Chapter Text
Eddie Munson is not an idiot.
Steve Harrington understood this fact when he met the kid halfway through the fifth grade, despite Eddie being a year younger than the rest of the class.
Munson had a motor mouth that was always split into a far-away grin and these huge eyes that shined like the stars lived in them. When Steve, young and full of pre-teen animosity, asked him where the hell he had come from, Munson had turned that wilded-out expression toward him to explain that he, in one fell swoop, skipped half of fourth and half of fifth grade. Which explained how he ended up stationed right next to Steve Harrington for the rest of fifth grade.
Steve wanted to hate the kid, especially since everyone else seemed to have no difficulty in finding issues with the nine-year-old. Munson was always either too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid, too little, too big, or generally too different from the rest of Mrs. Lewis’ fifth-grade class. They easily iced him out of their social circle.
It really ate at Steve. Mostly because he had been noticing that whenever Munson wasn’t being too much, he was actually really nice. On top of being whip-smart and full of innate curiosity, Munson was too sweet for his own good.
He shared his snacks with other students at lunch who would never return the courtesy. He wrote personalized notes on his Valentine’s Day Cards. He kept track of the class’ birthdays and would always wish people happy birthdays. Steve once watched as he picked himself up after being shoved to the ground only to giggle and apologize for running into the person who shoved him.
During the week that Steve sprained his ankle and couldn’t participate in recess games, Munson sat with him on the warm concrete and talked his ear off about the books he was reading. In that week of physical rest, Steve learned the entire plot of The Lord of the Rings and couldn’t find it in himself to complain.
Especially when staying silent and listening meant that Munson looked at him with the stars in his eyes just a little longer.
On the horizon of middle school, Steve thoroughly inserted himself into Eddie Munson’s life.
In that summer of in-betweens, Steve taught Eddie to shoot hoops and evade wrestling moves and Eddie taught Steve how to approach the world with a little more kindness. They built blanket tents and had hushed conversations about middle school.
On particularly sticky-hot days, Eddie taught himself the guitar using his uncle’s acoustic while he and Steve chatted amicably on his trailer’s front steps. He played and paused music and taught himself bits of music just by listening while he and Steve chatted amicably.
That summer was full of belly-deep laughter as the two bonded in a way that neither truly had in the past.
When they entered middle school together, it did not shock Steve when Eddie shot to the top of all his classes. It did, however, shock Steve that other people began noticing Eddie in a way that Mrs. Lewis’ fifth-grade class never did.
Middle school was a new start, and Eddie found himself surrounded by a gaggle of “his people,” as he called it. He rapidly befriended other kids that were too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid, too little, too big, and too different. They flocked to Eddie like sheep to a shepherd, and Steve carefully toed the line of jealousy and pride.
None of his jealousy mattered, though, because after school Eddie was his friend.
No one else got to have the Eddie that quietly plucked at guitar strings while pondering the secrets of the universe. Only Steve Harrington ever got to see the stars that shined behind his eyes when he rambled about things that he wholeheartedly cared about.
No other middle school kid knew the feeling that was evoked whenever Eddie Munson listened to their troubles while looking at them with his big, brown eyes, all the while nodding and sympathetically humming.
Nobody else had Eddie Munson crooning crappy rock ballads while he made a pillow fort for the two of them to curl up in.
Pillow fort nights were always Steve’s favorite nights— the ones where they rough-housed and had soft conversations. They grew closer from conversations based in empathy. They talked about the shitty, gut-wrenching feelings they harbored regarding their dads and how much it sucks when the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally just don’t.
It was a pillow fort night the night that Steve told Eddie he loved him. Those nights fostered soft feelings and the blossoming of a relationship that wasn’t quite friendship. Eddie had been talking about his father as they were curled tightly around one another, with Eddie’s ear placed over Steve’s heart, when Steve had told Eddie, with all the grace of an eleven year old,
“Your dad sucks, who cares if he doesn’t love you. I love you.”
Steve looked down just in time to see Eddie tuck a secret smile into Steve’s chest. He wrapped his arms tighter around Eddie when he responded, whisper quiet,
“You, too. Your dad sucks, and I love you.”
In the cold basement, the two find warmth in each other. That night, Steve watched as Eddie fell asleep while he was curled up against him and listened to his snuffling snores like they were the chorus to his favorite song.
