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Eddie Munson hated Christmas music.
And that normally would have been just fine.
For most people, all that would mean was that they’d have to avoid the mall in December, make sure to bring tapes to avoid listening to the radio, maybe wear earplugs while grocery shopping. For most people, it would be a minor blip of inconvenience, and they could go about the rest of their lives just fine.
But most people didn’t have a soulmate like his.
Not to say that most people didn’t have soulmates–because as far as he could tell, most people did. Eddie’s mom had told him all about them when he was little. Said that one day, when he was old enough, he’d meet someone very special, and then he’d start hearing their music in his head. She told him that music was a special kind of magic, just like soulmates were, and that when you got a song stuck in your head your soulmate would hear it too, and that’s how you’d know you were meant for each other. Music, she’d told him, was the best way to learn about who your soulmate was. The best way to understand them, to know them, was to listen to their music. Even, and especially, if it was different than what you were used to.
Eddie had asked her, once, small and quiet in the evening after his Pops had had too much to drink and passed out on the couch, if she’d heard the music with him.
His mom’s sad smile was all the confirmation that finding your soulmate wasn’t guaranteed, and that was enough to scare him.
Because you’d only hear the music once you’d made a connection, and what if Eddie spent the rest of his life stuck in bumfuck nowhere, never running into the person, never getting to hear their music in his mind?
Eddie spent the first fifteen years of his life (or, at least, the conscious and aware ones) waiting for the music to start. Sure, he could get his own songs stuck in his head (mostly Wayne’s favourites, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Loretta Lynn, and then AC/DC and Metallica and Dio, as he got older and started to explore on his own) but he was keenly aware that someday he would meet someone and it would be different.
Eddie moved to Hawkins when he was twelve, and he was sure that that was the end of any hope of a soulmate for him. When he’d been with his mom, before his mom had–when she was still–when he lived with his mom, they’d moved around a lot. And that had been fun and exciting, if not just because it gave him more and more opportunities to meet his soulmate.
So Hawkins felt like the end of the world, at least for his chances of ever meeting that person.
Especially because by this point in his young life, he already knew he was… different. Not just his taste in music, and clothes, and activities, but in his tastes in everything. So the thought that he could move to fucking Hawkins Indiana and meet someone else like him?
Not even worth considering.
Still, because he was a sap and a sucker, he still kind of hoped.
His first day at middle school he couldn’t stop the nerves, the giddy excitement, the hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d see the person who was his soulmate and hear the beautiful tunes of Never Say Die or Killing Machine and he’d just know.
Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Despite the let down, his first day at Hawkins High, two years later, had the same nervous bubble brewing in his gut. Maybe this year it’d be Ace of Spades or British Hell. Maybe there’d be someone else like him, who he could trade pins with, buy patches for, practice guitar with.
Maybe, this time, it’d be his year.
It wasn’t.
Freshman year passed in a blur of bullies and beatdowns and Eddie figuring out the best way to avoid either of those things. Luckily, he landed himself in a shaky friendship with a senior named Rick, who’d taken Eddie more or less under his weed-stenched wing, taught him how to play D&D, taught him how to be crazy enough that no one would fuck with him, and set him up to take over Rick’s little business when Rick graduated.
By the end of the year, Eddie had built out a reputation across the school. He was the go-to guy if you wanted a purchase, and he mostly charged fair prices, and by making himself indispensable to the jock’s parties and playing up his little crazed satanic act, he was more or less safe from the horrors of high school.
Oh, and he got free weed, so that was pretty cool too.
He’d almost forgotten about his entire lack of soulmate the summer after freshman year. Rick and his girlfriend Janet were still around, and he mostly bummed around the trailer park with them, crafting up his own D&D campaign in the hot summer afternoons, blasting Screaming for Vengeance and Iron Fist on the cassette player he’d bought with his first earnings as Hawkin’s High’s newest supply.
His first day of sophomore year didn’t even come with the usual bubbles and giddiness. Honestly, all he was thinking was that it would be another boring year in boring Hawkins, but at least now he had a way to fund his cassette collection, so things weren’t all bad.
Only.
The very first day of school, everything changed.
Eddie had been by his locker, digging around for the chemistry book he knew was in there somewhere. Behind him, someone cleared their throat, and Eddie turned to find a gaggle of what he assumed were freshmen standing behind him. Maybe eight guys, who all had the baby face and light touch of acne to indicate they were younger than him, but from the looks of them were also jock-adjacent enough that they probably could still beat him up.
He’d be outnumbered, at least.
But: he hadn’t been jumped in months. And, with the awkward way they were all standing around, nervous and a little hesitant to approach, he figured this was what it usually was.
“Tell me what the fuck you want in the next five seconds or scram, children. I have places to be.”
Eddie drew himself up as best as he could, thank god for that final growth spurt in the summer, and raised a brow. He was wearing his brand new leather jacket, a score of a find at the thrift store in Gary that Janet was obsessed with, and he thought it made him look tough enough that he could pull off a tone like that.
One of the jocks–around the same height as him, gorgeous swoop of chestnut brown hair–stumbled forward like he’d been pushed. From the way his short haired freckled friend was smirking, he likely had.
“Hey, uh, man,” said the kid, reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. “We’re having a party and we heard that you were, uh, like, the guy to… go to for… stuff.”
The kid was so awkward and clearly uncomfortable that Eddie couldn’t help himself.
“What’s your name, kid?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning back on the locker beside his, kicking his shut with his foot as he did so.
“Uh,” said the kid, turning back to look at his friends then back to Eddie. “Steve? Uh, Steve Harrington.”
Eddie snorted. What a fucking stuck up name. “Okay, Steve,” he drawled, looking back at his friends. “First rule of, uh, fucking life. Don’t tell your drug dealer your whole ass government name, man, jesus.”
Steve flushed red, and Eddie hated that he reveled in it, just a little.
Maybe being a sophomore would be okay after all.
