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"I see you moved on from freaky little Munson the minute you got the first chance on a better deal Harrington,"
Steve can feel the anger he'd buried, the anger he'd swallowed, for years, pushed down and down and down, a dormant volcano set to blow. Stupid how all it takes is is one drunk Eddie Munson showing up on his door three years after he'd disappeared like a ghost from Steve's life.
"What. The. Fuck."
It burned, like the time he'd tried to swig the shit tequila straight from the bottle at Robin's and threw it all up afterwards.
Eddie swayed in the door frame, eyes half lid and red, eyeliner a mass of webs down his cheeks and hair sweaty and limp, sticking to the sides of his face. Steve hated that even like this, even looking this fucking shit, Eddie could still make his heart ache. That there was even a twinge in his heart after three years of carving him out.
"Saw your little beau, pretty fella, smart-dressed and preppy," he slurred, hand holding a beer bottle that clinks against the wooden frame as he sway unsteadily.
"What the fuck are you doing here Eddie?" Steve says, refusing to play this game.
Eddie snorts uglily.
"Talkin' bout your new butt boy, new pretty thing, that sandy haired y-youngin' you've shacked up with."
"Not that it would be any of your business what the fuck I did or who the fuck I do in my life, if you're talking about Gabriel, I should punch your lights out."
"Why s'at? huh? So protective over your sweet- SLAP
Steve's hand stung from the impact, but the stunned look on Eddie's face soothed it, only a little. Steve hated violence, but he also hated slander.
"Gabriel is my junior coach, Robin's baby cousin. He is EIGHTEEN Eddie so you better shut the fuck up right now."
Eddie stares at him, hand gripping the bottle pressed to his face. His eyes are blown wide, stunned into some semblance of sobriety.
"It is none of your fucking business who I have in my life and this... what ever the fuck this is can get the fuck off my front porch," Steve spits with such anger he feels like he's going to be sick. It burns in his belly, the rage, he's so angry he could put his fist through the wall and he hates it. He has to take a stuttering breath before he can speak again. "I'll call you a cab and you can get to Nancy's so that you don't die in a ditch, but you need to leave."
Steve doesn't realise that his cheeks are wet, doesn't realise that he's panting or that his chest is so tight he feels like he might stop breathing.
"Steve..."
"You walked away from me, you took your shit and fucked off out of my life Eddie you DO NOT get to do this to me, the first time I see you after THREE horrible years and it's drunk on my doorstep, accusing me of fucking Robin's baby cousin? Where the fuck do you get off Munson?"
For the first time since he'd opened the door Steve could see the Eddie he'd known. Sheepish and embarrassed, it was a look he'd seen so many times before in the two years they'd had together.
"I only left before you left."
What.
"What?"
"I only left before you left me, because you were going to leave eventually, going to leave me and have your Winnebago dreams about six nuggets with whoever Jess or Jessy was on that ring anyway, so why the fuck wouldn't I have left Steve when you were going to leave me for her. What happened to her huh?"
Steve thought he couldn't get more angry than he already was, he is mistaken. He's has only ever been this furious once before and it was because Dustin had tried something so dumb it ended in an explosion that almost killed him and Lucas.
It's white hot in his veins. It's the burning flame of a thousand suns.
"Jessy was my grandmother."
It comes out like a whip of fire, like the violence of a cat-o-nine tails. It comes out of Steve with every bitter acidic feeling he's ever had for the last three years. The bubbling heat of a thousand suns burns in his belly, almost painful from the churning of his anger.
Eddie doesn't get it. He can see it.
His eyes struggle to focus, brain still processing. But Steve can almost see when it hits, and he wants to hit harder.
"Jessy was the only person in my life who loved me as much as my mother does, she was my everything when I was a child. She gave me that ring and told me to put it on whoever I loved the most and so I had her ring enlarged."
Eddie's mouth opens and flaps uselessly, Steve can see the realisation shining in his eyes now, three years too fucking late.
"Had it resized to a men's size 9," Steve spits, angry and so fucking tired. Three years he'd cried, ring in hand, sitting now in the bottom of his closet.
Three years he'd waited for something, anything.
A call, a message, a fucking letter.
Only to get this.
Eddie's mouth keeps flapping in disbelief, his eyes more red than they'd been before, arms hanging uselessly by his side.
"I don't know what I did Eddie to have made you distrust me so much you didn't even want to ask me what it meant, to even talk to me."
"I'm size 9," Eddie says hoarsely.
Steve sucks in a shuddering breath. He can see Eddie trying to reach for him and he can't help the flinch, it's just reflex.
