Work Text:
Eddie doesn’t have many regrets in life. He’s proud of a lot of things, in fact. It takes a certain kind of guy, starting out penniless in the big city and building one of the country’s most successful record labels. Often, when he’s listening to one of his bands, he imagines the stupid faces on the fine people of Hawkins if they could see him now.
If there’s one thing he regrets, it’s letting Steve Harrington slip away.
If Eddie had possessed the confidence of today, he’d have made the boy his a long time ago. Would’ve walked up to him in the schoolyard, or at one of those parties, and kissed him then and there, for everyone to see. But he didn’t. He left Hawkins with squealing tyres the moment he graduated, and while he’ll never rue that decision for a second, he always wondered what it would’ve been like with Steve in the passenger seat.
If he’d known how things would play out when they met again, he would’ve been honest from the get-go. Would’ve told Steve right there in that cheap diner that he’d always been obsessed with him. That remembering Hawkins would forever mean thinking of Steve and wondering what could’ve been if he’d been braver. But bravery has never been Eddie’s strong suit, and he didn’t say anything.
When he found out about Steve’s other job, he should’ve told him that his stupid teenage crush had long grown into something else. That the thought of Steve with those other men awakened something dark and ugly in him. Instead, he threw his money at Steve and demanded he stop seeing the other guys. He thought that this would be the only way he’d ever get to have him.
When Steve showed up at his apartment, sopping wet and shivering, and offered to take their deal from weekly blowjobs to something else, he should’ve … Well, Eddie isn’t sure what he should’ve done, but it probably shouldn’t have involved tearing off their clothes and confessing his love in the heat of the moment, because guess what? Steve panicked and ran, and now Eddie is out in the rain and the cold, looking for him and cursing his life choices.
He wonders if he’ll ever learn.
*
“The fuck do you mean, he doesn’t work here anymore?”
Steve’s coworker, the same girl Eddie has seen around before but never bothered talking to, shrugs and blows a chewing gum bubble at him.
“That’s all I know. My boss told me to take his shift ‘cause he won’t be coming in anymore.”
Eddie gapes at her. “And you didn’t ask why?”
She shrugs again. “Do I look like I care? That guy always thought he was better than everybody else, I won’t miss him.”
Eddie whirls and stomps out into the night before he can say or do anything stupid. The goddamn rain still hasn’t stopped, and the wind has a cruel, cold bite to it. It makes him regret wearing nothing but a shirt and flannel. Then he remembers that Steve was only in his flimsy, wet diner uniform.
“Shit,” he swears, pacing up and down the sidewalk like a cornered animal. “Shit, shit, shit, what do you do now? Think, Munson, c’mon!”
He has nothing to go on, he realizes, dread slowly trickling into his bones and mingling with the chill of the wind. He only ever saw Steve here or at his own apartment. He has no phone number, no address, no names of friends or family in the area. No way of finding him.
“Fuck,” Eddie yells, and kicks at an empty can. It clatters down the wet sidewalk and stops before another pair of feet. Feet clad in white tennis shoes and knee-high socks.
Eddie’s head whips up.
He’s standing in the entry of the side alley - the same one where Eddie found him on the night they made their deal, and he looks about as surprised as Eddie is feeling. The pink neon light shining over from the diner bounces off his wet skin and clothes, making him glow like an apparition. Like he’ll vanish again if Eddie so much as blinks.
He doesn’t blink, but he slowly starts to inch towards him.
“What are you doing here?” Steve asks. There’s no bite to his voice like Eddie feared, no thinly veiled demand to go away. He sounds … tired, instead. Tired and sad and incredulous, like Eddie is the one who might disappear at any second.
Eddie snorts a weak laugh. “I could ask you the same thing, big boy. Your charming colleague said you didn’t work here anymore?”
Steve huffs and runs a hand through his wet bangs. The neon light catches in the droplets, making his hair look like it’s been scattered in pink diamonds. There’s more on his face and lips and lashes. His arms are covered in goosebumps, and his smile twitches at the corners.
“Fuck if I know. Not like I have anywhere else to go, huh?”
Eddie thinks that, as long as he’s alive, there’ll always be a place for Steve to go, but he doesn’t say that. It might scare him off again.
“I think,” he says instead, slowly shrugging off his flannel, “we ought to talk, you and I. I think we should’ve done that a long time ago.”
Steve’s face is alight with a dozen different emotions as Eddie holds the garment out to him. When he accepts it and their fingers brush, his hand is ice cold.
Eddie wants to chase that cold away, wants to wrap Steve up in his arms and never let him go again. Wants to give him the world - real, actual diamonds instead of ones made of neon lights and rain - but for now, his worn flannel will have to do. For now, he’s not letting him slip away again, and that’ll need to be enough.