Chapter Text
Eddie Munson wakes up in an empty bed to the smell of bacon. Considering his recent status both as a dead man and a bat, both of these things are surprising.
Slowly, he sits up and rubs sleep from his eyes. It takes him a moment to remember exactly where he is. It’s the ugly wallpaper that finally makes everything click into place, and as memories from the night before come flooding back to him, he flops back down onto the mattress and groans.
If someone had sat Eddie down even as little as two months ago to tell him that he would someday be waking up in Steve Harrington’s house, in Steve Harrington’s bed, after spending a month as a bat on Steve Harrington’s desk while his original body pickled in Upside Down juices, he would have probably laughed himself to death. But nothing about any of this seems funny now.
“Shit,” he mutters. Which, all things considered, is probably the understatement of the fucking century.
He hears the clinking of cutlery, followed by footsteps walking up the stairs. There’s no time for him to prepare himself before the door opens, revealing Steve standing in the doorway and balancing a plate in each hand. His feet are bare and his pants are slung low on his hips. He’s still not wearing a shirt. Dear lord.
“You’re awake,” he says, sounding far too cheery considering how early it is. At least, Eddie thinks it must be early. He can hear birds chirping outside, but the room is still fairly dim.
“I am,” Eddie says. “You made breakfast.”
Steve grins. “I did. Breakfast in bed?”
“You spoil me.”
They end up sitting cross-legged together on the bed, plates resting on their knees as they eat. Steve wolfs down his food like he’s been starving for weeks, while Eddie picks apart his bacon and takes small bites. There’s an irony there that isn’t lost on him.
“For future reference,” Eddie says, pushing aside clumps of bacon fat, “I don’t really eat meat.”
Steve freezes with his fork lifted halfway to his lips. His brows draw together in confusion.
“Like, at all?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Shit, dude. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Eddie says. He manages to stomach one final bite before putting his plate on the bedside table. “Can't really afford to be picky, given the circumstances.”
“I can still make you something else, if you’d like.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it.”
Steve finishes off his bacon, then swaps his and Eddie’s plates and clears the rest of his food as well. Once the two plates are empty and stacked together on the bedside table, he gently nudges Eddie’s leg with his foot.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
Eddie shrugs. “Fine, I guess. I mean, I was pretty hungry when I woke up, but you fixed that already.”
“Sorry again about the meat.”
“It’s fine, Harrington. Really.”
“Do you think you’re ready to meet everyone to discuss what happened?”
Eddie wrings his hands in his lap and shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“We can wait a little longer if that’s what you need, man. You can get settled in and relax for a while. We have time.”
“Alright,” Eddie says. “Tomorrow, then?”
“Sure. I’ll call Nancy later to let her know.”
Steve must be able to sense, somehow, that Eddie doesn’t want to talk about the Upside Down anymore. Not yet, anyway. There’s not much else to fill him in on, considering how much Steve had rambled to him while he was in his bat form, but he manages to fill the silence anyway. He tells Eddie about the shifts he’s shared with Robin recently—Family Video has never been more spotless, because there’s nothing else to do other than talk and clean. He talks a little bit about Nancy and Jonathan; how they’ve finally sorted everything out between them and have decided to take a break from dating, just so that they can figure out what they both actually want. Eddie searches his face as he’s talking about Nancy, but he doesn’t find any relief or joy or even regret in his expression. He doesn’t find much of anything, really, which is even more confusing given the fact that Steve had kissed him not even twelve hours ago.
And that’s another thing. Eddie listens to Steve talk about a lot of things, but he doesn’t mention the kiss. Not even once.
Eddie tries—like, he really, really tries—to not let it bother him. But it’s near impossible to sit across from Steve and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary has happened between them. He feels restless, like there’s an itching beneath his skin that he just can’t scratch no matter how much he twists and turns and digs his nails into his flesh.
It frustrates him that he doesn’t know what Steve is thinking. It frustrates him even more than he doesn’t have the courage to ask.
