Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part I

“You Are My Obsession”

I've dreamt about finding
Someone like you
Can't live without
Nobody else will do
Life is just a lesson
Time is a perception
Love will cure depression

-Trevor Something

*

Eddie knows how to take care of himself. Always finds the quiet outside space where he can exist, defend himself, stay alive. He knows the balance to walk, the lines to keep to.

Stay small, never bend, never talk, never flinch.

The world is brutal, ever changing.

The landscape shifts endlessly, no stability but what he himself can generate. Violence, threat, coercion, deals, near misses, making friends and discarding them when their usefulness expires.

Survival.

Eddie’s been alone for what feels like forever.

They meet when they’re sixteen.

It’s a detention centre, one of the worst. Rotten fucking luck he’s back in there, not even his fault.

Malferth is a jungle, a prison, a death trap.

He’s in there for two weeks until placement can be arranged, but it’s bullshit. This is just where they toss the worst of the street urchins for a while, let the wrap cool down, let the cops forget, which they never, ever do.

It’s where he meets Steve Harrington.

Blood around his mouth, laughing, he’s pretty and he’s crazy, everyone can see it. Shirtless, he’s in jeans and high tops.

He gets dragged in while Eddie is sat on his top bunk, watching like everyone else. It’s a hall, massive and open, forty bunk beds in neat lines, no privacy whatsoever.

They beat him up real bad, but they can’t make him stop laughing unless they knock him unconscious and Eddie knows they don’t like doing that, too risky and death paperwork’s a bitch.

So they leave him on the floor, bloody and broken.

A punishment worse than death in Malferth, he’ll be torn to pieces by the older boys. Too pretty, too loud. Eddie looks away, he’s not picking up strays this time around, promised himself.

The boys are left entirely to their own devices in the main hall, but when they leave for chow in the morning, the place will be turned upside down. Drug searches, knives, weapons. Anyone dies, anyone goes missing, then there’s hell to pay. Most of the boys in here have done a bid or two in Malferth and they know the rules.

But they also know they’re well entitled to go take a piece from the new kid.

Eddie doesn’t look. He’s got two weeks and then he’s out.

He deals, keeps himself small in the outer circles, head down, mouth shut, never flinch. But he has to swallow down a real big one when he hears the new kid start singing as he’s dragged away towards the back end of the hall. No privacy, no walls, everyone hears everything, no matter how loud the ambient noise of this hellhole is.

Eddie doesn’t know why he can’t focus. Why he can’t pretend it’s not happening. Maybe it’s the way the kid laughed, maybe it’s the blood around his mouth and how Eddie can’t help but imagine what he bit that made such spatter.

Maybe it’s the fact that less than a minute after he’s thrown down on a bed at the end, there comes a scream and then more laughter, hysterical this time.

Eddie looks.

Can’t help it.

It’s exactly what he thought, even though he can’t believe someone would be dumb enough to use teeth as a weapon in a place like this.

He’ll never know why he gets down off his bunk, why he goes over there, nerves soaked in steel. He will never understand it.

‘Get off him,’ he says, uses the voice. The boys part enough for him to catch a glimpse. Kid’s on the floor, bloody, bruised, about to be beat to death by sock soaps.

Kid’s still laughing, he is singing.

‘Back off,’ the tall one, Jake Adams, warns Eddie. He’s standing in a way that makes it obvious where the kid bit, legs crossed like he needs to pee. Face bright red, he’s got murder writ large. ‘This bitch is dead.’

It’ll be a slow death. They’ll kill him over the next few weeks, starve him, rape him, break him down until he drops dead just when he’s outside.

Eddie will never know why he does what he does next.

‘He’s my brother, back the fuck off.’

He holds the gaze of the taller one, the dangerous one.

Flat, level, he doesn’t blink.

Adams sneers. ‘He ain’t your brother.’

‘Yeah, he really fuckin’ is and you’re gonna let him go.’

‘Like fuck! Little cunt bit me, he’s gonna die.’

‘You put your dick where it didn’t belong.’

‘I put my dick wherever I like.’

‘Not in my brother.’

Adams holds the gaze, he’s taller than Eddie, but not stronger and definitely not faster. Either way, it’s a suicidal gamble and Eddie’s gonna be so fucking mad at himself later.

‘You’re gonna settle up for him?’

Eddie quietly dies inside. ‘Yeah.’

‘What’s it worth?’

‘Three ounces.’

‘Five.’

Three.’

‘Four, and I get to fuck him.’

‘Four, and I won’t tell anyone what I saw last time we ran lifts together.’

Adams’ mouth twists. Unpleasant desire to inflict pain, Eddie can see it, smell it. He holds his ground, stands as stone.

The bigger boy gives in with nothing more than a small nod over his shoulder in the kid’s vague direction.

‘He’s your problem now.’

‘There’s no problem,’ Eddie says, scoops the kid off the ground. He’s light, easy to pick up, but completely fucking off his head on something, has to be. ‘Get your ass up,’ he hisses, arranges the kid’s arm around his shoulder, they just about get to their feet.

Everyone’s watching them walk away when Adams calls out, ‘What’s his name, Munson?’

Eddie slams his eyes shut, jaw tight. Fuck.

But then the kid looks back, clings harder to Eddie as he spits blood in Adams’ direction, and laughs like a hyena. It’s almost jarring when he speaks, fully lucid. ‘My name’s Steve, you little three inch bitch. Next time, I’ll bite it all the way off and I swallow, so watch your back.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Eddie snarls, pinching his side viciously. He looks over his shoulder, sees Adams gawking. Eddie really doesn’t wanna die in fucking Malferth. ‘Five ounces,’ he says with a decisive nod and then yanks Steve towards the bathroom.

*

He sits him on the sink, wipes the blood away.

‘You can’t get it on the pillow or sheets,’ Eddie tells him, sopping wet toilet roll is all he’s got to clean the kid, Steve, up with. ‘Guards do checks every day, punish anyone who bleeds.’

Steve is docile, lets Eddie do whatever he needs to. His pupils aren’t blown like he expected. They’re rounded, too much even for a concussion. He hums songs under his breath, Eddie recognises a few of them.

‘How long you got?’

‘Two weeks.’

‘Who you run with?’

Steve shrugs, blinks unevenly. ‘I run with… the sky and the wind and the birds. And all the mice who bring me buttons.’

Eddie makes the universal for fuck’s sake expression; it’s subtle, brief but he’s genuinely despairing. Why the fuck has he done this? Five ounces and he’s probably gonna catch a blade before he leaves, all for this kid who’s round the fucking bend.

‘Uh huh. You know where you are, right?’

Steve frowns, looks at Eddie for the first time.

‘America?’

Eddie’s patience frays so hard it almost snaps. He gets hold of Steve’s face, fingers digging in hard. ‘I put my ass on the line for you, I lost money I don’t have and I’m gonna need you to snap the fuck out of this, right? We’re both gonna end up dead otherwise.’

Steve strokes the side of Eddie’s face. ‘Don’t be scared of dying,’ he whispers, tone melodic. ‘We’ll just try again next time.’

Kid’s lost it.

Fucking hell.

Eddie shrugs away from the touch, hisses. ‘No, see, I’m not dying for anybody, you get me? Now, I fucked up back there and I helped you so the least you can do is help me.’

Steve’s got this look, it’s the kind of thing Eddie sees in girls when they’re drunk and meet one another on the street. How they’re split wide with empathy for strangers of their own kind. How they bond in the toilets, how they take one another in.

It vanishes when sober, they never reconnect.

But it was real when they were drunk.

Steve’s not drunk, though.

‘Help you,’ he says, nodding slowly. ‘OK. All right.’

‘Yeah, damn fucking straight it’s all right. No more of this loopy shit. You gotta watch your back.’

Steve’s eyes are hopelessly expressive. Eddie almost wishes he’d go back to the celestial disconnect of before. ‘Watch your back. Promise.’

Eddie sighs, wipes away the last of the visible blood. ‘My name’s Eddie Munson.’

‘Steve Harrington.’

‘No, it’s Munson now. Steve Munson. Don’t slip up.’

Steve cocks his head. ‘Did we get married?’

Eddie could kill himself for doing this. God, he’s made mistakes in the past but this… ‘No, we’re brothers.’

‘Right. Brothers.’ Steve looks down at his hands, then at Eddie’s. He holds one, touches his palm. Eddie lets him. ‘Twins?’

‘No, not twins.’

‘You’re sixteen.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Here, see?’ His index finger trails over some crease and Eddie’s not the most patient of people on a good day, but he keeps it together. He doesn’t know why. ‘Sixteen, same as me, I think. We’re the same age.’

‘No, we’re not,’ Eddie tells him, holding his gaze meaningfully. ‘You’re fifteen. I’m sixteen. You’re Steve Munson. You’re my brother.’

Steve nods. ‘What’s Momma’s name?’

Eddie finds new blood running down the back of Steve’s neck. Fresh little river, shit, he’s caught a solid hook there, right at the base of his skull and it’s bleeding. Distracted, stressed, he asks, ‘What?’

‘Momma’s name,’ Steve repeats patiently, whisper quiet.

‘She’s dead.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘It’s fine, when did you get hit here?’

‘I don’t know. What about close family?’

‘No one.’

Steve strokes Eddie’s face with the knuckles of his fingers. ‘Just us.’

Eddie smacks his hand away. ‘Look, don’t touch me like that. People see, they’re gonna know and it’ll be a fucking miracle if we get out of here anyway.’

Steve hums, just makes noise, sound and notes like it’s normal. ‘Sorry, big brother.’

Eddie rolls his eyes. ‘This isn’t gonna stop, you need stitches.’

‘I can sew. I made clothes for the kids before. They cried when they tore, so I sewed them better next time.’

‘Great,’ Eddie says, flatly sarcastic. ‘You happen to have a fuckin’ sewing kit on you right now, ‘cause otherwise you’re gonna bleed to death.’

‘I could ask the mice.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘No,’ Steve says, catches Eddie’s gaze and holds it. ‘The little ones. The ones who are quiet, who stay close to the walls. They always have needles and thread.’

Eddie frowns. ‘Who?’

Steve hops down, grabs Eddie to pull him along.

‘Don’t hold my fucking hand, what is wrong with you?’ he snaps, yanking it back. Steve laughs sweetly.

‘You never minded when we were kids.’

Eddie thinks this might be the biggest fuck up of his whole life.

‘Yeah, well I mind now.’

Steve rolls his eyes. He’s got blood running down his back, but he moves like he’s dancing, like gravity just works differently with him. He’s much too pretty to be in a place like this.

‘You worry too much.’

*

They stick to the outskirts and Steve leads him to a row of beds with people who Eddie thinks of as the shadows. The ones who stay quiet, still, don’t make eye contact. Steve scans the rows of them, like he’s shopping.

‘No, we don’t talk to them,’ Eddie says, pulling him back when Steve heads towards someone.

Steve shakes his head, gets free. ‘Of course we do. We love mice.’ The boy he approaches is skinny, very short. Hair cut close to the scalp, something ugly and rushed. Kid’s streaked with dirt and grime, hasn’t showered in a while. Eddie instinctively knows why.

‘Hey,’ Steve says softly, kneeling before the bottom bunk. ‘What’s your name?’

The kid looks up, instantly wary. He scoots back, eyes darting between them. ‘What do you want?’

Steve’s smile is so gentle Eddie wants to slap it off his face, scream at him that gentle things will be eaten alive in here, birdlike bones and all.

‘Do you have a needle?’

Eddie scouts around, the constant lighthouse in search of trouble. He knows they’re being watched, but for now, the shaky truce of five ounces and Eddie’s rep holds the worst of it at bay.

‘I—no, why would I?’

Oh, he does. Eddie blinks, doesn’t know how Steve knew that.

He’s about to demand the kid hand over the needle or get beaten bloody, when Steve leans in and whispers something.

Kid goes white, swallows and nods.

Something is exchanged between them, Eddie can’t see what, but he doesn’t miss how Steve rubs his thumb over the kids knuckles just once, winks.

*

Getting thread is easy, Eddie knows how to unravel clothes, pull threads long enough before they snap. He burns the needle over a lighter and then sews the wound.

‘What did you threaten?’

‘Hmm?’

‘The kid, what did you threaten him with?’

‘I didn’t threaten him. I gave him a gift.’

Eddie snorts, bites the thread and then dabs hand soap around the area again, best he can do for now. The cut is closed, no more bleeding. Infection chances are fifty fifty.

‘Oh yeah, like what?’

‘It’ll just make you mad.’

‘I’m already mad, I got saddled with you, didn’t I?’

Steve feels the cut, the crude stitches. ‘Thank you.’

Eddie washes his hands, blood comes off easy when wet. ‘So, what’d you give him?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘No secrets when we’re family,’ he deadpans, shakes off the excess water. ‘You need to shower.’

Steve looks down at himself. ‘Do I?’

Eddie rolls his eyes again. ‘Get in, I’ll keep watch.’

When Steve is under the spray, no privacy, it’s a row of shower heads and drains in the floor, Eddie stands guard. Gets an eyeful, no point pretending modesty. This place is a goldfish bowl.

‘What did you give him?’

‘A razor blade.’

Eddie blinks, stares at the other boy who washes himself, works hard to get the lather as thick as he can. His blood runs pink down the drain. Bruises, cuts all over. Eddie’s seen way worse, except for the scars on his legs.

‘You gave him a fucking razor blade?’

‘Sharp for sharp, that’s fair. And now we have a needle, which is much more useful.’

‘No,’ Eddie says sternly. ‘A blade is always more useful, Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?’

Steve laughs again. Eddie cannot understand how he’s so free with his happiness. ‘I’ve got two others. Needles are handy and the mice always have them, they keep them in their skin.’

He shows Eddie his palm, outward facing. Touches the heel.

‘I never knew that,’ Eddie says at length, frowns to himself.

‘You wouldn’t, would you? It’s a secret. You can’t tell anyone.’

‘Why do they have ‘em?’

‘For sewing. For protection. For eyes. There’s lot of things you can do with a needle, Eddie.’

‘Where’d you keep your blades?’ he asks quietly, handing Steve a rough towel. He watches as the other boy dries himself.

‘Secret,’ Steve whispers. ‘Can’t tell you.’

‘Whatever. You can borrow my stuff, OK, but I want it back.’

‘Share and share alike,’ Steve sighs as he pulls on Eddie’s clothes. It’s all basic fare, sweatpants and a tee. The hall gets boiling hot at night, no windows open except one right at the very top. ‘Hey, tell me a secret?’

‘What? No.’

‘You have to, or no one will believe we’re brothers.’

Eddie thinks no one’s gonna believe that anyway.

‘How about the fact I regret saving your ass?’

Steve giggles, rolls his eyes like Eddie is silly. ‘That’s not a secret. It’s OK, you can tell me later. Is there food?’

*

The first three days are the worst.

Eddie’s never come so close to going to a guard. And like, he’d die first, let’s be clear. He’d perish before he asked for help from a fucking uniform, but the trouble Steve causes has him actually thinking about it once or twice.

The guy just will not accept where he is.

No matter how many times Eddie tells him to stop looking, get his head down, shut up, Steve just… doesn’t. He’s at ease everywhere, even when he gets hit by a guard, gets shoved into a wall by Adams. He laughs, sings. It drives the others crazy, draws their attention constantly and Eddie is right on the verge of cutting bait.

He doesn’t want to die.

Three nights of Steve in the bunk below him.

Three nights of Steve not sleeping.

Three mornings of waking up to Steve’s fingertips across his skin, making circles.

And it happens in the showers, where most bad things do.

He’s running through it in his head, how he can actually dump out of this, how he can toss Steve to the wolves, let the others have him but he made it so hard because he said they’re brothers.

Eddie is running all this shit through his mind, eyes open under the spray, when he hears a loud smack of fists to skin.

Steve goes down hard on the wet tile and it’s planned out, because the other boys make a wall between Eddie and Jake Adams and Steve.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ one of the boys says. ‘Walk away.’

Eddie wants to.

He could.

They’re telling him to and he could just… do it.

Steve’s laughter gets cut off, hand around his throat.

He wants to walk away… but he fucking can’t.

Eddie’s made up his mind, he’s throwing all in when Adams screams high like a girl.

Everyone turns to stare.

Steve is covered in blood, mixing with shower water, and it’s everywhere, it’s all over him, his face, his chest.

And Jake Adams is on the floor, hands around his throat as blood gushes. He’s kicking his legs, curling up protectively, he’s terrified.

Steve Harrington has a razor blade between his middle and index finger. He watches impassively and for a second, no one moves.

Then Eddie shoves through the wall of boys, goes to Steve.

‘Fucking hell!’

Steve looks at Eddie, smiles pleasantly.

‘You can keep this one. Her name’s Bea.’ He gives Eddie the blade and then opens his mouth wide, reaches inside and from fucking somewhere, he pulls another. The sharp part is covered, got a little silicone hat, but that razor blade came from his god forsaken mouth and he just pulled it out like it was nothing. Eddie holds the blade, stares. ‘This one’s my favourite, Sally.’ He crouches down, naked and bloody. Jake tries to scoot back. No one else moves, no one wants to get caught by a blade. There’s no medic, no help. ‘Do you wanna die?’

Jake is absolutely going to die, Eddie thinks.

Steve moves the blade closer to his face. ‘I said, do you wanna die, bitch?’

Jake shakes his head, sobs weakly. Steve strokes his hair.

‘Good. Then I’ll show you what angels look like, hmm?’

Eddie’s seen people die before, he’s seen people shot.

Nothing like this.

‘Everyone out,’ he says, voice level despite the shock.

Every single one of Jake’s boys leave.

‘Big brother,’ Steve whispers softly, pulling the needle out from the shallow skin of his palm. ‘Thread?’

‘What?’

‘Can you get me some, please?’ he asks softly.

‘Are you—you’re not gonna kill him?’

‘He said he didn’t want to die,’ Steve intones. ‘Thread, if you can find some, please, love.’

Eddie is literally too shell-shocked to do anything else. He grabs his tee, finds a decent thread from around the collar and goes back. He helps Steve pull Jake out from under the spray, shuts the water off. They’re all naked, bloody.

‘Sit up, that’s it. Head back.’

Jake panics, Eddie can’t blame him. Steve has a needle and a blade, his pretty eyes are dark like the sky is when the sun goes away.

Steve gets his face, grips it tight, wrinkles his nose.

‘Silly rabbit, I don’t need to trick you to kill you. I could just walk away. Now get your fucking head back.’

Eddie winces, irritated that his dick has decided to find the whole thing oddly attractive. Nothing weird about it, he gets hard when he fights other boys sometimes, but this is a level up.

Jake whimpers, tips his head back and Steve peels his trembling hands away while Eddie threads the needle.

Eddie’s sort of expecting a human Pez dispenser, but Jake’s not cut anywhere near as bad as he thought. It’s like a graze, the skin is split, but not the fat, muscle or veins beneath.

Steve winks at Eddie as he finishes up.

He’s methodical, quick.

‘Need to wrap it, keep it clean,’ Steve tells him.

‘I—I’m not gonna die?’

‘Not today,’ Eddie warns flatly.

‘But now you know,’ Steve tells him, eyes bright with interest, with the light of a thousand horrors the world has not yet seen, they live inside him, Eddie thinks. ‘What happens when you touch one of us, don’t you?’

Jake blinks tears down his cheeks, nods.

Eddie shoves his shoulder. ‘Answer him.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ the taller boy rasps.

‘All your friends ran. They left you. Me and my brother,’ Steve says, handing Eddie the other blade. ‘We don’t leave each other behind. We don’t let people fuck with us. And we don’t give second chances.’

