Work Text:
Steve Harrington would not consider himself good friends with Eddie Munson. Actually, the prospect of them being friends could not be further from the truth. Their personalities are like water and oil- not to mention the contrast in their social… backgrounds. No, “The King” and “The Freak” interacting like good buddies does not mesh on any level.
So, Steve has no idea what he’s doing out behind the school come the final bell. Tommy says he buys from the guy, likes to rough Eddie up in the privacy of the thin forest where the totally-very-legal transactions take place.
‘Still,’ Steve reminds himself, ‘I want a clear head when I try to go to bed tonight. This should help.’
“Ah ah ah, Harrington! Kiiing Steve- What brings you ‘round here?” A voice startles the jock from his brooding to be asked a very obvious question. One of Munson’s brows is quirked upwards as he breaks out into a sharp grin, eyes flitting over Steve in a way that makes him feel read like a book. The dealer had a way in making everyone feel like that, eyes observant and intense. He held back no emotion, or at the very least made it very convincing that he didn’t.
“Munson, I’m very sure you know exactly what I am here for, given our exchange earlier?” Steve hopes the annoyance floods his tone the way he wants it to, pointedly attempting to make the freak stir away from whatever game he was trying to play and actually get to business. He watches Eddie’s shoulders sag the slightest bit as he mutters something about Steve being ‘no fun.’
Shoes land firmly on the picnic table between them with a loud thud, quite the usual display from Munson given his usual lunch-room…. Speeches? Ramblings? Steve doesn’t know what to call it. “Ah yes, my liege! Coming to the local peasants looking for commodities? I’m flattered you have chosen myself!” And then, he pulls a baggy from the beat up lunchbox he previously sat onto the table and dangles it leisurely in front of Steve's face- “Is this what you want?”
Pretty pink lips pout- ‘Woah- that’s a thought, Jesus Christ that’s… I’m going to ignore this’ and Eddie sways the baggie enticingly. Steve still nods, knowing better to snatch what they’d quite hushedly agreed on, and pulls out his wallet. “ ‘Pay extra if you roll one for me now?” His own voice comes out in a way that definitely does not sound the slightest bit sad, eyes tracking over Munson’s face at the proposition.
“Oh-ho? King Steve worn out by his ball-and-laundry-basket playing subjects, hm?” The words are sharp yet somehow those big brown eyes soften a fraction, and the feeling of having his soul revealed to the open air creeps up Steve’s spine once more with a rattling unease. “I’ll allo-”
“We could share? Shit, I mean-” the jock begins to stumble. ‘What the fuck am I doing? WhatthefuckamIdoing???’ “Just… need someone who isn’t… I don’t know. We could talk- This is stupid. This is incredibly stupid, forget I-”
It’s Steve’s turn to be interrupted, Munson jutting into his ramblings like a gift from the heavens, “No, don’t worry we can- Yeah man. Whatever. I get it, company and crap.” Steve feels off-put and Eddie is clearly noticing how off-put he is. “Spend some time with a lowly Jester like myself for entertainment, ha!” That brings the previous rhythm back, the jock rolling his eyes at the eccentric wording.
A few moments, a money exchange, and some joint-rolling later, Steve Harrington is somehow sat next to Eddie Munson staring at the clouds through half dead trees and a lovely haze. He doesn’t know when Eddie decided to sit down and Steve actually doesn’t think he really cares. They’re talking about everything and nothing, somehow letting the conversation breeze through as easy as smoke exhales through their lungs.
“So, like-” Munson starts, voice going gravelly around a fucked up intake, “why’d you need this now, huh? Never had ya’ come to me before and somehow I doubt you’ve been to anyone else.” It’s said with a giggle, warm and sweet and somehow non-repulsing given how much Steve usually wishes to remove himself from Munson’s presence as soon as he can.
