Chapter Text
you don't need to read the main fanfic to enjoy this little memory, but chapter three will explain everything they're talking about if you want more context. :)
i left Your Heart out in the sun; it's orange now
July 8th, 1985
Steve hears the phone ring in his bedroom upstairs as he stands in the kitchen, arms full.
"Seriously. I was up there all morning and now he chooses to call?
Care to answer that for me?"
He stares at the emanation that's leaning against the refrigerator door. Glowing bright. He's a tall man in a vest, trousers, and long sleeved shirt. Shiny cuff links, messy long hair and a narrow gaze accompany him. The emanation also happens to be missing the majority of his left cheek and ear.
"So. Nothin' clever to say this afternoon? Just gonna follow and stare at me the whole day? Cool."
He turns away, drops the bag of tortillas, block of cheese, and a box of peanut butter Boppers on the counter then rushes up the stairs. When he arrives, the phone stops ringing. He sighs and stares at it for a few seconds. It rings again and he picks it up on the second ring.
"Hey, this better be important. I was just about to hav-"
"Hi, Steve. It's me, Nancy."
"Oh. Hey, Nance." he can feel himself soften at her voice, he suddenly feels like a terrible person.
"Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to answer like that. I was expecting someone else, and... Sorry."
"It's fine, Steve, I'm the one who called you out of the blue. I just wanted to know how you were doing? After everything that happened at the mall, I never got a chance to talk to you, check in with you. To, you know, thank you."
Her voice sounds so nice and airy over the phone.
He forgot how much he loved falling asleep to her voice every night, to their long conversations about anything over the phone during their time spent dating.
"Thank.... me.... for what, exactly?" he clears his throat at the end.
"For everything, all of it. For getting dragged into all of this again and never backing out, for saving us from what almost happened with Billy.... I wish I could tell my mom about it. She thinks you're the safest driver out there." she laughs at the end. He can almost see her smiling on the other end of the line.
"C'mon, you never have to thank me for that...."
He wants to sigh, but instead turns and leans against his desk, laying his head back. She can't see him, at least.
"No, I guess I don't, but I wanted to. I... also wanted to check up on you, make sure you're up and moving? Mike said that Dustin was trying to reach you for hours the other day. He was worried sick, and well, with your injuries. I just.... wanted to make sure that you're not still in a lot of pain? I was scared to call and make your headache worse but-"
"Nancy, I'm okay, everything is fine. Dustin is quick to worry because of what happened with me and Robin, but we're fine. Her mom has been home with her the past couple of days, to make sure she's not alone after the, uh, y'know. I called every couple'a hours to make sure she wasn't lying. I think her mom hates me enough to go through with changing their number at this point."
Nancy chuckles and he feels himself unclench the muscles in his arm. He didn't even notice that he was gripping the phone that tight.
"But what about you? You didn't answer, but neither did anyone else. Were you alone the whole time?"
He glares at the two emanations that are eavesdropping from the bathroom. One of them flips him off.
Alone?
Definitely not.
They're always here....
"No, I wasn't alone.
That night, when I got home, my dad was there. My mom called in some pain medication for the next morning when she arrived. She was really upset about my face, asking if it was going to scar this time, kept badgering me over who did it so she could prosecute. Dad basically said I was an idiot for letting myself fall into trouble again. Y'know, the usual family banter. It's too bad she can't really sue all of Russia."
He wants to make light of it, but his voice betrays him. Nancy can hear the sadness in that last part.
"Your mom was there? That's good.... But, pain medication? Like, the really strong stuff? Is that why you didn't answer the phone? Did it knock you out? Wait. Was it even safe to take that after the.... y'know, Russian's drug? I know you didn't want to go to the hospital, but you really should've stopped by a doctor the next morning, at the very least. You might also have a brain injury again. It's dangerous, Steve."
Shit. She's never going to let this go now that she's started.
"I told you, everything was fine. I just needed the rest. My head and face, it was all killing me that day. Plus, my neck and back were all fucked up from the car crash. I could ignore and bear it at the mall, but once I got home, the exhaustion and pain hit me like a truck. I'm sure it happened to everyone else, too.
How's El doing? She lost so much more than all of us combined..."
The one adult she could trust to love her completely is gone. She lost her abilities, her best friend, and even her mobility will be bad for a while. She almost died about a dozen times that day.
Why the fuck is Nancy wasting time on me, again?
"Yeah, she's... Well, she's who she is. Strong, quiet, open to love even after everything. She's with the Byers, and it looks like it might be a permanent setup for her. Which would be great, considering she's never had an actual family to go home to."
"I'm glad. If there's anyone that can love someone else's kid, it's gonna be Joyce, right?"
He looks over his shoulder when one of the emanations starts to maniacally laugh. The tall, thin man then starts pacing and ranting on about orphans, orphanages, and women. The other emanation then inches closer.
