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The phone rings about a quarter after 1am.
Eddie’s not remotely close to sleeping, he’s been messing around with his guitar, taking advantage of the empty trailer to make some noise without running the risk of waking Wayne, but he still feels like someone’s jabbed him in the solar plexus when he hears it.
It’s so out of the ordinary that it has to be bad news, no one calls in the middle of the night with good news in Eddie’s experience. He almost wants to let it go, let the phone ring and ring until it goes silent again, because ignorance is bliss and all that. But it could be for Wayne, it could be Wayne, it could be about Wayne, and that’s what breaks the paralysis spell cast over Eddie.
His hand is already sweaty around the receiver when he picks it up, his heart ticking unpleasantly in his throat when he says, “Hello?”
There’s a lot of voices, muffled and distant, jumbling around the background and a hesitant breath rattling in Eddie’s ear. He waits, wonders if this is prank call, some idiot messing around, but then he hears his name. It takes him a second to place the voice, because it isn’t like they’ve had all that many conversations on the phone alright.
His stomach does this thing, sort of spasms and makes him feel like he’s going to upchuck the bag of doritos he had a while ago, his heart accelerating into hyperspeed.
“Steve?”
“Hey.” Steve says, voice gravelly and pinched in a weird way, makes that wild horse kick harder against Eddie’s rib cage.
He told himself the next time he saw Steve Harrington he was gonna know better, didn’t need to take crap from a guy who was so hellbent on upholding the status quo in all its pathetic simpering glory. But that’s easier in theory, obviously, because now Eddie’s on the phone waiting on Steve to say something instead of hanging up on him. “Uh, sorry for—I didn’t really know who to call.”
-
Eddie hates to give the guy credit for anything but he probably owes Billy Hargrove for the fact that he ever gets to kiss Steve Harrington.
Not, like, directly or anything but definitely at least indirectly. Cause and effect and all that. Like Billy Hargrove beat Steve’s face in with his own hands and Steve comes to school looking like he went twelve rounds with a brick wall with anger management issues and Eddie finds him puking in the boy’s bathroom.
“It’s sad how it looks about the same coming up as it did going down.” Is the first real thing Eddie ever says to Steve, hovering awkwardly over him while Steve spits into the trash can, because the guy barely made it to the bathroom, nevermind a toilet. Eddie was in here adding a pretty impressive looking phallus to the tile wall because if his classmates were going to cover every available surface in here with dicks he might as well show them up. Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and there’s a typhoon. Other times an asshole throws a punch and Eddie’s art time gets cut short by a dude puking his guts out.
“Sorry.” Steve mumbles, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Steve’s pale and shaky and frankly a little gross, but Eddie’s not the squeamish type. Eddie tears a shitty paper towel off the dispenser and wets it, hands it to Steve so he’s at least not just wiping puke off his face and onto his hand.
“You didn’t hork on me, man. It’s not a problem.”
He gets a good look at Steve’s face when he turns to take the napkin, has to do a fucking double take when sees the state its in. “Jesus fuck, Harrington.”
“Yeah, yeah. Take a picture.” Steve grumbles, balling the napkin up and tossing it in the trash can. He starts messing with the edges of the trash bag, pulling it free.
The bruises look gnarly and fresh as hell given how purple they still look, but it’s the mean looking scab at the corner of Steve’s mouth that makes Eddie wince. He runs his tongue over the inside of his lip, remembers the throbbing heat of a split lip, blood collecting inside his mouth. It almost makes him want to spit.
“Uh, should you be here?” Eddie asks because Steve looks rough, hands fumbling as he tries to tie off the trash bag holding his regurgitated lunch.
“Where else would I be?” Steve asks, tired, taking a deep breath before trying to tie the bag closed again. His right hand looks swollen, and there’s a bunch of bandaids around his fingers, colorful pops of neon green and pink.
“Um, home?” Eddie suggests, butting in and taking pity on the guy, grabbing the edges of the plastic bag and tying it closed. He sets it off to the side for the custodian to collect, hopes no one fucks with it before then. Well, if they do, they’re in for a messy surprise.
Steve snorts, winces, his nose scrunching up as much as it can, what with the swelling. “Nah. My dad dropped me off himself this morning.” Steve touches the bridge of his nose carefully, sniffs like he’s testing his airways.
“Okay but did he actually see you?” Eddie asks aloud, because no one way anyone with eyes thinks Steve should be upright.
Steve shrugs, and that conjures another flinch, a pained little grunt. He looks at Eddie with an asshole rejoiner right there on the tip of his tongue, Eddie can spot it from a mile away, but then his expression shifts, eyes widening, like he’s realized who he’s talking to. “Munson?”
