Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve’s busy doing the mock-up menu boards that his absolutely batshit boss thinks are a genius idea, Steven, are you sure you came up with it yourself?—which A: rude, if on brand for the crazy asshole, but B: yes, in fact, he did come up with it himself, namely by sometimes actually listening when his best friend rambles, across the past 20-years-and-change, then waiting for a monster name to come up that could match a fucking coffee—it didn’t require understanding the nerd game for real to put together a Vecnilla Cold Brew to try and drum up the dweeb demo from the school down the street—but whatever.

(It is possible he co-opted some of the specific knowledge of light versus dark…somethings from the gremlin children-who-aren’t-children-anymore-shit-some-of-them-have-children-but-it’s-not-like-that-spares-Steve-the-role-of-chauffeur-when-they-all-fly-home-to-visit, but yeah, sure, he might have picked up some babble from the goblins he used to babysit—and he still does babysit for the families in their neighborhood sometimes, Steve’s 100% valid for still calling the original batch a special kind of shithead—and if they’d chosen, then to now, to bicker in Nerd-wegian at migraine-inducing pitches, whether Steve was driving them home from school or arrivals at IND? Steve’s gonna count any ideas he cops off their rambling as gas money.

He’s the one who matched it to coffee roasts, either way, so.)

The point is: Steve’s busy with the chalk behind the counter when the midday lull is in full swing, which means, despite it only having been less than four hours since seeing each other last—they’d both technically been late because Eddie had overslept, again, but Steve factored that into his schedule as a regularly anticipated delay, and Eddie’s manager at the off-brand hippie-crystal store was either high as a kite or doing some sort of morning ritual to the sun spirits or fuck-ever, either way being too occupied to notice, let alone give a shit that Eddie was late at least half the time for the morning shift—but yeah. Eddie’d been and gone with his regular mocaccino for ‘Elevenses’ already, so actually it’s closer to just three hours since Steve’s last seen the man, but when Eddie pushes through the single door like the one dirty hot guy Viggo what’s-his-name played, who they thought was dead but came back to the Hell’s Deep: when Eddie does that and grins at Steve all bright as fuck, comes over and pulls him out from behind the counter like he always does when the place is dead and hugs Steve like they’ve been apart for at least a hundred years?

It kinda makes Steve’s day. Because his best friend is a fucking weirdo, but he’s a ray-of-sunshine kind of fucking weirdo.

Today’s a little extra, though; Steve doesn’t know how Eddie wrangles so many trips to the cafe on the clock, especially when he rarely gets anything for whoever’s working with him to soften the length of his ‘breaks’, but usually Eddie pushes his caffeine fix out to just after his shift ends versus demanding ‘Afternoon Tea, but with the espresso instead of the leafy stuff, for I much prefer my leaves for the smoking, good sir, as any of the Shirefolk worth their mettle would agree’ at 3pm on the dot like he does at home when they both have a day off.

But here they are, obviously on a work day, at 3:17 according to Steve’s watch, and then Eddie’s bouncing in, hugging Steve fit to crush him until it cracks his back and feels fucking awesome for it, and Eddie just grins when he pulls away like he always does, before he opens the fridge and looks for the whipped cream.

“Dude,” Steve pretends to chide him like he gives a shit, but Eddie just goes about setting the canister next to Steve, and then one of the little mini cups next to that, before sliding back around and popping his elbows onto the countertop, leaning his chin on his folded hands in wordless anticipation.

The fucker.

He generally got over Eddie’s requests for a fucking puppuccino as a grown-ass adult literal years ago, somewhere between refusing so many times his voice was hoarse by the point where he caved like they both knew he would, and screeching at Eddie that the barista bar was not like the cafeteria tables, and so he could not climb on top of them to give a bullshit proclamation about equal treatment and capitalism trying to keep the honest worker down while rewarding the canine population for absolutely no work whatsoever, as if the asshole didn’t turn around and baby-talk at a labradoodle five seconds later. But yeah, now he mostly just makes bitchy comments as Eddie rocks his shoulders back and forth with a shit-eating grin as he waits for Steve to give this almost-30-year-old-man a fucking cup of whipped cream.

For him to eat while refusing any spoon or straw because, y’know: equal treatment.

Steve sometimes wonders if his eyes would have actually rolled out of his head by now, if they hadn’t been hardened by so many years of constant training to withstand Eddie’s…Eddie-ness.

“Is that what the collar’s for, today?” Steve asks, pointing with one hand at Eddie’s throwback choice of accessory while he slides over the doggy-sized, suspiciously free-of-charge cup of cream; “solidarity with the target demographic?”

Eddie takes his cup and doesn’t even bother reacting to Steve’s dig at his…throwback accessory choices before thrusting his tongue into the cup shamelessly, bottoming out because it’s not deep enough then licking up the sides, same as he always does.

Eddie winks at Steve on the first massive lap of cream salaciously like it’ll somehow miraculously phase him this time. Steve guesses he can call the man…undeterred.

Usually for the worse, but. Y’know.

“You seek to wound me,” Eddie says with a stage-like gravitas that’s wholly undermined by the whipped cream on the tip of his nose like a bleach-out clown schnoz; “but I would be only too honored to stand with the four-legged working class.”

“I thought they were the slackers,” Steve pushes his cuticles, all nonchalant and unbothered to temper how snide he’s being; “rewards for no actual labor?”

“Stevie,” Eddie, as ever, sees straight through him and then pole vaults over the friendly banter by setting down his cup and clutching his hands to his chest, batting his eyes as he sighs: “you were actually listening.”

Lesser men would probably blush, no matter who they liked to fall into bed with. Hell, Steve would probably blush with any other man, or honestly most women. But this is Eddie.

Which means: 1) this isn’t new, and furthermore, 2) if Steve blushed at all the bullshit Eddie pulled he’d have turned into a tomato by freshman year.

“If you’re only here for the whip,” Steve patently ignores Eddie’s honestly kinda offensive, and definitely pretty pathetic, attempt at even a joke of a flirtation—of course Steve listens to him; “couldn’t you have asked at the boba place?”

Because the boba place is not only inside the mall, where the cafe is lot-facing just around the corner from the front door, but even more convenient: it’s right outside Eddie’s woo-woo store. Like, his boss could sun-salute at the popping jelly sphere display or…whatever.

“And miss the opportunity to see my favorite person in the whole wide world?” Eddie asks all pitchy, honestly shocked and appalled at the suggestion but: that’s the thing. It’s always been the thing.

Because while Steve knows that’s not the only reason Eddie’s brightening his doorway and tanking his productivity, he…knows it actually really is a genuine component part. They’d been thick as thieves more of their lives than not, but high school’s not kind to anyone, really, not all the way through in every way possible, and Steve had never left Eddie out to dry. But when he’d gotten ‘popular’ for reasons that he still doesn’t understand—he always chalked it up to the Hair but he didn’t really make the most of that until the end of Junior Year, so where’d the rest come in?—but from the first time he had to nip a less-than-kind word toward Eddie when Steve spent time with his new ‘cool’ friends who honestly never lasted long because if they were what cool meant, Steve didn’t want cool, and if the school hierarchy was going to continue dubbing him cool for reasons unknown? Then it was going to shut the fuck up about Eddie Munson, who Steve thought, cool or uncool or whatever he wanted to be, was far and away better company than anyone he had lunch with, or played sports alongside. He was Eddie.

Why do you even put up with that weirdo Freak anyway, man?, it’d been Tommy…H., Hagan, Steven thinks; fuck, but he hasn’t thought about the guy himself in years but he and his girlfriend had stuck around the longest out of Steve’s rotating ‘cool’ acquaintances—a fact that also baffled him, but on top of that, he understood their claim to being so-called-cool even less than his own, then and looking back now—but it had definitely been Tommy who was stupid enough to take a swipe at Eddie straight out. It wasn’t a secret Eddie ran with his own clique that contained a singular Steve-shaped exception, but it also wasn’t a secret that you didn’t badmouth either half of their dynamic duo without consequence—ever since that first fateful day on the playground.

But Steve, on that day, had been a little crossfaded and therefore a little forgiving. He’d shoved Tommy hard enough for him to wince, maybe leave a bruise, before he’d said the latest version of what they always ended up with, either one of them, when called upon to explain what looked from the outside the most inexplicable friendship:

He’s like my spleen, man, so don’t let me catch you disrespecting my fucking spleen again.

Steve had stolen back the joint and finished it long and greedy to make his point because it was really that simple: Eddie was basically a part of him. Friend and family and then some. And when Tommy crossed the line further, bolder, way dumber later in the year, he’d left Steve’s orbit with a broken nose, while Steve was just left with a little waiting period for the next place-holder populars to sit across from him at lunch—because not once ever did he and Eddie share a lunch period; it felt kinda targeted after middle school, to be honest—but that was the thing.

All that time, there was always Eddie.

Then to now.

“I need your opinion.”

Steve snaps back into the present where the subject in question is indeed right there in the now, staring at Steve intently before he deems Steve’s attention to be sufficiently focused on him and him alone before he gets to…whatever he needs and opinion on.

Which is apparently his ballet skills, because what Eddie does is a little twirl out of nowhere, straight in front of the register, his beat-to-shit Docs squeaking on the fake wood floor as he catches himself in an absurd fucking pose that looks seconds from tumbling into the basket display of seasonal roasts if he holds it too much longer.

And yep: fall he does, almost chin-first into the counter—Steve darts a hand out to soften the impact while Eddie hops on one foot in a circle even he can’t pass off as intentional, and only one of the bags of beans bursts open when the top crate falls for the impact of…well, Eddie.

Once Steve’s sure Eddie’s squarely settled back on his feet, he taps some buttons on the register.

“That’ll be $18.57.”

Eddie stills: a feat, always, for someone so constantly in motion—even if the coffee display had aided in the process of literally stalling his momentum.

“For one bag?”

“Plus tax.”

Eddie stares, full-on fucking aghast. He means it too, Steve can tell, versus just hamming it up. It’s cute.

“For one bag.”

“Inflation, twinkle-toes,” Steve sighs and reaches out a hand for cash or card; “plus it’s limited edition.”

Steve knows fuck all about why it’s limited edition, but he’ll admit that upon pain of death—he’s not risking Murray getting wind of it and giving him another long lecture on the process of, of…coffee beaning, or whatever.

That was a dark day he wishes never to repeat; once was more than enough.

“Goddamn late-stage capitalism, gonna fucking kill us all,” Eddie grumbles, ignoring Steve’s hand and tapping his just-past-the-cut-for-Apple-Pay ancient iPhone to the terminal, almost like it’s an act of rebellion when it actually makes Steve’s life easier. Steve is either amused by the failure to make the point, or grateful because Eddie knows what saves Steve the effort best and did it that way on purpose.

Maybe he’s both.

“It looks good though, right?”

Steve frowns—coffee beans look like coffee beans and he’s not sure you could even pour them over an oil-slicked-up naked body and make them ‘look good’—but then he follows Eddie’s gaze not to the beans Steve will need to sweep up, but to where he’s posing, at least stationary about it this time and – ah. He was not in fact looking for an opinion about his dance moves (kinda horrible but very entertaining, points where due). He’d meant the outfit.

And what it looks like is most of what’s in his closet, plus some lucky finds from Hot Topic, given their bend toward the tame since Eddie and Steve were in school.

“You don’t look a day over yesterday,” Steve shrugs, and Eddie doesn’t even have to fully form his pout before Steve’s ready to rebut; “you’ve always dressed like this.”

“Excuse you,” Eddie scoffs loudly; “I’ve toned it down in the wisdom of my years,” he sticks his nose high in the air, even, and sniffs hastily. “I’m an upstanding member of society, pay my taxes and everything.”

Steve can’t help but snort. Loud, like, the painful kind that’s so fucking worth it anyway for the way Eddie’s eyes narrow for being called out.

“Oh forgive me,” Steve deadpans; “the second-shift manager who definitely doesn’t hide that she’s a furry in the daytime actually does rob you of the most-eclectic wardrobe prize, you’re right.” Because while that’s a bald-faced lie—Steve knows she’s a furry because she told him when she came in for her own coffee for reasons Steve’s still unclear about, gave him a card she uses for the apparent conventions they hold that told him all about her fur-son, like person-in-fur Steve figures, and it’s actually pretty impressive and looks like the most cuddly costume-type-thing he’s ever seen, way comfier and cuter than the shit the nerd squad did, and still does, for their various comic-book gatherings; but Steve never would have known had he not been informed outright over small talk making a caramel corridor—but the point is that it’s at least more believable than trying to argue that the second-wave-feminist-crystal-toting Wiccan from the mornings would do jack shit to tone down Eddie’s vibe.

“Eclectic,” Eddie ultimately spits out, which: not a denial of the accusation. “You make me sound like a goddamn folk festival.”

Steve squints, tilts his head in that way everyone’s always likened to a dog while he sizes up just how much of a rise he wants to elicit, and ultimately nods because:

“I could see it.”

Go big or go home.

Eddie’s jaw drops as Steve stops holding back the urge to cackle, even as Eddie dips his finger into his tiny cup and gathers enough of his remaining puppuccino to flick at Steve, who’s honestly more surprised it makes contact with his cheek than anything before he gathers up his own indignation.

“That’s precious merchandise!”

“That I just paid for!”

Eddie didn’t use what he just paid for in his assault, and Steve wasn’t talking about the ammo, thank you very much. He had no desire to finish his shift with whipped cream looking like something very different stuck to his person more than necessary.

“Those are complimentary,” Steve pivots, pointing an accusatory finger at Eddie’s sad little cup; “I should make Murray put up a sign that you need a real live dog to accompany you before you’re allowed to order one.”

Eddie snorts, knows the threat’s empty, and at least takes the also-now-definitely-empty cup to the trash before he crouches and collects his only-half-busted bag of beans.

“It’s mostly the belt, right?”

Eddie looks up through his bangs in askance.

“The throwback,” Steve gestures to the three whole belts circling Eddie’s still kind of absurdly teeny-tiny waist. “For tonight.”

Eddie stands up and leans into the counter, walks with his elbows over to where Steve stands.

“You noticed,” he bats his stupid-long lashes…well, stupidly long. Dweeb.

“Hmm,” Steve draws the sound out with all the light judgment he can fit inside; “kinda hard not to,” he razzes Eddie with a quirked brow but, as usual, Eddie’s unfazed.

“Well, maybe it would be if you weren’t lookin—“

Steve lobs a new bag of the Limited Roast in Eddie's direction, because anything else in arm’s-reach would be painful. And Steve isn’t aiming for hurting.

He’s aiming for silence.

“Precious merchandise!” Eddie shouts all accusation—failure, Steve fails to get any silence, par for the course—even if the bag falls pretty harmlessly into his arms for how Steve arced the throw to shut him up. “Coming out of your paycheck!”

First: Steve’s not a rookie, you’ve gotta throw it long-end like a football and not flat to land blunt from the back if you don’t want it to burst open; the seams have to take the hit, not be pushed out by all the air. Duh.

Second:

“I could afford it,” Steve rolls his eyes; “it’s your month for rent and utilities.”

Eddie blinks, like either the fact hadn’t registered or something about the fact takes him by surprise, but Steve flicks one of the stray beans from before in Eddie’s direction and he rallies quick, eyes narrowed as he sidesteps the mini-projectile.

“Dodged, mofo,” Eddie celebrates with a much more constrained kind of dance this time, very heavy on shimmying the shoulders and hips like a deranged snake charmer; “and which one of us lettered in high school? What-what?”

He whoops and cheers on behalf of a non-existent audience; raises the roof like the whole-ass dork he is down to his bones.

“I don’t even know what era that’s referencing, dude,” Steve gestures to the whole of Eddie’s display; “but I’m pretty sure it clashes with your outfit no matter what.”

Eddie’s face scrunches petulantly before he tucks his obligatory bag of broken coffee beans into the crook of his elbow and flips Steve off with both hands as he moves toward the door.

“You sound like a farm animal with the fucking jingle-jangle of those pants,” Steve calls instead of saying goodbye as the chains clank at Eddie’s thighs with every step. “How’d I even get through high school without hearing loss, Jesus.”

Eddie pauses, starts to turn, and Steve readies himself for an assault—he can see a stray bean in the wrinkle at Eddie’s collar, hanging precariously but easily accessible as his weapon of choice if he’s noticed it.

“You know,” Eddie says, voice…too considering. Almost subdued. “Stevie,” and he turns wide eyes on Steve, and the readiness in Steve’s body shifts from defensive to protection: because there’s something off in all of this all of a sudden—and Steve might not know quite what yet but he needs to, to…

He needs to be on guard in case the off-thing is something wrong.

“I’m feeling a little feverish all of a sudden,” Eddie gasps a little, breathes deep like he’s trying to steady himself as he grabs for the back of a chair near the door.

“Shit,” Steve grabs the corner of the front counter and swings himself around, makes to come to Eddie’s side. “Like, bad? I’ve got Tylenol, wait a second, let me go grab—”

“No, no,” Eddie waves him off, but the gesture’s weak, floppy, as he shakes his head with a grimace; “Stevie, I’ve just got this fever, and the only prescription—”

“Oh my god, no,” Steve cannot believe he fell for this shit. Steve cannot believe he is best fucking friends with someone who still pulls this shit—

“Is more cowbe—”

Steve knows the layout of the shop, not least because he fucking works here, but he single-handedly puts it away or drags back out nearly every goddamn shift. So Steve knows very well where the display tower that didn’t get twirled into is, and therefore can grab a bag of beans without even having to look before launching it the right way in Eddie’s direction because fucking hell, but he’d kinda like to banish that SNL sketch to the pits of Mount Dune or wherever the fuck the one ring melted, that place—and Eddie knows it.

And that’s exactly why it’s always popping its head up between the two of them like the most annoying whack-a-mole. Eddie thrives on annoying Steve to tears.

And has yet to grow out of it so, Steve’s really not holding out hope for it anymore.

“Now there’s that sportsball aim I expect from his highness,” Eddie crows as he cradles the bag to his chest where Steve had landed a solid hit—it was aimed well enough not to break because yeah, Steve’s not an amateur, but it was hard enough to knock the lingering bean on Eddie’s collar into his hands, which the idiot fucking pops between his fucking lips and chows down on like an animal, Jesus, all exaggerated chewing around a shit-eating grin.

“Asshat,” Steve shoots his way with an eye roll, but no heat. Eddie’s grin just frowns before he swallows and declares:

“Crunchy.”

He’s thoughtful enough to make a show of walking the bag Steve threw at him back and placing it carefully back where it came from, patting it affectionately before spinning, chains jangling as he ducks in and licks Steve’s cheek, to Steve’s vocal disgust.

“Had a little suspicious something, there, sweetheart, can’t take you anywhere,” Eddie tutted when Steve wiped at the slobber on him and—yeah. Sticky enough to have clearly been leftover whipped puppucino cream.

That Eddie launched at him in the first place, so, again:

Fucker.

“Be here on time if you want a ride home before we have to leave, dipshit!”

Steve’s pretty sure Eddie doesn’t actually hear him and only flips him off again by sheer force of habit, but either way: it’s the one time Steve is pretty sure he doesn’t have to worry about Eddie being late when they have somewhere be.

Going to their class reunion was Eddie’s idea in the first place, after all.

Chapter Text

Eddie does some of his best thinking in the shower.

Usually, it’s around better chord progressions or a killer plot twist for his latest campaign. Tonight, though, and maybe it’s the odd hour—Eddie’s a morning shower person, so grabbing a second one right after work’s got him off-kilter anyway—but probably it’s got something to do with the reason for an extra turn in a shower to begin with: going back to Hawkins High for the first time in a decade.

So naturally, probably, his thoughts float back to the beginning as he lets the water soak his curls; first day of first grade: real school. His uncle had taken him in, what with his dad in prison and his mom either dead or M.I.A.—to this day no one really knows, save that she was wrapped up in the shit that sent his dad to the slammer and has kept him there to this very day, and will keep him there for many more of Eddie’s class reunions to come.

Anyway. Not the point.

What he mostly remembers is first recess, because they’d had two a day back then. And he’d found a broken swing with lots of unbothered dirt that no one had been kicking while the swing was out of commission, and since nobody knew him, or wanted to play, he figured he’d just…make his own distraction. He had always been good at that.

Then a shadow—not a big one, but a dark one, a close one, had covered up his handiwork, and that had been the beginning, really.

“Whatcha doing?”

He remembers looking up and thinking: with the sun all around him and the stars mapped out in dark dots on his skin, surely this was a boy sent from the sky.

He’d always had a vivid imagination.

“Drawing,” Eddie’d answered, and the shadow of the boy drew closer before he asked:

“Can I draw, too?” and Eddie’d lifted his head to shield his eyes when he’d asked:

“Are you any good?” and the other boy, that other, star-speckled boy—

Eddie still remembers how he laughed. Like, the first time he laughed and Eddie heard it.

Eddie kinda thinks back and wonders if it’d been as immediate as it feels in retrospect: making it part of his life mission, his own Munson Doctrine, making this specific boy, this man, just…laugh, as much as possible.

He wonders if he knew this boy deserved it, always, from the very start.

“Not really,” the boy’d shrugged, bending down to look at Eddie’s own scrubbing in the dirt.

“Then sure!” Eddie remembers brightening and patting the ground across from him where there was fresh dirt for etching into, because:

“I just wanna have fun, not enter a contest,” Eddie had explained and watched for a second as the boy chewed on his lip before making, fittingly, a star in the dust.

“What’s your name?”

That was when Eddie’d first noticed how this boy’s eyes were freckled, too, but looked bright like bee-honey in the corners.

“Steve.”

“That’s a weird name,” Eddie remembers saying, because it was so weird, so pretty, such a very cool name so weird was the best way he could think to say it.

Steve had grinned, missing two teeth, before he’d plopped down fully, like he was committing to settling in before he’d asked right back:

“What’s yours?”

“Eddie.”

And god, but Eddie likes to remember it maybe with full-rose-tinting but it’s like they were meant to be, best of friends from start to a finish far in the future still far beyond either of their lives alone, but Steve had grinned again with the gaps on the top and said the perfect fucking thing:

“Super weird name.”

And Eddie, he’d always been one to push his luck so he’d asked quick:

“Wanna have a weird name club?”

And Steve? Steve had, that day to this, been Eddie’s best gamble, the most amazing return he’d ever gotten on a player risk of being too much out the gate:

“Sure!”

And that’d been that.

Or else: almost.

“Hey!”

He remembers the grand finale of the pivotal day, and while when he thinks back on it now it’s with a snort at least; in those little-kid moments? Eddie’d been so scared that this one good thing was going to be snuffed out before he even got to enjoy it: like a first friend.

A for-real friend.

And he’d tried to look up with a genuine smile because maybe he was reading the pack of boys approaching them wrong but of course—

“Do you wanna draw, too?”

Of course he hadn’t been. Reading them wrong.

“No,” the first one had scoffed in the puffed-out-chest way that looks like it could tip someone that small over. “Drawing pictures is stupid.”

And they’d all laughed, and agreed, and turned to Steve in that expectant way, where a kid recognizes an ally, one of ‘their own’.

But then Steve had spoken up, tilted his chin almost challenging.

“What’s your name?”

And Eddie remembers that part so clearly, still: the way hope had sparked when he’d already learned not to expect it.

“I’m Jason,” the tallest of them pushed to the front, as you do when you’re all under five feet, then pointed to his side: “he’s Willie,” but Willie, in the most prescient display of the genuine cuntnugget he’d become, shoved Jason nearly to the ground to get up in front of him.

“It’s Billy,” he’d said, and Eddie remembers it mostly because the tone wasn’t the tone of. Kid, but struck Eddie more like what he remembered of his dad. “My mom’s gonna call and make sure the teachers say it right.”

And Steve, Steve had blinked at him while Willie stared him down for a reaction, the same reaction Jason was trying to quiet in the rest of the little posse, the natural juvenile urge to fucking giggle at a boy named Willie.

Steve just looked to the next kid, like he was waiting. Like these intruders were wasting his time.

Maybe…maybe their time. Him and Eddie.

“Tommy,” the next one had offered up before turning to his side:

“Tommy H,” and he’d said the last letter like it was worth some kind of pride.

“Tommy T,” and that kid had had the smarts to notice adding your last initial wasn’t the flex his other ‘friend’ seemed to think it was.

And Steve had hummed, seemed distant but unsure almost, and Eddie, well.

Again: he wasn’t lying when he said that the pushing-his-luck started early.

So he’d leaned in and waved Steve forward, eyeing the boys still standing suspiciously as he whispered close to his new-hopefully-real-friend:

“Those don’t seem like they’re very weird.”

And Steve had scrunched his lips up a little, confused: “What?”

“The names, for the club,” Eddie’d clarified. “Do they seem weird enough? Three of them are the same.”

And Eddie didn’t know then, and can’t remember well enough now, to figure exactly what Steve had stared at him with, what the tenor of that moment had been but.

Steve hadn’t jumped up and immediately left so, that day to this, Eddie counts it a win.

“That,” Steve had sucked again on his bottom lip, increasingly unsure; “hmm.”

“And they think drawing is stupid,” Eddie tried to remind him because: that was a pretty damning reason to deny anyone club membership. Flat out.

“I’m bad at it,” Steve had wavered, looking almost nervous as he glanced at the first where he’d been sitting; “maybe I shouldn’t—”

“Do you like it, though? Drawing?” And maybe Eddie had been desperate already; probably Eddie had been desperate. “Are you having fun?”

And Steve’s eyes had been bright, shy, but he’d nodded, and well.

That was that.

Eddie had bounced to his feet and stared down the gaggle of boys looming over their canvas space.

“Sorry, this is a very ‘pecific club. You can’t join.”

And it’d been memorably the most dumbstruck those assholes had been in the entire time Eddie’d had the displeasure of knowing them in the years to come, but it’d been there: a second where they’d been knocked down a peg before they’d pounced.

“I don’t want to be in some weird club, with someone like you, with your freak hair,” Willie-not-yet-Billy had snarled and knocked Eddie straight back down—and Eddie wasn’t even surprised by it.

He remembers being very surprised by someone popping up beside him and getting in the faces of all those boys, all laughing at Eddie on the ground. Someone glaring, standing in front of Eddie between him and those bullies, and…not laughing at all.

“Hey!” Steve had shouted; any louder and the teacher would come and he’d looked ready for it, to tattle on the boys if he had to, and Eddie remembers gaping so big he almost swallowed a horsefly while he’d watched one of the various Tommy’s try to turn him.

“You should come with us,” one of the Tommys had coaxed, glaring down his nose toward Eddie: “Nothing good to do with the Freak, he has girl hair.”

And Steve had just looked at them, Eddie couldn’t see how, but they’d left triumphantly, waving Steve to follow, but…Eddie hadn’t seen Steve as the type that followed.

But it’d felt immediately like he was wrong, a pit growing in his gut and a burn behind his eyes. So much for a real friend.

“You are weird.”

And Eddie’s head had snapped back up in a second because Steve was crouched down close with a smile, earnest-like.

“But I like it. I like you, you’re my friend,” and he’d said it so simple and sure, the way only kids can do and decide on so fast, but then he’d stiffened, with a quick crackless hardness Eddie wouldn’t understand for a while, still—how and why he knew this, despite his star-marks and his honey-eyes—but he’d stood, and he’d glared, and he’d growled:

“I don’t like people who are mean to my friends.”

“Wanting to be my friend is kinda weird,” Eddie remembers pointing out, unsure of anything except feeling hopeful despite it all.

“Then I’m kinda weird, I guess,” Steve had shrugged, pushing his hands in his pocket and kicking too close to his drawing and Eddie couldn’t have that, he’d ruin his pretty art—

“You’re my kinda weird,” Eddie had tugged on Steve's pant leg to stop him messing up the stars in the dirt. “I’m gonna keep you.”

And Steve had done the head tilt that made him look like a puppy again, but Eddie remembers only seeing him glowing in the sun at his back.

“Like a pet?” Steve had asked, more amused than concerned but Eddie hadn’t wanted that either because, no matter the head-tilting, what he’d meant was:

“Like a,” he’d bitten his lip to find the right word; “like a thumb, or a stomach or your lungs, just,” then he’d flapped his hands, frustrated, because it was right but it wasn’t quite right; “like something that’s a part of you.” Then Eddie’d ducked his head because it all felt true but he was definitely at the point of learning a lot of the true things he felt and then said out loud were what other people thought were too much. He’d tried to remember how to fix it as fast as he could because he didn’t want to mess this up. Not any of it.