He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead carefully, his face still throbs.
"Hey, Nancy, I'm glad that we got a chance to talk, but I need to get-"
"I know, Steve. Just wanted to hear your voice."
The other emanation, a young man in a sweater vest, is now trying to wrestle the phone cord from Steve. He holds it tight as he wraps it around his wrist to avoid dropping the phone, he keeps his voice steady during the struggle.
"Thanks.... it was nice to hear yours, too, y'know. I'll see you around?"
"Of course. Bye."
"By-"
To hang up as soon as possible he immediately presses down on the phone's switch.
"Will you fuck off already!? And hey! Didn't we come to an agreement that you leave me the fuck alone when others are around? That includes the phone, dipshits!"
He then uses the phone's cord to shove the emanation's hand away; it ends up slicing through his wrist and they both watch as his hand falls to the floor. The bloody stump now oozing and dripping ectoplasmic goop, causing him to yell in pain.
Steve sighs and waves his hand in the air to keep it from landing on him, but ends up brushing it off his hair in the end anyway. He then slams the receiver down onto the phone's cradle.
"I'm gonna make lunch, ya'll can do whatever the hell it is that you do up here when I'm not around. And you, pick up your stupid hand and go flip someone else off for a change." He glares at them both as he leaves his room.
As he makes his way down the stairs, he sees a shadow walk past the kitchen window. He hurries towards the kitchen, but when he takes a look out the window there isn't anyone around.
Hmm.
A ghost? A person? The gardener? The paperboy? My pounding headache causing me to see things?
Just as soon as he picks up the box of peanut butter Boppers, he hears a knock at the door. It's quiet, gentle, almost like the person knocking isn't trying to garner too much attention. He opens the door and finds Eddie Munson standing there.
"Oh. Hi... Uh, weren't you gonna call me?"
Eddie doesn't answer, simply looks him up and down, then looks him in the eyes carefully. His eyes move left and right as he looks into each one.
He's assessing me. I fucking hate that.
"Can you stop doing that and just get in here already?" he says as he opens the door wider and waves him in.
"Sorry Stevie, a phone call wouldn't have given me the full picture." he says, grinning as he walks past him.
"I'm gonna make some lunch, are you hungry? I can make extra."
Eddie watches him walk into the kitchen, stares at him without leaving from the entrance. Steve can feel his eyes on his back.
He's still assessing. Fuck me. This is hell. I died and I'm trapped in hell.
"Are you sure you can eve-"
"Yes, Eddie. I'm okay now. You don't have to keep worrying or checking up on me, or whatever bullshit this is. So, get in here and let me make you something to eat before we both die of hunger."
Eddie laughs, a small breathy laugh as he shuts the door.
It's nice to hear from behind him, but the lingering eye of assessment still hovers over him. He hates it, but bears it.
"Yeah, okay, fine. I gotta admit I am hungry. Didn't eat breakfast. Didn't want to wake my uncle with any noise, so I just hung out on the porch all morning. I uh, I actually wanted to drop by earlier, but didn't want to wake you in case your head-"
"I was waiting.
For your call."
Steve turns around and looks at him, shifts his weight, leans back against the counter with his arms. He can see Eddie's eyes move down from his, towards his split lip.
"Yeah, like I said, I wanted to see you. Make sure you, uh, were still alive and all."
"What, you can't do that over the phone? Who else would it be, talking on the other side of the line?"
"I dunno, a changeling, an oni? A doppleganger? I can't trust myself to believe it, not unless I see you." he shrugs.
"You do know that I have a headache right now? And that I have no idea what any of those words mean even if I didn't." he says as he rubs the side of his face - the less bruised side, anyway.
"Your eyes: moving, ✔️
your heart: beating, ✔️
your hands: in motion. ✔️
Yup, looks like Harrington passes the Living Persons Exam with flying colors."
Eddie walks over and places a hand on his shoulder, leans into him slightly.
"Now that I've established that you've still got a pulse, we can move onto phase two."
"....and that would....be?"
"How you're doin'? Like, mentally or emotionally? I'll take an answer on either of 'em."
Steve groans and turns his attention back to the bag of tortillas and block of cheese on the counter.
"Look, I don't need some weird therapy session with the town outcast, thanks. Now, move aside, I need a pan from that cabinet." he says as he slightly shoves Eddie's hip out of the way. Eddie moves and sighs loudly.
"It's not therapy for you. It's for purely selfish reasons, trust me, it's for my own emotional well-being. I need to know if I can leave you alone, y'know, in good conscious, for when I leave today. I didn't want to leave you alone yesterday, but I left when your parents were asleep and saw that one of the parental units were still home later that day, so. I drove away." Eddie's voice sounds strained.
