not want anything to do with me if we started over."
"Steve, I am in love with you. I don't think there's a version of me that isn't in love with you."
Steve laughs quick like he doesn’t believe it. "Eddie—"
"Then, ask me when."
"When what?"
"When I realized that I was stuck on you."
"Don't" Steve laughs, shaking his head, looking around for an invisible audience as stupefied as he his. Then, he pulls his lip between his teeth, like he's trying to trap his feelings, and then: "When?"
"When you took your shirt and shoes off to dive headfirst into the upside down,"
"That's…"
"A long time?" Eddie says.
"That's not what I was going to say."
"What were you going to say?"
"That's impossible."