#but once again brain latched on the the idea like a chewtoy and didn't want to give it back

[odderevents]

I have had a thought. Steve secretly knowing how to play the piano bc he learned as a kid and had to stop bc his dad's an asshole is lovely. I've seen this floating around a few times and I love it. Eddie catching him playing the piano and being so fucking in love with him will never not be perfect.

But.

Consider

Steve playing the Harp.

It's definitely a rich kid instrument. Big ass fucking impractical instrument. Absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to. Hands playing piano is great. But have you ever seen an accomplished harpist? It makes you think impure thoughts about what those fingers can do.

So. Steve secretly knowing how to play the harp

Maybe his mom used to play it, so there's a big harp (the ones with the columns and super intricate base board, not celtic) that's just gathering dust in the basement. Steve started piano lessons, loved learning how to pull music out of an inert object. But his dad decides it's to effeminate, makes him stop. And sure, a harp is a different beast to a piano. But you've still got cords, and Steve's got a pretty decent ear, and he can barely remember seeing his mom play. So one day when he has the house to himself, which isn't an unusual occurrence at this point, he tries it out. And he's admittedly pretty shit at it, but so was he at piano when he started. Only difference is he has no teacher.

So maybe Steve discreetly finds a way to acquire a beginner's practice instructional book for harp. And works on it when he needs to get his brain away from things.

He's even more careful with it than he is with any dirty mags he might later acquire. He knows that worse, much worse than piano, harp is not a masculine instrument and under no circumstances should his father find out about his affinity for it.

It's still his go to when he can't sleep even years later, pulling out the now old and battered booklet of sheet music and exercises. Especially once the upside down bullshit starts. It's soothing and mindless at this point.

The harp that was much too big when he first started with it is now just the right size, it's weight against his shoulder comforting. He can close his eyes and his fingers naturally find where to land and pluck.

Even when he becomes friends with Robbin and then Eddie, both musicians who he knows wouldn't give a damn about him playing a woman's instrument, he can't bring himself to mention it. If he did, they would want to hear him play and he's self-conscious about being self-taught. Both of them play well, they play with other people and people come to listen. He doesn't consider himself a "real" musician. It's just something he does to keep his hands and brain busy on nights where the sheets feel like they're strangling him and the dark reminds him too much of when he can't see not because it's night but because something's hit him in the head again and he can't tell apart the sound of his heartbeat from something pounding through his walls.

So he goes to the basement. Finds his stool. Removes the dust cover. Goes through the meditative motions of tuning it by ear, because that's how he's always done it. And then he plays until the tips of his fingers feel numb. Somehow, he always comes out of it peaceful enough to pass out on the couch in the basement for a couple more hours.

Steve is so used to keeping it a secret he doesn't even think about it when he starts dating Eddie. It's just a thing that's always only been his, and most importantly, it's been vital to keep it that way for so long it's the natural state of things for Steve at this point. It doesn't ever come up. When Steve gets nightmares when he's sleeping with Eddie all he has to do is curl into his boyfriend's chest and feel the warm heartbeat that's not his own to settle back into himself.

The problem arises on a night when Eddie was supposed to stay with Steve but he got held up in Indianapolis when getting a new amp for his guitar. He would come back to Steve but it would be late in the night. Steve has been keeping himself busy all day so he passes out in the early evening on the couch in front of a shitty sitcom he put on to try to distract himself from the empty house.

Nightmares find him, which isn't terribly unusual, but he doesn't have his usual method of coping so he resorts back to his previous habit.

Eddie walks in bone tired after many hours of driving to and from Indianapolis, waiting while the clerk figured out they didn't have the amp he'd been assured over the phone would be available for pickup today, waiting some more while they had the amp driven from a sister shop an hour away because no way was he driving back and forth again to Indianapolis on another day. So yeah. Eddie is beat. All he wants is to dive head first into his boyfriend's impeccable pecs.

He doesn't find Steve waiting with a welcome kiss like he usually would when he walks in. Instead he's greeted with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of the melody of Master of Puppets in a way he's never heard before.

He drops his stuff in the entry hall and goes down to the basement where the music is coming from, curious to see where Steve might have found the recording. Eddie doesn't quite know what to do with himself when he finally lays eyes on Steve, with dried tear stains on his cheeks and his eyes closed as his fingers pluck and strum without hesitation. He's rooted to the spot as he watches Steve work his favorite song in a new and completely heartrending way. He hasn't been able to listen to it since he played it in the upside down. It always brings up the bitter blood tang of the air and the hair raising shrieks of the bats. But this is somehow different, it's soft and melodious but it's still got the same bones.

Eddie feels tears on his own cheeks. He's missed this song goddammit. And he couldn't be happier that it's Steve that's given it back to him

Queue tears and fear and confessions and comfort. Somehow much later in the future there's inexplicably a harp in some of the corroded coffin tracks. And it shouldn't work but it does