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livwritesstuff · 3 months

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for @steddie-week day 3 | long (and a little bit of mutual pining but the kind when they're literally dating which i think is even more pathetic)

tags: modern day, famous au, actor!steve, rockstar!eddie

Eddie stayed longer than he should have.

He was supposed to leave Chicago with the rest of the band yesterday after their show at Credit Union 1 – opening night for a year-long national tour.

Eddie didn’t leave yesterday though. Instead, he insisted on spending one last night with Steve, one last morning pretending like they would actually get up and go to that breakfast spot they like even though they both knew they’d be spending the time wrapped up together in their bed, in the home they share, refusing to disentangle themselves until they had no other choice.

No other choice meant Eddie waited so long to leave that he ended up on a flight which would get him into Ohio with barely enough time to make it to the venue in Cincinnati before showtime (and he was missing soundcheck completely – sorta shot himself in the foot with that one, in Steve's opinion, though he won’t be caught complaining).

He won’t be caught doing anything – not publicly, anyway.

Steve and Eddie’s relationship is kind of in the halfway-stage between secret and private, where Steve posts vague, faceless photos of the two of them every now and then but still deflects questions about his romantic life during interviews because – look. He and Eddie are both at weird high-points in their careers at the moment, and that means there’s a lot of eyes on them whether they like it or not. Steve had a public relationship turn sour years ago and there is no way in hell he’s letting it happen again.

Not with Eddie. Not when it counts.

There are speculations, obviously (and after Steve dropped Eddie off at O'Hare, he posted a photo of the Kiss n’ Fly sign to his IG story with the caption i hate this place :( – mostly for his own amusement at the specific way his notifications implode afterward), and they’ll probably get around to an official hard-launch someday, but for now Steve likes that they’re keeping things to themselves, especially when they don’t get to make that choice with much else.

Steve gets a just landed text from Eddie a few hours after he boarded his plane.

(Steve knew. He’d been tracking the flight).

Before he could respond, Eddie added, miss you so fn much

i miss you too, Steve texted back, and before either of them could wallow in it too much, he sent, gonna make it on time?

probably, Eddie answered. Then, getting ready in the car lol

He goes quiet after that (the getting ready, presumably), which is fine.

Steve gets it.

He’s busy too. It’s why he’s not following along on Eddie’s tour like some glorified groupie, and it’s not like the distance is anything new. On the contrary, it’s been an element of their relationship since they met at an awards show after-party four years ago. It’s more that this time around, they were supposed to only have four-and-a-half weeks together before Steve headed off on a press tour for the movie he filmed last year, but then that got pushed out a bit further, and so that four-and-a-half weeks together turned into a glorious nine, the longest Steve and Eddie’s calendars had ever been aligned without some serious planning beforehand.

He just got used to it, Steve supposes.

He got used to having Eddie around all the time, under his fingertips, under his skin. He got used to saying goodnight in person, in their bed together instead of over phone lines, got used to waking up in Eddie's arms and hearing sweet nothings whispered in his ear rather than reading the texts Eddie would leave for him to wake up to when they were apart.

He'll adjust just like he always does, and the worst part will be over tomorrow morning – that moment right between sleep and wake when Steve will realize Eddie isn’t in their bed with him.

Like it or not, the distance is their normal and they make it work (except it’s not even making it work, because it’s not like that. Any situation, any set of circumstances will work without question because it’s Eddie).

The start time for the Cincinnati show comes and goes. A few minutes into the opening act and while Steve is mindlessly flitting between Instagram and TikTok waiting for the algorithm to fill his feed with clips from the concert (ones of Eddie, preferably), his screen lights up with a call.

“Hey,” he says the second he slams his thumb on the green accept button.

“Hey,” Eddie replied, his tone nothing short of grim.

“You geared up for the show?” Steve asked.

“No,” Eddie answered, “I’m quitting.”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, okay.”

“I need you to come tuck my pockets in,” Eddie said, and it’s a goddamn wonder Steve didn’t break down then and there, because Eddie always managed to tug his pants on in a way that made the front pockets stick out just a bit, and throughout their years together Steve had gotten into the habit of tucking them back in for him, squeezing Eddie’s hips a little when he was done and pulling him in for a kiss.

“Yeah,” Steve manages a wet laugh, “I – fuck, man, I wish I was there to tuck them in for you.”

“I want you here so bad, Steve," Eddie says, "I really, really miss you."

“I miss you too,” Steve nodded, even though miss isn't a big enough word for the homesick feeling in his chest, “Only a week until the Indy show though. And I’m coming with you for the Michigan one after.”

“Yeah,” Eddie replied, and if he sounded a little morose about it, Steve was right there with him. Sure, it’s a comfort knowing he’ll be seeing Eddie again so soon, but when those two days are over…yeah, it’s gonna be a long goddamn while until next time, because Eddie will be playing the Midwest while Steve’s press tour is mostly on the East Coast this time around, and after that he heads up into Vancouver to shoot a period drama mini-series while Eddie plays the southern half of the US, and then…well, Steve could keep going. They’re both taking a short break for the holidays, but that and the rare weekend one of them can fly out to the other is about it for the foreseeable future.

