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Chapter Text

Scoops Ahoy. 

Home to the famed U.S.S. Butterscotch. 

A staple of Starcourt Malls everywhere. 

America’s favorite place to cool down. 

That’s what the shitty commercial said, at the very least. 

But a summer job at Scoops Ahoy was tantamount to a social death sentence; one Steve Harrington’s asshole father had unhesitatingly sent him marching toward with his trademark frown and a disappointed shake of his head. 

“To teach you some goddamned responsibility.”

Responsibility. 

Steve had fought not to scoff in his old man’s face. 

He fought not to tell him he was plenty responsible where it counted; had done his damnedest to make sure, for the second year in a row, that interdimensional monsters didn’t invade their world. And this time he’d even had a whole gaggle of middle schoolers inexplicably in his care whilst he did it. 

He’d taken on a pack of demodogs for them.

Hell, he’d taken on Billy Hargrove for them. He’d take the demodogs over that juiced up psychopath any damn day. 

So, yeah, Steve figured he was plenty responsible enough without the month-long grounding, the near daily lectures, and the complete financial boot to the ass his parents had given him which made said summer job a very very unfortunate necessity. 

So, here he was, wasting away indoors when he could be out hanging by the pool or tanning under the sun, actually enjoying his last summer vacation before desperately applying to any and every college that would take someone with grades and test scores as pathetic as his. 

And if the prospect of scooping ice cream for screaming little brats, bossy pant suit clad moms, and judgmental assholes he went to school with wasn’t bad enough, there was also the veritable hot fudge and fucking cherry on top that was the uniform. 

Steve wanted to have a couple fist shaped words with whatever creep had designed these godforsaken uniforms.

There was only so much his patented Harrington charm could do for him when he was behind the counter at a menial job making three dollars an hour and wearing a fucking sailor suit. 

Talk about ‘cool down’. 

The top was itchy and cheap, with a garish red tie that made him feel like a schoolboy from the 20’s, the shorts were loose around his thighs but stretched tight across his backside, and the hat was nothing short of a war crime, flattening out his perfectly coiffed hair and destroying what little appeal he had left.

Steve sighed and broke himself from his brooding thoughts to check his watch for what had to be the millionth time, the anxious rhythmic tapping of his blue adidas sneakers escalating from aggressive to damn near violent as he read the little white digital numbers aloud. 

“12:34.”

Robin groaned loudly, the band geek turned antagonistic coworker mirroring his annoyance from her precarious perch on the counter, slamming down the pen she’d been using to doodle even more nonsense scribbles and drawings on the off-white rubber soles of her red chucks. 

“Half an hour late! At this rate, we’re not gonna have enough time to train him up before the after lunch rush!”

“Yeah, if he shows up at all,” Steve scoffed, reaching into the pocket of his apron to pull out his trusty ice cream scoop, twirling it absently in his hand for something, anything, to do. 

It’d been dead for the past hour, most business at the other side of the mall to celebrate the opening of the new ‘Merry-Go-Round’, yet another clothing store.

“He has to!” Robin insisted, her posture growing tense, her shoulders launching up to her ears.

“Todd said he would, and I choose to believe Todd, because the alternative is that he doesn’t show up and we’re left to deal with the Friday after lunch rush all by ourselves, and I honestly don’t know if I can handle that again cause-“

Steve tuned out her nervous rambling out of pure habit at this point, her raspy voice becoming an almost pleasant white noise in the back of his half-numb mind. 

He knew Robin was stressed. 

They’d both had to move their lunch breaks up several hours to accommodate for the new guy, and Robin thrived on a strictly kept daily schedule, lunch break every single day at 2:30 on the dot; that’s how it’d been since he’d started, and Steve had long since learned to never question it.

“-and if that little brat Erica Sinclair comes back for the fifth time today, then we’re going to have a line the length of the Great Wall of China while she forces us to let her try every single flavor under the sun for the hundredth time because she absolutely lives to make my life-“

“Hey hey, chill. We’re gonna do just fine,” he tried to reassure her, sheathing his scoop with one final twirl. “New guy or not. Hell, fuck what Todd says. We’re probably better off without whatever loser was supposed to show up anyway-“

The two glanced up from their pseudo pep talk as a commotion in the form of fast and heavy footfalls and metallic jingling sounded at the storefront.

“Hey, so sorry I’m late! I slept in through my alarm-“

The lanky figure stumbling in through the entrance paused, familiar large dark eyes half hidden behind wild dark curls meeting Steve’s, and recognition passed between the two like a blunt at a party. 

Eddie Munson. 

Eddie the Freak, King of the outcasts, protector of nerdy little freshman, local drug dealer, and all around weirdo was standing in his store, decked out in his usual garb, his armor against the status quo; the black band tee with a freaky weird demon, the dark wash jeans that were more rips and tears than denim, the red and black flannel wrapped pointlessly around his hips, the shiny black Doc Marten work boots in far better condition than he could’ve expected, and he was staring at Steve like he was the one out of place.

Like he was the weird one.

Steve stared right back, taking the challenge for what it was. His frown deepened as Munson’s smile grew.

He could feel his hackles rising as that dark gaze swept openly over his form, no doubt taking in and reveling in the sight of his stupid uniform with some strange sense of vindication. 

Because Munson may be a metalhead freak who’d been held back in school for yet another year, but at least he wasn’t the Ex-King of Hawkins High, stuck in a dead end job against all expectations and wearing a fucking sailor suit like Donald fucking Duck. 

“Well,” Munson finally spoke up again, grin twisting cheekily upward as if he were struggling to hold in his laughter.

“Hello, Sailor.”

He threw a little two fingered salute his way and winked, and Steve fought back the flush of embarrassment or annoyance or both that threatened to color his face a no doubt thoroughly unattractive shade of red. 

“You slept in?” Steve redirected with a half scoff half laugh as he struggled to regain control of his facial expressions. “Dude, it’s half past noon.”

A single dark eyebrow raised beneath curly bangs as if Steve’s observation was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard.

Steve had genuinely no idea how that simple gesture made him feel so incredibly off balance, defensive words bubbling up in his throat like the angry hiss of foam right before the mentos blows up the Diet Coke.

Robin cleared her throat loudly in the sudden silence, finally pulling their intense focus off of each other much to Steve’s relief. 

“Eddie? Eddie Munson?” she spoke up, hopping down from her spot on the counter with only a slight stumble and ultimately saving Steve from saying something really genuinely rude to The Freak.

He’d already had the scathing insult locked and loaded.

Call it a leftover instinct from the old days.

Eddie slowly tore his amused gaze away from Steve- how long had they been staring at each other?- and dipped down into a deep bow with a flourish of one ring covered hand, like a character from one of those cheesy fantasy films the kids loved so much.

Steve fought not to visibly cringe.

“The one and only. Buckley, right? Band?” he inquired with a searching smile, making his way fully into the store and toward the counter, his wallet chain jangling and swaying with each step. 

God, everything about him was so unnecessarily loud.

“Yeah! Trumpet! But Robin works just fine. Better, even,” she answered with a little smile of her own, no doubt enjoying Steve’s more than obvious discomfort.

So what else is new?

“And you obviously know the King Steve.”

Steve waved his fingers in a half-assed little salute, arms crossed tightly over his chest as he tried and failed not to pout. 

“Oh yes,” Eddie drew out the vowels of each word in that theatrical way he did, like he knew it would piss Steve off. 

It did. 

“And may I just say what an honor it is to be in the presence of royalty. Should I bow? Or would his Majesty perhaps prefer a curtsy?”

Eddie gingerly picked up the edges of the flannel tied around his hips, dipping down into a little curtsy with that same shit eating grin; the one that said, ‘I’m making fun of you because if you jab back, I’ll just refuse to sell you that weed you so desperately need to make your stupid little suburban house parties interesting’.

Steve’s eye twitched as Robin poorly hid a snicker at his expense behind her hand, which was still stained vaguely red from the cherry concentrate she’d spilled all over the walk-in fridge floor that morning. 

The concentrate he’d had to clean up.

“Ha ha ha,” he mocked dryly with a withering eye roll, walking back behind the counter and snatching up the bag their Store Manager Todd had dropped off that morning. 

“For the new hire,” he’d said, before sternly reminding Steve to wear his hat and “make a good example for this new addition to the team, or you’ll be on trash and toilet duty for a month.”

With little ceremony or warning he tossed the bag at Munson’s chest, trying not to let too much amusement show through as he scrambled to catch it.

Count on a nerd to have shit coordination.
Maybe he should’ve thought twice before skipping PE to dick around and smoke under the bleachers.

“Hurry and get changed, man. We only have an hour before the after lunch rush hits,” Steve jerked his head toward the back door pointedly.

With not a second of pause, Eddie pasted on a theatrically excited expression, eyes wide and smile huge as he held the bag out in front of him like it was something precious instead of a total eyesore made from cheap itchy fabric. 

“You mean I get my very own uniform and everything?” he grinned, fluttering his dark eyelashes like a cartoon character.

“Oh yeah,” Robin nodded, leaning up to pat the older boy solidly on the shoulder. “Wear it with pride.”

Eddie snorted at her deadpan delivery as he sauntered his way behind the counter and toward the door to the back room, disappearing through it with one last metallic click of his chain against the doorframe. 

Steve slapped a palm to his forehead the moment the older boy was out of sight, scrubbing his hand over his face as he slumped back against the wall beside Robin’s ‘You Suck’ tally board. 

“God, why did it have to be Munson?” he hissed miserably, snatching off his stupid little hat and steadfastly resisting the urge to yank on his hair at the risk of ruining it further. 

“What? Afraid of finally being outnumbered by the nerds?” Robin asked with fake sympathy, her bottom lip jutting out in a mocking little pout. 

Steve huffed a laugh at that, shaking his head. 

He’d been outnumbered by nerds since he showed up to Nancy Wheeler’s house with that stupid bouquet.

“You’re enough of a challenge to deal with. Him? He’s like… like the Emperor of all nerds. Like that gross wrinkly dude from Star Wars with the lightning fingers.”

He wiggled his fingers out towards her face to further punctuate his point, Robin shooting him an incredulous look before slapping them away with a scoff. 

“Look, I know you didn’t exactly run with the most accepting crowd in school, but maybe give him the benefit of the doubt for just a second. He’s really not that bad.”

Steve fixed her with a look to mirror her own, a single brow raised to further illustrate his doubt. 

“Did you know him? Cause he and I were in the same year; at least for his second try at Senior year. Dude’s a class-A freak. It was honestly like he thrived on negative attention or something, the way he’d constantly provoke people and climb on top of the lunch tables for his little speeches about ‘The Man’ or whatever it was he decided to harp on. And that’s not even mentioning all the rumors about him.”

Robin’s frown increased as she listened, crossing her arms and tapping her fingers against her elbow. 

“I’m just saying, maybe don’t judge a book by its cover. Someone’s reputation doesn’t always reflect who they actually are as a person.”

Steve opened his mouth to shoot back a response, something snappy that would surely have Robin rolling her eyes and calling him ‘Dingus’ like she always did, when the door to the back room flapped open again and the words died a quick and painless death on his tongue, never to be spoken or heard from again. 

The Uniform was ridiculous.

It was made to be ridiculous.

But somehow, in some incredibly cruel twist in fate, one of many considering the events of the past few years of Steve’s crazy fucked up life, Eddie Munson made that stupid fucking uniform look… ok.  

Cool, even. 

The metalhead had pulled his wild hair back into a low messy bun, several shorter strands already falling out from beneath the hat to frame his face. 

He still wore all of his usual jewelry, chunky silver rings adorning his long slim fingers topped off with chipped black nail polish, a silver chain bracelet and a black Casio watch hugged each of his bony wrists, and his wallet chain hung, as always, along his belt loop and into his pocket.  

The dark blue uniform top was a little snug across his shoulders, hugging his slim build in a way it certainly didn’t hug Steve. It revealed what Eddie’s usual look of layers upon layers didn’t; a surprising layer of lean muscle and a smattering of dark ink tattoos. 

Then there were the shorts. 

Although he stood about an inch shorter than Steve, he clearly had longer legs as the shorts stopped just a little past mid thigh rather than a few inches above the knee, baring a lot more pale flesh than Steve had been strictly ready to see. 

His mismatched socks peeked out just slightly above the tops of his heavy black boots, one solid red with two white stripes and one blue and green in a plaid pattern, to complete the full look. 

Todd would have a fucking coronary if he could see him; and he’d probably write him up for several dress code violations from the back of the ambulance.

Deep brown eyes met his once again, glimmering with very clear and unfettered amusement, and Steve had to force himself not to physically recoil from that shockingly sharp and observant stare. 

It was like being under a fucking microscope. 

Robin whistled low, fixing the other boy with a smirk. 

“Lookin’ good, Munson!” she laughed, exaggeratedly looking him up and down. 

The older boy flashed a positively beaming smile as he spread his arms out, spinning in place to better put himself on display for her.

Steve’s eyes immediately dropped downward, spotting a black bandana hanging from the back left pocket of his shorts. 

Like always. 

“Whaddaya think, King Steve?”

Steve’s eyes snapped back up, catching that mortifyingly knowing gaze once again. 

“Do I do the uniform justice?” Eddie inquired with a wink and a cocky grin.

Steve bit his tongue.

The word danger lit up in his head with flashing red lights and klaxons blaring; a clear and urgent warning from his subconscious that he would be a fool to ignore.

Steve snatched up an apron from a box shoved underneath the counter before he could think too hard about anything, throwing it in a crumpled ball at Eddie’s chest just like he’d thrown the bag before. 

“Congratulations. You look just as ridiculous as the rest of us. Welcome to the Scoops Troop, Munson.”

As Robin initiated the small tour of the store, Steve took a moment to lament his complete and utter lack of good fortune.

If he hadn’t already been dreading this summer, he certainly was now. 

………

Chapter Text

If Steve had thought working with Robin was a challenge, he hadn't been remotely ready for the absolute trial that was working with Hawkin’s resident freak-show Eddie Munson. 

If Robin had been watching and judging his every movement, Eddie did doubly so with the unbridled joy of a kid in a candy store. 

Every stumble over a word, every bombed pickup attempt, every trip, every fumble, every little thing he did that could possibly be deemed ‘out of character’ for the illustrious King Steve, the two of them immediately jumped on and pounded into the ground to a twitching bloody pulp. 

“Is that really all you got? Where’s that trademark Harrington charm I was promised?” Eddie would call out as he gleefully handed Robin the marker so she could put yet another tally under the ‘You Suck’ column. 

Steve was beginning to see that damn whiteboard in his dreams. 

It was like they had formed an alliance; one born with the specific purpose to aggravate him to an early grave, and it was working.

It didn’t help either that the kids had taken to visiting damn near everyday now, no longer just to bug Steve about free ice cream or passage through the employee back hallways to sneak into whatever lame movie they had their greedy little eyes on that week.

No, now they were here to fawn over Eddie, gushing about how ‘effortlessly cool and funny’ he was and picking his brain about anything and everything their nerdy little minds could conjure up, leaving Steve to handle the afternoon rushes virtually by himself, his only companion Robin’s bitingly snarky comments and the occasional sprinkle thrown at the side of his head. 

Lucas and Mike were downright enchanted by the metalhead flunky.

After their very first conversation with him, Lucas had sprinted to Waldenbooks as fast as his skinny legs could take him and had purchased a copy of something called the Silmarillion. He was already most of the way through it and enthusiastically updating Eddie on his progress.

Mike had abandoned his brightly coloured wardrobe with breakneck speed, now dressed in moody black and red like some sort of miniature Munson.

The thought of poor Karen Wheeler indulging the kid with a whole new dark and moody wardrobe while Ted watched on in mild disgust had admittedly amused him a great deal, but not enough to completely dull the sheer annoyance he felt.

Even Max, typically too cool for just about anyone, seemed to latch onto Eddie when she’d learned the Freak knew how to skateboard, because, ‘if it’s a good enough mode of transportation for Kirk Hammet, it’s good enough for me’, whatever the fuck that meant.

There was only so long he could listen to enthusiastic conversations about how to execute a kick flip or an ollie before Steve had to call a quits and begrudgingly admit what he’d been dreading since the other boy’s very first day:

Eddie Munson was more interesting than him.

If Steve hadn’t already been convinced he was trapped in some sort of weird purgatory to make up for what a dickweed he’d been in school, he certainly was now. 

“Hey, Dingus!”

He let out a long put upon sigh, dragging himself from his spot leaned against the counter watching Mike, Will, and Lucas stare googly eyed at Eddie while he filled them in on his latest DnD campaign with his expressive hands flying around him in a frenzy, to face an expectant Robin. 

“I said I need a split started,” she repeated as if the very act of doing so was insurmountably inconvenient for her. 

“Split. Got it,” Steve grumbled with a nod, ripping a banana off of one of the bunches hung up on the wall a bit harder than necessary and getting to work. 

“One scoop vanilla, one scoop chocolate, one scoop butterscotch, rainbow and chocolate sprinkles, and caramel sauce instead of hot fudge. Extra cherries!”

Fuck purgatory. 

He was in hell. 

-

His reprieve from said ‘Hell’ had come not a day later in the form of none other than Dustin Henderson, finally returned from his little nerd camp. 

He’d been on his break in the back when he’d heard the kid’s voice, dropping everything in his hands with a clatter and sprinting out to greet him with an excited fanfare. 

Robin watched with a mixture of amusement and disbelief as they executed their handshake, an epic lightsaber battle to the death that got longer and more complicated nearly every time they did it.

She at least had the good grace to wait until their giggling died down before hitting him with the inevitable:

“How many children are you friends with?”

Too many, he could readily admit. But the circumstances were different, not that she could possibly know that. 

He’d bled with those kids; saved the fucking world with those little bastards. That in of itself created an unbreakable bond that the sarcastic band geek would likely never fully understand, and that charismatic weirdos like Eddie Munson could never come between.

Sure, they were annoying little shits who never gave him the gas money they owed him and constantly begged him for favors and back-talked him like it was their 9-5, but they were his annoying little shits. 

And as such, he smiled encouragingly while Dustin told him all about camp, and his inventions, and his ‘hotter than Phoebe Cates’ new girlfriend, which admittedly was a bit of a surprise, but one that filled him with no small amount of pride. 

Although the sentence ‘she says kissing is better without teeth’ would actually most likely be haunting him for the rest of his life. 

“So, uh, where are the other knuckleheads?” Steve questioned quickly to distract Dustin from pursuing any sort of conversation in the direction of Robin being ‘cool’ after she’d, once again, interrupted their conversation with a snarky little jab at his expense. 

Of course Dustin would like her. 

“They ditched me yesterday,” Dustin admitted as he jabbed at his split, mushing up part of the banana against the bowl. 

“No,” Steve said with a sympathetic tilt of his head. 

“My first day back! Can you believe that shit?”

“Woah, seriously?” he leaned forward with genuine disbelief pulling his features into a frown. 

Because what kind of bullshit was that? 

The little assholes could spend hours at the mall basically drooling over Eddie Munson’s music and nerd culture knowledge, but they couldn’t spare one of their own the same kind of attention? He had half a mind to have some choice words with them the next time they showed up to bother Munson on one of his smoke breaks. 

“I swear to God. Mhm!” Dustin said through a bite of the split, holding up a finger. 

“They’re gonna regret it, though, big time, when they don’t get to share in my glory.”

“Glory? What glory?” Steve shook his head, fixing the theatrical young teen with a questioning look. 

Dustin smiled secretively and scooted closer. 

“So last night,” he started as he scratched quickly at his nose, trying and mostly failing to be subtle. 

“We’re trying to get in contact with Susie.”

“Oh! Mm-hm,” Steve smiled with a quick supportive thumbs up, trying desperately to keep the image of toothless kisses out of his brain for the sake of his sanity. 

That was gonna take some time to forget. 

“Mm-hm, and, uh…” Dustin continued as he glanced around secretively, surveying the seating area as if to make certain they weren’t being overheard. 

“IinterceptedasecretRussiancommunication,” he murmured all at once and far too quickly for the average human brain to comprehend. 

Steve stared at him blankly for a second, struggling to parse what was little more than a long drawn out sound rather than actual words. 

Something something, music composition?

“What?” he finally spoke, brow scrunching in confusion. 

“Uh…” Dustin clicked his tongue and scratched his nose again, shifting his hand to cup the side of his mouth. 

“IinterceptedasecretRussiancommunication,” he mumbled again, just as unintelligible as the first time, if not more so. 

Steve held back a frustrated sigh, his dwindling patience running ever thinner. 

“Just speak louder-“

“You intercepted a secret Russian communication?”

The two jumped in tandem, Dustin flinging his ice cream covered spoon into the air with an undignified squawk as Steve pressed a hand to his own chest over his rapidly beating heart, the other gripping the table tightly enough to turn his knuckles stark white. 

The other occupants of the tables and booths beside them sent glares their way, Dustin and Steve waving guiltily before turning back toward their apparent eavesdropper. 

“Jesus, Munson,” Steve breathed out in a huff as he glowered at the metalhead snickering at them from behind the booth. 

Dustin flailed his hands as he shushed the older boy, much to his apparent amusement if the crinkle around his eyes was anything to go by.

Not waiting for a formal invitation, Eddie hoisted his lanky body over the tall back of the booth with ease, swinging a leg over and very nearly kicking the pile of napkins off of the table with his white reebok. He dropped down into the space beside Dustin with an easy smirk, slapping a hand on his shoulder.  

“Don’t worry, kid. I promise I’m not a Commie or a snitch,” Eddie reassured him teasingly before turning that lazy grin towards Steve. 

Heat crept through Steve’s body and he honestly couldn’t tell if he was just embarrassed at how easily startled he was, or if the other boy’s mere presence was enough to annoy him to the point of anger. 

Could’ve been either. 

“That was a pretty long smoke break, Munson,” Steve admonished before he could continue to speak in that low and condescending tone, crossing his arms as he fixed him with an unimpressed brow raise and a grimace. 

He regretted his words the moment that smile stretched out across Eddie’s face, amusement dancing in his dark brown eyes like feathers on the wind. 

“Harrington, if you think fifteen minutes is a long time, then I’m inclined to believe more than half of those rumors about you in school were woefully untrue.”

Steve’s jaw clenched tightly enough to audibly creak as he did his utmost not to grind his teeth in his frustration. He could feel the mortifying heat traveling up to his cheeks, a situation he found himself in far too often now with Munson around. 

“Um, Steve, who the hell is this?” Dustin questioned, the concern creasing his brow wiping the anger from Steve’s mind faster than absolutely anything. 

He sighed, motioning flatly between the two. 

“Dustin Henderson, meet Eddie the Freak, the second half of the ‘Make Steve’s Life Miserable’ club.”

Eddie’s face lit up with recognition as he spun fully to face Dustin, a few curls falling out from his messy bun with the force at which he’d turned toward the preteen, making the other two occupants of the booth jump when his rings collided with the plastic top of the table. 

“So this is the famous Dustin Henderson?” he spoke once again in that long and drawn out way that set Steve’s teeth on edge; like an actor in a Shakespeare play monologuing for far too long about Caplets and Mongooses, or whatever.

He’d only seen the school’s production of Romeo and Juliet because Tammy Thompson had practically forced him to, going so far as to give him her complimentary ticket during Click’s history class in front of everyone.

It hadn’t been bad. He remembered actually shedding a tear when the guy playing Mercutio died.

“Your party has spoken quite highly of you. Nice to finally meet you, bard to bard,” Eddie continued, derailing Steve’s wayward train of thought.

“Bard?” Dustin repeated, his eyebrows shooting up into his hairline as his eyes swept fully over Eddie, from his grass stained shoes to the black ink decorating his arms to the unruly hair on his head.  

“You play DnD?”

Eddie snorted and Steve wanted to bury his face in his hands, or in six solid feet of dirt, because this wasn’t happening; couldn’t be happening again. 

Not with Henderson.

“Do I play DnD,” Eddie scoffed out a laugh, pressing a ring clad hand to his chest as if Dustin’s words were somehow both endlessly amusing and deeply offensive. 

“You’re looking at the founder and Dungeon Master of the Hawkins High Hellfire Club.”

He held out a friendly hand, Dustin immediately latching onto it with a positively starstruck look, and there went another one of Steve’s kids, charmed and taken in by the strange and endless charisma of one Eddie fucking Munson. 

He decided right then that El was his new favorite, as she was the only one left untouched by the weird and unnatural obsession with The Freak. 

He reminded himself to personally buy her a huge box of Eggos the next time he got the chance to go out to the cabin.

“Y’know, Munson, we were actually in the middle of a conversation here, so,” Steve rushed out, waving him away impatiently as he tried not to show his building jealousy. 

He was certain he’d never hear the end of it if the metalhead realized the hold he now had on Steve’s dwindling social life. 

“Oh, of course your Majesty. Please, by all means, do continue with your little spy game. Don’t let a lowly serf like me stop you,” he said as he bowed his head several times in false deference, tone dripping sarcasm as he pulled himself out of the booth, the chain attached to his uniform shorts clinking against the metal. 

Steve shot Dustin a betrayed glare as he chuckled. 

“Catch ya later, Sir Henderson,” Eddie bowed deeply once more, bent at the waist with his arms spread, completely uncaring of the judgmental stares from onlookers as per usual. 

Dustin executed a little bow of his own and Steve rolled his eyes at the two hard enough to give himself a migraine. 

“So cool,” the preteen whispered giddily, almost reverently, as Eddie disappeared into the back once more. 

So ends Steve’s short reprieve from Hell. 

………

Chapter Text

As it turned out, translating Russian with zero experience with the language, or any other language aside from very rudimentary High School Spanish, was no easy task. 

It’d taken them far longer than Steve would ever like to admit to realize that the Russians had a completely different alphabet than they did, and even then, they were making absolutely no progress until Robin had infiltrated their little translating team, offering them the distinct and surprising advantage of her ‘genius little ears’ in exchange for some much needed relief from the mind-numbing boredom of food service and the utter frustration of dealing with little Erica Sinclair and her far too competent understanding of their company policies. 

Steve supposed the glory of being hailed as ‘American Heros’ could be split three ways. 

He was only happy that Munson seemed to be entirely uninterested in their little project, mostly sticking to his now established routine of inexplicably managing to charm his way to a full tip jar in between frequent smoke breaks where Steve was 80% certain he wasn’t only partaking in cigarettes. 

Not that he could really blame the guy. Customer service was rough, especially for an antisocial and anti-work outcast.

By the end of their shift on the second day, Steve, Dustin, and Robin stood side by side before the whiteboard, the three of them reading off the mostly completed translation in sync. 

“The week is long. The silver cat feeds, when blue meets yellow in the west.”

Steve wrinkled his nose, unable to hide his disappointment if he’d tried. 

“Well that can’t be right, can it?” he inquired, taking a closer look at the whiteboard as if it would spill all of its secrets if he stared at it hard enough. 

Robin scoffed beside him. 

“I’m sorry, did you wanna try translating it yourself, Dingus?”

Steve shot her an unimpressed glare. 

“I’m just saying,” he started with a frustrated shake of his head. 

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense. A silver cat? Blue meets yellow in the west? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, because I know you’d love to, but that doesn’t exactly sound like a sinister Russian plot to me. It sounds more like a Don Bluth movie.”

“Jesus, you guys are still stuck on this?”

All eyes snapped toward the door as Eddie strolled in, staticky metal music blaring from the headphones hanging around his neck as he replaced the bucket and mop in the mop sink, wringing out the dirty water.

“What do you even get out of this if you solve it? A coupon to Sam Goody? Free Burger King for a month? Or is it just the satisfaction of a job well done?”

He smiled, his nose and brow scrunched mockingly as he reached into his pocket and shut off his walkman with a click.

“You think you can do better, Munson?” Steve shot back immediately, folding his arms tightly across his chest as he regarded the other boy with an unimpressed tilt of his head. 

“Better than Buckley? Certainly not,” Eddie answered with a grin, rounding the table and reaching out toward the recorder. 

Steve lunged forward and snatched it up before he could make contact, fixing the man with a sharp glare. 

That smirk only widened, sparkling brown eyes fixed on him with barely concealed amusement. 

“Well, can I hear it?” he questioned with a scoff, tongue visibly swiping across his teeth, stopping at one sharp pointed canine. 

Steve’s protective grip tightened on the recorder as heat rushed through his body and up to his cheeks; something like anger, but not quite as he zeroed in on the movement of the muscle. 

“Why the sudden interest, Munson?” he spat, unable to hold back the venom as he regarded the other boy with a more pronounced frown, even as his ever present grin grew inexplicably and frustratingly wider. 

“So sue me! I love a good puzzle. Why the sudden hostility, Harrington? Afraid I’ll win your little game before you?”

A scornful laugh punched its way out of Steve’s chest and he crossed his arms with a disbelieving shake of his head. 

“Y’know, weirdly enough, that possibility didn’t even occur to me,” he answered with a bitingly sarcastic tone, leaning his weight on one leg and fixing him with a withering stare that would’ve had anyone else ducking their head in shame; but not Eddie Munson. 

Steve was pretty certain the other boy lacked any and every sense of shame or self preservation.

“I say we let him listen,” Dustin piped up much to Steve’s dismay, Eddie immediately pointing a finger in his direction and nodding without taking his intense big-eyed gaze away from Steve, as if he were reluctant to lose their little staring contest he’d started. 

“I second that,” Robin nodded. “It might be nice to have another perspective on this. Another set of ears, at least.”

Steve reluctantly, very reluctantly, replaced the recorder on the table at their beckoning, jamming the play button with a little more force than was strictly necessary as Eddie fixed him with a smugly satisfied look before pressing his palms flat against the table with a clack of his rings, leaning down closer to listen.

It was the same staticky Russian nonsense they’d been analyzing all morning, Robin mouthing along to the parts she’d already managed to figure out which, admittedly, was pretty damn impressive.

Genius little ears was right.

Steve watched closely as Eddie’s brows furrowed in concentration, the amused expression slipping from his face as he leant in even further, loose curls falling into his face. 

“That’s so weird,” he whispered, tapping his finger against the table in a familiar cadence. 

“That sounds just like Daisy.”

“Daisy? Who’s Daisy?” Robin asked with a confused scrunch of her nose. 

“Y’know,” Eddie started, waving his hand like a conductor as he sang along to the grainy tune:

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It’s the song HAL sings in Space Odyssey.”

“Space what?” Steve questioned before he could stop himself, brow scrunching as all eyes in the room landed on him with differing expressions of incredulity. 

“2001: A Space Odyssey? One of the most well known sci-fi movies of all time?” Dustin spoke slowly as if to a child, scoffing when he showed no signs of recognition and Steve wondered, not for the first time, why the hell he chose to hang out with the mouthy little shit.

“Christ, Harrington. Thank god you don’t work at a video store or something,” Eddie snorted, and Steve clenched his fists tightly, biting back the insult resting precariously on the tip of his tongue.

Play nice. Nice-ish.

“Ok, but I already pointed out the music, and you said it didn’t matter,” he snapped toward Dustin, who raised his hands blamelessly. 

Eddie let out a bark of laughter, drawing Steve’s attention once again as the older boy straightened up from his slouched position. 

“Of course the music matters. If you wanna solve a problem, you gotta step back and look at the whole equation.”

Eddie’s nose wrinkled as he visibly cringed. 

“I absolutely hate that I phrased it like that, but the statement still stands.”

When he was met with only vaguely confused silence, Eddie reached back out and pressed play once more. 

“Listen, just for shits and giggles, let’s entertain the possibility that this is a secret Russian transmission. Why does it sound like this guy’s at a carnival or something instead of in a super secret bunker?”

“Maybe our Ruskie just likes the background noise while he delivers his cryptic messages?” Robin supplied, lips pursed and eyes wide in a not terribly convincing expression. 

“Ok, but the words themselves are still total nonsense!” Steve pointed out exasperatedly, immediately moving without really registering it to help Dustin as he began to shove the books and the recorder into his backpack. 

“It’s not nonsense. It’s too specific,” the preteen stated, hoisting the bag over his shoulder. 

“I think it’s a code.”

“What, like a super secret spy code?” Robin questioned as she followed along in their unspoken agreement to pack up and finally leave for the day. 

About time, too. Steve was beginning to hate the smell of ice cream.

“That’s a total stretch,” Steve scoffed, pushing his way through the back door and holding it open for the other occupants to filter out before he closed and locked it. 

Eddie snorted as he flipped the lights off, scooping the tips out of the jar which was, once again, somehow completely full, and dividing them out. 

“So that’s a stretch, but evil Commies broadcasting over a glorified HAM radio in the first place is totally believable? Weird place to draw the line, Steve-O.” 

Steve rolled his eyes at the nickname, motioning impatiently for everyone to step out of the store before he reached up and pulled down the security gate, crouching down to lock it. 

“Listen, man. After what I’ve seen, I don’t even know where the line is anymore,” Steve muttered, snapping his mouth shut at a harsh nudge to the ribs from Dustin. 

Dark brown eyes watched their interaction closely, and Steve was struck with the sudden and insane thought that maybe El wasn’t the only kid in Hawkins with supernatural powers. 

Because how else could one explain the intensity and the sharp awareness of those eyes, like it would take little more than a thought to pry into Steve’s mind and learn all of his deepest darkest secrets in less than a blink. 

“O-kaay,” Eddie dragged out as he swiped the sailor hat off of his head and shoved it into his pocket opposite the bandana. “That was weirdly cryptic, Harrington.”

The four of them fell into step beside each other as they made their way toward the exit, Robin and Dustin muttering together about secret codes and ciphers while Steve and Eddie listened in. 

Well, Eddie listened. Steve was still stuck on that tune; Daisy. 

The tune played on repeat in Steve’s brain, Eddie’s raspy but surprisingly gentle voice singing along. 

There was something he was missing; a reason the song was so familiar and so out of place, but he couldn’t quite-

Steve stopped in his tracks, uncaring as Robin and Dustin’s voices moved further and further away in an echo of:

“Exactly. Exactly. Exactly!”

Steve turned to his right, eyes meeting the sight of the small coin operated pony ride he walked past every single morning, and everything seemed to click into place like one big crazy puzzle. 

He frantically dug into his pockets, coins clattering across the tile as he searched desperately for a quarter. 

“Harrington?”

Eddie’s voice was surprisingly close by, but Steve didn’t turn to look as he tossed aside several useless nickles and pennies. 

“Steve?” Robin called out from a little ways ahead. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, it’s a quarter. I need- D’you have a quarter?” he asked distractedly as he continued to pat himself down, ignoring Robin's amused huff. 

“You sure you’re tall enough for that ride-”

“Quarter!” he yelled with a little more urgency, catching the one thrown his way and spinning on his heel to insert it. 

He squatted down as the music started, loudly and eerily echoing in the otherwise abandoned mall. 

“You need help getting up, little Stevie?” Robin teased once again, Dustin snickering before Eddie shushed both them from his spot behind Steve. 

“Shut up. He’s onto something.”

Steve turned and watched as realisation dawned on Dustin’s face. 

“Holy shit. The music.” 

The preteen dropped to his knees, yanking open the zipper on his backpack and pulling out the recorder. 

“The music!”

As he pressed play, the recording and the pony ride synched up perfectly.

The same tune, the same key, the same tempo.

“I don’t understand” Robin spoke up with a shake of her head. 

“It’s the exact same song on the recording. Daisy,” Eddie said. 

“Maybe they have horses like this in Russia?”

Steve jabbed a thumb towards the painted name on the coin box. 

“Indiana Flyer?” he read, eyes drifting back towards the others. 

“I don’t… I don’t think so. This code. It didn’t come from Russia. It came from here.”

Silence stretched on between the four for a long moment, the only sounds the song and the metallic creaking of the inner machinations of the horse. 

They all seemed to breathe in at the same time, letting out long deep sighs as the realisation of just what they’d apparently stumbled into fully began to sink in. 

“Shit,” Eddie let out with a humorless laugh. 

“The Commies have infiltrated Hawkins.”

………

Chapter Text

If you asked Eddie Munson, local metalhead/town pariah what his picture perfect summer vacation would be, he could rattle off quite the impressive list from the very top of his head:

Lazily rolling out of bed no earlier than noon to start the day, hitting up Sam Goody to once again demand an update on when they would finally be receiving the Megadeth album he’d ordered on June 12th when it came out, shooting the shit at band practice with Gareth and the boys, raving about the new campaign he was dreaming up until they were as fired up as he was, going for a nice long drive until the street lights flickered overhead and the pain of not graduating for the second time finally ebbed away in that temporary way that it did, and then finally heading back home to toke up and hook up his amp to pick out yet another song by ear and commit it to memory, perhaps something by Sabbath this time, because why memorize time tables and world history when you could pretend to be a rockstar alone in your bedroom at three in the morning? 

Take that routine, gargle, rinse, and repeat for the next 70 days until school started up again, and that was it. 

The perfect summer was a complete and total lack of Mrs. Click and her beloved ruler she apparently lived to slap on the hard surface of Eddie’s desk when he dained to close his eyes for more than a minute during her rambling lectures. 

The perfect summer was complete and total avoidance of everyone who sought to make his life difficult; Jason Carver and his holier than thou attitude, Billy Hargrove and his manic and mercurial nature, Tommy Hagan and his proclivity toward becoming the semi-loyal goon of whichever self proclaimed Alpha Male had the fiercest bite, and, the worst of the worst:

King Steve Harrington. 

Eddie could write and turn in an essay about the ways in which he positively despised Steve Harrington, and he was certain, barring perhaps a few points deducted for excessive profanity, he would make the very first A+ of his entire High School career. 

Harrington was cocky; an overconfident and overhyped piece of shit with his head shoved so far up his own personal Underdark it was a wonder he was still alive and hadn’t died via Beholder encounter. 

It was like he’d maxed out his charisma and dex stats with little to no concern for anything else, yet, despite it all, he was still apparently and appallingly fucking irresistible. 

Captain of the Swim team, Co-Captain of the Basketball team, actual Prom King, and the textbook definition of a spoiled rich kid.

He was the closest Hawkin’s could get to royalty. 

Eddie expected he would coast easily through his beautifully charmed and unbelievably privileged life with nothing but Daddy’s money, his regrettably great hair, and his even greater ass, and the mere thought of it has had him screaming into his pillow nearly every night since the eighth grade. 

He despised Steve Harrington. 

He despised him because, even though he stood for literally everything Eddie hated, forced conformity, the endless pursuit of popularity at the expense of others, he still found the fucker unbelievably, and unobtainably, attractive. 

So, yeah. 

His hypothetical perfect summer definitely included avoiding ’The Hair’ and learning as many Dio songs as he could cram into his brain before his inevitable return to the hell that was Hawkins High for his third round of Senior year. 

Too damn bad the universe had other plans for him, because his life could never just be fucking simple. 

He swore he could feel it, his perfect summer, like something tangible and solid turning to sand and slipping through his fingers like a goddamn ABBA song the moment Chief Jim Hopper had caught him sliding a dime bag into the clammy palm of Henry Wolowitz beside a dumpster in the park behind the community pool. 

Eddie had done his best to lay on the charm and talk his way out of it, and, against all odds, because Jim Hopper was one stubborn sonofabitch, it had almost worked. They probably would’ve gotten away with it had Wolowitz just kept his damn mouth shut, but it seemed you just couldn’t depend on an ass-kissing honor student’s nerve when blatantly lying to a cop’s face. 

“Kid, when the hell are you gonna learn your lesson?” Hopper had sighed like a disappointed father; like Wayne inevitably would once he’d arrived at the station to try and bail him out again, if he could even afford to this time. 

Eddie had laughed before he could think better of it, quickly avoiding the unimpressed eyebrow raise sent his way. 

“According to Principal Higgins, never,” he had huffed, picking at the broken zipper on his sleeve; he’d have to try and replace it before the sleeve started to wear. He was pretty sure he had some broken chain in his bedside table that would do the trick.

“Are you gonna lock me up or something?”

Hopper’s snort of laughter had caught him off guard, the good tempered smile so incredibly out of place on his stern face that he was, for just a moment, convinced he was being punked. 

“I normally would, kid, but you’ve found me in a charitable mood. I’ll let this go on one very simple condition.”

Naturally, and stupidly, Eddie had immediately agreed to whatever the Chief’s ridiculous condition was. 

He hadn’t cared about what it could’ve possibly been, more concerned about keeping himself out of a jail cell, but he was now dearly beginning to regret that decision as he flew out of bed in a panicked flail of uncoordinated limbs to the deafening ringing of his ‘you’re super fucking late’ alarm, snatching the slightly wrinkled Scoops Ahoy uniform from his bedroom floor and huffing it toward the bathroom for the quickest and coldest shower of his life. 

“I want you to clean up your act and get yourself a good and honest job for the summer.”

Hopper had looked so smug as he said it, as if he could feel Eddie’s heart dropping to his shoes at the prospect of a joyless summer. 

But he had already accepted. 

Because he was stupid. 

“Fine. I can do that. I’ll head over now and ask Old Joel if he’s still looking for help in the garage,” he’d offered, taking no more than half a step before the Chief was grabbing his shoulder and shaking his head. 

“No, not Thatcher Tire. You need to work somewhere that’ll teach more of a lesson; a little humility. Let me take care of it.”

And that’s how Eddie became a sailor suited ice cream slinging slave in the name of capitalism. 

Admittedly not very metal. 

His drive to the mall was quick considering he was going twenty over the speed limit, taking advantage of the clear roads that typically accompanied a Monday morning in Hawkins, and he was pulling into the massive parking lot in no time, flinging himself out of his van and all but sprinting inside. 

Eddie raced into the store an hour late for his shift, weaving with surprising agility through a few indignant customers with quickly muttered apologies before he stumbled, literally, to a stop behind the counter and beside a very unimpressed Steve Harrington. 

And that was another thing. 

“Hey man. Sorry I’m late,” he panted out in a puff of minty breath, still damp hair hanging loose around his flushed face, a few wayward strands plastered to the thin layer of sweat over his forehead and cheeks. 

Past Eddie was screaming at him for apologizing to King Steve in any capacity, but current Eddie was still preoccupied with not popping a stiffy at the mere sight of said King in his cute little shorts, so fuck it. 

Steve huffed out an amused little laugh, crossing his lean muscled arms and leaning a hip against the counter like he owned it. 

“Didn’t surprise me on your first day, doesn’t surprise me now,” he shrugged nonchalantly, snatching a banana off of the wall because Steve Harrington was too good for ice cream. 

Gotta keep in shape for the ladies.

That’s what Eddie had heard him say to Henderson the day before. 

He physically shook the thought from his mind through the guise of preparing to pull up his hair, wrangling the wild loose curls into a ponytail before pulling on his stupid little uniform hat. 

“So, are we any closer to solving our, uh, little red problem?” he questioned casually, swiping his trusty bandana from his back pocket to wipe away the sweat on his forehead and at the back of his neck. 

“Actually,” Steve started through a mouthful of half chewed banana. The sight should’ve been gross, but he found it disgustingly endearing. 

No one had ever given Eddie credit for having good taste. 

“While you were busy sleeping in, Robin translated the rest and cracked the code.”

“No shit,” Eddie grinned. 

“Yeah, shit. About twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn. I figured, outta any of us, it would be Buckley. So what’s the next step?”

Steve chuckled, not cruelly, but it still managed to catch him rather off guard. 

Everything the other boy did caught him off guard. 

“Oh so you’re invested now? I thought you said it was just a stupid little spy game?” he nudged Eddie good-naturedly in the side with a grin, his teeth pearly white like a goddamn movie star. 

“Let’s just say you’ve made a believer outta me,” Eddie shrugged as nonchalantly as he could, crossing his arms tightly before forcing them to unknot into a much more casual position. “Just don’t let it go to your head.”

But it wouldn’t; not really. 

Because King Steve was different here than he was in High School. 

Here, he was just another lame teenager with a lame summer job and lame perfect hair crammed beneath a lame little sailor hat. 

Here, he was the guy that always allowed unlimited free samples like a pushover. The guy that had genuinely terrible pickup lines that he refused to quit using, that talked down the indignant moms who clutched at their pearls when Eddie inevitably offended them by just existing, that begrudgingly allowed a nerdy little group of preteens to poke fun at him and demand free ice cream and free passage to the movie theatre. 

Eddie couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face as he recalled the dorky little handshake he’d witnessed between him and Henderson whilst heading out for his smoke break. 

The pretend lightsaber battle and subsequent death, followed by genuine little giggles and the biggest goofiest smile Eddie had ever seen on the other boy’s face, had been a feature in Eddie’s daydreams for the rest of the day.  

He’d never smiled like that in school; not even before Billy Hargrove had shouldered and punched his way into his territory as top dog like the feral beast he was. 

As much as Eddie hated the thought, Steve Harrington was much more tolerable to be around than he’d ever thought he could be. His smile was infectious, his laugh doubly so, and Eddie found himself trying time and time again to hear and see more of it in the short week they’d been working together, like some kind of Court Jester in the service of the King. 

Fucking ridiculous. 

Maybe it wasn’t too late to apply to Sam Goody, if only to finally quash the lame little crush he had on Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington once and for all. 

Banishing those traitorous thoughts from his mind with a self pitying smirk, he rolled up his proverbial sleeves, pasted on his best ‘please give me your hard earned money’ smile, and got to work on the steadily growing line forming at the counter. 

-

Twenty minutes.

Twenty one. 

Twenty one and a half. 

Eddie drummed his fingers nervously against the counter, sipping at his root beer float as he tried very hard not to let his anxiety get the better of him. 

He was waiting for the other three, his very unlikely co-conspirators gone to do some reconnaissance, tailing the Lynx delivery men that Robin had sworn would lead them to the Russians. 

He was still a bit dubious about the whole thing if he was being honest, halfway convinced the recording was just some blurb from some weird Russian commercial or something of that ilk rather than the government conspiracy the other three seemed so incredibly certain it was. 

Even so, as the getaway driver, designated specifically by Henderson, he kept his eyes peeled and his personal opinions to himself. 

It was strange, though. 

The kid didn’t even seem excited by all of it; the prospect of uncovering something as huge as Commies setting up shop in Indiana of all places. 

If anything, he seemed almost resigned, a gruff old veteran to uncovering top secret government conspiracies, and that thought in of itself filled Eddie with an odd sense of melancholy. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d mourned a lost childhood that wasn’t his own. 

Then there was Harrington, the ultimate yes man, apparently ready to follow the little nerd into battle with a snarky quip and a spring in his step as if they’d done this a million times already, and that was definitely a head scratcher. 

It was something he’d picked up on when he’d first met the rest of Harrington’s kids; the strange comradery between the preteens and their exhausted babysitter. 

It was as if they had an unspoken agreement to tolerate and care for each other, or like they were all a part of something the rest of the world wasn’t privy to.  

Whatever it was, it was genuinely bizarre to behold, watching cold careless King Steve interact with a bunch of DnD obsessed kids like some kind of older brother mother hen combo.

Bizarre and yet hopelessly endearing.

“You.”

A sudden voice crashed into Eddie’s errant brain space like a runaway train, sending him at least a foot into the air with an undignified yelp. 

His eyes searched only for a moment before landing on a security guard, tall with a dark ponytail and a goatee, dressed from head to steel toed boot in black. The man had a mean twist to his mouth and a knowingness in his eyes that had Eddie’s stomach churning and his pulse rocketing. 

That’s not good. 

“What are you still doing here? The mall’s been closed for over two hours.”

“Oh,” Eddie started dumbly, mouth opening and closing like a particularly stupid fish under the steely gaze of…

Fuck, if anyone in this backwards ass town could possibly be a secret commie, it would be this dude. 

Eddie took a deep calming breath, pasting on the long-suffering half smile half grimace of a food service worker and letting out a sigh. 

“Actually, I’m waiting on my manager,” Eddie huffed out with a purposely awkward little laugh and a shake of his head, as if to say ‘what can ya do?’.

“He’s been gone for,” he checked his watch for extra effect. “God, like fifteen minutes now.”

He sent a little eye roll toward the man, hoping and praying that his internal roll for charisma had been high enough. 

The guy didn’t laugh; Eddie wasn’t entirely certain Soviets were allowed to laugh. 

He regarded Eddie with an unimpressed and slightly suspicious look; the very same look every single one of his teachers had reserved just for him since kindergarten. 

Peachy. 

“And what is your manager doing that’s taking so long.”

It was phrased like a question, but it definitely wasn’t a question. 

Alarm bells rang in Eddie’s head as those sharp eyes trailed over his shoulder, fixing on the back room door with the single minded focus of a hawk seconds before diving. 

The image of the whiteboard, covered in translated Russian code, very much still out in the open where literally anyone could find it, suddenly came to mind, and he felt the blood rush from his face so fast he was shocked he didn’t faint or something.  

He tried to surreptitiously step in front of the door, his pulse racing as that gaze landed back on him with the intensity of blazing twin suns. 

A fucking Star Wars reference? Nice. 

His palms were sweaty, and he hoped against hope that Soviets couldn’t actually smell fear. 

That would be stupid.

Right?

“He’s, uh… taking out the trash. But, between you and me,” Eddie leaned in a little closer over the counter with a hand at the side of his mouth. 

“I think he and my other coworker might be, uh, engaging in something a little less work friendly, if you know what I mean.”

He winked. 

He winked at an undercover Commie. 

He was going to demand a raise. Three dollars an hour was nowhere near enough for this shit. 

The guard’s stern frown somehow deepened and he took a sudden step forward, moving to walk behind the counter toward the back door. 

“Woah, hey dude. I-I can’t let you back there,” Eddie stuttered out as he rushed to block the door completely, holding out an arm to stop the man’s foreword progress. 

He sucked in a breath when a hand clamped solidly around his forearm, the grip stronger than it had any right to be. 

The Commie version of the Terminator met his eyes with a sneer and Eddie prided himself on the fact that he didn’t melt into a puddle of terrified goo right then and there, but it was a near thing. 

“Why not,” he demanded, that iron grip tightening until Eddie could feel his bones creaking beneath it. 

“I… I’m not supposed to let anyone back there without my manager. It’s a- uh… a liability thing.”

Fuck, this dude was gonna break his fucking arm like a twig. 

“Dude, c-can you let go? That kinda hurts,” he laughed through the nervous lump in his throat, foolishly trying to yank his arm away. 

It didn’t even budge an inch. 

The man made a displeased sound at his struggling, like a bear annoyed with a particularly slippery salmon, and yanked him forward into his space until they were a hair's breadth apart. 

Eddie froze completely, his heart rattling in his chest loudly enough that he was certain the man could hear it. 

“And where is your manager again?” he growled, hot breath tickling across Eddie’s cheeks, sending his stomach careening to his feet. 

He felt nauseous. 

“He, uh… like I said before, dude, he’s taking out the trash,“ Eddie stuttered out, leaning back as far as he could from the man’s stern face as his pulse raced in his throat like the distinct drumbeat of Paint it Black. 

Eddie jumped out of his cold clammy skin as the back door suddenly opened behind him with a clatter.

“Hey man, sorry that took so long. It’s raining cats and dogs,” a soaking wet Steve sighed as he rolled the trash can in behind him. 