And no, no one else could ever have this Eddie Munson. Steve would physically fight anyone who attempted to take away the feeling of Eddie melting against him when they hugged, or the soft love that blossomed in his heart whenever Eddie fell asleep in his arms.
By the time Steve was twelve years old, he was willing to die if it meant protecting his relationship with Eddie.
The summer of 1979 was when things began to change. Eddie had spent the entire summer finishing workbooks so that he could be granted the opportunity to skip past the seventh grade and straight into eighth grade. When Steve protested and asked Eddie why he was so antsy to abandon him, Eddie had looked at him with his big, obnoxiously kind eyes and told him,
“Stevie, I gotta make something of myself,”
and Steve...
Well, Steve understood.
So the next school year, Steve entered seventh grade and Eddie rocketed into the eighth grade at age eleven. He was wickedly smart, as always. He was taking his Algebra and Environmental Science classes at the high school, and no matter how he framed it, Steve always had this distinct feeling in his chest that Eddie was going to leave him behind.
The feeling only worsened as Eddie got busier as the school year progressed. Having taken on high-school level courses alongside a “Gifted” Program that the school pushed him into really messed with his schedule, and Steve missed his friend.
It was around this time that Eddie started showing up to school with bags weighing heavy underneath his eyes. He would doze off during his classes. He forgot to do small things, like turning in his homework or studying for quizzes.
Steve hadn’t known how to convey his worry. Especially when Eddie always had room in his schedule for Steve, and seemed perfectly fine when the two were alone together.
Even though he had confessed that it bored him to tears, Eddie would always show up to Steve’s basketball skirmishes and games. Eddie would always be the first one down the bleachers after the final buzzer rang to throw himself at Steve and tell him how good he had played, even if Steve had played like absolute shit.
There was a certainty about Eddie’s presence in his life that Steve didn’t have anywhere else. He never knew if, or when, his parents would be around, and his basketball friends were always flaky, but he knew that Eddie Munson would always have his back.
Steve frequently found himself wishing that he knew how to support Eddie more. Because to Steve, Eddie Munson could have hung the stars in the sky by hand. He was enamored by his younger friend, but he didn’t step in and lend a hand when he noticed how obviously Eddie was struggling.
The summer before Eddie went to high school was spent almost entirely in the Harrington basement. Eddie was constantly working on some project or another for the advanced placement classes that he had been scheduled into, but Steve frequently forced the other boy into the sunlight so they could play basketball or go swimming. Anything to make Eddie smile and look less like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
It was under the stars one night, both boys damp from swimming, that Eddie confessed,
“I feel like... Like I’m on the verge of just crashing into the Earth, and that high school is going to kill me,” he had told Steve as he wrapped a swim towel around Eddie’s shoulders.
“You wanna know what I think?” Steve questioned, lazily throwing himself on the ground next to his friend so that he could dip his feet into the pool.
“Also that high school is going to kill me?” Eddie joked with a manic sort of panic behind his eyes.
“No,” Steve hummed, leaning into Eddie’s side with a grin, “I think that you’re gonna blow them all away. You’re made of pure star-power, Eddie, and you’re gonna outshine all those shitty high schoolers. You’ll be the best of them,” and the admittance of his soft feelings was worth it when it made Eddie turn to him with one of his small smiles.
“You really think so?” Eddie asked, pushing back into Steve’s lean.
“I do, Eddie. Just don’t forget about me when you’re living it up,” Steve teased, throwing his arm over Eddie’s shoulder and reaching up to noogie his buzzed head. Eddie screeched at the rough treatment and tried to jerk from Steve’s grip with no success.
“I would never!”
So at the end of the summer of 1980, a twelve-year old Eddie went off to high school a year before him.
And that was the last Steve heard from or saw of Eddie Munson for an entire year.
Calls went unanswered, he was never at his trailer when he attempted to visit, and eventually, Steve gave up trying to contact his once-best friend.
Eddie’s star hadn’t shined; it burnt.
If one were to believe the rumors circulating the hallways of Hawkins High, halfway through Eddie’s first attempt at a freshman year at Hawkins High, he burnt out harder than anyone ever could have anticipated. Steve couldn’t help but wonder what the school officials had expected when they put a little kid in a hostile high school setting. A steady and happy acclimation?
The word around the halls was that all it took was a failed English test for Eddie’s grades to begin a tumultuous landslide into failure. He went from being Eddie "the Control Freak" Munson to Eddie "the Freak" Munson when he started ditching classes to, allegedly, worship Satan in the woods.
