Archive of Our Own

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Wayne Munson in Los Angeles is not at all like Wayne Munson in Hawkins, Indiana.In fact, he’s no longer Wayne Munson at all.His new friends call him Jim. Short for James Dean Anderson.Jim is a happy-go-lucky guy who quit smoking, but still drinks occasionally. He no longer lives in a trailer, but in a very nice little house he found scouring the foreclosure section of the classifieds. A kind and patient lady in the savings and loan office had helped him fill out the paperwork for a government home loan. Wayne is tan now. As tan as his Midwestern hide will allow.Witness Protection had paid for their move, Wayne’s job training, and helped him find a place with an industrial cleaning company. He can set his own hours, because there’s always a mess to clean somewhere for some reason or other. He makes good money. Much better than he’d ever made in Hawkins.With his first paycheck, Wayne had gone out, gotten a beer and a girlfriend named Rosana. Rosana taught Jim to eat tacos and burritos and hot, hot salsa. She taught him how to swim in her apartment pool before taking him for his first dip in the Pacific.The water was cold. So cold Jim had shouted, hooting and hollering, while Rosana tossed her black hair back over her shoulder, splashing water at him and they both laughed showing all their teeth.Eddie had taken a lot of polaroids to commemorate the occasion.Eddie takes a lot of pictures these days, to replace the ones he lost.But Eddie’s not Eddie anymore.His name is Marc. The federal agent had let him spell it with a C as a sort of olive branch, after Eddie had pitched a fit upon being told his name would not be cleared—he was presumed dead. It would be easiest, better for all concerned, really, if he just slipped quietly into a new life.Eddie had been found half-dead in the Upside Down—not by any of the kids, or Nancy, or Robin, or even Steve, but by federal agents who had swooped in, barricaded the site, collected their data, and left. Eddie in tow.As such, he hadn’t been allowed to take anything with him from his old life. Not his vest, not his albums, not anything the agents had managed to salvage from the trailer—it was all evidence now, coded and cataloged in a warehouse somewhere. Evidence of what exactly, Eddie never got a clear picture. He didn’t need to know the cover-up story, if he wasn’t around to cover it up, his agent explained.But Eddie refused to leave Wayne behind.He agreed to his new name, to being shunted into a new life, but only if he got to take Wayne with him.Wayne…Jim…is happy.Eddie…Marc…should be happy, too.Not that Los Angeles isn’t everything that Eddie dreamed of when he was in Hawkins, wanting to get the hell out of Dodge.LA is all sunshine and pretty people, and it’s as good a city as any to live in. It’s easy enough to get lost in it, and it’s far, far away from Hawkins. They’d arrived in late April, just as soon as Eddie’s wounds had healed enough to boot him out of the Chicago hospital he’d woken up in.In a way, 1986 really had been his year: he’d arrived in LA just in time for summer. He’d gotten his GED, thought about college, his agent suggesting he was free to study whatever he liked—music, poetry, physics.“The world is your oyster,” the agent said, as Eddie shot him a glare. “Aw, c’mon Marc.” Eddie bristled at the name. “It isn’t 100 percent terrible. You could be a professor, an accountant, a mechanic…practically anything,” his voice dropping to nothing as Eddie looked like he was about to cry. Or throw something.But everything Eddie likes right now reminds him of his old life, and his old friends.But he can’t ignore some things, like music and its siren call. LA has a crazy music scene, and Eddie had started going to clubs on the strip, collecting fliers and making notes about which bands he liked, which DJs played which clubs on what days, and which promoters were better than others, just as soon as they landed in LA.Eddie found himself on Melrose, digging through records at Vinyl Fetish and shopping for clothes at places called Let It Rock and Retail Slut. Eddie couldn’t imagine anything being called “slut” or “fetish” and existing, let alone making money, in Hawkins. Eddie had discovered The Cathouse and their DJ shortly after he arrived and decided he’d found a home there. He’d seen Guns N’ Roses play the night before. It turns out, their lead singer is from Indiana. Eddie could tell, somehow. He marvels at how small the world is—even more than 2,000 miles away, even in a city of nearly 3,000,000 people—he can’t escape Indiana. Eddie feels homesick in a way he never in his wildest dreams imagined he would.Eddie chases the feeling away the only way he knows how—he drinks.A little too much maybe.Wayne bails Eddie out of jail early Wednesday morning—Christmas Eve—with a sad and disappointed look on his face, as Eddie collects his things from the clerk behind the counter. He smiles down at the EP he’d bought at the show, grateful he hadn’t lost it.Eddie stretches and looks back at the truck, his face going blank as he sees Rosana, who looks hesitant and a little judgmental, sitting in the passenger seat of Wayne’s 1985 Toyota Pickup. She scoots down to sit in between them, and Eddie presses himself against the door, leaning his head against the cool window glass, making himself as small as he can.It’s a very long, and very silent, ride back to the house.To avoid Wayne’s disappointed face, and Rosana’s very unsubtle hints that “Maybe what Marc needs is to get a job,” Eddie throws himself face-first into his bed to sleep off his hangover. He falls asleep to Wayne’s gentle voice, telling Rosana that his son’s just having a hard time adjusting.“Moving’s hard on anyone,” he can hear Wayne say as he drifts off. “Marc’ll be alright. He just needs a little time.”Eddie falls asleep to the sound of Rosana letting herself be sweet-talked—she likes Wayne. Hell, she even likes Eddie. She just doesn’t know what else to say…Eddie wakes up several hours later to Wayne’s soft knock on his bedroom door. Wayne comes in with a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and fried potatoes and a large glass of iced water.“Here, boy.”Eddie rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He knows Wayne is pissed if he’s calling him “boy.” Eddie’s slept the day away. He takes the plate, and the water, and drinks the entire glass before setting it down on his bedside table.Wayne sits on the end of Eddie’s bed, hands on his knees, drawing a long breath. Eddie knows he has something to say, and wants very much to avoid the lecture, but also can’t help but think he deserves one.He shovels more than a mouthful of food into his mouth and waits.Wayne just sighs and gets up to get Eddie a napkin. As Eddie eats, he can hear the toaster pop. Wayne comes in with two frosted apple Pop Tarts on a paper napkin. Eddie grins up at him, as Wayne hands them over with a little juice glass filled to the brim with milk.“When you’re done, get dressed. I wanna show you something.”Eddie wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay.”It doesn’t take long to finish eating. To drink his milk and inhale the toaster pastries. Eddie’s remarkably clear-headed for someone who had been arrested very recently for public indecency. Pissing on a fire hydrant in front of a cop car had not been his finest hour.Eddie puts on a clean pair of worn out jeans, a clean black t-shirt, slips into his black and white Vans. He’d bought them as a joke when they got to LA, along with a pair of ultrabright neon boardshorts. He runs his hands through his hair, a little shaggier now then when they’d first moved. He’d woken up in the hospital with much shorter hair. Wayne had said something about it getting shaved to repair his cracked skull. Really, Eddie had stopped listening, as he lamented the loss of his curls, but really, he was thinking about the other things he’d lost: his friends, Hellfire, his band.So much has changed, Eddie thinks. Not all of it good.Wayne is standing by the door when Eddie comes out of his room, keys already in hand, and the two of them go out to the parking lot, to the truck.Wayne drives, and Eddie fiddles with the radio because he can’t help it. Wayne stops his hand when he catches the chorus to that one George Harrison song.“It’s gonna take time, a whole lot of precious time,” Wayne sings in his scratchy tenor, still affected by years of cigarette smoke. “It’s gonna take patience and time…to get it right…”He smiles over at Eddie, and Eddie gives a half-smile back, tapping out the beat of the chorus on his thighs. God he misses his guitar.They arrive at their destination and Eddie raises his eyebrows. Wayne’s taken him to a pawn shop. Eddie wonders if Wayne wants his money back for bailing him out? What does he even have to pawn?Eddie frowns and follows Wayne inside. The clerk greets Wayne like they’re friends.“I wasn’t sure you were gonna make it back, man,” he says, as he reaches for something from behind the counter.“I saw this in the window when I was driving Rosana home,” Wayne says. “I wanted you to look it over before I bought it.”The clerk holds out a guitar.It’s a black BC Rich. Not a Warlock. That would’ve been far too much to ask of the universe.“The little horn parts reminded me of your old guitar,” Wayne says, motioning with his hand toward the curved body of the guitar.“Your dad was telling me you lost your guitar in a fire?” the clerk says, as Eddie swallows and nods. He takes the guitar and the weight of it makes Eddie feel like something’s clicking back into place.It’s a Shredzilla—the bottom round where the Warlock had been fashioned into its distinctive pointed shapes. But no mistake—she’s a beauty.Eddie turns her over in his hands, looking her over, inspecting her neck and body for cracks, chips, anything. But she’s whole, well-loved, and perfect. Eddie grins, really smiles, for the first time in months.“You want it?” Wayne asks, eyebrows raised expectantly.“Waaay-it. Really?” Eddie draws out the Wayne into “wait,” while Wayne laughs at him.“Yeah. You need a hobby,” Wayne says, pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket. “And a job—it’s on you to buy the amp or strings, or whatever else it is that you need.”“Probably could use some new strings,” the clerk shrugs, mouth curling up into a sly smile. “Not to mention, she didn’t come with a case or nothing.”Eddie nods, still holding the guitar, his guitar, in his hands. He’ll need a strap. Like immediately. Eddie starts making a list in his head: a strap and strings for sure, an amp, a guitar cable.He’d had a nice amp…but Eddie can’t let himself mourn for shit that he’ll never get back. He’ll never see that amp again.He blinks, as the clerk brings him back to the present moment.“If you want, you can put in an application, we get musicians off the strip all the time, looking to hawk their gear for a quick buck. If you know your stuff, I could definitely use the help,” the guy says. “Plus, I’d give you a hefty discount on anything you wanted that’s unclaimed…”“Merry Christmas, kiddo,” Wayne says. Wayne had leaned hard into old nicknames, since he was still training himself to call Eddie “Marc.”Eddie grins, and despite the arrest, despite knowing he’s gonna have hell to pay, despite feeling like he’s still got a Warlock-shaped hole in the middle of him, it feels like Christmas for the first time since the month began.Eddie fills out the application right there at the counter, doing his best to remember to use his new name, his new birthday, their new address, as Wayne and the guy, Nick, talk. He lists his agent as a reference, and plans on calling him as soon as they get home; which he does, leaving him a message, confessing to the arrest and the job application. Eddie hopes one will cancel the other out.Eddie slept so late, he can't fall asleep at a normal hour. Instead, he practices chords on his new guitar, the neck feeling just right curled into his hand. Eddie plays into the wee hours of the morning, thinking about Metallica, and all of the long, lonely hours he had spent figuring out those chords, that fucking solo…Eddie hopes this guitar will bring him friends, real friends. Like Jeff and Garret. Like Dustin and the rest of the kids. Something like Nancy, Robin and Steve…

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Steve is alone in the house.Steve has spent a lot of time alone in this house. He is currently listening to some of his parents’ records, digging through the old albums probably bought more for their cover art than because he can actually imagine either of his parents listening to any of this stuff.If either of them could tell him one thing about this…Steve flips the album over…Jaco Pastorius person, he would eat his left shoe.In the weeks after Eddie’s death, Steve spent a lot of time listening to his parents’ records. He can’t sleep. And he doesn’t want to impose on Joyce or Hopper or Robin’s parents. He still has this odd sense of duty to his own folks, to protect them by not pointing out they aren’t around. That they are never around…When Steve had finally been released from the hospital, after he’s been palpated and stitched up, and run through an x-ray and an MRI machine, he’d gone straight to the trailer park, thinking about Eddie, about bringing him home. But the trailer had already been cordoned off and he’d been chased away by a sheriff, who looked spooked and slightly intimidated by the federal agents already crawling around.Steve knows should be doing something else. Like thinking about what comes next. Robin, Nancy and Jonathan are all headed off to college when the summer is over. Mike has plans to get his learner’s permit. The kids won’t need Steve to drive him around much longer. They’re all growing up, dating, they won’t want a bum of a babysitter hounding their footsteps, and he doesn’t want to chauffeur anyone while they neck in his backseat.He thinks idly of the Upside Down and of everything it’s taken from them already. He can’t be next. The kids have already lost so much. Steve needs to get out of here before it takes him, too.He can become a safe haven somewhere else.In fact, he has to.His mother had called him earlier in the day, telling Steve the government agents had called, offering Hawkins residents the opportunity to sell their property, on account of the recent natural disasters.“Your father decided to accept. I’ll schedule movers to pack the house when we get an idea of when the sale will go through.” She had paused then, and Steve had bit his lip to keep from letting out any kind of sound. “I transferred a little extra into your account, just in case you wanted to consider moving,” his mother continued.She knew Robin, his best friend, had been accepted to college out of state. They’d talked about it briefly when she’d brought up Steve applying for college again.“Do you think you’ll want to stay in Hawkins, honey? The condo in Chicago is small, but we could make room for you, if you wanted to come.”“I’ll think about it.”“Okay..." She paused and Steve wished she would just...come home. To take care of him, the house, in person. Instead she said, "Take good care of yourself, okay?”“Okay.”She’d hung up soon after, and Steve had called the bank, the teller more than happy to confirm his bank balance—$22,897.03.He wonders how his mother had managed it. Or if she just hadn’t told his father, and made the transfer anyway.She still calls him every week, to give or get an update. They don’t talk long. It feels perfunctory to Steve. He's not sure what his relationship with his parents will look like in the future. Steve thinks this might be it for him, as far as his parents are concerned. He’d realized that if he left this house, he’d have no ties to them anymore, really. He considers it. He considers everything, as he realizes he doesn’t even know how much longer the lights will be on. He thinks he ought to have a plan before the house is condemned or he’s ordered to vacate the premises.Steve knows he doesn’t want to stay here. Not in the house, and not in Hawkins. He walks from room to room, thinking about what he might want to take with him, what he might be able to sell before the movers come. He thinks about where he might go.He has no idea what to do next.For some reason, he doesn’t want to talk to Robin about it, or even Joyce. In a weird way, he misses Eddie. He misses Eddie like he still misses Tommy. He just wanted a male perspective. Another dude to talk to. He loves Robin. Will always love Robin. But he didn’t want her soft, pitying eyes right now. He doesn’t want Nancy’s penchant for coming up with a ten-point plan, complete with backups.He wants Eddie, who probably would’ve laughed at him, teased him until he couldn’t even think of feeling sorry for himself first. And then maybe they could come up with a plan together.Steve sighs.Well. Eddie’s not here.He gets up and gets his keys. He drives to Robin’s anyway.