He froze as he glanced up at the scene before him with the most convincingly confused little frown Eddie had ever seen. 

“Is there a reason you’re touching my employee, sir?” he questioned, fixing the guard with a single raised brow. 

Steve fucking Harrington.  

There was a beat of silence, and then the painful grip was, thankfully, unclenching from Eddie’s arm, leaving behind stark lines of red and white in the distinct shape of fingers. 

That was for sure going to bruise, if not immediately than very soon.

Eddie took his chance to scramble away from the guard, placing himself beside and slightly behind the solid and steadfast barrier that was Steve as he stared the man down.

“You’re the manager?” the guard said, looking Steve up and down with a mean curl to his lip.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve nodded, his hair flopping wetly across his forehead, trailing water droplets down his flushed cheeks as he took a step forward and shouldered Eddie completely behind him almost protectively. 

No, not almost. 

The guards cold gaze surpassed Steve and met Eddie’s once more, the deafeningly silent anger behind them palpable even from where he stood.

“Try to get your employees out on time. No personnel in the mall after ten o’clock,” he spat before turning on his heel and marching away without a second glance. 

“Sure thing, man,” Steve called after him, watching and waiting until he’d fully disappeared from sight before letting out a sigh, his broad shoulders deflating in relief. 

“Fuck. You ok, man?” he asked, turning to face Eddie with a look of such genuine concern it actually surprised him. 

Eddie for his part realised a little too late that he was clutching his aching wrist delicately to his chest. He dropped it quickly, resisting the urge to hide it behind his back like a child hiding a broken toy. 

“I’m fine, dude,” he shook his head with a casual shrug, as if he got interrogated and manhandled by suspected secret communists posing as mall security every other day. 

No big deal. 

“How are you?”

Eddie visibly flinched at the supreme lameness of his own words, but Steve didn’t seem to notice. 

How kind of him. 

“We found some kinda secret storage area they were bringing everything to,” Steve spoke as he pulled down and locked the security gate. 

“C’mon, Dustin and Robin are waiting and we need to go before Boris the mall cop comes back for your other arm. I’ll tell you everything on the way.”

Eddie did not argue, grabbing the remnants of his float and jogging out after Steve, his knight in soaking wet blue polyester. 

Soaking wet blue polyester that clung tightly to his perky and surprisingly round ass. 

Shit. 

………

Chapter Text

“Alright, so that’s one vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles, one scoop of brownie delight in a cup, and one classic hot fudge sundae. Anything else I can get for ya?”

The redhead in front of the counter tucked her hair shyly behind her ear, smoky blue eyes sweeping over Eddie’s smiling face. 

“Could I get extra cherries on that sundae?” she asked softly, biting at a bubblegum pink lip as her two friends burst into giggles behind their hands. 

“It would be my pleasure.”

The girl pulled an extra couple of coins from her purse, but Eddie held a hand up. 

“No no! No charge,” he declared as he leaned in, glancing back and forth with a playfully conspiratory look that she joined in on quickly.

“Just don’t tell my boss,” he stage whispered with a little nod toward Steve that had him forcing back a laugh of his own in spite of himself, not even trying to disguise the fact that he’d been watching the exchange. 

The girl smiled widely, tucking a rolled up wad of cash into the tip jar as if in a trance as Eddie turned to make her order with a spring in his step. 

Steve shook his head with a sigh.

At this point, he couldn’t even find the energy to be jealous, simply watching with no small amount of wonder as Eddie smoothly handed the three girls their treats and sent them off with a wink and a smile that could almost be called roguish. 

Seriously, where the fuck did he learn that shit?

He would never fully understand how Eddie was seen as a loser in school when he had such natural charisma. He was pretty certain the dude could have seamless chemistry with a cardboard box. 

It definitely didn’t hurt that he was surprisingly good looking under all that hair and metal and leather and freakiness; even with it, he supposed.

Even in his stupid little sailor suit that hugged his lithe form a little too nicely, drawing more than a few wandering eyes anytime he squatted down to pick up dropped coins or reached up to the high shelf for a drink carrier, which he was currently doing as he chatted easily with a girl who couldn’t have been too much older than them.

Steve didn’t miss the way her eyes flickered down sneakily to the sliver of pale skin on display as Eddie’s uniform top rode up with the upward stretch of his arms, exposing several inches of his trim waistline, the trail of dark hair leading from his bellybutton down down down into-

“God, if only I could flirt like that,” sighed Robin from beside him, leaning against the wall with a wistful look. 

Steve blinked, physically shaking the strange and intrusive images from his thoughts.

Weird.

“I dunno,” Steve huffed a little laugh, head swiveling toward her though his eyes never left Eddie, who had moved on to the next customer in line, a young mother who seemed positively enamored as he complimented her son’s ‘sweet Dark Crystal shirt’, the kid grinning up at him like he hung the goddamn moon. 

For fucks sake. 

“I mean, you seem pretty cool and aloof when you talk to guys here that’re obviously into you,” he continued, shrugging towards Robin. “That’s kinda the first step in all this flirting nonsense.”

She snorted, opened her mouth, a smile already upturning the corners as no doubt hilarious words threatened to pour out, but she closed it again with an audible snap and a strangely cautious expression. 

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugged back noncommittally instead, leaving an awkward gap in their easy conversation quickly and thankfully filled by Eddie. 

“Hey, Buckley? You mind if I step out for a few? I’ve been itchin’ for a smoke for the past half hour,” he called, his smile back on his face full force as he bent across the counter to hand the little boy his chocolate cone, receiving a gap-toothed smile and a little ‘thank you’ in return. 

And several more crumpled up bills in the tip jar. 

Jesus, this dude was a force to be reckoned with. 

“Knock yourself out, Munson,” Robin answered with another shrug, pushing off of the wall to take his place behind the register as he whipped off his apron with a little whoop. “Just don’t take too long. Or do. I honestly don’t really care.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up towards his hairline as he looked back and forth between the two, Robin waving over the next customer while Eddie fished a pack of Camel reds and a lighter out of his pocket and jogged out of the store. 

A near flawless execution of step one. 

So, maybe Robin wasn’t immune to Munson’s weird nerd charms either?

He didn’t really want to examine why the thought had him so disappointed but also… relieved? He wasn’t certain that was the right word for the feeling, but no others immediately came to mind, so he quickly gave up with a mental shrug. 

“Steve!” Dustin called out, pushing past the line of customers and scurrying behind the counter like he belonged there, waving off a couple grumbles of:

“Watch it, kid.”

or

“Hey! Easy!”

“In the back. Now,” he insisted, throwing a quick apology over his shoulder to a frustrated looking Robin before shoving Steve toward the back door with the urgency of a caught-out cat burglar. 

“Ok ok, Jesus Henderson,” Steve let out with his hands raised in surrender, allowing himself to be pushed into the back room by the frantic nerd. 

“What’s so goddamn important that it couldn’t wait like two seconds?” he questioned, leaning a hip against the table as Dustin began to pace in front of him. 

“Ok,” he said, scratching at his chin like Mr. Wheeler did when a crossword puzzle question stumped him. 

Not an incredibly rare occurrence. 

“So I’ve been thinking more about this Robin thing-“

“Oh for fucks sake, Henderson,” Steve cut him off, his entire upper body bowing back with an admittedly dramatic groan of frustration. 

“Just hear me out, Steve!” Dustin insisted. 

“So, you’ve been in what many would consider a bit of a romantic drought, am I right?”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“If I say sure, will it end this conversation any faster?”

Dustin plowed on determinedly, entirely unfazed by his sarcasm. 

“Ever since Nancy broke your heart, you’ve been in a funk. Like, it severely impacted your game. You couldn’t flirt your way out of a paper bag.”

“Thanks man.”

“But!” Dustin spread his arms out as if offering up some sacred and essential information. 

“That’s what’s so cool about Robin! She doesn’t need lines, or smooth moves, or any of that fake shit! She actually thinks all that stuff is stupid!”

“Ok,” Steve ground out through a tightly clenched jaw. 

“Where is this going, Henderson? Cause, just incase you forgot, I am on the clock, and I kinda think I’d rather be… yeah, no I know I’d rather be literally anywhere else than here right now listening to you lecture me about my nonexistent love life, so-“

“Dude, just…”

Dustin pressed his fingers to his temples like he was the one getting a headache from their interaction; the interaction he’d forced Steve into. 

“It’s like I told you during our stakeout! Just forget all that stupid High School hierarchy bull and… consider Robin as an option! You two could literally be perfect for each other!”

Steve sighed deeply, pressing the heels of his palms against his eye sockets as he desperately tried to resist the urge to chuck the preteen into a trash can or something. 

His words from that day, just before they’d tailed their target only to discover that jazzercise was less peppy dancing more middle aged women hip thrusting, played once again in his mind as they had on loop ever since:

“Instead of dating somebody you think’s gonna make you cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around?”

That singular sentence had thrown him for more than a goddamn loop; it’d taken him into a proverbial boxing ring and had gone several rounds with him, metaphorically beating him into a bloody pulp. 

A familiar feeling.

It had him laying awake that night, truly trying desperately to think if he’d ever dated anyone because he liked them? Like, actually liked them?

Of course he’d liked Nancy; hell, he’d been pretty damn certain he was in love with her before she told him to his face that she thought he and their entire relationship was ‘bullshit’ and had promptly chosen someone else, but he could admit, though begrudgingly, that it hadn’t started off that way. 

He’d started flirting with her in the first place because of her sparkly clean reputation and what it could do for his own. 

Perfect Princess Nancy Wheeler; stunningly beautiful, big innocent doe eyes, straight A student, basically assured a full ride through the college of her choice. 

The textbook definition of a goody goody. 

She’d blushed prettily when he’d so much as winked at her, and he took that as a personal challenge, only egged on by Tommy H. and Carol, the bloodthirsty jackals they were. 

Feelings had formed later, but his original intentions had undoubtedly been to boost his already lofty reputation by managing to bag Nancy Wheeler for himself. 

He felt queasy. 

Oftentimes in the time since his fateful Junior year of High School, he found himself lying awake at night staring at his hideous plaid wallpaper and wishing he could turn back time and knock some much needed sense into his past self before Jonathan Byers had the chance.

“Dude,” he started, scrubbing a hand across his face and through his hair, knocking the hat off of his head, though he couldn’t find it in himself to care. 

“I already told you, Robin just isn’t my type.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot your type was ditzy cheerleaders with more boobs than brains,” Dustin scoffed with that judgemental little finger wag of his. 

Steve snickered, pulling himself up to sit criss cross on the surface of the table. 

“I mean, girls usually have more boobs than brains. Have you ever met anyone with more than one brain? Or only one boob? Not a dealbreaker, just… y’know, not super common.”

The withering glare he received was enough to have him muffling a snort behind his fist. 

“I mean it, Steve! Every argument you made against Robin, how she’s weird and hyper, a drama kid, and in band, that’s all so incredibly obsolete! It doesn’t matter! I mean, you could literally apply all of that to Eddie, and Eddie’s obviously not lame, so-”

“Eddie’s not a band kid, he’s in a band. Wha- and how does he even factor into this?”

Dustin threw up his hands in clear aggravation, shaking his head at Steve as if to say:

‘You’re actually hopeless.’

Steve quickly decided he’d much rather be dealing with the midday rush right now than Dustin Henderson the matchmaker, so he waved a dismissive hand at him and hopped off of the table to make for the door. 

“I’ll keep that under real careful consideration, dude. Though at this point I don’t really know who you want me to date more; Robin or Munson-“

Steve jumped back as the door swung open before he could finish reaching out for the handle, a waft of sweet tobacco, cherry, mint, and something warm and spicy hitting his nose like a crashing wave at the beach. 

His eyes caught in two large pools of deep dark brown and he sucked in a surprised breath, that scent filling his senses in a way that had his head buzzing. 

“Well hello, Sailor,” Eddie breathed a laugh, Steve’s eyelashes fluttering as his little puff of air ghosted across his heated skin.

So close.

“Uh… hey,” he answered in a strangely small voice, contending with a severe and very sudden case of dry mouth and empty brain. 

Red stained lips turned slightly upward in a little smile as they wrapped around the straw of the cherry soda Steve had only just noticed he was holding, and Steve swallowed down the lump that’d formed in his throat as he stumbled back just slightly out of his space, a little too late for it to look any sort of natural. 

What the fuck?

He took a quick step to the side to try and move past Eddie, but the other boy appeared to have the same idea, blocking his progress once again with an awkward little laugh and a humorous glimmer in those huge brown eyes. 

“Sorry. You move left, and I’ll- no, your other left?” Eddie tried to negotiate, but they just couldn’t seem to coordinate their limbs enough to successfully get around one another. 

Steve let out a frustrated huff at their weird little dance, steadfastedly ignoring the blood rushing through his ears louder than Niagara fucking Falls. 

He reached out with little thought toward it, solidly gripping either side of Eddie’s slim hips and yanking him forward into the room. The metalhead stumbled and threw his hands up to grip Steve’s shoulders for balance, the ice rattling in his drink as condensation stuck to the back of Steve’s shirtsleeve, clumsily allowing himself to be manhandled to the side until the doorway was cleared for Steve’s escape.

He pulled back with one final pat to Eddie’s bony hip, unable to even consider meeting his gaze again.

“Careful not to spend too much time in here with him, Munson,” Steve jabbed a thumb toward a wide-eyed Dustin the moment he’d once again found his voice. “He might try and set you up on a date with Petey the mall cop.”

With that, he finally pushed through the door and back into the fray to join Robin in her efforts to take on the midday rush, pushing down the weird little flutter in his stomach at the memory of those wide brown doe eyes and that cheeky little red-lipped smile.

Eddie had surprisingly nice lips. Full with a strong Cupid’s bow; not soft and glossy like a girls, but chapped and always slightly red after being worried between his teeth, a habit Steve had noticed early on.

He had a nice smile, too. Less obnoxious than Steve had first deemed it, more… luminous; bright and hopeful like the rising sun, but warm and unbridled like a roaring wildfire-

“Nice of you to remember you’re at work, Dingus!” Robin called back with a frown, though there was a definite playfulness to her tone and the quirk of her lips. 

Steve blinked in response, the residual image of Eddie’s cherry red lips fading from his mind as she continued over the din of the afternoon rush.

“Now make me two Banana Royales while I take care of this Cappuccino Blast.”

He unsheathed his trusty scooper and tuned seamlessly into work mode, because if there was one thing Steve Harrington could do better than anyone else, it was blissfully ignore all of his real life problems in favor of physically exhausting himself beyond the point of conscious thought. 

Hell yeah. Good plan, Steve.  

………

Several hours, one reconnaissance mission, and one harrowing banana shortage later found the Scoops Troop in the back room once again, Dustin pacing madly at the front like it was his new favourite hobby. 

Steve at least felt less like a hostage this time around, grateful the focus had finally returned to their own personal red scare rather than his absolutely stagnant sex life.

“That key card opens the door,” Dustin spoke severely as he recounted the findings of his and Eddie’s recon mission. 

Steve wasn’t even completely certain he remembered how they got to this point, let alone the beginning of their conversation, or rather briefing, the past hour going by in a blur of motion and a flurry of sprinkles that had Steve’s head spinning. 

So many sprinkles. 

Enough that Eddie had plucked a small handful out of his hair the moment they’d all congregated in the back, much to Robin’s apparent amusement. 

“But unfortunately the Russian with this key card also has a massive gun,” Dustin finished, holding out his hands for a rough size demonstration. 

“Massive,” Eddie agreed, widening his eyes for emphasis. “Just out in broad daylight.”

Dustin nodded.

“Whatever’s in this room, whatever’s in those boxes, they really don’t want anybody finding it.”

“But there’s got to be a way in,” Robin interjected, shaking her head with a thoughtful frown. 

How she could actually critically think was genuinely beyond Steve at that point. He could literally feel his brain turning into goo from the effort as he absently spun his hat around his hand. 

“Well, y’know…” he started as he leaned forward across the table. “I could just take him out.”

He ignored Eddie’s loud snort from his spot leant against the wall like the cool guy in every chick flick.

Robin fixed him with an amused look, her eyebrows raising as she said slowly with no small amount of sarcastic disbelief:

“Take who out?”

“The Russian Guard,” Steve nodded simply, scrunching his nose up at the assorted looks of good-humoured incredulity. “What? I sneak up behind him, I knock him out, and I take his key card. It’s easy.”

“Dude, this isn’t Looney Tunes,” Eddie chuckled, scratching a hand through his curls. 

“Yeah. Did you not hear the part about the massive gun?” Dustin agreed, his pacing finally halting as he came to a stop beside the metalhead. 

Steve rolled his eyes. 

“Yes, Dustin. I did. And that’s why I would be sneaking,” he said as he walked his fingers across the table in demonstration. 

“Well please, tell me this, and be honest,” Dustin began, and it didn’t take a genius to know exactly where he was going with it. 

“Have you ever actually… won a fight?”

There it was. 

“Ok, that was one time,” Steve objected, holding up a finger to further punctuate his point. 

“Twice,” Dustin corrected immediately. 

“Jonathan. Year prior?”

Eddie whistled. 

“Woah, as in Byers? The loner with the camera?”

“Listen, that doesn’t count-“ Steve tried to defend himself, his cheeks growing hot as Dustin scoffed at him. 

“Why wouldn’t it count? Because it looks like he beat the shit out of you!”

The two of them quickly descended into an argument, Steve not quite managing to get in many words edgewise over Dustin’s loud recitation of the events of his rather pathetic fight with Jonathan and Eddie’s oh so helpful slices of commentary at his expense. 

He very nearly didn’t notice Robin’s sudden eye widening grin as she stood from the little metal chair with a quick utterance of:

“That just might work.”

He did however very quickly notice when she hurried over toward Eddie, grabbing him by his poorly knotted red tie and wordlessly pulling him along behind her until they were both stumbling through the door to the front. 

Steve and Dustin shared a quick glance between each other before shooting up to follow them

“Robin? Hey, Robin hey! What are- what’re you doing?” Steve called as she scooped the impressive bundle of bills out of the tip jar, brandishing it with an appraising smile. 

“I need cash and Eddie’s van,” she said as if that explained literally anything, continuing to drag a wide-eyed but generally docile Eddie along with her. 

“Well some of that’s mine! Where’re you going?”

“To find us a way into that room! A safe way!” she called back loudly, though none of the other mall goers seemed to care enough to look for more than a second. 

“And, in the meantime, sling ice cream, behave, and don’t get beat up! We’ll be back in a jiff!

And like that, they disappeared into the crowd in a blur of red, white, and blue. 

………

Chapter Text

If Eddie hadn’t been before, he was entirely convinced now that Robin Buckley was a grade-A genius. 

The two were almost giddy in their triumph as they rushed back into his van, the band nerd proudly brandishing the plans she’d bought off of the dead-behind-the-eyes clerk at the County Recorder's Office with their tips. 

“Un-be-lievable, Buckley,” he over enunciated with a grin so big it pulled almost achingly at his cheeks as he slammed his door behind him, shutting out the stifling humidity of the summer air. 

“I really can’t believe how easy that was,” she laughed along with him, shaking her head as she quickly buckled her seatbelt, gripping onto the handle above the door with notably less terror than she’d had on the way there when he’d ripped out of the Starcourt parking lot to the sweet sweet sound of the intro guitar riff of Seek and Destroy, which started up once again without her immediately stopping it this time. 

He’d call that progress. 

“Like, that was scarily simple to do!”

“Most things are with a little green incentive,” Eddie chuckled as he rubbed the tips of his fingers together, checking his six before pulling out with a bit more caution for her sake. 

They fell into a companionable silence as Robin looked over the plans with a single minded focus Eddie couldn’t help but be impressed by. 

Buckley was cool. Comic nerd cool, but still cool. 

He wondered not for the first time if she would be able to apply her Russian puzzle solving skills at his table. He would have to up his game intensely if she ever decided to join in on a session of Hellfire, but he found himself excited at the prospect.

“So…” she broke the easy silence, Eddie glancing over to see her thumbing at the rolled corner of the plans as she sent him quick little side-eyes. 

“So?” he repeated with a nervous giggle, not at all liking the upward tilt of her lips as she turned fully toward him in her seat. 

“Steve, right?”

And they were remarkably lucky Eddie had already moved to hit the brakes before those words left her smug mouth, or else they would’ve been contending with a wrecked bumper.

“Uh. What about him?” Eddie asked as if he hadn’t just come incredibly close to clipping the little white sedan in front of them. 

They got a nice loud honk and a middle finger from the balding driver regardless.

Robin scoffed. 

“Don’t give me that, Munson. As a fellow nerd, I can tell you’re just as surprised as I am that he’s… like, actually ok to hang out with.”

Eddie clicked his teeth together thoughtfully, his grip on the steering wheel just this side of too tight. 

She didn’t know.

What a fucking relief. 

Feeling infinitesimally safer, he tapped his fingers along to the crashing symbols leading into the explosive first verse as he took a careful right turn. 

She was absolutely right. He was genuinely fucking floored that he found the King’s presence tolerable; desirable, even. 

He’d always enjoyed ruffling the feathers of the assorted high school bourgeoisie as well as the royalty; parading around with only half false bravado, performing his outrageous speeches, and teasing the grumbling jocks past the point anyone else would be able to get away with. 

But King Steve had always been… different from the rest. 

King Steve was, for lack of a better word, untouchable. 

He was devastatingly handsome, athletically inclined, effortlessly charming, smooth, and funny, and drew people in like ants to honey.

But he could also be cold and cruel, oftentimes standing to the side and simply watching, utterly above it all, as Tommy Hagan and the rest of his pack of ferocious middle class hyenas tore a lesser life form to shreds for his amusement and approval. 

Eddie couldn’t honestly say he hadn’t noticed a change in Harrington after Christmas break, his first try at Senior year in ‘83. 

He’d watched as that familiar douchey maroon Beemer pulled into the school parking lot, Steve hopping out, running around to the passengers side, and opening the door for Nancy Wheeler like some kind of gentleman. 

He could still feel, clear as day, the sinking twisting sensation that’d settled in his gut at the sight of them, walking into school hand in hand, completely ignoring the heckling calls of Tommy and Carol. 

Harrington had stared turning in his homework, much to the surprise of Mrs. Click who’d stopped asking for it two months into the semester. 

He’d stopped cracking jokes in class; had started taking notes instead, holding his stupid pencil between his pearly white teeth and scrunching up his brow when something confused him, and raising his hand to ask the dumbest questions, and giving a nod and a glowing smile when said questions were answered to his liking before dutifully scribbling down even more notes, and that’s precisely when Eddie had really and truly lost the battle with the logical side of his brain and had fallen for him. 

Even so, he’d never expected the other boy to be so… caring. 

The way he’d put himself between Eddie and that Commie security guard the other night, facing off with the man without a second thought or concern for his own safety. 

And then, once the threat had been neutralized, he’d turned toward Eddie with that concerned little frown on his rain soaked face and he’d asked him if he was ok and he’d actually waited for his answer like he gave a shit. 

Eddie realised a little too late that he’d left Robin’s not-question unanswered. 

“I guess he is,” he shrugged quickly, trying not to let his internal struggle show too clearly on his face. 

It must’ve worked to some extent, because Robin was back to looking over the plans with a casual little smirk, bopping her head along to the drum beat during the build of the guitar solo before the third verse. 

“I guess the cute little Sailor suit doesn’t hurt either?”

Eddie blanched as the mental image of lean muscled limbs wrapped in dark blue fabric came right smack back to the forefront of his mind; sleeves stretched tightly across toned biceps, shorts leaving just enough to the imagination to keep Eddie deliciously curious, strong hands restlessly spinning that damned scooper he kept on hand. 

Hands that’d very recently been on Eddie, grabbing him firmly by his hips and manhandling him like a petite heroine in one of those ridiculous romance films instead of like a fully grown man his own height.

He came clambering back to reality with a cackle from Robin and several loud angry honks. 

Near Car Crash 2: Electric Boogaloo. 

The van brakes squealed their objections as he slammed his foot down once again, stopping just short of the stop sign he very nearly ran and startling a flock of pigeons out of a nearby tree. 

“What-“ he started, wheezing a little as the old woman taking her time crossing the street in front of them whacked the hood of the van with her cane, sending him a sour look, which was honestly fair. “What are you implying, Buckley?”

Robin pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, looking far too pleased with herself for someone who very nearly caused two car accidents over the span of one seven minute Metallica song. 

“Oh, nothing at all, Munson,” she answered teasingly. 

“Nothing. At. All.”

So maybe she did know something. 

Fuck. 

Thinking quickly, a gift afforded to him from many years spent perfecting his craft as a top tier DM, he scoffed out a laugh and shot her a teasing smile. 

“What’s the matter, Buckley? Afraid I’ll steal him away from you with my stunning good looks and charm? I really don’t think you need to worry about that.”

He leaned in for the last part, whisper shouting over the final chorus of: “Searching, seek, and destroy!”

“I really don’t think I’m his type.”

“Yeah?” Robin chuckled raspily, her nose wrinkling as she playfully shoved at Eddie’s shoulder. 

“Well I know he’s not my type.”

The words came out of her mouth the moment the music had cut off with one final kick of the drums and squeal of the guitar, deafeningly loud in the sudden silence as the next track started; Raw Deal by Judas Priest. 

How fitting. 

He chanced a slow glance over toward Robin to see her staring straight ahead over the dash, her face stark white and her knuckles matching perfectly down to the palid shade where her shaking hands gripped the flimsy paper in her lap, audibly crinkling the edges. 

Eddie winced in sympathy as they slowed to a stop at a red light, not quite knowing if he should reach out and pat her on the shoulder or say something or… what?

What was the protocol when your coworker of one week accidentally came out to you whilst needling you far too accurately about your own hopeless crush on your other coworker. 

Your very male coworker. 

Once again, with feeling; fuck. 

“So…” he started after a deep breath, feeling the need to break the oppressive silence filled with absolutely nothing but pure tension and Rob Halford’s vocals before he exploded or something. 

“What is your type? Are you more of a… a Beverly Marsh kinda girl, or do you go more for a Chrissy Cunningham type?”

He watched with a deep sense of relief and satisfaction as Robin’s rigid shoulders relaxed back into the dingy cushion of the passenger seat, her hands relinquishing their strangling hold on the crinkled edges of the paper. 

“Actually,” she giggled, eyes sweeping nervously over to Eddie who grinned encouragingly. 

“I’ve held a pathetic little candle for Tammy Thompson ever since freshman year when she complimented my earrings during the ‘Getting to Know You’ game in homeroom,” she let out in one breath, as if she’d been holding it in for ages, which she honestly probably had been. 

“Tone Deaf Tammy?” Eddie let out almost hysterically before he could stop himself, slapping a hand over his mouth to force down his sputtering as Robin solidly smacked his shoulder. 

“I swear I’m not judging you,” he managed to choke out, his shoulders shaking with unconcealable mirth. 

“You’d better not be!” she replied sternly, though she wasn’t quite able to hold back her own raucous laughter at the loud angry honk from the car behind them, alerting Eddie to the green light he’d almost sat entirely through. 

“Don’t worry, Buckley. I think we’ve already established that I have drastically poor taste in men considering my longstanding and apparently painfully obvious crush on Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.”

“Only painfully obvious to a fellow queer,” Robin reassured, gently patting his elbow with a surprisingly kind smile. 

“By the way, you’re literally the first person I’ve ever told apart from my childhood bunny Mr. Wiggums.”

“I swear to be just as discreet,” Eddie stated with false solemnity but very real sincerity, raising his right hand and crossing his heart. 

“Me too, Munson. Your secret is safe with me,” she nodded as she mirrored his actions before linking their fingers together in an odd vertical handshake. 

“But that doesn’t mean I won’t take every opportunity possible to ruthlessly make fun of you.”

“Fair enough, Buckley.”

Fair enough. 

-

The plan was kind of ridiculous.

Then again, the entire situation was ridiculous, so who the fuck was Eddie to judge?

They’d arrived back to the mall in record time, breaking more than a few minor traffic laws to get there if only to spare Eddie from any more snappy and devastatingly accurate Robin Buckley one-liners. 

Eddie had stood off to the side whilst Robin talked through her discovery of the thankfully very well mapped ventilation system of Starcourt, drawing a neat red line from Scoops to the top secret room they’d scouted out the night before, circling it several times like a bullseye. 

He’d muffled his amused snickering behind his hand as he stood against the wall and watched Steve attempt to wrestle Dustin back out of the air duct after his failed attempt to crawl in, the preteen insistently yelling:

“C’mon! Pull Harrington! Use your stupid muscles!”

Eddie had watched appreciatively as said muscles flexed, his slim and slightly tapered waistline revealed more and more under his scrunched up uniform top as he raised his arms higher and higher to pull at Henderson’s scrawny legs. And was that a happy trail he could just see; a veritable feast for Eddie’s hungry eyes. 

He hadn’t even cared when he’d caught Robin’s gaze, her red lips quirking upward in a knowing little smile that said:

‘You’re so far gone it’s ridiculous.’

Little Erica Sinclair had stood beside him, arms crossed and hip popped as she too watched the scene before them with a judgmental and decidedly unimpressed purse to her lips. 

Once Henderson had finally been released from the confines of the air duct, very nearly toppling Steve off of the ladder in the process, Erica had stepped forward to survey her task. 

It didn’t take long before Eddie had been banished to the front at her bidding to conjure up a U.S.S. Butterscotch, as he was evidently:

“The only damn one of the three of you who makes it right.”

He didn’t miss the way Harrington’s eyes had rolled at that, his nose wrinkling as if he wanted nothing more than to argue with the overshorts-clad child about his ice cream scooping credentials. 

Eddie snorted to himself as he expertly selected and yanked a banana off of the rack on the wall, slapping it down on the counter and picking up the flimsy little knife they were supplied for all of their fruit slicing needs.

It was covered in brown stringy banana bits and Eddie tsked to himself. 

Harrington always forgot to clean it after using it. 

As he wiped the dull blade on his apron, he was struck with the sudden feeling that there was someone watching him, the hair at the back of his neck standing on end in a primal sort of warning. 

It took little more than a few seconds of searching before his eyes landed on the familiar stoic visage of the Soviet security guard from the night before, piercing gaze following his every move like a bloodthirsty predator hiding in the tall grass, ready to pounce. 

His forearm throbbed with the memory of the man’s iron grip, the finger shaped bruises a fresh purply red that stood out starkly against his pale skin like another tattoo. 

Before he could think better of it, he shot the man a cheeky grin and waved with the newly cleaned knife. 

“Hey man! You here for a scoop?” he called out loudly towards the guard, who furrowed his heavy brow at him in what he had to assume was confusion. 

“Might I recommend the cherry sorbet? It’s the perfect balance between sweet and tart, and it makes your tongue go bright red. You look like a red kinda guy.”

Shut up, Munson. Now is not the time to try to be funny. 

The guard sent him a heated glare before turning away and disappearing into the crowd as if he’d never been there in the first place. 

He had the distinct feeling that would be coming back to bite him in the ass.

As the other three, plus Sinclair the Younger, emerged from the back room to slide into a booth and continue their aggressive negotiations, Eddie set to work crafting the overly complicated spilt. 

The U.S.S. Butterscotch. 

He twirled the little knife in his dexterous fingers, slicing the banana in half into the long bowl, dipping and placing the scoops, strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla delicately in between, topping them each individually with strawberry sauce, hot fudge, and butterscotch, followed by fluffy whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, and one cherry each, and carefully adorning each one with a waffle cone sail. 

Fuckin’ bodacious. 

He really was good at this shit. What a bummer. 

He sauntered over to the table the others were waiting at, grinning as he set the picture perfect split down in front of its greedy little recipient.

Erica looked it over expertly, lips pursed thoughtfully before she nodded, appeased. 

“That’s a U.S.S. Butterscotch,” she said as she snatched up the spoon and chowed down as if she didn’t have a full hot fudge sundae not even two hours prior. 

With the little capitalist gremlin appeased, phase one of their ridiculous plan was a go. 

……… 

Chapter Text

The humid summer air had cooled significantly with the setting of the sun, something Steve was endlessly grateful for as he really hadn’t been looking forward to the possibility of sweating his ass off on the rooftop they were currently staking out. 

To the right of him, Robin held down the button Dustin had showed her on the walkie talkie, speaking softly into it with that raspy tone of hers. 

“Erica, do you copy?” 

There was a beat of quiet before the other end clicked. 

“Mh-hm, I copy. You nerds in position or what?”

“Yeah, we’re in position. It’s all quiet here, so you’ve got the green light.”

“Green light. Roger that. Commence Operation Child Endangerment.”

Steve and Robin winced in tandem, shooting each other pinched looks. 

“Can we maybe not call it that?” she said as Steve nodded, trying his utmost to ignore the writhing knot of anxiety and the little bit of guilt twisting in his gut. 

Maybe a sprinkling of nausea?

Call it his babysitter’s instinct. 

“See you on the other side, nerds.”

Eddie snorted softly from the far left beside Dustin, drawing Steve’s gaze. 

As usual. 

“What a delightful child,” he commented, arm stretching across Dustin’s back to slap a warm hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

The contact was quick, barely a tap, but Steve’s skin still flushed feverishly beneath it in a way he couldn’t fully explain. He was glad, not for the first time, that Robin was the one with the walkie talkie, because he absolutely would’ve dropped it off the side of the building.  

The line went silent, the four of them waiting with baited breath for what felt like an eternity before the walkie clicked to life once again with a little staticky hiss of feedback. 

“Alright nerds. I’m there.”

The group heaved a collective sigh. 

“Do you- do you see anything?” Robin questioned, and Steve could hear the anxious excitement in her voice clear as day. 

It was strikingly similar to the tone she got when a large group of girls stood at the counter and asked her for flavor recommendations or complimented her makeup. 

“Yeah. I see those boring boxes you’re so excited about.” 

“Any guards?”

“Negative.”

“Booby traps?”

“If I could see them, they’d be pretty shit traps, wouldn’t they?”

Steve tried not to roll his eyes at their back and forth, tapping his finger against the concrete below him as he forced himself to stay still. 

He’d never been particularly good at staying still. 

Robin sighed a long suffering sort of sigh. 

“Thank you for that.”

After yet another long pause, one that had Steve practically rocking with nervous energy, Erica chimed in once again.

“I’m in.”

“Oh god,” Steve groaned, rubbing his hands over his eyes as the weight of those words truly hit him. 

They were really doing this. 

Eddie and Dustin cheered silently next to him, shaking each other by the shoulders in their excitement as the metal doors creaked open and Erica stood proudly before them. 

“Free ice cream. For. Life,” she stated, punctuating her sentence with the back and forth wave of a finger

“I think that’s only fair,” Eddie spoke with a grunt as he pushed himself to his feet, pulling Dustin up by the hand. 

“Come on. Let’s get down there before Red Guardian comes back with his massive gun,” Robin whispered, handing Dustin the walkie talkie and springing to her feet. 

The preteen stared after her with proverbial stars in his eyes, and Steve couldn’t quite fight back the urge to roll his eyes. 

Steve moved to follow, freezing as an all too familiar hand was extended toward his face, palm up and waiting expectantly, silver rings glinting in the scant light of dusk. 

Deep brown eyes met his, two flickering headlights on a long stretch of road, alight with amusement clearer than glass, and Steve’s cheeks flushed with warmth that he couldn’t quite attribute to the humid night air. 

He got a flashback to his Senior year in the gym, warm brown eyes replaced with a cruel sea blue, the hand held out to him taunting rather than helping. 

He briefly wondered if Eddie would pull the same move, yank him up just enough to crowd towards his face and deliver a growling line before dropping him, but he waved the thought off the moment it had made itself known. 

Eddie Munson wasn’t anything like Billy Hargrove. 

Swallowing down the weird lump in his throat, he took Eddie’s proffered hand, allowing him to help pull him to his feet. 

“Red Guardian? What a fucking nerd,” Eddie chuckled quietly, leaning in very close to Steve’s face because he really just didn’t seem to understand the concept of personal space.

Steve vaguely remembered that it used to bother him. 

He was close enough now that every breath Steve took in through his nose brought in the now familiar earthy and spicy scent that seemed to cling relentlessly to the other boy; the artificial cherry and tobacco on his breath, the wafting smell of citrus, weed, leather, and sweat. 

Everything about him was so warm and familiar, like the all-encompassing heat of a crackling fire; the one he’d dreamed of sitting beside on the camping trip he’d always begged his father to take him on. 

It took Steve a moment to remember to answer him, his tongue heavy in his mouth and his pulse distractingly loud in his ears as he stared right back into those dark brown depths.

Deep dark brown with molten gold in the center.

He’d never noticed that before.

“You’re one to talk,” he shot back, forcing down the nervous laugh bubbling up in his throat as if it would give away the odd roiling rumble of hithertofore unexamined feelings that’d overtaken his previous anxiety. 

Eddie’s dark honey eyes squinted, the edges crinkled with mirth as that huge grin stretched across his face, and it was like looking directly into the sun, and Steve was pretty sure that made him that Icarus guy Ms. Hudson had made him write a book report on to pass Junior year English, because he suddenly couldn’t look away, not even as that grin slipped slightly out of place and those dark brows pinched together in transparent confusion; concern?

Every expression on Eddie’s face was so painfully readable, so incredibly genuine. Steve was almost envious of his ability to just… be; he always had been. 

There was no pretense, no pretty lies and fake smiles, no bullshit with Eddie Munson. He was completely and unapologetically and embarrassingly himself, something Steve had never been allowed to be. 

“You good, Harrington?” Eddie inquired, his voice low, his smile tilted and unsure, as if he could sense the unease building in Steve’s gut. 

Steve sucked in a long breath through his mouth if only to get away from the all-encompassing smell of the other boy, finally tearing his eyes away to glance downward. 

His traveling gaze landed on their still clasped hands, the grasp becoming sweaty and just this side of too warm, though he for some reason couldn’t bring himself to let go. 

His eyes trailed up from long calloused fingers twined around his own, past a surprisingly bony wrist wrapped in a black Casio watch, along a slim pale forearm decorated with distinct purple bruises where that security guard had grabbed him. 

“Yeah…” he breathed finally, his grip tightening infinitesimally as the memory of that encounter, of how close the man had pulled Eddie in to whisper threateningly directly in his face, sent a shot of anger as sharp and keen as a lightning strike through him that briefly overshadowed every other competing emotion holding court in his muddled mind. “You?”

Those rings dug into the side of his hand in a way that was almost painful, but strangely grounding, like an anchor tying down a balloon during a hurricane. 

A silence passed between the two, different from the one before; charged with… something. 

The only sounds in the world were the quickened beating of Steve’s heart and a staticky car radio from the distant parking lot, blaring out:

“You’re just
Just
Just wasting time.
Something happens and I’m head over heels. 
I never find out till I’m head over heels-“

But even Tears for Fears slowly began to fade away as the car sped off into the night, leaving them once again in the strange and heady silence. 

“I’m- uh…” Eddie started in what was just barely a whisper but was still somehow too loud, Steve watching closely as his tongue suddenly flickered out, swiping across his plush and slightly chapped bottom lip. 

The corners of his mouth turned upward in a more subdued smile as he seemed to struggle to find his words, an issue he was damn near certain the other boy had never had before.

He twirled a lock of hair around his finger, pulling it in front of his face as if to hide behind it.

Cute. 

What?

“Hey! Dingus’s one and two!” Robin whisper-shouted from the doorway of the stairwell, shattering the strange and dizzying spell that’d fallen over the two like a blanket of fog in the cool early morning. 

“What part of let’s go and massive gun did you not understand?”

Steve snatched his hand back out of Eddie’s surprise slackened grip like a child caught digging in the cookie jar, rubbing away the cold sweat beading at the nape of his neck. 

He wordlessly jabbed a thumb over toward the stairwell, not fully trusting in his ability to form sentences around his heart, which was firmly lodged in his throat, as he nodded and hurried to follow after Robin and Dustin. 

Their quick footsteps echoed in the stairwell and Steve took the short moment to gather himself, all but physically shaking the strange haze from his brain. He flexed his clammy hand at his side, the skin of it tingling where it had met with Eddie’s. 

He was certain he’d have little indents where the bands of his rings had pressed into the spaces between his fingers. 

What the fuck?

They rushed out of the stairwell to meet Erica, who tapped her little sneaker against the tarmac impatiently as if having to wait for them was some great inconvenience for her. 

As if she had something better to do than full blown espionage in the name of patriotism. 

“Took you long enough,” she scoffed as she spun on her heel, traipsing fearlessly back into the room with a perfectly executed eye roll. 

Steve bit back his grumbled response, hurrying to the entrance and ushering the others in quickly whilst keeping a close watch on their surroundings. 

All was quiet. 

Easy peasy. 

The moment Steve was safely through them, the doors eased shut behind them with a metallic clank, and they were faced with their goal; the whole stupid reason they were there in the first place. 

Steve wasted no time approaching the boxes, the others following quickly to gather around him in anticipation. 

He patted his pockets briefly, huffing out a soft curse as he came up with only loose change and crumpled receipts, before something shiny was presented in his periphery, Eddie wordlessly holding out a silver and black handled pocket knife. 

Steve nodded his thanks, taking it, flicking it open, and slicing through the packing tape on the top of the box with the panda logo to reveal a metal case with four embedded handles. 

“That’s definitely not Chinese food.”

Everyone leaned in close as Steve reached for one of the handles, and a sudden fear shot through him; a deep seated sense of anxiety that had him freezing in place. 

“Uh,” he started, glancing around the small group. 

“Maybe you guys should, y’know, stand back.” 

He waved a hand for emphasis and everyone moved immediately, Robin retreating a few steps while Erica and Eddie hopped onto two of the other boxes and sat. 

But Dustin stepped closer to Steve’s side, crossing his arms tightly with a stubborn set to his jaw. 

“No,” he said simply, shaking his head.

Steve closed his eyes briefly, letting out a frustrated sigh and reaching out to push Dustin away. 

“Just- Just step back, ok?”

“No.”

“Step back!”

“No.”

“Seriously-“ Steve began to yell when Dustin pushed his shielding arm away, taking another step closer to his side. 

“No! If you die, I die,” he stared with more determination than Steve had ever seen on his terribly young face. 

A moment of stunned silence passed over the group as all eyes flickered over to Steve, as if to wordlessly wonder what an asshole like him could’ve possibly done to earn such intense loyalty from the nerdy preteen. 

He couldn’t deny, the words hit deep, settling in his stomach and tightening his throat in a way he really wasn’t accustomed to. 

He struggled not to show it as he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 

“Okay.”

Without further preamble, he gripped and twisted the handle, pulling out something large and cylindrical with a hydraulic hiss; a case of some kind, like the sci-fi equivalent of a thermos, filled with glowing green goo. 

“What the hell,” he breathed as he held it up higher toward the light. 

“What is that?” Robin questioned from her place to his left, taking a few steps forward as she eyed the mystery substance. 

Eddie snorted in the way he usually did before telling one of his nerdy little jokes, squatting on his spot perched on top of a stack of boxes. 

“So the green slime are coming!”

Steve wrinkled his nose in confusion, the others mirroring his expression as they all turned to look at the smirking metalhead who hugged his knees to his chest and shrugged. 

“Not horror fans, I take it? That figures.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth when the wrenching sound of groaning metal filled the air, the floor rumbling and shaking beneath their feet like a tilting room in a funhouse. 

Steve swayed off balance for half a second before he managed to steady himself, tightening his grip on the handle of the container. 

The rumbling stopped, leaving the air vibrating in Steve’s lungs as he glanced around the room with wide eyes. 

“… Was that just me, or did the room move?” Dustin spoke up. 

All eyes looked upward toward the ceiling as if it would present any sort of answer to their questions, met only with flickering lights that sent a deep cold dread shooting down Steve’s spine. 

“Booby traps,” Erica put forth with a worried twist to her mouth as she hopped down from her spot on a box. 

All at once, the rumbling started again, this round more intense than the first. 

Steve’s hand shot out to pull Dustin upright as he stumbled forward, hugging him protectively to his side. 

Robin braced herself against the wall behind her, Eddie jumping down from his box tower to squat down low beside Erica. 

“You know what?” Robin called as the room settled for the second time. She pointed to the green goo and jerked a thumb animatedly towards the door with a worriedly furrowed brow. 

“Let’s just grab that and go!”

Not needing to be told twice, Dustin pulled himself from Steve’s grip and ran to the control box, repeatedly pressing one of the blue buttons to no effect. 

“Which one do I press, Erica?”

“Just press the damn button, nerd,” Erica snapped as she dusted herself off, shooting Dustin an icy glare. 

“Which one? I’m pressing the button, okay?”

“Press Open Door!”

“I’m pressing open door!” Dustin shouted back as he jammed the button in repeatedly, panic and indignation raising his voice even higher. 

Steve squeezed his eyes closed for a moment against his anxiety induced headache, quickly making his way over toward the two bickering children. 

“Just open the- press the other button,” he gritted out through tightly clenched teeth as he shoved his way in front of the control box and started to aggressively mash at the button. 

They descended into a loud argument, all caution or fears of being caught thrown to the wind as they tried every damn button on the panel while Robin yelled out a frantic and frustrated:

“Just open the door!”

The breath left Steve’s body in a punch when, over the noise of their arguing, a thick metal door slid down from the ceiling to cover the initial doors, locking in place with a definitive hiss and click. 

“Oh shit,” he and Eddie said in tandem.

And suddenly the whole damn room was falling. 

………

Eddie was screaming. 

Fuck, everyone was screaming. 

The goddamn room was free falling; like, actually falling, like some shitty broken ride at a carnival that existed for a lawsuit. 

Eddie’s stomach was in his throat, a similar feeling to hitting a huge bump in the road and rising out of your seat with the force of it.

He’d always hated that feeling. 

His eyes protested at the flickering overhead lights, squeezing shut against the instant nausea, his ears buzzing with the deafening sound of his unlikely friends crying out in terror as they plummeted to their doom. 

He yelped as a particularly hard jolt sent him stumbling backwards, arms flailing uselessly for something to grab onto as he struggled to stay upright. 

In less than a heartbeat, strong arms wound around his waist, pulling him in against a warm chest and securing him there in a pose reminiscent of the cover of a cheesy bodice-ripper romance novel.

Uh-oh.

The smell of expensive cologne and hairspray mixed with cold sweat filled his nostrils and he didn’t dare open his eyes for fear of somehow further humiliating himself in his apparent last few moments on earth. 

He could feel Steve’s rapid heartbeat against his hands, which were trapped against his chest in the crushing embrace; could feel large calloused hands holding him firmly in place, fingers splayed across the clammy skin of his back where his own uniform shirt had ridden up.

He could feel the solid muscle of Steve’s left thigh between his own, further anchoring him to the spot but also sending him to goddamn outer space.

Thank Christ he was too scared right then to be horny.

“Shit! Shit!” Dustin shrieked, his shrill voice cracking in visceral terror. 

“We’re going down! We’re going down!” Steve yelled out, voice far too loud in Eddie’s ear. 

Shit, they were close. Closer than Eddie ever imagined they’d get.

“Yeah no shit, Harrington!” Robin snapped from her spot on the floor, gripping with white knuckles onto the box behind her. 

Dustin flailed as he slammed his palm against the control panel in a panic, quickly joined by an equally frantic Erica. 

“Why don’t these buttons work?!”

“Come on, press something! Just press the button!” Steve cried out as his arms tightened further around Eddie, crushing their bodies together in a way that would have had him soaring if it weren’t for their fast approaching and imminent death via faulty secret Russian elevator room. 

Eddie buried his face in the sweaty warmth of Steve’s neck, tightly clinging onto the other boy’s solid biceps because if these were gonna be his last moments alive, he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to get at least a little enjoyment out of it. 

Damn Jim Hopper, damn the Russians, and honestly, damn him for letting Steve Harrington drag him into this godforsaken situation with his pretty hazel doe eyes and his soft pink lips and his shockingly bearable personality and his stupid stupid hair-

Suddenly, with a bang and a screech of metal, the room came to a jarring halt. 

Eddie grunted as his body was thrown with the sheer force of it, the air punching out of his chest as a heavy weight landed on top of him. 

They weren’t falling anymore. 

Had they reached the bottom?

Were they dead?

That would be a bummer and a half. 

He’d really been looking forward to finally listening to that Megadeth album. He could almost see it now, trapped in the hold box at Sam Goody, cursed to be shelved amongst the sparse and unkempt metal section they refused to stock, to gather dust when he was too deceased to come and pick it up. 

He knew his head should’ve ached so much more where it had collided with the solid metal floor; his shoulders and his ass certainly did. 

Could one feel pain if one was dead?

When he’d finally worked up the courage to open his eyes, he half expected to be blinded by that mystical white light everyone swore you saw when you died; the light at the end of the tunnel.

What he hadn’t expected was Steve Harrington’s handsome and dazed face, mole-dotted cheeks flushing pink from pure adrenaline as he too seemed to be struggling to catch his breath. 

Hazel eyes met his and he suddenly understood two things:

One, that Steve’s hand was cradling the back of his head, protecting it from what would’ve been a brutal strike against the floor at the cost of his own knuckles. 

And two, that Steve was, at that very moment, fully on top of him, muscular thighs caging in his hips, elbows planted on either side of his head, nose mere inches away from his own. 

Steve Harrington, former King of Hawkins High, well known heart throb, and longtime tenant of Eddie’s shameful secret fantasies, was straddling him, pinning him to the floor of a Russian elevator after saving him from sustaining a no doubt nasty concussion. 

Scratch what he’d thought earlier; Chief Jim Hopper was a goddamn treasure. 

“Uh,” Eddie tried, his voice raspy and wrecked from his fearful screaming as he stared up at Harrington with what had to be a positively dumbfounded expression. 

He watched as realization hit the ex-jock’s face like a well aimed punch, his weight immediately leaving Eddie’s hips as Steve flung himself to unsteady feet, stumbling in his urgency and knocking over a few boxes. 

Eddie willed his racing pulse to slow, taking in a quivering breath he hoped to whoever was in charge up there that nobody heard. 

“Is everyone ok?” Robin called out, her own voice just as unsteady as Eddie felt as she pulled herself carefully to her feet. 

“Yeah,” Steve replied quickly, just this side of hysterical as he ran a hand roughly through his hair, which still somehow looked artfully messy and gorgeous, because of course it did. 

“I’m great now that I know that Russians can’t design elevators!” he finished with a shout, pushing Dustin out of the way of the control box to slam his fist against the buttons. 

“I think we’ve clearly established that the buttons don’t work!” Robin reasoned with a sweeping motion toward him. 

Steve shook his head, his movements only becoming more desperate.

“They’re buttons! They have to do something!” he insisted. 

Eddie stopped listening to their back and forth as he finally managed to get some semblance of a grip over himself, focusing on checking on Dustin and Erica, sweeping his eyes over them both to check for any obvious external injuries. 

Nothing much worse than scrapes and slowly forming bruises. 

He tuned back in the moment Dustin turned to the others, finishing Robin’s sentence with a poignant:

“We’re stuck in here.”

“Yeah,” Robin agreed, and Eddie had to admit, he hated the way her shoulders drooped and her eyes scrunched as she seemed to fight back her panic. 