When Steve had first seen Eddie roaming the halls of Hawkins High, he had felt this pang of dark bitterness. At first, Steve hadn’t even recognized him. His hair had grown out to his shoulders and he looked dead on his feet. His skin was unhealthily pallid, he drug his feet when he walked, and he was quick to anger.
Perhaps worst of all, the stars had vacated his eyes.
In the few courses they shared, Steve spent most of the class attempting to reconcile the Eddie he knew and the Eddie that was presented to him.
This Eddie never smiled. He scratched profanities into desks, and he looked at Steve like he didn’t recognize him, either. He sat alone at lunch and kept his head down. He slept through most of his classes, didn’t turn in homework, and kept his mouth shut. Shit, there were even rumors going around that he was dealing drugs.
The rumor mill at Hawkins High completely consumed Eddie Munson until there was nothing left of his original identity; the sweet boy that Steve remembered from his childhood erased by The Freak.
And Steve, bitter over the year of no-contact, forged his own path through high school without Eddie by his side. He was full of vitriol and hatred as the abandonment blackened his heart until the only thing it had room for was negativity.
His shitty attitude only got shittier the more he noticed Eddie thriving without him.
It started small. Eddie would smile the shy and reserved smile that Steve, foolishly, believed was reserved for him. He started hanging around some kids that Steve knew to be theatre geeks. He began to laugh more freely and talk with more volume. He started staying after school to meet with the Drama Club. He was still failing the majority of his classes, but. He seemed so happy.
Just as Steve said he would, Eddie began to blow his peers away with his pure star power.
Eddie was a legend in his own little league of losers. He had found, as Steve remembered him calling it, his people. All Steve could do was watch as Eddie replaced him with newer, better versions of him that fit into his life way better than Steve ever had.
Little by little, Eddie Munson found his footing without Steve by his side and it. Fucking. Sucked.
He is not proud of the person he was. The way he laughed at snide and bigoted remarks directed at everyone, including Eddie, just to paint over the insecurities that plagued him. His own bigoted remarks haunt him, the way he mindlessly echoed the cruel words used by his father and peers, so long as it meant he didn’t have to look too hard at who he was.
What really put the final nail in the coffin of Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington’s childhood friendship was when Eddie came across Steve defacing one of the flyers hung by the Drama Club promoting their upcoming performance of Macbeth in black permanent ink.
Eddie had just looked at him with those big eyes full of disbelief and it made Steve, for only a brief moment, feel a pang of guilt. Eddie then let out a loud scoff and his face morphed into a manic grin,
“Think ya forgot something, big boy,” he had said as he pulled his own marker, bright red, from his mop of hair and uncapped it with his teeth.
He chewed on the cap and crossed the “t” at the end of the slur that Steve had scrawled out in bold, permanent ink. The red was a jarring contrast to the black Steve had used.
They stood there in a charged silence for what could have been hours but was more likely mere seconds. Eddie pointedly recapped his marker, shoved it back into his mane, and blew a kiss to Steve as he pranced away, loudly cackling. All Steve could do was stand there, floundering.
So, yeah. Steve was a real piece of shit.
Until Jonathan Byers beat the absolute living shit out of him, that is.
And then he lost all of the people he thought were his friends on that same day.
And then a monster from an alternate dimension tore his life asunder.
And then things felt okay for a while. He was in love with Nancy, he was doing alright in school, and the monster from the alternate dimension had been conquered. Sure, his parents weren’t around and he had to cope with the only true friend he ever had growing into a radiant being without Steve by his side. Or, maybe he grew because Steve was no longer by his side. And he had to learn to cope with the ache of abandonment that always lay below his ribs. But, things were fine! He was fine!
And then Nancy Wheeler broke his blackened heart into a million and one pieces in one fell-swoop of bullshit that Steve just had to learn to deal with.
And then he, somehow, befriended a local middle schooler after the alternate dimension monsters made a comeback. He also got his teeth knocked down his throat by Billy fucking Hargrove.
So, Steve thought to himself, maybe he was the problem. Maybe people kept abandoning him because he was the one that created the rifts. And he retraced the steps he had taken in his life to figure out when he had become such a massive fuck-up.
And it began with Eddie’s flop of his first attempt at a freshman year. The year that they had lost contact.
