Chapter Text
Despite Eddie's insistence, Steve pays for his own plane ticket. The guy might be about ready to drop a single, but that money hasn't started rolling in, yet.
Eddie is, however, waiting with a sign that says Stevie on it, with a silly black cap on his head and sunglasses on, a very serious expression on his face.
Steve laughs at the sign, and his whole get-up, and his heart pangs, and he kinda wants to cry. It's been so long, almost two years, since he's last seen him in person. He's still Eddie, Steve would be able to spot him out in a crowded room, like an airport, but he looks good. Less traumatized, maybe, less skittish that the people around him are gonna throw pitchforks at him.
Steve can also see the fact that his arms have gotten kinda jacked since he last saw him. The sleeves have been cut off, allowing Steve to see his arms. Must be the guitar playing. There's some new tattoos, too, that Steve can't quite see yet.
When Eddie finally spots him, the serious face melts away into a big, bright smile. "Steve!" He shouts and waves him over, as if Steve hadn't already noticed him.
Steve barrels into him, causing Eddie to stumble back slightly, but Steve keeps him planted to the ground by wrapping his arms around him tight, and Eddie does the same. Steve's head smashed into his shoulder as his arms squeeze him tightly. Eddie drops his forehead onto Steve's shoulder, pulling him in as close as possible. Any closer and Steve would have to melt into him.
"Best Christmas present ever." Eddie whispers to him. Steve laughs lightly. Yeah, he thinks, it really is.
Eddie's new car, he told Steve when his van sh*tted out on him, is still a bit of a junker, but there's not a lot of noticeable rust on it. He regals Steve with stories of the places that they pass by like he's a tour guide. Steve is just happy to hear his voice. "And, to your right, you'll see a bar I'm banned from. I'm not technically banned from it, but I screwed the bartender, and it was really bad sex." Steve ponders only for a moment the gender of said bartender.
He's taken the sunglasses off too. So Steve can see that familiar glint of mischief in his eyes, the way he looks upon the sights with adoration. His hair has gotten nicer too, still a bit of a rat's nest, but that's the style. Like he finally uses conditioner in his hair. "And to your left you'll see the infamous parking lot where my van broke down." He crosses his heart, Steve laughs. "May she rest in pieces in car heaven."
It's bright, Steve thinks. Despite it being night time, it's so bright here. Cars and signs and just lights everywhere. "And, to my immediate right, you'll see the gorgeous Steve Harrington." Eddie cracks a grin as he removes one hand from the wheel to gesture at Steve.
Steve is sure his face is red when he laughs and tries to shoo Eddie's hand away. He hopes it's dark enough in the car.
"C'mon Stevie, tell the people at home what you're wearing." Eddie closes his fist as if he was holding an invisible microphone and holds it to the side of Steve's face.
Steve is all smiles as he turns his face. "Well, if they must know, this t-shirt, I think actually belonged to Robin Buckley-"
Eddie swings his fist towards his own face. "I had a feeling you didn't know who Falco was." He swings it back.
"-and, these jeans are my old work jeans. Seemed like the softest option while still being presentable."
Eddie brings the invisible microphone to himself. "He's mixing comfort and couture." He brings the microphone back to Steve.
"My shoes?" Eddie nods at him. "Well, uh, my shoes are my monster killing Nikes." Steve swings his foot up on the dash to show them off. They're stained, but Steve has cleaned most of the dirt and grime off of them.
Eddie brings the microphone back to him. "Now, that, that is fashion, baby."
The two burst into a round of laughter and giggles, Eddie's hand dropping from the air. For a moment, Steve thinks he's gonna place a hand on his thigh, but he just leans his elbow onto his center console. Steve feels a slight bit of disappointment, already mentally arguing with himself over feeling that way.
Steve isn't very tired, despite Eddie saying he is, but Steve is f*cking hungry. After Eddie parks his car, still really bad at parallel parking, he takes him to the taco stand he promised him long ago. He says as much too.
There's an older lady in front of a bunch of toppings, and Steve can only assume its her son behind the grill section. They both look at Eddie with recognition, and Steve is only left to assume Eddie's been here a lot. "Holá abuelita!" He greets the older lady.
She smiles at Eddie. "Oh! Gatito! cómo estás?"
"Muy bien. Tú?"
"El negocio va lento hoy, pero muy bien." She says with a shrug. Steve is completely lost.
"Eso no es bueno. This is mí mejor amigo!" He gestures back at Steve, grabbing his shoulder and bringing him forward.
Steve clears his throat, holding a hand out to the lady, and putting a good smile on his face. "I, uh, don't know Spanish, like, at all, but I'm Steve."