‘I-I got it.’

‘Good,’ Eddie says. ‘Now fuck off and clean up.’

Jake’s knees are weak, they fail him, send him crashing down to the tiles more than once. Steve smiles like he finds it adorable, offers a hand to help which Jake takes.

When they’re upright, Steve leans in. ‘You got two of my marks in your vessel now. You don’t want a third.’

Jake backs away, bloody and pale, but no longer bleeding.

Steve doesn’t watch him go, loses interest. He cups his hands under the shower, throws the water over the biggest patches of red to help them wash away.

‘You can keep those,’ Steve tells Eddie when the worst of the red is circling the drain. ‘If you like.’

Eddie doesn’t know how Steve was even storing them in there. He can’t think straight, he’s shook to shit. Rare thing for him, but his adrenaline is smashing into his chill.

‘Nah, here you go.’ He licks his lips, hands them over.

Steve Harrington is washing himself under the lukewarm shower, looks like he’s enjoying it.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks when Eddie stays outside, hovering. His voice is like silk. ‘Did I scare you, big brother?’

He offers his free hand, smiles with little rivulets of water running over his face, over his lips. His hair is long, thick and strong. His bruises are fading, cuts healing, the scars on his legs are nothing less than pure, violent art. In the skin are carved flowers, vines, rose bushes and thorns. The tapestry is long since healed, almost flawless design. Eddie wonders which blade he used.

If it had a name.

Steve laughs softly, shakes his hair from his eyes. ‘C’mon, would never hurt you. Momma’d never forgive me.’

Eddie takes the hand that’s offered, steps under the water with Steve. ‘We ain’t got a Momma,’ he reminds him quietly.

Steve only smiles wider, rolls his eyes. He pops the protective cap on the blades, returns them to where they were before. Between his back teeth and cheek, it must still hurt even if it doesn’t cut him to ribbons.

‘We all have a Momma. I’ll introduce you when we get out.’

They wash together and Eddie knows he’s not gonna cut bait.

He accepts it.

Thinks he never stood a chance.

*

The days go easier after that, although nothing is really easy with Steve, Eddie comes to learn. Kid can’t do anything normally. He sits weird, eats weird, sings constantly, but after the incident in the shower, it works for them. The other boys side-eye him, they gossip. They even move aside when Steve walks past, holds their gaze, whispering about blackbirds singing in the dead of night.

Steve is fucking crazy.

Eddie doesn’t mind. He likes it, kinda.

Steve unsettles people, doesn’t blink, smiles and laughs like a hyena under his breath, the staccato rapid, the tone soft.

Everything with Steve is soft, sharp, sly.

They play cards during the day on top bunk. Steve doesn’t really get cards, doesn’t know spades or kaluki. He keeps taking the cards, shuffling them and asking the universe questions like he’s peddling futures. Eddie’s irritation cannot hold, it’s got no grip. He finds it kind of charming, adorable. Lets Steve read his fortune, rolls his eyes and chuckles, ‘Whatever you say, little brother.’

And Steve’s not especially lucid most of the time.

But when he says that, the gaze from those gut-rot golden eyes sharpens. He’ll smirk, focus on Eddie absolute. It’s momentary, Eddie is sure he’s the only one who gets to see Steve like this.

It feels precious. Kind of special.

Eddie had initially put him on bottom bunk beneath him, tossed the other kid to the outer circles (though Steve had given him a pair of Eddie’s fucking socks in recompense, decent ones too) but he quickly realised, Steve doesn’t sleep.

Like, maybe not at all.

He rests, sure, but he doesn’t close his eyes, Eddie thinks.

So, it just makes more sense to move him up top, where he can see. If he’s awake, he may as well stand guard. Eddie knows he’s heard whispers about the blades.

It’s got the attention of the hungry rungs.

Sometimes, in the pitch black of oppressively hot nights, though, Steve will hang upside down off the side of the bunk like a fucking trapeze artist. Eddie doesn’t know how, but he can tell by the shifting of the bed when Steve does it.

Feels fingers on his skin, hears his name being uttered in nothing but a whisper, shaped by a smile.

‘Wanna shop?’

Eddie didn’t get it at first, had warned him to be quiet. Steve just made a symbol over Eddie’s heart, a question-mark with a fierce dot.

Eddie gives in around the one week mark.

He creeps through the dark with Steve, learns how to be a whole new level of quiet. Steve’s like a shadow, barefoot and light as air. Eddie thinks they’re gonna rob the other boys who’ve got some decent stash, he’s game for that, but then Steve, the little psychopath takes him into the bathroom, the back stall. They keep the lights off.

Steve pops the grate off an air vent, hands it to Eddie.

‘Wait here,’ he whispers, draws a heart on Eddie’s cheek with his index and before Eddie can object, he lifts himself into the vent, slips inside with serpentine grace and Eddie’s left there in a toilet that stinks of piss as standard, holding metal.

He’s back quick.

His hoard is small, he stole like a mouse. Mostly what no one would miss. Four cigarettes, stale donuts from a box in the trash, a few pills, bandage roll, toenail clippers. Only one item is nice enough to be missed, and that’s the Zippo.

He snaps it to life, yellow warmth filling the cubicle.

‘You OK?’

Steve nods, points to his mouth.

He’s got something in it.

Eddie squints, moves closer. It’s vodka, no mistaking the scent, cut stems and harsh nights. Steve gestures from his mouth to Eddie’s, offering.

The world kind of grinds to a halt, like someone stopping a ride for a kid who got hurt. Eddie’s dizzy with it. This guy is so unlike anyone else he’s ever known and in a world where everyone is one of three types, it’s pretty dazzling to encounter this ethereal little fucker.

Eddie grins, licks his lips and nods quickly.

Steve smiles, his mouth like a hamster. He guides Eddie’s mouth open with his fingers, pries his lips apart and tips his head back. He moves in close, they’re toe to toe, barefoot on the dirty floor.

Their lips touch as Steve makes Eddie widen his mouth to permit the full entry of his own, closed.

He lovingly spits the vodka, bathes Eddie’s tongue with it.

And it’s fucking disgusting.

Lukewarm, spit-thick, fucking vodka.

Eddie’s never swallowed so quickly in his life.

Gets all that nasty shit deep down inside himself, drinks, takes, is grateful. Steve licks his lips, the sweet hyena laugh that Eddie can taste as they share the scent of the drink between them.

‘Next round’s on you, big brother.’

Eddie wipes his mouth with his wrist, weird feelings pulling his squishy parts in all different directions. ‘You bet.’

That’s the first time.

There are four more shopping trips. Steve slips down the vent like his bones can collapse, like he’s a pretty little rat, and he always comes back with treats.

And after, when Steve lays on top bunk and Eddie’s too excited to sleep below, Steve will let one hand drop down the side, fingers waggling gently in the visible gloom.

Eddie doesn’t think too hard when he plays with his fingers.

Doesn’t think too hard about anything when it comes to Steve. Much easier that way.

*

Steve gives away a lot of what he steals, always to the mice, as he calls them. He gets bandages every single time and when Eddie asks why, Steve frowns, like he’s dense for not knowing.

‘For binding.’ Eddie’s surprised he lowers his voice, something Steve rarely does. This is a lucid moment. ‘Binding keeps them alive in here. You get it?’

Wounds, cuts, whatever, Eddie still doesn’t get it, but the point is, Steve helps people, like that’s remotely normal.

On the last day of their two weeks, Jake’s necklace aside, they hadn’t had to use the blades once. Eddie half expects him to give those away too, but Steve says no, they’re a beacon.

Bindings, beacons, mice, the fucking moon. Kid speaks in riddles that settle like nursery rhymes into Eddie’s song-less heart.

They leave together.

Steve corrects the guard when he calls Steve Harrington to come get what they took when he arrived.

‘Steve Munson,’ he says dead serious and hilariously prim.

Exit guard couldn’t give less of a shit, hands him a plastic bag with random pocket items and processes Eddie next.

Eddie had more on him, he knew to bring money for the guards to steal, so they wouldn’t scrutinise the inner lining of his wallet, so the other shit would be safe. He’s got a hat, decent boots they took right off his feet, a jacket and a few other things among the most precious item of all, his phone.

It’s cheap, cracked screen, but valuable.

Got all his numbers in it. His whole world.

Westmont, LA is always hot, but this summer’s got a fucking bite to it. Eddie loves it, hates it, feels it burning him up where he’s already over-exposed.

He looks over at Steve, who pulls sunglasses out of his clear bag, but doesn’t don them just yet.

Eddie doesn’t know what’s going to happen now.

It brings him up short, that the last two weeks have ended.

For the first time since knowing him, Steve looks… vulnerable.

The sight of it has Eddie’s centre contracting tightly, wants to wipe that look off his face with a smile or a smack, either one because he can’t be vulnerable. That’ll get him killed out in the open, here.

And Eddie’s not stupid.

Malferth is a hellhole, but it’s not the streets.

Two weeks and now they can go their separate ways.

It’s expected, it’s better.

Instead, Eddie snags Steve’s sunglasses, puts them on Steve, he’s far too pale to be from around here. Then he asks, ‘Where to, little bro?’

And he thinks he never saw Steve smile until now, because oh… that must be what love looks like to other people. It must be how Christmas day feels for normal kids. It must be how god feels when he sees someone do something good for once.

Steve is the most lovely thing Eddie’s ever seen.

Eddie’s never had a lovely thing before.

He can’t let him go, won’t. Thinks he’ll get eaten alive without Eddie and besides, they work well together.

Steve nudges him, steals a cigarette and lights it with the Zippo he kept. ‘Santa Monica Pier,’ he says, like it should be obvious.

*

They’ve got nowhere to go, no roof over their heads.

No home.

Eddie’s never had a home. He carries drugs, he deals, he reports back. Moves, adjusts, sofa surfs, crashes, innovates, improvises, lies, steals, cheats.

But Steve doesn’t seem concerned about piddly shit like that when they hail a cab they have no intention of paying for, driving forty minutes across town to the Pier, where Steve wants to go.

They run like hell when they cab gets stuck in traffic five minutes away. Eddie grabs Steve’s hand, afraid he’ll fall behind, but Steve is fast, keeps up easily, even as he sing-songs his apologies to the driver, who yells after them.

They’re breathless and sweaty when they hit the Pier.

It’s packed.

Friday afternoon, the sun scorching. Furious to be stripped of the ozone, Eddie doesn’t know about sciency shit, but he knows the feel of an angry father figure looming overhead. Steve’s not from California, he’ll burn right up if he’s not careful.

‘You need sun cream, Snow White,’ he teases, pulling Steve back so he’s closer, doesn’t like when he’s too far. People fucking everywhere, Eddie hates them. Gets nervous sometimes.

Steve throws him a smile, but he doesn’t laugh like he might. He’s subtly scanning the crowd while they walk, threads their fingers together. Eddie has to swallow his nerves down, knows Steve isn’t like other people, but other people can be fucking mean as shit.

‘You like burgers?’ Steve asks, when they pass a small place serving right out the window, a couple of cheap looking tables and chairs scattered around. It smells great and of course he likes burgers, he likes everything except raw tomatoes.

‘Sure, but we can’t—’

‘Go order for us both,’ Steve tells him. It carries a command. He’s entirely lucid, in control. Eddie despairs briefly, thinks Steve is gonna ditch him. People have done it, more than he can count on one hand which is fucking pathetic, but still. ‘I want fries and strawberry shake plus a lot of pickles. No burger, just pickles, fries and a shake, yeah? Get whatever you want, I’ll be right back.’

Eddie’s sixteen.

He likes Steve, much as it costs him to admit.

He really doesn’t wanna get left behind like this.

But he goes and orders anyway, feels like his defences got stripped down and he didn’t even realise. There’s a hefty queue, fast food is never that fast and by the time it’s his turn, his voice actually shakes a little as he orders.

The guy looks up and down, but starts cooking his order, tells him the total.

‘My friend’s just coming.’

‘Uh huh. I’ll call you when it’s up, you’d better pay or it’s my lunch, kid.’

Eddie claims the small table closest to the window.

No sign of Steve.

He’s gone.

Ditched, dumped out.

Why wouldn’t he? Eddie’s not clever, he’s not pretty like Steve. Not interesting, not out here anyway. Not useful.

The sun beats down and he’s got no shades, only a hat he doesn’t wanna put on because maybe Steve won’t recognise him in it.

Pathetic.

The food is ready, guy calls out order’s up.

Eddie feels dead inside to realise he really has been—

‘Hey, he’s calling you,’ Steve says, breathless and chipper. ‘Here, I got it.’

Eddie looks up so fast he cricks his neck, stands quickly. He comes back to life like he got struck by lightning.

Heart starts again, blood flowing.

Steve’s lips are red, his cheeks flush. He pays and doesn’t tip, pockets all the change and gives Eddie the rest of the notes, two twenties.

‘Let’s sit somewhere else,’ he suggests, bite of urgency in it.

‘Sure,’ Eddie says, just so grateful that Steve came back. ‘Whatever you want.’

They find shade in the shadows of a tall building close to the beach. Steve sighs happily once he sees the water, bright blue waves crashing against sand.

‘Can I borrow your hat?’

Eddie gives it to him, doesn’t ask why.

They eat together in comfortable quiet, a world of obnoxious fuckers all around, but the ocean is right there and Eddie thinks it’s actually kind of special, seeing it with Steve.

 He’s got his little paper bowl filled with pickles; his fries and shake too. Steve demolishes them easily. Eddie’s impressed.

His own burger is fucking delicious. Dripping in grease, American cheese, sauces, chunky onions.

He saves his own pickle for Steve, who takes it with delicate fingers and a sweet smile.

‘You hustle?’ Eddie asks, curious.

Steve shrugs, tosses the pickle high, catches it in his mouth. ‘Sometimes.’

‘You fuck a john over? That why you got Malferth?’

‘Can we go swimming?’

Eddie rolls with the change of subject. ‘You wanna swim?’

‘Yeah, what’s wrong with that?’

‘No one swims here.’

‘How come?’

‘There’s sharks out there.’

‘There’s sharks everywhere. I want to swim.’

‘I mean, yeah if you want. We’ve got no towels, though.’

‘Sure we do,’ Steve says, points towards a few sun loungers, towels draped over the back. The occupants are playing volleyball nearby. ‘Those look nice.’

Eddie shakes his head, chuckling.

‘You’re a criminal, Steve Harrington.’

‘Munson. And we can just borrow them. Come on, I really need to swim, it’s been weeks and I miss it.’

Eddie should fight harder, he should lay down rules, sort the basics first, like where they’re gonna sleep, what the next few days will entail.

But in the water with Steve, it’s hard to give a fuck.

The ocean is cold, the sun is hot.

Steve is warm.

He’s crazy, he’s clever. He’s gorgeous and he plays with Eddie’s hands in the water, lifts one and sucks the salt from his index finger like he has every right.

Eddie’s had crushes before, but this is the first one he’s ever had that scares him.

Not enough to fight, though. Not enough to lay down any rules or sort the basics.

He swims with Steve Munson in the Pacific ocean with the boy who spat Vodka in his mouth.

If there are sharks, they stay away.

*

Steve steals the towels, a backpack too.

He left the women’s purses, said they’re sacred, but the backpack was apparently fair game.

In a Burger King bathroom, they dry off and change. No one yells at them to leave, everywhere is so fucking busy. There’s a reason Eddie never comes here.

Once dry and changed, they tear through the backpack.

‘Jackpot,’ Eddie declares, thick wad of notes sliding out from the pretentious wallet. Leaves the cards, they’ll be cancelled right away, and all the photos, he never touches those.

They also find a clean tee, condoms, expensive shades which Steve immediately dons, plus a few other useful things.

They leave the backpack in the toilet.

Walk out together, Eddie in the cheap shades, Steve in Rayban’s. He suits them.

‘OK, big boy,’ Eddie says when they’re outside again. ‘Where to now?’

Steve smiles lazily.

‘Shopping.’

*

They get clothes from market stalls.

Eddie haggles hard because Steve doesn’t know to. He puts his hand over Steve’s mouth so he can’t offer full price for the stolen clothes on hangers and Steve shakes with laughter. Eddie drives hard, gets the total way down for basic clothes, backpacks, underwear, cheap wallets, standard stuff.

Steve trades the Rayban’s for a pair of Levi boots and when Eddie mutters under his breath, Steve gives the boots to Eddie, says they’ll suit him, which… yeah, they do.

It’s tempting as fuck to get a motel for the night, but that money won’t last, it never does. Eddie knows to be smart, stretch it out until they’ve found their flow.

He turns his phone on, makes a few calls.

*

Eddie’s got friends all over, but he’s never had a friend. Never had a person he wanted to spend time with beyond a few hours. When he calls a friend, older guy named Rick, he’s invited to come over.

Rick lives in the Hills, he’s got a shitty place with a pool and neighbours who want to kill him for the amount of noise he makes.

‘Wanna go to a party?’ he asks Steve when he ends the call.

Steve finishes his juice, insisted on getting one.

‘Is it your birthday?’

‘Nah, it’s my friend, Rick. He’s always partying, said we could crash there.’

He really didn’t say that, but Eddie can smooth talk and he’ll make it worth Rick’s while, always does. Nobody runs deals like Eddie and Rick’s too lazy and loud to deal his own shit.

Steve doesn’t answer, he’s drinking his juice through a straw, little frown between his eyes.

‘Well?’ Eddie prompts. ‘What do you think?’

‘Are there lots of people there?’

‘Probably, but they’re all OK.’ Another lie, but again, Eddie can take care of himself and he knows Steve can too. ‘And if not, you can give ‘em a pretty necklace, like Adams, huh?’

Steve smiles, blinks slow. He looks tired.

Eddie’s never seen him tired before.

‘OK.’

*

The party is in full swing, sun setting slowly. Rick is aggressively trying to impress a girl who is way out of his league and he barely gives Eddie a nod and a grin before he’s back to the grind.

Which is perfect, really. The less scrutiny the better.

People stare at Steve, though.

Eddie doesn’t blame them, even though he wants to smack each of them, tell them to avert their fucking eyes.

The pool is small, already full of drunk people. Rick is twenty six, a full decade older than Eddie. They’re the youngest people there by a mile.

‘C’mon,’ Eddie says, taking Steve’s hand in his own.

Leads him through the crowd, past music so loud it makes his bones vibrate, and then they head inside.

Cigarettes, ashtrays, spilled drinks, party snacks.

Eddie grabs a bag of unopened chips and a bottle of water.

‘It’s too loud here,’ Steve tells him, sounds almost distressed.

‘I know, don’t worry.’

He leads them into the spare room. It’s filled with shit; boxes, clothes, laundry, stolen stuff too hot to sell yet, metal to sell for scrap in a pinch. There’s no bed, but Eddie’s crashed here plenty. He makes the same space behind the boxes, drags a quilt out from where he hid it last time. Uses clothes, whatever is soft. It’s like a little hideaway.

‘Here,’ he says to Steve, pulls him down to sit.

The music is muffled, it lives in the walls.

Steve sits beside him, crosses his legs. When he looks at Eddie, he seems almost high, but Eddie thinks he’s tired.

‘Safe?’ he asks, sounds like a child.

Eddie feels cut to his core, stripped of all he made tough and strong, dead skin suit of armour… it falls away.

This kid is in his heart, like a shard of glass, he slipped between the ribs, got inside.

Lives there now, Eddie thinks.

‘Yeah, we’re safe here.’

Steve half closes his eyes, back against the wall. ‘Tired.’

‘Why don’t you sleep? I’ll keep watch.’

