Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s this guy in Steve’s third period English class who won’t stop staring at him, and at first he thinks that he’s trying to pick a fight.

“That’s just Eddie Munson,” Carol informs him while picking delicately at her own cuticles. 

Her hair waterfalls over her shoulders in loose curls and she’s got on these vintage jeans, all billowy and flared, and sometimes Steve can’t tell if he has a crush on her or if he wants to be her: pretty and confident and smart with a tongue sharp enough to kill. She knows people immediately and intimately, reads them for filth, calls them out as she sees fit. And apparently she’s seen right through this Eddie guy, whoever he is. 

Steve really admires that part of her. He doesn’t know how to feel about everything else. Her constant catty remarks and propensity to be generally very bitter. He finds it increasingly impossible to say so. Carol’s something of a viper in that she’s perpetually prepared to strike at anyone who even looks at her funny, so Steve figures it’s probably better to be on her side for the time being.

She snakes her arm around his and continues to say, tone light and even, “He’s not trying to fight you, Steve. He’s just a creep. The best thing you can do is ignore him.”

Steve doesn’t know about all of that, but he supposes Carol’s right about one thing: Eddie Munson is not trying to fight Steve. He just stares a lot. And he doesn’t even look away when Steve catches him and they lock eyes. He just burrows further into his arms and raises a thin, pierced eyebrow. 

Now that Steve’s aware of Eddie’s existence and the weight of his eyes has become familiar, it’s like he physically cannot stop himself from staring back.

Eddie’s got this wispy curly hair cut in an effortlessly cool shag. Almost all of his jeans have a patchwork of fabric sewn haphazardly over their holes and rips, like he couldn’t bear to get rid of them so he busted out a sewing kit and whipstitched where he could. He wears lots of layers in the lingering winter, t-shirts over long-sleeves and then a sweatshirt over that, plus a jean jacket, and sometimes a leather jacket when the cold warrants it. Regardless, there is absolutely no puffer coat in sight. 

He’s got metal on his fingers, chains slung onto his belt loops and hanging from his ears in heavy links and studs. His posture is the worst that Steve’s ever seen, potentially worse than Jonathan’s, which says a lot. He’s perpetually stooped over, hands shoved into his pockets, lips set into a lazy little grin.

Steve’s always the one who looks away first.

The staring is unnerving but he can’t say that he doesn’t delight in the attention, and he also won’t deny that the feeling of Eddie’s dark eyes on him doesn’t send a zip of something wonderful straight up his spine every time he notices it.

He lets Eddie stare.

What’s the harm in it, really?

Well, other than the fact that Tommy absolutely loathes Eddie Munson. 

Tommy kind of hates everyone anyway, but the way he hates Eddie is different from the way he hates everyone else. It’s a silent kind of hatred, venomous and fierce and shining outward from his eyes. It’s barely distinguishable, wouldn’t be at all if Steve hadn’t been on-again-off-again best friends with the guy ever since their shared kindergarten class.

Steve thinks that Tommy and Eddie might have some sort of sordid history, that maybe something happened between the two of them during one of Tommy and Steve’s many not-talking phases, but he can’t be sure. Tommy never addresses it, in any case. He just mutters below his breath about Eddie sometimes and continues to shoot daggers from his eyes whenever he’s with Steve and Eddie deigns to look in their direction. 

Steve caught Tommy pinning him to a locker once and hissing something at him that sounded kind of like a warning, and Eddie responded with something that was probably just as brazen but twice as witty, and Steve had to step in before Tommy went into some kind of semi-fugue barbarian rage and clocked Eddie’s lights clean out on school property.

He never explains it. He doesn’t address it at all, really. Steve doesn’t ever ask either; he’s not sure he wants the answer.

Tommy stares at him sometimes, too, the same way that Eddie does, and he doesn’t seem to care whether or not Steve notices. 

Steve never really looks back.

Robin is Steve’s coworker at Cool Beans, a kitschy coffee shop wedged between the retro Palace Arcade and the vacant space that used to be a Blockbuster, once upon a time. Steve not-so-secretly thinks she’s the coolest person he’s probably ever met. 

She plays the trumpet and speaks almost five languages and rides her old-fashioned yellow bike everywhere like a character straight out of a Wes Anderson movie. She also has an interesting supply of knowledge about a wide variety of drastically unrelated topics: she can recite all of the lore about the Silent Hill 2 video game, whatever that is, and she can tell Steve the entire evolutionary history of the capuchin monkey, all because she fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole at three in the morning. 

Her sense of humor is dry, her voice even drier, and she’s one of the only people who doesn’t make fun of Steve when he asks dumb questions, and instead explains things slowly and patiently, which is always a pleasant and welcome surprise.

At first, Robin had pretended to be less than thrilled with Steve’s presence on their shared closing shifts. It turns out, however, that they have way more in common than she’d probably originally assumed: they both like iced caramel lattes and Star Trek and the Muppet movies, and they bond by talking shit about Hawkins High’s cliques and how stupid it all is, popularity and likability and all of the social constructs that Steve was once victim to. The things that only ever matter to teenagers with horrible personalities who don't know any better.

Robin eventually thaws to him, is what he’s saying.

It probably officially starts with her buying him a tiny pin with the bisexual flag colors for his embarrassingly bare apron, which makes him feel all gross and gooey on the inside. Platonically, of course, not only because Robin’s probably the biggest lesbian in the Midwest—and all of the flair that weighs down the front of her own apron makes that painfully clear—but also because he’s never quite seen her in that familiar rose-tinted glow that he tends to see the rest of his crushes in.

“Meet-cutes happen in coffee shops all the time, Steve,” she said once, when Steve asked why she needed a button that proclaimed in very loud rainbow comic sans that Men Are A Scam. “And I want cute girls to know I’m a lesbian right out of the gate. I’m sick of wasting time pining when I could be holding a girl’s hand.”

All they do is waste time, though. On the floor, pretending to restock sugar packets and near-empty syrup bottles, taking forever filling orders, and also ignoring the rowdy kids that hang out in the seating area towards the back after Hawkins Middle gets out, because maybe their home lives are hell and this place is kind of a shithole but it’s also safe.

There’s a group of about six or so buttheads that all order cups of water and cake pops and pay in exact change and never tip, but they always clean up after themselves and a few of them look up at Steve with big sparkly eyes in a mix of what is most likely admiration and envy, and Steve doesn’t really know what to do with that besides be there for them. So he’ll slip extra croissants in their pastry bags and slide them tiny cups full of hot chocolate and whipped cream just because he can.

He thinks maybe one day he wants kids. Six of them, just like this, adopted or fostered or procured in whatever way he can manage, really, but six of them who are all just as cute and polite and respectful and loud and annoying and disruptive and overwhelmingly pure as these ones.

One afternoon Steve’s in the middle of a daydream about road-tripping in a big RV with a faceless partner and an army of children when Eddie Munson walks into the Cool Beans lobby. He blinks at Steve for a solid five seconds. Then he turns around and walks right back out. 

He was wearing a red flannel over his Korn t-shirt but beneath his sweatshirt today. Also thick-soled combat boots. His hair was pulled back messily, strands and curls escaping the ponytail and framing his face. 

His eyes were really big, Steve has noticed; they are really big. Really round. Dark, too.

Steve’s never talked to anyone like him before, besides maybe Jonathan, who has made it abundantly clear on multiple occasions that just because he's some flavor of alternative doesn’t mean he knows shit about goths or metalheads. Steve’s mostly stayed on the preppy side of the cafeteria because that’s all he’s ever known. He wonders what Eddie would have to say. What Eddie likes and dislikes, what he’s passionate about, what he wants to do in life; if he wants to own a tattoo shop or play in a band or be a boring old accountant or do nothing at all besides survive. 

Maybe he wants kids, too. 

That would be nice. 

“That was weird,” Robin remarks, without really looking up from where she’s sanitizing the steam wand on the espresso machine.

“It was weird,” Steve echoes, feeling more than a little lost. “Do you know him?”

Robin snorts. “Eddie Munson? Who doesn’t know him is the better question. Guy’s been held back twice already and runs half of the clubs after school and has a mediocre band and sells shitty overpriced weed to the elite of Hawkins High. He has connections with everyone, even if they’re bad. You should see the contact list on his flip phone. A mile long, literally. He’s a social butterfly, but, like, also a social outcast? A social moth is maybe a better analogy, because he still flies all over the fucking place but he’s definitely not as graceful about it. Or beautiful.”

Steve disagrees but he will not say so. “Social bat,” he contributes.

“Bats aren’t bugs, Steven.”

“No, but he kinda looks like a bat.” Robin frowns and looks over at him. “You know, with his eyes?” Robin raises an eyebrow and Steve knows he’s digging himself into a bigger hole, but he can’t help it. “They’re all big and round and shit.”

“Oh my God,” Robin says, sounding like she’s just achieved a massive revelation. Like she’s ascended to a higher plane of existence and now knows the meaning of life all because Steve said Eddie Munson has huge fucking eyes. “Oh my God.”

“No,” Steve protests, but it’s too late.

“You totally think Eddie’s cute!” she crows, delighted. “Oh, my middle school self would be feeling so vindicated. You had no idea that I or any of the other band nerds existed and now you have a crush on a guy who’s actively failing PE and thinks that jocks are the bane of modern society.”

“I don’t see how any of that is relevant,” Steve asserts hotly. “And I do not have a crush on him. He just stares at me a lot. I feel weird looking away first. It feels like giving in.”

Robin stares at him incredulously. “Gym bros are so fucking weird. You’re about to posture your way into a relationship with the town freak. I say that lovingly, of course.”