“Second rule, we’re literally fucking in a school building right now, you moron. Look. Three PM every day except Thursday I’ll be at the picnic table by the woods. You want something, you come then.”
And then he paused, remembered what Rick had taught him, and leaned in. “And if you fucking tell anyone, if any word gets out about that interaction…” Eddie leaned in further, drew a finger across his neck in the most threatening gesture he could manage. “You’ll wish you’d never been born, got it?”
Steve nodded too fast, and stepped back. “Sorry, man,” he said, out of nowhere. “Uh. Three pm. Okay.” And then he turned and grabbed the group of kids who’d been lurking behind him, and shoved until they’d all taken off down the hall.
It should have been a completely unremarkable interaction, except for how proud Eddie was that he actually managed to stand up for himself and stick to the reputation Rick had helped him build.
(In fact, it wasn’t until years later that he even pinned the conversation as anything other than just that, a random interaction that boosted his social status. He’d met so many people that day, with new classes and new social groups. Hell, he’d met Jeff that day, and god knows he’d really thought that might have been the answer for a few years.)
It should have been completely unremarkable, either way.
Except.
He got home that day and dropped down onto his bed, exhausted from the sheer act of existing as a teenager, and…
Something was off.
His head sounded a little… static-y? Like someone was rustling something next to his ear, only, it was more… inside his brain?
And then:
If you like pina coladas,
And gettin’ caught in the rain
If you’re not into yoga,
If you have half a brain
If you love makin’ love at midnight
In the dunes on the cape
Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for
Write to me and escape
There was a song playing in his head.
There was a song playing in his head that he had never fucking heard before.
Eddie scrambled, launching himself off the mattress faster than he ever had before, lurching for the radio. He slammed it on as fast as he could and grabbed the tune dial twisting, pausing, twisting, pausing, twisting–
WSQK.
His soulmate was in Hawkins.
Eddie Munson had a soulmate. In Hawkins. Who was listening to WSQK right this fucking second!
He’d never been so fucking excited to be listening to Top 100 Radio in his entire life. Eddie dropped back on the bed, closed his eyes, and–
Oh.
This song…
Fuck.
His soulmate was in Hawkins. And he had awful fucking taste in music.
Fuck.
It continued like that for the rest of the school year. Pina Colada lasted weeks, and popped back up again and again throughout the school year like a bad fucking rash. Just when Eddie would finally have peace–
If you like pina coladas–
FUCK!
His soulmate, it turned out, had fucking atrocious taste in music. Eddie spent two weeks humming your kiss is on my list (frustrated every time) before he got saddled with three more days of fucking pina fucking coladas and then launched right into some absolutely disaster song about some guy named Jessie who had a girlfriend the singer of said song presumably wanted to fuck.
Still. Every time it happened he forced himself to suffer through however long it took to figure out the name. Skimming radio stations was typically his best bet, but he did once have to call Janet and ask for her opinion.
Either way. Eddie was starting a list.
After another particularly bad month of having to listen to some sultry-chain-smoking asshole croon about Bette Davis’s eyes, he decided he needed to fight fire with fire.
That led to a months-long battle, as far as he deemed it. He’d blast Judas Priest (Point of Entry, his current favorite) or Def Leppard (High and Dry, of course) until he had something firmly lodged in his brain, and then he’d lie on his bed and let it play over and over in his mind, picturing how his soulmate might be reacting. Every time he found a new favorite, he’d force it to stick in his mind, hoping he might help his soulmate break through the litany of billboard top 100 and learn some taste.
Instead, he suffered out the rest of the year with Winner Takes it All (and had to grudgingly admit that Abba was, actually, pretty good), Call Me (Blondie, less his taste), 9 to 5 (he did love some Dolly, though, that one might have actually been his own), and You Make My Dreams (Hall & Oates, as far as he was concerned, could go fuck themselves).
But, fine.
Every new song, ever frustrating bar, every fucking repeated chorus (because his soulmate never got full songs stuck in his head, just lines here and there, over and over and over), as annoying as they were, at least reminded him he had a soulmate, and wasn’t that something?
At least it was, until junior year. Because junior year was the year his soulmate, presumably, fell in love.
Or, something like it. Eddie had to suffer through nearly a month of Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, followed almost immediately by The Girl Is Mine and then Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
He’d managed to shove back The Hellion and Don’t Burn the Witch and Iron Fist, but that hadn’t stopped Physical from lodging itself in there for three fucking weeks.
At least, Eddie figured, one of them was getting laid.
(And he did his best to forget the entire month that was just Eye of the Tiger, because he was fucking trying not to go completely insane.)
The love songs only got worse the year after. Waiting For a Girl Like You and then Jack and Diane was a particularly beautiful few weeks. God, if he never had to hear another John Mellencanp song again he could, potentially, live a long and happy life.
Eddie bought two copies of Holy Diver, one for his home cassette and one for the car, and blasted Dio as loud as he possibly could, to try and keep the pop hits out of his brain. It didn’t help him when Toto’s Africa blew up to the point that even Eddie couldn’t get away from it. Some days, he didn’t know if it was his soulmate’s music playing over and over in his mind or his own, his taste profile completely ruined by the prep he was apparently destined to love forever.
(Eddie hated to admit it, but Raise a Little Hell was, at least, worth listening to.)
That year, his first senior year, when he still thought he’d be getting the fuck out of Hawkins any day now, was also the year he really got to work at trying to figure out who his soulmate was.
It became obvious fast enough that it wasn’t Jeff, which was really for the best. When Gareth had started at Hawkins, Eddie had thought, maybe, but then–he hadn’t been around when the music started, so it couldn’t have been him. Instead, in an act of what he liked to think was defiance, he started to add more and more patches and pins to his vest. He hacked up the Dio shirt he’d bought in Indy for way too much money and stitched it over the back of his vest, shouting for the whole school to see exactly just who he was.
