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It’s late.
Like, stupidly late. The kind of late where the cars no longer trundle into their driveways, gravel crunching beneath their wheels. Where the only sounds Eddie can hear over the coarse groaning of his shitty box fan is the crickets singing away their mating calls. The government’s new so sorry your houses got completely upended by the earthquake we’re definitely not responsible for trailer park is swallowed by the black fog of night.
Eddie presumes it’s gotta be around two in the morning by now, but he doesn’t bother shifting his prostrate position to check the clock on his bedside. His eyes are far too heavy to look at anything that isn’t his stiff pillow.
He’s not tired, though. Far from it. He and insomnia have been well acquainted for years, even before his near death experience in a cold and damp time-capsule dimension under his feet. Even as a kid, he was always up until the early hours of the morning doing something or the other. Some nights, he’d clutch a flashlight between his teeth and spend hours reading Tolkien. Others, he would be slaving away over his leather back campaign journal, and wake up after four hours of sleep feeling like he’s been afflicted with scoliosis. Hell, he’d stay awake just thinking, with his fucking eyes closed; thoughts zig-zagging all sorts of directions until his neighbors’ rottweiler started barking in the morning.
Eddie likes to think his brain operates on one, indelible rule: it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.
And the fat lady sure is timid, since she’s probably got fucking lockjaw or something.
When Eddie was younger, uncle Wayne used to tell him to count sheep if he couldn’t sleep. He said it would relax all them bouncy limbs and knock him right out. But Eddie’s whirlwind mind is like machinery– every single thought keeps the cogs turning. Counting in his head? Numbers are a form of thought, so it’ll keep whirring. Focusing on his breathing? Nice try, dipshit, if you’re focusing on something that means the ol’ noggin’s operating in tip-top shape. Which ultimately meant he’d think of something to keep himself from falling into boredom, and boom. Cycle starts again. Awake when the rooster crows.
As is the course of Eddie’s life, the nightmares added a whole new stupid integer into the equation. Whenever he dared to close his eyes, Chrissy Cunningham–with her splintered bones piercing grotesquely from her pallid skin–would be staring back at him with her mouth torn agape. Sleep meant revisiting that, and all other scenarios involving the people he loved crowded against his ceiling and mangled into jagged edges.
It’s been nearly a year, though. Sure, he hasn’t fully mentally recovered from watching a girl get murdered via telepathy, nor from nearly getting mauled to death by face-huggers with wings– but he’s been pretty mentally sound, all things considered. For the last couple of months, he’s comfortably upgraded to quick, dreamless sleeps. Shit, he’s even had the occasional good dream, though they usually fall through his fingers before he can even process them.
So, nightmares and general lala land-induced insomnia aside, the reason Eddie can’t sleep is because of Steve.
Not that that particular topic isn’t one that drives his sleepless nights often. Those thoughts usually rev his engine to a great degree, and eventually end with soiled boxers and that terrible feeling like he needs to euthanize himself. Or they have him rolling back and forth on his bed, pillow mashed between his arms and chest, giggling like a pre-teen girl.
Eddie hasn’t been jerking off to the image of riding Steve in the driver’s seat of his fancy Beemer, though. Unfortunately enough, the concept of touching himself to Steve actually makes him want to throw both his hands into a woodchipper.
The reason why Eddie’s awake at the damn near witching hour is because he fucked up. Like, unbelievably fucked up. Fucked up to the extent where, when he’s pushing daisies, Saint Peter’s gonna stop him at the foot of the pearly gates with a firm hand and boot his ass down to Hell; Eddie slamming his head on each individual step down the stairway to Heaven.
Lately, Eddie’s been…seeing Steve.
Well. Not seeing, since he does enough of that every fucking day–thank God–but they’re in that weird liminal space between dating and officially together. They’re not friends with benefits, by any means, because Eddie sure hopes there’s strings attached to whatever they’re doing. But they haven’t gotten far enough to put a name to it, other than two dudes who cuddle and kiss and occasionally participate in sodomy, for lack of a better term.