Steve Harrington nursed Eddie back to health, kept him warm and well-fed, and quite literally led a quest into Hell to give him his real body back. Which is great. It’s fucking fantastic. Definitely did not make Eddie fall a little bit head-over-heels in love with the guy.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself at first, because Steve is just a really good guy with a tendency to act like an overbearing mother and it absolutely, undoubtedly, one-thousand-percent did not mean anything.
But then the dust settled, and Steve had still looked Eddie in the eye and asked him to stay.
And then—!
Then Steve had kissed him.
Eddie desperately wants to know what it all means. Unfortunately, the urge to run away from the things that terrify him is still wired into his brain. Letting the uncertainty fester certainly doesn’t feel good, but it’s better than hearing Steve tell him that whatever happened last night was a mistake, or didn’t mean anything, or was just some kind of terrible joke.
Eventually, Steve excuses himself to take a shower and change into some clean clothes. Eddie doesn’t bother showering again, instead merely taking the clothes that Steve offers him and changing in Steve’s bedroom while the ensuite fills with steam. The shower shuts off after a few minutes, but Eddie can hear Steve shuffling around in the bathroom for a long time after that, grunting and hissing every now and then. He must be wrapping his scars again, even though they’re healed enough now that they no longer bleed. It’s probably just a habit that Steve has grown too accustomed to; maybe it’s comforting in an odd way, or maybe he simply hates having the wounds exposed. Eddie’s own wounds are healed too, albeit thanks to the creepy restorative qualities of the Upside Down, but he thinks he can understand what Steve is thinking. Maybe, if he uses enough medicine and bandages and care, he’ll be able to make the scars disappear. They might not fade completely, but they could certainly fade enough to make Steve feel almost normal again.
Eddie toys with the idea of wrapping up his own healed wounds. He thinks it would make him feel more whole again, like he’s being held together by something other than fear and spite. He thinks Steve would understand that, too.
Right now, though, he settles for merely slipping on Steve’s clothes. He gravitates towards the record player in the corner of the room again when he’s done. Steve’s collection of music isn’t the kind of thing he enjoys listening to most of the time, but it’s better than silence. He also liked the blush on Steve’s face last night when he started playing that dumb Tears For Fears song. He plays it again now, but lowers the volume until it’s simply a whisper that softens the hard edges of the room.
Steve returns fully-dressed and—mission success!—pink-faced. He shakes his head at the record player.
“I’m starting to think you actually do like this song,” he says.
Eddie pokes out his tongue. It makes Steve roll his eyes, but the action seems more fond than annoyed.
“So,” Steve says, putting his hands on his hips in his signature Tired Mother Of Six gesture. “Is there anything you wanna do? I think we have some movies, or if there’s nothing you’re interested in here, I can drop by Family Video to pick something up. Or we have, uhh… Games? I think we have a deck of cards somewhere.”
Steve is nervous, Eddie realises. It kind of makes his brain fizz and crackle into static for a moment. The need to make Eddie feel comfortable is eating into Steve’s confidence. Which is ridiculous, really. Eddie hasn’t felt uncomfortable around Steve for even a minute since the second time they’d seen each other at Reefer Rick’s, when Steve had waved and smiled and cracked jokes. He’s pretty sure that there’s not a single thing that he could do now to make Eddie not want to spend time with him.
“Actually,” he says, desperate to put Steve out of his self-inflicted misery, “is it alright if we go see Max today? I figure, you know, seeing as she won’t be able to attend our little debrief tomorrow—”
“Yeah, Eddie. Of course we can see Max.”
This is what Eddie likes about Steve. His pinched mouth and furrowed brows give away how apprehensive he is about this. He thinks it’s a bad idea, letting Eddie wander around outside so soon. And it is a bad idea. But the cogs are already turning in that pretty head of his as he figures out a way to make it work. He’s considering every option and deciding which is safest. He’s making mental notes of all the ways that he can keep Eddie safe, should anything go wrong. Eddie knows this, because the expression on Steve’s face now is exactly the same as it was when Max was offering herself up as bait to Vecna, and again when he was figuring out how to introduce Bat Eddie to Dustin. When he knows that what one of his friends is doing is stupid, his main priority becomes ensuring that they get hurt as little as possible.
And that’s how Steve cares. He minimises the damage and picks up the pieces. He’s the shield on everyone’s backs—always within reach, just in case he’s needed. A solid, reassuring weight that encourages and protects.