He thought, maybe, one of the jocks would tug him aside. Come to pretend to buy and pull him into the woods, tell him that it was him, and that he knew Eddie was looking for him. Maybe the guy would shove him up against a tree, and drop down to his knees, and–
Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Senior year number one passed in a blur of Down Under and Every Breath You Take and Eddie bought the new Slayer tape and played Die by the Sword enough that he hoped his soulmate might just get the fucking message.
Obviously, he didn’t.
And then Eddie failed math and history, and all of a sudden his dream of getting the fuck out of Hawkins was bleeding through his fingers, dying on the floor.
His soulmate, luckily, was just as fucking pissed the following year.
Or. Maybe not pissed. The guy was clearly sad, and yet… Eddie relished in it, a little. That sick squirming feeling in his gut that his soulmate was out there somewhere and heartbroken was easy enough to stomp all over, to crush as best as he could. So what that the guy spent three weeks obsessed with How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? I Won’t Hold You Back? Heartbreaker (though, Pat Benatar did clearly know how to fucking rock).
Eddie retaliated at first with anger and hurt of his own–Metallica’s Creeping Death. Killed by Death, Welcome Princess of Hell. He spent hours in the record store, reading track lists, wasting his dealer funds on tape after tape after tape, trying to figure out how to tell his soulmate to grow the fuck up and get over it.
That only led to a month straight of Dancing in the Dark, but at least that one didn’t make Eddie think of the guy lying in bed sobbing for months straight, which was a positive, in his books.
(Summertime brought Modern Love, and as much as Eddie hated it, he had to admit, it was hard not to walk around all day yelling “CHURCH ON TIME”... “MODERN LOVE”... “GOD AND MAN” to interrupt his friends, and now bandmates, every chance he got).
That was another change. Eddie had a band now, a group of friends. His D&D crew, his little sheep. He was finally having fun hanging out with people (as much as they tormented him every time they caught him humming You Can’t Hurry Love).
It was also frustrating because sometimes Eddie didn’t even get a verse. He’d just get a bar of music, and he’d think, “oh, that sounds kind of good”, and spend an hour picking it out on his guitar to show to the guys, and then they’d go, “you fucking moron, that’s just Footloose” and, man, that sucked.
By the end of the year, Eddie had stopped trying to fight fire with fire. Instead, he had moved right into ‘just keep listening to good songs, so that maybe I can fix this guy’s taste’.
He did, at least, feel pretty good about the time when he caught a bar of Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, complete with its touch of static that told him it hadn’t started in his mind. That, he thought, was a very good day.
The following year, his second senior year, was relatively uneventful. Sure, there was a fucking terrible month where he had to suffer through 24/7 “wake me UP, before you go go”, a one day reprieve, and then right back into “church on time”, which wasn’t his best week ever.
School was hard enough, and frustrating enough, that Eddie spent more time outside of class than in it. Every time he caught a snippet of a new song he’d take off from whatever he was doing, though he’d never quite managed to catch the moment a song got stuck in his soulmate's head from the radio like he had the first time. Still. He spent weeks poring over every station he could find, looking for the snips that would catch his soulmate’s attention.
(And weeks, annoyingly, having fucking Take My Breath Away stuck in his own head, no matter how hard he tried to drown it out with W.A.S.P. and The Last In Line and Ride the Lightning.)
School ended, and Eddie, once again, didn’t get to walk the stage. That year he told himself he was fine with it, and fuck school anyways. In fact, he’d almost packed a bag and taken off to Indy because who needed a high school diploma anyways, but Wayne had sat him down and told him he needed to give it one more try, and, anyways. Corroded Coffin were all still there, at least, so he wouldn’t be bored out of his mind.
It was the summer after that second senior year when things got a little… weird for his soulmate.
It started with Stevie Nicks, and honestly? Eddie was not mad at Edge of Seventeen. It might not be in his typical wheelhouse, but the week of “just like the white winged dove sings a song sounds like she’s singing” was a blissful reprieve from the tortues of John Mellencamp and WHAM.
ABBA came back with a hot vengeance, Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie! And Knowing Me Knowing You and Waterloo blending together in his soulmate’s head. Three days straight of Material Girl, which was grating enough to drive anyone a little crazy. He got a week of Cherry Bomb and started to seriously wonder if he’d misjudged the guy entirely and then-
Then things got really weird.
It started with classical music. As far as Eddie could tell, in the five years that he’d been hearing his soulmate’s musical preferences, he’d barely strayed from pop into light rock, let alone classical. But there it was, and that led Eddie right back to the record store, because he had no idea how else he was supposed to figure this one out.
Twenty minutes of him humming the melody at the clerk (because when he said “it kind of sounds like La Vie En Rose but not” she’d looked at him like he’d grown a second head), plucking the notes out on his guitar as best he could and making the remaining orchestra noises with his mouth, the sales clerk had finally snapped her fingers and shouted “Stravinsky! I think it’s Rite of Spring!”
It was.
But that didn’t explain anything to Eddie.
It only got weirder from there.
His soulmate spent two full days with just the melody of Daisy Bell going round and round in his head, and he’d camped out in the mall food court for a full afternoon, convinced that his soulmate must work there because it played from that stupid ride constantly.
If he’d been at all worried that his soulmate had died in the mall fire, that had disappeared quickly, when an acoustic version of The NeverEnding Story lodged itself so firmly in his head that Eddie had ended up learning the entire thing on guitar just so he could give it a backing track.
And then, it was back for another senior year.
Which, as Eddie learned fast, was a year for movie soundtracks.
Ghostbusters was annoying, but not as bad as Footloose. Toto’s Dune main title song felt absolutely out of left field, but at least Eddie recognized it. And what a relief that his soulmate had better taste in movies than he did in music. He could have gone without three weeks of Don’t You (Forget About Me), but it was better than a reprise of Eye of the Tiger, which (after asking Gareth) he found out was on the new Rocky soundtrack.
And that made him doubt everything again, because who the fuck was watching Rocky IV?
Luckily, Dio had a new EP out, and Rock and Roll Children was great at drowning out whatever his soulmate was stuck on that day.
And then: everything got fucking weird for him too.
