I Don’t Know What Those Stains Are…

Sure, they hooked up a few times. No biggie, Steve told himself. Shutting down, he decided that Eddie only asked him to come with him as something to say instead of ‘thanks for the fucking, see ya’. It occurs to Steve now that he never actually answered, just scoffed and walked away. 

But no matter how he reframed everything, it never eased the sting of separation from the first bright and beautiful thing he'd ever felt. Never stopped him from wondering what if he'd agreed, what if he'd eschewed the employment-matrimony-offspring pipeline.

Now, two kids and a divorce later, he never imagined Dustin's spawn’s wedding reception would be where they'd collide again. Apparently, Carl’s a metalhead who begged his dad to ask the Eddie Munson to play some songs. 

Eddie’s of course gone one better, bringing the whole band. They're used to playing stadiums, but seem entirely comfortable setting up on the venue’s small stage like it's The Hideout, bantering with staff and taking the numerous double-takes and requested selfies good-humouredly. 

The gang flashes horns and waggles tongues, and there's much reminiscing. Steve watches, wondering if there's even a place for him here; does Eddie even remember him?

His question’s answered when he looks over just as Eddie plugs in his Warlock, as vibrant as ever, if a little dinged around the edges. Just like Eddie. There's an electrical hum as the jack slides home, and Steve feels similar, familiar static buzz through his entire body as Eddie looks up, their gazes locking for the first time in a quarter-century. 

It's almost the end of the night when Eddie's finally free enough to catch Steve at the bar, tentatively sitting next to him and ordering two glasses of champagne. He slides one across to Steve and leans in close, a familiar, husky voice murmuring, 

“Hey, sweetheart. So, did you make up your mind yet?”

Thanks so much for reading! 💗💋

Steddie masterlist | General masterlist

A/N: Of course Steve moves in with Eddie and goes on tour with the band and they adopt older kids with special needs and three four insane dogs and live their golden years together and happily ever after *nods* And yes, Dustin's son is named after Carl Sagan.

Monday Morning, the sun streams through your curtains, breaking the dawn of a new day.

Eddie was going to be coming back from Steve’s wedding today and after the late night text he’d sent you in the dusky late hours of last night it was safe to say that you were anticipating things between the two of you to be awkward to say the least. 

You had a the suspicion that that text was nothing more than his drunken conscience making the decisions that sober eddie would surely regret come the morning, but it would be an absolute lie if you told yourself that the thought of him thinking about you, even in his presumed state of tipsiness, didn’t make your heart race.

Because it did. Your heart skipped beats, all because your cute, kind and caring neighbour with the devastatingly alluring brown eyes had thought of you.

Your final check on Pepper this morning had gone smoothly enough, she ate her food and leaned into your affectionate cuddles whilst you gave Eddie’s place a quick check to see that everything was in place before he came back later today.

It had just turned one in the afternoon as you loaded your laundry into the washing machine, when you received a knock at the door. Kicking the washing machine door shut with your foot and pressing the button to whir it into life you make your way over to your front door.

You quickly glance your eye through the peephole in your door and you’re met with a fishbowl lens look at Eddie, his fluffy curls somehow seem even bigger in this view.  He’s tucked his hands behind his back, and rocking back and forth on his heels slightly as he waits on you to unlock the door, and maybe some fantasist part of your brain is imagining it, but he almost looks a little bit excited, like he’d been keen to see you again, but surely, your brain was just teaming up with your heart to play tricks on you.

Sliding your locks open you let him in, bracing yourself with what you hope is a welcoming smile, and not the awkward one that it feels like as it stretches across your lips.

“Hey, Eddie.”

“Hey, yourself, thanks again for looking after Pepper.”

“Honestly it was no problem, she was a sweetheart, you probably want your keys back, right?” you nod. “Come on in, I’ll go get them for you.”

Eddie steps through the threshold of your apartment, his eyes going everywhere immediately. The layout of your respective apartments are virtually the same, but with the way you’ve decorated it, everything feels lighter, fresher, and brighter. The warm afternoon breeze blowing in through the open window, breathes life into the room.