“That’s the name.” Eddie says, sort of worried Steve’s having a stroke or something.
Steve heaves a sigh, turns towards the sink and washes his hands with jerky unsteady motions, braces his wet hands on the sink afterwards, head hanging forward.
Eddie doesn’t know what to do. Leave him here? Maybe. Get Steve to the nurse? Probably. He looks at his watch, knows there’s not much of lunch left. He wonders if the guys wonder what the hell happened to him, knows he can count on Jeff to pick up his shit at least.
“What period do you have next?” Eddie asks, shifting uncomfortably. He doesn’t love the feeling, the off kilter tilt to his personal brand of normalcy. Eddie Munson sticking around and worrying about pretty rich boy Steve Harrington. But the truth is Eddie doesn’t have an ax grind with Steve, not personally, more like, in theory. The world he represents in Eddie’s doctrine. And right now, looking at Steve in his dumb color blocked sweater and all-American blue jeans, face busted six ways from Sunday, Eddie’s not seeing a symbol. He’s seeing a guy who could use a little help and he’s not even asking for it.
Steve groans, “Gym. Fuck.”
Eddie nods. He’s got math, already knows he’ll be lucky if he can muster a D for the semester. Albertson hates his guts, no two ways about it, and Eddie likes to repay him with equal amounts of sarcastic derision. He thinks they could both use the break for each other, get their week off to a good start.
“I’m heading out. Want a ride?”
Steve looks up, stares at Eddie in the chipped bathroom mirror. He swallows, seems to be visibly struggling against any kind of relief when he asks, “Where?”
Eddie pulls a face, hams up the nonchalance. “Anywhere you like. I can drop you off at your place if you want.”
Steve holds himself real still, considering. His hands squeeze the sink. “The school will call.”
Eddie does reach out this time, rests his hand gently on Steve’s shoulder blade through his sweater. “You look like you’re about to do an encore of that scene from The Exorcist. I think your folks might just believe you’re not feeling good.”
Steve takes the ride. When Eddie asks him what the hell happened he ignores him all together. “I owe you one.” He tells Eddie before he climbs out of the passenger seat, grabs hold of the door for a few long seconds before he shaky lets go.
It’s not til later, almost a whole month later, after Steve turns up at Eddie’s lunch table and says thank you with a set of black dice, numbered with red, and mumbled, “A friend of mine plays that game you play. He said these were cool.” After Gareth asks Steve to join them for lunch and Steve does, sits on the bench next to Eddie and laughs at Freak’s joke, after Jeff asks Steve if he wants to hang out sometime and Steve says sure. It’s not until after Eddie realizes Steve doesn’t really talk to Hagan or the rest of varsity jacket wearing herd, after he hears that Nancy Wheeler is dating Jonathan Byers now and sees Steve walking with them in the hallway like it’s nothing. Not til all that and more has happened that Steve tells him about Billy Hargrove going berserker on him because Steve couldn’t let him get to a kid. “Don’t know that actually helped that much. As you saw.”
Steve’s a weird guy, Eddie’s learning. Not weird as in freak but weird all the same. The guy babysits on weeknights and smokes with Eddie on weekends and hangs out with his ex-girlfriend and the guy she dumped him for. Hargrove’s got some sort of vendetta against him from the few encounters Eddie’s been witness to around school. That last part clicks now, at least.
“You tried though.” Eddie tells him, sitting on one of the picnic tables where he usually comes to deal, but now he’s just sitting here smoking with Steve, who always bitches about Eddie’s preferred brand of cigs and takes one anyway, both of them freezing their balls off because winter blows in Indiana. “A lot of people don’t bother doing that much.”
The scab on the side of Steve’s lip dried up and peeled off, but there’s a little scar there. It could be a freckle or something if you didn’t know it wasn’t there before.
“If you say so, man.”
So, yeah, Eddie guesses he owes Hargrove for the fact that he becomes friends with Steve Harrington. And if that’s true then Eddie owes him for the February day Steve leans forward and kisses Eddie while they’re sitting on the floor of Eddie’s room, fucking math book open on Eddie’s lap like it’s an after school special. If Albertson’s to be believed that’s called a transitive property or some shit. If A equals B and B equals C, then Billy Hargrove’s a goddamn matchmaker.
“Billy’s dead.” Steve says, sitting in the passenger seat of Eddie’s van at 1:25AM after asking Eddie to pick him up from Hawkins General. Eddie doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just drives.
-
“I didn’t really know who to call.” Steve said on the phone and of course Eddie went, there’s no universe in which Eddie wasn’t going to go.
