Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eddie Munson was a well known celebrity chaos gremlin. 

A lot of it was good deeds and charity, but done in whatever crazy way he chose. Anything from performing an acoustic show for a small town middle school’s drama club fundraiser, to sending hundreds of couriers to a politicians’ office to deliver individual wooden blocks to create a massive copy of a letter expressing his opinion. The first three of those were expressions of severe outrage over ‘protect the children’ type censorship laws. 

Then came the poor freshman congressman who went on Fox and tore up a homophobe so hard they cut the feed. He saw the first couriers arrive and was, justifiably, scared and confused; he didn’t think that he’d done anything to upset the only guy who did this. By the time that puzzle was assembled, it was a 10 foot mural yelling GOOD JOB KEEP IT UP.

There had been a lot more since then.

Several senators had a pavlovian fear of one company’s uniform.

Growing up broke meant Eddie was allergic to wealth. He got itchy whenever he thought about how much money was in his accounts. Chrissy, bless her, hid it from him as much as possible. Most of it was in trusts that kicked out dividends to various charities. One was a trust to pay for his life when he retired: she refused to show him that one. 

There was also an account specifically earmarked for his chaotic gremlin moods. He chose those himself. Sure, Chrissy would text him links to things she thought he’d enjoy or want to know about, but it was him hitting the button. When it was a simple charity or donation - completing a crowdfunding goal, paying off debts - he did it anonymously. Otherwise? Well. For scale, he had a favorite skywriting guy.  

The last four and a half years had been meteoric for him. He’d gone from third shift warehouse work while posting videos of his music recorded on his cracked phone, to international, sold out, stadium-scale tours, with two Grammys in his first year.  

It hadn’t stopped since. 

It also hadn’t increased much - thank christ - he was already exhausted. He’d inadvertently made metal music mainstream. His stuff wasn’t full heavy metal like he’d expected to do as a teenager, but the roots were obvious, and the longer he spent on the charts, the more pure metal bands picked up fans. That meant on top of making his own music, he was the face of a genre, which meant more interviews.

Eddie scrolled through the links that Chrissy sent while he sipped on a strawberry mango daiquiri in his hotel room after an interview and photoshoot in NYC. It came with a flower that was now stuck behind his ear. Screw you, he was a superstar, with a scary rock star persona, he could drink his fruity, girly, overly decorated, sugary cocktails if he wanted. 

Today, she’d sent a list of his least favorite people’s recent fuck ups, a news article about the completion of a skatepark he funded by shipping thousands of small boxes of quarters to the city council that claimed they couldn’t fund it, and a copy of an email that had gone to their not-entirely-public-not-really-a-secret account. 

A wedding invite email. 

Those happened pretty often, and Eddie would scroll the couple’s social media, decide whether they sucked, and if they seemed like good people, he’d send the weirdest item on their registry. 

This one came with a note from Chrissy. 

Make sure you look at this one.
I think you’ve mentioned the name before?
-C

“Shit,” he cursed, setting down the daiquiri and scrubbing at his face. 

Yeah, he knew that name. He hadn’t mentioned it much to Chrissy, maybe three times ever, never with context, but she was incredible, so she remembered. 

Steve Harrington. 

One-time love of his life, and the man who broke his heart five months before he became famous. Arguably, Steve was the reason that Eddie wrote anything worth listening to back then. 

Agony was an exquisite muse. 

They’d been living together for half a year, struggling to pay bills and cover Steve’s tuition and neurologist, saving up for his hearing aids, and to fix Eddie’s van. They were dancing on the edge of eviction, they were juggling overdue bills, they were masters of grocery coupons, and it wasn’t enough. They both knew that, and wouldn’t say it out loud. 

They loved like wildfire: awe-inspiring, all-consuming, destroying everything it touched.

Steve caught him on the way out the door with his sweetheart in March, planning to pawn his beloved guitar. Steve had run out of his ‘as-needed’ prescription after a week-long migraine wiped out his supply. Steve wouldn’t let him sell the warlock, and was still trying to hide that it was lingering five days past that. It didn’t work. When Steve was hurting, it was all Eddie could see or think about.

Steve fully rejected his parents’ demands that he break it off with the ‘trashy drug dealer’ after four months of complaining, and Eddie promised that he’d take care of him. He’d never match the luxurious upper class life he’d known, but Eddie swore he’d always give Steve the love he deserved. 

Steve’s parents never hit him, but then again, they’d have to be around him longer than a few minutes to do that, and the Harringtons couldn’t be bothered. Their love was never really on offer, but their significant financial support was; conditional on Steve checking the right boxes. His early childhood education major didn’t check the box, but might have been forgiven if it wasn’t for Eddie in the picture. The problem wasn’t the fact that he was a guy, but that he was a broke, triple-senior, aspiring musician with a criminal record and no plan to get a degree. 

After they cut him off, in a fight that left Steve spiraling about being worthless, Eddie made him promise that he wouldn’t go back to them. That no matter what, he wouldn’t give them control over him again. More than anything, he knew that Steve would be destroyed by it. If he let his parents have any fraction of control, they’d erode him away until he was a shell. 

In return, Steve made him promise that, no matter what, no matter how bad it got, he wouldn’t go back to dealing. Eddie had made a few jokes after they moved in together that got a little farther from joking with each overdue bill. Steve always shut it down. With his misdemeanor charges as a teenager, another strike would see him hit with a mandatory minimum. 

Eddie kept his word. 

Steve didn’t. 

One day in April, the overdue notices stopped. The landlord stopped sending certified mail. Like a miracle. Eddie was ecstatic when he asked if they were fucked, and Steve told him he’d paid off everything. He thought one of the grants or scholarships Steve applied to had come through, thought that Steve had won big on a scratcher ticket, thought some eccentric rich guy at the restaurant where Steve waited tables had left a five figure tip. 

At least Steve didn’t try to lie when Eddie giddily asked how he did it. 

They fought viciously, and months of accumulated stress and anxiety meant they went straight for fatal hits. 

He never could remember much of what they said that day. In the moment, it was a rush of emotion, and his mouth ran away without him. There were pieces. Steve said something about refusing to give up what mattered. Somewhere in there he told Steve that Eddie was giving him everything he had, and if that wasn’t enough, then fuck you. 

He didn’t know - he’d never know - if that was the moment that ended it, but when he came home the next day after back-to-back shifts at the coffee shop then warehouse, Steve was gone, and all his stuff with him. He left behind the paid off bills and the rent prepaid for the next three months. 

Angry and aching, Eddie immediately blocked him on social media, blocked his phone number, and between tears, wrote the song that would go on to be his first single. 

Nothing Left to Love

So yeah, he knew the name Steve Harrington, and had hoped he’d never hear it again. Five years on, seeing it in writing was enough to twist his gut and tighten his throat. That was before he processed that he was looking at a wedding invitation. 

Mr and Mrs Richard Harrington
invite you to celebrate the union of their son,
Steven Richard Harrington
to his bride
Kate Elizabeth Winkler

It wasn’t directly from Steve, but from someone calling themself Steve’s brother. Oh, it was from Dustin, that made sense then. Not actually related, and four years younger than him, but very close.

During the almost-year they’d dated, Dustin, a senior in high school, had been too busy with classes and college applications and some kind of advanced internship and his rocky relationship with his girlfriend to pay attention to sleep or food, let alone have time to visit or talk to Steve. Eddie never got to meet the kid, but heard about how much Steve loved him. 

It was crazy how relieved Eddie was to know that it really was temporary, and Steve had Dustin in his life again. 

In his life, but obviously not privy to all the relevant information from that gap. 

The email from Dustin talked about how Eddie was his favorite musician in the world, and that his older brother always bought actual physical copies of all of Eddie’s albums, and that it would be so cool if he came to the wedding. Specifically mentioned that he and his brother would rather he show up than get sent a gift.

He pushed away the sharp spike of emotion at the idea that Steve was a fan. Steve was always his biggest supporter, it wasn’t a surprise that he liked the music. 

Normally, this kind of shot in the dark wedding invite, with a personal story, got Eddie to buy something, and then move on. Maybe send a note or an autograph if they seemed like real fans. 

This was really fucking far from normal. 

This was a really bad fucking idea is what it was. 

It was a bad idea six months ago when he saved a copy of the wedding information. It was a bad idea three months ago when he spent a night a few sips shy of drunk, scrolling through the enormous, extensive, ridiculous registry, insulting the style of almost everything in it. It was a bad idea a month ago when he bought a plane ticket and car reservation. 

It was such a goddamn bad idea as he walked into the church the morning of the ceremony to look around, and try to convince his brain to listen to reason. 

The wedding invite had come with a link to the wedding website - apparently that was a thing people did - and even though Eddie restrained himself for a few weeks, he eventually caved and clicked. There were photos of the couple dating, and photos of the proposal, and photos of the wedding planning, and an engagement shoot. Not selfies. An actual photographer had documented all of it, edited it to look perfect, and uploaded it into slideshows. 

At first, he was masochistically curious about who the hell this woman was. He wanted to know who had managed to fit into the venn diagram of people Steve would marry, and people his parents would approve. 

Kate was gorgeous. Eddie spent enough time at rich-people-and-celebrity-parties to know that if her beauty was store bought, and he didn’t think it was, those surgeons were expensive as hell. Her hair was silky and dark, was in a constant Brazilian blowout by the look of things, and looked like a model in every photo. They were professionally done, but he could tell she was just like that. 

But in looking at her, Eddie also saw Steve. Hair even shorter than the first time he saw him. Still fashionable, but corporate acceptable. He’d taken out the piercing in his ear. Athletic as ever based on the photos of them on ski slopes and mountain trails and beaches. In one photo he could just see a hearing aid. They were edited out of the rest.

She was a socialite and headed a charitable organization working with coffee farmers. Steve was… actually, Eddie couldn’t tell what his job was. If he got his degree and was teaching, it didn’t pass muster for the curated story the website told. 

That made sense. 

Steve left Eddie, so his parents would have let him keep his dream job.

Eddie tried to stay in the general relationship pictures, but it was a slideshow, and eventually he saw the proposal. 

It was in a Michelin star restaurant. 

And that… 

Well, that was when Eddie should have realized he was going to do something stupid. 

But in his defense, it was a red flag. Steve hated that kind of thing. He was barely okay with it when Eddie, at one of the rare open mic performances he did, in front of ten people, would dedicate a song to him. He loved that Eddie loved him so proudly, but that kind of performative love always reminded him of his parents, who only pretended they cared about him if there was an audience. Eddie wanted the audience, Steve never did. 

Steve wouldn’t propose in public. He never hid his affection in public, but the important moments? He didn’t like to share those. 

If Eddie was a smart man, or if he kept a more intense tour schedule, he wouldn’t have dug into the rest of the damn website.  

He did. 

Steve didn’t like sushi. There was a series of pictures of Kate feeding him bites from her chopsticks. 

Steve didn’t want a big, religious, church wedding. His was being held in a damn cathedral. 

Maybe, Eddie tried to justify to himself, maybe Steve had changed. It was five years since he saw him last. They were young then. Steve was twenty two. People changed. Shit, Eddie’s life was unrecognizable now, even though he liked to think he was the same person in all the important ways. Steve was different now too. Of course he was.

Or maybe, Steve was in love with her. Wait, no, he had to be, Steve was marrying her, of course he loved her. Steve wouldn’t marry someone unless he loved them, no matter how hard his parents pushed.

Steve did lots of things for Eddie just because they were together. He never played D&D, but he’d listen to Eddie talk about it for hours, just because it was something that Eddie loved. This was the same. This was who Steve was. If some compromises would make his partner happier, he’d always make that choice. 

When he loved, it was with his whole being. Everything he had. Right up until he stopped, and then he left it all behind. 

So that had to explain it. That had to be why the guy in those photos, and why the wedding they’d planned, didn’t look like the man Eddie once loved. Steve was in love with Kate, and he loved her enough to give her the things that made her happy. He had changed.

He got his heart to accept that fact after a few weeks. It tore open old wounds, but he got it done.

His stupid, broken brain?

No matter how many times Eddie swore to himself that he’d send something off the registry anonymously, let Steve live his now happy life, he couldn’t stop picking at it.

Eddie tried to find a way to sate the itch to go via gremlining. Contemplated sending a puzzle collage during the reception, but couldn’t figure out what it would say, or how to do it without it being obviously from him. 

Tragically, his brain wouldn’t settle for shenanigans.

He needed to see for himself. So. Plane ticket. Hotel room. His best undercover rockstar look. He never RSVPd, but he wasn’t going to stay for the ceremony and reception. No fucking way. He’d find proof that Steve had happily, genuinely changed, make his brain stop obsessing, and then he’d get the fuck out before Steve saw him. Rationally, he knew that Steve wasn’t going to care all that much if he did see Eddie, but screw you, Eddie had enough pride that he didn’t want his ex to know that he was a bit obsessive after all this time.

Shit, there hadn’t even been rumors of a relationship for Eddie, not even in the tabloids that claimed he was an actual, literal demon. No. Steve absolutely couldn’t see Eddie there or he might think it was something it wasn’t. 

Go in, look around, get confirmation to shut up his brain, and bail. 

Except he failed during step two. 

There was a crew doing final set up the cathedral, and the flowers along the pews and set up in a display by the doors were white roses, baby’s breath, and lavender.   

Fucking lavender. 

All over the place, and Eddie knew as soon as he saw it that the reception would be the same. The color palette was a deep purple, white, and gold. The flowers matched it beautifully.

Except.

Steve was allergic to fucking lavender.  

It gave him a terrible rash if he touched it, the smell made him stressed from worrying about the rash, and if the smell was too strong and he was around it too long, it gave him a fucking migraine. 

Eddie was failing on step two, so, what was one more bad idea for the day?

Was it called back of house if it wasn’t a stage? Eddie wasn’t sure, and didn’t particularly care. He was sneaking around in it, looking for… fuck if he knew what, but looking.  

Whatever mysterious flashing neon answer he thought he’d stumble upon, instead, he found Dustin. 

Instagram stalking Steve turned up nothing useful. Dustin, however, was a frequent poster, mentioned Steve from time to time, and thus, Eddie was very familiar with what he looked like. 

The suit was a bit much and the bow tie was a mess, but the curls made it easy. Even if Eddie hadn’t recognized him though, the reaction was enough.

“Oh my god, you’re Eddie Munson,” he squeaked, “Oh my god, oh my god, you came? You didn’t RSVP! I mean, I’m sure we can make it work since you’re you, but I sent you the invitation for a reason, you're supposed to respond if you’re going to show up!’

“Uh, hi, yeah, I’m here, sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure I would. Eddie Munson,” he held out his hand. 

“Oh my god, I’m shaking Eddie Munson’s hand,” he whispered in awe, then caught himself, “I’m Dustin Henderson, I sent you the invitation, and I need to say that I did not think you’d actually show, and this is the best day of my life. Mike is going to lose his shit when I tell him.”

“So you’re the superfan then, huh? Using your brother’s wedding as an excuse?” 

If Eddie didn’t know Steve, if these were strangers, Eddie would be cackling with glee. Inviting the world’s most infamous chaos agent to a fancy wedding that didn’t care about him was exactly his style. He’d have shown up with the scar prosthetics from that one music video with the bats, and the most lavish gift he could come up with. Custom Chihuly chandelier, maybe. 

“Uh, no, not an excuse, but I am a fan, so I know all of the cool things you’ve done. I knew you’d enjoy showing up to something like this - I should have known you wouldn’t RSVP, that would have let Kate plan for it, and that is not your style. I mean come on! You’re you! Now that I think about it, I’m shocked you didn’t land in a helicopter on the patio during the reception. Wait! Is that how you’re going to leave? Holy shit, that’s going to look amazing. Tell the pilot that there’s a bridge over the pond and if they drop a ladder you could totally pull it off. I can place a call and get some pyro effects set up.”

No wonder Steve loved this kid, he was great. However, it was impossible to look cool next to a helicopter with long hair

“Did you warn anyone you invited me?” He fished. 

Dustin snorted, “No, obviously. I had to steal Steve’s laptop to get admin access to their weird wedding website so I could send you that invite in the first place. And you can’t tell them that I sent you that invite, Kate would kill me.”

“Theft? Hacking? Deceit? My, my, one might almost think that I’ve been a bad influence on the nation’s youth. What would your parents say? What would your brother say?” 

Another snort. 

“Steve’s parents would flip their shit, my mom would just tell me that not everyone enjoys surprises.”

“And your brother?” 

“Oh, he’s not actually my brother. Not by blood. He’s just Steve.”

“Okay, so what would —”

“He’s my best friend. We met because I lost my cat and I was totally freaking out, and he ditched a date with my other best friend’s older sister to help me look for Mews, and we ended up getting chased by coyotes, and never found Mews. But he took me to adopt Tews the next weekend.”

“Right, so—”

Dustin cut him off again before Eddie could trick him into giving any kind of useful answer.

“Nancy broke up with him over it, but he told me once, like, four years ago? That he’s glad he helped me look for Mews instead of going on that date. No one ever believes me anymore, not since he started at the firm, but he’s a total softy. He said meeting me in high school is what made him want to be a teacher before.”

Fuck, Steve was working at his dad’s firm? That had to be what Dustin meant. That was always the top of the list of the Harrington Checklist of Expectations, and the top of the list of Things Steve Never Wanted. Did they let him finish his degree? Did he get to decorate a classroom even once with those little glow in the dark stars and a cork board for them to pin up the projects they were most proud of?

No, he was not indulging that thought process. He was looking for confirmation, and this — it hurt like hell, but this was a confirmation. His brother/best friend didn’t think it was a problem.

“Look, kid—”

“Hey, I’m 23!”

“Kid, Steve sounds like a good guy, I don’t want to ruin his wedding day. So I can sign something for you, and send a gift, and no one has to know but you and me.”

“What the Jesus fuck!? No! You can’t just fucking leave!”

One of the church staff glared at Dustin, either for the volume or the blasphemy. Eddie yanked him into an empty room, some kind of office, and shut the door. 

“Look, Eddie, I know it probably seems like I only sent an invitation to this wedding so I can meet you, and this is amazing, but I promise, this would make Steve’s day.”

“It’s his wedding, dude. The day should already be made.”

“Yeah? So? You’re Eddie Munson. I told you, he has every album. Streaming and CD. He has them on vinyl too. He has that special limited release one with the acoustic tracks, and he won’t let me touch it. I haven’t even heard it. He said his favorite song is on there, and he won’t even tell me the name, and for some reason no one else who got one of them has ever put a copy online. I’m a fan, I’m a huge fan, but Steve? No contest.”

Okay. 

Shit. 

That answer might not match the other confirmations he’d gleaned about Steve. It was a lot of dedication if Steve was fully living this new, different life.

There were only ten copies made of that recording. Steve must have bought it from, or through, someone else since Eddie met all ten buyers. A set of acoustic recordings of Eddie’s favorite songs. Not the same list as his biggest hits; these ones were Eddie’s favorites. He’d bet his right hand that he knew which was Steve’s favorite. It was, after all, the song Eddie wrote for him while they were together, and hadn't played in public since. 

“Well,” Eddie stalled, “Shit, if he could afford one of those, why hasn’t he bought a VIP pass to come meet me after a show? Would have been easier than this.”

“Ugh, cause he’s a loser, and he always said that he doesn’t like crowds, or that he has a big deadline, or that it’ll give him a migraine or that his hearing aids would glitch. Then he met Kate, and all the work I’d done to convince him to get us tickets? Gone.” The kid sighed, put upon, then jolted. “But trust me! He wants to meet you! Well, no, he’s going to be super weird about it because he’s always awkward about stuff like this. He pretends he isn’t, but he’s my brother and I totally know he is, but meeting you will make his year.”

“Stuff like what?”

“Ughhh, its so annoying, he thinks he’s supposed to be a ‘real adult’ now, whatever that means, so he gets… squirrely… about all these things that I know he loves —”

Dustin had no problem filling up a silence, and Eddie needed a minute. He let him keep going, autopilot nodding and hmm-ing to keep up the facade. 