The walls are painted in a soft pink, with various little posters and artworks on the wall. A plush deep green two seater couch sits in the middle of the room with a low rise glass coffee table separating it from the wall mounted television. There’s books stacked into a tall bookshelf, and Eddie tries his hardest to read the titles of the books if only just to see what kind of things you’re into.

There aren’t many books he recognises, but the standout thing he certainly does recognise however, is the three volumes of The Lord of The Rings, each one tucked next to the other in a neat little boxset cover. 

He too was a fiend for the high fantasy adventure series, and knowing

“You’ve read Tolkien?” Eddie asks, his fingers gently grazing over the spines of the books, tracing the gold embossed words of the familiar titles.

“Yeah, I will admit it took me a while, but I loved them! The films are good, don’t get me wrong, but they can only cover so much, you know?” you say as you waltz back into the room, Eddie’s keyrings jangling in between your fingers as you hand them over.

“I know right?” Eddie laughs heartily. “Like where the hell was Tom Bombadil? He’s like one of the most important characters and they just completely left him out of the movies!”

“Oh my god yes!” you laugh in agreement with him. “And don’t even get me started on the fact that they totally cut the bit where Saruman and his thugs take over the Shire! It’s like one of the most important points of the hobbits' development in the story.”

The laughter dies down, and in its place an awkward silence fills the air. Neither one of you wants to bring up the obvious elephant in the room of the late night text, but the fact that both of you know about it hangs around like an unwanted presence all the same.

It’s Eddie who braves the first step, breathing out a sigh before speaking 

“Listen, about that text, I totally didn’t mean-”

“I get it.” you say, quick to cut him off in his tracks. There’s no point in beating around the bush, it’s better to just rip the band-aid off. Quickly. “I know a drunk text when I see one, Eddie.” you say letting a kind, graceful smile pull across your face. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Well I just wanted to apologise all the same, the last thing I want to do is come across as some kind of creep. Especially when it comes to you.”

You try your very best not to dwell too much on what he means by ‘especially when it comes to you.’

“Don’t worry Eddie,” you smile. “It actually made me laugh to receive your text, drunken typos included. God know it’s been a while since I’ve had anyone send me such a sweet message like that”

Moving into this apartment had been the beginning of a fresh chapter in your life. The same old tired story, some dumb girl who thought she had her whole life figured out, and had been too blinded by love to realise she had been sharing her supposedly loyal boyfriend with the woman in his office. 

So many nights of ‘Sorry baby, the company needs me to stay late to close this deal’ but then would slyly sink next to you in between the sheets smelling of some unfamiliarly sweet perfume. It got to a point where you had to admit to yourself that you were simply ignoring the biggest red flag known to man, all in order to live a happy life.

But the thing is, you weren’t happy. You hadn’t been happy in a long time.

That night, as you lay in bed, you plotted the next step in your life.

You waited for him to slither off to work whilst you and your best friend packed up all your belongings. Leaving him with nothing but a less than charming note telling him exactly how you feel.

“I find that hard to believe. A girl like you should be drowning in messages”  Eddie chuckles. “I mean, your ex had to be some kind of special idiot to look elsewhere when he had you in front of him this whole time.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say, Eddie,” you blushed.” But, you’d be surprised how bad the dating scene is out there.” you scoffed with an airy laugh.

“I’ve been out of the game for so long, I wouldn’t even know where to begin” he says earnestly, raking a big tattooed hand through his dark spiral curls, and damn if that doesn’t make your heart skip a beat.

“I actually tried the whole online dating thing for a little while, y’know put myself back out on the scene, but after one too many bad dates you start to lose hope.”

Eddie’s soft brown eyes never move from you as you speak. His gaze would be intimidating, and you supposed in some ways it was, but it was intimidating in a way that felt exciting, but more than that there’s a kindness in those deep chocolate brown eyes that makes you feel safe.

“You can’t just say ‘bad bates’ and leave me hanging, you gotta give me the juicy details.”

