Work Text:
When Steve awakes that morning, his knee is aching. It gives him a slight limp, the kind that would have had Laura setting a pot to boil for his hot water bottle. Instead he stands alone in the kitchen staring down the flames of the burner while his mind blanks out. He wonders when the rain will start, hopes the storm that’s sure to come isn’t as bad as the one last year that had his roof leaking. He’d barely scraped together enough to get it patched up. The roof wouldn’t last another bad storm without a full repair he can't afford right now.
Steve clicks off the stove and pours the warm water into his bottle, hands gently shaking. Dries his hands on the kitchen towel that Laura had embroidered with their initials for their last anniversary. Twenty good years, they’d had together. Steve grips the towel before letting it go gently.
By two in the afternoon Steve's downstairs, stood by the register, and it’s coming down hard. Clouds so thick and dark, the world outside is like dusk already, and Steve’s sure now that the roof won’t hold the night.
Sundays are usually some of Steve’s busiest. Not today, though. The store stays empty. Hours tick, from two to eight, and then it really is dark out. The world on the other side of the glass is a mystery, water pouring down the pane in rivulets, dark like ink against a black backdrop. Steve is inside, on display under the fluorescent lights, a witnessless spectacle, stood in the same place behind the register that he has been every day since he was first hired at Carl’s Quick-Stop in ‘89. A testament to how little time might change a person if they held on fast to where they were stood.
Steve rubs absentmindedly at his knee as he stares out the window. He briefly considers closing early, but decides against it. The bad weather is all the more reason to be here. People ought to have a place to go, case of emergencies and such, Steve figures. So he keeps the store lit up and fluorescent, a modern day lighthouse.
In a flash of lightning, the empty parking lot outside is lit up like daylight. It makes visible the cracks in the concrete where weeds grow out, the faded lines that barely mark the parking stalls. Steve counts only three seconds before a rumble of thunder tears through the sky in every direction. He’s grateful on days like this for his hearing loss, that the sound of thunder is muffled enough that he doesn’t end up with the splitting headaches he’d have gotten in his youth.
Strange, to be here behind the counter with no coming and going. On a normal Sunday, Sandra and Shelley would stop by after church and update him on the hot gossip from the retirement home. Lenard Craft would buy his weekly scratch tickets. Flocks of children would come by to burn a hole in their newly acquired allowances, and Steve would undercharge the polite ones when weighing up their candy. Jeff Mason would pick up a pack of beer because he had Mondays off, and they’d talk about the latest baseball game. Emma Sterling would sometimes come by in the evenings to buy an energy drink when she had a test, and finals season was coming up. He'd been expecting to see her this week, had a tupperware of homemade granola bars for her to eat during the long hours at night spent at her desk.
Over the years working this counter he’s seen young couples get together, homes grow with the swell of bellies, babies turn into toddlers then children, start school, and eventually drive themselves to his convenience store with their freshly acquired driver’s licenses, before moving off to college or settling into a life in Hawkins for good, just as Steve had.
Today, though, Steve is grateful for the lack of customers. Maybe it's the weather or maybe it's just the time of year, but he is feeling inside himself, reflective, his thoughts a world apart. Mulling over old memories, pulled into a silence that he doesn’t want to break. Like holding that silence was an act of respect for time gone by and everything that laid behind him. The memories that ache bittersweet. Steve twists at his wedding rings, both his and Laura’s that he wears stacked on his ring finger. After the funeral, Bobby Johnson had sized her ring up, hadn’t let him pay, not with Laura so fresh in the ground. That was years ago, but he still gave Bobby a discount when he came by the store.
He thinks often of his late wife. The quiet life they’d had, soft and sweet. Mornings where Steve woke up before her to bring her coffee in bed, the anniversaries and birthdays he’d planned for her, carefully laid out. The way her hair had spread on her silk pillow, how he held and cradled her, and how she’d leaned on him when she cried. How strong she was when she picked herself up and put herself back together. The steely determination with which she’d faced the end of her life and the grace with which she’d passed. Everything she’d taught him about loving what you have in front of you while it’s there, and making peace with the hand you’re dealt.
