Chapter Text
Summer 1985
The first time Eddie remembered seeing Steve Harrington was in ninth-grade history, a class he’d actually enjoyed until the papers were due. The hair and the buffoonery were kind of hard to miss. Since both were actually Eddie’s trademark, he’d clocked The King immediately. But not as competition. No, they existed at two ends of a vast spectrum. One that started with high school royalty and ended with weird, nerdy queer kids who were really quite bad at school. He had never felt threatened by Harrington, but he'd definitely never stopped noticing him.
The first time Steve remembered seeing Eddie, however, was in Star Court Mall, the summer he had made the utterly terrible decision to wear a tiny sailor’s hat and even tinier shorts. He'd always known vaguely of the freak, of course. Hawkins really wasn’t that big, and Munson really wasn't very quiet or shy. But knowing of and actually seeing were wildly different things.
It was actually an incredibly embarrassing story, noticing Eddie Munson for the first time. One he’d never, ever tell anyone. Ever.
Because you see, he’d thought, for about thirteen seconds, that Eddie Munson was a girl. A very attractive girl, whom he'd intended to get to know, right there in the food court. In his defense, that hair, when combined with the shapeless lime-green bowling shirt from the Flash Studio, had been ambiguous at 30 ft. After all, Steve had a type, and curly hair was requirement numero uno. The ambiguity had…opened some doors for Steve. Doors he didn’t blame Eddie for.
But.
Fuck was it ever inconvenient.
The initial attraction could have been ignored if Eddie Munson hadn’t become fast friends with Robin Buckley. Even that would probably have been fine if he and Robin weren’t obsessed with mocking Steve as often as was humanly possible.
Which was pretty often, considering he showed up at the end of every shift to take advantage of Robin’s discount on lemonade. A lemonade that Steve really didn’t think was that great. It was an ice cream shop. There was a dedicated lemonade booth in the food court, for crying out loud. But none of these arguments, nor offering to just send Munson home with a case of the shitty powder they used in the machine, seemed to deter him.
For Eddie, the teasing and taunting of Steve Harrington was the only armour he had against the absolutely horrendous fact that he’d fallen desperately and completely for the fool within about five minutes of watching him try and flirt with every girl who came into the store. The lines never worked on the female population of Hawkins, but they sure as shit worked on Eddie, which was incredibly annoying. Considering he now had to avoid looking at Robin directly while he was in the store. He was practically a heart-eye cartoon, and she’d know immediately. Which was obviously Steve’s fault.
He’d obviously decided to have a crush on the straightest man in the county, because he was a disaster of a human being. He blamed Steve entirely, of course, but it didn’t help much in the long run. It was what it was. He was going back to the godforsaken hell that was Hawkins High in September. He just needed to keep his shit together, save up, and get out of town ASAP. The goal had not changed just because fucking Harrington had really good conditioner and the warmest, most teasing brown eyes Eddie had ever encountered.
By the end of July, Steve had made peace with having to exist in Munson’s universe if he was going to be friends with Robin. He'd even managed to stop checking to see if Eddie was waiting on the bench in front of Scoops whenever he had a closing shift. It didn't matter that sometimes he was, and sometimes he wasn't. Steve was just fine either way. Perfectly neutral, no matter what happened.
Tonight, though, he was definitely there. And he was smoking, which was technically against mall rules. Steve wasn't a snitch, but he had no doubt Munson was doing it to get a rise out of him.
"Do you have to do that right in front of the door?" Steve asked, hands on hips in the doorway. "You know Robin's already gone home, right?"
Eddie grinned up at him, all teeth and menace. "Why would I be waiting for Robin?"
Steve felt his throat tighten. "I don't know. Why would you be waiting for anyone?"
"Maybe I just like the ambiance."
The mall was practically empty because it was really late; the milkshake machine had broken again, and Steve was, therefore, still in the stupid store.
“You really shouldn’t be smoking in here,” he grumbled unnecessarily as he started wiping down the tables.
Munson shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”
Steve snorted in derision. There went that ridiculous attempt to…what? Start a conversation? Had that been his goal in admonishing this dude, whose actions weren’t actually impacting him at all? He felt so stupid. As usual. He sighed.
"So why are you still here?" Eddie asked, tossing his cigarette into the trash can with practiced ease. "I mean, the mall's about to close. Even the cleaning staff is gone."
Steve ran a hand through his hair unconsciously. "Machine broke. Had to clean it. Not that it's any of your business."
"Never said it was, Harrington," Eddie smirked. "Just making conversation."
"Well. Don't."
The words came out harsher than Steve had intended, and he winced internally. It wasn't Eddie's fault that Steve had been on his feet for eight hours, or that his back hurt from bending over the stupid machine, or that he couldn't stop noticing the way Eddie's fingers tapped against his knee in a silent song, rings occasionally clicking together.
Munson laughed. “Fine. Sorry.”
He stood from the bench, stretched, and reached out a hand. “Give me that. I’ll finish these. Go do whatever else needs to be done. I need a ride home. Van’s out again.”
“Fucking hilarious way of asking, Munson.”
“So is that a no?”
Steve stared at Eddie's outstretched hand for a moment, feeling a headache building behind his eyes. The thought of spending twenty more minutes alone with Eddie in his car made something twist uncomfortably in his stomach.