“You’ll need to borrow some accessories,” he says, more to himself than to Eddie as he strides over to his wardrobe and begins searching through its contents. “That hair of yours is too distinguishable, so you should hide it under a hat. I’m sure I have some sunglasses you can use, too.”
Just like that, he’s in what Eddie decides to call Determined Steve Mode. He settles into a unique kind of confidence and drive. He’d been like this when they parted ways in the Upside Down, too. Determined Steve Mode makes him seem less like a nineteen year old boy and more like an experienced soldier. Eddie has no choice but to stand to attention and follow any orders he might give.
As promised, Eddie is given a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap. It takes considerable effort to stuff most of his hair into the cap, but it succeeds in making him marginally less recognisable. Steve lends him a hoodie, too, which will help to shadow his face and hide the tattoos on his arms. The disguise is good enough to fool people, so long as they don’t stop to stare at his face too closely.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Steve asks him as they stand by the front door several minutes later, preparing to leave. “Venturing out into public, I mean. If anyone sees you—”
“I’m sure,” Eddie says, nodding. He feels determined, and not just because he really wants to see Max. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life hiding away. He wants to make the most of this second chance that he’s been given. He’d rather risk being caught than spend the foreseeable future going stir-crazy inside Steve’s house, as grateful as he is to be allowed to stay here.
Steve still seems anxious, but he doesn’t try to dissuade Eddie from going out. Instead, he retrieves Eddie’s shoes—wiped clean, complete with a fresh pair of white laces—from the shoe cupboard by the front door. He passes them to Eddie with a faint blush on his cheeks.
“I patched them up this morning,” he explains. “I figured you’d want to keep them. They didn’t get beaten up too badly, so there was no point in throwing them out. Plus, I realised as I was cleaning them up that they’re a size bigger than the ones I wear, so you wouldn’t be able to borrow some of my shoes anyway.”
Eddie doesn’t know what to say. Just when he thinks that Steve can’t possibly be more caring, he does something to prove Eddie wrong. He takes his shoes with a grateful smile.
“Thanks, dude.”
Phase One of their mission to see Max is getting to Steve’s car without any of his neighbours noticing Eddie. Fortunately, it’s already late in the morning by the time they leave the house, meaning that most of the people who haven’t already fled Hawkins are currently at work. Eddie would laugh himself silly at them for continuing to work on the brink of the world’s total destruction if he wasn’t a little envious of them. Pretending that everything is normal must be nice. Leaving the house as the sun rises, greeting the neighbour on your way to the car, avoiding the gaping chasms in the ground like potholes as you drive to work, then clocking in and acting like the world outside your window hasn’t changed at all—Eddie thinks he could appreciate that, if given the option. But he hasn’t been given any fucking option in this. Hence, the disguise and the hiding and the Steve Harrington of it all.
That’s not to say that he wouldn’t choose to stay with Steve if there were other options available. He likes Steve. Maybe a little bit too much—but that’s beside the point.
They come to a stop outside of the hospital just before midday. Now, it’s time for Phase Two: arrive safely in Max’s room without anyone recognising Eddie. So, it’s basically just an extended Phase One. Semantics, right?
“Stay close to me,” Steve says. “Keep your hood up and your head down. If anyone speaks to you—”
“I’ll let you handle it.” Eddie smiles. “I’ve got it, Harrington. Let’s go.”
Steve sighs one last time before opening the door and climbing out of the car. Eddie checks that his disguise is properly in place before joining him. He savours the sunlight beating down on him while Steve locks the car. It’s been a long time since he felt the heat of the sun, after all. Steve—the absolute angel that he is—allows him a few extra seconds of sunbathing before moving him along with a hand on his back.
Inside the hospital, it’s surprisingly easy to avoid people. The nurse at the desk must recognise Steve, because she waves him through without bothering to ask who he’s here to see. Eddie resists the temptation to look up at her, but he can still feel her staring at him as they pass her by. He lowers his head a little more and hunches his shoulders, hoping that she didn’t see enough of his face to recognise him.
