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Steve started his day to the sound of a disgruntled honk and a goose glaring at him over the edge of his bed, and it only went downhill from there.
The thing kept squawking at him as he tried to go through his usual morning routine, and sure, it couldn’t get in the shower thanks to the glass door, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a goddamn annoyance. He ended up being bullied out of the house with still-wet hair and his shirt on backwards an hour before school was even supposed to start. At least it was letting him drive in peace.
He’d heard stories of the hassle of having the goose show up, but he’d always thought it would be worth it for true love — if he was ever so lucky as to be part of the thirty percent of the population that ended up getting one.
Now, he couldn’t care less about finding his soulmate. He just wished the damn thing would give him a break.
“Ow,” he muttered when he let the goose out of the car and it pecked him in the leg. “Can you calm down a little? It’s a fucking game day.”
Coach was not going to be happy if he showed up sleep-deprived and scratched up from his goose. And the guys would never let him hear the end of it. God, Tommy and Carol alone would be a headache all day, he just knew it.
The goose just honked and pecked him again, herding him inside. “Jesus Christ,” he sighed. Who was even in the school this early? Teachers? Nerds?
Apparently, neither of those things, because it was herding him towards the gym. The doors swung open at its forceful pecking, wings ruffling as it picked up speed. Its honks joined the entire Hawkins High Marching Band, standing on the bleachers and ostensibly practicing for the pep rally later that day.
Steve ran after it, valiantly trying not to care about the opinions of band kids, but there was no doubt everyone was going to be talking about this by the end of the day. Godammit.
“Sorry!” He yelled, echoing loudly across the empty gym. “Sorry, it just…” He trailed off, gesturing at the goose. Everyone knew what he meant. It was The Goose.
And it was climbing the bleachers.
Steve couldn’t even focus on the band director speaking to him, probably pissed about him interrupting practice, because he couldn’t look away from his goose, about to reveal the identity of the person he was fated to spend the rest of his life with.
The goose barrelled in between two rows of people, everyone scattering as they got in its way. Then it just… slowed to a stop between a pair of shoes and sat down, blinking calmly as if it could fall asleep right there.
Steve gulped and followed the goose’s gaze up. There was a pair of shiny black uniform shoes, green pants, the weird marching band uniform shirt with all the buttons, and then… wait.
Steve blinked.
The goose wasn’t sitting between a pair of shoes. It was sitting between two pairs of shoes.
And there was a confused guy and girl staring down at it, instruments hanging limply in their fingers.
“Is it…?” The guy said to the girl.
“Absolutely not,” she said, and tried to step away. Immediately, the goose’s wings flared up, clearly upset at her movement, and spooked, she stepped back in line. “Or not.”
“Okay, so it’s you,” the guy said. “I’ll just…” He started inching away, and for a moment it looked like he might be able to escape its wingspan, but then it startled again, bringing him back to where he was. “What the fuck?”
“This cannot be happening right now,” the girl groaned.
“Harrington!” The band director snapped. Steve jolted. “Please take your goose away from our rehearsal.”
“Uh, of course, sorry sir,” he stumbled to say. He started towards the bleachers to grab it, but the guy beat him to it, scooping his goose up and flashing him a smile.
“I assume this counts as an excused absence?” He asked the band director as he loped down the stairs, the girl in quick pursuit to keep the goose happy.
The band director pursed his lips. “Remember to return your uniforms before class,” was all he said. The girl plucked a feather off her shoulder on their way out.
Once they were alone in the hallway, Steve turned to face them. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to — I mean, what am I supposed to do? It’s my Goose.”
The guy shrugged carelessly. “If he’s letting me skip, I don’t really give a shit.” He tugged off the stupid feather hat and revealed a mane of curly dark hair trapped in a bun. He pulled it free, shaking it out, and Steve felt his mouth fill with saliva. It was already stunning, but he could give this guy so many hair care tips. And since this was his soulmate, he would have the opportunity to.
The girl snorted, taking off her own hat. “Typical.” She was pretty too, with bright eyes and short brown hair. She would probably rock some highlights, Steve thought.
