I've got brainrot about 2 idiots from the 80s

“Actually … Would the two of you mind leaving me alone with her for a moment? Not for long, promise. I just wanna properly say my goodbyes.”

Steve's hand is on top of his before he even realizes he moved. He can feel Wayne's eyes boring into his neck as he squeezes Eddie's fingers. He finds that he doesn't care.

“Of course. Take as much time as you need.”

Wayne trails after him as he descends the steps and moves a few yards down the path, the silence between them thick in the everlasting magical hush that hangs over the place. Steve rubs his stinging neck, desperately searching his brain for some harmless conversation topic. The weather? The name of the flowers growing by the side of the path?

“He said you saved his life.”

Or they could talk about that.

Jeff isn’t an idiot. Chrissy is beautiful. He’s also learned she’s incredibly nice and funny once she gets comfortable with you. It didn’t take him longer than crossing the state line of Indiana to develop a crush.

He didn’t think sharing a bed tonight would be a problem, but now that he sees her bouncing on what is clearly a waterbed, he’s not sure he’ll be able to sleep at all.

“Oh my gosh, my friend has one of these. It’s like being on a boat!” She giggles again as she bounces a bit more.

Jeff smiles at her. He can’t help it. She’s been pretty quiet for most of the trip. Obviously scared about the future, worried about having to make a new life for herself. Jeff would be scared, too. Shit, he is scared, and he’s just one step in her journey.

“Come here!” She waves him over with one hand and pats the bed next to her with the other. “It’s fun!”

Jeff’s pretty sure he’ll do anything to see her keep smiling, so he joins her. She nudges his shoulder and he bounces himself, which bounces her, and then they’re both laughing. They bounce more, even after Jeff stopped trying to, and eventually lose their balance, falling backwards on the bed.

He looks over to see her smiling up at the ceiling as both of their bodies keep moving to the rhythm the bed’s made.

When she looks over at him, he quickly looks up at the ceiling, hoping she doesn’t notice he was staring.

Her arm touches his, then her hand finds his and she laces their fingers together. He feels like he can’t breathe.

“Thank you for doing this,” she says quietly. There’s still a hint of a smile in her voice, but she’s gotten more serious now. “I know it’s a lot to take on. Risking yourself and everything. I just…”

“Needed to get out, I know.”

Jeff turns to look at her again and she doesn’t look nearly as sad as she did this morning. She’s almost glowing. Distance from Hawkins has clearly done wonders for her.

“Will you stay when we get there?”

“Oh.” Jeff breathes out. “Probably for a bit, so it’s not suspicious that I was only gone for a few days. But I have to get back to my parents.”

“Right.”

Her smile drops, but she doesn’t look away.

“Will you visit?” She asks. She almost sounds hopeful.

“Definitely. Once Steve and Eddie have a new place, I’ll probably bring more of their stuff to them,” Jeff says. “And I’m sure they’ll bring you with them.”

“What if they bring me somewhere else?”

“Then I’ll visit you there.”

He doesn’t know that he could, really. He has quite a bit of allowance money saved up, but he used some of it for this trip since Steve and Eddie pretty much had to start over and don’t have much to their name. If they take her somewhere he has to fly, he’d eat up a lot more of it. Maybe all of it. He doesn’t know how far they’ll go to keep her safe.

He’s pretty sure he’d go anywhere, though.

“You’re a good guy, Jeff.”

He can feel the heat on his face as she leans her head over to rest against his shoulder. He can’t help but lean his head down on top of hers.

“You wanna take a shower?” Jeff asks after they lay like that for a few minutes.

Chrissy sighs and stands up from the bed, laughing when she almost loses her balance from the water making sloshing noises as she moves.

She walks towards the bathroom and strips off her shirt. Jeff pretends not to look.

“I’ll be quick,” she says. When Jeff thinks it’s safe to look, he sees her taking off her pants. He doesn’t look away fast enough. She winks at him. He’s dead. “Or we could just both take one. Since there’s probably not much hot water.”

That could be true, but he’s fine with a cold one. Or he was, until this offer presented itself.

“Like…naked?” Jeff sits up.

“Well, yes. We do have to get clean,” Chrissy giggles again. It’s so cute. “Or maybe I read this wrong…”

“No!” Jeff stands up as quickly as he can. “I want to do that! Let’s shower!”

'So, I think everyone is dying to know if you and Eddie Munson are friends. You're both from Hawkins, Indiana. Isn't that correct?' the interviewer asks.

Robin's smile slips a bit, 'I- uhh, this is going to be unprofessional of me but I made a promise to someone regarding if I was ever asked about Eddie Munson. So, can I have one minute to make a phone call before I answer your question?'

'Oh. By all means, make your call.'

Eddie watches as Robin is brought her phone by someone who is probably her personal assistant. She wastes no time in unlocking it and finding whoever in her contacts list.

'No time for formalities. I've been asked about Munson. Can I tell the truth?' Robin's mic isn't strong enough to pick up whatever answer she gets on the phone but she shakes her head to whatever answer she's been given. 'I told you, I love you more than this career and I've already got the grammy. I'll handle the fallout. It's not about me. It's about you.' What follows is a few seconds of silence before Robin nods and says goodbye, ending the call and passing the phone back to the PA.