‘You will?’

‘Course,’ Eddie says, smiling. ‘You kept watch the last two weeks.’

Steve kisses his cheek. ‘Love you, big brother.’

Eddie hasn’t said he loved anyone since he was very little. Since he was stupid, young, trusting. He hasn’t trusted anyone in years, knows he has not loved anyone either.

His heart is stone, it’s cast in scale.

He doesn’t say it back, can’t.

But he pulls Steve close, makes a pillow from clothes in his lap and bids Steve lay there.

‘I’ve got you, little brother,’ he says quietly, strokes Steve’s hair until he falls asleep. He can be the sentinel while Steve sleeps, while he rests.

Tomorrow is unknown, it always is, but Eddie’s good at making shit up as he goes.

Especially now he’s got a reason.

*

Part II

“Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?”

When's it gonna be my turn?
Don't forget me
When's it gonna be my turn?
Open me up, tell me you like it
Fuck me to death, love me until I love myself
There's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard.

-Lana Del Rey

*

They’re eighteen and they are never apart.

Best friends, brothers, they’ve not been apart since that first day they met almost two years ago.

Everything is hard, everything is difficult. Life hurts, it smacks Eddie across the face time and again. He’s used to it, yet that doesn’t dull the sting.

But he has Steve.

That helps.

Because Steve pays attention to where Eddie is hurt. He finds the source of pain, no matter what, touches it like that’s his natural right. Light touch, careful fingertips, expression of undiluted concern when they’re alone. He’ll find it, name it, and then kiss it.

Steve kisses everywhere Eddie hurts.

Most times his head or his heart.

Eddie lets him.

He lets Steve do whatever he likes, always.

Steve’s happiness is paramount, only ever outshone by the need to stay safe. If Eddie has to ruin someone else’s day to make Steve’s just a fraction more bearable, he will.

They steal, hustle, break, take, trash, and when they run, it’s always together. Holding hands so they can’t get lost because losing one another is unthinkable. Eddie can’t remember how he survived without Steve. What did he do?

Doesn’t matter.

They’re not going to lose each other.

So it’s fine.

But if they did… if Eddie lost Steve, even for a second…

He knows what he’d do.

It’s a cold fucking day in Wisconsin and Eddie makes Steve wear the good coat, won’t hear shit about sharing it. The Greyhound pulls away, fucking snow all around.

‘This is pretty,’ Steve declares, looking up at the sky, arms thrown wide to greet the snow as it falls. ‘Can we play?’

‘Later,’ Eddie says, distracted. He’s looking around for his Uncle Wayne. Thinks he’d know the kind of truck the old man might have if he could just see it, but it’s all station wagons in the lot, and they’re heaped with snow, been there all morning. ‘Let’s get a coffee.’

Steve follows him inside the diner. It’s quiet, warm, sort of cosy in a Fargo kinda way. Eddie clocks the men, like always. Biggest, most dangerous. The quiet ones who watch Steve. The truck drivers passing through. All men are dangerous, Eddie knows, but especially around Steve.

Like clockwork, Steve pulls the coat off, ruffles his hair and laughs musically. He’s still far too pretty for this world, this country, this time. It gets worse every day. Another year, Eddie thinks he’ll be beautiful. Steve performs the same scan Eddie does, but for different reasons.

Steve hustles like he’s visiting an ATM.

It’s just part of who he is, Eddie quickly came to discover. He whores himself at a fair price. Sometimes he robs them, sometimes he bites, sometimes he plays nice. Eddie can just about predict which of the three it’ll be, most of the time.

This scenario is absolutely one where Steve will clock the person who wants him most and is willing to pay. He doesn’t ever factor in danger, though.

And Eddie doesn’t judge, he would never. Has been on his knees for cash more than once in his life, and even if he hadn’t, he’d hardly be looking down his nose, but he just hates the risk.

Steve isn’t careful with himself, he acts like he’s immortal. Laughs when he gets hurt, sings when he has to bite to protect himself, names scars and goes starry. Eddie has to clean up the mess each time, so yeah.

He hates it.

But it’s part of who Steve is, so he accepts it.

Tall, bearded trucker gets up, gives Steve a nod. Eddie barely refrains from rolling his eyes, but he meets Steve’s gaze, gives him the wink which Steve returns.

Back in twenty or else come find me.

Eddie’s lost count of the come find me times.

Blood on the floor, Steve’s soft hyena laugh that means bad things happened and he barely survived them.

He hopes not this time.

Really fucking awkward to get arrested for murder in his hometown.

‘Two coffees, pancakes with strawberries and cream and I’ll have the French toast, thanks.’

The woman takes his order on a pad, doesn’t look at him much. Eddie gets a booth by the window, waiting.

Checks his phone for the time, counting down the minutes.

Coffees come first.

He adds sugar, drinks to distract himself. Someone slides into the booth and he’s so happy that Steve actually got it done faster than usual he looks up with a dumb-ass smile.

Only it’s not Steve, it’s his Uncle Wayne.

Eddie lets the smile vanish and die, that’s just for Steve.

‘Hey,’ he greets, gives his uncle a nod.

‘Eddie,’ Wayne says. He’s got a warm, kind sort of voice. Low and gruff, but he doesn’t look mean. Eddie remembers him, seen his face a few times, just got some new greys. ‘You’re gettin’ tall.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Were you waiting long?’

Eddie shrugs, glances towards the men’s, the clock on his phone. ‘Not long. You been all right?’

Wayne’s brother, Eddie’s piece of shit father is cold in the ground. Eddie missed the funeral, he’ll be sure to cry buckets of tears about it, but there was some shit Wayne said he could come get if he wanted. Eddie’s stuff he left behind when he ran away.

‘Not too bad,’ Wayne says. ‘Did you order? Can I get you anything?’

‘Nah, we’re set.’

‘We?’

‘I brought my friend.’

‘A girlfriend?’

‘No, he’s a guy.’

Wayne nods. ‘Boyfriend?’

Eddie checks the clock. It’s been twelve minutes. He gets nervous around the fifteen mark. Fucking hates this so much.

‘No, not my boyfriend,’ Eddie says, dead stare, insolent and loud. Fuck this guy playing nice, Eddie doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know Eddie. ‘You got keys or whatever for the place?’

‘It’s already been cleared. Landlord let me take what I could carry.’

‘Cool. Was there money?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘Smack?’

Wayne surveys him evenly. Eddie can feel himself bristling, wants to lean into where he’s comfortable around adults. Hitch a knee to his chest, make a lewd remark, make them uncomfortable just being in his presence so they won’t want to be anywhere near him ever again.

He doesn’t do that.

He holds his temper.

‘Any drugs I found got flushed.’

Eddie rolls his eyes, smirks. ‘Course.’

‘You’re not… well. I’d hope you’re not into all that shit.’

Eddie passively watches the snow, aggressively raps a manic rhythm across the table. ‘Uh huh.’ The food arrives and his phone tells him it’s been eighteen minutes. He swallows subtly. ‘So it’s at your place or whatever?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Cool.’ Eddie’s got a switchblade in his back pocket, he’ll use it, doesn’t give a fuck. He’s watching the bathroom door now, mentally counting down the seconds. If the guy comes out first and tries to leave, he’ll slit his throat before he goes to get Steve. ‘Whatever.’

Wayne asks, ‘Eddie, are you all right?’

The door swings open.

Steve comes out first.

Face damp from water, lips red from use.

He catches Eddie’s gaze smoothly, winks and heads to the counter, orders a strawberry milkshake for himself.

Eddie’s whole body relaxes.

‘Fucking twenty seven seconds,’ he hisses at Steve when he slides into the booth next to Eddie. No blood around his mouth or down his chin, good sign.

Steve gives him a butter wouldn’t melt look, kind of thing that drives Eddie fucking crazy and then purses his lips, gifts an air kiss of silly smugness. ‘Miss me?’

Irritation and relief are a strange combination, but the swirl is never enough to overwhelm his devotion, his adoration, obsession.

Not love.

It’ll never be love because Eddie loves no one and nothing, but Steve is as close as it’ll ever get.

‘Eat your food.’

‘I want my milkshake first.’

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he cracks a tiny smile when Steve won’t look away, when he holds his gaze, teasing, loving him with all that’s wild and weird. Steve loves freely, tells Eddie far too often and each time he says it, Eddie wants to clap his hands over his mouth, but he would never stifle him.

‘God, fine.’ Eddie remembers they’re not alone. He glances at Wayne, who’s watching them both closely. ‘Steve, this is my Uncle Wayne.’

Steve beams. ‘Uncle Wayne!’ Gets up from his seat, goes around and hugs Wayne, who freezes with surprise, eyes slightly wide. Eddie smirks again, never not amused by how people react to Steve.

But after a second or so, Wayne awkwardly pats Steve on the back. ‘Nice to meet you, kid.’

Steve sits down just as his milkshake arrives. It’s tall, got whipped cream and a cherry on top. ‘I’m Steve, Eddie’s brother.’

‘Step brother,’ Eddie fills in neatly, expression back to something more shuttered. He’s always the level one of the two. The more relaxed Steve is around strangers, the more Eddie tightens up. It’s not a stressful state, it’s not tense. He just likes to stay sharp.

‘Momma says she loves us both equally,’ Steve tells Wayne as he pulls his pancakes close, Eddie already knows what he’s gonna do. ‘But I think Eddie’s her favourite.’ He pours the milkshake over the pancakes like it’s maple syrup; artful drizzle of the thick, milky sludge. ‘I don’t mind, though. He’s my favourite too.’

Eddie knows Steve inside and out.

He knows all the subtle variations of his speech, his state of being. Body language, tone, all of it. He knows the difference between Steve being less than lucid due to disconnect and being less than lucid to elicit a test response from a new person.

This is the latter.

They both watch Wayne in different ways.

The older man gives a friendly smile. ‘Well, that’s because he’s still as charming as ever.’

Eddie snorts and Steve laughs, the real kind. Sweet, musical. Eddie wants to bite his voice box, just hold his teeth over it to feel the vibrations.

‘He is charming,’ Steve whispers, folds his pancake like it’s a tortilla, all covered in milkshake and then takes a bite. His fingers drip with light pink, his tongue makes a slow circle around his lips, seeking mess.

Measuring, again.

Testing.

Wayne clears his throat politely, looks at Eddie.

More or less a pass.

‘I’m gonna grab a coffee if that’s all right with you boys?’

Steve smiles, looks at Eddie, who nods.

They watch him go to the counter.

‘He’s OK,’ Steve informs him. His instincts about people when it comes to Eddie are impeccable. It’s those in regards to himself that he dulls time and again to get money.

‘You took too long.’

‘I was early.’

‘Twenty seconds isn’t early.’ Steve kisses his cheek, leaves a milky mark that Eddie rubs away. Irritated, Eddie eyes Steve. ‘He fuck you?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you high?’

‘It’s a sugar high, not poppers.’

Eddie leans in. ‘Swear on Momma.’

Steve eats, ignores him.

Fucker.

Wayne is back with his coffee before he can say anything else. God, if they’ve come all this way for school drawings and baby pictures, Eddie’s gonna be mad.

‘I settled up, my treat.’

‘Thanks. So, after we eat, you cool to go?’

‘Sure, whatever you like. You boys staying in a motel?’

‘No,’ Steve says before Eddie can answer, mouth full of food, he eats like a hamster still. ‘We don’t have anywhere to stay, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere.’

Eddie sighs subtly, finds Steve’s bratting irritating today in a way it never usually is. Maybe because this is Eddie’s last living relative. Maybe because he’s mad Steve lied, took too long, didn’t say no like he’s supposed to when a John asks for full whack.

‘You’re welcome to stay with me,’ Wayne offers earnestly.

Steve wipes his mouth with a napkin, looks at Eddie.

The sugar sweet smile of a pretty boy who’ll be so beautiful soon that the world will burn just to bear witness to him. Eddie is simultaneously obsessed and yet bone weary with resignation.

‘That sounds lovely, doesn’t it, big brother?’

And he only calls him that when he’s hyper or when they’re alone; to tease, or sometimes as a touchstone to safety when he is pulled adrift in the ocean of bad things.

Fucking poppers always make him hyper.

‘Sounds great,’ Eddie says with a tight smile.

He hates Wisconsin.

*

Wayne’s got a cabin. It’s small, well looked after.

There’s boxes by the window.

Steve stays outside for a few minutes, playing with the snow, probably talking to the sky and the trees. If he doesn’t come inside with a tiny animal or a large insect, Eddie will be astonished.

‘He OK out there?’

Eddie leans back to peer through the netted window. ‘He’s fine. Not used to the snow.’

‘He’s pale enough I thought he might be.’

‘Iron deficiency. Are these mine?’ He nudges the nearest box with his boot.

Wayne lights the fire. ‘Sure are. I got a little spare room down the hall, you can open ‘em there if you’d like.’

Eddie would like that. ‘Thanks.’

Wayne helps him carry the boxes in, sets them by the bed. It’s a nice room. Homey, warm.

Eddie’s dreading Wayne offering to let him live in it.

‘Thanks, I’ll open them later.’

‘Course.’

Steve comes in with a mouse in both hands.

‘She’s freezing, can I sit by the fire with her?’ he asks Wayne, expression open, almost impatient. ‘Please?’

Wayne shakes himself. ‘Uh. Y-yeah, sure.’

Steve’s already lowering himself onto the rug, crossing his legs. ‘Thanks.’ He immediately starts speaking in a soothing, hushed tone to the tiny mouse. Eddie sees quivering whiskers, smiles a little despite himself.

‘He likes animals, huh?’

Eddie follows Wayne into the kitchen. He’s thinking of the time Steve stabbed a guy in the thigh for kicking a cat.

‘You could say that. Can I help?’

There’s washing up in the sink.

They work together, side by side.

‘I’m not living here,’ Eddie says after the third bowl. He doesn’t have a tone, he’s not being mean. Just honest.

‘I kinda figured,’ Wayne says, sounds disappointed anyway. ‘But I hope you know that room has been yours since you were little and it always will be. House’ll be yours when it’s my time to go.’ Eddie looks up at Wayne, surprised to see the man frowning deeply. ‘I should’a done more for you, when I had the chance.’

‘You’re fine.’

‘Well. Room’s yours, all I’m sayin’. And your friend is welcome too. He seems nice.’

Eddie tenses up, doesn’t like when people talk about Steve without Steve himself there.

‘Mmhm.’

‘Is he, uh. Is there any help he needs that I could—?’

‘We’re fine,’ Eddie says curtly. ‘He’s not crazy.’

‘I didn’t say he was. People lose their balance sometimes.’

Eddie forces a smile, knows it’s a little cold but he can’t help it. His defences for Steve run like ice in his blood, solidify to armour so easily. ‘We get by.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

Eddie looks back at the plates, focuses on drying them. ‘Where’d they bury him?’

‘Out on Eastpoint, same cemetery as our folks.’

‘Near Mom?’

‘No. She’s with her sister, on the far side by the big oak.’

Eddie nods, remembering. ‘Right.’

‘Did you wanna go?’

‘Eh.’ If he does, it’ll be alone, and alone means with Steve.

‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

‘I will.’

He won ’t.

Steve comes to join them, looking around with bright interest. No sign of the mouse, which means it defrosted enough to scamper away and make a new home in Wayne’s cabin.

‘Is there popcorn?’

*

Eddie and Steve open the boxes and they stay in the room. It’s kind of rude, but Eddie’s not making himself an inch more uncomfortable than he has to. Whole thing’s awkward as fuck anyway.

They sit on the bed and rifle carefully through.

The contents smell of weed and mildew.

‘Did you draw this?’

Steve holds up a faded, wrinkled piece of paper with a few artless scribbles and circles. He squints. ‘I guess.’

Steve hugs the paper to his chest. ‘Little Eddie.’

Eddie snorts. ‘Shut up.’ He skims old school reports, wonders who kept this. Must have been his Mom, because everything ends when Eddie’s around nine, which is when she died.

He ran away at eleven.

Steve reads the school reports aloud. It sounds like someone else, a child from a different life. Eddie’s not bright or happy, he’s not kind to the other kids, he’s not a caregiver. Not intelligent either.

Smart, scrappy, sharp, maybe.

He sighs. ‘Fuck all of value yet?’

‘So far, sentiment only, love.’

‘What a waste of a trip.’

‘No it’s not, I saved that mouse.’

Eddie looks up, smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Affection. He’s pure gone on the levels of affection he feels for Steve, he’s riddled with it.

‘Yeah, you did,’ he says, not even sarcastic because he knows that’s how Steve will frame this trip. They’ll call it The Mouse He Rescued From The Wisconsin Snow because that’s how Steve compartmentalises. He makes safe memories from the bones of small delights.

Eddie finds a tin box, something that was absolutely used for drugs, Eddie can smell it. Inside now, after Wayne no doubt flushed the unwholesome contents, are dog tags, a guitar pick necklace and a woman’s ring.

He takes the ring out. It’s a plain band, silver. No stones.

Steve loves rings.

‘You want it?’ he offers, holding it out between them.

Soft eyes, Steve blinks like an owl. ‘That was your Momma’s.’

‘I know. You can have it if you like.’

The smile he gets is delicate, it’s only for Eddie.

Steve slips it on, fingers too skinny to hold it anywhere but his thumb. Then he kisses it, immediately begins whispering to it. Eddie watches fondly, knows all of Steve’s little routines by now.

And his Mom was nice, what precious little he remembers of her. He dares thinks she would have liked Steve. He likes the idea that it’s something they would have had in common.

His Dad on the other hand… well.

There’s a reason Eddie came all this way and it’s not really got anything to do with the boxes.

‘We can go to the grave tomorrow,’ he tells Steve.

‘Sounds good.’

‘Then we’ll leave?’

‘We could live here,’ Steve sighs, looking around. ‘It’s warm and it’s quiet and there’s food, always, even if it’s boring.’

‘I don’t want to,’ Eddie answers honestly. Small towns make him sick with fever, make him feel little. ‘Wayne’s OK, though. We can send postcards.’

‘From France?’

‘Or wherever,’ Eddie counters reasonably because Steve wants to travel all the time, talks about it constantly and Eddie gets tired of explaining about annoying shit like passports, and technically being considered minors. For now, America is their planet. ‘Wanna go somewhere warm after this?’

Steve cups Eddie’s cheek and rubs his thumb over the bones beneath his eye. He feels the ring, warmer now it’s on Steve’s body. Silver like the moon, near forgotten like his Mom, but Steve brings every good thing together, no matter how small a scrap, and holds the slivers to make the world shine.

‘Whatever you want.’

*

In bed, they lie together like always.

They sleep together every single night. Even if one stays awake, they’re together. It has become essential, thoughtlessly automatic, there’s hell to pay if, for whatever reason, they cannot sleep as they are now naturally wont to do.

Touching, close enough to feel breath, to let their hearts fall into sync, like the tides fall into the moon’s lull. Eddie thinks about the moon all the time, Steve’s Momma. He thinks about how lonely she must have been up there until the waters of the world started mimicking her, singing to her.

He thinks about all the water in Steve’s body, how he dances beneath her light heedless of who watches. His boy is the tide, the rogue wave as it rises, the rain as it pours.

He thinks weird fucking shit when he’s relaxed.

In a room that could be Eddie’s, but never will be, they lay on the bed, nose to nose, touching to ground, reconnecting after a long day spent not touching in anything but passing.

Stroking hair, skin, whispering with breath words that don’t need to make sense. Steve has this way of saying things, sensory whisper that makes Eddie shiver and relax.