Eddie knows Steve’s a wildly committed guy–even assumes he gets a little hard over it, too–but Steve’s been uncharacteristically cautious about it. Like he hasn’t quite processed the fact that he’s basically a step away from being Eddie’s fucking boyfriend.
Actually, scratch that. Applying the past tense to this whole situation would be better. Steve was basically a step away from being Eddie’s boyfriend, until Eddie completely blew whatever they had up over a dumb argument.
Look, Eddie’s accustomed to losing things as quickly as he gets them. Whatever entity’s been controlling the course of his life has some grudge against him, since a claw always curls on the monkey’s paw the moment something good happens to him.
Mom comes back after packing her bags and disappearing a year ago? Now she’s got terminal breast cancer. A girl genuinely asks you out to the middle school’s Sadie Hawkins dance and isn’t going to dump a bucket of pig’s blood on you? Nice try, you like boys now.
Steve Harrington reciprocates your deeply cloying and humiliating feelings with some sweet, sweet missionary? Hell’s starting to thaw, you absolute fucking moron! You’ve made a mountain out of a molehill and you’ll be nothing but a botched experiment in the backlogs of his memory.
Anyways, about what happened that’s tearing Eddie apart.
Six hours ago, they were fooling around in Eddie’s room, as two friends/lovers/dudes who’ve seen each other naked do. Fooling around as in just hanging out, not fooling around– though Eddie guesses this would’ve never happened if he was on Steve’s lap with the guy’s tongue spelunking in his tonsils.
Fuck, that was a missed opportunity.
Steve was actually riffling through the cassette collection Eddie was rebuilding after the old trailer cleaved in two.
“I’ve been thinking,” Steve said as Eddie plucked away Simon and Garfunkel on his acoustic. “I got a full tank and nothing to do tomorrow. You wanna go to Indy and buy some more cassettes?”
Eddie looked up from his guitar and sighed in disappointment. “As much as I’d love to, I’m pretty dry on the funds, right now. Can’t buy anything from Sam Goody’s with lint and a gum wrapper, or else they’ll take me out back and put me down like Old Yeller.”
Steve chuckled under his breath. “Ah, bummer. Been too high-maintenance lately?”
“God, I wish. I was out dealing last week at the quarry and some asshole decided to mug me.”
Steve set down the cassette he was studying and turned to face Eddie. His mouth was turned down into a frown, eyebrows scrunched. “What?”
“He didn’t beat the shit out of me or anything,” Eddie dismissed with a wave, “just pulled a knife on me and took everything in my wallet.”
Steve’s troubled expression didn’t lift at Eddie’s casual minimization. In fact, it deepened from worried to outright fucking distressed.
“Eddie, what the fuck?” he gaped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Expertly sensing the tension swirling in the air between them, Eddie sat his guitar against his mattress. The only way forward is to downplay it, he reasoned. It really wasn’t a big deal, and he didn’t want Steve to fret over him like he did back at the hospital. “It’s not a big deal, or anything. Just a couple of bucks and some pilfered goods.”
Eddie gestured at himself, waving his splayed hands up and down his body like it was proof. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
Steve scowled and raked a hand through his hair; a nervous tic Eddie noticed about him. “That’s not the point– you shouldn’t have been out dealing at night, anyways.”
“It was actually in broad daylight. The guy was pretty reckless for that.”
“Stop deflecting.”
“I just don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” Eddie insisted, hands flying to the air in frustration. “He didn’t even touch me!”
“He could’ve fucking killed you!” Steve snapped. “You shouldn’t have been out dealing, period.”
“Yeah, fat fucking chance, Steve. You want me to be poor forever?”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“How the Hell am I gonna make any money, huh?”
“Get a fucking job, then!
“Get a job, he says! What a fucking concept!” Eddie snarled, vision going completely red. His blood thrummed through his veins, red hot with rage, sending his heart into a wild gallop. “You think anyone wants to fucking employ the local serial killer? Because, believe me, I found out pretty quickly after the third time I wasted my time applying for a job in this shithole town!”