"You came by again? After you called? You... didn't have to do that." Steve looks lost in thought.
I hardly even remember the first time he dropped by or left. Apparently it scared him enough to keep coming back. Shit, I really fucked up with those damn pills.
"You do know that Henderson will murder me in my sleep if something happens to you, right? And after the elaborate tale I wove to keep him from barging in here or calling you every five minutes, well. I'm gonna need to make sure that your heart keeps beating for the next, like, seventy years. At least."
Eddie leans back on the cabinet again and watches him set a tortilla into the cold pan.
"I uh, guess that makes sense. I'm sorry you had to come by in the first place."
Steve stares at the pan, unmoving, with a washed out feeling taking over him. It's almost like he fell into the ocean, suspended in the buoyancy, unable to pull in air.
He thinks about it.
How does he feel, anyway? A little lost - maybe emotionally sucker punched.
I can't tell him that, though.
He'll worry more, assess me every chance he gets, probably barge in here everyday for the next year.
That last one doesn't sound too bad, actually.
It's nice having a person here.
Something about him....
.....keeps the ghosts away, too.
"You gotta turn the stove on if you're gonna heat those suckers up, dude."
"Hmm?"
Eddie groans and pushes himself up from the counter. He reaches over and clicks the gas on the burner to "medium". They both watch as the blue flame come to life.
"Hey, what are you- That's not even the right one, Ed-."
"No, it's the right one-" he says as he blocks Steve's arm from switching it off.
"-If you want the quesadilla to taste good, anyway." he says as he smiles and reaches for the tortilla in the pan. He holds it over the flame, keeps it moving as it darkens.
"Yeah, I know all about how to make a good quesadilla-" he says as he rolls his eyes.
"But... I swore to my mom I wouldn't ever do it directly on the stove again. Almost caught the kitchen on fire when the cheese melted into the burner and I didn't notice until it smoked. The house smelled awful for a week. My dad was going to ban me from ever entering the kitchen again for being a dumbass."
Eddie keeps his gaze fixed on Steve. He looks at him with a confused tilt of the head.
"You made a mistake that one time and.... That's it? You're not allowed to try again? I thought you baseball fellas got three strikes before you get tossed from home plate?"
"Not in this house, Eddie. In fact, the only reason I'm making this right now is because no one is home to tell me not to." he chuckles dryly.
Eddie sets the crispy tortilla down in the pan and grabs another from the bag, toasting it as he listens.
"That's a load of bullshit, my man. See, in my house, you're free to make all of the mistakes you need to in order to learn. Even if it means failing every single time. I'm kinda like the poster child for it, in case you didn't already know my track record."
"That sounds nice. I'm glad one of us is content enough to happily bask in their life's failures."
"Hey! I didn't say I was proud of it, I just said it was okay to have it happen. No one should use your mistakes to control you into following orders. That sounds like a shitty way to live and you deserve better, Steve."
Steve sighs and stares at the blue flame.
"I'm not being controlled, Eddie. I'm the one making the decision. I just... I'd rather give in and avoid a horrible argument and the name calling and stuff being thrown or broken and the....you know what, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'd rather live in peace, basically." he shrugs at the end and looks over to Eddie.
"I get that, but just so you know... that's not what's happening, bud. It's the illusion of control on your part, but you're still not the one making the choices here."
He wants to keep pushing this, I can tell.
I've already said too much, fuck, this headache is messing me up. Maybe Nance was right, and I do have a brain injury again.
I'm talking too much. The filter is gone.
I shouldn't have piled all of that onto him.
I need to stop being so damn stupid and shut the hell up.
"Eddie, can we please just. Let this go. I'm good, okay? My head is killing me and I need to eat something before I can take the medicine."
"Oh, fuck, no!"
Steve flinches and closes his right eye when a sharp pain stabs at his temple. Ouch. Yelling. Hurts.
"You are not still taking those after what happened the other day. If you-"
"I meant Advil. I promised not to take them again.... and I meant it. Even if it feels like my face wants to tear itself open."
Eddie stares at him for a moment, then turns his attention to the last tortilla on the burner. He moves it to the pan and switches the burner off.
"Sorry....
I... didn't mean to yell like that... it was just.... the fear of what happened, it ignited the flame, y'know? Sorry." his voice wavers at the end.
Steve reaches up and opens the cabinet above. He pulls out a cutting board and places the block of cheese on it after he unwraps it.
"S'okay. I'm glad you're here. Feels nice. Feels... I dunno, like I could get used to having you around."
He then opens a drawer to the right of the stove and pulls out a large knife. Eddie stares at the knife, then him.
"You're not gonna use that to kill me and keep my body here forever, right?"