Which, yeah, Steve loves acting, loves that he gets to make a whole career out of it, and he knows that Eddie feels the same way about his music, but…the love he has for Eddie definitely edges out the rest of it – enough that he feels the distance between him like a dull, ever-present ache whenever they’re apart.

Eddie only ends their call when his manager practically has to yank the phone out of his hand and shove him onstage, and then Steve settles back into bed, back into scrolling mindlessly on his phone waiting for his finely-tuned algorithms to do their jobs.

Sure enough, it takes less than thirty minutes for Steve’s FYP to start showing him TikToks from Eddie’s show, and amidst all the hair and leather and silver chains and chunky rings and eyeliner and manic energy, Steve sees something else, something that has the hurt of missing Eddie increasing ten-fold, something that has him seriously considering taking an ax to all his contracts and his career and his livelihood and getting on the next plane to Cincinnati.

Eddie left his pockets untucked.

#tour dates are vaguely inspired by the US leg of Metallica’s Damaged Justice tour #features some sneaky secret-relationship bits i yoinked out of the day-1 prompt i lost control of #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie week 2024 #long post for “long” prompt ig lol #might come back and edit this a bit more tmrw

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formosusiniquis · 3 months

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find your Suzie

Written for Day 2 of @stevieweek Gender Euphoria with bonus prompts t4t and Scoops. Coincidentally also hitting Day 5 of @steddie-week with Reunion/Getting back together lucky me!

Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 7679 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | CW: Features Eddie using the word tranny to refer to himself | Tags/Themes: Transfem Steve Harrington; Transmasc Eddie Munson; Steve & Robin Best Friends Forever; Steve and Dustin have a sibling relationship; Childhood Friends to Strangers to Lovers; Small Town 80s typical discussions of gender

AO3

It’s been a long summer.

That’s probably the least of what can be said about the month Steve has been working at Scoops. He has a coworker that hates him, the emotion he’s sure of the reason not so much. The kids only want to see him when he’s either giving them something or letting them in the back to sneak through to the movies. And his favorite kid isn’t even here.

Wasn’t even here.

It’s finally the week Dustin is supposed to be back from camp. And it’s not like Steve expects to be the first stop on the welcome back tour, Dust had sent a letter from camp -- surprising when he told Steve before he even left not to expect anything. Camp Know Where was the kind of camp, “that demanded your full attention the entire time you’re there, Steve.” Except when the counselors are requiring you to send one letter a week to the homestead so there’s no parents worried about dead kids or something.

That hadn’t been something anyone was afraid of when Steve went to camp. But he also didn’t have parents who cared if he went missing. If Mrs. Voorhees went nutso on his summer camp they would probably have just liked having the excuse to sue. Everything is a money making opportunity.

But Dustin’s Mom liked him, and Steve knew Mrs. Henderson would want first dibs on smothering her precious son with all of the attention that she hadn’t been able to give him in his month away. Then there was supposed to be some big Doorknobs and Dipsticks thing -- a name he was going to have to remember to repeat in front of Dustin just so Steve could appreciate the way it’ll make him groan.

Then after all that there will probably be time for Steve and Dustin time.

Which is only serving to make the day stretch longer. Because that’s the kind of summer it’s been.

After a month, it’s probably safe to say that nothing is really going to make this summer feel like a success. Something that he knew he was going to be able to say from the moment they handed him the uniform that it was going to be a miserable time. It was square and boxy, the ascot so long that the little red tie hung at his bellybutton. The shorts are okay, well they became okay after a trip through the dryer on the wrong setting changed them from baggy and saggy into something that cupped his ass and displayed a work safe amount of thigh.

He doesn’t even want to talk about the hat.

There’s a voice in his head that gets a little louder, a little more insistent with each shift as he puts on the uniform. There are only so many more things he can do while staring at his reflection in the mirror to make it shut up.

An end of the year haircut turned into highlights, when the thought of losing any of the length he’d been steadily growing out made him feel the same way getting called Little Guy used to make him feel. Which turned into figuring out the perfect way to get the blowout style waves in under twenty minutes, because he wasn’t spending more than that on hair that was going to get hidden under a stupid hat that was just going to push it back and make his forehead look weird. Which turned into noticing that his forehead looked weird so the things below the forehead had to look better so that no one would notice when the hat was on. The brown mascara had probably been Mom’s but could have been Nancy’s or possibly Carol’s, but either way it was sitting in the drawer of the third bathroom he looked in -- Steve knew it was there the whole time, it rolls in the drawer everytime he opens it looking for the nail clippers and every time it did he looks at it the way he thinks people who haven’t seen monsters probably look at snakes.

And the mascara was good. Gave him big, doe eyes that he liked watching in the mirror as the girl in there swayed this way and that, making sure the blonde highlights didn’t need to be toned to keep from going too brassy.

Only after a little while that stopped working too, and the mascara turned into a two step routine. Lipgloss, chapstick really, toned because it tasted like cherries.

And that was enough to feel like normal, for a little while longer. But the itch was there, a mosquito bite Steve wouldn’t stop itching until the skin was picked open.

But it was just loneliness. He’s always been like this. Left alone for too long without someone to distract him and he’s prone to spiraling.