They both looked kind of familiar, but it wasn’t like he knew anyone in band. “So, what’re your names?”
At this, they both rolled their eyes. “Of course,” the girl said. “Of course you don’t know our names. I only sit behind you in History twice a week.”
Oh shit, she was in one of his classes? “I — That’s — You’re behind me!” He sputtered. “What, do you think I have eyes in the back of my head?”
“How about a little thing called spatial awareness?” She bit back.
“That class is at like eight am, how am I supposed to — nevermind, can you just tell me your name?”
She considered him for a moment, her arms crossed. “Robin Buckley.”
Steve nodded, committing it to memory. “Steve Harrington.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, we know.”
“And does the fair king remember his humble servant’s name?” The guy jumped in, bowing as well as he could while holding a goose.
Steve wrinkled his nose. “Dude, why are you talking like that?”
“My liege doesn’t remember me attending his court?” He continued, batting his eyelashes and keeping on with his weird bullshit. “I know you indulged in my party favors.” He gave him a knowing look, and something clicked in Steve’s head.
“Oh! Munston!” He snapped and pointed at his new soulmate, only for his face to go sour.
“Munson,” he corrected. “Eddie Munson, at your service.” He bowed again, deeper this time, but somehow sarcastically? Steve wasn’t sure how he did it. The goose squawked and hopped from his arms to the floor, seemingly content to stand in between the three of them.
“Cool,” Steve said awkwardly, not really sure what to do now that introductions were out of the way. “So… Two soulmates, huh?”
“No,” Robin said. “Absolutely not. Once the goose realizes it’s made a mistake it’ll let me walk off without pecking me.”
“How do you know you’re the mistake?” Steve asked reflexively, then winced as he realized how that might have come off. “I mean, not that I’m mad about either of you —”
“Oh, come on,” Eddie said with a roll of his eyes. “We all know we were the last people you would have picked. If it was up to you, you’d have that goose lead you to cheerleading practice instead.”
“No,” Steve retorted. “I mean, yeah, cheerleaders are cute, but if it led me to you then it means that it’s you. And it’s not like you’re ugly or anything.”
“Ugh,” Robin said, which was weird when the most popular guy in school basically says he thinks you’re pretty, but whatever, he wouldn’t take it personally. Clearly she had her own issues.
Eddie just stopped and blinked. “You think I’m pretty?”
Steve pushed down the sudden wave of panic that came with realizing he accidentally implied something gay — a far too familiar feeling. “I said you’re not ugly,” he deflected with a laugh. “Don’t shoot too high, Munson.”
“Right,” Eddie pouted.
“Besides, it doesn’t really matter,” Steve continued. “We’re probably platonic soulmates, right?” He turned to Robin. “And then we’re the romantic pair? I don’t know if you two are platonic too. Maybe you’ll get your own goose.”
They both stared at him. Steve didn’t know why they were acting so dumbstruck. It all sounded perfectly reasonable to him.
Robin and Eddie exchanged a heavy glance and then looked back at him. “We are definitely not romantic,” Robin declared.
Steve fought the urge to laugh. She was clearly serious, he could see it in her face. But rejecting him? The King of Hawkins High? Well, it had just never happened before. “What makes you say that?”
She hesitated, biting her lip nervously and eyes darting back to Eddie. “It’s just…” She sighed. “To put it simply: you are so not my type.”
Steve did laugh this time. That’s all that was keeping his soulmate from admitting that they were fated to be together? Because he wasn’t blond or a musician or whatever she was into? “What’s your type then, Buckley? Maybe we can make a few compromises,” he suggested, laying on the flirting like she was any other girl.
Clearly she wasn’t like any other girl, though, because she honked out a surprised laugh, slapping a hand over her mouth with a mortified expression at the sound. “I — Trust me, no. You can’t. You’re nowhere close.” She sounded like she might start hyperventilating, whether from laughter or anxiety he couldn’t tell.