Steve’s parents are in fucking Santa Fe or Albuquerque or something, visiting an aunt or an uncle or a second cousin twice removed. Steve had told him back at the start of June, asked Eddie if he thought he’d like to come over, maybe stay a while, since he was gonna have the house to himself. There’d been something eager and anticipatory to Steve’s stare when he said it, set off a glow worm wiggling in Eddie’s stomach because he might barely be passing English but he knew about inferring. Big house all to themselves, no need to rush off to meet curfews or hoof it before parental cars pulled into the driveway. Getting time to actually do more than just stick their hands down each other’s pants.
That was before though, and Eddie hasn’t set foot in Steve’s house since, and now he’s pulling up outside in the dark, unsure of whether to consider it the middle of the night or the asscrack of morning. It doesn’t really matter but the storyteller in Eddie needs one or the other. Devil’s in the details.
“Fuck.” Steve sighs, the first thing either of them has said since Eddie pulled up to the hospital. “The keys.” Steve rubs at his thighs, hunches forward, “I don’t have my keys.”
“Uh.” Eddie says, feels useless, but Steve sounds seconds from unraveling completely so one of them needs to keep it together. “Okay, that’s okay. Your folks keep a spare? One of those fake rocks or a conspicuous lawn gnome?”
Steve’s resting his head on the dashboard, turns to look at Eddie under the tiny overhead light. “My mom thinks lawn ornaments are tacky.” He says, and there’s something wrong with his voice, the syllables clicking together all funny. The doctors probably gave him something for pain. Eddie only got a quick look under the lamppost in the hospital parking lot but he can look at Steve’s face now, the low light heightening the depth and breadth of the bruise around his eye. Shit, the doctors better have given him something for the pain.
“Right, of course she does.” Eddie chews on a piece of his own hair, hates what he’s gonna need to do to get Steve inside his house. He breathes out hard through his nose. “Okay. Wait here.” He scopes out the porch just in case Steve’s just forgotten about a spare and when that fails he goes back to the van, fishes around in the cupholder until he finds a bobby pin.
Lock picking wasn’t Dad’s bread and butter but he could do it well enough, showed Eddie the ropes same as he did around cars. It’s come in handy the two times Eddie locked himself out of the trailer and now it gets the front door of the Harrington’s house open. Steve stumbles out of the van once Eddie’s got the hallway light on, taking funny shuffling steps forward like he’s forgotten how to bend his legs somewhere between here and the hospital.
“You okay?” Eddie asks, even though that’s a stupid fucking question. He can see a wider scope of the damage now that he’s working with more than the overhead light in his van. Steve’s eye is nearly swollen shut, and there’s dried blood crusting around his nostrils, blood dried brown on his wrinkled uniform shirt. His wrists have angry red bands around them as if—
Eddie swallows, reaches out and carefully takes Steve’s hands. “What happened?”
“There was a fire. At the mall.” Steve says woodenly, eyes darting away, looking over Eddie’s shoulder.
“Fire—did the fire kick your ass?” Eddie asks, because he might not have graduated on his second try at senior year, but he knows first hand what it looks like when someone’s laid their hands on you.
Steve swallows. Shakes his head.
“I’m tired.” He says softly. He blinks his one good eye rapidly, the other one just sort of twitches, and his mouth twists, lower lip skewing left, the flats of Steve’s teeth digging in, like he’s forgotten about the twin splits in the skin. (Like Steve bit through his lip already.) “Can I—sleep. I need to sleep.”
“Okay.” Eddie says even though there’s nothing okay with any of this. Nothing’s felt okay since they fought but this isn’t just a disagreement between buddies, this is something bad enough to beat Steve black and blue.
Bad enough to kill Billy.
“C’mon.” He expects Steve to fight him on it, or send him home, but Steve accepts Eddie’s arm around his waist, accepts his help up the stupid stairs to Steve’s room.
“You need anything?” Eddie asks once he’s got Steve upstairs, sitting on the edge of his bed. Eddie’s vest is still hanging off the back of Steve’s desk chair where he left it last time he was over. He’s been too chickenshit to come get it, sort of thought Steve would either bring it by the trailer or toss it all together. Before tonight he wasn’t sure which outcome he really wanted. He didn’t want to lose the vest, of course, the Leviathan Cross patch had been a total find during a day trip to Bloomington. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to see Steve either, not after their blow up.
Steve makes a noncommittal nonsensical sound at the back of his throat, the majority of his attention on the shirt he’s trying to take off over his head. “Shit.” Steve hisses once he’s managed it, arms immediately coming down as if he means to hug himself, but he stops short, turns his attention to unfastening the button on his shorts.