This was bad. 

This was really really fucking bad. 

………

Chapter Text

Steve was honestly concerned at this point that he was just a magnet for trouble. 

First, the girl he was dating in Junior year unwittingly pulled him into a battle against an interdimensional monster, and he was too stupid to run away when she’d told him to. 

Then, he managed to show up to attempt to win said girlfriend back at the exact moment some rando kid needed someone to help him with his little demo-pet problem. 

And now here he was, trapped with the same kid, his most annoying customer, and his two smartass coworkers in a top secret Russian elevator with no food, no water, no timeframe, and the looming threat of Mrs. Sinclair’s mystical wrath for having made Erica miss her Uncle Jack’s birthday party. 

Honestly, what the fuck?

He must’ve done something truly heinous in a past life to deserve this sort of karmic retribution. 

Or maybe it was payback for how shitty he’d been pre-life-altering disasters; a purgatory for inconsiderate asshole jocks too preoccupied with being Prom King to see how they hurt the ones they deem beneath them. 

It’s not like it was him beating up freshmen or verbally humiliating anyone who had the audacity to be weird or different. That had been left up to people like Billy Hargrove, Tommy and Carol, or Andy Johnson and the rest of his buddies on the basketball team. 

Bloodthirsty, unsatisfied with their mundane suburban lives and their miserable personalities, so they had to go and take it out on other people just to feel something. 

Before he’d had his shit deservedly rocked by Jonathan Byers and his eyes opened to the existence of monsters in their world, he’d usually found himself either ignoring or occasionally laughing along with Tommy’s cruel antics. 

Whether it was because he genuinely found it entertaining or he was simply too scared to go against the grain, to dash other people’s expectations of him, to suddenly seem uncool, he really couldn’t tell, but wasn’t that the same damn thing?

Wasn’t that just as bad, if not worse, as him actually throwing the punches himself?

The thought sent a familiar zing of guilt through him, settling deep in his gut like a particularly nasty cramp after a four mile run.  

He liked to think he’d become a better person since then, the process most definitely helped along by dropping Tommy and Carol, and not just temporarily like he’d done in second grade when Tommy had cut a chunk out of the back of Steve’s hair during recess and refused to apologise for it, laughing and telling him not to be such a baby. 

Without their toxic influence over him, pressuring him and pushing him and smothering him in bullshit, Steve was finally able to focus on himself. 

He no longer sat back or turned a blind eye.

He went toe to toe with Billy fucking Hargrove, and he had the scar from the broken plate neatly hidden in his hairline to prove it. 

Even so, he still wondered what his life would’ve been like if he’d done that sort of thing from the start. 

If he hadn’t befriended Tommy in kindergarten during recess, but instead went to sit with weirdo Johnny Byers; two little weirdos hogging the turtle shaped sandbox instead of one. 

If he’d grown up with the all encompassing warmth of the Byers household instead of the cold loneliness of his own. 

If he’d been sneaking out for midnight bike rides with the strange photographer instead of concerningly underage benders.

Maybe he could’ve had friends who actually cared about him and not just about his big house and his parents money and his reputation. 

He could’ve been friends with Nancy instead of a ‘bullshit boyfriend’. He could’ve met the kids through her instead of in the midst of an interdimensional disaster or two.

Maybe they could’ve taught him their weird little nerd game?

He could’ve been friends with Robin. 

It only took a moment to locate her in the mess of boxes on the other side of the room, the band geek gesticulating wildly as she and Dustin did their damndest to figure out a plan of escape. 

Robin was… cool. Snarky and hyper and obnoxious, but also shockingly intelligent, dynamic, and fun. 

He imagined sitting with her, Nancy, and Jonathan at a lunch table, away from the filthy locker room talk and the insensitive jokes his fellow jocks tended toward. 

They would talk about the comics she was reading, the book report Nancy was working on, the music Jonathan liked.

He imagined studying with them, being led through his difficult subjects with thorough explanations and gentle words of understanding instead of scoffs of frustration and disappointment. 

Robin would’ve helped him keep his head on straight; not take shit so seriously. 

Not care about something as stupid as a reputation, even to the point where he missed out on all the amazing people he could’ve been hanging out with the whole time. 

Maybe he even could’ve been friends with Eddie?

Eddie, who was always so warm to the touch, the feeling of it burnt into Steve’s fingertips like he housed the sun itself under that pale skin of his. 

Eddie, who smelled like the sweet things he’d been snacking on and the smoke he’d been breathing on his breaks.

Eddie, who made fun of him ruthlessly and relentlessly, but still urged everyone to listen to him when he was speaking, who encouraged him when he figured things out, who leaned against him with those huge toothy grins and touched him with his calloused hands and…

And…

Weird. 

That was weird. 

“You good, Harrington?”

Cherry soda, smoke, mint, and sweat. 

Steve didn’t look up from his hands that he’d apparently been blindly staring down at for the entirety of his little trance.

He already knew what he’d see. 

“Uh, yeah. Just… Just thinking.”

Steve immediately anticipated the joke; the snarky little ‘well be careful not to hurt yourself, big guy’ or something of that ilk that he would inevitably laugh at, but would never stop thinking about after the fact. 

Everyone made that joke, and it hurt just the same every single time he heard it. 

But Eddie, yet again, surprised him with a gentle sigh, folding himself up on the ground beside him and fixing him with a look that promised his full and undivided attention. 

“About what?”

Their shoulders pressed together, warmth bleeding through their matching uniform shirts. 

He was close. 

Not as close as he had been before, when he’d clung to him like the world was ending, black painted nails digging painfully into the skin of his upper arms, hot breath tickling across his throat and collarbones.

But he was close enough that he could smell the lingering earthy scent of his shampoo in his hair, which hung loosely around his face in frizzy curls with the absence of his trusty hair tie.

Steve sucked in a deep breath, wiping his suddenly sweaty palms on his shorts. 

“About how I got here,” he answered honestly, because fuck it.

Eddie made a noise beside him; a quick ‘mhm’ as if to say:

“Well, go on. I’m listening.”

Steve sighed, pulling absently at a loose thread on his socks even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop once he’d started. 

He could almost hear his mother scolding him for ruining yet another pair, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. It’s not like she’d even been there to notice the last couple times he’d come home, once from the Byers’ house, once from the hospital, with his clothes ruined with dirt and blood, some his own and some an otherworldly monster’s. 

What was one sock in the grand scheme of things, anyway?

“It’s stupid, man,” Steve found himself saying, yanking at the errant thread and fucking up the sock even more than before. 

“I… I’ve been told for my entire life that I was gonna make something of myself, that I had no choice but to make something of myself, because I was a Harrington, dammit,” he mimicked his fathers stern tone, at least his vague memory of it from the last time he’d seen him at the beginning of the summer. 

“Expectations for me were always, like, stupidly high. And then… life started throwing these fucking curveballs at me and I… shit, I barely graduated. I was rejected from every university I applied to, because it doesn’t matter if you were popular or decent at sports or threw killer parties in High School if your grades were garbage. 

“So my old man cut me off and made me get a shitty summer job to, I dunno, humble me or some shit. Only reason he didn’t take away my car too is ‘cause he knew he wouldn’t be around to give me rides and he threw away my bike in Sophmore year after he caught me sneaking out with his expensive tequila.”

Steve let out a humourless little laugh as his guts churned like restless ocean waves during a storm. 

Heat travelled up his cheeks to settle behind his eyes, and he forced back his tears with practiced ease. 

Real men don’t cry, Steven. 

“Now I’m trapped in a Russian elevator halfway down to hell, surrounded by boxes of green goo, all because I was too stupid to go to college.”

There was a long moment of silence as those last words left Steve’s mouth, a heavy tangible weight settling between the two of them as their shoulders rose and fell in tandem with their synchronised breathing. 

It was almost relaxing, breathing in and out at Eddie’s easy pace, allowing the other boy’s quiet inhales and exhales to calm his racing mind. 

“Hey,” Eddie spoke up after a small eternity, his velvety-soft voice accompanied by another one of those burning hot touches that mixed up and melted his brain like ice cream under the blazing summer sun. Long ringed fingers squeezed his bare knee, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek. 

“That’s total nonsense, dude. You are smart. Sure, you might not’ve made all A’s. You’re sure as shit no Nancy Wheeler; none of us are. But you notice shit, man. You’re sharp and your funny and… Just… give yourself a little credit.”

Steve pressed his lips into a thin line as he allowed those words to sink in. 

His nose quivered in the way it did when he was about to cry, and he turned away from the other boy out of instinct more than anything, pinching at the bridge of his nose to ward away the buildup of tears once again threatening to spill past his carefully laid defenses. 

“Well,” Steve started as he cleared his throat, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as he leant his head against the box behind them. “I told you my shit, Munson. Why are you here? Your usual job not paying the bills?”

He couldn’t hold back the smile that stretched across his lips at Eddie’s light laugh, the sound so bright and easy despite their surroundings. 

When did this get so easy?

“Fair enough,” Eddie nodded, regrettably pulling his hand away from Steve’s knee, leaving it oddly cold. He folded his tattooed arms across his chest, the chain on his right wrist clicking against his crooked name tag. 

His name tag was always crooked.

Steve had noticed it since the beginning, the sight of it, along with the simple little bat drawn over the anchor beside his name in black sharpie, never failing to make him smile despite himself. 

He really didn’t know when he’d stopped thinking of Eddie as annoying; didn’t know when he’d started thinking of him as Eddie rather than Munson. 

“Business is usually good during the summer,” Eddie began, voice soft and low to keep their conversation private. 

Intimate. 

“Lots of teenagers with very little adult supervision looking for something stupid to get into. I was in the middle of a deal when Chief Hopper caught me. Couldn’t quite talk my way out of it this time.”

Eddie huffed a self deprecating little laugh, left hand untangling from the cradle of his right elbow as he raised it to rub at the back of his neck. 

“The Chief was apparently in a merciful mood, though. Instead of just arresting me, he made me get a job. I wasn’t allowed to choose where, since it was still some form of punishment. Figures he’d find one of the only places in the entire mall with a uniform dumber than Hotdog on a Stick.”

Steve snorted before he could stop himself, muffling it against his fist, but he could see those brown eyes in his periphery, glimmering with some sort of satisfaction. 

“But I guess it’s not all bad, what with the free ice cream, the surprisingly generous tips, and the, y’know, eye candy.”

And then he leaned in even closer than before and winked, and Steve’s stomach plummeted through the floor just like the elevator had not thirty minutes prior. 

A familiar feeling sunk its meaty claws into Steve’s guts, gripping on with the utter determination of a snarling demodog. 

He was disappointed. 

His eyes flickered back up to Robin; her admittedly striking freckled face, her dirty strawberry blonde hair, her bright knowing eyes, her soft looking red lips. 

Of course Eddie would be into her. 

He recalled the moment the two had come back from the County Recorder’s office, sharing secret smiles and knowing little looks that’d flown right over his head at the time. 

But now he got it. 

He forced a smile that he hoped would do well enough to hide the odd cocktail of emotions swirling around in his already troubled mind. 

“Yeah, man. I know.”

And he did.

Now. 

“Hey Steve?” a distraction in the form of Dustin Henderson called out.

Steve glanced up as the preteen approached, eyes flicking back and forth between him and Eddie, who still hadn’t moved out of his personal space. 

“Oh- Sorry to… interrupt?” he said slowly, tone upturned at the end questioningly. 

“You’re not interrupting anything, Henderson. What’s up?” he questioned through the lump in his throat, pushing himself up from his spot on the ground. He stretched out his tense body in an arch just for something to do, groaning at the series of pops along his stiff spine. 

Eddie stayed put, his face an odd shade of pink as he stared at his own hands, a mirror of Steve’s previous position. 

“Ok. Um… Can I talk to you? Alone?” Dustin spoke quietly, his expression shifting to something serious and perhaps even a little concerned, which was more than fair considering their current predicament. 

“Alone isn’t really an option at the moment, dude. If you hadn’t noticed,” he motioned pointedly around the room and Dustin sighed impatiently with the most dramatic eye roll he’d ever witnessed. 

He was always so damn impatient. 

“The roof, Steve,” he said simply before he was walking, leaving Steve to follow behind him as per usual. 

-

“Alright, Henderson. What is it?” he grunted out as he pulled himself through the hatch and into the endless elevator shaft, letting the door swing down with an echoing clank behind him. 

Dustin shifted anxiously on his feet and Steve’s expression softened immediately, his volume dropping as he took a knee beside him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“You ok, dude? What’s going on?”

“Have I ever told you about my Uncle John in New Jersey?” Dustin blurted out in a rush of words that had Steve’s head spinning as he fumbled to try to catch up with them. 

“Your- what? Your uncle?” Steve repeated, his nose scrunched in confusion as Dustin took in a deep breath like he usually did before launching off into one of his long-winded rants. 

“Yes, Steve. My Uncle John. He… ok. He lives in Tuckerton in a little apartment with his roommate… Brian.”

He paused, looking to Steve with a strange and meaningful gaze, like he’d just told a joke and was waiting for Steve to understand the punchline. 

“… okay?” Steve urged him to continue, circling his hand in the air between them in a ‘go on’ motion. 

Dustin sighed once again, and Steve rocked back on his bent leg, sitting fully on the cold metal beneath him to take away some of the pressure from his knee. 

“Ok, um… They’ve been living together since they met in college. Uncle John is… unmarried. So is Brian-“

“Jesus Christ, Henderson. If you’re seriously about to suggest that I’m going to end up bunking with a dude when I’m 40 just because I don’t wanna ask out Robin, I swear I’m gonna-“

“No no no, Steve. Just… Just listen.”

Dustin’s eyebrows pinched together beneath his curls and Steve nodded begrudgingly, closing his mouth and waiting for him to continue. 

“They’re unmarried because they… they have each other, ya’know what I mean? The whole family knows. Uncle John brings Brian to all of our Henderson family get togethers and they bring cookies. My mom always sends them home with too many of her special blueberry muffins. Brian is part of the family. We all love him, and we love them. Steve…”

Dustin placed a hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezed, and Steve didn’t fight the look of sheer confusion he knew was overtaking his face. 

“I just wanted you to know… if you ever need a safe place, you can always come to my house. You and Eddie both.”

The younger boy fixed him with that same meaningful stare, like a parent trying to reassure a child that they weren’t in trouble. It made him just a little nauseous. 

“Eddie? What do Eddie and I have to do with your Uncle and his…”

Oh. 

“Henderson,” Steve huffed, scrubbing a hand over his face as he well and truly processed what he’d just been told. 

“While the sentiment is… appreciated, I’m not a… Eddie and I aren’t… Jesus Christ, dude.”

“Steve it’s o-kay. Really! You have nothing to be afraid of with me. And I won’t tell anyone either, because I know that’s not ok, and-“

“Dustin!” Steve cut him off, waving his hands in front of him. 

“I promise you, it’s not like that. I’m pretty sure Eddie and Robin are into each other anyway, which I can’t really blame them for.”

Him. 

He’d meant to say ‘him’. He couldn’t blame Eddie for being into Robin. 

He was getting confused again, his thoughts spinning and dizzying and he really needed to get away from whatever this was. 

“Listen, Man. I’m gonna go back down and see if Robin has a plan yet. But… good talk, I guess?”

He patted the preteen’s shoulder twice, planting his hand on the second and using him to pull himself to his feet. 

He could feel Dustin’s eyes on the back of his head as he opened the hatch and jumped back down into the room. 

So that was really fucking weird. 

………

Eddie usually loved to watch Steve walk away, but this time…

He thought the conversation had been going remarkably well. He was pretty certain it was the longest they’d ever spoken without the words ‘freak’ or ‘asshole’ coming into play. 

But it had all gone to shit the moment Eddie had gotten too confident. Had leaned in and dared to flirt a little too openly with King Steve Harrington; had called him eye candy to his face, and had watched as that hard-won smile dropped from his lips, his eyes far away as he said two simple words that punched a gaping hole through Eddie’s still-beating heart:

“I know.”

And then he’d gotten up and followed Henderson out without sparing him a look, leaving Eddie to deal with his self-inflicted crisis alone. 

It didn’t take a genius to realise he’d fucked up in a major way. 

Harrington was as straight as they came; the golden boy, the fucking Prom King. 

And what was he?

The town freak, the drug dealer, the loud and obnoxious metalhead who flipped off the jocks when they bumped shoulders with him in the hallways. 

Who told Billy Hargrove in front of the entire lunch room to ‘mind his manners’ if he wanted to partake in his stock ever again. 

Who bared his teeth in baiting grins and joked and laughed like a fool in the King’s court and didn’t know when to fucking stop. 

He sucked in as deep a breath as he could with his admittedly shitty lungs, letting it out slowly and shakily. 

He needed to pull himself together before he lost it in a big way. 

Never let them see you weak, Ed. 

He smacked a palm against his forehead as if he could physically knock the memory, the hazy tear-blurred image of his grimacing dad, out of his mind completely. 

“Eddie?” Robin called out as she came to sit beside him, in the exact spot Steve had occupied before he…

“Are you ok?” she inquired, her raspy voice low and comforting. 

He pulled a lock of hair in front of his face, shaking his head against his palm as he squeezed his eyes shut tight against the sudden flow of tears that gathered faster than storm clouds in the sky in mid April. 

He always cried when someone asked him if he was ok. He couldn’t help it, no matter how hard he tried.

“You know what I was doing this morning?” he spoke with a pathetic waver to his voice, pulling his knees close to his chest as if he could simply curl up and disappear into nothing if he tried hard enough. 

“What?” Robin asked, crossing her legs in front of her and humoring him, because that’s just what she did. 

“I was having breakfast with my uncle. He gets off at six in the morning on Tuesdays, so I usually wake up early and make us some food so we can have a meal together before he goes to bed. He doesn’t really get days off super often, so it’s the only time we really get to spend together.”

Eddie wrapped his arms tightly around his knees, rocking back and forth so his back gently hit against the box behind him, the movement, the repetitive pressure, calming him ever so slightly as he continued to speak. 

“Today, while I was in the middle of shoveling cold mac n cheese in my mouth like an animal, he… he noticed…” 

Robin placed a gentle hand on his forearm, slowly beginning to rock with him as she silently encouraged him to keep going. 

“He could smell the aftershave I put on. I didn’t put on a lot, but he could tell. He got this knowing look on his face, and he set his coffee mug on the counter and… he asked me who ‘he’ was. Just… just like that. No judgement, no disgust, no hatred. He just asked me like it was normal and expected.

“So, I asked him how the hell he figured it out, and he just shook his head and told me he’d always known, ever since I was little, and that he didn’t care, so long as I was safe and careful and at least warned him when I was bringing a boy over. And that was it.”

Robin’s eyebrows were up to her hairline when Eddie finally managed to un-bury his face from the cradle of his knees and meet her gaze, her own eyes as watery and unfocused as his. 

He had little time to react before he was being pulled into the tightest hug of his life, crushed by Robin’s bony arms encircling him like a freckled boa constrictor. 

“That’s amazing, Eddie,” she spoke into his shoulder, wet tears dripping and soaking into the fabric of his uniform shirt. 

“Yeah…” Eddie agreed, snaking his own arms around her upper back and allowing himself to relax into the embrace. 

They rocked together slowly, soothingly, just like before, and Eddie was struck with this feeling of overwhelming gratitude. 

Because, sure, they might be looking at the very real possibility of starving to death together in a small metal room an immeasurable distance below the ground, but at least they had each other. 

At least he’d had the utter privilege of meeting and befriending Robin Buckley, trumpet player, comic book nerd, and his unlikely queer partner in Russian code breaking and espionage. 

“I hope I get to meet your Uncle one day, Eddie,” Robin whispered, her chin pressing into his shoulder with the cadence of her words. 

Eddie clenched his eyes shut, a single tear escaping through the barrier of his eyelashes and trailing ticklishly down his cheeks. 

“He’d love you. Really,” he answered with a sniffle. 

They clung to each other and rocked until they could both breathe right again. 

Until the occasional flicker of the lights and the creaking sounds of metal and the buzzing of electricity no longer overwhelmed them. 

Until Steve dropped back down through the hatch in the roof of the room, Eddie’s gaze pulled to him like a compass needle to the north, their eyes meeting before he could think better of it. 

Eddie watched in real time as Steve seemed to process the sight before him, his brows rising, his mouth falling into a surprised little ‘o’, his cheeks tinting a light and almost unnoticeable pink. 

Then, those eyes snapped away and refused to look back, even as Robin gave Eddie one final squeeze and rose from the ground to greet him. 

Eddie didn’t listen to their conversation, leaning his head back against the box and closing his eyes, focusing on his breathing. 

What a great fucking time to have a big gay crisis over a tragically straight guy whose shitty friends used to bully you in school. 

Truly the timing of the universe is un-fucking-paralleled.  

………

It had been a day. 

An entire day trapped helplessly in this stupid elevator, and Steve was going stir crazy. 

It was bad enough that the place was beginning to smell like teenage sweat and Dustin’s nervous farts, but now Steve was also stuck thinking about what Dustin had said about his gay uncle in New Jersey. 

About how certain Dustin had been that there was something less than straight going on between him and Eddie, which was… it was out of the question!

Eddie liked Robin. Robin liked Eddie. 

Neither of them were an option now. 

Not that Eddie had ever been an option in the first place. 

Steve wasn’t like that. 

He liked girls. He liked their soft hair and their glossy lips and the sweet scent of their perfume. He liked when they blushed after he whispered something suggestive in their ear. He liked how they felt beneath his hands, how they sounded and tasted. 

He was a well confirmed and well practiced ladies man, and proud of it. 

So…

Why couldn’t he stop looking at Eddie?

Why could he still feel the touch of his hand against the bared skin of his knee like a hot brand?

Why did the memory of his lithe body pressed flush against his own while they dropped to what he’d thought would be their death send a thrill down his spine even more heady than shooting a three pointer in crunch time?

He forced his focus elsewhere as he tuned back into his surroundings, Dustin’s voice echoing up the elevator shaft as he spoke determinedly into his walkie talkie, repeating the same damn sentence he’d been saying for the past twenty minutes. 

“This is a code red! I repeat, a code red! Does anyone copy?”

Steve pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, desperately trying to ward off the headache trapped behind them. 

“Batteries, dude. I told you,” he reminded the other, laying back against the cold metal beneath him with a deep groan. 

Below him, he could just hear Robin and Erica arguing about the logistics of drinking the green goop out of desperation. 

Only one day in. 

He couldn’t help his smile when he heard Eddie chime in with:

“I’d take that chance. I bet it tastes like green apple!”

Dustin was gearing up to repeat his distress call for what had to be the zillionth time by now when Robin suddenly appeared through the hatch. 

“We’ve got company!”

“Shit,” Steve breathed as he pushed himself to his feet. 

“Everyone up here now.”

The others scrambled to follow his orders, Eddie helping Erica up before pulling himself through, Steve gently lowering the hatch behind them just as an audible click and a beep sounded outside the room and the door was suddenly rising. 

Steve watched through the circular grates with baited breath as two men entered the room and began to unload the boxes, chattering back and forth in what was definitely Russian. 

He held up a hand, a silent warning to stay still and quiet, when his eyes locked on the container of green goop still held in Erica’s arms, her nose wrinkling as she grimaced right back at him. 

He grabbed it from her with a finger pressed to his lips in a shushing motion, watching as the men finished up with the boxes and exited the room.

He could hear their retreating footsteps halt.

He could hear them driving away. 

He could hear the door sliding down once again. 

Thinking fast, he dropped through the hatch into the now empty room, throwing himself across the floor with a grunt and slamming the container down to wedge between the floor and the quickly lowering door. 

He caught Erica’s My Little Pony backpack as it was hurled toward him, tossing it through the gap and urging the girl to hurry as she dropped down to crawl under after it. 

Dustin was next, Steve’s heart leaping into his throat as cracks began to form in the sturdy glass of the container as the door bared down. 

He all but pushed the preteen through with a muttered:

“Go go go!”

Robin stumbled clumsily as she followed, Dustin and Erica helping to pull her through as the cracking worsened, the green goo hissing angrily. 

“Go, Munson!” Steve hissed as Eddie rolled through agilely, springing to his feet and reaching out for Steve as the door inched lower and lower and the glass clicked and shivered in protest. 

Steve could hardly breathe as he flattened himself as much as humanly possible, face to face with the violent green glow as Eddie gripped onto his arm at the crook of his elbow and the pocket of his shorts, yanking him through the doorway just as the container shattered and the metal door slammed down like a guillotine. 

Steve watched with wide eyes as the goo sizzled and burned, effortlessly eating its way through the solid metal of the floor below. 

“Jesus Christ,” he cursed, allowing Eddie to help him to his feet as he attempted to slow his breathing. 

Holy shit, that was almost him. 

“You still wanna drink that?” Robin asked, both Erica and Eddie shaking their heads in tandem. 

“No, I think I’ll stick to Yoo-hoos,” Eddie breathed a laugh, his hand, still holding on to Steve’s arm, tightening almost imperceptibly. 

Or it would have been imperceptible if Steve wasn’t hyper aware of literally everything Eddie did at all times, always. 

“Nice work, Harrington. That was quick thinking, there.”

Steve forced his gaze away from the festering hole in the floor, meeting Eddie’s with a nod. 

“I couldn’t stand the thought of listening to Henderson say the words ‘this is a code red’ one more time,” he shrugged easily, shooting the other boy a sideways smile. 

“Holy Mother of God.”

Dustin’s words cut into Steve’s moderate calm immediately, and he followed the younger boy’s wide-eyed stare to the apparently endless blue lit hallway before them.

Eddie whistled, the sound echoing eerily down the hall.

”Talk about a simple walk into Mordor.”

“Well,” Steve started as he took a few steps forward. 

“Hope you guys are in good shape. Lookin’ at you, Roast Beef.”

………

Chapter Text

Eddie had the distinct feeling, just as Tolkien once said, that they’d just stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

Being trapped for a day and a half in an elevator filled with highly corrosive green goo had been one thing; one deeply unsettling thing that would haunt him for the rest of his life. 

But blindly wandering deeper and deeper into an actual secret Russian base was… fuck, it was something else entirely. 

It was Bilbo Baggins, Thorin, and company wandering aimlessly through the maddening trails of Mirkwood, waiting for the spiders lurking in the hazy darkness to emerge and strike, but there was no glowing sword to warn them of danger, just Henderson and his surprisingly piercing shrieks of terror. 

He felt the aching dull claws of hopelessness digging into him and clenching, and he resisted the urge to halt in place; to sit down, lean his head back against the wall, and close his eyes against the creepy blue lighting. 

To slump down on the cold floor and sob the way he used to when his dad took him grocery shopping as a kid. 

Or, well, when his dad applied the good ole five finger discount and he sat in the middle of the frozen food aisle and threw a massive tantrum as a carefully practiced diversion. 

He recalled how they’d return home with their haul after the fact, his dad patting him on the back and calling him pal while his mom expressed her disapproval. 

“Really, Frank? We talked about this! Eddie’s too young! You’re putting him at risk, involving him in your scams!”

And then his dad would pull her into his arms with only minimal protests and kiss the frown off of her lips with an empty promise that this time would be the last time.

Then they would put on whatever record his mom was obsessed with that week, usually Queen, Led Zeppelin, or Fleetwood Mac, and the three of them would dance around the kitchen whilst putting away their commandeered groceries together. 

Eddie had learned early on that that was what love was; a series of compromises and half truths and sweet distractions and Freddie Mercury’s dulcet vocals filling the small space of their messy kitchen as his parents held him and each other in a tight embrace and swayed. 

But love was also his mom throwing away syringes and spoons and lighters and big bottles still mostly full of liquor, swearing him to secrecy before he was old enough to understand why his dad was always shivering and sweating and scratching at his skin till it bled; why he got so much meaner when he didn’t have his drinks or his pills. 

Love was his mom begging his dad to slow down, stick to low profile jobs and carjacking like he had been, and his dad kissing her too pale face and promising to honor her wishes. 

Love was what drove him to break that promise the moment she was no longer there to hold him back; to reign him in and keep him grounded and sober with her soft words and her sweet smile. 

And now was definitely not the time to dwell on such things.

Not while Steve Harrington was walking close beside him, grumbling about fire hazards and communists and wrinkling his nose in that unbearably endearing way he did when he was confused as Dustin and Robin talked about ‘promethium’ of all things and Erica once again called them all nerds. 

He couldn’t even find it in himself to panic when Robin put forth the idea of the green goop being used to power nuclear weapons, far too distracted by the skin of Steve’s arm brushing against his with each step. 

He could almost pretend this way that things were back to normal between them; that he hadn’t apparently totally freaked Steve out by openly flirting with him in the elevator after the other boy had shared with him something deeply and genuinely personal.

Steve Harrington thought of himself as a failure. 

Steve Harrington. 

Eddie wanted to laugh, because his life was honestly a fucking joke at this point. 

“But if they’re building something, why here?” Robin’s voice pulled him once again back into stark reality, her expressively waving hands very nearly whacking him in the chest. 

“I mean, Hawkins? Seriously? Of all places? At the very best, we’re a toilet stop on your way to Disneyland.”

He could feel Steve slowing to a stop, his emanating warmth disappearing from his side and leaving him cold. 

Christ, that’s unbelievably pathetic. 

Robin and Erica didn’t seem to notice, so he kept up pace with them, fighting against his urge to eavesdrop with only partial success as Steve and Dustin whispered back and forth with their heads close together. 

Something about if the Russians knew about… something?

His shoulder brushed against Robin’s as they walked ahead and he jumped before he could stop himself. 

She gave him a sideways glance, her eyebrows raising in a silent question. 

Are you ok?

He wanted to cry again. 

Instead he schooled his features into an easy smile, as always, and shrugged wordlessly, nudging her arm with his elbow as reassuringly as he could. 

She squinted her black smudged eyes toward him in a way that instantly made him feel too seen; like she knew every single thought clattering around in the chaos that was his brain, but she didn’t say anything, distracted as she finally noticed Steve and Dustin falling behind. 

He was grateful for that, at the very least. 

He wasn’t entirely certain he could handle having a ‘feelings’ talk in what was basically the Death Star. 

“I’m sorry, is there something you’d like to share with the class?” Robin called back with the tone and expression of an exasperated teacher. 

Eddie knew that expression better than the back of his hand. 

Dustin and Steve shared a wide eyed glance like two cats caught in a koi pond, and Eddie opened his mouth to say as much when suddenly the crackle of staticky speech stopped the words in his throat. 

“Walkie,” Steve and Dustin said in perfect sync, the single phrase launching everyone into action, Erica dropping her backpack and pulling out the crackling walkie talkie while they gathered around her. 

Robin spoke softly along with the man on the other end, reciting the Russian she’d somehow managed to learn in a matter of days. 

“It’s the code.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie breathed, raking a hand through his hair and hardly even wincing as he snagged a few stubborn tangles. 

Dustin clapped his hands together in front of him with a focused look. 

“Wherever that broadcast is coming from-“

“It’s close,” Robin finished for him. 

“And if there’s one thing we know about that signal-“

“It can reach the surface!”

Eddie was almost impressed at this point by their ability to finish each other’s sentences, but perhaps that was because he hadn’t been following a goddamn thing they were saying since the very beginning of all of this bullshit. 

And from the blurry eyed open-mouthed expression overtaking Steve’s face, he was in the same boat. 

“Let’s go,” Robin said, flashing a grin that was almost hopeful as she helped Erica replace the radio in her backpack before springing to her feet with renewed determination. 

Dustin and Erica followed without question, Henderson sending back a gap filled grin and motioning for Eddie and Steve to hurry up. 

Eddie shot a sidelong glance toward Steve, mouth quirked and cheeks sucked in against his teeth in an annoyed but amused smirk. 

“I guess she’s in charge now,” he nodded toward Robin’s retreating back. It took him a little more than a second to notice that he was spinning the ring on his right hand nervously, but he really just didn’t have it in him to stop. 

Steve snorted, his warm hand falling onto Eddie’s shoulder and squeezing solidly as he leaned in close with an almost conspiratory smile. 

God, why does he smell so good?

“So what else is new?” he replied, his voice dropping low with a rumble of vocal fry that reverberated all the way through Eddie’s fucking lungs. 

Eddie’s mouth went dry as a desert, his pulse jumped, and his heart rocketed into its now familiar place in his throat. 

Fuck. 

He licked his chapped lips, pulling the bottom one in between his teeth and worrying at it as he tried his very best not to do or say anything irreconcilably embarrassing, especially since Steve seemed to have forgiven him in some capacity for his little slip up back in the elevator. 

Don’t flirt with him don’t flirt with him don’t flirt-

But then those big hazel eyes dipped downward, and Eddie wasn’t sure if he had actually managed to go completely batshit after just a day and a half of being trapped in a Russian base underneath the mall, or if King Steve Harrington was really and truly zeroed in on his fucking mouth. 

The moment ended just as quickly and weirdly as it had started, Steve releasing his hold on his shoulder with one final hard pat, clearing his throat like somebody's dad, and jogging off after their odd procession. 

Eddie physically shook the proverbial butterflies from his body before they could swarm in his stomach like they were wont to do, wiping his unbelievably sweaty palms on his uniform shorts and running to catch up before he was left behind. 

-

If the sight of the hallway from sci-fi hell hadn’t been worrying enough, Eddie truly hadn’t been ready for the sight of the command centre, positively buzzing with activity as soldiers, doctors, suits, and scientists alike moved around each other like parts in a well oiled machine, toting guns and clipboards respectively. 

Say what you will about their fucked up system, Soviets were an organised people. 

Steve held a protective arm out as he peeked quickly around the corner of the metal structure they were carefully clustered behind.

“Jesus,” he whispered once he was certain enough they hadn’t been spotted, his head falling back against the wall, eyes clenched shut as he let out a breath he’d apparently been holding. 

Eddie’s eyes locked with laser focus on the long line of his throat and the collection of moles and freckles that decorated the flushed skin there. 

He wanted to sink his teeth in and lock down like a dog on a chew toy and what the fuck now was super not the time to be thinking about shit like that. 

He bit down on his lip, making the conscious choice to nod as if he’d been paying attention as Dustin mumbled something about ‘Red Dawn’.

“I saw it!” Erica suddenly interjected with wide eyes. 

“First floor, northwest!”

“Saw what?” Steve questioned as all eyes focused on Erica. 

“The comms room!”

“You saw the comms room?”

“Correct!”

Dustin leaned in a bit with his eyebrows raised toward his hairline, that deathly serious look that betrayed previous experience in similar situations on his far too young face, and Eddie wondered once again what this kid had gotten himself into before. 

“Are you sure?”

“Positive!” Erica nodded. 

“The door was open for a second, and I saw a bunch of lights and machines and shit in there.”

“That could be a hundred different things,” Dustin pointed out, wrinkling his nose at an answering glare from the girl. 

Robin turned toward Steve and Eddie, meeting their gazes directly with a meaningful tilt to her head. 

“I’ll take those odds.”

Eddie’s stomach did a backflip as Steve turned to face him; to wordlessly ask for his input because he cared what Eddie thought. 

God. Dammit. 

He could only nod, blinking rapidly to keep him from falling headfirst into those hazel depths, drowning in pools of golden brown, green, and bronze for the remainder of his miserable life. 

It didn’t matter what he wanted at this point. He was pretty certain he’d follow Steve into a fucking trash compactor with zero hesitation, full ‘into the garbage chute, fly-boy’ style. 

Steve’s mouth creased in a focused frown and he let out a sigh, shaking his head as he moved to once again peek around the corner, everyone moving to do the same. 

Eddie fought the pathetic schoolgirl blush from his cheeks as Dustin pushed him a little closer to Steve in an effort to see past them, Eddie’s chest pressed entirely against the solid breadth of his back. 

His hair tickled against Eddie’s cheek and Eddie steadfastly resisted the urge to lean in and sniff him like a fucking creep. 

Pull yourself together, Munson, for fucks sake! You’re in an actual life or death situation!

“Alright,” Steve started, his brows lowering in a determined look Eddie recognised from the one and only basketball game he’d attended, back when King Steve was still the Captain of the Tigers. 

“We’re gonna move fast, we’re gonna stay low. Okay?”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Eddie spoke lowly, his breath ruffling the hair at the back of Steve’s neck, raising visible goosebumps across the skin there in a way that was greatly satisfying. 

And then Steve was turning back to look at him with the barest hint of a smile, their faces just as close now as they had been when Steve had been on top of him in the elevator, and Eddie had to go through the motions of remembering how to breathe properly all over again.

In and out. In and out.

Without further preamble, Steve was leading the way towards the supposed comms room, crouched low to the ground and carefully weaving through boxes and assorted obstacles like a real life and incredibly dangerous game of Frogger. 

“Move it!” he called back in a whisper, brushing his hair back over his ear as a man in a lab coat approached the door they were aiming for from the inside, pushing it open and walking through with his eyes dutifully glued to a clipboard. 

“Let’s go!” he hissed again, motioning for them to follow. 

He caught the door before it could close, sliding in and holding it open for the rest of them. 

Eddie ushered the kids and Robin in before him, brushing past Steve as he entered the room and letting out a heavy sigh of relief at the distinct lack of bullets in his back; a breath that caught in his throat immediately at the sight that met them. 

A uniformed guard right there, sitting in a chair before what had to be the comms radio. 

The guard removed his headphones as he turned and stood from his chair, taking them in with wide startled eyes. 

To be fair, Eddie was sure the sight of them, two actual children and three teenagers in matching sailor suits, was strange for anyone, let alone a guard in what was supposed to be a top secret underground base. 

Eddie felt his heart drop to his boots when the guard reached for his gun, but then Robin was stepping forward with a stilling hand and speaking Russian.

She made a strange motion with her hand, waving it behind her like a tail and nodding. 

The guard's nose wrinkled in obvious confusion at whatever she’d said, shaking his head as he responded, and Eddie didn’t know a single word of Russian, but he knew a ‘what the fuck’ look in any language. 

She tried again with a wince and a shrug, and Eddie’s hand shot out to pull her back as the guard reached down for his gun once again. 

Suddenly Steve let out what could only be described as a battle cry from beside Eddie, charging forward and tackling the man against the metal control panel. 

The guard grunted at the solid impact, wrenching sideways and bodily throwing Steve off of him to land on his back against the opposite panel. He swung at him like a grizzly bear, Steve dipping backwards to lay flat out across the buttons and switches beneath him to dodge the hit. 

Before Eddie could blink, the guard grabbed Steve by the front of his uniform, once again grappling him over and slamming him hard against the radio. He fisted a large hand into the fabric at Steve’s shoulder, reeling back for another savage punch, but Steve was quicker, managing to jab his sharp elbow into the guard's ribs to send him staggering back a good few feet. 

Faster than Eddie could even really comprehend, Steve reached out and snatched up the blocky phone from its cradle, tossing it over effortlessly to his dominant hand with the same flourish he used with his scooper, reeling back and clocking it across the guards face as he once again tried to make a grab for Steve. 

An audible crunch from the impact filled the air, the guard spinning off balance and slamming his bloodied face against the metal counter beside him, landing on the floor in an unconscious drooling heap. 

Steve panted for breath, pushing his mussed hair out of his face and shaking the blood off of his hand and Eddie was pretty sure he was fucking vibrating with a horrifying mixture of nerves, adrenalin, and full-bodied arousal. 

Because fuck, that really shouldn’t have been as attractive as it was, but it was unfortunately the hottest thing Eddie had ever seen. 

“Dude!” Dustin called suddenly, pointing at Steve with palpable excitement. 

“You did it! You won a fight!”

Steve had the audacity to shrug almost shyly as he laughed a little in clear disbelief, dropping the bloodied phone so it hung by its cord. 

Eddie took several more moments to catch his breath, as if he’d been the one fighting for his life against an armed Russian soldier. He allowed himself to approach Steve, who was staring down at his unconscious opponent with nothing short of amazement as Dustin worked to unclip the keycard from his belt, bickering with Erica. 

“That was… pretty impressive, Harrington, I have to say. A hearty and resounding Mazel Tov to you,” he started with a smirk in the other boy’s direction, crossing his arms in an effort to hide his unsteady breathing and his sweaty palms. 

Always with the sweaty palms. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve huffed with a promising glimmer of good humour in his eyes that told Eddie he wasn’t actually annoyed. 

“No, I mean it, man. That was the most metal thing I think I’ve ever seen,” Eddie reassured, nudging the other boy in the side with his elbow. 

“Like, you really went full berserker mode on a Russian soldier! I’m telling you, tales will be told and songs will be sung.”

Eddie watched in utter delight as the prettiest pink blush spread across Steve’s cheeks, those hazel eyes flickering down toward their shoes in a way that was almost shy. 

“Songs will be sung?” he repeated, and Eddie waited for the usual rib nudge and the semi affectionate declaration of: ‘nerd’ or ‘freak’. 

Instead, Steve leaned in closer like he knew the proximity would turn Eddie’s poor brain to jelly, and he smiled a secret little smile. 

“You gonna write me a song, Munson?”

And fuck was that an idea.

He’d write him the most epic ballad, with no less than two guitar solos if he asked it.

Rapid footsteps tore Eddie’s attention away from Steve, a miracle in of itself, and they glanced up to see Robin emerging from a small hallway Eddie hadn’t even seen her go down, too wrapped up post Berserker mode Steve Harrington. 

“Guys. There’s something up there.”

………

Steve was frozen. 

He was completely petrified, his breath trapped in his burning lungs as he took in the harrowing sight before him. 

The lab coat clad scientists standing behind the reinforced glass of their observation deck, hovering over machines with flashing buttons and screens, scribbling readings on clipboards; the men down below in red hazmat suits and white coveralls, maneuvering carefully around a monsterous machine that looked like it’d been ripped straight from one of Lucas’s comic books. 

A few men carried over all too familiar tubes of green goo, just like the one that’d almost exploded in Steve’s face, plugging them into sockets and stepping back as the blue glow increased in intensity. 

White electricity, spurred on by the apparent fuel replenishment, crackled and webbed around the spinning epicenter of the machine to culminate in a ray of blue-white light shooting directly into a tear in the fabric of their universe that Steve had hoped to God he’d never have to see. 

He felt simultaneously sick to his stomach and numb with fear as he stared through the glass panel of the right side door, sandwiched snugly between Dustin at his front and Eddie at his back.

He was so close he could feel the sharp inhale Eddie took in against his shoulder blade, the resulting exhale tickling across the skin of his neck the way it had before when they’d been formulating a plan to get into the comms room. 

“Holy shit,” Dustin let out, staring back at Steve with an expression of slack-jawed shock.

“What the fuck is that?” Eddie hissed, his words breezing past Steve’s ear, drawing his gaze back as well. 

Large dark doe eyes, made even deeper and darker with the wash of eerie blue light that fell over them, met Steve’s head on and his fear was a palpable gnawing thing in the air between them. 

Such fear didn’t belong on Eddie’s face, but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say to sooth the concerned wrinkle between his eyebrows or the downturned edge of his quivering lip. 

He just didn’t have it in him as he turned back to face his greatest fear, fully realised. 

“The gate.”

He and Dustin spoke in sync, sharing another quick glance, their horrified expressions mirror images of one another. 

“The what?” Eddie questioned immediately, his head snapping back up toward movement inside the observation deck as a scientist set down their clipboard. 

“We can’t stay here. We’ll be spotted,” Eddie insisted quietly, everyone moving to follow him back toward the dimly lit staircase. 

“I don't understand,” Robin spoke up as they went. 

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Not exactly,” Steve admitted truthfully. 

He’d never been there to see the gate, he’d just dealt with the monsters that’d come out of it. 

“Then what exactly?” she insisted with a more urgent tone, clearly aggravated at not being in the loop, and Steve thought, not for the first time, that she was far better off that way. 

No one else needed to be a part of this shit, let alone Robin Buckley the band geek, Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, and little Erica Sinclair. 

“All you need to know is it’s bad,” Dustin shook his head solemnly. 

Steve nodded in agreement. 

“It’s really bad.”

“Like, end of the human race as we know it kind of bad.”

Robin blinked slowly as she turned toward Dustin, eyes going wide and mouth quirking sideways in the most ‘what the fuck’ expression Steve had ever seen. 

“And you know about this… how?”

“Um, Steve?” Erica cut in suddenly. “Where’s your Russian friend?”

All eyes snapped over to the now empty spot on the floor the Russian guard had previously occupied, and Eddie let out an impressive string of curses, some Steve was pretty certain he’d never even heard before. 

Not a second later, the alarm was blaring, announcing their presence to the entire base, and wasn’t that fucking typical?

“Shit,” Steve cursed as he hurried toward the door, cracking it open and peeking through just in time to see the guard slumped heavily against another, motioning toward them, and an entire group of guards looking up towards him and meeting his gaze directly. 

Well that wasn’t good. 

“Shit! Go go go go go!” he shouted out, slamming the door and herding the group back toward the staircase for lack of anywhere else to go with a long and endless string of ‘shits’ and ‘oh gods’. 

They crashed through the doors with a bang, skidding to a halt as the observing men in lab coats turned toward them in surprise. 

“C’mon!” Eddie called, spurring them back into quick action before they could linger too long as he led them along the observation deck around the startled scientists and toward the stairs to the landing. 

Steve glanced back over his shoulder to see the soldiers hot on their heels, fanning out in an attempt to cut them off on the lower landing. 

Dustin shrieked as his arm was caught by a man in a red hazmat suit, but before Steve could act Eddie was already there, breaking the man’s hold before rearing back and kicking the man solidly in the chest with his heavy boot, sending him hurtling over the railing with a shout. 

Alright.

“Go!” Steve yelled as he grabbed Erica’s hand, pulling her along with him.

Adrenaline thrummed through his veins like electricity. Everything was a blur of movement and sound and light, of raised voices and heavy footfalls, until suddenly they were in front of the machine; in front of the chasm before which was the gate to the Upside Down, slowly but surely cracking open. 

Steve’s stomach turned, and he was pretty certain if he wasn’t so busy desperately trying to escape killer commies, he would’ve hurled. 

Dustin was still screaming, an endless mantra of:

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit HOLY SHIT!”

Erica’s hand tightened in his grip as she cried out a quick, “Guards!” in warning. 

Steve’s eyes snapped over to the armed men approaching and he turned his back on the gate. 

“This way!”

He ran as fast as his legs would take him, ramming his full body weight into the guard waiting at the bottom and sending him flying backward into a pile of metal barrels, taking out three more approaching guards in the process. 

“To the door!” Eddie called back as he ran ahead, vaulting over one of the unconscious guards into the darkened hall beyond. 

Eddie held open the blessedly unlocked door, desperately motioning everyone inside. 

Dustin, Erica, and Robin rushed in one by one, Steve sending one final barrel flying toward a soldier before shoving his way in past Eddie and slamming the door shut behind him. 

He threw all of his weight against it as several bodies rammed into the other side, the outline of hands slapping against the window sending a cool shock down Steve’s spine. 

Robin joined him against the door with a grunt as her bony shoulder collided with the metal. 

Not even her help would keep them out long.

There was no way out of this. 

There was no fucking way.

Not ten feet away, up a small set of stairs, Dustin, Eddie, and Erica struggled to pull up a hatch in the floor; an escape route, so close. 

Not close enough. 

“Here! C’mon, let’s go!” came Erica’s voice over the muffled shouts through the door as the heavy trapdoor clattered open. 

“Come on!” Dustin yelled back urgently. 

“Go! Just get outta here!” Steve answered, gritting his teeth as the dull thudding of fists against the metal at his back sent vibrations through his body.

Plant your feet, Harrington.

“Robin! Steve!” Eddie addressed as he stood, intense brown gaze fixed on them. 

“Quit playing heros and get the fuck over here!”

“No!” Robin called back, her voice cracking with fear. 

“Just go get help!”

“No! NO! We’re not leaving you!”

“Eddie, please,” Steve said, his throat releasing a whine he couldn’t possibly hope to choke back at a particularly hard bang that had Robin groaning with effort beside him. 

“You have to go. You have to keep them safe!”

His words stopped the other boy in his tracks, his face dropping, his fists clenching. 

Steve swore he could see tears gathering in his honey brown eyes, partially obscured by the wild curls that’d fallen completely from his knotted ponytail. 

“Fuck, Harrington.”

He felt his shoulders sink down in an odd sort of relief as Eddie rushed toward the hatch, ushering a hesitant Erica and a teary-eyed Dustin through. 

Those wet brown eyes met his once more, and Steve held his breath, watching his lips work their way around words he seemed to be struggling to force out. 

“Just hold tight until we get back, okay? Because I am not handling the July 4th rush all by myself.”

A laugh punched its way out of Steve’s throat, finding its way past the welled up tears he refused to let spill. 

“Aye aye, Captain,” Robin answered with a similarly wavering voice, and Steve didn’t have to look at her to know she was fighting back tears of her own. 

With one final look, one painful moment of hesitation that made Steve’s heart lurch in his chest, Eddie disappeared through the hatch and let the door slam down behind him. 

They were out. 

They would be safe soon. 

He and Robin on the other hand…

………

Chapter Text

Steve remembered coming home from the hospital like it was yesterday. 

He’d stumbled into the Byer’s wrecked living room on unsteady legs, post Demodog fighting and gate-closing, and had promptly fallen into the couch in an exhausted heap. 

He’d never seen the Byers living room not torn apart and wrecked; first covered in thousands of Christmas lights, now an insane and intricate map of crayon drawn tunnels. 

Billy Hargrove, previously an unconscious sweaty mass sprawled across the floor, was missing, the shards of the plate he’d broken over Steve’s head and the little specks of blood seeping into the hardwood the only proof of his presence. 

Joyce Byers had Steve’s busted up face in her hands, fussing as she looked over his injuries in a way that was so incredibly and unfamiliarly maternal it made his heart ache. She insisted Hopper drive him to the hospital to be checked out. 

He’d tried to resist, say that he was fine and it wasn’t like he hadn’t dealt with similar injuries before, Jonathan had the good grace to look a little uncomfortable at that, but Joyce had flat out refused to give in, saying he’d need stitches for the gash on his head and that she wouldn’t let him go home until he’d been properly cared for.

He couldn’t have said no to her if he’d tried, so he gave in and got in the car with the disgruntled police chief. 

As it turned out, he had needed stitches as well as quite the dosage of morphine to keep the pain at bay as he slowly came down from the adrenaline high he’d been existing on since the moment that goddamn blue Camero had pulled into the dirt driveway. 

The doctor made him walk heel to toe in a straight line like he’d had to do once during a sobriety test. 

Then he’d shone a bright flashlight in each of his eyes, frowning at what he saw before turning to Hopper and quietly informing him, with an overabundance of technical jargon that Steve had found totally unnecessary, that he had a pretty bad concussion and would need to be kept a close eye on. 

Hopper had turned to him once the doctor had gone, asking him in that gruff but still somehow caring way of his if he was ok to go home. 

The look in his eyes had been far too knowing, but Steve shouldn’t have been surprised. Damn near everyone in Hawkins who bought into the local gossip knew about his driveway, frequently empty aside from the Beemer. 