Eddie was here because his brain wouldn’t shut up, and he thought that if he could just see some evidence that Steve had changed, get some kind of confirmation that Steve was this person, and was happy, then his brain would stop. He could put down the mental pen he’d been clicking for months. He never really thought about what he’d do if he didn’t find that. What he’d do if he found the reverse. 

Steve broke Eddie’s heart. 

Steve was supposed to be fine now, maybe not living the life Eddie would have built for him, but he had to be happy and thriving if he was getting married, and Eddie was to confirm that. Eddie was the one who got broken up with, betrayed, left without an explanation. Eddie got the broken heart, so it was acceptable that he still carried a tiny little torch for the guy that he never managed to fully extinguish.

He came here for confirmation. 

He really, truly, didn’t think he’d find anything different. 

“—I know everyone says that you grow up and turn into your parents, but come on, Richard?! Ugh! Couldn’t he have turned into Emily instead? At least she’s slightly better than Dick!” Dustin’s voice got shrill as he yelled. Maybe, if Eddie wasn’t having an itsy bitsy breakdown, he’d have thought to shush him before he reached that pitch. 

“Dustin? Where are you? I can hear you.” 

Steve’s grumpy voice carried down the hallway. Dustin’s eyes lit up. 

Eddie tried to say something to stop him, but six different pleas tried to leave his mouth all at once, and the garbled noise that created didn’t prevent a damn thing. 

“In here, Steve! I’ve got a surprise for you!” A big, cheesy grin turned from Eddie to the door.

“And that surprise couldn’t be going to help Robin get the rest of the cards like—”  Steve’s voice carried well, and he kept talking as he opened the door, “— you said you were going to do for me while I got dressed?”

“No, this is an actual surprise.”

“Dude. She’s in a cast.”

“And I brought you someone you love even more than Robin,” Dustin announced, impatient for Steve to turn to the rest of the room. 

Steve looked over, and the mild annoyance on his face turned blank, other than the slight widening of his eyes. 

He was in his wedding suit. Deep grey, well tailored, with a pressed white shirt, french cuffs, gold links, and a carefully arranged pocket square, white with a band of gold, and a spray of baby’s breath and lavender.

Fucking lavender.

Eddie had read a lot of descriptions and seen a lot of versions of something that could be called Uncanny Valley. That wasn’t the right word, but it was the closest he could come up with in the moment. It was Steve, undeniably, irrefutably - Eddie would have known him from a hundred feet away. From a blurry photo in a newspaper taken from a hundred feet away. 

And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything he could point to, nothing he could name, but it was wrong, so wrong that it made his stomach twist. He couldn’t even think of him as beautiful, even though he knew he was, because his whole mind was eaten up with fear at what he saw. 

He came to get a confirmation, and fuck, if this was who Steve was now, if this was what he was leaving with, he hated himself for coming. 

“What? Ugh,” Dustin groaned, “come on! I know you’re the most awkward human being on the planet, Steve, but even you have to be excited to meet your favorite artist! You can say hi! You could try, I don’t know, smiling, maybe? Handshake? Steve? Maybe you could blink? Eddie freaking Munson came all the way here as my present for your wedding, and you’re just going to stand there gawking at him?”

Steve tightened his hands into fists and released them, then started to flick his thumb over the inside of his ring finger. Which was bare. Of course it was. Even if he had been wearing an engagement ring — which wasn’t all that common for men — he’d have it off right now so it would be ready for the ceremony. Fussing at a missing ring was normal. Eddie did it all the time when he took his off. Steve was probably used to wearing it because he probably wore it all the time, and probably loved having it on, because he loved his fiancee and he missed it being there to remind him of her. 

“Do I have to do everything around here?” Dustin sighed, stepping closer to Eddie and gesturing dramatically as he spoke. “Steven Harrington, my best friend, my brother, I’m happy to introduce you to your favorite artist in all of music who you have been crazy about forever, Eddie Munson. Eddie, please meet Steve Harrington, your biggest fan, who collects all your albums, and who is currently trying to impress you with his impersonation of a Cockatrice’s victim. Maybe a Beholder.”

Silence stretched. Painfully. 

If Eddie threw a chair through the stained glass behind him and escaped out of it, Dustin would chalk it up to his reputation as a crazy person, Steve could explain his bizarre reaction however he needed to, and then Chrissy would send a donation to whatever group owned the church as an apology. That one fan who ran a tracker of all the chaotic shit he did would somehow hear about it and send a tweet. 

Eddie could keep it together until he was somewhere private, and then he could have a nice breakdown, and then he could start lying to himself that he was okay with knowing what Steve looked like when he loved someone else. 

Then he’d write another album. He could feel it starting. It wasn’t words yet, or melodies, or even notes, but he knew when his muse was rising. 

“Steve, has your awkwardness become transmissible now? He was talking and normal a minute ago and you broke him. Look, at least stand next to each other so I can take a photo for you or something.”

“Dustin, get out,” Steve said.

“Steve, come on, even if you aren’t as excited as you should be about meeting your idol, he’s my favorite too and it's—”

“Dustin, do you remember right before you graduated high school?” Steve hadn’t looked away.

“Yes, Steve, of course I remember when you moved in with — wait,” Dustin stopped, realized something Eddie didn’t understand, then groaned in a remarkable combination of despair and outrage, “Reallly?!!? And you never told me? You left that out??”

“I’ll tell you about it later, dork.”

“What, you’re gonna call and tell me from your honeymoon in the Maldives?” Dustin was pushing his luck, based on the twitch in Steve’s eye.

“I’ll tell you later,” Steve repeated, nerves visibly fraying. 

Steve didn’t like the important things to happen with an audience. Eddie knew that. 

He had a tool that Steve did not. 

“Dustin,” he grabbed a card from his pocket with Chrissy’s contact info, “if you stop talking and leave right now I’ll get you VIP passes to any concert you want, for life.”

That worked. Dustin shut the door behind him.

They hadn’t looked away from each other, and the real conversation they needed to have required an elegance of opening that Eddie lacked, so he went after the immediate offense he could fix. 

“You’re allergic to lavender.”

“What? I’m — yeah, but only if —”

Eddie knew from the first word where that sentence was going. He closed the distance and reached out to rip the thing from his breast pocket, then thought better of it. The pollen wasn’t the problem, it was the oil, which was present on the fresh flowers, and easily transferred from skin, to other surfaces, back to skin. There was a box of tissues on the table, so Eddie grabbed one to remove the stupid flower thing from Steve’s stupid, stupid suit. 

Despite the impulse to crumple it up, he set the flowers on the desk carefully. He didn’t have any right to fuck up Steve’s wedding.

“You didn’t have to do that. I was being careful not to touch it.”

“You shouldn’t have something you’re allergic to pinned onto you.”

“I’m going to need to put that back on,” Steve said. 

Fucking hell, his next album was going to win a lot of awards. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, shaking it off, “I shouldn’t have come. You weren’t supposed to know I was here.”

“Dustin sent you an invitation, didn’t he? I guess that explains the counting error in the spreadsheet. It’s been making Robin crazy. She hand counted emails and couldn’t find it.”

“Look. Of course you can tell your brother whatever you need to, or want to, but if I need to match the story, you should probably tell Chrissy whatever it is so—”

“I don’t lie to him.”

Eddie gave him a look. Dustin didn’t even know about them. It prompted a half-hearted smirk and eyeroll. 

“I didn’t tell him your name because he’s a little shit and would have stalked you on socials and you didn’t deserve all that, but he knows everything else.”

That stung, and Eddie was drawn too taut to keep his mouth shut. “Guess you learned about honesty after what you did to me.”

Steve’s eyes fluttered closed, and his mouth tightened into a flat line while he sharply exhaled then slowly inhaled. That was always how he clamped down on emotions, but five years ago, Eddie was the exemption. He got to know what it was, and Steve never closed off if they were alone. 

“Sorry,” Eddie rushed to say, “forget I said that. Forget — nevermind. Look, I’ll clear your registry as an apology — except for that awful vase that looks like a tortured mandrill, that thing is terrifying. I mean, I’m gonna buy it because it’s one of a kind, but I’m going to gift it to Chrissy’s ex because he’ll feel obligated to keep it on display.”

“Don’t do that,” he sighed, “Except the vase thing. I can afford to buy out the registry myself.”

“Yeah, I bet you can,” Eddie snapped, then caught himself, “Fuck. No. Ignore that. Forget that part too.” He clapped his palms over his eyes, digging in the heels until patterns sparkled behind his eyelids. “I gotta leave. It’s your wedding, you don’t want me here and I’m making it weird. I’m sorry, again. Bye.”

He quit his escape attempt as soon as Steve shifted to stop him. 

“You can stay if you want,” he blurted out, “Uh, Robin never solved the spreadsheet, so there’s an extra seat at the reception and plenty of spare meals. It isn’t at a great table, but we could shuffle. I can get you a suit so you don’t stand out. Unless you want to stand out. You can stay. I mean,” he laughed ironically, “even our guest list doesn’t fill all the pews. There’s a place for you.” 

Confirmation, that’s what that was. 

Eddie wanted confirmation that Steve was changed and was happy. If he was happy enough, confident enough in his happiness, to invite Eddie to stay and watch the damn wedding, then that was plenty of proof, no matter to any other strange pieces. 

Eddie could leave now. Got what he came for. Should. 

“Come on, I know this is a little strange because of… but it’s an open bar? You could stay. It’s almost noon. I could have someone bring you something. You can hang out with Dustin the whole time. They could do a chocolate martini, or that strawberry mango daiquiri you always wanted to try? He knows as much about D&D as you do.”

“Stevie!” He cut him off with a shout, “I am not going to stay here and watch you marry someone who doesn’t fucking care that you’re allergic to your own fucking wedding flowers! There’s not enough alcohol in the city to make me okay with watching that. Dustin seems great, you always said, and he is — I am not going to stay and watch.”

“It’s just some flowers,” he defended.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Why does it matter? It’s flowers. You aren’t allergic to lavender. You like lavender!”

“You went back to them! Steve, you went back to them because, what? We got in one fight? Coupons were too hard? The bills were stressing us out? And now you’re letting them run your life, and you promised me you wouldn’t do this. I told you. You swore that you wouldn’t let them have you back because we both knew they would do this, and you said you didn’t want this life, but I guess their bullshit didn’t cost as much as what I had left to give you.” 

It was a lyric, almost. Steve would know which song Eddie was thinking about. 

“What?” 

“Nothing. Fuck. Forget that too. I didn’t say that. I have to go so I stop talking.” He thought he was over it. He really did. He didn’t wallow in his heartache, he wasn’t writing albums about it. There were two songs he wrote about Steve. Some of the others were prompted by experiences with him, but weren’t about him. He needed to leave before the rest of his - apparently still broken - heart collapsed.

“No, wait, hang on, wait just one — please, I need to say this, Eddie.”

Steve caught the sleeve of his leather jacket for a second, but let go as soon as Eddie stopped moving. He crossed his arms, then remembered the suit it would wrinkle, and let his hands fall to his sides. 

“I didn’t go back to them,” he managed, then huffed, and took a step away from the door, like he expected Eddie to bolt, and was proving he wouldn’t stop him. 

Little did he know that sentence had pinned him in place. 

“Stevie, you’re getting married in a cathedral with how many hundred guests? You work at your dad’s firm, your hair is — you went back to them, you did, and I know they’ve been pressing you into their mold ever since and I guess you were okay with that to get out of what we had.”

“I didn’t go back to them,” he repeated, softer, pitched like an apology, “until that fall.” 

The answer made no sense. Steve left in April. 

“Thank you, though, for coming today. I know why you’d show up like this, and… thank you. You didn’t need to, I am okay, but you came here even though you — I know what you said, but if you’ll come to the reception, I’d be happy to see you there.”

There was a strange inflection on the word ‘happy,’ but Eddie didn’t know why. He ignored it.

“What do you mean ‘that fall’? They paid off all our bills so you’d break up with me, and we fought, and I went to work, and I came home, and you were gone, and I loved you, and you didn’t even bother to say goodbye.” Steve’s lips pinched tight again, and Christ, Eddie hated to see the proof he was editing himself. “Never mind, you said thank you, so now I say you’re welcome, and we’ve both,” he swallowed, “checked the boxes. I’m gonna go.”

“No, that isn’t why —” He cut himself off, wincing.

“What, Steve?”

“That isn’t why I left. They didn’t pay off all our shit to make me leave you.”

Ah, cool, so his chest could hurt more, what a fun fact for Eddie to learn about himself. 

Before, he had the soft shroud of parental demands to explain that brutal breakup. Now he had nothing but himself. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t familial threats. Steve just didn’t want to be with him anymore so he made the best of his choice to simultaneously clean up his credit score. Right. 

He knew it was a bad idea coming today; the only shock was the direction the hit came from. 

Eddie shook his head and shoved it all down. Steve reached out, but didn’t touch. 

“Do you remember what you told me when we fought?”

“It was five years ago, Steve. No, I don’t remember.”

“Yeah you do. You wrote it into a song you’ve performed hundreds of times. First verse.”

Eddie didn’t remember it from the fight, but that line came easily while he wrote the next day. 

I’d rather give up everything than watch you give yourself away

“They gave us the money. Us. Both of us. They were going to support you too. They were going to cover rent and bills for us. So you could go back to having just one job, and doing open mic nights and posting clips until someone noticed how great you are. All you needed was a chance without working ninety hours a week, and I could give you that.” He smiled, a little bit bitchy, a little bit broken. “I was right. It didn’t take six months before you were on the radio.”

“If they didn’t make you, why did you…” he couldn’t finish the sentence. 

“You know, I hate that song?” he half laughed, “Your breakout single? I was so happy that you made it, so proud and happy that you had your dream, but half of that song is what we said when we were fighting, and I hate it.”

“Steve, what?”

“Third verse,” Steve smirked bitterly, “‘I’d walk my daddy’s footsteps to keep you far away from yours’ Come on, all the lyrics sites have that one figured out, you’re not subtle. When we fought, you said something about it. And for months before that you— You were going to ruin your life, and any chance you had at happiness or success, because you wanted to protect me. Because you thought I was worth more than you, so you thought you were the only one allowed to sacrifice for us, and I couldn’t let you do that. I don’t know if it would have been dealing, or your guitars, or if you’d just kill yourself working so much, or if you’d realize you hated me one day for being the reason you’d given up on every dream. 

“Right. So, uh. Yeah. Thank you, Eddie, for giving me a chance to say thank you for everything you did for me. I didn’t get to that night, too busy calling each other selfish cunts, I guess, and thank you for today, because it’s the same reason now. You don’t need to, though. I’m okay.” 

Steve grabbed a tissue, and turned away from Eddie, picking up the flowers to put them back in place. 

“What did you have to do?” His hands were twitching with the need to snatch the stupid thing and crush it into the carpet, even as part of his brain rambled about how doing that would release more of the oils and a stronger scent, and that would maybe give Steve a migraine and nothing was worth that. 

“I changed majors,” he said, like it meant nothing to him, “and schools. Moved in with Dustin that April. I spent the summer working at a terrible ice cream shop hoping you’d unblock me so I could tell you about this back then. Which was stupid, I know you’re too stubborn for that. I met Robin at Scoops, got into Dad’s second choice, and I got the degree two years later.”

No point in asking what he changed to. Business and Finance. 

Perfect for a venture capital firm.

Exactly what his dad wanted. Exactly what Steve hated. Gave up on something he wanted as much as Eddie wanted music, and talked about it like it meant nothing. He’d cried in Eddie’s arms for hours when they made his career an ultimatum. Now it barely merited a shrug.

“I was right too, you know,” Eddie whispered hoarsely. Steve glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t turn. “I was right about what would happen to you if you let them back in your life. Don’t thank me for any part of letting you do this.” 

Eddie hadn’t thought about what he’d do if he showed up and found out that Steve wasn’t happy, but if he had, knowing himself, there would have been a guitar on his back with a new song written, a lookout in the hall, and a getaway car down the street. It would have been gloriously dramatic.

It would have been wasted. 

He would have thought that if Steve was unhappy, was miserable, trapped by his parents and his fiancée, forced to become this alternate version of himself, and straining to be free, then he needed saving. Eddie would have come to save him. 

This hurt so much more than that. 

Steve wasn’t pressured to leave him five years ago. He left him.

He wasn’t cornered or baby-trapped into a marriage with some evil witch. He chose this. 

He wasn’t happy, but he wouldn’t leave.

Steve’s hands squeezed tight, opened, and he turned to face Eddie with that same blank look. 

This was worse than a confirmation that he was changed but happy, worse than finding he was miserable. Steve hadn’t changed. He was the man Eddie fell in love with, willing to sacrifice for the people he loved, willing to stand by his choice, even when it hurt him, and brave enough to tell the truth. He was still himself, but he’d scooped out everything that others didn’t want.

He wasn’t miserable, he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t anything.

He was a mannequin of the man he loved. He was exactly himself in every way, and so fucking wrong that Eddie couldn’t breathe. 

“I need to get back to the dressing room, the groomsmen have some tradition about shoes, and I need to see if Rob finally got everything in from her car. It’s an open offer if you want to stay, I’d be… really happy to have you there.” 

A new twist on the word that time, but Eddie couldn’t slow down his brain for that. 

Five years ago, that first song fell out of his pen, directly onto the page. It was everything he’d offered, all of it rejected. All of his grief and rage at not being enough, at having the only thing he wanted more than music stolen from him. 

Oh hey, more discoveries; turned out he wasn’t over, and wasn’t going to get over Steve Harrington in this life. 

Like hell was he going to stay and watch.

“No, no,” Eddie hissed, “I’m not going to your fucking cathedral wedding or your fucking black tie party just so you can pretend that… Fuck you, Steve, enjoy your life, enjoy being a Venture Capitalist, enjoy your parents’ demands, enjoy all this fucking lavender all over the place, just be careful with it, right? Make sure you don’t touch it, or anything it touched, because that makes it better. We wouldn’t want you to have a rash during your honeymoon." He clawed back the anger, and twisted his voice towards the sincerity he wanted to feel. “Congratulations, Steve.”

He ripped the door open and walked directly into Dustin. 

“Oh, shit, uhhhhh, I wassss, uhhhh,” Dustin mumbled.

“For fuck’s sake, Dustin, really?” Steve yelled, “All of it?”

Eddie moved Dustin out of the way with a grimace, and left him to Steve.

“Not all of it! I had to go grab my phone so I could text Robin!”

“So you were only listening in on most of my private conversation?”

Eddie didn’t look back as he reached the next hallway, needing to get out, get away, maybe get on a little prop plane and vanish into the Pacific like Amelia Earhart so he could get eaten by crabs. 

Behind him, echoing in the cathedral halls, he could hear shouting as he fled. 

“Dingus!”

“Finally! Took you long enough!”

“Robs, where is your crutch?”

“What the fuck does Dustin mean you’re allergic to fucking lavender!? ”

The rental car had a ticket under the wiper when he climbed inside, and he didn’t bother to grab it. The thing blew away when he turned them on. They’d contact the service, who would pass the ticket to Chrissy, who would handle it. 

Christ, he was going to have an album written by the end of the week, and he hoped, as he ran a red light, that Steve would be angry enough that he wouldn’t listen to this one.

Chapter Text

It took ten days.

Twenty one songs in ten days, not one of which required Eddie to think during the first draft. His muse handled everything but the literal pen in his hand. Three of them weren’t going on this album. They were good, and maybe one day, but they weren’t quite right. 

One of them was never going anywhere. Eddie wouldn’t make it through recording. He barely made it through writing the lyrics and melody notes.

Chrissy showed up in his Sequoia house on day six with a video from the delivery service who captured Jason’s tortured attempt to be grateful for the thirty eight thousand dollar eye sore of a vase by an artist famous enough that he was obligated to keep it for a few years before he auctioned it. She really was extraordinary at her job. 

He found her at a nightclub when he decided to loudly, dramatically seduce her then-boyfriend in retaliation for how he was treating her. They ended up talking after Jason stormed out, and a month later, when a label contacted him, she stepped in to help him translate the legalese and handle the parts that were overwhelming him. At the start, everything overwhelmed him. She’d grown up around money, gone to college so she’d fit the mold as Jason’s wife, and took contract law classes for fun.

