Work Text:
Now everybody knows
No way in hell I can ever live it down
Dig me now, fuck me later
And sing it to the tune of faggot, faggot, faggot
Take me now and fuck me later
And sing it with that
I've been denied all the best ultrasex
-- "Faggot" by Mindless Self Indulgence
It was a Sunday, which meant Steve and Robin were hanging out at Steve’s parents’ house (he didn’t think of it as “my house,” not even in his own head; it was always “my parents’ house,” no matter how many times his parents extended their work trips and vacations). Since they no longer worked together, Steve and Robin set aside Sundays as the day they spent together, just the two of them. The library was closed on Sundays and Steve requested it as one of his days off from the garage. Robin labeled the Sundays on Steve’s paper calendar in the kitchen with “Date Day” and took great joy in telling a nearly-hysterical Dustin that they were “Just friend dates. You’re still wrong. Me and Steve are still never dating.”
Steve was stretched out on the couch, leaning back on the arm, Robin was seated similarly at the opposite end of the couch, and their legs tangled together in the middle. Robin was eating black olives straight from the jar (Steve was pretty sure she had a salt def- diff- something. Not enough salt. Robin didn’t have enough salt in her body and that’s why she constantly did gross shit like eat an entire jar of olives in one sitting or drink the juice out of the pickle jar) and Steve was working on a plate of baby carrots. Something boring was on TV and neither of them were really paying attention. Steve loved stuff like this, when he knew a person well enough that he could just be with them, no pressure to impress or entertain. Steve knew Robin’s mind was probably buzzing with a million thoughts at once, while his was a comfy hum of nothing-in-particular. Usually, Robin would be the one to break the silence, giving voice to whichever weird thought took hold in her brain, so it was a surprise — even to Steve himself — when he was the one to speak.
“I got a two part question. First part: How did you know you liked girls?”
Robin looked up from where she’d been delicately fitting an olive onto the tip of each finger.
“What?”
“I said, how’d you figure out you liked girls and not boys?”
Robin screwed up her face, “I mean, I kinda always knew? I was always more interested in being friends with girls and spending time with girls, even when I was a kid.”
“But that’s normal, right? Girls are better friends with girls, and boys are better friends with boys.”
Robin pointed an olive-tipped finger at Steve. “Steven. What are we doing right now?”
“…Having a friend-date?”
Robin ate the olive off her finger.
“Yeah, okay, I see what you mean,” conceded Steve, “that was a dumb thing to say and I’d have known that if I thought about it for two seconds before I said it.”
Steve ate a carrot. Chewed it, swallowed it, made sure he didn’t talk with food in his mouth because that grossed Robin out so bad that she wouldn’t be able to pay attention to what he was saying.
“I just mean, like, some people are just hot, right? I like girls, but there are totally some guys that I’m like ‘he’s hot, I’d kiss him.’ You get that, right? So, how did you know you liked hot girls better than hot guys?”
Robin was frozen, staring at Steve, halfway through using her teeth to pull an olive off her ring finger. She looked really dumb. Steve loved her so much.
“Are you telling me that there are guys you think are hot and you want to kiss them?”
“Well, yeah. In the way, like, in the way you think that about any hot person that you see.”
“No, Steve. I do not think that about any hot person. I think that about hot girls.”
“You’re telling me you never thought a guy was hot? You never wanted to kiss a guy?”
Robins eyes were open wide, goggling at Steve, “I have never thought a guy was hot — except for maybe one time when I saw a picture of David Bowie and thought he was a girl — and I have definitely never wanted to kiss a guy.”
Robin gestured expansively with her hands. She was gonna lose an olive if she kept that up.
“Steve, I tried to make myself think guys were hot, I tried to make myself want to kiss guys! It never worked! That’s part of how I knew I liked girls! Because I never liked guys when all of my friends suddenly did and that’s all they wanted to talk about, and I thought I was defective because I didn’t think about guys like that at all!”
“Aw, Robin, you may be defective, but not because you like girls.”
“Thank you, that’s very sweet, but let’s go back to the part where you said there are guys that you think about kissing.”
“I don’t get what the big deal is, Robin! Some people are just hot and you can tell that, even if you’re not into them.”
“I think finding someone hot is kinda part of being into them,” Robin’s voice turned quiet, “Steve, I think you might like guys.”
Steve rolled his eyes, “Robin, you know how many girls I’ve dated. I can’t be into guys.”
Robin leaned forward into Steve’s space, “Why not? Would you date a guy?”
"Well, I—" Steve’s immediate thought was “No, I’m not supposed to date guys,” but he swallowed the words down. If he wasn’t supposed to date guys, then Robin wasn’t supposed to date girls. And the people who thought Robin wasn’t supposed to date girls were stupid people who thought there was something wrong with it. Which, like, those kinds of people probably thought there weren’t Upside-Down worlds full of monsters simply because those things weren’t supposed to exist, so what did they even know about anything? So if their opinions didn’t matter (Steve was getting better at not worrying about the opinions of people who didn’t actually matter and didn’t actually care about him), then why didn’t Steve date guys?