It’d taken Steve a long time and a lot of introspection to come to terms with the fact that he was born to be a trophy, a continuation of his fathers legacy and a boost to his already massive ego; nothing more. 

But that realisation hadn’t helped a thing, because now when his father yelled at him about his underachieving and wasting his ‘so-called potential’, he couldn’t pretend it was because he actually cared about him. 

When his mother lectured him about tearing a hole in another pair of jeans, or getting his haircut without her permission, it wasn’t because she wanted only the best for her son, it was because he was an accessory to her, only there to improve her image. 

Even so, he’d looked Hopper in the eye and nodded, assuring him that he’d be just fine. 

He always was, eventually. 

And then he’d returned to his big empty house, stripped off his filthy bloodstained clothes, turned on every single lamp between the front door, the living room, and the kitchen, and dragged himself over to the couch to pass out for the next twelve hours. 

And it wasn’t fair. 

It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t take comfort in his mothers arms and cry while she stroked his hair and told him everything would be ok, because she was far too busy drinking to forget about her loveless marriage and her disappointing son to provide that comfort. 

It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t talk to his father about his pains and his fears and his insecurities and receive wisdom and understanding and a hearty slap on the shoulder that said ‘I’m here for you, champ’, because he was far too busy going on months long cruises with his twenty three year old secretary, Lisa.

It wasn’t fair. 

It wasn’t fucking fair. 

“Help!”

It wasn’t-

“Help!”

It wasn’t…

“HELP!”

“Hey, would you stop yelling?”

Steve spoke before he could really even register he was doing it. 

He couldn’t think over the feeling of his brain pounding in his head like the entire drumline at a pep rally, but inside his skull. 

His nose was stuffed up and throbbing, the skin on and around his chapped lips caked with snot and dried blood. 

“Steve! Oh my god!” Robin gasped, her voice wavering. 

Was she crying?

He couldn’t turn to check. 

He couldn’t fucking see, the harsh white spotlight overhead haloing outward in long streaks across his blurry vision and effectively blinding him. 

“Steve, are-are you okay?” she asked, leaning her head back against his shoulder. 

He took in a shaking breath, the sound rattling unpleasantly in his lungs and yep that was definitely a fractured rib or two. 

“Well,” he started, forcing the words through the tightness in his throat. 

“My ears are ringing and I can’t really breathe, my eye feels like it’s about to pop outta my skull, but, y’know, apart from that, I’m doing… pretty good.”

“Well,” Robin said with the barest hint of humor in her tone. 

“The good news is that they’re calling you a doctor.”

Steve couldn’t help the laugh that escaped from his burning lungs, stinging the whole way out. 

That was definitely not good news. 

………

“So, when we set fire to the hub, we drew the Demodogs away so El could close the gate. But now, for some insane reason, the Russians appear to be trying to reopen it, which just destroys everything we risked our lives for.”

Eddie sat back against the metal duct they were crouched in, hands steepled thoughtfully against his lips as he allowed the full story to wash over him in its entirety like the air from the huge fan to their left. 

He didn’t listen as Erica inquired about her brother's participation with measured disbelief. He was far too busy dealing with the toppling of his entire worldview. 

Monsters are real. 

Monsters are real and they live in the fucking Fade, or Upside Down, which is also real, and this child in front of him, this curly headed preteen with no collarbones and a love for DnD and Weird Al Yankovic, had fought them. 

Twice. 

“Ok, so…” Eddie cut into Dustin and Erica’s petty argument, waving his hands in front of him as if physically trying to grasp at his next words. 

“So you kids have been fighting this shit since ‘83? Alone?”

Dustin had the audacity to scoff, pausing his work on the control panel before him. 

“Not alone. We have Hopper and Mrs. Byers. And Steve is basically an adult now that he’s graduated.”

“Steve- oh my god,” Eddie let out as he pressed the heels of his palms against his closed eyes, trying to ward off the migraine settling there. 

Steve Harrington. 

The same Steve Harrington who was only eighteen years old; a year younger than Eddie himself.

He was one of the adults this group of six middle schoolers depended on to keep them alive. 

He remembered seeing Steve in the one class they’d shared the year before, his upper lip swollen with a deep cut, his cheeks painted with the colors of healing bruises, his hair parted slightly differently than usual, fluffy bangs sweeping over his forehead in an attempt to obscure the white tape covering up the stitches in his perfect hairline. 

He’d looked like hell, and Eddie had laughed along with his friends at their lunch table at the thought of mighty King Steve getting his Royal ass handed to him on a silver platter, but now…

“That’s why he’s shown up to school two years in a row looking like Rocky fucking Balboa post-match? He was out going rounds with monsters in his free time!?”

“To be fair,” Dustin started, turning slightly back towards Eddie and pointing at him with his little screwdriver. 

“None of those injuries were technically monster induced. That first year, it was from his fight with Jonathan. Then last year, it was Billy Hargrove.”

If he felt nauseous before, it was nothing compared to now.

“Jesus H. Christ. What’s Harrington doing fighting a psycho like Hargrove?”

The change of expression on Dustin’s face was instant, his hands stilling in unscrewing something in the panel. 

“Billy… came for Max while we were waiting for the plan to start. He…”

Dustin looked down for a moment, as if the sheer memory was something more terrifying to relive than any of the other crazy shit he’d told them in the half hour they’d been crawling through the floor vents. 

“He went after Lucas, had him pinned against a shelf and was threatening him, telling him to stay away from Max, so Steve grabbed him and punched him, which was, like, really fucking badass. He tried to get him to leave. But, Billy…”

Eddie swallowed down the lump in his throat at the look in Dustin’s eyes, the genuine fear at the memory. 

“Billy started laughing and taunting Steve, and then he got angry and… he smashed a plate over his head. He got him on the ground and just started punching him, over and over and over, and we really thought he was gonna kill him. I know he would’ve killed him if Max hadn’t sedated him.”

“Fucking hell,” Eddie breathed, digging his fingers into the front of his hair and holding on, letting the sharp pull anchor him to reality; the reality where Steve Harrington was, and had been, a selfless and badass fucking action hero. 

While he was struggling through his second attempt at Senior year, slacking off, learning the entire discography of Ride the Lightning on his sweetheart, and planning the next dungeon for Hellfire’s campaign, Steve had been single handedly fighting interdimensional dog monsters and protecting a group of kids he had barely even known because it was the right thing to do. 

No wonder these kids flocked to him. He’s their Strider. 

That was another mystery solved and another level for his pathetic infatuation to climb. 

He was so deeply fucked. 

Dustin and Erica were immediately back at it, bickering about the control panel now, and how long it’d taken Dustin to do whatever the fuck he was trying to do. 

Eddie didn’t even know, at this point. 

His brain was spinning in his skull like the blades in the huge fan beside him, definitely not helped by the insane numbers Erica mentally calculated and rattled off like it was nothing. 

“Holy shit, you’re a nerd,” Dustin chuckled, Erica glaring icily at the accusation. 

“Come again?” she scoffed, tilting her head forward in disbelief, and Eddie was once again interested in the conversation. 

“You. Are. A. Nerd!” Dustin responded with an almost gleeful look. 

“Ok, you better take that back, nerd!”

“Can’t put the truth back in the box!”

“But it’s not the truth!”

Eddie looked back and forth between the two as they bickered; it was like watching a goddamn tennis match, only vastly more entertaining. 

“Let’s examine the facts, shall we?” Dustin posited, turning fully from his task to face them. 

“Fact one: you’re a math wiz, apparently.”

“That was a pretty straightforward equation,” Erica tried to argue, pulling a laugh from Eddie before he could stop himself. 

“Straightforward? I wonder if I could sneak you into my math final under my jacket? Maybe that way I’d finally graduate.”

“Fact two,” Dustin continued before she could fire back something undoubtedly scathing at Eddie. 

“You’re a political junkie.”

She locked eyes with Eddie with a judgmental little stare, and he genuinely couldn’t even begin to guess if it was genuine or not. 

“Better than a real junkie.”

There it was. 

“And just because I don’t agree with communism as an ideology-“

“Fact three, Henderson?” Eddie interrupted, motioning to Dustin with a flourish that had her rolling her eyes.

“Fact number three, you love My Little Pony,” Dustin rounded off as he held up Erica’s backpack to further demonstrate his point, Eddie clapping his hands one and motioning toward it himself, much to the young girls ire. 

“And what does My Little Pony have to do with this?”

“What doesn’t My Little Pony have to do with this?” Eddie snorted, leaning back against the metal siding once more, propping an elbow against his knee. 

“It’s basically a gateway drug into nerd culture. First you’re watching My Little Pony or He-Man, then the next thing you know, you’re spending all of your free time researching the lore and buying up all the merch and action figures you can get your nerdy little hands on.”

“Indeed,” Dustin nodded sagely. “Let’s recall the ponies’ latest adventure, shall we? The evil centaur team and Tirek turns Applejack into a dragon at Midnight Castle, and then Megan and the other ponies have to use Moonchicks’s magic to defeat his rainbow of darkness, saving them from a lifetime of enslavement.

“All the pink in the world can’t disguise the irrefutable fact that centaurs and castles and dragons and magic are all standard nerd tropes. Ergo, My Little Pony is nerdy. Ergo, you, Erica, are a nerd.”

“And how do you two know so much about My Little Pony?” she questioned. 

“Because we,” Dustin motioned between himself and Eddie. 

“Are nerds.”

With one final yank of a jumble of yellow cords, the fan sputtered to a stop beside them and Dustin grinned. 

“Let’s go, nerd.”

Eddie grinned as Dustin crawled forward through the opening. He leaned over toward the, for once, speechless girl, patting her little shoulder. 

“Welcome to the fold.”

-

Eddie was honestly shocked by the sheer volume of the cracks and pops that sounded from his body once he was finally able to unbend his knees, rising out of the grate in the floor after Dustin and Erica with an utterance of: 

“Well that was suffocating.”

Satisfied when his body no longer sounded like an entire factory of pop rocks, he took in their surroundings as Dustin hurried over to a small red shuttle car that looked uncannily like something made by Little Tikes.

They’d come out in the middle of some sort of containment area for the green goo that powered the machine doing its utmost to tear open the gate Dustin’s little psychic friend had closed. 

He couldn’t help but wonder, once again with feeling, what choices he had made in his life to get him to the point where the thought of a psychic fourteen year old with the ability to open and close interdimensional portals was no longer science fiction, something that only existed in comic books and movies. 

“Hey Henderson? What’s the plan here?” he called out as Dustin climbed back out of the little car, grumbling about the lack of keys in the ignition. 

He tried his best to ignore the errant thought in the back of his head that he was deferring to a fourteen year old for guidance. 

Said fourteen year old apparently had prior experience with sneaking around government facilities, so fuck it. 

“The plan,” Dustin huffed as he pulled out his trusty screwdriver, working open a little metal box on the wall and triumphantly removing a set of keys. 

“Is to get out of here and get help- where’s Erica?”

No sooner had the question come out of his mouth than Erica had appeared beside him, wielding some sort of electrified cattle prod on steroids. 

Eddie and Dustin lept closer together at the crackling jolt of electricity, clutching onto each other with matching startled yelps. 

“What the hell is that?!” Dustin yelled. 

Erica shrugged. 

“A deadly weapon,” she said as if it were the most casual and decidedly not batshit crazy thing in the world. “Could be useful.”

She set it off once again with what Eddie could only describe as a manic little grin, the two of them jumping until Dustin was very nearly climbing into his arms. 

“Jesus H. Christ, will you point that thing somewhere else?” Eddie urged, flicking the end of it away with a series of quick jerky taps. 

“What the shit are you planning on using that for anyway?”

Erica fixed him with one of her more incredulous looks, as if he were the stupidest person she’d ever met. 

“What do you think? Taking down Commies, saving your friends?”

“I thought you were more realistic than that, nerd,” Dustin interjected, extracting himself from Eddie’s hold and brushing out the wrinkles in his ‘Roast Beef’ graphic tee. 

“We don’t even know where they are! And even if we did, there are a million guards up there with weapons way deadlier than that,” he pointed out as they moved toward the little car, Erica stepping in and slumping back in her seat with a frown while Dustin continued. 

“The best thing we can do for them is to get outta here and find help- easy with that.”

He motioned once again to the prod, Erica rolling her eyes and pointing it away from him. 

“Our chance of surviving, and theirs, rises substantially. Just trust me on this. Please?”

When Erica sighed in reluctant acquiescence, Dustin nodded his approval and turned to Eddie with the keys extended outward. 

“C’mon. We need to go.”

Eddie bit at the inside of his cheek, standing stock still as he stared at the jingling keys before him. 

It was a solid-ish plan, but there wasn’t enough time. 

They just didn’t have enough time.

“Shit,” he let out flatly, his shoulders slumping, his pulse quickening, and his jaw setting in sheer and quite possibly moronic determination. 

“Yeah, you do need to go. Get the hell outta here and find some help,” he called back as he turned, yanking his bandana out of his back pocket, rolling it up, and using it to tie his hair back out of his face. 

This was so stupid. 

This was SO STUPID. 

“Wait- Eddie! Where are you going?” Dustin called out to his retreating back, the light quiver in his tone betraying his worry. 

Fuck it. It was time to be stupid. 

“I’m going to rescue Buckley and your stupid babysitter before they get tortured and killed by the Soviets, because when, not if, WHEN I get outta here, I’d really like to have a job to go back to that isn’t fucking Hotdog on a Stick. I hate that place.”

With that, Eddie jumped back down into the godforsaken vent, turning toward the two gawking children with a commanding finger raised. 

“Go. Get. Help. Maybe a real adult, or maybe your little psychic friend? I’d honestly love to meet her.”

And then he was ducking down and sliding the grate back into place overhead with a resounding click, disappearing once more into the belly of the Russian base with half a plan and an over abundance of adrenaline. 

………

Steve wasn’t sure how many more parts of his body could hurt at this point. 

His shoulder had joined the mix just minutes ago as he and Robin made one final jump toward the little table, landing wrong, sweeping the legs of the chairs they were bound to right out from under them, and crashing to the floor with a clatter and tandem groans of pain. 

Robin's half delirious words still rang loud and clear in his ears; her admittance of her apparent obsession with him despite his asshole-ness, and that should’ve made him some sort of happy. 

He liked Robin, right?

But he couldn’t help the nauseous feeling that washed through him as he realised that she was absolutely correct. 

He didn’t remember her from Click’s class. 

Back then, he’d been so absorbed in himself; in painstakingly maintaining his Kingly reputation, in keeping his parents happy, in pursuing Nancy Wheeler. 

At least, until mid November, 1983, when his entire world was rocked on its head by the Demogorgan emerging from the Byers’ living room ceiling, and suddenly being ‘Mr. Cool’, as Robin put it, was promptly set on the back burner of his mind. 

He’d been more concerned with the shadows that jumped in the corners of the room, or the ever present feeling of someone, or something, watching him. 

He’d been too busy keeping up appearances that everything was fine and normal; that he hadn’t fought off an interdimensional monster with a nail-filled baseball bat. 

He hadn’t had the presence of mind to notice the surprisingly cool band dweeb sitting just behind him, glaring daggers into the back of his head while she scribbled ridiculous little drawings on the rubber soles of her bright red converse. 

He’d said as much to her, allowing his mouth to run away with him in the pensive silence of the cold clinical room. 

It felt better than good to finally let out the thoughts that’d been clogging up his brain like crunchy autumn leaves in a pool filter since all of this bullshit had started. 

It shot him right back to his talk with Eddie in the elevator. 

The focus in the other boy’s dark brown eyes as he intently listened to Steve’s worried rambling, as if he genuinely cared about Steve’s problems. 

As if Steve didn’t just stand back and watch him get mocked and bullied by his so-called friends not even two years prior. 

As if Steve himself didn’t knock roughly into his shoulder more than a few times in the hallway with a venomous little utterance of:

“Freak.”

“I’m sorry,” he found himself murmuring aloud, his stinging lips forming sloppily around the words. 

The metal of the floor was pleasantly cold against his temple, and he closed his eyes as he leaned into the feeling. 

Robin sniffled behind him, her head knocking lightly back against his own as she turned to face him as much as she could. 

“For what?”

He was relieved to hear the good natured tilt of her voice returned, that natural humor she always seemed to carry with her coloring her tone.

“For… being an asshole. For not dragging my head far enough out of my own ass to notice sooner,” he huffed out, wincing at a sharp stab of pain in his ribs. “I mean, it took coming face to face with death to finally realize that all of that shit that I thought was so important, being cool and popular, throwing parties, sleeping around, that’s just… it doesn’t matter, y’know? It’s all… bullshit.”

“If you give me the ‘being Prom King isn’t all it's cracked up to be’ speech right now, Steve, I swear-,” Robin spoke through a smile, her shoulder nudging back against his own. 

“But it’s totally true!” Steve insisted, attempting to wave his hands for emphasis only to belatedly remember that they were currently bound to his upper body at the elbow. 

“It’s like… okay, when you’re the King or whatever, when you’re popular, you constantly have people praying for your downfall. Even the people I thought were my friends, Andy, Tommy H, Carol; it’s like they were all just waiting for a fuck up, a moment of weakness that they could pounce on. I mean, you saw how fast Tommy backed Billy when the asshole made it his mission to, what’s the word, unsurp me.”

Robin snorted, her shoulders shaking against his back. 

“Usurp, Steve. And Tommy Hagan was a grade-A sleezoid. I have no idea how you put up with him.”

Steve opened his mouth to answer, but came up strangely short. 

It was a difficult issue. 

Their friendship hadn’t been perfect by any means. Tommy was loud, aggressive, needlessly cruel some of the time, and incredibly obnoxious most of the time. 

He was a total asshole, especially in front of other people when he felt the need to show off. He would turn a joke on literally anyone, including Steve, doing his utmost to humiliate his chosen prey to make himself look better than them. 

But he was also the closest friend Steve had ever had. 

Tommy had known everything about him. 

He’d known about Steve’s weird long standing obsession with Danny Zuko from Grease, his hatred of artificial orange flavouring from the medicine his mother had made him take as a child, how he’d pretended to be allergic to shellfish for a whole year because he didn’t want to kiss Anna Jacobs at the Snow Ball in seventh grade after she’d eaten half a tray of shrimp. 

He’d immediately backed up Steve’s bullshit excuse when he’d shown up half an hour late to first period in Freshman year after getting to second base with Vanessa Levy in the janitorial closet. 

He’d talked Steve down after his father had hit him for the first time; slapped him hard across the mouth for daring to say ‘whatever’ to him instead of the expected ‘yes sir’.

Tommy hadn’t really offered him comfort, then. He never did. He’d simply watched as Steve hastily packed a bag and nodded in agreement while he angrily ranted aloud about finally running away until he’d managed to drag himself away from the proverbial ledge. 

He hadn’t judged him for crying that time, either, just every single time after that. 

“He was different when it was just the two of us,” Steve finally admitted. “Nicer when he had nothing to prove. He helped me through a lot of shit, but…”

He felt Robin nod in understanding. 

“But he was still a piece of shit who wasn’t good for you, and you’re way better off without him.”

“Oh, definitely. Yeah,” Steve agreed easily. “I know that now that I have, heh, real friends. You really think Tommy would’ve barred a door with me to allow two random kids he’d just met and Eddie Munson escape from a secret underground Russian base?”

Robin was laughing in earnest now, and he couldn’t help laughing along despite the flaring of pain in his battered body. 

“Are you saying we’re friends, Harrington?” Robin rasped out through little hiccoughs of laughter, a teasing lilt lifting her words. “What will people think? Steve Harrington associating with lowly band dweebs? Can you imagine the scandal?”

Steve shook his head, groaning as the world spun for a moment. 

“We could’ve been, all along,” he said. 

“Friends, I mean. I wish we had been, back when I was still in school. You, me, and Eddie. It would’ve been nice to get to know you under… different circumstances, y’know?”

Robin sighed softly.

“Yeah, I know.”

Silence passed between the two, not awkward, just contemplative. 

The only sounds around them were the distant clangs of movement somewhere deeper in the base, the soft whisper of air from the vents, the tapping of Robin’s blunt blue painted nail on the metal floor. 

Steve began to once again consider possible plans for escape when Robin spoke up. 

“So, Eddie, huh?”

“What?” Steve questioned, head turning slightly toward her as she snorted loudly. 

“You included Eddie in your little speech there. Guess you opened the book and didn’t hate what you read.”

Steve opened his mouth to shoot back a reply, something witty that would drag that raspy laugh out of her again, when the door opened with a loud buzz, quick footsteps sounding across the floor as it closed once more with the click of an automatic lock. 

Steve steeled himself to once again face the Russian commander. 

He knew at this point that torture was inevitable, and god wasn’t that a fucked up thing to be resigned to?

Fuck. 

He took in a deep breath, opening his eyes to see…

Dark brown with a golden center, like liquid sunshine swirling in a void. 

“Well, hello Sailor.”

Eddie. 

………

Chapter Text

Eddie’s heart was in his fucking throat. 

It had basically taken up permanent residence there, complete with a welcome mat and a post box, ever since the beginning of his dealings with one Steve Harrington; Hawkins resident pretty boy, ladykiller supreme, and the subject of every one of his fantasies since goddamn Middle School.

The very same Steve Harrington who was now staring up at him from his place on the floor, bound to a toppled over chair with Robin at his back and looking mere seconds away from passing out. 

His pretty face was battered to hell, one eye nearly swollen shut, dried blood trailing down from both nostrils of his definitely broken nose, and yet even more blood smeared across his split lip and his bruised cheeks, but the smile there was no less dazzling than usual, even with gruesome red smeared across his pearly white teeth.  

Damn him. 

“Fuck, I’m so glad I found you guys,” Eddie breathed out all at once, shoving the stolen keycard back into his pocket and drawing out his trusty pocket knife.

“Eddie!” Robin whisper-shouted, wiggling against Steve’s back and kicking her legs in her excitement. The chair scraped against the floor, the short sharp shrieks of metal against metal almost painful to his ears. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” she questioned. 

“Well I couldn’t just leave my favourite co-worker to the mercy of the Commies,” he answered wryly as he made certain the door was shut and locked behind him. 

Reasonably satisfied with their temporary safety, he made his way quickly over to the two. 

“Sorry, Harrington.”

He expected an eye roll or a sarcastic little chuckle as he crouched down in front of Steve to begin cutting through the thick straps binding him to the chair. 

Instead, the other boy pasted on an answering smirk, eyes half lidded as his tongue swiped across his bleeding lower lip, a movement Eddie had no choice but to follow. 

“Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper, Munson?” he quoted, his voice raspy and low in a way that vibrated around in Eddie’s lungs like a good baseline cranked up too loudly.

The metal handle of his knife dug into his palm as he clenched his fist tightly around it, his hand shaking. The colour bled from his knuckles, but that was more than made up for by the dark flush rushing up his neck to his cheeks and into his fucking hairline.

And as Steve’s gaze swept over his flushed skin, his widened eyes, his dropped jaw, his shaking hands, ever through the severe bruising and spatters of blood he looked pleased as punch.

Jesus H. Christ.

Eddie would consider it a great success that he didn’t choke on his tongue and pass away right then and there, but it was a very near thing. 

“That was the line, wasn’t it?” Steve inquired innocently, his words slurring together as a little bit of blood drooled out of the side of his mouth. 

Eddie bit down on his tongue hard to hold back what was no doubt the most pathetic noise in the known universe, focusing back on cutting through his bonds. 

Instead he forced a laugh, putting all of his remaining attention on trying to still his shaking hands.

“Be careful with those Star Wars references, Harrington. I might just fall in love with you.”

Steve wheezed out a laugh, his eyes squeezing shut as a wet cough wracked his form. 

Fuck, that sounded painful.

“Promise?” he choked out through a watery smile, those red rimmed hazel eyes meeting his and once again knocking the breath right out of his pathetic little lungs.

And that’s precisely when the door buzzed loudly for the second time, the sound of the lock clicking tantamount to a death toll. 

Icy fear shot down Eddie’s spine as he spun to face the door the moment it swung open, two guards halting in their tracks with twin expressions of surprise when they spotted him. 

It was almost comical, the way their wide eyes dropped from his face to the knife clutched tightly in his grip, and then back up to his face once more, like a scene straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.

He half expected Bugs Bunny to pop out, bite into a carrot like Clark Gable, and proclaim what a ‘stinker’ he was.

“Um…” Eddie spoke up with little to no forethought, breaking the oppressive silence as he raised his hands at his sides. 

“Auf wiedersehen? Wait, fuck that’s German.”

The guard on the left charged forward with an abrupt shout, and Eddie threw himself to the side with only a slight stumble and a curse, his shoulder ramming into the wall hard enough to hurt.

He scrambled to right himself as the other guard quickly followed suit, taking a swing at him that he didn’t quite manage to duck. His fist connected with Eddie’s cheekbone in a painful crunch, and he couldn’t honestly tell if the sound had come from his face or the man’s hand. 

He just knew the left side of his face was tingling and the guard was cursing in Russian. 

He recovered quickly, catching the guard by his arm and pulling him in to knee him solidly in the gut, sending him hurtling back a good few feet with a wheeze. 

“Eddie, look out!” Steve called out, Eddie quickly and surprisingly agily ducking the swing thrown at him from the first guard before flipping his grip on the knife still somehow in his hand and driving it into its mark; right into the meat of the man’s leg. 

The guard howled, landing a hard kick to Eddie’s chest to send him sprawling back across the floor, slamming into the little table beside Robin and Steve. 

He counted it as an exercise of great restraint when he managed not to ralph at the gruesome sight of the guard gripping onto the black hilt of the knife and yanking it out of his own leg, throwing it to the side with an enraged yell. 

Fuck, what are they feeding these guys in the motherland?

Eddie immediately scrambled in the direction of his discarded blade, half crawling half running as the second guard reached for the gun in his holster. 

Eddie rolled over his shoulder like a goddamn action hero, snatching up the knife, slippery with a thick coating of blood, and charging full speed at the man. 

The blade met its mark in his gut with a sickening sound before the man had a chance to fire, the agonized gurgle ringing in his ears as he pushed the man back off of his blade with his knee. 

He bent down and pried the gun out of the downed guard's slackened grip, turning the weapon on the first and fixing him with a heated glare as he struggled to even out his breathing. 

Next year, he swore to himself he would stop skipping out on PE to smoke under the bleachers. His lungs were burning. 

“Rob, you know Russian now, right?” he called over his shoulder as he adjusted his grip on the gun, certain he was holding it wrong. “How do I say, ‘gotcha, asshole’?”

His cocky grin dropped in a heartbeat as cold metal pressed into his temple, sending a shock of fear down his spine. 

“попался, мудак.”

At the sound of that voice, Eddie turned slowly, breath caught in his chest as he came face to face with an older bald man dressed in a uniform; a General, who was smiling at him the way a dentist in a shitty horror movie smiles before he goes to town on your teeth. 

The Russian General pushed the barrel of his Makarov further into the side of his head, pressing until he dropped the one he’d commandeered with a clatter and raised his hands in surrender. 

Several guards entered the room at his beckoning, a few dragging their downed comrades out while two broke off to lift Steve and Robin back upright despite their struggles. 

“Think you could write that down for me? I’m pretty shit at memorization,” Eddie responded before he could think better of it, wincing as the man let out a jarringly loud wheezing laugh and delivered a hearty slap to his shoulder, which was still throbbing from its collision with the wall.

“We have another comedian,” he said, his accent thick and his tone off puttingly jovial. 

“Perhaps this one will have some information a bit more useful to us. Shall we find out?”

As he spoke he leaned in close, moving the gun under Eddie’s chin to tilt his face up.

“I don’t know about that, man,” Eddie spoke, a quiver in his voice as he arched away from the weapon. “I think you picked the wrong guy. I don’t know anything. Like, anything. I mean, I failed my senior year twice! I don’t even think I could point to Russia on a map! It’s in Europe, right?”

His panicked gaze met Steve’s mid ramble and he shrugged helplessly, his good eye wide with anxiety; with fear.

Fuck.

The General laughed once again, the sound filling Eddie with a sense of dread so deep it settled in his gut like a leaden weight. 

“We will see,” he said before turning to the two remaining guards, barking a command at them in Russian. 

They instantly rounded on Eddie, dragging his arms behind his back and throwing him into a chair. His wrists were snatched up in a bruising grip that ground his bones together before what felt like metal cuffs were fastened on tightly, woven through the back of the chair to hold him in place. 

The General approached, holstering his gun with a smug look that set Eddie’s teeth on edge. 

He came in close, far too close, leaning down into Eddie’s face. Eddie tried to move away, the metal of the chair digging into his back, but he barely felt it over the pounding of his panicked heart. 

“Who do you work for?”

One simple sentence and Eddie could hear his dad’s words in his mind, as loud and as clear as if he’d been there himself:

“They start asking you questions, you don’t tell ‘em a thing, Ed. Not a goddamn thing.”

That’d been the last thing his old man had said to him; the last time he’d seen him, a full nine years ago as he was being led out of the courtroom by an impressive procession of security. 

The moment their eyes had met, he’d struggled out of the grip of the guards leading him back to his holding cell, fell to his knee to meet his gaze dead on, and grabbed him by his skinny shoulders to make him promise to do him one more favour, before he was shoved unceremoniously into line. 

And Eddie had. 

He hadn’t said a thing to anyone for the next three days, didn’t even speak until Wayne took him home once his presence was no longer required by the court.

The moment he’d passed the threshold of the trailer, he’d crumpled into his uncles arms, out of grief or relief, he still didn’t quite know.

He took in a deep breath now, nine years later, and met the steel gaze of the Russian General, knowing for certain that no matter what this bastard did to him, he wouldn’t say a damn thing. 

Not a thing that mattered, anyway. He was never good at holding his tongue when he was nervous. 

“Scoops Ahoy, man,” he let out with a nod down toward his uniform. ”Up there? In the mall you guys are hunkered down underneath like mole people? They work there with me. She’s my shift lead, th-that’s like a manager, but not really since there’s no pay raise. He’s… well. He’s just an asshole I went to school with- well, an ex asshole. He’s actually- ok, you don’t care about that. Point is, I’m not a goddamn spy. I’m just some schmuck who works at an ice cream shop in the mall to avoid going to jail for selling drugs to minors. I’m a slave to capitalism just like everyone else-”

That easy grin dropped from the General’s harsh face as he rambled and, though Eddie expected the backhand before he’d even moved to dole it out, it still managed to startle a pained yelp out of him, connecting with his cheek hard enough to rock his chair back onto two legs. 

“Dude, fuck,” Eddie gasped as the hands of one of the guards standing behind him gripped onto his shoulders, holding him back in his precariously tilted position. A sharp spike of panic shot through him when his feet could no longer touch the floor, every modicum of control wrenched from his hands in an instant. 

He was completely helpless. 

“You tell the same lies as your friends,” the General spat, reaching out and gripping Eddie’s hair at the root, yanking his head back to force him to meet his frighteningly cold gaze. 

“Why don’t you try again?”

Eddie scoffed despite himself. 

“Try- I’m telling the truth asshole! You think I wanna die for this country?”

He couldn’t hold back a whimper as that hand tightened further in his hair, his scalp stinging with protest. 

His face tingled, his skin flushed hot from the impact, and he was pretty sure he could feel the slow trickle of blood down his cheek. 

“I work at Scoops Ahoy, for some dick named Todd who I’ve never met but who insisted on a background check when he saw my fucking address. I make $3 an hour plus tips and get yelled at all day by bratty kids and middle aged women in pantsuits! I don’t have any useful information for you unless you want to learn how to make a rockin’ banana split! The secret is all in the ice cream to banana to syrup ratio, and honestly-”

Eddie gasped as the General released his grip on his hair, all four legs of his chair clacking back against the metal floor in a jarringly sudden motion. 

“What a pity,” he tsked as he straightened out his uniform with quick, efficient strokes. 

“They told me you Americans were stubborn, but they didn’t tell me you were foolish.”

Eddie flinched as the man was once again leaned into his personal space, breath ghosting across his still throbbing cheek. 

“Perhaps you need a little help to loosen your tongue?”

“Leave him alone!” Steve demanded with far more authority than someone tied to a chair and beaten to a bloody pulp should possess. 

“Ah,” the General started as he slowly turned to face Steve, prowling toward him like a goddamn predator. 

Eddie’s stomach twisted itself into knots as he reached out and grabbed Steve by his jaw, squeezing hard enough to have him visibly wincing, his lips puckering like a fish. 

“You must be the leader. Just for your bravery, you’ll be the doctor’s first… patient.”

Eddie really truly hated the sound of that. 

-

Truth serum. 

The Russians have fucking truth serum. 

The injection point in Eddie’s neck was still throbbing as the Russian Doctor, a man straight out of his childhood nightmares, gripped onto his hair, always his fucking hair, and checked his no doubt blown pupils with a toothy smirk of satisfaction. 

Eddie felt nauseous. 

He felt wired and alert, and yet also far away, like his head was stuffed full of styrofoam and cotton balls, but also like he was underwater. 

He could distantly feel Robin struggling against his back as the doctor moved on to her, and he tried to call out, to demand they leave her alone just like Steve had done for him, but his mouth wouldn’t move when he told it to.

Steve. 

Steve’s terrified screams still echoed through his mind; the look on his bloodied up face when the Russian doctor had pulled out the glowing blue needle gun thing. 

Steve had tried to protect him. 

Steve couldn’t stand up to his shitty friends who’d made Eddie’s life hell for a full seven years in the Hawkins School system, but he could stand up to an actual commie General for him. 

And he’d done it with absolutely no hesitation or regret, which, yeah, definitely did something funky to Eddie’s sick little heart. 

He could feel Steve’s shoulder pressed into the back of his left arm now, the other boy slumped forward in his seat and humming dazedly. 

He swore he could feel the vibrations from his voice in his very core, rattling his ribcage and tingling in his jaw. 

It was a pleasant voice, humming a familiar little tune, though he couldn’t quite grasp at it through the thick brain fog he was contending with. 

Something something and I’m head over heels.

He hadn’t been this fucked up since the first time he’d tried molly. 

The Russian General was speaking, but Eddie couldn’t find it in himself to pay attention, not even as his jaw was grabbed to force blurry eye contact. 

Everything was so so so blurry. 

“Woah, man,” he slurred, his mouth finding its way into a smirk with sheer muscle memory alone. 

He was already slurring his fucking words. 

“Buy me dinner first.”

Behind him, Steve and Robin both burst into manic little giggles, Robin’s shoes smacking against the ground as she kicked her feet hysterically. 

The grip around his jaw tightened enough that his teeth dug into the smooth wet flesh of the inside of his cheeks, but it didn’t hurt; it felt warm. 

Everything felt so warm. 

“-ask again. Who do you work for?”

Eddie scrunched up his nose in clear disgust as the man’s breath hit across his face. 

“Honest question. Do they have toothbrushes in Russia or are you guys just slamming pickled beets and letting that shit brew?”

Pain blossomed from the center of his face, and he sputtered as something wet and metallic poured into his mouth. 

Uh oh. 

He spit out as much of the blood as he could, distantly feeling it dribble down his chin and neck. 

Gross. 

The General was out of his immediate line of sight now, having shifted his focus to Steve once more, asking the same damn question like a broken record from hell. 

“Let’s try this again, yes? Who do you work for?”

“Scoops. Scoops Ahoy,” Steve snorted as if it were the funniest joke he’d ever told. 

“How did you find us?”

“Totally by accident.”

Eddie twisted in his seat to look as the General snapped another Russian command toward the Doctor, the man nodding sharply and picking up a pair of pliers like some kind of Orin Scrivello DDS. knockoff. 

The panic began to rise in his throat like bile as he approached Steve, ignoring his drugged up babbling and subsequent screaming as he snatched up one of his hands and clamped down on one of his fingernails. 

A chorus of screams scrambled around in Eddie’s foggy brain, repetitive cries of:

“No no no no!”

When suddenly Robin was desperately calling out over the din. 

“There was a code! There was a code! We heard a code!”

The doctor paused at the General’s beckoning, and Eddie drooped down in his seat as a sigh of something like relief punched its way out of his chest. 

“What code?” the General demanded, focusing that cold attention on Robin as she let out a raspy little laugh. 

“The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. Blah blah blah blah blah,” she trailed off, leaning her head back as she spoke, her hair tickling across Eddie’s shoulder. 

“You broadcasted that stupid spy shit all over town, and we picked it up on our Cerebro, and we cracked it in a day! A day! You think you’re so smart, but a couple of kids who scoop ice cream for a living cracked your code in a day, and now people know you’re here.”

Sensing the approach of his one and only chance, Eddie slumped down further in his seat, his fingers finding their way along the band of his watch to remove the bobby pin secured there. 

Images of afternoons with his dad after elementary school filtered into his head; afternoons spent not outside playing catch but rather inside sat at their rickety fold out table in their nicotine stained living room learning how to break out of handcuffs. 

An indispensable skill to have, Ed.

That’s what his old man always said as he locked the cuffs around his bony little wrists and walked him through the steps, over and over and over until he either cried from frustration or successfully picked the lock.

Best damn thing the bastard ever did for me. 

Blindly, but competently, he pushed the end of the pin into the small keyhole on his left wrist, twisting and turning until he felt it catch on the correct mechanism. 

The cuff clicked open with ease, and Eddie resisted the urge to headbang in celebration. 

That might be a bit of a giveaway. 

He tried to gather his thoughts, to formulate a plan with his newfound semi-freedom. 

Maybe he could take the General by surprise?

Take his gun and hold him hostage to negotiate for their release?

Maybe he could-

His half formed thoughts cut off with the sudden blaring of alarms. 

The General’s face dropped, and he immediately turned toward the door, storming out with the rest of the guards, leaving them alone with the sadistic doctor. 

Piece of cake. 

The moment the door had closed behind the procession, Eddie launched himself out of his seat with a cry, throwing himself at the doctor with a bit more force than he intended. 

The man stumbled under his weight, the pliers dropping out of his surprise slackened grip as Eddie threw a solid left hook, his knuckles aching from the impact and fuck they didn’t tell you how much it hurt to punch someone like that in the movies. He was shocked his fingers weren’t broken.

The doctor stumbled back, but Eddie advanced, somehow inexplicably staying upright even as his entire world tilted back and forth like a shitty carnival ride. 

Fuck he was high. 

He gripped onto the cuff dangling from the other still fastened around his wrist, pulling the long chain taught and wrapping it around the man’s throat in one surprisingly smooth motion. The doctor jerked in his hold, only succeeding in toppling them over onto the floor. 

Eddie recovered quickly, straddling the man’s back and tightening his death grip on the chain. 

He almost laughed as the mental image of Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt came to mind. 

The doctor choked and sputtered and struggled and bucked, but Eddie held fast, squeezing his eyes shut as he pulled with his entire body, refusing to let up until, with one final sickening gurgle, the man went limp and lifeless beneath him. 

Eddie released the chain with a shuddering breath, shaking out his cramping hands, each of which had the deep red impressions of the metal links across the meat of his palms. 

When he finally looked up, his eyes immediately met familiar hazel, almost completely swallowed up by a pool of black, like oil spilt across blossoming wetlands.

Steve stared at him, slack jawed with…

Wonder was the only thing Eddie’s drug-addled mind could supply. 

And wasn’t that a thought. 

That the pink painting his bruised cheeks and the ‘o’ of surprise shaping his perfect lips could possibly be in wonderment of him. 

The moment was shattered into a million little pieces as the door once again buzzed in warning before bursting open, a 5’5” ball of curly haired fury bursting through with a war cry, armed with Erica’s sparking cattle prod from hell. 

His piercing wail was cut hilariously short as he stumbled to a halt, seeming to take in the sight of Eddie knelt triumphantly over the limp body of the Russian doctor. 

“Oh,” he said, deactivating and lowering the deadly weapon with a purse of his lips. 

“You… ok. Good to see you had that… handled.”

“Hey! Henderson!” Steve called out, that strange and far away look on his face immediately replaced with an enormous dopey grin. “That’s crazy, I was just talking about you!”

“That’s nice, Steve,” Dustin muttered as he hurried over to the two still bound to their seats. 

“Eddie, help me out. We gotta go. Now.”

………

Chapter Text

Steve was

fucking

floating. 

He’d never felt so weightless in his life, not even in Sophomore year when he and Tommy had sat out by his pool while his parents were away and smoked through their entire sizable purchase of pot non-stop for five hours. 

They’d gotten stupid high and could do little more than lay flat on their backs in the damp grass, letting their heavy bodies melt into the ground. 

That high had been fun in a bone deep and soothing sort of way.  

This one. 

This one was a goddamn revelation. 

He found himself giggling at the shapes that wiggled across his blurry vision, reminiscent of the filthy carpet of an arcade. His head fell limply back against something solid as he reached out to trace them with his fingers. 

He took in as deep a breath as he could, his tingling nose filling immediately with a warm and comfortingly familiar fragrance; spicy and earthy and yet so so sweet. 

Eddie. 

Eddie was sweet. 

The other boy's curls tickled across his cheek as he nuzzled further into what he sluggishly realised was Eddie’s shoulder, breathing in the addictive scent with a pleased hum. 

A hand came slowly into his immediate line of sight, knuckles bruised and bloodied, long fingers adorned with heavy silver rings, blunt fingernails painted black with chipping polish that he only just noticed was a little sparkly. 

It was the same hand he’d used to punch the Russian Doctor, and to stab the guard. 

He was absolutely certain the sight of Eddie, brandishing a knife and savagely fighting for all of their lives would be living rent free in his mind until the day he died. 

No one had ever fought for Steve like that. 

He was the fighter. 

He was the protector. 

He was the one that’d grabbed the nail bat and taken a swing at the Demogorgon to save Jonathan and Nancy. He was the one that’d used himself as Demodog bait to keep the kids safe. 

He pulled Billy Hargrove away from Lucas and threw the first punch. He offered himself up to the goddamn Russians so the others could escape. 

People didn’t fight for him. 

But Eddie had. 

And the way he’d looked, wild curls flying and white teeth bared, straddling the Doctor’s back and choking the life out of him with his own handcuffs…

The handcuffs he’d picked the lock of. 

Un-fucking-believable. 

“Steve?” Eddie whispered, probably not for the first time, as he gently shook him by the shoulder. 

Steve had been lost. 

Shit, he was still lost.

He vaguely remembered the elevator ride up, Robin’s joyful shrieking as he pretended to surf on that red cart and ate absolute shit. 

Remembered Eddie’s full bodied laugh as he told Dustin he didn’t do drugs, Dad, and his surprisingly strong hands that dragged him to his feet as the elevator came to a stop, the other boy unsteadily leading him through the open doors. 

He remembered the crisp taste of the cool night air when they’d emerged, and the adjacent doors Dustin and Erica had unceremoniously shoved them through to escape from the two armed guards approaching them.

So they were back in Starcourt, in the  dingey, poorly lit back hallways that always gave Steve the heebie-jeebs, standing around and waiting for Dustin Henderson the Boy Wonder to figure out where they needed to go next. 

“Harrington, you with me?”

Steve slowly glanced up towards Eddie, meeting his gaze with a suspicious squint as his head lolled to the side. 

“The Russians dosed us up with the same shit, right? So, why aren’t you, like, as high as us?” he inquired, the words falling from his lips like dominoes in zero gravity. 

They were walking. 

Steve didn’t remember starting to walk. 

“Oh trust me, Stevie. I’m plenty high,” Eddie laughed lowly, leaning closer to Steve as he spoke like they were sharing a secret, patting his chest with one stunningly warm hand, but oddly chilly fingertips, and wasn’t that super?

Super duper. 

“I just have a little more experience managing it than you and, heh, Buckley over there.”

He nodded toward Robin, who was walking backwards with large back and forth steps whilst staring down at her feet in open wonder. She looked remarkably like a duck.

Steve snickered at the sight, gripping on to Eddie’s sleeve as he stumbled over his own foot. 

Eddie’s hand once again came up, this time setting itself gently but firmly on his elbow, supporting him. 

The contact sent pleasurable little tingles humming across his senses and he found himself leaning into it; leaning into Eddie. 

He wondered just how close he could get. 

“Harrington,” Eddie said once again with a voice that was so soft and so sweet in his ear, like a butterfly dancing across a flower. 

Well, his tone wasn’t sweet, it was actually pretty serious if the small frown and the scrunching between his eyebrows was any indication. 

He’d never seen Eddie so serious. Not even when he’d stalk across the lunch tables in school, shouting out his disdain for forced conformity and the status quo.

Steve couldn’t help but reach out and press his finger against the worried lines, attempting to smooth them away. 

“Munson,” he spoke through a giggle as the boy’s brow raised under his touch, those enormous eyes growing somehow even bigger. 

They were so dark and deep and endless.

God, he could fall into those things, just like Alice in Wonderland falling down that rabbit hole in that movie. He knew the descent would be just as, if not more, magical. Maybe he’d even meet the Mad Hatter, or the March Hare. He remembered liking them. 

“Not those singing flowers, though. I fucking hated them. That purple one was a bitch.”

“What the hell is he saying?” Erica called from just ahead of them, her little nose wrinkled in annoyance as she reached over and grabbed Robin by the back of her shirt to keep her moving. 

“But that white rose was, wow, so pretty,” Steve continued, swaying on his feet until he was spinning, his feet moving him to stand directly in front of Eddie. 

Their chests bumped as Eddie came to a sudden stop, his little exhale of surprise puffing warmly across Steve’s throbbing face, sending more pleasant tingles across his skin.

This close, so close, Steve could see each individual detail of Eddie’s face; each long dark lash crowning almost black doe eyes, each tiny freckle dotting across his nose and cheeks, even the one above his lip, the stellar pattern interrupted by the splatter of dried blood across his pale skin like a painful constellation. 

He could see each delicate line creasing the rosy skin of his red stained chapped lips. He would bet a months pay they would feel good to touch; rough, but not unpleasantly so. 

He was already touching him.  

He didn’t remember lifting his hand, but there it was, cupping Eddie’s jaw, thumb smoothing over his blood spattered cheek, across his chapped bottom lip. His skin was so soft and warm. 

Eddie was always so warm. 

He had been back in the elevator too, when they’d clung to each other while the world fell out from under them and they hurtled together toward hell. 

Sunshine taking a human form.  

“You’re like that,” he let out softly, thoughtfully, tilting his head this way and that to see Eddie at every angle he could manage without falling completely head over heels. 

“Pretty. Y’know?”

Eddie’s pretty lips dropped open in surprise, his cheeks flushing a deep pink that Steve could feel beneath his hand. 

“Steve! Eddie! Come on,” Dustin called from further down the hall, impatiently waving his hand toward the door before him. 

Steve groaned and rolled his eyes, the movement dizzying like a teacup ride at the Fourth of July fair. 

“Oh!” Steve exclaimed, pulling back out of Eddie’s personal space and turning haphazardly on his heel. 

“We’re totally missing the fair! We should go!” he suggested as he made his way toward the glaring preteen, gripping his shoulders and shaking. “I have never in my life wanted funnel cake more than I do right now!”

He glanced back over his shoulder, stumbling back with a snort as Dustin scrambled to hold him upright by his uniform shirt. 

“You comin’ Eddie?”

The metalhead jumped as his name was called, and Steve was struck immediately with the vivid image of a deer in headlights. 

That particular description had never fit another person as perfectly as it fit Eddie Munson in that moment, his big Bambi eyes flickering up to meet Steve’s. 

Fuck that was a sad movie. 

“Come on, dude! We’re getting Funnel Cake!”

“We’re not getting Funnel Cake, Steve,” Dustin wheezed as he successfully pulled Steve back to a fully upright position before shoving him through the doorway and into the Starcourt Cinema. 

“We’re totally getting Funnel Cake.”

“Funnel Cake? And a movie? Happy birthday to me!” Robin slurred with a huge lazy grin, motioning grandly with her arms spread out. 

Erica made a noise of annoyance so clear it punctured through Steve’s hazy brain fog as she slapped Robin’s arms down and cautiously checked their surroundings as they entered the cinema. 

“Wait, is it your birthday?” Steve questioned, bristling at Erica’s harsh shushing and mimicking the sound right back at her.  

Robin chortled at the display, slinging an arm around Steve’s shoulders and leaning in just like Eddie had. 

Well, it wasn’t quite the same. It didn’t send his blood thrumming or his nerve endings singing. 

“No, it’s actually March 10th,” she whisper-shouted, side-eyeing Erica as if she were a short-tempered librarian instead of an eleven year old girl with flashlights taped to her head. 

“Oh, mine's April 29th! Eddie, when’s your birthday?”

“Get in the goddamn theatre!” Dustin groused, planting a hand on Steve’s upper back and pushing him forward through a swinging door into a darkened theatre, a movie already playing on the screen. 

Steve kept his eyes glued to the talking figures of Michael J. Fox and some crazy old Einstein looking dude as they talked over a Dellorian, allowing himself to be maneuvered into an empty seat right at the front with minimal complaints at the shitty positioning. 

Dustin urged them to stay put before he and Erica disappeared from his immediate line of sight.

The closeness of the speaker had his ears ringing and his eyes vibrating in his head, but the haze made everything feel good; funny and numb. 

The movie was weird. He didn’t quite understand what Michael J. Fox was talking about, couldn’t decipher the meaning of the words and he wished, not for the first time, that movies in the theater had subtitles. 

“May 15th,” a voice whispered in his ear, sending goosebumps down the back of his neck. 

His eyes met Eddie’s once more, illuminated by the projected light glowing blue as the Dellorian disappeared in a flash for some reason. He wasn’t paying attention to anything but Eddie. 

Pretty pretty pretty. 

“May 15th,” Steve repeated, his gaze trailing down to Eddie’s pretty mouth as it curled upward in a small smile around his mouthful of-

Where did he get popcorn? And skittles?

“My birthday. It’s May 15th.”

His breath smelled like butter and sugar as he shoveled another large handful of the odd mixture into his mouth, and Steve found himself wanting to…

Wait. What?

“Oh hey! Our birthdays are March, April, and May!” Robin hissed excitedly from his other side, motioning between the three of them with a manic grin. 

“Ooh, gimme,” she demanded as she spotted Eddie’s mysteriously procured snacks, making grabby hands at him. Her face scrunched up in sudden displeasure as someone behind them shushed her rather aggressively, and she spun in her seat to shush back. 

Steve tried his utmost to focus his attention back on the screen before him, trying to breath around his rapidly beating heart.

He could feel Eddie’s arm move against his each time he reached down for a new handful of popcorn, and the contact was driving him just a little insane. 

Time passed by, the movie got weirder and more incomprehensible, and…

The light was casting an almost halo around Eddie, his mane of curls glowing red at the edges, his pale skin lit up at the highest planes of his face; he was so…

Oh. 

He called Eddie pretty. 

He called Eddie pretty right to his face. 

Robin was watching him. 

He felt nauseous. 

He needed air. 

He needed water. 

He needed…

Fuck. 

He needed to get away from Eddie and clear his head. That’s what he needed. 

-

As it turned out, gulping down water like your life depended on it with a body full of premium grade Russian truth serum and then spinning in place whilst staring at a trippy lit up ceiling was a recipe for ralphing. 