Eddie added slyly, “Well, I don’t know, maybe if you started wearing dr—”
“Eddie!” Robin slapped his arm and glared. Some silent communication passed between them, and Eddie put his hands up in surrender. She looked back at Steve and crossed her arms. “Look, bottom line is, this is platonic and it’s going to stay platonic. Capiche?”
Steve nodded. “Kaposh.” She almost broke a smile at his mispronunciation. Score. “Two platonic soulmates is… unusual, but I can work with it.”
Robin nodded gratefully, but Eddie didn’t seem as content, rocking back and forth on his heels as he worked up the nerve to say something. “Well, it —” He started, then broke off and stared at the floor for a second. He looked back up, drilling a hole into the wall beside Steve’s head. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have a romantic soulmate.”
“I mean, it kind of does. Getting two people is already kinda crazy, there’s like no chance I’d get a third soulmate,” Steve said.
Eddie looked at him like he had just been given a pop quiz and failed spectacularly. “I don’t think you’ll get a third soulmate,” he said carefully.
Steve furrowed his brow. “But you just said —”
“That’s not what I said.” Eddie held eye contact with him, begging him to pick up on the subtext he had apparently been dropping. Too bad he didn’t know yet that his new soulmate was an idiot.
Steve went back over Eddie’s words in his head. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a romantic soulmate. He gasped. “I — You?”
For the first time he had known him, Eddie looked shy. “Are you opposed to that?”
“I’m not gay,” Steve said dumbly, mind racing with the revelation that Eddie Munson, his soulmate, a man, was offering to… to what? Date him?
Deep down, the idea sparked a seed of warmth in his chest.
“I didn’t say you were,” Eddie said, put on the defensive.
“But you are?”
Eddie fought with himself for a moment before he gave a quick, sharp nod. “Hawkins High’s resident faggot freak, at your service.” He bowed again, a callback to before. This time, Steve could see it more clearly for the defense mechanism it was. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about me.”
Steve had. In whispers in the locker room. From drunken lips at parties. In very graphic graffiti in the bathroom stalls. “Yeah,” he said, trying not to feel awkward confirming that he’d heard his friends be very homophobic about his new soulmate.
Eddie’s face pinched, and Steve knew that he knew exactly what rumors he was thinking of. “It’s not true.”
“I know,” he rushed to say. “Or, I mean, I figured.” What did it say about him that he had only ever laughed along? Fuck, he had to steer the conversation back to something light-hearted. “Even if it was true, I assume I’d get the soulmate discount anyway,” he tried to say casually, trying not to think about the implications, about what if they weren’t soulmates and he couldn’t pay, never mind his family’s wealth, and he had to —
“Oh my god,” Robin said off to the side.
Eddie choked. “Awful bold there, Harrington,” he shot back once he’d recovered. “To think that deal even exists.”
Steve shrugged, and, well, his mouth had always moved faster than his brain. “I’d get a discount either way.”
Both of his soulmates' eyes bugged out, and he belatedly realized he had just implied that he would suck Eddie’s dick for drugs.
“Didn’t you just say you’re not gay,” Robin asked faintly.
“I’m not!” He said indignantly. “I love boobies.”
Robin made a grossed-out face. “Gag.”
Despite himself, Eddie snorted. “Buckley, you of all people should not be saying that.”
She elbowed him with a glare. “It sounds gross when he says it.”
“It’s not gross!” Steve exclaimed. “Boobies are great!”
“I know, just stop saying boobies!” Robin yelled.
Wait. Steve raised an eyebrow. “‘You know’?”
All of a sudden, she looked petrified. “I didn’t say anything. I know what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Haha.” She actually said that, haha, instead of a real laugh.
Steve took a moment to pause and think about all of the information he had learned about his soulmates in the few minutes since he’d properly met them. Eddie was gay, and maybe into him, and Robin probably knew, based on the knowing looks. And she was very adamant that she would never be into him, but wouldn’t say what her type actually was. And now, when talking about boobies, she was all red-faced and flustered and shifty. Steve might be dumb, but when a puzzle was this easy, even he could put the pieces together.
“Robin…” He started slowly. “Are you… like Eddie?” He couldn’t bring himself to say the actual word. It felt too much like a curse.
