Chapter Text
“I used to tell myself it’s not what it seems.
You used to cover Rage and praise the police.
You didn’t have a choice? That doesn’t change a thing.
You wore your pride like a purity ring.I used to have some hope, some hope you would change.
Blamed it on your folks and how you were raised,
But after months and months and months of the
Same. Old. Thing.You finally broke me.”
“Unholy” by The Wrecks
It takes three weeks, post-Vecna, for Steve Harrington to kiss Eddie Munson.
It’s an awkward kiss, too gentle, too tentative, over the railing of the hospital bed because both of them were too excited to put it down before their lips met. It’s warm and sweet and quick and tender. It’s one of the most chaste kisses Steve has ever had, and he’s honestly grateful for it. It’s his first one with a boy, and he thinks that if his first kiss with a boy had tongue in it, he’d probably have a stroke.
He wonders what his father would say if he saw him, hunched over a hospital bed with Eddie Munson in it, bruised and bandaged and scarred, kissing his chapped lips.
He thinks he wouldn’t say anything. He’d greet him with one of the stony silences he’s so fond of, probably one worse than when he told him he wasn’t going to college.
His mother would be the one to say something, something high-pitched and scandalized.
Yeah, that’s probably more right.
But it doesn’t matter what they’d say. They’ve been out of town for the past two months, while Steve has been at Eddie’s bedside for three weeks.
It doesn’t matter what they’d say because Eddie is saying something to Steve right now, something that’s getting lost in the static in his skull.
“What?” he manages, ever-articulate.
“I said,” Eddie whispers. “I thought you were straight.”
“So did I,” Steve admits.
So do I, he thinks but does not say. He can still be straight if he likes Eddie, can’t he? He likes girls, always has, definitely always will, and he likes Eddie, too, he supposes.
Straight, with a plus one. Yeah, that sounds right.
“Are you straight?” Eddie asks. He’s got a guarded sort of look on his face, one that Steve doesn’t think fits his features well.
Eddie, since he’s known him, really known him, has been so open.
“I don’t know,” Steve says instead of his instinctual yes.
That seems to be the right answer because Eddie smiles and kisses him again.
It takes three months for Eddie to be released from the hospital. Three months of bandages and surgeries and inpatient physical therapy, since he admitted that he’d forget to do it if they discharged him earlier.
That was probably a stupid thing to say. It definitely made the hospital bills go up. Steve said something about some people in suits, big flashy government types, paying for it, and Wayne assured him it wasn’t bullshit, but Eddie isn’t a hundred percent convinced.
He said he was, to their faces, but he still worries about getting a big hospital bill in the mail.
But he’s grateful that they actually forced him to do the physical therapy. It means that his legs work right and that he can sit up by himself without feeling like his insides will become outsides. He made a full recovery, or will, at least, minus some nerve damage and, of course, the scarring.
He’s scarred all over, but that doesn’t really bother him. Eddie knows he’s never been handsome, not in the classical sense. His eyes are too big, his limbs are too spindly, and he has yet to give a rat’s ass about any kind of mainstream beauty standard.
He’s not awful to look at, but he isn’t anything special, either. In that, he’s like most people. The scars really don’t make that different. He’s just a person. Now he’s got different features, but he’s still him.
Steve, though? Steve thinks he’s beautiful.
He tells him all the time, when they’re alone together in his hospital room. He traces over the scar on his face with light, gentle hands, and whispers that word to him like it’s the only one that matters, like it’s the only one he knows.
Sometimes, Eddie can see himself reflected in Steve’s eyes. He sees the wreckage of a guy who’s been through hell with the scars to show for it, a guy who was dumb enough to not run at the first opportunity. No more, no less.
He wonders what Steve sees. If Steve thinks he’s beautiful, he thinks that the whole world would be stunning through his eyes.
Eddie would like to borrow them sometime. That thought might make him weird, but he’s never cared about stuff like that.
Steve, though? Steve cares about stuff like that, and Eddie is fine with it.