“Hey, dingus!” she says, opening her window and waving at him. “Did we have something planned?”“No, I just…had to get out of there.”Robin nods and says, “Wait right there.” She comes down, yelling to her mom that she’s going out and not to expect her for dinner.She runs to Steve, who catches her in a hug, as Robin’s mom waves at him from the front door.“Go! Go! Go!” Robin urges and Steve gets into the car, as Robin climbs into the passenger’s seat.She looks good. Happy even. “You want to drive to Freddy’s for burgers and custard?” she asks.“Sure.”Robin fiddles with Steve’s radio, trying to find a clear station amidst all the static. It had gotten worse when the portals opened.“Papa, don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep,” Madonna sings, and Steve lets himself drift to the music as he drives.Robin dances in the passenger’s seat, and says, “This song is so wild.”“Yeah?”“Steve. It’s about teenage pregnancy.”Steve blinks and listens to the words. “He says that he's going to marry me, we can raise a little family, maybe we'll be alright…”“Huh,” Steve says eloquently.“We really need to broaden your horizons,” Robin says, smiling.They drive a couple of towns over, since a lot of things in Hawkins were destroyed. It’s good to drive, to remember that things are normal for other people.Boring, even. The teenager behind the counter takes their order with a disaffected “Welcome to Freddy’s, what can we get cooking?”Steve and Robin know exactly how she feels. Steve doesn’t bother turning on the charm. Just orders quickly and lets her get back to chewing her gum and picking at her nail polish.Burgers are always good, even if it’s sort of early for dinner. The good thing is there’s no crowd.Robin’s talking about college again. She’s still pushing him to consider coming to Pennsylvania. She’d been accepted to Bryn Mawr College, an all-women’s school founded by Quakers.“It’s just outside Philadelphia,” she says, like she hasn’t told him all this a few hundred times already. She’s been giving him the hard sell since she got her acceptance letter. “We can find an apartment and you can work and make me dinner and do the laundry while I go to school. It’d be just like Hawkins, but cooler and less life-threatening.”Steve laughs. “As good as that sounds, I don’t think I should borrow your life?”“What are you talking about?”Steve can feel it about to spill over. He just sighs and says, “I need to figure out what I’m doing for myself, you know?”Robin narrows her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”He laughs. There’s no point in trying to hide it. “My parents are selling the house.”“What!?” she says, too loudly for the small restaurant.Steve frowns at her, and says, “My mom called today.”“What? I…how…where are you going to go? You can move in with me for the summer. My mom loves you. You can come with me to Pennsylvania. It’s just outside Philly, you can get a job, there’s plenty of jobs in the city. I’ll give up my dorm room, for real this time, and we can get an apartment. I’ll take out some more loans. You don’t have to make me dinner, just…Steeeeve.”Robin flops her head down onto the table as Steve shakes his head.“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Besides…I just…all my life, all my dreams have been someone else’s, you know? I always thought I’d be an athlete and go to college, and study “business,” or whatever my father does to fill his time. But…”Steve groans and runs his hair through his hands, pulling at it ever so slightly. “Those were my father’s dreams. And I need to figure out what I want for myself. Something that isn’t just…bullshit.”Steve grimaces a little, and Robin reaches over and puts a warm hand on Steve’s forearm. They both know that bullshit is a loaded phrase. “That’s…”“What?” Steve waits, waiting, wanting for her to tease him to hell and back.“Really, like, mature of you?”“Oh shut up.” Steve says, twitching his arm to get Robin’s hand off him.“No, I mean it!” Robin grins at him. “Now buy me a custard.” She quickly covers her mouth with her hands, looking up at him regretful and realizing she’d put her foot right in it. “Shit. Steve! Should I be buying you a custard? Did your parents leave you high and dry? You realize you have to tell me everything now, right?”“I can still buy you a frozen custard,” Steve says. “But no toppings. I’m on a budget now.”Robin laughs and agrees. He tells her she can order whatever she likes. They push into each other’s sides.After they get their cones, they go outside to eat, leaning up against the hood of the car, instead of staying inside in the air conditioning. The heat feels good after the artificial cold.“What are you going to do Steve?” Robin asking the question that has plagued Steve since he graduated.The answer is still the same though.“I don’t know. I don’t even know how long I have in the house. I just know that I don’t want to stay here…”Robin nods. “Makes sense.”“I mean…I’d stay for the kids, but…you’re leaving. Nancy’s leaving. Eddie’s gone. I don’t want to stay by myself,” he tosses his cone wrapper away. “Is that selfish?”“I think it’s time for you to be a little selfish, Steve.”Robin hugs him, nearly getting what’s left of her cone all over his shirt. As it is, she catches his arm with it as he’d twisted out of her hold. She laughs and cleans him up with a napkin, and Steve thinks, if she’s moving away, if he can’t have this every day, he definitely doesn’t want to stay here.Robin must see the overwhelming fondness in his eyes because she tosses the last of her cone into the trash and hugs him tight, pressing up against him, warm and real and alive.If he and Robin had managed to find each other here, Steve is certain he can find new friends in another city.“Movie night?” Robin asks.There’s no more Family Video, but Steve’s pretty sure the cable’s still on. “Yeah, come on. I still have HBO.”Robin gives him too sad a smile, and it’s all Steve can do to keep from screaming.Steve shakes Robin awake and puts her to bed in the guest room.He changes his clothes and brushes his teeth and he thinks about what the future holds.The money makes it easier. To know that if he got in trouble, he has a safety net. He would’ve liked it better if he could call his parents, to talk to them about how to travel, how to live. He really has no idea.He knows he’s not totally useless—he can cook, keep the house clean, clean up after himself. He’d figured out how to do his own laundry a long time ago. He recognizes now that this idea he’d had that he’d get married and have kids and travel—it’s just wish fulfillment. What he’d really been after was stability and the prospect of a family that loved him.But if he didn’t have that in Nancy, then he…still wants it from somewhere.It feels stupid, but Steve goes to his closet and he looks at Eddie’s vest.“Eddie…man…” Steve says, regretting all the time he’d wasted in high school being a dick. Not for the first time. “I don’t know what to do…I can leave. I could go anywhere. I don’t even have to stay in Indiana. I can dream bigger than Indianapolis, you know? Nothing’s keeping me here. Nothing’s pushing me towards anything, either. Not school, not Robin. Not even you now.” Steve pushes a hand through his hair. “The kids have each other. Dustin’s gonna start driving, you know?”Steve feels that weird feeling he gets when he thinks about Eddie. Guilty. Sad. Like he’s missing something.“What would you do?” he asks the vest.He’s overwhelmed by the fact that Eddie just…isn’t going to answer him. He turns on the television in his room for noise and throws himself back onto his pillows. The channel box is already resting on MTV. It’s a commercial. They’re looking for VJs.“Send us an audition tape two minutes or less on VHS or three-quarter inch tape to the address on the screen,” the disembodied voice says. He blinks, taking in the address on the screen. “Send your tape to MTV, 1717 Broadway Street, New York, New York…”Steve sits up, realizes that he could.In fact, he decides he’s going to. He feels like Eddie would’ve done it—he’d wanted to do it. It was one of the stories Henderson had told him.It felt like a lifetime ago. Eddie standing up on a cafeteria table, or something.Steve doesn’t know the first thing about finding an apartment in another city. But he figures he can’t be the first person to do it. To up and leave home. To go somewhere new…Steve closes his eyes and thinks of Eddie looking back at him while he’d hotwired the RV. “Harrington’s got her, doncha, big boy?”“Yeah…” Steve says out loud. To Eddie. To no one. “I’ve got this, no problem.”

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Steve lives in the house all summer—cable, water and electricity up and running. He stays as long as Robin is in town. When her parents packed her up to drive her down to the Bryn Mawr campus, Steve had thought about offering to drive her instead. New York wasn’t that far.But he hadn’t been sure that he would’ve kept on going. He might’ve just given in and stayed, letting Robin talk him into the comfort and familiarity of living in each other’s back pockets.Steve already packed up what little he was taking, but he hadn’t told the kids that he was leaving.He was going to have to tell them now.All the kids are at Joyce and Hopper’s place, which makes it easier.“I knew it,” Dustin says, resigned.Will seems to take it harder than anyone else for some reason.Later, Steve tells Dustin to pay attention to that, and after hugs and one last pizza party, Steve sets off. He has an atlas and several mixed tapes that Robin made him as a going-away present. He gets to Toledo and decides it’s as good a place to stop overnight as any. He’s not in a hurry. He gives himself some time to see some of America. To get used to the idea that he’ll no longer be King Steve or The Hair.No one will refer to him by any of the nicknames again.He can be anyone he wants to be.It’s a heady thought.He stops at an AAA office and gets maps and brochures for each city he stops in. He asks for maps of New York City and every night, he studies the maps, thinking about where he might live, what he might do.He thinks about the future and wonders if he’s crazy. He hasn’t gone to college. He can’t list any of his old bosses on his resume, really. Scoops is long gone. Keith had left Hawkins earlier in the summer.For all his studying of maps, Steve gets to New York and is instantly overwhelmed by the traffic and the bridges and sheer vastness that is the city.He drives in loops for hours. Somehow, traveling east in the backseat of his parent’s BMW on their way to Cape Cod for the summer hadn’t adequately prepared him for being here on his own.He ends up in Long Island and finds a place to stay for the night.He sells his car the next morning and goes straight to Bank of America to open an account with the money he’d gotten.He takes the train into the city, figuring he’d buy a newspaper and find somewhere he can sit down while he figures out a place to stay.Surely, it can’t be that hard to find an apartment?He’s thinking about finding a payphone, so he can call Robin between her classes to lament his utter lack of planning when he sees a girl being punched in the nose by a guy bigger than she is.Bigger than Steve even, but that’s never stopped him before.He yells, “Hey, hey!” getting the man’s attention before cracking him one in the jaw.“Fuck you!” the guy says.“Fuck you first,” Steve yells back, hitting him again, this time in the stomach, knocking the wind out of his lungs.The girl grabs Steve’s hand and runs, screaming and crying, after a block, Steve says, “Slow down…”And she does.Up close, Steve can see she’s not a girl. Not really. But he’s not about to ask her about it on the street.“You okay, miss?” he asks, reaching into his pocket for the napkins left over from his dollar slice. And she smiles widely at him, blood in her teeth, as she introduces herself. “I’m Baby.”“I’m Steve. Here, let me…”Steve tries cleaning her up with his napkin, but her blood is already sticky, and the paper napkins were too thin to begin with.“You’re not afraid to touch me?” Baby asks, looking at Steve like maybe he’s going to hit her, too.“Why would I be afraid?” Steve asks, genuinely confused.“Well you know,” she says, looking down at the bloody napkins. “Sometimes people get upset about the blood.”Steve shrugs. He has no idea what she’s talking about—he’s been around blood plenty in the last few years. It’s never bothered him before…it occurs to him then, like a lightning bolt, what she means. He’s not afraid, not really, but he hands her the wad of napkins and smiles.“Oh,” he says, “Would you rather do it yourself?”“You’re not from around here are you?” Baby asks, taking Steve in, as she tries to clean up as best she can. “You’re too nice. A real New Yorker would’ve kept on walking…”“Well, lucky for you, I’m not a real New Yorker.”“Yeah,” Baby smiles. “Lucky me…”Baby takes Steve by the hand and tells him she’s going to take him to meet her mother. Steve keeps quiet, just listening to Baby chatter, explaining that Mother is the one who’s taken in all of them, that they’re not related, it’s just a nickname.Baby shows him how to get a card for the subway, and they wait on the platform, Steve doing his best to keep people from looking at Baby’s broken nose, her swollen and blackening eye.Steve lets Baby sit in the only available seat and stands over her protectively as she talks to him.They walk a few blocks and get to a brown brick building and walk up several flights of stairs. Baby takes out her keys and walks right through the door, giving a twirl and bats her eyelashes and she plays with the ends of her hair, as she says, “Mother! I found a real Prince Charming. Doesn’t he look just like a prince?”Mother, a tall, thin black man, blinks down at Steve unsmiling, as Steve just watches Baby chatter and preen, looking between the two of them, as Baby tells the story of how Steve had beaten up her latest boyfriend, making it sound more dramatic than it really was.“Can I keep him?” Baby simpers.Mother turns to Baby and says, “He can stay if he can pay rent. But he’s not for keeping. That boy is as straight as an arrow.”Mother walks into the bathroom, to get a warm wet cloth for Baby’s face, as Steve just blinks between the two of them, not quite sure what has just happened to him.Baby shows him to an empty bedroom and shows him the bathroom down the hall.“I do my laundry at the laundromat a block over,” she explains. “I can show you…”“Yeah, that’d be good,” Steve says and he moves in. Just like that. He’s carrying everything he owns—a backpack with a few changes of clothes, a notebook with everyone’s numbers and addresses written down, some photos. Eddie’s vest. It occurs to him he needs sheets. A blanket. A towel. He starts making a list in his head.Baby goes back out to get ice from the fridge for her shiner. Mother comes back in.“I don’t know what your story is, but Baby falls in love hard and fast,” he says, pointing a bony finger into Steve’s shoulder. “If you don’t like her back, be firm about it. She’ll pout a little, but it’ll be alright.”“She’s…”“Not your type?” Mother asks, hand perched on his cocked hip.Steve just shrugs, not really sure what to say.“Well. You didn’t take advantage of her, so that’s a point in your favor, but don’t think I won’t crack your head open if you think you’re going to take advantage of me in any way.”