The summer right before freshman year when Tommy and Carol both got grounded for a month for getting caught at the quarry drinking, he spent hours alone in his room wondering what life would have been like if he’d been born as a girl instead. Thanksgiving Break ‘84, without a girlfriend and his parents in Toronto or Cabo or Ohio, he sat alone in the living room with the curtains drawn as Some Like it Hot played on the TV. With a blanket pulled around his shoulders, he watched Daphne more than any of the others. Wondering if he could ever go back to being Jerry now that he’d gotten to experience being other. By then he could quote along with the movie by heart, he had seen it so many times he could practically play it in his head when someone else had it rented. He flopped down on the sofa in time with Daphne, spoke aloud into the empty house with her, “I'm a boy. I'm a boy. I wish I were dead.”

Now, in the middle of the worst summer of his life. He’s had the movie out so long he thinks it would be less embarrassing to just never go back to Family Video ever again. It’s been so long since his parents have been home or looked at the entertainment center he probably could have bought his own copy. He plays it every night until he wakes up to the static of the television. Still it’s not enough to keep him from laying in bed wondering about the girl who first told him to watch it and what she would think about what he is and isn’t now.

But Dustin is coming home and maybe he’ll bring the Steve Harrington he’s supposed to be in a suitcase or something.

The next day the blue of his uniform washes him out. That’s the reason he comes up with to rub a little bit of the pink Avon blush he found abandoned at the back of his Mom's vanity. A thumb rubbed gently through it, picking up just enough of the color that it shimmers on the pad of the finger. He rubs it into the round of his cheek. Swiping and rubbing at each one until it's impossible to tell if any of the color is still there or if it's just from his touching that's left them cheery and pink. The blush, the lipgloss, the mascara, the hair. Steve feels something like happy at the reflection in the mirror. Everything settling less like the costume he put on everyday since the middle of senior year.

Then Dustin gets home, and he's found a top secret Russian code.

They never would have made Jill or Kelly or Agent 99 wear a stupid fucking uniform like Steve's. But no one looks at him more than twice as he scurries around the mall with Dustin like the Moneypenny to the kid’s Bond or whatever.

He wouldn't hate it if the alt guy with the ratted out hair and vest browsing in the record store or the jazzercise guy looked a couple extra times.

Dustin stays at the mall for the rest of the day, hanging out in the back working on the code. In between customers Steve does what he can to help. Mostly that looks like trying to run interference with Robin. Her antagonism seems a little friendlier lately, but with her fun stolen now that Dustin was back -- and more important than trying to land a date he cared less about than sating the loneliness -- he could tell she was watching. When the mall is closed he walks Dust out the employee hallway, his bike shares the rack with Robin’s, the only two left even with cars still dotting the lot. He offers like every shift to give her a lift home.

“Like my bike would even fit in the trunk next to kid genius,” she says as she kicks off. Dustin unusually silent beside him. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, Harrington.”

The kid brother that forcibly adopted him stays quiet the entire time Steve is loading his bike into the back. But worry doesn’t set in until they’re pulling out of the parking lot and he still hasn’t said a word.

“So other than the girlfriend-”

“There’s really nothing going on between you and Robin?” Dustin interrupts, something steely but unsure on his face. “And don’t just say the same stuff about her being a nerd. You exclusively hang out with nerds. You obviously aren’t still holding on to that high school stuff anymore.”

He doesn’t know if it is that obvious, but even as he consciously setting that thought aside; the thought of dating Robin, taking her out and showing her off and possibly getting so far as intimacy, it feels weird. The kind of weird that thinking about dating Carol felt like, a half step in the direction of wrongness.

“Even if she didn’t totally hate me, dude, that’d be like if I asked you about dating El or Max.”

Belatedly, he remembers Dustin did have a capital T Thing for their random girl. But the comparison carries the correct weight.

“You have to find your Suzie then, man.”

It's hard to bite back the hysterical laugh, the thought that they'd rather be someone's Suzie. It's easier to push the twerp off than to touch that sticky, raw scab they couldn't stop picking. Still something about being in the car, the comfort of having their favorite kid back makes it feel safe to talk about a girl they’ve never stopped thinking about.

“I already met my Suzie,” a laugh makes it out before Steve can even think to stop it. “Literally Susan M. Even met her at summer camp, she called herself my boy named Sue.” Smiling out the windshield, they think back to that summer. It hadn’t been a reference they’d understood as a kid, not until Sue had made the joke again too close to one of the counselors. At home Steve had made Mom go get the album the song was on. They played it so many times they could find the track on the record without even looking.

“She called me her sweet Stevie,” they finish. It’s something they haven’t said to anyone.

That uncharacteristic quiet is back. Dustin looking at them; but with the softest parts of themself turned over, half exposed in a way even they haven’t looked at before, Stevie doesn’t look back. Just keeps driving the familiar path to the Henderson house.

“What happened?” Dustin asks, softer than they think they’ve ever heard his voice.

Maybe bringing up the lost summer camp love to a recent summer camp boyfriend wasn’t as smart as they thought.

“Tried to write but I guess they moved. People do that sometimes, I guess, send kids to camp so they’re out of the way during the move. Letter came back return to sender and she wasn’t at camp the next year.” They weren’t back the year after, determined old enough at 12 to stay home alone during the summer.

“Maybe you’ll find her again. If she was really your Suzie.”

“Maybe,” Stevie says. It’s easier than digging any deeper.