One day, everything was normal. His soulmate was stuck on an actual good song this time (except that Eddie was pretty sure it was from Critters, because he’d seen the preview for it the last time he’d caught a movie), and then on a random Friday night in March, Chrissy Cunningham had decided she wanted to get fucked up.
And then she’d died, fucking graphically and terrifyingly in his trailer and everything only got fucking worse from there.
Eddie had hunkered down in Rick’s boathouse, and the only thing that had kept him sane was closing his eyes and focusing on the song from fucking Critters. When the song died down, when his soulmate was presumably busy doing other things, Eddie turned his attention to the new Metallica album. It had only come out a few weeks ago, but he’d been first in line for his cassette and had been listening to it practically nonstop since. He’d been almost completely through working out how to play it on his guitar before… before, and even though he didn’t have his guitar at Rick’s, he’d found a piece of wood about the same size and carved frets into it so he could keep working on the placement. He’d close his eyes and leant back against the wall and work through the riff, over and over and over, because if he let his brain focus even for a second on what had happened–well.
He might never sleep again.
Things only got weirder, with the arrival of Dustin, Max, Robin-from-band, and Steve fucking Harrington, who was apparently a very different guy than he’d been, trying to buy drugs from Eddie in his freshman year. That hadn’t stopped Eddie from slamming him into the wall, so fucking terrified that he was about to get murdered (or sent to jail, maybe worse), that he couldn’t stop the instinct.
(He also couldn’t stop thinking about it, after the group had left. Thinking about the tiny whimper Steve had made when Eddie had pressed the bottle into his neck, the twitch Eddie had felt against his hip, the mindbending realization that Steve Harrington’s dick had reacted to Eddie pressing him into a wall.)
And then he was alone again.
Sunday bled into Monday and Critters disappeared from his brain so suddenly he was worried, for a minute, that his soulmate was the next body, floating through the Hawkin’s sky, busted and bruised and–
No, wait.
Was that Kate Bush?
Running Up That Hill was not as good as the Critters song, but it also wasn’t bad, all things considered. It did get a little old, as Monday ticked into Tuesday, but before he could really start to get annoyed about it everything went to shit again and suddenly he was sneaking out of Rick’s, running for his fucking life, and hunkering down at Skull Rock to wait for reinforcements.
And then.
And then he was following Steve and Nancy and Robin into a fucking portal in the bottom of Lover’s Lake, fighting demobats, trekking through a hell world, and falling just a little bit in love with Steve Harrington in the process.
At some point, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when, the song in his head switched over.
It was one he knew, one his mom had used to sing to him when he couldn’t fall asleep.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done,
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung,
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game–it’s easy
For his part, Eddie had been trying to focus on Master of Puppets, ever since Dustin had explained about the walkman, and how they’d saved Max with her favorite song. He’d been playing it over and over in his mind, fingers wiggling through the air as he followed the chords up and down an imaginary fret.
But… The Beatles, slipping through the cracks when he’d get distracted (tripping over a root, watching Steve’s bare chest underneath Eddie’s battle vest), felt like it had been meant for him. Like it was his brain reminding him that his mom wasn’t around anymore, but that she was still there.
Like somehow, his soulmate knew he needed that care, that tenderness, after everything he’d been through, and this was their way of comforting him. Wherever they were.
And then everything changed again.
Nancy started to float, and the kids and Robin were digging through his cassette collection, tossing aside W.A.S.P. and Judas Priest with abandon, screaming that they couldn’t find anything, and Eddie was already on thin fucking ice, with LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED pounding through his brain, trombone solo clashing with Metallica in a way that was really setting him off.
“Seriously, what is all this shit?” Robin yelled, in his direction.
Eddie turned towards her, hands full of tapes, trying not to drop them. “Well what are you even looking for?!”
Robin started throwing tapes, and Eddie saw red. “Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, Beatles!!! Music! We need music!”
And Eddie had had about enough of that shit. He’d been stuck listening to Blondie for years, and–
He snatched his Iron Maiden Piece of Mind tape from her hands and waved it in her face.
“THIS IS MUSIC!” he yelled, and then turned away from her before he screamed even louder.
It was only later, as he was setting up his Upside Down trailer, hammering boards to the windows, dragging his amp onto the roof, that something in his head shifted and he made the connection, the list he’d been keeping in a notebook stashed under his mattress slamming back into the forefront of his mind.
Material Girl: Madonna. Call Me: Blondie. Modern Love: Bowie. All You Need Is Love: The Beatles.
Robin Buckley was his soulmate.
What the fuck?
Eddie didn’t have time to ruminate. Before he knew it Dustin was counting down, and Eddie was shredding as hard as he had ever shredded before. He forced All You Need Is Love out of his head and focused on the notes, focused on the way his fingers moved on the frets, focused on Chrissy–floating, floating, floating–so he could instead focus on saving the rest of his friends.
And when it all went to shit, again, and he was forcing Dustin through the gate, cutting the sheet, running into the fray, and everything was going black, he heard Master of Puppets in his head. He didn’t know if it was his or his soulmates, but it didn’t matter, because he closed his eyes, and that was it.
When he opened them again, it was to the bright sterile lights of a hospital room.
“What,” he managed to say, and then groaned at the ache in his chest, the pain that radiated out from every inch of him.
“You’re safe,” Wayne said from beside him, gruff and emotional but there. “You and your friends, you’re all okay. Get some more rest, son. I’ll be here.”
And Wayne was there. Eddie only woke up for a few minutes at a time, that first week. The doctors said it was normal, with the amount of pain medication he was on. The rest of the time he was dreaming, or, hmm. Maybe dreaming wasn’t the right word for it.
He didn’t have a body, as such, in the dreams. He was just floating, aimless and lost, snatches of music seeping in.
First it was just Master of Puppets, and he figured that meant his brain was just stuck on that last thing he’d done before the attack. That made sense, right? But then he’d started to get… other things.
All You Need is Love was first, which also made sense. So did the transition into Knowing Me Knowing You, because his soulmate had listened to both of those enough to lodge them firmly in his brain.