“Oh no, I wouldn’t…”“You’d better not.” He smiles at Steve, chuckling a little. “Everyone who lives here works. I don’t care what or who you do, but you keep it clean in my house. No drugs, no drinking and no overnight guests without prior approval.”Steve nods.“Rent’s $250 for the room, that includes utilities and the phone for local calls. You’ll need to use the payphone, or get you a calling card for long distance.”“Yes…” Steve falters—he doesn’t know if Mother is a ma’am or a sir, or if he prefers to be called something else altogether. “Where can I get a card?”Mother tells him and huffs a laugh at his confused face. “If you can wait an hour, I’ll go with you,” he says. “Is that all you have?”Steve nods and Mother smiles. “Travel light, live alone…” he advises.It’s Steve’s turn to huff a laugh and he thinks about sitting down on the bare mattress, but thinks better of it.He slides down onto the floor, leaning his back up against the bed. He writes down his new address. He makes a little list of things he needs immediately: a phone card, some sheets, a blanket, a pillow. A towel, full-size toiletries. He waits, because he hasn’t gotten his bearings yet. He needs his map. He pulls out the subway map Baby had handed him earlier.He suddenly feels homesick in a way he never thought he would. Not for Hawkins. Not really. But for his friends. For the people who care something about him. He needs to call Robin sooner rather than later.He unpacks his paltry belongings and wonders how long he can live off the money from his car before he needs to get his money transferred from the Hawkins First National Bank. He knows it’s his money. That his parents can’t take it back, or take it away without his signature. It’s easier to know the money’s there if he needs it. But he doesn’t want to touch it. Not yet.Mother takes him out and smirks at him when Steve asks where he can get Paul Mitchell shampoo and conditioner.But they go so Steve can buy everything on his list and then some, hauling it back up the stairs to the apartment. Mother helps him make the bed and leaves Steve to make his phone call.He talks to Robin for five minutes before she has to hang up—her dorm only has the one phone line. He promises her a letter, pulling out his little notebook. He adds paper, envelopes and stamps to the list of things he needs to find tomorrow.That night, Baby comes into Steve’s room and sits on the end of his bed.“Why did you come to New York?” she asks, hands twirling the ends of her hair.Steve laughs and puts his head in his hands for a minute. “I didn’t really have any other place to go. I couldn’t stay where I was.”Baby nods. “I know what that’s like. You grow up fast here cause this city…it’s a beast. But it’s good here, too. I’ll show you some of my favorite things tomorrow.”“That would be great,” Steve says and means it.In the morning, Baby takes him to the New York Public Library, which is maybe the most beautiful place Steve has ever seen. Baby likes it there because she can read without being bothered; and it’s free.“Everything costs money. But this is ours,” she says, hands on her hips. “Everyone paying all that money for college. But I don’t need some old white man to tell me what things mean and why it’s important.”She tosses her hair over her shoulder and Steve smiles wide. He wonders what Robin would say to that. He asks her, sitting down to write Robin a letter, telling her about Baby and lucking into a room the way he had.Baby goes off in search of a book.“Did you know there are boys who are girls?” Steve asks Robin. “Baby is pretty like a girl, but I can tell by her hands, her Adam’s Apple, that she’s not really female? But I guess who she tells me she is, is what matters?”He flips the page and continues, “I’m so confused. But good confused. This place is so big. And it’s so loud here. Louder than I could ever imagine a city being. There were cop sirens at all hours of the night last night and there are so many people. They all walk so fast.Mother says I will make it here, or I will go home with my tail tucked between my legs before the end of the month. She. He? Says I won’t even make it till the winter comes.But…I want to stay. I’m looking for a job. Thinking about school maybe (He underlines the word three times). I would have to retake the SATs, or figure out who would even take me with my abysmal GPA. With all the head injuries, I don’t think I should play anymore sports…Missing you.Love,Steve”Baby looks over his shoulder, runs her finger over the word love. “You got a girlfriend, Steve?”“I’ve got a girl I love,” he says truthfully.“That’s real nice,” Baby says. And Steve can see her smile falter for just a moment, but then it’s back. Bright and just a little too wide. “You ever had a black and white cookie?”Steve shakes his head and follows Baby to a bakery and buys them each a cookie.In the days that follow, Steve trails after Baby like a duckling.She spends an entire day showing Steve what train lines to take, hopping on and off trains when there’s something in some neighborhood she thinks Steve should see, something he should know about. She takes him to museums and points out department stores with “Help Wanted” signs in the windows.Steve buys himself a pack of Bic pens and some tiny notebooks that he carries around in his pockets and fills with notes about the city.There’s always something to do for free, Steve finds.He spends a couple weeks overwhelmed by it all, there’s always something going on. Baby introduces him to her friends, and he meets locals and transplants and even another kid from Indiana, though they’d lived on opposite ends of the state.“I work on Saturday, but we should play basketball in the morning,” James says, high-fiving Steve over Baby’s head.“Yeah, that would be great.” Steve nods and Baby rolls her eyes.“Boys,” she says, as James presses his shoulder into hers.Steve goes back to looking at the classifieds.“Doesn’t matter who you saved, or why,” Mother had said after three weeks of Steve being jobless. “If you’re unemployed, you can’t pay the rent. And if you can’t pay the rent, you’ve got to go.”It’s the push he needs to look up Broadway on his map. To take the train.Steve goes to the MTV Studios, and lucky for him, there’s an open call that day. He doesn’t have a headshot; the casting director frowns at him when he tells her so, but looks him over closely anyway.“What do you know about Dio?” she asks, looking at Eddie’s…his…battle vest.“Uh,” Steve blinks and the casting director frowns again, ready to move on when he says, “Ronnie James Dio, left Black Sabbath to form Dio with former Sabbath drummer Vinny uh…Vinny Appice…”Steve raises his eyebrows, pretty sure he butchers Vinny Appice’s last name, but the casting director smiles at him. “Rainbow in the Dark?” Steve continues, “Holy Diver. Um…tell me what you want to know!”Steve laughs then and ducks his head briefly playing up the “Oh Shucks!” attitude for a moment. The casting director lets out a thoughtful hum, watching him.“Can you read from a prompter?” she asks.“I can do anything if you’ll give me a shot at it,” Steve says, looking earnest.The casting director smiles wider. “Okay. Come on back.”She leads him into a small room, a black curtain up on some polls, almost like a curtain rod. A couple of boxes in front of it. Artfully arranged junk. There’s a film camera and a teleprompter and Steve pulls out his glasses from the inner vest pocket.“You need those all the time?” one of the camera guys asks.“No, not all the time.”“Keep them off,” the casting director says. “Try reading what’s on the prompter without them.”“Hi, I’m Steve Harrington and you’re watching MTV,” Steve says smoothly, not tripping up even though it says (Your Name) and not Steve Harrington on the prompter. “That was Kate Bush’s ‘Running up that Hill,” which makes Steve smile a little wider. “Coming up in a few minutes, the video for The Smiths newest single, “How Soon is Now?” But first, in the news, Sheila E has just released a new single called “Bedtime Story” off her album Romance 1600. Here’s what she told us what we can expect…”“The camera loves him,” the camera guy says, looking down the lens right at Steve, who looks up through his eyelashes and smirks. “Oh yeah. The camera fucking loves him.”The casting director nods. “I thought so.”She looks triumphant and turns to Steve. “Basically, you’re getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, kid. Nights, weekends, on-call during the day if one of the VJs calls in sick. There’s no set schedule, just doing whatever we need, whenever we need you, for 40 hours a week.”“Sounds great,” Steve says. “I’m in.”“I’m Pam, that’s Brian and Brian.” The camera guys wave and Steve salutes back.Pam takes Steve down a long corridor to payroll, pointing out various offices and filming space as they walk. She tells him about wardrobe and hair and makeup and then she says, “You didn’t ask about the pay.”Steve laughs. “Is it more than $3.50 an hour? Because that’s what I made at my last job.”“It’s a little more than that,” Pam says, smiling. “Plus health and dental insurance. Go to the dentist, kid. Take care of those teeth.”“Yeah, for sure. I brush twice a day and floss every night.”“We don’t pay for vision, but there’s an optometrist I can send you to, if you need new glasses, preferably with that anti-glare film they put on these days.”Steve nods.“Keep your nose clean, if you’re arrested or get into any kind of trouble, we will fire you and I have to do this all over again. And I do not want that.”“No, of course not,” Steve says, nodding at her. “I won’t let you down.”He doesn’t mention that trouble usually finds him whether he goes looking or not.“Hey, Debbie?” Pam says. “We’ll do 35, since he’s getting the shit shift.”“You got it, 35 thousand,” Debbie says, scribbling it down on a Post-It.“Maybe the paycheck will keep this one around longer. You can help him with the paperwork?”“Yeah, Pam.”Steve watches as Debbie fills out the contract. He’s going to make $35,000 a year. He doesn’t have to do a lot of mental math to realize that’s way more than he ever earned at the mall. Plus, Debbie tells him, “You’ve got the option for potential product endorsements. Approved by the network, of course.”Steve nods along as she goes over the finer points of the contract with him.He knows it’s chump change, compared to what his father makes.But…his father isn’t young and alive and working for MTV.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Eddie gets a burrito before walking home, VCR under his arm. New, a VCR like this would’ve set him back at least $250. Nick had let him buy this one for $50.Wayne teases him about getting high on his own pawn shop supply, but really, working at the shop is wild. He now owns a really nice Marshall combo amp, a couple of pedals, and he has his eye on a Fender Jaguar that still had a few months to go on its ticket.Eddie never wishes anything bad for these guys, putting up their hopes and dreams for a little cash to get them by, to buy them a little more time. But fuck him if he doesn’t want this guitar. Since Wayne doesn’t make him pay rent, Eddie’s able to save up a good amount and still have money left over for his toys.Wayne encourages him to think about trade school or even college. But Eddie’s not ready to face that reality yet.Living in Hawkins, Eddie never thought he’d have enough money for more than one guitar. He’d sold drugs in a tri-county area for more than a year before he’d had enough for his Warlock. May she rest in peace.Even after the arrest (he’d gotten off paying a fine, since it was Marc Anderson’s first offense; the judge had taken kindly to the fact that he’d gotten a job before his court appearance, had dressed nicely and was by all accounts, doing well), Eddie still goes to a different show every night if he wants to—some clubs definitely better than others. Some clubs definitely raunchier than others, too. Eddie still hasn’t braved any of the gay clubs in Los Angeles. He’d tried once, standing outside, watching people go into Catch One.There had been all kinds of people, all kinds of men, women, and everything in between lined up to go inside. Everyone was beautiful, everyone so happy to see and be seen. Eddie could feel the thump from the speakers, but couldn’t see inside, since the club’s windows were blacked out. But he couldn’t do it…he didn’t think he could stand to feel like the odd man out in one more place.He isn’t totally without sex, though. A warm, wet mouth was still a warm wet mouth. But it makes him feel skeezy, because he knows deep down that women just aren't what he wants.It’s rough, being a closeted queer. The casual homophobia is anxiety-inducing in a different way than Hawkins had been. Sure, he could go to a gay bar, walk into a sex shop and just…buy lube. A fucking dildo if he wanted. But Eddie still overhears someone casually calling someone else a “fucking faggot” almost every day. Sometimes it’s a joke, other times, it isn’t. But Eddie knows he can’t come out, he can’t just be himself here. Not yet. Marc doesn’t have those kinds of friends. Not amongst the guys at the rock clubs he sees all the time. Not his coworker, Nick, who is a totally nice guy and had the best weed hookup.He knows Wayne doesn’t give a shit. Never has.But it’s hard, not having friends who understand. At least in Hawkins, he’d had Robin. Even if she’d never kissed anyone, she understood what it was like to want to kiss someone of the same sex.Eddie had kept his life pretty small after the arrest. He didn’t drink much anymore, no drugs. If he wasn’t at a show, then he’s in his room.It’s not a bad place to be. Wayne let him paint when they’d moved in, and Eddie has as many pillows as he could possibly want. His sheets are new for once, not thrifted, not soft because they’re threadbare. He has a new fluffy comforter, and he’s put in work, collecting new posters and EPs and cassettes from the shows he’s seen. He keeps all his ticket stubs in a shoe box, along with his polaroids. He’s slowly replaced his books. He doesn’t take a camera to shows. But he still likes documenting his time with Wayne, even Rosana, who seems to like him much better now that he’s gainfully employed.The best thing about Eddie’s room is that he now has his own television.It’s a luxury he'd never dreamed of when they'd lived in the trailer. But since Uncle Sam helped with their housing expenses, Wayne splurged on cable, installing it in the living room and paying extra for the connection in Eddie’s room.It's Saturday night, which means Headbangers Ball on MTV. Eddie's almost giddy thinking about it. The intro for the show comes on, but instead of Kevin Seal, it’s Steve Harrington.Steve “The Hair” Harrington.In Eddie’s fucking vest.Welcoming him to the Headbanger’s Ball.Eddie blinks, and for a moment, he is quite certain he’s still in The Upside Down. That this is…not a nightmare. But certainly not reality.He leans closer to the screen as Steve says, “I’m Steve Harrington filling in tonight for Kevin, welcome, one and all, to the Headbanger’s Ball…” Eddie adjusts the volume upward. “A three hour metal assault on your eardrums. In this hour, we have videos from Motorhead, AC DC and KISS. But first, here’s one from Judas Priest.”Steve cracks a smile, bringing his hand up to his face, horns up, tongue out, as Judas Priest’s video for “Turbo Lover” comes on the screen.Eddie can’t believe it. Steve. On MTV. In his fucking vest…Eddie looks around his room. Wayne is out on a date tonight, otherwise Eddie would've already called him into his room, to confirm that this in fact, reality, and not a trick of some kind.Eddie twists the knob, turning the TV off, then on again. The Judas Priest video plays, followed by a RATT video, then an older Motörhead video before cutting to commercial. The entire time, Eddie fumbles with the VCR, figuring out how to connect it and get it recording before the commercial break ends.As Eddie hits record, Steve's back, announcing some competition, delivering the script smoothly, smiling the whole time, looking cool and collected. His hands never look awkward or unsure like some of the other VJs. Steve has his hands on his hips and he looks…good. He looks like he belongs there, on television, for everyone to see.If this is a delusion, Eddie wants it to last forever.He doesn’t bother recording the videos. Just Steve’s intros and outros, already knowing he’s going to watch them over and over again.Eddie never thought he’d see Steve again. And here he is. On his fucking television screen…Eddie laughs to himself, and feels good, really good for the first time in months. Eddie thinks about the address that had flashed on the screen.He wonders if he’d sent Steve a letter…Eddie knows he can’t send Steve a letter. His agent would pitch a fit. But a postcard maybe…Just. An anonymous piece of fan mail. Addressed to Steve Harrington, care of MTV? What could be wrong with that?Eddie thinks about it as he falls asleep. Fucking Steve. On fucking MTV—money for nothing, and his chicks for free.The next morning, Eddie gets up early and goes down to the beach. He buys a postcard meant for tourists. He looks through the rows and rows of cards. Girls in bikinis lying on the beach, girls in bikinis on rollerskates, girls in bikinis holding a surfboard. Eddie laughs to himself and chooses one that just says “California” on the front of it, the letters filled in with a sunset image. No girls in bikinis on this one. He buys it along with a stamp, and fills it out before he can change his mind. “Steve, my man,” one of the Brians says. “You’ve made it.”