“No, no, come on, you don’t want to hear my horror stories.” You laugh. Part of you is a little nervous of scaring him off, not that you’re anything but neighbours to each other, but you can’t help but want to hope for more between you two.

“Look, I work behind a bar, so I’ve had front row seats to a fair share of bad dates, so c’mon, give me your worst, I wanna hear it.” He says, opening his arms up for you, waiting for you to command the stage with your story.

“Okay, but you have to promise me that you won’t laugh.” you preface, before launching into your most embarrassing, worst first date story. “So, I matched with this guy, and I thought he was pretty cute and we chatted and everything was going really well, so we agreed to meet up. There I am, sitting at this coffee shop waiting for my date to turn up and then all of a sudden this old man sits down opposite me, he had to be in mid seventies maybe, and then, of course, I’m thinking  he must be lost or something, but then he says my name like he knows me, and then it dawns on me that I’ve been catfished.”

“Wait, What?” Eddie gasps. “You’d been talking to this old man the whole time and you had no idea? But quickly that look of shock on Eddie’s face turns into an amused smirk tugging at the corner of his pink lips.

“Hey! You promised you wouldn’t laugh!” you plead, but Eddie’s cheeky smile starts to break down your walls, and gets you to crack a smile of your own.

“I think you’ll find I made no such promise.” he says, crossing his arms, puffing up his broad chest.

“It gets worse too”

“I really don’t see how it can get any worse. Oh no, don’t tell me he was married.” Eddie grills, taunting you to see where this story was going to go.

“I almost wish that were the case. No, he was using pictures of his grandson and was claiming that it was him. I didn’t stick around after that.”

“God, that is pretty rough.”

“What about you, come on, you got to hear my worst date story, you’ve gotta give me something to work with.” you try to prompt Eddie, fair was only fair, you’d bore your most embarrassing story, it was only right that you got to hear something from him as compensation.

Eddie sighed a little, almost like he was heavily considering even daring to tell this story to begin with.

“I’m not hearing anything embarrassing..” you tease.

“Okay, so it’s not a first date story like yours, but this is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. I was a fair bit younger when this happened, so I was full of stupid ideas back then. I’d been working behind the bar at the dungeon for a few months at this point and things were going well, except one weekend when I overhear my manager mention that one of the bands that had been booked to play in the evening had pulled out and now they didn’t have anyone to fill the slot for Saturday, so naturally I piped up and said that me and my band could do it, and my manager didn’t question it.”

“I’m getting there.” Eddie laughs softly. “Anyway, cut to the night of the show, and the boys and I are getting ready to go on, and it’s way more people than we’ve ever played to before, so I start to get a bit nervous and knock back a couple of shots of liquid courage”

Oh no, this didn’t sound like it was going to end well.

“So I’m more than a little drunk, I’m slurring words when I’m singing, my guitar playing is all off, my bassist Gareth is scowling at me and it’s just going awful.”

“So that’s your most embarrassing story?” you ask

“Oh no, it gets worse don’t worry. So, the whole show is a mess and in my drunken mind the only thing I can think of to save it is to do a stage dive. I position myself at the edge of the stage and just jump. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t as cool as I pictured it in my head, and ended my night in the emergency room to fix my broken nose and get stitches in my forehead.”

“Oof, and I thought my story was bad, at least I didn’t end my night in a trip to the ER”  

You can’t help but laugh a little at Eddie’s expense, and your bright smile and adorable laugh might just be the cutest thing Eddie’s ever seen. The way your eyes crinkle, and how your nose scrunches, and all because of something he said. There’s a part of him that wants to make a fool of himself, just so he’s rewarded with the sight of your beautiful smile.

He takes his hand and brushes back his dark, frizzy bangs to show you where there’s a small and pale scar hidden in between the few creased wrinkles in his forehead.

“I got this sweet little scar right here as a remind me to never try stage diving ever again”

“Well at least you’re not young and stupid anymore”  you laugh softly.

“Well, I’m not young anymore that’s for sure, still working on the stupid part.” he says with a chuckle. “Anyway, sorry for bothering you, I just wanted to drop by to say thank you for looking after Pepper and my apartment while I was away.”