Steve’s face dropped, shock and anger smoothing into regret. At least, Eddie thinks it was regret– recognized it after being the projectionist for the thousandth matinee showing of Eddie Munson Ruins Everything Again: The Film.
Yeah, Eddie can safely admit that Steve went over the line with the whole ‘get a job’ comment, but everything that happened after, he blew out of proportion. Like whipping out a Colt .44 after getting lightly sprayed by a squirt gun.
“Ed…” Steve said cautiously.
“No– no you have to hear this, you absolute asshole,” Eddie interjected, pointing a finger at Steve. “I know I put my fucking neck on the line every day to get a stable income, because it’s all I got!”
“Eddie–”
“Do you seriously believe I’m stupid enough to think I’m fucking untouchable? I know I’m an idiot, but where the fuck has reason taken me? I don’t have shit! Wayne doesn’t have shit! My whole life, my family never had shit! I can’t go traipsing around town with a job and your absent daddy’s trust fund like you, Harrington–”
Steve paled. He clenched his fists, knuckles turning white against his tanned skin. “Don’t bring my dad into this–”
“You play stupid games, and you win stupid fucking prizes.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Eddie barked out an acidic laugh. “Right, like you haven’t seen that happen, already.”
Steve didn’t say anything back, just pressed his lips into a thin line as his chest heaved with each breath. He looked down at his lap, legs crossed on the floor, then swallowed. He stood up and muttered, “I should go.”
And that’s where Eddie’s choosing to end the reel. Not when Eddie watched Steve stalk to the door in indignant silence. Not when he heard Steve’s Beemer peeling out of the driveway. Not when his chest tightened like a vice around his pathetic little heart, as he realized that the show was over; the stage lights had been flicked off, the curtains drawn.
Not when Eddie broke down in tears, sobbing until his throat was dry, still sitting against his bed next to his abandoned guitar.
So, yeah. That’s why Eddie can’t sleep.
But he’s past the point of denial, bargaining, anger, and all. He just feels empty, like his heart’s been excavated from his chest, a black smudge where it used to beat between his ribs.
Eddie raises his head from the pillow it’s been plastered against. He brushes away the errant curls clinging to his damp cheeks, blinking as his eyes adjust to his pitch dark room. Spitting out a strand of hair that found its way into his mouth he thinks, I need a fucking ciagrette.
Once Eddie manages to wrangle himself out of tangled sheets, he swipes a pack of menthols and a scratched zippo from his bedside table. He throws on a random hoodie he fishes off his floor and makes the treacherous journey outside. He throws open the door, peers out into the dark expanse of the trailer park, and decides that he’d rather just smoke behind the trailer. He doesn’t want to gaze, forlorn, out at the winding roads, wishing that Steve’s Beemer would suddenly materialize from the distance. Wishing that they’ll just kiss and make up. That everything will be okay.
Eddie curses at himself. Of course he wouldn’t drive back and apologize to his trailer trash not-even-boyfriend. At this hour? He’s not a fucking lunatic.
He rounds the trailer with a huff, crossing his arms over his chest. How the fuck does it get so cold at night at the end of the summer? As Eddie’s thumbing at the flint wheel, frustrated that the wick is refusing to catch, he hears the sound of wheels against gravel.
He straightens. The cigarette limps as his mouth slackens, before sadly falling to the ground. Bright lights bleed from behind the trailer as the car shifts into park.
Eddie bites back his hope, heart suddenly bursting back into its empty cavity and hammering in his chest. It’s not Steve. Of course it’s not Steve, why would it be? Don’t be a fucking idiot, Eddie Munson.
The door opens with a click, and Eddie hears the familiar sound of Steve’s sigh. That’s when Eddie’s heart goes from a jackhammer to a full-on tectonic collapse.
