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dreamsteddie · 2 months ago

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See Me Through Rose Tinted Glasses

It's finally happening! The final part! A fic that was supposed to take two weeks and be 2,000 words long turned into a two and a half month 8,000 plus word project. @devondespresso thank you so much for bearing with me as I wrote this, I hope you enjoy it!

divider from @thecutestgrotto

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Ao3

“Hey babe, sorry I’m late. We couldn’t decide what ice cream to get. We ended up just getting both. God knows between you and Dustin it’ll be gone by the week anyway.” He doesn’t look up as he’s coming through the door, too focused on juggling his five bags of groceries and toeing off his shoes at the door.

When no response comes, he stops. Eddie is never quiet, nor is Dustin.

“Eddie? Dustin?” He calls out, his mom coming through the door behind him.

“Oh honey, don’t be so anxious. They’re probably upstairs going over those books Dusty loves again. You know how they get absorbed in those things.” Steve does know. It’s one of the things he both loves and loathes about the little family unit they’ve got going on, not that Steve would ever refer to them as such in front of Eddie. It would be too much, just like he always is.

He’s getting ready to take his mom’s word for it, drop off the groceries and let himself ignore the strange feeling tickling up the back of his neck, when he sees the absolute mess of their kitchen table. Newspapers and glossy picture printouts that he knows he’s going to find charged to his own card because his brother is a little shit.

“Jesus fuck Steve, you didn’t tell me Eddie did track! I couldn’t even get close to him before he was gone.” Dustin says as he comes in from the back door, clearly a little winded. Steve doesn’t even tell him to watch his language because…well because what the fuck.

“Dustin, dude, what the hell is all of this?” He asks, completely ignoring his brother as he goes on. He picks up a particularly unflattering close-up of Eddie, only to be met with a sight he truly did not want to associate with his sibling. “Is this a fucking Playgirl? What the fuck Dustin?” The mention of illicit materials is enough to summon their mom in record time.

“Dustin Michael Henderson, your brother better not have said what I think he said,” she chimes in from the doorway.

“Mom, mom, no! It’s not like that, I swear, it’s research!” Dustin bellows way too loud for the small space of their dining room.

“Honey, it’s perfectly natural to be curious about women, but I would appreciate it if you kept your research in your room and off the dining room table.”

Steve tunes them out, too used to the ebbs and flows of their family dynamic to be concerned, not with the Beautiful Minds, 1920s detective shit taking up space in his third favorite room in the house. It takes him longer than it probably should to realise what he’s looking at, and almost no time after he does to get a sinking suspicion of what Dustin has been sneaking around about for the past few weeks while giving his boyfriend the cold shoulder.

Normally, he wouldn’t interrupt Dustin getting a lecture from their mom, it’s always so well deserved, but he needs answers. He reaches a hand back without looking, using what he likes to call his ‘brother sense’ to give Dustin a good couple of smacks in the shoulder to get his attention. Mom usually has something to say about bones and medical conditions when he gets the slightest but rough, but she’s a little preoccupied at the moment.

“Seriously Dustin, what the hell his going on here? What did you do?” Dustin sputters indignantly from behind him, as if he isn’t clearly guilty of something.

“I didn’t do anything Steve.” He says crossing around into his brother’s line of sight, crossing his arms in a clear mockery of Steve’s ‘this is serious’ pose. The kid really needs to get his attitude in check.

“I was just performing my brotherly duties of making sure Eddie knows to be careful! This was just research to make sure he knows that I know how to bury him, if need be. Me and the girls, of course,” he continues. “The guy’s got a wild life, I’ll tell you that.”

As he wraps up his defence, Dustin picks up a newspaper to wave around like evidence, and that’s when the final pieces slot into place.

Local Teen, Eddie Munson, Arrested in Connection to Murder of Chrissy Cunningham.