“Made what?”“Your first piece of fan mail.”“Really?!” Steve reaches out to grab the postcard, which Brian holds up and away from him.“Dear Steve, you’re so dreamy,” Brian singsongs. “Next time I’ll send my panties.”Steve snatches the postcard out of Brian’s hands. “It doesn’t say that.”“No, it doesn’t,” Brian agrees. “No panties for Steve.”“Stop talking about Steve’s panties,” Martha says, walking into the studio. “That’s sexual harassment.”Steve blushes because…that’s Martha Quinn. One of the original five VJs. When they’re both in the studio, Steve likes to watch her from somewhere. Behind the camera, the booth. Not because…he just wants to learn from her is all.In a way, she reminds him of Nancy. Sure of herself, knowledgeable. She’s just so cool. Steve taps his thigh with the postcard, and gives Martha a little salute with it before going up to the booth.He sits down and flips the postcard over in his hand.“Weather is nice. Wish you were here.” Is all it says. The handwriting isn’t bubbly like a girls. Not terribly masculine either. It’s sort of familiar. Or maybe he just thinks it's familiar because it’s addressed to him.The only person Steve knows in California that might write to him is Jonathan. Or Argyle, maybe. But if either one of them had written, they would’ve signed their name, right? Steve traces the handwriting with his fingertip before putting the card into his back pocket.He settles in to watch Martha work, she’s doing an interview today, and Steve really wants to study her technique. She’s so good at it, earnest and natural. He wants to be more than just a pretty face reading off a teleprompter.Steve doesn’t think about the postcard again until he gets home and changes his clothes. It falls out of his pocket. He pushes it up into the corner of his dresser mirror. It stays there along with some photos of him and Robin, him and the kids. He smiles at the post card and gets dressed. Tonight, he’s going to The Factory with James and Baby and all the rest.Steve rarely says no to anything Baby wants to do. He’s down to go anywhere, to do just about anything. He’s gone with Mother to balls, to drag shows. Once, Mother even took him to a jazz show at Sweet Basil’s, where his brother was playing.Baby takes Steve with her dancing; she likes to swan around the clubs and see and be seen. She carts Steve and James and the rest of her friends around with her, like an entourage. Steve goes because he likes dancing. He likes flirting and smiling and sweating through his shirts while he dances. Best of all, he likes being in a crowd. Especially after the perpetually empty house in Hawkins.Steve doesn’t know if it’s because of the company he keeps these days, but he finds he doesn’t mind who is pressed up against him, either. Men, women, men who are women, women who are men. It just doesn’t matter.And maybe because of the company he keeps these days, he gets his first blowjob from a man in the restroom of The Factory one night. He feels loose and a little cum dumb, but he’s not unaware of the fact that they’d rolled a condom onto his dick somehow. He blinks down at it.“Safety first,” the guy says, winking at him as he tucks an unopened condom into Steve’s pocket.Steve’s learned a lot about condoms and sexually transmitted diseases in the last several months. It’s also why Mother screens their dates—he knows through gossip and connections with phlebotomists and nurses, who’s getting tested and for what. Mother is determined to keep her children alive and well, thank you.In fact, he had sat Steve down and given him a little lecture about sexually transmitted infections, complete with the most gruesome photos of gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, and chlamydia just to name a few. Steve had had the fear of God put in him regarding AIDS, needle use and unprotected sex.Mother’s lectures didn’t put him off sex forever, though.In fact, he’s had more and different kinds of sex than he’d ever dreamed existed in Hawkins. It turns out, Indiana’s public school sex education had not been very thorough.He doesn’t talk about it with Robin during the precious few minutes they get on the phone. Instead, he listens about her day, and whatever interesting idea she’s thinking about now. No matter how busy Robin is with her classes, with papers and reading, and all her new friends, she still has time for Steve.“I’ll always have time for you,” she promises every time they schedule their next phone call.“I love you, Stevie,” she says, every time before they hang up.“I love you, too, Robby.”They see each other more often than Steve thought they would, too. He takes the train down to Philly, sneaking into Robin’s dorm room. Or she comes to him for the weekend.Robin comes up for a few days in the summer before heading back to Indiana to see her parents. She invites Steve to come home with her, but Steve’s not ready to go back to Indiana yet.He might never be ready.Instead, Steve takes her to work, where she’s just as starstruck by Martha as he is.Steve punches Robin’s arm and hisses, “I told you so!”And Robin suppresses her giggles, snorting into Steve’s shoulder. “Sorry, I didn’t believe you,” she says, breathless.He and Robin stay up late comparing notes and goggling at each other’s stories, both of them much less prudish about sharing these things now than they had been before. Perhaps because Robin has stories of her own now.“But you’re being safe, Stevie?” she asks, eyes wide and concerned.“Yeah, I promise,” Steve says. “Mother is constantly reminding us that he’ll kill us if we don't use condoms. I’m always safe.”Eventually, before bed, Steve shows her his fat stack of fan mail; he didn’t keep all of it, he’s gotten a lot of letters, art and photos. Even some zines.Robin turns over the latest California postcard—there are five now. None of the post cards are signed. All of them are relatively short.The longest card had been lyrics from an Iron Maiden song a kind librarian had helped him ID:
“I close my eyes and I think of home/Another city goes by in the night/Ain't it funny how it is?/You never miss it til it's gone away”
And Steve wonders who else is out there, missing home now that they’ve left it.Eddie finally makes it inside Catch One late one Thursday night.He goes home, eats dinner, showers, and he decides.Tonight will be the night.He finds his most whole pair of jeans, a black tshirt, before he can change his mind. He pulls his hair back, and skips the rings and the rest of his usual accessories.He’s nervous and his heart nearly leaps out of his throat as someone calls out “Eddie!”He watches a group of friends greet another guy standing in line, another Eddie, he guesses, and he does his best to calm down.“Here by yourself?” the guy behind him in the line asks.Eddie nods.“Me, too. I’m Stephen. With a P-H.”Eddie laughs. “Marc. With a C.”Stephen smiles at him and they make small talk while they wait in line to get in. Eddie pays his cover, and the bouncer checks their IDs. They walk to the bar together. It’s already hazy inside with cigarette smoke and smoke from the machines up near the DJ booth.“Buy you a drink?” Eddie asks.“Sure!” Stephen is giddy, and his good mood is infectious. Eddie buys them a round and can feel himself loosen up after he tosses back his vodka soda.The pop music reminds him of his own Steve, and he finds himself smiling to himself, thinking about Steve, horns up, tongue out, and not the Stephen right in front of him. Eddie pulls himself back into the present, putting his glass on the bar, and leading his new friend onto the dance floor, so Madonna can get them into the groove.Before the night ends, Eddie winds up in a bathroom stall with Stephen, hands down each other’s pants, swapping spit and smiling. It’s not Eddie’s first kiss. But it is the first time Eddie’s kissing another boy. It’s mostly the same, Stephen’s chin is smooth—no stubble. His mouth is soft and warm. But the thing that’s very different, the thing that Eddie will think about later, is how very different his hands look around his cock.They dance together the rest of the night, and Stephen gives him his number.“Call me, yeah?” he says, looking shy in the orange street lights.Eddie ducks down and kisses him in the view of the entire street, and promises he will.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Eddie’s at The Cathouse on a Sunday. He’d gone to get something to eat right after his shift ended at 7 p.m., so he’s early, too early really. But he doesn’t want to go home just to go back out. No one’s really here yet, and the first band is still setting up on the tiny stage.One of the sound guys is helping them out, and points to Eddie.“Hey you.”“Yeah?”“You know anything about these cables?”Eddie shrugs and comes over.“These assholes are making a mess of everything. Can you help me fix it?”“Yeah, no problem.” Eddie starts untangling the wires, frowning at a few of the frayed ends. He’s got electrical tape in his pocket from the shop. They get their fair share of things that have seen much better days. He’s started tinkering with some of the older gear—garbage that Nick had taken as a favor to the guys who’d brought it in.Eddie was free to fix or break things. He’d spent enough time tinkering with his van that electrical work didn’t scare him. He’s got good hands, quick fingers, and after a while, he got the knack of it. He can tell onsight what was broken beyond repair, and what a little elbow grease and rewiring can bring back to life.The sound guy watches him work, nodding approvingly. Soon the stage is set, and the cords are taped down, or bundled cleanly behind the amps and speaker. It looks good.“You know anything about a sound board?” the guy asks.Eddie shakes his head. “No, that’s about my limit there.”“Want to learn?”“Really?”“Yeah. I’ve seen you around enough. You don’t drink a lot, you never start fights and you’ve got a good ear. I’ve seen you dance to just about anything and you wince at the static or feedback over the speakers.”Eddie blushes. He didn’t realize anyone had ever been paying him any kind of attention.“My weeknight guy just quit to go on the road, so if you want to learn, I could teach you.” He sticks out his hand. “I’m Scott, by the way.”“Marc.” It still feels weird. Calling himself something else. But the more he hears it from other people’s mouths, the more real it becomes.“Well, Marc, here we fucking go.” Scott grins as the guitarist on stage begins the soundcheck, letting a loud and slightly sharp chord rip.“Can we turn him down a little?” Eddie asks.Scott laughs and says, “Yeah, kid. That was my plan.”Scott’s a good teacher, and Eddie’s an eager student, excited to be as close as he can get to the music without being able to make it himself. He’d disabused himself of the notion that the government would let him be a recording star, on the cover of some magazine. Rolling Stone. Metal Edge.Tiger Beat.So Eddie learns about sound boards and mixing boards, and Scott introduces him to Joseph, who shows him around the DJ booth, offering to teach him the ins and outs of being a DJ.Eddie agrees. Eddie says yes to everything these guys can show him—he’d woken up the morning after seeing Steve on Headbangers Ball and decided that if Steve could move to New York and become a VJ, then he could definitely make something of himself in LA.Eddie meets people, goes to parties, pushes to find the very fine line where he can be as much of himself as he can be. He takes refuge in his growing hair and the acceptability of guys wearing a little eyeliner, tight pants, torn shirts. It’s all a little queer, really, and Eddie wants to figure out how he can be as much of himself as he can without outing himself. It’s survival. But it’s also just Eddie’s ingrained habit of needing to be perceived, to be provocative, coming back to haunt him.If he can’t do it by jumping on a cafeteria table to give a speech, then he’s going to get people to listen to him, his music, one way or another.Eddie is booked to DJ one night at Ice, so he goes to Kinko’s to make fliers that he can pass out to drum up business. He can feel the theatrics of his D&D dungeon master days coming back to him as he tries to get people’s attention. When he started promoting his DJ gigs, he’d thought of it like sidequests. He thinks of Marc, of his new side hustles, as a character he can play, a story he’s telling—the ability to be someone else, anyone else, and just do whatever—it’s liberating.“Hey ladies, you like dancing?”Two girls walking arm in arm stop and look Eddie up and down, smiling at eachother and giggling. He’s wearing his tightest stonewashed jeans, torn at the knee and high up on his left thigh. His curly hair has grown back out, he’s got on a white t-shirt that he’s cut the sleeves off of, along the sides. Eddie’s not above showing a little skin to get people interested in his fliers. If anyone asks about his scars, he ‘d already made up a story about surfing and a very unfortunate and traumatic shark attack.He runs a hand through his hair, doing his best Steve Harrington impression, smiling what he thinks is a charming smile. “I’ve got a show coming up. You should come. I’d love to see you there.”One of the girls takes the flier and reads it. It promises no cover before 10 p.m., $1 well drinks, and dancing to something other than Madonna’s latest single.“Yeah, okay,” she says. “We’ll be there.”