She looks between Steve and Eddie for a moment, before landing on Eddie. Steve half expects Eddie to start translating, but Mamí starts speaking. "Éste es él? El chico al que has estado adulando?" She looks to Steve again, seemingly sizing him up and down. "El es bastante lindo..."
"Abuelita!" Eddie groans as he turns away, scratching his neck. "No le gustan los hombres." He says softly.
"Oh, Gatito, nunca sabes! Quieres lo de siempre?"
"Ocho, por favor." She nods, walking over to her grill boy, telling him something. He nods, and starts slicing meat off a giant lump that's been skewered.
"Pastor." Eddie supplies when he sees Steve looking. "It's, uh, pork, I think? With like, special seasonings. I didn't know what it was for a long time until I finally asked." Eddie shoves a ten into her jar.
"When did you start learning Spanish?"
"When I started coming here, Mi niño grande." Eddie says with a coy smile.
Hot, Steve thinks. Then Steve thinks, don't. He may have already had his whole gay crisis, but thinking his friend is hot, he draws the line at that.
"Bet it's a hit with the babes." Why must he torture himself so?
Eddie turns away from Steve. "Right, yeah."
Eddie's apartment is messy, just like Steve imagined it would be. It's just one room, just big enough for one bed, one couch, and a desk. One hallway leads off towards a bathroom, and the other to a kitchen. The walls are covered ceiling to floor with poster and papers, and by the phone there seems to be a whole pad of sticky notes on the wall. Upon looking closer, it's reminders of stuff people have told Eddie over the phone.
Important meeting on Tuesday. Robin unsuccessfully flirted with Becky. Henderson has a crush on a girl who smells like flowers and rainbows. Mike Wheeler is an idiot. Will is a really good painter. El wants to get a tattoo. Max is back on two legs. Lucas has scouts looking at him. Erica started a mini-Hellfire. Gareth has a girlfriend. Ronnie moved to New York. Jeff is thinking of joining his dad's business. Doug is the same. Wayne is seeing a new doctor.
Steve Harrington is doing better.
Oh. Steve thinks, his stomach getting a little queasy at the words. He'd never even told Eddie he was doing bad. That he could just pick up on it from how he sounded. It tugs at his heart, his heart screaming "yes!", Steve wants to strangle it.
Eddie doesn't have a TV, instead, a record player sits in front of his couch, boxes of records underneath the table it's on. Eddie crouches in front of it, but instead of flipping through the crates, there's a 45 sitting in the top of the table. It's has a plain white label on it, SWING written on it. He takes the LP out of the player, sliding it back into the it's packaging, Metallica, and puts the 45 on the spinner.
"It's the single the company wants me to put it out first. The more marketable one they say. More radio friendly, I guess."
He gestures Steve over onto the couch. Steve can't help but obey. "Can you legally show this to me?"
Eddie waves his hand at the notion, dropping the needle, and plopping himself onto the couch, right next to Steve. Like their legs are touching.
Steve can feel that comforting warmth that Eddie carries with him. Seeping through his knee into his. That sunshine that flows through Eddie, even indoors, even at night.
"Sa-wing batter, batter, sa-wing!" The record starts out with an umpire shouting.
"That's my old boss, from the record store. He's from the East Coast." Eddie tilts his head back onto the couch, slipping his eyes closed, the instruments of the song starting up. It's softer than Steve expected. "He used to say it all the time. It just kept making me think about this song more and more, and the story behind it."
"What's it about?"
Eddie grins at the ceiling. "You'll just have to listen, huh?"
"It doesn't sound very metal."
"I wrote one ballad on the entire album and it's the one they like most." Eddie shakes his head like it bugs him, but the smile on his face says otherwise.
"What happens next?" Steve asks, despite the fact he was told to listen. When he gets a warning glare from Eddie, he feels to need to explain himself. "Like after the single is released."
A hopeful look passes through his face, and it looks damn good on him. Remembers seeing him look hopeless for much of that turbulent spring break. "Well, if the single does well, breaks the top 40, then it's all about dropping the album and going on tour. An opening act. I'm hoping Metallica or Judas Priest or something."
Steve nods slightly, eyes trailing across the Judas Priest shirt Eddie wears. His eyes drift downwards, seeing a flash of pale skin coming out from where his shirt has rode up.
Steve wouldn't have been able to tell against Eddie's pale skin, the only reason he can see the scars is the fact that he wears the same on his body. He wonders for a moment, if they both pulled their shirts up, would they line up? He wonders if Eddie also fears meeting a new lover in case they ask too many questions, or would look upon him with pity and fear. Wonders, for only a moment, if Eddie also thinks a piece of him was left in the Upside Down.