With fear in her eyes, she nodded. “I mean, opposite, obviously, but… yeah.”
Steve contemplated that. “Huh. Okay.”
Robin waited, but nothing else came. “That’s it? ‘Okay’?”
“I mean — Yeah? I’m not mad at you or anything.”
Eddie took a step closer. “Let me get this straight,” he began. “You, Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High, well-known ladykiller and famously straight man, are completely fine with having not one, but two gay soulmates? You don’t mind being bound to us for the rest of your life?”
Steve could do nothing but awkwardly shrug. Sure, he’d never actually met a gay person before now, so he hadn’t really had to think about how he would treat one in real life, but if it was his soulmates? Steve had fantasized for years about this moment. Just because it wasn’t turning out how he thought didn’t mean he was going to give up on them. “The universe doesn’t make mistakes,” he settled on. “And neither did my goose.”
He looked down where the goose was still standing in the middle of them all. He didn’t know if it could understand them at all, but it had a knowing look in those beady eyes. It honked just once as if to agree with him.
“So you’re just completely cool with this,” Robin repeated in disbelief.
“Seems like it.”
“And you’re cool with this?” Eddie asked, gesturing between the two of them. “Whatever this turns out to be?”
Steve thought on it for a moment. Sure, he hadn’t expected to end up with a man as a soulmate, but surprisingly, he wasn’t mad about it. He was just excited to see where it went. And, as it turned out, he really did think Eddie was pretty. “I’m… open to it, I think.” He brushed past that before any of them could dig further. “But I think I’d like to get to know you better before anything else. Both of you,” he clarified, making sure Robin knew she wasn’t being left out. “What do you say to milkshakes after school at the diner? We’d have to be back before the game, but…”
“Yeah, us too, dingus,” Robin said, waving her trumpet as a reminder that she was also required to be there.
“We’d love to,” Eddie said. “Are you supposed to have a milkshake right before the big game?”
Steve laughed. “Coach would probably yell at me,” he admitted. “But I don’t even know if I’ll be able to play today, with my goose being here.”
Robin crouched down to its level, reaching out a cautious hand. Instead of pecking her like it had been doing to Steve all morning, it stayed still and let her run a hand along its back. “I think it’ll be okay.”
“Well, it likes you a lot more than it likes me,” Steve grumbled. “It’s barely even eight AM, and look how many bruises I have.” He pulled up his jeans to show off the pitiful state of his shins.
Eddie whistled. “Maybe if you show that to the coach he’ll let you sit out, that’s gnarly.”
Steve shook his head. “Nah, I shouldn’t skip. This game is important.”
“You sure?” Eddie sidled closer to him, a look in his eye that Steve was much more used to seeing on girls. “You know, if you don’t have to play tonight, we could skip too. Maybe watch a movie instead.”
“Not if I have to watch you two flirting all night,” Robin said. “This is nauseating enough.”
Eddie laughed as Steve flushed at realizing that Eddie was flirting with him. And he liked it.
This was going to be kind of life-changing, wasn’t it?
The hallway started to fill with students, the buses arriving out front. Eddie and Robin took that as their cue to leave, still needing to drop off their instruments back in the band room.
“Catch you tonight, Stevie!” Eddie called, turning a few heads as they wondered why the freak was making plans with the king.
Soon enough, people would know. Steve’s goose was hard to ignore, though now that they had met it was more docile than before. As soon as he made it to his first class, he just knew that he would get a million questions about his soulmate.
He didn’t care so much about all of that, though. He could blow off people’s questions all day. They didn’t matter. What mattered was his soulmates waiting by his car at the day’s end, his goose honking a greeting as they got in, squabbling over who got the passenger seat and who got the goose, ordering three milkshakes and putting three straws in all of them. Going back to Robin’s house after the game, staying up too late and watching her weird foreign film collection and making inside jokes that he knew they would be laughing about for years. Because he had years with them, stretched out before them into infinity. Just the four of them, together forever — Steve, Robin, Eddie, and the goose that started it all.