“I guess a pet can be a part of you, like your family and stuff but,” Eddie kept his eyes down because even trying to fix it he didn’t want Steve not to know, because maybe losing whatever it was to have a real best friend before it started as better than Steve not knowing:

“I meant the other way.”

And to this day, Eddie’s not sure he’s ever yet known a silence to feel so long until—

“Yeah, okay,” and he’d looked up quick, because Steve’s sounded close, not like he’d run away without any screaming or anything at all, plus his voice had sounded bright and there he’d been, a little confused maybe but mostly, mostly looking just like one big toothy grin:

“Can I keep you too?”

And from that day to this: Eddie has said it all with far more understanding, and with an entire array of seriousness over the course of his lifetime but never once has he said the words that came next with more feeling:

“Stevie,” and he’d bowed himself forward like he’d seen once in a movie, where he’d heard the words at all, folded over himself so his nose was in the dirt: “I’d be most,” and he’d paused, trying to make sure he remembered the words right:

“Honored.”

He’d looked up eventually, where Steve was watching him funny, but…but not bad funny, like some kids did. Most kids, really, already.

“Weird,” Steve had said again before dusting off Eddie’s shoulders where he hadn’t realized it was needed before leaning down again and getting close to Eddie to speak close like a secret:

“Would you be mad if I try and talk to those guys?” he’d glanced over his shoulder where Eddie had already forgotten someone might be looking at them, waiting for Steve to join them. “I don’t want them messing with you, if I’m not around.”

“You don’t have to,” Eddie remembers saying it quick, more like a reflex, or probably sheer confusion: who had ever stood up for Eddie Munson, honestly? Why would they?

“I want to.”

And that’d been that, Steve squeezing Eddie’s dusted-off shoulder and scampering toward the mean gaggle of boys who couldn’t be in their club because their names were clearly inferior.

Everything about them, really, had been clearly inferior from the start.

Eddie remembers asking what Steve said to the other boys, especially when they just kind of glared at Eddie the whole rest of the day and the next, and recalls Steve simply shrugging and telling them being mean wasn’t cool, and if they wanted to grow up and be cool, they’d stop.

Looking back, if it was true, it’s so fucking wild that it worked for as long as it did.

By the time it became an issue again, closer to the start of middle school, Steve had less clout to work with—he was at his baby-fat-fights-gangly stage and he hadn’t gotten his contacts yet, so he was as much a target as anyone for a brief stretch of years, and it was Eddie who fought off the sneers with his scathing secret weapon: you know Mr. Harrington could sue your stupid daddy into the trailer park, then you’d be my neighbor.

Steve would never have leveraged his parents’ reputation or their money like that, because his parents were never around, and Steve got twitchy and uncomfortable and lied about sleeping over at Eddie’s most of the nights they were actually home because oh boy, did the Harringtons dislike Eddie, but: when Eddie scared the other boys in their grade straight with the threat of them?

Steve was honestly more upset that Eddie thought being his neighbor was a deterrent. Because Steve thought that would be the best ever.

Even just thinking back on that day, branded bright in Eddie’s memory, leaves him feeling just, just…warm.

High School could have ripped them apart, more than once, and honestly when Steve started hanging out after school with some of the people who glared hardest—never said shit, lest it get back to Steve, King Steve: who was suddenly the top of the food chain and seen for being as fucking amazing as Eddie always knew beyond a doubt, but he still didn’t think anyone appreciated it, appreciated everything that Steve was enough, like they should—but even when they frayed a little, they never splintered, not for long. And when Steve’s friends asked why as much as Eddie’s once Hellfire really picked up, or when his band tried to talk Steve down for missing one of their shows because he had a swim meet: the answer was always some version of the same—

“He’s my spleen.”

“He’s my small intestine.”

“He’s my intrahepatic bile duct.” (Eddie still doesn’t really know what that is or what it does but he remembers reading it and it sound important and he stuck with that explanation for a while because people bought it being important, and that was the whole point of it: Steve and Eddie were important to each other. They were a matched fucking set.)

One time Eddie even overheard Steve saying, when they were in the middle of a minor disagreement and avoiding each other for a whole two days, and one of his prep-boy basketball teammates tried to ask why Steve bothered, when they were fighting, like one little fight was enough to break them, and what Steve had told him? Kinda said it all:

“He’s like my kidney, man,” Steve had shrugged; “fuckin’, like, stones and all.”

And Eddie’d waited for Steve after practice, after hearing that and feeling, just, yeah. And they’d hashed it out. Then they’d hit Taco Bell and split a quesadilla and all was well again.

The only other time Eddie remembers really arguing with Steve wasn’t even because it was a particularly bad, or long-lasting argument. He’s not even sure he remembers what it was about at all, save that it had to have been stupid. The reason he remembers is because of when it happened, and what happened at the same time, and how it was the last goddamn argument Eddie was ever going to have with his best friend.

Ever.

When the news of the fire reached him, he was at Gareth’s. He hadn’t talked to Steve all week, so while he knew Steve didn’t normally take closings at Scoops on Thursdays, he didn’t know, and sometimes Steve tried to pick up extra hours, at least when they were still planning on a road trip.

He burned so much rubber between driving to Loch Nora, to sicking up his dinner on the neighbors’ lawn when he’d seen Steve’s car nowhere in sight, to going at least 100 in the stretch of 35-zone between there and the mall that was…smoldering and Eddie’d just ran, he’d ran so blind and so desperate toward so many flashing lights and when they’d told him any survivors were taken to the hospital he’d done it all again in the opposite direction and he doesn’t remember what he’d said other than it having to have been Steve’s name when he collapsed in the crowded-as-hell waiting area near the nurses station, because what he most remembers is sobbing, or trying to and failing because there wasn’t any air and—

He’d recognized the girl who put her hands out to steady his shoulders from school. Her face was red, blotchy with the tears streaking her cheeks but also like staying out too long in the sun, or getting too close to—

Her uniform was singed. The same uniform that Steve—

They took him in back she’d told him, and it was only in the weeks that followed that Eddie felt like shit for not knowing her name when she clearly recognized him from his frequent visits when Steve was on the clock. He passed out and they took him away and they won’t let me see him or tell him anything and he saved me, he’s back there because he saved me and then she’d looked torn between crumbling and being distracted by Eddie, who’d…kinda already crumbled.

“He’s like my lungs,” he remembers it so clear, saying that like his own were being torn open and left in shreds then and there; “I can’t breathe, I,” and he’d cried some more, because of fucking course he had, and she’d pulled him to her side and they’d sat there, barely more than strangers, waiting for any shred of news, of, of hope and—

Eddie vowed that he’d never fight like that with Steve again, where they let distance grow between them, even by the count of days. Because the handful of hours he spent in that ER, just waiting had fucking ruined him.

But Steve pulled through. He was okay. It was smoke inhalation and the length of time was all breathing treatments or something, Eddie didn’t hear much save that Steve was okay, as in a living-breathing Steve was somewhere in this hospital and maybe Eddie’d burst into tears for it, so what if he had—of fucking course he had.

He could breathe.

It’d ended up with Steve being fine enough to ask for them, and they’d both nearly ran to the room number they were given. Steve had looked exhausted, a little too pale for Eddie’s liking, but his smile was the same. Tired, but not any…dimmer.

Still fucking there.

They’d hugged and it’d lasted a shorter stretch than Eddie would probably have kept it if he hadn’t been able to feel the presence of Steve’s coworker nearly vibrating next to him, but.

Eddie’s hissed at him before he pulled back—I better be listed as your emergency contact before we leave here, Harrington, because that’d been why they’d waited in fear so long, fucking bureaucracy—and Steve had laughed, rough and ragged but he’d laughed, and they were alright again.

And they both gained Robin in the balance—Steve’s platonic soulmate, and Eddie’s first fellow queer friend—so, like: Eddie wouldn’t risk Steve for anything. If he had a magic wand he’d have changed it all and kept Steve safe, no matter what got missed out on. But he’s pretty wandless, so, he more than appreciates the silver lining of Robin Buckley in their lives, and thanks the whole goddamn universe that it all turned out okay.

It was probably the catalyst of Eddie learning he’d actually had a queer friend all along, when Steve came out to both him and Robs as bi within the year—his argument having been that life was too short to hold back on it, and he’d been slapped across the face with it too hard to ignore—and after his parents found out, they were all in his corner, Wayne too, when they kicked him out of his house and his inheritance in one fell swoop. Eddie remembers the first night they’d spent living together in the trailer, how Steve had laughed in the dark out of nowhere and whispered:

“Always said being your neighbor would be the best thing,” and Eddie can still hear the rustle of Steve’s hair on the pillow as he shook his head; “roommate is way better.”

And they were roommates in the literal sense as long as they needed to be, before Steve could afford the apartment he wanted, which Eddie celebrated for Steve’s sake and lamented for his own until Steve took him to see it and there were definitely two bedrooms and Robin already had her campus housing and then Steve was slapping his shoulder and hugging Eddie hard from behind when he stared gaping like a fish, and said you didn’t really think I was leaving behind the best roommate I could ask for, did you, numb-nuts?, just before he gave Eddie a full-on fucking noogie that he forgave for the tangles it’d leave him with because Eddie wasn’t stupid enough to actually believe he was anything like a good roommate, like he tried but also he was a lot, so: Steve was saying something else.

Steve wasn’t leaving his best friend behind. And hadn’t ever planned to.

And just remembering that fact now makes Eddie smile for its own sake, and shit, to think where they are, that they’re still here, like this—maybe not as far from where they started as they’d hoped, working retail just an hour from their hometown, but facing the world side by side like they planned to always, it’s just—

“Jesus fuck.”

Eddie startles as the water he’s showering under cuts abruptly; in fact he startles so sudden and sharp he maybe…slips and crashes straight to the fucking floor, tearing the curtain down over him like a plastic-skin blanket.

“Are you okay?”

Eddie pops his head up past the lip of the tub to be greeted with Steve’s concern staring at him full-blast.

“Peachy,” Eddie groans as he sits up; “water’s out.” And maybe he glares up at the shower head, but hey: at least the shower curtain seems to have wiped off the body soap, all he’s got to deal with is what was left on his hair.

“Shit,” Steve frowns and tries the sink: no dice. At least he’d showered first, so there’s that.

“I’ll check the kitchen, then if there’s nothing I’ll run to Claudia’s, see if it’s not just us,” and that makes sense, plus Claudia’s such a love—they’d met when Steve had accidentally adopted her son when he’d become the kid’s babysitter, along with the other rugrats they’d collected between the two of them, but Dustin and his mom were special. Claudia ending up in their building when Dustin left for college had been the best luck, the unit opening up out of nowhere. She was the mom neither of them properly had, and they were damn lucky to have her.

Which is why it made sense when Steve then asked, pointing to Eddie still curtain-robed in the bath:

“Can you finish,” he points to Eddie’s bare torso and then winces at Eddie’s sudsy curls; “should I ask her—”

“I’ll manage,” Eddie waved him off; he’s dealt with worse, with less. “I was gonna let the hair dry on the way.”

Steve blinks at him.

“It’s November.”

“The car has heat,” Eddie shrugs because, um, duh.

Steve stares another few seconds, rolls his eyes with a sigh, and then goes to presumably check the kitchen.

“Fare thee well upon your quest, noble paladin!” Eddie calls as he struggles to stand, only falls twice for tripping on the slippery curtain before giving it up and letting it pool in the basin before he turns, finds the window by the shower too sparsely covered, then goes to seek a better collection of snow left piled somewhere from the night before.

Water’s water, after all.

“Wasn’t I a cleric last week?” Steve calls back, hears Eddie’s wet footsteps and turns, huffs at Eddie’s nudity as he checks the kitchen windows, and then sighs more at the full-open faucet dripping nothing in the sink.

“This has a pretty self-contained motivation,” Eddie says as he surveys the windows; Steve well knows his personal arguments on the finer distinctions between different classes, and so shrugs accordingly, squints trying to figure out what the hell Eddie’s up to before shaking his head and grabbing his door keys:

“Be ready when I get back,” he points less threatening than it would probably be with anyone else; “I wanna make sure we either miss or have a decent cushion for rush hour,” which okay, yeah. It’s only an hour but, better safe than sorry. And Steve’s all gussied up with higher hair than he’s had in years, he’s not fooling Eddie for a second, here.

“As my lord commands,” Eddie comments idly and gestures with a flourish as he simultaneously hears the the door click shut and finds the clean(ish) snow he’s looking for, which he curses for the chill as he gets the shampoo out of his hair in the sink by the handful.

He’s in the bathroom using the leave-in conditioner Steve told him to buy on clearance at Ulta for emergencies—so forward-thinking—and running a little liner under his eyes because why not, the occasion calls for the drama, he’s putting on a show, isn’t he? Where everyone who will be at this shindig counted him out, he might not be selling out arenas, but he’s…he’s living. He’s pretty fucking happy, he’s—

“Just us.”

Eddie finishes the line and fluffs his hair before leaving the bathroom, and…he realizes flipping the switch off does nothing, doesn’t need to walk out and see Steve toggling the one near the door.

“Well, shit.”

“You paid the utilities, right?” Steve asks, kind of bewildered, not accusing, but Eddie…remembers earlier that day. When he left Steve’s work back to his own for the end of his day. It’s not his month, it’s…

Fuck. Fuck, it’s his month. He traded Steve for December, didn’t he. Because Steve bought his Christmas gifts early, was short for September; Eddie loved it because he never bought his gifts early, he was last minute every year, never could learn better, but this would be perfect—

Until just now.

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes; “fuck, Steve, I forgot.”

And Steve, Steve almost doesn’t even look surprised. Just lets out a long breath and shakes his head, not even judgemental. And Eddie deserves at least that but.

“That’s not so bad,” Steve shrugs, goes and makes sure the taps are all closed, the lights are all down; “can you just send the payment on the way, so we’re not late?”

Eddie nods, sits to lace his Docs, taps their electric company app so he can get on this stat, fix things as soon as he can—

Oh. Oh fuck.

“Steve?” Eddie calls out, once a little croaky, but when he looks up Steve’s gone, starting the car to heat it up already.

Because Eddie’s hair is damp. Jesus. He…he’s gonna have to tell Steve in the car. Steve’s gonna want to fucking kill him.

Because Eddie had a total of $19.86 in across two accounts, savings and checking. Eddie knows his goldfish-like attention is probably to blame for fucking up the month, but the lack of funds either way, he…he doesn’t even know how that happened.

It’s gonna be a long fucking ride to Hawkins.

—————————

Once Eddie comes clean—half an album in, too fucking long—and once Steve freaks out as best he’s able while keeping in his own lane; once they actually put the effort into hammering it out, it’s depressingly simple, how they wandered into financial ruin.

They both know it’s on them equally to have missed the late payment. Likely payments plural, now, because much like the buzzer on their apartment when it’s not DoorDash or movie night (or D&D night): paper mail? Like that gets delivered to them by a human person and is left inside a box?

It’s…usually ignored. Unopened and ignored. It…it is really useful for holding up the pizza menus for the numbers they don’t have saved in their phones? That counts, right? They need enough to prop it up good and…stuff.

But from there, the lack of money. Steve’s out because of Christmas gifts. Eddie…Eddie’s not the most fiscally responsible human but, he…

“I mean, I’m out more than normal because I did go too far with Henderson’s gift, for the Baby Brainiacs thing,” Steve says, too resigned, his tone kind of fraying something vital in Eddie’s chest.

“Henderson?” Eddie looks up from where he was staring into the middle distance of the tire well. “Weren’t we doing that as a joint thing?”

Because it was adorable, and neither wanted to half ass it. Dustin’s graduate program was full of young parents doing part-time degrees, and they put their big-ass brains together to make changes to the lab, pay for a daycare center, make it all more toddler friendly and Dustin was such a good fucking dad, and the initiative was gonna make it so Suzie’s program was looped in, the whole department or whatever, and they’d be able to do their crazy awesome world-changing work and love on baby Elena Uyulala all they want to. Steve and Eddie do the math for the highest possible amount they can donate to the cause for Christmas and birthday gifts across the board, if they pinch pennies where they can, and then agree: yes. More than worth it. For the little brother they both share custody of, his little family, and the niece who’s too fucking cute to be real.

Steve paid for that up front. When they were going to share it. When it was balanced on a knife’s edge in their pressed-as-fuck budget.

“I thought I was paying for it.”

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever said words in a voice so small. At first he doesn’t think Steve heard him, and shit, he doesn’t think he can bring himself to say it again, but then, then:

“Seriously?”

“I thought that was why you helped me get the card, the one where I was paying it off monthly for like a whole year, with the, the,” Eddie stammers, can’t think; “the thing you helped me with?”

“No-interest balance transfer?” Steve offers.

“Yeah, that,” Eddie nods, but he’s so fucking miserable, it feels like he’s gonna be sick; “but then I fucked it up,” and of course he did, he’s kind of a notorious fuck up, and now they’re what, driving an hour out to face the people who called it first? What the fuck was he thinking—

“Steve, I’m,” Eddie licks his lips, can even look up, meet his best friend’s eyes; “I’m sorry, I am so sorry, I’m a fucking idiot—”

“Stop.”

Eddie looks, then, because Steve’s voice is firm. Angry, almost: like Eddie deserves. He wilts for it as he looks up and Steve only glances every few seconds, because he’s a good driver, but his voice is steel when he says, so simple and sure:

“No one talks about my kidney that way.”

And it takes Eddie a second, but: oh. It’s been a hot minute since they called each other that, defended their friendship as bigger and stronger than all others. But Eddie…how long can Eddie be the drain on the pair of them?

“You can live without a kidney,” he mutters, kinda fucking heartbroken; “especially if it’s a fucking useless moron.”

“More like it just got stones,” Steve says, too stern to argue, but Eddie looks up then, incredulous: stones were what they did in high school. This—

“Okay, so probably more stones,” Steve says, pulling off the highway at the exit; “but you don’t chuck a body part out just because it’s got a couple rough patches that’ll pass,” Steve stops the car at a light and tips his head. Evoke snorting and adding: “ha, literally.”

God, he’s such a dork.

“You can if you’ve got a backup,” Eddie argues, because Steve isa dork, and such a good person, means so much to Eddie, and he doesn’t deserve this; “one that’s rough-patch and idiocy-free.”

“Then you’re not my kidney.”

And here’s the thing: Eddie is aware he deserved that.

He was not aware how much of a fucking gut punch it’d be. How much hearing it just…stated, clear and almost without any emotion at all, would fucking hurt.

“How about,” Steve’s voice cuts in, still kinda matter-of-fact, kinda actually considering something when Eddie’s world feels like it might be unravelling a little because he’s losing—lost?—his best fucking friend and he, like, what is he even going to do, he made this bed and he gets that but he didn’t mean to and Steve’s not even angry sounding, he should be, deserves to be furious because yeah, maybe they’ve both been distracted but they’d set it up so Steve was allowed to have the responsibility on the front end, and Steve did exactly that so he could chill through the year’s end and then Eddie fumbled at the something-important-line and shit, shit, Steve has every right to walk away this time and Eddie needs to accept that, accept his infuriated rejectio—

Wait.

“What else gets stones?”

Eddie turns. Blinks. Steve’s biting his lip like he’s actually trying to think.

“Gallbladder?” Eddie rasps out, not following the plot here at all.

“Not really a big deal,” Steve shakes his head, then seems to reconsider before landing satisfied on:

“Regular bladder.”

“Pretty sure you can still live without your bladder if you have to,” Eddie says almost automatically, still not really picking up the point, or why they’re talking about it because he’s not Steve’s kidney anymore, even with the stones, Steve said so, so that’s means Eddie’s, like, what is Eddie, now, because that basically means Steve’s done with him, right and—

“But it’s important enough that there’s a lot of stuff involved, if you lose it,” and there’s Steve interrupting his brain spiral again; “you’d probably miss it all the time.”

“I don’t think about my bladder enough to miss it,” and there’s Eddie talking without running it past his brain again, but why is Steve even pushing the point, Eddie’s fucked up one too many times and—

“Stop fucking with the analogy, man,” Steve finally throws his hands up with a frustrated sigh but there’s…there’s something in the tone he uses. Something also…teasing. Or close to fond.

“It’s money,” Steve says finally with a huff; “it’s gonna fucking suck, fine, and maybe we’ll have a lot of…” he glances at Eddie meaningfully; “bladder stones to deal with for a little while.”

Eddie doesn’t want to get his hopes up after…assuming the worst in his head the way he’s prone to, so quick and so sure, but. This, like, almost sounds like Steve’s…not mad? And not kicking him out of their place—for however much longer they have it—and more than that, so much more:

Maybe not kicking Eddie out of his life?

“But we’ll figure it out,” and Steve sounds so fucking…not confident, exactly, but determined. Like maybe he can’t 100% believe they will figure it out, but he can believe they won’t even less. “I’m not sure how, yet,” he admits and then leans over the center console to bump Eddie’s shoulder; “but you’re the creative one, so,” Steve shrugs, then turns off the car. Eddie hadn’t even realized they’d stopped, let alone parked at their destination.

“How about we make you the creative half of my brain, if you don’t like being a bladder,” Steve proposes with a small smile.

“You can also live without half your br—”

And yes, Eddie does need to shut the fuck up, he’s being given grace here he doesn’t deserve and he’s wrestling against it like a fucking idiot—

“I wouldn’t want to,” Steve answers with, like, kinda real feeling; “my whole one on its own kinda sucks, anyway,” he jibes, tries to lighten the mood and he does change it, true.

‘Lighten’ may be the wrong term, though.

“Lies,” Eddie hisses vehemently; “no one talks about my pancreas that way.”

It’s less an olive branch than a desperate cling; Eddie wants to believe they’ve got this. That they still get to be Steve and Eddie.

And when Steve grins, not super big but not nothing; Eddie thinks they will. They are.

Fuck.

“Now you’re gettin’ it,” Steve nods, keeps that tiny grin even as Steve asks, when it should be posed the other way round:

“We good?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, a little awed, can’t help but huff something like a laugh in relief; “yeah, we,” and then he looks up at Steve, more hesitant and vulnerable than he’s been with this man in years, but still—kinda could only ever be with this man in this first place:

“We’ll figure it out?”

“We will figure it out,” Steve nods firm, set on it. “But not right now.”

Eddie frowns, confused. They kinda…should, right now, right? It’s winter in Indiana and they don’t have electricity.

“Not right now?”

“You dragged us here,” Steve nods out the window at their alma mater, no different now than ten years prior; “so let’s get this over with.”

And that’s true, Eddie did. So they both climb out of the car and get ready to face the music—literally, there’s probably going to be some terrible throwback playlist awaiting them—but as Steve locks the doors Eddie rushes around to the drivers side, grabs his elbows and hold him at arm’s length for a second, kinda weighing whether it’s real, whether they’re really just gonna be totally okay and wade through what comes next together, and when he sees enough evidence to sway something nameless in his chest on the matter, he pulls Steve in and hugs him tight enough it hurts.

But neither loosens their hold. So.

Eddie thinks it’s gonna be okay. And despite everything, all of this?

He’s still ready to walk into Hawkins High and show living proof that he got the best deal for his future out of all these Stepford-style cunts.

None of them can possibly have anything like a best fucking pancreas.

Chapter Text

The second Steve sets foot through the front doors, smells the unmistakable and unmaskable stench of teenager that he suspects might just be seeped into the tiles: from the first fucking instant, Steve wants to turn-tail and run.

But he reminds himself: he’s doing this for Eddie.

Which might not have even been enough if turning around and heading home hadn’t meant a home-with-no-heat, but. He’s gonna pretend he’s doing his best friend the solid. Martyr himself good and proper even if just in his own fucking head.

He appeases himself by shoulder-checking Eddie a little extra hard where he’s bouncing his way toward the little desk in front of the gym, shoddy table cloth in their school colors with a cardboard-cutout banner welcoming their class, blah blah—but yeah. Steve tries to extract some satisfaction from that, at least.

It really just sets Eddie bouncing in a slightly different trajectory but. Whatever.

Eddie gets to the desk first, leans down and signs…something, before peeling what looks like a sticker from a page and—

“Oh, classic.”

Eddie’s grinning so fucking wide as he sticks the name tag on his newly-resurrected—this version’s been replaced many times over by new models with room for more flair—original battle vest: Hi, My Name Is: Eddie “The Freak” Munson.

“Here, here,” he’s bouncing a little still, just in-place, as he thrusts the page of name tags at Steve. “Find yours, I signed you in already.”

Steve purses his lips and scrunches his nose and doesn’t even give a shit if it’s childish or petulant as he looks for his name and, oh. Awesome.

“The older I get the more I start to wonder if I should take this as an insult,” Steve comments dryly as he adheres Hi, My Name Is: Steve “The Hair” Harrington.

“One-hundred percent no,” Eddie says, over-enthusiastic as ever as he makes a frame with his hands, keeping a frankly-excessive (but appreciated, fuck, the name tag’s still fucking right) border so as not to disturb the goods. And, well, like—

Steve likes to think he has better things to offer than just his hair these days; that he’s grown enough that he’s funny, or kind, or loyal, or something and then also the hair.

Just, like: the hair, and.

“Copy of The Claw, our alumi newsletter,” and there’s an unnecessarily-glossy stack stapled together at strange angles being shoved less into his hands than at them, and he moves as quick as he can before he gets a fucking paper cut—Eddie at least has all his rings for protection—and then he follows the intrusion to its source to see—

“No, I did not have any hand in its abysmal titling,” Barb Holland, who doesn’t look any different from ten years ago—which, honestly, Steve’s not entirely convinced most people do, not yet—save for her slightly updated wardrobe, still librarian-esque but definitely more late 1900s which is noticeable, and still very quirky choice of eyewear but more…I probably got these off Zenni rather than a junk drawer at my great grandma’s.

“Long before my time,” she’s still talking, barely looking at them as she defends herself against the stupidness of the fucking newsletter name. “But it’s why you had to list your email,” she gestures aimlessly at the sign-in sheet.

“Digital version.”

Steve glances on instinct and notices—only because he’s pretty expert in deciphering Eddie’s scrawl by now—that the address listed by his name looks suspiciously like it contains the words sir_bone_ington and he very intentionally doesn’t look to see what absurdity Eddie’s written for himself, schools his features as best he can not to snort as he tries to interact like a grown ass adult in this weird fucking atmosphere. In front of Barbara Holland.

“Joy of joys,” Steve deadpans, flipping aimlessly through the newsletter he was saddled with without consent; Barb never liked him, exactly, and she’d know he was lying through his teeth if he expressed any attempt at enthusiasm—she’d grown to tolerate him, which had been a huge step after actively glaring at him throughout the entirety of his relationship with Nancy, but had softened the slightest bit in senior year when she’d helped push a petition (with Nancy) to allow early graduation, and she’d found herself alone in a lunch period without any juniors she know. But Steve knew her, and called her over to sit when no one was giving up a chair, and she’d begrudgingly accepted out of necessity.

Steve liked to think, by the time graduation rolled around, it was at least out of…kinda-neutral habit.

“How’d you get roped into this, anyway?”

Steve looks up when Eddie asks, flopping the newsletter in his own hand around and raising a brow.

Barb barely sighs, but her eyeroll is powerful.

“I assume the CPA at the end of my name made people think I was organized.”

“You were organized way before that,” Steve butts in, because, like: there were many reasons she and Nancy were best friends. Shared love of color coded notes was definitely one of them.

“Flattering,” Barb says, not wholly stoic. Steve will take the ‘not-wholly’ as a decent note to end on.

“Good to see you, Barb,” he says, and means it—they may not have exactly been friends, and Steve definitely remembers her more fondly than the reverse, but it is good to see she seems to be thriving—ish, at least—but more importantly, as Steve’s learned living with Eddie: she seems like she’s kept true to herself.

He catches Eddie doing his dungeon-dragon bowing thing from the corner of his eye before they’re both standing on the edges of the open doors to the gym, where the tile changes. Like a mountain precipice. Like they’re gonna leap to their deaths, maybe, or sprout wings and fly.

Holy fuck, Steve’s picked up on Eddie’s dramatics too fucking hard.