“I’m not a gym bro, Robin, I just happen to be on the varsity basketball and swimming teams. And the basketball season just ended. Do you see me working out now? I don’t think I’ve ever willingly gone to a gym outside of practice and conditioning.”

Robin completely ignores this. “Your taste in men is appalling, Steve Harrington. First Tommy Hagan, now Eddie Munson?”

“Tommy? What are you—I don’t—”

“Who’s next, Jonathan Byers?” Robin continues. She stalls when Steve goes suspiciously quiet. “Steve,” she implores, eyes wide.

Steve explodes. “We were at a party and Everytime We Touch was playing and he kept looking at me, Robin, what the fuck! What was I supposed to do, not kiss him? And he absolutely kissed me back, for the record. I feel like it needs to be said.”

“Jesus, is nobody safe? Are people allowed to look at you without the fear that you might lean in and plant one on them?” She squints at him. “You’re, like, so unexpectedly weird. The weirdest person I know. Maybe you and Eddie would be good together. You’re a couple of weirdos. A match made in weirdo heaven, really.”

“Die,” Steve tells her, just to end this conversation. He obviously doesn’t mean it.

“Choke,” Robin shoots back. So that’s that.

Except it isn’t, really, because Robin might be a lot of really cool things, but at her core she’s just an annoyingly relentless human being. Especially when it comes to Steve’s imminent humiliation. 

She pesters him about Eddie every fucking shift.

“How’s your crush on Eddie going?” she asks as she scoots behind him to grab a pitcher of lemonade; or: “Made any progress on the whole Eddie situation?” as she sweeps and mops the floor. Over and over again. And Steve flips her off or ignores her entirely, but if he’s honest he’s more ashamed of the fact that he truly hasn’t made any progress at all. 

Every time he tries to talk to Eddie, Tommy’s there to sabotage, or Eddie sees him approaching and he turns tail and runs, or Steve himself stays rooted to the spot as he watches Eddie sling an arm around another guy dressed in all-black leather and silver chains and laugh about something only they can understand.

Steve’s starting to feel a little hopeless about it, honestly.

“Hey,” Steve starts haltingly during their shared free period. “So, like. What’s the deal with you and Eddie?”

Tommy stills from where he’s been scrolling through dumb TikToks. He’s wearing Adidas track pants and slides and his baseball sweatshirt because he has practice today. His freckles have faded with the lack of substantial sunlight during the winter. There’s still a lot, though. Thousands of them, probably. 

Steve had tried to count them once, when he was younger and happier and a lot more innocent, but he’d kept losing track because Tommy wouldn’t stop staring him directly in the eye. It was too distracting. His eyes were all smoldering brown and dark and just as intense as they are now.

“What,” he says. Tommy’s never been the most eloquent out of the three of them. That’s always been Carol.

“It’s just that you’re really weird about him,” Steve supplies, maybe a bit callously, given the way Tommy’s face twists with incredulity.

“I'm weird about him?” he snaps.

It feels strangely pointed. “Well… yeah? You’re, like, all hostile with him and shit. It feels like you’re always trying to start a fight. Maybe don’t do that? He hasn’t done anything wrong. At least not to me.”

Tommy looks at him for a moment that bleeds into forever and his face entirely unreadable, which is unlike him. Tommy’s usually an open book, wearing the typical disdain and apathy on his face like a well-loved t-shirt. 

Then he scoffs, stands up, and grabs his backpack and his gym bag. “You’re an idiot, Steve,” he tells him before stalking off.

“Hey, what the hell?” Steve calls, hurt. Tommy doesn’t turn back.

It’s just that Tommy knows he’s sensitive about that. About his intelligence and people making fun of him for being stupid. He knows Steve’s insecurities pretty fucking intimately. He got into a whole fistfight with Asshole Andy from basketball back in sophomore year because the guy muttered something about Steve having no brains beneath all of his hair. That hadn’t been a fun day for any of them, because Tommy had swollen bloody knuckles and Andy a broken nose and coach made them all run suicides for the rest of practice for the unsportsmanlike conduct. 

Even so, beneath Steve’s annoyance at the entire situation, he’d been, well—touched, really, that Tommy cared that much.

It’s strange how things like that can change seemingly overnight.

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too,” Steve says below his breath, and goes back to staring at the same page of A Heart of Darkness he’s been stuck on for the past two days. There’s no way he can read it now, what with Tommy’s shit mood on his mind.

Whatever. He’ll just get Robin to help him with it after school, when it gets slow on their shared shift.

“What clubs does Eddie run?” Steve asks out of the blue.

“Huh? What?” Robin says, as she wipes down a table. 

“You said he runs a bunch of clubs.”

“Why? Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Well, he’s been the head of GSA for the past three years, which I only know because I went to the first meeting in my freshman year. But it’s really not GSA. They don’t talk about any gay stuff, they just play games on Gareth’s old Wii.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He has no idea who Gareth is. “Sounds fun.”

“Yeah, except what if I want to talk about the trials and tribulations of being a lesbian? You can’t just bring that up in the middle of Mario Kart.”

“Actually, I think Rainbow Road is a very appropriate setting to talk about gay stuff.”

She laughs. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were just some cishet jock. You’re a huge gay dork beneath all that hairspray and Ralph Lauren.”

Steve rolls his eyes but he’s smiling. “Maybe I should join the GSA. Would you join with me?” 

“Absolutely not,” Robin denies, and when Steve shoots her a look, she deflates. “I can never show my face there again, Steve. Vickie Summers was present at the very first meeting of our freshman year and when we were doing icebreakers she asked me for my pronouns and I stuttered for literally ten seconds straight and never actually answered her. And then I panicked and left in the middle and sat out on the curb until the late buses came and then I never showed up to another meeting because I was afraid that she might be there. And now we both pretend not to know each other in the halls.”

Steve is not surprised. “Yeah, that all checks out considering, you know, the everything about you,” he says, and dodges the balled-up rag Robin throws his way. “Okay, so GSA’s out. What other clubs does he run?”

She shrugs. “Pretty sure he’s running the Crochet Club with Cheerleader Chrissy, which is kinda weird, but apparently they’re, like, really good friends? And I think he does the Roleplay Club, too.”

“Roleplay?” Steve repeats, affronted.

Robin rolls her eyes. “Not like that, idiot. Roleplay games. RPG. Tabletop stuff. Dungeons and Dragons and all that old shit. The stuff with the dice, you know? Games.”

“Ah,” Steve replies, although he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Games. Makes sense.”

He looks over at the group of kids that are currently playing Uno in the Cool Beans lobby even though Steve has told them several times that they’re about to close and they need to clear out as soon as possible. The tall gangly kid slams down what Steve presumes to be a draw four, given the way the redheaded girl to his left immediately throws her own cards down to the table in order to get him into a chokehold. The rest of the kids egg them on, the game momentarily falling by the wayside.

Could be fun.

“Good to know,” he says thoughtfully.

“So, like, since you’re pretty clearly and openly pursuing Eddie Munson now, I gotta ask. What are you gonna do about Tommy and Carol?” Robin asks, kind of belatedly, and the question sounds like an afterthought. 

Steve focuses on her again, squinting. “What? What do you mean?”

Like, yeah, they’re his friends but they’re also kind of being assholes lately, and Steve would maybe like to stop hanging out with them as much as he currently does, especially considering he’s found new and amazing friendships with Robin and Nancy and Jonathan. But he hasn’t really considered what he would do in the long run. What it would mean to just one day decide he doesn’t want to be friends with them anymore—he's had Carol since first grade and Tommy even longer. He doesn't think he knows how to exist without them.

Maybe now's the time to learn.

Robin stares back at him evenly. “Nothing, never mind,” she says eventually, then shrugs and goes back to gathering bagel crumbs in her sani wipe. 

Steve just chalks it up to her usual brand of Robin Weirdness. He goes back to considering the kids and the cards piled in a messy heap at the center of their table.

Steve takes his 30 the following day and instead of running across the street to the sandwich shop where the entire staff is perpetually high and make the best damn BLTs he’s ever had, he sits down at the singular empty seat available at the table full of rowdy thirteen-year-olds that he has now come to recognize.

They all blink at him. They’re in the middle of a board game, like one of them brought the whole game to school, box and all, just so that they could bring it to Cool Beans afterwards and play in the cushy chairs until closing.

“Hey. Uh, What’re you guys playing?” he asks awkwardly as they all continue to blink owlishly at him.

“Catan,” a kid with bushy hair half hidden by a baseball cap says. He’s wearing a video game shirt—Minecraft, Steve thinks, or maybe Roblox, although he is entirely uncertain—and a pair of too-long cargo shorts. Steve shudders to think that he used to dress much of the same at that age.

“Catan?”

“Settlers of Catan,” the kid next to him answers, eyes all wide. He looks a little cooler, is wearing a Knicks jersey and blue Nike high-tops, which Steve can appreciate. “You’re Steve Harrington.”

Steve blinks. “Uh, yeah. Hi? How do you—“

“You’re on the varsity basketball team at Hawkins High,” the kid answers. “You’re so cool.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was. Thanks. You like basketball?”

“Yeah. I wanna join the team next year.”

“Basketball is stupid,” the kid from before asserts, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Yeah, come on, Steve, can you leave us alone?” another kid says. “We’re here to play Catan so let’s play Catan.”

Steve blinks at him. It’s the gangly kid from yesterday who the redhead had almost choked out. He looks familiar.

It takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that he’s Nancy’s brother Mike. 

He’d hated Steve’s guts when he and Nancy had dated in freshman year, despite the fact that their relationship only lasted for approximately two and a half weeks before Nancy realized that she exclusively liked women and they parted ways amicably.

It’s hard to recognize him without the baby fat under all of the long hair and the torn up jeans. He looks decidedly more alternative than he had just two years ago. He’d probably fit right in with Eddie and his dark and edgy friends.