Steve’s sigh isn’t the disappointed kind, which he does quite often, but the ultra-focused, rousing kind. The one he breathes out before he hypes himself up, shadowboxing and jogging in place. Usually, Eddie’s pretty fucking endeared by the dorkiness of it, but now he feels like he’s being flung around in one of those scrambler fair rides.
It’s pretty fucking evident that Steve’s wheeled up to Eddie’s house at two in the morning, sighing that galvanizing sigh, to ready himself for his big ‘this isn’t going to work out speech’.
Fuck Eddie’s stupid, cyclical life.
He jams his eyes shut, but his ears stay uneasily alert. Something bad is going to happen. Something very bad is going to happen, and he just can’t help himself.
Footsteps against gravel. The car door opens again. Closes. Then, something metallic clunks on the hood of the Beemer.
There’s silence again, save for the faint breeze and crickets chirping in the brush ahead of Eddie. Something plastic hits the ground. Steve mumbles, “Fuck.”
Actually, scratch that. Eddie has no idea what the Hell is going on.
The sound of Steve’s cursing nearly snaps Eddie out of his dread; its vice-grip loosening ever so slightly as Eddie presses his palm against his mouth, suppressing a laugh. Steve’s just so fucking goofy that he’s fumbling through trying to end his own almost-relationship. It makes Eddie feel a bit delirious.
There’s some vague shuffling from Steve, before something fucking weird happens.
The first thing Eddie notices is the clack of a cassette falling into a slot. A twinkling piano begins to fade in, single notes wandering into full on chords. Then, Billy fucking Joel starts to sing.
Don’t go changing…to try and please me…
You never let me down before…
Steve takes a great big breath of air, before shouting, “Eddie!”
Eddie jumps, nearly flatlining at the sheer volume of his voice. It echoes through the trailer park. A dog yelps in the distance, underneath Billy Joel’s crooning.
Oh my God.
“I shouldn’t have said those shitty things to you, Ed,” Steve persists, voice a little quieter, but still carrying through the trailer park. “God, I’m such an idiot!”
Oh my God. What is happening. Eddie whips his head around every which way, scanning his surroundings– there’s no way this is actually happening. This feels like some ridiculous, surreal romance movie. Yeah, that’s it. Steve’s the nice guy trying to win his girl back after their third-act breakup, right?
Where the fuck are the cameras?
Billy Joel keeps singing on, warbling out, I take you just the way you are…
“And I like you so much– you have no idea how much I like you. What I feel about you, it’s so fucking overwhelming, because I’ve never felt this way towards anyone before in my life–”
Okay, no cameras that Eddie can see. He thunks his head against the wall of the trailer, Steve’s aching voice muffled underneath the sound of his blood rushing at Mach-five speed. Jesus H. Christ and the old one, too– he can’t even breathe.
This cannot be his real fucking life.
“I know that I hurt you,” Steve admits, voice breaking, “but I’ll do everything I can to fix it, Ed. I’d– I’d move mountains for you. Fucking Heaven and earth for you, and you alone. I don’t know what I’d do without you, because you complete me. Because…because I love you.”
Eddie’s legs make the completely voluntary decision to give out. He falls against the trailer, body smashing into aluminum and steel with an earsplitting thud. Nails scraping against the walls like a sturdy fork against fine china, Eddie shrieks, “SHIT!”
He’s fully on the ground, back scuffing the dirt, when the music abruptly stops. Then, Steve’s over him, crouching down on his knees, and lifting him up with his big, stupid, romantic hands.
Steve, who actually full on, no-fucking-joke, loves Eddie, tracks his face with his beautiful eyes. His mouth curls into a silly smile. “I thought you were in your trailer.”
Eddie blinks, feeling a little bit off the deep end. He says, deliriously, “I needed a smoke.”
Steve hugs Eddie tightly, sliding a warm hand against the back of his head. He nuzzles into Eddie’s neck, rubbing his nose against the junction between his shoulder and throat like a cat.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispers, breath ticking against Eddie’s skin. He’s never called Eddie baby.
