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As a rule, Eddie doesn’t befriend colleagues in his line of work. He gets jobs and does his work, collects his money, and exits stage right without a look back.
Dustin is an exception to the rule. Dustin Henderson, mad scientist and premiere chemist, is an exception to most laws of man and nature. It’s part of why Eddie likes him so much.
“Don’t touch that.” Dustin says sharply, snatching a jar of piss-colored liquid out of Eddie’s hand.
Dustin’s scowl smoothes out as he places the jar back onto the shelf of other mysterious jars, and then he turns back to Eddie. “So what do you say? Can I tell Nancy you’re in.”
Eddie hems and haws. Mostly for show. It’s important never to agree to anything Dustin asks for too quickly or he’ll just ask for more next time. Give a mouse a cookie type deal.
Wheeler’s reputation as one of the best point women in the business precedes her. Eddie’s never actually had the good fortune of working with her, they don’t really move in the same crime circles. Wheeler has a thing for vigilante justice. Eddie’s not as discerning about his clientele. The list of things he won’t do is far shorter than the list of things he’ll try at least once.
“Dude, c’mon.” Dustin wheedles, sounds a little bit more like the freshfaced kid Eddie met a few years back, wet behind the ears and somehow smarter than most experts in his field, rewriting all the rules of Somnacin and lucid dreaming.
That the U.S. government hasn’t hired him or thrown him into a jail cell yet is a matter of constant amazement for Eddie. If he makes calls monthly to make sure Dustin’s name isn’t on anyone’s lists, no one needs to know that. (His old man taught him all about making the most of the favors people owe you, a lesson Eddie’s used and perfected in the years since he struck out on his own.)
“We haven’t actually worked the same job in forever. And it would make me look so bad if you flake on me after I hyped you up.”
“Fine, but only because I would hate to tarnish your good name.” Eddie says, smiling benignly.
-
Eddie doesn’t avoid the states on purpose. He’s confident enough in the aliases he’s accrued since he cut and run on the U.S. army, but he’ll always pick a job elsewhere over a job stateside. He tells himself it’s about fulfilling the childhood dream to get the fuck out of the midwest and never look back. Of course, little Eddie had dreamt of getting out of Indiana on a tour bus, rocking out on a stage with a guitar to the screams of adoring fans.
He doesn’t think anyone grows up imagining anything quite like this.
Dreamsharing was just a theory when he was a child, one that most people never even heard about outside of hushed up government meetings, and it was really just a matter of timing—lucky or lousy, Eddie’s opinion changes with the weather—that Eddie wound up at basic training right when the preliminary trials started.
Flying over the Atlantic is always a literal pain in the ass as far as Eddie’s concerned. He spends most of the flight from Copenhagen thinking about all the ways Dustin is going to owe him after this, even as the little twerp snores in his seat beside Eddie, eyemask pulled firmly over his eyes and ridiculous fluffy pillow secured around his neck.
The customs officer doesn’t bat an eye at them when they go through security, two brothers returning from a long backpacking trip across the European continent. He just waves them through and calls the next upright body along.
Denver International Airport is noisy and crowded, as much a mall as it is a travel hub. Eddie used to read ghost stories and conspiracy theories about this place, still remembers the first time he ever flew out of here, how he craned his neck in the back of a taxi to catch a glimpse of the legendary blue bronco statue. He still does, after Dustin has located their driver and they’re enroute to their rendezvous point, through the dark tinted film of the backseat’s windows.
It’s still hot despite the late hour, which isn’t uncommon for Colorado in late June according to Dustin, who reels off facts about the Rockies like a travel guide. The driver has the AC pumping in the town car that picked them up, music turned low, and Eddie wants to ask to change the station, but the whole problem with being a professional criminal is that you spend most of your day-to-day life trying not to make an impression. He’ll have to endure the top 40 alt-rock until they reach their destination.
It takes less than half an hour for them to pull up in a middle-of-developing suburb, fully constructed houses erected on streets alongside empty lots and active building sites. One of the houses has a basketball hoop fixed over the garage door and another has a porter potty on the lawn.
The house they’re looking for is a giant cookie-cutter suburban dream, white paint and a manicured lawn and deep-set driveway. Someone obviously beat them here since there’s a visible light shining in one of the upstairs windows.
“C’mon, I have the access code for the garage.” Dustin says, shouldering his duffle bag, walking up the driveway towards a double doored garage, flipping open a security panel and punching in the right combination of numbers. The door gears groan to life, the garage door pulling upward. The air inside is even hotter than the air outside.
There’s a BMW parked in the garage sporting Utah plates. Eddie commits the numbers to memory before he follows Dustin to the door on the other side of the garage that opens up into the house.
It’s thankfully cool inside, sharp AC air blasts over him and immediately chills the sweat on Eddie’s face. Dustin wanders deeper into the house, apparently confident in its security. It reminds Eddie that Henderson doesn’t go into the field all that often.
“Hey, wait.” Eddie whispers, reaching out and pulling Dustin back.
“It’s good. Steve’s already here.” Dustin whispers back, impatient.
“Steve? As in Harring—” Eddie sputters, paranoia momentarily forgotten. “You didn’t say anything about Steve—”
“I definitely did.” Dustin says, being willfully infuriating. “I told you Nancy was hiring a forger.”
“You—Dustin—fucking butthead.” Eddie hisses.
-
Eddie would be an idiot not to keep an ear out for the big players. Dreamsharing is a contentious field, it’s just good practice to keep track of who’s who, make sure you’re staying on the good side of the right people and steering clear of the wrong ones.
Most people seem to know Steve Harrington. Eddie first heard about him on a job he was working out in Perugia, where their extractor had the misfortune of hiring an absolutely fuckwit of a forger.
“Harrington would never have left us high and dry like this.” Carol had bitched, mostly to herself, because she wasn’t the kind who cared who was listening when she had an opinion to share. The other people, unfortunate enough to be stuck in that backwater holding cell with them looked at Carol like they didn’t need to understand her to know what she meant.
Jason Carver was, in Eddie’s opinion, an absolute idiot who acted like the world of lucid dreaming like some kind of country club, so it figured he would fumble the bag and run the second things got dicey with local authorities.
“You know this Harrington guy?” Eddie made the point of asking Dustin the next time he was in his neck of the woods, “Forger? Perkins made him sound like he knows his stuff.” Actually, she’d mostly gone on at length about how Tommy had screwed the pooch letting Steve leave their team, chain-smoking the last cigarettes in Eddie’s pack before he figured out how to break them out. But there had been some complimentary stuff about Harrington’s skills there too.
Dustin had been half-distracted measuring illegal and highly volatile chemicals, didn’t even turn around when he said, “Steve? Yeah, he’s a cool guy.” And left it at that.
Eddie would have left it at that too if it weren’t for how the name suddenly seemed to be everywhere he went. It popped up during his stint in Brazil and again in Pori and even Applejack, one of the youngest extractors Eddie’s ever worked with, had something decent to say about him during their work together in Sapporo. (“He’s a total loser but he knows what he’s doing. Which is more than most people these days.”)
Over the next year, Eddie had created a mental picture of the guy. Eddie pulled gently on the individual strands he’d spun out across his network of contacts, gathering that either Harrington came from money or had taken enough lucrative jobs to live more than comfortably now. Also, there was a string of colleagues who’d been charmed enough to share a little bit more than shop talk with him while on the job.