“You got room for one more player?” Steve asks anyway.

A kid who Steve almost hadn’t noticed before answers in a very quiet voice, “Sorry. Even with the expansion pack we can only have six players.” He looks like he’s growing out a very unfortunate bowl cut. Steve wants nothing more than to help him with that.

“He can take my spot. This game sucks,” the redhead says, slumping back into her seat.

“You’re only saying that because you’re losing!”

“You can watch, if you want,” the quiet bowl cut kid says again. Steve looks over at him and he flushes bright red, sinking down into his shoulders. “You can watch if you want to learn how to play. And then play next time. We’ll probably be here tomorrow, too. We can bring Catan in again. Only if you want, though."

“Sure,” Steve agrees. “Yeah. Okay. Sounds good."

The kids teach Steve how to play several board games over the course of the next few weeks, and in exchange he drives them all home from Cool Beans after closing. Mike and Dustin and Lucas and Ellie-Jane and Max and tiny quiet Will. 

Most of the moms didn’t like the idea of an older teen suddenly appearing out of thin air to drive their kids around town, though, save for Mrs. Wheeler, so he has to meet all of them in order to pass some preliminary personality check. And then before he knows it he’s been conscripted into a middle school mom’s book club where they read high fantasy and sci-fi novels that mostly go over Steve’s head and talk over glasses of white wine in the Wheeler’s living room. 

Nancy comes home from a tutoring session that went long once and stops and stares at her kind-of ex-boyfriend wine drunk on her couch with the neighborhood moms, and Steve just waves to her and continues munching on the guacamole that Mrs. Sinclair made. She sighs and shakes her head but she’s suppressing a smile. It’s weird but good.

Steve thinks he likes that.

Eddie Munson is weird but good, too; he begins leaving little notes in Steve’s locker, and Steve only knows it’s him because he’s absolutely horrible at being subtle. He catches him trying to shove a crumpled up note through the little slats at the top but decides to stay out of sight and continues on his way to class. Then when class ends and lunch starts, he excitedly opens up his locker to read what the note says.

In a scrawly, near illegible cursive that doctors all over the world would be proud of, it says: i really like your yellow sweater. when you wear it you look like a bumblebee.

Steve stares at the note for longer than he’d like to admit. Then he folds it up and puts it in his back pocket and lets it sit there for the rest of the day, trying to decide how he feels about it. 

Somewhere between flattered and infatuated, if he’s being entirely honest. 

Tommy also hates the notes, but what else is new?

“Wish he would just fuck off,” he mutters after seeing one of them. His face always goes all red when he gets angry. It makes his freckles stand out more.

Steve says, “He’s harmless, Tommy. Just leave him alone.”

“He’s a creep,” Carol repeats emphatically. She tugs on Steve’s sleeve. “I know you’re, well, you, and you like the attention, but you’re allowed to tell him that you’re not interested.”

“Why wouldn’t I be interested?” Steve asks, confused.

Tommy laughs. “Funny,” he says, and he snatches the note out of Steve’s hand, crumples it up, and stalks down the hall. Probably to go find Eddie and shove him around some more. Jesus.

Steve sighs, shakes his head, and ignores the look Carol is giving him, all analytical and probing. Steve doesn’t really want to be read today. He leaves her at his locker and makes his way to his next class alone.

A comprehensive list of other notes and items that Eddie leaves for Steve in his locker:

• A corner from a crumpled up math worksheet which says if you were a worm i’d put you in a pretty little mason jar with the best soil ever because it’s what you deserve.
• A little origami heart constructed from an old Melvald’s receipt. Steve doesn’t know if it contains a note because he doesn’t want to unfold it and undo the beautiful work.
• The entirety of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets scrawled out in red pen on a folded up sheet of notebook paper; Steve doesn’t know which one it is but it uses a lot of big flowery words that he thinks are about love. Carol reads this one over his shoulder and wrinkles her nose in something that might be disgust; it’s always hard to tell with her.
• A tiny bumblebee enamel pin, consistent with the observation from the very first note, which Steve immediately fixes to his work apron, much to Robin’s apparent amusement.
• A bouquet of picked wildflowers tied together with a piece of twine, which Steve immediately presses between the pages of his pre-calc textbook. Finally he seems to have a use for it.
• i want to see you headbang, it would be a sight to behold written on a crumpled up blue sticky note, with a heart drawn just below it.

“Is headbanging, like, a sex thing?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know why you insist on asking me these questions,” Jonathan says tiredly as he swaps out his books at his locker.

Steve runs his fingers over the sticky note. It’s all wrinkled up. “Eddie’s been leaving me notes.”

“Weed Eddie?”

“Yeah. I don’t call him that, though. I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought weed from him.” Carol was usually the one that bought it, and she always went straight to the source since she could always charm Reefer Rick into giving her a hefty discount. Eddie, notoriously gay, was not at all susceptible to her flirting. In fact, if she tried it with him he would upcharge her, which is kinda funny, looking back on it.

Jonathan hums. “What do you call him, then?”

“I don’t know, just Eddie, I guess.”

“Guess that makes sense. Well, headbanging is a metal thing.”

“So you do know what it is.”

“Yes,” Jonathan admits, resigned. “Even though I am not at all into metal, there is some intersection of the music I listen to and the music he listens to and their subcultures and all of that, so I do happen to know some things. And headbanging is not a sex thing.”

Steve pouts. “Aw.”

Jonathan eyes him. “Why do you sound disappointed?”

“I don't know. Don’t worry about it. What is it?”

“It’s like… When you get really into a song, you wanna bop your head to it, right?” Jonathan says, and Steve nods. “And with metal, you do that, but, like, times ten. It’s a lot more intense. I’ve heard there’s a whole science to it. A right way to do it and all.” He pauses. “Not that I'd know. I don’t love metal. It gives me a headache.”

“Oh.” Steve looks back down at the note.

“What did Weed Eddie say? Sorry. Just Eddie,” Jonathan asks. He cringes at himself like he can’t believe he even cares about this, but commits to getting the answer.

“That he wants to see me headbang,” Steve answers. “That it would be ‘a sight to behold’?”

“Ah.” Jonathan nods. “He likes your hair.”

“Is that what he means?”

“I think so. I’m like, 95% sure.”

“Oh,” Steve says, his voice light as he feels himself go all flushed and pleased. He pointedly ignores Jonathan’s long-suffering sigh. “Okay. I can work with that.”

“Hey, so, like, what are some roleplay games that you guys play?” Steve asks, as he places three little yellow train cars down on the Ticket to Ride board.

“Dammit, Steve, I needed to go to Winnipeg!” Dustin complains, staring at the board in defeat.

“C’mon, dude, how are you gonna get mad at me for playing the game?”

“Because you screwed me over, asshole!”

“I don’t think we do many roleplay games,” Will answers as Dustin continues to sulk. “Besides D&D, really. Some Warhammer here and there, too.”

Steve stares at him. “D&D? Warhammer?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re hopeless,” Mike snarks, the little shit.

“Aren’t most kids your age playing games online? Like, uh, Fortnite or whatever it’s called?”

“We play a bunch of those games too,” Lucas says kindly, over the soundtrack of the rest of the kids jeering at Steve for being a chronically-offline old man, even though he is in no way chronically-offline, and he has the Instagram follower count to prove that. “We still have our joint Minecraft server that we made when we were, like, seven.”

“I built the entirety of Minas Tirith on there,” Dustin says proudly, now back to engaging in the game. Steve has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about but he just nods like he understands; he’s learned that this is the best course of action whenever he can no longer follow along in the kids' convoluted conversations. 

Lucas continues, “But our moms all hate it when we spend too much time on our PCs, so they’ve banded together to limit our screen time and all. We’ve decided that some games are better than no games at all. Board games are a fun compromise.”

“Ah,” Steve nods again. “Sounds smart to me.”

“Why’re you asking about roleplay games?” Max asks, eyes squinted in suspicion.

“I don’t know, just wondering,” Steve answers shiftily.

“Are you trying to impress some nerd?” she asks, pretty much hitting the nail right on the head. None of them look all that invested in the answer until Steve doesn’t immediately say anything in response.

Mike looks up at him and groans. “It’s always about girls with you.”

“Uh, excuse me, you little shit, do you see this pin?” He points to the pin on his apron. “This is the bisexual flag. It means I’m bisexual. It’s not always about girls. It’s about guys, too. And nonbinary babes. Babes in general, Wheeler. Babes of all genders.”

“Whatever,” Mike replies darkly, sinking down into his seat and peering at his own handful of cards. “As long as you leave my sister alone, I don't care.”

“Your sister is a lesbian, Michael, she quite literally cannot be attracted to me,” Steve tells him. “And I was the one who pushed her to make that discovery, so you're welcome.”

“You turned Mike’s sister lesbian,” El says with a decisive nod.

Her humor is insanely dry and it took Steve a very long time to realize that she is in fact pulling his leg when she delivers outrageous statements like that in a completely deadpan tone.

Steve huffs. “Ellie-Jane, you know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Steve!” Robin calls from behind the bar. A line has started to form in front of the register which never happens. “Playtime is over, I need you on the floor.”

He sighs and turns back to El. “Sub in for me?”

El is notoriously good at Ticket to Ride so the rest of the kids groan in anguish. She nods happily and takes his cards, prepared to annihilate them and fulfill at least three more destination cards before the game officially ends. Steve feels like he’s getting the hang of it, though, which is a good thing. Maybe one day soon he can infiltrate Eddie’s little nerdy game club and impress him with his unexpected skill level.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Steve never quite gets the chance to do that, though, because Eddie Munson completely blindsides him by deciding on one random day to stop running away. In fact, he basically accosts Steve when they’re all alone, something Steve had never thought he’d do, given the way he scuttles away any time Steve so much as looks in his direction.