Immediately after that first, perfect kiss in the hospital, Steve had said, “I don’t want anyone to know.”
That stung a bit, but Eddie gets it. Steve went on to explain that he wasn’t sure how he felt, that he was trying to figure himself out, that all he did know is that he liked Eddie.
Eddie didn’t need him to explain. He gets it. Really, he does. He doesn’t have that luxury, not after he kissed Daniel McCain in sophomore year and got a broken nose first, then complete outcast status second, but he gets it.
And Steve really does like him. Eddie can tell.
So, he can live with it.
They’ve been dating for two months, Eddie has been home for one week, and he’s on the roof of the trailer.
He likes high places. Always has, probably always will, unless that gets ruined by the Upside Down just like bats were. Mama used to joke that he was born without the fear of falling, used to tell the story of three-year-old Eddie climbing the ladder up to a two-story roof because he had to tell Pa a story that absolutely couldn’t wait.
Eddie doesn’t know why he was never afraid of heights. He does know why he likes them, though.
Skylines, once you’re high enough, are just about the same everywhere.
When he first moved to Hawkins, Eddie climbed up on the roof of the trailer the second Wayne left for work. He just needed to be up somewhere, and he didn’t know the town well enough yet to make his way to the quarry quickly.
Once he was on the roof, he felt better. The trees looked the same as they had in West Virginia and Ohio and Kentucky and Pennsylvania and Tennessee, even if the stuff around them was a little flatter. They were just trees, and Hawkins was just a town, just like all the other trees Eddie had seen, just like all the other towns he had lived in. The roof was just another one that he climbed up to sit on; it didn’t matter that it was a trailer and not a house or a motel or a car. It was just a roof.
Eddie was just in another town, on another roof, looking at the same old set of trees. It didn’t matter that he was thirteen and lost both of his parents in one fell swoop because he got scared and ran from home as soon as Pa got arrested, as soon as he saw Mama get a whole lot more stuff in the brown paper bag she got from that man in the old lot.
It didn’t matter. Just a roof. Just trees. Just a town. And Eddie was still Eddie.
Steve’s head peeks over the roof of the trailer, bringing him back to the present. Even in the darkness, Eddie can see how his hair bounces as he hauls his arms, then his torso, then his legs onto the roof.
“That,” he pants, “was so much harder than I expected it to be.”
Eddie shrugs, holding back a smile.
“How did you manage it? You’re still injured.”
Eddie shrugs again. “Lotta practice.”
He looks out over the trailer park, squinting, but he can’t make out the shape of Steve’s BMW, a car that sticks out like a sore thumb among dull pickup trucks and vans.
“Where’d you park?” he asks.
Steve looks at him curiously, like he didn’t expect Eddie to ask him that. “Two streets over. It’s better lit over there. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t lose it in the dark.”
Eddie stares down at the myriad of porch lights that cast the summer grass in gold, but he doesn’t call Steve out on it.
“Come on,” he says instead, and he lays down.
Immediately, Steve’s hands are on his body, guiding him down more gently, despite the fact that Eddie doesn’t have any stitches to pull, that he doesn’t have any pain right now.
Yeah. He can live with Steve parking two streets over.
“You okay?”
“Just lay down with me, Nurse Ratched.”
Steve’s face scrunches up with confusion. Eddie wants to kiss that expression off his face, but that means sitting up, and he doesn’t plan on doing that for a little while.
“Wasn’t she, like, a total bitch?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have a better nurse reference,” Eddie says.
“Catherine.”
Eddie picks his head up a few inches. “Who?”
“From A Farewell to Arms. The nurse. Her name was Catherine, right?”
Eddie stares at him. “You read Hemingway?”
Steve shrugs. “I did for school.”
“You read the books in school?”
“I did freshman year. They got harder after that. Letters kept moving more.”
Eddie wants to ask about the letters, but then Steve is laying down next to him, and they’re pressed together, shoulder to hip, so he forgets how words work for a second.
“Woah,” Steve says. “There’s a lot of stars.”