Steve was honestly shocked he had anything in his body to puke up at that point, but his stomach seemed determined to prove him utterly wrong. 

He settled back against the side of the stall with a groan, clenching his eyes shut against the all too familiar pounding in his head. 

There was that concussion. Super. 

“The ceiling stopped spinning for me. Is it spinning for you?” Robin called from her own stall beside him, clearing her throat against the bile that was no doubt fouling up her taste buds just like his own. 

God, what he wouldn’t do for a toothbrush and some mouthwash. 

Slowly, carefully so as not to re-trigger his nausea, he leaned his head back and opened his eyes, taking in the sight of a blessedly stationary ceiling. 

“Holy shit,” he breathed, a slow smile pulling at the deep split in his lip. “No. Do you think we puked it all up?”

“Maybe. Ask me something,” Robin suggested, the rubber heel of her shoe tapping a slow rhythm against the wall. “Interrogate me,” she finished with an assumed Russian accent, pulling a chuckle from Steve as he leaned a bit of his weight against the seat of the toilet. 

Gross, but certainly not the grossest thing he’d done in the past 48 hours. 

“Ok, interrogate you. Sure, uuhhh. When was the last time you, uh, peed your pants?”

“Today.”

“What?” Steve said, unable to hide the disbelief from his tone as he stared at the wall dividing them. 

“When the Russian doctor took out the bone saw!”

“Oh my god.”

He couldn’t help the laughter that pulled at his chest, the memory of the almost cliche scene unfolding before them playing once again in his mind. 

He’d been close to that himself, especially when those pliers had clamped down threateningly on his fingernail. 

He shivered at the thought. 

“It was just a little bit, though!” Robin continued, her voice pitched up as she spoke through her giggles. 

“Yeah, it’s definitely still in her system,” he mumbled more to himself than her as he rubbed at the swollen bridge of his nose, wincing at the sharp pain of a no doubt broken bone. 

“Alright, my turn.”

“Okay. Hit me,” Steve agreed easily with a wave of his hand, pressing the tips of his fingers into his eyelids in an attempt to quell some of the ache behind them. 

“Have you… ever been in love?”

“Yep. Nancy Wheeler. First semester, Senior year,” he spoke with zero hesitation, forming his fingers into a gun, cocking, and shooting through the center of his chest with a ‘pew’ sound that seemed to echo in the empty bathroom.

“Oh my god. She’s such a priss,” came the unimpressed response from the other side. 

Immediately, the image of Nancy aiming a shotgun at him with perfect form and an icy glare came to the forefront of his mind and he hummed a little sound of amusement to himself. 

“Turns out, not really.”

In fact, he was almost certain, given what he now knew of Robin, she and Nancy would get along like a house on fire.

Robin scoffed for what felt like the millionth time in the past two days, but when she spoke next, her words were surprisingly gentle. 

“Are you still in love with Nancy?”

Steve found himself shaking his head with, once again, no hesitation, very firmly and simply stating:

“No.”

“Why not?”

And what a question that was. A question Steve had been struggling with for the past week or so. 

Maybe much much longer. 

Why wasn’t he still in love with Nancy?

Nancy was… beautiful and smart and capable and headstrong and everything he should want. The complete package.

But…

“I think it’s because I found someone… someone different,” he sighed deeply, letting his head fall back as the words, unrehearsed and unfiltered and unpredictable, began to pour from his stinging mouth. 

“It’s crazy. Ever since Dustin got home, he’s been saying, y’know, ‘you gotta find your Suzie. You gotta find your Suzie’, and…”

Big honey dark eyes came to mind with little to no beckoning, the memory of them always there, lingering under the surface of each and every thought. 

An unbelievably warm touch and gentle, reassuring words; a wild head of frizzy curls that smelled like Irish Spring soap and weed. 

A wide toothy grin, not cruel, but joyful and cheeky; sharing the joke with him, not making him into the joke. 

“Shit,” Steve cut himself off, biting down on his tongue as his brain finally caught up to his mouth. He choked on the words resting in his throat, ready and waiting to be spoken, like a missile ready for someone to press the big red button to launch. 

His palms were sweating. 

“I…” he tried to speak up, his voice wavering as icy fear coiled in his gut like writhing black vines in a subterranean tunnel. 

He could almost hear his old man’s disgusted scoff as he watched the news, loudly declaring that anyone who contracted ‘the disease’ deserved it and should’ve reconsidered their ‘filthy lifestyle’ before it got them killed. 

He couldn’t keep it in anymore. 

He couldn’t. 

“Fuck. The point is… this… this person that I… like… it’s somebody that I didn’t even talk to in school. I know why I didn’t, but it’s still stupid, because… I shouldn’t have cared about what Tommy H. would’ve said or… or about not being Prom King.”

He spat out the last two words as if they were the taste fouling up his mouth rather than stomach bile, pressing his fingers into the aching bridge of his nose, letting the sharp stab of pain ground him in the moment. 

He felt the panic rising in his throat once again, just as traitorous tears began to prick at the edges of his waterline. 

Real men don’t cry, Steven. 

“It’s stupid,” he forced himself to continue.“I was just… such an ass to this person. I mean, a grade A douche, all because I thought if I wasn’t, if I went against the norm and defended them instead, if I let myself imagine that I could be with them, I would lose… everything. My popularity, my so-called friends, everything that I thought mattered. That people like Tommy and Carol or my parents told me mattered. 

“I mean, Dustin‘s right, it’s all just a bunch of bullshit anyways. Because, when I think about it, I should’ve been hanging out with him this whole time. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed more in my life than I have this past week. Maybe my senior year wouldn’t have been so fucking miserable if I had just pulled my head outta my ass and realised things a little sooner. If I had… let myself consider this as an option no matter what my asshole dad might’ve said about it, because… shit.”

The silence from the other stall following Steve’s confession was positively deafening, broken up only by the roaring of the blood rushing through Steve’s ears and the pathetic whimpers and sniffles he couldn’t quite force down as the tears poured freely down his face. 

“Robin?” he tried to call out when it became too much, his tone quivering as he struggled to keep his breathing steady. 

“Rob, did you just OD in there?”

Robin’s softly spoken response rang loud and clear through the panicked haze in Steve’s mind. 

“No.”

He wrapped his arms tightly around his knees, pulling them up to his chest as he waited for the inevitable; for Robin to call him a freak and to leave him there, all by himself on the floor of the Starcourt Cinema women’s bathroom. 

Because why wouldn’t she? 

Instead there was a quick sigh from the other side, and a muffled: “hold on,” before Robin was suddenly sliding under the gap at the bottom of the stall, pulling herself upright to face him. 

Steve turned his face away quickly, using his dingey red tie to wipe the shameful tear tracks from his cheeks. 

“The floor’s disgusting,” he pointed out with a forced chuckle, the effect of which was ruined by the choked off sob that ripped its way out from his chest. 

“Steve,” Robin shot him a single raised brow. “I’ve already pissed my pants and puked on myself. I think in relative terms this is no worse.”

Steve laughed a real laugh that time, hurriedly wiping away more tears as they gathered in his lashes. 

He just couldn’t stop. 

It was like the levy had burst and suddenly eighteen years of heavily repressed emotion was forcing its way out into the open, and what outstanding fucking timing. 

Robin’s expression dropped from that oddly reassuring mocking smile she did so well to a thoughtful frown, her brow scrunching under the sheer weight of it. 

“Steve. Listen… Do you remember what I said about Click’s class? About me being jealous and, like, obsessed?”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded. 

That conversation felt like a lifetime ago, though he could almost trick himself into believing he could still feel the cool metal of the floor of the interrogation room against his shoulder and the sharp bite of the leather straps binding him to his chair. 

He doubted he’d ever forget that. 

“It isn’t because I had a crush on you,” Robin continued, pulling her own knees to her chest in a mirror of Steve’s position. 

“It’s because… she wouldn’t stop staring at you.”

She?

“Mrs. Click?” Steve questioned aloud, face scrunching in no-doubt visible confusion. 

Robin sighed, but there was no biting sarcasm, no ready wit or mischievous smirk. She just looked… determined. 

“Tammy Thompson. I wanted her to look at me. But, she couldn’t pull her eyes away from you and your stupid hair. And I didn’t understand because you would get bagel crumbs all over the floor, and you asked dumb questions, and you were a douche bag! And- and you didn’t even like her and… I would go home and just scream into my pillow.”

“But…” Steve stuttered out slowly as he struggled to process her words. 

“Tammy Thompson’s a girl.”

“Yeah, Steve,” Robin huffed softly. “And Eddie’s a boy.” 

The words hit Steve like a ton of toppling bricks, and he slowly, very slowly, released the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding in, the burning in his lungs finally abating. 

Eighteen years of burning, suddenly soothed by one single conversation with his coworker on the Starcourt Cinema bathroom floor. 

And it was funny. It was really fucking funny that one person, someone he’d spent only a month and a half in close quarters with, more than half of that time spent bickering and wishing he could be anywhere else, could lift the weight of the goddamn world, the fear of his fathers disappointment, and his mothers disdain right off of his shoulders. 

All it took was Robin Buckley; band dweeb, code breaker, polyglot, and, apparently, lesbian. 

“Steve? Did you OD over there?”

Robin’s voice broke him from his thoughts, and he couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the edges of his lips, a laugh of disbelief bubbling up from his throat. 

“Honestly, I really thought you were into Eddie,” he admitted before he could stop himself. 

He’d been so sure of it with how they’d looked at each other, the secret little smiles and winks, the playful ribbing, and then that hug in the elevator. 

“Oh I’m definitely not. I’m batting strictly for the other team, I’m afraid.”

“Good,” Steve nodded before he could fully think about it, and shit. 

He’d said it so genuinely. 

He was relieved. He was happy even that he’d been wrong. 

The realisation wasn’t necessarily a surprise. One didn’t think of the eyes of a platonic friend/coworker as ‘deep swirling pools of liquid sunshine’. 

Even so, the thought filled his mouth with cotton and his head with static, had his heart rabbit-kicking in his chest and his palms sweating a genuinely concerning amount. 

He huffed out a breath, one that could be confused for a laugh bordering on hysterical as he ran a hand through his hair and admitted, to the world and to himself:

“Shit. I’m into Eddie.”

Robin for her part just smiled and scooted closer, resting her back against the wall beside him and placing a hand on his shoulder. 

“I know.”

He briefly wondered how obvious it’d been to everyone but him. 

Even Dustin had clocked it before he did, and that was just embarrassing. 

Did Eddie know? Did Eddie feel the same way? Did Eddie even like boys?

“Well, aren’t we a pair?” Steve snorted out, wiping his nose gingerly with the back of his hand as his tears finally slowed to a stop. 

“They say they always come in twos,” Robin shrugged, leaning against his arm and nudging him gently in the side. 

And Steve laughed. 

He couldn’t help it. 

He laughed and laughed, ignoring the sharp stabbing pain of his tender ribs as he clutched at his sides and wheezed. 

Robin had joined him quickly, her freckled face pinched in an almost pained expression as she folded in on herself and snorted loudly, the sound echoing in the small space which only made the two of them laugh harder. 

Steve laughed until he could barely breathe, the rasp and rattle in his throat mildly concerning, but he couldn’t focus on it if he’d wanted to. 

He had a crush on Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson. 

Like, a big time crush; the birds singing, bells peeling, children laughing, life is beautiful kind of crush.

And the earth still turned.

Robin laid her head gently on Steve’s shoulder and Steve hummed, shockingly content in the moment they’d found themselves in. 

“So,” Robin finally spoke up once they’d gotten their giggles under control. “Was that stuff about being in love with Nancy Wheeler true, or-“

“Oh yeah,” Steve nodded immediately, dropping his head down to rest on top of hers. “I would’ve followed her into hell if she’d asked me, but… this is real too.”

He could feel Robin nodding against his shoulder, a calm silence passing between them. The first one that didn’t leave something gnawing and aching in Steve’s ribs. 

“So…” he started, unable to contain his smile at his next words. “Tammy Thompson. Really?

“Don’t start!” Robin yelled as she slapped him hard on the chest, which hurt like hell, but he was too busy snickering to notice. 

“No no, cause you have to remember that time she tried to sing the national anthem over the soloists from choir at the pep rally, beginning of the fall semester in ‘82!”

Robin covered her ears as Steve proceeded to serenade her with his best impression, interchangeably going sharp and flat with every other note. 

“Stop it! You sound like a Muppet!”

”She sounds like a Muppet! She sounds like a Muppet giving birth!”

“Oh like your taste is so much better than mine?” she talked over him. “Eddie the Freak, Steve? Do you remember when he jacked the tires off of Principal Higgins’s car and rolled them through the hallways?”

“Holy shit I forgot about that! God, Higgins’s face looked just like a-“

“A tomato! I know!” Robin shrieked. “Like a sun dried one because it was-

“Cause it was all red and wrinkled! Yeah!” Steve finished for her, the two of them descending once more into a veritable giggle fit at the memory. 

Steve could feel the aches in his abdomen and his chest as he struggled once again to catch his breath, wiping very different tears from his eyes. 

“Robin…” he said finally, nudging her as she let out a quick cackle. “Thank you.”

“For what?” she said, her voice far raspier than before as she carefully blotted at her eyes, further smudging her mascara beneath despite her best efforts. 

“For staying.”

“Steve…” Robin started slowly, turning to face him completely with a small smile. 

“We just survived being trapped in a secret elevator, being drugged and tortured by Russians together, not to mention working in food service for the past month, and now we’ve just come out to each other on the bathroom floor of the cinema. I’m sorry to say this, but you are stuck with me for the foreseeable future, Dingus.”

”Tammy Thompson impression and all?”

Robin once again smacked at his shoulder, but couldn’t manage to hide the snort of laughter or the fond smile as she nodded.

”Terrible horrible Muppet impression and all.”

For the millionth time in so many minutes, Steve found himself smiling until his cheeks ached. 

He could definitely deal with that. 

Definitely. 

………

Chapter Text

“You’re like that. Pretty, y’know?”

Steve had called him…

Pretty. 

Like it was a simple observation and not the most insane thing Eddie had ever heard in his entire life. 

Pretty. 

It replayed over and over and over in the theatre inside his skull, drowning out every other thought in its wake. 

A rushing river of: “Pretty pretty pretty”, carving its way through the canyons of his mind. 

Steve Harrington thought he was pretty. 

Steve fucking Harrington. 

Un-fucking-believable. 

Sure, the guy was higher than goddamn Sputnik when he’d said it.

High on Russian Truth Serum, emphasis on truth!

The reminder á la his drug addled brain only managed to confuse him further. 

Surely that had to mean something?

It had to mean something when Steve had stepped in front of him, those black drenched eyes scanning over his face like he was doing his utmost to map out and memorize each and every detail. 

It had to mean something when he’d placed a lightly calloused hand on his jaw and caressed his cheek, rubbing circles under his cheekbone and swiping a thumb across the seam of his lips. 

He was tempted now to just bite the bullet and ask; to just lean over to the other boy and whisper in his ear. Something like:

”I understand we both just narrowly avoided being tortured and killed by subterranean commies and now we’re tripping balls in a major way on fucking truth serum, but what exactly did you mean when you told me I was pretty like a cartoon flower?”

He wasn’t totally sure if it was the drugs in his system or his general disregard for his own personal safety that made him think that was a decent plan, but he’d already started to lean across his seat. 

He hoped the other boy wasn’t too engrossed in the film. 

He glanced over as surreptitiously as his hazy mind could manage, only to find both of the seats beside him empty. 

Oh. 

Uh oh. 

His head snapped over toward the other side of the theatre, spotting Erica hunched forward in her seat, fully absorbed in the movie with some popcorn of her own. 

Thank Christ. 

He slid out of his seat slowly, falling into a crouch close to the popcorn covered ground. 

Taking one last outrageously large mouthful of his popcorn and skittle concoction for the road, he shuffled along the aisle and out of the theatre, blinking rapidly in the sudden light. 

Oy fucking vey that’s bright. 

He glanced around the area, searching for any sign of his missing coworkers when he heard a familiar cackle coming from…

The bathroom?

He made his way over quickly, taking a moment to press his ear to the door to listen for another sign of his friends before he realised how creepy and fucking weird that probably looked and just pushed the door open. 

The sight that met him was a strange one to be sure; both Steve and Robin were on the floor of the second stall together, Steve crammed between the wall and the toilet, Robin leant against his shoulder, her feet up against the opposite wall. 

The two were red in the face from laughter, hanging on each other like old friends instead of slightly antagonistic coworkers dead set on drowning each other in sprinkles.

He didn’t have much time to swell on the strange sight before Robin’s big blue eyes snapped up to meet his and she grinned. 

“Eddie!” she greeted with a wide and welcoming gesture. “Welcome to the bathroom party! We just puked together! We are now bonded for life.”

As she spoke, she grabbed and raised Steve’s hand, shaking it in the air to further her point with a positively manic grin. 

Eddie shook his head with a chuckle as he let the door swing closed behind him, making his way into the stall and plopping down across from the other two as the nervous tension ebbed from his body. 

Robin immediately settled her feet in his lap, and he took a moment to look over the smudged up pen doodles on her converse. 

He snickered to himself at the crude drawing of a naked woman on the right. 

It was a wonder anyone thought she was straight. 

“So you’re telling me you two are gonna be twice as annoying now?”

“Yep,” Robin sighed dramatically, throwing her arm over her forehead and leaning back even further against Steve’s chest. 

A nasty little zing of envy shot through Eddie at the sight, but he did his best to tamp it down. 

Not the time for that, dumbass. 

“Steve and Robin, inseparable best buds for life! We should get matching necklaces or keychains- well I don’t have a car. Oh! Bracelets!”

Eddie’s eyes wandered over to Steve while Robin rambled and he was pretty sure he wasn’t high enough to imagine the almost teary-eyed expression on his face, as if getting matching friendship bracelets with Robin Buckley was the most meaningful thing he could think of. 

“So when do I get my bonding moment with Steve?” Eddie chuckled, if only to end Robin’s rant, which had taken a turn for the weird as she began a retelling of the time her dad had tried to teach her how to parallel park and she hit three mailboxes. 

Good ole Buckley. 

At his words, Robin seemed to perk up, shooting a secret little look over towards a glassy-eyed Steve before she slapped her freckled thighs loudly and moved to stand. 

“You know, actually, I should go and find our little boy genius. He’s probably worried about us!” she reasoned as she stepped over Eddie’s legs, tiptoeing over to the door in a way that couldn’t have been more suspicious if she’d tried. 

“I’m gonna- yeah. You two, uh, make nice! Chat! Maybe about recent revelations, Steve?”

And with a little salute and a stumble as she pulled the door the wrong way, she was gone, leaving Eddie alone in a bathroom stall with Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington. 

A moment straight out of his High School fantasies and nightmares. 

“Ok, so… That was weird, right? Not just me thinking that?” Eddie spoke up, turning to face Steve with an attempt at a playful smile. 

“I mean, it’s Robin,” Steve said by way of answering, and wasn’t that the truth. 

“Ah yes. Our dear Robin is indeed a queer bird,” Eddie mused with a reverent little shake of his head and a smile.

Steve flinched at his wording and, just like that, his smile dropped as quickly as it’d come. 

The other boy’s cheeks were oddly pale, his brow shimmering with a fine layer of sweat, his hands shaking in their place gripping at the hems of his shorts until his knuckles bled as white as his knee high socks. 

“Steve? You good, dude?” Eddie inquired gently, rolling forward on his knees and carefully approaching the other boy. 

“You’re not gonna puke again, are you?” he questioned, raising his hands as if to steady or shield; even he wasn’t entirely certain. 

“Cause if you puke, I’ll puke. I’m a very empathetic person and I really hate-“

“I’m not gonna-“ Steve started, rubbing a hand over his face and wincing as his fingers caught against the gnarly bruise around his eye. “I’m fine, man. Just… thinking.”

Eddie nodded slowly, sitting back on his haunches in front of Steve, leaving a respectable foot of space between them. 

“Ok good. Thinking is good, as opposed to puking. I really didn’t wanna handle puking right now. I would’ve, though, if you needed me to. I could’ve held your hair back or something-“

“Munson. Please stop saying puke. It doesn’t even sound like a word anymore,” Steve groaned, but there was that hint of a smile on his face once again; a smile that warmed Eddie from the inside out. 

That addictive warmth urged him to keep pushing, and he was never very good at resisting his urges. 

“Munson? So we’re back to last names, huh? I thought we were bonding, Stevie? How am I ever gonna catch up to Buckley if we’re not even on a mutual first name basis?”

That sunshiny smile widened and Eddie was pretty certain he could live off of the warmth it emanated forever. 

Who needs an area heater in the brutal Indiana winter when one has Steve Harrington and his 100 Gigawatt smile. 

What the fuck is a Gigawatt?

It didn’t matter. 

“I’m terribly sorry to have offended you, Edward,” Steve shot back, emphasizing each syllable with a goofy little smirk that buried itself straight into Eddie’s poor little heart. “How ever can I make it up to you?”

Eddie grinned, his aching cheek protesting the stretch, but he ignored it in favour of leaning in closer to the other boy’s personal space, staring up at him through his fluttering eyelashes. 

“You could start by telling me how pretty I am again?”

And there it was. 

Mouth meet foot; an uneasy alliance at best, but a very very familiar one. 

Eddie honestly fucking wondered if he would ever learn when to shut the fuck up. 

Hazel eyes widened and that starlit smile faltered. Bruised cheeks coloured a peachy pink that Eddie would find enchantingly attractive if it didn’t feel like his heart was doing its damndest to burst out of his chest like he was John Hurt in Alien. 

Where was Ellen Ripley when you needed someone to eject you out of an airlock and into the cold unforgiving vacuum of space?

“S-Steve, I-“ he tried, but the words dried up on his tongue like a riverbed in a years-long drought. 

Every single word he’d ever learned, every sound in the English language, every single thought in his head aside from the low and never ending buzz of pure panic that remained when all else faded, vanished from his mind all at once. 

And Steve was staring; just… looking at him with those big dark cow eyes of his, and Eddie had never been good at reading social cues or conforming to societal norms, but he was pretty fucking certain that openly flirting with your straight sort-of friend/circumstantial brother in arms twice within the span of two hellish days was a definite no no. 

Even if said straight friend had leaned into you and looked at you like you mattered to him and had touched your face so gently and called you pretty like it was something easy and not at all earth-shattering and- he was looking at his lips. 

Steve was looking at his lips. 

He was pretty fucking sure he was, at the very least. 

Not sure enough. 

“Steve?”

They had gotten closer. 

When had they gotten closer?

“Eddie,” Steve whispered back, a puff of air against his flushed cheeks. His eyes were heavy lidded, and his cheeks were pink, and his lips were red, and he was close. 

So close. 

Pretty pretty pretty. 

So close. 

There was no way this was actually… This kind of shit didn’t just…

So close. 

Panic shot through Eddie like a fucking bolt of lightning. 

Roll one D10 for damage. 

Before he could fall into the trap, he planted a steadying hand on the center of Steve’s chest- holyshitholyshitholyshit- courageously resisting the urge to grab a handful and squeeze. 

He instead patted his shoulder three times in the buddy-buddiest way he could manage and let out a laugh he dearly hoped didn’t sound half as hysterical as he imagined it did. 

“Your, uh, breath smells like puke, man,” he punched him playfully in his side, immediately apologizing as the action pulled a pained wince from Steve. 

Holy shit. 

“Yeah, go figure,” Steve chuckled after a second with a nod toward the toilet, a bit winded as he gripped at his aching ribs. 

Holy. Shit. 

The moment had passed, the air clearing from that stiflingly intense electricity to something familiar and friendly. 

And this was… good. 

Steve laughing was good. The distance now between them was good. 

This was…

This was safe and normal and safe, as opposed to reading some confusing body language super wrong, as usual, putting his heart on the line, and getting decked in his already bruised up face, losing Steve completely. 

He could pretend his heart didn’t ache for the boy in front of him who suddenly couldn’t meet his eyes, which at this point was a small mercy. 

He could pretend he didn’t crave that closeness they’d been falling into like two asteroids pulled into orbit. He was great at pretending! Hell, he’d made a whole damn club for it. 

He could pretend because he couldn’t lose Steve. 

He couldn’t. 

The sudden silence stretched on between the two of them, filled only with the sound of Eddie’s rings clicking together as he twiddled his fingers absentmindedly, tapping out a familiar melody on his thigh. 

I never find out till I’m head over heels. 

“I meant it, y’know.”

The words cut through the musical arrangement in his head, and just like that, all panicked thoughts in his foggy brain came to a crashing halt, a devastating pileup that would take all of his little mind-paramedics ages to sort out. 

He could hardly even whisper out his short little reply through the tight and pitiful clench of his throat. 

“What?”

Those hazel eyes met his once more; eyes that glittered like two perfectly cut gemstones, warm brown with flecks of green and gold, like the turning of the season in late August. 

Eyes that spoke of warmth and comfort, of hot cocoa on a chilly autumn night, of fuzzy socks and unbelievably soft sweaters, of a midday rainstorm that soaked the world darker and made it slow and lazy; the sorts of things Eddie lived for. 

He sucked in a deep breath as Steve, definitely Steve this time, leaned in closer, close enough that Eddie could count the lines etched artfully into his pink lips, as if extra time had been taken sculpting the details of his face. 

God, he’s a fucking masterpiece. 

Steve’s warm hand planted gently on his knee, barely a brush of calloused fingers and palm, but Eddie was convinced his handprint would be forever etched into his skin. 

He hoped it would. 

Those supple lips curled into a nervous little smile, those August eyes crinkling at the edges as they stared directly into Eddie’s, and then he spoke. 

“You are pretty, Eddie.”

And four words was all it took to turn Eddie’s stupid high brain into soup. 

His jaw dropped, heat rushing to his face like water from a tap, no doubt bleeding mortifying colour into his pale skin. 

He struggled to think, to conjure up any sort of snappy one liner or quick witted response, but that sort of thing was remarkably difficult with his brain leaking out of his ears. 

His need to reply was quickly and mercifully snuffed out at the sharp bang of the bathroom door swinging open, three figures stumbling into the space with little to no awareness of the strange and intense moment they’d just trampled all over. 

“-as you can see, they’re both here and totally fine, so there’s no need to interrupt-“

Robin’s rambling was immediately cut short as she took in the sight of them, both red faced and wide-eyed, still close together as Steve hadn’t yet leaned out of Eddie’s personal space. 

Ok, so maybe one of the three was aware. 

The quick smug look from Robin, her blue eyes positively twinkling, confirmed it, and Eddie fought not to groan and bury his burning face in his hands. 

“Okay, what the hell?” Dustin admonished, looking down at the two of them like a disappointed parent after finding two toddlers scribbling on the walls with permanent marker. 

Eddie would’ve laughed at the sudden role reversal if it weren’t for the fact that he could still smell Steve’s rich cologne, the musky scent sticking to him stubbornly after literal days of being trapped underground. 

Bastard. 

“What fucking part of stay put do you two not understand?”

“Yeesh! Language, Henderson!” Steve corrected him immediately as he finally pulled away, and Eddie couldn’t help the eye roll as the universe once again set itself right with the return of the infamous Mother Hen Harrington. 

“Hey, I understood you perfectly!” Eddie nodded once his tongue had finally returned to him after its brief vacation down his own throat. 

“I only left to look for these two chuckleheads!”

“Never figured you for a snitch, Munson,” Robin scoffed, but that knowing gleam was still there, taunting and teasing him like a neon sign flashing the words:

“I know what you are”

In bold rainbow lettering, no doubt. 

“It doesn’t matter. We have to go,” Dustin said quickly, motioning for them to get up and follow. 

“Come on!”

At his urging, Steve and Eddie pulled themselves up from the floor with no small amount of grunting and groaning. 

All five of them crowded around the door, Dustin in the front carefully pushing it open whilst Eddie tried his very best to ignore Steve’s hand, which had settled on the small of his back for support. 

He, of course, was unsuccessful since it seemed his traitorous brain only wanted to focus on said contact. 

“And…” Dustin spoke softly, raising a hand as he watched the crowds of people exiting the theatre, waiting just a little bit longer for the perfect moment. 

“Blend!”

They moved in tandem, stepping out of the bathroom and seamlessly into the crowd without drawing a single eye to them. 

There wasn’t a single suspicious thing about a group of kids taking in an evening at the cinema; aside from the fact that three of them were dressed like sailors and two of them were covered in blood and visible bruises, Steve with his nasty black eye and split lip, and Eddie with his nearly broken nose and the deep cut slowly scabbing over on his own bruised cheek. 

“Well, shit. That worked,” Erica commented with no small amount of relief. 

“Course it worked,” Dustin replied immediately in a hushed tone, shooting a furrowed brow at a girl who bumped his shoulder as she passed. 

“Now we just have to get on the bus with the rest of these plebes, and home sweet home here we come.”

“Uh, Dustin,” Steve spoke up from beside Eddie, his tone edged with guilt. 

“What?”

“Yeah, we might not want to go to your house.”

“Why?”

“Well, I might’ve told them your full name.”

Eddie’s gaze snapped over to Robin as she delivered a smack to his stomach, Steve and Dustin’s conversation filtering out as she leaned in to whisper to him. 

“So?” she dragged out the word, lips pursing as she nodded over toward Steve. 

Eddie’s jaw clenched as his pulse picked up its pace at the mere notion of the other boy. 

“So what, Buckley?”

He didn’t quite mean to snap, but she didn’t seem remotely affected as she continued. 

“So Steve, Eddie. Did he tell you?”

Eddie’s nose wrinkled in visible confusion as he turned to look at the girl who was practically vibrating in her chucks. 

“Tell me what?”

Her smile dropped in an instant along with her brow, and she opened her mouth to answer when something ahead of them caught her eye. 

She froze in place, reaching out and grabbing Dustin’s shoulder to hold him back and effectively bring the rest of the group to a halt. 

“Guys,” she spoke lowly, nodding towards the exit they were approaching. 

Eddie looked where she directed and felt the wind punch out of his lungs like a physical blow. 

A group of security guards barred off the exit, filtering out the crowds with ID checks and polite, if mechanical, utterances of:

“Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a pleasant evening.”

His eyes locked onto one guard in particular; tall and imposing with facial hair and a long dark ponytail. The bruises still etched into his forearm ached at the memory of that iron grip, and he gulped audibly. 

“Shit. I knew that red comment was gonna come back to bite me in the ass.”

Before he could even think to move, the guard turned, intense dark eyes locking directly onto him and squinting with recognition. 

“Oh fuck,” Steve stated succinctly. 

Oh fuck was certainly right. 

………

Chapter Text

“Oh fuck.”

“Abort,” Dustin instructed as the five of them began to tentatively retreat through the oncoming crowd. “Abort!”

“You think?!” Eddie snapped back as the guard called out to his comrades and they were suddenly running. 

Eddie acted quickly, herding Erica and Dustin ahead of them as they followed Robin toward the deactivated escalators. 

His hand shot out as Robin made to run down the steps, grabbing her by the back of her uniform shirt and redirecting her instead to the space in-between. 

“Slide! Go!”

They all followed in quick succession, first Erica, then Dustin, then Eddie at Steve’s insistence because he always had to go last. 

Beautiful selfless bastard. 

Eddie’s lungs burned as they sprinted through the empty mall, weaving through benches, abandoned kiosks, plants, and fountains; past the shiny new cherry red Chrysler Lebaron sitting pretty behind its velvet ropes that Eddie very nearly ran straight into. 

“Over here!” Dustin called as he took a sudden sharp turn, ducking behind the counter of Great Cookie. 

The others raced to follow, all huddling inside the darkened space, fighting to steady their harsh breathing as several voices shouted in the distance.

Getting closer. 

Eddie couldn’t help but feel, now more than ever, like he’d been transported into some kind of horror film; like, any moment now, some guy in a shitty mask was gonna jump out from around the corner with a rusty machete, spooking the audience with the sight of his flailing silhouette against a blood spattered wall. 

But instead of Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger, it was secret underground commies trying to rip open a portal to a monster dimension in the middle of their nowhere town, and instead of the pretty blonde babysitter and her handsome jock boyfriend, it was Eddie the Freak and his handsome jock coworker. 

What a weird fucking movie. 

Eddie glanced over to his right, across the faces of his companions in varying states of worry. 

Robin and Erica held tightly to each other, stony faced and silent as they stared straight ahead, listening and waiting. 

Dustin hugged his knees to his heaving chest, puffing out his cheeks as he focused on his breathing, but his wide blue eyes and the unconscious fiddling of his fingers with his trusty screwdriver betrayed his fear in a way that had Eddie’s pounding heart lurching in his chest. 

And Steve…

Steve had a look on his face that he was growing far too familiar with. 

He’d worn the same look facing off with the security guard after he’d come out from the back room to see him holding Eddie’s arm in a vice-like grip. 

It was the same look he’d given Eddie from his place barring the door in the underground base as he told him to escape without him. 

The same look he’d shot the Russian General as he commanded him to leave Eddie alone. 

It was the sheer and heartbreaking determination to protect the ones around him that he now understood characterized Steve Harrington far better than a couple lame nicknames ever could. 

As the distant voices drew nearer, Eddie knew what was about to happen before the other boy had even started moving; could see the resigned set of his jaw, the tensing of his shoulders, the shifting of his feet in preparation to pull yet another brave and unbelievably selfless stunt. 

He was going to try and draw them off; give Eddie, Robin, and the kids another chance to escape without him. 

Just as Steve gathered himself and rocked forward to jump to his feet, Eddie planted a firm hand on his sternum and pushed him back against the counter, using the momentum to rise into a crouch. 

First pain, then surprise, and finally understanding passed across Steve’s features in slow motion as Eddie leaned over and snatched the screwdriver from Dustin’s surprise slackened grip. 

“Eddie, don’t-“

“Sorry, Pretty Boy,” Eddie shook his head, cupping Steve’s face in his shaking hands- when had his hands started shaking- and leaning down. Their noses brushed and calloused fingers wrapped around his wrists in a bruising hold that burned as he breathed in that familiar scent; sandalwood, lavender, musk, and sweat. 

“It’s my turn to do something stupid,” he breathed, little more than a puff of air against Steve’s parted lips as he pulled away, sprung to his feet, and hopped the counter before he could change his mind. 

His body knew where he was going before he did, ducking and weaving across the large open corridor, making a beeline toward the shiny red car with a half-formed plan and a massive amount of adrenaline. 

He pressed his back to the side of the convertible, peeking over the top of the door to see the security guards further along down the corridor, shining flashlights inside each storefront, checking behind each counter. 

They’d be on him in minutes. Much faster if he did what he was considering doing. 

Fuck it. 

He pulled himself up and hopped over the side of the car into the driver's seat, pulling the screwdriver from the pocket he’d shoved it into and jamming it into the ignition. 

Taking out his knife, he quickly set to work removing the cover from the steering column, clenching the blade between his teeth as he went about pulling out the mess of wires. 

He took a couple glances up as he worked, watching as those beams of light slowly approached. 

He ignored the light but sharp pain in his fingertips as he pulled back the sheath of each wire, exposing the metal beneath to wrap together. 

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” he muttered around the blade of the knife between his teeth as he gripped the screwdriver, twisting it once, twice-

“Hey!” came the echoing shout as one of the guards spotted him, several faraway flashlights suddenly shining through the windshield like twinkling stars in the night sky. 

There was another shout, some sort of Russian command, and suddenly the air filled with the sound of running footsteps. 

A hand came down hard on the drivers side door and Eddie, before he could even fully think it through, wrenched the door open, slamming it into the stunned guard's face and sending him sprawling backwards with a loud crunch. 

Third time’s the charm!

He twisted the screwdriver once more as several rapid footsteps grew nearer and nearer, whooping in triumph as the engine turned over and the car roared to life beneath his hands. 

Fucking beautiful!

Shoving the knife back into his pocket and kicking the wooden wedge out from underneath the gas pedal, Eddie stared straight ahead through the glaring windshield and took in a deep breath. 

And then he fucking floored it. 

The tires screeched like a wounded animal, just barely gaining any traction from the slick tiles beneath, but it was enough. 

He drove straight through the velvet rope, the heavy metal stands scraping against the tile and the side of the car as he pressed down harder on the gas to accelerate towards the cluster of flashlights that faced him. 

The crowd of guards barely had the time to disperse, the unlucky few that were too slow to run screaming in terror before becoming temporary hood ornaments as Eddie plowed right through them like that cartoon coyote through a solid brick wall. 

“Take that you fucking bastards!” he hollered out, taking a screeching u-turn and stepping down hard on the gas. 

His heart pounded a familiar rhythm in his throat. He almost wished he had music playing. Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance came to mind and he could almost hear the explosive drumbeat kicking off ‘Riding on the Wind’. 

He could imagine it so clearly as he slammed on the brakes, drifting in a circle to face the Russians once more as the four still left standing pulled their guns from their holsters with steely resolve. 

He could see the guard with the ponytail, their eyes meeting in a heated glare. 

A classic showdown straight out of one of those Spaghetti Westerns he would watch with Wayne on the very rare occasion his uncle had a night off. 

Eddie hunched forward, his knuckles stark white as he clutched the steering wheel in a positively unforgiving grip and winked at the man once again. 

For old times sake. 

And then he was driving, tearing across the remaining space toward the line of guards. He didn’t stop, not even when they began to fire, bullets pinging off of the steel body of the car. 

One or two broke through the windshield, shattering spider web designs across Eddie’s vision, but he only went faster, pushing the pedal to the goddamn metal. 

Suddenly the car squealed in protest, two deafening pops sounded as it twisted off track. 

The fucking tires. They shot the fucking tires!

Eddie yelped as he went into an uncontrollable tailspin, doing his best to brace himself on the steering wheel in the split seconds before he crashed headfirst into a storefront with a loud bang. 

Dust filled his lungs and rubble battered his body. He blinked his eyes open, he hadn’t remembered closing them, and his vision was blurred red like the lights in a funhouse. 

He was dizzy, his ears ringing as he tried to push himself up, to steady himself, to absolutely no avail. 

He glanced up towards the flickering lights above, his eyes very slowly focusing on the familiar red, blue, and yellow Scoops Ahoy sign, which was hanging on to its place above the doorway by a single bolt. 

Oops. 

His boss was gonna be pissed. 

Before he could do much more than laugh deliriously, the car door beside him creaked open and there was a hand around his throat, yanking him bodily out of the car like an unruly cat.  

Eddie scrambled to fight against the grip, his bare knees stinging as he was dragged down onto the cold glass and debris-covered tile. 

Icy fear shot through his veins, a sobering coldness as the barrel of a gun was pressed against his brow. 

A familiar feeling at this point. 

“Where are your friends?”

Eddie blinked sluggishly, his red-stained gaze, bloody and blurry, rising to settle on the all too familiar and remarkably unpleasant countenance of the ponytail guard. 

Sharp dark eyebrows lowered with dangerous impatience at his silence and Eddie grunted in pain as he was hauled further up onto his knees by the throat nearly off the ground. 

“Where are they?”

“Gone,” he breathed out with a laugh just this side of hysterical. 

“They’re long gone by now. But don’t worry, comrade! They’re coming back with the goddamn cavalry.”

The guard sneered, fingers tightening around his throat until he was dangerously lightheaded. His vision swam with neon lights reflecting off of white tile and he couldn’t help the smile stretching across his lips. 

“It’s funny,” he choked out, gripping the guard’s wrist with both hands for something to hold on to. 

“I thought I’d be dead before I ever sided with the US government. Guess I was half right.”

He hissed in through his teeth as he was dropped, his knees smacking against the tile in a way that surely would’ve hurt were it not for the adrenaline still coasting through his body. 

That hand moved instead to his hair, fucking typical, the guard yanking his head back to force him to meet his gaze. 

“You are lying,” he stated unpleasantly as he leaned down into Eddie’s space. 

“Where are they?”

“Here we fucking go again,” Eddie scoffed, rolling his eyes with only slight regret as the world began to spin around him. 

“They are gone, Comrade Schwarzenegger. I stayed behind to ensure their escape. Very heroic if I do say so myself. What do you think?”

Eddie could see the three other remaining guards gathering behind them, watching in their terrifyingly stoic way as the one before him cocked his gun and pushed it harder into the hollow of his temple. 

“Foolish. But then, I’m not surprised.”

Eddie snorted. 

“Harsh.”

The guard grimaced meanly at him.

“Do you ever stop joking?”

“Not usually. Does it piss you off?”

Another chill to rival the first ran down his spine as the man laughed, the sound gruff and deep and suddenly way closer to his face than he was strictly ready for. 

“It will piss me off much less when you’re dead.”

“Not even gonna try to torture me for information? I thought we had something special going, Big Red?”

Shut up, Eddie! Shut the fuck up!

“You’re not worth the effort.”

Oof. 

Eddie’s mouth snapped shut as the gun was promptly placed right between his eyebrows, cold metal pressing into his clammy skin. 

He was shaking. He was pretty sure he was crying, but it was hard to tell with the combination of blood and sweat already dampening his face.

He was going to die.

He was never going to graduate high school; never going to walk that stage and flip Higgins the bird. 

He was never going to listen to a new album. 

Fuck, he was never going to hear a song again. 

He was never gonna kiss Steve Harrington. 

He was never going to see Wayne again. 

That one was the real kicker.

Everyone had always said life would flash before your eyes in your last moments. 

They’d been right. 

Eddie saw everything. 

His mom dancing in the kitchen with his dad, laughing loudly and uncontrollably as he peppered her face in sweet kisses. 

His dad ruffling his curls proudly after he’d successfully learned his first full song on the cheap acoustic guitar he’d bought him. 

Uncle Wayne taking him to a record shop in Indy for the first time and letting him pick out two tapes of his very own. He’d picked out Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir and Queen’s A Night at the Opera; two of his mom’s favourites. He still had both, sitting in their places of honor right beside his stereo in his bedroom. 

He was crying. He was sobbing, wretched choking sounds wracking his shivering frame as he waited for what felt like a lifetime. 

Waited for his own execution. 

He could hardly breathe as the gun shifted against his forehead, the guard's finger moving toward the trigger when suddenly-

“EDDIE!”

Steve. 

The guard jerked backward at the sudden shout, eyes frantically searching for the source as Steve fucking Harrington appeared, like a manifestation of every goddamn dream Eddie had ever had, sprinting toward him at a speed that would rival a goddamn Olympian. 

Before Steve could reach him, however, something else intervened. 

One minute he was knelt at the feet of a Russian guard, awaiting his inevitable death, the next he was sliding, tumbling, across the debris-covered tile with a startled yelp, pulled along by absolutely fucking nothing. 

He grunted as he skidded to a sudden stop, pushing himself up just in time to see, impossibly, the red convertible he’d wedged into the wrecked storefront of Scoops Ahoy begin to shiver and shake, the lights flashing and the horn blaring before it was wrenched out of the wreckage and flung through the air, taking out the remaining few Russian guards with a resounding smash that rattled Eddie’s very bones. 

Eddie didn’t dare to even blink as the car came to a stop, rocking once before settling fully, once more adhering to the laws of gravity with a crunch. 

His body felt numb. 

Everything felt numb. He was so cold, his body shivering as he stared straight ahead, straight at where the Russians had been before they were flattened by a flying Chrysler. 

Was he saved by a fucking Jedi? Was this something from the- what had Dustin called it- the Upside Down?

Suddenly the cold tile was replaced with something warm and solid, hands gripping around his ribs and pulling him up, arms wrapping around his chest in a firm embrace. 

“Eddie?”

Steve. 

Steve was holding him. 

Steve was grounding him back down to reality, rocking him back and forth and shushing and murmuring half-nonsensical little words of encouragement into his hair. 

“-ok. You’re ok, you’re safe now. It’s ok.”

“Steve.”

The name was little more than a breath from his lungs, the rocking immediately slowing so he was just laying curled up in Steve’s lap like a child after a nightmare. 

His gaze was no longer rose tinted with blood, nor blurred with uncontrollable tears. Everything fell into stark focus as red rimmed hazel eyes stared deeply into his own.

“Tell me…” he started, placing a trembling hand on one of the ones Steve had resting over his racing heart. “Did that car really fly, or am I higher than I thought?”

Steve croaked out a laugh. Eddie could feel the twitching of his abdominal muscles against the backs of his shoulders, the huff of his breath ruffling through his hair at the crown of his head. 

“Yeah. It really flew, Eds.”

Eds. Eds. Eds. 

That was new.

He wanted the way he’d said that tattooed onto his body, not the word, but the feeling.

Eds. 

“Cool cool cool. Um, second question,” he continued through the fluttering of his heart. It felt like the damn thing was trying to escape his chest. “Do you have, like, secret Jedi powers that I somehow didn’t know about?” 

There was a hand in his hair, but this time it was more than welcome, gently carding through and picking at tangles as it went. The gesture was so soft, so caring and domestic he could’ve cried again. 

“No,” Steve shook his head gently, tugging his chin up toward the second level of the mall above them. “But she does.”

Eddie followed his gaze immediately, eyes settling on the blurry shape of several bodies standing at the railing, headed by a small and severe looking preteen girl wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand. 

So that must be Eleven. 

She extended a nod toward him as if to confirm his thoughts, and Eddie found himself nodding back for lack of literally anything else to do. 

“Ok. Neat,” he said, his voice cracking only slightly at the second word. 

Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck

“Very cool.”

………

Chapter Text

Steve Harrington was no stranger to fear. 

In fact, one could say that after several run-ins with actual inter-dimensional monsters, going toe to toe with Billy Hargrove, and being held prisoner for a whole twenty four hours in a secret underground Russian base, he was more than acquainted with a little fear. 

But nothing he’d yet experienced could’ve possibly prepared him for the positively debilitating terror that’d taken hold of him the moment Eddie had jumped that damned counter. 

Watching the events unfold in the reflective surface of the counter before him, listening to the screeching of tires and the sounds of gunshots, hearing that guard threaten his life, tell him “you’re not worth the effort” as he cocked his gun and aimed; hearing the heart wrenching sobs tearing their way out of Eddie’s throat as he waited to die. 

It’d hurt more than any punch he’d ever taken. It’d terrified him more than any man or monster he’d faced. 

The only thought that’d run through his mind as Dustin clutched onto him and trembled with choked back tears had been:

“Run.”

He had to run. He had to get to him. 

He’d heard about tunnel vision before, but he’d never experienced it. The moment he himself had hopped the counter though, everything in the world zeroed out and there was only Eddie. 

Eddie, looking up at him with bloodstained black eyes and another gun to his head. 

Eddie, who smelled like cherry syrup, tobacco, and Irish Spring. 

Eddie, who showed up late every single day to the one class he and Steve had had together. 

Eddie, who blasted his loud music everywhere he went, who found ways to take up space and make himself known, who would heat up his SpaghettiOs in the microwave in the back room and forget to clean up the sauce that exploded inside, who somehow managed every single day to earn the most tips with his outrageously kind eyes and infectious grin. 

“EDDIE!”

Steve had screamed out his name before he could even register opening his mouth, his feet carrying him toward Eddie like it was the only thing they knew how to do. 

Enter El. 

Steve hadn’t even thought before he’d gathered Eddie into his embrace, holding the other boy against his chest, wrapping his arms around him and placing one hand over his heaving chest. 

He could feel the other boy shivering as he came down from his adrenalin high, struggling to steady his breathing. 

He could feel his quickened heartbeat pounding against his open palm like a dribbling basketball, lively and more reassuring than he thought anything ever could be, but the moment was interupted as the others came down to their level and Robin, Dustin, and Erica stepped out from behind the counter to meet them. 

And it wasn’t like Steve wasn’t relieved. 

The sight of El, of Nancy and Jonathan and all the other little nerds, was more welcome than he could even really say, but there was a persistent buzzing in his veins, a sick anxious feeling that he couldn’t quite shake; a terrified and hopelessly empty feeling as Eddie pulled away from his arms and left his body cold, like a puzzle piece removed from its spot.

The introductions between the two groups had been hasty, Robin and Eddie greeting the party members they hadn’t officially met while Nancy and Jonathan both did their best not to stare too confusedly at the presence of the band nerd and the Freak. 

The kids expressed their admiration for Eddie’s heroics, of course, and Steve tried so hard to be normal about it, but he couldn’t keep his hands from visibly shaking, fists clenched tightly at his sides as Eddie’s terrified sobs played through his mind like a broken record, over and over and over, non-stop. 

Because it had been brave. 

Hot wiring a car and playing chicken with a squad of armed Soviets was a scene straight out of an action film, and Steve was more than impressed. 

But he was also scared. He was angry. He didn’t want to be angry, but he was. 

Because Eddie didn’t have any right to risk himself like that. It wasn’t his job to run headfirst into danger like that.  That had always been Steve’s thing, his comfort zone knowing that, in that one instance, he was needed. 

He wasn’t smart like the kids and Nancy. He couldn’t really add to their impressive strategizing or their scientific discussions, or even their DnD bullshit. But he could handle a little danger. 

He could swing a nail-bat at monsters and he could run headfirst at Russians and he could protect his kids. 

He was the Parties’ fighter; their Berserker. 

That’s what Dustin called him, though he didn’t quite know what it meant despite the several times the kids had explained it to him.

That was his job; his role in the party.

But Eddie had caught him off guard; had pushed into his space and held him with shaking hands and wide endless eyes, eyes that pinned him to his place against the counter like a star to the night sky. 

It was another one of those moments, one where they’d been so close, breathing each other's air and existing in each other’s space, just like that time dancing around each other in the doorway to the back room, or clinging to each other in the elevator.

Such a situation had happened countless times over the course of the week, but that one. 

Fuck. 

That one had been different in a gut wrenching, life altering, head spinning sort of way.

It had been a goodbye, and that thought in of itself seemed to fuel the fire of his fear more than the hard hit to his aching ribs or the usurpation of his position ever could. 

That Eddie had been so ready to just… say goodbye. 

He didn’t have much time to fixate on his thoughts as the group was forced directly back into adrenaline fueled action when the sliver of what was apparently the Mind Flayer in El’s leg had suddenly made itself known. 

Jonathan and Eddie had sprung into action immediately, Jonathan acquiring a sharp clean knife and Eddie tossing him his lighter to heat it. 

Eddie had placed himself at El’s head, gently gripping her shoulders and whispering reassurances like some sort of experienced field Medic, encouraging the others to follow suit even as El took over from Jonathan, ripping the flesh slug out of her own body herself. 

And Steve couldn’t lie, the sight of it had made him incredibly nauseous. He was sure he would’ve puked if he had anything left in his stomach to purge. His eyes watered with sympathetic tears even after it was over, the gross fleshy slug slorping away slowly across the tile only to be crushed under Hopper's boot in the coolest entrance Steve had ever seen. 

Steve watched as Eddie stood from the floor with one last comforting pat to El’s shoulder, leaning heavily against a nearby pillar to catch his breath as Joyce hurried forward to help El wrap her leg while Mike and Dustin updated Hopper on their separate but still somehow connected situations. 

Steve still wasn’t entirely certain how everything fit together. He figured it could wait till the necessary recap they’d eventually have to hold, focusing instead on the curly-haired source of his frustrations. 