Steve is sitting on the bleachers by the football field during his free period even though it’s cold as balls outside, sunning himself in the early spring daylight. He has the second book from The Expanse series propped open on his chest, but he can only read it in tiny excerpts because the technical language and the worldbuilding gives him a bit of a headache, so he’s paused right now. He likes it, though. Reminds him a little bit of Star Trek but, like, realer. And he likes talking about it with the Mom Squad during their book club sessions. It makes him feel smarter than he actually is.

At the moment Steve’s closing his eyes so he doesn’t even realize Eddie’s there until the guy clears his throat, and when Steve pries his eyes open he’s met with the sight of him, hair all gloriously messy and skin pale like a vampire with jeans absolutely torn to shreds, standing on the tallest bleacher just above him.

“Oh,” Steve says, sitting up and running his hands over his hair, tucking it back behind his ears. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” Eddie says, with a bravado that Steve hadn’t known he’d possessed, considering the way he’s been actively avoiding Steve like the plague for the past couple of weeks. Well, except for the staring. He still stares all the fucking time. “Hello, Steve Harrington.”

“Uh, hi. Hey. What’s up?”

“I made this for you,” Eddie proclaims, and he proffers what appears to be an honest-to-God mixtape, like in this day and age people don’t just text each other Spotify links with heart emojis. 

He’s so weird.

His hands are thin but long, and he has guitarist’s fingers with calloused tips, and his nails are painted a very chipped black. His rings are huge and chunky and appear to be meticulously polished and Steve momentarily wonders at the weight and heft of them, and how the metal would feel pressing into his own skin.

“Oh,” Steve repeats. He takes the mixtape. The front reads FOR STEVE in huge capital letters and it’s written in blue sharpie. There’s a lightning bolt next to his name, too, which feels significant, although he cannot say why. “Um. Thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” Eddie says, unblinking with his large round bat-like eyes, although he does drag a piece of his hair over his mouth like he’s hiding a smile. 

“What’s the occasion?”

Eddie shrugs. “Music is important. I like you and want to know more about you. And I think you should know more about me, too.”

“Oh,” Steve says for a third time, feeling like he’s buzzing out of his skin. “Yeah, sure. Um, I can make you one, too? Except I’m not really sure how to make mixtapes. I can make you a playlist, maybe. Like, online? I don’t know about this stuff.” He holds up the mixtape.

“Okay,” Eddie says, nodding.

“Okay,” Steve echoes. “Um, you like me?”

“Yeah.”

“But… you don’t know me.”

Eddie waves his hand like it doesn’t, in fact, matter; it doesn’t matter that they’ve actually never held a single conversation or that every time before now, when Steve had gone to say hi, Eddie had hissed like a feral cat and scampered away.

“Who gives a shit? I think you kinda know right away when you like someone.”

“I guess. I didn’t know right away that I liked you.”

Eddie leans forward. “Do you know now?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. Then amends, “Maybe. It’s hard to tell when you keep running away from me.”

Eddie’s gaze skirts away. “It’s not easy to be brave, Steve Harrington. Especially in the face of someone as stunning as yourself.”

“Oh,” Steve says yet again. “You think I’m stunning?”

“I know you’re stunning for a fact. It’s like, arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she. Or whatever.”

Steve stares at him. “Was that—was that Shakespeare?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

They stare at each other.

“I like that you know that,” Steve confesses eventually. “Off the top of your head. It’s really cool.”

Eddie glows with the praise. “You think so? Carol Perkins laughs at me for saying shit like that all the time.”

“Yeah, well. Carol is kinda soulless.”

“Ah,” Eddie says wisely. “Not only is she a harpy-gorgon hybrid, but she is an undead one at that.”

Steve has no idea what any of those words mean. “Yeah. Sure.”

“You agree?”

“Kinda.”

“So then why are you with her and Tommy fucking Hagan all the time?”

Steve looks away. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve kinda been trying not to, recently.”

It’s true. It’s his free period and he’s not spending it with Tommy, which is kind of a first. He’s started to actively avoid them in the halls. Hasn’t been hanging out with them as much outside of classes, either.

A gust of wind blows and he shivers a bit; he’d thought it would be warmer but knew it would rain so he only brought a windbreaker to school today. Poor planning, considering he’s been spending more and more of his free periods outside.

Eddie suddenly starts grabbing at his own jacket. Or jackets, Steve should say. He’s wearing at least seven of them, all open and layered over one another. He’s like the world’s biggest Russian doll and all of his layers are his jackets.

“What’re you doing?” Steve asks, eyeing him warily, as Eddie struggles out of his leather jacket. He looks boxy and square now but beneath all of the fabric, Steve thinks he’s probably all lithe and shit. Maybe willowy like a tree.

Eddie then drapes the discarded jacket over Steve’s shoulders. Steve’s cheeks go all warm with the gesture. “Fear not, fair prince, for I will gift you my mantle to fight the rising chill in the air,” he proclaims, like some knight from the middle ages or something.

Steve shakes his head, eyeing the clothes that Eddie’s still got on, the denim jacket over the sweatshirt over the shacket over the cool-looking but undeniably tired Saw II t-shirt. “Why the hell do you have so many jackets?”

Eddie looks affronted. “What, a man can’t have hobbies?”

“I don’t think jackets is a hobby.”

“Says you. Coward.”

Steve says, “You’re, like, so weird, dude.”

“Dude,” Eddie repeats. He takes a seat next to Steve on the bleachers finally, with one leg up, the other extended completely. He has long legs. Skinny. “I am absolutely not weird. In fact, I am pretty fucking unspectacular in the grand scheme of things. It just turns out that Hawkins as a whole is even more resoundingly unspectacular, and the people here can’t handle someone like me without raising their pitchforks and crying demon. Or witch. Or ogre? Whatever is the most fitting at the time.”

“I don’t think you’re unspectacular,” Steve says, and feels a little silly for it.

But Eddie’s face changes and he says, “What do you think of me, then, Steve Harrington?”

“I told you. I think you’re weird. I just happen to like the kind of weird you are.”

“The kind of weird I am? What kind of weird is that?”

“I don’t know. It’s a good-weird. Nice-weird.”

“Didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“Well. Now you do.”

Eddie nods like this settles things. He stands back up again, startling Steve, and then starts to pace furiously, his boots clanging on the metal of the bleachers. “It’s March,” he says, apropos of nothing.

“Yeah?” Steve answers hesitantly, watching Eddie walk back and forth.

“Do not give me back my jacket. I have many more.”

“I figured you would, considering it’s your hobby and all,” Steve says, selfishly drawing the leather jacket tighter around his body.

“I’m going to graduate this year, so long as Nancy Wheeler continues to forcibly cram the past seven units of chemistry into my head during our torturing—sorry, I meant tutoring—sessions.”

“She’s pretty good at doing that,” Steve allows. “Torturing and tutoring.”

Eddie continues, “And, against all odds and in spite of the preconceived notions that people seem to have of me, I’ve decided about—” he checks his watch, “Seven or so minutes ago that should I pass all of my classes, I’m going to go to prom.”

Steve has no idea where the hell he’s going with any of this. “Okay? That’s nice. I liked it last year. It was fun.”

“Right. Okay. Yeah. It’s just that, well. Normally I hate convention and conformity and participating in the dumb trends that brainless preppy teenagers perpetuate on their TikToks and their Twitters. But even though you’re, like, admittedly also a little weird, also in a nice way, you seem like you care about grand romantic gestures, probably. So I think I’ll…” he pauses, clenches his fist and grits his teeth like it physically pains him to say this, “Prompose to you. Or something. Big poster and flowers and the works. But, uh, only if you’re interested. Wouldn’t wanna put you through the public humiliation of it all if it’s not what you want.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes. Then he realizes that Eddie’s basically asking him to prom, which, what? His brain feels like it’s about to buzz out of his skull. “Oh, I’m sorry. I kinda already made plans to go with Robin.”

Eddie gasps. “Robin. Robin Buckley? Buckley from band? Robin Buckley, the most anxious lesbian this side of Indiana, who’s currently carrying the biggest torch in the world for my beautiful high femme best friend, Christina Cecelia Cunningham? That Robin?”

“That’s the one,” Steve confirms. Then, frowning, “Wait, she likes Cheerleader Chrissy?”

“Ditch her and come with me, and then she can go with Chrissy and it all works out,” Eddie says.

“Maybe,” Steve allows. “I’ll have to talk about it with her. We already kind of got matching suits.”

“Dammit. Foiled again by lesbian Robin,” Eddie shakes his head. Then, belated, “So if you talk about it and she says it’s alright, you’d potentially be interested in going with me? Like, in a romantical kind of way?”

“Yeah, man, what the hell? Of course I would be.”

“Of course I would be, he says, as though there is any reality where Steve Harrington willfully goes to high school prom with someone like me.”

“Well there is, and it’s this one,” Steve says, shaking his head. “I’m not—I know some of my friends are assholes and all, but I like to think I’m not? Or, well, I’m trying not to be, anyway. And I like you, alright? So let’s maybe go to prom together. After I check with Robin to make sure it’s okay.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay, okay. We’re maybe going to prom together. And how about a date in the meantime?” He asks.

“Yeah. Sure. I’d love to,” Steve says.

“Okay. Yeah. Sure. Cool,” Eddie says, nodding to himself.

And then he just turns to leave, stalking right back down the way he came, his boots scuffing in the gravel path that leads to the parking lot.

“Hey!” Steve calls, and Eddie whirls back around. Steve doesn’t really know what to say, though. He holds up the mixtape. “How am I supposed to listen to this?”