He sent her the critical information from the plane ride home. Dustin Henderson’s permanent status for free VIP tickets, with a note that Eddie would cover his tickets to anyone else’s shows if he had the balls to ask. Steve’s permanent status on the filter list. He didn’t tell her to, but he was pretty sure Dustin got filtered too. They could message her all they wanted, he wouldn’t hear their names again. 

She didn’t ask him about it because she didn’t need to. The dots were easy to connect.

He’d be lost without her on his side. 

If they were both single a year or two from now, maybe he’d dig out his dusty metaphoric heterosexuality jacket and see if it still fit.

She also brought him a funding proposal from a wildlife organization that wanted to drop thousands of poisoned chicken heads with tiny water soluble parachutes out of an airplane to kill off an invasive species of snake on a remote island. It was unhinged. He funded it with the request they print frowny faces on all the parachutes. 

Eddie spent a few weeks editing, filling the gaps, and recording drafts. He sent it to Jeff, then drove down to the city a few days later. 

His producer talked through a few small notes about individual songs as they chatted with coffee in his office. It was oddly tense, and Eddie thought it was just him being caught in his head about writing a love story album for the first time ever. This wasn’t his usual style, so it made a little sense that it had thrown Jeff for a loop. 

Then Jeff braced himself, and said they needed to discuss the album’s overall flow. 

Sue him, but Eddie loved D&D for a reason. Every one of his albums told a story, and the songs were the chapters. They could be standalone, but it was non-negotiable for him; listening to it all in order had to tell a complete story, not just a theme, not just a general impression of a story if someone read all the liner notes. Each album had to tell a full, actual story. 

For the first time in five years and three albums, Jeff shook his head. 

“You don’t have it.”

“Come on, Jeff, seventeen songs!”

“Man, you know I wouldn’t say this if I wasn’t damn sure I was right about it. You think I’d risk you throwing a tantrum if I wasn’t? You? I don’t have time to bring in the cleaners, and I don’t think Annie would forgive me if you pulled something in revenge and messed with her garden. I’m right. It’s not there. It’s missing a song. Maybe more than one, that’s going to depend on you, but man, Eddie, you gotta know that. You knew that walking in here, but you were hoping I’d let you get away with it.”

Eddie whined and dropped his forehead to the desk.

“Yeah, see? You knew.”

“Nooooooo, it’s done.”

“Noooooooooo, it’s not. Remember how I’m actually damn good at my job?”

“I hate you,” he grumped.

“Uh huh. Great. You brought me seventeen songs, so how many more are in this album’s notebook?”

Eddie melted himself out of the chair and laid face down on the rug. “Four.”

“They any good?” Jeff asked, then laughed at Eddie’s indignant squawk, “Yeah, yeah, whatever, you’re the greatest songwriter of our generation, you have gotta stop reading the shit that publicity and marketing gets Rolling Stone to publish.”

“Rolling Stone said it, gotta be true.”

“Rolling Stone used to say you sounded like a dying cat, then Gareth did his job, and now they love you. How are the other songs?”

Eddie whined. “They’re good songs.”

“Are they what’s missing from this story?”

Eddie pulled the notebook out of his jacket and lobbed it vaguely towards Jeff. Then he resumed communing with the pot and bleach scent of the shag rug. It smashed his nose flat, and it hurt, but he was nothing if not dedicated to the bit. Still, he was silently grateful a few minutes later when Jeff commented and he had an excuse to move. 

“Holy shit, man.”

“Yeah.”

“You already know what I’m gonna say.”

“Not doing it.”

“What? Your mantle too full for another Grammy?”

“M’not using it.”

“Cause I’ll take those off your hands.”

He retreated, smooshed his face far enough he couldn’t move his mouth, and the carpet muffled what little diction he managed.

“M’ngnnangid.”

“Oh, get up, you freak, you don’t know half of what’s happened to that rug, and I haven’t replaced it in a year.”Jeff pelted him with pens until Eddie hauled himself off the floor and into the chair. “You’ve only got part of the melody written in, but the band will help you find the rest. We can vault it after, but come on, you gotta record this one.”

“I don’t think I can,” Eddie pleaded.

“No, you don’t want to, and I get it, I’m not gonna make you close the album with it even though it would make Rolling Stone have you carved in marble for their lobby — well, it’d be second to the end and then close on City Starlight — that’s not the point. You’re gonna need something else to go there so we can lock this album down. You gotta go do whatever it is you do when you need to find a song. The other three are good, so they might be post release singles. But I swear to god, Eddie, I will quit as your producer if you don’t record Lavender.”

“Song doesn’t have a title,” Eddie denied. Jeff stared, wholly unimpressed with Eddie’s pouting. “Shit. You swear you’ll vault it? No teasers, no clips, I don’t even want marketing to do photos of us practicing and recording it. I don’t want it on the label’s server. That one isn’t for other people.”

Jeff was his friend, but he was his producer first. For a moment, the compassion in his eyes was unbearable, like he might retract it. Jeff could see how much he was hurting, and had to know how big an ask it was for Eddie to record it. Producer first, friend second. 

“I promise, man. Still need to finish out the album, but this one won’t see sunlight without your buy off. I’ll keep it off the schedule for marketing, cause they’d try to pull something, but none of the band’ll betray you if you ask them to keep this private. They’ll get it.”

He’d never admit it with a gun to his head, but if he’d truly, absolutely never planned to do something with it, those pages wouldn’t have stayed in the notebook. He’d never have shown them to Jeff. 

It terrified him, but the idea of playing that song, hearing it in its full form was raw, cathartic temptation. 

“Okay.”

Maybe if he heard it, played it, got that song out of his chest, the hole it left behind could heal.

“I’ll start scheduling the guys. You’ll need Schnaider to work out the bass line for Let it Burn You Down, but Jess is the better fit for that missing transition in Love Notes where you just stopped playing and said ‘I don’t know what goes here’. She’ll know. We’ll get them both, and if you want to have a second bass for the album we can. 

“You’ll do strings first like normal in one on one sessions, let me know if you want to have me sitting in on it or listen to drafts after.” Jeff hummed, “Strings to start for most . You gotta get with Linus early to find the drumline for Richter Record Breaking. He’s how you’re gonna fix that clunky chorus.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t try that with me. It’s clunky and you know it. Actually, you should start with Linus before you get into anything else. Then do strings. Then we’ll get into the group sessions.”

“Sure. Next week?”

“Probably. Linus flew to... somewhere... to finish out a tour because Becca Hestley sprained her wrist. Can’t remember when he’s back. I’ll work with Chrissy. You go do your thing and get the song we need.”

“Do I have time to go back north for a few days?”

“Probably not,” Jeff said sympathetically. “Hey, Eddie. Look. I’m not gonna ask what happened that you brought me this when you told me a month ago you had no plans or pre-plans or itchy little ideas that might one day turn into your next album. Or why you brought me an album talking about things you never write about. I don’t need to know. But just in case, I’m not telling my boss that we’re starting this yet.”

“What, why? When we brought them Caradhras and gave them the draft list for The Red Book before they started asking for the next album, Nicholson did that little dance that the PAs giffed and added to slack.” 

“Dude, They aren’t even gonna ask you when you might have one for another couple months.”

“Yeah? So wouldn’t they be extra excited?” Eddie baffled at him. 

Jeff sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Eddie. Man. I’m not telling them yet, so if you decide you don’t want this,” he gestured to the notebook, “to be something you talk about in interviews, we can pretend it never happened.”

Shit. Friend was a real close second behind Producer, wasn’t it?

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. You’d think you’d trust me by this point, dude. Take this,” he tossed the notebook, “and go do your magic.”

Eddie called Chrissy as he climbed in his car. 

“Yes?”

“Thai or Indian, Chrissy?”

“Thai. Pad see ew and satay,” she immediately answered. “Should I come over tonight or right now?”

“I’m twenty ish from my place, unless the 101 is bad. Go in and start stuff for those lemongrass mojitos if you beat me there.”

He could hear her climbing off her treadmill. “Sure, I’ll grab some herbs from the patio. What else should I bring? You had a meeting with Jeff, so something’s up. I had the guys restock your bar before you got down here and the mangoes on my tree are insane. I have a bag for you. What else?”

“Full chaos list. The stuff you don’t normally let me know about. I need to… shit, I don’t know what I need, but I’m all itchy and I need to find a song. Need to do something soon to make it stop distracting me so I can write or Jeff’ll be pissed.”

“Mmhmm.” she hummed an affirmation, probably draining a water bottle. “Domestic or international? Social, political, environmental, general? Something personal? Community, youth, organization? Stealth? High profile?”

“I don’t know yet, Chris. Bring the whole thing. Hey. Could you put it on a scroll of parchment? I enjoy a nice scroll. One giant list that I could drop down the stairs. We’ll see what speaks to me.” 

There was a pause, and Eddie could hear the look she was giving her phone. “Alright. Get me the iced tea, too. We’ll order from the pie place later. See you soon.”

“See you in — shit, phone says it’ll be thirty eight minutes on the 101, what the fuck. Maybe I’ll jump to surface streets? Could take sixth up to KTown then cut across. But its already 4:30, so—”

“Eddie, I have permanent location access to your phone, you don’t have to tell me this, but if you’re stuck in traffic, I have time to shower. Drive,” she laughed, “drive safely.”

Eddie wandered Hollywood for an afternoon, dressed as a caricature of himself, busking and taking photographs with tourists who kept tipping him like he was an impersonator. He bought out an old church that was listed for demolition, contacted a group for ‘troubled’ youths, and spent two days with sledgehammers in the most intense version of a smash room he could achieve without getting a construction license. He found out about some bullshit homophobic law brought up in the Texas state house, and had the chocolate guy send them a sculpture that, technically, officially, wasn’t a giant penis, but yeah. It was. There was a sign that said Suck It. Which also wasn’t inappropriate because there were hard, pearly white candies with the sculpture. 

Amaury was a troublemaker. Eddie didn't even ask for that. It was his idea.

That was going to be a beautiful friendship. 

It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t get rid of the creeping feeling on his skin that distracted him from anything else. 

So, he jumped out of a plane. 

Both Chrissy and the flight company insisted he strap himself to an instructor first, and he didn’t argue. 

He laughed all the way down. Same as he did on a roller coaster. All that adrenaline bubbled over and turned to laughter while in free fall. They slipped through a cloud that spattered them in mist, then there was nothing but the desert beneath him, the wind in his ears, and the relief of a long held tension letting go. 

His laughter looked a lot like crying after he got to the ground, but he felt better than he had in months. 

It let him write something. Eddie sent four partial songs to Jeff, not thrilled with any of them, and hoping he’d get a note or response that helped him figure out what the real song would be. 

He went on one of the nightly shows, performed a song from his third album — Caradhras was the fan favorite — and grinned instead of answering when Stephen asked about whether he’d started on a new album yet. Since they were both infamous fans, he once again asked Colbert a question about Lord of the Rings, and for the first time; he managed to stump him. Eddie delivered a speech proclaiming his glorious victory from atop the back of the couch. 

The couch flipped before he finished, and the poor stage manager nearly had a heart attack when Eddie popped up bleeding from the forehead. 

Holy shit, he loved going on Colbert. 

There were a couple of one-off shows later in the summer, but he wasn’t gearing up for a tour yet. The crazy long tours that some artists did made Eddie crazy, so he stuck to short runs. Never more than four shows in a week. Never more than six weeks in a row like that. Not everyone could be Taylor, and Eddie’s reduced tour schedules made the ones he did higher profile. 

When he was antsy for a crowd between tours, he’d do a last-minute thing, without paid tickets, at some tiny venue. There was a fan on twitter who somehow always found out about those shows day of, and that guy’s tweet would be the only announcement. He and Chrissy agreed it was someone on staff, but it had become a brand signature, and they didn’t try to find out who it was. 

The first fifteen songs on the new, as-of-yet-unnamed album were coming together. It took Linus about ten seconds of thought after he listened to Eddie’s pre-record of Richter Record Breaking to nod and land exactly what the song needed. It was so perfect that Eddie worked it into a few other songs as a callback. It was a rumble and a pulse, and they traded those aspects back and forth to draw a thread through the album. Heartbeats and earthquakes as the looming threat beneath the melody, or as the roar that overtook it. 

Cicada might get cut and released later as a single. It wasn’t necessary for the arc now that Jess had fixed that transition and Love Notes ended sharper and more intense than it had in the first draft.

Every time Jeff listened to another final mix, he got more excited, and pushed Eddie a little harder for what was missing. 

He wrote a replacement for City Starlight first, even though Jeff hadn’t asked for one. Desert Sky was an inversion of it that most of his fans would catch if Eddie ever released City Starlight down the road. Even his casual fans would get it.

Starlight was about moving on. About the way the stars were still there, still watching, but invisible, pushed away and masked by the glow of the city. By the glow of living life. It was about the way the city tried to impersonate it, how you could look at a city from above and think you saw stars, and would only know the difference if you’d seen real stars before. It was about learning to be happy with the facsimile, and trying to forget the original. 

It ended the album on acceptance. 

If he was willing to put Lavender into the album, it was the perfect close. 

Eddie was not willing, so he wrote Desert Sky to replace it. 

Leaving the road to chase a mirage, thinking it would always be out of reach, but at least he’d get to see the stars as he followed it — the real stars — above him in the desert sky. Catching the dream, touching the stars, bringing them to earth, holding the mirage in his arms. 

Not. Subtle. 

They recorded Lavender around midnight on a Tuesday in a single take. 

They ran it without the vocals, worked out some fumbles in the melody line, looped the chorus until they found a give and take that worked, ran it some more until the chorus clicked, and after it happened accidentally, they changed the pacing at the ending. They nixed the slow fade, replaced the lingering collapse with a sudden cut. They played it through once more to be sure, still without vocals, but they knew they had it. 

Jeff was some kind of telepath, and knew before Eddie did that they were going to record it that night. He did the mix alone, and the band handled their own equipment. 

They didn’t do a second take. They didn’t need a second take. They got it. Absolutely perfect. It ended on a car crash, first the vocals, then the instruments dropped out in a sort of disjointed mess. Drums were supposed to cut out before the strings, but Linus stayed in, hitting one final thu-thump, one final heartbeat into the silence that fucking worked. 

It was lucky that it did, because they couldn’t have made a second attempt. 

Eddie’s voice gave out in the last word. 

He had to close his eyes and cling to his sweetheart, the guitar he rarely touched these days, brought down from Sequoia specifically to play this song. There was a heavy silence, with a few sniffles from the others. 

Jeff came through from the booth after a couple quiet minutes, and took the guitar from his hands. “Let’s go get you drunk, Eddie.”

Stained Glass Mirror got written the next day, while Eddie was hungover as shit, with a brand new tattoo on his ribs. Chrissy was still hiding in the guest room with the blackout curtains drawn when he got it down on paper, and went to find her around dinner. 

It was what the album needed if it was going to end with Desert Sky, and as the band did their job, it folded into the arc of music and story like it had always been there. 

The song was more of a fantasy than anything he wrote in The Red Book, and that entire album was references to Tolkien’s works. 

It was the ending that the story in the album expected. It was the victory at the climax of a movie. It was the happy ending that would live in Eddie’s dreams, if he ever dared to dream. And hey, the tour would be some kind of exposure therapy for him. He’d do the album start to finish for the main release tour. He’d have to handle whatever emotions it dredged up. 

If he was lucky, the really painful songs wouldn’t be the ones that topped the charts, and he wouldn’t have to keep playing them in later tours. 

His money was on Richter Record Breaking as the standout. It had a broader appeal and the buildup in the chorus repeats was infinitely belt-able. 

After weeks of avoiding the question, Eddie finally texted Jeff a photo of a page in his notebook with two words circled. 

Tracing Constellations 

He let Jeff and the others think the album name was pulled from the last song and the hints of it through the album, from the themes about seeing what you wanted to see, not what was really there. It did fit all of that. It was an echo of all of that, but he’d have gone with something else if it wasn’t for the part they didn’t know about.

Eddie really, really hoped Steve didn’t listen to this album. 

Shit, it didn’t matter if he did. 

Dustin would put it together and immediately tell his brother. 

Fuck it, he wasn’t changing it, it was the right name, and it wasn’t like the album name was a necessary clue if Steve listened to it at all. 

Since the album was unexpected, and since Jeff didn’t tell his bosses it was coming until they started working on Stained Glass Mirror, he had a gap before the press work and the tour began. They wanted album art and the style for the youtube visualizers locked down before they started doing teasers. Venues were scrambling behind NDAs to find slots in their schedules. Colbert’s team offered to boot any guest to get him back on. Mary was sketching out ideas for the set design and talking to an LED expert for media mapped star drops. Ryan was meeting with his team and with Jeff to get into pre-production for at least two music videos. Since they didn’t know what was going to rise to the top, they were trying to get a general language put together and build out concepts. 

That was another area where Eddie used his clout and stuck to his guns; the music videos backed the album’s story. Non optional. He let them do what they wanted with the visualizers and the merch -- and sometimes the finals were weird as shit -- but he had no problem raising hell if they tried to do some disconnected slop as the video. He got lucky on his first album because they weren’t really paying attention. By the time he was working on the second, he had the weight to push back on stupid suggestions. 

So, since the label was busy doing their job, he and Chrissy were taking a week’s pause before it ramped up to full speed. And since it was him, and since it was her, they were overseeing an exceptionally delicious bit of gremlining. 

Delicious. Ha. 

There was some kind of snobby luxury food event, full of pretentious idiots who swirled their wine and talked about the bouquet and profile because that was what a person was supposed to do, not because they could tell any difference. There were molecular gastronomy chefs creating flavored bubbles for people to pop on their tongues. Several trend setters and health influencers were giving speeches. There was a gallery of plating art. 

If it was an event for normal human beings, it would have been called FoodCon. Instead it was the Fitzwilliam and Felicity Willoughby-Harrenbaugh's Annual Exposition for Novel Presentations to the International Luxury Dining Association.

Gross. 

He only knew the name because there was a banner showing it across from their post. 

Even the abbreviation was impossible. 

FaFWHAEfNPttILDA

Keysmash looking bullshit. 

It was perfect for chaos though. Sure, food tricks and swaps got done all the time at more public events. Those guys that re-plated fast food made the news every time. This was invitation only, and apparently the Willoughby-Harrenbaugh’s were unaware of his reputation so they gave him one when he asked. Chrissy was giddy when she brought the idea to him. 

There was a second story balcony above the main hall, with a thick marble topped railing that let them watch without accidentally getting cornered, and obligated to try a ‘honey infused ghost pepper stuffed with dandelions’. Eddie wasn’t sure if it was actually a ghost pepper or some other variety, but he wasn’t going to find out. It was a twenty something James Beard winner offering them. There was a queue . 

He was happy where he was. 

They had a quince prosecco cocktail that he liked and Chrissy adored, a great view, a bet on whose bullshit would cause more drama, and formal wear. There were cameras at each of their displays so they’d get real video of reactions, but, again, he had no interest in being amidst the throng. In the last hour of watching, not a soul had come upstairs, thank christ, so Chrissy had pulled off her heels, and Eddie had loosened his tie. 

“I don’t think I’d survive the jetlag if we tried to go to Europe before next week, but if you wanted to go to Colorado, we could,” Eddie offered her. “I’ll remember to bring hiking boots this time.”

“You’ve been permanently banned from packing your own luggage for our trips without my supervision, so I’m not worried about that.” She stole his prosecco to replace her empty flute. “I don’t know, maybe we’ll just eat ice cream and paint our nails the rest of the week.”

Calm wasn’t a terrible idea. This event, and the videos and tiktoks and commentary about it would keep him entertained if they decided to wear sweats for days on end. 

“As long as we don’t use that one red that stained my skin. I swear makeup scrubbed three layers off me trying to get the color to fade enough for that interview. And then they brought out bleach.”

“We took it with us that day we went to the hydraulic press guy.”

Oh, right. Fantastic day. They should have brought a high speed camera though. Next time. 

Chrissy glanced past Eddie to the staircase, and went tense. She grabbed his arm quickly, and pulled so he was looking at her instead of whatever had her interest.