Steve wished he’d been as strong as her once she was gone, but she’d always been his better half. She’d always said it was better to have loved and lost, and usually Steve believed her. Today though, he felt the weight of the losses he’d lived multiplied by the years of separation. He wasn’t a young man any more no matter how you split it, but he felt he looked older than his age for his losses.
When the next crack of lightning comes, it reveals a car parked in the lot. When it had pulled in, and how Steve had missed it, he isn’t sure. He found himself easily losing track of time these days, getting lost in his head.
The bell above the door jingles as the maw of the door opens, and a tall, lean man steps in with a gust of rain and wind. No one Steve has seen in here before. Someone from out of town. He’s pale, dressed in black, dark hair in lazy curls that just reach his shoulders, soaked and dripping on the mat. Steve catches a quick glimpse of his face, deep set wrinkles that tell him the man is similar in age to him. Handsome. The other man acknowledges him with a quick nod, eyes meeting Steve’s for only the briefest of moments.
As the man browses the shelves nearest Steve, he cant help but shake a feeling of familiarity, like the face was supposed to have a name to it. What it was that gave Steve this sense of recognition, he didn’t know. Maybe the man had passed through town before. Maybe he looked like someone Steve had seen on the television.
And as the man slinks away him and further into the store, Steve is hit with a wave of full-on deja vu. Something in the way he moves, lithe under leather jacket and a curtain of hair, almost takes him to another nameless place and time, a memory just out of reach, like a word on the tip of the tongue. Steve thinks now for certain that the man can’t have passed through town before. He’d remember a face that made him feel like this. Steve’s determined to get a clearer look at him whenever he comes back around.
Out of sight, Steve listens to the sound of the stranger’s footsteps, heavy boots loud in the silent store. There’s something intimate in listening to the sound of the man pace the aisles of his store. Lightning flashes again outside with barely a moment’s pause before a rip of thunder loud enough to silence the cacophony of wind and rain slamming against the glass. Steve thinks of all the people who have come and left over the years he’s spent unmoving behind the counter. The relentlessness of time, change that never touched him, only left him with half as many memories as he should have had. What all had he forgotten?
The man swings back around and into view, now studying the chip options, facing Steve, and with a clear view Steve is certain he’s seen that face before. It’s as beautiful as it was on first impression, eyes deep and dark, wide and pensive, framed with thick lashes. The curls fall around his face gently, softening the lines of it. His lips are plush and pink, and Steve can imagine them wrapped around the end of a cigarette, pulling in smoke.
Such a specific image, so vivid. Strange.
The man turns younger in the eye of Steve’s mind. Face smoother, eyes brighter and wild, a thrum of energy. Metal music and the smell of weed, and the road to where the old trailer park used to be. A beat up van, a trailer falling apart, and Wayne’s old mug collection. Wayne Munson.
Eddie Munson.
Steve grips the edge of his stool, breath shallow and all he can hear is his heartbeat rushing in his ears, hot. Could Eddie hear his blood rushing? Could it really be Eddie, here in front of him after… some near forty years?
Steve never thought he’d see Eddie again, never thought he’d be back in Hawkins, especially not after Wayne died in ‘98 and Eddie hadn’t shown at the funeral. Steve had to learn from the magazines he stocked on his shelves that Eddie’d almost OD’ed, nearly died himself, if music journalism was to be believed. Steve would have said it wasn’t, except that was the only explanation for Eddie’s absence.
Eddie’d gotten clean after, or so Steve had read in the Rolling Stone in 2000. Steve hadn’t heard much about Eddie Munson in the past twenty some years or so since. His band had broken up in ‘09, and Steve no longer read about Eddie in the magazines. He had the internet now, and in years past had been tempted more than once to look him up. But he’d always resisted. He used to be real good at that, at not thinking about the things that hurt and couldn’t be changed.