“Bring your friends!” Eddie says, and they giggle again and wave at him in acknowledgement.Eddie smiles back at them for a second or two before pouncing on the next person.He passes out fliers for another hour or so before heading home to take a shower and a nap.When he wakes up, he picks up his nearest guitar. Eddie’s guitar collection has grown to include a really nice Gibson Sunburst acoustic that had put a considerable dent in his savings to buy. He’d bought it new and noodles a lot on it, late at night while Wayne and Rosana sleep down the hall.Between all the new guitars and knowing people who know about sound, he had been considering recording some music. Even if it’s just for himself. A tape that he sells on the sidewalk, or in a local shop, that only a handful of people will ever hear and really love.He daydreams about sending it to Steve, making sure he knows it’s not a demo to share, it’s just for him to listen to.A mixed tape of sorts, just him playing some songs. Singing if he feels brave. Eddie doesn’t think he sounds like himself on recordings. He wonders if Steve would recognize his voice. He’d never heard him sing. He snorts, imagining King Steve at a Corroded Coffin show. Before he knew better, he would’ve put money on Steve not being hard enough, cool enough for The Hideout. But Eddie knows better now.Eddie decides he will record something before he loses his nerve. He stays up late into the night playing softly in his end of the house into his tape recorder. It’s not the professional job he’d daydreamed about, but he mails the tape before he can talk himself out of it.He knows he’s playing with fire.But what harm could it do?Steve is sweating again on the basketball court.James had taken him for a pickup game, and these guys are really good. Steve is having to work for each basket.After the game, as he sweats onto the pavement, James asks him about lunch, because they’re both starving and they make their plans for the rest of the day.As they walk, Steve realizes he feels at home in this city. This is his.He’s happy.Things have changed a lot in the year he’s been in New York, and not just the job and Robin being in school.Steve had called his parent’s answering service when he’d gotten a job and left them a message about his new circumstances—the job, his apartment in a new city. He hadn’t expected to hear from them. But his mother had sent him a huge flower arrangement to the MTV studios the day after his first segment aired on the network. A couple days later, he’d gotten a letter from her, addressed in care of the studio, saying she was so proud of him. She’d included her new landline and fax number, and promised to visit him in the city soon.And she did.She came and spent an entire week with him, taking him to breakfast before work, meeting up for his lunch break, going out to dinner and then doing something, or nothing, every night. Steve hadn’t had this much of her attention since he was young. He felt heady with it.The last night she was in town, she had taken him to Keen’s and ordered them both a big steak dinner. Steve had looked at his mother’s plate in surprise.He’d always been vaguely aware of her eating these tiny portions, sticking to salads, dressing on the side, at lunch; never ordering dessert.But tonight she ate: a ribeye, a baked potato, broccolini in a rich buttery sauce. “Your father and I are getting a divorce,” she had announced.She looked so relieved that Steve couldn’t help but smile and laugh. Not at her. But with his own relief. They had smiled at each other and things between them got so much better from there.Tonight, Robin flies in to stay a few days before Steve takes her back to school. They’d gotten through Robin’s freshman year, and Steve’s adventures in New York together.Steve is sure that Robin is his life partner, through thick and thin, richer or poorer, better or worse. He meets her at the airport, Robin grinning at him as she runs to him from the arrivals gate. He picks her up and spins her around, like a movie. People laugh around them. He goes with Robin to get her luggage, and they take a cab back to the apartment.Robin settles in on Steve’s bed, shoes and socks off, leaning up against the headboard.They talk for a few minutes about Robin’s flight, her summer in Indiana—Dustin calls him regularly, and sends him photos. So far, all is well in Hawkins, no portals to hell opening underneath them.Steve hopes to whoever might be listening that it stays that way.For some reason, Robin brings up Eddie. How she’d driven by the trailer park early one morning—the park had been declared uninhabitable. All the trailers had been removed, and everyone relocated across town.“It’s just a field of wildflowers now,” she says.Steve nods, and sighs.“Do you ever think…” he starts, and Robin tucks her toes under his thigh.“Do I ever think what?”“I just wonder…” Steve leans back, catching himself on his elbows instead of flopping back onto the bed. “I just think about Eddie a lot.”“I miss him, too,” Robin says, looking earnest and sad.“Miss isn’t really the right word,” Steve says. “I wonder about him, what he would’ve been, who he could’ve been. You know?”Robin nods.“Mother talks about it a lot. All the friends he’s losing, what they did and who they were, and how the world isn’t the same because they’re not here.” Steve blows out a breath. “And I know it’s not exactly the same. But. In a way we also lost Eddie to something unexpected and preventable and it’s not fair. None of it is fair. That I’m here and he’s not. He should’ve been here. Not me. He should be on TV and he should’ve had these great friends, and he should’ve…”“Steve,” Robin stops him, squeezes his hand in hers and reaches over to wipe the tears that Steve had blinked down his face. Steve holds her hand to his face a minute, and just lets himself soak in her warmth.“I just wonder…” Steve laughs to stop himself. He feels so raw.She hums, her voice soft. “What do you wonder?”“I know it’s stupid,” Steve says. “I know we weren’t really friends. But it felt like we could’ve been. It felt like…he was someone who could’ve been really important to me.”Robin nods.She wasn’t an idiot. She watched them fall into their weird little romance, fueled by jealousy and Eddie’s need to deflect his own discomfort by being brash and more than a little flirtatious. Especially if he thought it would make Steve uncomfortable.But the joke was on Eddie…Steve rolled with the punches better than anyone she knew. In an instant, Robin suddenly wonders, too, what might have happened if Steve and Eddie had had time. But she doesn’t think it would do Steve much good to think about it for much longer.“Eddie was really great,” she says instead.“He was…” Steve gives her a watery smile. “I think he would’ve loved this city.”“Is he why you came here?”“Sort of…” Steve shrugs. “I just thought about how Eddie wanted out. And I knew I couldn’t stay, since my parents sold the house. I was zoned out, watching television and there was this ad on MTV looking for VJs.”Robin laughs. “You came to New York and got a job as a VJ because you saw a commercial? Steeeeeve!”It’s improbable, but not any more so than fighting monsters in a small town in Indiana. She laughs with her whole body, throwing her torso into his lap. Steve puts his hands on her, warm and alive, and they look so fondly at each other, Steve is pretty sure it would give someone a sugar rush to see them.“Shut up,” Steve says.“You shut up,” Robin answers, shifting to put her head down in his lap. “You know…some nights I thought I would never make it out of Hawkins. I thought I would die before I got the chance to really be myself.” Steve just nods, even though he knows she’s not looking at him. “I wish Eddie had gotten the chance to really be himself.”Steve rearranges them on the bed, big spoon to Robin’s little spoon.They’ve lived through so much. Too much sometimes, Steve thinks. It’s easy to forget that they’re far more world-wary than they should be for their ages.They don’t go out, even though they could’ve gone anywhere—a club, an art opening, a drag show. Instead, Steve goes and picks up some dinner and the two of them eat and curl up together, chatting and dreaming and wondering.The next morning, they’re back to normal. The city awaits. Robin wants to go to The Cloisters, since she’s never been. Steve buys her a bagel and they go before he has to go into the studio to film.There’s a packet of fan mail waiting for Steve when he arrives. Brian hands it to him without a word. Steve gets a lot of mail these days. Most of it harmless. The packages make him think twice. He has actually gotten panties.But today it’s a tape. No return address. Steve recognizes the handwriting on the outside of the envelope.There is a postcard tucked into the package. “This is NOT a demo. This is just for you. An aid in your continuing musical education,” the note says. He looks down at the tape and pops it into his Walkman. As it begins to play, he reads the cassette insert. All the songs written down. It’s all acoustic covers.The singer has a good voice, mellow and a little rough.He listens to it over and over. It’s his new favorite thing. He wishes he knew who this was.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Guns N Roses is playing at the Ritz—an MTV special that’s also being broadcast on the radio. Steve is in the crowd, not required to work.He hadn’t been able to talk Baby into coming. She’d wrinkled her nose in distaste when he’d asked, like he’d put his dirty gym socks under her nose. James had flat-out refused, saying that was not his scene at all, but promised to shoot some hoops, if Steve wasn’t too hungover the next day. Steve promised not to drink too much, and then set out by himself more than a little excited for the show.The interview with the band back in October had been a little bit of a disaster. It had been their first appearance on Headbanger’s Ball. A show that they had not given to Steve after Adam left. If they had, maybe it wouldn’t have gone so horribly. Instead, these days, they saved him for the Top 10 of the Day, episodes of 120 Minutes, which if he was honest with himself, was much more musically aligned with his predilections, and to read off music news updates while wearing his glasses, smiling for the camera.But he isn’t wearing his glasses tonight. He’s got on a pair of ripped jeans, a black shirt ripped at the neck. His hair is growing out a little bit, longer than it had been in Hawkins, but not as long as the guys on the stage.He’d briefly thought about getting one of those “haystack haircuts” a lot of the hair bands rocked, but he’d decided against it. Metal isn’t really who he is, but he has a soft spot in his heart for it. He’d also left Eddie’s vest at home. He doesn’t wear it much at all anymore. Not because he was ashamed of it or anything, but because it’s special. A relic almost, of Hawkins, of saving the world, of Eddie.The band is in fine form, and their energy is contagious; the crowd is into it. It’s not hard to have a good time. Steve yells and jams with the best of them, even letting a girl up onto his shoulders for half a song until security makes them stop.Steve is taking in the crowd during the slower Dylan cover, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”—he knows it’s a Dylan cover now. Maybe it’s because of Slash’s curly hair, his guitar playing, all their tattoos. Maybe it’s the line about “a cold black cloud coming down,” but Steve’s thinking of Eddie in the moment, thinking about The Upside Down. It wasn’t until after Steve moved and began his musical education in earnest that he realized how hard a song “Master of Puppets” was to play. How good Eddie’s ear had to have been to teach himself to play that solo in mere weeks after the album’s release. Or how lonely, maybe…Steve takes a deep breath, taking in another guitarist’s solo, swaying along as Axl Rose undulates on stage. As Axl is calling for audience participation, Steve starts to push himself toward the bar when he sees a familiar face in the audience.“Holy shit,” Steve yells, his voice lost to the screaming crowd.But Eddie sees him and blanches white, eyes wide like he’s seen a ghost.“Steve,” he mouths, barely a whisper, and suddenly, before Eddie can even consider hiding, Steve’s got a vice grip around Eddie’s wrist, pulling him out to the back of the crowd, not letting go, even when someone moves, trying to cut in between them."It's okay, man," Eddie says, waving off one of his friends. "We know each other from Indiana."His friend nods and Steve feels desperate. Crazy with the fact that Eddie's here. Alive. In this dark bar, watching this band play that didn't exist when they knew each other.“Holy shit. Holy shit,” Steve says. "Eddie."Eddie looks up, flinching at the old name. He feels stunned and Steve just looks at him, stares at him. Eddie feels x-rayed with the intensity of Steve’s eyes.“Am I dreaming?” Steve asks, blinking, squeezing Eddie’s wrists in his hands.Eddie looks down at the floor and then back up at Steve. He laughs, considering the implications of seeing and being seen by Steve. He’s overwhelmed by the idea of what Steve’s continued grip on his wrists means.“I’m not who you think I am,” Eddie says finally, shaking his head.Steve looks back at him, incredulous, hurt. “Eddie.”“It’s Marc, actually.”Steve just blinks up at him, so confused. Behind them, the song ends, and the band goes into “You’re Crazy” and Steve feels like he might be.“Are you fucking with me right now?” Steve asks.Eddie shakes his head, leans into Steve's space and says, “Eddie died in the Upside Down.”Eddie can hear Steve’s sharp intake of breath and his grip tightens again as Steve pulls him toward the back hall, toward the restrooms and the coat check, away from the crowd and the loud music.Steve bodies Eddie through the nearest door, which turns out to be an empty supply closet next to the restroom. Steve snaps the overhead light on with the long piece of string hanging down. Eddie processes the fact that Steve still hasn’t let go of him, has kept a hand on him the whole time.“Tell me,” Steve says, as he crowds into Eddie, who isn’t expecting it and falls against the wall. Steve holds him there, a weird inverse of the way they'd met that night in Rick's boathouse. Except this time, Steve is the one holding the metaphorical knife this time, pressed up tight against him, searching Eddie's face for answers.“Tell me what happened?” Steve asks. His voice is soft and it’s heartbreaking.Eddie sighs and looks up, shaking his hair back away from his face, and rests his head back against the wall. It’s not lost on him that Steve had followed, leaning up against him. Eddie's got his arms around Steve’s waist, he’s holding on just as tight. “The Feds, man. I woke up in a hospital in Chicago and they said I couldn’t come home.”“They told us you were dead. That they’d ‘recovered your body’ from the Upside Down.”“I know, I’m so sorry.” Eddie’s grip tightens on the back of Steve’s arms for a moment.“Then Wayne left town, and you…” Steve’s breath is warm in his hair, as he inhales and exhales. “We didn’t even know where they buried you. I guess they didn’t.”“No, just uprooted me. I took Wayne with me.” Eddie gives Steve a half-smile.Steve is so overwhelmed with every emotion he feels like he’s vibrating. He puts his forehead down on Eddie’s shoulder again, just breathing him in, still as near as he can get.“We should never have left you down there.” Steve breathes. “I tried to go back. I tried…”Eddie thinks he’s imagining it when he feels Steve’s lips hit the juncture of his neck and jaw. He turns then, completely surprised when Steve kisses him gently on the cheek.Eddie can’t hardly believe it. He laughs, surprised, thinking wildly about there being a joke in here somewhere, about closeted kissing, but he can’t think of it, not now. Not when Steve asks him so sweetly, “This okay?”Eddie wants to cry. “Yeah,” he says, the air punched out of his lungs as he feels Steve put a hand in his hair, kissing his other cheek, his eyelids.Steve pulls away and Eddie opens his eyes, deflating as reality crashes down on him like a Pacific Ocean wave.“We can’t…Steve, I can’t,” Eddie says.“Oh, I didn’t…if you’re uncomfortable, I mean-I just-” Steve starts to pull away, and Eddie laughs hysterically, pulling him back, keeping their bodies in contact. “You’re here. You’re alive.”“No, it’s just…Steve, I can’t,” he whispers. “I’m not…I’m not Eddie anymore. My name is Marc now. I live an entire continent away. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.” Eddie sighs, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t leave. “I came with a crew from California. We came to see the band. I know these guys from LA. I thought…this was so stupid. Of course you’re here. Of course you are.”“I just…I feel nuts. This is nuts. You’re alive.” Steve kisses Eddie's forehead, and it registers that Steve’s still kissing him so tenderly, Eddie aches with it.“This is too fucking much,” Eddie breathes.“I can stop,” Steve says, decidedly not stopping.“Steve, we can’t,” Eddie said, holding Steve’s shoulders. “We’re in a fucking…we’re in a closet. We have to go.”“Sure. Can’t have people wondering what two dudes could get up to in a closet.” Steve snorts.“Steve, that is… the last thing on my mind. You don’t think I want to get my hands on you? My mouth?”“So, let’s get out of here,” Steve offers, as Eddie marvels. This is a dream. It has to be…“Let’s get out of here,” Steve is saying and Eddie puts his head down, resting his forehead on Steve’s shoulder as he takes a deep breath to keep from crying.