Steve, attempting to enter his post-being-a total fuck-up phase, starts with Eddie Munson. And fails multiple times to enter his post-being a total fuck-up phase because of Eddie Munson.
His first failure, Steve is willing to admit, is entirely his fault. He approaches Munson in the hallway in-between classes and slaps a hand on his shoulder, boldly asserting,
"We need to talk.”
Munson turns his head over his shoulder and gives him one long look up and down and then laughs straight in his face. His laugh is loud and boisterous enough that the hallways quiet around them and, because it's Munson, he also has to make a spectacle out of it by loudly asserting,
"Careful, big boy, you might catch something if you touch me any longer," before pretending to sneeze in his face and walking away. The hallway around him fills with quiet laughter of their schoolmates either laughing at him or laughing at Munson.
And Steve…
Well, Steve understands. Steve knows that he definitely deserved that. But, shit, if it didn't suck.
The second attempt doesn’t go any better and, once again, Steve blames himself for the failure.
He approaches Eddie’s lunch table, the one he has with a weird culmination of theatre geeks and people that are in his Hellfire Club thing that Munson petitioned the principal for in their sophomore year. The table silences as Steve approaches, everyone stopping what they’re doing, except Munson.
Munson, who, upon quick inspection, is scribbling notes into the margin of some book.
Only when he realizes how silent his table has become does he look up.
And he immediately bursts out into manic, vaguely nervous, laughter when he sees Steve standing at the end of his table like a god damn lady in waiting.
“So,” Steve says, “this seat open?”
It only makes Munson laugh even harder, and Steve almost feels pleased. However, Munson just stands up and pulls out his chair,
“Nah, but this one is now,” he says and just grabs his stuff and walks away from the table.
Attempt three goes a little better, Steve thinks.
He waits outside of the auditorium for Drama Club to be done with their rehearsal, sipping at chocolate milk while he waits. He knows that Eddie’s not an actor, so he’s not even really sure what Munson does at rehearsals, but he excitedly straightens his posture when Munson exits the theater.
There’s a girl with cropped brown hair tailing him, and they’re both burdened by toolkits, three-ring binders, and two, huge keyboard-looking things.
Munson doesn’t see him over the mountain of shit he’s carrying, but the girl does. The look she gives him is nasty. He’s surprised that she doesn’t spit at him as she walks by.
Their interaction doesn’t last long, though, because Munson kicks at a door that opens up to a short flight of stairs and immediately heads up them. The girl follows. Steve walks to the open door but doesn’t follow the two up the stairs.
He can barely hear their muffled conversation, but a few choice words stick out to him. Fucking Steve Harrington, dickhead, asshole, and, I will kill him for you, had to be some of his favorites.
He tries for a friendly smile when Munson comes down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“What do you want, Harrington,” he drones, closing the door behind his friend and locking it.
“This your girlfriend?” Steve asks because he’s determined to ruin his third attempt, it seems.
Munson dryly laughs, fully enunciating his ‘haha’s deadpannedly. He turns to look at the girl and says,
“Robin, can you tell Ms. Hoover that I’ll be right in? Harrington, you know that I’m a queer,” he puts forth both statements at once, as though his message for Ms. Hoover and his ontological statement carry the same weight. It puts Steve in his place and silences him, but not for long.
“Right, um," he stammers, tripping over syllables. Munson looks at him with eyes full of malice.
“What do you want, Harrington? Here to spray-paint hate speech on the walls?”
“No, uh.”
Munson’s expression gets more baleful and hateful the more Steve hesitates.
“What do you, um, do? For your theater thing?” He casually attempts. Eddie eyes him up and down, shakes his head, and starts to walk to the auditorium’s doors.
“Wait! Wait, I’m sorry!” Steve cries, almost grovels. It pauses Eddie in his tracks, and he turns his head over his shoulder.
“Tell you what, Harrington," Munson sighs and rolls his eyes, "how 'bout you get me an itemized list of all the fucked up shit you've done by the end of the week,” Eddie says as he opens the door, and Steve sincerely cannot tell if he’s joking. “Then, we can talk,” he enters the theater and closes the door behind him, leaving Steve absolutely flummoxed.
So, Steve does what he does best.
He runs to a gaggle of middle schoolers for help.
It turns into this whole production, with all of them that were available sitting around Steve’s dining table, as Steve stares down at a blank piece of paper.