The picture makes his heart clench painfully. Black and white and yellowed with age but still so clear. It’s Eddie, fresh out of high school. Hair shorter, ears sticking out sweetly, dirt on his face, eyes past full of deep fear. His Eddie.

“Dustin where did you get that?” He asks, severe in a way he never is. It’s enough even to stop Dustin in his tracks. “Dustin!” He snaps when he doesn’t say anything. He can hear their mom gasp and start to chastise him, but he doesn’t listen.

“I went to the library! I just asked them to give me everything on Eddie Munson and they gave me a bunch of stuff. It’s not like I broke any laws of anything!” Dustin is getting man now, too, which is never a good combination. They’re both too stubborn for their own good.

Steve pinches his nose as hard as he can to stave off the impending blowup he can feel building under his skin. Their mom relies on him to be the more level-headed one. “It doesn’t matter where you got it, man, you shouldn’t have it in the first place,” he grits out.

“Why not?” Dustin asks like Steve is being dumb. “It’s like, public knowledge. It’s out there for anyone who wants to know. You should know. I know Eddie’s a great guy but this is a big deal and you should-”

“I already know about this crap, dipshit! I didn’t need you digging around in my boyfriend’s private life for me!” He’s officially lost his cool.

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that? I’m just trying to look out for you!” Dustin yells back. “Besides, why shouldn’t we know about it? It’s not like I hunted down his old classmates or something; it was in the newspaper! A bunch of newspapers!”

“Boys, this really isn’t-”

“BECAUSE IT’S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS DUSTIN! JESUS H CHRIST.” He’s breathing hard, like he just ran a marathon, as silence descends around them. Steve never screams, never raises his voice. Not like that, but he’s done.

Steve runs his hand through his hair. Twenty minutes ago, he was thinking about whether or not he would have enough time to style it before their reservation at Enzo’s. Was thinking about if his red sweater was clean and if the ice cream would survive the car ride and if he should have the pasta or the pork at dinner tonight and if Eddie would invite him back to his house at the end of the night.

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t give a shit if it’s public knowledge or not, Eddie deserved to tell us this kind of shit when he was ready. If he was ever ready.” Too late for that, an unhelpful part of his brain supplies.

Steve watches as the fight slowly drains out of his brother, and the weight of the skeleton he just dragged out of the closet registers. The thing about Dustin is that, no matter how badly he pushes your buttons or calls you stupid to your face, he’s a good kid. The best, really. He just gets ahead of himself, so far in front he can’t see the consequences.

He looks down at the paper still clutched in his hand, staring hard at the same picture Steve had, and frowns. “Shit,” he says, elequent as always.

“Yeah man, shit is right,” Steve responds.

No one seems to know where to go from there. Time is ticking past, and with every second, Steve feels a burning building in his feet, telling him to go looking for Eddie. Dustin said he ran out the back door, which doesn’t bode well. He hopes he went back to his apartment, but there’s no saying for sure.

It’s his mom who gives him direction. She’s always been the wisest of any of them, the strongest too, always able to handle any situation the world throws at them. Dustin isn’t ready for a full apology, and Steve sure as hell isn’t ready to offer any forgiveness, so there’s only really one thing to do.

She places a warm, soft hand on his arm and gives it a squeeze. “You go find Eddie, I’ll take care of things here,” she says, shooting a meaningful look at a visibly cowed but silent Dustin. He squeezes her into a hard hug, suddenly violently grateful for her presence in his life, and runs out the door.

He’s got a rock start to find.

Eddie is not wearing shoes for this kind of walking. In all honesty, he probably doesn’t even own a pair of shoes designed for support anymore. Everything he buys nowadays is for the vibe.

God, he feels like a poser all of a sudden.

Two miles probably shouldn’t be that big a deal, but after the night he’s had, the pain building in his feet is draining every last bit of his energy to the point of debating just calling Steve tomorrow. The only thing stopping him is the knowledge that Steve probably, definitely, saw him run out the door and is probably worried sick.