Eddie turns toward him. Steve’s breath catches when Eddie’s eyes meet his, waiting for the recognition to sink in.
“Hey ah, you got a bathroom in here?”
Eddie stares politely at him. Steve stares for a moment longer than socially acceptable, before he manages to nod and point toward the back with his chin, silently.
“... Right. Thanks, man.”
And he’s gone again.
Eddie didn’t recognize him. Of course he didn’t. Eddie’d moved on decades ago. While Steve had had the magazines and tabloids to keep Eddie real, there’d have been no trace of Steve for Eddie. And even without the reminders, Eddie’d always been larger than life, while Steve had always been one to blend in with the tapestry. Never mind that Eddie’d always meant more to Steve than Steve could ever have meant to Eddie. He wonders if Eddie would even remember a Steve from all the way back home.
Steve remembers the heat of Eddie’s body next to him as they both laid next to each other under open skies. He remembers the buzz that lived just under his skin the whole winter he’d gotten to know Eddie. Come spring, they’d spread a thin blanket on the roof of Eddie’s van and lay there, smoking and chatting, and watching the stars overhead. Sometimes they’d stay out late enough for the sky to begin to pale and the stars to fade before Eddie drove him home.
Steve also remembers the moment he realized he was in love with Eddie Munson. Eddie dropped him off at home one of those nights and in bed he’d laid there, retracing Eddie’s face in his mind, fascinated by the plush pink of Eddie’s lips and thinking absentmindedly about how easy they’d be to kiss. And it was like the bottom fell out from under him, the realization that that was what he wanted to do, he wanted to kiss Eddie. He’d had no idea that he’d liked men. Hadn’t, he thought, until he met Eddie. And Eddie, he was something else.
Steve wanted not just to kiss him, but to make him know how wonderful he was. How special he was. How admirable he was for not shying away from being his fullest self, how goddamn remarkable it was that in a town where everyone hid inside themselves and contorted themselves to the image of what they thought everyone else would find acceptable, Eddie simply remained true and authentic in a way that Steve didn’t know how to be.
Steve wanted to be true to himself, like Eddie. So one night in April of ‘86, Steve leaned in. He’d heard the rumors about Eddie, had felt the other man’s eyes linger on him, too, long enough to give him hope. Figured that a guy like Eddie, who was so in tune with his own nature, would at the worst turn Steve down softly if he were wrong.
And Steve hadn’t been wrong, at least he didn’t think so. They’d kissed. First soft and sweet, then deeper, and desperate. Hands grabbing and bringing each other in tight, holding, and pulling, until they nearly rolled off the roof of the van. Eddie’d helped Steve down, before leading him into the bed of the van. Closing the door and drawing the curtain.
Being in a relationship with Eddie hadn’t been all too different from being his friend, except that he could kiss Eddie, and touch him, and know that he was the person who got to see Eddie come undone, who got the honor of seeing the sides of Eddie that no one else ever got to see. And Steve, for one, could let go. He didn’t have to hold himself back, the way he did with everyone else.
Which was why he was able to tell Eddie, without much thought or worry, that he loved him.
And that had always been Steve’s fatal flaw, really. Caring too much, being too much, wanting too badly to cling, to hold tight. There was, of course, a reason that Steve held back. A reason you couldn’t wear your heart on your sleeve. When he said the words, he felt Eddie tense beside him. Felt the other man’s hand running through his hair, his low even breaths. Silence like a stiff breeze. An uncrossable distance between them, suddenly, though they were still chest to chest.
It fell apart softly but swiftly from there. Steve never much blamed Eddie for it, at the time. Within two weeks, Eddie broke the news that he was leaving. That some agent from some bigwig record company had heard their music at a festival a few weeks back, and wanted them to sign on the record label, but he’d have to move to the west coast for it. He was leaving in the morning. No forwarding address, and no phone number. Just a promise he’d reach out to Steve, once he got there.
He didn’t, of course.