“I- well,” Steve starts, and thinks to himself ‘Jesus am I about to tell him this? Fuck it- I’m telling him.’ “Just… I have trouble sleeping.” He can’t help but continue thinking how much he really should not be telling Eddie Munson this, but no matter. The dealer’s brow quirks with interest at the start of his statement, and that mixed with the weed loosening his tongue keeps his words chugging along forward. “And I- it’s because I get so.. So lonely. My parents aren’t around, like- Ever. So, I figured, ‘Hey, weed is said to be, like, relaxing. Maybe that might help.’ Now here we are.” Steve’s arms gesture around him at the end, emphasizing on the fact that he’s sat here smoking weed with the local dealer on some random Thursday behind the school. At this point the metalhead’s brows have hiked upwards in an ‘oh shit’ kind of manner, big brown eyes staring straight through Steve.
“Damn. That’s like- that must suck, Harrington.”
The jock lets out a breath, nodding in confirmation with the words. Mist continues to loosely swirl in his head, gears turning slowly to produce more of the conversation.
“Yeah. And they refuse to act like I’m there even when they’re home, so it’s just- …I needed this. I appreciate you for staying.” A strange sensation warms in Steve’s chest as Munson elbows him with another grin, shaking his head at the thanks.
“It’s no problem-o! Really, fuck them! Your parents, I mean.” The brunette bites back a chuckle while Eddie gestures wildly with his arms, giving the impression that the man might as well be made of silly putty.
‘Hah,’ Steve thinks, ‘definitely silly.’ Instead of a chuckle, a smile worms onto his face. It prompts Munson to grin even wider and poke at his cheeks. “Heyyy! So he can smile! Was starting to think you’d been damned to an eternity of-” The metalhead’s words are cut by a beeping from his watch, Munson quickly scrambling to make it stop and put out his smoke. “Shit! Shit shit shit- I gotta go! Pleasure doing business with you, my liege, but I gotta run!” Several things are shoved back into his little lunchbox as he speaks, before Eddie is sprinting off and away from the picnic table they’re sitting at.
Steve finishes up what he’s doing and shakes his head, watching the freak run.
-
He really does try not to make a habit of interacting with Eddie. ‘And yet…’ an annoying voice in Steve’s skull reminds, ‘you keep going back.’ It sounds annoyingly like himself, the version of him that stares back in mirrors the day after parties and taunts him for the fact that said parties only exist because he’s trying to fill the void left by his absent parents. ‘“And yet” you need to learn to shut up, dear inner conscience.’
Steve’s internal conversation is cut off by someone bumping into him as he stalks through the school hall, and a familiar rattle of chains get caught on the pocket of his letterman jacket. A ‘Hey, watch it!’ is drowned in his throat when he catches sight of the perpetrator. Eddie grins wolfishly at him, grabbing one of Steve’s sleeves and pulling him off towards the side so they can converse.
“Hey Steve-o, fancy seein’ you here!” is the greeting the metalhead supplies, nudging the jock’s side with his elbow. “Catch ya after school, my liege?”
“Uh- yeah. Sure.” Heat creeps along his spine as Eddie’s sharp grin softens with genuine excitement.
“Great, see you then, big guy!”
And then Munson is off, hurriedly running away with that same sound of clattering metal he usually creates. The interaction should feel weird, especially with how everyone suddenly seems to be staring at Steve, but the jock finds he cannot care any less as a grin bites its way onto his lips.
‘Cool. Seeing Eddie after school then.’
-
‘His hair kind of looks like one of those pretty oil spills…’ is the first thing Steve’s mind supplies when he gets to the usual picnic bench, the thought followed by ‘wait no fuck don’t think that- Eddie Munson is NOT pretty.’
As if the metalhead can sense Steve’s presence based on the volume of his thoughts, Eddie turns around and waves him over.
“Heya, Stevie! Was starting to get worried you might not show!” A ringed hand is gestured vaguely towards him, deep brown eyes sweeping intensely over his form while he sheds his letterman jacket to escape the early spring heat. Steve’s shoulders relax from the relieved temperature as he sets the clothing article onto the table and moves to sit beside Eddie.