“Hey, Eddie. Listen. I’ll be back if you need me, and I’m so down to set off the fire sprinklers if you want to make a dramatic escape, but I’m calling some of those open ended favors you’re always offering me.”

He immediately glared. Never, not once in their friendship, had she called a favor. Sure, he gave them to her like candy, but she always rolled her eyes. 

“What did you do, Christine?”

“Don’t even. This can count for like, fifty of them, okay, and you’ve promised me hundreds.”

“Chrissy, what’s going on?”

“Let him talk to you,” she kissed him on the cheek, squeezing his arm, “for at least five minutes.”

There was only one reason she’d cash in a favor for a conversation. He watched her flounce away, bracing himself for what was coming. 

“I assume you’re the reason I’m drinking a ninety dollar pour of Two Buck Chuck,” Steve’s soft amusement preceded the clink of glass against the marble ledge. 

Three months wasn’t enough time. His newest tattoo was barely out of the flaking phase, and he was scraped raw, still choking with the taste of lyrics on his tongue. Eddie took a second to make sure he had himself together enough not to say something cruel, and wouldn’t immediately sob when he saw a ring. 

When he looked forward, planning to watch the crowd as a safe middle ground, he caught a glimpse of Steve in his peripheral vision, and he turned against his will to properly see him. His hair was longer. Hadn’t been cut since the wedding, Eddie was sure of it. It was still as short as when they first met, but it was an inexplicable blow that shook his control. 

He skipped the chance to notice anything else and faced forward. 

“How long did it take you to catch on?”

“Are you joking? First sip. I think Claire was about to say something, but I mentioned notes of honey and cedar, and suddenly it was an extraordinary vintage she’d love to add to the cellar at all of her restaurants.” 

“How long before she and the others catch on?”

“Oh, no.” He could hear Steve smiling. “They won’t. If you aren’t planning to tell them, they’re going to leave and ask their sommeliers to bring them a supply of - what did you name it? I wasn’t paying attention until I tasted it.”

“‘S’il m’Arillion.’ It sounds french enough if you don’t think too hard. If you do…” He shrugged.

“Silmarillion. Of course you did. Nerd.”

Fuck. He said it just like he used to, back when it was an endearment. 

Chrissy told him five minutes. There was four and a half left. Eddie could make it that long, then he’d chase her down and find out why she was doing this to him. The album was done. He could take a break from songwriting. He didn’t need new hurts to bleed onto a page. 

“So what else did you do?” Steve asked. “This is good, and they’ll have a conniption, but the joke needs a punchline. Are you having them do ten dollar pours of some rare vintage?”

“Of course, it’s the woman pitching rapid aging wine using chemicals. But there’s another. The newly discovered plant that’s organic, all natural, sugar free, low calorie, metabolism enhancing—”

“You didn’t.”

“Chrissy’s idea. Don’t worry, they’re making sure people with an allergy won’t have it, just in case.”

“That’s what the RFID tags are for?”

“Those already existed as part of the event, we’re just using them.”

“What is it really?”

“Amaury turned a box of sweet'n'low into this green fluff with a poppy seed thing at the base. It tastes like kale and then like agave, but it has a texture like corn hair. I think he might be a wizard. He helped with the name for the wine too.”

Steve finished off his glass and set it down again, letting his right hand rest a little closer than before. 

Eddie flinched. 

“Eddie?” Steve didn’t touch him, but his fingers twitched like he wanted to. “Chrissy said she’d get me five minutes, and I don’t want to run out of time. Can you look at me?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s fair. They did warn me, and kind of — okay, yeah okay, I can say this to the back of your head. I can work with this. There’s two things.”

Eddie gestured for him to proceed. He needed this to be over. 

“Right. Ironically, I need to thank you. Again. For showing up that day. Dustin was wrong about a lot of things, and I wish he’d told — at least he could have told Robin, but he told me about it after. He said he wanted to get me the best present, and he’s a grad student now, so he’s broke. He thought meeting you would be the best thing to ever happen to me.” He paused. “He’s not wrong.”

“Don’t—”

“You are. Meeting you is the best thing that ever happened to me. You were the first person to ever really put me first, or care if I actually wanted to be some place or doing whatever thing was going on. Before you, I just went where I was supposed to. It wasn’t an option not to, so I never really thought about what I liked or wanted, I just did what I was supposed to, and if there was any wiggle room, I’d slide towards whatever was least awful. You didn’t let me get away with that.”

Eddie slipped his hand beneath the suit jacket, pressing his fingers over fresh ink. 

“I get why you didn’t, but I wish you’d stayed, Eddie. I really do. It was — it’s good we had an open bar, definitely made full use of it. Shit. I wish you’d been there. I’d have been happy if you were. I get it, but, yeah, uh, thank you, for showing up to your ex’s wedding just to make sure that the guy was doing okay. Normal people wouldn’t bother.”

“You’re welcome.” 

Because the Willoughby-Harrenbaughs enforced a strict hetero-normative dress code, Eddie wasn’t wearing his usual eyeliner. On the one hand, that was good; it couldn’t leave tracks. On the other hand, worrying about his eyeliner was how he usually avoided crying in public.

 He’d visited Steve on his wedding day, reminded him that he was allowed to want things — he had to be reminded of that, what the fuck, how could he have spent five years forgetting that he was allowed to, supposed to want things — and, he guessed, was living a happier, more authentic life as a newlywed because of it. 

He went for his own confirmation, yeah, but he’d wanted Steve to be happy. Ergo, he’d done good. He’d helped Steve. Steve was happier now. Shit, even the weirdness in how the guy said ‘happy’ that day was gone. 

“Eddie?”

“You’re welcome, again. Glad I could remind you about that. Maybe put it on a post-it above your toothbrush. Anything else? It’s been five minutes now, right?”

“Please turn around?”

“Steve, I actually, literally, cannot, and don’t you dare move. You said there were two things. Just. Just say whatever it is. Please.”

Steve must have had something Chrissy wanted. No other way she’d have arranged this torment. No way she knew what he was going to tell him either. If she’d known he was just going to stand there and dig the knife deeper, there wasn’t a bribe big enough. 

“Right, yeah. So, the other thing.” Steve shifted, and slid the glass away from them with a scrape. Eddie could feel how close he was. Not touching, but the sense of potential was overwhelming. 

“I know Dustin told you I have all your albums. He gave me a full recap after he realized who you were. And he’s right. All the singles and the live show recordings. I have the special editions where you added photos of your notebook. There are a couple of audience recordings of you in your unannounced shows. I have the limited release stuff. I paid someone to be the fake name and face you met so I could have a copy of the acoustic set. I didn’t think you’d let me buy it if you knew it was me. I got it because I hoped it would be on there.”

Eddie wanted him to hurry up, but that was an insane reason.

“You spent a hundred thousand dollars to buy an album on the hope that it would have a song that I’ve never played?” No need to name it, they both knew what song Steve meant. 

“It was one twenty five; I had to pay Mikey. And you’ve played it. You used to play it every time. Any time they let you near a microphone. You just never played it for money, you never played it after.” 

“Okay, great. That’s a lot of money you wasted on a gamble, but I guess it’s yours to do what you want. Thanks for not uploading it on youtube. Did you want a corrected autograph on it or something?”

“I was right,” Steve snarked, “it was on there, so I think I won that gamble, which means it wasn’t a waste.”

He squeezed his eyes shut before he half-turned over his shoulder. It wasn’t looking at him, but it was a middle ground, and might push Steve to wrap this up. 

“It’s definitely been five minutes now, so, I’m happy you’re happy.” His voice was mostly stable as he said it. He spun back, fully facing away from Steve so he could open his eyes. He stared at the ceiling, willing away the tears and the lump in his throat. There was still blood under his nails from tearing himself open over this man. He couldn’t keep doing this. “You’re welcome. Glad you like my music. Don’t waste your money in the future. If you want a special copy of something, message Chrissy, she’ll take care of it, and I won’t — we won’t have to do this again.”

“No, see, wait, no, that’s kind of what this is,” Steve said, pulling something from his pocket and sliding it far enough Eddie could see it on the ledge without turning. “But I need your permission to listen to it.” 

It was a thumb drive, one of the good, secure ones, unlabelled. Not that it needed to be. 

“It’s limited edition, one of a kind, maybe, not to be released to anyone,” he whispered, “not ever heard without your approval. Even the label doesn’t know about it. I hear it’s only been played once, and it’s on this. So, I’m here to ask for your permission.”

No. 

No no no no no.

“How the fuck did you get that?” 

“I’m not going to tell you, because they don’t deserve you blowing up on them. I promise it wasn’t Chrissy, though.”

He knew that. Jeff or the band, despite the promises they made.

He snatched at the drive so he could go find the nearest guy with a hydraulic press. 

Steve moved faster. He got the drive, and he caught Eddie’s wrist before he could run. 

“Eddie—”

“Don’t, Steve. Don’t do that. Don’t do this. You don’t have my permission, you’re never getting permission, it’s never getting played. I never should have recorded it.”

“Eddie!”

“You’re happy, and you have your perfect stupid life, and I hope you enjoyed your honeymoon, sorry I couldn’t pretend hard enough that I could stay to watch you have a party about it, but I’m happy you’re happy, so give it to me, cause I gotta go.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Eddie,” he snapped, half spinning Eddie, half stepping around him. “Look at me!”

God, he was beautiful.

No caveat this time. No layer of distortion from a facade of happiness. Just beautiful. 

He came here to thank him. 

Eddie did a good enough job reminding him of how they once were that Steve was actually happy again. Perfect life and perfect wife. He was wearing a suit. What did it look like? Fabric. Probably. Eddie didn’t care. That was just clothes. He couldn’t look away from his eyes, and the smug grin he always got when he won. 

“Okay, looked at you, give it, leaving now.”

Steve let go, but tucked the drive into his jacket as he stepped backwards.

“No, you didn’t look.”

“Did too, you’ve got a tan. See? I looked.”

“Eddie, come on, look at me.”

“I did!” Sure, he was now looking at the terrazzo floor — hideous, why did rich people love it so much — but he looked at Steve for a few seconds.

“Stop it. You’re the first person who really ever saw me, not who I was pretending to be. You’re the first person who ignored all the layers of bullshit I threw at them and actually looked at me. Who actually saw me. Come on, this time isn’t even hard. No bullshit, no masks, just me. Just look at me. Please. I need to know if you still do.”

Obviously Steve thought there was something important in his tan or his suit or whatever the fuck, and if it made this end sooner, then fine. 

Eddie froze the second he really looked, and Steve’s snitty little smirk deepened and grew, turning into one of those smiles he couldn’t fake. 

“Told you you should look at me. We could have skipped that little dramedy sketch.”

He gestured at Eddie, then put his hands back on his hips. 

His bare hands. 

“You’re…”

“I’m not married.”

“So what, you just got divorced a month after —”

“No. I didn't get married that day. Or any day. We had the party, but no wedding.”

Yeah, that made more sense. Steve wouldn’t divorce someone like that. It was cruel. So he called it off, and probably broke Kate’s heart and pissed off both families. He fucked up all the important pieces of his life, ruined however many years of relationship, whatever reserve of good will he’d gained from his parents. Gone. Wasted, all at once. And he was here, which meant it had to do with Eddie. Which meant Eddie did that to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “you weren’t supposed to see me. I just went to make sure you were happy. You weren’t supposed to know I was there. I didn’t mean to fuck up your life.”

“Oh, fuck, baby, no,” Steve keened, “You didn’t. I promise.” 

Baby.

No. Nope. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t do this. Eddie pivoted in place, striding towards the emergency stairs. 

“Eddie, what the fuck? Please, don’t leave like this. Okay, okay. I should have called or something, I know, just let me talk to you. I need to tell you all of it. There’s so much you should know, baby.”

“Nope. Five minutes is up.”

Steve was a few steps away, hands held out and bare . He was terrified, and he was beautiful. It was Steve, his Steve, and Eddie was still gluing together his heart from the last time. Even if it was something good, Eddie couldn’t do this, not right now. 

Wait, fuck, Steve still had the —

“Don’t listen to it.”

“Eddie, please at least let—” Steve tried. 

“No. You don’t have my permission. Don’t you dare listen to it.” 

He pulled the fire alarm, and ran down the stairs as the sprinklers wreaked havoc behind him.

Chapter Text

They did spend the rest of the week eating ice cream and painting their nails. Plus a bit of crying.

Chrissy apologized for not grilling Steve about what he was going to do. Eddie apologized for not letting Chrissy pull the alarm.  

Neither of them knew how Steve got hold of that song, but, once Eddie calmed down from what was super-definitely not a panic attack about it going public, he knew that Steve wouldn’t post it. He wouldn’t listen to it either. He’d hate that, he’d want to listen to it, but he showed up to ask for permission because he understood what it was to keep the important things private. It was probably safer with Steve than with Eddie, now. Eddie would have gotten his hands on a welding torch within an hour. 

Steve had it though, when he shouldn’t have known it existed, and the list of people who did know was extremely short. 

“There’s no way, Eddie, no way. Jeff wouldn’t do that.”

“He’s my producer, Chris. It has to be him. If it was the label they’d have released it. First thing Jeff said about that song was that it would win awards, and that if I didn’t want another Grammy, he’d take it. He wants it released, but he also knows that I’d burn the world down, and he figures if St— if he liked it, then I’d be okay with it.”

“Come on, even if he did want it released, there is no way that Jeff would have kept a straight face. You’ve talked to him - had meetings with him - how many times since you recorded it? Jeff would have cracked. He knows this is a big deal. He would have cracked. It had to be someone else.”

“Maybe he’s learned how to lie.”

“Even if he did, he has to know how big this would be to you. How mad you would be. I haven’t even seen your lyric journal and I still know how big it is. He’s your friend!”

“He’s my producer first, Chris!”

She threw her hands up and groaned. 

“What are you going to do, then, fire him? You’ll have to give the label a reason, and then they’re gonna know about the song. So are you planning to blackmail him?”

“Yeah! Maybe I am!” Eddie shouted, “If I can’t trust him then I don’t want him as my producer! He made me record it and I only agreed because he swore no one would ever hear it! He’s supposed to be the only one that had a copy. He said he’d vault it! So if it went anywhere then he had something to do with it!”

Chrissy clenched her jaw, glaring at him for a long moment, clearly restraining something. They’d yelled about this over and over since they got home, and she’d pushed him a lot harder than she normally did. She was hesitating over something, and wearing the angriest of her contract-law-classes-for-fun faces. She knew him terrifyingly well.

She pulled out her phone. 

Eddie squawked and flapped his hands at her. She climbed up the chair and onto the dining table to dodge him, thumbs flicking over the screen.

“No, Chris, don’t, what are — don’t just call him, I’ll give you anything you —” 

“Pie place, cake place, or the milkshake place?” She interrupted, pulling up the app. Eddie dropped into a chair. She wasn’t going to force it. Not yet. Not now, which was the only thing that mattered tonight. 

“Cake place, please,” Eddie said, “The strawberry one if they have it today.”

“I’m getting the cheesecake drizzle too. And Eddie?” She looked down at him. “I put a meeting on the calendar for tomorrow afternoon.”

“Are you serious?” Jeff perked up the second the question left Eddie’s lips, like he’d just found the map to El Dorado. “Are you going to do something with it? I know, I know, it won’t be right away, and I won’t pressure you, but maybe after the tour? Maybe after the second or third leg? If you’re okay with it, we could do an alternate release copy. I’m sure the guys would love to tweak the rest of the album to shift the flow so it lands harder. We can do it as a — if you’re okay with it — but can you imagine a concert tour where we don’t announce which version it will be? Like Clue? And if you do a third version? You’d sell out any venue, every time.”

Eddie’s heart sank. Jeff’s first thought was the album, the concerts, the job.

“But holy shit, Eddie. I thought maybe, in a couple years — I don’t really want to encourage you to do versions of your albums since I know you’d end up doing seven versions of Red Book going after cuts so deep that the Tolkien estate would need to reread to understand them, but for this album? Jesus, Eddie, if we time this right, you’ll win album of the year two years in a row for the same album. I don’t even know if the Grammys will do that, but they’ll change the rules if they have to.”

And there was the immediate thought about fame and awards. He was going to hate finding out, but he couldn’t not know. Plus, Chrissy was chatting with the production team, and she’d kill him.

“Look, Jeff, do you have the song or not?”

“Yeah, yes, of course, I have it right—” Jeff looked into the drawer he’d been unlocking in his desk, and froze. He rifled through for a moment, breath getting visibly shallow. “Hang on, just hang on, sorry. I must have put it in the —” He spun to a lockbox on the back wall, opened it, yanked out the container, and stared in horror. 

“Fuck. Shit. Christ. Fuck. Oh, fuck, Eddie… you aren’t here to…” His eyes were wide as he jolted upright and spun back. “Does someone have it? Okay. Shit. I need to call Legal. If we move fast enough we can get it off whoever is hosting and talk to youtube and the main platforms so they can flag the sound and auto remove it.” He grabbed his phone and shook the mouse to wake up his computer. Or maybe it was just his hand shaking. Jeff looked like he was about to hyperventilate.

“I should be able to keep upper management from hearing about it if we get there before it trends. It’ll get more complicated if the C Suite decides they want to hear the song because you know what they’ll say. You have some protections in your contract for final veto that Chrissy added but Legal has loopholes and if it’s already public it’s going to be easier for them to get around you. We need to get Chrissy and Jenn in a room, immediately —” 

Jeff paused in his panic, and shook his head weakly. “Eddie, I am so sorry. I’ll fix this, I promise.”

The weight lifted off Eddie’s chest. It wasn’t Jeff. He was a shit liar, always had been, and he couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. It wasn’t Jeff. 

No matter how much his producer wanted that track released, or how many plans he had if Eddie changed his mind, he hadn’t betrayed him. He pulled the phone from Jeff’s hand, and closed out of Jenn’s contact.

“Don’t call Legal.”

“What the hell, Eddie! Someone broke into my office and stole shit! We need to call Legal. Probably the police. Do you even know who has it?”

“Yeah, I do.”

That muted response pulled him up short. Eddie didn’t put any effort into hiding it, so Jeff figured it out after a few seconds.

“The guy you wrote it for.”

“About, not for.”

Jeff didn’t argue the difference. He took a few slow breaths, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the ashy cast from his face, or the tension in his eyes. “If you knew he had it, what was this? Why’d you ask me if you already knew someone had it?”

“Needed to know if you’re the one who sent it.”

A flinch, then hurt, visible and audible, as Jeff replied, “I wouldn’t do that to you, man.”

“Someone did,” Eddie sighed, “It would have been easier if it was you, dude. You, I would have gotten fired or something. Put on my best diva crown and pitched a fit. So now I’m hoping you recently hired some uberfan undergrad intern who thinks the world works like a romcom.”

“I haven’t hired anyone new, and interns don’t come in until February.”

“Did you get blitzed at Annie’s birthday and tell a rando about it?” He asked, exhausted, and feebly tried to find a different explanation. “Maybe went to Magic Castle and got hypnotized? Aliens? You told Annie and she got grabbed by aliens? Is there any way that this comes back to you?”

“One of the band?” Jeff caught on to what Eddie was trying to disprove. Pain faded into anger, and he flushed dark. “Fuck. Fuck that, and fuck them. I’ll find out who it is and fire them, and blacklist them, and I’ll find you the best replacement in the industry, and I’ll have them here tomorrow morning so we can start practicing.”

“Don’t,” Eddie mumbled, folding over in the chair until his forehead just rested on the edge of the desk.

“Then I’m gonna — Eddie, what the hell?”

He trusted Jeff. Even more now that he was sure that Jeff was ready to grab a shovel and head for the desert with a body in the trunk. 

It was only a few steps and a wall between the booth and the recording room, but it was far enough. Holy crap, it would have been easier if it was Jeff.  That would have been betrayal for fame and fortune, and Eddie would have held onto the fury of it for decades.

Jeff recorded it, he was near it, but wasn’t inside the swell with him as Eddie drowned in that song.

It wasn’t Jeff, which meant Eddie had to cope with a more complex emotion.