Doesn’t matter what he’s saying, just how he says it. How they speak in this language of silent breaths and throat noises and hands caressing the vessels they cherish.

Sometimes they kiss.

It’s probably the thing Eddie is most terrified of in the whole world. Rare moments when things are awful. When Steve cries, the skies threaten to crack and split. When death comes calling, it reluctantly leaves an I.O.U written in Eddie’s blood. When people come into their world and leave a trail of nothing but pain in their wake, Eddie and Steve will cling, they’ll cleave and sometimes, they kiss.

Eddie won’t count the times, but he peripherally knows it’s less than ten. When Steve can’t laugh or sing, when something hurts him beyond his own astounding tolerance for grotesque suffering, he cries.

Eddie was the one to start it, knows it’s innately his fault.

Because the first time he ever saw Steve cry, he didn’t know what to do. Bloody, torn up, Steve cracks like a mirror, he distorts the world around him and in reality, he’d only been crying quietly on the bathroom floor, but to Eddie, it was all the atoms of the world splitting.

And he’d kissed him.

Kissed him to make it better, kissed him to silence the sorrow as it left, to trap it, keep it in there like blood in a body. Steve’s blood is sorrow and without it, he might die, Eddie thinks.

He fucked up massively.

Closed mouth, press of lips as he held Steve’s face, heart straining past his unworthy bones, wanted to leave, slip free, live elsewhere in the better body, no matter how beat up.

Eddie refuses it, always.

Just a kiss, but Eddie knows he started the countdown to the end of the world that very first time. He hit go on the clock, and is now forever doomed to watch it slowly tick backwards, hurtling dully towards an inevitable end.

It happened again, and again. Steve crying has become Pavlov’s bell for Eddie’s greatest fear.

The last time it happened, maybe four months ago, the kiss began to evolve. Energy adapting into the fluid shift of hunger. Steve parted his lips, licked gently inside and moaned wetly, fingers in Eddie’s hair and it would be the end of the world to fuck with Steve like this. No survivors.

But Eddie’s weak for him.

Terrified, weak and wanting.

He is the grounded one. He’s the kite string. He has to make the bulk of the hard decisions for them and this is the worst one.

They’ll destroy each other if they let their bond evolve.

They will be the ruin of one another and Steve is the best thing in Eddie’s life, knows nothing is worth that.

So, sometimes they kiss, but only when things are really, truly bad. Eddie does whatever he can to keep things good, or fine, he’d even take OK.

Anything but bad.

Anything but Steve crying.

‘Tell me you love me,’ Steve whispers, fingers trailing lemon-sour ribbons of sweetness over Eddie’s soft cheek.

Eddie’s throat is full of things too big for his body, he is the soul container of the apocalypse. He sighs, leans in and rubs their noses together.

‘Never.’

‘I love you.’

‘You love lots of things.’

‘Don’t be cruel.’

‘Don’t be stupid, then,’ Eddie warns gently. Hates hurting Steve like this, but it’s necessary sometimes. Keeping them alive and whole is a full time job and he’s resentful of it, on occasion. Resentful of Steve’s free spirit and his easy declarations. Guilt stings at the base of his spine, his own heart despising him. Eddie thinks his entire interior would abandon him in an instant, given the chance. ‘Momma loves you,’ he offers instead, swallows over a thick lump.

It’s paltry. Less than Steve deserves.

Eddie is a mere shadow compared to what Steve believes he is.

Steve sees the good in everyone, the bad, the ugly. Frighteningly perceptive sometimes, entirely disconnected others.

Eddie hates it, is lost without it.

And it’s not enough, either, this time.

Steve rolls over slowly, gives Eddie his back. It’s a door closed quietly in Eddie’s face. Eddie stays where he is, facing Steve in case he changes his mind. Eddie can give him this. He can give him his presence, his… his energy, his life, his care and devotion.

Eddie would cut his wrists for Steve.

He’d lay on train tracks.

He’d kill and he’d do real time, he would endure and suffer.

He has.

But he can’t love him.

Cannot let himself.

Cannot find it.

He writes with the tip of his index finger, I’m sorry, in the skin of Steve’s back, gets no response.

Deserves none.

*

Wayne makes breakfast for them both.

Steve is still sore about the night before, punishes Eddie by getting on with Wayne like a house on fire. Steve can be petty and spiteful, but always in happy ways.

The pair of them talk easily, lucidly. Steve laughs, hand over his mouth to keep the pancakes and bacon in there, ignores Eddie completely when the slightly older boy comes out of the bedroom to find the day has begun without him.

‘Eddie,’ Wayne greets warmly. ‘Got coffee and pancakes here.’

It stings to have Steve ignore him, but Eddie knows he deserves it. He doesn’t let himself think about it much, but he’s not stupid. Has every reason in the world to love Steve.

And he knows how much it must hurt Steve too, to be so devoted, to love so openly and patiently, getting no such reciprocity.

‘Thanks,’ Eddie mutters, unsure of how the day will go, except that he’ll be ignored unless he makes it right.

He goes to Wayne’s food cupboards, rifles around until he finds what he’s looking for. The staple of any home.

He sets the jar of pickles down beside Steve’s plate, then sits himself down. Eddie watches Steve raptly, couldn’t care less what Wayne thinks. Steve looks at the jar; small, full of brine, little green things inside, all pickled and sharp and sweet.

His light brown eyes lift to look at Eddie for the first time that day. He’s still hurt, still upset. Steve cracks the jar, gets one out and crunches it.

‘Try a pancake,’ Steve says, licking the watery juice off his fingers. ‘They’re made with buttermilk.’

He forgives him easily, always does.

Eddie breathes easier, smiles shakily.

The day begins.

*

Eastpoint Cemetery is blanketed in white.

Steve holds Eddie’s hand as they trudge through the snow, seeking out the location of the new grave, the headstone.

‘Can we see your Mom’s after?’ Steve asks, almost slipping on ice, but Eddie’s got him, steadies him.

‘Sure.’

The grave looms. Munson.

The stone is newer than the others, inscription has no moss in the grooves, but it will soon.

Eddie’s dad was a bad person. He left no good memories behind, only scars and the low voltage terror of unconsciously becoming him.

They stand there at the end, in the experience together. Eddie’s not alone with Steve there, he never feels alone anymore, even when things are difficult.

‘I’m glad you’re dead,’ Eddie whispers staring at the stone. He sees the face in his mind, hears the voice. ‘I’m glad you’re gone.’

He spits on the stone.

Hopes it’ll freeze, last all winter.

Steve rests his head on Eddie shoulder, like they’re basking in some scenic beauty. Eddie wraps one arm around him, rubs his shoulder, knows he’s cold, always is whenever they’re not in the sun.

‘Say goodbye, baby. Otherwise it’s not real.’

Eddie can feel his bottom lip trembling.

He’s eighteen years old, feels eighty most days. He travelled halfway across the country to be here, to mark the grave with disrespect, with his disgust.

The goodbye gets stuck in his throat for a moment.

Then he drags it up, vicious and hard by the collar.

The way his Dad had dragged him many times.

‘Goodbye,’ he utters, breath curling in the bitter cold. ‘You fucking piece of shit.’

Steve kisses his cheek. ‘Now it’s real.’

*

His Mom is buried under a big, old oak. Her grave is shaded from the snow, but it’s much older. Mossy and faded, Eddie knows she wouldn’t care about the stone, but it’s still strange to realise how long it’s been.

Steve is wearing her ring, loves it.

‘She’s in the tree,’ he tells Eddie, touching the trunk. ‘Took all her light, let it live there for always.’ He smiles warmly and Eddie does the same, helplessly caught up in the other boy and his ways. ‘When I die, will you bury me under a tree?’

‘You’re not gonna die,’ Eddie tells him, stern, more of a warning than anything else. ‘And if you do, I’m hardly gonna be available to pick out a fuckin’ tree to bury you under, am I?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I would obviously be dead too.’ Eddie brushes snow off the stone, traces her name. He has something in his pocket.

It’s a picture he drew.

Of him and of her.

Squiggly lines, faded crayons.

The sun above, scraggly grass below.

Eddie puts it in the snow, a rock atop it beneath the stone.

He knows it’ll get ruined, soaked through, but he’s giving it to her either way.

‘Miss you,’ he says softly.

‘Say it to the tree,’ Steve suggests. ‘She’s in there.’

Eddie looks at the tree, branches heavy with snow. He touches the trunk, smiles a little. ‘Miss you, Mom. Hope you’re OK.’

Steve kisses the branch and Eddie links their hands.

They stay there for a little while, beneath the tree.

Steve hums a song and Eddie closes his eyes.

It’s the first good memory he’s made here in a long time.

*

Wayne gives Eddie five hundred dollars he had saved up, won’t hear a word about refusing. Eddie accepts, but only because Steve takes the money and hugs Wayne in thanks.

It’s an awkward goodbye, but it’s heartfelt enough.

Eddie thinks he might genuinely write to Wayne sometimes. Maybe even visit. But for now, they leave the sleepy snows of Wisconsin behind.

On the bus back, Steve gets into a fight with men who wouldn’t leave these two girls alone. Eddie low key dreads situations like this because Steve's sense of injustice is off the charts sometimes, so two girls travelling alone and three older men harassing them - it was inevitable.

Once he gets out his knife, bus driver pulling over and yelling, Eddie knows they need to get the fuck away.

They barely have time to grab their shit and run before the bus has stopped and the men chase them off. Blood was spilt and the tall one got cut real bad, Steve’s always so tricky with blades.

Eddie hardly catches the name of the town, doesn’t matter though, he knows they’re in fucking Nebraska.

Steve’s palm is badly cut, he’s all bloody.

‘That’s fucking serious,’ Eddie chastises, thinks it needs stitches. The bus depot is a ways back, cops won’t bother chasing them unless one of those assholes died which Eddie really doesn’t think is likely.

Steve laughs and then he kisses him.

Just once, closed mouth.

A thing of joy.

It’s late and dark. Most places are closed, but Eddie drags him into a near empty coffee shop, barks an order for whatever’s cheapest at the guy behind the counter and gets them in the bathroom.

‘God damn it,’ he complains, holding Steve’s wrist under the cold tap. ‘ You need to be more fuckin’ careful!’

‘They were being mean!’

‘Most people are. Doesn’t mean you should—’

‘Hey, you can’t just barge in here—oh shit.’

The guy who followed them inside stares, eyes wide.

It’s a moment Eddie’ll never forget.

The day they meet Billy Hargrove.

*

Billy Hargrove works in the coffee place, and he knows how to use a first aid kit. He wraps Steve’s hand up with expertise while Eddie watches carefully, can’t shake his suspicion whenever someone offers to help.

Steve lets him, of course.

Turns liquid and loose after Billy told them his name.

‘You’re so sweet,’ he murmurs, holding Billy’s gaze.

Billy snorts, carefully applies disinfectant before the bandages. ‘I’m really fuckin’ not.’

He’s got a thick accent, local.

He is surprisingly good looking. Prettier even than Steve in the right light, or he would be, with a decent haircut, but he’s built. Sturdy, works out. He’s around their age too, maybe a year older, maybe younger, it’s hard to tell.

‘Someone come at you?’ he asks Steve, closing the cut with a few butterfly stitches and then he wraps it, finally.

Steve gives Billy his best fuck me up, Daddy eyes. ‘Maybe I came at them, huh?’

Billy doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t leer. Holds Steve’s gaze, meets it like he’s capable. ‘If you say so.’

Steve laughs, glances at Eddie whose patience is fraying but at the same time, he recognises an opportunity when he sees it.

The place is empty and it’s almost nine.

‘You got your own place, handsome?’ Steve asks, voice like honey, eyes warm.

Billy finishes the wrap. It’s decent.

‘Livin’ upstairs. Boss lets me work here and crash, so long as I lock up. Part of my probation.’

‘You did time?’

‘NCYF. I’m cleared in less than six months.’ Billy packs away the kit, carefully disposes of the bloody tissue paper. ‘So I don’t want trouble.’

Steve cocks his head, slips down off the countertop where he’d been sitting. ‘Neither do we,’ he says, silky soft. It’s irresistible, his voice like this. Even Eddie is affected. Steve can be like a siren sometimes. ‘We got kicked off our bus, we’re just laying low till the next one.’

‘Tomorrow, nine AM.’

‘Could we stay with you?’ Steve asks, looking at Billy like it is only him and Billy, as if Eddie is luggage. Eddie knows what he’s doing, respects it, but hates it all the same, like so many other necessary evils. ‘Just for tonight?’

Billy sighs, looks at them both.

‘You gonna start shit?’

‘No,’ Eddie says, clear and firm. Means it, knows better than to fuck around with Nebraskan cops or locals. ‘We’re in and out. Would appreciate some help, though.’

He either will help or he won’t and no matter what, they’ll be OK, they always are but he knows this is what Steve wants. That Steve is sick of the snow by now and the cold.

And that Steve is curious about Billy.

Steve’s curiosity rarely leads anywhere good, but where Steve goes, so Eddie goes and where Eddie goes, so Steve goes.

They’re together, always.

‘OK, then,’ Billy simply says. ‘Here, lemme take your bag.’

*

It’s small, neat.

Billy’s a clean person.

Eddie cases the place for anything of value, but there’s nothing. It’s worth more to stay the night without interruption.

It’s a studio, but it’s warm enough. Steve asks if he can shower. Billy says sure.

Eddie watches him go, the pair silently communicating.

I'll keep an eye on him.

Don't be mean, he’s nice.

I won't be, go shower.

Love you. You love me?

Never.

But Eddie winks, softens it with a smile.

It’s all he can give.

Steve sings in the shower and Billy makes coffee.

‘Thanks for this,’ he says, lets his tone soften deceptively.

‘It’s all right.’

‘You want money or something?’

‘Nah.’

‘Do you expect to fuck him?’

Billy glances at Eddie. It’s more measured than the fucker has any right to be. ‘Have a coffee, man. You look wired as shit.’

He pushes the cup towards Eddie. No milk, no sugar. He lets him decide. Then he goes and sits where there’s a blanket on the floor and some cushions, no sofa.

Eddie brings his coffee, sits with his back against the wall. ‘Thanks.’

Billy shrugs.

And Eddie thinks maybe he gets it.

Must be lonely.

Steve’s like the fucking sun when he wants to be. Bright, beautiful, charming. But it doesn’t last, night always rolls around.

‘How old are you?’

‘Nineteen. You?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Him too?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You from LA?’

‘How’d you know?’

‘Accent.’

Eddie nods, drinks. ‘You local?’

‘Born and raised.’

‘You hate it?’

‘It’s all right.’

God, what a fucking boring ass night this is gonna be, Eddie thinks. Would almost rather be outside, finding their own shelter from the cold.

‘You brothers, then?’

Steve had said that earlier, Eddie thinks. ‘Half-brothers.’

‘Really?’

He looks at Billy, finds himself being watched closely. No real motive in it, but he hadn’t clocked how observant Billy is until now.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘You don’t look at each other like brothers, is all.’

‘Fuck would you know?’

Billy shrugs again, drops his gaze.

Steve emerges from the bathroom not a moment too soon. He kept his hand dry, which is smart. He’s got a towel on, nothing else. ‘Billy, can I borrow a tee?’

Eddie wonders if Steve’s actually going all the way with this. The way he’s speaking to Billy, the softness, the sweet little boy lost shit, it’s not unheard of with Steve, but unusual for sure.

Billy gets him one, pair of scruffy looking sweatpants too.

Steve smiles, sits cross legged to complete the triangle, drinks his coffee and seems surprisingly lucid.

‘Thank you, Billy. This is so kind.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything, anyway.’

‘You wanna get high?’ Eddie offers, doesn’t think he can go another hour sober and they’ve got no drink. He reaches into the backpack, fishes around and finds a few joints.

Billy considers for a moment. ‘Just one.’

Steve’s smile spells trouble.

*

Eddie keeps thinking it’s gonna happen.

Steve’s practically throwing himself at this guy and look, Eddie cannot blame him. Billy is built, he’s solid, quiet, fucking gorgeous actually. He’s helped them, made them coffee. He still has Steve’s blood around his fingernails.

So yeah, Eddie’s come to terms with it happening. Wouldn’t be the first time they made a one night friend for Steve to fuck.

But the thing is, it doesn’t happen.

When Steve asks to shotgun, Billy agrees.

He cups Steve’s face to steady him while he laughs, because pot makes Steve giggle, and he could kiss him.

Only he doesn’t.

Time and again, Steve touches him, reaches out, even collapses against Billy at one point, laughing so hard he needs a strong, sturdy boy wall, but no. Billy just holds him up, wraps an arm around him, but no kiss.

Eddie’s almost insulted on Steve’s behalf.

‘I’m gonna get some shut eye,’ Billy says at around one in the morning. ‘Bed’s over there, you two can have it. I’m set here.’

Steve looks at the bed, pouts. ‘Wish there was room for you.’

Billy rolls his eyes affectionately. Eddie feels threatened to an extent he has never felt before. He finds himself wishing they’d just fucked.

‘Get into bed, you,’ Billy tells Steve, then looks at Eddie. ‘Night, Eddie.’

In an unfamiliar single, they’re pressed together, nose to nose. Billy sleeps on the floor with cushions and blankets. It’s impolite of them to let him, but Eddie doesn’t really care.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks Steve, their language of breath and mouth noises, no voice.

Steve strokes his hair, shrugs.

‘He’s nice.’

‘He’s a dud.’

‘I like him.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s got light inside him.’

Eddie frowns slightly. ‘What kind?’

He’s waiting for something like dark or light, he’s waiting for a shade, so he can take the measure of the situation.

He’s not remotely prepared for Steve to say, ‘My kind.’

*

Steve and Billy are already up when Eddie opens his eyes. He’s used to waking somewhere unfamiliar, never gets panicked.

And Steve always rises before him, is a naturally light sleeper when he does sleep, and Eddie sleeps heavily, can’t help it, but it’s still annoying to be woken by the sounds of Steve being happy with someone else.

Eddie stares at the wall for a minute.

He doesn’t like this scenario at all.

Gets up and feels high key determined to get them the fuck away and out of this shit hole. ‘Hey,’ he greets tightly, headed for the bathroom. Billy gives him another polite nod, but his expression is somewhat softened by spending time with Steve. Eddie knows the effect his boy has on people.

‘Hey.’

‘Morning, big brother,’ Steve purrs.

Eddie rolls his eyes, slams the door and showers viciously. He uses more of Billy’s all in one shit than he needed to, but oh fucking well. He dresses from the pack, fresh clothes and underwear ready for the new, uncertain day ahead. 

‘Steve,’ he calls out when he emerges. ‘We should get going.’

‘Why?’

Eddie stares. ‘Because.’

‘The uh, coffee place is closed today,’ Billy supplies quietly, gaze downcast. ‘If you wanted to hang out, I can get pastries.’

Steve’s eyes go wide.

Eddie knows it’s a lost fucking cause.

*

OK, so fine, it’s not such a bad day.

They get free coffee, pastries and Billy plays the radio while they talk. He’s kind of funny once he loosens up. He shares only a very little of what Eddie had suspected was a serious crime that landed him in Juvie.

Steve is less effusive than last night, but Billy doesn’t seem any less friendly because of it. When Steve asks how it feels to stab someone in the chest, Billy answers honestly.

Nothing for show, nothing exaggerated.

He doesn’t say who, though.

It’s late afternoon, when he looks at Eddie, asks, ‘Where were you headed? Back to LA?’

‘Maybe,’ Eddie hedges. ‘We move around.’

‘Is it fun?’