“…But I like girls? So I can’t like guys, right?”
Robin’s eyes were massive as she stared at him in silence. She looked kinda like a confused owl. Steve would tell her that later, she’d get all huffy about it; it would be funny.
“Steve,” said Robin, maintaining an intense level of eye contact, “People can like both. People can like girls and guys.”
Steve felt a weird jerking sensation in his chest, like when you miss a step on a staircase and almost fall but catch yourself right before it happens.
“They can?”
Robin threw her arms in the air, “Yes, Steve! Yes, they can! There are people who like girls and guys, and they date girls and guys! And they just end up with, like, whichever person they end up liking the best! Boy or girl!”
“I… did not know that.”
“Okay, and now that you do know that, what’s your answer? Would you date a guy?”
Steve pressed his fingers into the tops of his eye sockets, just below the ridge of his brow; it helped sometimes when he had headaches.
“Okay. Well, the thing is… the thing is I said this was a two part question and your answer to part one of the question has kind of answered part two of the question. Or changed part two of the question? I don’t know.”
Robin was practically flapping her arms in nervous excitement. Again, like an owl.
“Okay, okay, so what was part two gonna be?”
Steve scrunched his eyes closed and pressed his fingers more firmly into the sockets, “It’s gonna sound really stupid now.”
“Dingus, I love you, even when you’re stupid! Just tell me about part two before I go insane from curiosity!”
“Uhh… part two was gonna be ‘How do you tell the difference between when you like a girl because you want to date her, versus when you think a guy is hot but you don’t want to date him,’ but that was when I thought everybody could tell when a person is hot, doesn’t matter if it’s a guy or girl. But now I’m realizing that’s maybe just a thing that I do? And maybe other… other people who like girls and guys do that? So, then, I guess the new version of part two is… um… whenever I’m hanging out with Eddie or I think about Eddie, I feel basically the same way I felt when I had a girl I was crushing on. And does that mean what I — just now, this second, have figured out — what I think that means?”
Robin grabbed Steve’s wrists, yanked his hands away from his eyes, and shouted, “Eddie? You’ve got a crush on Eddie?”
Steve shouted back, “Apparently! That’s what I’m realizing right now, right this instant! So maybe don’t freak out at me, because I’m trying really hard not to freak out!”
Robin quickly let go of Steve’s wrists, “Oh, jeez, Steve. I’m sorry. I just got really excited.”
She sat back into her end of the couch and eyed Steve, “Are you really freaking out? It’s okay if you are. Once I finally let myself think the words ‘I’m a lesbian,’ I definitely freaked out for, like, a week.”
Steve ate another carrot and stared into the middle distance for a moment before sighing heavily, “I don’t know, Robin. You just told me it’s possible to like girls and guys. I just put it together that the way I feel when I’m hanging out with Eddie is basically the same way I feel when I’m around a girl I like.”
“Basically the same? What’s different about it? I mean, other than the boy parts.”
Steve snorted, “Boy parts.”
Robin kicked at his thigh, “Shut up! You know what I mean. What’s different?”
Steve got up from the couch and began to walk in aimless circles around the living room. It helped him to think, moving did. And, if Steve was walking around, he didn’t have to make direct eye contact with Robin. Normally, Steve had no problem with eye contact; he’d even beaten Robin in two staring contests and four no-blinking contests. But when he was venturing into some unknown territory of his own mind, trying to fit together the pieces of his own thoughts as he said them out loud, eye contact felt like too much, like the person was waiting for the right answer and Steve was sure he’d give a wrong answer.
“The first thing that’s different is pretty obvious: Eddie’s been through the same stuff we’ve been through. I don’t have to worry about him seeing my scars and getting weirded out, or having to explain why I lose my shit if the lights flicker. Literally all the girls — women — who know about the Upside-Down that I could date are one hundred percent un-dateable for me: You, Nancy, and Mrs. Byers.”
“Makes sense,” Robin said, nodding along.
“Eddie’s fun to be around; he’s funny, he’s nice. Yeah, he’s intense about the stuff he likes, but he’s actually pretty easy-going, he can be kind of a petty bitch sometimes but—"
“If Eddie’s a petty bitch,” interjected Robin, “then you’re a pissy bitch.”
“Exactly!” Steve waved a hand to emphasize his point, “We can be bitchy at each other and we both know we’ll get over it in, like, five minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eddie be mean without a good reason, y’know? Like, even his stupid cafeteria rants weren’t mean.”
“Ohhhh, my God. Your perception has warped so much that you recall his cafeteria rants fondly. You do have a crush on Eddie.”
“And,” said Steve loudly, drowning out Robin, “Like I said, he’s nice. He’s like one of those moths with the wing patterns that look like scary faces or something. Yeah, he likes horror movies and loud music about Satan, but he spent all that time in high school inviting little, nerdy, baby-freshmen into his nerdy club so they wouldn’t be alone and friendless and picked on.”
“You do know that he toootally loves playing the ‘wacky, fun dad’ to your ‘overprotective, buzz-killer mom,’ you know that, right? It makes him feel cool.”