“You’re not bothering me, it was no problem, she was an angel.”

There’s a beat of a moment. A breath of silence with neither of you quite sure of what to say next. It wasn’t that the silence was awkward, no, what was strange was however, was how comfortable you both felt in the other’s presence.

“Well, I best get going now, but thank you again.” Eddie says, as he rocks back on his heels, swinging his keering around on his finger, almost like he’s nervous or something.

“It was nice seeing you Eddie.” For a brief moment your body automatically thinks about going in for a hug, but your brain works faster and pulls your body back before you can make an awkward scene. 

You walk with him to your apartment door, waving him across the small corridor that separates your two apartments.

“Don’t forget” you call out to him just as he’s about to turn into his own place “ I’m just across the hall if you ever need anything else!”

He gives you a silent nod and two finger salute,  a cheeky smile pulling at his pink lips as he disappears behind his door.

You slip back into your apartment, closing the door behind you. Your hands drag down your face with an embarrassed huff of breath leaving your lips as you thunk your head back against the door. Why did he make you act so stupid?

You hadn’t seen Eddie for a few days, reasoning that your daytime hours are conflicting with his night shifts, and you’re thankful for that actually. Thankful to have a little breather away from whatever hold he seems to have over you and your heart. A chance to level with your feelings about the cute bartender who lives across from you.

You roll out of bed, and take advantage of the day off you have to explore the city a little bit. 

With breakfast eaten and cleared away you change out of your pyjamas into a light and breezy outfit, some denim cut off shorts and a striped linen shirt worn unbuttoned just enough, the open sides knotted around your waist. Finishing off your outfit with a few little pieces of jewellery and a spritz of perfume you grab your bag as you make your way out the door and into the streets.

The sun shines on your face with a balmy heat, as you strut through the neighbourhood, tall apartment buildings with overflowing window boxes, the golden rays glinting off shiny cars parked on the sidewalk. 

You keep walking for a while, stopping into a cute little cafe and grabbing an iced coffee to keep you going.

You know what you’re looking for, and so when you turn the corner the exact building you’re looking for comes into your line of sight. 

Bits & Pots Pottery Studio

You’d made it a point to visit Robin’s studio ever since Eddie gifted that cute mug from her shop.

As you push through the door you’re immediately met with the earthy scent of clay and paint.

There’s a counter in the front of the shop, staffed by a woman with fiery red hair twisted into two long braids that fall around to frame her pale, freckled face. She regards you with her sparkling blue eyes before speaking. She’s wearing a soft lilac apron with a name tag pinned on her chest, along with a few other colourful buttons. Vickie, the name tag reads.

“Hi, welcome to Bits & Pots Pottery Studio, how can I help you today?”

“Hi, I was wondering if I might be able to find Robin? I’m a friend of a friend.” you start out tentatively, because what were eddie and you to each other but friends and neighbours? The fact that you could potentially see something with him had nothing to do with it.

Just as Robin’s name left your lips the girl in question came bobbling in. A soft green, clay splattered apron, although there were suspiciously more bone white clay splotches on her hands, arms and dark brown overalls than there was on her apron.

“Speak of the devil.” Vickie mutters under her breath, before gleefully accepting a kiss on the cheek from Robin.

“You know you love me.” Robin teases back. “Anyway I heard my name..wait..I know you! You were that girl from the bar the other night..right?” 

“Yup that’s me” you nod.

“I’m sorry you had to meet me when I was sloppy drunk, that’s not usually how I like to make my first impressions”

“That’s why you were late in the studio on Monday? You told me you had a dentist appointment!" Vickie scoffs, having caught Robin in a lie.

“Look I was nursing a godzilla sized hangover, I wasn’t in any fit state to see or do anything, okay? Cut me some slack.” Robin defends against Vickie’s accusatory tone of voice. “Anyway, what can I do for you?” Robin asks as she turns her attention to you.

“I was hoping I could grab a chat with you if you’re not too busy?”