Eddie turns around—why? He’s seen it before, done it before, used his own hands to unbuckle Steve’s belt—pulls open the drawer of Steve’s dresser to find a pair of gym shorts for Steve. There’s the squeak of the mattress moving and when he turns around Steve’s under the blankets already, socks balled up on the floor next to the royal blue fabric of his discarded uniform. Steve’s briefs are on the floor too, kicked almost under his bed.
Eddie opens his mouth, stands there holding Steve’s shorts like an idiot. “Steve?” Eddie asks, walking slowly towards the bed. Steve groans, rolls on his side.
“I’m going to get you some water.” He sets the shorts next to Steve. “Uh, in case you’re cold.” Steve nods into the pillow, moves to push the blankets off. Steve’s chest and stomach, shit his whole abdomen, are covered in bruises too, blood red and angry. Eddie hisses just to look at them, moves closer to help Steve sit up even if Steve didn’t ask.
Eddie’s stomach cramps, his head spins. He remembers being a beanpole kid with a loud mouth, the sore ache that set off every time he moved.
“Did Hargrove do this to you?” Eddie asks, fear gone rank in his mouth. Not just fear. Anger cuts through the worry, sharp-edged and lethal. Eddie’s not a fighter by nature but he thinks he could run out into the night right now looking for vengeance if it didn’t mean leaving Steve alone.
Steve looks up, sitting there naked with bruises all over his body, his face, and Eddie does his best to be gentle, cradles Steve’s face in his hands.
“No.” Steve says simply. “It wasn’t—” His mouth trembles, he falls quiet. Steve lays a shaking hand on Eddie’s wrist. He doesn’t squeeze or push or anything like that. He just holds on.
It’s hard to believe that a week ago Eddie swore to himself he was done with this. Done with Steve. Right now he wants to wrap his arms around him, hold him as close as humanly possible until he figures out how to get closer than even that. That’s always been his problem, he’s got an all or nothing type of mind. Wayne’s always warned he’s gotta learn temperance before he burns himself out (like Dad, Wayne doesn’t say but Eddie hears it, knows it as the threat that looms over his head, the shoe everyone’s just waiting to drop).
Eddie nods in response to Steve’s silence, something terrible brewing in his chest, but he can’t let it loose right now, bends and kisses Steve’s greasy hair, carefully runs his fingertips through the stringy strands falling forward, pushing them back behind his ears. There’s dried blood behind Steve’s ears too and Eddie wants to scream, ask a hundred questions until he knows who he needs to kill.
Steve squirms when Eddie gets too close, accidentally knocking against Steve’s face as he tries to get a better look at his head.“Sorry. Sorry.” Eddie apologies, steps back, hands held up. “Here. Just let me,” he grabs the shorts, kneels so he can at least get them around Steve’s ankles, pull them up enough that Steve doesn’t have to bend forward and fuck with all the bruises on his stomach. “Alright, big boy. Lay down, just rest. I’ll be right back.”
He books it back downstairs, realizes he didn’t lock his fucking van doors, has to trek back outside to pull his keys out of the ignition and deal with the doors. He’s shivering even though it isn’t exactly cold, still Eddie hurries back inside regardless, rubs at the goosebumps on his arms. He catches a glimpse of himself in the window of the Harrington’s kitchen once he’s got the light on, sees himself looking ragged and out of place in an earth-tone tiled nightmare. He ran out in his cut off sweats and the t-shirt he’d been wearing all day, didn’t even grab socks before shoving his feet into his sneakers and heading to the hospital, hair pulled up and folded in half by a rubber band. His bangs are everywhere.
Whatever, he’s not entering a beauty contest, Eddie thinks darkly, pulling a tall drinking glass out of the dish rack and filling it with cold water from the tap. He turns to go, but he thinks of Steve’s blackened eye, hesitates for a split second before he goes to the freezer. It’s neatly stocked with frozen dinners and ice cube trays and, thank god, frozen produce. Eddie grabs a bag of corn kernels and then snags a dish towel, has just enough brains left over to flick off the kitchen lights behind him.
The entryway light he leaves on because he doesn’t feel like busting his ass trying to climb Steve’s staircase in the dark. It’s not like the Harringtons can’t afford a little extra on the light bill.
Steve’s still laying down when Eddie gets back to his room, flat on his back, eye closed but face rigid, hands clenched tight in the sheet laying over him. The comforter is still folded over at the base of the bed.
“Hey.” Eddie says quietly, creeps closer, sets the water down on the bedside table so he can wrap the bag of frozen corn in the dish towel.
Steve opens his eye when Eddie’s standing right over him. “I thought, y’know, to help with the swelling.” Steve doesn’t reach for it, but he stays still when Eddie bends, places his makeshift icepack against the side of Steve’s face.