"Yeah, what other fucking dude was I in love with back then huh Eddie?" Steve scrubs his face. "I'm calling a car. You're taking it, and you're going to Nancy's and I hope you have a nice fucking life Munson."
Steve looks at him, hair floppy and miserable, big eyes red and begging and closes the door, just like Eddie had three years ago.
“Munson.”
Eddie looks up, he’s surprised to still recognise Robin. They haven’t talked for about as long as Eddie’s run away. The Robin Buckley in front of him today has a shaved undercut, blue streaks and a mean look for him.
“Buckley,” he answers weakly.
She slams the hot cup of coffee down onto the table in front of him and he winces, but he guesses he deserves it. He definitely deserves it. He knows he’s fucked up. But until now, he didn’t realise just how much.
“So tell me why I shouldn’t just put you on the curb and wait for Gareth to pick up your sorry ass?” she says, still no sitting, staring down at him from where she’s standing.
Eddie traces the rim of the cup, he recognises it. It’s one he’d given Steve, Garfield. Robin must have chosen it on purpose.
“I… I don’t know why Rob, you should just kick me out,” he feels more defeated than he has in a long time.
“I mean between making my soulmate feel like ABSOLUTE shit when he hasn’t ever done anything to deserve it, he also told me you implied he was FUCKING my baby cousin. Thanks for that. Nice of you to show up Munson, three years fucking late for a drunken soap drama worthy performance. Are you fucking five?”
Her face twists.
"How Wayne Munson could have a son like you I don't-
“Robin.”
They both turn at the sharp tone, it’s quiet, but firm and Nancy stands in the hall.
They stare at each other, Eddie’s pretty sure they’ve got the couple's telepathy down because after a second Robin’s face twists into something ugly, but she turns to leave instead. As she passes Nancy, a thin hand grazes her shoulder and she leans into it before disappearing.
With Robin gone, those sharp eyes turn to him and while Nancy had stopped Robin’s tirade, he wasn’t sure that he was out of the snake pit.
Nancy sits down, opposite, composed as she’s always been, now more so since she’s grown into herself. Eddie feels like a bug under her stare, not just under the microscope but under her tweezers and pins. He feels raw, flayed, like his skin has been peeled back and he really just wants another drink, wants run from their microscope back to his shit hole in New York.
"I assume you're here because of Wayne's fishing accident?" Nancy says, words quiet and measured.
"Yeah. Scared me," Eddie manages. He takes a sip out of the Garfield mug and his fingers shake.
"Has the alcohol been a problem for a while now? I did see some articles about it but not a lot," Nancy comments. Her gaze doesn't waver and Eddie wants to die.
"Yeah. Went to rehab last year, crashed out, fell off the wagon, we're back here in the bottom of a bottle again," Eddie says. He takes another scalding sip because its better than talking. He needs to do something, anything, but it's not like he's going to raid their alcohol cabinet, he's not that fucking weird.
But you fucked Steve's night up.
Eddie shakes his head, the voice acidic in the back of his head.
"Do you need to call someone? Should I call your band? Your manager? Do you have a sponsor?" Nancy asks questions like she shoots a damn gun and Eddie's taking the hits.
"I- No sponsor. I washed out of my last AA, blazed it to the ground with my fuck ass mouth. I'll call Gareth. My manager hates me," Eddie says, twiddling his fingers.
"Okay. You can use our phone. Not Jeff?"
"Jeff's not talking to me right now, I shoved him off the stage at the last show and he's almost broke a limb. Was too drunk to realise there was no ledge," Eddie's not sure why he's telling her all of this, but her unnervingly steady stare is all it takes for him to spill his guts apparently.
None of his therapists had even gotten half way.
"Okay. So you'll call Gareth and he'll take you back. He's in town?"
"Yeah."
"Better not to worry Wayne while he's resting," Nancy says with a nod. Then her eyes are fixed on him again. "Eddie. I'm going to say this once, and I know how scary you all think I am so I am hoping that this is going to stick."
Eddie swallows.
"You cannot come back here if you're going to act like a fucking child. Steve's been through a lot. I don't know what you said to him tonight, but I know from the state he called in that it wasn't good. I want to believe you have your own reasons, how misguided they may be, but you cannot do this to Steve. Not again. Not to him, not to us. You cannot come here again like a twister and leave in devastation. Am I clear?"
"Crystal," Eddie says, picking at the small tab of skin that's already starting to bleed.
"So I'm going to step in this once. This is your one chance Eddie. You've blown all the rest."