He has learned from his first three attempts, he tries to convince himself. He isn’t going to get back into the good graces of Munson through awful attempts at conversation or cornering him. He needs to think about this.
Luckily, these middle schoolers are smarter than Steve will ever be.
“So, what exactly did you do to this guy?” Lucas asks, “because I feel like we should start there.”
“We were, like, best friends when we were your age. We lost contact, and I did some real messed up shit to him,” Steve explains dejectedly.
“What kind of messed up shit?” Max probes.
“Just, shit,” Steve exclaims.
“Steve,” Dustin says in a way that is so condescending that it immediately raises his hackles, “we’re not going to get anywhere with this if you’re unwilling to admit and accept any wrongdoing.”
“Fine!” Steve throws his hands up. “We were best friends, and we lost contact, and I was an asshole, and I did asshole things to him!”
“Okay,” Will gentles, reaching over and grabbing Steve’s paper and pencil. He scrawls down:
I am sorry for…
1. Being an asshole.
“What else?” Dustin encourages.
“I said a lot of hateful shit, like, a lot, called him a,” he starts, murmurs a slur under his breath, and tries not to wince when the table gasps at it. Will scrambles to write:
2. Using hateful and bigoted rhetoric against you.
“Guys, I really need a judgment-free zone if this is going to work,” Steve sighs and puts his head in his hands, slumping over in defeat.
“Slurs aren’t cool, Steve,” Mike says, and it gives Steve pause because he hadn’t expected that sentiment from Mike.
“I implied, a few times, that he was, um, diseased,” Steve continues, locking eyes with Mike.
From his periphery, he sees Will underline what he had written prior with two bold lines.
“Good, this is good. This is healing,” Dustin says.
“I would start fights with him in the hall because it would make Tommy H. laugh.”
3. Valuing the opinions of others, such as Tommy H., over your safety and comfort.
By the time they’re done with Steve’s impromptu therapy session with pre-teens, the moon has risen in the sky and they have seventeen items on the “List of Things Steve Is Sorry About.”
He gets Munson alone again by waiting for him outside the auditorium during another rehearsal. Will had put the paper into an envelope for Steve before he had driven the kids home, and that envelope is clutched tightly in Steve’s hands.
Munson steps out of the auditorium with his friend, and when Munson spots Steve, he exhales a long-suffering sigh and passes his friend a set of keys.
“Can you get everything set up in the booth, Robin? I have to deal with this,” and he gestures to where Steve’s sat.
“I will kill him for you,” Robin whispers, loudly, but unlocks the door and heads up the stairs.
Munson drops himself into the seat across the table from Steve, and Steve hesitates before sliding the envelope across the table toward him. Munson cocks an eyebrow, opens up the envelop and unfolds the paper, and lets out a bark of laughter when he sees the contents of the letter.
It makes Steve hopeful. Just a little bit.
Munson’s eyes scan over the paper, and when he puts it down, he looks Steve right in the eyes.
“I’ve got shit to do. You know where I live,” is what he says as he tucks the paper back into its’ envelope. He stands up and shoves it into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll be home around seven?” He offers Steve a small smile, and it makes his heart race.
“Seven, sounds good, seven. See you there,” Steve stammers. Munson’s smile shifts into a smirk as he turns around to go up the stairs. Munson shoots him a quick look over his shoulder, and for the first time in a very long time, Steve can see the stars behind his eyes.
So, at exactly seven o’clock, he rolls up to the Munson’s trailer in his Beamer with a fucking boombox in his back seat. He parks right next to Eddie’s van.
He sighs and shakes his jitters out, stepping out of the car in the bitter cold of late November with the boombox carried in his hands. He carefully and quietly makes his way Eddie’s bedroom window, grateful to see the light is on.
He sets his radio down and hits play on the mixtape Munson made him during middle school, standing outside his window with his hands held together behind him.
The chanting opening of Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling begins to blast through Munson’s cramped lawn and Steve levels the biggest, widest eyes that he can at the window in front of him.
He knows what his big ole’ doe eyes can do, has heard enough people lament how crazy his Bambi eyes drive them.
After ten seconds of no response, Steve, in desperation, begins to sing along.
“Can’t stop this feeling,” he warbles, “deep inside of me,” he crescendos, closely watching the window.