“Yup,” Eddie says, staring at the sky. He traces them out with his eyes. It’s July, so Orion is out, not Scorpius. He finds it first, then looks for Leo, then Cancer, then-
“What are you doing?” Steve asks.
“Looking for constellations,” Eddie says. “Can you find Cepheus for me? I can’t find it.”
“I don’t know what that looks like.”
Eddie props himself up on to his elbows. “You don’t know how to find Cepheus?”
“I can find the Little Dipper,” Steve defends.
“Yeah, because it has the North Star. Anyone can find the Little Dipper.”
“Sorry, astronomer,” Steve snarks. “I didn’t have anyone to teach me.”
Eddie wonders what Steve did with his father. Eddie and Pa would go out hunting sometimes, or camping. It wasn’t very often; Pa wasn’t always around, but it was often enough for Eddie to remember doing it.
They’d find a clearing in the woods and set up their stuff. At night, they’d lie down on the blanket they put on the grass, and Pa would trace out the stars with his hand, telling Eddie where to look. When they went back to the house, Eddie would tell Mama about the stars they saw, and she’d tell him the stories behind them.
It wasn’t often that both of them were around, but it was often enough for Eddie to remember them.
Pa’s been in prison for seven years now. Eddie wonders if he can see any stars from his window.
Mama’s been dead for two years. Eddie hopes that wherever she is - she wasn’t very religious, but she wore her necklace with the star every day, and she was more devout than Eddie thinks he’ll ever be - she’s telling more stories.
“I’ll teach you,” Eddie says. He puts his arm behind Steve’s back even though he knows it’s going to fall asleep from the pressure, and he uses his other hand to trace out every constellation he can see, telling all the stories behind them.
It takes a moment, but Steve melts into the touch. He snuggles into Eddie, and by the time Eddie gets around to talking about Heracles killing the Nemean Lion, Steve is asleep in the crook of his neck.
Yeah. Eddie can live with this. He already loves it.
If they’re outside, they’re on a roof.
Most of the time, they’re inside. They have Wayne’s work schedule memorized even though he knows about Eddie, even though he’s queer himself. Steve still parks one street over instead of two, and Eddie is going to count that as a win, goddammit.
Most of the time, when they’re inside, they’re at Eddie’s trailer. It makes things harder, avoiding Wayne (even though Eddie doesn’t want to) but Steve hates his house.
He’s never said as much, but Eddie can tell. The trailer feels like a home, and the Harrington house feels like a museum. There’s more of Steve, even if it’s in subtle traces like notes and little gifts, in Eddie’s room than his own.
It’s sad, but Steve doesn’t want to talk about it, so they don’t.
They’re inside when the weather is bad and outside when the weather is good - and when it’s dark - all that summer.
And if they’re outside, they’re on a roof.
The roof of the trailer is easier to access, but there’s something about getting on to the roof of the Harrington house that’s so much better. Eddie thinks of it as a “fuck you” to Steve’s prim and proper parents, and Steve thinks-
Well, Eddie doesn’t know what Steve thinks. He only knows that Steve cackled with glee at the fact that his foot dislodged a shingle the last time they came up here. It was a sound Eddie had never heard from him before, but he loved it.
He’s finding he loves most things about Steve, and ain’t that a thought?
It doesn’t matter that Steve still doesn’t want to tell anyone. That’s his decision, and Eddie will stand by him for as long as he needs.
He did tell the Corroded Coffin guys he’s seeing someone, though. They begged and demanded to know who, since they know it’s slim pickings for Eddie here in corn husk hell, but when he told them that his boyfriend wasn’t out, they accepted it.
They’re cool like that. Eddie wouldn’t be friends with them if they weren’t.
Eddie will wait for Steve for as long as he needs. That’s what love is.
But he can’t deny that part of him hurts every time he has to stop himself from calling him “sugar” or “darlin’” in front of people, or when Steve pulls back from holding his hand.
He gets it. It’s Hawkins. And yeah, it hurts, but Steve’s love is sweet and warm, like tea with honey in it, coating Eddie’s throat and easing the ache.