In the years after, Steve regretted not getting angry at Eddie, for not insisting on some kind of explanation. Not booking a ticket out to LA and finding his address in the yellow pages. But eventually, he’d come to accept that he’d gotten everything from Eddie that Eddie’d been willing to give. Steve had been in love, and if going out west to pursue his music career was what would make Eddie happy, then Steve was glad that Eddie didn’t love him in return, so that Steve couldn’t hold him back from his dreams.
Decades had passed like water under the bridge.
Steve didn’t know that he’d ever stopped loving Eddie, really. He’d never really had the closure necessary to stop. So even as old and overgrown for puppy love as he was now, even if he had hardly thought of him in years, his heart still ached for Eddie in that old familiar way. He could admit that now. He was, after all, the first and only man he’d ever fallen for. The key to a piece of him no one else had ever seen, nor would.
Sometimes, early on in their relationship, when he laid next to Laura he imagined, crime of all crimes, wiry curls in the place of her soft ones. Imagined himself wrapped up in stronger arms. Being the cradled and not the cradler. Imagined rough hands and callused fingertips and beer breath and the rough drag of stubble. Imagined Eddie taking care of him, like he was small and gentle, a thing to be held not because he wasn’t strong himself but because with Eddie, he didn’t always have to be.
Those feelings that had been so all consuming once dissipated with the years, worn and faded by storms and sunlight and the steady passing of time. But they never truly left.
By the time Eddie comes back out of the bathroom, Steve has had time to fully relive those old and long untouched memories. Looking at his face now, it's obvious that the man in front of him, unlikely as it may be, is the very same he’d fallen in love with more than forty years ago. He wants to scream, to say something, to acknowledge who they both were, what they’d both meant to one another. Or what Eddie’d meant to him, at least.
Instead he smiles politely back at Eddie, and begins to ring his items up, one by one, fingers shaking. Items heavier than their weight.
Eddie still doesn’t recognize Steve, and it makes sense. He wouldn’t have expected Steve to stay here, to still be working a service job, still be behind a counter. It doesn’t matter that Steve owns the store now. He is still sat here, behind the counter, and that's all there is for Eddie to see.
If Eddie were to recognize him, Steve would be so small in Eddie’s eyes. Just another hometown boy who never went anywhere. Not someone who carved a path for themself, who made a name for himself like Eddie did. Steve was invisible, rendered totally unrecognizable by the fact that time had changed him so much less than it ought to have.
Eddie taps his card to the machine, and reaches for the bag that Steve hands to him, knuckles grazing. A hand that once held him many years ago, now brushing against his skin again like it was any other mundane transaction. Eddie gives Steve one of his signature heartstopping smiles. Some things never change. He thanks Steve, and eyes flicker down to Steve’s name tag. Then to his face. And the nametag again.
“Harrington?”
“Eddie.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
And like that the illusion that Eddie was unreachable is broken. Heart galloping stupidly, Steve gives him a small smile.
“Took you long enough.”
Eddie laughs at that, like it's easy. Like heartbreak and lifetimes had never separated them.
“Yeah. I guess it did. You look good.”
Steve feels heat rise to his cheeks, like a goddamned school boy. Resists the urge to deny.
“You too.”
Eddie smiles at him, then gestures outside.
“Some timing I chose huh? It’s really coming down out there.”
“Well, if anyone would ever have been reckless enough to be out in this mess, it would have been you, wouldn’t it?”
“Appears it still is.”
Eddie leans in, elbows on the counter and chin in his hands. His eyelashes are as thick as ever, eyes beautiful as he looks at Steve.
“Pray for me that I don’t wind up in a ditch halfway down the road?”
“I thought you weren’t religious?” Steve asks, smirking.
Eddie shrugs. “Not my business who you pray to. Even I’ve got a higher power these days.” Eddie pulls a bottle of steak sauce out of his jacket, like it’s normal. He sets it on the counter. “HP sauce, get it?”
Steve snorts.
“You lug that thing around just for that joke? Pardon me, but you might need some new material.”