It was one of the artists who made an album out of the bleeding wreckage he’d laid on the page. None of them wanted their name in lights. They didn’t want the fame part of a music career; they wanted to make the music. They were excellent. They could join any musician and not just play the chords they were told to, they could slip inside, feel it, and make it something more. 

They were up to their elbows in Eddie during this album. Whether Eddie wanted them to be there or not, they heard him talk about the lyrics, and stepped deeper and deeper into Eddie’s chest. They were up to their necks when they recorded Lavender. They drowned with him as they played it. 

There was a reason they all had matching tattoos now.

It wasn’t sent to TMZ or a fansite. 

It was sent to Steve. 

Yeah. Eddie still wanted to kill whoever it was. First professionally, and maybe literally after he’d destroyed everything they cared about. 

They’d seen the inside of his soul. They’d seen the chasm yawning open in there.

If he’d ever been in their place, if he’d heard a song like that, written by an artist who so badly needed to — well. He’d have done the same. 

“I can get a whole new band if you want them,” Jeff offered after the quiet got loud.

“Don’t bother, I’d just make the guys travel with us to work with them for the first half of the tour, and there’s a reason we wanted them for this album. May as well have the originals.”

“Then what can I do? You have the first pre-press on Wednesday. It’s public in five. You have the first concert five days after that. Do you want… shit, man. This is usually when I call Chrissy, this is pretty far beyond producer shit.”

“Yeah, well, you know me, always pushing people to expand their boundaries. Look, I came here, Chrissy made me come here, because I needed to be sure it wasn’t you, but I was also a little bit hoping you lied.” His stomach flipped as he willed himself to say it, “Was that drive really the only copy? Cause it’ll make my life a lot easier if you have a backup sitting around.”

“You told me no backups,” Jeff answered flatly.

Eddie slumped. “And you listened to me?”

“About this? Yeah, man. You said no copies, no backups. It only exists on that drive. I worked on a local file direct on the drive so the server didn’t get a copy. I had to override the program because it really didn’t like me doing that. If the computer had crashed while it processed, the song wouldn’t exist at all.  You said no copies. You said to vault it, and I promised you I would. Only thing I’d have lied about is if you’d told me to destroy it.”

“Dammit,” Eddie hissed into his hands.

“You’re welcome,” Jeff sassed blandly. 

“Yeah, yes. Thank you, really. We’ll talk later about how much. But this would have been easier if you were a bit of a bastard. Okay. Can I get a copy of the other one then? And a pre-release copy of the full album on CD?”

“City Starlight? Sure, it didn’t get mastered with the rest, but I have a copy, and it’s close enough. There’s a whole stack of CDs with Gareth, grab as many as you want.” Jeff shrugged, winced, and rolled his shoulder to work out some of the muscle tension Eddie had just provoked. “Why? What are you doing?”

It felt wrong to lie to Jeff after that showdown, so Eddie was stuck with honesty.

“I really haven’t decided yet.”

As for how Steve got Chrissy’s approval to talk to him, that was Robin. She was Steve’s best friend, even though Dustin contested the title, and spent two months pleading Steve’s case to Chrissy’s email, then voicemail, then directly to her. Chrissy apologized for that as well, explaining that Robin had made it seem like Steve was going to fix things. 

In between meetings with the tour’s production teams and the various marketing teams, they texted each other ridiculous ways they could gremlin some vengeance out of her. There was no way they’d follow through, but it was fun.

His schedule was gnarly now that word was out. 

The label made the first announcement as a video with the start of the intro, fading in on the album name and a date. It was posted to Eddie’s official accounts. All kinds of mysterious and dramatic. They were waiting for the last of the venues to get their ducks in rows before announcing the tour schedule, but kept the fans hungry with thirty second clips and poster reveals. PR had him do pre-records for a bunch of countdowns and sneak-peeks, and got his disinterested buy-off for the behind-the-scenes content. There was a pitched battle going on between Ryan and the CCO about which songs would get videos. Mary was frazzled and snappy; something about the pixel mapping on the star drop not having enough color control.

Rehearsals were stalled for two days until Jess and Luke got back from recording with another artist, which was good for several reasons. Eddie had a little more time before he’d have to play with a group when he knew one of them was a traitor. And it left a few hours available for him and Chrissy to drink and laugh and exhale. 

Chrissy’s phone rang while they were pouring fresh mai tais, face up on the counter with the name visible, and she waited for Eddie’s nod before answering. Speakerphone, because she was the best. 

“Hello?’

“Oh god, Chrissyyyyyyyyy ,” Robin’s voice dragged guiltily through the name, and then switched to auctioneer speeds, “I’m so sorry, he fucked that up so bad, I should have made him practice on me so I knew he wasn’t going to make things worse but he told me all about what he was going to say and how he wanted to say it and he told me he’d been practicing and it sounded so sweet, and oh my god Chrissy, I’m so so so so so so sorry. 

“I totally get it if you won’t give him another chance, but he didn’t do the thing he should have done first because he’s a dingus, and he’s so stupidly in love that he got distracted because he always thinks that things will just turn out because it would be better like that, so please tell me how I can get a note or a text or a letter or a video or a telegram or something to Eddie so he knows about all of it, even if he doesn’t forgive him or want to talk to him, because it got all fucked up, but he deserves to know.”

Chrissy winced, “Robin, you’re on speaker.”

“Oh. Oh, no. No. No, no. Please say you’re standing in a room with, like, Lady Gaga, and Janelle Monae, and Chappel Roan, and every other beautiful woman in music, and they’re all laughing at me, and you’re going to make fun of me forever, and buy a billboard about it because that would still be better than if—”

“So, you’re Steve’s best friend?” Eddie cut her off. 

“One moment, please.”

Eddie finished pouring their drinks as they listened to a door open, close, a period of muffled screaming, then the door open, close, and footsteps. Chrissy tried to get him to look up, but if he did, he’d break, and she would kick him out of the room for this phone call. 

“Okay, hi, can we pretend I didn’t say any of that?” Robin asked in a falsely calm and polite tone.

“No,” Chrissy said.

“Fine, then you have to sit there and listen, Munson,” she dropped the niceness and threatened, “because my soulmate is a dingus and incapable of saying things when he really needs to, and I’m incapable of keeping my mouth shut when I should. It’s a finely crafted system of checks and balances.”

“Robin, look,” Eddie started.

“Wait, shit, hang on, platonic soulmate, not like soulmate-soulmate. I love him, but I’m an entire lesbian, so I love him, but it isn’t like that and never has been and never will be, and honestly even if he suddenly got hit with a magic spell and turned into a woman it still wouldn’t be like that because I promise it’s entirely, one thousand percent platonic. You can ask anyone who has ever known me, I swear this is —” 

Chrissy dragged Eddie, her phone, and their drinks to the couch. She left him with Robin while she grabbed the liquor, the mixers and the ice. 

“Do I get to ask questions, or is this a filibuster deal?”

“Oh! You — You have questions?! You actually want to know?”

He bit his tongue on a bitchy retort. Of course he had questions. About a thousand of them. He’d been trying to pretend for the last week that he didn’t care, but now that there was an opportunity for him to ask? He was boiling over.  “What happened to the wedding?”

“Yes, good! Starting at the beginning! Good choice. Yes. The priest refused to perform the ceremony.”

“What?” Chrissy gasped, loud enough to mask the gutted noise Eddie let out. 

“I know, right? Dick’s eye was so twitchy I thought it was going to pop out of his skull.”

“Why not?” Chrissy grew up Catholic, and this was obviously blowing her mind. 

“He said he wouldn’t bind two people for life if they shouldn’t be together. He gave a whole — a really beautiful, actually — this whole service to all the guests about the foundations of a life together, and how he wouldn’t help erect a house on sand because then it’s just going to go all three little pigs and smoosh everyone inside... Uh. He said it better than that.”

Eddie bit his lip and clutched Chrissy’s hand. She asked the follow up for him. 

“How did he know something was wrong? Did Steve say something?”

“Uhhhh, so? That one’s my fault? Sorta. Partly. See, Dustin overheard Eddie talking about Steve being allergic to lavender, and he texted me to come find them ‘cause he assumed I already knew and was pissed off that I hadn’t said anything, but I didn’t know because he might be my platonic soulmate, but he’s also the biggest doofus on the planet, and then Steve tried to tell me it wasn’t a big deal, like it didn’t matter that there was lavender on literally every table and pew, and that he had a scrip from his doctor for the steroid that helps with a rash in case he accidentally touched it, and he’d taken his migraine meds in advance. So then I started yelling because that’s stupid , which made Steve start yelling, and then Dustin started yelling, and the priest could hear us from his little priestly office thing and came to ask about all the yelling.”

“He refused to perform the ceremony because Steve has an allergy?” Eddie asked.

“No, he refused because — shit, I feel bad telling you this, but he’s proven he can’t handle himself so if he wants to be mad at me later, fine, he can be, honestly if you want to be mad at me too, that’s fine, I’m telling you — the priest guy asked Steve about it, and first Steve said it was good that he’s allergic because marriage requires compromise. So the priest asked if he’d discussed this with Kate and he’d accepted it because it was important to her, and Steve admitted that he hadn’t. And then he tried to say that was even better because she shouldn’t have to argue with him over something as little as flowers, she should just get to have what she wanted, and the priest gave him this look, and then, oh my god, he flat out asked Steve if he loved Kate. And, listen, he’s been my best friend since the Summer of Scoops, and I thought I knew him better than anyone, right?”

“What — Summer of — what?” 

“Ice cream shop, I’ll send Chrissy the pictures. There were uniforms. Sailors. He had to wear shorts. And Steve goes to answer the priest, and just sorta — he just stopped for a second, and he pulled the lavender out of his pocket, with his stupid fingers, he totally got a rash later, and he looked at it, and for a second I thought he was having a stroke because he was just sitting there, but he —”

Robin sighed, and Eddie couldn’t breathe, waiting for her to go on. Steve never hid his affection for someone he loved. Steve would never marry someone he didn’t love. 

“I’d never seen him cry before. Like, at all, you know? He’s Steve, and he’s got his suits and his dorky briefcase, and he matches his socks to his tie for good luck when he has an important meeting, and he tells the worst jokes, and he’s always super calm about things and is so good during a disaster or when someone is in trouble, and he’s just so full of love.”

Chrissy pushed Eddie’s cup towards his face so he’d actually drink instead of staring slack-jawed at her phone. 

“He tried to like, undo it? I don’t know what he thought he was doing, but he kept saying that he wanted to marry her, and at one point he tried to convince us they were happy tears. Which? No. That was not happy crying. The priest sent someone to go find Kate, and when Steve freaked out because you’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding, this guy, god. You know how movies always have the priest or the pastor or whoever be all compassionate and wise? That’s who we got. He looked at Steve and said that it was fine if he saw her, because they weren’t getting married today.”

A quick tap to mute their end, and Chrissy asked him, “Do you want me to do this and tell you later?”

He immediately unmuted them to plead, “Robin, if they didn’t get married why did he tell me he wished I’d been at the reception? Why did he say it would have made him happy if I’d gone to his wedding reception? What did he say to —”

Robin cut him off before he could loop back to the priest’s question.

“He said that?”

“Yeah. He said he wished I’d been there.”

“He said that without telling you that they called off the wedding? He didn’t say that part first!?” They heard her thunk her head against something. “Ughhhhhhhhhhh. I knew I should have made him take note cards. But he thought it wasn’t romantic to need notes. You know what’s romantic? Clear communication of relevant information, that’s real romance.”

Chrissy muted them again while Robin ranted about the superiority of index cards.

“Are you okay?” 

He gave her a look. 

“Right, stupid question. How not-okay are you?”

“You want it on a scale?”

“Yes, please, that would be perfect. On a scale from vagueing about a congressman to taking stunt pilot classes.”

“I ruined his life, Chris.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did! I ruined their lives.”

“You didn’t, but, whatever. How not-okay are you right now? Because I am not going to sit here and let you torture yourself with this, which is exactly what you’re doing.”

“Guys?! Shit! It says it’s still connected, can you not hear me?” 

Eddie reached for the phone, trying to get past his best friend.

“Oh god, did you block me? But then how could I still be connected to your phone, that doesn’t make any sense, but you haven’t answered—”

“Robin,” Eddie interrupted as soon as Chrissy let him, “How mad is Kate at him for cancelling her wedding?”

There was a moment of silence as Robin seemed to restart her brain from her blocked-contact-panic. 

“At the priest? She’s Catholic, isn’t she Robin?” Chrissy said in the gap, then looked at Eddie without waiting for an answer, “She’s not gonna be mad at the priest.”

“Jesus Christ. At Steve. How mad is she at Steve?”

“Oh. Okay. Okay.” Robin stammered a little, “In advance. I promise, I got permission to tell you this part. I swear. Cause Kate is a pretty awesome person, and I wouldn’t just, like — so I talked to her, and she said I could tell you about this if I needed to. Really, she should have talked to Steve about this earlier, but she thought he was the same, and I also understand why she didn’t. And honestly, she would talk to you herself, but she thought that would be really awkward for everybody, but the offer is totally on the table if you want to take it.”

“Robin,” Chrissy insisted, arm around Eddie’s hunched shoulders.

“Right, sorry. Okay, can’t lie. Kate was super mad when the priest had her come in to talk, but!” she interrupted herself when Eddie let out a garbled sob. “But. She was on the priest’s side. She was mad at Steve about the lavender. She didn’t know either, cause Steve never told her, and he was always just really careful about it because she grows lavender, and it's her favorite flower, so it's been around their place the whole time.”

Of course he did. Steve would give anything for someone he loved. Kate loved lavender, so Steve was willing to deal with the rashes and the headaches every minute of the day for her. He loved her enough to do that, and Eddie being there fucked it up. 

“Fine, okay, but it's still her wedding. It got cancelled, her family was there. Wasn’t she mad that her fiance wasn’t going to become her husband?”

“No! I promise. She was okay with it!”

No one would be okay with it. 

“It was in a cathedral! Weddings are expensive! They had hundreds of guests! I saw the invitations and the registry and they did all those photos! She had her dream wedding with a dream guy and suddenly it all got taken away from her!”

“She’s aroace!” Robin yelled.

Eddie checked with Chrissy for a moment, bewildered by Robin saying that like it made anything better. She looked just as lost.

“What?”

“Aro-Ace, as in—”

“We know what the word means!”

“Then you know—

“That doesn’t make it okay to cancel her wedding!”

“She was cool with it!”

“It was his wedding too, and he didn’t want to cancel it!”

“Both of you Shut Up!” Chrissy cut them both off. “Robin, set the phone down, hit mute, and go get a glass of water. I’m muting our end too. Come back in a couple minutes.”

Eddie emptied his mai tai, and immediately accepted Chrissy’s when she handed hers over to replace it. 

“This isn’t good for you, Eddie.” Sometimes he could hear her sorority sisters when she spoke.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re super not fine, you’re freaking out, and it’s bad. It’s bad like that time we both had to talk to the secret service.”

“I ruined his life, Chrissy.” He shook his head. “He had a life planned out, and I showed up and…”

Did Steve ever answer the priest? Robin hadn’t said, and she cut him off before Eddie could ask, but if Steve had answered, she would have told him. Which meant… Fuck if he knew what that meant. 

Steve never hid how much he loved someone. 

Steve wouldn’t marry someone he didn’t love.

Steve didn’t answer the question. 

He was asked and he started crying and then he thanked Eddie for showing up and ruining his life. 

Chrissy was shaking his shoulder.

Kate was aroace, and there was a wide range within that, but she thought Steve was the same. She thought Steve didn’t want romance. That he didn’t love with every cell in his body. Steve. Steve. It was five years, but Steve was willing to give up so much for her, and he was changed, but he wasn’t, and he came to find Eddie to thank him, when he should have come to curse him.

“Robin?” The whip-like snap in Chrissy’s voice pulled Eddie’s head out of the spiral. “I’m hanging up. Don’t call.”

“Wait, no—”

The phone rang again as Chrissy powered it off. 

She was looking at him. He could feel it, but he was stuck, eyes caught on nothing, shuffling the pieces and trying to make it make sense. It didn’t make sense.

After a few silent minutes, leaning against his side, she softly asked, “what the fuck?”

“Fuck if I know.” He exhaled an almost-laugh, and reached for the drinks to make another, but she snatched the glasses away. 

“Nope. That —” she gestured at her phone “— just vaporized all of the food I’ve eaten today, and it was worse for you. I was a bystander in that trainwreck. We need protein, fat and carbs. We need to hydrate, and then we can have another drink.” Sorority voice again. It showed up when she was fully freaked out. A coping mechanism.

“I’ll call her tomorrow and get the full story,” she announced as she returned with a bag of mini babybels, leftover rotisserie chicken, and two stacks of crackers. Two stacks, because they had strongly conflicting opinions on, of all things, crackers. “I’d ask for a list of what you want me to ask her, but I think the best I’ll be able to do is shepherd her back to the topic while she rambles for hours and then answer your questions myself.”

Ever the classy rich guy he was, Eddie responded with a mouth full of cheese. 

“I don’t want to hear it through you.”

Ever one to match his style, she answered with a mouth full of crackers. 

“You can’t talk directly to her again.” She swallowed fast so she could continue without spraying crumbs, “You two are two types of chaos and it did not blend. Eddie, you cannot do that to yourself again. I am not going to let you do that to yourself again. You couldn’t see yourself. I could. It isn’t happening. I’ll take away your phone.”

“I don’t want to hear it through her.”

She blinked. “Okay but, uh, Eddie. Like, a week and a half ago you pulled a fire alarm so you wouldn’t hear it from him, either. But you’re making a face, so I know you don’t want to never hear about it.”

“He was — what she said. He thought it was all going to work out if he — When he left me, I never really got to… I don’t want to hear it from him, until he… I need him to hear me first.”

He realized what he was going to do as he spoke, and hated it for being the right answer.

“Why are you making your chaos-regret face?”

“Ask me tomorrow. How many more cheeses do I have to eat before I can get drunk about this?”

Steve — This comes out in three days. The first draft was different. Listen to the CD first. That’s the one the world gets to have.

The last two songs got replaced.

After you’ve listened to it, the other CD has the closing song that I wrote initially. City Starlight would have been track 17.

You already have what would have been track 16. I would have made you a copy with the full original version of the album so you could listen straight through, but you have the only copy of that song. I never even heard it after we finished recording. No backups, nothing.

I think you’re going to hate it. I think you’re going to hate what it says. I think you’re going to hate me for saying it. If you don’t want to listen to it, or if you listen and then don’t ever want to hear it again, destroy it. It’s yours. If you don’t want it, then it shouldn’t exist. 

You have my permission to listen to it now. 

— Eddie

It was very stupid. Chrissy agreed. 

It was the right choice. Chrissy agreed. 

He needed Steve to hear him, but he couldn’t face him without falling apart. Thus, a compromise.

He sent it by his favorite courier service, the one who would send someone to pick it up from his place, get on a plane, and hand it directly to the recipient. They’d worked with him enough that he had to specify that this time, he didn’t want video of the delivery, just confirmation it got there.

Eddie sent an offer to open the door, but really, as he closed the envelope, he didn’t expect anything. Last time he was fully honest with Steve, while they fought five years ago, Steve left. Honesty via song instead of swear words wouldn’t change the result. 

It didn’t feel like sending Steve his hope, it felt like sending his goodbye. 

It got there. Confirmed with a signature. He immediately regretted not requesting a video confirmation.

Luckily, he was so disastrously busy with the album, he didn’t have time to stew in his own anxiety and grief. He knew that any message, if there was a message — good news, bad news, or anything else — would go to Chrissy first, so he didn’t need to stress when his own phone buzzed. 

There was work to do, and he loved it as much now as he did when he was ignoring his algebra teacher. He was scheduled from nine in the morning to nine at night every day until they left.

This concert didn’t need an extensive costume — Red Book had four costume and make up changes including full chainmail — but the costumers and stylists had put together dozens of potential outfits. He’d travel with at least eight, covering any weather potentials, and any unforeseen destruction. 