But it’s Eddie, with the same confident swagger Steve’s pretty sure he learned and honed in this very building all those years ago, sharpened in the intervening time and probably steadier for not being balanced on lunch tables, but: it’s Eddie who leads them in, and straight to…

“Open bar?” he nods to the man probably closer to Wayne’s age than anything, standing behind a pop up bartop. The guy nods, maybe a little wary even before Eddie grins wolfishly and orders.

“Two Dark and Stormies.”

Then he turns to Steve.

“You want a drink?”

What a fucking stupid question.

“Fuck yes,” Steve answers because…no one’s approached them yet, they’ve only even spoken to Barb but…everything feels kind of oppressive? And he definitely needs that social lubricant. Now.

Like, right now.

“Add a tequila sunset,” Eddie nods to the bartender; “you get one as a treat,” Eddie grins at Steve before waving a mock-scolding finger in his face: “but no more for you, you’re driving home.”

Oh. Oh, well that’s not how this works at all.

“I think fucking not,” Steve leans into the surprisingly steady bar setup and grabs the tequila and one of the dark and stormies, leaving the remaining drink for Eddie to grab himself: “I didn’t even want to come,” he points out, and takes bigger sips than he’d normally chug these days from both glasses to make a truly awful combination of flavors, but proves his point sufficiently if the devastated look on Eddie’s face is anything to go by.

“You don’t like rum!” Eddie tries to argue, and he’s not wrong. But: desperate times.

“I like it better than making it all the way through tonight sober.”

Eddie doesn’t scowl so much as look like he sucked on a lemon. He seems to cast around for a rebuttal to be somehow found in the crowd gathered around them and, oddly enough, he finds it and points garishly, speaks way too loud:

“Oh wow, looks like your court still awaits, your majesty,” and the gaggle of ladies they went to school with that he’d sniffed out turn as one and…Jesus.

Low fucking blow.

“Fuck you, Edward,” Steve hisses, makes no attempt of his own to avoid outright scowling, and marches away to…anywhere else really, honestly less to avoid Eddie and more to postpone the wave of women descending upon him from the other side of the gym.

“Look at that massive blow up,” he hears and…recognizes that voice—not necessarily in a good way—if not the light tone of it.

“Indiana, right,” it’s added with a defeated kind of laugh. “I mean, who knew anything about style,” it goes on almost rueful; “unless you count a letterman jacket.”

Steve didn’t count that as style at any point, but it does make a case for the voice matching who he thinks it belongs to before he reaches the source, still pointing at the blown-up photos of sports teams adorning the majority of the gymnasium walls, before the man’s eyes widen and he…smiles.

What the fuck.

“Though this guy had us all beat,” Jason fucking Carver, who sounds already like less of a douchebag with age, like maybe it had expired in the ten years since Steve had last avoided him and now he was borderline…normal? “Ahead of the curve, Harrington,” he claps Steve’s shoulder, and that’s…that is something. “I never saw it at the time, but I promise. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Oh…kay,” Steve nods, and thinks it’s weird that Jason’s hand is…still on his shoulder. They played on the same team for a while but were never friends. He was a class-A dipshit, and a dick to basically everyone, and Steve didn’t have time for that.

“Steve Harrington?!”

Oh. Oh fuck.

The women have arrived.

“No ring?” Someone grabs his hand before he even notices the presence of a body next to him—Jesus, fucking vultures.

It takes Steve longer than he wants to admit, just barely shy of grimacing her way, before he recognizes her: Laura Loomis. She…Steve’s not the expert but he really thought that you got filler later in life than now. Definitely that much filler. But, y’know.

To each their own.

“Lost it recently,” Steve says, which is…true. He asked Eddie if he could borrow one of his tamer rings to fend off this very possibility when he agreed to come to this charade. Eddie had found him a band but had decided that the Steve Harrington would raise more eyebrows with a shitty band than none at all, so he’d thrifted something that looked sturdier, then hit up a friend of his who knows how to…weld or something, to size it right, but said-friend lost the fucking thing. So. “Waiting for a replacement.”

Because it actually was a good idea to have that, when he didn’t want to attract the attention of the people around him. Like right fucking now.

“Who,” another voice comes up from the front, Jesus fuck, how do they move so quietly, ready to fucking pounce.

“No one you’re thinking,” because, well. He’s not in any relationship right now, but he’s a bad liar, and if he just pretends she’s asking who lost it, or who’s making sure it’s replaced (Eddie, who’s harassing his friend regularly): he can lean into the answer as a truth.

“But someone we know?”

They definitely don’t know Eddie’s welder-acquaintance, Steve barely does. And honestly?

“No.”

They never knew Eddie, really, either. And it was always their loss. Fucking…all of them.

“Dingus!”

Steve can’t help but grin because, of all the women flocking to him, at least now he’s got an ally incoming to save his ass from these…piranhas.

“We know Buckley!”

Steve doesn’t fight how his grin grows that she’s as identifiable, iconic, as she’s ever been—his platonic soulmate, so suck it.

“We definitely would have expected Wheeler,” someone behind him tacks on, and Steve picks Robin out, waving her hands as she approaches with Nancy’s hair visible at the right angle following.

“Neither of whom I live in wedded bliss with, but both of whom I answer the beckoning of,” Steve tries to disentangle himself with…care, like not even politeness—he’s suddenly happy that he outgrew sticking solely with polos for events because even if he’d hated putting on a button up for the evening, at least the hands grabbing at him aren’t on his skin, that feels like it’d make the whole production worse, here; “good to see you, ladies, maybe we’ll bump into each other again before the night’s over.”

He really hopes…not.

Robin gives him a little side-hug, shoulder-squeeze when they reach each other, neither of them having to speak to convey Steve’s lingering displeasure and present relief to be standing with people he liked, no: that he loved.

“What number’s that?” Nancy—who’s not a Robin, and definitely not an Eddie, but still became one of his closest friends and has stayed as such; Steve thanks his lucky stars they broke up before high school ended so they could build the foundations for what they have today—but Nancy eyes the near-empty drink in Steve’s hand shrewdly.

“Only two.”

“Oh god,” she sounds offended on his behalf before she eyes him with clear instructions to finish what’s left before she takes the glass and weaves fast through the crowd to presumably grab him another.

“Let’s get you better lubricated,” Robin pats him comfortingly on the back before guiding him to an empty table; “gonna be a long night otherwise.”

“Gonna be a long night either way,” Steve groans, which eases for a moment when he sees Nancy somehow on her way back already with three cocktails balanced almost elegantly, and then deepens all over again when Steve sees who’s going to beat her to their seats.

“You’re inescapable, Carver,” Steve says with the least bit of inflection of any feeling at all as the guy invites himself to join them; “you back for the holidays?”

That’s neutral. That’s simple and quick and easy to be in and out and done, right?

“Oh. No, no,” Carver looks flustered for…no reason, like, flush on his cheeks—maybe he’s been drinking more than two of his own already; “head back home tomorrow.”

“Wow, came all this way just for this?” Steve’s actually…not impressed. Impressed, but take away all the good parts of it because: why. “How far is home?”

“Well, for,” Jason clears his throat awkwardly, tugs at his collar; shit, it’s like he got body-snatched since high school, fine, but in the now he looks cut and paste from a bad teen movie; “for this, but, um, home’s kinda far,” he bites his lip, Jesus, who even is this fucker? “If L.A. counts as far?”

If?!

“Shit,” Steve whistles low; “you wanted to see this place again that bad?”

Again: impressed, with none of the positive connotations.

“Wanted to show my partner,” aww, that’s nice; especially since Steve doesn’t see a ring, seeing as he does look given his heightened attention to the idea of one after being accosted, Carver must be serious, maybe planning to propose back home, he seems weirdly sentimental that way; “and um,” and there, there the motherfucker’s blushing again, Steve should maybe see if Barb knows if anyone’s watching for people leaving and clearly tempting a DUI: “tie up a loose end?”

“Cool,” Steve says, totally distracted and entirely uninvested in anything but getting up with a not-so-apologetic shrug as Nancy finally makes it to them and beckons them to come with her quick, she found them on the jumbo wall photos!

(She 100% had not; Steve had looked at the ones that were where she’s leading them and it’s all from the Homecoming they missed because her little brother had a friend that lost his mom’s beloved cat and the whole fucking town had to be mobilized—not that Steve could trade Dustin or Claudia or any of the Hendersons for anything, but: it’s ironic those are the photos they’re being dragged toward when the reasons they’re specifically not in them is also the indirect reason he’s not gonna be able to go home to a warm apartment, due to, y’know. The heat being turned off.)

“Okay!” Jason’s waving at them too…enthusiastic and stilted all at once? Weird as shit. “Talk later!”

Steve hopes the fuck not, actually.

He does pause their escape-disguised-as-a-pointed-trek-across-the-room to grab another drink as he downs the one in his hand that Nancy’d only just passed to him as they’d left the table.

He figures it’s really just forward thinking. You don’t feel the fucking cold so bad if you’re liquored up well enough.

Right?

————————

“Shirley Temple, my good man,” Eddie asks of the bartender; if he’s stuck on kid-friendly libations for the rest of the night, at least they can be fun ones.

Also, he fucking loves maraschino cherries. Make the best of it all, he guesses.

Which: when he’d stood up here, people-watching his night away and only just starting to feel bad enough that he’ll consider intervening to help Steve in his…time of trial, reliving his ‘glory days’ against his will.

Eddie swirls his bubbly grenadine and surveys the landscape, and clocks Steve in a swarm of the same chicks who swarmed him ten years ago.

He’ll feel bad if it lasts another…ten minutes.

For now:

“Fuck,” Eddie comments, not noticing he has a companion also leaning idly by the drinks who hums, low enough to be ignored or taken for curiosity. Eddie glances over, notices the man’s in a black satiny button down that fits a lot like Steve’s. He’s put the fuck together. His glasses are the kind that almost definitely have no prescription and still have the slightest tint in the dark of the gym.

Fuck it. Eddie loves to talk, and an invitation’s an invitation.

“My friend’s getting steamrolled by the masses,” Eddie points toward the spectacle; “he was a jock, you’d think people would move on,” not that Eddie really did think that. But.

“Not in my experience,” the fancy stranger adds before tilting his head, considering.

“That is your friend? By the blond?”

“And now getting flanked by the two ladies with the drinks?” he notices Robin and Nancy for the first time, they might have just gotten there, and of course Robin especially is honed to Steve’s needs. Eddie glances back to see his fellow loiterer nod, the line of his gaze very clearly sizing Steve up and not anyone else in the throng. Eddie doesn’t know why it makes him feel…weird. To be able to tell, and know.

Probably the club soda so quick after the rum.

“Yep, that’s him,” Eddie confirms and the man beside him sucks his lips once before shaking his head ruefully:

“You must admit,” the man eyes Steve unapologetically, and Eddie’s finally clocking his way of speaking as an accent in the lull of the genuinely pretty awful playlist; “that’s not a face to move on from.”

Eddie purses his lips; he’s pretty sure most of the girls in the gaggle are married.

And that their husbands are here.

“Or a figure to move on from.”

Eddie knows where this man’s gaze has settled without following it. It’s always been a known fucking quantity when it came to Steve.

He’s never bought his best friend, like, extra birthday cakes every year or anything. Not him. Never.

Of course not.

“I’m Eddie, by the way,” he feels it’s that time in the conversation to at least share names. This dude was checking out Eddie’s best friend without a lick of shame. And Eddie can appreciate that sort of lack of fucks to give.

“Dmitri,” the man rolls his name in a way Eddie’s never heard before. He doesn’t want to be stereotypical and assume the guy’s Russian, but, it feels probably close.

“Do not worry, you are not forgetting me from your chemistry class,” Dmitri-from-somewhere-cool-probably-foreign-almost-definitely-and-not-most-covered-in-fields eventually says, assuming Eddie was pausing to place him in his graduating class, as if Hawkins was ever that worldly; “I was never a student at your, hmm, lyceum.”

See? Too global. Too cultured. Eddie doesn’t even know what language that word’s in, let alone what it means.

“I’m not a,” Dmitri adds, again, along like he thinks Eddie’s lamenting of some of the things he hated most about high school are confusion instead; “a proud Tiger?”

Eddie does not even remotely successfully hide his snort at that in his drink. zero out of ten, no points awarded.

“That’d make two of us,” he laughs when he recovers himself, which makes Dmitri huff with a grin.

Okay, maybe Eddie can have one point awarded.

“No love lost, then?” Dmitri asks, and Eddie shakes his head emphatically, enough to tangle his hair; Dmitri takes a sip of the amber drink he’s got before following up:

“If it is not impertinent,” and he waits, like actually waits like a polite and cultured person, for Eddie to wave on whatever he wants to say because, fuck.

Eddie ‘The Freak’ is back in Hawkins. Very little could offend him in some new or effective way, now.

“Why come?”

Fair question. Steve asked it, too.

“People watching,” Eddie shrugs; it wasn’t really a complicated thing. “Sizing up how other lives ended up.”

And for the record? None so far have shit on Eddie. Maybe bigger houses or fatter wallets or newer cars. Or a suave accent with a shinier-but-less-well-fitted jet black button-up than Eddie’s best friend but still: credit where it’s due. Still: no one he’s eavesdropped on so far can hold a candle to what Eddie’s own life is.

And that’s just…pretty damn content.

“Hmm,” Dmitri hums, almost in genuine consideration before he gestures with his drink.

“Any quite excessively large photos of yourself on the walls?”

“Actually,” Eddie is genuinely thrilled to point out to someone who has zero context of the image underneath the basketball hoop. “There is!”

He points and his hair gives him away without effort: he’d been caught mid-prance between lunch trays. It was actually a great photo and Eddie kind of wants to tear it down and take it home.

“Charming,” Dmitri laughs, and Eddie’s grin grows. Just more proof he was ahead of his time.

“But you’d have even less of an incentive to brave these unhallowed halls without promise of a genuine piece of art featuring your teenaged mug,” Eddie points out, at which Dmitri stifles a snort—successfully, too, goddamn him—in his glass. “What brings you Hawkins-way,” Eddie asks, kinda baffled and kinda fascinated because truly—why?—but, still: “if it’s not impertinent.”

Because he can be polite and cultured, too. And not least because this guy kinda looks somewhere between a model and a member of the mafia.

“Plus one.”

It takes Eddie three whole seconds to put together that answer: ah. Makes sense. If you ended up saddled to an alum, you were shackled by default.

“And they left you to fend for yourself with the Hoosiers?” Eddie teases, wiggles his brows in hopes he comes across as light hearted as he means; the man laughs again, so—safe, and good on Eddie, too. Making small talk at his reunion with only the Shirley Temple as an aid.

The fact that he’s only managing it with a complete stranger is of entirely no consequence so like, doesn’t even matter at all.

Points to him.

“Where does that name come from, anyway?” Dmitri asks, and since Eddie assumes it’s about ‘Hoosiers’, he can confidently answer:

“Fuck if I know, man.” And he’s lived here his whole fucking life.

“And its meaning,” Dmitri presses, but doesn’t look hopeful. Which is good: Eddie won’t disappoint him.

“Again,” he shakes his head; “not a clue.”

“Fascinating.”

They’re both quiet for the second it takes to let even the least nerdy person register the way his tone lands in Spock territory and they both bust out cackling. Though Dmitri’s much more classy about it.

Probably because of the Steve-shirt.

“See?” Eddie points in playful accusation. “You’re people watching, too!” and Dmitri laughs again, lifts his glass in concession to the point before Eddie asks, because at this point he has to:

“Who did drag you here and then leave you to the big striped cats?”

Dmitri’s eyes go back toward Steve, which is weird, because now Steve’s sitting with Robs and Nance but they’re about to be interrupted by—

“Jason Carver,” and Eddie fucking well feels his jaw drop when he puts recognizing that smug asshole across the room to the words being spoken next to him. “I do believe he was in the process of engaging your friend before his accosting.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, because, because he doesn’t mean, unless he does mean, except he can’t possibly mean—

“He is newly,” Dmitri does his humming thing again between words, the considering; “building confidence in his identity, you know,” and Dmitri leans the slightest bit closer to keep the casual divulgences somehow discreet, like he’s not, not just saying—

“And a friend of mine from work suggested it may help to revisit the source of his,” and here Dmitri raises his brows and looks more pointedly to the table where Jason is definitely sitting without having been invited, and is starting to also look kinda…feverish? It’s stuffy in here but not that stuffy—

“Well, the source of his original awakenings.”

Eddie turns slow, almost unnaturally so, to look Dmitri in the eye when he finally speaks. Maybe it’s shock; maybe he’s buying time to try and find the capacity to form words.

Six of one; whatever.

“He,” Eddie points; “he’s,” and Dmitri just blinks, almost looks entertained; “and you,” Dmitri sips from his glass again, wholly fucking nonchalant; “but he,” and then the context comes back, and Nancy’s re-approaching the table where the ‘original awakening’ is standing with Robin and following Nancy very pointedly away from Jason, who is very pointedly staring after one of them, and yeah, it fits that the religious asshole was closeted as fuck, Eddie’s always had some passing suspicions but, source of awakenings, he, it, but—

“Steve?”

Dmitri quirks a brow, very isn’t it obvious? about it all and, and…

“Jesus fuck.”

“Quite the opposite, as I understand,” Dmitri quips, dry as fuck, but in all honesty does watch Jason—propping his elbows on the tables and leaning his head into his hands with a defeated sort of patheticness—with something undeniably fond and compassionate.

Weird. Kinda cute. But so weird.

“Hence relinquishing the trauma of repression,” Dmitri returns his attention to their conversation with a shrug before revising; “or else, attempting to.”

“You came just for that?” Which, if so? That…is kinda sweet.

Like Eddie’s teeth are aching, if that is indeed the case. Fucking hell.

“He needs it,” Dmitri answers simply; “and I am very fond of him.” The little smile that accompanies that nugget of affection officially causes cavities, nine out of ten dentists agree. “The flight was only seven hours, with the delays.”

Only?

“The fuck did you come from,” Eddie blurts out, momentarily but immediately distracted from the queer former bible-thumper who apparently had, at the least, a crush on Eddie’s beloved roommate.

“Los Angeles,” Dmitri says, finally finishing his drink. Eddie realizes his own is mostly pink melted ice.

“Shit,” Eddie says, first for the sacrifice of his Shirley Temple but secondarily for the idea of a cross-country flight for this. “What do you do out there?”

“I am an actor.”

Well, of course he is.

“Wow, super impressive, man,” Eddie says, means it, but is also slowly getting to that point where the evening has taken a turn for the unbelievable, and one hundred percent is justifying his RSVP.

“Thank you,” Dmitri tips his head a little, all smooth grace and shit.

“Fucking movies?” Eddie can’t even believe it. Jason Carver and his suave-exotic-movie-star boyfriend?

Eddie could not have made this storyline up. And he is exceptional at storylines.

“Precisely that,” Dmitri says with a…a kinda weird smirk but. Maybe that’s typical of the west coast, a strange and distant land of mystery.

“Anything I’d have seen?” Eddie ventures, because that’d be kinda fantastic, if he’d seen this guy on screen.

“Possibly,” Dmitri draws out the word before asking: “do you ever enjoy films with exclusively male casts?”

Eddie pauses, smashes his lips together to think.

“Like war movies?”

“The proportion of the types of,” Dmitri clears his throat but like, in a way that has meaning; “action we film is in fact, statistically higher in military settings.”

They stare at each other in silence for a few long seconds before Eddie cannot take the nagging voice in the back of his head insisting that he is reading this right and this is about to become ten times more awesome and insane at least:

“Tell me if I’m reading you wrong but,” and Eddie leans in, not that the man has yet to show any shame for…well, anything: “are you in gay porn?”

Dmitri’s smile broadening the way it does is really all the confirmation Eddie needs.

“Forgive me, I thought you may have recognized me,” Dmitri apologizes—apologizes.

“Shit man, that’s awesome though. But like, forgive me,” Bevause Eddie has no filter now, he’s been led into this rabbit hole too far; “so is it like, t.A.T.u.?”

Because, you know; the accent. But then also Eddie is pretty sure he remembers hearing that thing was mostly an act and…Dmitri is in Indiana with his boyfriend.

“I grew up here,” and suddenly Dmitri’s foreign lilt is way less pronounced; “but I was sent to live with my grandparents in my rebellious formative years to learn gratitude for that fact and it’s privileges,” Eddie can hear the air quotes that give the man away as still bitchy about the who shebang; “but,” and he collects himself again: shrugs and smirks kinda wickedly; “I’ve learned the accent has its uses for intrigue.”

“Totally,” Eddie agrees; sure as shit worked on him.

But once the stun fades, Eddie has…an idea. The outline of an idea. The suggestion of an idea and if he’s right, maybe—

“Do you mind mixing work with pleasure?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself—either way, now he’s fucking curious and he’s kind of un-shut-up-able when he get curious; so he plows forth before correcting; “if you can call a night in a high school gym a pleasure?”

Dmitri eyes him a little…bright. Like he’s intrigued. Tilts his head in enough of a nod for Eddie to run with.

“I have so many questions.”

————————

The gym’s emptying out by the time Steve and Eddie cross paths again.

“Stevie,” Eddie greats him warmly, having never left his post by the drinks.

“Eddie,” Steve says, weary, a little tipsy, but in good enough spirits. Probably the latter being encouraged by the other kind of spirits.

“I have someone to introduce you to.”

“Munson, we’re having a conversa—” and oh, Jason Carver was behind Steve. In a position where it looked very much like Steve was neither aware of their supposed conversation, or of Jason’s presence at all.

“Jase.”

Everyone turns to the voice, which was Dmitri’s, as a shiny-sleeved arm reaches toward Carver.

“This is Dmitri,” Eddie goes back to the most important thing—talking with Steve and sharing the first epic fucking bombshell at the heart of the matter: “Jason’s boyfriend.”

Steve’s lips part and he turns to gape at Jason, who himself has turned into a goddamn beet.

“Is that what you’ve been trying to spit out for,” Steve glances at the old clock above the doors; “forty minutes?”

“Oh, katyónak,” Dmitri shakes his head and pats Jason’s arm before addressing Steve directly: “you were his sexual awakening.”

“Dimi!” It’s so fucking avandalized; Eddie shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. He should feel bad for it.

He does not, in fact, feel bad at all.

“Am I incorrect?” Dmitri meets Jason’s indignation and embarrassment with gentle but commanding challenge and—shit. He would have been a hell of a deterrent for a lot of shit Jason Carver pulled in high school.

“Carver,” Steve asks slowly, and it’s not even for the sake of the booze, Eddie can tell; “is that true?”

Jason, on the other hand, is silent while he focuses on turning from a beet into a plum that’s honestly a little worrying shade of purple.

“I’m flattered, man,” Steve says, even reaches out to pat Jason’s other arm; “and glad you got where you needed to be, with the right person to be there with.”

Jason opens his mouth and fails entirely to say anything; Steve, who is always the best person in these situations, walks with Eddie to give them some space.

“Happy for him, like, to outgrow the douchbaggery and replace it with gayness, but,” Steve grimaces, and then fails to bite down a full body shudder as he notes without hesitation:

“So not my type.”

Eddie chuckles, and puts that in a folder he’s been amassing their whole dating lives, because it’s actually hard to pin down what Steve’s type is. He’s a hopeless romantic, he’s graduated entirely from looking for casual to aiming for true love, and he doesn’t not go for the Jason Carver type.

It’s a pretty shamefully short list.

“But fuck that was brutal,” Steve shakes his head; “more drinks.”

“As you wish, your excellency,” Eddie stops them as they approach the bartender near the opposite end of the setup. Steve gets a Jack and Coke.

Eddie orders one more Shirley Temple just for the cherry.

Steve’s regaling Eddie of the trials of the formerly-high-school-popular across the evening when Jason tries to slink by to the exit unnoticed, which is fine.

But Eddie’s not gonna let the man with his hand on the small of Jason’s back go so quickly.

“Dmitri, I’ll add you on insta,” he calls and they don’t stop, but Dmitri does turn.

“Eddie, an absolute pleasure to meet you,” and he says it like he means it, same as when he looks at Steve and says; “and you, the infamous Steve Harrington.”

Steve looks confused as fuck but waves as they leave and Eddie…well. Steve may have suffered for the night, but Eddie will pay him back by being the best roommate ever and doing everything needed while helping tend his hangover tomorrow.

Because Eddie’s outline of an idea? Is still an outline. And is possibly too indefensibly insane for words, let alone implementing. But maybe. Just maybe.

It might just have the potential to be fucking amazing.

Chapter Text

“So.”

“Soooo.”

Steve sighs; even Eddie’s sing-song drawl doesn’t lighten the reality of, well:

“We’re fucked aren’t we?”

Well: that.

“I mean, no,” Eddie takes another swig of his drink as Steve levels him with an incredulous look; “that’d be public indecency. There are laws.”

Steve snorts and buries himself in his pint glass a little deeper. They’d stopped on the way home because…in the absence of distraction? Shit felt real. And hard. And Steve knew that. And Steve knew they’d find a way through but.

Fuck.

“Kinda, yeah,” Eddie finally revises in agreement; gestures at the barkeep for another round—it’s piss-swill, dirt-cheap, plus they know the owner, he’ll half their tab.

Can’t keep the fucking lights on, but y’know: some expenses are necessary for survival.

And Steve thinks being blackout-drunk and hungover for the morning to avoid any of this is a goddamn necessity.

Plus: he’d made the point earlier, like, all of earlier, that you drink to keep warm. Now that the reality of lack of heat in the winter is impending all the more here, just at the edge of their town, appropriate preparation is required. More…more of it. Or…something.

“How’d this even happen?” And he means the larger…how are they in this mess sort of deal. A mess where one wrong move, one objectively tiny mistake, fucked them this hard.

And Steve knows that Eddie knows what he means.

“Honestly?” Eddie grimaces, half around the inevitable process of acclimating to the taste of aforementioned-swill still being a work in progress—it’s a nasty-ass IPA that was discounted already, presumably to get rid of it—but just as much half around the answer he’s about to give, the one Steve knows is coming.

“Probably started with the whole waiting on your inheritance to ever not be tied up in your parents being assholes…thing.”

Steve sighs, and lets his head flop down on the too-sticky-to-think-too-much-about bartop.

“That was dumb, yeah.”

He can admit it. Putting any time or energy on holding out out hope for the money to come through and save their asses, over the course of the last ten fucking years, probably put them behind in the game more than Steve wants to think too hard on. But it’s not like they’ve been wholly irresponsible. They haven’t…y’know, splurged on a bouncy castle. They share a Prime account—see? Financial responsibility, why pay those corporate fuckers twice?—so Steve sees their collective expenses. Did they need new fleshlights over the summer? Actually yes: they both had worn theirs out, and maybe stored them poorly, to the point of no return and they came in a two pack so: economical!

They don’t speak of the Bad Dragon orders that came through in the past twelve months. Orders, plural, yes. But they don’t speak of them. They’re a lot like the bills that prop up the pizza menus, except…unspoken of and also very out of sight.

You can’t live that close to the poverty line and have no indulgences, okay; that’s not how it fucking works.

He’s saved from the temptation of spiraling further by a familiar hand on his shoulder.

“Not how I meant it,” Eddie’s voice is hard, and Steve’s yanked back to the point: his nonexistent inheritance; he understood being cut off and cut out by his parents, but his grandpa’s money wasn’t even fucking theirs; “I meant they are monsters and they deserve to rot in hell.”

Steve tips his glass upward in recognition. And agreement; the fuckers.

“Would you get their money if they did?” Eddie asks with a slightly brighter tone. “If they were rotting in hell?”

Steve hates to disappoint, but:

“Nah, they disinherited me like, officially. Years ago.”

Eddie knows that already but he’s ever-hopeful; part of his charm.

“Can’t you contest it?” and oh, Eddie. Eternally optimistic in the face of even the most hopeless situations.

“I don’t think it works like that,” Steve shakes his head. “If my grandpa’s money came through though,” he hedges, bites his lip—he doesn’t know how his parents keep that shit tied up but…they’ve been very successful so far, and Steve is familiar enough with their slew of lawyers on retainer to expect that to continue as the status quo—still, though:

“He had more than my parents ever had, or probably ever will have. If I ever got that money we’d be,” and his tone goes a little melancholy, but also a little wistful. They fucking life they could have, how much easier, how much more free but then also—

Easier. But if they were together, it’d still be…Steve&Eddie.