They’re outside Max’s room before he knows it. He recognises his surroundings from when Steve smuggled his bat self in here, but everything is brighter now and the objects around him are no longer overwhelmingly large. Nevertheless, he kind of wishes that he could tuck himself away in Steve’s jacket and nuzzle close to his chest again. It had been so comforting. But Eddie isn’t a bat anymore, and he doesn’t think it would be appropriate to do it in his regular human body where anyone could walk by and see the two of them embracing.
He settles for grabbing a fistful of Steve’s shirt instead, because he’s too much of a coward to hold Steve’s hand. He follows Steve into the room and closes the door behind them, before using his free hand to take off his hood and sunglasses.
“Hey, kid,” Steve says. “I brought a friend.”
The smile on Max’s face suggests that she already knows exactly who Steve is talking about. Eddie takes a seat in the chair next to her bed and instinctively reaches for her hand. Her skin is slightly cold, and her fingers are limp when Eddie wraps his other hand around them. She turns her face towards him anyway. She can sense him there, somehow; even without being able to see or feel him, she knows exactly where he is. Eddie wonders if she’s feeling a tug towards him similar to the one that he’s currently feeling towards her. It’s like something within him is drawn to something within Max. Like puzzle pieces, they click together.
“Eddie,” Max says. Her eyes are shiny with unshed tears. “It’s good to have you back.”
Eddie has to look away from her face to stop himself from crying. Even then, he can feel her emotions almost as strongly as he can feel his own. Relief, hope, and anger wash into one another like watercolours mingling on paper.
“Thanks for being the smartest kid I know, Red,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”
“It hurt, didn’t it?” she asks as her smile fades. “Coming back, I mean. I felt it.”
“You did?”
She hums. “It didn’t hurt me, but I could tell that it was hurting you. Was it your injuries?”
“No. Those don’t hurt anymore. They’re completely healed, actually.”
Max falls into a contemplative silence. Not knowing what else to say, Eddie doesn’t speak either. He can sense Steve staring at the two of them, tapping his foot lightly against the floor. Whether it’s out of impatience or concern, Eddie can’t tell. Maybe it’s a little of both.
It’s Steve who eventually breaks the silence by asking, “Where’s Sinclair and the others?”
“I told everyone to take a break today. Lucas still insisted on visiting, though. He went to the vending machine a while ago,” Max says.
The door slides open, and Lucas enters the room as if he’s been summoned. He takes one look at Eddie sitting beside Max and drops the bag of mixed nuts he’s been holding.
“Eddie!” he shouts.
Steve shushes him, but it falls on deaf ears as Lucas launches himself at Eddie. They’ve never hugged before, Eddie realises. Thanks to his dedication to basketball, Lucas has always been less present at Hellfire meetings than Dustin and Mike. Even when they were saving the world together, Lucas had been so concerned with keeping Max safe that he and Eddie never really got to talk. Eddie can’t help but feel surprised, once again, at the fact that someone is this happy to see him alive. He pulls Lucas a little closer and savours the moment as much as he can.
“It’s good to see you again, Sinclair,” he says.
Lucas is trembling against him. He sniffs quietly.
“I’m so sorry, man,” he mumbles into Eddie’s shoulder. “I should have told you that sooner. I wish I’d come to your last campaign. I— I took you for granted, and I upset you and Dustin and Mike by skipping, and I thought it didn’t matter anymore when we were fighting Vecna because we got to spend time together again, and I thought maybe I could make it up to you all by sticking around this time, but then everything went wrong and you died, and I never got to tell you that I’m sor—”
“Woah, hey.” Eddie pushes him away, but keeps his hands wrapped firmly around Lucas’ shoulders. He gives him a gentle shake. “Don’t give me that. You don’t need to apologise. I heard you won that game, you know. Could you have done that if you’d attended the Cult of Ve— You Know Who?”
“No, but—”
“Steve,” Eddie says, looking past Lucas at where Steve is crouched on the floor, picking up all of the nuts that Lucas had dropped and collecting them in his cupped hand. He startles at the sound of his name, and a few almonds clatter to the floor again.
“Yeah?”
“Lucas made the right decision, didn’t he? Tell him he did.”