“Yes, I know. I trust him with the little shits though. Like, I know he’s not gonna do anything that would put the kids in actual danger. I mean, we already have a plan for if the kids come to him about drugs.”
“What?” shrieked Robin before dissolving into (in Steve’s opinion) unwarranted laughter. Steve paused in his pacing to glare at Robin.
“Oh, don’t give me the ‘grumpy mom’ face; it doesn’t work on me. I fully recognize that we’re getting sidetracked, but I need to hear what after-school special you and Eddie Munson have cooked up for when the baby geniuses decide to take a walk on the wild side.”
Steve sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “Well, he said, right off the bat, he’d never give any of them anything harder than weed. And then we agreed that, if they want weed, the first time any of them get high, me and Eddie will both be there. And if they want to smoke weed again, they have to be with at least one of us to do it. If they’re with Eddie, he’s done it enough that he can keep his shit together, and if they do it with me, I’ll just make them stay indoors and watch cartoons or some shit.”
Robin’s grin was massive, “God, please, you have to invite me when you and Eddie, while high, attempt to corral those children while they’re high. I won’t even smoke anything, I just want to observe.”
“Robin,” Steve was fully aware he was whining, “if you’re going to interrupt my freak-out, then you don’t get to make fun of the things you hear from me that you interrupted me so you could hear about them!”
“That was grammatically confusing, but I understand. I will reserve my mockery for when you’re high as a kite, trying to keep Dustin from… I don’t know… formulating LSD from the contents of your spice rack.”
Robin sipped some of the liquid from the jar of olives. She was disgusting and insane and it was totally unfair of her to judge Steve when she drank olive juice.
“Back on track,” declared Robin, “You like that Eddie knows about Upside-Down stuff; it means he understands a lot of your shit because it’s his shit too.”
Robin bounced her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner, “You like Eddie’s personality. What else about being around Eddie is different from being around a girl you like?”
“Ugh, I don’t know how to say this without it sounding shitty. Like, that I’m being shitty. So I’ll just say it. When I go on dates, it’s like I’m an actor. I’m an actor in a role and the role is ‘Nice Boyfriend.’ And I know part of dating is getting to know the other person but, it’s like, I don’t think they want to know any other part of me. They see ‘Nice Boyfriend’ and they want that. They want me to be handsome, but they don’t want ‘Guy Whose Bathroom Routine is More Involved Than Theirs,’ they want me to care about their feelings, but they don’t want me to care about other girls’ feelings which means they don’t want ‘Guy Who’s Friends With His Ex and Her New Boyfriend’ or ‘Robin’s Best Friend.’ I haven’t even dated someone long enough to find out they don’t want ‘Guy Who’s Perfectly Happy Being a Mechanic the Rest of His Life’ or ‘Guy Whose Friend Group is Mostly Horrible, Tragically Codependent Children’ or ‘Guy Who Can’t Talk About His Screaming Nightmares Because of the NDAs He Signed.’”
Steve flopped back onto the couch and draped his legs over Robin’s, “But, like, Eddie knows all those parts of me already, so I don’t have to worry about it. He knows and he’s okay with it. The only part of me Eddie doesn’t know is the ‘Nice Boyfriend’ part. Hell, maybe I throw that in there with Eddie and it’ll be perfect. I can be one-hundred-percent myself around him.”
When Steve turned to look at Robin, he was surprised by her expression. Robin looked pleasantly shocked, taken completely off-guard but in a happy way.
“Wow, Dingus! Okay, so you like Eddie and you like being around Eddie. We’ve established that. But what about uhh…” Robin screwed up her face in an exaggerated display of disgust “…Sex stuff. Kissing. Do you want to kiss him and do other… more-than-kissing things?”
“I mean, me thinking about kissing guys is kinda what started this whole conversation. So, like, yeah. Yeah, I’ve thought about kissing Eddie.”
It was easy to think about kissing Eddie. His mouth was wide and full, expressive, smiled easily. Steve imagined Eddie’s lips might be a little chapped, but a few swipes of Steve’s tongue and Eddie’s lips would be soft and slick. Eddie’s whole face was expressive. He’d probably look really good in the warm, charged lead-up to a kiss, and even better after, with his eyes heavy-lidded and his mouth rubbed red; maybe Eddie would do that infuriating smirk that he did sometimes.
“As for more-than-kissing stuff… this is also gonna sound pretty dumb.”
“…Yes?”
“Me and Eddie smoke weed together, right? And weed always makes me… I get horny when I’m stoned.”
“Wow, Steve, you are really not selling me on the idea of you monitoring the kids when you’re high.”
“Shut up! That has nothing to do with this! My point is, I’m high around Eddie a lot but I’m — um — also horny around Eddie. I kinda just thought it was the weed...”