He’s sitting on the edge of Steve’s bed, near his hip, before he even knows it, half-surprised when Steve’s hand moves off the sheet and grabs at his thigh.
“Really thought I—” Steve starts, stops, a whining hum at the back of his mouth before he says, “wasn’t gonna see you again.” His eye flutters, and Eddie wishes he knew if it’s exhaustion or painkillers or injury that has Steve sounding so out of it. All of them maybe. Probably.
A week ago Eddie might have scoffed, made a pithy remark about how Steve only had himself to thank if that happened. Now though it’s a loaded statement, a real possibility given the state Steve’s in. Shit, Eddie picked him up from the hospital. The hospital.
Billy Hargrove is dead and Steve’s whole body is wrecked and someone did this to him. Someone hurt him.
Eddie’s eyes sting, but he doesn’t think he’s allowed to cry right now, not when Steve is struggling to hang on.
“I’m here, Stevie.” Eddie says, can’t help himself, and the lack of a glare following the slip of his tongue is almost as bad as Steve’s hand squeezing his leg. Steve hates when he calls him that. “Looking right at you.”
He covers Steve’s hand, his head a mess. He was only a kid when he was taking care of himself, not like there was anyone around teaching Eddie first aid basics after Dad hit the bottle too hard. He knows how to slap a bandage over a cut and put ice over a goose egg. Not like he can do anything for Steve that they haven’t done at the hospital already, right?
Still. He feels useless.
Steve closes his eye again, breathes out. Eddie rubs the back of his hand gently, soothes his palm a bit up Steve’s arm, keeps at it over and over again until Steve’s arm relaxes, his breathing going loose in his chest.
The frozen corn falls off Steve’s face when his head lolls to the side. Eddie reaches for it, puts it off to the side. Does he leave now? But what if Steve wakes up, somehow worse? What if he needs help? He doesn’t have his keys and his car isn’t downstairs and his parents aren’t coming home for another week.
Eddie can’t leave. He knows that much. He can’t.
-
He kisses the back of Steve’s hand when he moves it off his leg, pulls the rumpled comforter up from the foot of the bed and drapes it over Steve as carefully as he can.
He kicks his shoes under the bed. Eddie turns off the overhead light and goes to turn on the desk lamp, doesn’t want to leave Steve in the dark in case he needs to get up. Steve’s full-sized bed is big enough for both of them, Eddie knows that from experience even if he’s never actually spent the night. Still he’s careful when he climbs onto the other side, doesn’t want to upset the mattress or jostle Steve.
It’s a comfortable bed. The mattress is firm. The pillows are fluffy. Eddie knew that already. He’s never spent the night in it, obviously. Even the weekends when Steve’s parents took off to Indy or Chicago for a night or two, Eddie was too chickenshit to risk it. Thought too hard about what the neighbors might think. It’s one thing to park at a place when it’s just one car amongst many back in the hay day of Steve’s keggers, but there’s no way the neighbors wouldn’t look twice if his van parked outside for days at a time.
Steve never pushed, didn’t exactly ask for a sleepover invite himself. Eddie’s room and the trailer is good for hanging out, messing around while Wayne’s at work, but not for staying. Eddie’s been grateful, if he’s honest, doesn’t have the first idea of how he’d field questions if Wayne came home one morning and found Steve in his bed.
(Eddie’s never brought a girl home and he’s always wondered if Wayne wonders at that. Maybe he just assumes that Eddie’s messing around outside their home, maybe he’s decided it’s better not to ask so that Eddie never has to tell.)
Steve asked him to come over though, said Eddie could hang out while he was at work, said they could grill or swim or whatever. Steve promised to bring home a whole pint of rainbow sherbert for Eddie to gorge himself on.
“Whoa, you run a ritzy establishment, Harrington.” Eddie had joked, uncomfortable about how desperately he wanted to say yes.
“Y’know, it could be fun.” Steve said, still trying to convince Eddie. As if he weren’t already all in.
It probably would have been fun, Eddie thinks now, looking at Steve’s bruised face, brow still pinched with discomfort even in sleep. It would have been great.
-
He wakes up to the sound of the phone ringing. Eddie hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but watching someone else sleep isn’t riveting material and once the adrenaline faded Eddie couldn’t stop his eyes from closing.
Steve’s still dead asleep next to him, curled into himself under the blanket. Eddie takes a second to check that he’s breathing before climbing out of bed. The phone stops ringing but it starts right up again, gratingly loud in the early morning stillness.
Eddie tramples down the stairs, answers the phone with a brisk, “Hello?”
“Steve?” It’s a girl’s voice, a raspy whisper like maybe the person on the other end actually does understand what time it is. Too fucking early.