“You made the right decision, man,” Steve says without hesitation. “Winning that game made you happy. Besides, if you hadn’t earned Jason’s trust, he might’ve found Eddie a lot sooner than he did. You risked a lot by stalling him, and it helped us in the long run. You did good, kid.”
“Thank you,” Eddie says, beaming. He focuses back on Lucas, whose eyes are suspiciously wet. “You see? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“I just wish—”
“That’s enough, Sinclair,” Eddie snaps. He sighs and continues, softening his tone again. “At the time, I was definitely pissed that you were skipping. I’ll admit that I took it a little personally—but that’s my own problem, not yours. As your DM and your friend, I should have been more supportive and accommodating. Anyway, the point is that I don’t give a shit about you skipping anymore. How can I, now that I know how many more important things there are to be worried about? Besides—” and, here, he smiles so wide that his cheeks ache— “Lady Applejack more than made up for your absence. I guess talent runs in the Sinclair family.”
Lucas rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He reaches up to wipe a tear away from his cheek.
“I told Erica you’re back, by the way. She wants to see you.”
“She does?” Eddie asks, genuinely shocked.
“Yeah, man. She puts on a brave face, but I could tell she was really affected by your d— Uh, you know.”
“She… was?”
But she hated me, he thinks. Didn’t she?
“Of course she was,” Lucas says. “Sure, it was only for one day, but you were her DM as well as mine. I know she didn’t know you for long, but I think she liked you. Or, I don’t know. She didn’t hate you as much as she hates other people. Maybe she looked up to you. Ever since Vecna disappeared, she’s been… quiet.”
“Holy shit,” Eddie says. “Erica Sinclair? Quiet?”
Lucas snorts. He sobers up again quickly, though.
“She makes her own figurines. Did you know that?”
Eddie shakes his head.
Lucas takes that as his cue to deal the final blow: “She named one of them after you. Edward the Brave. Even painted it to look a bit like you.”
“Brave, huh?” Eddie laughs, because if he doesn’t, he’ll start crying instead. “You sure she named it after me?”
“Yes.” Lucas says it with such conviction that Eddie has no choice but to actually kind of believe it.
He’s having trouble fathoming all of this. These wonderful, courageous, funny, heroic kids and their equally awesome babysitters are probably the best people that Eddie has ever met, and for some reason, they all care about him enough to bring him back to life and name dumb figurines after him. He feels a little ridiculous for getting choked up more at the latter than the former, but come on. You can save someone’s life out of obligation, but you can’t honour someone like Erica has honoured Eddie without genuinely caring about them at least a little bit.
Eddie loves every single one of these people—even the ones he hasn’t officially met yet. He can’t say he’d expected any of this when he was first dragged into their mess, but god, is he glad to be here now. Meeting these people might just be one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to him.
“We’ll be meeting with everyone tomorrow,” Steve says, resting his hand between Eddie’s shoulder blades. The touch is grounding, and Eddie leans into it before he’s even aware of what he’s doing. “Tell Erica to come. It will be nice for everyone to see her again.”
“I’ll tell her.” Lucas turns to Max as he adds: “And I’ll bring her here, next time I visit. She’s ready to see you again, Max.”
Max smiles softly. “That would be nice. Um… Can I talk to Eddie alone for a bit?”
Eddie shoots a glance at Steve, only to find him already staring back. He gives him a reassuring nod.
“Alright, Sinclair. Let’s go for a walk.”
Eddie waits until Steve and Lucas have left the room before turning back to Max.
“What’s up, Red?”
“You can feel it, too, right?” she asks.
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know how to describe it,” she says, frowning. “It’s like… energy inside me. Dark energy.”
“The link to the Upside Down, right? I can feel it.”
Max’s voice barely reaches a whisper when she admits, “I don’t think it’s as simple as a link.”
“What do you mean?”
“El and I have been talking. In my head.”
Eddie gapes at her for several seconds before asking, “You can do that?”
It shouldn’t be surprising, actually. After all, before last night, he and Steve had been having entire conversations in Steve’s dreams. He’s still not quite sure how he managed to do that, but he’s mostly been chalking it up to dumb luck and sheer willpower.