Steve had thought about it — kissing Eddie — when they were high. Eddie was always in motion, twitching, and jumping and gesticulating dramatically. When he got stoned, it didn’t stop, but it turned into something more languid and rhythmic. When they’d get high, Eddie would relax into the couch or the bed, wherever they were, but his toes would curl and uncurl, or he’d stroke the ends of his own hair, or massage the muscles of his forearms and hands, probably sore from playing guitar, writing, or painting those little toys he used in DnD. Kissing Eddie while they were high would probably feel really good. Maybe Eddie would continue those weird, convulsive, repetitive movements, maybe he’d play with Steve’s hair, or grip and release Steve’s shirt while they kissed, like when cats would knead on a pillow. Or maybe Eddie would be too relaxed and stoned to even kiss back much; he’d just keep his mouth open and let Steve lick and suck the way he wanted. Eddie would probably look really hot giving a blowjob. Eyes red from the weed, barely able to keep them open while he looked up at Steve with his full, wide mouth stretched—
Steve interrupted his own train of thought, “I’m gonna stop thinking about that before this turns awkward for us both.”
“Ew!”
“Don’t ‘Ew’ me, Robin! You’re the one who asked! And anyway, I don’t even know if Eddie likes guys. I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend, I don’t think I ever heard about him having a girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean he’s gay. Or like, I don’t know, half-gay. Whatever it is that I’ve got going on.”
Robins eyes were big and her lips were smushed flat into a line, but a muffled “Hrreep!”-sound leaked out. That was, absolutely, Robin’s “I know something but I shouldn’t say” face.
Steve rounded on her, “What? What do you know?”
Robin clapped her hands over her mouth and shook her head.
“Robin! Tell me!”
“I can’t tell!” Robin wailed from behind her hands.
“So you do know something. There is something to know.”
“Okay! Okay!” Robin did little jazz hand motions, “There’s stuff I know and I can’t say what it is. But what I can say is that, one time, I went to visit my Nana in Chicago, and I went to this used bookstore—"
“Robin,” groaned Steve, “What does your Nana in Chicago have to do with Eddie liking guys?”
“I’m getting there! Let me tell my story and we’ll get there! God!”
“Sorry, fine, I’ll be quiet.”
“Thank you. So I was at this used bookstore and they had a women’s studies section and there was this book, it was called ‘Rubyfruit Jungle,’ and wow, let me tell you, Steve, that book sure did explain some things for me. It’s about this woman who—“
“Robin, does the book have anything to do with Eddie liking guys?”
“No, the book doesn’t have anything to do with Eddie liking guys.”
“Oh my God, Robin!” Steve resisted the urge to throw his carrots at her.
“What I found in the book has something to do with Eddie liking guys!”
“Okay then tell me about what you found!”
“Right, right. So there was this folded up piece of paper in the book and when I read it, it was a guide for a code.”
“…You found a code language.”
Robin clutched Steve’s hands, “It was a gay code! That gay guys use to let other gay guys know what kind of sex stuff they wanna do!”
That was way more interesting than intercepting coded Russian transmissions, in Steve’s opinion.
“So you’ve heard Eddie use some of this code language or something?”
“No, Steve,” Robin was bouncing in place on the couch, clearly excited and warming to the subject, “It’s a visual code. It’s Eddie’s bandana!”
“Eddie’s bandana is a code?”
“Yes! I don’t remember a lot of what was on there and I… um…” Robin’s excited bouncing stopped and she suddenly looked embarrassed.
“What?” Steve was reconsidering throwing his carrots, but Robin was still squeezing his hands, “What did you do?”
“Look, once I realized the code was for guys, I didn’t want to keep it, it didn’t have anything to do with me. The book cover was plain enough that I knew I could buy it without my parents knowing the book was full of lesbian sex.”
“You found a lesbian sex book?”
Robin plowed on with her story, “But the paper with the code was way too obvious; what if it fell out of the book and my parents saw it?”
“Yeah, okay, I can get that,” Steve could only imagine the horror of his parents finding him with a guide to a gay sex code, “So what’d you do with the code paper?”
“I crumpled it up and ate it before I bought the book.”
Steve tried to jerk his hands away but Robin held on tight, “Robin! Now I can’t learn the code!”
“I know, I know! I’m sorry! But how was I supposed to know that in the next year and a half I’d be friends with a guy and the guy would tell me he liked our other guy-friend and I’d need to know a gay code to figure out if the other guy-friend was gay!”
Steve sighed, “Yeah. Sorry for yelling. There’s no way you could know any of that.”
“Apology accepted because I’m an amazing and wonderful friend who remembers some of the code.”
Steve would not be throwing his carrots at Robin today, “Yeah? What do you remember.”
“It’s not much. But I remember the side where you put the bandana or the handkerchief is important. I don’t remember which side was which, but one side means you like to do the sex thing, and the other side means you like to have the sex thing done to you. And the color of the bandana tells you what sex thing the guy wants to have or wants to do.”
That seemed like a pretty good system to Steve. He wished everybody was that clear about what they liked and wanted. Even a code was easier to figure out than the mind-reading, guessing games he’d experienced on some dates.
“So, we don’t know which side Eddie’s bandana means. Do you know what the color means?”