It’s more than enough. Steve’s worth it.
“Hawkins is just a town,” Eddie says.
They’re on the roof of the trailer this time. Steve has climbed it more times than he can count, and it’s gotten easier. Not quite muscle memory, not with how uncertain that first foothold is, but the rest of it is smooth sailing.
Steve looks over to him, but Eddie just keeps smoking his cigarette. He quit weed, a fact he bemoans at least once a week. The first time he smoked was two months after he got out of the hospital, and he had such a vivid flashback that he called Steve.
When that happened, Steve didn’t park a street over. That would have wasted time. He parked right in front of Eddie’s trailer, almost forgetting to turn the damn car off, and swiped the spare key from underneath the mat.
He held Eddie and reassured him that he was perfectly safe, that Vecna was dead, that the bats couldn’t take any more bites out of him, that Steve was real.
They stayed on the kitchen floor, underneath the phone, gently rocking back and forth, until Wayne came home.
Steve was too busy whispering to Eddie to hear the key in the lock, but he did hear the heavy tread of Wayne’s work boots and barely kept himself from launching away from Eddie.
Eddie was holding onto his shirt too tight for him to do that, anyway.
But Wayne hadn’t said anything. He just looked at them, looked at Eddie, finally quiet for the first time in two hours, and then back at Steve.
He looked, and he said, “Is there anything I can do to take care of him?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Steve said, voice tight.
“Alright. Anything I can do to take care of you?”
Steve was tempted to say no, completely out of habit, but he found himself saying, “A glass of water would be nice, if you don’t mind, sir.”
Wayne snorted like he said something funny, and filled a glass at the tap. He put it down on the floor, next to Steve’s knee, and sat in a chair at the kitchen table.
“I’d join you down there,” he said, “but my knees aren’t what they used to be.”
“That’s alright-”
“Just don’t want you to think I’m trying to be above you, is all.”
“I didn’t think that, sir,” Steve lies.
He did think that. He absolutely did.
Wayne was nothing like his father. Where Wayne was all comfortable quiet and calloused hands, Richard Harrington was stony silence and perfectly ironed suits. Where Wayne was soft-spoken and welcoming, Steve’s father was abrasive and imposing.
Wayne Munson was nothing like Richard Harrington, but Steve still thought that he’d want to be superior.
He hadn’t seen his parents in two months, but it seemed he still couldn't get rid of them.
Steve took a sip of his water, trying to clear those facts out of his head.
“Is he asleep?” Wayne asked, pointing to Eddie.
Steve turned his head to look. Sure enough, Eddie was slumped against him, completely dead weight, eyes closed, breathing steadily.
“I think so, sir.”
Wayne snorted again. “You don’t have to call me sir. I doubt you did it growing up.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Steve thought. He thought of the constant yes, sir ’s and no, sir ’s and thank you, sir ’s of his childhood and decided that now, sitting on his kitchen floor, holding his nephew, was not the best time to inform Wayne Munson of that fact.
“Harrington, right?” Wayne asked. “Steven?”
“Steve,” he corrected. Steven is reserved for when his parents are mad at him, and Steve really doesn’t want to think about that right now.
“Steve,” Wayne said. “You Eddie’s boyfriend?”
Every muscle in Steve’s body tensed. Eddie shifted against him, and on pure instinct, Steve kissed his forehead in apology.
And then remembered that Wayne was there.
Steve could hear his heartbeat roar in his ears and stayed frozen for a few more terrifying seconds.
Until Wayne snorted. Got out of his chair. Filled his own glass at the tap.
“I guess that answers my question,” he said.
“I guess so, sir,” Steve said.
He couldn’t bring himself to say boyfriend. That felt like too much. Eddie was a guy, obviously, and Steve was a guy, perhaps even more obviously, but boyfriend was…
Well. It was.
“Do I have to worry about you treating him well?” Wayne asked.
Steve looked down at Eddie in his arms, folded against him, looking much smaller than he ever should.