But then, one afternoon when he was stuck between sleeping and waking, a chorus floated in that he’d never heard before. I just want your extra time and your kiss.
It was frustrating, once he realized what was happening, to be hearing songs from his soulmate without being able to look them up. He’d managed to steal a marker off an orderly, and he started jotting the lyrics down on his arms as soon as he woke up, not able to move enough to reach anything else. He’d fight the nurses off who tried to sponge bathe him, and begged for Wayne to bring his notebook, so he could start transcribing the songs into his list.
More songs he’d heard before slipped in and out, a whole collection of Beatles songs, but then: Disposable Heroes, off of Master of Puppets. Which was fucking weird, because he’d barely listened to it enough to know the name, not enough for it to get stuck in his head.
Maybe that meant…
But thinking of his soulmate now was… painful.
Eddie had known he was gay since he was old enough to know it was weird–middle school, before he’d moved to Hawkins. He’d known he was different than his friends, than anyone he knew, than anything he’d ever seen. So he’d always just assumed his soulmate would be, you know.
A guy.
His mom had told him that in rare cases people got platonic soulmates, if there was no one in the world they were truly destined to love, and as much as Eddie had grown fond of Robin Buckley over the week or so they spent more in each other’s orbit, something about it felt wrong.
But maybe that was just the knowledge that he was never going to have true love curdling in his stomach. Maybe that’s all it was.
Spring slid into summer and Eddie was still in the hospital. He was awake more, now, though still not enough to be good company. Still, that didn’t stop the kids from rotating through his room. A few times he’d opened his eyes to find Steve sitting beside his bed, one leg bouncing up and down, his fingers drumming out a pattern on his thighs. But Eddie never had it in him to have more than a quick conversation before he had to sleep again. Sure, he’d bonded with Steve in the Upside Down, but… Were they close enough friends for Steve to be sitting by his bedside?
June brought a new song–sounded like Madonna, if he had to guess–and Eddie tried not to focus on the implications. A pretty girl falling in love with a guy who was bad for her, wanting to raise a family. Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep?
God, did Robin think their bond was going to be like that? He’d thought, for a minute at the end of the world, that the way she looked at Nancy felt familiar, felt like something he understood.
Clearly, he’d been wrong.
The end of July came with the end of his forced hospital stay–he was moving into Wayne’s new government-supplied house to continue to rest and heal. His skin was mostly knitted back together, the infections mostly cleared from his bloodstream. He was on strict orders to stay in bed and only move when he absolutely needed to, but honestly? It still hurt so much he couldn’t imagine doing otherwise.
July also came with a new song. Eddie was able to find this one, thanks to the radio propped by his bed. You Give Love a Bad Name. And wasn’t that accurate.
Being home also meant he was finally reunited with his cassette collection. Wayne had dropped a paper bag on his bed at one point with a gruff, “one of your little friends dropped this off”, and Eddie had torn it open to find an absolute treasure trove of brand new tapes. Dio’s Intermission, Mötorhead’s Orgasmatron, Krokus’s Change of Address, and, of course, Slippery When Wet. (Wanted Dead or Alive was a real nod to Eddie’s situation that summer, as he waited for the feds to finally and officially clear his name.)
Wayne didn’t say who the bag was from, but Eddie knew with the last tape exactly who it must have come from.
Only, he was too much of a coward to pick up the phone and ask her to come over, to explain that he could never be who she thought he was.
Instead, he listened to the tapes, played Deaf Forever a hundred times in a row, skipping back through the cassette to hear it over and over.
By August, he could sit up long enough to have the kids over for D&D. Robin sometimes came, at the end, sitting in the passenger seat of Steve’s bimmer, both in their matching Family Video uniforms, but she never got out of the car. Actually, she barely acknowledged him.
Steve would wave, though, a little awkward, a little shy, and Eddie would throw a hand up back. He still couldn’t stop the swoop of his gut when he thought about Steve in the upside down, vest open and chest on display, but he couldn’t figure out how to talk to the guy, now that they weren’t in life threatening danger.
Which was fine. Totally and completely fine.
And then the fall came, and Eddie remembered.
He fucking hated Christmas music, and his soulmate was the reason why.
This year, it started in September, and fuck, he’d thought the usual November was bad enough. This time, Eddie figured it was a one off, a few bars of Do They Know It’s Christmas lodged in his brain for two days.
At first he’d thought it was just the marching band getting together and getting ready for their Christmas concert. Except… he was pretty sure Robin had graduated, so that theory fell apart pretty quickly.
When September ticked into October and Eddie had to spend two full weeks with Wonderful Christmastime (quite possibly the worst Christmas song in all of existence) on a non-stop loop, he briefly considered jumping off the water tower. He was healed enough, now, that he was out and about a little bit. Mostly it was to the arcade with Dustin, or to the Wheeler’s basement, where they now ran D&D, or to Jeff’s garage, for band practice.
But the water tower was looking very appealing.
November was worse than ever.
Instead of just one or two Christmas songs, his soulmate seemed to be listening to Dolly Parton’s Once Upon a Christmas on repeat, a new song popping into his head every day.
And Eddie was really starting to lose it.
He’d taken to asking Dustin questions about Robin, as subtly as he could, to figure out if she was actually certifiably insane. Only, every time he asked something, Dustin would frown at him and pull a face.
“Pretty sure Robin only listens to that much Christmas music because of Steve. Why do you care, anyways?”
Somehow, that was even worse. The thought that his soulmate spent so much time with Steve Harrington that it wasn’t even Robin’s taste in music causing him this pain, but Steve’s. He still hadn’t spent much time with the guy, despite Dustin’s attempts and plea’s otherwise. Dustin was, for some reason, convinced they’d be best friends, even though Dustin himself was basically the only thing they had in common.
Either way.
November marched on into December and the music was relentless, now. His soulmate had moved into classics–Silent Night and Good King Wenceslas and, inexplicably, Joni Mitchell’s River–and Eddie had taken to playing Heaven is Hell at top volume as frequently as possible, to try and get the message across.