Robin scrunched her face, “No, I don’t know what a black bandana means. I only remember that a light blue bandana means blowjobs because whoever left the paper in the book had circled that one with a big ol’ marker.”
Steve sighed deeply and flopped back onto the arm of the couch, “Okay, thanks, Robin. But that doesn’t actually tell us much. Maybe Eddie just keeps a bandana in his pocket? I mean, I’ve seen him use the bandana — tie it across his forehead — so maybe it’s not for the code at all?”
Robin fished another olive from the jar and popped it into her mouth, “But he always has the bandana. It’s always a black bandana and it’s always in his left pocket.”
“But that still doesn’t mean it’s for the code!”
Robin closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose, as if she were some overworked parent rather than the biggest, most exasperating of the children that Steve babysat.
“Dingus. You said Eddie’s never had a girlfriend but that’s not proof that he’s gay. And then I said there’s stuff I can’t tell you, but here’s what I can tell you.”
“Yes, Robin, I was there for this conversation, like, two minutes ago.”
Robin grinned and put the last two olives on each pointer finger.
“So it’s a math problem. You’re solving for ‘x.’ And in this scenario, ‘x’ equals ‘Eddie Munson likes guys.’ I have the full equation, but you’ve only got the ‘bandana code’ and the ‘x’ part of the equation.”
Steve furrowed his brow and shoved his fingers into his eye sockets, desperately recalling as much high school math as he could.
“So… you’re saying that ‘Robin’s secret info’ plus ‘bandana code’ equals ‘x’?”
“Yes.”
“And ‘x’ equals ‘Eddie likes guys’?”
“Yes.”
“So… so… if I know that ‘Robin info’ plus ‘bandana code’ equals ‘Eddie likes guys,’ then I don’t actually need to know the thing that you know, because I already know that what you know plus ‘bandana code’ means 'Eddie likes guys'.”
Robin tapped a fingertip olive to the end of her nose before eating the olive, “Bingo, Steve-o!”
“God,” moaned Steve, “Robin, why couldn’t you just tell me that?”
Robin munched her final olive, “If you’re gonna be half-gay, then you gotta follow the gay rules.”
“There are gay rules? Were they on the bandana code paper? Wait—" Steve glared at Robin, “You told me you didn’t even know any other gay people. Well, I guess before you knew Eddie. Not the point. The point is how would you even know gay rules?”
Robin ignored Steve’s question, “You — we, now, I guess — have to be careful with this stuff. If we know that someone’s gay, or half-gay, we can’t just tell anybody. It’s private, it’s their choice who to tell.”
“Even if telling would be a good thing? Like telling me if Eddie likes guys because I also like guys and I like Eddie?”
“Yup. Even then.”
“Ugh.”
Robin shrugged, “I know; it’s rough. On one hand, I’m really, really excited for you. And for me. That this is, like, another thing we can share. Being secret queers together. But also it’s sad, because I know there’s this whole other level of complicated and scary and unknown that you have to deal with now.”
They sat in silence for a little bit. Steve munched a carrot.
It was a lot. But, also, weirdly not? Once Steve thought about it, let himself think about it, it made sense. The feelings he had around Eddie were the same kinda of feelings he had around… Shit, that he’d had around Nancy. And now that Steve had the context, the permission, to see those feelings as the same thing, it was obvious to Steve: He really liked Eddie. Steve liked Eddie’s personality, his irrepressible weirdness. Steve liked Eddie’s hair, and his eyes, and his mouth, and the kinda blobby shape of the end of his nose. Steve realized he wished Eddie would wear tighter clothes, or less layers, or less clothes altogether, so Steve could see his body. Steve liked when Eddie came over to swim in the pool, and Steve was able to look his fill of Eddie’s pale skin, the dark hair in his armpits and under his navel, those stupid tattoos, and the red, angry spatters of scar tissue that stretched from the middle of Eddie’s left thigh, up across his hipbone, belly, and ribs, ending in a splotch on the edge of his jaw. Steve’s own scars itched and gave weird, unexpected pangs of sensation, deep inside where the nerves were maybe trying to heal? Steve imagined that Eddie’s scars did that too, and he wished Eddie would let him touch, let him rub Vaseline into the scars, massage away the itchy-aching nerve pain.
“So,” said Robin, “What are you gonna do?”
“What? Do what?”
Robin rolled her eyes so hard Steve could hear it, “What are you gonna do about your crush on Eddie?”
“Do about it? What is there to do about it? Even if he likes guys, that doesn’t mean he likes me.”
“Dingus, that man gazes at you. He moons at you with the biggest, sparkliest eyes.”
“His eyes are just… like that.” Eddie did have big, dark eyes. Like a deer. Or a shark.
“You think his eyes are ‘just like that’ because that’s what they’re like every time he looks at you.”
“I don’t know, Robin. That’s really not a lot to go on,” Steve paused, “Shit, this is totally one of my arguments where I try to convince you of the very obvious fact that Vickie is into boobies and into you. But now it’s the other way around.”
“Yup. The gay shoe is on the other gay foot.”