“With a walkman, Steve Harrington, what else?” Eddie says, eyebrows furrowing like Steve is silly for even asking.

Steve sputters. “Oh, I’m sorry, is it the eighties?”

“I wish. I fucking hate iPhones,” Eddie laments, his nose wrinkling up. It’s kind of adorable.

“Are you gonna keep leaving me things in my locker?”

Eddie looks cowed. “How’d you know that was me?” At Steve’s look, he deflates and says, “Yes, yes, I will, Your Highness. Alas, my brain, as hopelessly romantic as it is, is filled to the brim with thoughts of you that I cannot help but put down onto stray scraps of paper, lest they make my entire head explode in the middle of O’Donnell’s eighth period pre-calc.”

“Don’t let your entire head explode,” Steve tells him. “I like your head. Also I kinda want more notes. And we have to go on a date. And to prom.”

“Okay,” Eddie repeats, smiling big and wide again, and then he leaves for good.

“Hey, so how do you feel about maybe going to prom with Cheerleader Chrissy?”

Robin chokes on her iced caramel latte, kinda dribbles a little on her blue apron, then looks at Steve like he’s grown a second head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, Eddie kinda asked me to prom—”

“What ?”

“And I said I already made plans to go with you,” Steve continues.

“Oh my fucking God, you idiot, you did not!” Robin hisses, smacking at his chest. “Go to prom with Eddie, Steve! You’ve been pining over him for, like, weeks! Why wouldn’t you—Oh my God, you dingus! You’re fucking crazy!”

He yelps at the assault, even though Robin’s arms are all noodley and weak. “God, Robin, stop! I’m trying! I told him that and he proposed the idea of you going with Cheerleader Chrissy and that way we can all go together? Like, as a group? But he’ll be my date and Chrissy will be yours.”

She freezes and gawks at him. “Did—did fucking Weed Eddie just wingman me? With Cheerleader Chrissy? The girl I’ve liked since, like, forever?”

“I mean,” Steve hesitates. “Kinda, yeah?”

She processes this for a minute. “God dammit,” she mutters, dropping down into a crouch.

Steve looks around. Luckily the Cool Beans lobby is pretty empty at this time of day and nobody looks at them twice, so he also drops into a crouch. They’re crouching down on the floor together now. “Why are we mad about this?” he whispers.

“Because,” she says through gritted teeth, “Now I’ll owe Eddie Munson forever. He’ll never let me forget it. My tombstone will probably say Robin Marie Buckley: Owes Eddie Munson forever and ever, eternally, in life and in death.”

“I don’t really think he did it for you, if it’s any consolation.”

Robin groans. “That just makes it worse, Steve.”

“Well hey, chin up,” Steve says, clapping her on the shoulder. “You’re kinda going to prom with Cheerleader Chrissy.”

“Oh, God,” Robin laments, burying her head in her hands. “I’m gonna do something stupid and embarrass myself. I don’t even know how to dance and I’m gonna step on her feet. She’s gonna think I’m weird and that I talk too much and then she’s gonna tell the rest of the lesbians of Hawkins that I’m undateable. As if Nancy Wheeler needs another reason to hate me.”

“Well, uh, you know. I think both you and Nancy share the blame for the way that your whole situationship crashed and burned,” Steve says. “The communication wasn’t there.”

“The minute I start taking relationship advice from you, Steve Harrington, is the minute I’ve truly failed as a functional human being,” she snarks. Then, a little more serious, “You should talk to Tommy and Carol.”

Steve blinks at her. “Why? About what?”

Robin mutters something under her breath that sounds a hell of a lot like stupid fucking boys, but she doesn’t actually answer. Instead she stands back up and goes back to wiping down the counters vigorously, a furrow to her brow, leaving Steve crouched over and alone behind the bar.

“Hey,” Steve says as he sets his tray down at the lunch table. “Can you please make sure Eddie Munson passes his chem class?”

Nancy squints up at him from where she’s snacking on grapes and reading from a very worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. It’s all very in character for her. “That’s what I’m trying to do, Steve. It’s kind of the whole point of me tutoring him.”

“Right, but he really needs to graduate this year,” Steve says, as he punches a hole in his juice box. “He’s maybe taking me to prom and he can’t do that if he’s on academic probation, apparently. The prom committee doesn’t even accept bribes anymore. It’s ridiculous. Since when did everyone get so uptight?”

Nancy blinks. “Eddie. Eddie Munson. The Eddie Munson that I tutor every Thursday is maybe taking you to prom.”

“Yeah. Potentially. He quoted Shakespeare at me and made me a mixtape.”

“Of course he did.” Nancy shakes her head, and it’s unclear whether it’s in disapproval or not. “What about Tommy and Carol?

Steve pauses. He feels like he’s missing something. “What about them? Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

Nancy stares at him. “What? No, nothing. Never mind. I just thought—never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She apparently decides a subject change is in order, because she asks, “How are you even listening to the mixtape Eddie gave you?”

“I’m not, because I don’t have a Walkman.” Steve frowns. “Why couldn’t he just text me a link to a playlist? He’s so weird.”

“My mom has one in the basement somewhere. I’ll see if I can get it for you.”

“Have I told you how much I love you?”

“Yeah. It’s what made me realize I that I was a lesbian.”

“Eleanor Jane Hopper already made that joke, Nance. You’re a couple of days too late.”

“Hey,” Jonathan says as he appears, taking his seat at the table next to Nancy. Then, to Steve, “Are you not sitting with Tommy and Carol anymore?”

Steve shakes his head vehemently. “Yeah, no, I’ve been kind of avoiding them, recently, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you broke up. That explains the whole Eddie thing. And also why they’re glaring at the back of your head right now.”

All three of them turn around to look at Tommy and Carol, just a few tables down and staring Steve down like he murdered both of their mothers in cold blood. Tommy’s fist is clenched around his fruit punch Capri Sun so tight that Steve worries it’ll burst all over him. That would be pretty funny, actually.

“Wait,” Steve says after a beat, when he finally catches up to what Jonathan said. He turns back around and stares at him. “Broke up?”

“Uh. Yeah,” Jonathan says slowly. Nancy elbows him in the ribs and makes these huge wide eyes at him and Jonathan is very clearly confused about what he’s supposed to say here, and Steve can’t even think about any of that, because, well—Jonathan said broke up. Why did he say broke up? Did he think—

“Holy shit. Did you think I was dating Carol? Or—or Tommy?”

“Uh.” Jonathan’s eyes cut to Nancy again, who has apparently just decided to let this conversation play out in favor of laying her head on the grody cafeteria table in defeat. “Yeah.”

Steve gawks at him. “What—which one? Which one of them did you think I was dating?”

“Uh,” Jonathan says again. Cringes a little. “Both? Kinda?”

“What the fuck,” Steve says. “You thought I was dating them?” He pauses. Really thinks about it. “Holy fucking shit, am I dating them?”

“How do you not know if you’re dating them, Steve?” Nancy hisses, reaching over to pull at his ear.

“Ow! Fucking—stop that!” Steve smacks her hand away. “I don’t know! They never—how was I supposed to know? Nobody ever said anything! But I guess—I don’t know, I feel like a lot of things kinda make sense now? Like, they both hate Eddie for no reason, for one thing. Also I have made out with them before, but, you know, I kinda thought that was just as friends.”

Nancy looks like she’s either about to scream or cry in her despair. “Right. Okay. And how much do you happen to make out with your friends?”

Steve pointedly does not look at Jonathan. “I don’t know. The normal amount?”

“Oh my God,” Jonathan mutters, and lets his head fall into his hands.

“Wait, did I break up with them?” Steve asks. “Holy shit, I didn’t even—I didn’t say anything to them. They probably think I just ditched them without officially breaking up with them. For Eddie. For fucking Eddie Munson. Oh my God, did I cheat on them with Eddie? Is Eddie the other woman? Holy shit, am I the asshole?”

“You’re definitely not the asshole here,” Nancy says. “Like, no, normal people do not make out with their friends as often as you do without reassessing the state of their platonic relationships, sure. But they didn’t have to be so mean to Eddie when it is abundantly clear to me that none of you took the time to define any kind of relationship.”

Jonathan hums in agreement and admits, “I kinda always thought that they weren’t good enough for you.”

“Yeah. You know I never liked them. I told you that multiple times,” Nancy states brazenly. “They’re mean.”

“Says the mean lesbian,” Jonathan mutters dryly, and winces when Nancy elbows him in the ribs again.

“Yeah. Being mean sometimes is okay, though,” Steve says. “Like the kind of mean they were in middle school was fun, because we’d tease each other and not take it too seriously, but then—I don’t know, it feels like a switch flipped this past year and they’re just mean to anyone who looks at them funny. I don’t want to be like that. My parents are like that and they’re fucking miserable.”

Nancy hums. Her microbangs shift as she tilts her head. “I don’t like your parents, either.”

“Yeah. We should make a club about it.”

“I’ll join and we can officially start a religion,” Jonathan offers, bizarrely. “All it takes is three people.”

“Really? Damn. Okay,” Steve says. “Let's talk about something else right now, maybe? Before I lose my mind about this?”

Nancy, sensing his rising panic, starts prattling on about college acceptance letters and financial aid and the FAFSA, which is boring as hell but does the job just fine. He kind of zones out for the rest of lunch, feeling Tommy and Carol’s simultaneous death glares drilling into the back of his skull.

And Jesus Christ, Robin knew this whole time, didn’t she?

Steve bursts into the Cool Beans backroom that afternoon like a man possessed. Luckily, Robin’s already there, pulling on her apron.

“Did you know I was dating Tommy and Carol?” he asks bluntly, right out the gate.

Robin sighs. “Oh, are we doing this now? Can I at least knock back a shot of espresso first? I can feel a headache already coming on.”