‘Very,’ Steve says, plucking the cigarette from Billy’s fingers. ‘But also not. It gets scary. Tiring.’

Billy nods. Eddie’s almost curious what he’s thinking.

‘How do you make money?’

Eddie glances at Steve, waits.

‘I hustle. He steals and deals. We make do.’

‘Not everyone can sling coffee,’ Eddie says, oddly compelled to defend himself for reasons he doesn’t understand.

Billy’s expression smooths out. ‘I get that.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah, really. What do you think I did before this?’

Steve knew, Eddie realises. He knew already.

‘You hustled?’

Billy shrugs. Does that a lot. ‘On and off, as and when. You do what you have to.’

‘Around here?’

‘No, used to go a few towns over. Only when shit was bad.’

Steve offers Eddie the cigarette. ‘Sometimes it’s fun to do it when shit’s good.’

Billy inclines his head, expression oddly delicate. Eddie doesn’t like it, doesn’t want someone around his Steve being delicate or vulnerable or whatever the actual fuck.

‘Wouldn’t know,’ he says after a beat. Eddie watches Steve blink slow, the way he cocks his head, like Billy is interesting.

He doesn’t like it.

‘You got family here?’ Eddie asks briskly, stubbing the cigarette out.

‘Little sister.’

And there it is. Eddie doesn’t need to worry, he doesn’t need to fret, because Billy won’t be coming with them. He won’t be dragged away by Steve because he has a connection here and it’s one of the best. Little sister, little brother, they’re important.

He should feel relieved.

He doesn’t.

Fucking Nebraska.

‘Does she look like you?’ Steve asks. Eddie watches as he extends his hand, the middle three fingers. They brush over Billy’s cheek, down over his jaw. It’s a light touch, one Eddie knows intimately. Billy endures it like he’s a mountain and Steve is the wind. He’s contained, he doesn’t sway like most people do when Steve touches them. ‘Beautiful?’

Eddie looks away, clears his throat quietly, tongue in cheek.

He hears Billy say, ‘Step sister.’

Steve laughs and Eddie briefly despairs because it’s the real laugh, the one he only ever lets out when he’s with Eddie.

‘You’re funny.’

‘You’re cute.’

Maybe Eddie should just leave. Give them the room, give them the whole fucking state so he wouldn’t have to hear this shit.

He’s jealous.

It’s the first time.

And the feeling burns on low heat; not enough to sear all the way to the bone, but the skin’s all fucked up regardless. Cigarette burns of his own stupid infliction.

Self-harm, self-sabotage.

Steve is his.

His.

Tell me you love me.

Never.

He’s still his, Eddie can’t lose him to someone else, but…

Oh god.

He’s never even realised that one day he might.

That one day, someone else might come along who’d tell Steve, I love you, as many times as it takes to make him happy.

Eddie gets up on shaky legs, headed for the bathroom again. Barely slams the door shut before he’s on his knees, puking into the bowl. It’s violent, his skin is icy cold and he’s slowly swallowed whole by this new fear.

This great big, terrifying possibility.

He didn’t hold his hair back and a few of his curls get messed up with spit and bile. It’s disgusting and he doesn’t give a fuck, but when Steve comes inside, sits on the floor beside him, he immediately feels self-conscious.

‘Why?’ Steve only asks, rubbing his back at the very base. Warm hands, he’s always so sweet and Eddie wishes he could be better for him. That he could love him. If he could love a single fucking thing in this hellhole of a world, he’d have it be Steve Harrington. But it’s just not there. It cannot be, so it will not be.

Eddie spits the last of it, shaking all over.

‘Dunno.’

‘Liar.’

‘Fuck off, then,’ he hisses, flinching away from Steve’s kind touch, from the love he gives so easily. ‘Go be with Billy, huh?’

Oh, it’s pathetic. And obvious. And stupid.

And Steve should leave him right there, go make out with Billy Hargrove, whose light is apparently Steve’s kind. Billy, who has a place and a job and he once turned tricks, so he gets it. Billy, who’s so much better looking than Eddie.

He should.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he brings their mouths together.

Eddie sobs quietly, tries to pull away.

It’s gross. It’s disgusting.

Steve consumes all the worst of him. All the acid and spit, all the vile shit inside Eddie Munson, he drinks it down like it’s mountain spring water, like it’s what he needs.

‘I love you,’ he whispers into Eddie’s mouth, lips rubbing together side to side, noses brushing. His hands are in Eddie’s hair. ‘Can you feel it?’

Eddie should shove him away, he should stop this.

‘No,’ he lies.

Steve kisses him again, harder. ‘Now?’

‘No, and stop—’

Steve climbs into his lap, arms around his neck and they kiss proper. Deep, dirty, it feels like Steve has his hands in Eddie’s ribs and he’s running his fingers over each bone, making music, making a mess, as he’s so very wont to do, Eddie’s boy.

‘I love you,’ he swears, the words harsh and the kiss soft. He kisses Eddie like he loves him, and he does. Eddie knows he does. He lives on it, breathes daily the generosity and beauty of what strange love Steve Harrington has to offer. It’s more vital than air, than water. ‘I’ll love you forever, even though you’ll never, ever love me.’

Eddie wants to cry. He wants to burn this world to nothing but ashes so he can cup them in his hands and give them to Steve.

He wants to say he’s sorry. He wants to love.

He wants so badly to love Steve.

‘Isn’t that enough?’ Steve asks, cupping his face before he bites Eddie’s bottom lip. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

Eddie’s blood paints Steve’s own lips, sharing red like it’s something made to be borrowed back and forth.

‘It’s enough,’ he manages to say, daring to stroke Steve’s hair back. The eyes that hold him in place are fierce, they burn bright with celestial things Eddie’s afraid of, things he could have loved in another world, another life. ‘It—it’s more than enough, it’s everything. I’m sorry.’

Steve frowns, licks Eddie’s blood before it can drip down his chin. Eddie would let Steve eat him alive. He’d bleed himself to death for Steve to paint with, if he wanted. He would do anything, give anything, except the one thing Steve wants.

Guilt crafts agony and Eddie is so sorely aware of how much less he is than Steve deserves. Can only hope to be useful enough, caring enough, good enough for as long as he lives so he gets to have Steve with him always.

Selfish, gross, he is a bad person.

And he knows it.

Steve kisses him again, gentler. He makes lipstick of the red between them, paints them pretty and bloody. Eddie tastes salt and iron, and Steve in the spit.

‘It’ll never not be you, Eddie.’

Eddie closes his eyes. Feels stupidly young then. Feels all of his precious few eighteen years while Steve looms large with wisdom so vast it can’t connect to the real world.

‘But you like him.’

‘You like him too.’

Eddie looks up sharply. Steve strokes his face, surveying him curiously, almost bemused.

‘No, I fucking—’

Oh.

The realisation kills the denial instantly.

Steve smiles, shakes his head. ‘That’s why you’re throwing up.’ He climbs off, rubbing the cut with his thumb, makes it sting. ‘You like him too.’

*

Credit where it’s due, Billy makes absolutely no comment whatsoever when they come back. Blood on the front of Eddie’s t-shirt, his bottom lip still leaking a little that he wipes off continuously. Their mouths are kiss bitten and red and it couldn’t be more obvious, but Billy says nothing.

‘Can we go outside?’ Steve asks, peering out the window. ‘I need to check in with the sky.’

Billy’s looking at Eddie as he sits down again, reaches for the last of his lukewarm coffee. ‘There’s a rooftop, if you want. I’ve got the keys.’

Steve brightens, hums happily, drawing shapes on the glass.

Eddie gives Billy a small smile, could easily just be gratitude for the offer, but as the moment stretches and Billy doesn’t quite smile back the same way, Eddie realises the twisting feeling inside is exactly what Steve said.

He’s attracted to him, to Billy.

It’s different from Steve. Completely new.

He doesn’t know this guy.

But he kinda wants him.

Wants to know what it would take to get a reaction out of him, how hard, how deep before he’d groan.

‘Thanks.’

‘Ain’t nothing.’

*

They get high on the rooftop.

It’s icy cold and Steve is wearing one of Billy’s big coats with a ratty fur hood. Eddie’s tougher, handles the cold better, but even his teeth start chattering when the sun dips beneath the horizon.

They talked for most of the day. Swapped stories and moments, questioned and listened and laughed.

It’s this strange, surreal day where little by little, Eddie becomes more relaxed, Steve starts singing to himself and flirting near constantly and Billy unfurls just enough to tell them about his life, his situation, some of his past. How he used to be a lifeguard, his family. How he used to be a prick, self-proclaimed "bad guy", Billy has a fair amount of disdain for his past self.

Eddie speaks about himself too.

Guarded, to a degree. But… more than he’s ever shared with anyone except Steve. Billy listens, doesn’t judge or react too much.

And when they finally go back inside, Billy takes them down into the closed coffee shop for more stale pastries that didn’t sell and he makes real good coffee for free and Eddie wants to kiss him while Steve watches.

But he can’t. Not yet, maybe not ever, he isn’t sure.

When they go back upstairs, Steve rummages through the backpack and emerges triumphant with a little clear bag and a few pills inside.

‘Can we?’ he pleads with Eddie, who rolls his eyes but catches Billy watching him intently. The studio is warm, dimly lit. Feels hidden from the real world, like a pocket of this country no one else knows about. Eddie gets why Billy likes it.

‘You’re a brat on ecstasy,’ Eddie warns, but he knows he’s not gonna deny Steve whatever he wants. His lip still stings from the bite and his insides are freshly torn up with guilt. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen here and now, this night with Billy Hargrove, but then they never know what’s going to happen. Tomorrow is a question-mark and they chase good experiences over stability every single time. ‘But OK, fine.’ He looks at Billy. ‘You want one?’

Steve gets the pills out, grinning all slutty and sultry.

Billy hesitates. Like all else about him, it’s slow and measured. Thinking shit through. That’s somehow more exciting than him just saying fuck it. When he nods, utters, ‘Sure,’ it means more because he considered it.

It’s dark outside when Steve pulls his t-shirt off and puts ecstasy on his tongue, but not to swallow.

He walks on his knees to Billy, takes his face in his hands and just waits. Billy stares at him like Steve is death and Billy’s been waiting for him to catch up.

There’s a little bit of something like love in his eyes.

Eddie doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Steve gives Billy the pill with his tongue, he shares it with his mouth and whispers something as he rubs over the apple in Billy’s throat, encouraging him to swallow.

They still don’t kiss, even though Billy has his hands on Steve’s hips, Eddie’s boy straddling him, playing with his hair. Natural curls he should let grow, they’d look much better.

‘Eddie,’ Steve calls out, low and warm. Eddie sighs, he keeps one hand on the awkwardness of things as an escape. Quick exit if he needs, he knows where all the doors are. Steve offers his palm, pulls Eddie in until their knees are touching and they’re all close.

Steve has another little love-heart pill, and Eddie knows this one’s for him. Steve smiles, fingers and thumb lovingly gripping Billy’s cheeks to make his mouth pop open. Billy’s gaze is softened, it’s warm like candlelight and deep like the ocean, too blue for Nebraska.

‘Tongue out,’ Steve whispers, places the tablet on the pink flesh when extended. He looks at Eddie, expectant and deceptively babydoll, but Eddie knows him too well, knows what he’s doing.

‘You don’t have to,’ Eddie tells Billy all the same, feels a weird tug of something strong in his chest, the first time he’s really said something to this guy and meant it. ‘You don’t have to, I promise.’

Billy blinks slowly, lids lowered thereafter and he reaches for Eddie, pulls him close enough to kiss.

And it is a kiss.

It’s not what he did with Steve.

He pushes the pill into Eddie’s mouth, but he chases it with his tongue, he seals their lips and kisses, deep and hungry.

Something in Eddie cracks.

Steve’s hands are in his hair, stroking and loving and urging them closer and Billy drags Eddie in until they’re making out. No denial, no way back. He’s in his mouth, his scent is filling Eddie’s head. Boy smell, clean and smoky, underlying fresh sweat and skin.

Billy kisses like he’s leaving behind the mortal coil. Intense and devoted and harsh but he holds Eddie carefully, his hands roaming up the back of his neck where one stays, possessive and protective and Eddie can’t feel like this.

He can’t.

Mustn’t.

He’s the one who protects, who possesses.

He’s the one who holds it all together.

Billy whispers, ‘I’ve got you,’ and Eddie didn’t even realise he’s shaking, fucking shaking all over. He draws back, swallowing the chalky residue of the pill, it’s inside him now, slowly fizzing to fuck him up real good. Billy drinks in his expression, gaze roaming. ‘I’ve got you.’

Eddie kisses him that time.

A greedy clash of teeth and tongues and Billy’s strong, he can take it. He can take a lot, Eddie thinks.

It’s hot and it makes him want things.

He has Steve’s fingers in his hair, lips against his ear whispering things that only make sense to Eddie.

Billy said he’s got him.

He said it and people never mean what they say, Eddie knows that, but oh he wants to pretend just this once.

‘Let him,’ Steve whispers, teeth sinking into the flesh of Eddie’s lobe, loving bite that sheds no blood, anything less than red is pure affection. ‘Let him in.’

Eddie throws himself into the kiss, wants to be Billy. Inside him, in that strong body, in the mind of someone who thinks shit through, who runs steady and true.

Wants Billy inside him, too.

As soon as he draws back for air, Steve kisses Billy.

Impatient yet artful, the two meet like they’ve known each other always, like they know how to kiss one another and Eddie stares, riveted in a way he’s never been before. Watching someone else kiss his Steve… it’s the most excruciating feeling of fragile joy, it’s hope growing from the soil of despair, even while a part of him screams in protest.

Kiss him, make him feel good, love him for me, love him the way I can ’t, please.

Steve is a good kisser, exceptional really. He drags Billy’s tongue through his teeth, smiles like sin personified and pushes his hand down over Billy’s chest, pulls his t-shirt up, guides it off. Billy helps, his skin flush and scarred in places. Nowhere near as much as Eddie, definitely no comparison to Steve, whose thighs are lilac rose gardens carved with art class razor blades, but Eddie knows what a stab scar looks like.

Knows the criss-cross lines on the forearms.

Cigarette burns, too. They scar like pennies. Round, dark, strange. Eddie wants to kiss them, wet them with his tongue.

When Steve sucks a welt into Billy’s neck, Billy yanks Eddie in, all the way. The kiss is a clash and it hurts to be kissed so intensely by someone so strong and Eddie’s a little bit fucking gone for it. Billy’s greedy for Eddie, he kisses with confidence and trust and Eddie thinks both are misguided, wasted on him but he doesn’t care.

Billy gasps when Steve gets his hand down his pants, grips his cock through his boxers and rubs. Eddie watches, panting softly.

‘God,’ he croaks. ‘This is—’

Steve kisses him to silence him, to keep the insecurities inside, like blood, drown them with love and lips.

‘Let yourself feel good,’ he breathes, like it’s a command, like it’s law, a plea. ‘For me?’

Eddie stares at him, eyes wet, cock throbbing.

If he could love anyone, it would be him.

It’d be Steve Harrington.

‘For you,’ he agrees, like it’s a hardship. ‘For you, baby boy.’

Steve smiles, bright and beautiful and kisses him again, deep and delicious, he tastes so good and Eddie’s losing it, he really is.

Billy’s strong arms are around them both, he bites gently up over Eddie’s shoulder to the curve of his throat, doesn’t mark him, though.

Steve looks at Billy, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to kiss him again. It’s slick and slutty, Steve is so talented, far beyond his years and Eddie thinks it’s a thing of pure beauty.

‘You’re a top?’

Billy shrugs. ‘Don’t mind. Whatever you want, both of you.’

Steve looks at Eddie, who feels suddenly so small, beheld.

‘You wanna be in the middle, baby?’ Steve offers, and his eyes are full of stars, of galaxies and dark places that swallow worlds. Meat and bones and blood, but there’s a spark of something in him that no one else sees, Eddie’s sure of it. Alien, strange, he would die for Steve and do it gladly.

‘I—what does that, uh…?’

Billy’s trailing kisses up his throat. ‘Whatever you want,’ he promises intently.

And Eddie’s done stuff, he’s been jerked off, jerked off in return. He’s got his dick wet, but he’s never had sex like what he thinks this could be. Never been inside or had someone inside.

‘Steve,’ Eddie whispers. ‘Whatever Steve wants.’

Billy’s brow creases, he’s like syrup. Warm, thick, slow and sweet, Eddie thinks drowning in him wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

‘What do you want, Eds?’

Eddie wants to dissolve between them, he wants to shed his skin and leave this earth with a smile. He wants what he is incapable of giving because he’s greedy, selfish, sick.

He can’t say it, though.

Doesn’t have to, of course.

His boy reads his mind.

‘You want Billy to fuck you while you fuck me, hmm?’

Eddie’s eyes cross at the very thought.

‘Oh god, fuck.’

‘Yeah,’ Steve praises, eager breaths and silky tone. Billy is stripping off and Steve’s already naked, Eddie didn’t notice. ‘You want that, don’t you? Crushed between us, so full while you fill me up?’

Billy’s hand cups Eddie’s throat, just to hold. Eddie moans, wanting more of things he didn’t even know he liked.

‘Y-yeah, want it.’

Steve smiles at Billy. ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful thing in the world?’

‘Sure is,’ Billy husks, nosing against Eddie’s cheek.

‘He won’t love you back, though, no matter how hard he tries.’

Billy looks at Eddie when Steve says that.

Eddie might crack apart, he’s so raw.

Billy just says, ‘That’s OK.’

He kisses Eddie.

Eddie never, ever wants to stop.

He wants it all, both, everything.

The ecstasy is kicking in and he didn’t even realise, until colour starts to swim and he starts slurring a little. Sloppy kisses and slick fingers and hands on his cock, then Steve’s mouth which is like velvet heat, it’s enough to bring him right to the edge.

Billy’s cock has a condom on it, big and thick, Eddie kisses the head just once before Billy turns him around. They’re on the floor, on blankets and cushions.

Lips kiss down his spine and Steve is in front of Eddie, he’s below him, beckoning him to kiss. Eddie goes where he’s bid, falls into Steve, kisses without any degree of restraint.

Like they’re trying to get into each other, live where it’s dark and swap for fun, he can’t get deep enough. Lips sliding, mouths open, tongues curling, it’s a dirty fucking kiss and Eddie hopes he never, ever forgets it.

Billy’s fingers curl deep inside his ass, sore from stretching, tingling from the attention. Eddie flinches as pleasure bursts from a single spot, makes him shudder and moan like a whore.

‘That’s it, baby. Let him make you feel so good,’ Steve tells him, guiding Eddie’s cock down between his legs. Eddie loses all his breath as he realises what’s about to fucking happen. He’s going to fuck Steve.

He’s going to fuck Steve.

It should be monumental, and it is, but when Steve’s body opens up to take a part of Eddie inside, it just feels like coming home.

Eddie grips Steve by the hair, kisses him like he loves him, wishes he could, decides this is enough, has to be.

Steve’s legs are parted, pushed back and when Eddie bottoms out, he grunts from the deepest regions of his soul because that’s when Billy starts pushing into him.

‘You’re OK?’ Billy asks, breathless whisper against Eddie’s ear as he wraps one arm around Eddie’s middle. ‘Not hurting you?’

Tell me you love me.

Never.

‘Want it harder, make it hurt.’

Steve smiles up at Eddie, unbearably lovely, Eddie can’t believe he gets to be inside him. ‘So good for us,’ his boy praises. ‘Let him fill you up, baby. Let it be enough.’