Despite the little demon in his brain telling him that after he takes a good look at all the skeletons in his closet he won’t care to look for him, Eddie knows that Steve is too good a guy to let even the lowest of low lives get lost in the Hawkins woods.

The good thing about the walk is that he gets to rehearse every imaginable scenario for how his impending interaction with Steve will go.

“Hey babe, sorry about running off like that. Now let me explain about those murders.”

No.

“Wild about those Playgirls right? I don’t know how they even got those pictures!”

Also no.

“Please, please don’t leave me. I swear half this shit is made up anyway. Please.”

Well, maybe.

The last block of his walk passes in a blur, like his brain can’t process that the walking is almost over. Consequently, the sight of Steve sitting on his front porch feels like a mirage. Something distant and perfect that could slip right through his fingers if he’s not careful.

He stops, his fashionable but painful boots finding purchase in the dewy, patchy grass of his rented front lawn.

Steve is always stupidly beautiful to Eddie. The guys say he has rose-tinted glasses on, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ve only seen Steve through grainy photographs that don’t do him justice. They see him like the placid lake in a pleasant but static panorama that hangs in a high-class office, while Eddie sees the bubbling, splendid life hiding beneath.

Steve is good at presenting an unflappable, calm facade. He acts like he’s above it all, and Eddie, so far, has let him think that the people closest to him can’t see that his heart is perpetually stuck in the trenches.

All of that veneer is stripped from Steve in this moment.

He looks tired.

He looks scared.

Eddie feels like his heart is going to shrivel up in his chest. Wayne must have been wrong. All that time Eddie spent telling himself it would work out on his walk here was just him selling himself a fairytale. Steve is scared, but he’s being brave so he can let Eddie down and leave him behind for good.

Eddie takes a deep breath, tries to ignore the breath stalling in his throat and the burning behind his eyes. He can do this. Good things rarely last for him, he shouldn’t be surprised this is how it’s going to end.

He closes his eyes, letting himself have one more moment of peace before his heart splinters in his chest.

Which means he doesn’t see Steve make his way towards him, his vintage Nikes soft enough in the soles to muffle his soft footsteps. It’s not until he feels warm, slightly calloused hands cupping his cheeks, that he even realizes that Steve has come closer.

Eddie flinches on instinct, too wound up to expect the gentle, insistent kindness Steve reaches out with. He doesn’t let it deter him, just curls his fingers so his ring and middle fingers cup just behind the curve of his ear, teasing the baby hairs found there.

“Eddie,” He breaths out. And, oh, that’s not the voice of somebody who’s getting ready to break his heart, not at all. Eddie opens his eyes, and that’s not the face of someone who’s afraid of him, maybe the opposite.

Maybe he didn’t see them, then, the skeletons in his closet. Maybe Eddie will still have to tell him and watch the fear bubble up and the care drip out. The thought makes his breath hitch, but he doesn’t look away.

“Eddie. I know, it’s ok.” Steve’s voice is rough and soft at the same time, a beautiful contradiction that obscures the meaning of his words for a moment. Eddie scrunches as the answer comes to him. That can’t be right. He must be talking about something else. Maybe the rehab, maybe the overdose that preceded it, because Steve wouldn’t be looking at him like that if he were talking about Chrissy.

“You don’t know, I-I” He needs to say it, but the atoms in his body are resisting. They want to stay in Steve’s orbit for as long as they can. Let his beautiful eyes and his beautiful hands and his beautiful voice cradle him into the long night, and they know that everything they touch goes ugly.

Steve deserves anything but the ugly of Eddie’s life.

“I know Eddie. I have known. The entire time. Since we met.” The words don’t register, not fully.

“Wha-”

And now Steve is the one who looks guilty, which is absurd.