“Man, Robin, I’m sorry. I didn’t get it. All my advice about Vickie was really… uh… what’s the word? Where you’re, like, jumping to conclusions and acting like you know the right thing to do?”
“Presumptuous?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“It’s okay, I know you were trying to help. So, are you gonna make a move” — Robin drew out the word lasciviously — “on Eddie?”
Steve tugged at his own hair, “I don’t know, Robin. I just— I just figured this out. I know this sounds totally unlike me, but I wanna think this through some more?”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s, like, this is an important thing, right? I should be sure of it. It would be unfair to Eddie, if I made a move and he was actually into it but then, once it’s happening, I figure out ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute. Maybe there are some guys I’d be happy to kiss, but I’m really not into the rest of this!’ That would be the worst.”
Robin patted Steve’s hand, “I think the chances of Eddie not being into you are slim. Tiny. Microscopic! Whether or not you do anything about it, it means a lot that you talked to me about this. And I think it says a lot about how important Eddie is to you, even just as a friend, that you’d wanna be certain about it.”
“Thanks, Robin.”
Steve did think about it. Actually, after the conversation with Robin, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. All of the thoughts he usually dismissed as “anyone would think that about a hot person, doesn’t matter if the hot person is a girl or a guy” took on new significance. Okay, so not just anyone would have those thoughts. Steve had those thoughts because there were guys that he found attractive. Steve found some guys attractive because Steve was attracted to men (and women, that was still happening). God, it felt like going through puberty again; daily life was an uncharted map strewn with landmines that blew up in Steve’s face and gave him hard-ons at the most inconvenient times.
Like, there was this guy who would go jogging through Steve’s neighborhood sometimes. He was older than Steve, maybe in his mid-30s, and he was fit. Muscular, and with enough fat to turn the hard lines of muscle into graceful, curving flesh. The guy was one of those strawberry-blonde gingers — the kind with eyelashes and eyebrows as pale as cornsilk — and his skin was tanned and heavily freckled from jogging in the sun. The guy’s body hair was so much paler than his tanned skin that it created a soft halo-effect when the light struck just right. On some mornings,after Steve had done his own morning run and weights and was preparing to leave for his shift at the garage, the guy would jog by and the morning sun would spark off the sweat caught in the pale hair on his chest and lower back. Now, with all this new context, Steve recognized that ogling some guy’s lower back hair and wondering if the guy’s ass was tanned and freckled or pasty-pale was probably not what most guys thought of when they saw another guy out for a jog. But it’s not like Steve was thinking about having sex with the guy.
Okay, except for how Steve was thinking about having sex with the jogger. Instead of the thoughts being little squirmy things that he swept out of his mind as “not allowed, therefore irrelevant,” Steve let himself have the thoughts. The thoughts flourished under his attention; they grew from being squirmy, undefined feelings into rippling, muscular coils of desire, just as elaborate as the way Steve felt about women. Steve knew he loved how it felt to jerk off after a workout. In a hot shower, muscles aching from exercise and then going relaxed, pleasantly tired post-orgasm. Steve thought about showering with the jogger and jerking off together. It seemed pretty nice.
When Steve went to babysit (it wasn’t really babysitting, he wasn’t paid and the kids were teens now, but Steve would only admit in his own head that he was just hanging out with the kids) so Mrs. Byers and Hopper could have a date night, Steve found himself considering Hopper’s casual authority in a new light. And then Steve thought about how soft Hopper’s eyes went when he looked at Mrs. Byers and then Steve thought about Mrs. Byers and then he thought about Mrs. Byers and Hopper having sex and also he was there somewhere? It was just a blip of a thought, Mrs. Byers’ breasts and Hopper's stomach and himself in-between, but then Mike and Dustin were having a screaming argument about something. Which, thank God, if Steve ever got hard in front of Hopper and Hopper noticed, Steve was pretty sure his dick would be scared into never getting hard again.
Laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, trying not to think about the things that lead to nightmares, Steve ended up thinking about Billy. Thinking about Billy usually ended in nightmares, but this time was different. Because, now, Steve was pretty sure that Billy had hated him so much because what Billy really wanted was to fuck him. Or get fucked by him. Thinking about that made Steve feel sad for Billy. Sad again, actually. Steve had been sad when Billy died, even though he’d driven a car into Billy at full speed not long before the guy got killed by a gross flesh-monster. Steve had felt sad because he’d seen himself in Billy, someone who was screwed up and angry. It was sad that Billy wouldn’t have anymore chances to change, the way Steve had changed. Steve thought about what it might have been like if Billy had another chance, or if Billy had been just a little nicer at the beginning. Maybe they could have been friends, friendly rivals. Maybe they’d have played one-on-one games together, horsed around, shoving and laughing until, maybe, it turned into something different. That train of thought ended in one of the saddest jerk-off sessions Steve had since the time Nancy broke up with him.