Later it won’t feel so much like digging when they’re sitting in the bathroom high.

Stevie feels like floating away, like underneath the skin it’s all bubbles. They’re there lifting up everything: the mood, smiles, secrets.

When Robin asks, “Have you ever been in love?”

It feels easy, for once, to bring up Nancy. It feels just as easy to say, “I think I met the love of my life when I was 10 years old and it was a girl who acted like a boy and treated me like a girl. Do you think that's like a sex thing and I'm just now realizing it?”

“I had a crush on Tammy Thompson and she liked you, that’s why I hated you.”

“Oh.”

The moment feels loaded. Bubbles popping in the air. Stevie doubts that’s what an OD feels like.

“Tammy’s such a dud.”

“What and you think I should have had a thing for a girl like you?”

Bubbles again, bright and fast and fizzy like a shaken up coke. Exciting, explosive.

“Yeah, well, at least I can sing.”

Dustin and Erica interrupt karaoke but Stevie can feel something solid setting into place beneath the foamed up feelings.

It turns out being an adult and not having to go to school leaves you with a lot of time to kill.

Being reported as the hero of Starcourt who pulled a bunch of kids and a coworker out of a burning building bought another year of living rent free in the Harrington house. That and the passionate bond with the female coworker who was still in high school. It was easy to make promises that neither of them planned to keep while on the phone with her parents. Lies laced with truth, the two of them would be leaving for whatever city Robin picked for college with every intention to stay bonded for life. That was good enough for Dick and Diane to look the other way for another year.

So with time and money to kill Stevie spent the hours Robin was in school looking for the kind of secret bookstores that Robin’s heard about. The ones with zines and pamphlets about people like them.

And they learn and they change. And she's chasing that feeling she felt in that dingy mall bathroom where her best friend called her a girl. She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a girl. She sometimes feels like she’s Daphne at the end of the movie. Shaky and a few wrong sentences away from pulling off her wing and throwing in the towel.

And Eddie Munson is stealing her goddamn kids.

That’s a separate part of her new life. Not that it’s any less frustrating. She’s figuring out how to be her own person in a way that’s not gonna get her killed, and she has to compete for attention with the king authentic.

“If you’d just meet him,” she’s barely listening to Dustin’s insistences. She’s heard them all before and Keith is lurking somewhere in the store waiting for her to slip up.

“I don't want to meet your Geek Mother.”

“It’s Dungeon Master,” Dustin tails her around like a second shadow. “And I think you would actually have a lot in common if you’d just talk.”

“That there’s something wrong enough with both of us that we want to spend our free time with you gremlins?”

“Ha. No. You both like those shitty, pulp, horror novels, you both like cars, you both have a secret love of Johnny Cash.”

“Oh yeah, a real recipe for best friendship.” She rolls her eyes into the cover of Flashdance, somehow he feels like Alex will be more receptive than her brother. “I’ve got Robin, I’m not really interested in any more friends right now.”

“Okay, well, he’s kinda meeting me here so.”

“What? Dustin!”

The bell above the door tongs, Stevie glares daggers and nailbats at Dustin while she shouts out the required, “Welcome to Family Video.”

The sound of metal hitting something solid carries over the sound of Oxford Blues. Normally it’s the sound of feet shuffling on the carpet that gives her the chance to make sure she’s the right amount of everything. Surviving this slow paced transition on the virtue of already being known around town as a pretty boy, as long as she keeps the right amount of butch it’s fine. At least Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy keep their hair short. She’s taken them on as hair icons until she’s in a place where she can grow it out long like Farrah or Brooke Shields.

A place where hopefully she’ll be able to add the occasional skirt to her wardrobe. She adjusts the rise on her jeans, she’s got no idea where Munson is. It’s hard to track the slap of his chain in the store the way she can dragging footsteps. Tugging at the belt loops of her pants, the ones she got from the women’s side of the thrift store, she feels like it’s obvious from the cut they’re different. Swears they hug her differently.

She doesn’t know if she wants Munson to be able to tell, but he’s coming around the bend from the Romance section and she can’t really do anything about it.

“Henderson,” Munson greets even though his eyes are locked hard onto Stevie. It’s been a quiet day, maybe she left one of those butterfly clips El gave her in her hair.

“Eddie! Did you grab the movie you said you were gonna show me?”

“Where’s the fire, Henderson?” He has a nice voice. Pitched in a nice warm tone it has a husk she thinks she can feel. Gives her goosebumps. It’s not that she didn’t know that already, or maybe she didn’t, in all the ranting and screaming he did at school she thinks she remembers it higher. Cracking even as late as his junior year.

He’s looking at her again, something molten and complicated in his eyes, “Why don’t you officially introduce me to your favorite babysitter.”

Dustin sighs, full bodied and dramatic. “You went to school together, do I really need to?”

“No manners in these kids these days,” Eddie jokes. “You are not the same person I went to English third period with.”

Something bubbles up in the pit of her stomach, a little bit fear and a little bit joy at being recognized as something different. “That could be because you were barely ever in third period English.”

“Touche. And in that case it's all the sweeter to meet the fabled Stevie.” He grabs her hand by the tips of her fingers, sweeps his other arm out as he bows and presses a kiss to the little gold ring Robin gave her. She’s surprised by the sound of her own giggle.