Eddie looks up at Nancy. Nancy who has thin wire framed glasses now, who has hair until her waist, who looks at Eddie like she's not sure who he even is. It's been three years and it wasn't just Steve that he left. It was his friends. His family. People who dragged him out of hell, all because he thought that Steve had cheated, had planned to go straight and narrow and leave him in the sand.
All because he couldn't let go of his demons in a bottle.
Jessy was my grandmother.
It had never been clearer to Eddie than in that moment, that his problems with Steve hadn't stemmed from a misunderstanding. No, he'd dipped his tongue into the bottle long before that. His misery, his drowning had started before he'd even developed the idea of Steve cheating on him. It had begun with nightmares he refused to deal with and insecurities aggravated by his own perception of his body, of his financial status, of his failures. It was the bottle, the nasty ugly little Eddie that lived in the bottom of the bottle that had whispered the words to him.
He's going to leave.
He hates you.
Of course he hates you, you can't do anything right.
That's why he wants a WOMAN.
It wasn't Steve. It had never been Steve that was the problem. Now, he'd fucked over Jeff, Gareth and Frank barely want to talk to him after his last stint on stage. None of the kids talked to him, Dustin had stopped trying, Max hates him, Mike is disappointed.
Lucas won't look at him.
Eddie has Wayne. Wayne who looks at him so sadly Eddie stopped looking at him in the eye.
"Okay."
"I'm going to call Hopper and you are going to beg for him to be your sponsor, you and he aren't close enough for it to be a problem. Then I'm going to call the local AA, I've worked with them before, and you are going to go and do your twelve fucking steps and you are going to stop trying to kill yourself," Nancy says.
Her voice doesn't change. She doesn't shout, she doesn't yell, it's the same tone as the start of the conversation yet Eddie feels it. Feels the fury behind her words.
The concern.
That he doesn't fucking deserve because what has Eddie done these last three years. Go on tour, make songs and ruin his fucking life all because he couldn't face his problems in the daylight without four bottles of jack.
"Okay."
"Do you want to tell me why you left Steve? Why the fourth song on your second album is about Never Being the One?"
"No."
"Are you going to tell me?"
"I left Steve because I found a ring in his cupboard with the engraving To my one and only, Jessy and instead of ask him, I drowned in the nearest bottle and left town with all my stuff."
"I'm going to call my friend, she's a therapist. She's dealt with me through my issues about Barb and my own self worth and I think… I think Eddie, that if you want any semblance of your old life back, considering you showed up drunk here screaming after three years I think you do, you will talk to her," Nancy says.
"I tried. I tried last year. I fucked up Nancy, nothing sticks, I just end up in the same damn hole each time and every time it just got worse," Eddie says, honest in the face of her intensity.
"Try again. If you don't you're going to be another statistic. Do you really want to make the 27 Club Eddie?"
Eddie flinched, he had thought about it. How he might end up like the other rockstars, dead in the ground before 30. Then he'd gotten scared and when Eddie got scared, he got stupid. Hence the throwing Jeff off the edge, hence the throwing himself off stages, hence the driving all the way over to Steve's and what ever the fuck that was.
Eddie is quiet and so is Nancy and for a good minute they sit in silence.
"Dustin asks about you every week. He wonders about you, he asks about you, he buys your album and it kills Steve every time he mentions you, because for a good while after you left, Dustin blamed Steve. Then he didn't and he hated you, then he just became resigned."
Eddie doesn't want to know this. Wants to and doesn't want to, hates that he has to.
"Steve still buys your albums."
"I'll talk to your friend."
"You deserve one chance, I'm giving this one to you because I know that they all still love you even though you've destroyed every bridge you could. But you fuck this up? That's it. You don't come near Steve ever again Eddie. I will make sure you don't, got that?"
"Got it," Eddie says, finger bleeding.
"Go call Gareth," Nancy says, fingers wrapping a tissue gently around Eddie's fingers. "Talk to Hopper. Talk to my friend. Find yourself."
Eddie sobs, her hands are so gentle. More gentle than he deserves.
"And while you're in this house, you won't find any alcohol. Stay if you need to. Though after Robin comes back I can't promise you'll survive."
"I know."
Nancy looks at him and for the first time that evening her face falters, there's a sadness there, a bone deep one, the same look he'd seen when she would talk about Barb, back when Eddie was a confidant and not a boozehead.
He hated that she was looking at him like that.
"We missed you Eddie, but you gotta work for it."
"I know."
"Good."