That, at least, is a bright spot to hold on to. The brightest, in fact. They may have an apartment with no utilities and an enviable collection of past-due notices but: they’ve still got each other. Always have, always will.

“In the meantime, then,” Steve makes himself straighten up, but slowly so Eddie’s hand on his shoulder slips gently off instead of drops too fast; “any bright ideas?”

Eddie squints then points to himself theatrically, jaw dropped with the drama of it.

“Bright? Moi?”

Steve sacrifices the foam at the lip of his glass to flick at Eddie, because he’s plenty bright in lots of ways, but then he does have to acknowledge the…reality of the moment. Because he’s not drunk enough to do otherwise.

Yet.

“Fuck, man,” Steve groans, looks to see if their next drink is on the way; “this is the kind of shit that leads people into prostitution—“

“Not shaming,” Eddie’s quick to asterisk.

“No shame for sex workers,” Steve agrees with an immediate nod because, like, inherently accurate but also it’d be shitty as fuck to feel otherwise: they’re friends with some.

They clink their glasses in wholly-unconscious synchrony, no need to even glance each other’s way to get it right.

“But that,” Steve returns to his rightful bemoaning, and underscores the shift in tone with a long drink from his beer:

“That, or fuck, like, making porn.”

He takes a few seconds to swirl his drink around idly, sigh a little deeper, wallow the tiniest bit in pity before he…realizes the space beside him’s too quiet. The body occupying the seat there’s too still.

He’s not a fucking idiot; he knows Eddie too well, like an extension of himself after all these years, to be anything but suspicious.

He glances over and meets Eddie’s too wide, too intent gaze, glowing in that…wicked kind of way that’s, that’s—

“Stop it.”

Eddie’s eyes somehow widen further.

“What?” and oh yeah: practiced innocence. Steve knows it too goddamn well.

“That look. That fucking,” he twirls his hand from the wrist indicatively; “look you have. That you get.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed to look, now?” Eddie scoffs. “Jesus, free fucking country my ass, apparently—“

“Redirection,” Steve calls it, points in accusation right in Eddie’s face; “you always do that with the look.”

“You say that with capital letters,” Eddie comments, but doesn’t deny the point before lowering his voice ominously, lips only just twitching to betray him entirely as he intones:

“The Look.”

Steve glares at him with his own fucking look, because: two can play that game.

And fuck yeah, Eddie breaks first. Should know better.

Does, too, if the way his sigh only lasts like three seconds instead of ten is anything to go by. Which it is.

“Okay, fine,” Eddie concedes in the bitchiest tone, too, which is rich as fuck given how Steve is the one who always get shit for being a bitch; “but,” and he holds a finger up, almost accusingly:

“You’ve already made clear your opinions on the high-end escort idea.”

Steve isn’t sure if the sound he makes is more of a growl or a groan but he gives in to banging his head on the nasty-ass bartop either way.

“And we both know I’m not going to pull shit in my,” Eddie clears his throat dramatically: “demographic.”

Steve looks up with a glare at that, because: shit excuse. Like, absolute bullshit lie excuse. They both know Eddie’s got the rockstar look on lock. People dig that shit.

“But you were the King. The Hair,” and Steve’s yanked back to the ridiculous point at hand by the hopeful-conniving widening of Eddie’s eyes paired with the maniacal sort of glint in them, and the dangerous curl at the corners of his lips and:

“No.”

“And then there’s me, the bonafide Freak, still!” because of course Eddie’s just gonna talk like Steve hasn’t said anything.

“Eddie,” he tries to whine his way into derailing the monologue to come but he’s pretty sure it’s hopeless.

And yep, he’s right:

“Dmitri Von Ramyue, Jason’s super nice boyfriend?” Eddie says like they didn’t just leave the high school where they met the man. “He said shooting and distributing his own porn’s making him six figures. Easy. Gay porn, Steve! I’m already at least in the right ballpark and you, you’re halfway in the right ballpark! We’d probably make double, maybe triple, we could appeal to everyone!” and fuck, fuck fuck fuck: Eddie looks excited. Actually excited.

That is so much more dangerous.

“We could ask Rob, and then we’re really—”

“Jesus,” Steve huffs out, at a…at a goddamn loss honestly, because what the fuck—

“Diversity! Representation! Everyone seen on screen!” Jesus, okay. Okay, they’ve crossed into wavy-hands territory. Gotta tread lightly through this like there are goddamn landmines.

“Let’s pretend for five seconds that I’m even following your absolutely batshit scheme, here,” Steve humors him, but only really because he’s about to shut him down definitively; “if it were so fucking easy, why isn’t everyone making bank on it?”

“Because other people have options! Families! Shame!” Eddie answers with…a passion in it. Like he doesn’t see this as batshit insanity at all.

“I would like to be very clear that I have a healthy amount of shame,” Steve latches onto the first clear point to dispel; “which I guess puts me smack dab in the ‘other people’ category,” he clicks his tongue, shakes his head with maybe exaggerated regret; “sorry man, try again.”

Eddie leans back, runs a fingertip around the top of his glass like it’s fine wine before he hums:

“After Christmas three years ago, you think you still have shame?”

Steve freezes. Stills from the spine.

Oh. Oh no, he did not.

“We swore never to bring that up,” Steve hisses, cannot even try at a level tone. “Ever.”

“Which I am keeping to by referring vaguely to a solid month-long season that could encompass anything,” Eddie tilts his head and meets Steve’s eyes less with a challenge and more with the kind of…anemic sympathy that comes about when you know you’ve got someone on the ropes, fucking fuck.

“Your, what was it? Healthy sense of shame? Seems to be reading into it,” and hell if Eddie’s shrug isn’t the K-O punch.

“Fuck you,” Steve bites without any teeth, whereas Eddie’s grin is all teeth, the bastard, so Steve just drinks deep from his glass and…relents.

“Point taken.”

Eddie takes the initiative to clink his glass against Steve’s while it’s still lifted to his mouth, and plows onward.

“Your parents don’t give a shit,” he ticks off points on his fingers; “Wayne’s no fucking angel, or a prude, but I also know for a fact he still gets his kicks from magazines like a goddamn dinosaur,” and where Eddie snorts, Steve almost goddamn chokes before he glares.

“Thank you so much for that mental image I didn’t need of one of the few male role models left in my life.”

“Aww,” Eddie pats Steve’s thigh in a far-too-exaggerated gesture of comfort, which always means something worse is coming; “don’t worry, Hopper’s probably at least into VHS.”

Steve groans so loud it’d probably draw attention if this place weren’t such a dive.

“Can you not?”

“Point is,” Eddie ignores him entirely; “we are in a fucking spectacular position here.”

“Oh, really,” Steve turns to him, incredulous; “is that position the same one you were in before or after the water shut off in the shower?”

“After,” because it’s Eddie who has no shame and grins about forgoing trying to get water out of the back of the toilet and running stark naked through their apartment instead: “because then I just collected the cleanest looking snow off the windowsill and got the rest of the shampoo out.”

Because yeah. That.

“You’re disgusting,” Steve says, and hell if it doesn’t come out as something closer to awe, like it’s impressive.

“And ingenious,” Eddie adds, so modest, before he leans in:

“Seriously though, hear me out,” he pushes his beer away and sets his elbows on the barfront. “Porn’s not just mainstream, man. There’s a whole movement of sex positivity, workers’ rights, the whole enchilada,” his voice gets louder, more earnest as he goes, like a crescendo to the grand fucking finale: “we would be downright progressive for doing this!”

He’s damn-near panting, something triumphant in him. Steve…

“I’ve known you too long to eat up your campaign-voice bullshitting at face value,” Steve tells him flat, eyes him in his peripherals as he deflates, but only a little, as Steve takes a drink and lays down the gauntlet:

“Try harder.”

Eddie eyes him carefully, then reaches for the last of his beer, sips slow. Contemplating. Either gearing up for a rebuttal or processing defeat.

Steve’s not a moron, though, or ill-practiced in an Edward Munson tête-à-tête. So he pushes in the opening given.

“McDonald’s has drop-in hiring,” Steve comments, idly and wholly transparent, between them.

“Would you want me near your food?”

“I have lived with you for ten years,” Steve shrugs off the weak pushback; “you are often near my food.”

It’s out of the corner of his eye, but Steve sees Eddie’s pout deepen.

“Would you put me in a hair net?” Eddie’s tone gets pitchy, then, and they both know he hits his mark because one thing Steve’s never outgrown is his…wholly normal level of attention to his hair care routine.

“Make a podcast,” Steve counters, impresses himself with how quick he manages, honestly; “you love the sound of your own voice, really should have been your first go-to.”

“So last year,” Eddie scrunches his nose, disgusted, but…he’s kinda adorable for it. “So last last year, Jesus.”

“So, about as absurd and embarrassing as your original idea,” Steve shrugs, draining his beer and gesturing for another. Eddie’s quiet while he waits.

Eddie, and quiet, in the same sentence…are a dangerous mix.

“Who would even buy this hypothetical porn, hmm?” Steve heads-off whatever Eddie’s sitting there concocting to hit him with as an argument. “No audience, no income. Waste of resources, dead in the water.”

“Au contraire, mi amore,” Eddie’s back, full force, swinging into Steve’s face with a goddamn Cheshire grin, sharp and intent. “Fucking is fucking. A statistical majority of people are at the very least interested in watching it occur.”

“Oh yeah, two cornfed Indianans diddling their asses and jacking off on camera,” Steve deadpans with an eyeroll. “I can literally see the dollar signs stacking up.”

“And,” Eddie cuts back in, undeterred; “and! Even if we didn’t have stupid fucking decade-old reputations to bank on, people watch porn of perfect strangers every day, but if you told me someone in my graduating class made a sex tape?” Eddie lets out a low, very fucking performative whistle. “I don’t even care if it’s vanilla missionary shit between Heather Holloway and Jermaine Demario, like super hetero milquetoast fucking, I would be asking why the hell were not watching that right this fucking instant.”

“Because we don’t have electricity,” Steve answers blandly; “that’d be the answer.”

It earns him a halfhearted kick in the shin.

“Oww.” Fuck him for telling the truth, then, apparently.

“Steve,” Eddie opens again, shifts his tone to serious; “Stevieeeee,” oh, no: shifts his tone to wheedling; “this could be it. Graduating class of what, 700? Probably more?”

Less, actually, if Barb with her email list was indicative of anything, but then Eddie’s spreading his arms wide, ready to plow forward, undeterred:

“They’re still open, you could even sneak a copy into the back room of Family Video.”

“We don’t live here anymore,” because that’s the Family Video he’s talking about.

“If one Family Video has a secret porn room, they all have a secret porn room.”

“How many people go to fucking Family Video, still?” Steve asks, only half rhetorically because who rents videos, discs, anything anymore? “Fuck, how many are still even open?”

“Irrelevant,” Eddie waves a dismissive hand.

“And were you planning on calling up Heather and Jermaine for this? Pretty sure they’re married,” Steve shoots back; “and not to each other.”

Eddie blinks at him. Not quite like he’s trying to come up with the content of his rebuttal but more like…working out his angle.

“We could fuck, if we had to, I guess.”

Oh.

Oh, well. That’s certainly an angle. Thank fuck Steve hadn’t taken another swig of beer.

“Umm, first,” Steve collects himself enough to speak at all, though okay, sure, there’s the sudden churning flutter in his stomach that has to be a result of, of—

“First, thanks for saying that in the same tone you’d talk about eating pussy.”

Of that. That’s the reason for the weird…feeling. Because Steve’s a fucking catch, okay? Maybe not the, not the best of all catches but you sure as shit wouldn’t throw him back, especially not anymore—

“Or eating carrots.”

Steve’s shaken out of his head by the amendment because: leave it to Eddie.

“That’s worse, for you,” Steve glares a little; “and that’s fucking saying something.”

Eddie shrugs, but there’s…there’s a set to his shoulders. Steve can read what it is, but not why.

So he does what he always does. Takes up the invitation, volleys the ball.

Metaphorically.

“But also? Eww, no,” Steve makes sure to infuse it with equal distaste and then some.

“Oh wow, King Bitchy Steve,” Eddie grins genuinely then, the unknown tension wholly gone before he frowns.

“Wait, hey!” Eddie protests with something of a whine. “That was a carrot-eating tone, too!”

Steve maybe smirks. Maybe turns his nose up a little.

Maybe.

“Doesn’t feel very nice, does it?”

“Steve,” Eddie starts but seems to peter off before he can get a tangent to run with and Steve isn’t gonna throw away his shot, especially when Eddie has the audacity to pull out high school nicknames, plus the bitch card:

“Level with me,” he leans back a little before realizing it’s a stool with barely any back, then tries to cover the way he shifts to avoid tipping over by crossing his arms and looking Eddie up and down, considering before he goes in for the kill:

“Have you secretly always wanted my dick, dude?”

Eddie’s jaw drops for a second before he snaps it back, almost audibly, and then drops his chin, shakes his head so his curls wave back and forth:

“Fuck, shit, you got me,” when Eddie speaks through his hair it’s so dry and deadpan that it’s almost abrasive. “I’ve strung you along as your best friend and loyal half-of-the-bills with the constant, undying hope that one day we’d be so destitute I could orchestrate a grand plot to woo you into my loving arms, woe is me to have been found out before we’ve even begun!”

And he slaps the bartop hard enough as the dramatics build, and he’s cursing the ceiling with a theatrical shaking fist by the time the bartender, who took the snack as a call for refills, comes around with more booze they can’t really afford but whatever.

Whatever. They’re this deep into the shit already.

“Then we stick to toys,” Eddie finally straightens up, brushes his hair behind his shoulders again and plows on still undeterred; “and self…manipulation.”

“That doesn’t seem worth paying for,” and Steve really doesn’t believe it would be, like, come on.

“I’m very imaginative,” Eddie counters with the straightest fucking face, Jesus. Steve…does know about the Bad Dragon shipments, so: it might be a niche audience but—

“I can’t even argue that,” Steve laments a little; “unfortunately.”

“You say unfortunately,” Eddie tips his beer at Steve before finishing the bottle; “I say profitably.” He reaches to clink his new bottle against Steve’s own empty before he pauses, shrugs a little and just adds:

“Hopefully.”

“I’m not filming my bare ass for ‘hopefully’, Edward,” Steve is quick to draw that goddamn line.

“Then I think we have to,” Eddie nudges his shoulder but does look apologetic when Steve glances up to Eddie driving the nail in the…the something:

“Y’know.”

To which Steve shakes his head and keeps his beer between his lips to try and keep from spitting anything out like they’re on a fucking sitcom. As if it were funny.

“It’d be like fucking my brother, man,” which yes, but also no, but also he’s not and just, he is not and the thinking about it at all can stop right there.

“No, it’d be a,” Eddie bites at his lower lip, looking for the words, not that Steve can imagine any words that would make any of this any better; “a professional agreement. A business transaction. Purely for money. You’ve definitely gotten it up for less.”

“How do you know?”

Steve genuinely would like to know how and why Eddie thinks he has this knowledge, and so fucking confidently, the asshole.

“Umm,” Eddie drags the sound out patronizingly, because again; asshole. “I’ve known you since you called me to ask if it was normal for your first boner to feel like—”

“Okay,” Steve cuts him off. Because…fine. Fine, he does know. Fuck.

“And to have been caused by—”

“Okay!”

Jesus.

“And I’ve been party to you trying to hide them fairly frequently ever since, so,” Eddie shrugs and takes to his beer, and Steve is so fucking tempted to nudge him so he splitters that shit everywhere because that’s so much less than he deserves.

“Not since like, middle school, man,” Steve chooses instead to take the high road and just defend his own…dignity.

“Not frequently,” Eddie mutters and oh. Oh no he didn’t.

“You’ve asked me if your dick was normal looking for one thing or another every year since your voice dropped, so,” Steve shrugs, because he could be a catty little bitch too; “goes both ways.”

“Fine,” Eddie grits out; “we both know too much about each other and have seen too much of each other naked,” and of course that’s when he pivots; “so what’s a little more, then? With a literal payoff this time?”

And god fucking damnit; Steve is tired, and kinda getting near tipsy again but also hungover at the same time? But whether that’s the reason or not: he can’t even think of an objection when it’s phrased like that.

Shit.

And then Eddie’s kneeling on the floor of this disgusting dive—they love it, but it is disgusting—and grabbing Steve’s hand before Steve can protest and catching Steve’s gaze with a solemnity Eddie doesn’t usually achieve before he says, even and measured and…almost, like, hopeful?

“Steven Harrington,” and it’s gotta be the tipsy-hangover thing that makes Steve run hot all of a sudden; “will you have sex with me on camera for money?”

It’s definitely the tipsy-hangover thing that makes his pulse do weird shit while Eddie stares at him, waiting, and Steve had been right.

He looks hopeful.

“Fucking hell,” Steve mutter to himself, tips his head back and stares at the ceiling as he breathes out to…fuck knows what or who:

“I…yeah.”

“What was that?” Eddie’s leaning in, and hasn’t let go of Steve’s hand.

“Yeah,” Steve repeats, then sighs, his pulse still fucking weird and skippy and kinda unhinged, but then Eddie’s leaned in so close his head is in Steve’s lap so Steve looks down again and meets his eyes and seals his fucking fate;

“Yes, I will,” he says, licks his lips and repeats it when Eddie looks like maybe he doesn’t believe his ears; “yes.”

And then Eddie’s springing from the floor and pulling Steve in for a bear hug fit to crack ribs, bouncing off the walls but not once letting go until he pulls back enough to say:

“If this works,” and Eddie sounds downright giddy; “maybe we can even move to that new complex off South Street.”

And…okay. Okay, that would be nice. They’ve been eyeing that ‘new’ complex for years. Bigger, nicer. Close enough they’d still see Claudia.

Right. Okay.

Steve guesses he needed a silver lining, and as Eddie tackles him again, he figures: okay.

He’s made it through worse.

Chapter Text

“This seems unfair.”

Steve’s staring at his phone with the contact pulled up, but honestly: unfair is an understatement.

“You dated her!”

Steve head snaps up quick enough to make him a little dizzy as he claps back, sounding as scandalized as the argument deserves:

“And you saw how that ended!”

Didn’t just see, either: Eddie pulled Steve back from the brink of what would have been a catastrophic breakup if he and Nancy had tried to be something they weren’t any longer, or better: if Steve had kept trying to make them something they didn’t fit into from the get-go. It was rough sailing regardless, and Eddie was there to pick up the pieces no one else would, before Robin was in the picture. He knew that while Steve and Nancy were friends now, they…they still had history.

“She never liked me,” Eddie continues to protest the point, to which Steve gives a huff and an eyeball because:

“She liked you just fine,” which: he won’t go farther than that. Nancy was cordial to Eddie and yes, it always rubbed Steve a little wrong but he always also saw it as something they would work on in the future—the one he was planning that looked like something that only suited a version of Nancy that wasn’t real, and one Nancy was 100% not planning with him; and Steve will protect his best friend from just about anything, but he won’t sugarcoat the facts to the point of a lie. Besides:

“And she likes you now!” because that is seriously true. There may be a lot of space between the group of them, but they’ve stayed in touch, and if they’ve managed all this time, through all this time, that means something. “We’re fucking adults man, Jesus.”

“You’ve seen her naked,” Eddie argues solemnly; “you have an undying bond.”

Steve has the distinct urge to either throw something or vomit—not that Nancy wasn’t gorgeous, and the sex wasn’t at least above average, but, that was, that was…that feels like a whole other life.

Not to mention he has been heavily favoring hookups including dicks since his last breakup with a woman. Not, like, consciously, but. Just the facts.

“I hate you for saying that,” Steve finally swallows the bile in his throat safely enough to speak; “for like, putting that in my head.”

Eddie pats his shoulder like the condescending douchebag he sometimes really fucking is.

“I’ll handle Robin,” he offers like a compromise.

“That is not an even fucking trade in any possible world,” because seriously. Like Steve talking to his Platonic Soulmate™ was in any way comparable. Jesus fuck.

“I’ll owe you,” Eddie finally concedes, and Steve doesn’t even look to confirm that he’d pulled out his big shiny doe eyes to do half the begging for him. Steve knows they’re staring him down.

Fucker.

“Fine,” Steve hisses, drawing the blanket around his shoulders—the sun’s already started setting and the whole no-heat thing is starting to suck ass—and stalking to his room.

Might as well get this over with before his teeth start fucking chattering mid-call.

—————————

“Who died?”

Steve barely registers that the line connects before the voice is barking out sharp, no-nonsense, ready-to-take-action: classic Nancy Wheeler.

But even as that kinda settles Steve’s reluctance in making the call in the first place—familiar, if nothing else—he’s still caught off guard by the words themselves when they sink in.

“Today?” he asks, just kinda fucking floundering. “Like, something around a hundred and seventy thousand people?”

“Nationally?”

“Worldwide.”

He gets a snort, at that.

“That’s gotta be a Munson fact.”

And Steve chuckles because:

“Not wrong,” and it’s not like Steve retains all the random Trivial Pursuit shit Eddie’s spewed their whole lives, but. Sometimes.

“Seriously though,” Nancy sobers quickly. “You never call off-schedule,” and he can hear her arched brow across the connection: “you text at best.”

Again, she is not wrong.

“This would,” Steve bites his lip; “this would not be a good text.”

“So someone did die?”

Steve lets out a long, careful breath, but knows it’s audible through the call; knows Nance not only hears, but reads it at least…to a point.

“Think less morbid, more incriminating?” Steve lands on, passing a hand over his face before letting himself sigh and groan in a weird swirl of the two.

“I’m intrigued, Steve Harrington,” is what he gets, measured but curious and, well.

Steve’s long since grown out of the idea that he’ll ever grow out of being susceptible to Nancy’s effortless way of getting people to spill their shit, and cut to the chase.

So he spills…just about everything.

And is met by silence. Enough seconds of it that he actually thinks are as long as they feel.

“I,” Nancy finally says, and then cuts off, like she’s lost, and that…that’s not like Nancy. And it hits Steve like a ton of fucking bricks, then.

“Shit, fuck,” and at the core of it all the bigger part of Steve reluctance to make this call wasn’t about being Nancy’s ex—they didn’t work, but Steve was over that shit now, and cliche as it was, they did make way better friends; it was much more about how…Nancy showed up at a pole fitness class instead of the ballet-fitness thingy, like apparently there were days the same studio put the bar upright versus long the wall, so you learned that kinda dance, and now she’s using her skills to pay her grad school expenses.

After class, obviously.

“I wasn’t, like,” and Steve fumbles because honestly, he thinks it’s kinda great, because Nance is this powerhouse of a woman who is going to take over the world when she finishes her program, and it sounds like the ladies from her dance class are cut from the same cloth; they all came up with the idea of working at a club in the evenings together, drive enough out of town so as to put distance between themselves and their school environment while they cash in on twirling less-than-half dressed for a few hours. He thinks they’re pretty fucking amazing, and he never ever ever wants to like, cheapen it, what they do. Like it’s not real work or that it has, like, expectations.

And Steve’s gotten better about putting his fucking foot in his mouth, but—

“I’m not trying to say just because you dance you’re, like,” he tries to recover but Nance cuts him off:

“But I am.”

“But you’re not like,” an exotic dancer is not what he was going to say, he wants that on the fucking record. Because she’s made it clear that they’re not strippers, but there’s no shame in it if they were, but she would call herself the former and there’s no shame in that either—and anyone who thinks otherwise can meet Steve in the back with the baseball bat he still has for some reason, leftover from an wrong turn away from basketball for less than a season.

“You’re not a commodity to take advantage of,” Steve finally lands on because…that’s basically it. He’s not assuming Nancy would be more on board with this automatically because of her work. He was asking because she’s in town, and they’re friends, and boundaries between them are few and far between, even now.

“I didn’t think you thought that at all,” Nancy’s voice is warm and kinda gentle, and that’s…from here, that’s, like, poignant.

“But,” Steve starts but she butts in again, and quick:

“We’re friends, right?”

And…that had been his whole point. So…yeah. Yeah, they are.

He nods, and only clocks that she can’t see him after she’s talking again, her tone a little wry like she could have seen his head bob somehow with her weirdly perceptive skills, even through the phone.

“And we’ve known each other way longer than the first time I took a pole fitness class, let alone,” she hums, and Steve gets how she maybe knew he nodded, because he knows she tosses her hair and smirks when she adds: “well.”

And it does somehow kind of encompass how prissy-on-the-surface Nancy Wheeler ended up a pole dancer in the off hours to offset her student loans.

“Still,” Steve feels the need to…emphasize the point, for his own deep-seated and still-sometimes-lingering fears of being anything like his parents, a thing that creeps up especially when high school is immediately recalled to his mind, even if it’s just via the people from high school. “I, like, also, I mean, of course you don’t have to,” Steve groans, he’s well aware he’s stammering, bumbling around his own words here; “I’m sorry I—”

“It actually sounds kinda fun.”

Steve’s grateful, in the back of his mind, that he’s alone for how his mouth stays open, gaping as he tries to process what he thinks he heard but like, can’t have heard.

“What?”

“I said,” and Nancy’s tone is light, kind of amused; “it kind of sounds fun. We can use fake names, right?” she asks, like she’s…like she’s serious. “It’s what we do at the club, so the school can’t prove anything if they find out.”

“Of course,” Steve assures her, running his hand over his mouth and catching his bottom lips between his fingers and pulling them almost to the point of pain in just, kinda blind fucking disbelief that this is where the conversation’s going: “shit, Nance, I didn’t even think—”

“Makeup does wonders,” Nancy rescues him from his fumbling yet again; “I can look nothing like myself when I want to. It’s gonna give a whole generation a fucking complex as soon as it takes over social media but contouring?” she whistles down the line:

“Saving my ass.”

“Literally?” It pops out from Steve almost automatically, and it’s worth it like fuck for the way Nancy snorts but ends it on a groan.

“I hate when your lewd humor is actually accurate,” she sighs, despairing of him in that specific Nancy Wheeler way before she flips the subject, and pretty unexpectedly at that:

“Is your cast list full?”

“I…no?” Steve only flounders for a second, though, because this does bring him to an important point to clear before moving any further.

“But that was the next thing, because, we,” he grimaces as he clears his throat, the way his voice screams ‘hat-in-hand pathetic’ kinda just…unavoidable: “we can’t pay you unless the thing sells, I mean, I’ll make you all the fucking coffee you want, but—”

“Steve, breathe.” Nancy’s voice is calm and authoritative, reassuring even as it’s giving orders: as per usual. “I kinda got that memo already when you told me why you were shooting a porno.”

Oh. Well, yeah, okay; point.

“Right,” Steve nods to himself again; “and you’re…cool with it?”

“You know my coffee order,” she tosses back, a little mischievous with it; “I’m sure it’ll even out as a decent advance.”

And…Nance has been in New England long enough where, yeah. She might not be that far off.

“But the question I asked,” she leads him back to before he freaked out a little; “if your cast isn’t finalized already, I kinda came back with a friend.”

Ooooooo.

“A friend?” Steve repeats suggestively; he is so not above needling for something juicy.

“Just a friend,” Nancy says, her voice betraying a smile but it’s final, like Robin says Capital P. “She was a cheerleader at Jordan, weirdly enough; you might have even seen her at games,” which is actually entirely possible, not that Steve ever asked their names or anything.

“But she was actually the one who thought we could use the club to make some extra money and practice our skills from class. And she was planning to come home for the holidays too, so,” Nancy pauses, which usually means she’s about to wrap up her own well-laid plans in a victorious little bow: “if I run it by her and she’s interested, you’d have a role for her?”

And, umm, Steve doesn’t mean to be stereotypical, and he definitely doesn’t want to be misogynistic, but, like. They’re all the same page here, right? They all know what the context here is; the end goal. And, like, come on.

Cheerleader who works the pole?

“Fuck, yeah.”

“Literally,” Nancy deadpans, and Steve can hear the wince that follows once she processes it out of her mouth, even before Steve snorts.

“Less than what, a week in the same town, and only like ten minutes on the phone, and I’m already corrupting you into making these little comebacks?” Steve tuts dramatically. “How the mighty have fallen.”

“I am honestly ashamed of myself,” Nancy says, dead fucking serious.