“Yeah well, maybe I shouldn’t if it means I have to come sit around like a creep out here with the likes of you.” The jock’s words might be a bit harsh, but there is no true bite in his tone, at least nothing that settles too deep beneath the surface of their usual interactions.
“Wow, you wound me, truly. How shall I ever recover from such hurtful words!” Munson’s retort is fueled with the usual dramaticism, sharp grin slicing into his soft features. Steve rolls his eyes and elbows the freak’s side, earning him an annoyed groan. “Not cool, Harrington.”
The brunette chuckles, relaxing into their usual flow.
It’s been maybe a month and a half of this little dance they do, joining each other under the quiet rustle of forest leaves to talk about life and vent out their problems with the help of a little weed. Steve would even go as far to say he’s begun to enjoy Eddie’s company, the other always keeping the air of being a genuine person and not one of the cardboard cutout rich kids that Steve’s surrounded himself with since the start of high school.
“So, why’d you ask for my presence out here, anyway? Get bored smoking all on your lonesome or do you miss me that much?” Steve eventually asks, once a blunt has been rolled and lit. Munson shrugs beside him.
“Dunno, maybe a bit of both. Despite being the Lord of the Assholes, you do make a good conversation,” the dealer answers, eyes inspecting Steve as he watches him take a drag. There’s something else muttered out, but it’s too quiet and too quick for the jock’s mind to process it through the quickly amounting haze.
“Right, King of the Freaks hanging out with King of Hawkins High because he makes good conversation.” They both laugh, already knowing that they mutually accept the strangeness of their ‘forbidden’ friendship. Steve ponders that while Eddie takes his turn to smoke. “Say, it’s kinda like Romeo and Juliet in a way.”
Munson snorts- or maybe he chokes? It’s hard to tell.
“Accept we aren’t in love or anything…” The brunette tags on to the end, watching something be calculated behind the metalhead’s eyes. Eventually, Eddie nods in agreement.
“Yeah, guess we’re missin’ that part.”
A beat of silence passes through the conversation, only filled in by the sound of wind gently shaking between leaves. Steve adjusts in his seat, looking skyward to watch a bird breeze by overhead. Its wings flutter gently as it searches for a place to land, eventually coming to a rest on a branch just out of his view.
“Say, what’d you think about the latest…”
Their conversation sparks again like embers caught against dry leaves, flames flickering lazily between them as they float from topic to topic. New movies, new episodes of shows, bands in town. They don’t share all the same opinions on most of these topics, Eddie growing excited as he rambles about some band that most likely produces more screaming than genuine lyrics while Steve rattles off about an action series he’s been interested in. Munson calls him basic and the jock only sticks out his tongue in reply, sending them both into a fit of childish giggles before they switch to talk about one of their classmates falling asleep mid lunch.
“I’m telling you, there was a snot bubble! It was huge! Like something out of the cartoons while his friends all just sat there laughing! I think one of them even popped it!”
Eddie gags, shoving Steve’s shoulder at the included detail. “Gross- who even willingly touches that shit?” The brunette shrugs, settling backwards against the top of the picnic table and closes his eyes.
“I dunno, man. Real weirdos or something, someone who’s definitely ‘lot weirder than you.” Steve slips an eye open, smirking while he glances sideways at the metalhead.
“Someone weirder than me? That’s quite the looming accusation, Harrington! Only makes me less sure about the validity of your claim!”
They laugh, and Eddie stomps out the last remains of their shared smoke against the first floor. A moment passes where they both process the action, before Steve is standing and nodding towards the dealer.
“Well, I better go. Parties ‘round here aren’t gonna throw themselves, yeah?” He stretches his arms and legs out of their stiffness from sitting so long, holding a fist out towards Munson expectantly. It’s met shortly with a bump from the other’s knuckles, albeit a bit obscured by cool rings that send a quiet jolt down the jock’s spine.
“See you around, man.”
Steve nods, smiling gently, and makes his way back to his car.