“No, he’s, ah, still sleeping.”
“Who’s this?” The girl asks, voice getting a little louder.
“Who's asking?” Eddie shoots right back, eyes gritty and patience short. The clock on the wall says it’s barely after seven and Eddie’s felt better after the worst bouts of insomnia than he does right now.
“Robin.” The chick on the other end says, sounding impatient herself.
“From the mall?” Eddie blurts out. Steve told him about Buckley. Their paths didn’t exactly cross, but Eddie had vague memories of the gangly chick with the trumpet from his one week in band. Steve said she hated his guts.
“Yeah.” Robin says, “From the mall.” She sound hesitant when she asks, “Who is this?”
“Eddie Munson. Uh, I picked Steve up yesterday.”
Robin breathes out a shaky sigh. “Oh, thank god. I—sorry—I wasn’t sure he’d call.”
Eddie doesn’t know what Robin does and doesn’t know about him. Him and Steve. He sucks on his bottom lip, gives a wheezy little huff out his nose. “He called.” He says finally.
“How’s he doing?” Robin asks carefully, voice going low again.
“He’s, uh, pretty fucked up,” Eddie tells her because there’s no point denying it. “But they wouldn’t have sent him home if he wasn’t going to be okay, right?”
“Right.” Robin sounds as convinced as Eddie feels.
“Were you there? Do you know what happened?”
Robin squeaks. “Yeah. Yeah. I was there.”
“How—”
“I don’t know what I’m allowed to say.” Robin says quickly, “I can’t—I’m sorry. I just wanted to check on Steve. Can you—will you ask him to call me later. When he’s awake. If he wants to. I mean. I just want to see how he’s doing.” The words all run together in Eddie’s ear, refuse to stop whenever he tries to interrupt. “I’ll give you my number.” She rattles it off and Eddie doesn’t have much choice but to write it down on the little notepad the Harringtons keep next to the phone. He repeats it back to her just to make sure he’s got it.
“Thanks Eddie.” Robin says quietly before she disconnects, leaves Eddie standing there with a phone number and more questions than he had last night.
Steve’s laying awake when Eddie gets back upstairs, stretched on his back.
“Hey.” Eddie says quietly, instinct telling him its too early to speak at full volume even though its just them here. “That was Robin. She wanted to see how you were doing.”
“She okay?” Steve asks roughly, pushing himself up on his arms. The bruises look worse in the morning light, Eddie’s attempt at icing Steve’s eye to prevent it from closing completely didn’t quite work. Just looking at it hurts.
“I didn’t ask.” Eddie says apologetically, standing off to the side of the bed. “Is there—did the person who hurt you hurt her too?” Eddie asks as carefully as he can. Steve looks at him, bleary eyed and grim, takes a long second before he nods.
“I tried…”
“Shit.” Eddie breathes out. He rubs his hands over his face. “Steve. What the hell happened?”
Steve swallows. Reaches for the glass of water Eddie set on the nightstand hours ago. He sips it slowly.
“You’re never going to believe me.” Steve whispers, “It’s completely insane.”
“Tell me anyway.” Eddie says, dropping himself back onto the mattress, reaching for Steve’s knee under the blanket. “Just tell me because I feel like I’m going crazy not knowing.”
Steve looks at him, and it’s the same look he sent Eddie’s way a week ago, a hurt kind of resignation etched into his features.
(“Well, I’m not going anywhere.” Steve said and Eddie wanted to bite, wanted to spit, wanted to dig his nails into his own skin and scratch until he bled. Because Eddie wasn’t graduating. Again. And it had been weeks of Steve saying shit like ‘we’ll figure it out’ as if he was the one who was going to have to go back there. Again. “I never asked you to stick around.” Eddie had ground out, hands balled into fists, tucked under his armpits because he needed to hold himself, needed to keep the snarling anger and disappointment in check because he did something monumentally stupid. And Steve’s mouth parted, eyes going wide like Eddie had hit him, then gone blank, everything locked down before he said. “Guess you didn’t.”)
Steve drinks more water. His knuckles are white around the glass.
Then he opens his mouth.
And the truth comes out.
-
“I gotta, I gotta smoke.” Eddie says, hands shaking as he reaches for a pack of smokes that isn’t there because he’s wearing a pair of sweatpants he cut off at the knee. Steve reaches out, pulls his bedside drawer open and produces a closed pack, a lighter, hands them to Eddie without a word.