“I’m pretty sure you are,” Eddie replies, laughing wetly. Steve’s nails scratch his scalp, and he nearly goes limp as putty again. Steve’s other hand releases Eddie from his snug grip. It wanders up and down his arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake, before his palm lands softly on Eddie’s cheek“...I’m sorry, too.”
Steve frowns. His thumb traces circles against the sensitive skin under Eddie’s eye. “What for?”
“God, don’t be such a fucking martyr,” Eddie scoffs, but there’s no bite behind it. He feels so fucking soft and squishy in Steve’s arms. Always has, from their first kiss to their first time, he always was the pliant one. “I was a shit to you, too. Said things I didn’t mean.”
“Hey, c’mon–”
“It’s just hard. Everything is so fucking hard, sometimes.”
“I just want you to be safe,” Steve says, firmly.
“I know. I was just…defensive. But then I blew everything out of proportion, and I got scared. So fucking scared. I just didn’t want to lose you.”
Steve’s expression turns somber. “Don’t be sorry. Never be sorry.”
His hand leaves Eddie’s head, and now both of them are resting on his cheeks as he tugs Eddie closer, between his open legs, and into a kiss.
It’s soft. Calculated. Nothing like the blind, passionate makeouts they had fallen into before– all sharp teeth and probing tongues. It’s just…two lips sliding against each other, adoringly sweet, and nothing like Eddie’s had before. He feels like his flesh is sinking into Steve’s as their mouths move, threads of nerves and muscle and bone weaving together into one stirring entity.
Kissing like this, Eddie’s unsure where he ends and Steve begins.
They eventually break apart, a strand of Eddie’s hair sticking to Steve’s spit-slick lips. Eddie giggles, feeling a bit like a feral animal, and plucks it off Steve’s mouth.
Unsure of what to say, Eddie teases, “...Billy Joel?”
Steve’s glazed-over expression shifts into a peeved one. “C’mon, it’s romantic.”
“It’s fucking cheesy, is what it is.”
Steve’s hands, which had travelled from Eddie’s face to the sharp juts of his hips during their kiss, squeeze lightly. He jostles Eddie, swaying him side to side. “You like cheesy.”
“You’re cramping my style,” Eddie snorts, knocking Steve on the shoulder with his fist.
“You’re wearing my hoodie, though.”
Eddie looks down, stretches the hem of his hoodie, and throws his head back in a groan. It’s a fucking heather grey Hawkins high school basketball hoodie, a tiger with an unhinged jaw above the logo. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What can I say,” Steve hums smugly as he yanks Eddie’s sleeve. It’s like he’s a pre-teen boy pulling at pigtails. Jesus, it’s stupidly endearing. “I like the way my clothes look on you.”
“Christ, you’re such a dork,” Eddie grumbles, rolling his eyes.
Steve takes Eddie’s hands in his massive paws and drops them on his shoulders. “You’re a dweeb.”
“Evidence shows that you love dweebs.”
“Yeah, I think I love them too much.”
“You’re a lucky guy.” Eddie’s fingers skitter from Steve’s shoulder to play idly with his perfect hair. “I love dorks. Love ‘em so much.”
Steve brightens like it’s his first day on earth; wandering out, fully formed, from a tulip field and seeing the sun rise for the first time. He drops his head back into Eddie’s neck and winds his arms around him like a jungle snake.
“Any way I can repay you for my wrongdoings?” Steve rolls his head onto Eddie’s shoulder, looking at him with coveting eyes. “To prove how much I love you?”
Eddie pushes a lock of hair from Steve’s eye and smacks a wet kiss against his temple. “Sure you can.”
Eddie does get some sleep that night. Sure, he wakes up with Steve bare-naked, soft, and drooling against the back of his neck at noon, and his ass is awfully fucking sore.
But sleep comes. Sleep goes. Eddie’s just happy he’s got someone in his bed to hold him through it.