“Can we be done with what’s happening here?” Dustin interrupts the fireworks happening in the back of her brain like a mindflayer on the Fourth of July.

“You were the one that wanted us to meet,” she reminds him.

“And I immediately regret it now that it’s happening. I need better impulse control, you and Ma were right.”

“Really are the best babysitter in the world, humility out of Henderson is like getting blood out of stone,” Eddie teases.

“You were coming out of Romance, what is this favorite movie you were going to show me?” Dustin demands now, a pink flush to his face like they’ve succeeded in embarrassing him too.

“I could like romance, I contain multitudes. And I said I was showing you my favorite horror movie, Re-Animator got shelved there a couple weeks ago. My favorite is a comedy and never on the shelves.”

“Someone just brought back Ghostbusters today, and we were holding Goonies for movie night this weekend, but the kids have seen it before,” she offers, taking a blind stab at the kind of comedies that might make it to Eddie Munsons's favorite list. It's really a puzzle made more for Robin.

"Excellent features both, but I'm afraid my favorite is a little more black and white. Caught Some Like it Hot in a Marilyn Monroe double feature at the Hawk with Wayne as a kid. Used to rent it at the Blockbuster all the time before I moved to Hawkins full time, it's always rented here so," he grabs Dustin by the cap, shaking the kid's head roughly back and forth, completely oblivious to the way Stevie's palms have started to sweat around the sticky case of Halloween.

"Who sorts their favorite films by genre?" Dustin asks, the question wobbling out of him with the shake of his head.

"I do, shortstack, by genre and all kinds of criteria your yet to be enlightened brain hasn't even thought to try."

"Sure, whatever, did you grab your favorite horror movie yet?"

Instead of answering, like a normal person might, Eddie Munson takes a step closer to her. He leans in close enough that she can smell the cigarette he must have smoked before he came in, the smell of his deodorant below that. His arm brushes against her lower back as he reaches and reaches.

She's gotta talk to Keith about getting the a/c fixed.

Eddie is close enough she can count the stubbly hairs of his not quite mustache. There's something about his eyes that reminds her of someone, but it's hard to place. Unlike the exact location of his right arm, currently brushing against the waistband of her jeans.’

And then he's gone.

In his hands he's got the black clamshell box of the movie, and Stevie feels a little bit like an idiot. "I could have moved."

"But then I wouldn't have gotten to appreciate the sweet, sweet smell of your hairspray."

With a sigh that could probably propel him into space, Dustin announces, "I'm going to the van."

And even though it doesn't really mean anything, it kind of feels like it might mean everything when once he's out of earshot she decides to tell Eddie, "I actually have that movie. That's why you can't ever find it, it's one of my favorites too."

Before he can finish the door alarm sound again, and she would recognize the sound of converse on the dirty store carpet even if Robin didn't immediately shout, "Stevie, you better get a brick someone locked your kid in their dirty van." She rounds the corner to find whatever scene she and Munson must make, the two of them too close together to be in a store with Family in its name right beside the horror section. "Oh."

"I'm across from Little Red, in the park," Eddie takes a big step back, hands stuffed in his pockets in a way that makes him look a million times more suspicious than if he'd just pulled away. She'd been right that it was a mistake to ever meet him. "If you wanted to bring that movie over sometime."

"We'll see, Munson."

He’s got the widest smile on his face that she only gets to appreciate for a second before he sweeps down low into a bow. The dimple in his face screams of a mischief that makes her think of childhood. “I know I shall, fair Stevie.” He nods at Robin, who trails him to the desk to check out while Stevie goes back to putting the returns on the shelf while they have that moment of quiet.

Moment of quiet from customers anyway, the second Eddie is out the door he takes Stevie’s last chance of peace with him.

“Were you just flirting with Eddie Munson,” the thought doesn’t tick up because Robin isn’t asking a question, she’s making an accusation.

“He was flirting with me.”

“But you were receptive to it.” She decides correctly and immediately. “Are you gonna go over there?”

Reaching under the counter for the wipes she’s started keeping there, Stevie carefully wipes off the gunk on her hands from the grimy video cases. Taking the time to try to figure out what she even wants to say.

“I’m just trying to survive. He knows who I am, who I was,” she corrects, “I’m not trying to do anything stupid that’s going to jeopardize our escape from Hawkins or being able to protect the kids.”

Pushing up to her tiptoes, Robin takes a quick glance around the store. Even though the room must be empty for her to even risk continuing the track Stevie has started them down, Robin still leans in close enough that she can smell the fruity scent of the gum that Robin always chews after lunch. “Maybe don’t jump to conclusions, you know the kind of rumors that go around about him. Like why he flunked gym twice before he got that doctor’s note, because he wouldn’t dress out with everyone else.”

She’s thinking about the guy who kissed the ring on her hand even when she says, “I think we already know that you can’t trust rumors. If they were all true then I’d be gay but compensating and you’d have gotten fired from the Hawk for letting the film burn because you were having sex in the bathrooms.”