More than that though, everyone seemed to swear the guy was as good as all the talk suggested. It annoyed Eddie more than he’d ever fess up to.
He wasn’t able to crack if Harrington had his roots in the military too, wondered if this Steve had been serving at the same time as Eddie, if he’d been strapped to tables in brightly lit basements, getting shot in dreams over and over again.
No one really seemed to know where he’d come from. He just appeared on the scene one day, fully formed.
“If you wanna meet him so bad, I can make an introduction.” Dustin offered the last time Eddie had to crash in his guest room (getting shot at always sucked, but Eddie’d always been quicker than he looked and now he just needed to lay low and stay out of Marrakesh for a while). If it weren’t for the fact that Dustin’s security system was probably one of the best in the world and that he’d finally swapped out that shitty futon in his home office for an actual bed, Eddie would have left then and there.
“Bullshit.” Eddie snapped, because Dustin had that tone to him, all smug and self-important, like he’d be doing Eddie a favor. Dustin had been pretty locked in since the move to Copenhagen (something about his girlfriend getting offered a research position at UCPH, though Susie remained a figure of myth that Eddie had never managed to actually lay eyes on in the short years he’d known Henderson).
How the hell had he ever managed to make a contact like Harrington, who was apparently some sort of leaf on the wind, moving from one job to the other at the drop of a hat.
“I have his number.”
Eddie chewed on the inside of his cheek. There was no way—and even if it were, it’s not like Eddie had a job lined up to excuse the meeting and god, wouldn’t that be pathetic of him to just call the guy up and say, what exactly? “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Eddie cringed just imagining it.
“No thanks, man. I can live without meeting the prince of thieves.”
Dustin grinned, shrugged like it was no skin off his back. “Suit yourself.”
-
The house is big enough that none of them ever need to be in the same room if they don’t want to.
Eddie claims the basement suite, complete with its own living room, bedroom, bathroom, and pool table. The only thing it doesn’t have going for it is a kitchen, not so much as a mini fridge, so he’s forced to go upstairs in the middle of the night in search of a drink. Bad sleep is a given when you’re a professional dreamer. You’re converted to a full-time night owl or a chronic insomniac. It’s probably why so many crack their nut early in their career, wind up addicted to any number of vices or eating a bullet. The ones who don’t get taken out by someone else, anyhow.
(The only narcotic Eddie touches these days is whatever is needed to go under. He doesn’t even indulge in weed unless he’s got enough time between jobs to work it out of his system. The science on adverse interactions is still a work in progress and the one and only time Eddie tried to build high it was less H.R. Pufnstuf and more of a Giallo film.)
The living room sectional is empty now, but the coffee table is still littered with notes and files and a bowl of popcorn. The coffee mugs are missing now, and someone’s set the dishwasher on. Eddie frowns, an old instinctual disinclination against waste—Uncle Wayne always said dishwashers were a waste of water and electricity—continues on his way to the refrigerator.
Nancy’s had the refrigerator stocked prior to their arrival, enough staples that there’s clearly an option to cook meals in-house instead of living off take out in the coming weeks. Maybe that’s why they’re setting up shop in this rental instead of in hotels downtown.
There’s another file folder sitting on the kitchen island, open to a couple of pictures of their mark. Neil Hargrove. His stepdaughter hired them to find the kind blackmail that’ll secure her a brand of justice that a court of law can’t guarantee. The guy’s a piece of work from everything Eddie’s read about him. There are a few printed pages behind the pictures, schedules, addresses, handwritten notes scrawled in the margins in a couple of places, but they’re impossible to read even when Eddie holds them up to the light inside the refrigerator.
“It’s not polite to read other people’s things.” Comes a vaguely amused voice from behind Eddie.
Eddie turns slowly, refuses to look guilty or caught by surprise. He’s in a house full of thieves and criminals. Snooping is hardly the worst crime anyone upstairs has committed.
“Should clean up after yourself then.” Eddie shoots back as smoothly as he can. It’s only been a few hours since he’s formally made Steve Harrington’s acquaintance but he feels like he’s got enough of a handle on the guy to try and meet him where he’s at. He’s changed out of the polo shirt and chinos he was wearing when they all met earlier, swapped them out for painfully basic basketball shorts and a t-shirt for a sport team Eddie’s not familiar with. Wayne was a Pacer’s fan, that’s pretty much the extent of Eddie’s sports-ball knowledge.
“Noted. Next time I have to take a bathroom break, I’ll make sure to stow all my shit in a safe.” Steve doesn’t sound upset, voice still benign. If Eddie weren’t on guard, the guy would sound downright friendly. It makes Eddie’s shoulders tighten.
Eddie puts the schedule he was trying to read back on the kitchen island. The refrigerator is still open at his back, adding crisp white light to the rest of the kitchen.
“You find anything good on this guy?” Eddie asks, because work is usually a safe resting point with other people in their line of work.
“Nancy put together a good file.” Steve says, fingertips pulling the file folder his way across the cool stone countertop. “Found a few pressure points we can press.”
“Yeah?” Eddie asks. He read the file too. Dustin printed Eddie’s copy before they took off, called Eddie a Luddite for needing paper while Dustin keeps all his notes and work on his laptop. The fine details of Hargrove’s personality don’t matter as much to Eddie as they might to other members of the team, but then they all have their special interests. Nancy needs to pick the guy apart with a fine tooth comb while Dustin’s honing in on the guy’s medical history (long-term alcohol use combined with high blood pressure and an existing heart condition make for a tricky subject, Dustin’s going to need to modify the Somnacin dosage as soon as they finetune the details of how long they can keep Hargrove under).
Eddie read about where Hargrove lived before business brought him out to Denver (California and a brief stint in Indiana, go figure), what properties he frequents and where he meets colleagues to talk shop (a penthouse in Salt Lake and the high roller bars in just about every city across the U.S.). That’s his job as an architect. He’s responsible for setting a scene, using real life details as a form of set design, filling out landscapes that feel realer than real so that the mark never stops to wonder when they feel asleep, tucking secret passages and trap doors in plain sight that’ll serve whatever purpose he’s been hired for. Stealing secrets. Finding blackmail. Instilling fear.
(Eddie took a job once from a man who believed it was better to torture his enemies inside their minds rather than real life. The laws are murky on assault in dreamscape, but that wasn’t why he liked it. “You can kill a man a hundred times and never set him free.” He said with a quiet satisfaction that made Eddie’s skin crawl. He still built the apartment building. Layers and layers of floors. Doors leading nowhere. Stairways that acted as closed loops. The kind of maze without entry or exit anyone could find unless the client wanted them to. He taught the layout to the hired dreamer, took his check, and moved on. Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he wonders if some poor schmuck is still trapped there, in a prison of Eddie's design.)
Steve studies him openly, blatantly deciding if Eddie's worth his time. Eddie rolls his eyes, irritated even before Steve’s reaches his verdict.
He must pass muster, Steve pulling a piece of paper from his folder, pushing it towards Eddie. Its a death certificate. William Hargrove. Cause of death: Smoke inhalation. Almost six years ago. Hargrove junior would have been fresh out of high school if Eddie's math is right.
Eddie blinks. “You wanna use his kid?”
There’s a flicker of surprise on Steve’s face, so brief it barely counts as a reaction. Something shifts in Harrington’s eyes. He shrugs. “It’s good to have options,” he says lightly, “Dreams are funny things. You never know who you’ll run into.”