It was one time, one single time, that he tripped over a cord and tore his shirt apart, but Tiana never let it go. 

Eddie put on outfit after outfit, twirling around for a first impression from them, then testing with instruments if it passed the aesthetic check. They ended up with fifteen they all approved. 

Starving, and impatient to get to rehearsal now that Luke and Jess were back, Eddie forgot about the other rack of clothes. 

That took another two hours as they developed a wardrobe for interviews and photoshoots. It killed all hope of rehearsal for the day since the release party was that night. 

By the time he actually got into a room with the band late the next day, he was so spun up and impatient, he blew past any thought of betrayal. The discomfort in the air lasted about four seconds while he slung the strap over his head and played a few notes to check the volume. The draw of the music, and the vibrating excitement of the approaching show grabbed all of them. 

He didn’t bring it up, so neither did they. It was in his head, couldn’t kill it, but it didn’t matter as much as the music. 

The day after that, Becca interrupted them midway through a run of Elastic Snap to record a new message for socials. No one had expected And the Creek Don’t Rise to shoot as high as it did. Richter was still leading, and Ryan pulled the trigger to start on the video for it, but Creek went into storyboarding in case it remained a favorite. 

They’d all assumed Dangerous Games would get a video since it was the horniest thing on the album, and probably the horniest song he’d ever written. He’d dodged being the performer in previous horny videos, but it wouldn’t work this time. Ryan was thrilled about finally getting to have him in the center. Marketing was giddy about all the thirst trapping they could do. It wasn’t that his fans disliked the song, but it was currently trailing behind Creek in the streaming numbers. 

They paused design for the video, but didn’t unravel the planning yet. 

Because he wrote albums that were a cohesive story, when he released something, the first few weeks tended to be fairly level while the core fans listened to it in full, on repeat. After that relaxed, they’d see which were the standouts.

The first run through of the lighting design with the LED star drop was so cool Eddie did a dorky little dance. Gareth was nearby, so it ended up online in short form. Rude of him, but technically it was Gareth’s job to make Eddie look like both a big scary metal star, and a big freaking nerd. They ran the show through tech until they had something flexible enough to tour, but excellent enough to meet their standards. It ate up all his time before the departure.

Eddie only asked Chrissy once, while he packed for the tour, if she’d heard anything. 

Not a word.

Chapter Text

The first performance of an album in front of a crowd always made his blood sing. 

Their energy echoing back to him was the best high he’d ever tasted. If he screamed out his anger, they roared in reply. When he whispered secrets, they held him close and shared their own with him. 

Sure, there was always a twitch in his eye in the hours before the first show, but it was never anything like stage fright. Not that kind. He did have a bit of actual, literal, afraid-of-the-stage, fright. Especially on a design they turned around this fast. Mary created a work of art, Jonas did some kind of magic to all of the dmx boxes to cooperate. Eddie didn’t know how many designers and artists had crunched late nights to finish this. 

He’d have to find out and send presents. 

The label gave him the very best.

But Eddie also knew every story about sets and lights and pyro gone wrong. He knew why Van Halen put the M&M line in their rider. His team designed it and he trusted them, but there were always venue staff and over hires involved who he didn’t know. 

With six and a half thousand pounds of overhead lighting equipment — six thousand six hundred and seven, to be precise, not counting the star drop — installing for the second time ever, and the first was in a controlled rehearsal and testing space — Eddie was twitchy. 

By the looks the band was giving him, they thought it was about the album itself. The overall topic, or individual songs, or the songs they weren’t including.

Nope. 

He hadn’t heard back. Steve was always braver than Eddie was. If he wanted to contact him, he would have. As melodramatic as it was to send it, it was freeing, in a weird way. 

Eddie wasn’t clinging to hope, or expecting a response anymore. He didn’t not want a response, but that wasn’t the same. Counterintuitively, he had more downtime now that the tour was in motion, but it wasn’t a fixation in his brain. He’d said what he needed to, in song, to the person who needed to hear it. Now the tour could be therapy. Catharsis. Something. 

He’d pour all of that emotion into the crowds, let them feel it with him, and let them send it back, refracted through their own experiences. The concerts were going to be the easy part. 

The interviews would be trickier, but Jeff and Chrissy had written aggressive conditions this time. Nothing was airing live. There was a list of banned questions. Jeff got to scrub through footage and audio and transcripts before anything went public, and there was a debilitating penalty fee if they tried to pull something. 

Eddie did one last check of the stage, one more check in with the crew, and then the gates were ready to open. 

He stepped into the back of house to get dressed and hooked up with electronics, and let the rising rumble of the crowd lift him into his favorite place. 

Eddie knew when he ran out of that church that his muse was going to hand him something good. He knew when he scribbled lyrics as fast as he could write them that it was going to work. He knew when they were recording that he had it. 

Hell, he’d seen the streaming numbers and early quotes and reactions. He knew he’d stuck the landing on this one. Hyperbolic awards show expectations to one side, the album was exactly what he wanted.

It was a different confirmation to play in front of a live crowd, and he was confident going in, but Jesus Christ, they loved it. 

They’d had the album for less than a week, and they sang along with every word. Statistics were one thing; this was the part he craved. 

After Richter Record Breaking, they had to pause and take a quasi intermission so everyone could drink about a gallon of water, swap instruments, and whatever else needed doing. Most artists paused to welcome a crowd after a song or two. Eddie wanted the story more than the applause, so his concerts were shaped like musicals. 

One of the alternate guitarists kept a low thrum of music from backstage as Eddie finally greeted the audience. 

“So, I guess you like the album?” He rasped into the mic, empty water bottle in one hand and a thermos of honey tea in the other, beaming. Their cheer rattled the stage deck. “Glad to hear that since this one’s a little different. Proud of how fast you got that constellation effect built back there,” he gestured to a large group, all in black, with star point lights embedded in the fabric. “I’d ask Corey to turn a spotlight, but it would ruin the effect. The rest of you can see it online later. I’ll make sure it gets reposted to our accounts.”

Through the earpiece, Beth confirmed that everyone was back in place to restart on his cue. Eddie wasn’t nearly done with the audience yet. 

“Nice of you to bring so many signs out tonight. Are there any stores left in stock in a twenty mile radius?” He grinned back at their laughter. “Have to say though, you three on the side? Hi to you too, but when you break up ‘Hi EDDIE’ into three panels, maybe don’t have the last one just say DIE. Guy could get nervous about it.” 

“The album already killed us!” Someone shouted from the pit. 

Eddie cackled. “You’re pretty loud for a dead guy. But maybe I can wipe you out before we’re done.” He drained the last of the tea, handed off the thermos to crew, aware two more were waiting for him, accepted the next guitar, and smiled at that fan. “Ready to get back to it? You know what’s next.”

They all screamed. 

“Let me hear it!” 

He hit the first chord, and let out the broken cry that started Salt the Earth, hearing it rise from them and join with his rage. He held it longer than the album, until his voice dropped, and theirs kept going. His grin was absolutely feral as he nodded to Linus, who crashed them into the absolute rampage of that song.

And holy, fucking, shit. 

He was right. 

This tour was going to bleed out all the pain as his fans relived it with him. 

Jeff might be right too.

It probably was going to win a lot of awards. 

He always called out a few people in the crowd whenever he took a break in a concert. 

An intermission post Richter was a planned requirement for Tracing Constellations, but there were a few points in the show where, if the feeling was right, or if something happened, he could chat as well. 

He loved to see the insane costumes they created, and the signs were anywhere from touching, to funny, to explicit. The girl in the pit at the second concert wearing a damn near perfect Galadriel-tempted-by-the-ring cosplay made him fumble his fingering. He spent a full five minutes talking to, and about her, during an added break after Creek. He got the cameras turned so she could be on the big screens. 

As a consequence of how fast, and how much of a surprise the album and tour were, there were a few signs and outfits that were a bit slapdash. His fans matched his style, and he was a dramatic, excessive, chaotic bastard of a man. 

The same night as Galadriel, there were two small banners from two people who couldn’t get seats near each other that read: 

                                      JOB

GOOD  

A guy the next night made the classic mistake and wrote ‘KEEP IT’ in letters so big that ‘UP’ was on a floppy piece of computer paper taped to the edge. 

The internet was a big fan of the story of that congressman. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen it referenced.

There was a trio of friends who clearly tried their best on fan made merch, and failed miserably at it. He adored them for the effort, and made sure that venue staff got them backstage so they could get photos with him. 

A sign he saw often showed up for the first time at the fourth show. It only stood out because normally they greeted him, and this one didn’t rise until The Second Law. It said nothing but I LOVE YOU. He responded like he always did, quoting the Megamind meme, and savored the conflation of their timing. He didn’t know if that fan actually knew that the song cut deeper than the surface level of the lyrics, but Eddie knew. 

It highlighted the honesty of it, making an extra accent for the last show of the first week on tour, and painting the pain of it a little sharper.

He flew to New York to do Colbert on Monday, facing off in an exaggerated, dramatic confrontation with the host. He adored Colbert, and his team trusted Stephen wouldn’t break the interview rules, so he got the first one.

“I can’t believe you would do this to me, Eddie. I’m betrayed. Wounded. Genuinely, I’m hurt. I thought we had something special.”

“I know. It hurts.”

“You sat right on that couch a few months ago, and you said there wasn’t a new album coming yet, and then, to really drive this treason home, you stumped me on a question.”

“Yes, I did,” Eddie answered contritely.

“And then,” Stephen clutched his heart. “ Then. You didn’t include a single line of Sindarin on this one.” The audience laughed while Eddie played along, lamenting over his words like a fatal wound. “There are no elves, Eddie. No hobbits. No references to a silmaril or the Valar. Not even to pipeweed. You didn’t sing a word in the black speech of Morgoth.”

“I know, I barely recognize myself anymore.” 

Stephen cracked a smile. Eddie cracked in response. Out came two glasses of whiskey, and the interview began for real.

“This album really is different from your previous work, though. You’ve always said that your music, that each album tells a story, but I didn’t know this one.”

“No you didn’t, but this was the story I needed to tell.”

The second week of the tour, the fans knew a bit more, and had time to prepare. There were outfits to match the set design filling the pit, and the quality had jumped up. He loved them all so much. 

Signs got better too. 

Favorite lines from songs. One that showed up during Richter asking if it was about his dick. Thank god they always paused after the song for the intermission, because that shit was hilarious. A giant sign that said THANK YOU in purple letters. 

Extra time or not, the next show had another giant one that said YOUR INDREDIBLE. Eddie didn’t point out the spelling issues, because he barely graduated, and lived in a glass house.

Another giant sign at the seventh show made him cackle. 

MISSED YOU

Eddie played up the dramatics of offense, going on about how he gave them a second album in less than fourteen months, how could they have had time to miss him? Carhadras was still in the top 100 when they announced Tracing Constellations. How had there been time for them to feel his absence?

Next show had a whole section dressed as dwarves, beards and all. Plus a sign that said TOOK TOO LONG. Of course. There were a hundred videos posted by fans after every performance, and they knew it would entertain him. 

It still hurt to sing through the album. It was still raw and bloody and tore through his throat like blades, but after the first performance opened up the gate, he craved it. He was addicted to catharsis. He’d chase it, overdose on it if he had to. He had that thought during City Starlight at the end of the second week, and jotted it down into a clean notebook. Maybe it would turn into nothing, but the thought stuck in his head. The relief of sharing this pain was what he needed. 

Thank god for Chrissy Cunningham. On top of everything that was her official job, she filtered the internet insanity about him.

Apparently, there was a conspiracy making the rounds online about the shows. Not the album’s topic, like they assumed would happen, but about the shows themself. 

They’d all been braced for impact from speculative gossip rags claiming that Tracing Constellations was about Eddie’s real life — unavoidable — and efforts to find the other person in it — unacceptable. Eddie practiced responses for every invasive question someone might throw at him, and hadn’t slipped yet. Official interviews were controllable; random paps and fans were not. 

Whatever the conspiracy was, Chrissy was keeping an eye on it. She shrugged at him, confident that his fans, who loved stories as much as he did, who had just been handed an album about finding patterns in the pieces scattered on the ground, were trying to create the same in reality. 

Reduced schedule or not, concert tours wiped him out. Between running ten songs straight, overnight bus rides, warmups, seventeen full songs before an encore, meet and greets, and interviews, Eddie didn’t have the brain space to care about internet drama. 

Chrissy handled that, and everything else he didn’t have room for. 

Eddie sang his heart out in every show, dying and resurrecting in the roar of it, too high on catharsis to pay attention to something Chrissy said he could skip.

They flew to Europe for the third week of the tour, so they were loopy as hell as they met up with the crew, who had flown with the specialty equipment as soon as they struck it at the end of week two. The crew was even loopier. The set was complex for a tour. The French were not happy about how much equipment they wanted hung, and someone had messed up the advance package, so there was a rush to find replacements for the RGBAW movers. The venue only had RGBW on hand.

Linus was a native speaker, so he hauled ass from the bus and smoothed things over with the local crew. Eddie didn’t care much about the color tone of the spots matching the star drop, but he wasn’t going to say so where the designers might hear him. 

Night one was outside Paris, and French accented echoes of his grief reverberated in the stadium as they sang with him through The Second Law. He had to wipe off a bit of makeup with the sweat after it ended.

There was a multi-part sign in English during the intermission. I QUIT MY JOB BC OF U held across seven guests. Eddie commented on the sign next to it instead, since it was in French, and he was in France.

That turned out to be a bad idea. 

Mostly because he read it aloud, in a decent french accent, which meant the internet now had footage of him saying he wanted the chocolate guy to finger fuck him. 

Linus translated it as he cackled, and Eddie choked on his tea before laughing with them. Best fans in the world. As unhinged as he was. When the tour was done, he’d see if Amaury was down to make some joking posts about it. He pretended to be appalled, but ended it with a wink and a comment about dexterity that got them all shrieking again. 

Amaury remained a trouble maker, and commented before the show ended. Chrissy sent him the posts while they travelled. They would definitely do something when the tour was done.

Germany roared back his rage at the loss of what he hoped for, and they did it so loudly, so rabidly, that Eddie teared up during Richter , struck by an emotion he hadn’t realized he’d written into it. He hid a few more tears when he saw posters held up just behind the pit that said YOU CHANGED MY LIFE. Four people in a row, four posters, each saying the same thing in their own handwriting. That was what he wanted from the music he made. He wanted to make something that changed people.

He tried not to read into it, tried not to be too on the nose with the album, looking for connections between the chaos, but every show seemed to have something on a sign that caught him in the gut. It felt indulgent and a little delusional, but the tour was his therapy, so it was hard to stop.

Bucharest was an open air amphitheater, and the storm that rolled around them, right on the cusp of rain, gave an added, literal, electricity to the show. It was fittingly on the horizon during Cloudburst. During Behind Locked Doors and Elastic Snap , when the story arc swung into the unknown, into the possibility hiding just out of reach, that energy broke his heart in a way those songs rarely did. Faces were wet before the rain started, on and off the stage. 

Before they got used as umbrellas, there was an English sign reading NEED TO TELL YOU. That was a song title on his second album, but seeing it with this album so loud in his mind, it meant more. 

Ireland was cloudy, which was Ireland’s only available setting, it so shouldn’t have been as annoying to their stage manager, Beth, as it was, even though the venue was outdoor.

Then there was a security kerfuffle because four fans tried to get to him backstage. That delayed the curtain by fifteen minutes, which put Beth in an even worse mood. Eddie thought that any fan bold enough to parkour off a twenty foot building deserved to meet him, but he was overruled. 

The Irish grabbed the thread of pitiless injustice that wove through the album, the way that life was so agonizingly unfair, the way the universe didn’t care, and Eddie found another heartache as they sang with him. His hurts weren’t singular or unique. His loss wasn’t disconnected from the way everyone else was grieving.

There were a lot of signs saying it that night. He had an enthusiastic fanbase in Ireland. Frankly, there was almost always at least one sign saying it, at every show, and honestly that was true for every musician. But in Cork, there were four people scattered through the crowd, each holding one part of a matched sign. They weren’t seated anywhere near each other, but they must have made the signs together. They didn’t hold them up until his post show thank yous and play off after the encore ended. It was shuffled, but that didn’t matter. 

It was an agonizing point in the constellation he was trying so hard not to invent.

YOU I LOVE EDS

Eddie did the Today Show on two hours of sleep when he got stateside, playing Love Notes for the street crowd. He didn’t know what day it was. Between the jet lag and the concerts and the emotional wreckage in his chest and the itching thought he kept trying to smother, his already sub par sleep schedule was a catastrophe. 

His scary rock star persona let him get away with bizarre answers and red-rimmed eyes. Lucky, because a big chunk of his brain was still in Cork.

That wasn’t one of the names his fans used. Maybe someone said it once or twice, maybe the almost-stalkers used it, but his fans tended to grant him titles like they were in the Renaissance. He was Eddie the Banished when he visited Canada because he almost got thrown out of the country the first time. Eddie the Incomprehensible for a while thanks to an audio problem during Coachella. During his second album, he saw a lot of signs calling him the Wordsmith of Sorrows. They were dramatic, and he never discouraged anything they called him. 

And it was Ireland. Very strong accent. Very distinct dialect. ‘Eds’ could be an Irish thing. That was the best explanation. 

It wasn’t what he heard in it. 

Yeah, he wrote an album about seeing what you wanted and put the word constellations on the cover, but he was well aware that a group of stars that got called a scorpion was just a group of random stars. 

Chrissy frowned at her phone more often once they got back to the states, and stole his for a minute to check something. 

“What was that?”

“Making sure you hadn’t re-downloaded Twitter.”

“Why would I download the nazi app?”

“That’s why I checked. I knew you deleted your personal one, and the album runs your official.”

Lie. She was fidgeting with her earring.

Eddie didn’t ask her why she really stole it. The conspiracy thing, obviously. He wasn’t stupid. He was a coward. He couldn’t handle hearing speculation about what had prompted the album, especially if it had her making so many scrunched faces. 

“We need to come up with something for that guy,” he grumbled instead, sipping at his tea. He didn’t enjoy the tea, but it made it possible to get through the tours without a laryngitis cancellation, so he loved it, and drank it constantly. 

“Did he do something?”

“He’s still alive and posting, isn’t he?”

Chrissy smirked at him behind her daiquiri on the hotel balcony, bundled in a blanket. Boston was having a cold front just in time for the show tomorrow. “Good point. Since he’s a very loud, public facing idiot, you should do something very loud and public facing.”

“But not something he can spin into a meme.”

Out came her phone, and she pulled up the spreadsheet of random ideas. He saw a bit of tension drop off her shoulders when he didn’t ask for details. 

If she was that worried about him asking, he didn’t want to know.

Despite doing his best to ignore it, even if he’d never heard Chris and the crew mention it, Eddie would have known something was going on. 

It had to do with the signs, but he didn’t know more than that. 

Other than the unusual nickname in Cork, nothing he’d seen was all that strange. He’d seen signs like them before. What they said wasn’t weird. Having giant signs wasn’t weird. Unrolled banners and scrolls were a constant during the tour for The Red Book m. Having a sign split apart to multiple people in different sections wasn’t uncommon. Friends would make signs, and then get separated by will-call wait lists.

The signs were normal. 

What was inexplicable was the reactions to certain of them.

They went up, and people cheered. They blocked other people’s view, which normally had security antsy about fights breaking out — and they got cheered. Before Eddie pointed them out, even if Eddie never called it out, they got a response. Each show, a specific sign would go up, and all of the hardcore fans celebrated.

At the concert in Tampa, there was one that said CANT STOP LISTENING. He pointed to them and commented that the label would be glad to hear it. That was a generic comment that didn’t match the wild reaction it caused. 

In Houston a poster board said HAD NO WORDS. 

That was part of a line in Love Notes, but Eddie doubted it was a callback causing that cheer. He didn’t comment on it, but he did finally get an answer about why the whole crowd always reacted. The messages were written on both sides.

During Event Horizon Dance in Detroit, another disjointed sign went up near the end, so bizarrely that Eddie raised an eyebrow and looped the ending while he waited for them to fix it. At first it just said LIST TO. The audience nearby shifted and yelled to each other, passing posters around before it re-raised.