“As you should be,” Steve affirms her stance because, well, yeah. She’s supposed to be the clever one.

“I’ll let you know what Chrissy says,” Nancy recovers quick, and Steve tries to figure if he can remember any visiting-team cheerleaders named Chrissy; “text me the details as you have ‘em, either way.”

“Will do,” he agrees, and then pauses, because…this was easy. Too easy, and it shouldn’t have been, he doesn’t deserve it to have been, and—

“And Nance?”

“You don’t have to thank me, Steve,” she cuts him off, still knows him too well; “it really does sounds like it could be fun.”

And she sounds like she means it, too. Wild.

“Gets you out of your parents’ place, too, so,” Steve shrugs, tries to see her grass-is-greener perspective on this insanity. “Bonus.”

“I wasn’t going to lead with that but,” she draws the word out before admitting; “also definitely that, yes. Mike is already insufferable, but if Dad starts on politics,” and her cringing is actually audible, she kinda squeaks a little, and just…yeah. Warranted.

Steve remembers dinners around the Wheeler table too well.

“Just tell Ted you’ve got a,” Steve bites his lips, trying to come up with something convincing; “a practical skills internship…placement,” he fits decently-professional words together hopefully, before giving in to needing to ask: “is that a thing?”

Nancy chuckles, then, and doesn’t answer exactly, but does settle the point:

“He’d never know if it wasn’t.”

And, well, yeah.

Steve remembers that about Ted Wheeler, too.

—————————

Steve has to switch to balancing the phone in the crook of his neck to his ear before he says goodbye with Nancy, his headphones dead and, well. No place to charge them until he gets to work in the morning.

He’s only just glancing down at his phone to see what its charge has left when it starts vibrating in his hand.

“Fuck,” he mutters as he answers on autopilot, standing from his bed to head to the living room, see if they have a power bank anywhere that’s got any juice in it—he’s already at 42%, and his phone’s too fucking old to trust it below half-charge.

“Why am I learning that you’re destitute, and filming pornography, from your house husband?”

And that’s why he answered on autopilot, always—and also curses always answering for her on autopilot, given verbal assaults out the gate like this.

“I drew the short straw and had to call Nance.”

“Oof,” Robin’s tone changes from accusing to commiserating; “you’re forgiven.”

Steve snorts, shaking his head as he switches her to speakerphone, needs both hands and less concern for not dropping her while he looks for a charger.

“Your graciousness. It knows no bounds.”

“I am firm but fair,” Robin sniffs theatrically, and Jesus: why do both of the most important people in Steve’s life have to be so goddamn dramatic?

“That’s what he said,” slips out of Steve’s mouth before he can think twice, or better of it—not like it’s relevant to Robin but…y’know, that’ll probably make it more effective.

“I won’t forgive you for that,” she groans predictably, and Steve smirks; “that was awful and juvenile.”

“I think you’ll find it’s you being juvenile, Birdie,” Steve chides her playfully; “Mr. Clarke said exactly that at the beginning of every year.” That earns him an even louder groan because he is right, the man opened with his grading policies every year even if everyone knew he was more lenient than he tried to project. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Jesus.”

Steve thinks he can hear Robin’s eye-roll through the phone.

“But dingus,” Robin’s voice suddenly deepens, turns totally serious; “how bad is it? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Because it’s a long-standing thing in their group that unless it’s life or death, you don’t lend money between friends. Because Steve lived too long paying for too much, for just about everybody, with money that was meant to stand in for love and never did, never could, fucked him up well enough even with Eddie always reminding him he was worth more, and Wayne, and then Robin—it was more than just protecting friendships from toes stepped on for something as fucking stupid as money. It was not reinforcing the toxic messages Steve learned to tell himself all the way to his bones for too fucking long.

But there were exceptions. Namely: when it came to Robin and Eddie. His best internal organ and his best shared braincell.

She almost sounds…hurt, that he didn’t come to her when they could be facing eviction if they can’t right this fucking ship, but he never meant it like that, plus it’s still a new problem, and they…well, they’re at least trying to fix it.

And like half their friends, Rob’s in grad school too. She doesn’t have a whole lot of spare charge to toss at even her most favorite idiots.

Steve explains as much, and gets increasingly-pitchy whines in response as he goes along until the sound he gets lands on a sigh. It’s a resigned sort of thing that Steve has long learned means ‘this is probably not over but I’ll let it go for now and you should be grateful I’m being that lenient’.

So Steve chalks up the win. Thinks back to their first job together and draws himself an imaginary line in the ‘You Rule’ column.

Especially once Robin shifts fully into ‘distracted by problem solving’ mode. It was like when she got obsessed with decoding Russian riddles for free lo mein at the food court near the end of that first summer scooping ice cream.

“So cast—”

“Accumulating,” Steve comments as he casts a blind hand into the next drawer, looking for that one really massive black block thingy that takes forever to charge but like, does three phones before it’s dead again. “You want in?”

“Duh,” and Steve is kind of surprised for one whole second before Robin adds like clockwork; “keeping a house over your fucking head? Did you think it was a question?”

And no. No, he didn’t, not really. And he loves her. So goddamn much.

“You’ll be pleased to know that Nancy’s a go, and is bringing a friend,” Steve baits her playfully; “so, you’ll officially be more boobies to dicks. So far.”

“Pairs or individual breasts?” she asks warily, and pointedly doesn’t say ‘boobies’ because she’s too mature but Steve still thinks that being bothered by the choice of term is the less mature move, so.

Boobies.

(It’s not like he says it in the bedroom anymore, or ever did, the few times he’s still hooking up with chicks or anything. Jesus.)

“Pairs,” Steve lets her dodge the well worn bickering for now; suspects it’ll come back in full force soon enough. “Lucky you.”

“You gonna reach out to Jon for the camera work?” she redirects, but sounds giddy. He knows her too well; they match like that—but then she wavers with a low, groaning, moaning sort of whine.

“Nancy gonna be cool with that?”

He hadn’t got as far as thinking of the cameraman yet, but of course Jon’s the first ask at least. But…when it came to Nancy. andJonathan…

“You know what, Robs?” Steve gives up on the search for a charger and turns to where Eddie is curled up on the couch with a flashlight in his mouth against the growing dark of late November. “That’s an excellent question, we should definitely check first.”

And Steve doesn’t know if Eddie’s been eavesdropping on their conversation or if he’s too engrossed in the nerd manual he’s got propped on his knee, scribbling to the opposite side in a notebook. Both possibilities are pretty much tied in probability when it comes to Eddie Munson.

Place your bets.

“Hey Eds,” Steve calls as he waltzes into the room proper: “remember how you owe me?”

The way Eddie blinks owlishly and then pales immediately gives him away. Definitely was listening.

And definitely clocks that now, he’s gonna have to talk to Nancy anyway.

And about her ex, no less, because while she and Steve made it out before things got really bad, her and Jonathan?

That’d been a nuclear site for years afterward; everyone still generally treaded carefully between even just the idea of them in proximity.

So: when Eddie’s sitting there frozen, spitting out his flashlight into his lap so his lips can start moving around silent words that look an awful lot like ‘Jesus H. Christ, no, please, god no,’?

Steve at least figures he’ll be getting his favor’s-worth out of the whole thing. Maybe even teach Eddie that shrugging responsibility off on his friends sometimes has consequences.

Probably not, for the latter, but hey. Hope springs eternal or…whatever.

Chapter Text

“Jon, man,” Eddie hears from the door before the bells at the top even have a chance to jingle; “good to fuckin’ see you.”

“Same, dude, been way too long,” Jon answers in earnest and Eddie grins to himself—Jonathan’s…the story with Jonathan, for all of them, has always been a weird one.

Because when the story’s told without context, like, if you weren’t there: it makes Jon sound…kinda slutty.

And if he was, that’d be one thing. But it’s not that Jonathan didn’t have standards, or preferences, or…you know. Like anyone involved—you or him—was the bottom of the barrel or something, or either was someone who’d just fuck around with anyone. Jon was just…in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Jon was more than bi-flexible. All-the-flexible and chill as fuck about it. He was…like Gumby.

Not Gumbo.

But like…maybe like gumbo. Lots of combinations. Spicy by midwestern standards. Basically decent as a rule, edible—

Okay, yeah: point is, they’ve nearly all of them fucked Jonathan at least once.

Eddie, probably a handful of times. All super casual. Mildly spicy, like, the most-mild. Better than decent but solidly rooted at ‘good’. He knows Steve was with Jonathan more than that, though not by much. Maybe like both-handfuls. Also casual. Also how Steve realised he wanted more than casual—but not with Jonathan, who was super cool with that, too.

However, in the middle of those handfuls: there was Nancy.

Post-breakup with Steve, she and Jon had been long term. Serious. Leave-and-fallow-you-to-college serious. Let’s-talk-about-mortgages-and-timelines-for-when-to-get-off-birth-control serious.

(Jonathan may have had a steady stream of bedfellows, but he hadn’t had a ton of friends so, pre-post-and-during, Eddie and Steve mostly just got used to learning more about his relationships and hookups not-with-either-of-them than they…probably could have volunteered themselves for.

But Jon is a good friend. A great friend, really. He’s here to help them shoot fucking porn, so. Great friend.)

He and Nancy had imploded, in that the end of their relationship had crushed them both in different ways. They’d been away, because Jon had followed Nancy to college in Boston. To this day, no one has poked for more details from either than they sometimes offer unprovoked, because when anyone had tried in the beginning, hoping to help, they both looked like you’d run over their pet. And…yeah.

It’s kind of insane that they’re both gonna be here. Willingly. It’s been years, and they’ve both more than moved on, but; still wild. And Eddie doesn’t take for granted that they’re willing to do it to help him and Steve. That Nancy’s on her way, even though she’d spent the phone call—that Eddie had made under duress—to gauge her comfort level about the whole thing in silence until she’d taken a shaky sigh and said only It will be fine, low and quiet and Eddie hadn’t even noticed the cold that night because he’d felt mostly fucking guilty, that it was a thing he’d had to ask at all.

That she’d agreed, and then begged off in less than ten seconds.

But Steve, who keeps him even when he’s a bladder full of stones, keeps reminding him they’re all adults and you do things that are sometimes inconvenient for the people you love—because the love’s always bigger than the inconvenience.

So Eddie’s trying to focus on being grateful, and feeling a little warm and fuzzy to be part of a group of friends who’ve weathered the tests of time to still have this much genuine love between them.

He finds himself kinda smiling at the tangle of cables in his hands, for a second. It’s just, y’know.

It’s just a nice feeling. Even if they’re all gathered essentially to just…fuck about it.

Semantics.

“Thanks for coming, and being willing, y’know,” Eddie can picture how Steve gestures at the after-hours scene the coffee shop paints; “not exactly pizza-for-help-moving affair, y’know?”

Because not only had they decided it was their only real option for a place to shoot with no fucking money, it’s also the only place they can get together to plan, when their home’s still sans electricity.

Hard to have a pre-shoot meeting in the dark and all.

“I haven’t been able to film something other than stock footage for like three years, man, think I kinda owe you pizza,” Eddie hears Jonathan like, genuinely lamenting as Eddie gets to working on finishing his tasks quicker—namely, finding the right things to unplug that won’t like, spoil all the dairy and charging every last one of their electronics between him and Steve so they have them for the cold afterwork hours, and at least one thing will still be charged to set off their morning alarms before they come in and start all over the next day.

“I dunno,” Steve’s teasing tone draws Eddie’s smile a little wider; “you were the genius mind behind that one old guy who’s angry and happy depending on what you search, right?”

Eddie snorts, knows he’d be unable to keep from full-ass laughing if he were in the same room and not just listening in when Jonathan’s aggrieved moan echoes toward the back: “Do you have any idea how long that shoot took?”

“You still in touch with him?” Steve asks with too much energy, like a golden retriever, playing it up and Eddie just shakes his head with a grin, but also kinda agrees with the question because, like: “think I can get an autograph,” exactly, that’s exactly why; “he’s an icon, I mean—”

“Brochachos and brocachettes of the adult entertainment persuasion!”

Oh, oh fuck. Eddie drops the last plug he needs to swap something non-super-perishable with and then scrambles to retrieve it, and fucking find a hood outlet because—

“Oh shit, you brought,” and now the enthusiasm in Steve’s voice has turned to something more playful, more lighthearted, because:

“Steve-o!”

“Argyle, fuck,” and Eddie hears the clapping of hand heavy on backs and shit, he unplugged something he can’t trace, can’t confirm won’t end in disaster, he seriously needs to give this cord up and find another so he can get out there because: “it’s been forever.”

Seriously, like, they know the man’s alive and shit through Jonathan, who at least texts and sends random photos from wherever he’s working, but, Argyle’s a little too…rooted in an elsewhere they still aren’t wholly sure the nature of to be reliable for regular contact, or like, more than proof-of-life updates.

“Too, too long, my dude,”Argyle answers warmly, the words weighted and genuine before he hums loud enough for Eddie to hear: “but time is only subjective perception, in the punchcard hellscape,” then his tone brightens a little, and Eddie can imagine the man reaches for both Steve and Jon’s shoulders, drawing them close as he celebrates: “and now we are reunited in the flesh where there was no time apart in the mind.”

Case in point: rooted…elsewhere.

And Eddie is only not super jealous to be missing the start of this reunion because one, Argyle has only two hands to hug with (on this plane of being), so he’s already wholly occupied and two, fucking yes, he found a safe outlet to plug in on.

They don’t need all the lights back here, fuck that.

“Missed you, man,” Steve’s saying as Eddie plugs in the last of their phones “and Eddie, shit, he’s gonna flip—”

“Is that my favorite fucking ganja-growing guru I hear?”

Eddie bursts through the door separating the back from the rest of the store with all the theatricality the moment demands because: Argyle is here.

“He really doesn’t only love you for the weed, man, I swear,” Steve murmurs while he sucks his lips to tamp down his grin as Eddie barrels toward the group of them.

“Love is love, my dude,” Argyle declares safely before embracing Eddie one of in his signature bear hugs, the sort that Eddie holds as a top tier golden standard for hugs in general, matched or exceeded by only, like, two people, one being his uncle; “I don’t police its origins, only bask in its glow.”

“You’re sure he’s sober?” Steve asks under his breath, like he’d probably exchanged some pointed glances with Jonathan on the subject already, but Jon just nods and shrugs.

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s just, baked into him forever at this point, whether he lights up or not,” Jonathan replies, a little bewildered but mostly kinda fond, which is basically the universal reaction to Argyle, and has definitely been Jonathan’s reaction to the man for fucking ever, so. Yeah.

Steve, though: he snorts.

“Pun intended?”

And it takes Jon a second, and Eddie only slightly less, to clock it: baked in.

Ha.

“There actually is pizza already, behind the counter, so,” Steve points them to the bar that’s usually clear for coffee orders, and that’s currently covered in telling white boxes; “help yourself, and if you’re genuinely inclined to contribute, you can grab the pies when we start shooting.”

Jon nods and makes his way at a normal person’s pace—Argyle and Eddie were just properly disentangling from their hug so it’s fitting that they’re half attached as they both scramble to the food, which of course came while Eddie was still hunting charging stations.

“And this is?” Eddie hears as Steve’s voice float almost teasingly, from farther away from it should, he looks up with a slice of supreme hanging half out of his mouth as he looks up and notices…more people.

“Chrissy,” a petite blonde stands near Nancy, must be the cheerleader from pole class, and extends a hand to Steve before they both give up at once and she giggles when he opens his arms for a hug.

“Steve!” she nearly squeals, but it’s fucking endearing, and the way Steve spins her a little…Eddie does kind of remember her from the basketball games he tried to never miss. “I hoped it was you,”

“Looking gorgeous, as always,” Steve kisses her cheek like it wouldn’t have been a decade since they might have crossed paths, but she just giggles, and any confusion of…anything else that Eddie might be feeling kinda just slips away as she beams smacking playfully at Steve’s shoulder as he sets her down.

“Flatterer,” she accuses, the syllables themselves all bouncy like her ponytail—Steve has to have bonded with her over hair at some point, seriously—and Eddie can’t help but grin at them, rush finishing his pizza slice and grabbing another before he makes his way back toward where Nancy’s chatting with Robin; and circling back to people who’ve fucked—

“Truthful,” Steve says, with that specific brand of genuineness that tingles through Eddie as much as the person it’s directs toward, the real honest fucking ‘Harrington charm’; “but I won’t pretend flattery hasn’t generally worked in my favor so far.”

Steve finishes off with a playful smirk before leaving Chrissy to greet mostly new faces and Eddie just gets a solid vibe from her—like, bubbly and honest and still signed on for the madness.

Quicker than usual, he’s already super sold.

“So!” Steve claps like a fucking kindergarten teacher once introductions have all been made, Nancy and Jonathan haven’t started a nuclear holocaust or a Nicholas Sparks novel—total destruction on a time mile radius or lasting emotional devastation were both viable possibilities—and everyone’s demolished enough of the pizza to have gone back for seconds; “first, thank you all for being here and being willing to do this at all, like, fuck, seriously, thank you,” and Steve’s doing that thing where his genuine earnestness fills you up by default again, no matter who’s the actual target, and Eddie feels all warm for it all over; “and just for the record I’m nothing to write home about when it comes to, like, leading things—”

“Says Mister Basketball Captain,” Robin beats Eddie to the punch with an eyeroll; Eddie’s mouth had already been open, the clear protests ready on his tongue in the face of that blatant bullshit.

“Ten fucking years ago—”

“That’s not the part of the skillset that fades with time,” Robin stands firm and Steve sighs, then turns it all kind again, the gloriously stubborn fuck:

“Co-Captain, anyway—” and oh, oh Eddie has this one all ready to refute.

“Whatever you say, Mister Swim Captain,” because Eddie knows damn well Steve was not only the youngest to hold that title, but never once did he share it.

Steve doesn’t quite glare at Eddie but it’s like…it’s like if a glare got tenderised in a lifetime of living in each other’s pocket. It’s a look that breaks with a shake of the head and a quirk of the lips, either way, so.

Point: Edward Munson. Damn straight.

“I figure we should at least,” Steve gestures broadly, restarting from the top; “make a basic plan of who’s comfortable with what?”

Everyone glances around like…maybe kinda like they are in grade school, little sheepies in need of guidance, and here Eddie can help, Eddie knows as well as Steve does how to shepherd the wayward when they lack direction.

“Should we start with like, guy on girl, girl on girl,” he suggests and Steve snaps his fingers, eyes bleeding gratitude.

“Okay, let’s,” Steve scribbles in his notes before looking up: “who has strong opinions about who they don’t fuck?”

“I don’t want any dicks,” Robin’s quick to note so Eddie just piggybacks as naturally:

“And I don’t want any vag-action.”

Steve doesn’t write it down, of course, because he knew that well enough. He does look around to invite input—he can guess for everyone but Chrissy, but, y’know: sexuality, spectrum, fluid. Also this is a porno. It’s not…real. Preferences can be wholly different than real life.

“Anyone else?” Steve prompts when no one says anything and just gets shrugs and some head-shakes before tapping his pen on the old-school legal notepad he’s got in his hand.

“Okay,” he takes a second to look up and down the lined yellow paper before Chrissy pipes up:

“Is there a plot?”

And she sounds…actually honestly curious. Like she’s…excited to know.

Steve’s eyes widen a little for it, but Eddie’s not the center of attention just now so he lets his jaw drop because…holy fuck.

He didn’t see anyone doing this out of anything but a favor. Pity, maybe. But…he glances around. They’re…all waiting, like they give a shit to know.

He’s not entirely sure what to make of that, to be entirely honest. Steve hides it better, but Eddie knows him like the back of his hand: they’re on the same bewildered page.

“Less plot?” Steve answers, a tiny grimace in his voice more than on his face, which is never not just…handsome and very rarely anything less than put together. “More,” and Steve gestures at the shop at large: “playing to the scenery.”

“Vibes and ambience,” Eddie chimes in, goes toward the coffee stocked behind the counter; “props,”as he grabs a bag and tosses it in the air for show.

“Notthe fucking limited edition, man,” Steve warns with a raised brown and Eddie fucking feels himself blanch.

“Oh my god,” he whispers, catching the bag in more of a cradle to his chest before gently replacing it and backing away slowly. He actually did learn his lesson.

“Right so,” Steve snorts at Eddie’s slow tiptoeing backward; “I’ll make sure those are hidden when I close, which is how I’m on my boss’s good side, I’ve got the whole week, which Jon,” Steve turns to their esteemed cameraman; “think we’ll need more?”

Jonathan purses his lips. “When’s close and open?”

“Close at 8, open at 6.”

“More than enough,” he answers, like, dead confident with it and holy fuck: they could…have a full fucking film by next fucking week?

But then Jonathan’s frowning, eyeing still warily:

“Will you get enough sleep, man?”

“It’s one week,” Steve waves it off with a shrug; “I’ll be fine.”

Eddie might not have a legal pad to jot it down, but he’s got a notebook in his head devoted solely to making sure Steve’s okay, so. He files away paying extra close attention in that handy mental notebook for the next eight days, give or take.

“But I’ll make sure we close the night with plans for the next night’s first scene, so I can clean everything, thoroughly, and set up before you get here,” Steve looks to each of them in turn; “and then kick you guys out to clean up again and clean everything even more thoroughly before we open. Maybe, like, twice,” then he frowns a little with his his lower lip jutted out all adorable and shit before he nods to himself and amends:

“Three times.”

Which is super fair, given the givens.

“Sounds perfect, we’ll still have plenty of time,” Jon assures and Steve brightens, mind taken back off of cleaning standards.

“Awesome,” Steve grins; “and like, I don’t know shit about lighting but,” he tosses his hand upward with a shrug.

“This is fine,” Jonathan confirms, unbothered as usual which is…a relief; Eddie’s not going to pretend the anticipation of seeing the man wasn’t mixed in equally with anxiety after his call to Nance; “a lot of my stuff’s post production. Software will do the color correction and whatever if we need it.”

“Great,” Steve checks something off on his notepad—bad at leading things, Eddie whole entire ass; “anyone super pumped to dive in as the first go, tomorrow?”

They’re back to sheepie kindergarteners, mostly not making eye contact, definitely not being forthcoming to volunteer.

“Don’t be so excited, guys,” Steve deadpans to a couple of chuckles, but then…more silence.

“I’m not, not,” and it’s Nancy that’s…weirdly sounding like she means it, like she’s pumped for this somehow. “I’ve just never fucked on film before.”

And that might just be the closest Eddie has ever heard Nancy Wheeler sound to timid: understandable skepticism of the unknown.

“And we all know each other,” Robin adds, because hell: she’d told Eddie—long after Steve knew, of course—but she’d told him that Jonathan had ended up at a marching band party in her sophomore year and they’d ended up in a closet for seven minutes in not heaven where Jon had honestly stumbled in to her still-clothed tits and had been a perfect gentleman to spend the rest of the time talking foreign movies when he’d seen how disgusted her face had gone for the contact, even on accident.

“Wait,” Steve picks up on something they’re all missing because they’re still basically shuffling their feet when Steve brightens and scribbles something before pointing his pen back and forth between—

“Chrissy,” he starts, then turns to: “Argyle,” then both straighten up, lean in a little—or, Chrissy by a lot, and Argyle noticeably only if you knew him; “how well do you know each other?”

“Only made this lovely lady’s acquaintance tonight,” Argyle offers and Chrissy giggles a little at the choice of words as she nods. Steve’s smile broadens a touch.

“You cool to start?” he proposes hopefully. “Least history goes first?”

And honestly, that…that makes sense, yeah.

“Seems like a solid rule of pointer, my dude,” Argyle agrees and Chrissy nods before freezing and turning, a little hesitant as she asks:

“Do you mean thumb?”

“Thumb’s wide, but not the longest,” Argyle points out like the most obvious of things, wholly unbothered.

“Oh,” Chrissy blinks, maybe kinda startled before looking at her hands and smiling: “that is true!”

Eddie absolutely doesn’t snort when the majority of the gathered party seems preoccupied with measuring their thumbs up to their other fingers. Fucking sheepies.

“I’ll bring my most choice accoutrements for the lady’s comfort and pleasure,” Argyle’s pledging with a hand to his chest as he bows a little toward Chrissy, who go looks endeared as fuck. “Jon and I will stay with the Byers across town for the week but I’m fucking dead on my feet,” Argyle then turns his attention to Steve, then over the Eddie: “could we snag your hospitality for use of your couch before showtime?”

“You can use the beds, man, we’ve both got work,” Steve says, speaks for them both because he knows their answer by rote, plus yeah: they’re meeting super late and their alarm clocks are charging in the back. He and Steve were gonna make a bed out of the sacks of beans in the back for all of…maybe five hours? Jon and Argyle know they’re going into cold and dark, but: bed’s a bed.

“This first night is that only one I don’t actually have the night shift,” Steve’s answering the girls who are confused by the sleeping arrangements; “I’m just coming back because it’s all the kids we don’t trust with the keys. And works to our advantage if I’m locking up.”

“Then we’ll light an inaugural indulgence to share,” Argyle says like it’s a sacred ritual, glancing at Jonathan before he adds: “Purple Palm Tree?”

As if that’s supposed to mean anything, but context does imply it’s weed.

“If we share,” Jonathan puts his foot down immediately; “we have to work.”

Shit. Okay. So: good weed, even by Argyle-expectations.

“So it is written, my fellow seekers of fame and fortune,” Argyle sets it in stone before Robin tacks on:

“And fatties?”

Eddie snorts; he never claimed his sense of humor was particularly evolved.

“I forgive you for being so callous,” Argyle tells her graciously before whispering to his coat pocket: “she didn’t mean it.”

So now everyone knows where the supply is, cool.

“Argyle doesn’t really,” Jon is trying to explain to Chrissy, who looks amused as fuck; “like his drug of choice to be insulted with,” and Jonathan grimaces as he finds himself in the position of defending marijuana like a jilted lover: “crass slang.”

“Especially not the choicest choice strain of her majesty, the most excellent pur—”

“Anything special to wear?” Chrissy cuts in with a bright smile at Argyle, all the apology and balm she needs to soothe cutting him off; he melts as much as the rest of them. Steve’s charm in a woman’s body: potent.

Eddie has always wondered if there was something about jocks that explained the sheer efficacy, and it’s looking like maybe he was on to something.

“Kinda think it’d defeat the purpose,” Eddie answers first; “it’s just coming right off.”

There’s a murmur of agreement, then: problem solved.

“I found some old aprons we need to pitch anyway, so we can throw those over whatever you’re comfortable with if we’re getting into a role thing,” Steve adds and Eddie watches all of them fall into a different quiet; contemplative. Thinking up their plot lines.

“Sounds good,” Nancy butts in with a nod, and then Steve’s tucking his pen behind his ear.

“Meet back at 9 tonight?” because it’s long-long past midnight, now, and everyone agrees before collectively polishing off the remaining cold pizza.

“Eds,” Steve’s coming up to his side, “you going back for anything or just giving Jon the key?”

Jonathan perks at the sound of his name and Eddie tosses his house keys over; he’s gonna stay and make a bean-fort with Stevie, of course.

So they let everyone out, dump the pizza boxes, and settle on not not-super-comfortable cost of coffee bean bags, still fully dressed because one, they don’t have a change and two, the bags are scratchy as hell. But it’s warm. And they’ll have functional alarms in a few hours.

And the company is incomparable.

They’re just kinda finding a good way to lie down when Steve lets out a loud breath before he speaks, voice pitched low:

“We’re really doing this.”

Eddie turns, looks him full on, closer than usual for the setup they’ve managed so he can see Steve’s whole face, every flicker of expression in the emergency lights still on at the other end of the room.

“We are really doing this,” Eddie says, and then frowns.

“Why, having second thoughts?”

Because this was Eddie’s harebrained idea. If Steve didn’t want to—

He’d never makes Steve do something he didn’t want to. They’d…figure out another way.

“No,” Steve stills Eddie’s spiral, hand on Eddie’s elbow in the dark. “No, I’m just,” and he laughs, doesn’t sound…wrong, or hesitant at all.

“I just kinda can’t fucking believe we’re even this far.”

Eddie chuckles. “Same, man.”

And they both just kind of laugh together, baffled in maybe the best at, and Eddie eventually drifts off, thinking of not much, really, and warm with Steve’s hand still on his arm.