He felt distinctly uncomfortable at the distance between them. His palms itched and he wanted to reach out to the other boy, to provide him with the closeness and the comfort of his arms once more, but he was, of course, beaten to it. 

“Eddie?” Nancy spoke with a gentle tone, as if unsure it was actually his name. 

As if everyone in Hawkins didn’t know about Eddie the Freak and his lunchbox full of party favors. 

“Are you alright?”

She reached out gently, hesitating for only a second before placing a delicate hand on his upper back, uncaring of the sweat soaked fabric of his uniform shirt. 

Eddie brought his arms up against the pillar to cradle his damp forehead, shoulders shaking with the wry laugh that pushed its way out of his chest. 

“I’m absolutely stellar, Wheeler,” he answered, running a visibly trembling hand through his tangled mess of curls, not quite able to get all the way through. 

Steve’s fingertips tingled with the kinetic memory of that hair, greasy and sweat-damp and a little crispy to the touch after days without being washed, blood clumping the waves and scattered ringlets together. 

“I just wanted to say,” Nancy spoke up once again, her eyebrows pinched together in visible concern as Eddie wiped away a bit of half dried blood from his cheek.

“You handled, um, everything back there very well.”

Eddie made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, reaching back and patting her hand still resting on his back. 

“Yeah, thanks. That means a lot, really. Would-would you give me just one moment?”

Eddie pushed off of the pillar, approaching a large round planter nearby with a determined gait, stopping right in front of it, leaning down, and promptly hurling into the fake foliage. 

Nancy jumped forward with a speed Steve shouldn’t have been surprised by, scooping up Eddie’s hair and holding it back from his face as he coughed and retched rather violently. 

The scattered conversations around the party stopped as everyone turned, watching with a mix of concern, disgust, and even wry amusement, but that was mostly Hopper. 

Once the sounds finally stopped, Eddie hacked and spat one final time and straightened up with a pinched frown, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. 

“Oh, that sucked,” he breathed out, gratefully accepting the handful of peanut M&M’s that materialized in front of him via a thoroughly grossed out looking Max. 

“Good news is,” he continued through his mouthful, wincing as he swallowed the half chewed candy too quickly. “I’m pretty sure I’m not high anymore.”

Hopper scoffed from his place beside El and Lucas, not meanly but almost playfully as he shot a quirked brow toward Eddie. 

“That might be the most surprising thing I’ve heard all day, Munson.”

Eddie opened his mouth to fire back a no doubt snarky reply, but was very nearly knocked entirely off balance by Robin as she bounded over and threw an arm around his shoulders, yanking him down to her slightly lesser height. 

“Welcome to the sober squad, Eddie! How does it feel?” she asked with a smirk and far more energy than their situation called for as the older boy snorted. 

“When you say it like that? Like a D.A.R.E. commercial,” he shot back, batting uselessly at Robin’s merciless nougie she was in the midst of dealing him. 

Hopper took that moment to clap his hands sharply, effectively gaining the giggling group's attention. 

“Ok,” he said, the playful edge to his voice replaced entirely by that familiar grave authority he usually carried. 

“We have a lot to talk about, so why don’t we get started?”

-

It never ceased to surprise Steve how the absurd-ness of a situation could become significantly clearer when it was recounted out loud. 

If that didn’t help, the assorted expressions of shock, disbelief, and horror staring back at the Scoops Troop as they detailed their past few days activities to the rest of the party certainly did the trick. 

“Ok, so…” Mike started slowly, brows scrunched as if staring at an unfinished puzzle. 

“So, Dustin, you tapped into and recorded secret Russian correspondence with Cerebro, which she translated,” he motioned blindly toward Robin, eyes staring straight ahead as he continued his recap within the recap. “-in like two days-“

“With no prior experience with the language,” Lucas interrupted, his brows raised into his hairline with a look of sheer amazement as he looked across the four of them for confirmation. 

“Yep,” Dustin popped the ‘p’ with a little nod. “After she cracked it, we found the elevator. Erica crawled through the vents to let us in, but we got trapped inside and taken down to the secret base-“

“The base that Starcourt was built to conceal,” Nancy reaffirmed, her brows pinched together thoughtfully. 

“Exactly,” Robin said. “That’s where we saw that, um, portal thingy. We tried to use the comms room to contact you guys, but the guard Steve beat up woke up and sounded the alarm.”

“Steve beat up a guard?” Mike and Lucas spoke in almost perfect sync, twin expressions of disbelief on their faces. 

Steve scoffed, crossing his arms tightly against the sudden scrutiny. 

“C’mon, it’s not that surprising.”

“Wait wait wait,” Max spoke up, waving them off with an intense gaze as she looked toward Steve and Dustin. 

“Portal?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck as all eyes immediately fell on him. 

“The Russians built this crazy machine, powered by that green goo we found in the elevator, to reopen the rift between us and the Upside Down. It’s slow going, but… it looks like it’s working.”

“Well that’s not good,” Murray, Steve was pretty sure that was his name, let out, lifting his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose as he muttered something about ‘those damn commies’ under his breath. 

“Ok, continue the story,” Nancy insisted, the others falling silent at her beckoning. 

Dustin obliged. 

“Ok ok. Steve, Robin, and Eddie were captured. Well, Steve and Robin first, and then Eddie tried to find them and, yeah,” Dustin explained, barely taking a breath between each word as he gesticulated wildly. “So Erica and I stole some of that green goo and melted a hole in the floor, and tripped the alarms as a distraction, and-“

“And that’s when they found us in the interrogation room,” Robin continued, motioning between herself, Eddie, and Steve. “Eddie picked his cuffs and took out the creepy doctor guy, and then those two crashed in with this crazy juiced up cattle prod! Long story short, we stole a weird little car, got back in the elevator, watched a really weird movie, puked up the drugs, got chased by some more Russians, the magic child demolished then, and now we’re here.”

Silence passed between the group as everyone seemed to take in the entire story, giving assorted nods and heavy sighs. 

“Holy shit, guys,” Max said finally, the others murmuring their agreement. 

Nancy placed a soft hand on Robin’s shoulder, the latter looking mildly uncomfortable for a moment before seeming to accept it as the comforting gesture it was meant to be. 

Steve almost wanted to laugh at that, but couldn’t quite gather up enough air in his lungs with Eddie still standing so close to him; so close that his shoulder was brushing Steve’s chest with each long slow breath he took. 

It almost wasn’t enough. 

Something in Steve, something anxious and protective biting and gnawing at the back of his mind begged him to pull Eddie closer, to engulf him in a tight embrace and never ever let him go again. 

He was moving before he could think better of it, hand finding its way to Eddie’s upper back, right between his pronounced shoulder blades. 

Right where Nancy had touched him. 

His touch trailed slowly downward, vaguely feeling the notches of his spine beneath his fingertips as he made his way to the small of his back. His fingers clenched in the fabric of his uniform shirt there, holding on seemingly of their own volition as if to keep him rooted to the spot and away from danger. 

Eddie, for his part, was as still as a statue under his touch, eyes forward and lips pressed into a thin line. Steve almost could’ve convinced himself the other boy didn’t notice if it weren’t for the flush of pink traveling up from beneath the collar of his shirt. 

Steve found himself wanting to touch that as well; to feel the warmth of the blood beneath his skin, thrumming with life.

He could feel eyes on him before he even spotted Murray, the strange balding man sending him a look with a tilt of his head that was far too knowing for Steve’s comfort. 

He felt like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and the guy wasn’t looking away, instead fixing him with a smirk and raising his eyebrows in a way that made him feel far too seen. 

“Ok,” Dustin spoke up once again, thankfully drawing everyone’s attention back to him. 

“So that’s our side. What about you guys?”

-

As it turned out, the other side of the story was just as, if not more, batshit crazy. 

Dead lifeguards, a possessed Billy Hargrove, a giant Mind Flayer meat puppet made from melted people who scarf down fertilizer like a basket of hot french fries. 

Gross.

The chase through the hospital that Nancy and Jonathan had endured was the stuff of fucking nightmares, and Steve wondered, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, how the fuck he’d managed to get himself into this shit. 

Throughout the entire story, his eyes continued to wander, as they often did, right back to Eddie. 

Eddie’s huge dark eyes had only grown wider as the story went on, his eyebrows long since disappeared beneath his messy fringe and his mouth hanging open in a shocked little ‘o’. His gaze bounced back and forth across the group at each new speaker, like a spectator at the most terrifying game of tennis ever. He’d even pressed back into Steve’s hand, still resting at the small of his back, as if chasing the comfort. 

There really was nothing like an outsider's perspective to remind you how utterly fucked up your life was. 

“Are we sure this thing is still out there? Still alive?” Joyce cut in, finally drawing Steve’s attention away from Eddie and his nervously fidgeting fingers and his impossibly wide eyes and his teeth worrying at his chapped bottom lip. 

Focus. 

“El beat the shit out of it,” Max stated with a nod toward the other girl currently being cradled protectively against Hopper’s side. “But, yeah, it’s still alive.”

“But if we close the gate again –“ Will started, Max pointing toward him with a smirk as she quickly caught on. 

“We cut the brain off from the body –“

“And kill it… Theoretically,” Lucas finished with a satisfied smile, nudging Max’s side and receiving a fond little eye roll in return. 

“Jesus H. Christ,” Eddie muttered, and Steve’s eyes were drawn right back over to him like a compass needle to the north, watching far too intently as he scrubbed a bloodstained hand over his face. “You all make it sound so normal.”

Max shrugged. 

“You’ll get used to it,” she said casually, the others nodding in agreement. 

Eddie scoffed. 

“I sure fucking hope not.”

Any further discussion was cut off as Murray returned from wherever it was he’d gone, waving papers over his head with a loud call of:

“Yoo-hoo!”

Steve was pretty sure he didn’t like him. 

As Murray and Hopper began to strategize over the blueprints he’d somehow acquired, talking about someone called Alexei and ‘the hub’ and ‘the vault room’, Steve pulled away from the rest of the group. 

He knew well enough by now that he wasn’t really needed for this bit; the strategizing and planning. 

Robin and Eddie followed behind him, most likely of a similar mindset to his as they gathered behind the counter of the Hot Sam next to the Orange Julius, Steve pulling himself up onto the counter with a deep sigh that rattled in his throat.  

Now that the threat of imminent danger had died down for the moment, his entire body seemed thoroughly determined to remind him of the last 24 hours of pain it’d endured. 

His eye throbbed where a fist had repeatedly struck him, his ribs groaned with each breath no matter how shallow, his nose ached similarly, still filled with dried blood, and his head pounded with yet another concussion.

Could you get a punch card for concussions?

He felt filthy, covered in several days of sweat, blood, and puke. He’d never wanted a shower more in his entire life. He wanted to scrub every inch of his skin until he was bright pink and raw, until every last trace of his imprisonment disappeared down the drain, swirling rust red fading away until the water ran clear. 

He was certain he wasn’t the only one itching to clean up. 

Unbidden, his mind conjured up the image of Eddie, eyes closed against the light spray of a shower head, face tilted back, curls soaked and sticking to red flushed cheeks as water rained down over him. 

Red lips parted in a sigh of bone-deep relief, slim strong fingers, absent of ever-present silver rings, running through sodden ringlets, pushing them back over broad shoulders. 

Water droplets running down a long pale neck, pooling in the hollow of pronounced collarbones, trailing across a broad flat chest, down, down, down-

“-ok, Steve?”

Steve flinched, wincing at the sharp stabbing pain in his ribs at the jarring little movement. 

“Wha?” he said oh so intelligently, blinking as a concerned Robin dropped the hand she’d apparently been waving in front of his face for who knows how long and fixed him with a single raised brow. 

“Are you ok, Dingus? You just groaned, like, zombie want brains groaned. Kinda loudly.”

Oh my god. 

Mortification zinged through Steve’s body like an electric shock. Warmth flooded his cheeks and he resisted the urge to bury his burning face in his hands because surely that would only look more suspicious. 

Eddie chuckled from his spot leant against the counter, fingers fiddling with the chain of the handcuffs he still had for some reason.

“You’re not gonna go all Night of the Living Dead on us, are you Harrington?” he questioned, raising his hands and wiggling his fingers in a cartoonishly spooky gesture, his rings clicking together with each pass. 

Robin snorted as she pulled herself up onto the counter beside Steve, bringing a leg up to hug against her chest, resting her chin on her bruised up knee. 

“Don’t worry, Eddie. Zombies usually go for brains, so you should be just fine,” she snarked back, pretending to pick at her cuticles as Eddie sputtered dramatically, taking an exaggerated step back and pressing a hand over his heart. 

“Oh, Buckley. You wound me, truly,” he spoke theatrically, emphasizing every other syllable in that way that he did that Steve was pretty sure he used to find annoying. 

But not now. 

Now he allowed himself to smile despite how it pulled at the bruises and cuts on his face; allowed himself to laugh despite the protest of his ribs. 

His anxious heartbeat slowed its quickened pace as Eddie and Robin turned once more to each other, apparently forgetting Steve’s embarrassing lapse in self control and continuing with their easy banter, blessedly unaware of the less than innocent thoughts and images racing around in his mind like horses at the goddamn Kentucky Derby. 

Fuck, it was like he was a Freshman again, turned on in Biology for no fucking reason other than the simple mention of the human body.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and his head snapped up at the feeling of eyes on him once again. It didn’t take him long to find the source, Murray meeting his searching gaze with another of his all-knowing looks. 

The strange man nodded toward Eddie and raised his eyebrows again, radiating smugness even from fifteen feet away as Steve’s cheeks darkened further. 

Who the fuck was this guy??

He tuned back into his surroundings with a shake of his head as Dustin’s voice reached his ears, his tone coloured with all too familiar annoyance and his face scrunched up in that ‘I obviously know more than you, so why are you even trying to argue’ expression. 

“Don’t worry,” Dustin said very matter-of-factly from his spot sat at the table across from a standing Hopper. 

“You can do all the fighting and the dangerous hero shit, and we’ll just be your… navigators.”

He motioned to Erica sitting beside him and the girl nodded, the beads in her hair clicking with the movement. 

“No,” Hopper said flatly with a shake of his head, both kids' faces dropping instantly as they looked up at the frowning Chief. “Nope.”

Dustin threw up his hands in frustration as Hopper turned and walked away from the table they’d spread the plans over, silently beginning the task of checking the scattered bodies of the Russian guards for weapons. 

Steve watched as everyone fell into step with the familiar routine, preparing for battle as they had all done twice before. Steve itched for his nail-bat, the weapon an odd source of comfort in times like these. It was still in its spot safely tucked away in the trunk of his car, sitting uselessly in the Starcourt parking lot with no keys to work it. 

Damn Russians. Maybe Eddie could hot-wire it?

Steve didn’t have time to allow his mind to wander to the strangely enticing image of Eddie’s deft fingers working open a car and manipulating the wires for long as Hopper slapped a disarmed assault rifle on the counter beside Steve. 

“You three,” he started, motioning between him, Robin, and Eddie with an aggravated slope to his brow. 

“You got through that place alright. As much as I hate to admit it, and I really hate to admit it, the kid’s right. We need someone who’s been on the inside to guide us through. Think you could draw up a safe path?”

Steve, Eddie, and Robin all looked between each other with similar thoughtful expressions. 

Eddie was the first to speak, turning to face Hopper with a nervous little half-smile.

“Hate to tell ya, Chief, but we were all drugged to high heaven and barely conscious for most of that. I don’t think any of us are gonna be of much help to you.”

Steve and Robin hummed their agreement immediately.

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, swinging one leg up onto the counter and resting his elbow on his knee. 

“It was those two that got us out, not the other way around. Without them, we’d still be stuck in that hellhole. Like it or not, they’re your best bet.”

Hopper’s lips pressed into a thin white line of genuine annoyance at that, and Steve fought the urge to chuckle. 

He looked to be about to speak, maybe to argue, when Robin piped up nervously from beside Steve. 

“Also, uh- with all due respect, Sir,” she started stiltedly, shoulders lifted towards her ears like a turtle trying to disappear into its shell. “After dealing with these kids for as long as you apparently have, I think you know by now that telling them not to do something literally just ensures they’re going to do it, just… less chaperoned.”

Steve pursed his lips and raised his brow with a small but audible “hmm”. She made a very good point, which Hopper, though very reluctantly, seemed to concede. 

He sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his face and pinching at the bridge of his nose before snatching up the rifle and making his way right back over to the kids with a low angry grumble. 

Something about ‘these goddamn kids testing his goddamn patience’.

Nothing different from the usual, Steve mused. 

“So,” the sudden presence of another person behind him had Steve jumping clear off of the counter, grunting in pain as he stumbled back into the proofing oven behind him that smelled overwhelmingly of stale pretzels. 

“Jeez,” he breathed, pressing a hand to his chest right beneath his throat as he struggled to calm his heartbeat. ”What is it with you people sneaking up on my bad side?”

A steadying hand planted on his shoulder and he quietly thanked Eddie as he straightened up, fixing a still smirking Murray with as unimpressed a glare as he could muster, which, considering his Kingly past, was basically muscle memory. 

“So, what?” Steve tried not to snap, crossing his arms loosely so as not to further upset his aching bones. 

Murray’s eyes traveled to the hand on his shoulder and his smirk widened, eyebrows dancing up his forehead. 

“Are you two in the know, or are you as thick as Mom and Dad over there?” Murray questioned, jerking his head toward Hopper and Joyce. 

“In the… what?”

He shared a quick look with Eddie, the other boy's nose wrinkled cutely in confusion that mirrored his own. 

Murray’s smirk dropped instantly, his shoulders dropping and his back bending as he let out an exaggerated groan. 

“Oh come on. Don’t tell me you’re clueless, too. Anyone with two eyes, two ears, and a brain in between ‘em could figure it out.”

“Aaand that’s my cue,” Robin piped up behind them, hopping down from her own spot on the counter and heading off toward Nancy and Jonathan with a sly smile and a salute like she knew something. 

Steve was getting so fucking tired of hanging out with smart people.  

“Sorry,” Eddie began to say, pulling his hand away from Steve’s shoulder to cross his arms tightly across his chest with a tight frown. 

Steve was instantly struck with the thought that he looked a little intimidating. 

“But, who exactly are you?”

Murray looked entirely unfazed by the front, fixing Eddie with a sarcastic little smile. 

“Murray Bauman, circumstantial Yenta for the clueless couples of Hawkins.”

He looked between the two of them expectantly, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as he made a hurry up motion with his hand. 

“Um, Eddie. Eddie Munson,” Eddie stuttered out, looking a bit bemused as Murray nodded in greeting. 

“And?” he urged with a pointed look toward Steve, once again circling his hand in the air to hurry his response like an annoying orchestra conductor. 

“Steve. Harrington,” Steve let out, resisting the urge to reach out for a handshake, the motion an almost Pavlovian response to greeting at this point. 

“Ah. So this is Steve!” Murray sang out, arms spreading in greeting as if his name was a revelation of some sort; the punchline to an inside joke he wasn’t privy to. 

“Oh, I can see why she liked you. I can see why a lot of people like you.”

Murray glanced to the side; to Eddie who crossed his arms somehow tighter, as if he was attempting to fold himself into a paper crane or one of those fortune tellers the girls in study hall always made. 

Eddie looked to be about to speak when his name was called, both him and Steve glancing up to see Joyce waving him over with a small nervous smile. 

A lump formed in Steve’s throat as Eddie glanced back toward him guiltily, sympathetically, patting him on the shoulder once more before jogging off toward Mrs. Byers and leaving Steve all alone with the terrifyingly observant man before him. 

Great. 0 for 2, Popeye. 

Steve huffed in reluctant acceptance of his situation, turning to once again face Murray. 

“Is there, like, something I can help you with, or…?” he trailed off, waving a hand in front of them and attempting to project his absolute unwillingness to continue their weird-ass conversation. 

The concussion was enough of a headache. 

“Oh, you’ve got it the wrong way ‘round. It’s me who’s helping you, Big Shot.”

“Helping me?” Steve scoffed, hoping it came off as mean as he intended it to, though the other man still seemed utterly unaffected.

He was worse at reading social cues than Mike. 

“Helping me with what, exactly?”

“Seeing what’s right in front of you!” Murray exclaimed, leaning against the counter and nudging his glasses further back up his nose. 

“I’ve got you all figured out, Steve. You’re the big strong protector. The ex-asshole jock with the heart ‘a gold and the hair the girls go ga-ga for. It’s a good front; really convincing. But it’s not the full truth, is it?”

Murray shook his head, tsking five times as he fixed Steve with a parody of a sympathetic look. 

It was the same look you’d give a particularly stupid dog endlessly chasing its own tail with no success. 

Pitiful. 

“You see, you have been taught by the people in your life that you have to be useful. You have to be exactly who they need you to be, or you’re worth nothing.”

Steve’s brow scrunched downward in an instant and he opened his mouth to argue, but Murray steamrolled right over him with zero consideration. 

“You reek of lonely rich boy and Calvin Klein’s Obsession, so I’m assuming mommy and daddy weren’t too attentive unless you did everything they asked of you. Pretty soon the asking turns to demanding, and the attention you’re given when you do what they want just peters away. You’re less of a son, more of a show pony; a thoroughbred.

“So you start looking for new people to please and perform for. To be useful for. You become Mister Popular! Mister Cool! Mister Ladies Man! You do what the other kids expect of you, you play the part of the cool careless King and sleep your way through the female student body, pun intended, and you soak up all that attention that you so desperately need.”

He stepped around the counter, making his way closer to a frozen Steve as he monologued. 

Or was it a soliloquy?

He couldn’t remember which one meant what. He couldn’t do much past listening to Murray’s words, not even flinching as the older man flung an arm across his shoulders, jostling him a little. 

“But then, one day, the act isn’t enough for them anymore. Everyone who raised you up starts to turn against you once again. King Steve falls from grace when they find a shiny new plaything to poke and prod like a fancy little bird in a cage. So you take up, heh, babysitting.”

Murray makes a sweeping motion across the space before them, the party, and Steve can barely swallow past the lump in his throat. 

“You find a new way you’re needed; a new way to get that attention. You become the hero they need, because you need to be useful. It’s a survival tactic. Second nature, just like looking over your shoulder or fixing your hair. 

“You make yourself useful, you throw yourself headfirst into danger, you take the hits, you take care of everyone, because you’re terrified that the second you stop being of use to them, they’ll drop you just like everyone else has.

“But, if you’re spending all your time taking care of everyone else, who’s taking care of Steve?”

He placed a hand on top of Steve’s head, maneuvering him to glance out towards…

Eddie. 

The metalhead was crouched down as Joyce spoke to him, too far away to hear but from the stricken look on his face and the wetness of his eyes, it was most likely the patented Joyce Byers ‘I’m your mom, now’ talk, the one every party member had received at one point or another. 

Steve couldn’t help the smile that stretched at his split lip as Eddie stumbled when he was pulled into a tight hug; Joyce gave the best hugs. 

Eddie stayed stiff for only a moment before Joyce began to rub his back in slow circles and he slumped into it, eyebrows pinched like he was about to cry. 

“So,” Murray spoke again, breaking Steve from his thoughts once more with the return of that knowing tone. 

Steve huffed a humourless laugh, pulling away from Murray’s grasp and running a hand through his hair to fix it; second nature. 

Fuck. 

“It’s… it’s not-“

“Oh, don’t say it’s not like that. I know it’s not like that,” Murray insisted with a roll of his eyes so hard it hurt Steve’s head. 

“But it could be. Just… think about it.”

Think about it. 

As if Steve hadn’t been thinking about it since the moment Eddie sprinted into Scoops Ahoy half an hour late for his first day with wild hair, a blinding smile, and an only mostly sincere apology. 

“I…” Steve sighed, digging his nails into his scalp for something to do to distract him from the tugging in his heart. The want; the need. 

“I’ll think about it.”

And the worst part was that he would. 

He couldn’t help it; not when it came to Eddie Munson. 

………

Chapter Text

Eddie very vaguely remembered his mother. 

Very vaguely. 

It was hard to picture her face sometimes. He could never quite think in pictures like he wished he could. 

Whenever he tried to conjure up the image of her face, it was like looking at an x-ray, white at the edges and dark everywhere else, non-specific and impossible to hold onto for more than a few seconds. 

He knew he looked like her. 

Wayne always said so; said he had his dads nose and chin, but her everything else. 

Her smile, her hair, her laugh, her mannerisms, her eyes. 

It was a comfort, having something left of her aside from flashes of memories where the world looked too big and everything was dreamy and hazy, like Vaseline smudged over a camera lens. 

Blurry little scenes of playing in an overgrown garden of wildflowers, of dancing in the kitchen to Stevie Nicks, of gentle hands bandaging his bloody knee after he’d fallen out of a tree, or brushing tangles out of his unruly curls. 

Though he couldn't quite picture her face, he could still recall her smell; a warm blend of golden plums and honey. 

He could recall the sound of her singing voice, raspy and low in a way that never failed to lull him to sleep. 

He could recall the warmth and security of her arms, and the way her hand would rub circles on his back as he pressed in closer. How she would chuckle softly as his little hands fisted tightly in the fabric of her shirt, as if he could stay there forever and never let go. 

He swore he could feel her presence, smell her perfume, hear her gentle words of encouragement as Joyce Byers pulled him into the second best hug he’d ever received in his life. 

He had to bend significantly to accommodate her, but the slight discomfort in his back and his legs didn’t seem to matter as she rocked him gently and rubbed his back in slow soothing circles, like the memory of a mother. 

His heart clenched at her whispered words of reassurance, her apology for his involvement in “all of this”, her gratitude for his part in keeping her kids safe. 

Her very serious statement that he was now one of her kids. 

That’d very nearly done him in, pushing the tears gathering behind his eyelids further and further until they were a blink away from falling. 

When she’d finally released him, she took his face in her tiny hands, using her thumbs to swipe away the tears before they could go too far. 

“After all of this is over, if you ever need anything, a place to stay, food to eat, someone to talk to, my door is always open.”

Eddie had been rendered totally speechless, simply standing there in the aftermath of the moment, trying to wonder how he’d ever lived without this. 

His eyes wandered around the wrecked mall, over the strange found family he’d found himself a place in through pure happenstance. 

The kids that’d routinely interrupted his breaks to interrogate him about DnD and Tolkien, that swore up and down that Steve Harrington was the coolest person ever, that had apparently been fighting actual monsters since ‘83.

He couldn’t help but smile as he glanced over them, huddled closely with their heads together as they spoke; plotted. 

Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers, and Robin stood nearby, having their own whispered conversation which Joyce joined shortly thereafter. 

Chief Hopper was still circling the area searching for weapons, grumbling responses as that Murray guy followed closely behind, arms waving around in a thoroughly Muppet-like way as he spoke. 

Weird guy. 

Finally, inevitably, his gaze made its way back over to Steve, widening as he realised Steve was already looking his way. 

Their eyes met and everything faded out to a hum around him as Eddie lost himself once more in those hazel depths. 

Deeper and more complex than Daedalus’s Labyrinth.  

He was suddenly thrown back in time; back to the floor of the bathroom a little more than a half hour before. 

Before they’d been chased through the empty mall by Russians, before Eddie had risked his life and played a very dangerous game of chicken with a Chrysler and a squad of Commies, before a super powered preteen used the force to drag him away from harm and directly into Steve’s waiting arms. 

“You are pretty, Eddie.”

That’s what Steve had said to him, those labyrinthine eyes and that shockingly gentle smile and those unbelievably warm hands all so incredibly fresh in Eddie’s memory. 

He couldn’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if Dustin hadn’t come crashing through the door when he did. 

Would Steve have…

kissed him?

It’d certainly felt that way, what with the meaningful words and the leaning in close and the staring at his lips-

Oh holy shit.  

Eddie snapped back to reality at a loud whistle, Hopper making his way over toward the group of kids still huddled conspiratorially beside the fountain. 

He addressed Dustin and Erica, his sloping brow furrowed deeply as he spoke, though Eddie was too far away to hear him. 

He looked back over to Steve just in time for him to nod toward the group, motioning for him to follow him over. 

Eddie obeyed wordlessly, walking to stand beside Steve and Robin as Dustin addressed Hopper. 

“-If you want us to navigate, you got us, but we need a head start,” he reasoned, crossing his arms as Erica nodded beside him. 

Eddie wanted to laugh. 

Despite having been at each other's throats for the better part of two days, the two of them made an exceptional little team. 

Hopper nodded his agreement, the annoyance never quite leaving his visage as he opened his mouth to answer, his teeth audibly clicking shut as Dustin held up a hand. 

“And a car.”

The Chief pressed his lips together tightly, the line of them disappearing behind his bushy mustache as he fixed the preteen with a look of great reluctance. 

He sighed as he dug into his pocket, pulling out a jingling key ring and holding it out in front of him. 

“Oh hell yeah,” Eddie let out as he took a step forward to grab at the keys, but Hopper snatched them back out of his reach with a shake of his head.

“Not you,” he stated firmly before tossing them to Steve. 

“Which one is it?” Steve inquired as he caught them effortlessly, fighting not to snicker at Eddie’s quiet utterance of:

“Buzzkill.”

Hopper gave him a significant look, as if he were in on a joke the rest of them weren’t privy to. 

“You’ll see it.”

Dustin clapped his hands together, the sound echoing through the large empty mall. 

“Welp. What are we waiting for?” he prompted, turning on his heel toward the nearest exit.

Eddie moved to follow when Hopper called out once more, stopping him in his tracks with a:

“Hey, Munson.”

Several scenarios shot through his mind before he had a chance to wrangle his panic. 

What if Hopper wanted him to stay behind?

What if he didn’t want him there at all?

What if he sent him home?

What if he never saw Steve again?

He tried not to let his confusion or concern show as he faced the Police Chief once again. 

“Listen, kid,” Hopper started, his tone suddenly softer than before. “I gotta say, I really didn’t mean for you to get involved in all this. If I’d have known, well… I woulda talked to Old Joel myself to get you that job at the garage. What I’m tryin’ to say is…”

Eddie’s eyebrows shot up as Hopper set a large palm on his shoulder, squeezing solidly exactly the way Wayne did when he was telling him something important. 

“Be careful.”

Eddie nodded, that familiar wetness returning to his eyes as Hopper squeezed his shoulder one more time before pulling away, his stern features pulling back into their usual frown. 

“That goes for all of you.”

There was a quick chorus of yessir’s before the five of them broke off from the rest of the party, Steve taking the lead as they began to make their way towards the nearest exit. 

“Ok, so, call-signs,” Dustin started as he stepped over part of one of the dead Russian guards. 

Eddie tried his utmost not to feel queasy at the casualness in which he did it. 

“We’re the Scoops Troop.”

“Naturally,” Robin nodded. 

“Hopper is Papa Bear, for obvious reasons. Mrs. Byers is Mrs. Frisby, Murray is Bald Eagle-“

“Jesus, when did you guys find the time to decide on all this?” Steve interrupted, brow scrunched and lips upturned with a sort of confused amusement. 

“And the rest of the party,” Dustin carried on with a pointed look which Steve answered with an eyeroll. “Is the Griswald Family.”

“Griswald family?” Eddie repeated, his nose wrinkling as Dustin turned to look at him. “What’s that from?”

Suddenly all eyes were on him, including Steve who’d turned around and started walking backwards just to fix him with a look of genuine confusion mirroring the other’s. 

“Seriously, Eddie? You’ve never seen National Lampoons?” he questioned, a smirk tugging at the edge of his lips. 

Eddie tried not to bristle at the tone, but couldn’t quite help the blush slowly darkening his cheeks. 

“National- what?”

“National Lampoon!” Dustin exclaimed, copying Steve’s position as he too turned to walk backwards with much less grace than Steve managed, hitting his shoulder against a pillar and struggling for just a moment to keep his balance. “With Chevy Chase? You’ve seriously never seen it?”

Eddie scoffed at that, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking a crumpled up empty cup out of his path. 

“No. I think I tried once, but got bored. Besides, Chevy Chase is an asshole.”

Steve scoffed, but it was more amused than malicious. 

“You got bored with National Lampoons, but not Space Odyssey? Maybe you really are a freak, Eddie.”

Eddie smirked, staring back at Steve through his eyelashes and leaning over to knock his shoulder against his. 

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Stevie boy,” he practically purred in the other boy's ear, picking up his pace as they approached the doors leading out to the parking lot. 

He felt more than gratified at the sound of a shoe scuffing polished linoleum as Steve tripped over his own feet. 

See how he liked it. 

Eddie pushed open the doors, gratefully sucking in the warm fresh air as he stepped out into the dark parking lot from the blinding neon brightness of Starcourt. 

“Oh-ho-ho man, now this!” Steve exclaimed from behind him, tossing and catching the keys Hopper had given him in a quick little motion as he approached the car parked rather conspicuously right at the entrance. “This is what I’m talkin’ about!”

And as Eddie took in the sight of the light yellow Caddy before them, he couldn’t help but let out a low whistle in agreement. 

Even with the Indiana dirt mucking up her shiny chrome-lined fenders, she was a beauty. 

“Toddfather?” Robin read off the license plate with a remarkably unimpressed tone. 

Steve shook his head as he made his way around the side of the convertible, dragging a reverent hand along her body and giving her a few good solid taps. 

“Oh, screw Todd! Steve’s her daddy now!”

Eddie choked back what surely would’ve been a painfully embarrassing sound as he walked to the other side of the car, watching Steve effortlessly hop into the drivers seat. 

Not trusting his coordination in his current state, he chose instead to swing a leg over and climb in, flopping down into shotgun as Dustin repeated Steve’s previous move like a veritable mini-me. 

“Did you just talk about yourself in the third person?” Robin scoffed as she opened the door for Erica, climbing into the back beside her. 

“Did he just call himself daddy?” Erica shot back. “What’s so special about this hunk-a-junk anyway?”

“Hunk of-“

Eddie took in a deep breath, closing his eyes and steepling his hands in front of his nose as he turned to face the girl. 

“This hunk-a-junk is a Cadillac Eldorado convertible; fuel injected 4.1 Liter V8 backed by a 4 speed automatic transmission. This thing goes for about $31,000. Just the catalytic converter from one of these can get you anywhere around a grand. I just know the poor chump Hop stole this baby from is in mourning right now.”

He turned toward Steve with a grin, faltering only slightly when he wasn’t met with enthusiastic agreement, but instead a wide eyed open mouthed look of wonder. 

“Oh. I, uh…ahem. I didn’t take you for a car guy,” Steve admitted as he cleared his throat, focusing his intense gaze on the steering wheel. 

Eddie leaned into his personal space with little to no forethought- a common trend where Steve Harrington was concerned- laying his head back on Steve’s shoulder and gazing up at him with a salacious smirk. 

“You can take me wherever and whenever you want, Big Boy,” he said with a wink, reveling in the way those cheeks flushed even darker, pink lips dropping open with an audible pop. 

He looked to be working himself up to answer, his eyes dancing across Eddie’s face and his brow scrunched cutely in that way it did when he was really ruminating on something, when Dustin gripped onto his seat from behind and shook it with a loud exclamation of:

“Oh- kay! Let’s go!”

“Alright! Jesus!” Steve snapped back, jamming the keys into the ignition to start the car. “Where are we going?”

“Weathertop.”

“Weather- what?”

“Just drive!” Dustin yelled as Steve shook his head, planting one hand on the back of Eddie’s seat and turning to back up. 

“Ok! Jesus,” he said before peeling out of the parking lot, tires screeching as they drove off into the night. 

………

Murray Bauman was one crazy tricky dude. 

With just one single conversation, he’d turned Steve’s entire thought process to: 

“Eddie Eddie Eddie.”

Not that it’d been much different for the past few days. 

As it turned out, watching the guy he’d been strangely fixated on since Freshman year successfully fight off several Commies, pick the lock on his own handcuffs, and hot-wire a car, it was a little hard to continue having normal thoughts about him. 

Steve was pretty certain the image of him straddling the back of the Russian doctor and strangling him with the chain of his cuffs would live in his brain forever.

“But, if you’re spending all your time taking care of everyone else, who’s taking care of Steve?”

That was the question that seemed to stand out the most from Murray’s little monologue. 

A question Steve had never really allowed himself to think on. 

Steve took care of Steve. 

He always had. 

Ever since the first time his parents left him alone with a babysitter for more than a week, it’d been him taking care of himself. 

He’d taught himself to cook, not wanting to rely on whatever overpaid teenager they’d decided to hire that time around. 

He’d pull the step stool up to the counter, wash his hands like Julia Child said to, and would try his best. 

He worked at it until he was good, and then continued to work until he was better. 

He was lucky to have had a natural talent for flavor picking, knowing what paired well with what; what would work in a recipe and what wouldn’t.  

He was still shit at baking. 

He would misread the instructions, get the words or measurements mixed up and jumbled around in his head. He’d add too much flour or too little baking powder and it would end up all wrong, and he would get frustrated and quit. 

But cooking was much more instinctual. He could feel out a recipe, could add ingredients he liked, could take out ones he didn’t, could season and mix to his heart's content. 

It was freer, and much more forgiving. 

In a strange way, it was sort of… like Eddie. 

Eddie wasn’t confined by strict rules. There wasn’t much logic or structure to the things that he did, he simply did them because it felt right. 

Steve had always envied that about him, but now that he’d gotten to know him, had learned about him, had fought alongside him, well…

“Just think about it.”

He was thinking about it. 

He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since he’d nearly kissed him in the bathroom. 

Twice. 

His heart thudded in his chest as he chanced a glance over toward the occupant of his thoughts. 

Eddie was turned almost completely around in his seat, no seatbelt in sight, hair whipping wildly around his face in the wind, listening intently as Dustin explained to him- with far too much technical jargon for Steve’s taste- exactly what Cerebro was. 

“Wait wait wait, so…” Eddie cut him off, waving his hands. 

“Is a telephone not an option? Do Mormons not have those?” he questioned, garnering tandem snorts from Erica and Robin. 

“Well, no. She’s not Amish, dude. Her family has a phone, but her dad is, like, super crazy protective, so-“

“So,” Robin said, reaching across the car and flicking the brim of Dustin’s hat.

“You hand-built a ham radio on steroids at your little nerd camp to have long distance conversations with your honey. We follow.”

“Hey, how far is this place, man?” Steve interjected with a glance down toward the clock on the dash. 

“Relax, we’re almost there,” Dustin waved him off, smacking away Robin’s hand with a huff. 

She didn’t seem to let it deter her as she leaned back with a smirk. 

“Suzie must be pretty special, huh?” I mean, if you built this thing and lugged it all the way to the middle of nowhere just to talk to her?”

“I mean,” Dustin began, getting that starry look in his eyes Steve could see from the rear-view mirror. “Nobody’s scientifically perfect, but Suzie is about as close to being perfect as any human could possibly be.”

Erica wrinkled her nose, eyeing Dustin sideways as she turned to address the other occupants of the car. 

“She sound made-up to me. She sound made-up to you?” she asked, her lips pursed as Dustin scoffed and made to argue. 

The squabbling, now a very familiar sound, quickly became background noise like the purr of the Cadillac’s engine and the rubble crunching beneath the tires. Steve did his best to shrink back into the seat to avoid getting pulled into the conversation. 

He wanted to believe in Suzie. He didn’t think Dustin would make up something so personal, but the whole… genius computer whiz who shared all of his interests and was hotter than Phoebe Cates thing… that’s where he had his doubts. 

But he couldn’t just say that, could he? Not without hurting the kids feelings, and that was the last thing he’d ever want-

“Left! Turn left!” Dustin called, very thankfully putting an end to the conversation before Steve could get more than a few stuttered words out. 

Steve hurriedly glanced from one side to the other, brow scrunching when he was met only with tall grass and half rotted wooden railing. 

“There’s not a road here,” he pointed out with a quick gesture to their surroundings. 

“Turn left now!”

“Jesus, hang on!” he shouted out, arm reaching out across the passenger side as he jerked the wheel to the left, tires screeching as he veered off-road. 

Assorted shouts and curses filled the air as they broke through the little fence, backs hitting their seats with several audible thuds as they hit the steep incline of the hill and began to climb. 

The engine roared and whined its protest the higher up they went, Steve’s foot pressing down further and further as if to coax it along. 

“We’re not gonna make it!” Robin called out over the din, hands braced on either side of her with Erica holding on to her arm. 

“Yes we are!” Steve insisted, leaning closer to the wheel to stroke an encouraging hand across it. “Come on, baby. Come on baby!”

“Steve, it’s a car, not a horse!” Dustin shouted, but Steve ignored him, pressing the pedal to the metal.

He squeezed his eyes shut as the car let out a pitiful noise, the tires almost seeming to settle into the dirt in defeat. 

Steve let out the breath he’d been holding, sinking back into the seat and striking his palm against the steering wheel. 

“Guess the Toddfather has its limitations,” Robin spoke up breathlessly from the back. 

Eddie snorted beside Steve, his chest heaving underneath Steve’s hand. 

Steve’s hand was on Eddie’s chest. 

“Heresy,” Eddie chuckled, the rumble of it vibrating against Steve’s palm which was still on his chest. 

Steve turned to face him, meeting his dark gaze head on. 

Eddie’s eyebrows rose beneath his wind-blown bangs, pink dusting high across his cheeks. 

He looked like he wanted to say something, and Steve found himself holding his breath, waiting for… something. 

He was snapped out of the moment as the door was opened beside him, Dustin shoving past his seat to climb out virtually over him. 

“Jesus, Henderson!” he complained, shoving Dustin’s foot off of him as the preteen stumbled out of the car. 

“C’mon, it’s not far from here,” he said as he straightened up and dusted himself off, the rest of them moving to follow his lead. 

Eddie patted Steve’s hand with a secret little smile before pulling away, hopping over his own door to follow behind. 

Steve’s fingers tingled at the loss of his warmth, but he shook himself out of the strange headspace he’d fallen into and forced himself to follow. 

They had a job to do. 

-

“Bald Eagle, do you copy? Bald Eagle, I repeat, this is Scoops Troop. Do you copy?”

They waited only a beat before the answer came. 

“Yes, I copy.”

There was a moment of collective laughter, of relief, before Dustin nodded and spoke again. 

“Call sign?”

There was a crackle, something quiet and vague whispered into the walkie talkie, and Steve had to press his lips together to keep from outright smiling. 

“Please repeat,” Dustin insisted in all seriousness, only a slight upturn of his mouth betraying his own amusement as they waited for what they knew was coming. 

“Bald Eagle! This is Bald Eagle!” Murray shot back, the annoyance crystal clear in his voice even over the staticky connection. 

Robin rolled her eyes as Eddie and Steve burst into tandem giggles, blindly reaching out to hold onto one another’s shoulders as Dustin leaned back in. 

“Copy that. Good to hear your voice, Bald Eagle. What’s your 20?”

“We reached the vent. I’ll contact you when I need you. Until then, silence.”

“Roger that, Bald Eagle. This is Scoops Troop, going radio silent. 10-10, over.”

Steve patted a hand on Dustin’s shoulder at the same time Eddie grabbed hold of the top of his head over his hat. 

“Genius, kid. I’m tellin’ you,” Eddie praised, using his grip to shake Dustin back and forth, sending the preteen flailing with an unmistakable smile. 

Steve couldn’t possibly agree more. 

With an indeterminable wait ahead, the five of them spread out across the grass. Erica positioned herself beside Dustin, leaning back on her palms and assisting him as Murray very occasionally chimed back in for directions. 

The three teens, taking a much less active roll in the situation, settled into semi-comfortable positions nearby, Robin laid flat on her back, her head resting in Steve’s lap, and Eddie sat behind Steve, leaning against his back with his head resting on his shoulder. 

It was oddly reminiscent of their time tied up together in the Russian base, sending an unpleasant tingle of panic through Steve’s gut. 

He banished those memories as best he could, focusing instead on the feeling of Eddie’s slow breathing against his back, his curls tickling across his neck, his head swaying to the beat of the silent music in his mind. 

He thought of the song stuck in his own head, playing on repeat ever since that moment on the rooftop. 

The first moment he’d looked into Eddie’s eyes, like, really looked, and had seen something more than deep dark brown. He swore he could still feel the warmth of a calloused palm against his own, slightly sweaty in the humid July air, as a nearby car played:

“Something happens and I’m head over heels.”

And he was, wasn’t he?

Head over heels. 

So much so that Dustin had clocked it, which would never not be some flavor of embarrassing. 

“Scoops Troop this is- hm- Bald Eagle. I’ve reached another junction.”

Once again, Eddie and Steve had to muffle their snickers behind their hands at Murray’s tone of pure aggravation. 

“This is what?” Dustin asked, Erica quickly supplying him with:

“The fourth junction.”

“All right,” Dustin nodded. 

“So if memory serves, this is right after the My Little Pony thesis-“

“We went left, so he has to go, right,” Erica finished for him, the two nodding with twin utterances of:

“Right.”

“Fly right, Bald Eagle. Fly right.”

“Roger that, flying right.”

As the line once again went silent, Eddie let out a snort that seemed to echo across the hilltop. 

“You can, like, hear him clenching his teeth every time he says it,” he spoke through a grin, Steve unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face if he’d tried. 

He glanced fleetingly back over the skyline as Robin sat up to face the others.

The smile dropped from his face at the sight that met him, and he found himself rising to his feet before he could even really think. 

He moved slowly towards the crest of the hill, his eyes locked in place as panic scratched and clawed its way up his spine. 

“What’s the My Little Pony thesis?” he could hear Robin ask, her words met with another one of Eddie’s snorts and Erica’s:

“Don’t get him started.”

“Hey guys?” Steve called out, shocked that he’d managed to keep his tone even. 

The rustling of grass sounded behind him as the others quickly gathered around, following his gaze toward the violently flashing and wavering lights of Starcourt Mall in the distance. 

Silence spanned out for a long few seconds, broken only by Eddie’s quiet exclamation of:

“Shit.”

Without further ado, the five of them hurried back over to Cerebro, Dustin skidding across the grass as he reached out and jammed the button down. 

“Griswold Family, this is Scoops Troop! Do you copy? over!”

There was a short moment of silence, but no click to prelude an answer; no Nancy or Mike Wheeler to chime in and confirm their safety. 

Steve’s stomach dropped. 

“Griswold Family, I repeat, this is Scoops Troop! Do you-“

The radio crackled as an inhuman screech broke through, staticky and horrible. 

“Griswold Family, do you copy? Do you copy?!” 

Dustin was yelling now, hands shaking and knuckles stark white as he gripped onto the receiver. 

They were answered with another sound; a roar this time, a noise straight out of a nightmare. 

Steve placed a steadying hand on Dustin’s shoulder, Eddie doing the same as the preteen screamed into the com, his voice cracking in his worry. 

“Griswold Family, this is Scoops Troop! Please confirm your safety! Griswold Family, this is Scoops Troop! Please confirm your safety! Are you en route to Bald Eagle’s nest?”

Steve clenched his jaw, glancing back over his shoulder toward the mall. 

In an instant, he knew what he needed to do. 

He rose from his spot crouched behind a frantic Dustin, turning and racing in the direction of the abandoned Toddfather. 

“Where are you going?!” Erica called out after him. 

“To get them the hell outta there!” Steve shouted back. “Stay here, contact the others!”

“Fuck- Steve!” Eddie cursed as both he and Robin jumped up to follow him. 

“Wait! Robin!” Dustin yelled, picking up the walkie talkie beside him and tossing it towards her. 

“Stay in touch!” 

“Got it!” Robin nodded as she stumbled to catch up with Steve and Eddie. 

She jumped into the passenger's seat, Eddie in the back, Steve at the helm. 

The sound of Dustin switching channels to speak to Murray was very quickly drowned out by the roar of the Toddfather’s engine as Steve slammed on the gas, turning the car to face down the steep slope of the hill. 

“Hold on,” Steve said, more to himself than anyone else as he gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles creaking from the force of his hold. 

Just hold on. 

………

Chapter Text

“Eddie, put on your goddamn seatbelt!” 

Steve’s words were just barely audible over the roar of the wind past Eddie’s ears after the turn they‘d taken, virtually on two wheels.

And he thought he was the reckless driver of the gang.

Eddie yelped as he was sent flying across the backseat to hit the other side of the car with an audible bang, hands shooting out to root himself to the spot until the car was firmly back on four wheels and not careening around a bend. 

Without further hesitation, he took the seatbelt with shaking hands and clicked the buckle into place.  

“Seatbelt! Got it!” he called back, gripping onto the side of the car and the back of his seat as Steve took yet another outrageous turn, the flashing lights of Starcourt appearing over the horizon like a flickering beacon. 

Gondor calls for aid.

Eddie tried his best to shake off the unpleasant coil of anxiety in his stomach; the very out of place in the moment feeling that usual preluded his showing up for a shift at Scoops.

This wasn’t coworkers carpooling to work, this was trusted allies now friends on their way to execute a rescue mission.

A real one.

Steve cut across every single lane, smashing through a flimsy wooden sign boasting “incredible parking and out of this world air conditioning in just 3 miles”. 

Eddie was honestly shocked how quickly they’d gotten back as opposed to how long their drive up to Weathertop seemed to have taken. Then again, they hadn’t been pushing 90mph and running every single stoplight on the way there. 

What’s the use of having the Chief of Police on your side if you couldn’t break a traffic law or ten?

“Ugh! How do you work this thing?!” Robin griped, striking the walkie talkie against the side of her palm like a tambourine instead of an essential and most likely expensive piece of equipment.

Eddie somehow managed to smirk through his slight car sickness as Steve swerved once again to the other side of the road.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a genius, Buck? There’s a dial and like two buttons!”

Robin shot a glare back toward Eddie with no real heat behind it, pointedly twisting the dial and slapping the buttons without breaking eye contact  

“Suppose to be? Who was it that translated and cracked that secret Russian code while all of you dinguses- Wait- I got it! I got it!”

Her words were proven to be true as familiar voices crackled out from the speaker, increasing in volume as Robin twisted a dial on the side. 

Eddie couldn’t quite pick up on the words, but he was pretty certain Murray was arguing with someone about a password. 

That couldn’t be great. 

He was distracted quickly enough from the arguing at a distant but sharp sound, like the cracking of a whip, echoing across the Starcourt parking lot as they pulled in, Steve accelerating to jump a curb. 

“Is someone setting off fireworks?” Robin questioned, eyebrows quirked and face scrunched in disbelief.

Eddie shook his head.

“Those aren’t fireworks, they’re too low to the ground and too sharp sounding,” he said, yanking on the strap of his seatbelt as he craned his neck to glance around the barren lot, scenery whizzing by almost too quickly to see. “No, those are gunshots.”

“It’s Nancy,” Steve stated, twisting the wheel sharply to the right as they approached the north entrance parking lot. 

“As in… Wheeler?” Eddie pried, gripping the back of Steve’s seat and pulling himself closer to hear. “Wheeler’s got a gun?”

Steve only nodded, Eddie watching in the rear view as his brow dipped dangerously low, eyes locked on something dead ahead. 

The roar of a secondary engine mixing with the sporadic sound of gunfire dragged his attention away from Steve, his eyes widening as he caught sight of pretty and prim Nancy Wheeler, gun in hand, standing in front of a station wagon packed full of kids, shooting with a single minded focus at the gut-clenchingly familiar blue Camero screaming toward her across the tarmac. 