It’s more than enough and Billy’s cock is thick, it stretches Eddie wide fucking open, but there’s a lot of lube and that helps. He’s hyperventilating when Billy’s all the way inside, biting wet, sloppy kisses up his neck, burring praises that rumble in his throat.

‘Wanna make a new star, name her and let the light make all the corners bright for once,’ Steve sighs, kissing the inside of Eddie’s wrist. ‘It’ll be enough now, I promise. New strings, new songs, you’ll see.’

‘Let me take control,’ Billy husks, holding Eddie by the hips.

Eddie blinks, eyes wet. ‘Uh, y-yeah, OK.’

‘Just relax,’ the older boy says, slowly pulling out, pushing in. ‘We’ve got you.’

Steve rolls his hips, arches his back, fucks himself on Eddie’s cock while Billy starts to fuck Eddie from behind, holds him steady. The dual sensations craft a sense of overwhelm that comes for Eddie like the dark of night after a burning bright day. It seeks to swallow him whole, bones and all, and he welcomes it.

Gives himself over to it.

To these twin rhythms that match too well, too easily. Like Billy and Steve are the storm and the ocean, working in merciless tandem to shipwreck Eddie.

His heart can’t take it. His senses are ruined.

The ecstasy swims in his blood, makes fire everywhere it touches and he wants to scream, cry, plead, say stupid shit he doesn’t mean as they take him to pieces.

Steve is so tight and warm and he fucks himself up and down the length of Eddie’s cock, plays with his hair, pulls it. Billy’s got one hand around Eddie’s throat, the other around his middle. He fucks him slow at first, but deep, so fucking deep Eddie thinks he feels him in the core of his being and it’s so intense, it’s too intense.

Centre of the universe, witness to all the loveliest things in creation as they circle and swell. The birth of light, the collision of stars to make worlds and Eddie’s in the middle. Gets to feel it, see it, make it.

‘Good boy,’ Billy praises into his skin and Eddie wants it inked there, forever. So he can touch it and hear the words again.

Steve drags their mouths together, clenches around him and breathes, ‘Always, always.’

Eddie sobs, raw and adrift.

Powerless, he can’t make decisions, can’t do anything except take and give what is wanted of him.

‘Pretend you love me,’ Steve utters, exposes his throat for ravaging when Billy starts to fuck Eddie harder, when the pace picks up and skin slaps and they’re all making noises, ugly and honest. ‘Pretend you’re gonna put a baby inside me.’

Something primal catches like lightning, strikes hard and merciless and Eddie cannot control the force of his desire.

‘Fucking god, yeah,’ he moans, slave to every filthy thing now filling his head as he’s fucked deep and hard, filled so good it makes him hurt, but also wanting to fill, to flood, claim, fuck. ‘Wanna knock you up, sweetheart.’

Steve’s expression creases, genuine affliction of utmost pleasure for the first time and Eddie urges Billy to fuck him faster, harder, their tandem rhythm so powerful.

‘You want that, huh?’

Steve nods, sobs weakly and Eddie kisses him again. Licks into his mouth where it’s warm and wet, and home.

‘Gonna make you mine, Stevie,’ he says, the drug cutting every cord he uses to restrain himself. ‘Come inside you and make it take. Make you swell, keep you forever.’

Billy makes a filthy sound of approval, grunting deeply before he smacks Eddie’s ass and the impact sends a ricochet of skittering pleasure-pain through Eddie’s body.

Steve opens his eyes, looks at Billy.

He’s never looked at anyone like that, except Eddie.

‘Fuck him deeper into me, Daddy.’

It’s like the very last piece of anything resembling sanity just dies. Steve kills it, he often does.

Everything goes fucking wild after that.

Billy fucks Eddie proper, no holding back. It’s brutal, painful, it’s perfect and Eddie is deep inside Steve, whose body is tight and hot and wet, whose mouth makes sin from air, whose kisses draw blood and Eddie does not care, wants all of it, wants more.

‘That’s it,’ Billy rumbles into Eddie as he smacks harder, makes Eddie’s jaw drop. ‘Knock our boy up.’

Eddie comes inside Steve, orgasm strangling him to death, it’s so violent, so heavy. A thing born of light and all the love he doesn’t have, but wishes he did. It’s vicious, painful, too big for his cock, tears him to pieces and he knows he’s coming so hard inside Steve. No condom, didn’t even think of it.

Steve’s back is arched with all the grace of demonic possession, fingers pulling on Eddie’s hair.

Billy cries out, slams so deep Eddie sees stars behind his eyes and then comes into the condom. Eddie wishes it was inside him, he wants to know how it feels to be filled up.

They are three bodies all tangled up and sticky with love slick, with spit and sweat and blood.

Eddie’s vision goes grey around the edges, he can feel himself going lax, dropping down atop Steve as Billy finishes, slamming deep, fucking himself inside to chase his pleasure.

Steve strokes his face, kisses his hair.

‘It’s enough now, isn’t it?’

Eddie feels like he’s about to pass out. ‘Uh huh, pr’mise.’

*

He wakes on soft blankets, to the sight and sound of Billy fucking Steve. His boy’s in Billy’s lap, cock buried deep inside him while they fuck hard, rough, brutal.

Steve makes a strangled sound of tormented pleasure, begs, ‘Again?’

Billy smacks him across the face and Steve moans, jaw lax, eyes rolled all the way back.

Eddie watches, sits halfway up. The ecstasy still has him, he rarely does it because he gets a deeper trip than most but it’s fading now.

He watches as Billy fucks Steve, as he kisses him and they hurt each other and then moan their pleasure, mouths bloody, faces red, skin clawed up. Eddie can see Billy’s cock where it’s fucking deep inside Steve’s ass, bouncing up and down. Thinks there’s no condom, but he’s still too out of it to be sure.

‘Bite me,’ Billy growls. ‘Make it bleed.’

Steve laughs, sinks his teeth into Billy’s shoulder, bites until Billy cries out, dragging his nails down Steve’s back in return, and then he laughs too. Billy laughs, the smile wide and gorgeous and Steve smiles to have earned it, kisses to taste and savour.

‘Colour?’ Billy asks. He grips Steve by the hair, slamming his cock deep and vicious inside Steve, where it’s tight and wet, where Eddie’s come filled him first.

Steve whines, disrupts the rhythm by slamming his hips down, dragging back and forth for a moment and Billy groans.

‘Green, Daddy. Need you, need it harder. Fuck me up.’

‘Whatever you want, baby.’

He smacks Steve around the face again, hard enough to make Steve cry and when Steve cries, Billy kisses his tears, makes a truly inhuman sound of pleasure-pain and then comes.

Eddie watches the orgasm crash through him, gets to see every little part of it.

And when Billy whispers something to Steve that Eddie can’t hear, his boy comes with a soft, high sob. His come spatters Billy’s chest and they kiss throughout. Deep, possessive, knowing.

They kiss like lovers.

Eddie thinks it’s the most gorgeous thing he has ever seen.

He watches them come down, sees the little intimacies that follow. Caretaking, gentle kisses. Steve licks over Billy’s mouth, but it’s affectionate and Billy smiles warmly, strokes Steve face and lifts him carefully off his cock, bare like Eddie suspected.

Billy goes to get something, winks at Eddie as he walks away and Steve notices Eddie too, smiles tremulously. His cheeks are tear-streaked, his face bloody, cheeks purple with handprints.

He crawls, then bends to kiss Eddie.

Only once.

‘Hi.’

Eddie swallows thickly. ‘Hi.’

‘You’re OK?’

Eddie nods, pulls Steve into a hug. Steve melts easily into him, always has. ‘Momma won’t mind,’ he whispers and Eddie laughs, tears burning behind his eyes.

‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’

Billy drags his mattress over, covers and pillow too. He makes a floor bed almost big enough for them all, but it’s comfy and warm and between Eddie and Billy, they get Steve in between so he can sleep and feel safe. They make the choice unconsciously, unspoken.

Steve sleeps quickly, no doubt exhausted. Nose to nose with Eddie, one hand in his hair. Billy has his arms around him from behind, chin tucked over his shoulder.

Eddie stares at Billy while Steve sleeps. He watches him without any expectation, no weight, no judgement. Finds himself similarly studied.

‘Are you gonna break his heart?’ Eddie asks after a while.

Billy’s hand rests on Eddie’s bare hip under the covers.

‘I couldn’t, even if I tried.’

Eddie shakes his head. ‘He likes you.’

‘I like him. I like you.’

‘He loves too easily.’

‘And you don’t love at all.’

Eddie looks away, rests his gaze on Steve.

His boy.

His world.

They never know what tomorrow will bring, what it’ll take.

But this feels like something has changed.

‘Don’t hurt him in any way he doesn’t want.’

Billy nods, lifts his hand to stroke Eddie’s cheek with his strong fingers. ‘And what about you?’

‘I don’t care about me. Just him.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s all that matters,’ Eddie says, tries to make it as stern as he can without raising his voice. ‘OK?’

Billy nods again, expression soft.

But it’s the way Steve’s expression softens sometimes. Beneath the weight of knowing too much, having felt too much, seen things no one ever should.

‘OK.’

‘And anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow.’

It feels final, smart.

Hurts to realise he doesn’t especially want to leave, though.

‘Well,’ Billy says, snuggling closer to Steve, eyes falling shut. ‘You know where to find me.’

And yeah, Eddie hates Nebraska.

But not enough to stay away.

*

Part III

“God’s Country”

You ’ve tasted love and it tasted sweet
You drank the blood and bit the meat
You hold it, you hold it, you let it go
You close your eyes and count to three
You say the word and come to me
baby, I know  

- Ethel Cain

*

Eddie’s nineteen years old and Steve is dead on the floor. It doesn’t register at first.

Twenty minutes were up three minutes ago and Eddie got caught talking to some bitch outside in this massive, crazy hotel suite party on the very top floor.

Makes his excuses, has to be rude to get her away and then he’s inside the bathroom, it’s big and pure white marble, horribly opulent. Eddie’s already mad about whatever mess Steve’s made this time going over the limit as he so often does lately.

And he finds him, right there on the floor.

Completely still.

Not moving, not… breathing.

And he can’t be dead, fucking obviously there’s no way he’s dead, so he’s just—just knocked out or whatever.

But as Eddie collapses heavily to his knees, starts feeling him all over and shaking him, he sees marks around Steve’s neck.

‘Oh,’ he says softly, feels like a child. ‘Oh… my god, no. No, Steve, no. Come on, baby, wake up. Wake up for me, oh my fucking god!’

He slaps Steve’s face, shakes him, but nothing.

Steve’s pale, still.

Eddie’s got a way all picked out, of course he has. Easy, efficient. He’ll slit his wrists whenever he has to follow Steve, but that… that’s not today.

It can’t be.

‘N-no, come on, baby.’

He thinks he should do CPR, but he has no actual idea how, beyond what he’s seen in movies. The party music blares and somewhere out there is the man who killed Steve Harrington. There’s no one, fucking no one.

Except…

He hits call on the only contact they both have in their phones, feeling Steve all over. He’s still warm, but…

‘Hey, what’s up?’ Billy answers evenly, like always.

Eddie shakes himself, blinks. ‘Uh. Steve’s dead.’

Silence. On and on and on until, ‘What?’

Eddie sounds so normal he wants to laugh. ‘Yeah, he’s dead on the floor. I, uh. I. Fuck. How do I bring him back?’

There’s a crash on the other end, someone yelling, Eddie couldn’t care less. Hand on Steve’s chest, he waits. The only other person who cares about Steve anywhere near as much as him is Billy.

‘Stabbed?’

‘Strangled.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Minute or two, I don’t know.’

‘He still warm?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re gonna do chest compressions,’ Billy tells him, engine revving to life in the background. He’s unshakeable as ever. ‘Do everything I say. Where are you? What state?’

‘Uh.’ Eddie shakes himself, feels like he might throw up. ‘N-nevada. Vegas.’

‘You’re gonna put me on speaker, right? Do it now, Eddie.’

‘OK, I did it.’

‘Now get both hands on his chest, right over his heart. You’re gonna press real hard and fast and I’ll make the rhythm, got it? Then two breaths, pinch his nose and breathe into his mouth to fill his lungs. You ready?’

Eddie puts his hands over Steve’s heart.

‘Ready.’

‘With me then. He’s not goin’ anywhere.’

*

Steve is dead for two minutes, at least.

He comes back gradually, it’s not like in the movies. No screaming inhalation, no sudden rush of consciousness. His breaths come low, pulse comes back lazily.

By the time he’s breathing fully, eyes fluttering, Billy tells Eddie to stop now, to check his airways, see if he’s been sick, but he hasn’t.

‘N-no, he’s OK,’ Eddie says, feels like he’s stuck in a nightmare and prays that it’s ending now. ‘I think he’s—Steve, you hear me?’

Steve groans, swallows and winces. ‘Hear you.’

‘Eddie, you there? Is he conscious?’

‘I’m here,’ Eddie tells him, feels dizzy. ‘He-he’s conscious, yeah. He’s awake.’

‘Get him out of there, now. He needs to get checked over at a hospital.’

Steve groans, rolls over and pushes up to sit. ‘Hi, baby,’ he rasps towards the phone. ‘How’s little sis?’

Billy’s half talking to someone in the background, Eddie can hear ambient crowd noises, hears announcements over a tannoy. ‘Yeah, first out, whichever. Hey, Stevie, she’s good. Really good. How are you?’

‘I think I died,’ he tells Billy. ‘Must be a reload.’

‘Eddie, get him to a hospital. I’m on the next flight to Vegas, it leaves in twenty five. Text me where you are.’

Steve laughs softly, rhythm unstable. He’s on his knees when he reaches into Eddie’s inner back pocket, gets the switchblade.

‘’M not the one that’s gonna need a hospital,’ he tells Billy, voice rough and slurring.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Eddie says, scrambling to get up when he realises what Steve’s gonna do. ‘Shit, Billy, I’ll call you back.’

He ends the call, knees weak from shock and Steve’s not letting a little thing like death slow his roll at all, so Eddie’s running to catch up.

Steve yanks the door open, staggers out into the suite party which is in the insanity stage of the night. Music thumping, disco lights, people fucking on the floor, in the corner, doing unholy, careless shit and money all around where no one’s looking, it’s why they’re there.

‘Steve!’ he hisses, tries to grab him, but his boy’s on a mission, stalking ahead with clear cut intent to kill. ‘Stevie, please!’

He scans the room, can’t find the person he’s looking for at first and Eddie just wants to get him out, get him the fuck away.

He tries to touch Steve, but he shrugs him off violently and then makes quickly for the person he’s searching for.

A man gathering his things, talking to a woman but very clearly leaving. Eddie pursues Steve, has already come to terms with what’s gonna happen and is only thinking damage control, wouldn’t think of stopping him in a million years.

It’d be him with the switchblade if not Steve.

And it happens fast.

His boy moves like lightning, always has.

Goes right for the throat.

Only this isn’t like the showers with Jake Adams and Steve doesn’t hold back anything. He lets loose his fury, his power and the blade does what it was made to, sending a fantastic spray out in a wide arc over the woman, over Steve and partially over Eddie.

It takes a single blow.

Just one, his boy is lethal, and the man goes down instantly, spluttering, grasping his throat like a fucking idiot.

Eddie’s already pulling Steve carefully away as the women start screaming and people begin scrambling for the exit, but Steve resists again, bends down to rifle through the man’s pockets. He gets his wallet, takes the whole thing and says, ‘You forgot to pay me.’ He watches the light go out, Eddie thinks he needs to make sure. ‘No coins for the crossing, bitch.’

Eddie pulls Steve away, firmly this time now that the guy is very dead and covered in his own blood.

The people running and screaming are creating the most perfect diversion and Eddie never misses an opportunity. ‘C’mon, baby. Follow me.’

He grabs a fork from a room service plate, pushes the tongs almost inside a wall socket and then kicks it all the way in with his rubber boot. The socket sparks brightly and then the power goes out.

The screams go wild.

Eddie pulls their backpack on his shoulder, takes Steve’s hand and they slip out with the others, headed down the dark hallway just as the fire alarms kick in. But he doesn’t lead them towards the main stairs with everyone else. Instead, they duck down the fire escape and Eddie drags his hoodie over Steve before they head out quickly, unseen before the cops even get there.

*

Vegas is both one of the best and worse places to kill someone. It’s good because there are so many people around to blend in with. The strip is packed beyond belief and all the outer areas are too this time of year.

Bad because there’s nowhere to hide without cameras, without bright lights to shine down on them.

‘We need to get out of sight,’ Eddie says. He’s holding Steve’s hand and his boy is, for once, very compliant. Expression shuttered, face down, he goes where Eddie leads.

The safest place is with a hooker.

Tropicana Avenue has an array of women and men, subtly offering their services. Steve mutters, ‘I’m gonna throw up,’ and Eddie knows they need to get off the street right fucking now.

‘Hold it together,’ he tells him through his teeth, gripping his hand tight as they stop in front of a woman in her mid-twenties. Neon blue eye makeup, long hair down to her waist, she’s in a crop top and jeans with Doc Martens and she has a belly button charm in the shape of a small white rabbit.

She gives them the look, Eddie’s seen Steve do the same thing a million times before. Eddie says, ‘Five hundred for you to get us a room. We just need to clean up and then we’re gone.’

*

She lets them in the bathroom window of the motel room she paid cash for. Steve’s clumsier than usual, lands awkwardly in the bath, hisses and rubs his knee.

‘He OK?’ she asks, eyeing Steve’s blood spattered face when he pulls the hoodie down.

‘Killed a john,’ Steve explains before Eddie can stop him, ‘S’OK, though. Fucker killed me first.’

‘Shut it!’ Eddie warns, but he’s already at his limit. ‘Throw up and then get in the shower.’ He washes his face quickly, gets the red off. They need to get clean first, then he’ll bleach the room before they leave.

Steve kneels in front of the toilet, back rolling with the beginnings of a retch and the girl looks to Eddie.

‘I ain’t gonna say shit,’ she tells him flatly. ‘Whatever else, there’s plenty of sickos in this town. One less is good news far as I’m concerned. Clean your boy up. I’ll be out here.’

*

Eddie does a vicious job of cleaning Steve.

He’s angry, furious.

But not because he killed that guy.

Under the lukewarm spray of the shower, he scrubs the blood from Steve, uses way too much soap all over. Cleans between his legs, cleans inside him.

Steve lets him.

No singing, no humming.

He’s dead behind the eyes, pliant and docile.

Absent.

‘Never again,’ Eddie tells Steve, voice trembling.

No answer.

‘Never again, you hear me?’

‘Plus jamais,’ Steve mutters, slipping into French as he sometimes does when extremely disconnected. ‘Plus jamais sous le ciel rose, car tu auras toujours le goût du vin.’

Eddie grits his teeth, scrubs harder.

Steve winces, looks away.

‘I need you to stay with me.’

‘Don’t I always?’ Steve asks, finally looking at Eddie but it is of no relief, none, because he’s barely there. His lovely eyes are hollow and even when tears spill, his expression is so empty, it’s like rain down glass windows. ‘Did I kill him?’

‘You killed him.’

‘That’s good. Are you gonna kill me?’

‘No, but I’m so mad I feel like I could.’

‘Why are you mad?’ Steve touches him gently but Eddie smacks his hand away, zero patience for any of this. ‘Because I made a mess?’

‘Because you fucking died!’

Steve quietly reels, but it’s so subdued, like he’s behind glass, like he’s been reset. ‘I couldn’t help it.’

‘You’re never careful,’ Eddie tells him, washing under his armpits. ‘And this is the inevitable fucking outcome!’