-
Steve Harrington has been met with a very, very big problem.
‘You’re an idiot, though you already know that.’
‘Shut it.’
He can’t find his letterman jacket anywhere. He’s checked his closet, his coat rack, the backs of all his chairs, even under his bed, a place it should never end up because he loves the damn thing like a child. Now he’s really freaking out, because it’s become a signature part of his look recently and Tommy and Carol are going to absolutely kill him with jokes about losing it when he gets to school and has no possible explanation to where the stupid jacket has gone.
‘Maybe I left it when I was out with Eddie? No, I wasn’t wearing it then. I can remember the feel of his rings on my arm… his rings... FOCUS! Maybe it’s still at school?’
Begrudgingly, he gets himself ready even without having the article of clothing to complete his outfit. The brunette runs through the motions of brushing his teeth, washing his hair in the bathroom sink, styling his hair, and making breakfast. Muscle memory gets him through most of his panic-dulled morning, everything just a bit hard to manage with the pressing anxiety that his beloved jacket might not be in his school or gym locker.
Breakfast is made simply, one plate of scrambled eggs with some bacon before the singular dish is placed into the empty sink, followed by a singular glass which was used to quickly guzzle down some orange juice. Without much further thought, Steve is walking out the door with his backpack and car keys in hand.
He stops outside Tommy’s place first, some Blondie song humming through the radio while he honks for his friends to hurry up. Tommy and Carol show their faces out the front door of the large house before quickly running down to the sidewalk with their own backpacks in tow, clambering into the back of the Beamer without much to note.
Silence aside from the radio passes for a few seconds before Tommy speaks up.
“Dude, where’s your jacket?”
Steve groans loudly, head falling backwards against the headrest of his seat.
“Couldn’t find it at home, thinking it’s at one of my lockers or some shit,” he grumbles, eyeing the duo in his mirror. Tommy’s eyes shine with a telling taunt.
“You LOST IT?!” His friend eventually cackles, earning a half hearted smack from Carol. “Steve, don’t you treat that thing like it’s your child? How’d you lose it, buddy?”
Steve splutters for a few seconds, shooting a glare towards Tommy via his mirror once more. Carol takes the beat of silence to speak up.
“He’s not wrong, you do treat that thing like it’s precious. Hard to imagine you losing it.”
“I- Shush! It’s not lost! It’s- it’s probably at school!”
They continue to bicker about it a bit more until they’re pulling into the school parking lot, right next to where the Wheelers are dropping off Nancy Wheeler and her kid brother. ‘Huh,’ Steve thinks, ‘She kinda looks like Eddie, if he’d took better care of his hair and were a cute girl.’ Tommy and Carol quickly catch him staring, giving him a questioning look.
“What, you got the hots for Wheeler?” Tommy teases, earning him yet another elbow from Carol. Steve’s face flushes with embarrassment, for both him and Nancy.
“I- I mean- No! No I’m just-” He thinks ‘Just staring because she looks kind of like local freak show Eddie Munson? Just staring because I think she might be just a little cute? Wait- do I like her?’ “I- It’s nothing guys, let's just go get to class. I need to look for my jacket.”
“Oh, you so totally like her!”
“Shut up, dude!”
-
Two periods go by without sight of Steve’s letterman jacket. One period being homeroom and the other being gym.
‘Fuck.’
The panic about it must be pretty clear on his face because by the time third period rolls around and he sees his friends again, one of them has the mind to ask Steve if he’s alright. He ends up just nodding his head, cracking a joke about the heat of spring starting to get to him despite the fact that today was a particularly moderately temperatured day.
‘All the more reason to need my stupid fucking jacket.’
He’s genuinely begun to give up hope by the time he sees it. Well, he rather hears it first. The familiar rattle of chains that speaks of Eddie Munson’s appearance is what reaches his ears to start, followed by an ‘Oh my god, Harrington- Steve, look!’ from someone beside him. His eyes have finally locked onto the reason for the stir though.