“Shit, it’s Hargrove,” he yelled over the din, hands gripping tighter onto the back of Steve’s seat until his fingers were cramping, but he couldn’t make himself care enough to let go. 

Steve said nothing, that dangerous look only growing more determined as he stepped down on the gas, the Toddfather lurching forward ever faster, like a charging bull in an arena. 

“Uh, Steve?” Robin called out, blue eyes going wide as she glanced between him, Eddie, and the very quickly approaching Camero. 

Steve answered in the form of slamming his foot down hard on the gas pedal, the car shrieking like a jungle cat as it vibrated dangerously around them, pushed to its very limit; angry. 

“Steve?!”

“Hold on!” Steve shouted, Eddie and Robin scrambling to comply as they fully realised just what he was planning. 

Eddie wanted to close his eyes. 

He didn’t have the time to as the side of the Camero neared in slow motion. They were close enough he could see Nancy’s terrified scream before he could hear it. 

He could see the haunted expression on Billy’s face through the passenger's side window, harsh blue gaze still fixed straight out in front of him, unaware of their approach. 

Impact was quite possibly the loudest noise Eddie had ever heard, like a pocket-sized explosion accompanied by the screeching of metal and rubber across slick tarmac. 

The Camero spun out a good few feet, shuddering to a halt, dented and damaged, before the dash abruptly caught fire. The body inside was slumped unmoving over the wheel, blonde curls bathed eerily in the orange glow.

“You guys ok?” Steve inquired, panting as he glanced back over his shoulder toward Robin and Eddie in turn. 

“Ask me tomorrow?” Robin replied just as breathlessly, exerting genuine effort to peel herself from the clinging leather of the seat. 

Eddie nodded fervently, shaking hand unbuckling his seatbelt, a seatbelt he was dearly grateful for.

Thank Christ for Mother Hen Steve Harrington.

“Fuck. Ditto,” he agreed with a quick nod  

They had no real time to collect themselves as a low rumbling roar sounded from somewhere ahead. 

Robin gasped, her back going rigid as she pulled herself up to stand in her seat, gaze locked on-

Quite possibly the most terrifying thing Eddie had ever seen; a creature pulled straight from a nightmare.

The Mind Flayer. 

“Oh shit,” she and Eddie breathed at once as they took in the harrowing sight of the  giant monster exactly as Mike and the kids had described, meaty claws crunching and crumbling the concrete of the rooftop of Starcourt as it clambered toward them. 

It was coming toward them.

They were startled out of their terrified trance as the Station Wagon swerved up beside them, letting out a quick honk. 

“Get in!” Nancy ordered, and they were quick to follow, hopping out of the smoking Toddfather and hurrying toward the trunk. 

Steve threw the doors open, ushering them in with a frantic:

“Go go go!”

It was a tight fit with the three of them in the back. Robin was pressed into the wall with her knees to her chest, Eddie balancing precariously over her, and Steve squeezing into the other side behind him. 

As the car lurched forward, Eddie fought to keep his balance with a hand against the wall above Robin’s head. 

He let out an undignified yelp as an arm wrapped around his waist, pulling him off kilter and into a solid warmth that was all too familiar by now. 

“Stay low,” Steve whispered, his lips tickling along the ridge of Eddie’s ear, sending goosebumps along the back of his neck and down his arms that had nothing to do with the actual monster outside. 

One arm became two, and suddenly Steve was hugging him securely against his chest, his thighs, strong mole-dotted thighs, on either side of Eddie’s hips like the sexiest seatbelt in existence. 

Fuck. 

“Aye aye, Captain,” Eddie somehow managed to breathe out through the swarm of butterflies attacking his insides. 

Fuck!

He wanted to bite those thighs.

Now was not the time for a big gay freak out. 

The Mind Flayer let out another ear piercing shriek in harmony with the screeching of tires as the packed station wagon flew out of the Starcourt parking lot, the bumper slamming against the curb as Jonathan accelerated and jumped it. 

Eddie cursed under his breath as the monster leapt from the rooftop and galloped after them. 

Nothing that big should be able to fucking gallop. 

“Wait wait wait,” Steve exclaimed as he twisted to face the front, Eddie having no choice but to lean with him as he seemed to search across the other faces in the car. 

“Where’s El? And Mike and Max?”

A momentary silence passed over the group as they seemed to take in the absence of the three, assorted looks of panic overtaking their faces. 

“Shit, they must still be inside!” Jonathan answered from behind the wheel, the clenching of his fingers audible even from the trunk. 

“We have to turn around!” Steve insisted. 

“Turn around?”

Eddie couldn’t stop the incredulous laugh that punched its way out of him. 

“But that thing is after us right now,” Eddie pointed out, motioning toward the Mind Flayer with a trembling hand. “Or did you somehow forget?”

Steve cursed under his breath as he glanced out the back window towards the monster pursuing them, a shaky exhalation ruffling Eddie’s hair at the back of his neck. His arms tightened around Eddie’s middle until the squeeze was almost painful, his body going tense against his back. 

“Easy, Big Boy,” Eddie huffed out, placing his hands over Steve’s arms and tapping gently. “They’re safer now where they are.”

“He’s right,” Will proclaimed from his spot beside Lucas. “We’re leading him away from them. We just need to keep going, keep him distracted, until we get the signal from Hopper.”

Steve nodded, loosening his suffocating hold but not releasing Eddie. In fact, he almost seemed to nuzzle up against him, his nose pressing into the side of his neck, his chin resting on his shoulder. 

Eddie tried his very best not to visibly swoon. 

Now was certainly not the time for swooning; not with a thirty foot meat monster made from their neighbors chasing them down the backroads of Hawkins. 

Fuck, that was deeply upsetting to think about. 

He decided there would be ample time to process that later, focusing instead on keeping his breathing even and wheeze-free as Steve Harrington hugged him like a Koala in the trunk of a station wagon.

“Turn here,” Nancy instructed, pointing left across the dash. “Away from the city center.”

Jonathan obeyed immediately, swerving left, the fender thumping against the curb before he managed to straighten them out. 

The Mind Flayer roared, and Eddie’s stomach churned even though he was pretty damn certain there was nothing left in his body to puke up at that point. 

His eyes snapped over to Robin as the walkie talkie in her hand suddenly crackled to life, an unfamiliar voice filling the air. 

“Dusty-bun, you copy?”

Eddie mouthed the name with a scrunch of his nose, turning to glance back at Steve and Robin, their expressions strikingly similar to his own. 

“I copy, Suzie-poo. It sounds much better, now. Thanks.”

It was Dustin’s voice that came through the small speaker that time, and it clicked in Eddie’s mind just as Steve and Robin let out a tandem exclamation of:

“Suzie!”

Eddie scoffed out a little laugh of disbelief. 

“I’ll be damned.” 

“Okay, so listen,” Dustin spoke up once again. 

“Do you know Planck’s constant?”

“Do you know the earth orbits the sun?”

Groans sounded from the others, followed by muttered comments of:

“God, there’s two of them.”

“Unbelievable.”

Dustin’s lovestruck little chuckle was barely audible through the static. 

“Okay, so I know it starts with two sixes and then a… w-what is it?”

“Okay,” Suzie started. “Let me just be clear on this. I haven’t heard from you in a week, and now you want a mathematical equation that you should know, so you can… save the world?” 

“Suzie-poo, I promise I will make it up to you as soon as possible.”

A short moment of silence followed before Susie spoke up once again. 

“You can make it up to me now.”

Steve’s face scrunched up as Robin let out a guffaw of surprise, slapping her hand over her own mouth. 

“Oh, I don’t know if we’re gonna wanna hear this,” she mumbled through her fingers just as Dustin answered with a cautious:

“What?”

“What indeed, Henderson,” Eddie agreed, wiggling his eyebrows to a chorus of gags from the front seats. 

“I want to hear it,” Suzie insisted a bit cryptically. 

“Well that doesn’t clarify anything,” Steve scoffed, sending Eddie into a fit of giggles. 

“Not right now!” Dustin seemed to argue, his tone almost fearful. 

“Yes, now, Dusty-bun!”

“Suzie-poo, this is urgent!”

“Yes yes, you’re saving the world, I heard you the first time, but Ged is also saving Earthsea, and he’s about to confront the shadow, so this is Suzie, signing off-“

“Wait wait wait! Ok! Ok. Ok.”

Silence stretched in for a long couple of seconds, as if Dustin was hyping himself up on the other end. Everyone seemed to lean in, the anticipation of the moment very nearly enough to make them forget about the towering eldritch horror chasing after them. 

Almost. 

The walkie talkie gave that characteristic crackle once again, and suddenly-

“Turn around. 

Look at what you see-

In her face,

The mirror of your dreams.”

Eddie’s jaw dropped. He let out a quick and halfway to hysterical laugh as Dustin started to sing, Suzie joining in with a smile audible in her voice. 

“Make believe I’m everywhere,

Hidden in the lines. 

Written on the pages is,

The answer to our Never Ending Story!”

Eddie found himself bopping his head to the beat, catching incredulous, open-mouthed looks from both Steve and Robin. 

He couldn’t help it. 

He recognised a great performance when he heard one. 

“Reach the stars,

And fly a fantasy. 

Dream a dream,

And what you see will be. 

Lives that keep their secrets will

Unfold behind the clouds. 

And there upon a rainbow is

The answer to a Never Ending Story!”

The two harmonized beautifully, and Eddie felt, now more than ever, as if he was dreaming. 

Any moment now, he’d wake up in his bedroom, in his uncle’s trailer in Forest Hills, in a world where monsters were mortal men and not hulking creatures made of men. 

He would drag himself out of bed and pad into the living room, grab a handful of cereal, take a swig of milk straight from the carton, and just… exist. 

Maybe he’d learn a new song?

Maybe he’d start with his acoustic?

Maybe he’d learn to play ‘Never Ending Story’?

He was certain he could find the tape at Sam Goody before he next shift-

“Planck’s constant is 6.62607004.”

Suzie’s voice cut through his calm like a lightsaber through a blast door, the music gone and the Mind Flayer back, feeding fear into his mind freely without the barrier of two nerdy preteens performing an impromptu and surprisingly beautiful duet. 

It felt like all the air had been stolen from his lungs.

“You just saved the world,” Dustin breathed, sounding utterly enamored. 

“Gosh, I miss you, Dusty-bun.”

“I miss you more, Suzie-poo.”

“I miss you more, multiplied by all the stars in our galaxy!”

“No, I miss you-“

Dustin’s sickly sweet words were cut off with a sudden click and a crackle, and Robin let out a loud snort. 

“Thank you, Erica.”

Eddie couldn’t agree more. 

“I didn’t know he could do that,” Nancy said from the passenger's seat, the admission answered with several nods and ‘mhms’ from the rest of the car. 

“Uh, guys?” Steve suddenly spoke up over the sound of another otherworldly roar. “It’s turning around.”

“What?” Nancy called back. 

“It’s turning around!” Steve repeated a bit more urgently. 

Eddie’s gaze turned immediately back out the window to see the monster was indeed retreating, heading back the way they’d come. 

That sight was somehow more terrifying than when the thing was chasing them. 

“Maybe we wore it out?” Lucas chimed in hopefully, Will giving him an unsure frown. 

“I don’t think so,” Jonathan said with a shake of his head, his grip adjusting on the wheel as he glanced back. “Hold on.”

That was all the warning they got before the car was spinning back around, the engine roaring and the tires squealing. 

Steve kept one arm around Eddie, the other shooting out to steady Robin as Jonathan stepped on the gas, heading right back to Starcourt. 

Right back to square-fucking-one. 

………

Chapter Text

Steve was pretty damn certain he’d never run faster in his entire life. 

He wasn’t sure whether that was one hundred percent accurate, or if it just felt that way what with how the world was spinning around him like a janky ferris wheel at a fun-fair, lights and faces blurring everywhere he looked as he and the rest of the party raced in through the doors of one of the many employee entrances of Starcourt, laden down with crates, boxes, and bags of stolen fireworks. 

The plan was stunningly simple, masterminded of course by Lucas, Will, Nancy, and Dustin. 

Go in, find El and the others before the Mind Flayer could get there, and distract the thing with festive explosives until the adults could manage to deactivate the machine and close the gate once and for all. 

Easy peasy. 

‘Easy peasy’ still had his heart beating right out of his chest and his palms and pits sweating more generously than they had when the Hawkins Tigers were one free throw away from moving on to the Championships, the outcome resting squarely on his shoulders. 

They had the advantage; a rather sizable head start as Jonathan had cut back through Hawkins in record time, breaking more laws than Steve could count with his shortcuts through one-ways and across mostly empty fields. 

Safe to say Hawkins citizens would be in hysterics when they woke up tomorrow to see tire tracks wrecking their precious lawns. 

Steve swallowed down the nervous lump in his throat, allowing the adrenaline to take hold as he led the group through the dimly lit back hallways, planting his hand on the wall beside him as he took the twists and turns as quickly as his rattled brain would allow. 

He didn’t know where they were going, he didn’t know where to even start really, but he kept moving forward through the winding corridors, keeping his eyes peeled for their missing party members. 

“Nancy, you said you saw them run into The Gap. Do you think they’d still be there?” Robin questioned, her voice a gentle rasp that just barely carried over the rumble of the air conditioning. 

“There’s no telling where they may have gone,” Nancy sighed, her eyebrows pinched and her lips pursed. 

Her expression was stern, but Steve could’ve seen the worry etched into her features from a mile away. 

“Maybe we should split up?” Jonathan suggested, those words immediately followed by a chorus of protests along the lines of:

“Definitely not.”

“When has that ever worked well for us?”

“Have you never seen a horror movie, Byers?”

Jonathan raised his free hand in surrender, shouldering his duffle bag with a sigh. 

“Ok, ok! It was just a thought.”

They continued to move forward, Steve checking quickly around a corner before leading them down a long stretch of poorly lit hallway. 

He could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as if his body were warning him of… something.

Without thinking, he reached his free hand back, his knuckles brushing against the warm skin of Eddie’s arm. 

Cold calloused fingers threaded through his own without a single word- a single look- passed between them, hard silver rings pressing into the spaces in between. It was almost painful, but grounding; calming. 

“Steve,” came an urgent whisper from behind. 

“Will?” he replied as he turned to glance over his shoulder, taking in the sight of startled brown eyes and the nervous set of his jaw. 

He looked almost nauseous with fear, hands shaking as he dropped the box he was carrying with an echoing thud. 

“He’s here,” he whispered, his voice cracking as his eyes swept their surroundings, one hand raising to cup the back of his neck as he visibly trembled. 

“The Mind Flayer?” Lucas inquired, taking a step toward him and pressing his free hand to his shoulder with a look of concern. 

“No,” Will shook his head, eyebrows scrunched and jaw trembling. 

“Him.”

At the utterance of the word, the lights in the hall began to flicker.

A shiver shot down Steve’s spine, his stomach twisting into terrified knots. 

In an instant he was back in the Byers Christmas light covered living room, seventeen years old, terrified beyond comprehension, and wielding a nail-bat against a nine foot tall interdimensional monster. 

He shared a look with Jonathan and Nancy, the other two mirroring his expression perfectly. 

“Him, who?” Nancy asked steadily, resting her own bag of fireworks on the ground as she took a small step closer to Will. “Will? Who else is here?”

Will shook his head quickly, squeezing his eyes shut against the onslaught of flashing as the dim yellow lights seemed to brighten, following a clear path down the hall as if something really was there with them. 

Steve bit his lip as Eddie’s rings dug into his fingers, the dull ache nowhere near enough to get him to even think of letting go.

He held on tighter. 

They watched, all of them transfixed as the moment it reached the far end of the hallway, the flickering died down completely, leaving them bathed in that dim yellow lighting once more. 

“I don’t know,” Will answered weakly, flinching minutely as Lucas’s hand, still resting on his shoulder, gave a light squeeze of support. 

“He… He was there in the Upside Down. He was trying to get me, but… he couldn’t.”

“Is…” Jonathan started, his fists clenched tightly enough to audibly creak in the echoey corridor. 

“Is it… is he the Demogorgon?”

Will once again shook his head. 

“No. I don’t know what he is. I never saw him. He…”

Will sighed, his expression pinched with an odd mix of anxiety and frustration, as if he couldn’t quite find the words he needed. 

“This is gonna sound weird, but… when there was sound, music, he couldn’t get me.”

There was a pregnant pause as everyone seemed to take his words in.

Eddie was, as per usual, the one to break the stifling silence, letting out a low whistle like a character from a cartoon. 

“Ok, so… Let me get this straight,” Robin started, a nervous smile forcing its way onto her face. “This… thing that was after you… it adheres to the ‘Whistle a Happy Tune’ doctrine?”

“More or less,” Will nodded. 

“That’s why,” Lucas spoke up, brow furrowed deeply as he considered Will closely. 

“That’s why you were singing when El found you over the radio in the Upside Down? To keep him away?”

Will nodded once again. 

“Wait wait wait,” Eddie spoke up, waving his hands in front of him, though he didn’t release his hold on Steve’s with his right, forcing him to move with him. 

Steve didn’t miss the smirk Robin sent him, her eyes flickering smugly down toward their joined hands.

“Music,” Eddie continued, emphasizing the word with a raise of his eyebrows as he glanced around at each of them, as if waiting for someone to catch on to his point. 

“Um… elaborate? Maybe?” Robin offered, motioning for Eddie to go on. 

He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut briefly before addressing the group once more. 

“Back in the car, when the Mind Flayer was chasing us, didn’t anyone else feel it? This… presence, like, invading your mind?”

He paused, glancing around the group once again. 

Steve recalled the moment, the bumping and rocking of the station wagon that sent his vision blurring, the fear-fueled adrenaline that had his heart pounding in his chest, the whisper of words that weren’t his own in the back of his mind, the weight of an unfamiliar presence lurking somewhere intangible, the warmth of Eddie’s sweat-damp back pressing against him, the smell of Eddie’s hair, the feel of his skin, the comfort of his form-

“Yes,” Nancy said, her soft voice echoing in the silence, effectively pulling Steve from his thoughts. “It was like there was someone watching me; whispering things in my ear.”

“Yeah, I… I felt that, too,” Steve agreed. 

Jonathan, Robin, and Lucas also nodded, each looking markedly unnerved. 

“Right!” Eddie continued, swinging Steve’s hand around as he spoke. “Ok, but then, when Dustin and Suzie started singing, it… went away? Just for a while?”

Yet more nods followed his words, this time with less hesitation. 

“Ok,” he said, dark eyes checking either way down the corridor before settling on the direction they’d come from. 

“I have a plan.”

Without further preamble or explanation, Eddie dropped Steve’s hand with one final squeeze and set off in his chosen direction, swiftly disappearing around the corner. 

“Eddie? Where are you going? I thought we just nixed the whole splitting up thing!” Robin called out after him, worry written on her face Steve was more than positive matched his own. 

In a flurry of brown curls, Eddie’s head popped back around the corner, that familiar grin firmly in place, though Steve could see the nervousness reflected in his eyes even from there. 

“To find us some music!” Eddie answered easily, winking before vanishing once more, his footsteps fading much too quickly down the hall. 

Steve’s stomach lurched in all-too familiar panic, the very same panic he’d felt when Eddie had leapt over that damned counter. 

He couldn’t let him go off alone again. 

He couldn’t stand to let him out of his sight, lest he end up at the wrong end of a gun for a third time in so many hours. 

His hand, left cold and empty without Eddie’s in its grasp, twitched helplessly at his side, and he found himself looking toward Robin.

Without a single word shared between them, she stepped forward and took the crate of fireworks from his hand and jerked her head sideways, silently urging him to go. 

With a quick nod and a slightly apologetic look towards the others, Steve was taking off in a dead sprint, following behind Eddie. 

………

Music. 

The answer was music. 

Honestly it fucking figured. 

Eddie resisted the urge to laugh aloud as he hurried through the absurdly creepy back corridors of Starcourt with a mission in mind. 

A mission in the form of background music, because what huge climactic monster battle was complete without a killer soundtrack?

Not this one. 

He reached the stairwell to the first floor faster than even he anticipated, taking the steps down three at a time before giving up on them entirely and hopping over the railing. 

The hard thump of the thick rubber soles of his boots against the concrete floor echoed through the hall like a gunshot, that along with his heavy breathing and the clinking of his wallet chain the only sounds he could hear as he sped toward his goal with the single-minded focus of a charging bull toward red. 

The lettering on the little signs on each door blurred past as he raced down the long stretch ahead. 

Not far now. 

Almost…

Almost…

“Ah!” Eddie exclaimed, quite literally skidding to a halt, windmilling his arms cartoonishly to stay upright as he turned abruptly toward the backdoor of Sam Goody. 

“Bingo.”

Adjusting his stance and bracing himself for impact, he reeled back and started kicking hard into the surface of the door, right beside the handle. 

Once,

Twice,

Three times was all it took for the lock to break with an echoing snap, Eddie whooping triumphantly to himself as he pushed the door open and let himself in. 

He greedily sucked in a couple deep breaths, heart pounding as he moved through the darkened back room, past a shelf covered in discarded jackets, coffee cups, and somebody’s forgotten lunchbox. 

Star Blazers themed. Very cool. 

Not wasting any time, he emerged through a door absolutely plastered from top to bottom with stickers and posters very nearly covering the ‘employees only’ sign, making his way onto the sales floor.

Without a single thought toward it, his feet carried him toward the familiar section tucked away at the very back corner of the store, the neglected tapes and records covered in a thin layer of dust and just waiting for someone to pluck them up and take them home. 

He took a moment to run his fingers reverently along the smooth surface of each cassette case, scanning the titles, taking in the artwork, dearly wishing for more time, a bag, and perhaps a walkman-

Focus. 

He nodded to himself as if to agree with his internal monologue, hand reaching out towards a Black Sabbath tape- Heaven and Hell- when he spotted a case decorated with a familiar black, red, and white design; the silhouette of a hand dropping a hammer beside a pool of blood. 

“Perfect.”

Without a second thought he snatched the case off of the shelf, tucking it safely away into his pocket with a gentle pat. 

“Ok. Now to get to the mall office and-“

The all too familiar sound of footsteps had him freezing in place, icy fear tingling down his spine, clenching low in his gut like a vice around his insides. 

Fuck. 

He dropped down low into a crouch, holding on to his wallet chain to keep it from clinking and giving away his position as he half walked half crawled across the dusty concrete floor. 

Reaching the end of the aisle, he carefully peeked around the tape-laden shelves, eyes searching across the darkened store for, well, anything.

The pink neon sign at the front cast an eerie glow across the space, and he squinted as he searched the seemingly endless aisles for any sign of movement. 

The distinct sound of the rubber sole of a shoe squeaking across the polished concrete seemed to echo from the other side of the store, plastic clacking noisily against plastic, followed by a muffled curse.

Eddie pressed his back against the shelf, very slowly rising up from the floor. He did his best to steady his breathing as he reached into his pocket, fingers closing around the hilt of his knife. 

The footsteps grew closer and closer and Eddie’s heart beat faster and faster as he waited for the inevitable; for a Russian guard, a monster, Billy fucking Hargrove to appear around the corner and take him out once and for all. 

He bounced in place on his heels, adrenalin kicking as he waited till the last possible moment, waited till the footsteps were right beside him. 

Fuck it.

He swung around the corner with speed that surprised even him, hands connecting with something solid and warm. 

With a grunt of effort, he shoved hard into the solid form, wrestling and pushing it several feet until he’d managed to slam it against the front counter right beside the register. 

A stack of tapes and a cup full of pens and rubber bands clattered noisily to the floor as hands flew up, planting firmly on Eddie’s shoulders to try and shove him away. 

Eddie held fast, raising his knife to a mole-dotted throat when-

“-ddie? Eddie! Woah man! Hold on! Hold on! It’s me!”

Eddie blinked, eyes meeting terrified but instantly recognizable hazel staring right back at him. 

“Steve?” he spoke softly, fingers loosening their choking grip on what he now realized was Steve’s red uniform tie. 

Steve nodded jerkily, wide unblinking eyes fixed on Eddie like the unmoving marble of a statue. 

His face was cast in an odd pink light under the flickering glow of the neon, but even so the dark flush of his cheeks was unmistakable. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Eddie asked, his heart hammering as he struggled to come down from the instinctual high. 

He could feel his hands shaking, his palms sweating, his pulse hammering. He was sure Steve felt similarly if the audible gulp he let out was anything to go by. 

Eddie’s eyes followed the line of his throat as he swallowed, the bob of his adams apple just above the blade of his knife pressed lightly against his skin-

“Oh, shit,” Eddie gasped, immediately pulling back, hands raised where Steve could see them as he slowly folded and pocketed the knife. 

Steve let out the breath he’d apparently been holding, chest rising and falling rapidly as he gasped for air. 

Eddie winced in a mix of sympathy and guilt, hands reaching out hesitantly towards him before falling uselessly back down to his sides. 

“I’m sorry, man. I… you snuck up on me, so I-“

“It’s ok,” Steve panted, pressing a hand to the base of his throat, rubbing at the red line marring the otherwise smooth skin. “Jesus, dude. You’re a lot stronger than you look. I’m surprised you never tried out for wrestling or something. You would’ve been great.”

Eddie couldn’t help the snort of laughter that forced its way out of his chest. 

“Me? And a sport? You’re real funny, Harrington.”

“So I’ve been told,” Steve shot back, leaning just a bit closer with a smirk that sent Eddie’s brain all staticky like the snow across a tv screen. 

Eddie physically shook away the metaphorical cartoon hearts circling his head, clearing his throat and hoping to whoever was listening that Steve couldn’t hear the embarrassingly loud hammering of his heart. 

“So, what are you doing here, Steve? Shouldn’t you be searching with the others?”

Steve’s smirk fell in an instant, mien shifting to something… unsure?

Afraid?

“I…” he started, twisting his hands in such an uncharacteristically nervous fashion it was almost worrying.

“I couldn’t let you go alone, again,” he admitted slowly with a defeated shake of his head, hazel eyes switching back and forth from Eddie’s own to the floor. 

Eddie felt himself frown, his eyebrows pulling together behind his bangs and his heart dropping down into his stomach like a leaden weight. 

He took a step closer, his fingers once again itching to reach out, to reclaim Steve’s hand in his own like Steve had done back in the corridor not ten minutes before. 

“Steve-“

“I couldn’t risk it,” Steve interrupted with a shake of his head. “You, running into more Russians? Or the Mind Flayer? Or that thing Will was talking about? What if you got hurt again, and I wasn't there to- I… I couldn’t risk something happening to you, so I-“

“So you decided to follow me. To protect me,” Eddie stated rather than questioned, his heart breaking just a little at the slow nod Steve answered with. 

“Steve… you didn’t have to-“

“No,” Steve cut him off once again, if a bit aggressively, taking a step forward to close yet more of the distance between them. Eddie sucked in a sharp breath and bit his tongue as he got a nose-full of his sweat and cologne, the scent of it positively intoxicating. 

God, why does he still smell so good?

“Don’t say I didn’t have to. I did. I do. I…” Steve huffed in clear frustration as the words jumbled up on his tongue, refusing to come out in the proper order. 

He ran a hand through his hair, pinched at the bruised bridge of his nose, scratched down the side of his jaw as if he couldn’t stand the thought of staying still for even a moment. 

“Fuck, man,” he laughed self deprecatingly. 

“It’s basically my job at this point. It’s the only thing I can do; the only thing I’m good for.”

At those words, that look of acceptance, that dismissive tone, red hot anger the likes of which Eddie had never before felt coursed through him. 

“That’s bullshit, Steve,” he snapped, a raging fire burning in his cheeks, behind his eyes; he wouldn’t be surprised if steam were leaking from his ears. 

The flames were further stoked by the look of shock overtaking Steve’s face, his eyebrows sloping up and his petal pink lips dropping open. 

He looked like he’d been gut-punched. 

“Who told you that, hmm? Henderson? Wheeler? Hopper?” Eddie demanded, hands on his hips like a scolding schoolteacher, but he was far too upset to care. 

“No one… no one told me. It’s just-“

“It’s just what? Jesus H. Christ, Steve,” he exclaimed, pressing his lips into a thin line as he brought his hands up to wave uselessly beside his head like one of those guys with the orange batons helping to land a plane, or a particularly frustrated conductor. 

“I don't know who the hell made you think that way about yourself, but it’s just not true. I mean, fuck, Steve! You’re the one that figured out the Russians were here. You’re the one who got us out of the elevator! You beat up the guard! You withstood actual torture and didn’t spill shit, for fucks sake! You’re so much more valuable than you think you are!”

Eddie reached out before he could stop himself, planting his hands firmly on Steve’s shoulders. Those autumn eyes, soft and sad and warm and everything Eddie had ever dreamed of, stared right back at him, glazed over with unshed tears that brought similar moisture to Eddie’s own. 

“You spend so much time taking care of everyone else,” Eddie almost whispered, head dipping down until his forehead was very nearly resting on Steve’s chin. “You just-“ he squeezed his eyes shut, grasping helplessly for the right words. 

You matter more to me than almost anything.

I would never mentally recover if you got hurt or killed protecting me. 

I’ve had a dumb little crush on you since the seventh grade, but I’ve been in love with you since you sacrificed yourself for me, our coworker, and two child geniuses in a secret Russian bunker below our workplace. 

Eddie breathed in deeply through his nose, stuttering and unsteady as he slowly raised his gaze back up to Steve’s face. 

“You can’t go through life like that, Steve. You deserve to have someone take care of you, for a change.”

The words seemed to strike something deep inside Steve, his brows scrunching and his eyes widening, his cheeks darkening and his lips parting. 

He took in a breath as if to answer, but Eddie shook his head hard enough to send his hair flying about his face. 

“And don’t try and argue with me, Harrington, because I know for a fact that I’m more stubborn than you and I will win-“

Eddie’s words came to a crashing halt, a spectacular thirty car pileup in his mind as hands shot out towards him, cupping either side of his face with unbelievable warmth, lips crashing into his in a kiss that stole the breath straight from his lungs. 

Steve was kissing him. 

Steve. Harrington. Was kissing him. 

And it was everything. 

Every stupid corny thing every romance story boasted; the fireworks, the butterflies, the spark of electricity shooting straight down your spine to tingle in your toes. 

Eddie was damn near convinced he could hear birds singing in the Sam Goody as Steve used one large hand to tilt his face where he wanted it, deepening the kiss with the gentle press of a tongue to the seam of his lips as the other hand traveled back to cradle the back of his head, fingers weaving through his curls.

He let out a sound, a choked off little gasp as his knees went weak and wobbly, his own hands coming up to grab at Steve’s shoulders, to ground himself before he could simply float away. 

As if he could read Eddie’s mind, Steve’s arms wound around him, a tether to keep him grounded; an anchor tying down a balloon in a Hurricane.

Before Eddie could answer in kind, push back against him and breathe him in the way he so desperately wanted to, those lips disappeared from his own with a soft smack, taking their warmth with them.

He blinked his eyes open- he hadn’t remembered closing them- half convinced Steve would be gone and he’d be back in his bed in his room in his trailer instead of in the middle of Sam Goody, his life thoroughly absent of Russians, Monsters, and unattainable High School crushes suddenly and impossibly returning his affections. 

He’d roll out of bed after an hour or so of moping under the threadbare covers, pour himself a cup of lukewarm coffee, and continue on with his life as usual. 

Maybe he’d call up Gareth. He’d have to hope his dad didn’t answer. Mr. Emerson was not his biggest fan, after all. 

But when his tear-blurred vision focused, separating the splotches of reds and browns and greys into proper shapes, he was met not with his hand painted Corroded Coffin mural, nor the posters and artwork plastering his walls, the mess of tapes, records, and magazines littering his bedside, his overflowing ashtray that was actually a ceramic bowl he’d made in freshman year art class, the dice dangerously scattered across his floor, but was instead met with hazel eyes, scrunched at the corners with tangible concern, soft lips stained red from kissing- kissing him - and upturned at the corners with… 

Hope?

“Are you volunteering, Munson?” Steve asked, his soft voice low and rumbling, reverberating through Eddie’s lungs like a lone singer in a cathedral. 

Eddie sucked in as deep a breath as he dared, licking at his lips and swearing he could still taste Steve there. 

He didn’t miss how those eyes seemed to track the movement almost hungrily.

He definitely didn’t miss the flush on those cheeks or the quickened tempo of his breathing. 

“Fuck, I could be,” he sighed, hands slowly, carefully, coming up to rest on Steve’s chest, rings clinking against his nametag in the otherwise silent store. 

He searched for only a second before pressing his hand just over Steve’s heart, feeling the rhythmic beat of it against his palm like the bumping of a speaker in an amp. He took a moment to take it in; the reassuring thrum of life beneath the spread of bruised ribs. 

Steve answered in kind, moving his hand from its spot caressing Eddie’s cheek to rest on the side of his neck, his thumb seeking out his pulsepoint there. 

Eddie let out a sharp breath as Steve pressed in, feeling his own rapid pulse through the thin layer of skin. 

“Do you…” Eddie started to say, his adams apple bobbing beneath Steve’s touch as he audibly swallowed. “Do you want me to be? Volunteering, I mean?”

He was certain Steve could hear the unspoken question in those words, could see the flash of insecurity in his eyes, could feel the quickening of his already speedy pulse as Eddie waited for his response with bated breath. 

He didn’t have to wait very long as Steve surged right back in to reclaim his lips, the sheer force of it bowing Eddie backwards. 

Those increasingly familiar hands planted themselves on his waist, pulling his hips further forward to rest in the cradle of his own, and Eddie couldn’t help the moan that rumbled up from his throat, muffled though it was by the eager mouth devouring his.

Steve let out an answering growl, and suddenly he was spinning and pressing Eddie back against the counter in a move that punched the air right out of his lungs in the best way possible. 

Eddie was lightheaded, floating blissfully in the stratosphere; he was walking on goddamn sunshine as Steve Harrington licked into his mouth with a needy little whine. 

“I want you,” Steve breathed against his lips like something straight out of Eddie’s wildest imagination as he sucked softly at Eddie’s bottom lip. 

Eddie forced back a whine of his own as Steve slid his knee up in between his thighs, effectively pinning him in place against the counter with his entire body, as if Eddie would dare, could even think clearly enough to try and move away. 

“I… I like you, Eddie,” he continued, his voice soft and low, harmonizing with the bass hum of the air conditioner. 

Eddie fought not to shake, slap, or pinch himself in one last ditch attempt to make utterly certain this was actually happening, forcing himself to listen to the pretty words spilling from the pretty boy's pretty lips. 

“I think I have for a long time, but I hadn’t really let myself, y’know, consider it an option. I was scared of what it would mean, but I sort of realised…” Steve cut himself off with a wry chuckle. 

“There’s a lot of way scarier shit out there than a crush on the local metalhead, y’know what I mean?”

Eddie let out a laugh that was halfway to hysterical, burying his face in the crook of Steve’s neck as his fingers tightened their grip on his uniform shirt, fisting the fabric tightly as if it would keep Steve right there with him, in this moment in time forever. 

What a dream that would be. 

“Yeah, Stevie,” he chuckled, his voice muffled against Steve’s throat. “I know. I really really do.”

Eddie paused to drag the flat of his tongue along the long line of Steve’s neck, collecting the salty sweat that clung to the clammy skin. 

Steve’s hands tightened on his waist, his hips twitching against Eddie’s and his head falling back.

Eddie took full advantage of the newly revealed skin, reveling in the wet sounds that seemed to echo through the empty store as he kissed and sucked a line down Steve’s neck. 

“And now that we finally seem to be on the same page, I’m gonna need, like, at least a million more kisses as emotional compensation for making me wait so long.”

“A million, you say?” Steve said with a smile in his voice, placing unbelievably gentle hands in Eddie’s greasy curls, guiding his head up to meet his gaze once more. “Well then, we’d better start sooner rather than later, huh?”

Eddie grinned like a madman, snatching Steve’s red tie up and twisting it around his hand to drag the other boy in so they were nose to nose. 

“How about now? No time like the present.”

Steve nodded immediately, nose knocking against his in his unmasked enthusiasm. 

“Now is good. I like now-“

Eddie barely allowed him the time to finish his sentence before he was crashing their lips back together, melting into his embrace like wax to paper. 

And Jesus H. Christ, all of the rumors passed around in the cafeteria, the locker rooms, and by the water fountains were one thousand percent true.  

Steve Harrington was an amazing kisser. 

Heaven fucking sent. 

Eddie could’ve cried. 

He almost wanted to.

His arms wound around Steve’s broader shoulders as Steve’s hands traveled down from his face to the sides of his neck. 

Calloused thumbs smoothed along either side of Eddie’s jaw, gently pressing into his cheeks, and he parted his lips with a groan, an embarrassingly needy sound that would’ve been positively mortifying were it not for the rather delightful distraction of Steve’s tongue swiping once again across his lips. 

He sucked Eddie’s lower lip into his mouth, rolling it lightly between his teeth. Eddie answered with another pitiful sound, his fingers finding their way up to Steve’s hair and burying themselves in it the way he’d always wanted to.

Even unwashed with product buildup and blood clumping it together, it was still unbelievably soft. 

“So you have a crush on me, huh?” Eddie spoke smugly against Steve’s lips, pressing a chaste kiss against the upturned corner of his mouth. 

“Oh, you’re gonna be so annoying about this, aren’t you?” Steve groaned, his thumbs smoothing along Eddie’s jawbone in a repetitive path that would’ve had Eddie purring if he were any further gone than he was. 

Give it time, and he would most assuredly get there. 

“The almighty Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High, has a crush on the town pariah! However will the female populace of the noble state of Indiana recover from the heartbreak, the sheer humiliation of losing such a fine specimen to the likes of me?”

Eddie pulled back with a theatrical pout and a wistful shake of his head. 

“There will be mourning. Wailing in the streets for their lost love, corrupted to insanity by the Satan worshipping freak.”

He fixed Steve with a serious look, tsking three times before latching onto his jaw without warning, planting wet kisses along the curve of the bone up to his ear. 

Steve let out a low whine that Eddie drank in like sweet nectar from a flower. 

He wanted that sound on tape, playing on loop in his mind for the rest of his life. 

Desperate for a repeat performance, he worked his way further down the side of Steve’s neck, breath tickling across the spit-damp skin of his throat as he sucked and bit a path down towards Steve’s collarbones. 

“Ok, ok. Don’t go getting a big head over this Muns- Uh!”

Steve let out a startled moan as Eddie bit down at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, sucking long and hard enough to leave a sizable mark behind before soothing the sting with his tongue. 

“Fuck,” he let out with a shaky sigh, winding Eddie’s curly locks around his fingers and holding on as Eddie licked and kissed all the way back up toward his lips. 

“Here? Now?” Eddie couldn’t help but joke with a falsely scandalized expression, hand pressed to his chest and eyes wider than saucers. “Steve Harrington, you scoundrel-“

“Shut up, man,” Steve snorted, planting his hands on the underside of each of Eddie’s thighs and lifting him bodily onto the counter before he could so much as breathe.

Eddie let out a breathless moan of surprise, legs immediately closing around the other boy's hips, pulling him in as close as he could manage. 

Steve swallowed down the sound with another searing kiss, slow and unhurried as if they had all the time in the world; as if they weren’t sitting on top of a veritable doomsday device in the form of an interdimensional seam-ripping portal in a Mall built by the Russians in order to mount an attack on America using literal monsters.  

Time slowed around them, the world falling perfectly silent and still until it was just the two of them, locked together in a long anticipated embrace; two halves finally made whole.

Eddie tangled his fingers back into Steve’s famed locks, putting everything he had into the kiss; every thought, every feeling, every word he’d never said to another soul, but screamed into his pillow when he was alone at night. 

The moment was ended, as all moments must eventually be; shattered by a deafening crash from just outside the store. 

Eddie’s eyes shot over toward the windows overlooking the rest of the mall, his breath stuttering in his chest and his blood growing cold as he took in the sight of the Mind Flayer crawling in through the gaping hole in the rooftop, unfathomably large limbs cracking and crumbling the marble beneath. 

“Fuck,” Eddie whispered, unable to tear his eyes away from the monstrous form. “Looks like we’re out of time.”

Steve‘s hands tightened their hold on Eddie’s waist, his chest heaving with uneven breaths as he too stared out at the beast; at their gargantuan opponent as it clambered down to the ground, letting out an otherworldly chittering roar. 

“We need to go now,” he uttered with the utmost authority. “You find the mall office. The sound system should be in there. And I’ll regroup with-“

His words were cut off as an ear splitting scream ripped through the air, followed by all too familiar cries that had Eddie’s breath stopping short in his chest, heartbeat pounding in his ears as he slowly turned to meet Steve’s wide terrified eyes. 

“El.”

They were running without a moment's hesitation, sprinting through the back door and back into the corridor behind the stores as quickly and as quietly as possible. 

Steve raced to the door leading to Scoops, Eddie moving to go the opposite way towards the mall office as planned. 

He fought back a gasp as a hand wrapped around his wrist, yanking him back into the warmth and safety of the arms he’d somehow found a place for himself in. 

Steve kissed him for the third time in as many minutes, the press almost painful in its desperation, begging without a single word spoken between them:

Come back to me. 

When at last they pulled apart, Eddie took Steve’s hand in his own, fighting back tears as he squeezed solidly three times, leaning up close to his ear to whisper in tandem with each gentle pulse:

“I love you.”

And then he was running, racing down the corridor with a new purpose and new determination. 

He had a promise to keep. 

………

Chapter Text

“I love you.”

Bang. 

“I love you.”

Bang. 

“I love you.”

Bang.

Those three words replayed on loop in Steve’s mind, setting a steady rhythm as he repeatedly rammed his shoulder into the backdoor of Scoops Ahoy. 

He kissed Eddie. 

Eddie kissed him.  

Eddie loved him. 

God, what a concept. 

The very thought of it and the sheer joy such a thought came with almost outweighed his aggravation at the Russians for taking his goddamn keys. 

Almost. 

He briefly entertained the idea of trying to find his way back up to the second level, to get back to his friends and the fireworks and the plan, but that would mean either cutting back through the hallways, or running straight past the Mind Flayer itself. 

There was no time for the first option, and the second was tantamount to suicide, so he steeled himself and rolled his shoulder a few times before ramming into the door once again.

“Goddamn. Door,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, pulling back and delivering two solid kicks to the spot just beside the handle, letting out a quick celebratory whoop when the door finally buckled and swung open. 

He hurried into the back room, past the whiteboard covered in cyrillic, very nearly tripping over one of the fold up chairs as he passed it on his left, before stopping at locked door number two. 

“Flay this, you ugly piece of shit!”

Lucas’s voice rang out loud and clear, very quickly followed by the distinct and deafening crack of fireworks. 

The battle had begun. 

Steve’s heart and ears pounded with the rush of blood as he slammed his aching shoulder against another locked backdoor, fighting to break it open, to get to the others. 

To protect his party. 

He grunted as, with one final hard hit, the door buckled and swung open, sending him stumbling out into the wrecked store. 

Chunks of debris from Eddie’s earlier crash littered the ground, every available surface covered in a thick layer of dust and insulation. The sign above the demolished doorway blinked and sparked like a strobe light, hanging on by a single nail. 

It looked like a veritable war zone, which, Steve supposed, it sort of was. 

“Hey asshole! Over here!”

He glanced up through the car-shaped hole in the storefront at the sound of Robin’s voice, his concerningly blurry vision filled with the colorful flashes of fireworks and the writhing and thrashing of the Mind Flayer. 

Another loud bang seemed to reverberate through the air after Robin’s taunting words, followed by an ear splitting roar and a very human shout of pain. 

Human and strikingly familiar. 

His eyes only had to search for a moment, past the flickering sign and the unfathomably large form of the Mind Flayer’s meat puppet to see Billy Hargrove knelt on the floor, pinning someone there beneath him-

The air forced its way out of Steve’s lungs as if he’d been fully submerged in freezing cold water, his throat constricting around a shout.

“EL!” he choked out before he could stop himself, vaulting over the counter and shoving his way past the rest of the debris. 

He ran at the two in a full tilt sprint, launching himself at Billy with an enraged shout, tackling the younger boy and sending the two of them tumbling across the cold linoleum. 

Steve ignored the pain and rolled with the momentum, climbing on top of Billy and pinning him down with a sharp knee to his sternum. He cracked a punch across the other boy's face, his knuckles tingling instantly at the impact. 

Cold blue eyes snapped up to meet his, like icy water seeping into his lungs, and…

They were wrong somehow. 

They didn’t hold any of the burning rage that characterized Billy, that simmered from his body like whistling steam from a kettle; they were far more quiet, far more menacing, far more frightening. 

Time seemed to crawl to a stop as a smile that didn’t belong to Billy stretched across his face, twisting his features in a way Steve had never seen before. 

It was more than unnerving.

It was uncanny valley.

It was downright horrifying. 

Steve reeled back to throw a second punch, but gasped as the remaining air was forced out of his lungs by a quick and savage jab to his bruised ribs. 

He curled in on himself with a cry of pain, managing to block another hit, but not quite managing to anticipate the hand that latched onto his throat, deathly cold fingers digging into either side of his larynx in a crushing grip. 

His own fingers curled around Billy’s wrist, fighting to loosen his grip to absolutely no effect. 

He was strong, inhumanly strong, staring at Steve with somebody else’s cold and cruel gaze and slowly, very slowly, tightening his grip. 

Steve’s head went fuzzy, buzzing with static as he struggled to breathe. Unbearable heat flooded up to his face, behind his eyes, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding throughout his body, in his throat, in his ears, in his brain. 

He scratched and clawed, punched and slapped, but Billy’s grip did not relent. His icy expression only seemed to grow colder, his lips curling in a sneer as if Steve were nothing more than a minor inconvenience to him; a fly in his soup or a pebble in his shoe. 

The edges of Steve’s vision began to blacken, his body going limp without his consent, the sharp sensation of panic fizzling out, replaced by the unnerving calm that always, in Steve’s ample experience, preluded passing out. 

The sounds of the battle raging on beside them faded away like the end of a song, the only thing audible to Steve the hammering of his own pulse, the roaring of his own blood, the creaking of Billy Hargrove’s jaw as the younger boy fixed him with a look of…

Absolute terror.  

The change was visible even in Steve’s oxygen-starved state. 

Billy was there, trapped as a passenger in his own body, and he was terrified. 

“Billy-“ he managed to choke out with the very last of his breath, reaching out toward the other boy with a quivering hand. 

“Please.”

In a moment, those hands loosened their hold around his throat, allowing Steve to suck in an agonizing lungful of air that burned in a vicious way. 

He collapsed in a heap to the side with a wheeze, his own hands coming up to soothe the throbbing skin of his neck as he coughed and hacked into the cold linoleum. 

His entire body felt numb, floaty, like the anti gravity sensation of a free fall, the conclusion of which was the ground below hurtling ever closer. 

He felt high, a feeling he most certainly did not miss over the course of the two hours reprieve he’d gotten since puking up the truth serum in the bathroom with Robin; a memory from another lifetime. 

“Steve!”

He registered the sound of his name being called in the back of his mind. 

He blinked his eyes open, groaning like a wounded animal as he sought out the source. 

“Steve!” came another cry. 

A warning. 

El. 

Steve fought against his uncooperative limbs, his head lolling to the side sluggishly just in time to see El, her eyes wide and her mouth moving in words that his unfocused eyes couldn’t quite interpret. 

She was yelling, sobbing, her shaking hand raising up in front of her, though there was no blood trailing from her nose; no supernatural Jedi powers. 

Just abject terror and another warning, this one ringing out loud and clear. 

“Look out!”

Before he could act, a hand tangled itself in his hair, grip as unforgiving as it was around his throat, and he had less than a second to register what was happening before it was yanking hard and slamming back down, smacking his head hard enough into the linoleum he was certain he could see stars. 

Thought that only happened in Looney Tunes. 

Everything seemed to blur together, every sound, every colorful flash of light, every earth shattering explosion, even El’s tear and blood stained face; everything. 

Steve tried to shake it off, to force his body to move, to force his eyes to see and his ears to hear, but it was no use. 

All he could do was watch in petrified horror as what was not quite Billy Hargrove stepped over his body, making his way back over to the blurry shape of El. 

Her whimpers seemed to echo over the dull roar of everything else, the sound like a blade straight to Steve’s gut. 

He felt the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, but just as he was powerless to help her, he was powerless to stop them from falling. 

Unbidden, the image of Barb Holland found its way to the forefront of his hazy mind; the girl who’d died alone in his own backyard, in his own pool, mere feet away from the safety of his house.

The girl he’d killed with his own ignorance and arrogance. 

He often thought of her, especially after his breakup with Nancy. Wondered if he could’ve saved her if he’d been less preoccupied with sleeping with her best friend. 

Wondered if it would’ve made any kind of a difference.  

But there was no use in what ifs. 

He’d failed her. He’d brushed her off, encouraged Nancy to do so, too. They’d left her alone, and then she’d died, just like that. 

Steve had failed her, just like he was failing Eleven. 

Failing everyone. 

Like always. 

“Seven feet.”

El’s voice once again broke through the white noise of hopeless panic, but she wasn’t talking to Steve, she was talking to Billy. 

Not to the creature puppeting Billy. 

Billy. 

She was looking him dead in the eye, her struggles ceasing as she took in a deep stuttering breath and spoke in a quivering but determined tone. 

“You told her the wave was seven feet. You ran to her on the beach. There were seagulls. She wore a hat with a blue ribbon, a long dress with a blue and red flower, yell-yellow sandals covered in sand.”

There was a long pause as El struggled to steady her sobs, her voice cracking with the effort. 

“She was pretty. She was really pretty,” she managed to choke out. “And you- you were happy.”

Billy’s shoulders began to shake, his face twisting up in pain and sadness so tangible Steve was convinced he could feel it himself; a deep and dower melancholy that sunk down to his very bones. 

Steve watched in something tantamount to shock as El reached out her hand, gently cupping Billy’s cheek as tears began to trickle down from his unblinking eyes. 

In the distance, Will’s voice called out a quick warning of:

“We’re out!”

At his words, the flashing ceased, signaling the end of the onslaught of explosives. 

The Mind Flayer straightened up its enormous body, opening its tooth-filled maw and releasing a piercing roar as it turned fully to face El and Billy, and Steve once again tried desperately to move, to get to El; to do anything but just lay there and breathe. 

A strained whine forced its way out of his throat as he rolled onto his front, planting his arm out in front of him to drag himself across the floor. Every move sent a spike of warning through his body, like klaxons blaring and lights flashing red and white, but he was numb to the pain, numb to everything as he focused all of his attention on El. 

He just had to get to El. 

The moment he managed to get a knee underneath himself, to push his body upright despite the wave of nausea that washed over him like a seven foot wave, the Mind Flayer threw back what Steve thought was its head, releasing an earth shatteringly loud shriek and slamming its huge meaty limbs against the floor, hard enough to shatter the tiles, sending chunks flying like shrapnel. 

Steve watched in horror as tendrils rose from its monstrous form, like Medusa's snakes poised to strike, when-

Ding dong. 