December also brought another brown paper back to his doorstep. Someone had rung the bell, and by the time Eddie had dragged himself down the stairs (his sides still ached, some days, at the effort), whoever had done it was gone.
He brought the bag inside and tugged it open, and couldn’t help himself from smiling at the contents. As much as he hated the idea of someone (even his soulmate) taking pity on him, he really hadn’t been able to relaunch his typical business and he was still enough of a social pariah that finding a job in town wasn’t easy, so he didn’t have a lot of spare cash around for new tapes.
Opening the bag felt like, unfortunately, Christmas day.
Dark Angel’s Darkness Descends, Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time, W.A.S.P.’s Inside the Electric Circus, and Megadeth’s Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? were stacked in a tidy pile in the bag.
And there, at the very bottom, was Dolly Parton’s Once Upon a Christmas.
It was so unexpected that Eddie burst out laughing, and glanced at the front door one more time.
Maybe he needed to make more of an effort with his soulmate. Even if she was a, well. A she.
He didn’t get around to it.
December ended in a flurry of Christmas celebrations, and an invitation to Harrington’s new apartment for a potluck dinner. Him and Wayne showed up with Wayne’s famous mashed potatoes, and Steve had taken them from him in a Kiss The Cook apron, a grin on his face.
“I’m really glad you came,” he said to Eddie, after the potatoes had been safely placed on the table.
Eddie, unfortunately, couldn’t stop the flush that creeped up his neck at the thought that Steve Harrington was glad that Eddie was in his house.
“Yeah, well,” Eddie reached a hand up to scratch at the back of his head, suddenly feeling sheepish. “You invited me, and uh. Dustin basically said he’d murder me in my sleep if I didn’t show, so. Here I am.”
And then he paused, inhaled. He really should get this over with.
“Is, uh, is Robin here?”
Steve frowned, a little taken aback, and shook his head. “Nah, she had to go out of state to see her Grandmother this year. Why? Do you guys even like… talk?”
Eddie shrugged, uncomfortable, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Uh, not really, but… I figure I probably should get to know her, y’know?”
He should have told Steve, he knew that. Steve probably knew already that Robin was his soulmate, the two of them were practically joined at the hip. But the words stuck in his throat, and before Eddie could feel more awkward about it, Max and El were slamming through the kitchen, chasing each other and laughing, both screaming FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, and Steve had to leap into the fray to prevent his stove top stuffing from flying everywhere.
Eddie, too embarrassed about the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Steve shirtless in the upside down (his soulmate’s best friend, fuck!), managed to avoid him for the rest of the night.
And that should have been that.
At least, he’d thought to himself as he crawled into bed later that evening, guilt and shame still twisting his stomach, at least the Christmas music would finally stop.
It didn’t.
Instead, he was treated to two weeks of Little Drummer Boy, which was almost as bad as Wonderful Christmastime. Pa rum pa pum FUCK, was about how he felt by the end of that. Mid January brought Frosty the Snowman and White Christmas and on and on and–
Who the fuck was still listening to Christmas music in February?
His soulmate, apparently.
And not just Christmas music. At this point he had been assaulted with enough of it that it was starting to, horrifyingly, grow on him.
No.
His soulmate was listening to WHAM!
Eddie spent the first full day of Last Christmas in his room with the door shut, Merciless Death on loop.
It didn’t work.
Day two he tried the strategy of “getting absolutely blasted high and hoping for the best” and instead he found himself sprawled on the floor of his room, shouting “LAST CHRISTMAS, I GAVE YOU MY HEART” in the hopes that by giving in he could make it through.
On day three, he decided he needed a stronger distraction.
He’d been avoiding Family Video as much as possible lately. He knew from bugging Dustin about it that Robin was taking community college classes, and he managed to wheedle out the information that she wouldn’t be in the store on a Thursday. So it theoretically should be safe to swing by and see if there were any copies of Labyrinth, which had just come out on VHS the week before.
Eddie parked his van in the parking lot and turned it off, and then groaned as, once again, Last Christmas started in his head.
“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away,” sang the stupid song lodged in his brain.
Eddie dragged himself from his van and shook his head to try and shake it off, and then darted across the snow covered parking lot and into Family Video.
Just in time to catch none other than Steve Harrington standing on the main counter, a broom in his hand held like a mic stand, eyes shut and head thrown back.
“Once bitten and twice shy, I kept my distance but you still catch my eye! Tell me baby, do you recognize me? Well, it’s been a year, it doesn’t surprise me!” sang Steve, at the top of his lungs.
Perfectly in time with the song in Eddie’s head, and–oh.
Oh.
Eddie backed up too fast and smashed into a rack of tapes, and sent at least half a dozen scattering to the floor.
Steve opened his eyes at the crash, and his eyes caught Eddie’s, and–
Steve Harrington was his soulmate.
“Oh, fuck,” Eddie said.
“Eddie,” Steve managed to get out, his entire face hot red, as he scrambled off the counter. “It’s not, this isn’t–”
And before Eddie’s brain could catch up, before he could do anything, his legs took over and he was turning and running back to his van, throwing himself into the front seat, and peeling out of the parking lot.
He didn’t even look back, because he couldn’t stand to see the disappointment on Steve’s face, knowing that he was stuck with the worst soulmate possible.
Fuck.
It took Eddie three days to crawl out from under his blankets. He’d been smoking almost constantly, trying to dull the hum of Last Christmas, no longer sure if it was stuck in Steve’s head or his. It just kept playing, over and over and over.
Now I know what a fool I’d been, but if you kissed me once I know you’d fool me again.
Because that’s what Eddie was. A fool, a fucking huge one. A fool to think he’d have a soulmate who could love him back. A fool to think someone like Steve Harrington could ever want him.
At least the Christmas music stopped.
Only… the change wasn’t for the better. He had to suffer through a day of Baby Come Back, a day of Your Love, and a reprise of Blondie’s Call Me, which he’d honestly hoped he’d never hear again.