“Sure, come on in the back to the drying room, it’s a little more private there, so long as you don’t mind sitting amongst slowly drying clay.” Robin says with a charming little laugh, before calling out to VIckie over her shoulder to look after the front of the shop whilst she’s gone.

You follow in behind Robin to the drying room, where, sure enough, there are stacked shelves full of mugs, vases of different sizes and experimental sculptures that almost look like monsters from another dimension. The room is toasty, the sun gleaming in through the big glass windows turning this place into something akin to a pleasantly warm greenhouse.

“What did you want to talk to little old me about, huh?” Robin asks, as she pulls up her knees on one of the wooden benches. 

“Well, I kinda wanted to ask you something..something about Eddie?” you start carefully. Robin gives you a silent nod so you continue. “I was wondering if you knew anything about his girlfriend. I was looking after his cat, Pepper, while he was away for Steve’s wedding and I stumbled across a picture of him with this girl.”

“You like him don’t you?” Robin asks, although it’s not so much a question but more an assumption, and one she’d nailed down with pin-point accuracy.

A glowing flush works its way across your cheeks and it’s not just from the heat of the drying room either.

“...maybe…” you stutter out a little. “..but if he’s already got a girl I don’t want to make a fool of myself by flirting with him and have him turn me down, I mean we live opposite each other for crying out loud!”

“Hey hey, slow your roll cowgirl,” Robin hushes, quieting your spiraling emotions before they have time to turn into a full blown tornado. Then she sighs, shifting her tone  into something more serious. “Amber really left her mark on Eddie. The Eddie I knew was loud, brash, cocky, and god knows damn right annoying at times, but that was Eddie. By the time Amber was finished with him, it was like his spark had gone out. The thing that made Eddie, Eddie, was nowhere to be seen.”

You ponder Robin’s words for a moment, a wave of relief washes over you at the fact that you certainly wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes by making a pass at Eddie, but then there’s a bigger concern growing inside you about what if you were pushing yourself on Eddie when he wasn’t even ready to open up to letting himself get another chance at happiness?

“Look, just talk to him, he’s not scary, he just needs someone to show him that there’s still some good people out there, y’know?” Robin smiles warmly, “Give him a chance, you might just be surprised."

Sure, they hooked up a few times. No biggie, Steve told himself. Shutting down, he decided that Eddie only asked him to come with him as something to say instead of ‘thanks for the fucking, see ya’. It occurs to Steve now that he never actually answered, just scoffed and walked away. 

But no matter how he reframed everything, it never eased the sting of separation from the first bright and beautiful thing he'd ever felt. Never stopped him from wondering what if he'd agreed, what if he'd eschewed the employment-matrimony-offspring pipeline.

Now, two kids and a divorce later, he never imagined Dustin's spawn’s wedding reception would be where they'd collide again. Apparently, Carl’s a metalhead who begged his dad to ask the Eddie Munson to play some songs. 

Eddie’s of course gone one better, bringing the whole band. They're used to playing stadiums, but seem entirely comfortable setting up on the venue’s small stage like it's The Hideout, bantering with staff and taking the numerous double-takes and requested selfies good-humouredly. 

The gang flashes horns and waggles tongues, and there's much reminiscing. Steve watches, wondering if there's even a place for him here; does Eddie even remember him?

His question’s answered when he looks over just as Eddie plugs in his Warlock, as vibrant as ever, if a little dinged around the edges. Just like Eddie. There's an electrical hum as the jack slides home, and Steve feels similar, familiar static buzz through his entire body as Eddie looks up, their gazes locking for the first time in a quarter-century. 

It's almost the end of the night when Eddie's finally free enough to catch Steve at the bar, tentatively sitting next to him and ordering two glasses of champagne. He slides one across to Steve and leans in close, a familiar, husky voice murmuring, 

“Hey, sweetheart. So, did you make up your mind yet?”

Thanks so much for reading! 💗💋

Steddie masterlist | General masterlist

A/N: Of course Steve moves in with Eddie and goes on tour with the band and they adopt older kids with special needs and three four insane dogs and live their golden years together and happily ever after *nods* And yes, Dustin's son is named after Carl Sagan.