Chapter Text

“You okay, big boy?”

Eddie walks in after locking back up behind him, pulling the curtains tight and setting the metric ton of fried chicken on a table before making his way to Steve, who throws his head over the back of the low-slung chair to glare at Eddie upside-down.

“Fucking peachy,” he answers so dry that Eddie’s glad they’ve got plenty of lube around on this production, lest Steve’s general demeanor spread to the actors. Which—

Which: holy shit.

There are two naked bodies on the counter that Steve keeps immaculate during working hours—more for boredom than anything, Eddie knows, but he can’t help but wonder if it’s eating at Steve already, how much bleach he’s gonna have to use come morning, and he makes a mental note to be sure they’ve both got good gloves for the task—but all that aside, that’s a problem for the pair of them hours from now. And right now?

Steve’s sitting with his yellow notepad that’s serving now as some kind of master script, a key of all the scenes they’ve collectively agreed on. An orange traffic cone is perched at his side to use as a megaphone, one that’s seen better days, was definitely lifted from the mall parking lot, and maybe hasn’t been cleaned since last winter for the amount of salt caked to the base. But.

There are still two naked bodies stretched out by the register, waiting for instruction—the first scene was picked for the actors, sure, but they matched Chrissy and Argyle like they did because it’s about as vanilla as they get from what they’ve strung together, out of what they sketched out as basic guidelines, so it’s as much their first take as it is a…kind of trial run, for all of them in one sense or another, to ease into the groove of things. Steve’s even got his glasses on, which means he means fucking business.

And he looks fucking…good. In his element somehow, without any of them having a clue what they’re doing, save for the literal fucking part. Something warm swells between Eddie’s ribs, watching Steve chew his lip as he runs a finger along the chicken scratch scribbled on the page, scrawled under Scene One.

“Nance?”

Eddie looks up when Steve doesn’t, meets Nancy’s gaze on Steve’s behalf.

“Think you can climb up if someone spots you, and do the bean-sprinkling?” Steve asks, and Eddie notices for the first time the step ladder just outside scene-left.

“Who am I aiming for?” Nancy calls back before making her way to the steps, Robin following behind to spot as promised while Jonathan adjusts his camera, presumably to make sure he doesn’t film them in a way he can’t cut out.

“Argyle,” Steve looks up then; “you gonna take her hair down?”

“Oh, I insist,” Chrissy grins, turning her head to give Argyle access to her scrunchie.

“The lady has spoken,” Argyle nods and carefully lays Chrissy’s hair down around her shoulders before they both go back to leaning, Argyle against chrissy’s back and Chrissy against the—

“Fuck!”

Against the countertop, which given her squeal, must have done her some damage upon impact.

“Can you get a splinter in your boob?” she asks, a little meek about it, but Steve cuts in quick to reassure her.

“Not from that. It’s not real wood.”

“As opposed to,” Eddie mumbles under his breath, incredulous a little that this is happening, fighting laughter that he cannot let spill out when Chrissy’s probably got a friction burn at worst, because it’s got nothing to do with that, and everything to do with, just…

This is happening.

“I thought we were the professionals, here,” Steve hisses back at him, more than able to read his swallowed cackling without a goddamn sound, well-practiced to read between the lines.

“I do not remember agreeing to—” Eddie starts but then his thigh is being assaulted by the master legal pad and he course corrects:

“—anything less.”

Steve hums, appeased enough for the moment, before he frowns and stands, walking over to his actors with…purpose.

“Hold on, before before we start,” Steve leans in, waits for Argyle to nod, and then fans Argyle’s hair out to match Chrissy’s, steps back to assess the picture they paint almost clinically.

“I’m guessing both of them?” Steve wonders out loud. “Ideally the beans fall into the hair, make their own sound effect when they shake out.”

“We can amplify it after the fact,” Jonathan assures them with a thumbs-up, but then Chrissy is turning at an angle that looks kinda insane, leaning up and cupping a hand—which in itself is also insane, like, fucking ab control right here, Jesus—to Argyle’s ear, whispering for a second before pulling back with a wicked kind of grin.

“The lady has a plan,” Argyle announces, his own grin slower, molasses-like. “Okay if we exercise a little creative license, my dudes?”

Steve huffs a laugh.

“Isn’t that what we’re all here for?”

“Sure as shit hope so,” Eddie concurs and only after chuckling to himself, still in disbelief, does he turn to see Steve, kinda frozen, traffic cone half raised.

“Oh, umm,” Steve says, so fucking soft, little bit dazed as he takes in…everybody looking at him. Looking to him for the next move, the next play.

“Looks like you’re as much of a king as a film set can get, my liege,” Eddie bumps his arms against Steve’s.

“But I don’t know how—” Steve’s careful to block his lips with the cone and not talk into it, to keep the shock and bewilderment, the almost-but-not-quite-fear from projecting, from being heard.

“None of us fucking do,” Eddie tells him voice pitched just as low. “You’re a director now, Stevie,” he reaches, squeezes Steve’s shoulder now, less playfulness in it; more faith. “Big shot, callin’ all the shots, back like in the sportsball days,” because: Eddie said less playfulness.

Not no playfulness.

“Barb, you,” Steve seems backed into asking if someone else could do this, and better; and what’s more, seems cowed, almost, by nothing in particular, into doubting that he can pull this off when he’d seemed so steady a second ago, when Eddie first came in; “umm…”

And Eddie is not going to pretend he’d even noticed Barb before this moment, but he turns to where Steve’s directing his words and sees her in the corner with a bunch of paperwork—receipts, he thinks, so maybe she’s helping them with production…stuff? They’d mentioned Nancy reaching out to her for the class newsletter contact list but Eddie hadn’t thought she’d show up.

“This is my element, Harrington,” she answers simply, unbothered, wholly consumed by at least a few pieces of paper that are long and skinny enough to scream ‘receipt’. “Commanding attention always was yours.”

“Delegating,” Steve says to himself, but then nods a few times, tighter, firmer each time before he talks like he’s reminding himself: “captain delegates.”

Then his head snaps back up as he claps his hands and walks a little closer to where Jonathan’s set up.

“Alright,” he says, slipping back into the role smooth as anything and it’s kinda…well.

Commands attention, that’s all. Barb was right on the money.

“Chrissy, Argyle, we feeling good?” and he asks it with the kind of authority that’s necessary but also malleable, ready to listen and make changes and needing the affirmation, the…consent, really, of the people waiting to fuck on camera.

And Argyle gives a double-thumbs-up with a wink that should be kind of cringey all together but somehow manages to meld into the vibe of this weird, weird stoner motherfucker who somehow has been gaining more of Eddie’s respect all the more by the day—he’d always thought the man was cool but, just…damn.

“Ready to feel even better,” Chrissy adds with her own, far more fluttery little wink, to which she largely gets stares from around the room at large, and she lets the silence gather for a few beats before she pouts and throws out a hand:

“What?” she asks, adorably indignant. “Just because it’s for a scene means I’m not allowed to look forward to an orgasm?”

“Not at all,” Argyle agrees in far too low of a purr to be decent before the camera’s rolling.

“In fact,” and he pulls up, reaches for the shelf below the counter and brings a box that he sets in front of Chrissy, who’s propping her chin up with both hands; “does the lady have a preference?”

And Chrissy’s eyes go big at whatever’s in the box, out of view for the audience, before she points enthusiastically and Argyle nods, extracting a kinda monster-sized lavender dildo before replacing the box and turning back to Chrissy:

“Which and where?”

“You in the front,” and she’s sitting up, repositioning them both with sure hands, never hesitating to manhandle Argyle where she wants him before she dictates clearly, grabbing the wrist of the hand that’s got the toy and shaking it a little until the silicone jiggles.

“This one in the back.”

“Impeccable taste,” Argyle agrees sagely as he lifts the selected toy from the box with the delicacy of a relic, while Chrissy stifles a little snort because, well, the selection kinda does also determine her upcoming taste: “I call her the Purple Palm Tree Delight,” and he holds it out in both hands, as if for inspection, but then there’s an unexpected shuffling near the camera, where Jonathan’s been silent and working on…focus, or lighting, or whatever he does.

“Isn’t that the—” he starts, but Argyle lifts a hand to pause him; Eddie glances at Steve who’s looking back with the same quirked brow, because now that Jon’s said it out loud, even if he didn’t get to finish, Eddie knows it’s not just in his head. Steve’s glance over his way only clinched the point.

That’s definitely the name Argyle gave for the shit they smoked last night.

“Inspiration comes when it comes,” Argyle waves Jonathan’s unspoken critique away like a cloud of the same-named smoke: “in all shapes and sizes.”

“Sounds delightful,” Chrissy turns to him with a big grin, and it’s lucky everyone laughs at her riff off the name because both Steve and Eddie—and even Jonathan, who Eddie’s not sure he’s ever seen laugh before—can get the cackling out regarding a dildo being named after a ‘particularly righteous’ strain.

“Shall we?” Steve both prompts the actors, and glances to Jon for the go-ahead.

“Actually,” Chrissy sits up and slips off the counter, then turns to Argyle, glinting with maybe more of a plan as she asks apropos of…something: “Hair?”

“Oh,” and Argyle’s back to letting her take the lead as she ties back his hair, with her scrunchie.

“Argyle, come around on this side like you’re walking in to order,” Steve instructs and then it’s…

“Action.”

It starts innocent if super fucking stilted and cheezy, Argyle ordering an Espresso Upside Down. Leading the two of them to the shortest foreplay Eddie’s ever witnessed before, well.

Chrissy’s got a dick in her mouth while she lies on her back, sucking upside down, while her legs defy the laws of physics and give Jonathan the angle he presumably was after of her ass while Argyle uses one hand to hold her legs steady and the other to…work that fucking Purple Palm Tree.

“That’s like some, some,” Eddie blinks, and only fully realizes how far his jaw’s dropped when he tries to lick his lips and they’re weirdly far away; only registers the pitchiness of his voice as he stares and tries to sum up what he’s seeing on the countertop somehow:

“That’s some fucking Kama Sutra shit.”

He doesn’t even intend the pun.

“Could be worse,” Steve whispers, leaning close so as not to interrupt the shot: “Jonathan told them he couldn’t get a good enough angle if it was your more, umm,” and he gestures broadly, a flush blooming at the apples of his cheeks as he assesses the goings-on before them and, not unlike Eddie, tries very hard to find the right words: “traditional? Traditional double penetration?”

Chrissy should be gagging on Argyle’s honestly kinda intimidating length but she’s bobbing like a fucking pro somehow even as her head’s fighting gravity against the counter where Argyle’s climbed to kneel just right, her ass in the air all the while as Argyle works the translucent violet dildo into her fast, actually, but nothing compared to the pace she’s setting for his dick in her mouth and fuck what Jonathan said, Eddie doesn’t care about camera angles, there are limits to the human body that it kinda looks like these person angles they’re moving at might be violating outright, save that, that—

“I’m so not straight,” Eddie automatically prefaces, his jaw still not having made its way once up from the floor only barely as Chrissy undid the tie from Argyles hair and gathered it instead in her hand to tug until he moaned so fucking dirty; “but I think it’s hotter like this, anyway?”

It’s definitely hot, so—

“One hundred fucking percent,” Steve says without hesitation, his head nodding like a bobble head as quick, almost even on pace with Chrissy’s suckjob and just, just…

Goddamn.

Eddie forces his gaze back to the ‘most vanilla’ scene they’ve got on the docket unfolding and, well.

The King himself, in his bisexual wisdom, has spoken. Shit’s hot.

This porno thing may not have been Eddie’s stupidest idea to date, after all.

“Seems to be the consensus,” Steve glances around with a growing smirk before he lands on the singular figure, save Barb, least engaged in the action and points out meaningfully:

“Save one,” and yeah. One reason or another: Robin, holding the ladder, looks…like she sucked a fucking lemon.

“Which,” Eddie figures asking the burning–if slightly embarrassing–question is probably his best move to not just flat out stare at Robin trying to figure out her major malfunction, here, not to mention bonus: he has no shame, so it’s actually not embarrassing at all!

Score.

“Which of the holes is he, umm, going into with that dildo?”

And Steve opens his mouth to answer, then pauses, bites his lip, and then kinda equivocates with:

“That speed makes me think front, but like, they were on the counter when you got here because there was a lot of prep action going on,” and Steve’s eyes cut to the garbage can where Eddie only just sees the tops of…more than one bottle of lube as Steve swallows audibly and adds:

“I mean, like, a lot of prep.”

And…okay. Maybe that’s just a mystery for the final cut.

Or never. Possibly never, too.

“Pull out before you jizz, and aim for her hand in your hair,” the instructions echo a little through the room; “and start the coffee bean shower now, aiming for both their hair.”

Eddie feels the strain in his neck when he snaps it back, whiplash style, at Steve using his directing-cone to give instructions as he watches them both start to pant too hard, to move with rhythm, moan too close to hysterics.

“That’s weirdly kinky,” Eddie breathes as he watches these two people he’s only just met start to unravel, but have enough presence of mind to shift so as to have the best chance of accommodating Steve’s direction.

“He said he was an upward shooter,” Steve shrugs but doesn’t blink as watches, sees if it’s the right call, if it’s even possible in the moment or just on paper, in his head:

“Might as well make the most of it.”

Chapter Text

Night number two, and they’re already a scene ahead. Ish.

Like, Steve didn’t have a plan, per se, but he was the director and when Nancy’d suggested another ‘softer option’, it did provide a good means of getting solid footage of Nancy choosing to be explicit about which hole she wanted—which, Steve was the only one unsurprised which: for as long as she and Jonathan were together, the implication that they’d never tried anal was…a thing, a thing Steve now knew. Which was…cool. To know.

Maybe their activities in that specific arena were implicitly off-limits, like how Steve’s real bisexual awakening hadn’t been finding a man attractive, at least not outright, but 100% Nancy pegging him and Steve fucking loving it, too much for even his deepest exhibitions of obliviousness over the years to have not wised up to as having some level of significance.

(Robin and Eddie definitely know about all that, so, oops if he was supposed to keep his mouth shut about the, y’know.

The ass stuff.)

But anyway: given it required only one solid wipe-down between scenes, and more hetero content for the full film release—and goddamn if that doesn’t sound cocky as shit, like, ooo, they’re making a porno but it’s a film release—whatever. It was a good call. Nance does anal like a fucking champ, and Argyle’s so up for anything he’s basically the perfect scene partner. Steve’s kind of afraid of diving in today, given he might…have to risk failing spectacularly at actually doing the director thing.

He’s blissfully spared, or at least his humiliation delayed, when Chrissy comes up to him before she even gets her coat off and asks if they can film the scene she’s doing with Nancy tonight, the one they plotted out on the drive down to Indy only knowing Steve worked at a cafe. Not that they’d actually be filming in one.

But honestly: they have the window but never installed a drive-thru. Jonathan assures him movie magic will smooth any rough edges. And the ladies, well.

Steve thinks their idea’s fucking awesome, so.

Go for drive-thru-speaker not-quite-phone-sex it is.

“Would you like your muffin warmed, sweet thing?” Chrissy is purring into what are definitely somebody’s gaming headphones. Not bulky enough to be Argyle’s, so Steve’s money is on Jonathan. Though…weird to travel with it.

Steve really hopes it’s not Will’s, long-left at home after he left for college and beyond. And if it is, he hopes to fuck that Jon’s not going to put it back.

Steve might steal it just in case. Throw it away and then it’s just a…relic lost to time. It’s probably so out of date at this point it wouldn’t matter anyway.

And Steve will sleep better at night, to know for sure.

“I didn’t order a muffin, though,” Nancy’s being all breathy, playing the innocent skeptic up hard while she speaks into her phone with a voice modulator app to make it sound like she’s talking through a speaker when they sure as shit don’t have one; “plus it says you’re out of everything but…” she pauses with a little huffy…gasp? Gaspsy huff?

“Cornbread,” and she laughs like she’s in on a bad Midwest-flavored joke. “Not so sweet.”

“Hmm, true,” Chrissy pouts her lips but her eyes gleam wicked as fuck; “though maybe I didn’t mean the kind your put in your mouth,” Chrissy says, almost casually as she twirls a loose strand of her hair and hikes her leg on the counter so her barely-there skirt bares the whole of how she’s not wearing anything underneath:

“Except, maybe I did,” she titters wickedly and, damn. She’s selling the shit out of this.

“Oh,” Nancy whispers, breathless; Steve watches as she plays with the neck of her little strappy tank while she waits for her entry in-shot: “oh.”

And hell: Nance is selling this shit like a pro, too. Damn.

Like, like…

Steve has seen worse porn. It’s cliched as fucked but Steve has definitely seen way worse porn.

“Cream and sugar, sweetness?”

“Cream,” Nancy’s voice has gone husky, heavy, heated and Steve remembers that voice, laughs at the memories it pops into his head—they were such stupid kid, and he’s reminded again that while it was hard, and probably ill-advised to push through in the early years, he’s really fucking glad they stuck it out and found out what they worked best as was good friends.

“Cream,” Nancy’s repeating as Argyle and Robin work to hold her phone and help her strip to her underwear before she runs out the door into the fucking freezing cold—which Steve wants on record wasn’t his idea, this whole scene was all the girls and they insisted; “shaken,” and her tone wobbles in the heady way that, when Steve glances around, makes everyone blush just a little, thought Chrissy looks more wild, almost ravenous as she grabs for the half and half they’d poured into a plastic carafe that was made to look like an old-time milkman bottle.

“Shaken,” Chrissy lifts her not-unimpressive bust up and situated the bottle in her cleavage; “gotcha.”

Then she starts to bounce.

“Iced,” Nancy says, ironic only for behind-the-scenes as Robin holds the bells from jingling so she can run out into the below-freezing evening in just her thong.

“Which is so interesting, see,” Chrissy’s just talking as she bunny-hops and the milk bottle gets closer to popping its lid; “I personally like my,” and then yep, there goes the cap, and there flies the milk; Steve watches to see if it gets on the ceiling which blessedly: just shy.

Chrissy’s printed up like a cumshot smokeshow, though, and giggles, putting one hand on the bottle to hold it from slipping with the cream and the other theatrically placed over the speaker on her headset as she whispers:

“Whoops!”

Then she settles both her hands under her breasts and pushes them filthily together as she keeps on fucking shaking the open bottle until she’s covered, monologising the whole goddamn time like a champ:

“See, I like my coffee like I like my women,” she muses, hot enough that if Nancy can hear her at all maybe she won’t feel so fucking cold as she waits for her cue; “tall, strong, hot in the way the makes people ask ‘you sure you’re gonna stick your tongue in that?’ but you know it’s more than worth it when it tastes that good.”

And Chrissy grabs for the coffee and the ice set to the side, pulls the milk jug from…her jugs, and the spreads her legs so the camera can peek at her lips under the skirt as she shakes her breasts off into the coffee, the milk swirling almost fucking artistically before she deems it done and goes to open the window.

Steve gestures sharp with his hand, so Eddie knows to give Nancy the go-ahead from the door, and it works fucking perfect. Chrissy barely gets here you go! out of her mouth before Nancy scrambles through the window and flips so she lands on her feet—and gives a stellar show of her undercarriage on the way through, as Jonathan moves quick to get the shot of her crouching to get a drip of the cream from near Chrissy’s ankles and following it up, slow, lascivious, until she looks up hungrily at Chrissy through those perfectly curled lashes and then buried her face where the milk bottle lived until all that’s visible is her bouncing curls, while Chrissy lifts her legs to spread wide on either side of Nancy’s frame, propped on the counter top, and, just…fuck.

Putting all those dance lessons going to good fucking use.

“They’ll sell the whole thing on their own,” Eddie comes up to whisper in Steve’s ear and Steve can only nod because, again: fuuuuuuuck.

“Report on the tomato?”

Which Robin can never know Steve made her code name in this super-very-secret plot to see if she’s jealous enough to blush on top of scowling when it’s Chrissy and Nancy—because Steve knows she wasn’t grimacing at Chrissy and Argyle last night because of Argyle. And Robs and Nance have fucked around for fun and nothing more, no spark just boobies, more than once over the years. So if she’s blushed to the roots of her fucking hair and mad about it, again? Now? Tonight?

She’s hard up for Chrissy.

“Stick her at the end of the road and she’d be a better stop sign,” Eddie confirms and Steve glances toward him, catches his grin with one of his own, because: Chrissy definitely did not try to hide how she’d sized Robin up upon meeting her. How she glanced her way…all the fucking time.

Robin was just hopeless at noticing women noticing her.

Steve tries to discreetly take a peek, not to fact-check Eddie but just because he doesn’t often get to witness quite this level of pining—regular levels, sure, all the time, but not this—but as he turned he sees…different presentation, but definitely similar vibes.

In an unexpected corner in the back.

Watching the…loud, very wet-sounding culmination of a milkshake bringing just one girl to the yard.

“Two birds, one stone,” Steve mutters under his breath and tips his head gently toward where Barb is…staring with that blank sort of emptiness that feels vaguely lethal. Eddie gets him, no problem, and stretches to get a look to confirm.

“Oh shit,” he exhales at Steve’s side. “I mean we always…”

Thought she and Nancy were a thing. Or should have been. Or had some one-sided tension. Or…just, something.

If the look is about Chrissy, Steve’s ride-or-die for his soulmate, sorry Barb. But if it isn’t…

Steve looks up and notices the way the milk’s less noticeable as milk and more just as mess on Chrissy’s skin, and their kissing’s gone lazy so he calls cut and looks meaningfully at Eddie, who reads him just as well as Rob can, only different, while Steve grabs the damp beach towels they soaked for the ladies and ferries them over.

“You’re shivering, Nance,” Steve wraps her first and pushes her over to where Argyle’s got her clothes waiting, plus an extra hoodie if she needs it. Might smell like weed, but: not always a deal breaker.

Chrissy gratefully hugs her towel around her for a second before she starts to clean herself up. Steve leans in before she makes it past her collarbone.

“Would you mind going one more round?” he asks, pitches his voice low; “after the cream’s taken care of, obviously.”

“Did we fuck up the angles?” Her eyes are so big, like she’s genuinely very concerned about this matter. “Or the audio?”

“Not at all, you guys were perfect,” Steve reassured her; “but the more shots the better and,” he pauses, glances around, makes sure his back is to anyone who could read his fucking lips before he speaks to the floor close to Chrissy’s shoulder:

“After her and Argyle last night, I had a hunch,” Steve starts, glances to Nancy in a flash, but Chrissy doesn’t miss a beat; “and after your scene just now,” Steve leads and tips his head back to where Barb is almost definitely still giving a death-glare-that’s-not-a-death-glare-but-is-a-death-glare, and watches Chrissy fix her bangs to take a look.

Sees her eyes widen quick, on the exact same page at the sight.

“They were best friends in school, yeah?” Chrissy tosses her ponytail to avoid being seen for speaking, frowns before taking it down as a lost cause and starting fresh.

“Kinda wondering if there’s more to why they drifted apart quite so amicably, and so fucking fast with it,” Steve confirms and offers a hand with her hair: it’s how he finally remembered her. They’d recognized hair care priorities in one another that transcended team rivalries even in passing, and he’d helped her fix her cheer bows more than once.

“Heard,” Chrissy agrees to what Steve’s only had to imply for her to be on board, even sends him a cute little salute:

“Aye-aye, captain,” then, brushing past him for more water before she gets camera ready one more time, mutters; “keep me posted on your findings?”

“You got it,” Steve taps his notebook against the back of his wrist—instinct went for the counter but…he has not yet cleaned that, so—before he looks around, finds Eddie who nods that Barb’s okay generally, at least put on a good enough front that she thinks her staring’s gone unnoticed, so Steve can…slide in witha proposal.

He takes a deep breath before he gets close enough to be noticed: Barb kinda always intimidated him. Definitely hated him long enough while he was with Nancy for the effect to linger long after but.

Now he has renewed reasons to wonder why—despite all his attempts at friendliness, or even just being cordial—she’d hated so hard.

“Barb,” Steve comes up to her; her head snaps right up but her expression’s neutral in a…not-homicidal way, and Steve does know her better than to mince words, so: “any way I can persuade you to do a voice role?”

She blinks, then leans back a little to eye him critically, like she’s trying to find his angle. He doesn’t fault her for looking—he definitely has one—but he doesn’t think she’ll guess it right. She’s smart, but everyone has a blind spot.

Steve’s…kinda willing to bet on hers.

“Only voice?” she asks, skeptical and confused all in one.

“Umm,” Steve bites his lip, tries to study her right back; she’s got a lap full of paperwork again, he’s not even sure any of it’s relevant to what they’re doing here, or reason for her to continue showing up, but he sure as shit doesn’t want to have, like, offended her or something, so: “unless you wanted,” he gropes around for footing before she huffs a laugh, not mean even, and offers him a thin sort of almost-smile.

“Voice is fine, Harrington,” she puts her stack of papers aside and sides up before arching a brow: “for now..”

Gotcha, Holland.

“You won’t even have to go outside if we do it like this,” Steve leads her to Argyle, who knows the right app to put on her phone to make her voice sound speaker-fixed; “I was definitely going to use that to sweeten the deal,” he leans in a little, dares for playful, and her smile’s no bigger but it comes back again so.

Win.

“Just ordering a coffee?” she clarifies as Argyle works his magic.

“Chrissy’ll have the bulk of the innuendo, but, you know,” Steve shrugs; “feel free to throw in what feels right.”

And then they’re off, Steve calls action and can immediately see where this fits, like a lead in for the main event with Nance, s’perfect.

“Oh dear,” Chrissy’s spilled a new bottle of milk down the centers of bother her bare breasts, almost defying fucking gravity; “I hope you’re okay with extra cream,” she laments, almost looks near to tears. “I’ve got more than enough to spare.”

And it’s an odd, open lead-in. Barb could go anywhere, or nowhere, but she doesn’t tiptoe in.

She dives.

“Do you do nut milk, by any chance?” she asks into her phone, angled for Jonathan to pick up just right, and recording to her device to post production; “I’m not vegan or anything, I just think almonds look like vulvas. Makes the coffee taste so much sweeter, to have that thought in your mind.”

Steve didn’t see that coming, and Chrissy’s too quick to be sure if she’s fazed but…okay.

“Or coconut, if you have that instead. You sound gorgeous, just to listen to, are your coconuts as stunning?”

“They’re positively dripping as we speak, in fact,” Chrissy shoots back, the cream still dribbling from her nipples; “and they’re not the only thing wet enough to drip.”

And they take it from there. O-fucking-kay.

“That should be disgusting,” Robin appears next to him with Eddie close in tow.

“Maybe,” Steve equivocates as they’ve taken the prompt and ran with it, Barb coming in to grab her order to see if the coconuts were to her liking for her drink, before licking them wholly clean with a honed kind of precision. Before her fingers take to mapping Chrissy’s almond, to better decide the more appealing option:

“But then maybe not.” Because Steve sure as shit wouldn’t have planned this, or even thought of it but—

“Don’t yuck the yum. Buckley,” Eddie chides, and that’s basically it but Robin’s quick to scoff.

“It’s not even in the star system of your yum,” she shoots back, but it’s also clear that…Robin’s too red in the face. And it’s not hot in here. And there’s no Nancy. And Barb is not Rob’s type, so.

One down.

“And yet look at me, yucking nothing,” Eddie turns his nose up, needs to do nothing more to underline his superiority and Robin nearly growls as she turns around grumbling.

“It’s the same fucking scene,” and yep. Yep: one fucking down.

Steve turns to try and find Nancy to see if she’s all blotchy like she gets with a blush, but Eddie’s hand on his forearm stops him from giving up the game.

“Jealous as hell,” Eddie confirms; “the way she shot daggers when Chrissy even just started to let Barb talk her through all that milk stuff,” and Steve doesn’t have to keep looking for her, because…he’s got a plan.

Barb’s…really good at talking. A little weird in terms of the nature of her dirty talk but…it’s still dirty. And looking around, it’s effective. Even considering how many biased parties are in play.

He scribbles down an idea to slot in for the next scene they shoot, tomorrow as soon as the door locks. Just in case Barb finally realizes she doesn’t have to be here and leaves accordingly.

He turns the legal pad so Eddie can read, and matches the grin he gets once Eddie processes the vision.