“I hope not, sir,” he said.
“Good,” Wayne said.
He gently put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve surprised himself by not flinching.
(His father never hit him, but it always felt like he would. It always felt, while Steve was receiving his latest lecture or tirade, that that would be the time. That would be the time Richard Harrington ripped the seam in the shoulder of his dress shirt to backhand Steve across the face like he so desperately seemed to want to.
His father never hit him. Steve sometimes wondered if it would be better or worse if he did.)
“I’m going to bed. If you can get both of y’all to bed, I’ll see you in the morning. If you can’t, you can leave Eddie for a minute while you take the pillows and blankets off the couch for him. He sleeps like the dead, once he’s out.”
“Okay,” Steve said. “Thank you, sir.”
“Nice meeting you, Steve. Maybe we can talk more in the morning,” Wayne said, and he walked off to the bedroom.
Steve picked up Eddie and got them both in bed, even though it meant stumbling and shoulder-checking a door frame so hard the house almost shook.
Wayne Munson might not have been anything like Richard Harrington, but he could always be like Georgia. She used to get so pissed whenever Steve used the couch cushions to make forts on the floor.
“You with me, Stevie?” Eddie asks, lazily taking another drag of the cigarette.
“Yeah,” Steve says, mind screeching all the way back to the present. “Yeah, I’m with you.”
Eddie rolls over to look at him. There’s this almost-smile on his face, like he knows Steve wasn’t really listening but won’t tell him so.
“What did I say last?” Eddie asks.
“Hawkins is just a town.”
He raises his eyebrows, definitely impressed by the fact that Steve remembers, even when he’d been so out of it.
“Exactly,” Eddie says. “Hawkins is just a town.”
“Okay Plato,” Steve says. “The hell does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Hawkins is literally just a town.”
Eddie sits up so fast the cigarette almost falls out of his mouth. Steve alarms himself with the thought that he absolutely would have caught it, even if it meant singing his fingers.
“Look,” Eddie gestures to, well. Everything. “It’s just trees. It’s just houses. It’s just roads and streams. That’s it.”
It’s dark, the night lit only by the quarter moon, a few stars, and whatever porch lights are still on at 2 AM, but Steve catches his meaning. He almost always does.
“There is absolutely nothing special about Hawkins, Indiana,” Eddie concludes, flopping back onto the roof with a scrape that makes Steve wince.
“What about the monsters?” Steve says, unable to let any of Eddie’s bold statements go unchallenged.
Eddie snorts. “Those aren’t special. Those are just fucked.”
Steve laughs, once, loudly, before he remembers that it’s 2 AM and his neighbors are nosy. If one of them looked and somehow saw them on the roof, that would be an uncomfortable conversation with Hopper to explain that no, we’re not insane, Eddie just likes to be up high and what am I supposed to do? Let him go alone?
Steve surprises himself again with the knowledge that if the cops came, he wouldn’t shy away from Eddie.
That’s a thought. He’s not afraid of men with guns, but he’s worried about the reactions of a few genius kids with sharp tongues, of the few friends he has his own age, of the three adults - well, since Wayne knows, only two don’t - in Hawkins whose opinions he actually cares about.
The monsters are definitely fucked. Steve thinks he might be, too.
“You, then,” he says instead.
Eddie rolls over to face him. His head is cocked to the side like it always is when he’s confused. A lock of hair falls into his face, and he blows it off before Steve can reach out to move it for him.
“What about me?”
“You’re the thing that’s special about Hawkins,” Steve says.
Eddie blinks. Blinks again. In the dark, his eyes are reflective, holding stars and galaxies and what they can see of this little podunk town.
“Do you mean that?” he whispers.
“Absolutely,” Steve says honestly, and before he can even finish the word, Eddie crushes their lips together.
They have sex for the first time six months into dating, three months after Eddie is out of the hospital.
They took things slow, on account of Eddie’s injuries. He can’t move the same as he used to, at least not yet, so anything outrageously athletic was pretty much off the table.