He can’t stop the grin that cracks his face in two when Munson wrenches back his curtains and stares at him in disbelief. He continues his performance as Munson shakes his head and mouths a quiet “Steve Harrington,” from inside his room.
“When you hold me... in your arms so tight,” he continues and tries his hardest to not wilt in disappointment as Munson draws his curtains back shut. He came here with a mission, and he will sing through this entire mixtape before giving up if it means getting back in Munson’s good graces.
“You let me know... everything’s alright,” he regains some semblance of hope when Munson peeks through the curtains again and rubs at his eyes, almost as if trying to clear them to make sure that Steve Harrington really, truly, is serenading him at his window at 7 PM on a Thursday.
“I,” he wails from the bottom of his vocal cords just to watch Munson bite his lip to hold back a smile, “‘m hooked on a feeling,” he bellows and Munson’s shoulders shake with silent laughter that unravels this deeply pleased feeling in Steve’s stomach. Steve’s grin only widens when Munson cracks open his window and leans out of it, bracing his hands against the sill,
“Couldn’t just knock, Harrington?”
In a bid of desperate hope, Steve turns the boombox off and rushes up to Munson’s window. And because he knows Munson’ll appreciate it, he goes for honesty.
“I miss you,” he admits.
Munson rolls his eyes right in Steve’s face and all the hope that Steve has accrued immediately flushes right out of him.
“I think you’re lonely, big boy,” he hums, “I think that you’ve been left in the dust by everyone else, so now you’re crawling back to me because I’m the most pathetic son of a bitch you’ve ever been friends with,” and his eyes are mean even though there’s still a small smile on his lips.
Before Munson can move to shut the window, Steve’s got his fingers wedged onto the sill between Munson’s.
“I miss you,” he repeats, “and we need to talk because otherwise, you’re going to miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have Steve Harrington grovel at your feet and beg for your forgiveness,” he leans in closer, shifting his weight onto his arms, and prepares to launch himself into Munson’s bedroom through the window.
“Christ on a bike,” Munson breathes out, but he steps back from the window and lets Steve catapult his way inside. Munson looks terribly unimpressed and drags both his hands over his face with a long, exasperated sigh. When Steve lands with a clatter on the cluttered floor, Eddie just sits on his bed and puts his head in his hands.
Steve rolls up from his prone position onto his knees and approaches Munson by scooting forward on his knees until he can sit on the floor across from him.
Munson’s floor is filthy. Clothes are scattered everywhere alongside loose-leaf paper, books, and a miscellaneous assortment of crap. Steve’s sitting on something that’s digging into the back of his thigh, but he’s not going to let anything stop him now that he’s got Munson where he wants him.
“Look,” Steve says at the same exact time Munson says, “Listen,”
They blink at each other owlishly and Munson titters a panicked giggle and uses his hands to shake his hair from his face.
“You first, big boy.”
Steve takes a deep breath to steady his hammering heart and, as requested, goes first.
“I’ve sort of been an asshole,” he starts, and can barely stop himself from smiling when Munson lets out a short, genuine cackle at the admission. “Okay, okay! I’ve been a huge asshole. To a lot of people. But especially to you. Writing that itemized list yesterday made me realize a lot of things,” he waits for Munson to look at him before continuing, “I was hurt and bitter,” he confesses, “and I took it out on you, and that was an asshole move.
"I said shit that I should not have said, and I used language I should have never used, and I’m not asking you to forgive me for, for any of that. I was just. Really upset, when we lost contact. And I did stupid shit because of my own stupid issues to make me feel better about it. But, I just. I really missed you, and I’m sorry that I showed it by being a hateful fuck-up.”
Silence permeates between the two as they look, truly look, at each other for the first time in over three years. And Steve has never felt more like a winner than when Munson offers him a small and tentative, but genuine, smile.
“I missed you,” Munson confesses lightly, poking Steve’s knee with his socked foot. The confession makes all kinds of fireworks go off in his stomach and it brings a small smile to Steve’s face.
“Then why…?”
“High school fucking killed me, man,” Munson sighs out, “I felt dead inside, and I had all this extracurricular shit I was doing, and I had this huge image to live up to and all these expectations for me, or whatever,” he runs his hands through his hair again, “and it like fucked with my head real bad, made me go a little crazy. It wasn’t until I tried offing myself that anyone took it seriously,” and this time the confession is a little shaky, “it was, like, forever ago, and I went through some multi-step recovery programs or whatever, but I was real fucked up those first two years.”