“Yeah yeah. It’s actually a rehab thing, they really get off on the whole ‘god’ thing,” Eddie says, making scare quotes with his hands before he picks up the bottle and points it at Steve. “but they don’t actually care too much who your higher power is.”
Steve feels an incredulous smile creeping up his face. As much as Steve had stayed in one place, somehow Eddie had too. He was the same person. Erratic and eccentric and unpredictable as hell. He shakes his head and Eddie returns his nonperishable god to his pocket.
Steve’s stomach twists as he readies himself to say what first crossed his mind when Eddie asked him to pray for him.
“About the rain. You know, you could stay here.” Steve offers, feigning lightness.
Eddie tilts his head, hand rubbing his mouth. “My, my. Have I stumbled my way to my own Prancing Pony Inn?”
“Even better, we don’t have those dead guys on horses, last I checked.”
Eddies eyes briefly widen, and then he laughs.
“Dustin made you watch the movies?”
“Annually.”
“Good boy. Or man I guess. Heard about his cushy professor job.”
Steve nods, letting it sink in just how long it’s been since any of them had heard from Eddie. He had lost touch with all of them after his move. Not just Steve. He had become a figure present in memory only. Memories that slowly faded and dwindled, and were recounted less and less. With the distance of time and the tint of nostalgia, he’d become a character, even. Relegated to a small set of stories that were reused at gatherings. A character far enough removed from their world that he would fit in easily with the fantasy books Eddie had loved so much. Loves so much, probably. The improbability of him standing here, now, is dizzying.
“I saw him on the news you know, that’s how I found out. Some specialist comes on to talk about some rare footage of a meteor landing in fuck knows where Canada and boom, it’s my favorite little sheep from high school.”
Steve nods, proud smile on his face.
“Tenured faculty since about twenty years back already. Department head as of this year. University of Minnesota, Physics and Astronomy.”
“Good for him. Always knew he’d make it.”
“Yeah.”
“Well.” Eddie knocks his knuckles against the counter, and leans back.
“I believe there’s a ditch waiting that has my name on it.”
“Stay,” Steve says, voice carefully level. Like he doesn’t care either way what Eddie does. “I have a spare room. Just upstairs. Wait out the storm.”
Eddie's dark eyes meet Steve's, for the first time looking deeply. Silence stretches out, or time slows, Steve isn’t sure, but there’s a warmth there that’s almost burning hot.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You’d really let me. You know, after everything?”
“There’s always been a place for you here, Eddie.”
At that, Eddie breaks eye contact, looks at the ground nodding. Eyes turn up to Steve’s again, gentle and hesitant.
“Okay. Guess we have a lot to catch up on, don’t we?”
“I guess we do.” Steve agrees.
That night, Steve makes the guest bed for Eddie. He almost offers Eddie the bottle of aged whiskey he’s been sitting on before he thinks better of it and puts on the pot to boil. In the end, the guest bed goes untouched until the morning, as does Steve’s own. They talk until dawn, like they’re both twenty years old again and full of life. Steve tells Eddie about Laura, and Eddie doesn't skirt around the topic of Steve's dead wife. Asks Steve if her favorite flowers were daffodils because he noticed the pot Steve had bought last week sitting up on the counter. He doesn't ask if they had kids, perhaps noticing the lack of any pictures of children around his apartment, perhaps not thinking to ask. Eddie confesses that he’s bought a plot of land on the outskirts of town. That he’s gotten sentimental with age, and has been thinking about coming home. Settling down in a quiet house within driving distance of Uncle Wayne’s grave. Getting a cat, smoking weed and drinking nonalcoholic beer down by the river in the summer. Maybe even find someone else to kill time with, before time kills him, he says.
That night, the roof holds up. Steve thanks god, and Eddie thanks the bottle of sauce in his jacket pocket, and they laugh together. They don’t kiss that night. They have a long way to go before they get there again. But Steve wants to. And he thinks that Eddie might, too.