-
Downstairs, with his Red Bull and pop concoction, Eddie opens the dossier Dustin printed for him. He flips over his own notes, the paragraphs he’s underlined, the margins where he’s sketched a couple of possible layouts that will meet the needs of the job Nancy’s got outlined. He opens up to the background information on the client.
Max Mayfield. Steve has a picture of her in his folder that’s not in Nancy’s package, a choppy red bob and a steely blue stare (Eddie wonders if Steve will try her own too. Other forgers Eddie’s worked with avoid forging the dead, saying the risk of slipping up and alerting the mark’s subconscious to the con is too high). She’s a grad student studying social welfare in California. Lives with her boyfriend. Child of divorce, mom remarried Neil Hargrove when she was a kid. Divorced him a couple of years later. It’s normal enough on paper.
But Eddie’s good at seeing patterns, even ones blended into a bigger tapestry. There are an abnormal number of hospital visits in those brief years of marital bliss. Falls. Collisions. A statement taken by a social worker describes a bad fall of a skateboard, makes a note about the possibility of neglect, attention seeking behavior. Eddie wonders if anyone ever wrote a note like that about him, the skinny kid in clothes that never fit, a loud-mouthed smartass with a dead mom and a deadbeat dad.
Nancy’s notes from her interview with Mayfield confirm what Eddie already suspects. Neil Hargrove is a lousy dad and a mean drunk. Took it out on his son, on his stepdaughter, on his new wife.
Then there was a fire. A little house in a small town in Indiana. In the obituary written up in the local paper, Neil Hargrove mourns his son and his heroic sacrifice. He woke us up, made sure we got out. There’s a picture of the deceased in front of a cherry red Camaro.
Susan Hargrove filed for divorce less than a year later, Neil dragged it out, draining her dry in the process.
Overall, it’s pretty cut and dry. Max Mayfield wants money. Susan Hargrove has debts to pay. Max is strapped to student loans. Not to mention there’s the team’s payout to cover. Luckily, Hargrove has more than enough to spare.
Eddie reaches for his notebook and starts to draw.
-
The job comes together easily. They have Hargrove’s schedule for the next two weeks, his routine. Dustin makes a few calls and gets his hands on his medical records, his most recent test results from his physical last month and then turns the spare office downstairs into a temporary laboratory the rest of them are banned from entering.
Steve trails Hargrove around town, comes and goes dressed anywhere between fratboy chic to polished businessman. There’s a couple of days he seems to be moonlighting as a security guard, reappears in the kitchen come morning, weary eyed and nose deep in a cup of black coffee.
Nancy meets with Max again, disappears into her laptop and emerges with their scene.
“Max is going to send you a couple of pictures of the interior of the house. You just need to focus on the living room, that’s where the fire allegedly started.” Eddie knows. He read the reports. “Max is going to come back at the end of the week, she’s going under with Steve—”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. Steve sends a little flippant wave his way.
“You can ask her to take a look at what you’ve got by then. Take some notes. We move on Hargrove next weekend.”
Eddie looks over the pictures attached in the email Nancy forwards him, takes in the small ranch style house. A quaint slice of Americana. The living room has blue walls. Cornflower blue, maybe a touch darker, Eddie will have to play with the lighting in the dream. There’s a couch, a granny square crocheted throw over the back of it. A couple of family pictures Eddie circles with his pen once he’s got the images printed out and in hand.
In the basement he pours over pages of isometric graph paper, builds his maze out of darkly lined boxes. The living room design is easy enough, it’s in the hall where he can go wild, a mobius strip of dark wood paneling and thick beige carpet, cheesy fake gold sconces fixed to the walls that leads out and feeds back into the living room.
Places to get lost in. Places to hide. Secret spots to lay in wait until the right moment.
-
Mayfair—Max, she tells Steve tersely when she comes to the house, arms crossed and eyes skeptical as she looks back and forth between them—signs off on their work. It’s still a trip, even after all this time in the field, watching someone shift. One second Steve’s there, and then someone happens, the light bends and Eddie’s eyes lose focus, just a split second he only notices because he knows it’s coming. He’ll give it to Harrington, it’s a subtle turn. One breath between him standing there in his dumb purple Rockies t-shirt and William Hargrove taking his place.
If seeing her late step-brother in the flesh startles her, Max doesn’t show it. She nods at him after a long minute studying him, takes a step back.
“Give me a tour already.” She says flatly, jaw set as Eddie leads her through the space. She gives him a few notes on things pictures can’t capture. The smell of ash and tobacco in the air. The way the second lamp in the hallway flickered. The background drone of the refrigerator.
“There should be a cigarette burn there.” Max says, pointing to the left arm of the floral armchair back in the living room. “Billy never used an ash tray.”
Eddie’s dad never kept one close either. He preferred to stuff empty Bud cans with cigarette butts. He sniffs, tries to clear the faint scent of stale beer and ash from his nose. Steve-as-Billy looks at him. It still trips Eddie out, seeing someone else’s expression on a brand new face.
(He’s obviously spent too long staring at Steve this week, to recognize the tick in his jaw, the arch of his brow, the way he holds himself straight, hands on his hips.)
Eddie spends a little while longer under after the timer goes off for Steve and Max. Walks around the entire level, double checks the finer details. A door he didn’t design appears at the end of the hallway. The air takes on a new smell, shut in, mildewy. The wallpaper looks faded, mauve turned to pale chipped beige paint, yellowed from cigarette smoke. The door at the end of the hall, cheap plywood, barely secure in the frame, Eddie remembers the feel of it, pressed against his back, hiding inside the closet while outside there was yelling—
There’s a crack, glass crunching underfoot. When he looks down the hallway runner has switched into a thin brown carpet, watermarked by spilled drinks and countless tenets. There’s a mug on the floor, the handle snapped clean off, the rim cracked. Garfield’s round orange face is still intact though.
The door rattles, gives a violent lurch, the wood creaks menacingly. Eddie forgets himself, just for a second, the smell of cigarette smoke burning at the back of his throat. He needs to move. Needs to run.
He’s going to get out. He’s going to get out and be so fucking mad—
“Munson.” Steve says at his back, voice cutting through the fear choking Eddie’s brain. The door goes still. The smell of cigarette smoke recedes.
“Nancy wants to run through the plan with Max here.” Steve tells him, hovering just behind Eddie’s shoulder, so close Eddie can almost feel him. His hand lands lightly on Eddie’s elbow, barely there before they fall away. “C’mon, time to wake up.”
He’ll Harrington this much: he knows how to kill a guy painlessly.
-
The job goes off without a hitch until it doesn’t.
It’s just Nancy and Steve going under. Dustin’s already on a flight back to Copenhagen and the house has been scrubbed of every last trace they were ever there. Eddie’s only there to monitor the PASIV and even that feels like an over precaution more than a necessity.
They’ve got Hargrove drugged and knocked out on the floor of the locker room in a ritzy blue-blood club and Steve bribed someone to get them 15 minutes undisturbed, a rope across the doorway with a sign that says it’s closed for cleaning. Eddie and Steve will have to drag him to the sauna after. Leave him there to figure out how he got there in the first place. One last mindfuck while they run off into the early afternoon, crime completed.
And they’re nearly there, Eddie counting down the final seconds, the machine’s pumps slowing to a standstill already when—
The first time Eddie got shot he was sure he was done for. Hilariously, it was before he committed himself to his life of crime. Friendly fire is what they called it, some trigger-happy newbie who managed to catch Eddie in the fucking chest. He didn’t die, obviously, but the injury shelved him from active duty and that eventually led to him getting sent to a new unit. Experimental stuff. Crucial to security development for Uncle Sam.