“You diabolical little genius,” he crows as quiet as he can, and Steve just smirks as he shrugs, forces himself to go back to watching Chrissy and Barb and eyeing the natural end of their scene, but still answers Eddie out the corner of his mouth:

“Playing a little bit of matchmaker for a good cause while also getting good footage from it isn’t a crime. It’s the opposite of a crime. It’s a good deed,” he pauses, the summarizes, but concedes nothing because it seriously is nothing but a good thing for all parties involved:

“It is an efficient good deed, even.”

And not even Eddie can argue with that. And that is saying something.

Chapter Text

Eddie isn’t even exaggerating when he says that this, all of this—well, this scene specifically, yes, but all of it—is proof that Eddie’s worn off on Steve over the years because, shit: director-ing is enough like DM-ing to begin with but the creativity, here.

“I regret to inform you that this is a surprise inspection,” Barb tuts, glancing over the rims of her glasses; “the HEALTH department has reason to believe you’re not up to code.”

“Health Department?”

He’d been coaxed out from the camera, showed Eddie and Steve the basics and set the rest up on a timer that he swears he can cut around if they fuck something up, like he promised it’s basically fool-proof, and while Eddie’d originally planned to be in-frame for this part—doesn’t mind a naked pussy much so long as it’s not near him so they’d put him with Argyle, but he’d been feeling…weird about it, not about Argyle, but like, maybe he wasn’t as cool about fucking on camera as he thought? But he is pretty fine with it, he’s sure he is, it’s just, it’s started to feel, like, when he was thinking about it, it was—

Steve had casually asked if Jon wanted a break from the camera, and Jonathan had looked at him bewildered until Steve had said the magic words: You could just swap out for fucking Argyle, and Jonathan? Notoriously-unbothered Jonathan Byers?

Dude lit the fuck up like a Christmas tree.

And it’s not even matchmaking, really, just a nudge: Steve had asked that first night that Argyle was playing musical holes if there was anyone back home who’d be pissed to see it and Argyle had just waved him off with a grin while definitely not suspiciously and very obviously avoiding glancing at Jonathan.

The avoidance didn’t keep the glaze of wistfulness out of his eyes, though.

So this time, honestly: Steve’s not even matchmaking. They’re, like, nudging, at best. Honestly Eddie’s kinda shocked the two aren’t officially an item already, even like an open relationship kinda shtick. So it’s probably long overdue, really, and the way the two of them had been all flustered to be pressed against each other with their dicks already twitching before Steve had called to roll?

Yeah. They’d probably needed the nudge.

“Mmmm,” Barb’s weaving between naked bodies sprawled across the—scrubbed like fifteen times, seriously, not a laughing matter, Eddie had even helped—floor in front of where the register sits, coffee beans sprinkles decoratively all around them—Eddie had definitely helped with that, they were the cheapest roast in the store but he’d felt a certain level of power doing it below twenty bucks—but Barb crushes one bean under a clicky heel as she starts marking things on the clipboard she’s carrying before answering the question asked, because…yeah they’d be committing about fifty health code violations in a functioning cafe.

“Department of Highly Erotic Assessment of Libidinous Tendencies and Hedonism,” she informs the group with only slightly put-upon superiority, she owns it too well for it not to come from somewhere, not that it’s not pretty well-earned—Chrissy’s got a breather, so it’s Jon and Argyle to one side and Robin with Nancy to the other, and Chrissy does not disappoint with her eyes already fixed on Robin before they’re even moving, Steve really did call that one from the get-go.

“Harder,” Barb barks and Eddie’s shoulder straighten like he’s still in high school; he must have been in his head longer than he thought because the pairs are going at it in earnest, now, with Barb damn near half-domming the hell out of these fuckers who are…now definitely moving but apparently not going hard enough for Lady Health-Department.

“Not you.”

It’s like a whip’s cracked—shit, if they’d known how she’d take to the very-not-for-undisclosed-purposes new scene, they’d have definitely picked up a whip when they ran to Spencer’s to get the dick and vulva pins they glued together for her H.E.A.L.T.H Department badge—but it snaps just the same through the room, now, for how she spins her attention to Jonathan and Argyle, as Eddie leans into Steve to watch through the camera while Steve gets brave and tries to zoom in. Jonathan’s pulled off Argyle’s cock just a little, only half between his lips as he turns to look at her, eyes watering and chin all drippy-sloppy. Eddie…

Eddie thinks this might be the first real moment he believes, with no doubts, that this whole fucking production is gonna goddamn work.

“Hmm,” Barb leans down, taps her pen more like a slap against both of Jonathan’s cheeks, pushing him to recoil enough to pull a squeak from Argyle still held hard inside his mouth when she sneers a little as she stands and proclaims:

“Adequate.”

Then she turns, literally spins onthe ball of her high-heels and narrows her eyes at Nancy and Robin.

“I meant you.”

And she strides over to them, angling to land a thin heel dangerously close to where Robin’s spread-eagle on Nancy’s fingers, hell: closer to her whole fucking fist.

“Harder.”

And Eddie might not be an expert on female anatomy, but, like: how do you get to harder?!

Nancy seems to interpret it, for better or worse, as actually, yeah, going full-fist and faster once she gets Robin’s okay, even if Robin’s sweating and panting and saying ‘oh fuck, oh god, oh fuck’ to the ceiling as her chest heaves so hard Eddie kinda feels the most empathy for the way her tits are swinging.

“Oh god,” Robin finally moans and starts to shake, and good thing Steve’s one, bisexual enough to have an eye to the cues and then probably also two, still into his sportsball enough to have been able to call where the camera needed to focus because, mostly: damn.

“Flattery will not influence your results,” Barb leans down a little condescendingly, clearly acting like she’s taking the god comment personally, and pets Robin’s mess of hair just before Robin’s arms give out from holding herself up at all where she’d been watching Nancy work the whole time, though she’s pulled out from Robin and is stroking down her sides, and it feels almost too raw to watch so it’s a good thing Barb breaks the moment and snaps.

“I don’t remember telling you to stop,” and she stomps for the sake of the way her heel echoes and…yeah.

Eddie didn’t actually know he was kinda into the power play. Like, maybe not to do or have done, and definitely not involving ladyparts alone but…

He’s kinda enthralled.

“Harder,” she demands again and this time Nancy goes down with her lips; as enthusiastic as anything, and Robin looks this close to Nirvana or an early grace when Nancy gets to it, but then—

“No, it is you this time.”

Barb turns steely-eyed to Argyle and Jon, who’d been…watching too, and raises an eyebrow fucking, like, menacingly if it weren’t so much like a taunt.

Argyle’s switched with Jon, now, and gets back to sucking at Barbs command, but then she approaches them, grabs for Argyle’s hair—proven effective the first night—rather than petting like she did with Robin and adds, brooking no argument:

“And deeper.”

And Argyle’s a champ, deep throats Jonathan and looks more than ready to swallow as Jon’s flushed closer to purple than red, like…in all visible areas, but then—

“Other hole, please,” Barb glances back and forth between her subjects, who’ve collectively frozen entirely like it’s a Pavlovian thing after ten goddamn minutes, and, well…

Maybe, yeah?

“The assessment is designed to be rigorous,” Barb lets her heel click as she makes a point to write on her clipboard and stroll leisurely at first, as both pairs make to grab for the lube handily filled to the tops of to-go cups; “and thorough.”

Nancy’s the first to pull away from suckling what Eddie’s assumes very strongly is the clitoris, to Barb’s immediate disapproval.

“Ah,” and the smoldering sense of…something when those two lock eyes?

Might be worth this whole endeavor on its own.

“Leaving the front unattended would be a cleanliness violation,” Barb shakes her head despairingly. “Not that I should be helping any of you but,” she swings her attention to Jon and Argyle.

“Make sure it all gets in the proper receptacle.”

Watching Jon go for the legs-up approach despite what that’s got to be doing to a fuck that hard for the angle is insanity. Watching Nancy cake her hand in lube and roll her and Robin as one to their sides so she can almost wrap herself in the fetal position around Robin to get her hand near Robin’s backend and keep her face buried in Robin’s pussy?

That…kinda suggest they’ve done it before.

And Eddie definitely clocks the way Barb’s attention is more on the female team until everybody screaming and damn-near-maybe-actually-crying from stimulation overload, each of them flat on the floor, sprawled and gasping and blissed the fuck out.

Eddie takes a glance at Steve, who’s doing a hell of a job with closeups on the four faces, and those…very well abused holes, Jesus H. Christ.

“Sloppy,” Barb’s voice finally rings out as she walks a figure-eight between the bodies, tsking at the way they’ve disappointed her inspection; “have some self respect when it comes to the quality of your own work, good god.”

Then she stops, doubles back to Argyle and Jon and her expression pinches, disgusted:

“Good god, man,” she sneers, gesturing at the dribbling mess all down from Argyle’s lips to his chin, and down his chest, to the spillage out Jonathan’s ass where at some point Argyle must have pumped a load that’s now coming out before she huffs, wholly made of judgment:

“You plug a leak.”

And Eddie doesn’t know when she grabbed it, and he’s pretty sure it belongs to Argyle either way but the way she throws a very fucking massive butt plug at Argyle so it squeaks a little as it hits then drags down the line of come fromhis mouth?

Diabolical.

“This,” she points at everyone accusingly, glancing over her glasses again; “was not an acceptable showing,” then she sighs, closes her eyes and shakes her head like she’s disappointed in whatever she’s about to say:

“But because you did put forth such effort,” she says, so fucking begrudgingly, and Eddie is…why is he so invested in this? Fucking hell.

“Expect me back by the end of next month.”

And she clicks heavy out of frame and he follows her with his eyes while Steve pans back to the recovering actors until Barb reaches up to the bell to signal her departure without actually opening the door, and then cuts the shot.

“Goddamn,” Eddie whistle and then starts to clap, for everyone but, let’s be serious: mostly for Barb.

Steve’s quick to join in, and Barbara Holland, for the first time Eddie’s ever witness, blushes and ducks her head around a smile.

“It was good?” she asks, in that stilted way that people have when they never find themselves in situations where they have to check.

“Fucking phenomenal, Barb,” Steve’s saying, as blown away as Eddie from his town, and Barb just grins wider.

But it’s got nothing on how she looks when, while still only partially recovered, everyone on the floor starts clapping, too.

And even that can’t hold a candle to Barb’s face when she catches Nancy’s eyes which, despite the performance of the night from each and every one of them, look ravenous.

(Though it should also be noted that, if anyone were paying attention to Chrissy besides Eddie and Steve, they’d all notice her eyes looking exactly the same level of hungry, if not even more so, and fixed on the still-heaving breasts, all that’s visible of the figure directly behind Nancy on the ground.)

Chapter Text

It’s a testament to Eddie’s commitment, swear to fuck, alert the mayor or some shit: it is proof of his investment in the project and not evidence of the dry spells he’s been going through that’s teetering on a full-blown drought.

It’s because he wants to be at his best for the scene that he shaved his fucking balls in the sink with a bar of soap and a bottle of water because no, thank you, they still do not have running water and he is not going to do that particular bit of grooming in Claudia Henderson’s shower.

He does possess some level of decency, Jesus.

“Hey.”

Eddie whips around—he’s got a towel from home wrapped around his waist for…what, modesty? They’re filming a goddamn porno, what the fuck is his major malfunction—but he whips around at the low voice closer than he’d expected, not having heard the approach because he’s…he’s feeling some kind of way this evening, he thinks maybe he drank too much coffee when he got in before Steve smacked his hand away and cut him off, he’s jittery, his heart’s kinda-sorta racing, or at least starting the fucking race, and then a voice pops up beside him, pitched deeper than normal even and comforting as a rule and Eddie feels…safe, for the fact of it but then there’s something else, something else he can’t put his finger on but that’s almost like the gun that starts the sprint, Eddie’s heart jumping in a way he…doesn’t recognize.

Especially when it’s just Steve in a fucking bath towel, just like him. Same ones they always use. Familiar. Simple. Easy.

“You feeling okay, about everything?”

Eddie can’t help but smile as he lets out a shaky breath from fucking nowhere: like he said, all of this is routine, and it’s not like he’s a goddamn blushing virgin, what the fuck.

“I mean, I’m a little nervous,” Eddie finds himself saying, and of course Steve steps forward, brows pinched in concern as he goes to touch Eddie’s naked arm like he always would, he always reaches, he always wants to help, Jesus H. Christ what is wrong with Eddie that something that’s true always is making his whole torso, stomach through the chest, flutter like a schoolgirl with a cr—

“I just, how am I supposed to know if I picked the right shade to wear for this backdrop,” Eddie drops back on sarcasm, on humor because maybe if he surrounds himself with more familiarity the rest of the things that should be familiar, that are familiar, will slot back into the spaces where they feel like home, and less like home-with-a-side-of-electric-voltage, running through Eddie’s whole damn body.

Steve snorts at Eddie’s aggrieved expression that his wardrobe of nudity might not match the back fucking room of the coffee shop, where they’ll be playing delivery-boy-meets-caffeine-dealer. The sound’s always been endearing and hilarious because it’s the sort of full-bellied thing that can’t be faked or held back but like, right now? If Eddie’s heart’s in a race, or warming up for one or whatever?

That fucking snort’s the gun at the starting line.

“Maybe we should have had a test run beforehand?”

And Steve laughs a little but it almost sounds like maybe he’s just a tiny bit nervous, too.

Wait. Wait, no. Because Eddie’s not nervous, not exactly, he’s just…feeling a little unprepared, that’s all.

“It’s kinda wild we’ve never fucked,” Eddie’s mouth says without his brain’s input, and once Steve turns to him, eyes wide, Eddie doesn’t waste time trying to sort either what they’re wide with, or what that fucking unconsidered notion from nowhere actually means even to Eddie himself—he just jumps in to what he knows.

Deflection.

“I mean, given,” and Eddie gestures wide at the room beyond where everyone is still congregated and moving shit to the back to film in the storage area.

And thank fucking god, Steve laughs.

“Dude, seriously,” he agrees, then cocks a brow at Eddie; “though I do remember asking if this was always just about getting me naked.”

He’s even enough of an asshole to throw Eddie a wink into it. Jesus, he’s perfect.

“Oh absolutely,” Eddie deadpans; “as if having to see your limp dick out wasn’t thrilling enough every time you forget to put a clean towel in the bathroom and you're running to put your tighty whities on wet.”

Steve blushes the slightest little bit, and again…perfect.

“Dick.” And it’s bitten out without teeth and just, just—

“Ready, then?”

Steve asks with a deep breath and a straightening of his shoulders as Eddie clocks everything has been relocated, and everyone’s around them—and neither of them are in costume.

Steve’s just gotta pull on a pair of brown pants that look dressy enough to belong to a delivery man, while Eddie drops his towel in a corner and grabs one of the old-aprons-for-burning-later.

Yeah. Ready.

“Okay,” Steve looks over at Jon with the camera and Rob, who’s hovering in a…weirdly protected and invested way for someone who’s definitely seen them both naked and definitely has no interest.

“Jon, you’re in charge of calling the shots until I call cut, sound good?”

And it’s so weird how…proud, he feels? Something like feeling proud. Warm and tingly and shit to see Steve not in his element, but making all this his element and running with it full-throttle.

But before Eddie can dwell on the feeling Jonathan’s gesturing for Steve to walk topless into the cold to knock on the door and get this show on the road.

Eddie’s hands don’t even shake when he answers the knocking—see?

He said he wasn’t fucking nervous.

“Premium delivery for a,” Steve pretends to read the label on a box so old the actual label is, in fact, unintelligible: “B. Jay?”

He keeps such a straight face, the lilt in his tone like a genuine question. And Eddie cannot be the one who breaks.

“Hmm,” Eddie licks his lips, makes a slow circle around Steve, careful to kick the door shut for effect and practicality—no one needs to catch a glimpse of his bare ass in the middle of the night—tapping his chin as he eyes Steve up and down unabashedly before stopping directly in from of him again.

“I’d keep it premium, no doubt about that, but,” Eddie lets his grin spread slow, salacious; “look at you,” Eddie shakes his head and tuts kinda hungrily:

“Think I can upgrade your delivery.”

Eddie has no clue whether Steve fumbles, has to grapple for the box on purpose or because he’s taken aback by something Eddie’s done—what, he couldn’t guess, he stayed on script to the letter—but he recovers quick, and it adds a dynamic of authenticity.

But like…it’s not supposed to be authentic. It’s porn. It’s not…

It’s not real.

“Not that it needs it,” Eddie remembers the next line, remembers to turn back to admiring Steve outright and assuring him his package is already premium, clear as day in his too-tight pants; “so how about taking the service up a notch?”

Steve drops the box that’s not even that full, just with random worthless shit, but it hits with a force that makes Eddie jump, lets a breeze float up his apron for it and gives Steve the convenient in to tear it over Eddie’s head and flatten Eddie, all in one fluid motion, to the newly-fluffed-or-the-bean-equivalent-of-fluffed tower of coffee bean sacks they’ve been using for a bed.

Steve, despite being outside just moment before, is so fucking warm.

“Shit, we didn’t,” Steve leans to the side of Eddie’s face, whispers low and sounds genuinely upset until he sighs, not heavy enough to see but enough that he emotion tickles Eddie’s skin with the hair on Steve’s chest as Steve whispers out of view:

“Top or bottom?”

If Eddie freezes at those words, no one can fucking blame him, okay?

No one.

“It’ll be easier if you’re staying on the bags,” Jonathan butts in when apparently their quiet and still too long, guessing the obvious reason; “if Eddie’s physically beneath you, at the least,” he shrugs and flushes a little before adding:

“Doesn’t matter how, just the camera can’t see through all that hair.”

“Right,” Eddie takes a deep breath because…this is real. This is real now.

Eddie is going to fuck his best friend.

“You’re up, then, big boy.”

Goddamnit, but his voice shakes.

“I can ride you,” Steve offers, his eyes so bright, so wide, so…kinda endless; “if you’re not—”

“Easier this way,” Eddie shakes his head, winces as his curls drag against the burlap. “We’re here already, and shit, we ripped a hole in these fuckers just sleeping.”

Steve blinks then grins in half-a-grimace.

“Gotta prep you,” Steve pushes ready to grab for the hidden lube cup but Eddie catches his hand with a shake of his head.

“Done already.” He’s been wearing the plug for hours.

Steve does his blinking again and the grins, more of a smirk before he ducks his head and volleys back:

“Same,” as if Eddie didn’t know well Steve’s Amazon history, as if it should be the kind of surprise that trips up his pulse; “didn’t know what you’d want,” Steve adds, almost sheepish, almost shy, so fucking…considerate, Jesus fuck—

“This, um,” Eddie fills the quiet automatically, grabs a bit of his hair to hide behind, but lets it pull across his face almost instantly because Steve knows his tells, Steve knows so he’ll…

What exactly will he know?

“Camera angle.”

What the fuck, Eddie?

“Least now you know your best side,” Steve snarks, reaching to put Eddie's hair back where it belongs with a playful little grin; “mystery solved.”

Holy fuck. This is probably why he’s never fucked Steve, when it’s down to brass tacks.

Eddie couldn’t have lived past twenty, at this rate. He might not live past the next ten seconds.

“Action!”

Eddie tenses even as Jonathan’s voice is pitched low, a gentle interruption. Steve leans closer, both hands still braced at the sides of Eddie’s chest.

“Okay to start with kissing, just to set the tone?” Steve asks even more quietly.

“Works for me,” Eddie says just as quiet, just as sure as he can make his peace with the universe in the seconds before Steve’s lips touch his.

He’s not fucking wrong.

Steve tastes like mint, first, like he prepared for this; his lips are soft, despite the dry corners the winter chill demands, and plush and deep, somehow, drawing Eddie in and sucking at his tongue within the space of half-a-breath—at least in theory, because Eddie cannot fucking breathe to save his life, he’s suspended in this moment where the layers of Steve’s flavors are being lapped away between sloppy lips, spicy like chilies and caramel like his eyes and something grounding, elemental at the core and Eddie never thought all that much of kissing but if this had been his first go at it?

He might never have wanted anything else in his whole goddamn life.

“You wanna?” Steve pants between them after fuck knows how long, Eddie’s lungs are burning but it’s a pleasant buzz for the strain, he has no inclination to fight it at all, and it takes a minute, especially because Steve doesn’t pull back to ask, doesn’t make them stop and in fact pushes farther, harder, deeper, nips at Eddie’s lips like maybe even he wants in a way he’s never known quite like this before, which is fucking ludicrous but maybe—

And Steve’s starting to turn them, like he wants to keep kissing to the last second but knows they’ve gotta move on to the main event but Eddie’s fast once the prospect’s staring him down in the now: bends his ankles and catches Steve before he pulls any further and says breathless but firm as anything:

“Like this,” and Steve stares for a second, eyes like suns, because they’re not just stars, Eddie thinks; they give life, they decide whether your world still spins.

And he doesn’t fight. He watches Eddie, reads him in this, somehow, like he always has in everything else and settles his sweat-matted chest hair on Eddie’s skin again like it’s not the most fucking erotic thing Eddie’s ever known.

“Can you get your,” Steve starts, and Eddie’s not so lust-but-not-lust-but-then-what-dumb that he can’t get the memo that his legs need to swing up over Steve’s shoulders, stat.

He understands the goddamn assignment, Jesus H.

“Flexible motherfucker,” Steve grumbles playfully; fondly.

“If we couldn’t all be jocks, some of us leaned into being nimble,” Eddie pants, his heart skipping as Steve adjusts his weight with a palm on Eddie’s chest that catches the cacophony in real time.

“Don’t be nervous,” Steve murmurs low, eyes hooded under those lashes that Eddie always teased must drive his bedmates crazy.

Called it.

“M’not,” Eddie answers, but his heart’s a riot under states touch, Eddie’s skin’s electric beneath his hand and it’s, it’s—

Steve’s slow, waiting for any opportunity to be redirected, or unfathomably stopped as he reaches to Eddie’s ass, now easily cupped to start working the plug out and Eddie moans as it hits just right for a second, shivers at how empty it always feels to be bereft without the stretch but then Steve’s asking:

“Ready?”

“Uh huh,” Eddie trembles, hopes Steve’s knows it’s not for hesitation, or trepidation, or—

Steve knows.

Steve knows and he slides in easy, replaces the stretch before the missing of it can sink in wholly and does so in a way so much better, so much more than Eddie’s known as Steve goes to the hilt in one thrust and Jesus fuck, the way he nails Eddie’s prostate better than Eddie’s ever felt before—even with his very extensive and heavily curated collection of toys specifically for that purpose—makes the way Eddie arches back on a moan that’s filthy and honest and humiliatingly loud save that Eddie doesn’t give a shit, anyone who’s close enough to hear would do the same if they felt like this, but the way he moans?

Steve takes a second and studies his face—Eddie’s eyes are closed and his mouth is open and his head’s still tilted full-back but he know when Steve’s staring at him, he can feel that shit—so Steve studies him, makes sure it’s okay, before he starts a rhythm in earnest.

Eddie thinks he may have kept that bowed-back position the whole damn time, maybe the rest of his natural born life to feel the gift that was the angle Steve was hitting but Eddie’s too greedy, too thrown to loose ends all at once in an instant and he’s grappling for purchase, claws for Steve’s shoulders and Steve doesn’t falter once, grips bruises tighter maybe into Eddie’s hips, the first hint of a curve of the ass Steve’s pushing into hard and fast and perfect, easing out almost all the way, squelching just a little for as much lube Eddie’d had plugged up there, sliding free and taking full advantage of the opportunity, and Eddie’s reeling, Eddie’s keening, Eddie’s dick feels rock-hard and wholly on a hair-trigger every time Steve shifts so his abs barely brush Eddie’s tightened balls where they set tense and as sensitive to a record breaking finish in mere fucking minutes as the rest of him—and Eddie thought he was just hard up but…this feels maybe different.

Maybe this is more than just that.

It’s not even Steve’s exceptional fucking—shit, the rumors maybe were always entirely true—but that’s not what sends Eddie spilling over them both, more come in him to paint their skin than he remembers shooting ever in his life.

No: it’s the first sound that Steve makes, past the panting and the gasping and the exertion of the performance.

It’s the whimper that escapes him with his eyes scrunched tight. It undoes Eddie in ways he didn’t know he could be unmade.

And then Steve’s coming, shaking, following Eddie over the edge and all Eddie feels is warm, from the pumping spill where Steve’s still buried inside him to the way Steve falls on Eddie’s front, chest to chest as they both fight for air. And it’s not even like this was particularly…crazy fucking. Eddie’s definitely done things more physically demanding, and Steve’s Mr. Athlete even if he’s mostly picking up games and taking on fix-it work with their neighbors. They shouldn’t be this wrecked, and yet.

Eddie feels his pulse against Steve’s weight above him like a barreling train; like a constant rumble without any breaks when it presses to Steve’s when they gasp in just right.

Something shifts. The air. The mood. The ambiance. The earth’s crust beneath them.
Something is suddenly entirely different, and Eddie’s not sure what it is.

“Cut!”

Steve says it before he even moves, but it doesn’t matter; it’s like there was one reality, before, and then in this moment, right now, Eddie is keenly aware that’s not true anymore. There are two realities.

And he just left one of them, maybe for always. And he thinks something in him’s breaking for it.

But then Steve lifts, and reaches for a wet cloth he carefully, painstaking wipes them both clean with—Eddie didn’t even know Steve had those to reach for in the first place—and Eddie’s pulse does the trippy thingy again, goddamnit, and he’s not sure if Steve feels it again as he wipes Eddie’s chest or if he just knows, but he locks eyes with Eddie and asks, so serious, so concerned:

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Eddie chokes a little, real fucking convincing.

“Just fine?” Steve asks, sounds like he means to tease but doesn’t quite get there and Eddie…Eddie doesn’t fucking like that at all.

“Makes sense now, why it was always so loud when you brought people home,” Eddie huffs, still panting, and Steve gives one tiny laugh, more like it’s expected than like he means it, before his hand is steadying back on Eddie’s chest where he definitely feels the uneven galloping going on beneath before he moves to stand and…keeps going.

Somehow.

“Planning to get up?”

Eddie didn’t realize he’d spaced out a bit until he sees Steve’s hand stretched out to help him up but Eddie…he has to wave him off.

“I said nimble, not possessing Olympic lung capacity,” Eddie quips and Steve snorts a tiny bit before leaving him to recover, but more than that: before asking for the real reason Eddie’s staying there, naked on the floor.

Because it’s not his smoker’s lungs. It’s, it’s more, just, like…

The notion of him and Steve never fucking may have been unconsidered in the delivery, but apparently a significant portion of his…fucking everything had maybe been pretty dead set on maybe more than just considering this whole thing, and everything it could imply, every idiotic impossible thing it could hypothetically but never ever would really grow to be because, because…

He doesn’t know. Or maybe he does know. Maybe he knows the unknowable thing. Maybe he knows what can never be said. Maybe the seconds are ticking by for him to grieve the loss of something that never was, or was for so short a time it barely mattered.

Maybe. Fuck.

Fuck.

The sweat in his hair’s sticky and crunchy and disgusting, after a while, but he’s still lying on the stack of bagged coffee beans they’ve been using for a bed now—their bed, Jesus, how did Eddie not see this, how had he never seen this?—but he’s been lying here naked on the flimsy excuse of catching breath that refuses to be reined, hand on his chest like he’s trying to steady something, trying to hold something in but, just: fuck . His heart’s had at least ten minutes now to calm itself the fuck down and there it is, under his palm, inside his unceasingly-heaving chest.

Still running a goddamn marathon.

Chapter Text

The worst part—maybe. Maybe it’s the worst part because there might actually be more than one worst part here, in all this—is when Eddie remembers, still sprawled naked on the burlap-covered coffee beans, that the next scene they’re out there setting up is the one where Steve fucks Nancy.

Just like old times.

And yeah, they’d been moving the pieces around so she and Barb would finally give something a go, or at least talk it through, consider it or put it to bed so they could maybe be friends again, but here’s the thing.

Before, when they’d been doing that and Eddie had been gung-ho about it, full throttle?

Before, he didn’t know what sleeping with Steve felt like.

No way in fuck Nancy screws Steve again and doesn’t remember what she’s missing. And she’s an assertive woman, she’ll go after what she wants.