“What the hell do you mean? There’s a this that we have to do?” Steve plows on hysterically. He starts to pace the backroom frantically. “I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind, here. You—you asked me about them, like, twice, and then today during lunch Nancy and Jonathan told me that they thought we were all dating and it’s just—I’ve never been more confused in my life, Robin.”

“Okay. That’s fine. Let me just break this down for you, then” Robin says, and gestures for Steve to take the seat at the desk and clock in on their old busted iPad. He does.

Robin rubs her hands together for a moment, then says, “I’m pretty sure that myself as well as the entire student body believed that you and Carol and Tommy were in a polyamorous relationship, that you have been since since freshman year, ever since you broke up with world-renowned lesbian Nancy Wheeler, and with regular intervals where you broke up and got back together again. Which is totally cool, props to you and all of that, right? And I think Tommy and Carol may have also thought this, too. The only person who didn’t was Eddie, since he is really not normal. Hence his unabashed flirting with you, even though both Tommy and Carol clearly don’t think that you have broken up and very vocally disapproved of that whole situation from the get-go. Polyamory is cool, Steve. But polyamory where the communication isn’t there sucks actual dick and balls.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Wait—I’ve been talking about Eddie for, like, weeks now, Robin. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Robin stares at him. Then she flicks him on his forehead. “I tried bringing it up, dingus! You just had no idea what I meant, and, like, what the hell am I gonna say? Oh, you better end the exclusive polycule you don’t even realize you’re a part of with the school’s biggest bullies before you go and date Eddie The Freak Munson!”

“Yes! That’s exactly what you say!” he cries. “Now I’m basically a cheater! Steve Harrington doesn't cheat! Steve Harrington is loyal and communicates!”

Robin sighs and shakes her head. “Look, Steve, your love life is unnecessarily convoluted, and I’m saying that as a lesbian, so you know it’s true. It's not as cut and dry as you're hoping, you know? There's layers to this that you're gonna have to peel back."

"What are you talking about?" he asks, helplessly confused.

She just sighs. "I love you, Steve, but I gotta admit that my work here is done. I told you everything I know, and now you have to use that information to fix things to the best of your ability, okay? You gotta talk to Tommy and Carol. Make things right. Now, I’d like to go fashion myself a macchiato, if that’s alright with you.”

“Fine,” Steve groans. He lets his forehead fall to the cool surface of the desk. “I’ll be out in five. Need to have a mini breakdown first.”

Robin softens with her sympathy, pats him on the back. “Alright. Breakdowns on company time will always be welcome and warranted. Let me know if you need anything, alright? And maybe brainstorm how to tell your kinda ex-partners that you were never really dating in the first place.”

“I’m probably gonna die,” Steve tells her seriously.

“You’ll be fine,” she says all good-naturedly, waving her hand. “You made it this far, Steve Harrington. What’s the worst that could happen?”

The worst that could happen is Steve sitting in Principal Higgins’ office, wedged between a fuming Tommy sporting a split lip and one Eddie Munson trying to clot his running nosebleed while dressed as an elf prince.

Backing up, the whole situation is catalyzed by Steve deciding to rip the band-aid off as quickly as possible. The day after his enlightening conversation with Robin, he makes it through classes, and then when the last bell rings, he walks over to the senior parking lot to confront Carol and Tommy about their non-relationship. 

“Hey. I have to talk to you guys,” Steve says as he approaches.

They’re both propped up against the side of Tommy’s Benz, looking intentionally very cold and standoffish. Carol’s hand is tucked into the crook of Tommy’s arm. Their shoulders are high, chins tilted higher. 

They are clearly not going to make this easy for him.

Tommy sneers. Carol says, icily, “Guess you’re finally done giving us the cold shoulder, huh?”

“To be fair,” Steve starts, and he plants his hands on his hips, bucks up to say the world's most humiliating sentence, probably. “I would just like to state, for the record, that I had no idea that we were dating.”

Tommy and Carol don’t even falter—they both immediately groan in unison, which tells Steve everything that he needs to know. 

“See, I told you,” Carol snaps, jabbing a sharp acrylic nail into Tommy’s side, and Tommy rolls his eyes.

“How the fuck didn’t he know, Carol?” he turns to Steve. “How did you not know? We were making out all the time. I carried all of your books for you to class every day. Carol holds your hand. We go on dates every other week, for Christ’s sake.”

“I thought we were just hanging out! Like, as friends!” Steve protests. He deflates almost immediately. “Look, I’m really sorry, okay? I never meant to hurt you guys. And we had fun together. I had fun with you. But I don’t—I’m not—”

He can’t find the words he needs to say because there aren’t any that describe what he’s feeling. Not really. He feels like an asshole for making such a dumb mistake, for not thinking about things more carefully. He feels careless and mean. Stupid. He hates feeling stupid.

He should’ve known better. Should’ve actually paused and taken a moment to think about his friendships, his relationships and what they all mean.

Because now he's standing here in front of two people who used to be his best friends and are still important to him in a way that he can't fathom, and he's telling them that he doesn't like them, not in the way they want him too, or in the way they thought he did for close to three years now.

It feels like a missed step. Something that could’ve been but ultimately was never meant to be. And it still hurts.

Steve could’ve loved them, maybe. If they were slightly different people. If Steve wasn’t as dumb, if Carol wasn’t as vindictive and Tommy not as cruel.

"Yeah, I think we kinda got the message already, Steve,” Tommy is saying, eyebrows drawn low. “You don’t like us like that. Whatever. We’ll get over it. Just maybe don’t go around leading people on like this, okay?”

“Hey,” Steve protests. “You can’t only blame me, alright? You guys never said anything. You never called me your boyfriend or alluded to any kind of romantic relationship. How was I supposed to—“

“I don’t know, Steve, maybe just use your brain for once?” Tommy snaps.

“That’s not fair,” Steve says, and he’s hurt all over again because here Tommy goes. “Maybe you two should’ve just said what you’re feeling. You never do! Besides when you’re angry or annoyed or you hate people, which is actually all of the time, now that I’m thinking about it. You two are mean! You’re fucking assholes!”

“Now who’s being mean,” Carol hisses. “You’re the asshole, Steve.”

“At least I actually have to try,” Steve retorts. “It just comes naturally to the two of you.”

“Shut the fuck up, Steve,” Tommy seethes. “You have no right to say that to us. You’ve been the biggest asshole ever these past couple of weeks. You ignored us for days to hang out with Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, those fucking losers, and then out of nowhere you started getting it on with Eddie fucking Munson, of all people, the king of the freaks—“

The sound of an acoustic guitar beginning to play cuts Tommy off in the middle of his sentence. They all blink at one another as it gets progressively louder, the strumming evening out into a beautiful melody, and Steve has just a single moment to think oh no, before Eddie’s voice is loudly proclaiming, for virtually all of Hawkins High School to hear, “Hear ye, hear ye! Sir Edward Munson, son of Sir Wayne Munson, first of his name, slayer of demon bats from hell and tamer of Warlocks, cordially invites you, Sir Steven of House Harrington, to the royal gala filled with fun fellowship and fellow acquaintances this spring."

Steve turns his head to see Eddie standing in the middle of the parking lot in, like, full medieval cosplay. It’s honest-to-God Renaissance Fair shit, boots and a leathery vest and a flowy linen shirt beneath it. His hair is intricately braided and he’s got fucking prosthetic elf ears on. His guitar is slung around his neck and he strums it expertly. There’s a sheathed sword strapped to his belt, too, which actually might be real. It’s Eddie, so who the fuck knows?

Not only that, but his weird grungey friends are all stanced up around him, too, also wearing clothes from the fucking middle ages. One of them has fairy wings on and is blowing pathetically into a trumpet. Another is holding up a sign that says, Prom ? in huge gothic font, looking painstakingly hand-painted. The last one kneels on the ground next to Eddie and splays his arms out, as if presenting him to Steve. 

All the while, Eddie plays his guitar. He finishes his little melody with a flourish, feet assembled in fourth position. Then he bows, hand splayed out to the side.

“So, what say you, fair prince?” Eddie asks. “Will you grant me the honor and the privilege of your presence at my side during this night of festivities?”

A beat passes, then, as everyone takes in the situation at hand.

“Oh my God,” Steve and Carol say at the same time.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Tommy decides, before catapulting himself across the parking lot and launching at a shrieking Eddie.

After the commotion dies down and O’Donnell and Kaminsky are able to separate Tommy’s hands from Eddie’s neck, they all wind up in Principal Higgins’ office. Following a brief lecture, Carol and Steve are excused early as they weren’t technically involved in the physical fight. 

Steve immediately takes a seat in the hallway outside, guiltily tapping his shoes against the linoleum and wishing that his love life wasn’t so fucking complicated. Robin was fucking right; he can never say so.

Carol is there, too, leant up against the wall opposite him. She’s still as perfect-looking as ever with her crocheted top and bootcut jeans, her messenger bag slung over a shoulder.

She doesn’t say anything at first. Neither of them do. They sit in silence outside of Higgins’ office, listening to the muffled voices and the sound of the shitty clock ticking up on the wall.

She eventually reaches the point where she can’t handle it anymore. She bites at her lip and then murmurs in the quiet, “I don’t think it’s just your fault, for the record.”

Steve looks up at her. Her pretty hair and cold blue eyes. Sharp nails and sharper tongue. He’s shocked she hasn’t tweeted anything about this incident yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time before the whole school’s hearing about it. He’s pretty sure he saw several kids filming Tommy and Eddie’s fight, the fight that wasn’t so much a fight as it was Tommy attempting murder on school property. It will almost certainly be plastered all over Snapchat in the coming hours. Steve is starting to think he’d be a lot happier if he quit social media and romantic love and became a hermit or something.