Steve adverts his gaze, choosing instead to focus on one of the new tattoos that adorn his arms. There's one right on his pulse point on his left arm, a twelve-pointed star. Knows it hasn't always been there, because it was the same pulse point he checked every two seconds almost two years ago. He reaches out, pinching the spot between three fingers, just like then, but this time, this time Eddie's pulse is strong. Pulsing rhythmically against his fingers.
He looks up at Eddie, finds him already staring back knowingly. He gives Steve a soft smile of reassurance. "It's new." Steve says, because he feels his should say something.
"A point for everyone who saved me," Eddie explains. "The kids, Joyce and the Chief, Wheeler, Buckley. I wanted to put a point for Argyle and Byers Senior too, but my tattoo artist threatened to stab my wrist if I did." Steve chuckles. "I ended up getting matching tattoos with them."
"What?" Steve says in shock. He didn't think the three of them were even close. There's a hint of bitterness that he taste, and he's not entirely sure which side he's jealous of. Jealous of Jonathan and Argyle for having seen Eddie more than him in recent times, or jealous of Eddie for connecting with them in a way he never could.
"Well, almost. Me and Argyle did, but Jonathan chickened out at the last minute."
"How? When? Why?" Steve asks all at once, because now he's intrigued. "Where?" Because he has to see it.
Eddie laughs loudly, relishing in the memory. "They visited me last fall, we got way too high stumbling around the city, and we practically fell into the shop. We got matching butt tattoos-"
Steve cuts Eddie off with a laugh. "No way!"
"Yes way! Our original idea was 'Butt Brothers' but the artist talked us down to 'Ass Men'."
Steve almost asks if he can see it, but stops just short. Too close to the line of friendly and intimate. Just like his fingers still pressing down on his wrist.
It's only when Steve is almost asleep in Eddie's bed later, the two had argued for almost thirty minutes about who would sleep where, that he realizes he didn't pay attention to Eddie's song at all. It makes him feel sh*tty, because Eddie had wanted to show it to him, but resolves himself by promising to listen to it again before he leaves.
Steve gets to meet some of Eddie's friends the next night at a bar they all meet up at, or is it a club? Is there even a difference? And he can finally answer his question. The guys in L. A. are way hotter than the guys in Hawkins.
And Steve finally gets to put names to faces he's only heard about. Paige, who's a few years older than Eddie, in her late twenties, who, when Steve is introduced, raises an eyebrow in question. He panics about this, there's no way she could possibly know him, he was still just a kid when she left Hawkins for greener pastures. But, despite her scrutiny, she's kind to him, and she thanks him for something he doesn't know, not knowing exactly what Eddie has told her.
There's Jobie, as in Jo-bee, despite the fact that Eddie has and continues to only call him Job-ee. He just gives Eddie a gentle shove, rolling his eyes despite the smile on his face. They used to be coworkers, he's told. Back at the record store Eddie worked at, and reminds him briefly of him and Robin, forced to be friends through the monotony of a job. Not to stroke his own ego, but he reckons he and Robin are closer than Jobie and Eddie due to being drugged by Russian spies.
And Paisley, Paisley's cool. He-She-It-They, he learns, did some of the bass work on Eddie's album, despite already being in a different band. Eddie says that band is crap, Paisley doesn't agree or disagree, and Steve doesn't have any input on the matter.
He feels a little sad for Eddie, had half expected Eddie to be friends with all of California by now. Only to meet three of them, seems unlikely that he doesn't have more. But, upon seeing the bartender and some of the patrons greet Eddie with friendly smiles, something between acquaintances and friends, maybe he has more friends than those in the group, this is just his inner circle.
As Eddie orders them all drinks, because the bartender gives Eddie free drinks, Paige pulls him slightly away from the group, leans in close. "Steve, as in Harrington, right?"
Dread pools in his gut. She may have never met him, but maybe she has a younger sibling or cousin or friend who he'd crossed paths with in high school. Curses his luck for never being able to get away from that idea of him. So, he just nods, just wanting to get it over with.
"I remember you."
Oh. f*ck.
"My parents' live in Loch Nora too. I remember seeing you and that squirrelly kid ride around on your bikes."
f*ck. Oh.
Steve let's out a breath, shaking his head slightly. "Oh my god, I thought you were gonna say I was an asshole."
She grins at him as she waves her hand dismissively. "No, Eddie kinda gave me the full run down once I connected the dots that his best friend Steve was also that stupid little Harrington boy who lived down the street."
Stupid. Stupid he can live with. He chuckles to himself, he can't believe he got so worked up.
"Your dad's the real asshole."
Which, true, but she shouldn't know that. Thankfully, Eddie returns with four drinks balanced precariously in his hands, and very willingly takes the one Eddie hands him. The trio sit back down at the table that the duo had commandeered, Eddie's chair right next to Steve's.