LISTENED TO IT 

They dropped the sign when he started the next song. 

Strange audience coordination to one side, that was a very weird sign. They were at the premier concert run, it would be fucking crazy if they hadn’t listened to the album.

Getting from Detroit to San Diego overnight kept the band and the crew frazzled enough that he didn’t have a chance to talk to Chrissy. He barely slept on the bumpy flight and was worn thin going into the fourth consecutive day, so the venue staff found him a solo dressing room away from the stage. They gave him earplugs and a blanket, and he managed a few hours before they needed to warm up. 

It left him exposed in a way he hadn’t been since the first week. The concert was staggering. Even better; no weird signs to throw him off balance. He talked to the crowd longer than usual during the intermission, relieved that he didn’t need to fake any selective blindness. 

They screamed with him as Salt the Earth began, and they cried with him as Shattered ended. 

There wasn’t a sign that night. 

Well, no, there were signs. There were always signs at a concert and there always would be, but Eddie knew something was missing. 

As grateful as he was not to see another when he was wobbly, it was almost enough to make him ask Chrissy. 

He did an interview and photoshoot with Rolling Stone when they passed through LA on their way to Seattle. Gareth, angel that he was, had prepped the interviewer, and prepped Eddie well enough that even sleep deprived and loopy, it sounded good. The photographer committed a minor miracle, and the makeup artist committed a major one. They got him looking not just like a living human being, but damn sexy. 

Dangerous Games had caught up to Creek . In the group chat with video production, Eddie got a heads up that they were going forward with all three videos. Eddie wouldn’t do any filming until after the end of the tour, but the CCO was pushing to get at one out asap. Eddie agreed, but it added design pitches and approvals to what could have been napping time. 

Eddie suggested using actors in the video for Richter, and only use him in a secondary role. Ryan called him out on breaking his own rules about a cohesive story in the videos, and after a quick tantrum that cracked his phone screen bad enough to need a new one, Eddie conceded.

With two weeks left in the tour, life was a little bit horrible. He daydreamed about tucking and rolling as he jumped off the bus and going the fuck home when they passed Bakersfield on their way north. 

This was why he couldn’t do the more intense schedules or longer tours. He wouldn’t let go of the other pieces. He couldn’t let go and risk it not being good enough. If he did two more shows a week like most musicians, he’d become a stereotype within a month trying to keep up. 

It was no wonder musicians were so infamously fond of cocaine. 

The Social Media team got new behind the scenes shots and B roll from the bus, and from a gas station near Redwoods. Eddie did generic thank you clips to fans, and then did a video thanking the crews of the venues they’d used so far. He didn’t have the list of names since Chrissy was meeting them in Seattle, so he leaned into humor. He thanked ‘the pyro guy with the walrus beard’ who found his phone in Denver and ‘the terrifying intern with the murder boots in Detroit’ who got them back on schedule. 

Chrissy met him at the hotel with a new phone. 

It only took a couple of seconds with it before he noticed. She was waiting. She didn’t say a word, but she was offering. If he asked her about it now, she was going to answer. 

The Reddit app was no longer there. Or Instagram or TikTok. 

He couldn’t bring himself to ask, so they went for a late dinner where they arranged for a single travel size jar of vaseline to be sent to every member of Congress. No note, no signature, no explanation. Just five hundred and thirty five individually delivered jars. They’d be able to connect it to the budget bill on their own.

The audience in Seattle was buzzing with so much energy that Eddie and the band were bouncing during the opener. Literally bouncing.

For the first time, one of those signs was up as they walked on stage. Dead center in the closest seated section. 

SORRY

He smiled, and a second later, two dozen smaller signs popped up saying the same thing. 

His smile grew, he flapped a hand at them, the signs vanished, and the show started. 

That was an easy piece to slot into the puzzle. For whatever reason, the sign in San Diego was missing, so they were apologizing.

During the final bows, after an electrifying show that let him latch onto the joyful moments more than he normally could, the signs came back. As he started to frown at the repeated apology, they flipped. On the back of every one of them:

LOVE YOU

Dramatic little shits.

Chrissy dropped onto the mattress next to him as they rode towards Calgary. 

“Do you want to know?”

He flopped to the side, elbow over his eyes. 

“Am I going to get through the rest of the tour if you tell me?”

“Doubt it.”

“Am I going to ruin it if I wait?”

“No.”

“Do I already know?” She didn’t say anything, so he shook his head, “Not yet.”

She stole a pillow, curled close, and fell asleep with him because he had the least-uncomfortable bed on the bus. Only because of the mattress. Definitely nothing else.

Calgary had a light dusting of snow, a half hour delay due to an issue with the ticket scanning system, a group dressed as mounties with a fake wanted poster, and a layer of tenderness in the way they sang with him. There was only one person, with one sign that night, given greater significance because every other sign in the lower section vanished when it went up. 

ALWAYS LOVED YOU

The crowd bellowed as he nodded at it, but returned to normal when he started taunting the fake mounties. 

Eddie put an extra pause early in the show in Winnipeg the next night so he could bitch about global warming. 

It was relevant bitching. 

Snow in Calgary, and then hot enough after sunset that he had to strip off a layer. Two different cities, sure, but not that far apart. He was distracted enough by juggling the headset pack, his clothes, and his guitar, that he took the sign he saw at face value. 

YOU’RE WRONG

He got two minutes into a rant about how climate change was real and how even if it wasn’t, which it was, he wasn’t wrong about it being weirdly hot out tonight. Then his brain caught up to the way the audience was giggling and pointing towards the sign. One of the guy’s neighbors grabbed it as the original laughed himself into tears. 

Shutting up, Eddie traded his excess clothes for a thing of water, and moved into playing Love Notes like nothing strange had happened, and that sign didn’t haunt the corners of his brain for the rest of the concert.

Chicago’s stadium was enormous. Absolutely massive. It was intimidating the first time he played there.  

It still wasn’t a welcoming venue, but after the install crew confirmed their checks, his only fear was that whoever had tonight’s sign might be too far for him to read it. 

He should have known better than to doubt his fans. 

It was too far back, if it had been a normal sign. He wasn’t sure how they got the thing past security, but he watched a pair of poles get passed across a row to hold up a cloth big enough that he could easily read it. 

IM SO SORRY BABY

Security got there fast, and it seemed not everyone in the crowd was aware of the sign conspiracy, since that one earned a lot of boos. 

It went up during Promise Swore an Oath. 

Okay. That. Fuck.

He wasn’t finding shapes in clouds. 

He wasn’t imagining it. 

Fuck.

He paid the fine for the kids with the banner, and asked Chrissy to get them tickets to the next tour since they were kicked out midway. 

Chrissy was technically his agent. Legally, and in all documents, that was her job. They both knew it was a lot more and a lot less than that, but they needed to write something down in the first few days after Jeff found his videos. She was one of the sweetest people he knew, and she rarely needed to show anyone that underneath that genuine sweetness was solid steel. 

Eddie didn’t know what happened in between him sitting down in the makeup chair, and him walking into the room for the interview, but Chrissy was spitting nails. Her phone was held up on speaker as she yelled at the reporter about contractual breaches. 

“Leave, Eddie,” she snapped when she heard the door. 

He already trusted her enough to do so immediately, but when he heard Jeff through the phone as he did, just as furious as she was, he picked up the pace. 

An hour later, the interview was cancelled, someone up the chain from Jeff was involved, and Eddie had an open afternoon. 

“The interviewer broke the conditions of the agreement. They’re getting fired,” She explained as they ate stupidly delicious duck fat french fries. 

Sometimes rich people got it right. 

“Jeff can get people at other companies fired now? That seems like too much power. It’ll go to his head. Did he get his hands on the One Ring?”

“Not Jeff. That woman’s editor is going to fire her, and then their executive editor is going to beg forgiveness from me and Jeff, and then maybe, we won’t recommend to the label to never accept an interview request from People ever again.”

“What did—”

“No.”

“I’m not allowed to—”

“You are allowed, and if you want to know, I’ll tell you. But first, I’m going to warn you that Jeff and I yelled, and ended a woman’s career over it. If I tell you what it was, I’m going to have to post bail.”

Eddie ate a few more fries and weighed the options. 

“Fine, but next time we go up to Sequoia, I get to choose something from the list of stuff you don’t like.”

“I get veto power on anything that will get you arrested.”

“Always.”

She clinked her glass to his, and they discussed dessert. 

He sent the album and the first versions. He knew it got delivered. He didn’t get a reply before the release, or before the tour started. 

He didn’t want to hear through someone else, and he didn’t want to hear anything until he said what he needed to first. 

Steve didn’t like the important things to happen in public. 

This was happening in public. 

Either it wasn’t important to him, or there was something else.

Nashville was a riot. Almost literally. 

The energy was high, and the crowd came with him, echoing back each song unchanged. Just feeling it with him, finding all the things that Eddie had found from the audiences he’d met already. It was a normal show otherwise. Nashville was not a hot spot for his fans. He had plenty, enough to fill a stadium, but he knew from hearing Gareth plan events that it wasn’t a dense concentration of super fans. However, it was a party town with too much alcohol in the venue. 

When that night’s sign went up during final bows, that became a problem. 

I HATE THE ENDING

Some of the crowd cheered and screamed.

Some of the crowd just screamed. 

Security was great. They got those guests out of the crowd before they could get hurt, and Eddie defused the rest of them with a few jokes about his reputation in the bible belt and playing an extra song. 

If he’d had a way to talk to that group after, he’d have taken it.

There were two ways to read that sign, because there were two endings. Eddie didn’t know which it meant, but maybe they did.

Atlanta was a hot spot for him with a ton of intense fans. Because of the rushed tour scheduling, they were in a smaller venue than Atlanta could fill for him. That meant the balance was better skewed between casual fans and the ones who knew about the signs. 

IT’S THE WRONG ENDING 

The group was far enough to the side that their posters didn’t block anyone’s sightline to the stage, so it stayed up longer. Eddie sang most of Stained Glass Mirror directly to them. None of the fans minded.

Dallas was the second to last show. 

The songs didn’t hurt less than they had in the first concerts. He still tore his chest open to hand his heart over with each note. The difference was only that he fully trusted them to hand it back again, a little brighter and a little more healed. He trusted that they were coming with him through the arc of it all, and that they’d carry each other through the parts that were hardest. 

One sign was held up by one person during Supergluing Glass. 

I LOVE YOU EDS

Important things didn’t happen in public, so Eddie didn’t answer it, not even with a deflection. 

He let the hope of the album ring a little louder in the back half. He let Locked Door’s tense fear of what was waiting drift a little more towards the good outcome, and let the joy in the final songs resonate and land a little harder. 

The team did what they could to get the last-minute tour scheduled in a manageable sequence, but it was still a dart board. There had been plenty of long drives in the night, a lot of them were over twelve hours. They flew over to, and back from Europe on red eyes. Twice, the only way to get to the next domestic venue was on a plane, and the bus met them there after the show. They had extra drivers for every vehicle so no one had to worry about exhaustion causing an accident, and had to buy seats for some of the equipment if they flew. 

The last drive, from Dallas to Phoenix, was more than fourteen hours. Right at the cut off before they had to fly.

They got there on time, but it was directly from the bus, to equipment install, to testing, to warm ups, to opening the gates. 

As if Eddie needed anything to increase his stress. 

Then they were delayed by an hour.

One of the lighting crew found a safety cable on the edge of the deck as they cleared the last carts, which meant every fixture had to be re-checked. There was no reason that a dropped cable meant anything was going to go wrong. Safeties were there in case the mounting clamps gave out, and clamps didn’t give out. 

Eddie wouldn’t gamble with that stuff, and neither would the crew. Every fixture got checked again. 

It was a random spare that must have fallen off a cart. Every instrument was secure. They could have started without the delay, and no one would have been in any danger. 

This was the shit that made him love his team. It was also why he loved the band. No one argued or complained. Last show or not, exhausted or not, they did it right, or they didn’t do it. 

He trusted them all, even knowing what someone in the band had done.  

There was a new type of magic in every performance, but firsts and lasts were always a few steps beyond. 

He was drowning and flying. He let the story pull him deeper than he had since they recorded, inviting it to devour him. He let all of it pour out through the lyrics and the guitar in his hands, into the open arms of the audience.

He didn’t have to hold back to ensure he wouldn’t lose his voice overnight. He didn’t have to hold onto enough control to make sure he had the emotional and physical reserves for tomorrow. He could give them everything. He was terrified of whatever tonight would bring, and the best comfort was catharsis. He gave them everything.

The night air was cool around them, and the clouds were patchy, stars picked between them as the last of the sunlight faded.  

He took the extra break after Creek, and thanked them in the first breath, prolonging the feeling.  He held longer in the intermission to thank them for giving him so much, and for making this show what it was. He pointed out more of the amazing outfits than usual, more of the incredible art they made. He answered the signs, almost all of the signs, and was aware that most of the crowd knew what he was looking for. 

He only knew in the broadest sense. There would be another sign tonight. There would be something. He didn’t know what it would say, and he didn’t know what he was hoping for, but he knew it would be there. 

It wasn’t up during the intermission.

More than it had in other cities, Salt the Earth became a dual plea to burn away the wreckage, and burn away the grief. 

He kept looking for it, whatever it was going to be, keeping his eyes up and scanning over their faces. 

He found it during Behind Locked Doors. As he started the song about hiding from what he’d broken, and the fear of what he hoped to find, a girl held up a plain white board with plain black text.  

YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION

She still had it up when he managed to look her way a few lyrics later, a big smile for him, nodding. 

Steve didn’t like the important moments to be in public. Eddie did. 

And this one? It could only be important. Any version of it was important.

His hands kept playing and his voice kept going, adding a heightened sense of uncertainty to the song as he went back and forth about whether he’d do — something. 

He hadn’t responded to any of the love messages once he caught on. He could now. He could say the three words that didn’t show up in the album. He hadn’t admitted that Tracing Constellations was his life, even though everyone knew. He could say that. He could talk about why. He’d never mentioned Steve, and maybe that’s what the sign was saying. 

Permission to love him out loud. 

Eddie loved him, but Eddie didn’t know him anymore. He wanted him, but he wouldn’t put Steve in the spotlight until he got him in his arms again. 

He’d give Steve anything he asked for, but he didn’t know what this was. 

The sign went down as they moved into Elastic Snap and Eddie sang with his own tension ramping higher as he struggled to find what he was supposed to do. 

A new sign went up during the second verse.

It was the answer. 

The outro of Snap could linger, and he used it as a chance for a mini break when they needed one, grabbing drinks and toweling off sweat. It was the last chance like that in the concert. He didn't like to talk to the crowd during that gap, but if the band needed to check in or adjust, that’s when they did it.

After Snap came Stained Glass Mirror and then Desert Sky. Those? He’d never pause between those two. They flowed into each other, and a gap between them would destroy the impact. 

So. 

Elastic Snap was the last chance to say it. To change it. The only chance, really. If it went up sooner, Eddie would have had time to talk himself out of it.

Fuck.

Snap was the high point of the story’s suspense. It was the highest point of the unknown. It was the tension and the fear and the echoing maybe, maybe, maybe he wrote to drain the sensation from his veins before it consumed him. He sang it to the crowd in Phoenix in utter agony, once again burning with it. 

The close could cycle as long as he wanted, and it only built the tension higher before Stained Glass Mirror broke it into the happy ending. All he’d have to do was shift to the next chord, and the show would end as it was supposed to.

Steve hated the ending. 

He hated performative love. Steve wanted the important things in private, but he never wanted to hide from it in public.

Steve was telling him what he wanted with that sign. 

PLAY IT

The sign stayed up. The group holding it wasn’t jumping or singing along. Six people, dead still in the crowd, holding up one letter each. 

If Eddie really wanted that song gone, if he never wanted it out there, he never would have shown it to Jeff. He never would have let them record it. 

Eddie cycled the end of Snap. 

The band took the cue for what it was: a pause while something adjusted. He wasn’t sure if they could see where he was looking, but he knew that they could see the same thing he did. Fucking hell he loved his fans. As the song tightened into a hold that broke from the album version, he watched the knowledge and the stillness flowing through the crowd. There were a couple of short cheers and shouts out there, but everyone up close was watching him, or watching the sign, waiting to see what he’d do. 

Fingers still moving, Eddie turned to the side stage and bobbed his head. Blake cut the stage mic so Eddie could use the earpiece. Jess took over the guitar line without being asked. 

“Sorry, Beth.” She whipped to look at him. Eddie continued, “Corey, Nicole, don’t try to program on the fly for this, keep it simple. If you have an alt look pre-built for the star drop, use it for the final song, not before.”

He didn’t bother to tell the band, just glanced, and saw welling emotions in their expressions as they nodded. Whichever of them caused this, they were all onboard. One of the stage hands rushed out as he drained another bottle of water. It somehow wasn’t a shock to get handed his sweetheart. Of course someone had it traveling with them. Of course someone knew he needed it for this. 

It was a conspiracy, after all. 

The mic was live and waiting for him when he spun back to the crowd. A cheer rose up, but the crowd was still split in two between the people who liked a good concert, and the people who knew. The first group were the only ones cheering.

Eddie bobbed his head towards that still-raised sign. 

“How about we end tonight a little different?”

The second group lost their goddamn minds. 

In front of a crowd who had never heard it before, without the help of their voices, he had to carry it alone. It was self inflicted vivisection.

He didn’t have their help to fill the lyrics when he wanted to swallow the parts that hurt too much to say. They followed him into the torrent, though, and they gave him every ounce of energy they had. They took the pain he gave them, amplified it, and handed it back a thousandfold, even before they’d learned the repeat in the chorus. 

These were the same kinds of fans that analyzed his lyrics and wrote meta about his metaphors. The kind who had the whole album memorized before the first concert, days after the album came out. He didn’t spoon feed stories into his music, but they knew how he wrote, and how to find the truth of it immediately. 

He watched the song land. He watched them realize this wasn’t just a modification of the song, but a different ending to the album. It took them to the last verse before they’d all caught up, and they were joining in for the first time as he reached the final chorus. 

“I'll let you put it back in place without —”

That car crash ending of the last chorus slammed into him just as hard as it had in the recording booth. It left him gasping as he cut off. The shriek as their hands slid up the strings, and the last heartbeat on the drums collapsed after him.

The crowd didn’t know the crash was coming, and their voices finished the line for him, without him, without the music underneath it. 

Without me stopping you. 

They cut themselves off in a stutter, catching up with the fracture of the song’s end. 

As the torture of singing it, showing it, dripped from the raw cavity in Eddie’s chest, the band carried him, letting the silence of the final drumbeat hang for one second, two, four, seven. 

Right when the audience started to react to the heartbreak of losing , of following him through a story and realizing it ended in a tragedy, Linus pulled the audience, and Eddie, into City Starlight. 

That was another song they hadn’t touched since recording it, but the motherfuckers behind him were fucking brilliant musicians. They shifted it around to better fit the pacing the story needed after that exact performance of Lavender. They made the aching, hollow promise of trying to pretend even more oppressive. They sharpened the lyrics’ lies by upping the tempo, nearly nodding in the direction of pop, and forcing Eddie to sing, like he was desperate to keep the lie in place. Those talented bastards created exactly what it needed to carve the last catharsis from his bones. 

His eye makeup was entirely fucked by the time it ended. 

Corey surely had the whole thing in a closeup to the big screens as Eddie spun to stargaze upstage. 

Crew took his sweetheart off his shoulder, putting a towel and a thermos in his hands. 

Normally, at the close of a show, Eddie thanked his team and his band, called them out by name so they could get the praise they deserved, and then do a short encore from other albums. Normally, at the end of a tour leg, he gave an even longer thank you, and always did a double encore. 

Wouldn’t be an option. Not this time. 

He bowed, waved, gestured to the team backstage, to the booth, to the band, one by one. He stepped towards the mic, hoping he’d find his voice to at least say thank you once. 

That sign from Steve was gone. He looked for the next one as he waved and savored the high of that unequaled release. He tried to find the answer to what he’d given.

There wasn’t one. Just a crowd with tears on their cheeks. 