Thinking about Nancy made Steve think about Jonathan. And, okay, here was the thing: Steve could kinda get it now. Mostly, Jonathan looked like a tragic frog, as far as Steve was concerned. But he could get the appeal because… because Steve could see how Jonathan and Eddie were similar. They’d both grown up with at least one dirtbag parent, they’d both been kicked around in school (even though they handled it in very different ways) and they’d both grown up poor. Jonathan and Eddie were both guys very used to never getting what they wanted. They were both hungry. Steve had seen the way Jonathan looked at Nancy — still looked at her — like he was some grubby little orphan outside a toy-store window, staring at the shiniest toy that he knew he wouldn’t get for Christmas. Steve could see the appeal of having that hunger focused on you, of being the shiny toy in the window. For Jonathan (for Eddie), it would be so easy to make him (Eddie) happy; Steve would barely have to do anything. Steve just had to give, and any of the girls Steve had slept with could attest to how happily Steve gave. Steve could just lean back and say “Yes,” and that’s all it would take, Jonathan (Eddie) would know the shiny toy he wanted finally — actually, truly, for real this time — belonged to him.
And, of course, Eddie. Holy shit, Steve could not stop thinking about Eddie. Or, rather, Steve realized how much he’d already been thinking about Eddie. Plenty of the thoughts were platonic things, the kinds of thoughts Steve had about Robin, Dustin, or any of their monster-fighter group. Like, “I’ll tell Eddie about that, he’ll think it’s funny,” and “Has Eddie heard this song on the radio? Seems like something he’d enjoy.” But there were other thoughts too, thoughts that Steve now realized were, very obviously, not platonic. Thoughts like “I would do very stupid things to make Eddie smile with dimples,” and “Eddie would have amazing curls if he’d let me wash his hair with a good conditioner and put some oil on the ends.”
Then, of course, there were the sex thoughts about Eddie. No matter what Robin said, Steve was sure that plenty of straight guys wondered what their friends’ dicks looked like, so that thought wasn’t evidence of anything. But the thought where Steve wondered what Eddie looked like when he was fucking someone was pretty telling. So Steve let himself start having the thoughts about Eddie.
It wasn’t until Steve realized he’d had two variations of the “Winnebago Fantasy” involving Eddie (What if we took the kids on a road trip somewhere? That would be nice; give us all something fun and normal to do. What if Eddie was in a band that went on tour? I could go with them and help out) that he understood how deep in he really was. The question wasn’t “Do I really have a crush on Eddie?”, the question was “When do I tell Eddie I’ve been making a five year plan for the two of us?” It had only taken Steve one week to figure it out.
It had only taken Steve one week to figure it out and then immediately fuck it up.
It was 12:03 AM on Sunday so it was technically their Friend Date Day. Steve stood on his tiptoes and frantically tapped at the window to Robin’s bedroom.
“Robin,” he hissed, “Robin! I’m— I’m having a queer emergency!”
The window shot open.
“Dingus, what the hell are you doing?”
“Let me in!”
Robin moved back and Steve pulled himself up over the windowsill, and ungracefully stumbled into Robin’s bedroom. Steve stepped out of his shoes (Robin was insistent upon no-shoes-on-the-bed) and flopped face down onto Robin’s bed. Robin lay down beside him and rolled onto her side to face Steve.
“Dingus,” she said gently, “What happened?”
Steve rolled onto his side too, so he could look at Robin’s worried face, her lips pressed into a tight little line.
“I fucked it up, Robin.”
“What’d you fuck up?”
“I fucked up with Eddie. I told him about me, about liking girls and guys, and then I asked about the code. I asked him what his bandana meant and he got so mad at me.”
“What? What the fuck was he mad about?”
“He… uh…” Steve hesitated, “Should I be saying? Is saying what the bandana means against the gay rules, like you not being able to tell me if Eddie’s gay?”
“Fuck the gay rules!” hissed Robin, “You’re my best friend and something went wrong. Tell me so I can help.”
“Okay, okay. He said wearing a black bandana in the left pocket means he’s a top — he wants to do the fucking — and he’s a sadist. So he’d wanna hurt me- hurt someone during sex.”
Robin blinked, “Oh. Well, why was he mad at you about that?”
“He kept telling me to back off, but I kept bugging him. Like, I’d never seen him so mad. He kept saying I didn’t know what I was asking for, I wouldn’t want that, and then he just ran off.”
Even relating the series of events in order, Steve was still confused.
“So he was scared the two of you would do it and you wouldn’t like it because you’re not turned on by the same things.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“So are you?”
“Am I what?”
Robin rolled her eyes, “Are you into the things Eddie is into? Would you be into it if Eddie, I dunno, spanked you or something?”
Steve rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He liked it when girls gave him hickies or bit him a little. He liked having his hair pulled. He remembered when Jessica Kinworth had playfully asked him to spank her and he happily delivered a few swats to her cute ass before she laughed, turned around, and pulled him into the bed. Steve imagined the position they’d been in, Jessica leaning across his lap, and he imagined himself in her position with Eddie underneath him. Eddie’s hand on his ass. It was a good visual.
“Steven, you better not be getting an erection while in my bed.”
“Robin! You can’t get mad at my dick when you’re the one that keeps asking me to think about having sex with Eddie!”