“Part of that is true, I did burn that film reel.” She waves him off with a flap of her hand, stopping the movie on screen as it reaches the credits and tossing it to Stevie to rewind. She snags one off the counter at random and tosses it in the VHS player connected to the main screen. Stevie recognizes the start of Victor/Victoria as Robin leans against the counter in a way that screams she isn’t feeling as casual about the thing she’s about to say as she’s pretending she does. “And I mean, visually, it’s six of one or half-a-dozen of the other, right? You like both.”

“Okay, well,” she’s scrambling for something to say and she knows Robin can tell. “Eddie can just be my Vickie then, how about that?”

Stevie has backed them both into a conversational suicide pact. But she knows Robin well enough to know that she’s too scared to take the Vickie bait. While she’ll glare, and boy does she glare, she’d rather let Stevie get away with the blatant denial than admit she might have a real chance with her fellow bandkid.

“I think I’m gonna add Notre Dame to my application list.” She changes the subject, right on time.

When she’s holding a single VHS tape outside of Eddie Munson’s trailer with her hair carefully styled and her favorite lipgloss on. It’s too late to be wondering if maybe she’d been a little bit too right about calling Eddie her Vickie. The cab of the beemer is looking especially inviting, but she’s been in the Mayfield trailer when people have pulled up to their houses and there’s no way in hell that the Munsons haven’t heard her pull up.

A curtain twitches, like someone inside is aware of her internal debating. She tugs on the sleeve of the soft, colorblock sweater she’s got on, forcing the neck to ride a little lower on one shoulder.

And as the plastic case creaks in her hands she gives in and knocks.

Eddie is breathless when he answers the door, even though she was positive he was the one twitching the curtain just a second ago. He has a hoodie on that matches her out of season sweater.

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually show up,” he says, “I didn’t think to mention that my Uncle is asleep.”

“Oh!” She isn’t sure what else to say, standing on the porch with the news that she wasn’t actually expected.

“I just mean I would have told you to come by after he was awake so we could actually watch the movie.”

She glances back over her shoulder at her waiting car, “So should I-”

“No!” A strong hand closes gently as the friendship bracelet Robin made her around her wrist. “I’m not doing this right. I just mean you’ll have to kill some time in my room with me.”

“That’s some line.”

His eyebrows disappear into his bangs, the faint flustered pink that had been taking over his cheeks blooming into something someone who wasn’t staring intently at his face would notice. With a doglike shake of his head, he says, “This isn’t going the way I thought, hold on back to one.” And the door is shutting in her face.

When it reopens a bare second later, Stevie is sure she must be gaping.

“Hi Stevie, thanks so much for coming and bringing that movie we talked about. My Uncle is asleep in the living room right now, but don’t worry he works nights so he’s a sound sleeper. If you’ve got time, we can hang out in my room for an hour until he gets up and then we can watch it together.”

“Hi Eddie, thanks for giving me the 411 so clearly and without any possibility of confusion. It sure would be embarrassing to think that you hadn’t actually wanted me to come over.”

He pulls her in off of the front porch into a house that has things. After keeping herself awake last night worried that she would accidentally reveal something with her familiarity with the movie or that she wouldn’t be able to stop staring at Eddie. But with the mugs and the caps hung up on the walls, there are hundreds of things to distract herself with while she hangs out with him.

“Wayne’s a semi-professional thrifter.” Eddie tells her, it's hard to know if he's correctly interpreting her awe.

“Is he not good enough to go pro?”

That dimple is back, deep as the quarry dug into the side of his face as he drags her past the man in question, asleep on the pullout couch. “Oh he is, but he's too scared to quit his day job. He prefers to keep it a hobby.”

Before she knows it, she's a girl in a guy's bedroom on what's questionably a date. And according to some of the zines she's been a girl in a guy's bedroom a lot of times, at team overnights and birthday party sleepovers.

But this feels different right now. Maybe it's the knowing: that there isn't something wrong with her and that she is what she is. Maybe it's the not knowing, does Eddie have expectations for the afternoon? And she doesn't have a clue what he does and doesn't know.

As her wheels are spinning against the road, trying to grab onto anything to get moving, the babysitter brain kicks in. Instinct the snow chains of the mind, later she'll talk to Robin about whether she should be concerned about that.

“3 inches!”

Eddie freezes with his hand on the door, more like an inch from latching.

“I, um.” He's looking at her now, and she's scrambling for an explanation that sounds better than ‘I've listened to multiple baby teens complain about this particular prophylactic and now that I'm on the other side of the bedroom maneuver I'm feeling a little inexperienced.’ She just isn't sure how well that would go over.

“The hinges squeak, good call.” He flops down on the bed, beckoning her a little closer. All she can think to do is sit at the edge, it makes her feel prim, too proper and too aware of the way her body fits in this room.

After the silence starts to drag, and she starts to question whether or not she's made a single good decision since November of 1983, Eddie asks, “So, what makes Stevie Harrington tick?”

“What do you mean?”

“Single handedly supporting the social lives of a generous handful of mouthy teenagers via unpaid taxi service, enjoys black and white cinema or at least enjoys this movie enough to risk the wrath of the VHS gods,” he ticks each one off on his fingers as he goes. “What else is there that makes you, you? Do you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain? You look like you could be into yoga.”

The tension breaks like it had never been there to begin with, she tries to hide her laugh in her hand. The door is open, and Eddie's uncle is sleeping. “Oh my god is that that Jimmy Buffet song?”