Taking a shot never loses its specific brand of horribleness. Eddie feels like he’s been swiped by a fucking car in the side, air knocked out of his lungs as he’s thrown off balance, head cracking on the gleaming floors. Jesus Christ, he thinks, when he can think, hand shaking as he presses it against his burning side. There’s a hiss, a repeated whisper that echoes funnily on the bathroom tiles, and a grunt, Steve’s khaki clad shins coming into view and then his knees, his hairy arms, his board hands, his handsome face last as Eddie gets turned on his back. “Fuck, Munson, hey. Hang in there.” Nancy is doing something behind Steve, firearm visible in the waistband of her pressed navy slacks, same as the receptionist was wearing when she let them in the employee entrance.
“We’ve got four minutes tops before security gets here.” She says, moving fast. There’s another pop, a wheeze, Steve muttering, “Shit, Nance, warn a guy.” But he’s already moving, pressing one of the clean cotton hand towels to Eddie’s side, holding it down hard.
“Hold on to that for me.” He orders, moving, moving, and then Eddie’s moving too, hoisted up by Steve, one arm over Steve’s shoulders. “Sorry, this is going to suck, but we gotta hustle.” Then Eddie’s not on his feet anymore, he’s being maneuvered onto Steve’s back. He’s definitely getting blood on his pink polo.
“Indiana.” Nancy says, closing the case. The shock is melting into more pain, sweat breaking out across Eddie’s body, head swimming.
“Indiana.” Steve echoes, moving deeper into the locker room, towards the emergency exit.
The last thing Eddie sees before they clear the scene of the crime is the pool of blood slowly spreading around Neil Hargrove’s body.
-
He loses consciousness in the back seat of Steve’s BMW.
He wakes up somewhere—shitty room, small and stuffy and too hot, shitty bed and shitty lighting and Christ alive Eddie is on fire—and there are hands on his face, rough and scorching, and a stranger’s face looking down at him. Eddie thinks he’s seen it before. In a dream.
He wants to reach for his totem, the loaded twenty-sided die he keeps on him at all time, always comes up 13, but his arms have been replaced by wet rope or something. Impossible to lift.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” The stranger is saying, holding Eddie’s head still, “My friend’s on her way, she’s gonna take care of you. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”
Eddie thinks of Wayne, wishes he were here. Wonders if he ever thinks of Eddie anymore these days since he went AWOL all those years ago. He wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t run. They probably would have stopped chasing him if he hadn’t stolen a fucking PASIV machine when he did it. Eddie used to imagine calling Wayne from a pay phone in the middle of nowhere, just for the chance to apologize. He’s never been brave enough to go through with it.
Eddie can’t keep his eyes open, honestly doesn’t want to, even his eyeballs feel like they’re throbbing and about to burst. Split and squish like grapes.
Something cold touches his face and it feels like heaven, pulling a groan out of the depths of his very soul at the relief. When he opens his eyes the stranger is gone and Steve is there, leaning over him. Steve Harrington. Eddie's known him for a grand total of two weeks and a day but the sight of him settles something in his chest. He’s not alone, he tells himself. He’s not alone because Steve is here. Eddie’s not going to die alone.
“You’re not going to die.” Steve says bluntly, but there’s relief bleeding into his expression like maybe he wasn’t that sure of the fact himself.
Eddie thinks it’s a shame Steve spends so much time pretending to be other people.
“You’ve got a nice face.” He says, voice pulverized by pain and fever and blood loss. “I like it.”
“Yeah?” Steve half-laughs, and the hand that touches Eddie’s cheek is cool, fingertips icy and palm damp, fresh and clean like new snow. Eddie shivers. Never wants the feeling to go away. Steve smiles at Eddie, looks almost surprised when he says, “I like yours too.”
-
The next time he wakes up the shitty room is still pretty shitty but Eddie’s not on fire anymore. He feels like he’s been run over a couple of times. The sharp pain has been replaced by a deep ache, and when he looks down there’s a surprisingly small patch of gauze taped down over what he assumes is the entry wound.
A red-haired woman wearing a pink and white striped sweater comes out of (what Eddie assumes is) the bathroom, drying her hands. She introduces herself as Vickie, tells Eddie he’s lucky it was a thru-and-thru. “Missed everything important.” She says matter-of-factly.
She produces a bottle of generic antibiotics, low-grade painkillers, more basic first aid materials, and a decent fake ID and passport.
“Steve left that for you.” She says finally, pointing at a black backpack set on top of the cheap desk backed against the wall.
She hangs around long enough to make sure Eddie knows how to change his bandage and watch him drink water. “Don’t die.” Vickie says in parting. “I’d hate to see my work go to waste.”
-
The backpack contains a wad of cash, a burner phone, the keys to a rental car, and a clean change of clothes. There’s a plane ticket to Copenhagen and a note in Steve’s now-familiar writing. Henderson’s expecting you. Don’t flake.
-
Eddie’s honestly surprised when he finds out he’s in fucking Montana of all places. He half-expected to be back in Indiana, probably a side effect of thinking about Wayne as much as he has in the last 48 hours.
He tries to piece together a timeline between getting shot in Denver and waking up in Billings. There was a text on the burner when he checked it, confirmation about a deposit to one of his off-shore accounts, so Nancy obviously made it out alright and was able to collect their payout.
Eddie checks his totem, rolls three 13s before he starts getting dressed in the nondescript clothing from the backpack. Sweater, t-shirt, loose jeans, a pair of sneakers. There’s a baseball cap—the fucking Pacers—that Eddie tucks his hair into. He wonders if anyone has the rest of the shit he brought to Colorado or if it’s sitting in a dumpster somewhere along the interstate highway. He tells himself it doesn’t matter either way, he never travels with anything he’s not alright saying goodbye to. That’s just the way of things.
The closest Eddie has to home these days is a safehouse in Berlin where he bought out all the apartments nestled over a heavy metal club. He rents out most of them but he kept two for himself. Stores his Warlock and his books and sketchbooks there, the picture of Wayne he’s managed to hold on to this long. He gets to the airport and thinks about fucking off there instead. Vickie the Nurse seemed pretty chill about Eddie’s bullet wound, didn’t seem to think he was at risk of dropping dead if he was left on his lonesome. He could touch down in Kastrup and be in Berlin in an hour, easy.
But Steve’s note is folded in the pocket of his new jeans, and Eddie doesn’t for a single second doubt that Dustin’s waiting for him. Hell, the little punk might pull up to the airport with a chauffeur’s hat and a sign with Eddie’s alias on it.
He’s sure of it actually.
-
The hardest part of living a life of crime operating experimental technology meant for dream-based thievery is being on your own. Eddie figured that out fucking quick when he first got started. Crews come and go, and there are people you see more often than others. People you know are good at what they do and people you know not to bother with again no matter what the pay out is.
Eddie will never admit it but he misses having friends. He understands that friends, hell acquaintances, are a liability. He understands it the same way he understands why he can’t reach out to Wayne.
Eddie told himself that Dustin Henderson was a good collaborator, an ace to keep up his sleeve for dire times. Dustin’s never failed him, not if Eddie rings him up asking for a fresh batch of Somnacin or a place to crash or is looking for a specific contact. Dustin’s connected Eddie with a couple of leads that led to good work, jobs that never fail to be interesting and don’t leave Eddie with that churning uneasy feeling in his gut that lingers for weeks afterward.