“She can,” Max says. “But I’m— What I’m trying to say is that maybe we all can.”
“You’ve lost me, Red.”
“The energy inside us… El said that it’s what she harnesses whenever she’s using her powers. When she was in that lab, they were training her to control the energy so that it couldn’t control her. It’s a link, sure, but it’s also a weapon. She can use it to fight.”
It’s times like these that remind Eddie of the fact that he’s still out-of-the-loop when it comes to a lot of things. He knew that there was a kid with superpowers—Steve had told him as much back at Reefer Rick’s place, and then it was El who officially brought him back to life last night—but he had no idea that there had been a lab dedicated to training her to use those powers. Was the lab here in Hawkins? Jesus—was it Hawkins Lab? Eddie remembers reading things in the paper and hearing things on the radio about that place. So, what? Was it all a bunch of cover-ups? Has Hawkins Lab been screwing around with the Upside Down all along?
Eddie feels sick. He tries to ignore the churning of his stomach and makes a mental note to ask someone for more information about the lab later.
“That’s why El’s the superhero,” he says. “But we’re not, Red. We’re just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now have the scars to show for it.”
“But what if we aren’t? What if we can learn to control it just like El can? What if we can fight? Just imagine it. Me, you, El, and Will. We could be the answer to everything.”
“I don’t—”
“There are four gates, Eddie.”
He sighs. “Yeah.”
“And four of us.”
“Red…”
“You can’t tell me that you didn’t feel anything when you walked in here earlier. We’re connected, somehow. Not just to the Upside Down, but to each other. To Vecna. To everything. If we can learn to harness the energy inside of us just like El can, maybe we can help her close the gates and destroy the Upside Down for good.”
It makes a little too much sense, if Eddie is being completely honest. But maybe that isn’t a good thing. Maybe this is all part of Vecna’s plan. Maybe this is why Eddie didn’t just stay dead. He can’t help but think that this is all some kind of elaborate trap.
“It just sounds too good to be true, you know?” he says.
A crease forms between Max’s brows. “I guess,” she says. “But… Promise me you’ll at least think about it. Just mull it all over for a few days, and if you still don’t think it’s possible after that, then we can forget about it.”
Well. There’s no harm in doing some thinking, right?
“Alright,” Eddie says. “No way am I bringing this up at the meeting tomorrow, by the way.”
“You don’t have to. Not yet, anyway. El and I are still figuring it all out. Until we know for sure… Well, I’m sure Nancy will have theories and plans of her own. We’ll stick with those for now. But we should tell Will about this, too.”
“I still don’t know Little Byers very well, but I’ll see if I can find a moment tomorrow to talk to him alone.”
“Thanks, Eddie.” Max smiles gratefully. “You and Steve should probably leave now. I’m surprised he even let you out in public in the first place.”
“Hey, I’m wearing a pretty good disguise, you know.”
“Let me guess,” she says, in the same tone of voice she’d use before when she was rolling her eyes. “You’re wearing sunglasses and a hat. Am I right?”
“And a hood,” Eddie adds defensively. “What do you think I am, an amateur?”
Max laughs. “Go home, Eddie. And be careful.”
He ruffles her hair gently as he stands up. Before he reaches the door, he pauses and looks over at Max again.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Red.”
“I’m glad you are, too,” she says. “Thanks for coming today.”
Eddie lifts his hood again and slips on the sunglasses. He leaves the room just in time to see Lucas and Steve round the corner at the end of the corridor. Steve pats Lucas on the shoulder, then waits as Lucas and Eddie pass each other.
“See you tomorrow, Sinclair,” Eddie says, bumping their shoulders together.
Lucas glances around to make sure that nobody else is within earshot, before saying, “See ya, Eddie.”
He disappears into Max’s room while Eddie catches up to Steve. There's concern written plainly on his face, and it undoubtedly has something to do with Max wishing to speak with Eddie in private. Unfortunately for him, Eddie is nothing if not a man of his word, so he won’t tell him about what Max said until they have the proof that they need to either support or invalidate her theory. For now, he loops his arm around Steve’s and drags him in the direction of the exit.
“Time to go home, Harrington. I’ve had a busy day.”