Eddie Munson is wearing his goddamn jacket- And he’s fucking modified it, too.
The metalhead seems to simultaneously notice Steve and clock the exact moment the jock realizes at the same time, because he breaks out into that stupid shit-eating grin and begins to cackle before starting to run.
Steve obviously gives chase, stumbling recklessly between students and teachers who call out a ‘Harrington, slow down!’
The brunette can’t be bothered to listen, though, because he’s locked his eyes onto the back of a black-curl covered head that’s just taken a sharp left into the boy’s bathroom. Steve catches up quickly, scowling as he catches sight of the freak standing at the very back of the room. Eddie is nearly doubled over laughing, hands rested against his knees while he desperately catches his breath.
After a moment, he rights himself with a heaving breath, and finally meets Steve eye to eye.
He seems to calculate his next move, knowing that one of them is going to need to slice through the tension quickly building between them in the silence of the bathroom.
“Well, do you like it?” Is what the stupid, weirdly pretty nerd asks before he does a little twirl to show off his handiwork. Steve thinks his brain has broken, or maybe fried. It feels as though it’s started to melt out of his ears, leaving his head empty and Eddie with the mess of brain matter on the floor with which he’ll have to call for a janitor to clean up.
Because, frankly, the jacket looks really good on him. Granted, it’s hardly a jacket and more of a vest now that the sleeves have been unceremoniously sliced away from the base fabric. Plenty patches have been sewn along the front and back, different band titles and sayings and silly too-many-sided dice dotted across it like works of art. There’s Sharpied-in doodles of little dragons and symbols, the most prominent ones being centered around where the name ‘Harrington’ sits proudly on the upper back of it, now acquainted with a little crown and several emphasizing squiggles.
“Uh-oh. I’ve broken him.”
“What the fuck.”
“Ah, so he speaks!”
“What the fuck.”
“Oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
They have a little stare-down. Munson’s gaze holds tauntingly against his own while Steve processes the several things he wants to do right now, somehow not all of them being murder. Taking a moment to school himself, the brunette finally moves to make a grounding motion with his hands. He takes a breath, before glaring daggers into the metalhead’s soul.
“Do you realize how much I love that jacket?”
Eddie quirks a brow upwards and nods, eyes raking over Steve like he’s looking for something. Two seconds later, he’s nodding again to himself, and then replying.
“Yes, I’m very aware-” Steve goes to open his mouth, but Munson cuts him off, “however I’m fairly certain you can get this little old thing replaced with all daddy’s money, yeah? ‘Less the King’s pockets hath suddenly run dry?”
It itches against Steve’s nerves like asphalt against skin, because Eddie is undeniably correct. Munson clearly has come to the same conclusion, excluding the slowly building internal crisis that Steve is having about having someone else walking around with his name attached to them.
“Yeah, but messing up other people’s shit isn’t really nice, ya’know?” The brunette glares, watching the confidence in the metalhead’s form waver. “How’d you feel if I took like- your guitar or something and slapped a bunch of ABBA stickers on it while stealing it.”
That seems to crack something in the other’s expression, but Eddie doesn’t budge.
“True, but I wouldn’t do something like this if I knew you couldn’t just replace it!”
Steve goes to open his mouth before he just sighs, knowing this isn’t a conversation he can win. Contemplating, he lets his eyes wander Munson’s form once more, before pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
“Just- just keep it or whatever. I don’t have time for this. See you later.”
He waves Eddie off, turning around with a sly middle finger flown over his shoulder. Eddie laughs at the action behind him, and then the bathroom door is shut between them, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts.
‘Christ… what the hell.’
And then he’s marching off to his next class as the bell rings out overhead.
(Later, Eddie will meet him back at his house with one of his own vests and the promise that Steve can ‘jock-ify’ it to his heart’s content. Later, Steve finally loses his self control and kisses Eddie senseless while he’s still wearing his stupid jacket. Later, they both realize the quickly amounting feelings between the both of them. Later, they both have their happy end.)
The End.