"Fine," he said, handing over the rag. "Just don't—"
"I can handle wiping down a table, Harrington," Eddie said with an epic eye roll that made Steve twitch in irritation. .
"Right." Steve turned away, heading back to finish counting the till. He could hear Eddie humming something under his breath as he moved from table to table, efficient. It wasn’t unpleasant, which was annoying.
The cash drawer balanced perfectly for once - a small mercy. “K,” he announced. “Let’s…go, I guess.”
The silence in the Beemer was so viscous that it was making Eddie want to throw up. He wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking. Mostly, he hadn't wanted to make the nearly hour-long walk home. The van had gotten him to work that afternoon, but when it sputtered and died again as he'd tried to leave, he’d only gone back into the mall to get to a payphone. Steve still being in Scoops had mostly been happenstance.
So, now, here they were. Eddie was way too warm, twitchy. Uncomfortable and incapable of starting a conversation. Which was so unlike him that he was actually a little bit angry. At Steve? At himself? It was unclear.
Steve kept both hands on the wheel, grip tight enough that his knuckles were starting to whiten. Eddie stared at the road ahead, fidgeting with his rings. The silence was making his skin itch, but he didn’t know how to break it without making things even more awkward. The headlights cut through the darkness of the Hawkins streets, illuminating empty sidewalks and closed storefronts. It was too late for anyone decent to be out, his mother would have said.
"So," he finally said, because someone had to say something. "How's the ice cream business treating you these days?"
Steve glanced over, eyebrow raised. "Seriously? That's what you're going with?"
"Well, excuse me for trying to make conversation."
Steve, surprisingly, sighed. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. The job is fine. How’s yours?”
“Oh, simply thrilling.”
“You spend a lot of time at mine, so I figured it wasn't the most exciting employment opportunity.”
Eddie felt himself blush, which was stupid. He knew Steve was just throwing a jibe. It wasn’t…an insinuation. Probably. He had been hanging around the ice cream a little more than was likely advisable. It was true that he preferred talking to Robin over seeing any of his own coworkers for one moment longer than was necessary, but it may have been excessive to start hanging around after every shift. The mall’s air conditioning made it so tempting not to leave to return to the hot, muggy air of either his car or the trailer, but apparently, he’d stopped being subtle about the other reasons he enjoyed the SS Butterscotch’s port of call.
“Well. Robin’s cool,” he covered smoothly, forcing himself to stop being stupid and breathe. “You should be nicer to her.”
“Me!” heprotested. “She—you know—”
But he gave up midsentence. There was an awkward pause, before Steve cleared his throat.
“Munson," he announced.
“Harrington?”
When he spoke again, Steve's tone matched Eddie's frustration and irritation.
“Do you want to go out? Sometime. Saturday, maybe. I’m not working. If you’re…also not. I…yeah. That.”
Eddie's mind went completely blank. For a long, terrifying moment, he had no idea what to say. Steve Harrington had just asked him out. On a date? An actual date?
Unless it was a joke. It had to be a joke.
"What?" he managed, his voice cracking like he was thirteen again.
Steve's face was illuminated only by the dashboard lights, casting strange shadows across his features, but Eddie could see the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers flexed on the steering wheel. He was...nervous?
"Never mind. Forget it." Steve's voice was tight, controlled. "That was stupid. I shouldn't have—"
"No!" Eddie said, too loud for the quiet car. "I mean, yes. Yes to the going out part. No to the forgetting part." He was babbling now, but he couldn’t seem to stop. "Saturday's good. Saturday's great. I…huh. Yes. Please.”
Steve’s exhale was audible, and it was only as he heard it that Eddie realized he’d been holding his breath. Which was, unfortunately, incredibly adorable.
“Okay. Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Eddie murmured, staring so hard at the side of Steve’s head that the man apparently felt it.
Steve turned carefully to the side, one eye still on the road, and glared at Eddie. Eddie, in response, smirked. His face was out of his control right now; he didn’t feel like smirking at Steve Harrington, mouth full of intrigue and innuendo begging to escape in the form of very stupid words. He felt like he was going to throw up. He felt like he was probably being mocked. But he let the smirk reign free, unable to come up with a reason why Steve shouldn’t feel just as uncomfortable as he was right now.
“God," Steve exhaled as he rolled his eyes at the smirk. "It is so annoying that I like you.”
“No shit, Harrington,” Eddie chuckled. “You think this is good for my reputation? Tell anyone, and I’ll…well. Probably defend you, which. Let me tell you.”
“Fucking irritating.” Steve smiled.
The smile transformed his face. Eddie wasn’t used to that grin being directed at him. He was more used to a furrowed brow and a vexed downturn of his mouth, an expression of annoyance born of the teasing Eddie and Robin would throw at him.
“So very irritating,” Eddie murmured, unable to muster more air for volume.
The world felt suddenly tilted, like someone had grabbed Hawkins by the corners and shaken it until everything landed in new, impossible configurations. Steve Harrington was beside him, driving him home, calling him irritating with the smallest, sweetest smile pasted on his lips. An expression that Eddie only ever saw directed at people he was attempting to flirt with. To make this situation even more confusing, Steve Harrington had just asked him out. And now, he was letting the silence stretch between them like taffy, sweet and tense, saying nothing else but looking for all the world like the cat who got the cream.
The utter, fantastic, ridiculous dickhead.