Eddie trusts him, and for better or worse, that means he trusts Steve too. Because he knows Dustin wouldn’t have left him behind in Denver if he didn’t believe the team was solid. And he was right, obviously. Eddie’s sitting upright in a business class seat with a healing bullet wound in his side because Nancy and Steve didn’t leave him in a fancy club bathroom to take the fall. Or die.
He takes two of the pain killers Vickie left him with with a mouthful of vodka, pulls the brim of the Pacers cap down over his eyes and sleeps fitfully for the next fifteen hours.
-
“Can’t take you anywhere.” Dustin says at the airport, where he’s waiting for Eddie at arrivals. The kid wraps Eddie in a gentler hug than usual, pulls Eddie’s signature move of slapping the brim of his baseball cap, knocking the hat up off his head. He doesn’t have anything other than the backpack he brought with him from the hotel room. Dustin carries it for him, leaving Eddie with the herculean task of moving his own exhausted body.
“Asshat.” Eddie grumbles, mouth dry and eyes gritty, desperately in need of water and a new bandage, but he wraps his arm around Dustin’s shoulder more out of camaraderie than pain. Dustin gets them to his respectable reliable car in record time, gets Eddie buckled in and situated in the passenger seat with a bottle of coconut water and a protein bar before they hit the road.
Dustin fills the car with easy nonsensical conversation, talks about Susie’s latest paper, the journal she’s getting published in, the cat they’re looking at adopting, the book he just started reading. Eddie lets it wash over him, the now familiar excitable cadence of his voice so much easier on his ears than the mechanical drone of the airplane.
He’s half-asleep by the time Dustin pulls into his garage. He’s always liked Dustin’s place. Exposed red brick and the waterfront just a stone’s throw away. Rooftop garden where Eddie can go smoke and sketch the surrounding buildings. He likes how they look nested together like building blocks, green steps ascending skyward.
“You okay there?” Dustin asks outside his front door, Eddie leaning against the wonderfully cool wall. He doesn’t know if it’s because of the lag time between getting hurt and showing up here, but he’s not usually this wrung out when he gets here. Normally he’s still burning off the adrenaline.
“Peachy.” Eddie mumbles. He ran out of painkillers on the flight and the medical-grade tape is starting to itch on his side. He closes his eyes while Dustin keys in the thousand-digit long code that unlocks the door, sighs when he finally hears the little beep that means it’s open. Dustin takes him by the elbow, doesn’t even nag Eddie for not taking his shoes off in the entry way.
“Got your room ready.” Dustin’s saying, leading Eddie further in. “Picked up a few things for you, since Steve said you were traveling light.” Eddie nods, his usual well of words run dry, feels an unexpected prickle of warmth at the center of his chest.
He thinks, against his will and better judgement, of being a kid. Wayne picking him up from the group home the social worker had dropped Eddie off at when Dad got arrested. Everything Eddie owned in the whole wide world fit into a single garbage bag. Wayne had driven them to a K-mart on the way back to his, bought Eddie a plain gym bag to carry his shit in.
Fuck, Eddie’s so tired.
The room is just as he remembers it, simple, clean, safe. Dustin sits him down, assesses his bandaged side with his uncanny focus. Eddie makes a joke about feeling like a frog on a dissection tray when the kid puts on gloves and everything to do it.
Eddie stays conscious long enough for Dustin to peel off the old gauze and put ointment on the rash developing under the tape. He slaps a square hydrocolloid dressing over the healing gunshot wound while Eddie mumbles his way through a retelling about his encounter with Vickie.
“Yeah, she’s basically Steve’s sister-in-law.” Dustin says absentmindedly, slipping a shirt over Eddie’s head like he’s a toddler incapable of dressing himself.
There’s a bottle of water on the bedside table, another personal-sized carton of coconut water. “Take these.” Dustin orders with his familiar imperious tone, two nondescript white tablets appearing in Eddie’s palm.
When Eddie falls asleep he dreams. Nonsensical, non-linear, ridiculous dreams. He watches buildings rising up out of nothing like daisies out of snowmelt. No rhyme or reason, Eddie only a spectator to it all.
-
Over a massive bowl of hønsekødsuppe Dustin fills Eddie in on a few details. “Hargrove didn’t have security. Nancy dug into the interloper, he was just a gun nut who was too happy to play Punisher. It helps though that he’d already been cited twice for carrying a concealed weapon on premises. And that staff knew he had some beef with Neil over parking or something.” Dustin slurps a dumpling off his spoon. “Don’t worry, Nancy’s dealt with it.”
Eddie nods and decides that’s good enough for him for the time being. He’s seen enough of Nancy’s work to believe no one is going to link the shootout in Denver to their team. Which means no one is going to be looking for Eddie. He’ll reach out to Ronnie to double check that his name hasn’t popped up anywhere he doesn’t want it, lay low in Berlin for a couple of months.
He opens his mouth to ask Dustin if he can help him get his hands on a new smartphone when there’s a knock at the door. He looks at Dustin, a single drop of icy dread rolling down his spine. Dustin doesn’t look bothered. Or surprised.
He sets his spoon down, crosses the short distance from the livingroom to the entryway. Dustin’s place isn’t a mansion, full of clean lines and functional pieces, though the bookshelves and walls speak to the chaotic madness Eddie catches glimpses of in Dustin’s eyes. Dustin keeps his work locked up tight elsewhere, only brings home his encrypted notes and the plans he keeps inside his head.
Eddie wonders if it’s finally Susie, the mysterious footsteps he heard late at night, the other half of the whispered conversations that slips in under the bottom of his bedroom door.
It isn’t Susie.
In walks Steve Harrington, blue jeans and a yellow sweater, dufflebag hitched over his shoulder. Eddie’s dufflebag.
“Hey.” He says when spots Eddie on the couch, wearing Dustin’s sweatpants (too short in the ankle by at least two inches, the elastic cuff riding up dramatically every time he moves), a Motörhead t-shirt he left here a while ago. He wiggles his fingers in Eddie’s direction, a ridiculous little wave.
Dustin ushers him inside, closes the door behind him. “I thought you weren’t getting in ‘til tomorrow.” He says, grinning broadly through the note of disapproval in his voice.
“Caught an earlier flight.” Steve says easily, placing the duffle down on the far end of the couch. “You’re looking good, man.” He tells Eddie as if they’re old friends, sitting on the arm of the sofa near Eddie’s feet.
“Thanks.” Eddie says, mouth suddenly gone dry. He looks down at the bowl of soup in his lap. The floating dumplings and chunks of chicken, flakes of parsley and bits of dill. He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so aware of his own body. The ache in his side where the bullet wound is healing, painstakingly slow and annoyingly incapacitating. His unwashed hair and oily skin and legs that are too long for the sweatpants he’s wearing.
He feels his own existence, in way that might have something to do with painkillers but probably has more to do with his fucking job. Acutely aware of the imperfect reality of being.
When he looks up at Steve his eyes land on a will-be blemish on his chin, the slight grey tinge to his skin that comes after a long flight. Eddie wonders where Steve flew in from. Carrying Eddie’s duffle with him all the way.
“You hungry?” Dustin asks Steve from over in the kitchen, “We got soup or you can make a sandwich.”