Steve tries to catch his gaze but Eddie refuses now.

All he can see is Steve dead on the floor.

‘You’d still have Momma,’ Steve whispers and Eddie slaps him, right across the face. The water makes the smack a thousand times worse, it must sting so bad, but Steve just closes his eyes, face turned to the side and he says nothing as the handprint blossoms and Eddie continues to wash him long after they’re both clean.

*

Dressed, dry, the bathroom bleached and pristine, they sit in the bedroom of the motel with the girl, Adriana. She vapes and scrolls her phone while Steve flicks through the channels of the crappy TV.

He and Eddie don’t talk to one another.

‘You guys want food? I can get room service.’

‘No, thanks,’ Eddie says and at the same time, Steve says, ‘Pancakes and a strawberry shake, please.’

A message comes through from Billy and Eddie’s never been so happy to see that fucker’s name ping up in his whole life.

ETA 2 hours till I land. Is he OK? Which hospital are you in?

Eddie rolls his eyes, but his jaw is tight, fingers trembling when he replies.

He ’s OK, we’re in a motel. Stay on WhatsApp, no text or calls. Shit went sideways.

Are you hurt?

No, I ’m fine. Just get here as soon as you can.

Say less, on my way.

Eddie won’t admit it, but he’s counting the seconds until Billy is there with them. He’s desperate to leave Steve safely with Billy for ten fucking minutes so he can go scream into a pillow or something.

Maybe run.

Maybe run for good this time.

He is never not gonna see Steve dead on the bathroom floor ever again. It’s there inside him now, like a sickness and the cost of cutting it out might be too high.

The girl and Steve start talking after a while; polite whore conversation, in that it’s not polite at all, they speak to each other with a degree of brusque familiarity that Eddie never sees between anyone except those who hustle. He tries not to think about how easy it would be for her to shop them in to the cops.

Steve makes her laugh at one point though, and Eddie relaxes enough that he’s not frantically checking for messages from Billy.

He goes through the dead man’s wallet.

Finds six grand in cash, some family photos that Eddie blurs his eyes so he doesn’t see the faces, and a whole bunch of credit cards. He bags the cash, leaves everything else but he remembers the name he sees on the cards, lets it in.

‘You deserved worse than what you got,’ he tells the imprinted letters on the American Express before he closes the wallet, takes it into the bathroom and dumps it in the sink with bleach all over it. Uses trash bags on his hands to grab it again, wrapping the bags inside out, then twisting them and repeating the process until it’s airtight and small. He’ll toss it once they’re outside the city.

When he comes back inside, Steve and the girl are on the bed together, making out and … yeah, literally of course.

Eddie just turns around, goes back into the bathroom, sits on the floor with the wall against his back, balances his phone on the peak of his knee and waits for Billy.

*

Steve doesn’t fuck her, judging by the sounds, but he loves going down on girls. It’s a whole thing for him and Eddie’s heard it enough by now to know the kind of noises they make when he’s doing just that.

He makes her come a few times and then room service arrives and Steve slips into the bathroom with Eddie to avoid being seen.

‘Jesus, it stinks in here,’ he complains quietly.

‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ Eddie says, reasonable and calm. ‘I was just bleaching my DNA off the wallet of the guy you murdered.’

Steve looks down at him, unreadable expression, lips red from use. ‘Good for you.’

Adriana knocks on the door and Steve leaves, greets her with a kiss that Eddie hears because the fucker left the door open. He smells pancakes, bacon, waffles.

Fuck’s sake.

Eddie joins them again, sits alone on the empty queen bed and grabs something from the tray, a plate of fries and a can of Coke. ‘Thanks.’

She shrugs. ‘Your dime.’

‘So,’ Steve says, pouring his milkshake over his pancakes like always. Eddie watches him do it, taking what very little comfort he can from the familiar behaviour. His own brittle anger aside, he is desperate for Steve to be OK. His boy is unstable on a good day. ‘When’s Daddy getting here?’

Eddie scowls. ‘Don’t call him that.’

‘You went running to him right away.’

Eddie eats, ignores Steve. They shouldn’t talk when things are bad like this, all fucked up and jagged, just touching the pieces will cut them.

‘Do you know the name of the john?’ Adriana asks after a few beats.

Eddie does. ‘No.’

Steve shrugs. ‘I forgot.’

‘He strangle you?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

She nods. ‘Might be the guy who killed my friend last year.’

They eat together in silence.

Steve falls asleep after. He’s curled up tight on Eddie’s bed because even fighting, even angry and hurtful, they always sleep together or not at all. One awake, one asleep sometimes, for sure, but always together.

‘You his boyfriend?’ she asks when Steve has been asleep for an hour or so. Eddie feels horribly wired, like he could sleep for a week, but he’s got energy to keep him going for months.

‘Brother. Friend.’

‘He said you’re the other half of his soul.’

Eddie snorts softly, strokes Steve’s hair. ‘He’s dramatic like that.’

‘It fucks you up, the first time they try to kill you,’ she tells Eddie, staring at the TV, some old nineties movie playing in poor quality. Julia Roberts’ big ass smile; the way everything was so much brighter back then, even the pastels. ‘Don’t be hard on him.’

‘I just wanna keep him safe.’

‘You’re doing a good job. And for whatever it’s worth, if you killed who I think you did, don’t shed a tear over it.’

‘I really wasn’t gonna.’

Eddie’s phone lights up.

Just landed. What motel?

‘Hey, where’s a good place to get picked up in a car?’

‘Corner of 11th, there’s an alley. If you get the car to park up right under the streetlamp, cameras won’t pick up shit. You can get to the alley through the back window unseen.’

Eddie looks at her, really looks. ‘Thank you, Adriana.’

She shrugs, watches the movie and says nothing. Eddie relays the instructions to Billy, who says he’s twenty minutes out.

Eddie starts gathering what precious little of their shit is laying around. He cleans the room and gives Adriana three thousand dollars cash. She doesn’t protest, but her eyes widen with gentle surprise.

Then she says, ‘Tell him I said I love him.’ She smiles as she folds the notes and tucks them into her bra. ‘He’ll like that.’

Eddie huffs a laugh despite himself. ‘I bet he will. Take care, thanks again.’

*

The room is pristine when they leave it.

Billy is waiting for them at the end of the alleyway. Eddie wears the backpack, he’s got all their stuff, half carrying Steve who’s still sleepy, maybe in need of fucking medical attention, but they won’t have time for that until they’re out of state.

‘Hey,’ Billy greets, taking Steve and the backpack without needing to be asked. ‘In the back, go on.’

Eddie goes, so relieved he could cry.

*

Billy hired a car from the airport. Neither of them can fly out, they don’t have I.D, so Billy drives and they leave Las Vegas behind.

Eddie sits with Steve in the back and Billy plays the radio low, only songs, no news stations. Every now and then he’ll quietly tell Eddie to check on Steve, who is sleepy and somewhat irritable to be woken, but he’s breathing, responsive, knows his own name.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Eddie tells Billy when the sun rises and they see nothing but desert for miles.

Billy looks at him in the rear-view.

‘Thank you for calling.’

*

It’s a day’s drive to fucking Nebraska but Eddie’s low key relieved to be going there, he’s tired of their lives the last few months. Noisy, loud, people, money. He’ll never like Nebraska, but at least it’s quiet.

Safe, because that’s where Billy lives and in the year since they’ve last seen Billy - that very first time - the guy has definitely gained a little more muscle. His hair’s longer too. Curls brushing his neck, almost as long as Eddie’s now.

Pretty, gorgeous, it suits him.

They stop after four hours. Steve wakes up, stretches like a cat and predictably makes a huge fuss of Billy. Gets out the car when he sees him getting snacks from the gas station and runs, full on runs to him.

Billy smiles to greet him, it’s like the sun.

He’s only got one free hand to grab Steve with, but he makes do, doesn’t drop the bag and gets Steve under his thigh to pick him up, spin him around. Eddie’s surprised they don’t just make out there and then, but it’d probably draw a little too much attention and Billy’s smart.

‘Missed you,’ Billy tells him, low and fervent, sets him down beside the car.  

‘Eddie can drive, right?’ Steve asks, practically bouncing on his toes. ‘You’ll sit in the back with me?’

Eddie makes a face. ‘I don’t have a license.’

Steve’s not looking at him. Things are still not right.

‘I’ll sit in the front then.’

Billy looks between them, gaze sharpening somewhat.

‘Why don’t you sit in the back, baby?’

‘Why would I sit in the back?’ Steve demands, already climbing into the front seat, pulling out his phone to find better music to play through the speaker system. ‘He won’t talk to me.’

Eddie’s leaning against the back door, stretching his legs when Billy hugs him.

‘I missed you.’

Eddie’s eyes well up with tears that he blinks back. ‘Yeah, I bet. Fuck all else in Nebraska goin’ on without us, huh?’

It comes out so shaky, so wobbly and Billy doesn’t buy it for a second, Eddie knows, but he takes it for what it is. Doesn’t push.

‘I got you a sandwich,’ he says, handing the bag to Eddie.

*

It’s a long drive.

Steve’s power nap and the arrival of Billy have combined to make him somewhat hyper. He plays his favourite songs, rolls the window down and puts his feet out, sucking on a Twizzler and telling Billy a very theatrical fucking version of events.

‘Oh hey, what happened to Adriana?’ he asks, suddenly swivelling to look at Eddie.

Laying in the backseat with one arm over his eyes but by no means asleep, Eddie sighs and looks at Steve. ‘I gave her three grand and she left. Told me to tell you she loves you.’

Steve smiles, sighs happily. ‘I loved her too. She tasted like coconuts and oh my god, she had like, you know girls sometimes have a really big clit. Fuck, I wanted to play with it all day long, it was so hot. I’m glad you gave her three grand, that’s nice. She has kids.’

‘She told you?’

‘No, I saw it in her skin. Can we rent somewhere in Nebraska? I wanna stay for a while. Billy, would you help me start a garden? I want to plant things.’

He’s manic, Eddie realises with a low curl of dread. More so than Eddie’s ever seen him.

Reaction to the trauma of being murdered and then murdering the guy in turn, no fucking doubt, but Eddie still doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he fucked up massively in the shower.

‘Stevie, take it slow,’ Billy says, his voice mesmerising as ever. They’ve only spoken on the phone a few times since they left him that first time, but he sounds just like always. ‘Whatever you want, we’re gonna do, but slow it down, OK?’

Steve settles back in the chair, gives Billy a dazzling smile and puts on sunglasses. ‘Whatever you say, Daddy.’

*

The rest of the trip is a straight shot but Billy stops once more to get gas. Eddie and Steve stay inside the car, silence heavy and awful until Steve says, ‘You can go, if you want.’

Eddie closes his eyes.

Sometimes it feels like Steve is inside him. Like he’s pawing through his mind and his heart, like he can hear everything.

‘Why would I wanna go?’

‘Because I know you’d only ever love me if I died.’

Eddie grits his teeth. ‘God, shut up.’

‘And I did die, so for a few minutes at least, you loved me, Eddie. You loved me just a little. Part of you wants to run, to start over and put distance between us so you can survive it.’ Steve speaks quietly. ‘You think I’ll be OK with Billy, maybe even better off. He wouldn’t have let me die, right?’

Eddie gets out the car, doesn’t know where he’s going, he just needs to go. The highway is dry, hot and there’s nothing in sight for miles beyond the gas station, the car he’s leaving behind.

He’s got the pack on his shoulder, Steve fucking Harrington in his heart, like a little glass shard that slipped in through the ribs, will never come out.

He can’t do any of this anymore.

He’s walking fast with wet eyes and Steve’s not chasing him, he wouldn’t.

Eddie smacked his face in the shower after he died.

He shut down, he fucked up.

And Steve’s right, usually is.

Seeing Steve dead on the floor made him realise something he simply cannot tolerate. Gargantuan fucking monster that he mistook for a mountain the entire time he’s known Steve.

He walks away from the car, from Billy, from Steve.

Steve doesn’t chase him, but Billy does.

Drives the rental right up alongside him.

‘Get in the car,’ he requests gently. Eddie doesn’t look, he’s just aggressively walking. ‘Eddie, come on.’

‘Take him to fucking Nebraska, plant flowers with him or whatever the fuck,’ he spits, not looking, only running in this slow, sustainable fashion. ‘I’m done.’

Billy sighs. ‘You’re a pain in my ass.’

Eddie wheels around, jaw dropping. ‘Me? I’m the pain in your ass?!’ It’s when he sees Steve’s not in the car. ‘Hey, where is he?’

Billy yanks the handbrake, gets out and walks quickly around. ‘Yeah, you, Eddie Munson! You’re a pain in my fuckin’ ass and he won’t get in the car unless you’re in the car and all I wanna do is tell you that I looked at your number every single day since you left and the only time you called me was to tell me he’s dead!’

Eddie pulls a face, doesn’t understand, hasn’t seen Billy like this before. ‘I—I didn’t know who else to call.’

Billy shakes his head, looks out at the horizon for a moment. He’s breathing fast when he takes hold of Eddie and kisses him.

It’s like the still waters above a riptide because Billy might be reserved at the best of times, he might be quiet and steady but he’s got that wildness in him too, just like Steve, like Eddie.

He kisses Eddie like it’s the end of the world, three seconds to go only the world doesn’t end, because apparently she’s got more misery to dole out. A lifetime of uphill battles scattered with starlight moments of brief joy.

‘Where are you going, huh?’ Billy demands fiercely when he pulls back to breathe, lips still touching, he is holding Eddie’s face and his hands are strong. ‘I’m here, the car’s here, Steve is here. Where are you going?’

Eddie swallows. He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Billy’s expression softens, it cracks. ‘You need to sleep.’

‘Can’t.’

‘You can. I’ve got him. I’ll keep him safe, both of you.’

‘He was dead,’ Eddie tells Billy, like he doesn’t know all this already. ‘He was on the—the floor and he didn’t move when I tried to wake him up. He was gone.’

Tears spill and his voice breaks and Billy is there for all of it, he’s holding him on the side of the road as the sun sets on a day spent driving and Eddie cannot remember the last time he slept, Billy’s so right.

‘He’s not gone, though,’ Billy promises. ‘You brought him back.’

‘We did.’

Billy kisses him again, whispers, ‘I know you love him.’

Eddie shakes his head, wants to deny it, wants to scream that it’s not true. Beneath the milky purple skies cut through with vibrant orange spilling like blood as the sun dies, he fights and Billy won’t let him deny it, he just kisses it all away.

‘I’ll keep your secret,’ Billy promises in Eddie’s mouth. ‘I’ll carry half of it, OK? Don’t go. Please.’

Eddie closes his eyes, warm salt running down his cheeks. ‘He’s safer without me.’

‘We’re all safer without each other, but it’s too late for that.’

Eddie lets out a trembling exhale, feels so tired he aches with it. ‘You’ll watch him while I sleep?’

Billy kisses him once more. ‘Promise.’

*

Eddie tosses the bagged, bleached wallet of the man who killed Steve, who Steve killed right back. He throws it into the dead bushes before he gets into the car and they drive back to get Steve, who’s sitting on the side of the road with his legs crossed. He’s fiddling with something he found, focused on it right until Billy pulls up.

‘In the car, baby,’ Billy tells him. Gentle but firm, no more fucking around till they’re past state lines in Nebraska, thank you very much. ‘In the back, I need snacks and coffee up front.’

Steve shrugs, knee deep in a sulk. He keeps whatever he found by the roadside and gets in the back.

Billy finally gets on their destination path once more.

He plays the radio, local rock station on low and the windows are down because it’s warm.

Eddie and Steve don’t look at each other for a long time until he feels Steve’s hand intertwine with his own and his boy whispers, ‘Sleep?’ like a child.

And Eddie knows he could never have left.

He would have turned back after sixty seconds, couldn’t get far without him. How could he? What chance does he have when, even broken and painful, their connection lives on in such a way? A thing that refuses to die, much like Steve himself. Immortal and ugly, it should die, perhaps, but it simply won’t.

Eddie takes his hand, grips tight and wordlessly opens his other arm, pulling Steve in so they can cuddle and finally sleep while Billy drives them somewhere safe.

Before he slips into dreamless dark, Steve whispers, ‘I won’t ever ask again, I promise.’

Eddie kisses his hair, prays things are easier in Nebraska.

*

Billy has a house now.

It’s big.

Eddie asks how he can afford it and Billy shrugs, sets down the backpack and holds onto Steve, who he’s carrying bridal style.

‘It’s cheaper by the highway. No one wants to live out here in the sticks, but I like it. There’s a guest room upstairs. Max’s room, for when she comes to stay, is the room on the end. Mine’s left of the bathroom. Shall I take him up?’

Steve’s curled up tight, fast asleep or at least he’s pretending to be. Eddie knows he’s a naturally light sleeper, periodically goes without sleep for days at a time when he needs to. Maybe he’s really that tired, though.

Maybe he just likes being held.

‘Sure. I’m gonna get some water and then come up.’

It’s around three in the morning.

Eddie slept for a while, but he knows he could sleep more, especially if it’s in an actual bed. He fills his water bottle from the tap, doesn’t turn the light on, looks around the inky dark of this unfamiliar space.

It’s neat, tidy and clean. Billy has a big fridge, he’s got a little table with four chairs tucked in. Eddie smells coffee and bread. The quiet isn’t overwhelming. It’s… nice.

No music coming from the next room, no screaming, no yelling. He can feel himself getting tired again, but he takes the water and toes off his boots at the bottom of the stairs.

Billy pulls thick, crisp covers over Steve in a big, spacious double bed with a wooden headboard. The room is sparse, but it’s clean, warm. The windows have curtains. It smells of fresh cotton.

‘He’s coming out of shock,’ Billy tells him when Eddie sets the water bottle down. There’s a small lamp on in the corner. Eddie will leave it on all night in case Steve wakes up afraid, though it’d be the first time. ‘It’s good that he’s sleeping.’ He strokes Steve’s hair, kisses his cheek and looks at Eddie. ‘He definitely killed the guy?’

Eddie undresses, muscles aching. ‘Slit his throat.’

Billy just nods, like that’s totally normal. ‘You got away clean?’

‘As clean as we could. There’ll be DNA in the bathroom of the hotel, but that suite had a dozen couples fucking all over and we don’t have DNA on record, so,’ he shrugs. ‘I think we’re OK.’

‘That’s good. Tomorrow, I’ll drive the hire back to the nearest rental place.’ He heads for the door. ‘You can both stay as long as you like.’

*

Steve’s awake before Eddie, he always is.

Eddie smells hot coffee on the bedside table waiting for him, spies a couple of painkillers for which he is grateful, because he wakes with one fucker of a headache.

There’s a shower in the bathroom. He uses it.

Shaves, takes his time sorting himself out in ways he’s neglected for months now. He feels nervous to see Steve today. Doesn’t know how it’ll be. He hears them talking downstairs, but it’s not the viciously animated chatter he half expects. It’s calm, civilised.

He goes downstairs, feet clad with thick socks over the hardwood floors, and finds them at the kitchen table.

Breakfast is all spread out, most of it untouched.

Steve sees him first.

Their eyes meet and Eddie… he can’t move.

Feels like the very first time all over again.

Like he’s just seeing this fucker, blood around his mouth, injured and potentially insane because he was singing in a place where no one sings.

Only now he’s nineteen, Steve is.

And the day Eddie’s dreaded has come.

Steve is beautiful.

He’s too beautiful for this world.

And the changes are incremental, they’re minuscule and meaningless because Eddie could never quantify them. The shine of those eyes, the soft cascade of hair. His skin, the array of moles where they scatter like inverse stars. His mouth. His mind. The shape of him, the shade.