And then.
Eddie was lying on his floor, pillow over his head, trying to figure out if he could just leave Hawkins forever and no one would mind, when it started.
A tiny bit of static, the kind he’d now gotten so attuned to he could pick out over any other noise.
And then.
Well I wish you were here, and I see you everywhere
You are a vision from my heart, but I stand apart,
It’s a long time ago since I first saw you,
I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting many years for you
Eddie launched himself off the floor and towards his cassette collection.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, tossing tapes to the side, digging through the pile. And then–there.
He grabbed his copy of Warlock’s Burning the Witches, flipped it over.
How?
Eddie took the stairs two at a time, tape in his hand, practically ripped the phone off the wall, slammed his fingers into the buttons to dial Dustin’s number and just hoped–
“Claudia, hi!” he said, trying to modulate his voice so he wasn’t screaming at the poor woman. “Is uh, is Dustin home from school yet? I have a question for him… Yeah… yeah about the dragons game. Thank you!”
As he waited, he tapped the tape against the wall, a frantic pattern, Holding Me still swimming through his head.
“Eddie?”
“Dustin!” he called, let out a breath. “Fuck, man, I’m glad you’re home. Look, can I ask you a… can I ask you a question and you can’t fucking rag me for it later?”
On the other end of the phone, Dustin groaned. “Yeah, man, fine. Just this one time though.”
Eddie nodded, closed his eyes.
“Is Steve… is he okay?”
There was a very long pause.
“Well,” Dustin started, and Eddie could tell he was deciding how much of Steve’s confidence to break. “He’s convinced his soulmate thinks he’s the most disgusting person on earth, and he called out sick from work the last three shifts, according to Robin, and as far as we can tell he’s just been locked up in his apartment almost all week. And it’s Valentine’s day. So, uh. I’m gonna go ahead and say not the fuck at all, Eddie.”
Eddie winced at the judgment in Dustin’s tone. “Yeah, okay, okay, man. Message received. Can you tell him-”
“No,” Dustin cut in, half a shout. “No fucking way, dude. This is not my problem to fix. God, you’re so fucking stupid, the both of you. If either of you had just listened to me… Look. Do whatever the fuck you wanna do, Eddie. But don’t make it worse, you got it? He’s been my brother longer than you have, and I’ll pick sides if I have to.”
Eddie nodded into the phone again, and then remembered that Dustin couldn’t see him. “I know, man. I know. Wait. Did you say today is Valentine’s day?”
“You absolute MORON-” Dustin started, and Eddie slammed the phone back onto the hook.
Maybe… maybe he could fix this after all.
It didn’t take Eddie long to figure out a plan of action, but actually enacting it was… more of a process than he’d hoped.
It started with a trip to the record store. Luckily, the clerk (the same one who’d helped him with the Stravinsky, all that time ago), knew exactly who he meant when he told her he was looking for Steve Harrington’s favorite tape.
“I don’t know about favorite,” she’d said, as she tugged Can’t Hold Back out of a display and passed it over. “But he bought this one the first day it was out, last summer. Made some comment about what a coincidence the guy’s name was.” She tapped the front of the tape, Eddie Money’s name. “And he had this stupid smile…” she trailed off, and Eddie grabbed the tape from her hands.
“Say no more,” he promised, and dug out the handful of change he’d scrounged from the couch cushions and the console of his car. Eight dollars in quarters, but the clerk hadn’t minded, and Eddie tore off the protective plastic cover and had it in his walkman (Max’s old one, that she’d left with him when he was still in the hospital) before he was even out of the store.
He wore the headphones for the rest of his errands, and by the time he was done and on the way across town to Steve’s place, had the first song stuck firmly in his head.
Good.
Maybe Steve would know he was coming.
Eddie knocked on Steve’s front door with his elbow, both hands otherwise occupied. Luckily, Steve’s apartment hall was easy enough to get into with a correctly placed hip-bump, so Eddie had made it this far without having to buzz in. Now he was stuck waiting, hoping Steve was actually home like Dustin said he would be.
It took a minute, and then he heard a noise from inside.
“Go away, Dustin, I told you I’m fine,” Steve shouted through the door.
Eddie winced.
“It’s, uh, not Dustin?”
There was another noise, a thump, and a muffled fuck, from the other side of the door.
“What do you want, Eddie?” Steve finally said, and he sounded. Fuck. He sounded defeated. Heartbroken.
Eddie felt the ache as if it were in his own chest.
Maybe it was.
He cleared his throat, and shut his eyes. If anyone else came into the hallway, he was absolutely about to ruin any shred of an image he had left in this godforsaken town.
“I feel the hunger, it’s a hunger that tries to keep a man awake at night,” he sang, trying to keep his voice as close to on key as he could, without a backing track. “Are you the answer, I shouldn’t wonder, when I can feel you whet my appetite. With all the power you’re releasing, it isn’t safe to walk the city streets alone. Anticipation is running through me, let’s find the keys and turn this engine on.”
Eddie paused after the chorus, hoping, hoping–
He took a deep breath. He’d sing the whole fucking song, if he had to. “I can feel you breathe, I can feel your heart beat faster. Take me home tonight, I don’t wanna let you go till you see the light-”
In front of him, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
Steve was standing in a rumpled white t-shirt and a pair of boxers–navy blue plaid, Eddie noted. His hair was mused, like he’d been in bed and hadn’t had time to do his elaborate styling routine. His eyes were red, just a little, and Eddie wanted to kiss him.
Fuck. Eddie wanted–
“Keep going,” Steve urged, and Eddie felt the blush creeping up his cheeks. But…
“Take me home tonight, listen honey, just like Ronnie sang, be my little baby.”
“What are you doing here?” Steve asked, as Eddie finished the chorus.
Eddie looked down to his hands, and offered them up. First, the bouquet of red roses he’d spent way too much for at Melvalds. And then the pizza box. Steve took the flowers, lifting them to take a sniff.