Eddie doesn’t light up inside because Steve’s warned him enough times about his mom having a bloodhound nose, takes himself downstairs. He wanders out to the backyard, stands in the shade that’s rapidly disappearing, the morning already going warm. It’s probably going to be another day in Satan’s ballsack, July unrelenting as it hurdles them into full summer-mode. It’s the sort of day meant for cookouts and bike rides and swims out at the quarry, wholesome all American pie pastimes or some shit. Instead Eddie’s here, sucking down nicotine as fast as he can, trying to get a hold on his rapidly unraveling sense of reality.
His first instinct is to check Steve for head wounds. The guy obviously got his shit rattled hard, who’s to say something important didn’t get knocked loose.
But Steve recounted everything that happened in the last week with a deadened voice, hands clasped around an empty glass, eyes fixed on the hand Eddie had on his knee.
He didn’t beg Eddie to believe him, he didn’t try to convince him he wasn’t crazy.
He said, “We told the kids to run.” He said, “They shot us up with something. To make us talk.” He said, “I tried to keep them away from Robin but they hurt her too.”
He said, “I thought I was never going to see you again.”
Eddie drops the burnt down butt of his cigarette to the concrete under his feet. He’s surprised to see it isn’t the first or second or third one he’s dropped already.
If Steve had died. If it were Steve who hadn’t made it out instead of Hargrove. If the last thing Eddie said to him was some shit about how there was no point in pretending they were something they weren’t. No point dragging out the inevitable. Guys like Steve don’t stick around for guys like Eddie.
(“You’re such a fucking hypocrite, Munson. Always talking about being forced to comply but you have no problem deciding what’s true and what’s bullshit for other people? If you don’t give a shit about me then say that, asshole, don’t make it about me not knowing what I want!”)
Last night was just the tip of the iceberg, an entry point to a weirder, worse world that Steve’s been experiencing for a while now, even if he couldn’t explain it to Eddie. “I don’t actually know a lot of how it happened. I mean, I try to, but mostly I’m the muscle when shit goes bad.” He’d grinned with his bruised mouth, “Hilarious right?”
None of it makes sense but that’s in keeping with the Hawkins Eddie knows. Kids found dead and then seen walking around town, girls going missing and then declared dead in some sort of accident where the pieces don’t quite add up.
Eddie flexes his bare feet against the concrete. Thinks of Steve sitting alone upstairs, shoulders slumped and gaze heavy. Hurt.
Alive.
He drops his half smoked cigarette to the ground.
“I thought you’d left.” Steve says when Eddie walks into his room. He leaves the door wide open because there’s no one to hide from here, no reason he needs to waste a second before he’s climbing back into bed.
He needs to be careful, knows he needs to be careful but he also needs to wrap his arms around Steve. Steve stiffens for a second, then his arms wrap around Eddie, limbs scrabbling so that he can kick free of the sheet. There’s no coordination or grace to either of them as Steve repositions himself, rising up over Eddie, pushing Eddie flat on his ass so that he can get one leg over Eddie’s lap.
Steve lets all his weight drop down, sits on top of Eddie and holds him even though it must hurt.
Eddie presses his hands to Steve’s back, hears the shaky breath he inhales at the touch. “Is there blood when you piss?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself.
Steve shakes his head, “Don’t think so.” His voice is muffled against Eddie’s shoulder.
Eddie nods, runs his palm up Steve’s back, as if he could suss out anything the doctors might have missed.
“Once, my dad got too enthusiastic with the belt. Straight up thought I was dying when I went to the bathroom.” Eddie whispers, presses the softest kiss he can to Steve’s jaw.
Steve pulls back a little, looks at Eddie with his one eye, the purpling around the other waxy and shiny looking. Eddie should get him more ice. Eddie shrugs as best he can with Steve wrapped around him, wrapped around Steve, shakes his head. “I mean, you told me about you. Just, uh, sorry if that was weird.”
“I just told you about Russians under the mall and monster dogs. I’ve got a pretty high bar for weird.”
“Me too.” Eddie says, hopes Steve understands what he means.
-
They sleep some more, wrapped around each other. When they wake up again, Eddie makes Steve coffee and oatmeal and then gets to listen to Steve horking it back up.
Eddie calls Jeff, asks for a favor, and the two drive to the mall parking lot with Steve’s spare car key to pick up the beemer. If Jeff thinks anything about the fact that Eddie’s obviously wearing Steve’s clothes (primary color blocked shirt and Levis bagging in the back because Eddie’s not carrying quite the ass Steve is. Hell Eddie’s even wearing Steve’s socks and that shouldn’t feel intimate but it does), he keeps those thoughts to himself.
“Holy shit.” Jeff whistles, seeing the burnt out husk of the mall, surrounded by news vans and emergency vehicles. Dozens of lookie-lous crowding around the perimeter of the barriers set up to keep people away. “Harrington was in there?”