“Fuck, this is so stupid.” Steve pinches his nose, a tell Eddie has learned to mean anything from Steve feeling mild exasperation to Steve pushing down tears. He hopes it’s not the latter, he doesn’t think he could handle seeing Steve cry on top of everything else. “Robin got really into those true crime radio shows for a while, like…three years ago?” Steve starts, not looking Eddie in the eye, but clinging tight to the back of his shirt, not letting go.

“She made me listen to them all the time, would just change the station whenever she got in my car like I wanted to listen to a bunch of washed up 30 something act like they know shit about fuck.” Which…Eddie is aware that people talk about what happened. They like to bring it up every anniversary, every album drop, every birthday, every time there isn’t a better headline to print, but radio shows?

“You knew?” It seems impossible that Steve could have known, really known, what happened before he agreed to let Eddie take him out. Not the full of it, anyway.

“I don’t really give a shit what Jim, or John, or Jerremy with a microphone or Jan and Josie on the morning news have to say about my boyfriend.” There’s that little bitchy furrow of his brow that Eddie is learning to love. He kind of wants to bite it, which is really not an appropriate thought to have during what feels like one of the most important conversations he’s had in the last five years.

“I ran, Steve.” Because that’s always been the sticking point, for him, for everyone. He ran. He got locked in a closet, listened to the nicest girl in his school get mangled to death through the other side, and ran before he even knew she was gone.

Ran and didn’t look back.

Ran until the soles of his feet bled and the sirens caught up.

Ran and didn’t even try to help. Didn’t even try to save her.

And then he ran again tonight. Nothing changed. Nothing new. The same Eddie he was on the worst night of his life.

The same Eddie that only an uncle could love.

But maybe, impossibly, he’s wrong again. Because they haven’t said the words, and it feels too fast to be something he can recognize on sight, but Steve is looking at him with eyes full of love and understanding.

“It sounded scary.” It was. By god, had he been scared.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry about Chrissy.” So is he, every day.

“I would have run, too,” Steve says.

It feels like a lie—or, no. It feels like Steve is telling him what he thinks is the truth, underestimating himself with full confidence. Eddie knows, somewhere deep in his bones beyond his rational thought, that Steve would stand his ground in the face of even the worst monsters—in the face of Henry Creel.

But it’s enough, somehow, to hear him say it. To hear Steve say that not only does he know, actually truly know, but that he understands.

I love you, the thinks. “Thank you,” he says.

Steve smiles, slow and charming and tilting up on one side. Eddie lets himself wrap his arms fully around him, still a little unsure of his welcome but willing to try just about anything to get a little bit closer to that smile. “Of course, baby. You know you’re not the only one with a couple of demons hanging around. I’m just sorry you didn’t get to tell me in your own time,” Steve says.

Steve is running a hand through his hair now, settling flyaway hairs from his mad dash like he has any hope of getting them to stay.

Maybe it’s better this way, Eddie thinks to himself. For all the drama, all the fear, Eddie doesn’t know if he would have ever been brave enough to say it himself. He might have gone months, years, with this secret eating him alive, wondering if Steve would leave him when he found out, taking their little burgeoning family with him when he left/

At least this way, Eddie knows. It should have been his choice, Steve is right, but at least he doesn’t have to live with the ‘what if?’ anymore.

Eddie takes a deep breath, and lets it go. The worst as passed, the storm has moved on, and Eddie would really, truly like to sleep for at least twelve hours straight and take these boots off before his feet bleed.

For now, though, he lets himself tuck into the safety of his boyfriend’s neck and close his eyes, just for a moment. Steve continues to pet his hair, carefully detangling the strants, and lets out a low humm of contentment, like he’s completely happy to stand with Eddie in the patchwork grass for as long as he’d like.

A beat passes where they just listen to the crickets sing and the cars rumble in the distance.

It’s Steve who speaks first.

“And hey, maybe when you’re feeling a little better, we can look through that Playgirl together.”

Eddie smiles.

How the hell did he get so lucky?

Tag List: @warlordess @shoujo-wizard @thewickedkat @phiauniverse @estrellami-1 @awcere

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