"I don't think I need to, you keep coming back on your own and all." he says with a smile as he starts cutting off slices of cheese haphazardly. Eddie grabs each piece and starts placing them onto two of the tortillas in the pan.
"Besides, I'm much more likely to jam this into my own head right now."
He then switches the burner on the pan to "low" and places the other two tortillas on top of the cheese filled ones.
Eddie opens the fridge up.
"You got any sour cream? Maybe some extra spicy salsa in here?"
"I wouldn't be making these if I didn't." he says as he hands him the block of cheese.
"Hey, answer me this.... How do you even know the secret to making a quesadilla, anyway?" he asks as he elbows him playfully.
"Both of my parents had careers before I was born and they weren't about to change that just 'cause I came barreling into the world. I had a nanny growing up that made these for me all of the time, showed me exactly how when I was old enough." Steve looks down at the pan, he has a smile, but he looks sad.
"No shit? Is that why I saw you turn around and laugh that one time when I called Henderson 'culero' under my breathe?" he asks as he stifles a laugh.
"I mean, it's not like she taught me those words, but yeah. I went everywhere that she went when she took care of me. Which was like, all day and night, basically. We always went to a lot of places where they spoke Spanish." he says with a small shrug.
"Do you ever, you know, miss her?" Eddie asks as he flips the quesadillas in the pan.
"All the time."
"Yeah, I guess it's like, you're technically missing a mother, right? She took care of you, raised you, loved you. That shit'll hurt like hell to lose out of nowhere."
Eddie turns the switch on the stove to "off". He then looks around the kitchen and points to a cabinet. Steve shakes his head and points to a drawer.
"How about you, is your mom like the best mother ever or something close to it?" he asks with a smile as he watches Eddie pull out two plates.
"I'd say so. Always humming songs, blurting out poems or weird quotes that fit the occasion. Cooking the best meals and telling the grandest of stories. So yeah, best ma ever in my eyes. She died around the same time as when I started going to school, so I just wish I got to know her for longer."
Fuck, I probably should've known that. His dad is in prison and he lives with his uncle.
I'm so stupid for just blurting it out without thinking first.
I hope I didn't upset him and ruin everything.
"Oh, uh, I'm sorry- I didn't mean to-"
"It's okay, Steve. You didn't do anything hurtful by asking. In fact, it's nice.
No one ever asks me about her, or talks about her, or mentions her name. If I didn't have a little box under my bed with some of her things and a couple'a old photos, I'd probably think I dreamt her up and hatched myself out of an egg."
Steve smiles, and a small airy laugh comes with it.
"Well, you can tell me all about her anytime you want. Day or night. It could be twelve in the morning when you remember something about her; I'll answer the phone. I'll ask.
I'll listen."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Steve tips the pan over each plate as Eddie scoops out the toppings onto the sides. He places the pan back on the stove and glances over. Eddie looks happy, but also like he might spill a few tears.
"It's not the same, but Miss Trini died when I was eleven. I got phone calls, letters, packages, and postcards from her for years and all of a sudden, they just. Stopped.
I kept calling, writing back, waiting for a response. Then one day my letters all returned to me, inside a package marked 'Return to Sender: Dec'. I didn't understand, so I walked into the post office one day after school, and asked why. The clerk told me they couldn't deliver the letters to a deceased person. I didn't even believe it at first. It wasn't like she was some old lady that could've died in her sleep. She was in her thirties, it felt unreal.... so I wrote letters to all of her neighbors and waited. I figured someone would have to know, right?
Then one day, someone replied. Said they didn't know her, but seeing my kiddie handwriting must've been sad enough to get them to find out. They sent me a folded up newspaper article along with her obituary explaining that she had been murdered by her boyfriend."
"Damn. That's a brutal way to find out something terrible happened to someone you love. I'm especially sorry that you had to figure it all out on your own."
Steve gives a half-hearted shrug as he takes two glasses out of the cabinet on the side.
"It was a long time ago. I did try asking my parents, but it was always a sore subject to bring her up. My dad would get angry because of the time she 'abandoned' us when her mother was ill. My mom would get upset because she thinks I loved her less when Miss Trini was around. It's a whole thing, trust me, you don't want to know. It's not important, anyway." he says as he rubs at his eyes. The pain is starting to blind him.
Eddie reaches over and grabs his hand.
"Don't do that. You'll only make it hurt worse."
He groans but also leans into his touch. The warmth coming from his hand feels so comforting and grounding.
"The pain is already up to an eight, don't worry, if it gets any worse I think I'll pass out before I can complain about it again."
"I meant dismissing your feelings. Now, here, drink some water, eat your lunch, and take the damn Advil before I call a doctor."
His vision is blurry and there are bright white lights coming into his center view, but he can still see Eddie from his peripheral vision. He looks at him with sincerity.
"I'll be okay.
As long as...
You're still here."