The sight of the damage, the smell of smoke and the multitude of materials that went up in flames, all of it turns Eddie’s stomach, makes him clench his hands around the steering wheel.
“Yeah.” Eddie says, scanning the parking lot for Steve’s car. Needs to focus on their quest and not the sickening feeling rapidly filling his stomach. Imagining Steve in that mall as the fire went up, Steve trapped in some fucking torture dungeon underneath it. No one would even know to look for him there. No one would have ever found him.
Just another missing person on a flier cluttering up Hawkin’s bulletin boards.
Jeff follows in Eddie’s van as Eddie leads the way back to Loch Nora. It’s just Jeff’s beat up Ford in the driveway and Eddie doesn’t know why that surprises him. He hadn’t stopped to ask Steve if he’d called his parents, and the only person who’d called the house all morning was Robin. Steve had called his loudmouth miniature buddy who’d apparently gotten back from camp in time for the shitshow at Starcourt.
(Dustin is pretty funny, even if he has a tendency to talk at you rather than to you. But he knows his shit around a gaming table and he’d asked Eddie he might ever want to play with him and his friends. Which was kind of sweet.)
Steve opens the door, waves at Jeff with the door covering the worst of his face. “Thanks, man.” Steve says when Eddie’s back inside. He’s showered since Eddie left, hair wet and slicked back, comically flat, dressed in another pair of shorts and an old gym shirt, the tiger decal staring right at Eddie. Steve’s feet are bare on the patterned rug that runs down the hall to the doorway, and Eddie can still see the burnt remains of Starcourt, hear Steve’s voice last night, over the phone, “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I’m sorry.” Eddie blurts out, “I—I should have said it sooner. I was being a dick and I shouldn’t have taken my shit out on you.” Steve looks at him, eyebrows arched in surprise. The swelling in his bottom lip is starting to go down, a little, and the scabs are more brown than red now.
“I know you mean it. You always say what you mean. It’s what I like about you, y’know. When you talk you mean it. And I’m not—I’m sorry I don't know what to do with that.” Eddie swallows, the last twelve hours pressing down on his windpipe all at once. His eyes flood faster than he can hold it in. “I’m so glad you’re not dead.”
He should be holding Steve he thinks weakly when Steve’s arms go around him, pet at his tangled hair, less injured cheek held fast to Eddie’s. Eddie can’t rein the feelings in now, they’ve cracked open and gone all over everything inside him. Everything he’s been trying to ignore since Steve called and before that too, mixing into the horror of seeing the aftermath of Starcourt and knowing how easily Steve could have been lost without Eddie even knowing.
That’s the shitty thing about life. Things just happen. No rhyme or reason or relief. They happen and you just have to live with them.
Dads with tempers and teachers who hate you and boys who promise you they’ll stick around.
-
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.” Steve says quietly. They’re sitting outside and it’s too hot but Steve wanted to be outside, wanted to sit in the grass and listen to birds and get eaten alive by mosquitos.
“You don’t have to—” There are so many other things, bigger things, for either of them to worry about.
“I want to though.” Steve goes on. The heat is giving Eddie a headache and there’s no way Steve isn’t dealing with a concussion or something, should probably go inside soon before he’s puking up the toast Eddie made him. “I’m sorry for calling it bullshit. You’re not—I don’t think that about you. I never have. I swear.”
Eddie nods, remembers how Steve’s eyebrows furrows low, how his mouth gaped as he spit out the words, “You think you’re so different but you’re just like every asshole in this town, hung up on a bunch of bullshit.”
“I think we all get hung up on our shit, Steve.” Eddie tells him, “I didn’t take it personally.” That’s a lie. Of course, but he’s not upset anymore. They both said shit they didn’t mean.
“I really like you.” Steve says calmly, staring at Eddie again. He keeps staring at him, like he’s not sure Eddie’s still going to be there. “I want to say that. Just so you know. I’m so into you.” He huffs a weak laugh.
Eddie wonders if Steve just wants to say it in no uncertain terms because of the near-death experience of it all, if he’s still thinking about regrets he would have taken to the grave. That doesn’t change what Steve said though.
A week ago a declaration like that would have set Eddie’s skin on fire as badly as poison ivy. A week ago the suggestion of it nearly had.
Eddie of a week ago was obviously a dumbass. Or maybe he just didn’t know. Didn’t know how easy it actually is to reach out, to take Steve’s hand with it’s bruised knuckles, how simple it is to say, “I really like you too.”
Steve’s smile is small but it’s honest.
Eddie holds Steve’s hand and they sit there on the Harringtons green lawn, the sun shining down on them both. He tells himself they can have a little while longer before they head back inside.