Steve was fine with that. He said wanted to take things slow, for a change, to treasure chaste kisses and under the table hand-holding.
Eddie thinks there’s another reason, but he doesn’t say anything about it.
It’s Eddie’s first time ever. It’s Steve’s first time with a guy.
It’s slow and sweet and perfect. There’s laughter and breaks and mutual orgasms and really, what else could they want?
Eddie bottoms. Steve said he’d like to try it sometime, but he isn’t ready for that yet.
That’s okay. Eddie will wait as long as he needs.
Nine months into dating, Steve shows up on Eddie’s doorstep as a bundle of nervous energy.
“I told Robin,” he blurts before Eddie can even offer to invite him in.
“Okay,” Eddie says. “That’s good.”
They stand there for a moment, letting the January air into the trailer before Eddie comes to his senses, grabs Steve by the arm, and tugs him inside.
Immediately, Steve wraps his arms around him, squeezing Eddie’s shoulders and burying his face into his neck.
“It’s okay,” Eddie says, rubbing his hands up and down Steve’s back. “It’s okay.”
Steve nods against his neck. Eddie supposes it’s good he’s wearing a worn, black Led Zeppelin shirt since he doesn’t care if Steve cries on it.
Steve is very much crying on it.
They stand there in the middle of the living room for a long while, swaying back and forth while Steve cries and Eddie talks him through it. He’s so thankful Wayne isn’t home.
When Steve’s breathing has evened out, Eddie takes them both to the kitchen. Makes Steve sit at the table. Gets them both water.
“Did it go well?” he asks.
Steve chugs half the glass as he nods. When he’s done, he wipes his mouth and says, “I knew it would. It’s Robin. I had a hard enough time keeping it from her, but she knew something was up, even though she didn’t press me on it.”
“Okay,” Eddie says instead of asking, so why are you so upset?
“It’s just,” Steve pauses, then continues, “it was scary as shit. Like, I knew she’d be fine. She’s a lesbian. She wasn’t going to be anything but okay with it. But I freaked out when I told her, and I guess I didn’t get it all out of my system before I came here.”
“It’s okay,” Eddie says again.
Steve shakes his head. “It’s not. I got snot on your shirt.”
“I don’t care about this shirt,” Eddie says honestly. “I don’t think I’ve even listened to Zep within the last six months.”
Steve laughs. It’s still a little wet, and it’s a small sound, but he laughs, so. Mission accomplished, on Eddie’s part.
But then his face slides into something that’s not quite a frown, but it’s definitely not a smile, either. Eddie just waits.
“Is it always going to be this scary?” Steve whispers.
Eddie thinks back to sophomore year, back to his broken nose, back to everyone taking one look at him and knowing, since they heard from someone who heard from someone who heard-
“I don’t know,” Eddie admits.
Steve nods like he was expecting that. Of course he would. He was probably one of the people who spread that bit of gossip, even if he definitely regrets it now.
“Hey,” Eddie says, because he wants to see Steve smile again. “I’m proud of you.”
Steve gives him the barest hint of a grin. It’s not much, but it’s something.
“Thanks,” he says, wiping at his eyes. “Do you… do you want to tell your friends?”
Eddie thinks the floor drops out from under him because. This is huge. This is one step closer to not being a secret.
Not that Eddie wouldn’t wait, but someday, he wants to love Steve with the windows open.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “If you’re okay with it, I’d love to tell the guys.”
Steve nods. “I am. But… just them. Is that okay?”
Eddie smiles. Picks Steve’s hand up. Kisses the back of it like a fairytale prince would, just to see Steve blush.
“It’s more than okay,” he says honestly.
(Eddie tells them the next day that his boyfriend is Steve Harrington. Jeff passes money to Archie, who smiles smugly, while Gareth groans, “You’re dating Steve Harrington and I can’t even make fun of you in public for it?”
As if on cue, Jeff and Archie smack him on the back of the head.
Eddie loves these guys more than life itself.)
April 1987 rolls in with a cold breeze and little fanfare. They can’t do fanfare. It’s Hawkins.