Steve is inconsolable when Robin gets there and she almost wishes she'd gutted Eddie when she'd had the chance. Deep down, she knows, she gets it, it's the booze, it's the drink, it's that and Eddie's monumentally terrible self-esteem issues. She gets it, gets how he can think he doesn't deserve shit, that he's only a last resort and not a first choice. She gets it.
Watching her best friend sob on the floor means all rationality goes out the window and Robin Buckley wants to commit murder, not for the first time in three years.
Steve hiccups, he takes gulping breaths like he's trying to control his crying, trying to stop, but can't, the fat tears keep bubbling over.
"Robin," he calls and she goes, she swoops, she curls him into her arms, stronger than she once was thanks to the little work out sessions she does with Gabriel and Steve. She can easily tuck her friend onto her lap, curl her arms around him and hold him.
"It's okay, I'm here. It's okay, you're okay," she says, soothing one hand along his back.
"I- I - he— I don't know what to do anymore Robin. What did I do? What did I do to deserve this?"
"Nothing Stevie, you didn't do anything," Robin says, trying to keep his breathing even. Steve sobs into her shoulder, clinging her like a child might a sibling.
"He's gone Stevie, sent him to Nancy, she'll deal with it, you know she will," Robin says, trying to soothe him. But Steve's shaking his head in her shoulder, crying into her t-shirt.
"It's not- Robin god, it's been three years. Three fucking years and I thought hey, maybe this year might be different, maybe it's finally time I try. Try to see if the lesbians in Indy might wingman me like they said they wanted to. Maybe it's time to move on. Then he shows up and drags his claws through my fucking heart and now all I can think about is him. Why? Why Robin, why do I still love him?"
Robin holds him fast to her body, feels the way his heart hammers against her chest.
"Because your heart is big Steve Harrington. It holds so much love," Robin whispers.
"I love him, Robin even now, I love him and it hurts, it hurts so fucking much. I can't. My face hurts, my chest hurts. Just looking at him hurts. I'm worried. I'm angry. I can't- he thought I was going to leave him? For a woman? Is it because I'm bisexual? Like it's a fucking option when he's the only one I've ever wanted after Nancy,"
"The word is biphobia and a surprising amount of gays are susceptible to it. But I don't think that's on you Steve, it's not because of what you would do, it's because of what Eddie thinks he doesn't have. How he thinks about himself," Robin tries to reason.
Steve scoffs and snorts up his blocked nose.
"So I'm not even the correct kind of gay is that it? I have to be gay gay to be fucking loyal? I must have done something, it can't just be Eddie's fucking shitty self esteem," Steve says bitterly. He rubs his nose, pinches and snorts. She wipes the tears from his cheeks, pretty even in his misery her soulmate is. He could have anyone. He could take on the world. But Steve's never really been like that. He's happy, with the simple life and simple things and she almost hates that one of those things is Eddie Munson.
"There is no correct gay, you are exactly the right amount of gay to be Steve Harrington and it is. In this situation, in this moment you've done nothing wrong. Eddie could have chosen to ask you about it. He could have chosen to ask the rest of us. He could have chosen to scream and shout. He ran away, right into a bottle and he hasn't been able to pull himself out of it for three years it seems. Steve, c'mon, we've talked about this, even before you knew about what you know tonight, he was already on the verge before this."
"I-
Steve slumps, shoulders going lax, defeated. Robin hates that more than anything. That in the last three years Steve has learned to just accept defeat. Especially when it came to his love life.
"I just wish I'd been enough. I just wish that I could have helped," Steve whispers.
"Sometimes when you're too close you can't. Sometimes people need help from outside, because whatever is inside is too close to the live wire," Robin says, tucking his hair behind his ear.
"C'mon Stevie, you've got a good life, you've got good friends, Joyce Byers and Wayne Munson adore you and Hopper thinks you are a fine young man. You've got me and you've got Nancy and we've got you. One Eddie Munson cannot be the end of it all," Robin says as she smooths his hair back.
"Is he okay?" Steve says, voice whisper soft.
"Yeah. I gave him coffee in the Garfield mug and he was scared of me," Robin tells him.
Steve snorts.
"You're only bitchy for me," he teases.
"Steven Josephine Harrington, I am bitchy all the time!"
Steve laughs.
"That's still not my name and you are not. You're a bag of jellybeans."
"What a thing to be, a bag of jellybeans, thanks Steve," Robin snorts.
"Do you think…
Robin waits. Patiently.
"Will you be…
Steve rubs his face, cheeks red, nose dribbling.
"Did I fuck this all up with my ring?" Steve asks.
Robin grabs his face in her hands.