He slings an arm around the back of it, if Steve were to lean back slightly, he could feel his arm. He gets asked a ton of questions by Eddie's friends, as Eddie had seemingly "waxed poetry" about him. Steve is happy to answer, and when the questions get a bit too personal, a bit too close to monsters and dimensions, Eddie will butt his head in, say just the right thing to quell their curiosity, and turn the conversation towards something else.
He eventually does lean back, as he gets a little too drunk, and as Eddie gets a little too drunk, his arm leaves the back of his chair, finds it's way around Steve's shoulders, massaging his far shoulder gently. As Steve's drunkenness fades into yawning, he presses closer and closer into Eddie, his head leaning on Eddie's shoulder, Eddie's arm now migrated on his waist, gently rubbing his fingers into his side.
Paige had sobered up enough at that point to drive them home, thankfully. He and Eddie get helped into the back seat of her sedan, Eddie's hand still on his waist, his head still on his shoulder.
They help and hinder each other back up to Eddie's apartment, both longing that his building had an elevator as the stairs were a daunting task. Eddie fumbles with his keys, nearly dropping them, but he never takes his hand off Steve's waist.
They slam into Eddie's apartment, Eddie only checking that he actually locked his door for a moment, before he's trudging over to his bed, both of them flopping down into it. Steve rolls over onto his back, Eddie is face planted into the pillow, surely that cannot be comfortable.
As if he can read Steve's thoughts, he turns his head to the side, eyes heavy but not quite closed yet. Steve turns his head to look at Eddie.
Steve just stares at Eddie as they both are falling faster and faster asleep.
Steve needs to call Robin, tell her it might be more than a crush, because he didn't kiss any guy tonight, didn't kiss a single guy the entire time he was in Los Angeles, because the only guy he wanted to kiss was looking at him in bed.
In his bed, surrounded by his things, right next to him.
When Steve leaves, Eddie drops him off at the airport. Holds him close.
"I wish I didn't have to go." Steve says earnestly. He'd had so much fun just being around Eddie again. Drinking, smoking, shooting the sh*t, quietly eating pancakes together on Christmas morning. Just existing in the same space. It's been a long time since he'd had someone constantly invading his space, and he missed it. He would never say that though, his life is already imposed on enough. But, having someone there when he wakes up, and still there when he goes to bed, it's nice, it's addicting with how nice it is.
"You could always stay." Eddie says as if he's not offering Steve everything. It feels like early summer back in '86, not nearly '88 now. The smell of smoke wafting around them, a graduation cap in the distance, 'I would say yes if you asked' lingering in the air.
He tries to think about what kept him from leaving then. Mostly the paranoia that the ground was gonna split open beneath his feet, swallow him up, reunite him with his missing flesh. And if that did happen, he needed to keep everyone safe. The kids safe, Robin, Nancy, he'd try like hell to protect Joyce and Hop too.
He tries even harder to think about what's keeping him now. He's Officer Harrington now, just finalized his new place (a small two-bed townhouse, but he needed to get out of the Harrington house), and, most importantly, the kids. The kids who all drive, who are all smarter than he is, who are all going some place bigger than Hawkins. They're Juniors this year, people are scouting out Lucas for college basketball, Dustin is receiving offers from different fancy schools (if he doesn't take MIT, he's kicking his ass), Will just won an award for his art, a Hawkins award, but an award nonetheless.
But, there's always that ever present, worrying what if. What if everything isn't over? What if the second he leaves Hawkins it all goes to sh*t? They don't need him to drive them around anymore to run from monsters, but he'd get his face busted a million times over before he lets something hurt them.
Steve pulls away slightly, hopes his smile comes off easy and not at all that he's breaking inside. "Careful, Munson, you might just convince me." He jokes, he hopes it sounds like a joke.
Eddie gives him a somber smile, pats his shoulders a few times, before pulling away. "Sounds like you don't need much convincing, Harrington." He says with a slight nod. "Call me when you get home, airplanes give me the heebie jeebies, Steve."
"How do you expect to get to your gigs all over the world if you don't fly?" Steve asks with a grin forming on his face. He can't let it end somberly.
"I'll swim." Eddie says simply.
Steve laughs, imagines Eddie swimming across the Pacific. Like hell. He can't swim for sh*t.
Eddie waves him off, Steve waves back before reluctantly turning around and walking into the airport.
It's only when he's halfway through his flight, half asleep, that he forgot to listen to Eddie's song. "f*ck," he mumbles under his breath, the old lady next to him flicking an eyebrow up at him.
He'll just have to catch it on the radio.