“I thought you were dead,” Steve says. There are tears in his eyes. “Look, if you can’t stay, if we can’t be friends or keep in contact, then…” Steve looks determined. “Then give me tonight, Eddie. Please.”Eddie nods. The show isn’t quite over yet, but Steve doesn’t give Eddie a chance to change his mind. He takes Eddie’s hand, entwining their fingers together and leads him out of the club and down the street. He can’t take him home, so he takes him to the nearest hotel, paying for their room wordlessly while Eddie stands behind him.Steve gets their key and they walk to the elevator.“When do you leave?” Steve asks, doing his best to sound casual.“Um, tomorrow.”“So soon.”“Yeah…”The elevator door pings open, and they don’t talk on the ride up. They don’t talk as they walk down the hall and into the room Steve’s rented. Once inside, they just get undressed. Eddie’s never felt so vulnerable as he does now, naked with King Steve staring back at him. Steve looks good. Still golden, still muscled and just something so fine, Eddie can hardly stand it.Steve doesn’t have to ask about his scars. He knows what and where they’re from. They’re just part of so much scenery that doesn’t even factor into their awareness.Eddie doesn’t know what color the walls are, can’t even name the hotel. But he does know he’ll always remember what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Steve’s hungriest look.Steve closes the distance between them and it’s tender. It’s oh so, very tender the way Steve touches Eddie’s face, tucking Eddie’s hair behind his ear as he kisses his way down the column of his neck, before finally kissing his mouth.They kiss, tasting of the night's cheap booze, smelling of sweat and the faint leather of Eddie's jacket. Eddie’s overwhelmed as Steve’s hands slide down and around his body. Just exploratory touches, like they have all the time in the world.Eddie is stiff under Steve’s hands for just a moment before he lets out a breath and gives in. They don’t speak, they just swallow back whatever questions they have—Eddie wondering where the hell Steve learned to do this, insanely and irrationally jealous of whoever got to teach him. Steve, just doing his best to keep his emotions in check, to stay in the moment.Because if this is all they’ll have, Steve wants it to be good.It doesn't take long before the heat of Eddie's blood is blooming in his cheeks, down his throat and into his belly. He's throbbing with it as Steve tightens his grip on Eddie's cock, heady with the sight of Eddie's eyes closing, a whine in his throat, slumping slightly into Steve.Steve pushes Eddie back, finally falling into bed. Eddie goes easily, arms snaking around, wrapping tight around Steve's neck, their bodies tight together."I only have the one condom in my wallet," Steve says."What?" Eddie blinks up at him."I didn't…I only have the one condom, if you know…if you wanted…” Steve flicked his eyebrows up at him suggestively. “Do you have another?""Jesus Christ…" Eddie laughs, because he'd be a liar not to admit he's thought about this: about how many times they could get each other off in a night. He kisses Steve, soft and slow before biting his bottom lip. Steve whines then and Eddie grins with it, as Steve pushes against him, the thick line of his cock everything and more as promised by those damn 501s back in the day."This okay for now?" Steve asks, his hips stuttering a little as Eddie touches him, moving to suck a bruise onto Eddie's skin, high on his neck, easily hidden by his hair."Yeah," Eddie says, marveling at Steve’s thoughtfulness. Touching the lithe line of Steve's spine, the swell of his ass. It's easier now, for Eddie to touch, to believe. Eddie grounds himself in the soft fuzz of Steve's body hair, his thighs as hairy as his chest. Eddie gasps with the overwhelm of the sensation: Steve's mouth on his, the soft noises he's making, their cocks leaking between them.They find an easy rhythm, and soon Steve says "Fuck, Eddie, fuuuhhck" drawing it out as he comes. It pushes Eddie over the edge, head thrown back on the pillow, holding his breath before letting it out to say, "Holy shit."Steve chuckles softly, curling into Eddie's side, leaning over and up to kiss his neck. Eddie drags his fingers along his stomach, touching the cooling spend on his body.Steve pushes up, dragging his tongue along Eddie's neck before kissing him, biting at his bottom lip before getting up to get a washcloth.Steve cleans Eddie up, and this time, he's not surprised by Steve’s thoughtfulness—the cloth is warm, not too wet. He brought a hand towel to dry them off with.Steve comes back to bed, making himself comfortable between Eddie's thighs, pressing a lazy kiss to Eddie's inner thigh on each side before looking up at him."Mother makes us get tested regularly, so I'm clean if you wanted to…"Eddie reaches down, putting a hand in Steve’s hair. Steve leans into the touch like a cat."Come up here," Eddie says, patting his chest. He still needs a minute, still recovering from the mindflaying image of Steve Harrington between his thighs.Steve gracefully lifts up and over, caging Eddie briefly with his arms. The swell and flex of Steve's body isn't lost on him."Your mother?" Eddie asks, as Steve gets comfortable.Steve laughs. "No, not my mother. Mother is the man I rent a room from. He's a nurse."Eddie blinks, as Steve tells him about his roommates. "I met Baby my first day here. Mother named Baby cause she was 16 when her family kicked her out. James lives with us now, too. He's a dancer. Also from Indiana! He taught himself tap watching his sisters practice. He's nice, you'd like him."Eddie puts a finger to Steve's mouth. Steve kisses him reflexively."As much as I want to ask you 20 Questions…" Eddie says.Steve snorts."Just…you're OK?" Steve asks. "You're happy?""I've missed you all so much," Eddie confesses under Steve's literal weight, as he climbs back on top of him."God, Eddie…" Steve says. "You have no idea."Steve kisses him again, some more, like he likes him. Like this means something, and Eddie blushes hot, thinking about all of the times he'd fantasized about this very thing."I am, too," Eddie says, still blushing, like a virgin. Which, by some definitions, he is…. "Clean, I mean. We don't have to do anything crazy, I just…whatever time we have, let's not waste it.""We won't," Steve answers.They rest a while, just holding each other in the cool dark of the hotel room, warm underneath the sheets. Steve radiates heat, and Eddie almost falls asleep with it, running his fingers along Steve's scalp.It doesn’t take long before Eddie starts feeling antsy, though. Because if they’re not…you know…then what is he doing here? He can't stay. He can't risk Steve's newfound success reigniting rumors of Satanism and murder on the off chance someone recognizes him.Eddie's stomach churns with anxiety, which Steve seems to sense."Whatever you're thinking-" Steve says."I don't want to think." Eddie sounds frustrated and a little upset."You don't have to. Would this help?"Steve fits himself between Eddie’s thighs again, kissing his hip, the slightest curve of his belly. Steve reflects that Eddie is still too thin maybe, and he mouths at his stomach, his thighs a little before finally taking the head of Eddie’s cock into his mouth.Eddie’s hand goes straight to Steve’s hair then, pulling just slightly, earning him a moan. Eddie closes his eyes and doesn’t look down. Not yet, afraid that seeing Steve’s mouth, stretched out around his cock will make him come faster than their rutting together had.Eddie does look down when he feels Steve wrap his hand around the base of his cock, working in time with his mouth.Eddie touches Steve’s eyelashes softly. “This is better than any fantasy I’ve ever had about you.”Steve smirks and looks up then, eyes bright and mischievous, and Eddie knows Steve is going to ask about that later. It doesn’t take long before he feels the sparking up his spine. His thighs tense and he does his best to keep his hips still. They lock eyes for a moment and Steve takes him a little deeper as Eddie shakes apart underneath him. Eddie yanks at Steve’s hair again, just rough enough and frantically pulls him up to lick into his mouth, tasting himself there.“Perfect,” Eddie says. “Fucking…perfect.”They kiss and they touch and neither one of them rests for long. Everything feels good, perfect, like they’re infinitely better acquainted with each other’s bodies than they really are. Because Steve is a quick study, and Eddie’s not going to waste his chance by being shy about these things now.Even with their two condoms between them, they don’t risk penetrative sex. It makes no difference to Steve, who’s happy using his hands, his mouth. Eddie laments it for a minute or two, but makes the best of Steve’s fingers instead.It’s their fourth time in as many hours, and it’s beginning to hurt, regardless of the little bottles of lotion they’d tried using for a little bit of slick. But then Steve does this thing, sort of massaging Eddie on the outside, hitting somewhere on the inside that’s got his eyes crossing.“Fuck, fuck, fuck Steve,” Eddie laughs. “I want to come so bad. I don’t think I can come again.”Steve stops and Eddie glares at him. “Oh, I’m gonna try, asshole, come on.”Steve laughs and keeps going, and Eddie does come, his dick making this sad little spurt.“Jesus fucking Christ, Steve.”Steve wipes his hands and plants a kiss on Eddie’s belly before flopping over onto the pillows.“Good?”“Stupid good,” Eddie says. There’s no reason to hide. He’d already told Steve how much he’d liked him in high school, watching him in gym class in his short shorts.Steve’s eyes had lit up with it, as Eddie had tried behind his hair.“No come on,” Steve said. “I liked you, too. I like you so much, Eddie.”They’re both so tired, they decide to risk a little shut eye. Steve reaches out, running a thumb over Eddie’s knuckles and doesn’t let Eddie go, holding onto his hand as they fall asleep.Because it’s just so easy to forget there’s only a finite amount of time left.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When Steve wakes up, just in time for check out, he’s alone.Eddie is gone. No note. No phone number. Steve knew, but reality sucks.Steve feels…hollow. He does something he’s never done before. He calls in sick, sounding so miserable Debbie doesn’t even question it.“You call me if you need me to bring you some soup or anything, yeah?” she says.“Thanks, Deb.”“You got it, baby. Take care of yourself today.”“I will,” he croaks.Steve hangs up and knows there’s just one place he can be right now. One place that one won’t drive him absolutely out of his mind. He runs home to change clothes, to get a heavier coat. He’d left his at the Ritz. He’d have to go back for it, maybe. But not now. He’s freezing, completely numb, when he gets to the apartment, sneaking in, though he’s pretty sure Mother’s on shift. No one’s home and he washes off with a washcloth at the sink, pointedly avoiding the mirror. He gets dressed in clean clothes and grabs another coat—a really nice warm lined thing his mother had bought him that was just so painfully preppy, so very King Steve that he’d never worn it before.Without thinking too hard about it, he grabs his Walkman, too. It still has Eddie’s tape inside.He knows it’s Eddie’s tape now, even if he didn’t confirm it.He runs back out and goes to the station to buy a ticket for the train to Robin, barely keeping it together as he waits.Steve calls a cab and shows up on Robin’s doorstep unannounced. She’s just leaving for her next class. But she takes one look at Steve’s red-rimmed eyes and the heartbroken look on his face and she skips.She’s in off-campus housing now, sharing a house with three other girls, so it’s easier than ever to smuggle Steve inside. Robin hustles Steve past her roommates drinking coffee at the cramped kitchen table and into her room.Steve sits down on her bed, and without preamble, just as she gets the door shut, he says, “I saw Eddie.”“You what?!” Robin says it louder than she means.She reaches out and steadies herself on Steve’s shoulders. She looks like she’s about to pass out, or have a panic attack. “What do you mean you saw him?”Steve can tell her mind is running through worst-case scenarios. He puts his hands on her arms to ground her, completing their circuit.“I was at a show last night. A taping for MTV, but not working,” he says. They flop back onto her bed. “He was in the crowd. His name is Marc now. He didn’t really tell me more than that…”“And then?”“And then…I slept with him.” Steve’s voice breaks, and Robin blinks her eyes.“You…okay. Okay.” She rearranges herself, so that she can look Steve in the eye, toeing off her shoes, as Steve does the same, pulling his legs up onto her bed. “Okay. Tell me everything.”“I was at the Guns N Roses show. It was fun, you know. They’re a really good band, people were into it, drinking, fun.”Robin nods, hands fluttering nervously, unable to settle. Robin rubs a hand against Steve’s side, leaving it there. “And I was thinking about Eddie, like. How much he would’ve liked it. And I turned around and he was there.”Robin nods frantically, willing Steve to get on with it.“And I pulled him out of the crowd and to the back of the bar, and couldn’t believe it. He looked good, you know? Happy. Hot,” Steve admits, thinking back to Eddie’s torn up jeans, leather jacket. The eyeliner. Steve smiles a little, thinking about how Eddie hadn’t really dressed for the weather. He wonders if Eddie’s forgotten what the cold is like, out there in California. “He said he wasn’t who I thought he was. And I was so confused, like. I knew it was him. I knew it. And he said, ‘Eddie died in the Upside Down.’”Robin gasps, putting a hand to her mouth before reaching out to snake her arm underneath him, around him as Steve shivers.“He told me the Feds found him and took him to a hospital in Chicago. And he has a new life now, I guess, a continent away. California, he said he knew the band.”“Like of them, or knew them personally?”Steve shrugs. “I’m not sure.”“So then?”“So then…he said he couldn’t stay, but I asked him to give me the night.”Robin nods. She understands. If Nancy had died… if she had come back like that… who knows what would’ve come out of her mouth. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done, seeing Eddie again. Not offered her body, obviously, but something. Something just as grand to Eddie who had died.To Marc who is living.“You’re okay?” she asks.Steve nods, but even as he does, his eyes well up again. Robin scoots in close, closer, until they are curled together into each other, their legs tangled together. Usually, Steve is the one who holds her, but today, she will be the big spoon. She will be the one who holds him together in her hands.Steve’s breath shudders. And he cries.Robin cries, too, because fuck! None of this was easy, or fair. She says so, into Steve's hair as she holds him."The worst part is," Steve says, voice so small, Robin can barely hear him, "we can't tell anyone else."They wake up a couple hours later, hungry and dehydrated.“Do you have to go back today?” Robin asks, getting up to get them a glass of water.Steve just shrugs and drinks the water in one go. “I dunno. I guess I better. Back to normal, right?”“Sure,” Robin says, looking at him carefully. “Back to normal…”Robin orders cheap Chinese for delivery and they spend the rest of the day together, just bullshitting, planning their next visit. She's got a paper due, but she's going to New York for the weekend, just because Steve needs her.Before Steve’s train leaves, Robin buys him a Coke and a packet of peanut M&Ms. “I love you,” Robin says at the station, willing Steve to know in his bones that he is loved. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”“I love you too,” Steve says, looking so forlorn, Robin wants to buy a ticket. Fuck school and the paper that’s due… “I love you so much. I’m okay. Thanks for today.”“You call me when you get home.” Robin tries to sound stern.“I will.”“Don’t forget.”“I won’t.”“I love you,” she says again, wrapping him up in a boa constrictor style squeeze.