But their first anniversary is still special.
Eddie writes Steve a song. It’s slower and sweeter than anything he usually plays, and he strums on the acoustic, in time with his words.
He sings of first love and becoming stronger after hell, of finding solace in another person, of strength and softness, intermingled.
It’s perfect. It’s them.
When he’s done, Steve is grinning like an idiot, tears on his face.
“I think that’s the best gift I’ve ever gotten,” Steve whispers, and he tackles Eddie into a hug the second he puts the guitar down.
Eddie wraps his arms around him and laughs with his head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you liked it.”
“Liked it? I loved it,” Steve says, and the enthusiasm in his voice is unmatched by anything Eddie has ever heard before.
Eddie pulls back and jokes, “Okay, so what did you get me?”
“Hold on,” Steve says. “I left it in the car.”
Eddie waits on the couch in his living room, staring at the wall of hats, while Steve runs out to the Beemer. It’s parked right in front of the trailer, so Eddie doesn’t have to wait for long.
“Close your eyes!” Steve calls from the door.
Eddie laughs, but he listens.
“Hold out your hands,” Steve says, much closer.
Eddie does, and gently, always gently, Steve places something into them. There’s no way-
“Open them,” Steve whispers.
It’s a brand new Warlock.
It’s black and white with yellow lightning instead of red - neither one of them do red anymore - but it’s the same shape, the same size as the guitar they had to leave behind in the Upside Down.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie murmurs, staring down at it. He doesn’t even want to move his hands. This guitar is perfect, and it’s expensive, and he can’t believe Steve got it for him.
There’s no way he can accept this.
“Stevie, I-”
“Look at the neck of it,” Steve says.
Eddie does. And he sees, in white paint, stark against the black, three letters in scrawled handwriting.
SJH.
Steven James Harrington.
“So I’m with you at every show,” Steve explains. “Once you start touring like a big shot.”
Eddie gently places the guitar on the ground before he yanks Steve down, by the shirt collar, into his lap.
“Like I’m not gonna take you with me,” he says, and he kisses Steve again and again and again.
It’s still April when Eddie says, on the Harrington roof, “What about Chicago?”
Steve looks at him curiously. “What about it?”
“Why don’t we go there?” Eddie asks.
Silence falls, punctuated only by the first few crickets that have started chirping after winter’s chill. In the time it reigns, Eddie takes two more drags of his cigarette.
“I’ve never been to Chicago,” Steve finally says.
“Neither have I. But it’s bigger than Indy.”
Eddie needs something bigger than Indy. He exhausted everything there when he was sixteen and confused and needed to see that other people like him existed.
He continues, “And it’s still close by. No one says we can’t come back.”
But I can’t stay here, Eddie thinks. I can’t stay in a town that doesn’t want me just for the few people that do. I can’t stay and give up my dream of making it big. I can’t stay in the same small town all my life, knowing there’s a big, fantastic world out there.
I’m going to leave, but I hope to god you’ll come with me.
Steve stares at the sky, eyebrows scrunched in the way they do when he’s thinking.
I hope to god you’ll come with me, Stevie.
“Yeah,” Steve finally says. “As long as we come back sometimes.”
Eddie snorts to cover up his sigh of relief. “Do you think Henderson would let us leave for good?”
Steve shakes his head, laughing, then turns to look at Eddie.
It’s been a year, a little more than, but Eddie still feels like he’s looking at Steve for the first time, every time. He hopes that never goes away.
“He won’t,” Steve says. “But let’s go in August. When school starts.”
“One last summer?”
“One last summer.”
Eddie smiles. Stubs out his cigarette. Kisses Steve, slow and sweet.
“Can do, darlin’,” he says, and he feels Steve smile against his lips.
Eddie looks out at the dark skyline of Hawkins. He tries not to shiver in just a t-shirt when the wind blows; he tries instead to focus on the same old trees, the same old sky, the same old houses and streams and lights.
And then he thinks of Chicago.
Chicago. No city has ever sounded better.