A lot of things click into place at once in Steve’s head.
“Jesus Christ, I was such an asshole,” he whispers in horror, memories re-contextualizing themselves. Steve’s revelation only makes Munson let out a snort of laughter, though.
“Yeah, pal, you kinda were,” he affirms.
Steve scrambles to do something he hasn’t done since the seventh grade and tackles Eddie Munson into a hug. It sends Munson sprawling down onto the bed with an “oof,” but it doesn’t make Steve let up. Because Munson is everything that is right about the world and Steve almost lost him forever and he didn’t even know. A lesser man would have choked back the tears that Steve feels burning in the back of his throat, but Steve is trying to be a better man, so he weeps into Munson’s stupid Hellfire baseball tee. He hears Munson let out a wet laugh before he’s wrestling them into a more comfortable position to hug in.
“Fucking Blue Swede, Steve?” Munson— Eddie— questions, once he has them settled chest-to-chest with each other’s arms, wrapped tightly around one another, and Steve almost starts crying again at the kind touch alone. It’s been a minute since someone has touched him with kindness, and pairing that with the emotional reconciliation he’s currently facing is a lot.
“You were the one who put it on the tape, asshole,” Steve snarks, his voice wet with snot and tears that he rubs on the shoulder of Eddie’s shirt just to be a vindictive bitch.
“Can’t believe you kept it,” Eddie murmurs, vulnerability laced in his tone as he relaxes his face into the top of Steve’s hair.
“Of course I kept it. Missed you,” Steve responds with that same vulnerability and shifts to get a little closer to his friend. He feels like a little kid again, wrapped in his best friend's arms. But at the same time, he has never felt more present in his life.
Everything feels right in the world for the first time in a very long time. If Steve believed in fate or the cosmos, he would probably say that the universe is righting itself after being wrong for so very long. The bottomless pit that has been forming in Steve’s stomach since he got his shit rocked by Byers is steadily getting replaced by the light warmth brought on by Eddie’s simple presence.
They stay there for an indeterminate amount of time, wrapped up in one another just like when they were younger, sharing parts of their heart that no one else had access to. A monumental relief settles between the two of them as they absently talk about the past three years of absence in hushed tones, voices quiet like they're sharing secret intelligence with one another. They exchange truths for truths between themselves.
Eddie admits that he's failing almost all of his classes and Steve admits that he's scared of graduating. Eddie confesses that he's not sure he can ever forget how Steve treated him and Steve confesses that it'll be okay if he can't. Eddie tells him that he's scared that this is all some elaborate, shitty prank and Steve tells him that he can't blame him for thinking that. Steve promises to do better.
It’s only when the front door to the trailer squeals open that they untangle themselves.
Eddie sits up excitedly and scampers out of the room, singing, “Wayne!”
Steve quietly follows and watches as Eddie wraps himself around his uncle in a hug, and it makes Steve’s heart burn with adoration thinking that this is how Eddie must greet his uncle every day. A subtle reminder that no matter how much time may pass or how difficult life may get, Eddie Munson always has room in his heart to take care of the people he loves.
Wayne removes himself from his nephew and looks up to see Steve leaning in Eddie’s doorway and his eyes immediately narrow. Steve shudders as vivid memories of Eddie giving him that same exact look cross his mind.
“Steve Harrington,” Wayne testily says.
“Sir,” Steve meekly says.
“Wayne,” Eddie exasperatedly says.
Wayne grumbles, ruffles Eddie’s hair, and then heads off to the fridge to grab a beer. Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“I should probably get going,” Steve grimaces at the tension that his presence has caused. Steve has always known Wayne to be fiercely protective over Eddie, especially because Eddie’s dad was a shithead good-for-nothing, and he doesn’t want to put himself even higher on Wayne’s shit list by overstaying his welcome.
“Yes, you should. Goodbye, Steve,” Wayne monotones and cracks open his beer.
“Goodbye, Steve,” Eddie parrots, twirling his hair in front of his face to hide his impish grin.
It doesn’t work, but the smile makes Steve’s heart lighten. Eddie opens the door for him, and Steve makes a hasty retreat.
“I’ll,” he calls as he unlocks his car, “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?” His voice cracks in the middle of his assertion, turning it into a question. His face blazes with embarrassment, but it makes Eddie smile even wider at him.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”