His voice.

Steve is the most beautiful thing Eddie’s ever seen and it takes his breath clean fucking away.

Alive, present, safe.

Eddie wants it to replace the image of him on the bathroom floor, he wants to forget, but he can’t, not till something else replaces it.

Only monsters eat other monsters.

‘Hey,’ Steve says, blinks slowly, small smile pulling on the corners of his mouth. ‘Billy made waffles. They’re good. I saved you the best one, didn’t let him touch it.’

Billy looks up, looks between them. He is at ease, he radiates it. Eddie thinks it’s his gift, this man, wishes he could drink it until he’s full. ‘He wouldn’t even let me look at it,’ Billy chimes in. ‘More coffee?’

Eddie shakes himself back into the present moment.

It’s a nice one. They’re rare.

He smiles, has to force it because nice things don’t come easy or natural and this thing between them isn’t right, not by a mile but he tries anyway. ‘Sure,’ he says, joining them. ‘Show me this waffle.’

*

It’s strange, with Billy there.

He takes nothing, asks for nothing, but he carries what Eddie can’t. Catches the spill over like it’s effortless, provides constancy and surety for Eddie to come alive a little, to breathe.

It makes him realise he hasn’t been breathing right for a really long time now. That his ribs are sore and his lungs are curled so tight like the petals of a flower hiding from winter. The first time he takes a deep breath, his whole body goes tense, awaiting some cosmic punishment, but in Billy’s house the universe cannot reach down and inflict as she usually does.

Steve is manic still, he’s due for a crash, but with Billy there to provide a baseline of something resembling stability, it’s more manageable.

That morning, they drink coffee and Eddie eats the waffle Steve saved for him, it tastes good; warm and crisp and fresh, Billy made the mixture from scratch. He’s got an old iron press and his syrup is in a glass bottle with a lip.

He makes coffee on the stove, with fire.

His milk comes from a glass bottle.

His house is huge.

The world of Billy Hargrove is full of authentic basics.

It is absent of the neon rainbow that Steve so loves when the sun sets. It’s lacking the shark-filled waters of Santa Monica; no fairground rides and easy hustles. No high from the risk of a low grade heist. No one buying, no one selling. No cops rolling around the corner of the street, windows down so Eddie has to get his hand over Steve’s mouth before he says something that’ll get them chased.

The house is brown and iron dark and full of natural light. He’s got a couple of plants in the windows. Their leaves are green, thick. Steve immediately names them, whispers secrets to them.

Eddie wanders around after breakfast while Steve settles into the large space of the sill in the living room, smallest of the plants in his lap, his fingers in the earth of the pot. Billy cleans up and Eddie explores a little.

He leaves Max’s room well alone, but the door is open and he catches a glimpse of the bright walls; vibrant yellow struck through with reds and oranges. He sees a skateboard by the bed, sees all kinds of stuff that kids would like and then he looks away because he never had a room like that, even when he had parents.

There are four bedrooms in the place. It’s unfathomable to Eddie, who thinks about the price of renting a single bed motel room in the shittiest parts of LA for a single fucking night. There’s people out here living quiet lives with milk in glass bottles and waffle irons and four rooms.

One room is just full of boxes.

Some of them are marked Billy, some are marked Dad. This room is in progress, Eddie thinks. The walls aren’t freshly stripped and painted like Max’s room, like the guest room. They bear the old wallpaper. Faded nicotine beige florals and dark stripes, kind of thing he thinks would look great in a horror movie set up, but it’s Billy’s house, so nothing bad would dare try to slip inside.

He opens one of the boxes, one marked Dad, sees a bunch of old, unpolished trophies and ribbons. Neil Hargrove is the name inscribed into the worthless metal.

Eddie looks in a Billy one. Books, comics, and several chunky VHS cassettes, beneath which he finds a very old stuffed toy. It’s Taz the Tasmanian Devil, from Loony Tunes. His fur is bobbled, the whites of his eyes and teeth are faded to grey. He’s been sewn at the back more than once with threads that don’t match.

Eddie takes him with him, doesn’t put him back.

Billy’s room is light and airy, the window is half open and the netted curtains flutter in the breeze. The bed is made. The walls are a vibrant cascade of greeny blue. There are pictures along the skirting, not yet hung. Wardrobe, drawers, pillows. It’s a fair sized bed, might be a King. He has this throw over the quilts; it’s handmade, crocheted or knitted or whatever the fuck. It’s patchwork. Well-crafted and soft, a rainbow of mismatching shades.

Eddie’s gripping Taz tightly, looking around as he blinks rapidly, swallows.

It’s not fair.

It’s so fucking unfair he wants to scream, to smash the room to bits and pieces. The colour on the wall is the nicest Eddie’s ever fucking seen. He didn’t even know there was a colour like that.

He needs to leave.

Needs to thank Billy for his help, make up some shit about why they need to leave and then get gone. Get away from syrup made to be poured not squeezed. Away from plants that Steve’s already named. Away from the boxes Billy hasn’t unpacked yet, the bright room of his little sister, what a good brother he is, huh?

Away from four rooms and a house so big it makes Eddie feel like the world turned upside down and he’s falling into the sky. All this space with walls and high ceilings, it’s not right. His lungs have too much room to breathe, his body shouldn’t—it shouldn’t be so full of air, should it?

When he turns, intending to run, he smacks into Billy.

The man’s hard, a wall of muscle and strength but he’s gentle when he steadies him with strong arms and rough palms.

‘Hey.’

‘I—I need to go. We need to go.’

Billy nods, like Eddie’s making total sense.

‘Yeah, come on.’

*

Fucker has a yard that may as well span the entire state. It’s wild, untamed.

High grass, green and pale brown in patches. There’s trees, fucking trees that are older than all of them combined. No real furniture beyond a few chairs and a round iron wrought table with an ashtray in the centre.

Steve stays inside with the plants, he’s happy in the alcove but Eddie needs to be outside, he needs to see the sky and know it’s the right way up.

Eddie knows how to take care of himself.

He fucking does.

His go-to has always been the quiet outside space. 

Stay small, never bend, never talk, never flinch.

The world is brutal, ever changing but here in Nebraska, the skies are white cut through with streaks of blue and the air is cool and clean and there is no one around for miles. Eddie could scream and no one but Billy and Steve and the plants and Taz would hear it.

Eddie knows how to survive, but this is not a place for survival. It’s… it’s a place to live.

Billy smokes, offers one to Eddie who takes it even though it’s not really his thing, expensive fucking habit that he trained himself out of reliance on at a young age.

He stares at the sky, the horizon.

This feels like Billy’s world.

‘You just got it all, huh?’ he says quietly after a beat, sits on the chair, Taz in his lap. ‘Got it all figured out.’

Billy looks at him. ‘You look not good, Eddie.’

Eddie laughs bitterly, feels like all the glass shards he’s been gripping the last few months, years are finally doing the damage they were intended to now that he’s uncurling his hands.

‘Newsflash, I’ve always been ugly.’ He smokes because that sounded pathetic and he knows it. ‘He’s the pretty one. The good looking one.’

The beautiful one.

Today, Eddie came downstairs in a big, gorgeous house removed from the world that hurts them and found Steve has finally tripped right over into being beautiful.

It’s only a matter of time now.

‘I like your hair.’

Eddie closes his eyes. ‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Just. Stop being so fucking nice. I hate it.’

‘You’d rather I smack you around?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ No. ‘That’s what you did with him.’

‘What’s got you, man?’

‘Like I’d tell you. Like you’d get it. Got money, got this house, got everything all figured out. Your whole life.’ Eddie laughs meanly, stares at the scrap of blue sky right ahead. ‘Must have been a thrill to get a call from me, huh? Bet you just sit around all day listening to the clock tick.’

‘I’m always happy to hear from you both. I gave you this address last time. I told you—’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

Billy sighs. Eddie wonders if he’s about to come out with some wisdom, tell him something from his past.

Share.

Metaphors, maybe.

Instead Billy stubs the cigarette, gets up and heads back inside, but not before he says, ‘Leave then.’

*

Eddie stays outside for a long time.

Just him and the horizon and Taz from the box.

He saw those cartoons as a kid, they played every Saturday morning whenever he stayed over at someone’s house. Other people had TVs, other people had pancakes and waffles.

He hated them for it.

He’d steal from them.

Go through the purses of the Mom’s whose stuff was carelessly scattered around, trusting that Eddie was just a little kid, he wouldn’t possibly steal.

But he did.

Until he didn’t get invited to anyone’s houses anymore and he never heard, …come to Tasmania, come to Tasmania… ever again.

He could steal from Billy.

He could take whatever he wanted and leave in the dead of night, take his car, that pretty blue Camaro. Hit the highway with Steve, blast the music and scream away all his feelings until they were nothing but ashes and Nebraska nothing but a distorted memory his ego would twist to justify his actions.

He could do that.

But he’s not sure if Steve would come. If he’d even let him.

Eddie’s not sure of anything anymore.

The world has stopped, Billy stopped it, let them get off.

Inside, he hears music playing.

Pink Floyd.

Steve loves Pink Floyd.

He’s fond of their lyrics, all the weird notes that stretch out too long, like a high manifested in the real working world.

Eddie should leave them both.

Hitch back to a big city, carry on as he was before he met Steve Harrington. Getting by, surviving, dealing. He’s good at it, he thinks. Has to be; he’s alive isn’t he?

It’d hurt them both, if he did. Steve would cry.

That feels good for all of one fucking second.

Then Eddie remembers how he’d looked on the floor.

He remembers how he came back from death so slowly. He remembers every bad time before that and why Steve so often has blood around his mouth, why he carries blades and knives.

Eddie hears the songs he sings, they live inside him, always will. The way he laughs, soft hyena rhythm that’s as unnatural as it is alluring. Eddie thinks of the way Steve didn’t even hesitate to go do what he did when he woke up.

He thinks of the moon and why Steve calls her Momma.

And his heart fucking breaks.

Because this must be hard for Steve too.

Because no matter how bad Eddie’s had it in life, Steve Harrington has had it so much worse.

And to think he would be dead still, were it not for Billy answering the phone, Billy calmly walking Eddie through the steps to save him… it’s agony beyond what Eddie can cope with.

He can’t survive this.

Something needs to die, to bleed.

*

He slips inside, carefully places the toy on the kitchen table and looks in the living room. Steve is still on the windowsill, he’s still holding the plant, but he’s talking to Billy at least. Billy’s on the floor, he’s surrounded by records, he’s reading the backs of them and Steve laughs, wipes his eyes and then looks right at Eddie.

He smiles with relief and slides down, leaves the plant on the sill and runs to Eddie, flings his arms around him.

‘I don’t want you to run or find a new sky,’ he says, voice wobbling. ‘I know I made a mess, but I’ll clean it up, and I won’t miss the count this time. I know I let all the mice down and they won’t forgive for thirteen months, but I really didn’t mean to die.’

Eddie tries to swallow the feeling, but it’s just too big. Everything with Steve is massive, it’s monstrous and it doesn’t fit inside him unless broken down, or unless Eddie splits himself in half to make a cloak from his insides.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Eddie tells him, tries to sound like Billy, kisses his hair and holds him tight. ‘I was a complete prick, don’t apologise.’

Steve kisses him on the lips.

Eddie tastes salt and spit and Steve Munson.

Don ’t be scared of dying. We’ll just try again next time.

But Eddie is scared. He’s terrified.

It’s inside him, all the fear and sickness and he can’t get it out.

Steve has both hands on the side of his face, rubbing their lips together back and forth as he hums, softly cries and then says, ‘Bea can help, can’t she?’

Eddie holds Steve’s wrists, gently pulls them down.

Billy’s looking at them from the floor.

‘I. Yeah, I think you’re right.’ He closes his eyes, so he can’t see the big house and the glass bottles and the green plants. ‘Billy, I need to do something and it’s… I need it, but I don’t want you to freak out.’

Billy’s already up, coming over as if beckoned only by the use of his name. Steve makes a happy sigh, reaches for him and pulls them all together.

Eddie touches Billy too, he pulls him in.

Holding one another, all three.

‘Whatever you need,’ Billy says to Eddie, to Steve too, whose cheek he kisses, nuzzling for a moment. ‘Promise.’

*

Billy’s bathroom is clean, it’s really nice.

He lays a towel down on the floor, he’s got a med kit because that’s what Billy does, he fixes what bleeds.

Steve has razorblades. He has Bea.

And Eddie has death inside him, cheated and vengeful.

Steve strips off entirely naked, like this is a full moon ritual and maybe it is. Maybe the bright skies above Billy’s corner of the world counts for the moon.

Billy takes his tee off; jeans and bare feet, he rubs alcohol over Eddie’s arm like he’s about to give him a tattoo and Eddie would like that, actually. Maybe they’ll get some Indian ink and one clean needle to share between three because whatever Billy and Steve have, Eddie wants it too.

When the skin of Eddie’s forearm is clean, Steve holds the razorblade over an open flame. Dark Side of the Moon plays downstairs, Billy’s got it on repeat. Eddie doesn’t know how repeat works with records.

Steve sits cross legged, the sterile blade between his delicate fingers as he examines the skin. ‘You’ll let me choose?’

Eddie looks down at the rose garden between Steve’s thighs, how it curls out into lilac blossoms. He’s never seen scars like it before, knows only Steve could make something so beautiful from blood and pain and all the awful things other people did to him.

‘Yeah, of course,’ Eddie tells him, hushed whisper all he can manage when he still so full of death and disease and the name of the man whose wallet had pictures inside. ‘Whatever you want.’

Brain Damage plays loud through the walls and Eddie lets Billy sit behind him to make a wall from his chest, to hold him.

Steve smiles at Eddie and fucking god, but Eddie feels like he’s the crazy one and Steve’s just been real patient this entire time and now… now he gets it.

‘Good boy,’ he tells Eddie, drops a wink and then presses the blade into the soft, pale skin of Eddie’s inner forearm. Pain erupts instantly and it’s controlled pain, it’s the kind of thing Eddie saw coming but it still can’t prepare him.

Steve drags the blade in a long line, shallow enough to keep Eddie very much alive, but to let the blood out all the same.

He needs to.

Can’t keep this thing inside him any longer.

Billy has his arms around Eddie’s middle, holding him tight so he doesn’t flinch.

‘You’re OK,’ he tells him, like it’s just absolute fact. ‘We’ll get it out.’

It hurts so bad that Eddie feels tears sliding down his nose, he’s trembling all over as Steve knowingly carves shapes into his skin. His blood drips onto the towel, into the thick, rough material.

‘Tell me who you killed,’ Eddie utters in a shaky voice, closing his eyes as he leans back into Billy, giving Steve his arm to sculpt with the razorblade he kept in his mouth all those years ago. ‘Please?’

Billy kisses his shoulder, right over the bone.

‘My Dad.’

Eddie’s arm is on fire; wrapped up with rivulets of red and it’s all over Steve’s fingers too, his hands, his wrists because blood gets everywhere, Eddie remembers, knows.

‘Why?’

‘Because I…’ Billy says slowly, watching Steve make a near perfect circle with the blade. ‘Because I couldn’t take it anymore. Because I was scared that it’d be me. Because there was a knife right there and I wanted him to die. He was my Dad and I killed him.’

Steve whispers, ‘Your Momma says you did the right thing,’ without looking up from his bloody canvas. ‘She’s drawing skylines in the sand and she writes songs about you every new moon and she tells everyone you’ve made it.’

Billy makes a little sound, kind of thing that broke in his throat before it could even form and Eddie knows that feeling. He knows what it’s like to be cut wide open by Steve Harrington.

Steve starts singing along to the song downstairs and Billy holds Eddie very tight, his cheek against Eddie’s, his heart pounding into Eddie’s ribs.

‘I got this house because I hoped one day you’d both wanna come here and there’d be room for all of us,’ Billy tells him like it’s a secret. ‘Because I feel so alone without you both. Because I never knew what it could be like until I met you. And I know you won’t stay, not always, but I want this to be your home that you come to whenever you need. This is your house too.’

Eddie’s crying when Billy kisses him and Steve is singing while he carves into his flesh and the bloodletting leaves them all dizzy in different ways.

Then he feels a new sting; alcohol poured over the cuts, paper towels wrapping and drying it.

Billy breaks the kiss, teeth keeping hold of Eddie’s bottom lip for a moment too long before he looks at Eddie’s arm.

Eddie opens his wet eyes, blinks away the tears and stares down.

It’s still bleeding, but Steve cut him shallow, cut him just right, his boy knows how.

He’s drawn a rose, growing from the stem of a switchblade, blade pointed down like a compass needle aimed South.

The lines are near perfect, like Steve used a ruler.

The swirls are lovely, they bleed the most.

His blood is everywhere and Steve licks the excess off his fingers before he kisses Eddie’s cheek.

‘You like it?’

Eddie stares. He feels drained. Weak.

We ’ll just try again next time.

Maybe he was the one who died in that bathroom.

But in this one, he comes back to life.

A second chance that’s closer to a thousandth, but he’s not counting them, not anymore.

‘I love it,’ he says, looks at Steve. ‘I love you.’

The old world breaks apart, goes down in quiet fire and flames and then it’s just gone. The collapse of rotten wood giving way to the water of the new world.

Steve doesn’t react at first, patches of vibrant red from his work all over him, Eddie’s blood suits him. Then he blinks slowly, dazed, frowning. ‘You shouldn’t.’

Eddie nods, trying to breathe. ‘I know.’

‘But you do?’

‘But I do. I love you.’

It cuts him up to say it, but that’s not a bad thing anymore.

Eddie pulls Steve in, needs to touch him, to love him in a way he’s never been able to before because maybe… god, he doesn’t know. He’ll never know, he’s not smart like that. Doesn’t understand metaphors the way Steve does, doesn’t process life through a filter of rosy wrapped riddles and poetry.

They kiss hard and eager, Steve’s all over him like he’s been just waiting for this. For Eddie to bleed and cry and feel what he feels.

What he’s always felt.  

Billy takes the blade, goes to set it aside, but Steve stops him, panting harshly. ‘I want one,’ he pleads. ‘Put one in me?’

Eddie doesn’t even hesitate, wants to give his boy anything and everything.

And maybe today really is the countdown to the end of the world. Or maybe it’s the first day of a new one.

All he knows is that Billy’s inside Steve when Eddie carves a new rose into the skin garden of his thighs because that’s what each one is. Something lovely made from the wreckage of something awful. Billy holds Steve’s wrists, not fucking him, but filling him and Eddie is gonna beg Steve to fuck him when it’s done.  

One life to live, why not make yourself at home a little?

Steve sings a new song Eddie’s never heard before and when the carving is done, they kiss as three for the very first time. Messy lips and tongues and it’s imperfect, it doesn’t really work, but Eddie’s never felt so whole. So full.

So alive.

They fuck all day.

They draw in blood and Billy doesn’t ask for one, but Eddie can feel how badly he wanted it when Steve offers and he blurts out, please.

Steve puts a rose over the stab scar on his chest, he uses the existing tissue distortion to give the rose shading. Their blood runs together, runs thick and thin and red, all shared, combining, like true love should.

Come and spit and cuts that will heal well because Billy’s smart about shit like that, he is the undertow.

They are tangled.

They are love, personified.

And in the big, beautiful bed of the house Billy got, hoping they’d come back one day, Eddie falls asleep last, watching over them both. There’s blood on the pillows and sheets, but no one’s gonna be punished for it.

Night falls over Nebraska.

He loves Nebraska now, always will.

But not enough to stay.

*