“Happy Valentine’s day,” Eddie offered, weakly, and Steve sighed (but this time it sounded closer to fond) and stepped aside to let Eddie and the pizza in.
“Steve,” Eddie said, as he set the pizza down on the kitchen counter and turned towards him. “How long have you known?”
Steve winced, turning his back to Eddie to go about trimming the rose stems and putting them in a vase. “We’re just getting right into it, huh?”
“How long?”
Steve sighed again and lifted one shoulder in a shrug, still not turning back to face Eddie. “Since Master of Puppets, officially. I’d been hearing that stupid riff for like three weeks, and then when I heard it in the Upside Down I just… I knew. That’s why I turned back before the girls. I knew Nance had it covered but the thought that my soulmate was back there with all the fucking bats? And dude, it’s a good thing I did.”
Eddie nodded, flicking open the pizza box and taking a slice, just to have something to do with his hands. “You said officially?”
“Well…” Steve trailed off, and sighed. “I’d kind of… had an idea, earlier. You showed up to school one day with this MASSIVE Dio thing on your jacket, and then I went and bought a Dio tape, and it was exactly the same shit that had been blasting through my head and fucking up my math test results for ages, but I thought…” he trailed off, and sighed. “That was when I still thought I was straight, so I figured it was just a coincidence, you know?
“Thought you were straight?” Eddie pressed, taking a bite of pizza so his mouth would be full, so Steve couldn’t ask him.
Steve shrugged again, and then he finally turned to Eddie, crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back against his counter. “You got a problem with that?”
Eddie laughed so hard he choked on his pizza, just for a second. “Problem?!” he half shouted, turning so that he could pace the living room a few times. “Steve, I’ve been flagging for the last like, four years-”
“Oh my god, that’s what Robin said!”
“Robin?” Eddie asked, thrown to hear her name in the midst of this.
Steve smiled. “She just said it was like… a queer thing. The bandana.” He waved a hand in the air, like he was gesturing to Eddie’s back pocket, clearly uncomfortable. “But I just figured you didn’t know and just thought it was cool, because like. If you knew you were gay, and you knew I was your soulmate… then that meant you just hated me, and… It was easier to think that me being a he was the problem.”
Eddie shook his head, fast.
“I didn’t know,” he said, and tried to make it sound believable. Tried to make sure Steve realized that was true.
Steve snorted. “Yeah, okay…” he mumbled, and shook his head.
Eddie dropped the pizza and lunged forwards, grabbing Steve’s shoulders with his hands. “No, I’m serious, Steve. I didn’t know. I thought… I thought it was Robin.”
“What!” Steve said, frowning in disbelief.
“No, hear me out! I’d spent like years listening to my soulmate listen to Abba and Blondie and fucking Toto. At one point she–or, I guess, you–had Daisy Bell stuck in your head, and Robin worked at Starcourt, so I figured she heard it from that stupid ride thing by the food court. And then, when Nancy got Vecna’d, Robin said we needed music. Good music. Blondie and Bowie and Madonna and The Beatles. Then I spent the next week listening to All You Need is Love. So…”
Steve laughed, shaking his head, his eyes so close to Eddie’s that Eddie could see flecks of green in them. “I worked at the mall too, dingus. That’s where I met Robin. The song was in the stupid Russian–y’know what, ask Dustin about that one. And All You Need is Love is… my mom used to sing it to me. Before… before.”
Eddie’s heart swelled. “Mine too,” he whispered, and licked his lips.
“Robin’s a year younger than me,” Steve said, stupidly.
Eddie frowned. “What?” he mumbled, because his eyes were now fixed on Steve’s lips. On his soulmate’s lips.
“Robin. She wasn’t at Hawkins. The… The music started my first day at Hawkins. Right after I tried to buy drugs from you. That’s how I knew it wasn’t Nancy, because… Because I’d been hearing your music before I met her.”
Eddie groaned, closed his eyes and tipped his head back. “I didn’t even think about that,” he admitted, and then there was a hand on his chest, fingers starting to tighten in his shirt.
“I thought you knew and you hated me, hated that you were stuck with me,” Steve admitted, and his voice sounded vulnerable, soft, breakable.
“I thought you were straight,” Eddie admitted, and then paused. That wasn’t what he meant, not quite. “I… I’ve had a crush on you for years, Harrington. At least since you dove into the lake and killed that fucking demobat with your teeth.”
“Really?” Steve asked, a soft smile spreading across his lips.
“You brought me the tapes, didn’t you?” Eddie realized, eyes snapping open.
Steve’s blush darkened. “Maybe,” he admitted. “I had to ask Mike fucking Wheeler what he thought you’d like, which. If you want to be humbled, go ask Mike Wheeler a favor, Jesus Christ. But I just thought… your taste in music was so different than mine, and it wasn’t fair that you were listening to all my crap while you were stuck at home healing and couldn’t go out to get more of your crap.”
Eddie scoffed, and stepped closer, pushing himself into Steve’s personal space. “My music is not crap, thank you very much.”
Steve snorted, but his eyes had flicked down to Eddie’s lips too. “Wah wahh darkness is hell and death is creeping towards me and life is a crime and death is the answer,” he teased, dropping his voice into a lower octave.
“Oh that’s rich, coming from the guy who had the song from fucking Critters in his head.
Steve’s eyes blew wide, and then he grinned, wolfish and ready. “I thought you’d like that,” he admitted, and his voice was lower still, but this time it was sultry and full of promise.
“My my,” Eddie mumbled, pressing closer still, their chests now together with Steve’s hand in between them, only inches from Steve’s lips. “Was Steve Harrington trying to woo me?”
“That depends,” Steve said, and licked his bottom lip one more time. “Is Eddie Munson going to kiss me?”
“Yeah,” Eddie admitted, grinning because he couldn’t help himself. “He sure is.”
And then, he did.
And it was better than anything he ever could have dreamed, Eddie Money playing in their heads, safe and warm, right where they belonged.