He sighs. “Thanks. And... I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. Didn’t mean to hurt you guys like that.”

“I know.” She shrugs one shoulder. “I’m sorry too. But this probably never would’ve worked out, anyway. I’m a really jealous bitch, which is never good for throuples.” She smiles to herself. “And, you know, you wouldn’t stop fucking looking at Munson. Munson, of all people. Yuck.”

“Eddie wouldn’t stop looking at me,” he corrects. “And don’t say yuck. Eddie’s nice and hot and funny.”

She waves him off. “You were both looking at each other, Steve. It’s fine. I hope you two work out. Match made in weirdo heaven.”

Robin had said the same thing. He smiles at her. She smiles back.

Both Eddie and Tommy stumble out of Principal Higgins’ office not long after. The minute the door shuts behind them, Eddie is whooping triumphantly. “Didn’t even get a suspension this time!”

“We got detention for three weeks straight, Munson,” Tommy glowers.

“I’ll take it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Hagan, but I’m actually trying to graduate this year.”

“What’re the odds of that happening?” he scoffs, and Steve frowns.

“Hey. Don’t say that.”

Both of them look over at him. Eddie’s face brightens; Tommy’s darkens.

“Whatever,” Tommy says, brushing past him to get to Carol.

“Tommy,” Steve starts, getting to his feet.

“Don’t, Steve. Just leave it,” he mutters, without turning around. His head hangs.

Steve is stubborn, so he’s not doing that. “I don’t want to. I mean, for the record, you’re being a huge asshole, and you shouldn’t have tried to strangle Eddie because he really didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I was the one who fucked up. So I—I want to apologize. For everything.”

Tommy finally turns back to him. His scowl has morphed into more of a frown. He mumbles, “‘S not your fault. Probably. It’s fine. Whatever.”

Steve blinks. “Is it?”

Tommy shrugs. He kicks at the ground. “Maybe not now, but it will be. We’ll get over it.” 

He looks to Carol, who just huffs and acquiesces with a small nod.

“I had fun,” Steve blurts. “For what it’s worth. I had fun with you guys.”

It’s the end of a chapter Steve hadn’t wanted to finish. It had been too easy, to dwell in the pages of his childhood, uninhibited. To turn off his brain and be the king of the school. To be with Tommy and Carol, too, to whatever unwitting extent that meant: platonically to him, romantically to them, but meaningful all the same.

Tommy’s face softens. He really is handsome. All freckles and soft brown eyes. Unerringly loyal, too, an unspoken devotion to the line of his shoulders and jaw. In another life Steve could’ve really loved him. Carol, too.

They’ll do just fine without him, though.

“Yeah,” he says. “We did too.”

They nod at one another, and Carol waves, waggling her fingers, and then the both leave, just like that, their hands clasping tightly together between them just before the door shuts, closing them off from Steve.

“What the hell was that all about?” Eddie asks obliviously, cutting through Steve’s wistful reminiscing.

Steve looks at him and almost bursts into laughter because the guy’s all wide confused eyes and he’s still in his horribly nerdy getup, elf ears and cape and all. “You’re kind of ridiculous.”

Eddie gapes. “Huh? What—me? I’m ridiculous?”

“Yes, you,” Steve tells him, rolling his eyes. “Who the hell promposes to someone in the senior parking lot while in full medieval cosplay?”

Eddie looks offended. “Uh, excuse you, this is not cosplay. I’m not portraying a character. Well, I guess I am, but I’m my own character, Edward the Banished, so I think it’s really more like LARPing than anything else—“

“Oh my God, please shut up,” Steve groans, but he still reels Eddie in to press his lips to the guy’s cheek. 

He’s weak like that.

“Wha-huh,” Eddie mumbles unintelligibly.

“Yes,” Steve says, fisting his hands in the lapels of Eddie’s dumb cape. 

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes to prom, Eddie. I wanna go to prom with you. Sir Steven of House Harrington humbly accepts your invitation or whatever.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, sounding far away all of a sudden. His eyes go wide again. “You cleared it with Robin?”

“Yep.”

“And she’s good to go with Chrissy?”

“Yeah.”

“And would you still wanna go on a date with me sometime soon? Even after all this bullshit with Tommy and Carol?”

“Yes.”

“And… You really wanna go with me? Like, I know with promposals it’s very public so there’s this kind of pressure to give in, but if you don’t wanna go, you totally don’t have to, you know? I figured you would just appreciate the gesture, but, well—yeah.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You think too much.”

“So you wanna go with me? To prom?”

“Duh.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, easing down. He smiles, crooked and charming. “Cool.”

He reaches up and takes his fake elf ears off. The fact that he wore them during his meeting with Higgins is somehow both infuriating and endearing. Definitely ballsy. The sword on his belt alone probably landed him an extra week in detention just for violating dress code. 

“I’m gonna kiss you now. Like, for real,” Eddie announces. “Just needed to take the ears off first, 'cause sometimes they get tangled in my hair.”

“Right.” Steve looks around. They’re still standing outside the principal’s office. Higgins is probably still fuming on the other side, and who knows when his nosey secretary is going to get back. The lighting is fluorescent, one of the bulbs blinking, and there’s a weird stain on the linoleum floor that looks like it’s been there forever. “You want our first actual kiss to be here?”

Eddie doesn’t even hesitate. “Sure. Why not?”

Steve doesn't have a good reason to protest.

He meets Eddie halfway.

Prom is kind of a nightmare in the best way possible, messy and scandalous and vastly underwhelming but still so much fun. 

For one thing, they add Nancy and Jonathan to their preexisting party and meet up at the Wheelers’ place to take pictures, and all of the neighborhood moms are present for some reason, and they all think Steve is dating Robin.

Robin’s feathers are understandably very ruffled by this. “I understand the confusion, because me and Steve are matching. But also… Me and Steve are wearing matching suits.” When the moms all continue to stare at her blankly, she sighs. “I’m a lesbian.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Wheeler says, and then waves her hands frantically. “Oh. That’s wonderful. So is Nancy. Have you two—”

“Oh my God, Mom, please don’t,” Nancy groans. “We’re just friends.”

It’s kind of very lesbian of the two of them to have been in a relationship that wasn’t quite a relationship that lasted maybe two weeks, and then for them to remain friends after, Steve thinks. He will not say so for fear of incurring Nancy’s wrath and Robin’s psychoanalysis of his own relationships. He’s suffered through enough of both of those things over the past few months, what with the veritable nightmare that was his and Tommy and Carol’s unconventional relationship and its accompanying drama.

“Me and Robin are actually each other’s dates for prom, Mrs. Wheeler,” Chrissy chimes in, smiling shyly and flashing her big white teeth.

She’s stunning in that girl-next-door kind of way, blonde hair and blue eyes, all demure, a delicate kind of pretty. But she’s wearing this huge poofy taffeta prom dress that might’ve been in style in the eighties, then went out of style, and is probably now back in style again. Chrissy’s cool like that, always ahead of the trends. Plus she’s got these huge pink platform boots on her feet, and her hair is awesome. Steve will need to consult her later about how she gets that much volume in her trademark ponytails.

“Oh,” Mrs. Wheeler squints. “I thought you were going with Eddie.”

“No, Karen, Eddie is going with Steve,” Mrs. Henderson chimes in patiently. “They have matching boutonnieres.”

“Steve, I didn’t know you were gay! I would’ve set you up with Jonathan,” Ms. Byers says, and she actually sounds pretty upset about it, which is kind of funny.

“Oh. Uh, sorry?” Steve says. He’s about to tell her that he’s actually bisexual, but she’s looking at him with these huge earnest eyes and he’s not sure the specifics really even matter right now.

“I’m not gay, Mom,” Jonathan says tiredly, like a liar who lies because he absolutely swapped spit with Steve once or twice and he also definitely enjoyed it.

Eddie cuts in, then. “Sorry, Ms. B, but I swooped in and wooed Steve with my awesome mixtape-making skills and also my promposal, and he’s mine now. Better luck next time,” he tells her, entirely serious.

“Oh. You made him a mixtape?”

“He did,” Steve confirms. His hand, which had been tucked into the crook of Eddie’s elbow pretty much this whole time, squeezes. “On a cassette and everything, and it’s all songs from the seventies and eighties.”

A lot of it was eighties metal, which Steve regrettably could not get all that into, although he still listened to the entire playlist on the Wheeler’s old Walkman just on principle. He did enjoy the pop songs. There were some pretty cool ballads on there that Steve hasn’t been able to get out of his head all week. Alone by Heart and Eyes Without a Face by Billy Idol. Angel by Aerosmith. Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon. He plays them all on repeat.

Each member of the Mom Squad looks positively delighted by this revelation.

“Charles made me a mixtape when we first started going together,” Mrs. Sinclair says dreamily. “It’s so romantic.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot of effort to find and record all of the songs you want,” Ms. Byers adds. “Definitely not as easy as the Apple Music.”

“Eddie’s my new favorite,” Mrs. Henderson decides.

Eddie preens at all of the praise. Steve rolls his eyes but still leans in to plant a kiss on Eddie’s cheek, smiling into his skin. He can’t help that Eddie’s cute.

And, well, beyond his overall charm, he looks really handsome today. He always looks handsome, of course, but Steve’s never seen him all prettied up like this: a spiffy tux and a red bowtie left untied around his neck, his curls loose and conditioned. He’s still got on all of his jewelry, his silver rings and chain necklaces, and he’s wearing his shitkicker boots instead of dress shoes, too. 

Steve really likes this about him. His staunch refusal to change himself for everyone else. Even when he’s dressing up for a fancy event, he’s still Eddie Munson: dark aesthetic but pale like a vampire, chains rattling with each heavy step of his boots, layers upon layers of him just waiting to be pulled back.