"If I found a ring in Nancy's drawer and it had a man's name on it, I would look her in the face and ask her about it. Not run away and take all my stuff and write about fifteen songs about the one that got away."
"You may have done some things wrong in life, but this Steve, was not one of them," Robin says with a squeeze of her hand.
Steve smiles at her, it's a little cracked at the edges, but it's still a smile.
"Thanks Robin."
It's an entire year before Steve sees Eddie Munson again. It's not a year before he hears about Eddie though. Nancy discreetly gives him small updates so that Steve doesn't have to worry that the other man is dead and from the updates it seemed that his therapy and AA were going well. It had been rocky at the start, difficult, but it seemed that Hopper of all people had gotten through to Eddie.
One whole year, where Steve has to learn again how to deal with the twister that is Eddie Munson wrecking havoc on his heart. One whole year before the man is standing on his doorstep again.
"Hi," Eddie says.
Steve is staring, he knows, but Eddie does look better. His hair is short, cut till his chin, curls bouncy and alive, his eyes are clearer than Steve ever remembers. He's dressed simple, black t-shirt, leather jacket, not a single ring on his fingers.
"Hi," Steve says back because he doesn't know what else to do. He just thanks the gods that he didn't have anything on today, so if things went south he could deal with it himself.
"Can we talk?" Eddie says, but he doesn't motion inside, he instead opens his hand to the side of Steve's porch, where he's got a little patio set up with a swing chair.
Neutral ground.
"Yeah," Steve says, because for once he's had an excellent week. His kids are top of their game, Gabriel passed his training exams, Robin bought him more quesadillas than he can eat and Dustin hung out with him for an entire weekend. So he's packed full of good juju, enough so that he can handle talking to Eddie, an Eddie who seems clearer than even before the first time he'd left.
"Thanks," Eddie says and lets Steve slide out of his house and into his porch chair. He sits down on the other end and they stare out onto the lawn. It's early, Steve's always been an early riser, but Eddie never was. "I get up early now. I don't sleep very well if I let myself stay up past eleven but that means I now get up at six or seven," Eddie explains unprompted.
"Sounds like a good habit. I still don't sleep until one," Steve says, conversation easy, relaxed, safe.
"Yeah. It is. It's helped," Eddie says, staring out wistfully. "I— I came by to apologise."
Steve is quiet.
"I'm sorry Steve. I'm sorry for all of it. For leaving you, for icing you out, for not trusting you, for verbally assaulting you that night. I'm sorry, I was out of order and you didn't deserve to get the brunt of my untreated alcoholism and internal hatred," Eddie says. It sounds rehearsed but heavy with emotion. Steve thinks about whether Eddie practised this in the mirror, whether he'd had dry runs on his own.
"I know that what I did is unforgivable and I don't expect you to forgive me off the bat, what I did, destroyed more than just us and I regret that. But could you maybe give me a chance to make it up to you? To show you, that Eddie Munson surviving past 27 is doing better. It's okay if you say—
"It's not even a question Eddie. I never stopped caring. I really don't think you understand just how important you were to me Eddie. Still are. You take up this space in my head, in my heart, larger than life. I never stopped loving you, that's not how my love works. I don't get to turn it off. I'm not ready to forgive you, but this… can be a start," Steve says.
Eddie looks at him, Steve can feel it, eyes boring into the side of his head.
"You…
"Yeah. I'm stupid that way," Steve says with a snort.
"You're not. You're never stupid Steve. I love you too. I always have, I always will."
Steve sighs.
"You hurt me Eddie. You hurt me like no one has ever hurt me. If I give you this, how do I know you're not going to just rip me apart again," Steve says, because he's tired, he cares, he does, but he's scared.
Eddie looks at his own hands, wrings them between each other.
"I can't promise that I won't hurt you ever. But I can promise that I will never intentionally do it again and if I do, you will never have to see me again. Nancy will make sure of that," Eddie says, eyes looking at his feet.
Steve feels his belly churn.
He feels scared.
He feels hopeful.
"Come back tomorrow," Steve says eventually.
Eddie looks up at him and the smile he gets is almost like the one he once knew. But as the other man reaches out to him Steve flinches back and Eddie looks pained.
"Tomorrow," he emphasises.
"Tomorrow," Eddie repeats.
Steve feels his heart flutter as he watches Eddie's retreating back.
"Where are your rings?" he calls out.
Eddie stops. Shoulders hunched.
"I don't want to wear any rings until I deserve to wear yours."
"That may never happen."
"Then I'll never wear rings again."
Steve's heart beats in his chest as Eddie disappears from sight.
He hopes.