“I love you.”Eddie comes home from New York looking completely wrecked.Wayne knows this isn’t a hangover. This isn’t coming down off a bad high.Wayne knows something happened the second Eddie comes out of the airport doors and throws his overstuffed backpack into the bed of the truck.“You okay?” he asks.“Absolutely not,” Eddie answers. It’s all he says during their ride back before holing himself up in his room for the night. But Eddie gets up to go to work the next day, and Wayne lets himself believe that whatever happened in New York will stay there, and won’t follow Eddie home.Eddie doesn’t talk about it.He can’t bring himself to wax poetic about seeing Steve to Wayne. He can’t tell anyone about Steve’s hands—or dear God, his mouth—and what it had meant to him to fall asleep beside someone he’d just had sex with; someone who, he knew deep down, would stay.So Eddie tries to swallow it down, to drown it in the Pacific.He still catches himself thinking about Steve’s thumb on the dent of his bottom lip, or his hands in his hair, or… Steve gets one more postcard from California. More song lyrics: “There'll come the runnin', he'll know he's got to, don't ask him not to or why.”The librarian says, “Your mystery friend has some taste.”She hadn’t even needed to consult any books to know who these lyrics belonged to. She leads Steve to the collection of albums they keep under lock and key. She hands him a Laura Nyro album, telling him that she was a singer-songwriter that was popular in the 60s and 70s who had written hits for Blood, Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night, The 5th Dimension.Steve vaguely remembers these names from his parents’ record collection. For the first time, he wonders what happened to all those albums. If they’d ended up in some Hawkins thrift store. He’ll have to ask his mom the next time she calls.The librarian unlocks a listening room, which is equipped with a record player that looks like it would survive a bomb blast, a cassette player and some headphones, and tells him to find her when he’s done.Steve puts the record on, counting the grooves in the record to put the needle down on the right track.Steve laughs to keep himself from punching something as the song starts and the woman’s voice tells him at the start: “He’s a runner, and he’ll run away…”Steve listens to the whole song, feeling a fresh melancholy sink into his bones. It wasn’t fair to lose Eddie twice.Steve pulls the postcard out from his pocket. It’s postmarked from Los Angeles. He taps it against his thigh. He’s got a year and some change left on his contract. He wonders if he can get a transfer or something to LA, or if he will just have to wait.He doesn’t want to wait.He wants Eddie.Eddie throws himself into promoting his shows at various clubs in any club in town that would schedule him. Gay bars, metal bars, pop music, retro disco nights, whatever. Eddie doesn’t care.His reputation grows and as long as he keeps busy, he feels okay.Everything is the same, but it feels empty.He toys with the idea of moving to another city, taking refuge in any of the other cities named for saints. But Steve is across the country, and Eddie isn’t listed in the phone book, even if Steve had somehow found out about his fake last name.But really. Eddie should’ve known better.Steve does come.He takes a week’s vacation that summer and trolls LA’s clubs and record stores, walking down Melrose with Robin, who had tagged along, unwilling to let Steve go alone, needing to see Eddie for herself.They end up at The Cathouse. Eddie isn’t there, but Steve gets the nerve to ask The Cathouse DJ about him.“How do you know Marc?” Joseph looks a little wary.“Oh, um. I ran into him at the GNR show in New York, he said if I was ever in town, I should come by, but you know…” Steve looks sheepish and just a little embarrassed. “I was pretty drunk but I know I thought he told me he was DJing here.”Joseph laughs. “Right on. Well, Steve Harrington, he’s spinning at Exposure tonight.”Steve laughs, blushing a little at being recognized. “Thanks, man. Appreciate it.”He and Robin leave for the next club. Steve pays their cover, and Robin stops short in the doorway when she sees Eddie behind the DJ booth. Steve runs into her back, and he can feel her, nearly hyperventilating. Steve takes her into the women’s bathroom so she can calm down.“I didn’t…I knew you said that he was, but…”She is crying real tears. Snot. The works.A woman knocks on the stall door. “You okay in there?”“Yeah, I’m…sorry. I’m okay.” Robin wipes her nose with her hands and Steve hands her toilet paper. “Just…just a bad trip.”The woman hums. “Been there.”She walks out, leaving Robin and Steve to their stall. Robin wipes at her eyes with the backs of her hands, as Steve holds her. She isn’t sure she can keep herself cool, like really wrap her brain around the fact that Eddie is out there, living a life.They eventually make back out and stand where Eddie is sure to see them, but he doesn’t give it away, if he sees them or not. They bide their time, not willing to cause a scene in the club, or make trouble for Eddie in any way. Steve and Robin dance, numbing themselves with liquor. Steve gets recognized, he knows, because he can hear the chattering around him, but no one approaches him to bother him. A couple girls ask him to dance and he indulges them. More for something to do than not.Steve tries, he tries so fucking hard to dance, to pretend like he’s having a good time. To anyone else, he’s pulled it off. But Robin can tell he wants to get out of here, to get on with it.But they both know that they can’t. They can’t leave, and they can’t let Eddie out of their sight now that they’ve finally found him.The club is finally closing and Steve and Robin find Eddie in the alley, loading up his car with his milk crates of records.He stands up, doing his best to look casual.“What are you doing here?” he asks flatly.It sounds mean. Rude.Robin holds her hand out instinctively, silently asking for a truce. Eddie doesn’t move as she gets closer. She grabs him and hugs him, pinning him against the car. Eddie hugs her for a moment. Holds her so tight. Steve is still a few feet away, giving them some space.“Eddie,” she breathes.“None of that,” Eddie says, looking at her fondly. “It’s Marc.”“Marc.”“Yeah, like Marc Bolan.”“T Rex,” Robin says, nodding.Eddie smiles at her, still hanging on. God he missed this. Missed her. Misses Steve. But he lets her go, though, reminding himself that this isn’t his to keep.Robin stays near, though, motioning for Steve to come closer. He looks a little skittish.“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks. It’s not unkind this time, but it does sound firm. Steve flinches and shrugs, and Robin encircles Eddie in her arms again, hanging on.“You doing ok?” she asks. “You’re okay? Happy?”Eddie shrugs. “I’m okay. Got a new guitar.”Robin’s laugh turns into a small sob, Eddie holds her tight for a little while. Steve leans up against the car near them, but not touching. He looks so good in the dark of the alley. It’s all Eddie can do to keep from reaching out for him, too. From roping him in, from holding him.But he can’t.This isn’t real, he reminds himself. This is a dream.They talk for a while, catching up in the alley. To anyone it would sound like running into an old friend, someone you haven’t seen in far too long. It’s not awkward. It’s easy. It’s so easy, and Eddie can feel himself slipping back into their comfortable orbit.Fuck, it’s going to hurt when they leave.“I can’t believe you live here,” Robin says. “This is, like, the dream. Pretty people, sunshine, all this fashion and music! There are actual stars here, Eddie. Like movie stars and music stars, and I swear to God we saw Madonna in a club last night.”Eddie laughs and tells her about the record stores they should check out, the weird little shops that he thinks Robin would like, a little more removed from the tourist traps.He tells them about how he’s DJing now, and sometimes he busks on the Walk of Fame, playing Elvis for visiting Southerners, shaking his hips for tips.Robin laughs and things are good. Fun. But it starts to fray when she asks to get something to eat, so they can keep catching up.Steve tries to stop her, to keep Eddie from becoming an asshole, so that isn’t the last memory she’ll have of him before they leave for the East Coast.“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Rob,” Eddie says, hands firm on her shoulders, finally making space between the two of them. “This has been nice. But this can’t be real.”“Why?” she asks, voicing the question that Steve won’t let himself ask. “Who gives a shit? No one knows us, not really. If Steve makes a DJ friend out in LA, who will think anything of that? I promise I can keep a secret.”Eddie puts his hand over his eyes, wishing they’d disappear. That this was a hallucination, and that he could just wake up, alone in his room.“Who am I to you, anyway?” Eddie asks, voice suddenly hard, looking at Steve like he had in the boathouse, untrusting and deadly serious. “Why are you both here?”“Marc…” Robin says, careful to use his new name. “Don’t…”“No, Robin,” Eddie says. “It’s been nice, or whatever, but now you have to leave. Now you have to go back to whatever lives you’ve made for yourselves and leave me to mine.”“Marc, please…” Robin says, her voice breaking.Steve can’t bear it. It was easy, when he could pretend that Eddie would see him and let him kiss him hello. Let him write, call. It was so easy when Steve could pretend that Eddie had missed him as much as he had—enough to buy a ticket, enough to look.But Eddie won’t give them the chance. And Steve would've begged, got down on his knees in the piss-smelling alley: to keep in contact, to stay in touch…but he can’t stand that Robin’s doing it and Eddie’s saying no.It’s King Steve who wraps his arm around Robin’s shoulders, pulling her toward him. Away.“We don’t mean shit to you, got it,” Steve says coldly, closed off. “Have a nice life.”Robin is rooted to the spot. Steve lets her go and turns on his heel to walk away. Robin steps back toward Eddie, looking fierce and ready to kill. She pushes him hard against the car. Harder than Eddie expected.“Fuck you,” Robin spits. “He loves you. We love you. Jackass.”Eddie stands in the alley, arms curled around himself in a hug.“Robin…” he pleads, wishing she would just understand how impossible it is, but she’s already jogging down the alley to catch up with Steve, who is merging into the last of the club crowds, disappearing.“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Eddie kicks one of his milk crates and instantly regrets it. Mostly because it’s fucking heavy and he’s pretty sure he’s broken his toe. He tosses his crates into the back seat, not bothering to cover them up before locking the car and hobbling down the street.It doesn’t matter. Steve and Robin have already disappeared.He calls out anyway. Hoping they’ll hear him. Hoping they’ll come back.After half an hour of looking, Eddie gives up and heads back to the car.“Goddamnit!” Eddie pounds his fist into the dashboard, into the passenger seat.Why couldn’t they have just left him well enough alone?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Steve graduates from New York University in the spring of 1993.He’d worked his three years at MTV, signing on for another 3-year stint. VJs had come and gone, including Martha Quinn who’d left and come back to the network. Steve still has a terrible crush on her.He’d applied to NYU, leveraging his experience at the network to earn a bachelors and masters in Radio, Television and Film in a shortened amount of time. When he wasn’t at the studio, he was in class.His father hadn’t come to his graduation, even though Steve had sent him an invitation. Probably too busy with his new wife. His new kid…But his mother is there, with her new beau, a man Steve likes a lot. Everyone comes to the ceremony, his mother renting out the Lambs Room at Keens so everyone can go to dinner after.The kids came, Hopper and Joyce had flown in. Nancy, Jonathan and even Argyle. Robin had come in especially from Washington, D.C. She’d gotten a job at the State Department, even though she’d been leery of working for the government. But she’d been recruited and elected to do her civic duty. Plus, she figured having an in with the government could only be helpful if shit ever hit the fan again.They all hoped shit never hit the fan.Mother and Baby are there, James, too, even though Steve had long left their apartment behind. He'd still kept up with them, refusing to leave any one of his found family members behind. The Brians are there. Even Debbie and Pam, who teases him about having to hire someone after all.“It’s not going to be the same without you,” she says. “But I am so, so proud.”(Martha Quinn doesn’t come to Steve’s graduation festivities. But she does give him a pen as a graduation present. Steve had thanked her and quoted John Cusack in “Say Anything” “I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen.”Martha’s real present was laughing at Steve’s joke and squeezing his arm, before saying, "Good luck out there, Steve.")Steve’s favorite pictures of the day are of him barefoot, pants rolled up, walking through the fountain in Washington Square Park in his cap and gown. His classmates are blowing bubbles, he can see his mom and the kids in the background, a happy blur among the crowd.Steve packs—he has a lot more than a backpack this time. His mother helps him and arranges for cross-country movers.Steve leaves his New York life behind, which included a very nice woman he could’ve had a very particular future with: married, traveling, kids. But her life was in New York, and Steve had taken a job in LA.It’s an amicable split. Steve feels fine when he arrives in Los Angeles and doesn’t look back.He’s landed a job on a new network, producing original content for a new movie channel. He was hired primarily to do in-depth interviews with movie directors, producers, cinematographers, even actors, famous and infamous. He produces his own segments, and he has an assistant, a fact that Robin ruthlessly teases him about.Steve's good at his job, good at making people feel comfortable. His interviews might never be as good as Martha Quinn’s, but his ratings are really good, and he's got some ideas for the bright and wide open future.LA is good to him. He likes the perpetual sunshine, all the pretty people. It's an entirely new experience. His mother comes and helps him find and furnish a little bungalow. The traffic is rough and Steve knows he has to buy a car again. He's been perusing the classifieds for a used, burgundy 733i BMW…But until he makes a decision, there are cabs and he's not above taking the bus.Today, Marianne brings him his coffee—a Grande skim iced latte, two pumps simple syrup—and hands him his research.“Who’s on the docket?” Steve asks.Marianne sighs. Usually, their weeks are meticulously planned. But there had been a lot of rescheduling and shuffling around when their studio flooded thanks to a plumbing problem with their sprinkler system, then a movie shoot ran long and two actors canceled, and a director that Steve had really been looking forward to speaking with had unexpectedly passed away.“A film composer named-” Marianne flips through her revised calendar before digging at the pile of file folders she was carrying under her arm. “Marc Anderson?”Marianne hands him a file folder of research and Steve accidentally fumbles his coffee.“Sunova-” he starts, as Marianne runs off for paper towels.While she’s gone, Steve flips open the dossier of research that she’d given him, confirming his suspicions.Steve sighs.