“Escape is not a James Buffet number, your majesty, that's Margaritaville. And you're dodging the question.”

He's calmer than she remembers from high school, but still that bright passion he seems to have for everything is too much to look at directed at her. The warmth of him as hard to look at as the noonday sun. “I don't think I'm that interesting,” she casts her gaze around the room instead looking at all the personality that Eddie has shoved into the place in the few years he's lived here.

“I think you're lying.”

His closet is bursting from its boundaries. A sea of black pushing its way out in a waterfall of clothes onto the floor.

“You think I’m lying about being boring?”

Jeans, shirts for bands she’s never heard of, a skirt.

“Tell me one weird fact about you, and I’ll tell you how you are definitely not boring,” he insists.

Skirts, multiple, now that she's looking she can recognize the shape of them. Is that a heavy metal thing? If she changed her style could she get away with finally wearing one in public.

“When I was a kid, I rode my bike to see 101 Dalmatians in theaters like six times. Then one day I found this fur coat in my mom’s closet and I made her get rid of it because I didn’t want her to be the kind of person who could own fur.”

“An animal activist,” Eddie says, “see, interesting. And proof of my bigger point that you, Stevie, are one of the best Hawkins has to offer. Aren’t you?”

It’s hard to imagine how he got there when she’s mentally rifling through his things, trying to figure out a way to ask about-

“They’re gifts from confused but well meaning long distance relatives.” Eddie explains, done politely ignoring where Stevie’s attention was actually focused. “I was a tomboy as a kid, so when they heard I was a tranny I guess they got confused. I felt bad donating them or throwing them away, made with love.”

That’s probably the bravest thing she’s seen that doesn’t involve flesh eating monsters. Stevie musters up the courage she taps into when fighting those monsters to say, “Me too, opposite direction. Obviously.”

“That would make you the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen then, Stevie Harrington. And definitely still the most interesting.”

Euphoria, big like soap bubbles, fills her chest. It already feels like she could float away when he asks, “You wanna try one of them on?”

“You wouldn’t care? You just said they were homemade.” She’s already off the bed though, running a thumb over the soft black cotton. Up close she can make out the faintly lighter blacks and greys of a flower pattern. It’s beautiful.

“Well I wasn’t blessed with the gorgeous ass you’ve got, but it should fit just fine.”

She doesn’t have to be told twice, it's off the hanger and clutched in her hands before Eddie’s finished complimenting her. And oh, that sends some of that bubbling joy flooding a little farther south.

That new not revelation is easy to table. Drowned out by the feeling she gets when the skirt swishes around her knees. Light and floaty as cotton fabric. She’s a balloon flying out of some kid's hand disappearing into the clear blue sky.

“What do you think?” She twists and twirls, the long fabric spinning out around her like a princess in a Disney movie.

“Pretty as a picture.”

Her eyes snap up from the swirling black of the skirt, in time to fall down deep into the dark expanse of Eddie’s focused gaze. Hot and heavy on her.

For a second, it throws her back to when she was a kid. Standing on the dock at the camp lake, a pair of dark brown eyes staring at her while her beach towel wrapped around her like a dress. Twisting this way and that, posing with a hand in her hair that had grown longer than she was usually allowed to keep it after a missed summer cut. They’d just climbed out of the water, fingers pruny and faces ruddy from laughing.

“How do I look?”

“Pretty as a picture!”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

Mouth open, whatever he’s about to say that warrants the way his eyes go soft and nervous is swallowed by an older man’s voice shouting down the hall, “Ed, you and your friend can come out and use the living room. I’m up.”

It’s refreshing, having one more person she can be herself with, fully. Having someone who understands even better than Robin what it feels like to be different. To feel the way she’s always felt. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t been in her life for forever the way he slots into it so easily.

But then maybe Dustin had a point, she has a way of attracting nerds.

And once they’ve found her they latch in and don’t let go. Feral cats every single one of them.

“Just put something on, Stevie, I swear to god.”

Eddie’s where he is most of the time these days, flopped sideways across her bed. Hair hanging off the side in a dark wave. Ratted out as it is it’ll defy gravity for longer than natural when he sits up again. But it looks beautiful now, the way Eddie always does.

“You say that now and then it’s all, ‘did the estrogen break your eardrums? How can you even like Wham?’ and ‘The only good thing Fleetwood Mac ever did was break up.’”

There’s a thump behind her, she doesn’t have to turn to know he’s flailed his way onto the floor. She does turn to see how his hair lifts up from the roots like the bride of Frankenstien. “I did not say that shit about Fleetwood Mac, Rumours is one of the best albums of all time.”

“No, you’ve just defamed everyone else in my record collection.”

“It can’t be everyone,” he groans, “your entire collection can’t be Wham and Huey Lewis.”

“You’re forgetting Madonna and Blondie, pretty sexist of you Munson.”

“No, the ladies are where your taste shines through. That’s my planned window in, you see,” Stevie turns back to her record shelf, carefully paging through each one while Eddie talks. ABBA, Adams, Benetar, Bowie. “I’m gonna make you a real rock’n’roll mixtape, get you on the right path. Joplin, Heart, The Runaways, Girlschool.”

She lands on the perfect album, tosses it on the table and starts it spinning. It’s not until the jaunty guitar starts bouncing that she realizes what she’s done.