Eddie catches him looking and smiles. It’s small and crooked and beautiful.

“Whatcha staring at?” he asks quietly, as the moms go back to hounding Robin and Chrissy, trying to get them to stand up on the stairs for a generic couple’s prom photo. Robin has had this dreamy expression on her face all day, even as she was getting ready at Steve’s, like she can’t quite believe this is happening.

Good, Steve thinks vindictively. Or maybe supportively. It’s hard to discern the two emotions when it comes to his friendship with Robin, in all honesty.

“Nothing,” Steve answers belatedly. “Robin. You.”

“Well, is it me or Robin or nothing?”

“All of it,” Steve says. “Mostly you. You know, I kinda stare at you a lot.”

Steve gets this weird sense of deja vu, then, a recollection of a conversation at his locker earlier in the school year, of Carol telling him that Eddie’s a creep.

She couldn’t have been more wrong about him, Steve thinks.

"Not as much as I stare at you," Eddie says. "You're really pretty, you know that?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

“Hey!” a very familiar voice calls, drawing Steve right out of his thoughts and his conversation with Eddie, and he turns to find all six of the Cool Beans kids piled up by the entrance to the Wheeler’s basement. They’re staring rapturously at the prom group. Max’s eyes are wide, focused on the volume of Chrissy’s huge dress. Will’s cheeks are pink again. Mike looks less than amused by the situation at hand.

“Oh. Hey, guys,” Steve says. “What’s going on?”

“Is this the nerd you were trying to impress?” Dustin asks bluntly, and he points at Eddie, who startles and then laughs.

Steve can feel himself flushing. “I was not trying to impress anyone, thanks for asking.”

“Yes, he was,” Robin calls at the same time. “And yeah, this is the nerd. They’re going to prom together.”

The kids all titter excitedly at this revelation, giggling behind their hands and whispering to one another right in front of him like the little assholes that they are.

“What do they mean about impressing me?” Eddie asks, his hand sliding around Steve’s waist and squeezing.

“Nothing,” Steve lies, not meeting his eyes.

“He made us teach him how to play games so he could impress you with his unexpected knowledge and skill level, since you run the gaming club,” Dustin says immediately, the traitor.

Eddie’s face lights up. “No way. Really? What games?”

“Board games, mostly,” Steve mumbles. “Nothing too crazy.”

“Steve learned Settlers of Catan for you,” Lucas says. “Even though he hates it.”

“None of you guys would trade with me!” he protests. “I only had three settlements the entire game because Wheeler stole all of the wheat!”

“That’s how the game works, Steve,” Mike says with a scowl.

“That is adorable,” Eddie says. “You’re so cute, Steve Harrington. You learned games for me with a bunch of shitty middle schoolers. I like you so much.”

Steve turns and meets his eyes, ignoring the sounds of the children fake-gagging in the background. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Car’s here, guys,” Nancy calls from the front. “Ready to go?”

“You ready?” Eddie asks, offering his hand. Wide, calloused, warm, soft where it counts, right in the middle of his palm.

Steve nods, takes his hand. “Course.”

Halfway through the night, the prom committee gets up onstage to announce the prom king and queen, and Steve sinks into his seat at their corner table because he fully expects his name to be called. 

This turns out to be a bit presumptuous of him because Nicole C. gets behind the mic and winds up screaming Tommy and Carol’s names instead.

Immediately afterward, Steve just sits there, blinking and processing and honestly feeling more than a little stupid.

“You okay?” Eddie asks from his place next to him, his thumb running a careful path over the swell of Steve’s knuckles.

“Yeah, yeah. I just—I guess I kinda thought I might win,” he admits. “I definitely thought Chrissy was gonna win. She was a shoo-in. Jesus, how the hell did Tommy and Carol even get anyone to vote for them?”

Eddie looks at him. He doesn’t respond to anything else Steve says, just asks, “Did you want to?”

“What?”

“Win. Did you want to win? Did you want to be prom king?”

Steve pauses and takes the time to actually think about it, even though he knows the answer. “Not really,” he confesses.

It’s true. He’s recently found that popularity is not a contest he wants to win, because it kind of makes him feel like shit about himself. Prom King is not a title he wants to carry with him for the rest of his life. He doesn’t want the spotlight. Doesn’t want his picture taken, doesn’t want to slow dance with a girl in front of the entire graduating class. Doesn’t want it to be another thing his parents can brag about to try and cover up the fact that he didn’t get into Notre Dame or ISU and is headed to Roane Community in the fall instead. Oh, did you know that Steven was voted prom king? Go look at his picture up on the mantle!

He doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want any of that bullshit.

He just wants Eddie. Just wants his friends, too. The real ones. Robin and Nancy and Jonathan.

“Oh, good,” Eddie says, sounding relieved, and then he laughs right after. “That’s good. Okay, I kind of have to tell you something.”

Steve looks at him, confused. “Uh. Okay?” 

Eddie scoots his chair as close as possible just so he can grab at both of Steve's hands, hold them up to his wide warm chest, and confess, “I may or may not have but definitely did break into the classroom that the prom committee have been using and messed with the ballots.”

A beat.

“What,” Steve says, reeling.

“I hacked it so that Tommy and Carol would win.”

Steve blinks at him. “What—I don’t—” he pauses to gather his thoughts. They seem to just burst out of him regardless. “You rigged the votes so that Tommy and Carol would win prom king and queen?"

Eddie nods.

"Jesus Christ, why ?”

He shrugs. “Look, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t really care for the two of them,” he says. “Who does? They’re assholes. But, well, a little birdie informed me pretty recently that they may or may not have thought that they were in a relationship with you for the past four years or so, and here I come fucking it all up and making them feel objectively very bad about themselves by swooping in and stealing you away. Rightfully so, might I add, but still. Even though you are your own person and it’s just as much their fault as it is yours and mine, I kinda felt bad about it. I figured they deserved a win.”

“So you decided that breaking and entering into the prom committee classroom and forging a bunch of fake votes for two of the bitchiest people in the school was the way to go,” Steve says, awe coloring his voice.

“Well. Yeah,” Eddie admits easily. He shrugs again. “Seems like the exact kind of vapid bullshit they’d care about, you know?”

They turn to look at Tommy and Carol, who’re out in the middle of the dance floor, basking in the spotlight. They’re also beaming at one another as they slow dance, wearing their matching crowns and sashes. Carol says something below her breath that makes Tommy throw his head back and cackle. His crown is crooked on his head. 

Eddie’s probably definitely right.

Steve turns back to him. “I think I really like you,” he tells him, and Eddie grins, wide and wicked.

“I know,” he says, and it’s not braggy. Just a fact. He leans in close, his breath warm on Steve’s face. “Steve Harrington, you gamed for me.”

“I did. I’ll never live it down,” he laments. “And I didn’t even get to surprise you at your club like I wanted to. Did all that work for nothing.”

“Nah,” Eddie says. He takes Steve’s hand, threads his fingers into his. “Not for nothing, my darling. It just prepared you for me, because there's no way we're gonna date without you having played at least one D&D campaign. You’re gonna be awesome at TTRPGs, though, I just know it.”

Steve does not know what that means, but he still flushes, pleased. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, paladin of my heart. Wanna dance?”

Steve smirks. “I don’t know, are they gonna play an 80s power ballad anytime soon?”

“Probably not. Let’s go bother the DJ,” Eddie decides, and he pulls Steve with him, across the dance floor and to the DJ booth. 

On the outskirts of the crowd, Nancy and Jonathan dance. She’s got her hands on his waist and his hands on her shoulders and they’re engaged in what appears to be a heated discussion, probably about something supremely nerdy.

Robin and Chrissy aren’t too far away, and Robin’s suit is perfectly tailored just like Steve’s. She laughs as Chrissy twirls her around and around. Then she catches Steve’s eye and grins. Steve winks back.

Tommy and Carol continue to gaze lovingly into one another’s eyes while stomping on other people’s feet, which is definitely intentional, knowing them. Carol’s stilettos are no fucking joke. Their crowns shine in the hazy strobe lighting, and they’re made of cheap plastic but if it works for them, it works for them. Steve won’t judge.

“Hey, Mr. DJ, can we get Air Supply going in here? Maybe some Spandau Ballet? I’ve got a gentleman I have to woo!” Eddie is crowing, and the DJ is looking at him like he’s fucking insane. He kind of is. Steve likes his kind of crazy. Good crazy. Good weird, nice weird. 

It all makes him feel a little more normal. He figures that’s kind of what love is.

The DJ does eventually play something from the 80s, although it’s not Air Supply, thank God, and Steve ends up on the floor with his date, too. Arms wound around each other, Eddie keeping a running commentary going in his ear about how Jason Carver keeps looking over at them with a particularly homophobic glint in his eyes. Also about how cute Chrissy and Robin look together, all thanks to him. If he didn’t go out of his way to woo Steve, then both of them would still be pining from afar.

They keep slow dancing together even when the song changes and it’s some new upbeat pop techno nonsense. They’re the only ones dancing like this. Nobody else cares. The lights pulse, paint Eddie’s face blue then green then beautiful liquid amber.

Steve wants to kiss him so he does. Eddie doesn’t hesitate; he kisses back. 

“Hey,” he says loudly. “I know we kinda just got here, and once we leave we won’t be allowed to come back in, which is kinda bullshit, but would you wanna get out of here and go make out in the parking lot?”

Steve has never wanted to do anything more in his life. He nods, follows Eddie through the crowd and towards the double doors that lead outside, ignoring Robin’s loud jeering and Chrissy’s tinkling laughter, Nancy’s unimpressed look and Jonathan sending him a subtle thumbs up.

Prom is overrated anyway.