Steve grins at Eddie before turning his head to look over his shoulder. “Sure, I can eat.”
-
They spent two weeks and a day together in Denver but there’s something different to sitting there in Dustin’s actual living room, shooting the shit and eating food that is almost familiar but never quite right. (Eddie grew up on generic canned soups and government cheese, the European stuff never tastes how he expects it to even if he recreates a familiar meal step by step. Which he rarely does, regardless of whether he’s working a job or staying put.)
Steve and Dustin talk about comics of all things, get into a brief argument about some Russian contact they’ve both worked with who apparently sucks, and then bounce right back to the Hulk.
“I’m just saying, you could probably figure it out if you worked on it.”
“And I’m letting you know that’s not how radiation works.” Dustin says with an astounding level of audacity considering the field the three of them work in. Dreamsharing was the stuff of make believe not so long ago and here they are making a profit of it.
“That’s quitter talk.” Steve says with the air of a little league coach, pointing a reproachful finger in Dustin’s direction. Eddie’s tired, still somehow tired despite having not done very much at all since he arrived two days ago. He’s happy to lean against the couch cushion behind him and just listen to Steve and Dustin bicker.
It’s the same cadence and rhythm to their conversations about the Hargrove job, that almost-too-sharp back and forth, lived in and confident. Eddie feels stupid now for doubting Dustin knew Steve Harrington, because it’s obvious Steve’s not just a contact or sometimes-colleague. This is a friend.
There were hints of it in Colorado, some thread obviously connecting Dustin to Nancy and Steve, Eddie stitched into place and yet apart.
There’s a drop of something sour at the back of his throat as the thought takes form. He wonders if Steve stays in the room Dustin calls Eddie’s when he’s here. Have they laid their head on the same pillow, rested under the same blanket?
(He feels a flash of heat, there and gone before Eddie can think to stifle it out, when he wonders if Steve’s ever touched himself in that bed. God, it’s been too long since Eddie’s gotten laid, obviously.)
“What do you think, Ed?” Steve says, as if he’s just remembered Eddie’s sitting right there.
Eddie gingerly sinks into the couch cushions behind him, hopes nothing he’s actually thinking is visible on his face. “Sorry, I’m more into wizards and dragons than superheroes.”
Steve doesn’t let Eddie’s answer or stilted tone phase him. “You might like Doctor Strange. He’s a sorcerer.”
Dustin sits up straighter, points at Eddie excitedly. “Oh, man, Constantine!”
Steve grins, big and wide, snaps his fingers, “Now we’re talking.”
And just like that the conversation isn’t occurring next to him, he’s a part of it, Steve and Dustin bringing him into the fold of their ridiculous back and forth as if he’d always been a part of it.
Eddie isn’t used to things just slipping into place, not in the waking world. But sometimes, somehow, they do.
-
Eddie’s been a shitty sleeper for a lot longer than he’s been dreaming professionally. He’s tried every trick in the book to get more than three hours a night but mostly he’s had to make peace with the fact that he’s doomed to near constant exhaustion.
No one expects a dreamsharer to be anything close to normal and no one has expected normalcy from Eddie for as long as he can remember. It works out.
Still, recovering from a bullet wound in the middle of coastal Denmark doesn’t exactly afford Eddie a bevy of distractions. Dustin’s home entertainment system is impressive but Harrington’s taken the couch for the night. Eddie already feels like a dick convalescing here, in Dustin’s home, in the room he apparently shares with Steve, he doesn’t want to add disturbing other people’s sleep to his reasons to feel like an asshole.
He’s just about depleted his phone battery playing Slice & Dice when he realizes he left the charger in the living room where he charged it straight out of the box.
He powers down his screen, eyes momentarily blinded by the immediate plunge into total darkness. The black out curtains Dustin and Susie like really take their job seriously, not a single ray of outside light making it through. Eddie stares up at nothing because there’s nothing he can see. It’s a good thing the dark hasn’t creeped him out since he was little. He lays there for a few minutes, eyes open, eyes shut, honestly can’t see the difference.
He finds his thoughts wandering without his permission. Back to that bathroom in Denver. He hears the pop of a silenced shot. Dustin said Nancy handled it. Eddie now knows that means Hargrove is dead. They funneled a good bit of money out of one of his puppet accounts. Divided it up between Max Mayfield and the team. That wasn’t part of the plan. But neither Steve or Dustin seem especially upset about Nancy’s choice.
Eddie wonders what she found in Neil Hargrove’s mind to make it so easy to pull the trigger. Or maybe she was just doing what any good point person can do, see three steps ahead.
Prepared for countless probabilities.
He thinks about it until his head starts to hurt. Turning on his uninjured side winds him, makes his side pull unpleasantly, that deep tugging burn that yanks from inside. He needs Dustin to give up his life of crime and go into figuring out which maximum strength painkillers Eddie can take without turning his blood to battery acid. Whatever kiddie shit he’s been taking isn’t cutting it.
(“Someone who bitches as much as you do should work harder to not get shot.” Dustin lectured him heartlessly the second time Eddie turned up on his doorstep. It hadn’t even been that serious. A couple of grazes on his arms because Higgins’ henchmen couldn’t shoot for shit. Eddie was all for taking himself back to Berlin but he’d been in Malmö already.)
He wonders if Dustin still keeps his pre-rolls in the cookie jar in the kitchen.
Eddie does his best to keep quiet, walks on careful feet only to find Steve sitting upright on the couch, bathed in the warm glow of the television.
“Hey.” Steve greets him. For a split second Eddie thinks Steve was expecting him but that’s stupid. “You alright?”
“Can’t sleep.” Eddie answers, so very aware of his body and all its awkward pieces, the pain radiating from his side.
“Can I get you anything?” Steve asks helpfully, sitting up a little straighter on the sofa.
Eddie scratches at his chin, hums under his breath, and decides fuck it. “You know where Dustin keeps his weed these days?”
-
Eddie takes a deep drag off the joint, holds it in and feels the heat soak through his chest, exhales long and slow. He holds the cherry out to Steve.
Steve holds the joint between his fingers, raises it to his mouth but pauses to ask, “What’s the deal with the closet?”
Eddie snorts, worries his thumb against his bottom lip. “Obvious, don’t you think?”
Steve shakes his head. “I’m pretty dumb, ask Dustin.”
“Henderson thinks everyone’s dumber than him.” And that’s pretty much true.
Eddie looks at Steve, waiting patiently for Eddie to explain, expression unguarded, eyes warm. Steve might be pretty but Eddie would be an idiot to underestimate him.
It’s weird the things that become currency when your entire brain can become someone else’s playground. The truth becomes a commodity
Eddie waits until Steve’s got his mouth occupied, “Old man was an ass.” He says, straight to the point. “A locked door was his idea of discipline.” He looks at the waterfront, thousands of miles away from the podunk town he grew up in. “So one day, I decide to give him a taste of his own medicine. Locked him in.” He can hear the door rattle. The victory had lost its shine pretty quick. Soon as Eddie realized that the door would eventually open. His dad would get out.
Steve breathes out long and slow. “Shit.”
Eddie scratches his cheek. His head is warm, fuzzier. His neck feels looser. “Yeah. I got the fuck out of dodge. High tailed it to my uncle’s place.” Wayne had always kept an eye out for him. Too bad he was working late that day.
Steve hands him back the joint. Eddie takes a long drag off it.
“Well, that’s my sob story.” Eddie says with forced levity. “Tell me yours.”