“Shit, sorry, let me set it back. You probably want to listen from the actual beginning of the album.”

“No, no, leave it, it’s fine.” Eddie says in the toneless way she’s noticed he gets when he’s focused. “Do you always skip straight to this track?”

“Yes?” Stevie knows this is one of those times when the answer she’s giving is going to mean something even if she isn't sure what the question hiding under the first is.

“Is there- I mean, is this just your favorite song or do you always start three tracks in on the B-side when I’m not here?” His laugh is weak, and it’s noticeable when everything about Eddie is so sure and strong.

She tugs on a single lock of her hair, twirling it around her finger before tugging. A nervous gesture she’s picked up from Eddie, now that it’s long enough. “There was this kid I went to camp with, first love shit, you know. We lost touch but she called herself my Boy Named Sue all summer. When I got home this was the only song I’d play for months. It’d finish and I’d pick the needle up and put it back at the start for hours. I really hope she’s doing okay now, however okay looks like for her.

“Anyway, it’s just a force of habit. I can put it back to the start or pick a new album if you’ve got shit to say about the man in black too.”

There’s a dazed sort of reverie on Eddie’s face that he doesn’t snap back from until she moves for the record player. “No, no, play it again. I, um, shit- Okay, so I need you to not be mad at me.”

She doesn’t even need to look to set the track back to its start. Eddie’s got his hand fisted in his hair, pulling at it hard enough that it hurts her scalp, chewing at his bottom lip. Nerves have always made her a little mean. “I’m already feeling a little mad at you, say what you’re going to say.”

“I was going to tell you that first day we were hanging out,” he’s digging around in his back pocket for his wallet like it isn’t on a leash he could tug on like a dog, “we were sharing these mutual coming out moments and I thought, ‘now’s the time I’ll tell Stevie, everything is going to be great.’ Only Wayne woke up and ruined the moment and the longer we kept hanging out the harder it was to bring up again.”

“Just spit it out already.”

The photo insert hits her in the chest. Fumbling, she bats at it between her two hands before she’s able to get a firm catch. Raising both her eyebrows in a question Eddie barely answers with a wave of his hand. Even as she rolls her eyes, she looks down at the photo in her hands. A larger picture, carefully folded so that two kids are at the center. She recognizes the picture, has a copy of it in a shoebox in the back of her closet where she keeps all the tiny precious things she doesn’t want her mom to throw away when she starts decluttering. A picture of everyone who made it to the last day of summer camp, and now made center of this one is a ten year old Stevie with her arm flung tight around… Around Eddie.

“Surprise,” he says.

“You're? And you've been?”

“We moved right after that summer, I’ve told you the kind of guy my dad was. Not like evil or anything, just incapable of keeping his nose clean and he’d gotten into some trouble in Fort Wayne that sent us to Indianapolis for a bit. When I tried to write, I realized I’d either lost your address or it’d been thrown away.”

“What about when you got to Hawkins, with Wayne?”

“My voice still cracked when I got nervous, and you’ve always been the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t like I looked the same way I did when we were kids, and at first you didn’t either.” She remembers the way she styled her hair back then, the tragic mustache she’d tried growing freshman year cause maybe that would make her feel the way everyone else said she was supposed to. “You looked muted, sad. But then I saw you laughing, at an FFA party I was dealing at, and when you tossed your head back I finally saw Stevie again.

“And when Henderson started coming around talking about his best friend Stevie. Stevie, who was the coolest person in the world. Who kept taking on all the worst parts of the world to keep people safe. And I latched on to him as hard as I could hoping I might get to see you again. If it was puppy love when we were ten, I've got a whole dog pound now I'm so in love with you. Maybe that's crazy to say.”

She can't listen anymore.

“Eddie, stop.” Before he can shut himself down, shutter closed and make his excuse to leave, she lets her own confessions tumble out faster than she can think of what she even wants to say, “You have made me feel more like myself since we first met.”

Her skirt, a deep plum and stolen from Eddie's collection, gets tangled around her ankles as she knee walks close enough that she can touch him. “You've given me confidence and clothes and a name.”

“I added an -ie, Sweetheart.”

“And I like it! It feels like me. I feel like me, and you helped me get there.

“Maybe it is too early to say things like I love you, but I loved the boy who refused to make friendship bracelets for anyone else at camp but me and now he's just promised me a mixtape.”

Stevie knows she could go even longer, could give a Shakespeare worthy speech about all the ways she likes Eddie Munson and what he has come to mean to her as the summer love she cherished in her heart and now. She could, but it's swallowed by the press of Eddie's mouth against hers. An ugly, spitty, puckered lip, perfect first kiss.

She gently corrects the motion until the kiss becomes something sweet and gentle. The kind she'd been hoping for when she'd gone back to camp that following summer. Something that belonged to sunscreened skin and freckled faces. Soft, innocent. But felt just as right here in the bedroom she’d grown up in with Johnny Cash on the stereo and the scent of the perfume she was trying out hanging in the air.

Eddie pulls away, moving just far enough to lean his forehead against hers, his hand coming up to cup the back of her neck. She can feel each slow exhale against her mouth. “I’m really glad I found you again.”

“I’m really glad you found me too.”

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