He didn’t know what this was. He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t want another piece of paper in the air. He wanted to look out there and see Steve. 

You could blame his bleak internal monologue, or the high quality ear protection for how long it took him to realize the fans in the pit and first rows were shouting something he needed to hear, but they kept going, louder and more desperate, until he noticed. 

“He’s here!”

“Go get him!”

“Find him!”

“Backstage! Look backstage!”

“He’s here!”

“Fuck the encore!”

“Go!”

Later, he saw the video of the audience reaction, and the way they were trying to make new signs since he wasn’t hearing them. In the moment, he did what they said.

“Eddie!” Chrissy grabbed him as he got into back of house, immediately helping him pull off the control pack as an excuse to keep him in place. “Hey, Eddie, Eddie. Look at me.”

Her eye makeup was also extremely fucked, but she had her serious business face on underneath it. 

“If you want him gone, he’s gone. Security is on standby, and I’ll absolutely do it, but please don’t make me call them.” 

“No. Where —”

“Main talent green room.”

He didn’t waste time changing out of his sweat soaked clothes or cleaning the disaster that had to be his face as he slammed through the door. 

Steve was so ridiculously beautiful.

He wasn’t wearing eye makeup, but if he was, it too would have been very much fucked. 

He looked like shit, and he was so fucking pretty.

“Hope you don’t mind us coming back up.” The stage feed through the clear comm was active. The opener was stepping in to do the encore for him. 

Steve’s hair was almost back to the length where it swooped and fell in his face. 

“Eddie has something he needs to take care of. Think you’re okay with that.” The speaker picked up the audience’s raucous screaming. They started one of their most intense songs, matching the energy of the crowd. 

It only took a few seconds for Eddie to realize. That was too fast for a kit swap. It was Linus and Luke and the rest playing with the opener, not the usual backup players, and they were doing it so seamlessly that they must have practiced before.

One mystery’s answer slotted into place, and Eddie flicked off the speaker. “They were all in on it, weren’t they? We were trying to figure out which one committed treason, but it wasn’t just one of them that sent it.”

“They were worried about you, Eds.” The green room couch was between them, a slightly scruffy barrier that might keep them apart long enough to talk. Steve had chosen to stand behind it on purpose. “They care about you.”

“You didn’t call or send a message or —”

“Signs weren’t good enough?” That ever so slightly bitchy, mostly teasing, endlessly fond tweak of his mouth said more than the comment. 

“How many?”

“All of them. Except San Diego. There was supposed to be one, but their car broke down. They tried to get there anyway, or get the signs there, but — I have the email from them freaking out about it. They thought they ruined it.”

“Come on. Not every sign was from you,” Eddie scoffed, “You did not ask if Richter was about my dick.”

“Would you like a list? I have one. Or you can check online. There’s an entire subreddit tracking it. Max said it’s a Tiktok hashtag too. They’ve got photos of all of them, even the early ones, most of them have videos of your reactions. I don’t know if you thought you were being subtle after you realized something was up, but it didn’t work.”

Eddie had to look away for a second so he could think about something other than the soft look Steve was giving him. 

“When we had the release party and you hadn’t answered, I thought I was right, and you weren’t going to.”

Steve grimaced, then confessed, “I hadn’t listened to it yet.”

That shocked Eddie back into his body.

“You own every piece of music I’ve ever released, including special editions. You have interviews and articles and whatever else, and when I sent a pre-release, you didn’t listen immediately? I sent you music that no one else was ever going to hear and you didn’t listen to it? ”

“I couldn’t.” Steve shook his head, “I couldn’t even listen to the clips. Ever since you told me I needed your permission, I couldn’t listen to any of your music at all. Then I saw the album announcement and Eddie, you have never been subtle. That title? I couldn’t do it. I blacklisted the whole thing, but that lasted about five minutes before I undid it so I could stare at the title some more. I still couldn’t listen to any of the previews, but I couldn’t look away either.” He huffed. “You told me not to listen to it, so I couldn’t.”

“That was only about that one song.”

“Didn’t matter. You didn’t want me to hear what you said in it, and everything you write is connected. If you didn’t want me to hear that one, you weren’t going to want me to hear the rest. And then you sent me a copy and the songs you wrote first and you told me you thought I’d hate them. You could always see me, Eds. You thought I was going to hate them, and your band thought I needed to hear that song, but they didn’t tell me why, so I just… I couldn’t.”

“That…” Eddie attempted, scowling at the ground. “That didn’t occur to me as a possibility. You never — I watched you fight a mugger. I didn’t think you might…”

“Be scared? Eddie, you are the most terrifying — no. No, wait, hang on, I’m not gonna fuck this up again.”

Steve went over to a jacket on the wall and dug out a stack of worn note cards. Eddie bit his lip, and mentally apologized for some of the things he’d thought about Robin. Clear communication sounded really nice.

“Okay, I’m still going to mess some of this up because I didn’t want to read you an essay. So, the summary you need to keep in mind when I do fuck up is this: You have never been anything but a good thing in my life. Even when we fought, or when dating you meant my dad cut me off, you were still a good thing. Ever since we met, you have always been the best thing in my life.”

“Jesus, Steve, you don’t need to do all this,” Eddie begged, suddenly afraid of how honest this would be. He could feel the distant vibration from the stage through the ground, like the prelude to an earthquake.

His eyes flashed. “Yes, I do. You wrote an entire album, and you sent me all of the pieces you thought no one would want, and you told me with every word of it that you thought you’d fucked up my life. You’ve spent the last six weeks tearing yourself open in front of crowds to try to recover. I need to do this. Anyway, I spent a really long time with Robin trying to get all of this into something that makes sense, and I need to say it.”

Eddie nodded, because he didn’t know how to respond, and braced himself.

“After we broke up, I made you into a storybook ending,” Steve began with a line that was definitely written in full on the top card. “That summer, I spent a lot of time imagining different ways I’d get to see you again. I’d imagine you showing up at Dustin’s after driving all night, or accidentally bumping into me on the street or even unblocking me to send me hate mail. You’d changed my life, you’d changed me, and I loved you enough to leave, but it hurt too much to think that I’d never have you again, so I would think about all these ways that it could get better. 

“When that song was suddenly on the radio, I tried to stop. I wanted you to be happy, and I could see how happy music was making you. That was why I left, and it worked. I watched every clip you had, read every article, because it was proof that you were happy. So I had to stop thinking I might really see you again. You had what you wanted.”

Fucking hell, yeah, this was going to kill Eddie. He knew that Steve needed to say this, and that he shouldn’t interrupt. He knew that. Eddie had what he wanted back then? Jesus christ, no. 

“I wasn’t supposed to get you back, not for real. You were gone. But you could be my make believe. Like when we used to stay up stupidly late and talk through how we would have saved the day if we were suddenly in Marvel or Middle Earth or whatever dumb thing we’d just watched. I’d have a bad day, and I’d let myself think about how it would go if it was one of your stories.”

Eddie had to give up D&D when he took a third job. There weren’t enough hours in the day. That Steve could sound so fond of those dumb conversations, years later? Eddie always thought Steve was just humoring him about those.

“Like, I’d get dragged to some douchebag techbro’s yacht party, and I’d spend it thinking about bumping into you over a plate of hors d'oeuvres and how I’d apologize, and you’d immediately forgive me, and then we’d flip off my dad and, then, I don’t know. Steal a jet ski or whatever.” 

Eddie snickered at the imagery, then clapped a hand over his mouth to shut himself up. 

Steve started to say something about it, but caught himself, and flipped to another card. “I made you into all of these storybook endings because I knew I’d never get to have you back, so the best I could have was the fantasy.

“My life got a little better, and then a little more, and I didn’t — this sounds shitty but — I didn’t need to run away with you as much. But when I stopped imagining it all the time, you were still that version of you. In my head you were this — you were the fantasy. And then you were a rockstar, so meet-cute-and-run-away is a fantasy I share with a hell of a lot more teenage girls than I’m comfortable with,” he grinned for a second, “I got ahold of every scrap of you that I could because it was the only way I could hold you. And then you showed up.”

“I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see me,” Eddie said instinctively.

“Don’t. That day sucked, but I’m glad you did. I never let myself imagine that one, but it was like so many of the fantasies I had where I got to have you back. But I knew I wouldn’t get to keep you, so I tried to force it to be boring and normal. But, you’re still you. You showed up to your ex’s wedding to make sure I was okay. Total fantasy shit. I’m just sorry that I didn’t — this also sounds really shitty — I’m sorry I didn’t remember that you’re a person.”

Unintentionally, Eddie gave him an exaggerated, incredulous expression. It made Steve snort.

“Yeah, like I said. Sounds shitty.”

“Maybe more than sounds shitty.”

“You were Prince Charming, Eddie,” Steve stressed, changing cards, “and I’d been handed the modern day equivalent of the key to your heart and told to go ask your permission to open it. I wanted it so bad I didn’t look past the script. I thought you’d just forgive me and grab me and we’d listen to it, and I’d have you back. I forgot you might not be in the same book. So, uh. Basically everything I said at that food thing? I fucked up all of it, and I’m sorry. It was true, but I did it wrong. Which is why, these.” 

Steve gestured with the note cards.

That cut deep. Worse. It rhymed with how they broke up, with Steve making a decision without him. He had to ask that question too, eventually, but he was still caught on this week’s signs. 

“But you said you hate the ending.”

“I do.”

“Steve, you just said—”

“Baby, you made the end of our story a fairytale.”

“You just said —”

“I don’t want a fairytale, I want you. I only made you a fairytale because it was all I could have, but I just wanted you.” He stopped to look at the cards again and grunted as he flipped through them, “fuck. I don’t have anything that —” He huffed and dropped his hand to the side, “You know I hate performative romance. You know that. It’s not about it being in public, it’s about it being real. I hate the ending because you took what you actually felt and how I actually hurt you and how much you actually lo— care, and you turned it into what someone expected to find. I hate it. I didn’t need to listen to the first drafts to know that you were making up a happy ending for everyone else because that’s what it was supposed to be.”

Steve moved around the couch as he went off script. He wasn’t crying yet, but he was glancing to the ceiling too often to be far from it. 

“I listened to the album at midnight the day of the release because I was suddenly mad that other people were going to have a part of you that I didn’t. And I didn’t send something or contact you before the tour because I didn’t know what to say . The first signs? You probably don’t remember them and didn’t think they were anything, because they weren’t yet. I mean — I paid for someone’s tickets so they’d hold up a sign that said ‘no words’. That’s how hard you took me down. 

“I had to do something, I couldn’t let you reach out and never get anything back, but Eddie. Do you not get that I know you, that I could hear all of the little things that your fans will still be decoding next year? I didn’t know how to respond to what you said. You’d just broken five years of precedent and written an album about how I’d broken your heart and how you weren’t over it. You wrote me an entire album as this tragic love letter, and you did it without ever saying the words.”

Eddie twitched forward, desperate to take away the grief Steve was showing him.

“You understand how much that was to hear?” He had his eyes locked to the ceiling. He wasn’t hiding his reaction, or how he was feeling. Instead, he was trying to hold it off long enough to finish what he was trying to say. “You created this devastating thing and you sent it to me because you wanted to be sure I heard it. You didn’t just make it, you were going to go sing it and share it with everyone because that’s what you needed to do to survive what I did to you.

“I wanted to be like you and do something big and loud so I could even get close to matching what you were saying with this album, how much you were saying, and how much it meant, but I don’t know how to do that! 

“So, I paid for people’s tickets, or repaid them if tickets were sold out, to get them to agree to bring the sign I asked them to, and hold it up when I said. And I made it up as I went along, trying to figure out how to make this right. But I don’t know how to do the big things like you do, so I couldn’t show you what I meant.”

“Stevie,” he whispered. Eddie almost gave in, almost grabbed him when watery eyes snapped back to his. “Steve, you set off a conspiracy theory on the internet so big that Chrissy removed the social apps from my phone and parent controlled the alerts so I wouldn’t see it. You did something that had concert crowds cheering when signs got held up and blocked their view. That is — I haven’t looked, I haven’t read any of it and I was afraid to ask Chrissy. But. Stevie, you think this wasn’t big? Steve. Steve. International anonymous crowd collaboration concert poster message delivery. I think you went big enough.”

They paused, both smiling at how ludicrous it was when described like that. Then Eddie watched Steve’s face crumple, and flinched again. Steve wasn’t hiding it, so Eddie knew another painful admission was coming. 

“Eddie, If you hadn’t played it tonight, I wouldn’t have been back here. I would have left.”

Okay. Shit. Eddie’s turn to stare at the ceiling and blink. That took a second to recover from. He almost didn’t play it. If those kids had held the sign up a verse sooner, Eddie might have chickened out. If he had an ounce less trust in the crew and the band to have his back, or in the audience to be there for him, he’d have ignored the sign and played Stained Glass .

Steve was, what? Testing to find out what Eddie would give for him? Looking for how much of his heart Eddie was willing to—

Oh.

“You needed to know if I still wanted the guy that made me write those songs. If I could admit it. You knew that I needed to play it because it was killing me to keep it inside.” Eddie brushed his eyes. “Shit. And you knew that if you told me I could play that song, the only reason I wouldn’t, was if I didn’t really want you.”

“If it helps,” Steve murmured, “I think I hate the ending of the first draft, too.” He laughed, “Ironically, Lavender gave me a migraine.”

Eddie snagged between the bitter satisfaction of knowing he was right, and confusion how a song about an allergen could give Steve a migraine. 

Steve deciphered his expression and flatly explained, “I cried so long I gave myself a tension and dehydration migraine.” 

“I didn’t think it would… matter that much to you.”

“Eddie.” Steve swallowed. “The first time you wrote me a song, it was about how no matter how bad the day was, if you could see my eyes, it was like the day started over, and it wiped away anything bad. Then. You wrote a song about how I didn’t love you as much as I loved money. Then there’s this whole album which is — god. But, I’m pretty sure the first song you wrote was Lavender . And I’m pretty sure you started writing it while I still had some pinned on my chest.

“I hate that I did that to you. I hate that you left thinking I didn’t want you to help me, or that I’d rather sit in glass and blood and lavender than have you back. Honestly, Eds, I hate both endings. They’re beautiful, but one of them is a lie, and the other one is how much I hurt you, and fuck that. I want you to be happy.”

This sucked so much. He wanted to just hold him and kiss him and blow off all the awful complex shit that was hurting them both so much. Ignore it like they used to. Just shove it in a box and shove that box inside of another box and mail that — 

He wanted to hear this from Steve, not through somebody else. So it wasn’t done. 

“Robin told you about that call, didn’t she?” 

“Yeah. Love her, but I could have killed her for that.”

“She didn’t do worse than you,” Eddie admitted. “Chrissy cut it off. I wasn’t, uh, handling it well. So Chrissy hung up. There’s questions I wanted to ask, and if this — we can come back to most of them if this thing between us is still going to exist tomorrow —”

“Ask, Baby.”

“Did you love her?” It fell off his tongue, sounding like resentment not guilt. That was wrong. Steve wasn’t his. He wasn’t mad, but the loss was louder than his fear. “Were you happy? Did you finally have that? Did I take that from you?”

They managed a moment of real eye contact, without jokes to soften the honest edges. 

Steve looked away first, back to his note cards, leafing quickly through them with a frown. He gave up, mumbling something to himself. He tossed the cards onto the couch, and put his hands to his hips in frustration. Eddie had missed seeing it.  

“Look. Can I be sort of pathetic about this? I know I just said I don’t want something fake and I don’t, but you’re better with words than I am, and I feel like a thirteen year old girl right now, but can I answer in, just, a really pathetic way?”

He wasn’t bad with words, but he got in his own way if he was nervous. Playfully mean, Eddie said, “Go ahead and be as pathetic as you need to, Stevie.”

That earned him a weak glare. 

“I’d made a constellation.” Steve began bluntly. Eddie startled, and covered his mouth with both hands, but couldn’t look away as Steve continued. “I’d found all the little bright points and pieces of my life that could still shine after it shattered, but I couldn’t put them back together. So I drew lines in between them, and I found a picture in them, and I made a constellation that I could call happiness. I called it love. And it was fine, because I hadn’t seen the stars in so long that I forgot what they really looked like.”

“Gonna make an AMV, Stevie?” His voice cracked as he failed to avoid the obvious. The question didn’t make any sense, but Eddie was too shaken to be clever.

“I would have been okay if you hadn’t shown up. It was a really nice picture. I’d made something good out of the pieces I could find. But, no, I wasn’t happy.”

That was the only part that mattered. 

To either of them. 

In the stupidest ways possible, hurting themselves while doing it, all they’d ever done was want the other one to be happy. They were far past the point where Eddie’s restraint frayed. For six weeks, he’d worked his way though the emotions to find a way to live with it. He’d been bleeding from this wound for a long time. If he had any chance, he’d smother the fear and take the chance.

“Can I try again to make you happy, Stevie?” Eddie saw the shift in Steve’s eyes, and couldn’t help himself. With a sincere, shit-eating grin, he asked, “Can I show you the stars again?”

And there went the tears. 

Fuck this carefully mature distance. 

Eddie grabbed his hands and kissed his knuckles before catching him.

“Eds, you absolute nerd," Steve bitched at him with the tone that turned it into affection. While he hugged him, and buried his face in Eddie’s neck. “I can’t believe you just said that, you’re the worst, why did I do all of this,” he kept complaining, “God you’re so gross right now, my clothes are going to be wet. How are you this sweaty, and your makeup is going to be all over my shirt.”

A light flicked on in Eddie’s brain as he held him, the same one that lit up when he found an outlet for a built up emotion. An idea bulb, for a very specific kind of idea. 

“Sweetheart.” He kissed the side of Steve’s head. “Do you trust me that even though I made it literally into a show, that it's not a performance for me? That this is real, and nothing I do for you is because I care about how it looks?”

“Why are you asking?” Steve pulled back to meet his eye. It was confusion though, not concern. “Baby, you just played those songs in front of a crowd with hundreds of phones recording you. You aren’t going to get to undo that. It’s pretty clear.”

“Okay, good.” He held Steve’s face. “Cause I want to give you both.” Eddie gently kissed him. “Both of them. I’ll give you anything, but first I want to give you both. You have the real one. This all hurts like hell, and I think it will for a long time, but I promise, you get to have the real ending. Can I give you the fairytale too? Can I play it?”

“You put the fairytale in the album, though? That’s what Stained Glass is.”

“Not that one.”

Steve caught up.

“Eds…”

“You always hated when I did this, but I wanna do it anyway. I wanna show them. Can I?”

“Really? Even with me looking like this?”

“Look at me.” Eddie grinned, knowing he’d won. “And I made all of them cry too, they can’t judge.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying yes to this.”

“But you are saying yes, right?”

Steve kissed him.

The final show of a tour always had a long encore. Eddie usually did a double. This one was going to be more like a triple since the opening band had almost finished a double. Luckily, metal music loved long songs, so the concert wasn’t quite over yet. Fortunately, everyone involved in the tour was used to his personal brand of chaos, and rolled with it when he walked on stage with his two sweethearts in hand. 

Chrissy had the sense to shove ear protection at them both before letting them pass. Steve had the sense to shut off his hearing aids.

Very necessary precaution as the crowd saw them, and Eddie stepped up to the mic. 

“Thanks for being patient with me,” he laughed, loud and bright and sharp. “And thanks for all the help you gave this guy.”

Steve rolled his eyes as he blushed, but he didn’t flinch from it when the audience exploded. 

“If you’ve stuck around this long, you know my music pretty well. Maybe you’ve been online recently.  Probably a fan. You know my stuff tells a story.” He looked around to check, and he was right, the audience was a little thinner. The fans who were annoyed about a change from the album, the ones who were casually interested, the ones who didn’t know what all the shit with the posters and signs was about, they’d left. There were people still leaving, but not the ones that mattered most to him. 

“Thought maybe as a thank you, you’d like to hear the… I guess it’s a prologue. Maybe the epilogue too. Haven’t played it in a long time. Haven’t had a reason.” He stared at Steve, confident that they were both tear-streaked saps. “The song’s called Sunrise Eyes.”