Steve snorts, rubs at his nose. “Don’t really have one.”
Eddie blows out a raspberry. “Oh, yeah, dreamsharing is known for all the well adjusted individuals who apply.”
Steve shrugs. “Small town guy. Two parents. Three square meals a day. Threw parties when I wasn’t supposed to, snuck girls in, snuck guys out.” Steve grins at him, gauging Eddie’s reaction to what he’s saying. “Moved out. Grew up. Made some choices. Now I’m here.”
“That simple?"
“Pretty much.” Steve says, “I’m a simple guy.”
“Bullshit.” Eddie laughs, surprised by the abruptness of the sound. “How’d you land in the biz?”
“You’ll never believe me if I told you.” Steve says lightly.
“Try me.”
“Maybe later.” Steve says, arm brushing Eddie’s as he turns to go back in.
-
Eddie stays in Denmark a full week before he bids Dustin farewell. Steve left two days before, took off in the middle of the afternoon to catch a flight elsewhere. He hadn’t said where.
“See you next time, Munson.” He’d said, gripping Eddie’s shoulder.
Dustin tells Eddie he can stay as long as he’d like but Dustin and Susie don’t have so much as a goldfish, they don’t need to be taking on the responsibility for a full grown adult. So he grabs a flight out to Berlin. He doesn’t do much of anything for the next couple of weeks. Months. The bullet hole in his side heals, leaves behind two puckered scars, front and back. He goes to a couple of local shows, puts together a tune or two, cracks the spine on his copy of The Simarillion. He checks to see how Max Mayfield is doing.
He sleeps. Sometimes, during these long breaks from work, he thinks he dreams even if he can’t remember it in the morning.
One morning he wakes up mid-conversation, hears himself mumble a single name. His skin is sleep-warm and flushed, his eyes still seamed together with leftover sleep. No one else is there to hear him. Eddie sighs into the pillow under his head, and tells himself it doesn’t mean anything. Dreams are just funny that way.
-
Dustin shows up on his doorstep one frozen February afternoon.
“I don’t remember giving you my address.” He says, letting Dustin in.
“I put a microchip in you last time you came to stay.” Dustin tells him with that deadpan confidence Eddie can’t read as true or false immediately.
Dustin cracks a shitting grin at his expression. “C’mon, give me the tour.”
It’s too cold for Eddie to take Dustin upstairs to the rooftop where empty pigeon coops collect graffiti, so Eddie cracks open his kitchen window to smoke while Dustin tells him about a potential job.
“It’s basically local.” Dustin says, laptop open in front of him. Eddie doesn’t think Münster counts as local but they’re not crossing borders, so there’s that. “Anyway, small potatoes. Three person crew. Robin’s doing point. She’s chill. You’ll love her.”
“Robin?”
Dustin looks at him like Eddie’s not keeping up. “Yeah. Robin, y’know, Steve’s Robin.”
Eddie wasn’t aware Steve had a Robin. “That his girlfriend?” He asks with an air of disinterest that is utterly and completely an act. Eddie pulls on his loose hair, yanking it over his mouth, annoyed at his own annoyance at the idea of Steve with a girlfriend.
It isn’t unheard of. It isn’t common, too many risks associated with going under with someone who actually knew you, the potential for bringing other things in higher than average. Emotions. Memories.
He chews on his hair and tells himself he’s just disappointed in Harrington’s lack of professionalism.
“Ew.” Dustin pulls an impressive stank face. “She’s basically his sister.”
Eddie rolls his eyes as hard as he can. He thinks he sees his own brain. “How am I supposed to know that?”
Dustin huffs, clearly annoyed. “Steve never shuts up about her. I figured he mentioned Robin when you too were hanging out without me.”
Hanging out is a stretch, Eddie almost says before he stops himself. Because, he guesses, from a certain point of view, that was what they were doing. Smoking late at night, watching subtitled movies, just shooting the shit. Steve asked Eddie how he decided what to build. Eddie sketched him a maze on a piece of loose leaf paper, long dashes of black ink and 90 degree angles. It sunk downward like a funnel, tighter and tighter until it closed in on itself. “Well, shit.” Steve whistled, tracing his fingertip over the page. Each dead end seemed to delight him, brow creasing in concentration as he went back to the start.
“Keep it simple, but dig deep.” Eddie told Steve in the flickering light of the television screen. Eddie had figured that out in his second year building. It kept projections occupied and bought more time with the mark.
“Where’d you learn to forge?” Eddie’d asked again, forgetting himself for a moment. People who didn’t go around announcing their tutelage tended not to talk about how they learned at all. Steve seemed to belong to the latter.
“How do you know I’m not just naturally talented?” Steve had teased, still tracing paths through Eddie’s maze.
“What do you say, man?” Dustin asks, bringing Eddie back to the offer on the table.
Eddie crushes the remains of his cigarette into the ash tray on the windowsill. “Sure. I was getting bored anyhow.”
-
Steve hasn’t changed much in the months since they parted ways. Still handsome in that quiet, average way of his, dressed in a beige sweatshirt with the word Munich embroidered in bold black letters over a patch of the German flag. His hair is covered by a backwards black baseball cap with a FC Bayern badge on it.
“Do you buy all your clothes exclusively in souvenir shops?” Eddie asks when he approaches the car Steve’s leaning against. Steve smiles, dark glasses moving slightly as his cheeks push upward.
“I like souvenirs.” Steve says lightly, pushing himself upright and reaching for Eddie’s bag. “C’mon, I’ll fill you in on the way.”
The job sounds like a cakewalk. A tech startup trying to suss out a mole. A patent for a medical device at risk if some big corporation gets their hands on it first.
“Robin’s got the full write up but that’s pretty much the gist. What d’you think?” Eddie’s already thinking of a setting. A hospital. White lights. Endless doors.
“Sounds highly doable.” Eddie says, looking out the window.
-
The job goes off impeccably. No one gets shot. None of the doors in the hospital Eddie dreams up rattle under the memory of his father’s angry fists.
When it’s over and done Robin bids Eddie a cheerful goodbye, says, “It was great to finally meet you.” A sidelong glance in Steve’s direction that left Eddie feeling like he was missing out on a joke.
Then it’s just Steve and Eddie.
“Where to next?” Eddie asks, suddenly aware of how empty his schedule is now that the job is over with. He should hit up Ronnie, see if there’s anyone in the market for an architect.
“Depends.” Steve says easily, hands buried in the pockets of his jeans.
“On what?”
“On whether you’re gonna invite me back to yours.” Steve grins, mischievous, but there’s a touch of nerves at the corner of it, eyes studying Eddie’s face for his reaction.
Eddie tips his head back, surprised and delighted by the blunt-headed proposition.
“Dude.” He says, still laughing, “Don’t tell me this whole job was just your idea of flirting.”
Steve rocks back on his heels, so obviously pleased. He drops forward again, gaze warm and unwavering, aware that he’s got Eddie hooked. “It worked didn’t it?”
-
Eddie wakes up to the rumble of the street sweeper rolling its way along the sidewalk below. Steve’s still out on the mattress next to him, stretched out on his stomach, the mole-speckled skin of his back on display for Eddie to look at. There are scars up on his shoulders, patchy and red-brown, the skin raised over itself like tectonic plates push upward when they collide.
“Job went bad.” Steve mumbles after a few minutes of Eddie mapping the skin out with his fingers. “Guards caught me. Tried to get me to tell them who I was working with.” Eddie wonders what methods they used, what kind of brutality would leave marks like these.