Steve snorts. He pats the back of Eddie’s hand, then just keeps his own hand stacked on top of Eddie’s instead of dropping it back to his side. His palm is warm and soft against Eddie’s knuckles. Eddie is so distracted by the feeling and the sight of their hands together that he doesn’t even register the fact that they’re outside again until Steve is shaking him off, reaching for his keys so that he can unlock the car.
They drive back home in silence, but it isn’t uncomfortable. Eddie simply has a lot to think about, and he’s sure that Steve’s mind is equally plagued by all kinds of thoughts about what will happen next.
When they stop in Steve’s driveway, Eddie gets out of the car. Steve doesn’t follow. Instead, he rolls down the window and waits for Eddie to lean closer before speaking quietly.
“I’ll see you in a while, okay? There’s a spare key under the plant pot next to the door. You should probably just keep it. Just in case, you know?”
“Where are you going?” Eddie asks.
“I just have some things to do. I won’t be long, I promise.”
His face is open and honest—calm, even. It’s enough to reassure Eddie that there’s nothing wrong. So, he salutes Steve exaggeratedly and steps away from the car.
“Whatever you say, Harrington. I’ll see you soon.”
Steve waits until Eddie is inside the house before backing out of the driveway. Eddie watches him leave through the thin opening he’s left in the door. Only when his car has vanished from sight and the rumble of the engine has faded does Eddie close the door. He hesitates for a moment before locking it for good measure.
And then he’s faced with Steve’s empty, silent house. It’s a little creepy like this, he thinks. Eddie can hear the echo of his own footsteps as he walks along the hallway, and he sees his breaths steaming up in front of his face every time he exhales. The house is so cold when there’s nobody else around to fill it with warmth. He wonders how Steve has managed to live here for so long, practically alone by the sound of it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why he didn’t hesitate to ask Eddie to stay. Maybe, he would have asked any warm body to stick around.
Eddie doesn’t linger downstairs for too long. He makes his way up to Steve’s room, immediately feeling comforted by the creaky door and the glow of the lamp from the bedside table. It’s the most lived-in room in the entire house. The Harrington residence might not truly feel like a home, but Steve’s bedroom certainly does.
He puts the Tears For Fears disc on the record player again and collapses onto the bed as Head Over Heels begins to play. Maybe Steve is right. Maybe Eddie is starting to enjoy this song. It wasn’t completely bad to begin with, honestly. The chorus is catchy. Eddie finds himself humming along as he lies there, tapping his hands against the sheets.
The front door opens just under an hour later. Eddie is still lying down, and he’s almost managed to drift into sleep. The sound of rustling bags and footsteps along the hall downstairs has him snapping his eyes open, though. He rolls off of the bed and stumbles downstairs without bothering to turn off the music.
He meets Steve in the kitchen, where he’s just finished setting three plastic bags onto the counter. Eddie comes to a stop beside him and immediately reaches for one of the bags, raising his brows when he finds a bunch of random snacks inside.
“What’s all this?”
“Food,” Steve says, as if that much wasn’t already obvious. “It’s for you. I, um, don’t really know what you usually eat, so I just grabbed anything I could find that isn’t meat. There are eggs and milk—I needed more of those anyway—but also chips and nuts and some of this… soy stuff?”
“Tofu?” Eddie asks. He’s only managed to unpack half of the first bag so far. Jesus.
“Sure. I picked out a whole bunch of vegetables too, most of which I’ve never eaten in my life. I figured I could try them with you.”
Eddie’s hand bumps into something solid and sharp—plastic. A case of some sort. He picks it up and raises it out of the bag. It’s a tape of a movie that Eddie hasn’t seen before. If the image on the front of the case is anything to go by, it’s some kind of romantic comedy. Steve probably chose it because it’s the furthest thing from horror, which is understandable. Still, Eddie can’t help but feel a little flustered.
“This isn’t food.”
“Oh, yeah. I dropped by Family Video on the way home,” Steve explains. “I know I said we have movies here, but honestly, it’s all shit my parents used to watch when they were actually home. Most of the stuff we have is from, like, before I was even born. As far as I can remember, none of it is any good.”
“Well, this looks promising. At least we can make fun of it if it’s bad.”