“So that’s a yes? You are into Eddie spanking you? You do want to have weird sex with Eddie?”
“I don’t know! I really don’t. I’ve never- I’ve never been the one on that end, so I don’t know if I’d like how it feels. But I think I wanna try it. I wanna find out. With Eddie.”
“Normally, I’m not one to encourage someone to go after a person that’s turned them down, but did Eddie actually say he wasn’t into you?”
“Uh… No. Just the stuff about me not wanting it.”
“He never said ‘Steve, I’m flattered you like me, but I just wanna be friends’?”
“Oh, shit,” gasped Steve, “I never told him I like him.”
Robin slapped her hand on Steve’s chest “Dingus! How did you skip that?”
“Ugh… I told him about me and then I immediately started asking about the bandana. Man, I might as well have said ‘Hey, Eddie, I just realized I’m into guys! Why don’t you suck my dick, since you’re queer and all!’ Fuck, that was dumb.”
“Yeah, that was dumb, but at least you know how to fix it. Tell him you were overcome with joy upon realizing his bandana meant there was a chance he’d be into you.”
“No, Robin, I am not going to say that. I’ll tell him I fucked up how I said it, that I like him, and I want to date him.”
“Simple. Straightforward. Minimal chance of you misunderstanding each other again. Good.”
They lay next to one another in silence for a few minutes.
“Steve?” whispered Robin, “I know you like Eddie. And I like Eddie too, as a friend. But what if… what if he hurts you too much or does something you don’t like on purpose?”
“Oh,” replied Steve, “I never even worried about that. Like, even when he was mad at me, I didn’t ever think he would hurt me because of it. He’s not like the Russians or- or Billy. If Eddie was the kind of person who’d do something like that, it would have shown up somewhere else too.”
Eddie hadn’t mooched off his Uncle Wayne, Eddie had done what he could to help pay the bills while living in a town where no one would hire him for legit work. Eddie sold drugs, but he never actively pushed them onto people, only sold to those who came and asked. When Eddie had been annoyed with Lucas for picking a basketball game over DnD, yeah, Eddie had been a petty little shit about it, but he didn’t force Dustin and Mike to pick DnD over watching Lucas’ game; the jerks had chosen that themselves. Eddie could be petty, bitchy, and mean, but Steve had never seen, or heard of, Eddie doing anything simply to be cruel; whereas Steve was fully aware that he, himself, had been cruel in the past.
“Yeah, no. I’m not worried about that.”
“I don’t think he would either, but I worry about you. Your head doesn’t need any more dents in it.”
“Thanks, Robin. I think… I think I’ll give him a couple days to cool off, and sort out what I want to say before I see him. That would probably have been a good idea the first time around.”
Robin nuzzled her face into her pillow, wedging it against Steve’s shoulder, “Mmkay, Steve. You’re gonna take me to the diner for waffles tomorrow. And whenever you talk to Eddie, you have to call me right after.”
Steve chuckled at how Robin’s speech was beginning to slur as she drowsed off, “Right after? But what if I wanna have weird sex with Eddie?”
“Mmneven then. Even the weird sex.”
Steve pulled the covers over them both, “Good night, Robin."
For someone who’d spent the last 30 (45? 60? Steve hadn’t looked at the clock and time had started to feel weird right around when Eddie told him to take off his shirt) minutes getting slapped, Steve felt amazing. He was stretched out on his back on Eddie’s bed and Eddie was snug against his side, shoulder tucked under Steve’s armpit, head resting on Steve’s chest. Steve pet at Eddie’s hair; it was a little sweaty at the temples and the back of Eddie’s neck, but that was fine. Steve’s whole body was warm and buzzing under his skin. Sure, Steve usually felt good after sex but this felt… more. Some of the more could certainly be attributed to the emotional build up and release, the mounting anxiety after his argument (?) with Eddie, and the relief of finding they were on the same page (Eddie agreed to be his boyfriend! Eddie agreed to go on dates!) and finding that he was absolutely compatible with Eddie’s weird sex stuff, but that wasn’t all of it. It was like the humming exhaustion after working out, after swimming laps. Steve felt like he’d scored the last point in a winning game, he’d done his job, got it right. Eddie was happy so Steve was happy.
Steve shot up in bed, jostling Eddie’s head.
“Mwherr?” mumbled Eddie.
“Shit,” said Steve, “Eddie, I gotta use your phone.”
Steve stumbled into the trailer’s kitchen, grabbing the yellow plastic phone that sat on the formica dinette. Eddie shuffled after Steve, comforter wrapped around him like a cloak. Eddie leant his forehead against Steve’s shoulder and draped his blanket-arms around Steve’s waist.
“Hello?”
“Robin, it’s Steve!”
“Well, obviously, Dingus. What’s up? Why are you calling?”
“I’m calling you after the best weird sex of my life.”
Steve pulled the phone away from his ear as Robin screamed.
“Thank you and good night, Robin.”
Steve returned the phone handset to its cradle.
“What was that about?” asked Eddie, smiling.
“Mmm, let’s go back to bed and I’ll tell you about it.”
“Deal.”