Unlike Eddie, who’s a little more like a limp pasta noodle about things he really wants. Because wanting too much terrifies him. Has never really served him anything but hurting, especially when it comes to matters of…romance.

He hears Jon keeping at the starting line, calling Action and all Eddie needs to hear is one moan that’s distinctly Wheelerian, and he has to cover his ears hard enough to hear his own heartbeat again, still not calmed, still not settled, ramped up and running, running away from this because of course Eddie starts—just starts, he has suspicions as to where it’s leading but it’s still just the easy, undeniable straight edges of the puzzle just now, but…but—

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. He doesn’t want to know. He just knows he feels sick to his stomach because…he maybe just…maybe he actually just had sex with his best friend and realized in the process he’s not just quite possibly in love with him?

But maybe he has been this whole fucking time.

Because the realization itself is dizzying and blindsiding, even in its nascent stages where it’s ping-ponging around his ribs trying to decide exactly how to land; but it doesn’t feel, exactly, like…new.

It’s when a sharp whoop breaks through the way he’s smashed his ears closed—it’s what they’ve been doing when someone acknowledges that food from the 24-diner at the other end of town has been procured between scenes—that Eddie lets go of his abuse of his ears and lets them be sore as fuck as a reminder of the hurt that’s coursing through the whole of himself for quite possibly being a blind fucking idiot for more of his life than he’s ready to admit; lets the slow adjustment of his hearing filter viscous and half-hearted almost like he’s been underwater, which is fitting as hell, really.

He feels mostly like he’s drowning, anyway.

He manages to stand, which takes too long and settles on too-wobbly legs, and he leans his ass against the wall to steady himself and pull his clothes back on, gets the basics and goes for his belt and jacket next when the door swings open and he freezes, and his heart hadn’t settled, not really, but it fucking hurts how it pounds because Eddie knows, he knows—

“Eds?”

Eddie fucking knows it’s Steve before there’s a single word spoken. Before he even clocks the gait of his steps as Steve approaches him, as the door swings closed:

“You okay?”

And he’s holding out fries—Eddie’s favorite from the diner, slathered in cheese sauce so he knows they were ordered and brought over just for him, just for him—on a paper plate, but Eddie’s stomach just churns. He swallows, hard, and Steve doesn’t miss it.

“Was it,” Steve pauses, sounds fucking miserable which makes no sense because he just fucked his long lost Mrs. Harrington into coming to her senses; “did I,” and he reaches out and Eddie doesn’t mean to flinch. He doesn’t, he could never ever mean to—

But it’s Steve who looks sick, now, when Eddie does and fuck, fuck; Eddie has to fix this. Eddie has to make it right, Steve didn’t do anything wrong—

“No, no, nothing,” Eddie rushes, babbles, flails his hands; “it was fine, I’m fine, like I told you.”

“You’re a fucking terrible liar.”

Steve’s smile is the saddest thing Eddie’s ever had the misfortune to witness, let alone be the cause of.

God-fucking-damnit.

“Did,” Steve starts again, after the silence stretches so long, so heartsore somehow; he sounds like he’s navigating a minefield, like there’s an elephant in the room whose threat level has yet to be identified and Eddie’s heart is literally trying to mandolin itself on the blades of his ribs right now, Jesus fuck: “I mean, was it, did you feel like, maybe you felt like—”

Eddie maybe makes a noise. Or a face. Or does something that cuts Steve off. He can’t tell. He can’t hear. His heart’s stuck halfway through a rib, sliced half-assed and bloody and killing him slow as it tries to race but can’t because Steve figured it out before Eddie did, because Steve knows Eddie that fucking well so of course he did and he knows he knows and he’s awkward as fuck about it, he’s scared, he’s tiptoeing, he thinks Eddie’s feelings are explosive and deadly, harmful, to be avoided and dodged and—

“Oh wow,” Eddie rasps; “I feel…not so good,” and fuck, hey: at least that’s not a lie.

He feels like, if souls are real? His is trying to strangle him, or else, lasso his heart and yank it like a tooth from where it’s lodged on his ribs, so it can bleed out with dignity until he’s bone dry and empty.

“Shit,” Steve leaps into action, reaches for Eddie like he’s already set aside the shiftiness for the demands of the moment; “what can I do? Water? We should still have peppermint tea or something, or like, like Pepto, the chewy kinds, somewhere in the drawer,” he rambles and Eddie loves him for it.

Fuck. Fuck.

Eddie loves him, loves him, doesn’t he.

And Steve thinks Eddie’s feelings are a minefield.

“No, no, I’m good,” Eddie tries to beg off, tries to bat Steve’s hands away as gentle, as not-frantic as he can when all he wants is that touch, and all he needs is to fucking run.

Steve knows he has feelings. Steve thinks Eddie’s feelings are weapons of mass destruction. Steve fucked Nancy.

Eddie needs to get out.

“You said you were sick,” Steve frowns, equal parts worried and suspicious now.

“Umm,” Eddie swallows when it comes out to much like a rasp; “I meant more like I’ll be fine once I sleep it off,” Eddie improvs on the spot and it’s close enough to a lie to suck just as bad; “I’ll see you, okay?”

“Eddie, we sleep here,” Steve tries to protest, looking less worried or suspicious and more…more terrified and Eddie wants to fix it, wants nothing more than to fix it, save that it feels like ‘it’?

Is him.

“Break a leg with Nancy, tiger!” Eddie calls as he bolts out the back door they’d used for their scene, and he’s gonna be sick, real fucking soon, but he has to run first, he has to, in case Steve follows.

He can’t tell if Steve does, because for all the damage done, for all the carnage left behind, for how sick and wrong it manages to feel in his chest: his heart’s still pounding.

—————————

“What happened?”

Because of course Robin can see it on him immediately, and has already crossed the room to grab his forearms and press their foreheads together.

“He doesn’t, he didn’t,” Steve whispers, a little dazed, because he’d been convinced it was too good to be true, that what he’d felt flooded with when he touched Eddie, when he learned what it felt like to exist inside him, when the moon shifted and the poles moved and gravity changed its force and its center all at the same time: there was no way Eddie could feel the same way.

Because Steve Harrington never falls in love and then has it reciprocated. Fact of life. Law of physics. Whatever. Just how it goes.

Everyone knows that. It’s probably written in a book somewhere.

But they’d all of them been staring at him when he came back out in a towel, clothes left out in the front of the cafe like an idiot, and Nancy had stepped forward just one pace before declaring.

“Jon’s doing the scene with me tonight.”

And Steve’s jaw had fucking dropped.

“You know the camera enough,” Jonathan had been a little subdued, even for him—which made no fucking sense, because those two in the same room had been a gamble, but on film, having sex, after the way their relationship imploded?

No, no Steve couldn’t—

“I’ve already had a scene with Argyle,” Nancy had anticipated an argument Steve wasn’t even planning to make: he knew she did, and Steve knew that he was on-deck for filming with her because they need a little more girl-on-guy for balance, and there was no fucking way he’d even consider asking Jonathan so, no matter what else, it was just acting, so whatever Steve was feeling like a hummingbird in his chest could wait, because that feeling fucking mattered and whatever he was about to do with his dick in the next thirty minutes didn’t, so—

“We’re not making you fuck her after that.”

And that was…that was Jonathan. Who was looking at Steve like he saw straight through to the heart of him. Could watch his heart as it soared and sang and hoped despite knowing it was a fool’s errand to even think on—Jonathan was looking at Steve like he saw it all.

And then everyone else was nodding and Steve…wasn’t sure what to say.

“I felt like I shouldn’t be watching,” Chrissy had whispered, kinda reverent almost; “it was too intimate.”

“Nauseating,” Robin added, like a correction that also underscored the point.

Then Steve went to speak, though he wasn’t sure what he was even gonna say, and Argyle beat him to it anyway:

“Did it feel like sex, my dude?”

And…well, fuck.

What it’d felt like was something that made ‘sex’ feel insulting to the weight of what this had meant.

So…Steve had trusted Nancy and Jonathan because they were adults and because in his own mind Steve can acknowledge he was absolutely selfish enough to let them try this if it meant he didn’t have to fuck Nancy, because Steve didn’t think he wanted to fuck anyone ever again, really, if it wasn’t Eddi—

He let Jon call the shots, start to finish, and they did end up abbreviating what was planned, but Barb comes back with the food at the exact right moment to call it a solid filler scene, just what they needed, and it gave Steve the perfect opportunity to grab the cheesy fries he’d ordered for Eddie to take it back to where he was probably waiting out the scene so he didn’t walk into frame, and then maybe, maybe he could try to ride the still-simmering high of what they’d done, see if it was something they shared, and—

Now, pinching the bridging of his nose as he pulls back from Robin: he’s basically just really glad he only just got the first of his words out, the barest glimpse of his heart offered up before Eddie bolted.

It’d shattered in the process either way but, at least it’s a mess inside his own chest, mostly. He’s used to that.

Save that it’s never felt like this, and fuck: they weren’t even together.

An hour ago, Steve didn’t even know he was in love with his best friend.

Now he’s wondering how long that’s been true and he just didn’t notice.

“He does, though.”

Steve’s shaken out of his stupor of stunned devastation but Chrissy’s frowning disagreement.

“Steve,” Nancy says, weirdly imploring; “you didn’t see how he looked at you,” and everyone starts nodding and humming agreement and Steve thinks they mean for it to be encouraging.

It feels more like a knife in the chest.

“Endorphins,” Steve shakes his head; “hormones and shit,” and then he inhales just as shaky, too; “he, he was pretty clearly not interested.”

“I don’t buy it,” Chrissy’s crossing her arms, looking oddly like she’s prepared to fight this point to the blood, to die on this hill. Steve wishes it didn’t hurt so much to feel how wrong she is to have that kind of faith.

“Eddie’s never exactly been brave,” Jonathan pipes up, not unkindly; “especially about, you know. Emotions.”

And Steve thinks Eddie has the heart of a fucking lion. But…when it comes to specific things, and when it comes to first encounters with a lot of things: Jon’s not wrong.

Still. That doesn’t—

“He’s a runner,” Robin cuts in, almost certainly knows she’s also cutting off the spiral of Steve’s thoughts, at least for the moment. “He always has been. You know that.”

Of course Steve knows that. But this…this is different. Steve knows it is.

“If he felt the same, if he felt this,” and Steve’s voice is low, raw, trembly as he runs his chest because it says what he can’t say, and also because it fucking actually hurts:

“You’d run toward this, not away,” Steve rasps out, squeezes his eyes shut so fucking tight:

“Even him.”

“Are you sure?” Robin’s voice is so close, pitched so just he can hear before he feels her grab his wrist, listens as she speaks just for them:

“You know each other better than that.”

Steve thought they did, he really, really thought—

“Go after him,” she urges, emphasizes every syllable.

“I don’t know where he went,” Steve barely breathes.

“Probably your place,” Rob draws little circles on his arms as she speaks in rational points to try and calm him, and it usually works, just more for the way it makes her kind of babble, and that is usually what does the trick.

It doesn’t, though, not this time.

“You guys said the temperature starts to get bearable enough just before sunrise,” she’s explaining what they’ve both said more than once “and you’re fifth floor, so the heating everyone else has had on the whole night’s had time to rise.”

And when she realizes it’s not working, she resorts to desperate measures: she pulls Steve into a full-bodied embrace with a strength she usually doesn’t demand when they hug; a closeness that’s reserved for when they try to meld into one person.

“Find him,” she murmurs, tickling Steve’s skin as it fluffs at his hair: “don’t ask him. Tell him, everything,” and Robin’s whisper is fierce as fuck:

“Then tell me he doesn’t want you.”

“If he doesn’t?” Steve asks, and it sounds just as scared shitless as he feels.

“We’ll clean up today,” Robin answers simply as she pulls back, still holding onto Steve’s arms; “five whole wipe downs, I swear,” she promises with a grin and quirked brow; “and after that I will leave you to either fuck wildly, or wallow for all of thirty-six hours unless you text before,” she turns a little softer then as she squeezes Steve’s biceps: “at which I will come and we will eat pints of Dublin Mudslide and watch shitty romcoms.”

And Steve huffs less a laugh a more and aborted sob and grabs her back to hug her tight one more time.

“I love you, Birdie,” he kisses her temple and she doesn’t even fight him for the affection.

“I love you, too,” she says, like she’s talking about the sun rising in the east, and the she adds with the same matter-of-fact certainty:

“And so does Eddie. And not in the same way.”

Steve doesn’t laugh, but he manages a smile for her, and they all shoo him out encouragingly so as bad as he feels leaving them to do the work when he’s technically in charge? He’s grateful, because he’s in serious danger of falling the fuck apart.

Eddie’s van’s gone, so at least Steve doesn’t have to worry about him being frozen to death, but he doesn’t see it in the lot on the roadside near their apartment—but maybe he got there before everyone started leaving for work, so he parked too far down to notice. Possible, at least.

But when Steve opens their door, with the just-starting glow of dawn the only way to navigate, he doesn’t have to go looking to know for sure that Eddie’s not here. That he ran, away from home—their home; away from Steve, and who even knew how far he’s gone, or is still going. Eddie was that…repulsed by even the suggestion that he, that they, that Steve felt—

Steve doesn’t pinch his tears back this time—he’s got 36 whole hours to fall the fuck apart.

Chapter Text

There’s too much gas in the tank.

There’s too much gas in the fucking tank. Eddie never fills the van up past half-full, but Eddie’s had enough to get him near the fucking state line, and that’s, that’s—

Steve filled it. Steve did that.

And that’s when Eddie finally fucking breaks down. That’s when the trembling he’s been doing behind the wheel for at least an hour or two gets the best of him and shakes him to pieces, and he pulls over to the side of a dead-end road and falls the fuck apart.

Because Eddie knows it now. He knows it in the shivering bones of him that he loves Steve more than he loves the blood in his veins and the air in his lungs; the songs he pulls from the strings under his fingertips don’t hold a fucking candle to what it felt like to dig bruises into Steve’s skin and Eddie knows it, now.

He knows it, and even if he’s alone in it, it is a beautiful, magnificent thing. It’s so bright, and it’s so big, and he was a fool to think he could run from it. Like an earth can run from the atmosphere. Like the sky can run from the stars.

It’s a part of him, now. It’s maybe been a part of him for years.

But now he knows it. And he was a big enough idiot to try and run from it, Jesus H. fucking Christ. When it was woven between his goddamn cells.

He’s still kind of blubbering a little when he finds a rinkydink little station to put whatever he’s got in his pocket in the can to fill it up as far as he can afford and pray it gets him back home, because he, just…

He needs Steve.

He needs to find Steve and…do something.

It’s fumes and desperation alone that pulls him into a free spot, front wheels half up on the curb at the back of their building—he can’t even see if Steve’s here, if he bunked down for his day off like they’d planned before Eddie skipped out like the blind coward he is or if he went with Rob or more likely Nancy, given the givens, or hell, if he worked dead-on-his-feet because he’s angry, or hurt, or uncomfortable around Eddie, now, and whichever it is, whichever of those things Steve was trying to muscle through and confront head-on in the back of the store last night, to call Eddie out on gently so they could move past it before Eddie made the mountain out of the molehill except it was more like an anthill into Mount fucking Everest—

“Steve?” he calls out, and fuck, his voice cracks as he pushes their door open and…something’s off.

The door was locked, so it’s not like, an intruder or something, as if they have anything to steal. But something isn’t…there’s something wrong. Off-balance. Like a…piece missing, or something, which makes no sense.

“Stevie?” he calls out, and there’s a pit growing in his stomach as he walks toward the hall, because it looks like Steve’s door is open so he’d hear, if he were there, but it’s almost like Eddie’s voice is too loud, like it echoes when it’s never done that before, like there’s something empty about the walls they’ve called home for so many years and he—

“No.”

Steve’s door is open. And his room is fucking…

His room is empty.

Empty of his clothes. Empty of his things.

Empty of his self.

Steve is what was missing, what Eddie could feel was missing from the moment he opened the door. And the missing is what’s carving a brand new hole in Eddie’s chest, gaping and jagged and every time he tries to breathe it stutters and leaks out and he can’t, this can’t be, he, he—

“Oh, fuck,” he can’t breathe but more than that, he can’t have lost Steve, not for real, not like this.

He needs Steve way more desperately to live than he’s ever needed air. Steve is the only essential Eddie thinks he even knows.

Now that he’s looking. Now that he can see what he’s been too blind to even think about looking for.

“Oh fuck, no, no no no,” and Eddie’s moving on instinct, feet shuffling by rote as he throws open Steve’s closet—nothing—opens the drawers of his dresser—nothing; and it’s not rote or some unconscious fucking choice, it’s his body fucking shutting down, failing him because he’s falling apart as he drops too close to the edge of the mattress—just old sheets, Eddie doesn’t even think they’re Steve’s at all, weren’t Steve’s, aren’t…

Aren’t ever going to be Steve’s? Is there anything in Eddie’s life that will be Steve’s again, when all of everything in Eddie, really possibly his whole fucking adult life in one way or another, and he’d always known the one way, the way Steve was his better-than-best friend and his vital organs and his other half and—

Jesus H. Christ, Eddie is a moron.

A moron who slips to the floor and starts shaking with his knees bent and his head burrowed between them, because there’s the faintest scent of Steve still in the air but he’s…but it’s the kind of soft perfect scent that’s already so faint Eddie knows it’s almost gone, already it’s almost gone and how the fuck can it already be almost gone—

And Steve is just gone—

“No, no,” Eddie moans to himself, shakes his head, hair dragging against his knees, back and forth and back; “no,” and he still can’t breathe, he can barely see, what little vision he has between his kneecaps tunnelling further and his heartbeat’s so fucking loud and it might be what’s shaking Eddie, like a secondary aftershock below the obvious splintering of loss-loss-loss and—

“No—”

“Oh.”

Eddie startles, freezes; doesn’t try to breathe anymore not because it was pointless already but because suddenly, he just fucking can’t.

He doesn’t look up because that voice feels like what people say about the last seconds the brain has before it dies, like a hallucination of a fantasy before there’s nothing—but Eddie was already feeling like there was nothing and—

“Um. Sorry,” Steve’s voice says again, stilted in a way Eddie doesn’t think he’s heard before, or else, maybe.

Maybe he’s heard it before. Maybe he’s heard it about Steve’s parents.

Holy fuck, but if that’s not a shame, a guilt that Eddie will take to the goddamn grave; to be the cause of that, but he…he loves.

He loves this man and he doesn’t think he could stop if he tried, thinks it’s grown too strong for too long, too deep to notice but now the roots are formidable as it’s finally broken ground and he, he…

More than any of it, maybe: Eddie doesn’t think he’s strong enough to trade the shame away, if it means losing the love. Desired or not. Reciprocated or not. The cause of the loss of everything, or not.

He…doesn’t think he’s strong enough. He’s not stronger than the love.

“Got caught by Claudia,” Steve’s crossing his arms over his chest too tight, not making eye contact, staying in the doorway, as far from Eddie as possible; “was gonna come back and do a sweep, make sure I didn’t forget any—”

“Where are you going?”

Eddie knows he’s gonna hate the answer regardless of what it is. He doesn’t know why he asks.

He wonders a little, in the back of his mind, if Steve’s going to Nancy.

But then Steve’s tipping his head back against the door jamb and sighing so deep Eddie imagines he can feel the exhale shift the weight of the whole room; the whole world.

His whole world.

“Even if we can patch this up,” and fuck, fuck,he’s tipped his head back down, burying his chin in his chest and pinching at the bridge of his nose, and Eddie knows what that is, what all this has caused and led to because he discovered fucking feelings by fucking the most important person in his life. Jesus.

“It’s gonna be weird for a while, maybe a long while,” and Eddie should maybe see the positive in hoping there’s an end date of some kind in Steve’s mind, that it’s not—

“Maybe even forever,” and yep, that’s why Eddie wasn’t finding any silver lining here in the first place. The only thing he knows is the sick slosh of his own hopeless heart and just…hollowness.

“And I don’t want to push you if you didn’t, I mean, and—”

“Don’t leave.”

It comes out in a rasp, which fits just fine—Eddie doesn’t plan to say it but it’s understandable, predictable; it’s all that’s still coursing through his veins on the lagging power of his sad-sluggish pulse. It’s the only thing fueling anything alive left in him.

“Don’t leave,” Eddie whispers again, and then the clincher slips out: “me.”

Because that’s it, isn’t it? They’ve never left each other. They’ve always been here. That’s his, Steve is his—

“Don’t leave me.”

And Steve’s eyes are still wide, so so fucking wide but Eddie can’t find a clear line into what they’re wide with, and Eddie’s mostly made of wanting and loss of his own making and doing here, right, so what more can he fucking lose?

“I was wrong, Steve,” he struggles to his feet because he has to, something primitive and deep-lodged in him knows he has to; “I think maybe for years I’ve been wrong,” and he’s walking toward Steve who stills somehow even further, but doesn’t leave.

Steve’s never been the type who runs, after all.

“You’re not my spleen,” Eddie says, one step at a time, ever-closer to the frozen figure of the man in the doorway who’s flinching like it hurts to hear and Eddie hurts with him, but he’s more focused on trying really fucking hard not to fall over, crumble at his feet, or fall straight into him where Eddie might not be wanted but might find fucking exists anyway, and that part is the forever thing that exists without question. Because he’s sure now.

Because:

“You’re not my kidney, or my fucking bile duct,” he breathes, and he reaches slow, slow so Steve can stop him but Steve is still motionless, Steve just stares as Eddie’s hand braces on his chest and Eddie sighs for the contact, selfish. But necessary.

“You’re my heart.”

And Steve sucks in a breath and maybe Eddie can’t quite make out where the wideness of his eyes lands on a scale of disgusted to confused, but the wideness is brighter, wetter, and where Steve is stock-still, at the very least Eddie’s mouth decides to be the runner, now:

“You are my whole heart and I don’t know how to survive without you, I don’t know how to find meaning in maybe anything at all if you’re not with me, if I can’t tell you or stand next to you and share the world with you, because what use is the world if there’s no you,” Eddie sucks in a breath that still doesn’t quite fill his lungs, the hole in him still gaping but there’s some relief just touching Steve, just feeling the heavy thump of that heart under his palm. It eases the agony.

“And I know you don’t want this, I know that’s literally what you were saying to me, that I wasn’t supposed to feel like this, it was just a role, we were just playing parts, I know,” Eddie shakes his head at himself, because there’s the shame, there’s the failure but—

“But you are my whole fucking heart and I’m more in love with you than I can breathe around,” and god but it’s true, it’s so true and even if the speaking of it and the momentum onward is sudden, it feels like it’s been with him forever.

“And even if you’ll never feel the same,” Eddie breathes, stares at his hand on Steve’s chest—that Steve hasn’t shoved off, or backed away from—mostly to memorize it for always but also to avoid having to see the rejection Steve would be graceful and generous with, but still couldn’t change to be anything but heartbreaking to have to see:

“Even so, Stevie, I wouldn’t change it.”

And that’s the goddamn truth of it, ain’t it. That’s the soul beyond the everything else.

“It’s too much, it’s too deep,” he shakes his head, both a denial of ever wanting, let alone being capable of changing it, but then also to marvel, because it really is so much:

“I wouldn’t take it back.”

And Steve is quiet, and Eddie feels pieces of himself splintering off into nothingness with every moment that passes until—

Until Steve reaches, and grabs Eddie’s hand, and Eddie thinks that this is it, the force in his hold of Steve’s fingers around Eddie’s wrist is too forceful, too demanding to be anything but the prelude to the end, and then the words come to seal the way Eddie will fall apart for real this time, no saving him, or putting back together:

“Where the fuck did you get the idea I wouldn’t want it?” Steve hisses, but when Eddie finally meets his eyes again, pure shock response, they’re not angry. They’re…

They’re like looking at the sun but without any of the hurting.

“That I didn’t feel…” and then Steve drops his hand, and he’s so confused, Eddie is confused but he melts when Steve cups one hand behind his head, then mirrors how they were with the other, palm to Eddie’s now wholly-pounding heart as he leans close so Eddie shivers as Steve exhales beneath his ear:

“Don’t be nervous.”

And then he drags the barest hint of his lips against Eddie’s skin, his breath heavy and untethered, until he speaks against Eddie’s lips, half a kiss and half a declaration and wholly unashamed:

“I was trying to tell you,” Steve murmurs between sloppy, uncoordinated presses of mouths; “I was telling you, but then you were gone, and…”

“What were you telling me?”

Eddie has to know. He is well aware he’s the reason for his own ignorance, his fear the cause of the damage done. He is still wholly cognizant that he may not like the answer.

But Steve’s hand is against his chest and Steve’s lips are against his own. The odds have shifted slightly, at the very least.

“We laid down to fuck,” Steve breathes into Eddie like life itself; “but for me, it felt like,” and he pulls back, and Eddie whimpers for the loss and then again for the fire, the feeling in Steve’s eyes when they catch Eddie’s and hold as he says the most beautiful words Eddie could never have dreamed to hear:

“It felt like we made love, instead.”

Eddie’s heart, under Steve’s hand?

Leaps. Trembles. Shivers.

Wants.

“And it’s never felt like that before,” Steve’s other hand abandons Eddie’s face to grab Eddie’s own free wrist; “I have never felt like that before.”

And then it’s Eddie’s hand on Steve’s chest. Touching. Feeling the warmth of Steve suffuse him.

Feeling the beat of his fucking heart straight to the skin like a wild bird, a flaring star.

“And I don’t think I ever will,” Steve barely mouths the words, his breath shallow and shaky but his pulse so goddamn strong as he looks into Eddie when he says closer to a vow than anything:

“I know I don’t want to, not with anyone else,” Steve tells Eddie true, because Eddie can feel it sink into him visceral and with heft in it: chest to chest and like, shit, it’s impossible but, but—it feels like it’s soul to fucking soul:

“Not for anyone else.”

And Eddie gasps something like a sob when he leans and captures Steve’s mouth, prays to everything that could listen that Steve will let him, will keep him, up until their lips meet and Steve kisses him with the sparkling flame Eddie read in his eyes, with the flavor of the impossible, of a soul reaching and winding around another where it wants most to be, where it belongs—

“I’m your heart?” Steve breaks away only the slightest bit to ask, partially a confirmation but not without a glaze of wonder Eddie doesn’t know if he deserves, but relishes in so fucking whole and full.

He nods until his goddamn neck’s sore.

“Okay, good then,” Steve chuckles, like relief and amusement and fondness as he cups both of Eddie’s cheeks to hold him still, to watch him, to see him straight on: “because you’re sure as fuck mine and it’d be really messed up if one of us ended up with two hearts and the other one dropped dead with none.”

And Eddie, fuck: he laughs and he knows he’s going to fucking cry in a hot fucking second so he kisses Steve one more time, hard, and then buries himself in the crook of Steve’s neck and holds to him tighter than he thought he had the strength for, that he knew himself capable of.

Steve clutches back, just as strong but gentle, strokes at Eddie’s hair.

“I love you, Steven Harrington,” Eddie presses the words into the pulse at Steve’s neck, wet with his tears like something sacred somehow.

“I love you, Edward Munson,” Steve kisses the top of his head and cradles Eddie to him closer, leaning them both against the wall so he can hold Eddie and Eddie alone and they breathe there, for fuck knows how long.

Until something startles Eddie, a thought from nowhere, a fear held close that weighs him down when all he feels apart from it is weightless:

“Can I still be your kidney, stones and all?” Eddie whispers, hesitant, almost timid.

But he gets the privilege of tracing Steve’s chuckle where it bubbles up through his throat before he eases Eddie back, looks at him with…with love when Eddie had thought he’d lost even friendship, minutes that feel like a lifetime ago, now.

But they both know what Eddie means: he means there’s a difference, between loving a difficult friend and holding a difficult lover. He knows he’s not easy, knows his quirks and his flaws and will Steve want that, will Steve want that in the lifelong way Eddie’s always thought of when he thought of Steve at all, and—

“Eddie,” Steve cradles his cheeks, frames his face and traces the bones soft, nearly cherishing with the pads of his thumbs:“you’re my everything.”

And if Eddie didn’t melt at that—he definitely does, for the record—he’d be a puddle without Steve’s touch, Steve’s hold as the man tucks Eddie under his chin, where Eddie’s cheek can feel the echo of his heartbeat as he says so goddamn warm:

“So yeah, I think that’s part of the package.”