Steve grins. “Yeah, exactly. D’you wanna go get it set up? I’ll grab the snacks.”
Eddie does as he’s been told, taking the tape into the living room while Steve starts retrieving bowls from his cupboards to fill with some of the snacks he’s bought. The Harringtons have a nice TV—big and shiny and new, although that could just be its lack of use making it seem new—and Eddie stands in front of it for a moment with his hands on his hips and his bottom lip drawn between his teeth. He wonders whether Steve and his parents have ever sat down in front of this television together to watch a movie. He wonders whether Steve has ever invited Robin and Dustin over to watch one with him, instead.
The TV is clean. Spotless, even. Eddie imagines Steve dusting it carefully, wiping away the thin layer of grime around each of the knobs and fixing up the antennas when he accidentally knocks them out of place. All so that he can continue to let the TV sit there, quiet and unused like most of the things in this house.
Eddie has never been so grateful that he grew up with his uncle. Their trailer was small and full of junk, but at least it was a home. They’d watch movies together and eat breakfast at the same table and bicker whenever the hot water ran out because Eddie took too long washing his hair.
God, he misses Uncle Wayne.
He can hear Steve stepping into the hallway, so he quickly composes himself and bends down to insert the tape. He switches on the TV just as Steve enters the room, a bowl in each hand and a few extra bags of chips tucked under one arm. Eddie takes one of the bowls from him to free up one of his hands, and he gives Eddie a grateful nod before setting everything else down onto the coffee table.
“Lights on?” Steve asks.
“God, yeah.”
Steve nods and gestures towards the couch. He busies himself with opening the bags of chips as Eddie takes a seat, then he drags the coffee table closer to the couch so that they can both reach the snacks without needing to leave their seats.
When Steve finally comes to sit beside Eddie, his ass barely even touches the seat of the couch before he’s suddenly springing back up to his feet again.
“Forgot something,” is the only explanation he provides.
He jogs back into the kitchen while Eddie remains seated. Eddie recognises the sound of the fridge opening, and then—
“Oh, yes,” Eddie all but moans.
Amidst the whoosh of cans being cracked open, he hears Steve laughing in the kitchen. He returns a moment later with two beers in his hands.
Eddie could kiss him again. He really could. He definitely wants to. Fuck.
Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek and takes the can being offered to him. He takes a tentative sip, then groans and gulps down some more. It tastes like goddamn molten gold.
“I could get used to this,” he says. “Fancy house, expensive beers, good company. This is the dream.”
“I agree with the part about the beers and the company,” Steve says as he settles in beside Eddie. “I think I could manage without the house, though.”
Eddie snorts. “Believe me, Harrington, sleeping in the woods isn’t as fun as people think. Be grateful that you have a roof over your head, and a damn big one at that.”
“I’m not saying I’m not grateful, I just— I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“No, come on. What were you going to say?”
Steve sets his can of beer down onto the table, then shrugs. “It just gets lonely here, I guess. It’s too quiet. I hate being here most of the time.”
“Even when I’m here too?” Eddie asks. He aims for teasing, but the question ends up sounding more vulnerable than he’d like it to.
“No,” Steve says. “You make this place louder and warmer. Easier to live in. Even when you were just a bat, you made a difference. Before you got here, though— It was much worse.”
Eddie thinks back to the quietness that had seemed to close in on him as soon as Steve left him alone earlier, and then he thinks of the residual warmth in Steve’s room and the relief that he’d felt as soon as Steve returned. It’s easy to understand what he means.
“Well, it looks like I’ll be sticking around for a while,” he says. He grins at Steve. “Only time will tell whether that’ll turn out to be a blessing or a curse for you, Harrington.”
Steve bumps their thighs together. Inside Eddie’s chest, his heart pounds painfully.
“I’m sure I’ll cope, Munson.”
So, they watch the movie. And it’s bad—truly horrible, actually. But that’s okay, because it means that Eddie gets to rip into it as much as he likes. The more he complains about the ridiculous plot, the more Steve laughs. It fills the entire house with noise and warmth. Eddie sinks into it, tips his head back as it washes over him, and thinks that he really could get used to this.