“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world…he walks into mine,” Steve quotes, knowing that Robin was shivering somewhere, overwhelmingly pleased in the knowledge that all of her movie-loving had made a dent in Steve’s psyche. He half expects the phone to ring, with her gloating on the other end of the line.Marc Anderson, the Artist Formerly Known as Eddie Munson, has scored a film.Steve laughs, looking down at the headshot Marianne had included in the file. Eddie…Marc…looks good, better than Steve has ever seen him. He looks healthy and tan, like the west coast sunshine had finally gotten the better of him. His hair is short on the sides, longer on the top. Still curly.Steve flinches, thinking about the last time they’d seen each other. After they’d gotten back to the hotel, after he and Robin had cried, grieving again, this fresh new loss that had felt so very final, he’d woken up the next morning and put Eddie into a box which he had taped shut and packed away into the compartments of his mind best left unexplored.Well, the damn box is open now.Steve sits, coffee forgotten, as he reads the provided bio, which only mentions an uncle—Steve assumes it’s Wayne and writes a little note in the margin to ask about him, if he was one of his influences. He starts digging into the research his assistant has provided. There are recordings—video cassettes of film clips with Marc’s music overtop to watch; a cassette tape, too. A four-song demo inspired by some set design done for a movie. Steve isn’t sure how Marianne got it. It wasn’t released commercially.He’ll have to remember this when it comes time to give her a raise.This had been Marc’s first film score. Steve’s seen the movie—everyone’s seen the movie, which is currently breaking box office records. There’s already Oscar buzz for the cast and crew, Marc’s name listed as a potential nominee for Best Original Music for a Film.Steve reads and has Marianne go out to find the movies on video so he can watch them again before the interview. It’s an excuse. He doesn’t trust himself to be around anyone yet. Not quite sure what his face will do as he delves into Eddie’s immediate past and present.This entire life that he didn’t want Steve to be a part of.Steve wonders why he had agreed to the interview. He taps his pen against the small pile of articles.Later that afternoon, he dials Robin’s work number, knowing she’s probably in a meeting. The phone rings and Steve thinks he should hang up. He knows Robin still bears a grudge. She’s still always so careful never to mention him, not even in situations when his name comes up naturally. Well. Now he would have new information to pass along, new things to discuss and sift through.She doesn’t answer, and Steve thinks it’s just as well.He goes home, and goes through the motions: research, dinner, messages to return.He thinks about talking it over with Robin, but decides they’ll talk about it after. He can’t talk about it with her yet. Not while there’s nothing to talk about.He doesn’t need her to rile him up. Not when he knows he needs to get some sleep if he’s going to be professional and put together in the morning. He falls asleep listening to the cassette, listening to this song, just Eddie and his guitar.The next morning, Steve gets his own coffee, even though he knows Marianne will bring him one. It feels like a two-coffee kind of day.Steve gets carefully dressed, clothes casual, but still put together. A white turtleneck under a Fair Isle sweater his mother had brought him back from her honeymoon, black trousers, black socks, black brogue boots he’d had handmade.He takes a deep breath and does his best to detach from any expectation. From any desire.Steve smiles as Eddie, Marc, enters the studio.“Hi, I’m Steve Harrington,” Steve says, like he’s done with every person who’s entered this studio. Steve reaches out to shake hands. Firm, brief, welcoming.“Marc Anderson,” the man says, looking a little sheepish, but a little challenging, too.Steve smiles, charming and disarming, like he’d done since he was 15 and starts the spiel, the same one he makes every time.Because everything about this is so very normal.“We’ll just talk through some things. Very easy. There shouldn’t be any surprises—we’ll talk about the film score, your life and career. Any time you’re uncomfortable, or want to change the subject, please feel free. This isn’t hard-hitting journalism. This is just supposed to be a good time. We can edit anything in post.”Steve laughs. It’s good natured, easy.Marc smiles at him. "I've got to confess: I'm a little starstruck. I saw you once on Headbanger’s Ball. You're like…a formative part of my being.""You saw that?" Steve sticks his tongue out a little and throws up his horns for just a second before laughing a little self-deprecating laugh. "I was only on the one time.""Well, you made an impression."Steve blushes and they sit down in front of the cameras.The interview goes well. Things are easy, and Steve is pretty sure he’s not imagining it—but there’s chemistry here. An easy repartee between them that translates into a really good conversation, which will make for really good TV.They talk about Marc’s influences, how he ended up in music, the new film."This was completely unexpected. I've been in and around music since I was a kid, but never thought I'd be composing. Which is such a wild word. It makes me think of symphonies. But no, this was just me noodling around on my guitar, tapping out melodies on a keyboard."They talk about Marc’s being back in LA after a stint in Seattle, which led to one of his songs being included on another movie soundtrack, off the cassette Marianne had found.“You know the story?” Marc asks, looking utterly charmed.“I’ve got a really great research department,” Steve says.“Obviously,” Marc says. “So, a friend of mine was doing some set design, creating lettering and just a general vibe.” Marc leans in toward Steve again, like he’s telling him a secret. “Before everything was so corporate, you used to be able to sell your demos, your tapes, in local shops, independent record shops. Make a little money, get some local exposure for your band.”Steve nods. “Sure.”“And my friend created this tape, a xeroxed photo of one of the actors on the front, track listing on the back, with four of the greatest song titles I ever heard,” Marc smiles, looking so fond with remembrance.Marc still talks with his hands, borrowing Eddie’s gestures. Steve feels his facial expressions veering far too soft. He covers his mouth for a brief moment, and then leans forward, hands on his knees, looking up at Marc through his lashes.“Oh uh…” Marc pauses, losing the thread of his story for a moment, as Steve looks up at him. “So I um…"Marc swallows and huffs a laugh. "Jesus…” He collects himself and continues. “I went home that night and wrote four songs, sort of as a joke, for the director, and we made just a handful of copies for us, you know? I recorded the whole thing on an eight-track reel in my bedroom closet, no bigger than this little area we’re sitting in now. I recorded all four of those songs in a night.”“Really.” Steve thinks about Marianne’s raise again. “Tell me about the song that made it onto the soundtrack. It’s a beautiful song.”Marc smiles. “I’ve always liked that they used that particular song for the soundtrack. That it reached a wider audience than I could’ve ever dreamed. I wrote it with someone in mind. Someone I owed this gigantic apology to, but was never going to get the chance to say what needed to be said. For both our sakes, you know?”Steve frowns, but manages to look thoughtful. “Sure.”“So it gave me a chance to express my own disappointment in myself, while also, just sort of indulging in this feeling that I’d been left behind. Even if I’d done it to myself.”“That’s a lot of effort for a song you thought no one might hear?” Steve asks, humming.Marc smiles. “I’m pretty sure it found its audience. That’s all that matters.”They smile at each other for a beat too long, before Steve composes himself and does his best to guide the interview back on track.After the interview, Marianne walks into Steve’s dressing room with her eyebrows raised.“That was exceptionally flirty,” she comments.“What? No way,” Steve says, wiping off his makeup with a warm cloth.“Well, maybe not on your part, but definitely on his.”“No way,” Steve says again.And Marianne raises her eyebrows again, looking at Steve in the mirror. “Oh, yes way. He wanted me to give you his number. He said if you’re free for dinner, he’d love to continue the conversation.”“Well, that’s…” Steve puts down the cloth.Marianne shrugs. “You should go. You’re still new in town. Make friends.”“Why not?” Steve asks, taking the number from between her fingers.Steve wakes to the phone ringing, knowing from the ungodly hour that it’s Robin, returning his call.“Hello?” Steve asks, his voice rough.“Steven Marie Harrington…what have you been doing?” she asks. “Get rid of them and call me back!”Steve laughs, briefly reflecting on how enmeshed they are, if Robin could tell he'd slept with someone based on one word over the phone.Steve laughs. “Not this time.”“Oh?”"So I had this interview yesterday…""Oh! How utterly unprofessional of you. Please, continue.""I think you might remember him…""Steve, are you shitting me right now?""Never once have I shit you, Robin.""Oh, hey is that Robin?"Eddie had woken up."Steve." Robin suddenly sounds so deadly serious."Oh, shit." Steve says as Eddie blinks up at him."Put him on the phone right now, Steve."Steve winces, covering the phone with his hand. “You should go now, if you’re going to avoid Robin’s wrath.”Eddie shakes his head. “It’s not undeserved. I’m not running, or pushing you away this time.”Steve gives him a gooey look before handing Eddie the phone.Eddie rolls to sitting. “Hello?”"You listen to me Edwina Munson, or whatever it is you’re calling yourself these days. I've got friends who have access to Navy fighter jets, certain CIA task forces, and you bet I’ve got an in with the FBI. I know where you live.”Eddie makes an affirmative sound, acknowledging the severity of her threat.“I’m not kidding,” Robin says low into the phone. “If you hurt him again, I swear to God, you will wish you’d died in the Upside Down.”Eddie breaks into goosebumps, and he can feel the hair rising on his neck. He laughs out of nervousness and fear. “I won’t. I promise.”“Put Steve back on the line.”“Uh, Robin, for you…” Eddie hands over the phone, pale and very much wide awake. He ducks under the comforter, as if to hide.“Okay, babe,” Robin says, tone light and airy. “You’re calling me later with every single detail. I love you.”“I love you too.”Steve hangs up and laughs as he makes his way under the comforter, pulling Eddie toward him.“You okay?” Steve asks.“Yeah…when did she get so scary?” Eddie asks.Steve shakes his head and flicks his eyebrows up for a second. “She’s…very protective of me.”Eddie looks serious for a moment, as he touches Steve’s face. “She said, ‘if I hurt you again…”Steve makes a sound low in his throat.“I know I did,” Eddie whispers, wrapping his arms around Steve, pulling him down to lie on his chest. “I know I did. But I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep you. Your life was lightyears away, and I kept thinking…I couldn’t…I couldn’t keep you.”“I know,” Steve says. “I’d be lying if I told you I had a plan back then. But we’re here now.”Eddie runs a hand down the broad and familiar expanse of Steve’s back. “We’re here now.”Dinner had been easy.Eddie had answered the phone on the first ring, like he'd been waiting specifically for Steve's call. Eddie wasn't about to make Steve play phone tag games, or make him leave messages on Wayne’s machine.Eddie was staying with Wayne until he could find a place, only just recently back from Seattle. Seattle had been fun, but it wasn’t his. Not like LA was.He and Steve made plans to go to dinner, eschewing LA's fancy fine dining establishments for family-owned Tex-Mex. They'd closed down the restaurant, and then a bar, just talking, catching up. They had so much to talk about, filling each other in on the last several years of their lives.It was easy. So much easier than either one of them would've guessed.Eddie Munson would’ve called Steve “Big Boy,” and gotten up into his space. But Marc Anderson keeps his distance, maybe ventures a touch on the back of Steve’s hand, stares and smiles a little too long. Steve found he didn’t mind the change, maybe even liked it better, because he knew it was sincere.In the wee hours, standing outside the bar where Eddie had once DJ'ed, he offered to split a cab, but Steve had just shaken his head."Who are we kidding here?" Steve asked."Yeah?" Eddie asked, looking unsure but so hopeful."Yeah, come on. Come home with me."“Steve,” Eddie said, looking more serious than he had all night. “I have to tell you something first.”Steve wrinkled his nose and braced himself for the inevitable blow…“If I go home with you, I might never leave.”Steve laughed then, loud and bright.“Steve,” Eddie said, stepping up into his space, taking Steve’s hand in his. “I fell in love with you that week in Indiana. I’ve been in love with you since that night in New York.”Steve took a deep breath in, feeling his emotions well up behind his eyes. “Eddie…”“The whole world’s gonna watch Marc Anderson fall in love with you on national television.”“My ratings aren’t that good,” Steve jokes.Eddie rubs his thumb along Steve’s knuckles. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, and you don’t have to decide right now…You don’t even have to take me home tonight. But my bruised and battered heart is yours, has always been yours, if you want it.”Steve took a deep breath. “Let’s talk about it in the morning.”“Yeah?”“Yeah.”Steve took Eddie home and Eddie was fully prepared to sleep on the couch, the floor. Steve had rolled his eyes and taken him into his bedroom, tossing him an old CBGB shirt.“For your modesty.” Steve smirked.Eddie put the shirt on, stepping out of his pants, stripping down to his boxers. Steve, ever the excellent host, had a spare toothbrush.They’d gotten in bed and had fallen asleep before they'd gotten very far at all. This time, Eddie held onto Steve’s hand as they fell asleep."You're staying this time," Steve says, starting a fact.“If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you,” Eddie sings softly into Steve’s ear. “If mountains crumble to the sea, there would still be you and me.”Steve smiles, recognizing the lyrics to one of the songs that Eddie had sent him in that tape he’d made, singing just for Steve. Led Zepplin’s “Thank You” which instantly takes on more meaning than it ever had before. Steve still has it, the tape. He’d hand-carried it during every move. Still listened to it, on occasion.Steve thinks it’s one more thing he’ll tell him, as they continue to stitch their lives back together. To heal from the rift of time and of the distance.“What’s different now?” Steve asks, has to ask.Eddie sighs. “I tried. I did, to live an ordinary life and fall in ordinary love. And maybe if the danger had been ever present—the mob wanted me dead, say. Maybe I could’ve tried harder. But I’d already lived through extraordinary danger, and fell in extraordinary love.” Eddie reaches his hand up and runs it through Steve’s hair, holding him so close. “As far as I can tell, we’re not in danger anymore. And I’m living this life that they gave me, being who they let me be. And I’m falling in love with you anyway.”Steve takes a deep breath. “Wait here.”Eddie sits up. “Where are you going?”Steve comes back with two tapes—the one Eddie made him years ago, and the one Marianne had found. He hands them to Eddie.“You still have this?” Eddie holds up the one he sent. “How did you get this?” Eddie holds up the one Marianne found. He laughs. “Fuck, I wish I had my guitar.”“Why?”“Cause I want to sing for you.” Eddie says.“Yeah?”“I want to sing for you every day, for the rest of my life.”Steve smiles and rolls his eyes. “Okay.”“Okay.”They smile at each other, and Eddie tosses the tapes onto the nightstand, opening his arms for Steve to slot into. Eddie holds him, Steve runs his hands through Eddie’s hair.There’s still so much to say. So much to figure out.If either of them are thinking about the future—what, or even how, they’re going to explain this to The Party, their families, Eddie’s agent—they don’t discuss it. That’s a problem to tackle after coffee, after breakfast, after spending the morning reacquainting themselves with each other’s mouths, making up for lost time, followed by the soft easy joy of unhurried morning sex.They have all the time in the world.