A chime sounded over the intercom, echoing across the expanse of the empty mall in a way that was so incredibly commonplace it was almost comical. 

“Attention, shoppers!” Eddie dragged out over the speaker, Steve unable to stop himself from letting out a laugh in a mix of bone-deep relief and absolute hysteria. 

“Hold onto your asses, ‘cause it’s about to get loud! This one’s for you, Mystery Meat!”

And with a staticky click and an abrupt drumbeat, the chugging sound of an electric guitar filled the air, a second guitar and the crashing of symbols answering with an aggressive beat in return that was somehow even louder than the fireworks had been. 

The change was instantaneous, the Mind Flayer jerking around in tangible confusion as it sought out the source of the all encompassing sound, its tendrils shrinking inward on itself and rattling like rattlesnake tails. 

Billy let out what almost sounded like a laugh, rising from his place knelt over El, turning to face the Mind Flayer head on, fists clenched tightly at his side. 

He squared his shoulders as the drums kicked in at a near deafening volume, planted his feet, raised his chin, and stood before the monstrous creature, placed in between it and its quarry, arms spread as if to say:

“You want her, you go through me.”

The beast thrashed as the vocals rang out, clear above all else:

“By the last breath, the fourth winds blow

Better raise your ears

The sound of hooves knock at your door

Lock up your wife and children now

It's time to wield the blade

For now you've got some company.”

With little warning, one of the tendrils shot out toward Billy, but Billy was ready for it, stopping it dead with his bare hands, uncaring as its sharp teeth punctured his palms, pushing back against it with an animalistic shout. 

“The horsemen are drawing nearer

On leather steeds they ride

They've come to take your life

On through the dead of night

With the four horsemen ride

Or choose your fate and die

Oh, yeah, yeah!”

The soles of his shoes squealed across the polished tile as he fought to hold his ground, letting out a guttural shout as, with a flex of muscled arms, he ripped the mouth of the tendral clean in two, the Mind Flayer shrieking out a high pitched noise of something like pain. 

Seeing his opportunity, Steve pushed himself the rest of the way to his unsteady feet, racing toward El and grabbing her under one arm and one leg. 

He hoisted her up into his arms and broke out into a staggering run, his ribs burning with each heavy intake of breath, head pounding like the drums of the song blaring out of the Starcourt speakers, but he couldn’t stop- wouldn’t stop- until she was safe. 

He had to keep her safe. 

As he half ran, half limped closer and closer toward the relative safety of Scoops Ahoy, moving almost in tandem with the raucous guitar licks and the crash of symbols that almost seemed to shake the floor with their sheer intensity, two figures appeared through the demolished doorway, one tall lanky blur of blue and white, and one slightly shorter blur of red and white. 

Mike and Max. 

He moved toward them with an urgency he’d never before felt, El clinging to his shoulders, her damp face buried in his chest. 

He could just make out the shape of Max breaking off from Mike to meet him halfway when suddenly there were shouts of warning from the second level, an unintelligible cacophony that had barely reached his ringing ears when something wrapped tightly around his ankle and pulled. 

Steve released his hold on El as his entire world rocked sideways, the two of them hurtling to the floor and colliding hard with tandem smacks and cries of pain. 

The pull became a sharp yank, and Steve yelped in horror as he realized he was being dragged backwards. 

El screamed, far past words in her apparent panic as she immediately scrambled to reach out for him, to grab at his hands, but he was pulled just out of her reach as the tentacle tightened its grip around his leg and yanked him bodily across the floor. 

He couldn’t hold back his cry, the mind-numbing fear that gripped him as he tried desperately to catch himself, to grab hold of something, to stop, when suddenly, like something out of a fever dream, Billy was there. 

He grabbed onto Steve, one hand clutching his own, one gripping onto his upper arm. 

“Hold on, Harrington,” he ground out, planting his heels solidly into the ground as he tightened his grip, anchoring Steve to the spot. 

Steve howled in pain as the tentacle tightened its crushing grip around his leg, the pressure increasing until he was certain his ankle was about to break.

He could feel the creak of the bone in his goddamn teeth, the feeling dragging out an agonized wail when an abrupt shout rang through the air:

“Hey, asshole! Let ‘im go!”

With that, Lucas snatched up and lobbed with shocking accuracy a large chunk of debris from the ceiling, nailing the Mind Flayer right in the side of its eyeless head. 

The others followed in kind, hailing down heavy pieces of plaster and brick, bits of metal and stone, anything they could get their hands on as the guitars on the track battled it out with the vocals. 

Steve watched, positively enthralled, as at that moment a meaty chunk sluiced right off of one of the monster's larger limbs, hitting the floor below with an audible smack. 

It almost seemed surprised itself at the loss, staggering sideways yet still keeping its unforgiving hold on Steve’s ankle as it thrashed and jerked under the barrage. 

Billy grunted as he fought against the pull, to keep Steve grounded as the tentacle lifted his lower body clear off of the floor. 

“Hold on!” he shouted once again, eyes clenching shut just as tightly as his teeth and his hands as he held fast. 

Steve couldn’t help the indignant huff that forced its way out of his chest. 

“What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing-” he shot back, the last part of his sentence cutting off with a yelp as Billy’s blood-soaked grip slipped, his hands scrambling for purchase before grabbing Steve solidly under his arms and digging his fingers into the material of his uniform shirt, clinging on like some sort of odd parody of a hug. 

If he weren’t two seconds from passing out from pain, fear, or the severe concussion he had absolutely no doubt he’d sustained from the several violent knocks to the head, he would’ve made a joke. 

As it was, he barely had the time to take another breath, let alone force his mouth to work through the agony as, with a flurry of movement and a flash of steel, the tentacle on his leg was sliced clean through, unfurling and falling limply to the floor with little more than a twitch. 

Steve grunted as the lower half of his body dropped to the floor once more, Billy immediately pulling one of his arms over his shoulder as he turned him to see…

Eddie, standing there with a sword clenched tightly in his two shaking hands, the light silver blade stained with black ooze to match the wide dark eyes considering the weapon. 

“Jesus H. Christ, I didn’t think that would work,” he gasped out with a breathless little laugh. 

“Where the hell did you get that!?” Steve questioned hysterically, flinching as something dripped into his good eye, stinging and staining his vision red. He ran his fingers across his forehead, through the mess his hair had become, his hand coming away covered in warm tacky blood. 

Fantastic. 

A manic grin edged with panic stretched across Eddie’s pale face as he raised the blade with a flourish. 

“Borrowed it from its display case behind the counter of Suncoast. It’s a perfect replica of the Atlantean sword from Conan the Barbarian, down to the designs on the hilt, which is-“

At an unimpressed look from Billy, perfectly punctuated by an earth shattering roar from the flailing Mind Flayer behind them, Eddie nodded. 

“You’re right. So not important right now. Here.”

He reached behind him, pulling a bright red painted fire ax from his belt and handing it to Steve. 

At the start of yet another explosive verse the three of them spun around to face down the towering monster as it lost yet another large chunk from its underbelly, the collection of jellified person liquifying upon contact in a way that had Steve forcing back a gag. 

He gripped onto the handle of the ax and grit his teeth. 

“So gather 'round young warriors now

And saddle up your steeds

Killing scores with demon swords

Now is the death of doers of wrong

Swing the judgement hammer down

Safely inside armor blood guts and sweat!”

Another tendril shot out toward them, but Eddie intercepted it with another solid slash of the sword, the blade lodging itself in the putrid flesh and holding it there long enough for Steve to reel back and swing down the ax. 

The Mind Flayer let out a rumbling growl, something about the sound so clearly rageful as yet more tendrils raised up from its slowly melting body. 

Oh fuck. 

Tentacles launched out towards them from all directions, and suddenly the three of them were all moving in tandem, fighting off each attack with the fluidity of a well oiled machine; Eddie with his sword, Steve with his ax, and Billy with his bare hands. 

Steve’s cloudy gaze, growing hazier on his left side by the second, followed the shape of Eddie as if magnetically drawn to him like the needle of a compass to the north; Eddie whose dark eyes simmered sweetly like caramelized sugar, whose lips tasted like the future he always dreamed of but could never imagine he’d have, whose arms felt like home even when he’d only just once been able to wrap himself fully in their addicting embrace. 

Eddie was yelling, squawking out a medley of creative expletives, spaced out by the occasional “Jesus H. Christ, goddammit!” as he swung like a madman at yet another toothed tentacle, cleaving it in two and kicking away the severed end with a disgusted scrunch of his nose. 

“How long does it take to close a goddamn gate?!” he called back frantically, ducking a swipe from another tendril that Billy caught with a growl, red blood and black ooze flying as he tore it apart like wet paper. 

“It varies!” Steve answered as he swung a hard hit straight into the maw of another tentacle, cutting straight through with a sickening squelch. 

He was certain that sound would live in his head for the rest of his life. 

He glanced back over his shoulder, eyes searching only briefly before they landed on Max and Mike, the two lifting El and carefully dragging her away from the scene. 

Dragging her to safety. 

As he noticed, so too did the Mind Flayer, the beast lashing out with dangerous desperation. 

Steve threw himself in the path of the tendrils, winding up and swinging down with as much strength as he could muster, grunting as a flowering mouth clamped razor sharp teeth around the head of the ax and pulled. 

“Fuck fuck fuck!” he gritted out, losing his footing as he was yanked forward. 

In less than a moment, the tentacle holding onto his ax thrashed hard, yanking the weapon out of his hands before swinging wildly back towards him, colliding hard with his side to send him hurtling back into a pillar. 

He dropped down with a breathless cry, his world tilting and turning on its axis like a boat on troubled water. 

Wetness coated the entire left side of his head, trickling down his neck in a warm red trail that stained the shoulder of his uniform; that filled his senses with the sickening scent of copper. 

“Steve!” 

He barely recognized Eddie’s voice as he screamed, high and cracking with emotion as he moved towards him, poised to slash at the tendril when another came out of nowhere, latching onto Eddie’s throat and slamming him back into the opposite pillar, his sword clattering out of his shock-slackened grip as he fought and kicked against the strangling hold. 

Steve wanted to move, to fight, to scream, but he was well and truly down for the count this time, unable to do much more than watch as the Mind Flayer, standing in a pool of its own slowly disintegrating husk, turned to once again face the lone figure of Billy, who snatched up Eddie’s discarded sword and fell into a waiting stance. 

In an instant, everything faded out around the two of them. 

Nothing existed now except for the screeching of the dueling guitars and the pounding of the drums, the crashing of symbols, the low rumbling of the beast, the steady dripping of blood from Billy’s black stained hands, the flickering of the lights, the putrid permeating smell of gore and death and gunpowder. 

The Mind Flayer lashed out at the same time that Billy swung with a roar of his own. 

It was like watching Luke Skywalker in that pit in Jabba's Palace all over again, battling the huge monster Dustin had scoffed at him for not remembering the name of after only two viewings. 

Billy swung the replica sword like a baseball bat at a hardball, fought like the very devil himself, that all too familiar rage burning in his eyes, emanating from him like heat from the summer sun. 

One tendril broke through his defenses, latching onto his side, a deep red stain immediately spreading across the white fabric of his tank top like morbid watercolor paint. 

Billy swung down at the offending limb, but in his distraction, another caught his other side, and another, and another, and another. 

The song had ended with a final squeal of a guitar and an explosive clash of symbols, and suddenly the entire world was deafeningly silent, the music gone, the light fading. 

He heard a cry somewhere behind him, a desperate call of:

“Billy!”

Red painted Steve’s vision as Billy threw back his head and screamed, his body lifting into the air as the beast poised for the killing blow when-

Suddenly the Mind Flayer jerked sideways, swaying like a marionette with a single string cut.

It dropped Billy to the ground in a red-stained heap, his body limp, his blood flowering across the tile. 

The Mind Flayer chittered and roared, thrashed and shook, its enormous body rocking back and forth, knocking into the upper balcony as it flailed wildly. 

The limb holding Eddie by the throat suddenly melted off of the whole, dropping him to the floor. He sputtered and gasped for breath, holding his throat and visibly fighting the urge to gag as he slipped in the puddle of emulsified meat. 

More and more bits began to slough off of the Mind Flayer, the beast shrieking in indignation as its fetid form disintegrated around it. 

With one last garbled roar, the Mind Flayer collapsed with a thunderous crash, unmoving; dead. 

Steve let out a gasp of relief, the feeling all encompassing. 

As all encompassing as the arms that were suddenly winding around Steve’s battered body. 

One cold hand cupped the left side of his face, slipping in the slick blood that coated it but holding fast, holding on to him as if he were something precious and important.

Black dots danced across Steve’s vision, across Eddie’s tear soaked face. 

He was speaking, lips moving in the shape of his name, but the sound was garbled like a radio submerged in water; warped and faraway.

With no small amount of effort, Steve raised a hand and planted it on the side of Eddie’s neck, bloody fingers caressing purpling skin. 

“We did it, Ed.”

Eddie’s mouth snapped shut, the tears glazing his gorgeous eyes falling freely down his grime covered cheeks. 

He nodded, letting out a huff of laughter that ghosted across his face like a gentle caress. 

They did it. 

………

Chapter Text

“-Gandalf held it up. It looked to be made of pure and solid gold. ‘Can you see any markings on it?’ he asked. ‘No,’ said Frodo. ‘There are none. It is quite plain, and it never shows a scratch or sign of wear.’

‘Well then, look!’ To Frodo’s astonishment and distress the wizard threw it suddenly into the middle of a glowing corner of the fire. Frodo gave a cry and groped for the tongs; but Gandalf held him back.

‘Wait!’ he said in a commanding voice, giving Frodo a quick look from under his bristling brows.”

Steve was awake. 

He was pretty certain. 

He didn’t quite know when he’d fallen asleep. He knew he probably shouldn’t have. 

That was, like, the number one thing everyone said to someone with a concussion:

“Stay awake. Don’t fall asleep.”

Oops. 

He could remember the battle, standing side by side with Billy Hargrove and Eddie Munson against another monster straight out of one of Dustin’s freaky game manuals. 

He could remember the stench in the aftermath; gunpowder and blood. 

So much blood. 

He’d never minded the scent of blood when it was his own- was used to his own- but gallons and gallons of jellied person?

He wouldn’t forget that smell anytime soon. 

That smell was thankfully gone, though, replaced by the increasingly familiar tang of heavy duty disinfectant, the sterile scent burning in his nostrils as he took in a remarkably painless lungful of air. 

God bless morphine. 

He made the executive decision to keep his eyes closed against the blinding fluorescents above, the light leaking in red through his eyelids regardless of his efforts. 

As he slipped fully out of unconsciousness, the static sounds of life filled his ears- or rather his ear. His left side still seemed to be struggling to wake up, sound not quite penetrating as if his ear was stuffed full with cotton. 

The steady beeping that mirrored his heartbeat had become quite a familiar sound, more so with every passing year and every accumulated injury. 

He remembered that that was why he was here again, laid up in a lumpy hospital bed, hooked up to too many beeping machines and IV bags, feeling like that pushpin filled tomato in his mothers unused sewing kit. 

Because he’d gotten his shit rocked for the third time in an Upside Down related incident. 

What wasn’t a part of the whole familiar hospital stay package was the bit of warm weight resting carefully on his hip, the sound of a low voice narrating a vaguely familiar tale, the feeling of a soft warm hand placed gently in his. 

“No apparent change came over the ring. After a while Gandalf got up, closed the shutters outside the window, and drew the curtains. The room became dark and silent, though the clack of Sam’s shears, now nearer to the windows, could still be heard faintly from the garden. 

“For a moment the wizard stood looking at the fire; then he stooped and removed the ring to the hearth with the tongs, and at once picked it up. Frodo gasped-“

Steve squeezed the hand solidly, nearly numb fingers smoothing over bony knuckles and chunky silver rings.

The voice halted, and Steve almost regretted revealing his awakened state before a soft word broke through the monotonous beeping. 

“Steve?”

Eddie. 

“You awake, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart. 

The beeping of his heart rate monitor sped up in tandem with his pulse, and he was certain if he wasn’t so relieved to hear Eddie’s voice he would’ve been somewhere close to mortified, especially as Eddie let out a low chuckle, his fingers tightening their hold around Steve’s. 

He blinked his sleep-crusted eyes tentatively open, squinting against the harsh light just like he knew he would. 

Just as his left ear’s hearing was muted, his left eye seemed to have some sort of blur that, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to blink away, like a particularly stubborn smear of grease across a window pane. 

He couldn’t quite find it in himself to complain as yet another familiar sight swam into starker focus. 

Two deep dark eyes, rich brown with a golden honey center; two beautiful bursts of sunlight in the darkness and a most welcome sight to Steve’s tired eyes as they struggled to remember how to see. 

Eddie gazed down at him with a soft smile that made his heart soar, his hand not clutching onto Steve’s own setting aside the book he’d been reading aloud from before reaching out to caress his cheek, touching him gently- carefully- as if he were something precious. 

Something worth protecting. 

“You gave us all quite the scare there, Sleeping Beauty,” Eddie spoke softly, his tone more gentle than Steve had ever heard it. 

“Mh-sorry,” Steve managed to slur out, the words stinging the whole way. 

His throat was drier than Death Valley. 

How long had he been out?

“Two days,” came Eddie’s reply, indicating he was either psychic and only now letting Steve in on the secret, or he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. 

After all he’d been through, it was hard to know for sure. 

He groaned in response, nuzzling into Eddie’s palm, into the warmth and comfort of his touch. 

He allowed himself a moment to take him in; his fluffy brown curls, no longer plastered down with the weight of dried blood and sweat, his handsome face, lightly bruised and bandaged but otherwise… ok. 

He’d showered and changed, the Scoops Ahoy uniform gone, replaced with a threadbare band tee and those all too familiar black jeans with the rips at his knees and across his thighs. 

Shit. 

Eddie let out a soft chuckle, a sound that burrowed itself in Steve’s brain for a nice long stay, filled him with warmth and with sleepy satisfaction. 

He briefly considered falling right back to sleep, pulling Eddie in as close as physically possible by the chain on his belt, curling around him like a cat, and slipping into peaceful oblivion. 

But if he went back to sleep, he couldn’t look at him. 

“Stevie, baby? I need to get up and call the doctor, ok?”

Steve frowned as Eddie began to pull away, tightening his grip on the hand in his own as he reached up to grab the other, pressing it insistently back to its previous place against his cheek. 

“Steve,” Eddie sighed, but not in the way everyone else seemed to ‘sigh’ it. 

His ‘Steve’ was absent of annoyance or disappointment at Steve’s cluelessness, devoid of frustration or disgust at his clinginess. 

His ‘Steve’ was spoken like a sweet secret shared in a whisper, a gentle laugh to an inside joke. 

Like it was something he was happy and even relieved to get to say.

“Stay,” Steve pleaded, his voice hardly a whisper, a scratch in the back of his throat as he met Eddie’s soft gaze. 

He watched those eyes flicker up toward the call button, and he couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his chapped lips. 

“Eddie,” he spoke once again, tugging on his hand hard enough to set him off balance, his knee propping up on the side of Steve’s cot. 

“Careful, Steve,” Eddie gasped out, wobbling a bit to keep upright. “I don’t wanna fall on you.”

Steve’s smile only widened as he tugged once again, pulling until Eddie was leaning almost fully over him, dark curls tumbling over his shoulders like curtains around his startled face as he planted a hand on the mattress beside Steve’s head to keep from completely crashing down on top of him. 

“Steve,” he admonished once again, just as half heartedly as before, a small huff of laughter escaping his lips, puffing warmly across Steve’s cheek even as he tried once again to right himself, to retreat from Steve’s insistent embrace. 

Steve smiled, cupping a hand against his jaw and meeting his dark gaze with his blurry one. 

Impossibly dark eyes blinked down at him, the smile slowly fading from Eddie’s pink lips, his mien shifting to a look of…

Anticipation? Hope? Want?

Steve rubbed a thumb across his cheekbone, guiding him in closer and closer until he could feel the warmth of his breath against his lips, the ticklish touch of his curls on his forehead, the blazing heat of his skin. 

The thrum of life through his veins. 

“I love you,” he whispered into the scant air between them before leaning up and closing the distance with a press of his lips. 

He could feel more than hear Eddie’s soft gasp, the tentative pressure of his own lips as he returned the kiss, the brush of his nose along his own as he leaned in even closer, the sweep of his cool fingers across his cheek as they gently caressed his face. 

Steve pulled back slowly, just enough to press his nose into the warm apple of Eddie’s cheek, taking a moment to breathe him in.

He could smell the hospital issued soap on his skin, and he wondered if Eddie had been there with him the entire time. 

The thought made his heart ache. 

The harsh antibacterial scent was, very thankfully, not quite enough to cover his natural musk, much more pleasant now with the distinct absence of several days worth of grime and perhaps a little bit of puke. 

But there was no more of the lingering cherry scent, and he found himself missing it if only for the sake of familiarity. 

“Steve.”

The word was little more than a whisper across his skin, leaving a trail of pink tinted warmth in its wake and sending a shiver down his spine. 

He could hardly believe his own name spoken aloud could sound so good, so devastatingly beautiful and special. He burned inside to hear it again; to hear that breathless low rasp, to feel that want. 

Eddie’s hand trembled where it cupped his cheek, and Steve placed his own on top of it, his finger tracing over the solid silver of his rings, the soft supple skin of his long fingers, the hard won calluses on his fingertips. 

“You didn’t give me time to say it back,” Steve answered just as softly, conjuring the memory in his mind:

The hallway behind Scoops Ahoy, dimly lit with a flickering yellow bulb. Roars of an unfathomable monster in the distance, the creak of the cassette tape case in Eddie’s tightening grip, the red of his kiss-swollen lips as they curled quickly and devastatingly around those three words.

“Didn’t really have the time,” Eddie replied with a breathy chuckle that sounded mere moments from giving way to tears, his fingertips trailing across a spot on the left side of Steve’s head, the touch strangely muted as if separated by a bandage. 

“We have time now,” Steve followed up, taking Eddie’s wandering hand in his own and pressing a kiss to his open palm, to the heel of his hand, to the inside of his bony wrist. 

He pressed his nose against Eddie’s pulse point, feeling the rapid tempo of his heartbeat flickering beneath his skin. 

It was quickly becoming his favorite song.

“We have all the time in the world,” he said as he leaned in to place another soft kiss to Eddie’s chapped lips, this one just gracing the edge of his smile. 

Fuck, he had such a beautiful smile. 

Eddie laughed in earnest now, a sweet and joyful sound as his nose brushed alongside Steve’s again, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes.

“Stevie, I need to call in the doctor to look you over,” he tried to reason, tried to pull away, but Steve was faster, hands flying to grip firmly at his waist, fingers looping through a rip at his pocket and his wallet chain to keep him right where he belonged. 

“Why can’t you do it?”

Eddie scoffed as he covered Steve’s hands with his own, though his assumed frown did nothing to hide the pink flush of his cheeks. 

“D-do what?” he stuttered out as his fingers pried at Steve’s, hips wiggling as he barely fought to escape his hold. 

Steve’s smirk widened as he stared up at Eddie through his lashes, drinking in the uncharacteristically flustered sight of him as he squirmed and blushed and fussed, cheeks stained pink and lips kiss-swollen and plump. 

“Look me over,” he shot back easily, fingering at the hem of Eddie’s tee shirt before slipping his hands beneath it. 

His progress was halted by the pull of the wires attached to him. He gave it very little thought, merely reaching down and ripping them out of his arm.

Eddie moved to protest, but his touch quickly resumed, his thumbs pressing into the hollows beside each sharp hip bone, Eddie’s objections and breath catching in his throat, his mouth dropping open with a soft gasp, his hands scrambling to take hold of Steve’s wrists. 

Steve took the opportunity of his reclaimed mobility to lean back in, nudging Eddie's jaw to tilt his head back, nosing along the side of his exposed neck, watching the fine hairs stand on end as if leaning closer in anticipation. 

He could feel Eddie holding his breath, the steady rise and fall of his chest stuttering against his, the muscles of his abdomen tensing and releasing beneath his touch. 

Steve pressed forward until his lips just barely ghosted the shell of Eddie’s ear, huffing out a breath that sent a shiver down Eddie’s spine that he could feel underneath his fingertips. 

“You can give me a nice thorough check-up. Make sure everything’s up to par,” he spoke with a low rumble deep in his chest, his smirk widening as Eddie’s grip tightened around his wrists, not pulling him away, but keeping him there. 

Before Eddie could respond, Steve planted his hands firmly on his waist and gave one final yank to align their bodies completely, pulling until Eddie was straddling his hips, seated fully in his lap. 

His hands traced delicately down along the slight curve of slim hips, settling on firm thighs wrapped in black denim. 

Curious fingers found their way beneath the frayed rips in the fabric, skin sliding smoothly against skin. Muscles jumped beneath his touch, a sharp breath huffing out of Eddie’s narrow chest as wide pitch black eyes met his, and wasn’t that a sight. 

The gentle and inquisitive tilt of his head, the line drawn artistically between his furrowed brows, the dampness clumping together his long eyelashes like drops of dew in clover, the pink overtaking his cheeks like rosy storm clouds rolling across a peach coloured sky.

“God, you’re perfect,” Steve let out, his touch reverent as he smoothed his thumbs along the skin of Eddie’s trembling thighs, toying with the soft downy hairs that curled against his fingertips. 

He was tempted for a moment to grip onto the denim and pull, to widen the rips until he could fit his hands inside them completely, desperate to seek out even more of the velvety soft skin.

His fingers clenched around the fabric on either side, the material creaking beneath his grip, but he summoned up enough of his dwindling self restraint to remember that Eddie probably needed to leave the hospital eventually; preferably still fully clothed. 

Instead he used his grip to anchor Eddie down so he could grind up against his ass, his efforts rewarded immediately with a surprised groan from the very back of his throat. 

Music to his ears, sweet enough to ward off any monster.

Eddie opened his mouth to answer, to argue no doubt, his words melting into a whimper as Steve licked a long stripe up the column of his throat, suckling and kissing at the bruised skin there.

“Oh, Big Boy. You don’t know what you do to me,” Eddie sighed, his hands slowly gliding up the length of Steve’s arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake. 

They came to rest tentatively on Steve’s chest, the touch so featherlight and unsure, as if he were convinced Steve would up and break beneath his hands.

He wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t.

“I think I’d really like to find out,” Steve answered as he tightened his grip on Eddie’s thigh with one hand, his other trailing upward to rest firmly on the bulge between his legs. 

He pressed in with the heel of his hand, light enough to tease as he rocked his hips up against Eddie once again. 

The sound Eddie let out, a sharp intake of breath and an unsteadily fluttering exhale, was quite possibly the best sound he’d ever heard, and he rolled his hips up once more out of pure desperation to hear it again.

He was musical. Melodic; every noise, every movement, every expression positively hypnotic, and Steve was only too happy to fall under his spell. 

“Oh fuck, Steve,” Eddie gasped, slapping a hand over his own mouth as he writhed in Steve’s grip. His other hand fisted itself into the thin papery fabric of his hospital issued shirt, the material creaking warningly in his grip. 

The friction, even between the layers of clothing and scratchy hospital sheets, was electrifying as they fell into a rhythm, moving together like an ocean wave lapping at the shore. 

It felt all too natural, the push and pull of their bodies like the pull of the moon to the tide, the perfect synchronicity of their breathing like the whispering air through the trees, the wandering of their hands like the caress of the setting sun over the horizon. 

As Steve thrust up, Eddie arched back with a groan that was loud even through the barrier of his own fingers, and Steve couldn’t help but echo the sound as his cock, now achingly hard, pressed up against the seam of Eddie’s pants like a promise. 

“Steve, we-we have to stop,” Eddie stuttered out with a gasp and a tentative look towards the door, though his body seemed intent to contradict his words as he circled those hips down with a renewed fervor, bucking into Steve’s hand. 

Critical thought at that point was singularly difficult, what with the concussion and the distinct downward flow of blood in his body, but Steve managed to tear his hands away from Eddie to grip at his waist and hold, to still the other man’s frantic movements. 

They groaned in tandem at the loss of friction, their chests heaving as they panted together loudly in the otherwise silent hospital room. 

With effort, Steve shook the heavy haze from his brain, reaching one hand up to gently take hold of Eddie’s chin to turn his face until he could meet his hooded gaze. 

He sucked in a breath at his utterly fucked out expression; the almost red glow of his cheeks, the wetness of his eyes, the trail of drool on the side of his mouth. 

Fuck.

He resisted the urge to lean up, to lick the line straight back up into Eddie’s mouth; to push into him and touch him and kiss him and claim him until his brain went fuzzy and his body went numb and it was impossible to tell where one of them started and the other one ended. 

He shook himself out of the warm haze once again, meeting Eddie’s bleary-eyed gaze with purpose. 

“Do you want to stop?” he breathed, his thumbs digging back into the dips of his sharp hip bones like they belonged there; like missing puzzle pieces slotted together after far too long apart. 

Steve watched as Eddie squeezed those tear-glossed eyes shut, teeth tugging at his plush lower lip, worrying at the pink flesh in a way that made Steve’s own mouth envious. 

He looked almost distressed, his head dropping back, his hands fisting tighter in Steve’s shirt, his hips wiggling in Steve’s tight hold as he let out a low whine that sank right down into Steve’s gut like an arrow through a bullseye. 

“Eddie,” he pushed even as he pulled back, his touch lightening until his hands were merely hovering over him, barely touching at all. 

That seemed to stir Eddie back into action, his own hands covering Steve’s and pressing them firmly back against his body, dragging them downward along the curve of his hips to rest rather boldly on the swell of his ass. 

“No,” he whispered, his voice unsteady, his lip quivering as he rocked his hips down against Steve’s once more, pushing back into his touch with a desperation that was palpable. 

“Please, Stevie. Please touch me. Don’t ever stop touching me.”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice, surging up to crash his lips against Eddie’s to swallow down the startled moan that spilled from his mouth. 

He steadfastly ignored the soreness in his ribs that was beginning to make itself known, choosing instead to suck Eddie’s lower lip in between his teeth as his hands gripped onto the stiff fabric of his back pockets, using his hold to drag Eddie’s ass down against his painfully hard length. 

They moaned into each other's mouths, harmonizing in the basest way, their bodies moving together as if they’d never been apart; as if they were made for it. 

Eddie’s hands fumbled with his own belt, the clink of the metal drowned out by the roaring of the blood in Steve’s ears, the pounding of his heart in his chest, the coursing of the electricity in his veins. 

Eddie moved with an urgency Steve felt deeply, undoing the intricate handcuff buckle with shaking hands and yanking the thick leather straight through his belt loops with a thwip. 

Steve didn’t even wait for it to clatter against the linoleum before his hands were on Eddie’s fly, unbuttoning and unzipping as Eddie reclaimed his lips in a kiss he could only think to call starving. 

It was borderline violent, sending his vision spinning once more, but he couldn’t find it in himself to mind. He could more than handle a hammering heart and a fluttering pulse if it meant he didn’t have to stop kissing Eddie Munson.

He gripped the waistbands of both Eddie’s jeans and boxers, yanking them as far down his spread legs as he could manage with their current position.

He smoothed his hands back along the exposed skin of his thighs, his hips, his waist, his back, reaching down to take two handfuls of his pert little ass. 

Eddie‘s responding moan vibrated through Steve’s chest, his hands flying up to bury themselves in his hair, his grip bordering on painful as he used it to pull Steve in closer. 

In an instant, everything else fell away; the dull beige walls surrounding them, the incessant beeping of machines, the offensive smell of disinfectant. 

The dull ache of still healing injuries, the lingering paranoia of monsters lurking in the shadows.

Now it was just the two of them; Eddie and Steve. 

Eddie’s hands shook with anticipation as they traveled down the length of his neck, across the expanse of his chest, his fingers curling into dark chest hair, dancing over surprisingly sensitive nipples. 

He took hold of the waistband resting low on Steve’s hips, yanking down to free his erection from the confines of his flimsy hospital issued pants. 

Those dark eyes flickered over every newly bared inch of him with the intensity of a hungry predator, stopping their exploration only to focus with laser precision on the pearly drop of precum shimmering on the head of his uncut cock. 

Steve gulped audibly as his gaze finally swept back up to meet his own, the pure want in them knocking the breath straight out of Steve’s chest like a full tackle from a linebacker. 

“Like what you see, Munson?” he breathed, unable to feel embarrassed at the neediness in his tone; the whine of his words that so clearly spelled out how desperate he was for Eddie’s approval and praise. 

Eddie leaned down, taking Steve’s bottom lip in between his teeth and tugging before licking into his mouth with a single minded determination that had him buzzing. 

It was filthy. It was like he wanted to devour him whole. 

“Mmh,” Eddie let out against his lips, his voice so low, so rough that it rumbled through Steve’s very core like the purring of an engine. 

He pulled back just enough to look him once more in the eye, dark lashes batting heavily with each sluggish blink as those kiss-swollen lips opened to speak. 

“When you’re fully cleared to go home,” he started, hands coming down to rest on Steve’s abdomen as his hips began to rock steadily. 

Steve’s teeth clamped down on his bottom lip as their lengths slid together, electricity shooting up his spine as Eddie continued. 

“I want you to fuck me. I wanna feel every goddamn inch of this inside me. I want you to pound me into your mattress until I cry; until the only words I can say are ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Think you can do that for me, Big Boy?”

Steve was certain he couldn’t answer with real actual words if he tried. In fact, he was pretty damn sure his brain had melted and drained out through his ears as Eddie threw his head back and let out a beautifully breathless laugh at his no doubt stupidly slack jawed expression. 

Without another moment's pause, Steve brought his hand up to his mouth and spit into his palm before bullying it down between their writhing bodies and taking them both in hand, wrapping his fingers snugly around their lengths and just holding and feeling; getting used to the unfamiliar weight against his palm. 

Eddie let out some sort of combination of a gasp and a whimper before his hand could come back up to cover his mouth, cheeks blazing red, eyes squeezing shut as Steve began to stroke them both at a slow and steady pace. 

And it was better than good.

It was intoxicating.

The velvet slide of Eddie’s cock against his own, the tight squeeze of his hand, the slickness of the precum slowly leaking from the both of them to ease the glide. 

The sinful sounds every single stroke seemed to pull from Eddie. 

He watched, hazy-eyed and enraptured as Eddie arched back, his spine curving, his shoulders dropping, his hips twitching in tandem with Steve’s hand as if he just couldn’t help himself, every thrust punctuated with a breathy little “uh uh uh”.

His free hand found its way back to Eddie’s hip, quite possibly its new favourite place to be. Fingers dug into soft skin stretched over sharp bone for something, anything, to hold on to as they rocked and ground together, filling the liminal space around them with the slick sounds of sex. 

“So good, Steve,” Eddie moaned into the back of his hand between panting breaths. “So fucking good. Fuck. Just like that!”

The praise swarmed through Steve’s lust addled brain like a veritable plague of biblical proportions. It sank in deep, seeped through the cracks in his walls like sweet ichor, satisfied an urge buried so deep down inside of him he thought it would never come to light. 

His pace stuttered, his hand coming to a sudden halt as he desperately tried to muffle a positively pitiful cry with his other.

“You like that?” Eddie observed, his tone amused, but not mockingly so. Even breathless and desperate, he somehow managed to sound giddy. “You like it when I tell you how good you are? How you make me feel?”

Steve could do nothing but nod. 

The skin of his cheeks burned with a searing heat beneath his own palm, tears gathering behind his tightly clenched eyes that threatened to spill forth like they never did. 

Like he never allowed them to. 

He felt lightheaded, but not in a bad or dangerous way. 

He felt faraway and floaty; he felt safe. 

“That’s it, Sweetheart,” Eddie rasped out, nipping along his jaw, pressing a lingering kiss to the spot just below his right ear. “You’re safe. Let go.”

He cried out as Eddie’s hand closed around his own, his only warning before Eddie resumed thrusting into the tight clench of their fists, his cock dragging deliciously against Steve’s own. 

The sensation was almost too much; too much warmth, too much friction, too much. 

His jaw clenched as heat curled low in his belly.

He breathed harshly in and out through his nose, his chest heaving, his muscles tightening, his toes curling as Eddie rutted down against him with abandon, a string of filth unlike anything Steve had ever heard pouring from his lips. 

“Yes, Steve. God, fuck, can’t wait to feel you. Wanna taste you so bad. Wanted to for so long. Would you let me? I bet you would. I’d get on my knees for you anytime, anywhere, if you asked; swallow you down and let you choke me on your dick.”

“Eddie,” he called out in warning, his voice, so breathy and whiny and high, was nearly unrecognizable to him, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. “Eddie, I’m so close.”

Eddie’s rhythm stuttered at his words, his steady thrusts becoming erratic, his careful words morphing into nonsense. 

His head dropped down, his forehead resting against Steve’s as they humped and writhed against each other like animals, existing only off of each other's air. 

Steve could die like this, and he would die an incandescently happy man. 

At a particularly guttural moan from Eddie, Steve managed to pry his eyes open just in time to see Eddie’s widen, huge and round and black as the new moon, shimmering with tears that flowed freely down his flushed cheeks. 

His red lips fell open in a silent scream, his eyebrows pinching upward, the tendons in his neck jumping under pale bruised skin as he let out a strangled cry and came. 

Hot sticky wetness streaked across Steve’s stomach, his chest, up to his chin, the sensation his undoing as that all too familiar electricity coursed through his veins, lighting up every nerve ending with mind numbing pleasure. 

His back arched off of the cot, Eddie yelping as he scrambled to hold on. 

His eyes clenched tightly shut once more, his brow furrowing, his shoulders raising up to his ears, his heart hammering in his chest.

He reached up blindly, his free hand burying itself in the hair at the back of Eddie’s head and pulling him down to crash their lips together in what was less of a kiss, more of a desperate need to be as close as humanly possible as he finally came undone. 

It took a while for the buzzing in Steve’s head, the swarm Eddie had let loose inside him, to calm, but when at last it did, Steve took in a remarkably unburdened breath. 

The weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders, the fear of the unknown untethered from its previous stranglehold around his heart. 

He felt lighter than he had in years. 

His cheeks were wet with tears, but he didn’t care. 

He felt good.  

A weight shifted against his chest, one that he dearly hoped to become intimately familiar with in the coming days, months, years if he was allowed. 

He hoped he would be allowed. 

Exhaustion predictably crept in, and Steve surrendered to it freely. 

He was certain the doctor could wait for that checkup. 

And so, for the first time since the fall of 1983, Steve closed his eyes and slept without a single nightmare of creatures clawing through ceilings or racing through tunnels dragging him back to wakefulness. 

He was safe. 

He was loved. 

He was happy. 

………

Chapter Text

One Month Later

The official statement called it a freak accident.

“A tragic fire that wiped out countless innocent victims,” they’d said.

A senseless tragedy, completely void of interdimensional meat monsters and meddling commies and telekinetic preteens.

The community mourned its losses and moved on just as it always did; didn’t question for even a second why so many of their friends and family had left the Fourth of July festivities to wander around the closed mall in the first place, just as they didn’t ask questions about the boy they’d attended a funeral for reappearing alive and as well as circumstances would allow not even days later.

Nobody asked questions in Hawkins.

They all knew better.

And because of that, very fortunately, the world seemed to have returned to some semblance of normal.

School was all set to start up soon, the kids a mix of excited and anxious to begin their highschool careers, El more than anyone else as Joyce had given her the green light, despite Hopper's great reluctance, to start right along with them after a whole summer of Nancy’s expert tutoring.

Robin and Steve, admittedly more Robin than Steve, had managed to sweet talk their way into jobs at Family Video, complete with matching schedules all the way up until Robin had to start classes herself.

Steve was not the most excited at the prospect of having to work alone with Keith, especially since the Cheeto-fingered creep had taken to glaring holes into Steve’s skull literally every single time he dained to look his way, watching every customer interaction with laser-like focus as if he could simply absorb Steve’s natural charisma through his retinas, but that was a problem for the future.

He would cope.

At the present, he was keeping himself busy till the fast approaching shift change unboxing brand new tapes, slapping a sticker onto each shiny new cover before handing them off to Robin to painstakingly sort into her genre-based stack for ‘quick and efficient shelving’.

Steve smirked down at the next movie he’d plucked up, amusement crinkling his brow as he turned toward Robin and read off of the cover:

“Back to the Future. He was never in time for his classes, he wasn’t in time for his dinner, then one day… he wasn’t in his time at all!”

Robin groaned loudly from her spot perched on top of the counter, covering her face with the two tapes she’d been holding. 

“You think Keith will notice if we just leave that one in the bin?” she said, her question muffled, though Steve knew it was rhetorical. 

It was against Robin’s very being to leave a project unfinished, proven further by the way she finally and ever-so-carefully deposited each of the tapes in her hands on top of their proper and precariously stacked pile, blindly holding out her hand for another even as Steve watched the piles tilt and wobble.

He snorted, placing the offending tape into her waiting palm before swiftly jumping the counter to start on shelving, lest the stacks topple and ruin all of their hard work.

Not for the first time that day, or even that hour, Steve was struck with the insane notion that just one month prior, he’d still been bitterly shilling sweet treats to assholes in the mall, moping about his less than stellar grades all but landing him with the ‘social death sentence’ that was a summer job at Scoops Ahoy.

One singular month ago, he and Robin had been barely-civil coworkers slinging more insults than ice cream while he agonized over his suddenly directionless life; dead end customer service job in a hokey little sailor suit, no big beautiful college experience on the horizon, no friends aside from a group of kids he was pretty sure at the time were just using him for free ice cream and access to the back hallways, no girlfriend, no hope…

But now?

Now he had people. He had the kids, and Hopper, and Joyce.

And screw it. He had that weirdo Murray for all that was worth.

He had Lucas monopolizing his free time for free throws, Erica dragging him out to every ice cream parlor in the greater Hawkins area every single Sunday to make good on her ‘free ice cream for life’ deal. 

He had El, Will, and Max dropping by with little to no warning to make use of his pool and to talk about boys (mostly Mike to Max’s great annoyance), and he had Mike in return pretending to be reluctant about asking him for advice.

Dustin had become a human barnacle stuck to his side nearly 24/7, often enough for Claudia Henderson to mark him down as one of Dustin’s emergency contacts should she ever be unreachable.

Even stranger still, he had Nancy and Jonathan. Granted, it would never not be awkward between them, but he still knew for certain that they had his back no matter what.

He had Robin, the two of them quickly becoming inseparable; a package deal. Where one went, the other followed, and that’s how they liked it.

Who cared if he was stuck in Hawkins for the foreseeable future? Who cared if he couldn’t get into a decent college?

He didn’t care so long as he had his party; his family which now, by some astounding twist of fate, included Eddie Munson.

Eddie the Freak. Eddie the Loser. Eddie, the single bravest person Steve had ever met.

Eddie, whose breath always smelled a little like the sweets he’d been snacking on.

Eddie, who laughed louder and longer than anyone Steve knew.

Eddie with his big beautiful brown eyes, and his sunshine smile, and his mess of dark curls, and his gentle hands, and his sugar spun kisses.

He didn’t care about a single thing, so long as he had-

“Hey Dingus! Your boyfriend is here.”

Speak of the devil.

Moving quickly to shove the last few tapes in his hands into their proper spots on the shelves, Steve emerged with a smile that widened until it was borderline painful to his cheeks when he caught sight of Eddie leaning against the counter with a matching grin of his own.

“You close early?” Steve questioned, eyes sweeping across the store as he approached before deeming it safe enough to plant a quick kiss on Eddie’s cheek. “Or did you just get sick of fishing paper clips out of the Gallega machine for the hundredth time today?”

“What?” Eddie scoffed as if deeply wounded by his words, hand to heart and jaw dropped open with utter indignation. “And what if I was just eager to reconvene with my darling boyfriend and my favorite band nerd, huh? Ever thought of that?”

“Not even for a second,” Robin snorted from her spot across the counter. 

Eddie kept up the charade for only a moment more before he deflated with a dramatic groan, his upper body resting back against the counter, his arm stretching out to send their cup full of pens crashing to the floor.

“You know me far too well, Chuckles. Little assholes always go for Gallega! Why can’t it be Dig Dug, just this once?”

As Steve dropped into a squat to gather up the pens, Robin tutted, rapping her knuckles against the wooden cabinet below three times.

“Knock on wood! Do you really want to incur Max’s wrath?”

Eddie answered with a full body shudder, jabbing a finger toward Robin that she immediately batted away from her face with a huff.

“Right you are, Sir Buckley. I was foolish in my fancy.”

“You act like that’s a rare occurrence, Sir Munson,” she countered, Eddie muttering a quick ‘touché’ in response as she plucked up a curly strand of his dark hair and split it into three, deftly twisting it into a braid. 

Steve couldn’t help but smile at the sight; two of the people he loved most in the world. Two people he’d been through hell with.

He was certain he could blissfully live in that moment forever. 

“Speaking of Max,” Steve finally spoke up as Robin finished up the little braid, dropping it to let it blend right back into Eddie’s mess of curls. “Who’s on hospital duty today?”

“Nance,” Robin answered a bit too quickly, a blush overtaking her cheeks at Steve’s raised eyebrow that 100% confirmed his suspicions of who she’d spent her entire lunch break talking and giggling to over the phone that day. 

Keith would have a conniption if he ever caught wind of the sheer volume of missed calls during that half hour.

“She’s there now with Max and El,” she continued, ignoring Steve’s smug smirk in favor of scratching at the remains of a sticker on the counter. “No change yet, but she says his fingers twitched during Seek and Destroy.”

Eddie nodded, his lips pursed in approval.

“I can’t begrudge him this; fuckers got decent taste in music. I still prefer Ride the Lightning, myself. I mean, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a fucking masterpiece, and don’t even get me started on-“

Before Eddie could get much further in what Steve knew from personal experience could quickly become a several hours long rant about the origins of thrash metal and its effects on the genre as a whole, Steve grabbed at the collar of his tee shirt and yanked him upright into a kiss; one he immediately returned with enthusiasm, sinking both hands into Steve’s hair and melting against him with a sigh that had Steve’s stomach doing cartwheels.

“Kissing me to shut me up?” Eddie tutted against his lips, his own curling into an enticing smirk that Steve desperately wanted to lick across. “A dangerous move, Harrington.”

“Mhm. But one that payed off?” Steve inquired as he pressed a kiss to Eddie’s jaw, lips tracing over a small patch of stubble he’d missed while shaving that morning.

Eddie’s answering laugh was a low rumble that vibrated straight into Steve’s chest. Steve only held him closer, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s waist and hooking his fingers into the back of his belt.

“You’ll need a higher persuasion roll than that, Sir Steven,” Eddie said in his DM voice, the one that sent shivers down Steve’s spine and blood into other choice extremities.

“I’m rolling with advantage,” Steve fired back, watching Eddie’s eyes widen before narrowing into a squint with the sheer size of the dazzling grin overtaking his face.

“Dirty talk? In public?” he said in a scandalized stage whisper, whipping his head back and forth as if to search the empty store for witnesses to their debauchery.

Well, previously empty store as no sooner had he said it than their entire gaggle of children, sans Max and El of course, walked right through the doors.

“Ugh,” came the obligatory exclamation of disgust from Mike as he quickly covered his eyes and turned toward Robin. “Are they being gross again?”

“Again?” she repeated. “They’re always gross. It’s like their constant state.”

“Well wrap it up!” Dustin insisted with an impatient tap tap tap to his watch face. “Time is a’ticking and we need plenty of it if we’re going to get the entire party to Ravenloft in time for the Winter Solstice!”

Not even bothering to attempt to decode that sentence himself, Steve turned back to face Eddie with a quick utterance of: “Translation?”

Before Eddie could answer, Mike swiveled on his heels and threw open the door, very nearly dislodging the bells fastened above as he shouted back:

“DnD now, suck face later!”

With barely muffled giggles, the others filed right back out of the store after Mike, heading toward Steve and Eddie’s cars respectively.

Dustin was the last out, once again tapping impatiently at his wristwatch before letting the door slam shut behind him.

“So,” Steve started, very reluctantly pulling away from Eddie to clock himself out. “Children are definitely off the table for the future, right?”

“Oh no, Sweetheart,” Eddie tsked, snatching Steve’s bag up before he could reach for it himself, shouldering it and stepping right back into Steve’s space.

Steve leaned in like a planet pulled into orbit as Eddie gently straightened the collar of his polo shirt, his calloused thumbs brushing along the sensitive skin of his throat.

“I hope you know,” he spoke closer to Steve’s ear. “I fully intend to trap you into a marriage. We’re having no less than six kids and a mortgage. We’re taking those brats to DisneyLand at least once a year. We’re buying a Winnebago, Steve.”

And Steve wasn’t embarrassed to admit that his brain, in that moment with those words spoken in even joking sincerity, stuttered to an almost complete halt; he was certain he’d nearly fucking flatlined when Eddie sent him a cheeky little wink and pressed a quick kiss to his burning hot cheek as if he hadn’t just sent Steve into cardiac arrest. 

Eddie moved to follow the way the kids had gone, out to the parking lot to share in their pre-DnD excitement, but Steve couldn’t have that.

He reached out with speed he was frankly surprised by considering the 30 car pileup that was his brain, grabbing Eddie by his hips and yanking him right back into place.

Eddie came willingly, lips curling upward as if he knew he’d won something; some kind of game between the two of them only he knew the rules to.

But Steve was a quick learner.

He took hold of Eddie’s chin, his touch gentle; featherlight in a way that had Eddie leaning in for more, eyes falling closed with a contented little sigh.

Steve shook his head with a soft chuckle, holding Eddie’s face still as he placed a kiss against the apple of his cheek, the edge of his lip, the ridge of his brow, the hinge of his jaw. 

“You’d have six kids for me?” he asked lowly, his free hand splaying across the small of Eddie’s back, pulling him flush against him and reveling in the low groan he got in return.

“I’d do anything for you,” Eddie whispered, hands making their way up Steve’s back, arms snaking around his neck as he slowly began to sway them back and forth in a serene little dance.

Steve’s heart swelled, the word spilling as naturally from his lips as it had that very first time;

“I’m so in love with you right now.”

Eddie took his hand and raised it above both of their heads, spinning under it like a ballroom dancer before stumbling right back in to press against him with an unbelievably warm smile. 

“You’d better be. I’m carrying your Harrington Nuggets out of wedlock! Whatever would my uncle say?”

“Ok, ew,” Robin cut in rather loudly from just in front of the counter, holding her backpack in one hand, the jingling store keys in the other. “I never ever thought I’d say this, but Mike is right. DnD now, suck face later. Preferably far far away from me.”

Steve and Eddie burst into laughter once more, scrambling to flick off the lights and grab the rest of their things before following after Robin.

And as the kids called out “finally!” with varying degrees of frustration, splitting off into predetermined groups and clambering into their designated vehicles, Steve looked to Eddie once more, taking hold of his hand and squeezing three times:

“I love you.”

Eddie held his gaze, dark eyes brightened into pure amber in the light of the setting sun, and squeezed back three times.

“I love you”

And Steve was certain at that moment that there was no one in the world luckier than him.

………