Steve rolls over. His eyes are calm, his face still loose with sleep. Steve tugs at Eddie until he’s laying close to him, Eddie’s cheek on Steve’s arm, Eddie’s arm resting over Steve’s waist.
They lay there, in Eddie’s bed, in Eddie’s apartment, listening to the random, everyday sounds of Eddie’s neighborhood outside.
Steve sighs. He bends his arm, holds Eddie closer. His hand covers the curve of Eddie’s shoulder. “It was a long time ago.” He says softly, more like he’s reminding himself than reassuring Eddie.
“I’m sorry.” Eddie says, kissing Steve’s side. He doesn’t know what they’re doing. What he’s doing. But Steve is warm against his side and it’s been such a long time since there’s been anyone to lay beside and never anyone here.
He repositions himself until his head can rest on Steve’s chest, ear pressed against his skin so he can hear the steady rhythm of his heart beating.
-
Steve looks on, unphased as Eddie takes a pair of scissors to the Berliner Fernsehturm t-shirt he picked up the other day. They’d done the whole tour. Steve had insisted after he’d found out Eddie had never visited once in all the years he’s called Berlin home.
“You own a sewing machine?” Steve asks, vaguely surprised when Eddie pulls his trusty machine out of his closet.
“I’ve been known to sew now and then.” Eddie tells him proudly. He points to the jacket hanging on a hook by the door, the Dio shirt stitched into place on the back of a thrifted denim jacket. He only wears it here of course. It isn’t the sort of thing he can travel with.
Steve happily relinquishes a hoodie from his travel bag. It’s bright red with a minimalist graphic of two mountains on the front. “Got it in Colorado.”
Steve watches him work, drinks his beer and asks the occasional question while Eddie turns the t-shirt design into an applique. “Where’d you learn that?” Steve asks as Eddie carefully snips around the logo, revealing the t-shirt’s design underneath.
“The internet is a wonderful thing, baby.” Eddie tells him, snipping the last threads with a flourish. “Now you got something one of a kind.” Eddie smiles, tossing the sweatshirt Steve’s way.
Steve holds it up, eyes studying Eddie’s work like it’s a Jackson Pollock. He slips it over his head, grinning like a fool when he immerges, hair a wreck.
-
Steve drinks his coffee with milk but no sugar. He runs in the mornings, rain or shine. He sleeps in four hour increments and then wakes, gets out of bed unless Eddie’s also awake and they can spend their time otherwise occupied.
Steve drags Eddie to the worst tourist traps and crowded museums and Zagat recommended restaurants. He jumps along to the metal bands that play the club downstairs and kisses Eddie stupid in the bathroom while the base is throbbing under the soles of their feet.
Steve takes jobs and comes back (days, weeks, sometimes months later) and crawls into bed at Eddie’s side. Eddie never gives him a key but Steve keeps finding ways in. One night Eddie wakes up to the clamor of Steve dragging himself through a back window, eye swollen almost shut, face bruised and blood flaking around his mouth.
“You should see the other guy.” He says, cradling his ribs while Eddie helps him up. His words slur together, and his smile keeps slipping nonsensically, like his facial muscles can’t hold the position.
“Did anyone follow you?” Eddie asks, glancing out the window before he latches it shut. There’s an empty room over a restaurant across the city they can move to if necessary. He doesn’t want to, but he’s always known it was a possibility. A probability even.
“No way, I’m a ninja.” Steve sounds genuinely offended. Like when Eddie tells him Rob Thomas needs to apologize for the damage he’s done to music as a whole.
“Steve.” Eddie asks, taking Steve’s face carefully between both his hands. “Focus. Did anyone follow you?”
Steve holds himself still, hands reaching up to hold Eddie’s wrists. His face sombers. “I lost them before Dresden. I took the scenic route here.”
“You drove?”
“I took the train.” Steve corrects him, sloppy grin returning. “I took a lot of trains.”
He’s pretty sure Steve’s at least concussed with the way his eyes can’t seem to focus. He helps him to the bedroom, sits him on the edge of the bed to help him undress. Needs to get a better idea of what he’s dealing with. More bruises, mottled and angry looking, on his stomach and sides.
“Sweetheart.” Eddie breathes, working Steve’s dirty jeans off his legs. His knees are bloody, remind Eddie of schoolyard scuffles.
They haven’t worked a job together since Munich. They don’t talk shop when they’re together. An unspoken rule they mutually uphold. Eddie doesn’t even know where Steve’s coming from. Who he was with. “Was Robin with you?” He asks, catching Steve’s shoulder when he starts to list forward.
Steve shakes his head.
“Nancy?”
Steve blinks. “Indiana.” He answers. Eddie doesn’t know what that means.
He could call Freak, a local chemist who moonlights in emergency triage, have him come look Steve over, but Steve shakes his head when Eddie suggests calling someone in.
“I’m okay.” He promises, “Just gotta sleep it off.”
There’s no way he’s alright, but Eddie helps Steve to the bathroom, holds him upright at the sink so he can wash the blood off his face. Steve sighs when Eddie finally gets him horizontal on the mattress, closes his eyes in obvious relief. “Indiana.” He whispers, turning his uninjured cheek into the pillow.
-
Steve moves like an old man the following morning.
“Keith’s chemist was a total joke.” He explains, wincing as he repositions himself into an upright position on the bed. “Pretty sure he sold Keith a bad batch of Somnacin.” Eddie winces too at the idea. Bad trip doesn’t begin to cover the adverse effects of badly made Somnacin.
“Owens had hired help.” Steve says bitterly. “They were waiting for me at my hotel. I was still tripping balls, wasn’t able to shake them immediately.” He motions at his face.
“Steve.” Eddie breathes, sitting at Steve’s side, one hand on his thigh over the blanket.
Steve looks up with his beaten, swollen face. “I meant it though. I made sure I wasn’t being followed before I even started this way. I wouldn’t bring trouble to your door.”
The thing is Eddie believes him. The truth is he believed him last night too, when Steve was obviously off his fucking groud. Not because of the jobs they’ve done together or because of the people who Steve associates with or the reputation that preceded him before Eddie even laid eyes on him.
No, there’s very little rhyme or reason or good sense to the certainty that fills Eddie’s body when Steve tells him they’re safe here. It’s just. That it’s Steve.
This is the kind of thing that gets people killed in their line of work and Eddie couldn’t give less of a shit right now.
“Sorry.” Steve mumbles, looking down at his hands. “I just—I was gonna come back here, y’know. That was the plan. And I just, guess, I just really wanted to stick to the plan.”
Eddie nods, picking at the blanket over Steve’s lap. “This Indiana?” He asks finally, because he’s been thinking it over all night. That single word spoken in that bloody bathroom, repeated by Steve as he finally fell asleep last night.
Steve looks up, looks surprised. But the surprise eases into something warmer, fonder, his hand steady when it covers Eddie. “Yeah.”
Eddie nods again, turns his hand under Steve’s so their fingers can slide together. It’s been a really long time since he’s been a safe space for anyone. It makes him nervous. Terrified even. But also. Not. Because he wants it as much as he wants to run, wants Steve to think of him and see him and know him as badly as he wants to disappear, hide himself in a maze of his own design. He thinks, even if he could run, that Steve might follow after. The thought doesn’t scare as much as it should.
“Okay.” Eddie says and means it.