The interviewer's eyebrows are up to her hairline in shock. 'That sounds ominous. You think it's career ending?'

Robin grins and it's almost feral. 'Corroded Coffin's fans have always been ruthless, and perhaps a bit heartless, so what I have to say will certainly set them on the attack. To answer your original question, yes, Eddie Munson and I are from Hawkins. We even shared band class in high school, but that's the end of what connects us. We are not friends, but we once were.'

'Can you elaborate on that?'

'Our friendship ended ten years ago when he ruined my best friend's life for fame and fortune, and Steve's never really known a day of peace since.'

Eyes wide, the interviewer leans closer, 'Steve? As in, Hey Steve, Steve?'

Robin nods, 'Just the one.'

'Are you prepared to talk about how one song ruined your friend's life?'

'That was the purpose of the phone call. Yes, I think people should know the truth. Munson vented his bullshit breakup rage into a song and fucked off out of town. A week after its release, his fans doxxed Steve. He wasn't out to his parents, you see, and Corroded Coffin's fans, Eddie Munson's fans, outed him. They sent hate mail to his house by the ton, it seemed. The fallout from that- the aftermath-' Robin cuts off as her eyes water and she swipes at them, smearing some mascara across her cheek. 'I'm sorry. I almost lost my best friend, the platonic love of my life, that day.

'It's public knowledge, what happened, you can look it up online if you know what to look for. But it is also so incredibly personal. I want to be the one to say this because it's important. What you do in life, it has consequences, and sometimes those consequences are for other people. Whether you think it will, or not. I'd rather people hear it from a human voice, from someone who loves Steve, and not the journalist view. No offense,' Robin shoots the interviewer a sweet smile.

'None taken, please continue.'

'Steve was hospitalized, I won't give the details,' Robin says, in a watery voice as she's clearly trying to not cry at the memory. 'When Steve was finally released from the hospital, there was no one but me to pick him up. And he's going through this while nursing a broken heart. He and Munson had only been broken up for maybe a month before Hey Steve came out.

'In less than two months, Steve had lost his parents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. And to top it off, that man gets to become rich and famous off a venomous, hate-filled song about their breakup. It talks about Steve like he's coward for not willing to be out, yet, and how... what's the line, about conformity?'

'Conformity holds your leash, baby, so run to the end of your chain and bark,' someone off camera shouts.

'Yes, that, thanks. Accusing Steve of picking 'conformity' over his love. Steve wasn't picking conformity, he was picking safety! And the worst part? The hate mail has never stopped. Steve lived with me and my family for a few months after getting out of the hospital before the hate mail got too much, and someone showed up at my childhood home, looking for him, threatening him. They had a gun. It was traumatic. I was still in my senior year of high school-' Robin cuts off, taking deep breaths.

The interviewer reaches across to place a comforting hand on Robin's, 'I can't even imagine what that must have been like.'

Once Robin has composed herself, she says, 'sorry, this is a lot. I've had ten years to come to terms with it, and I've waited seven for someone to ask me about Munson. I didn't think it would be this hard.

'And it's not- I can't blame Munson, or Corroded Coffin, for everything that happened. He doesn't control his fans. But he's never said anything about the treatment his fans give Steve. And if they're like this towards Steve, are they like this towards all his other ex's? Does Munson not care, or, almost worse, does he not even know?' she stops again, getting a faraway look for a moment before looking at the interviewer again. 'I had to help Steve move again. Just last month. They're still finding him. Sending him hate. Doxxing him.' Now she looks at the camera directly, "Eddie Munson. Call off your fans. Stop playing Hey Steve at concerts. Isn't a decade of hurt enough?'

There isn't a lot that makes Eddie feel anything these days, he'll admit. A decade of fame has made him a bit cynical and callus. However, Robin had said something that made his insides squirm. He swipes across the screen, rewinding the video to hear Robin say Steve had lost his parents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. -ents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. The man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. Marry one day.

He pauses the video. That can't be right. That has to be a lie Robin is adding. To garner more sympathy or make Eddie, and therefore Corroded Coffin, look worse. Steve and he had been young and naive when they'd dated. There was no way they'd have ended up married, even if Eddie had stuck around Hawkins longer. Gay marriage wasn't even legal when they broke up in 2013.

Eddie unpauses, skips forward to the end and listens to Robin speak directly to him. Stop playing Hey Steve? The song that rocketed Corroded Coffin into the limelight? No way. And call off his fans? Like they're dogs he's supposed to control or something. The video ends and the YouTube algorithm shows him a number of react videos. Eddie clicks on one and falls down the rabbit hole.

At first the algorithm shows him responses in his favor. Videos made by his fans defending him, or strategically picking apart what Robin had said. Eddie wants to agree with them, he doesn't think he's done anything wrong other than live his life, but then.

Then a video of a guy wearing merch sold during their tour last year plays. He's on the right side of the video while a screen recording is on the left. It takes him less than five minutes to get Steve's past addresses found. And Eddie is... well, he's a little horrified at how long the list is. At the short amount of time Steve's spent in any one place is.

The guy in the video reads out the state, city, and how long Steve lived at each address. The longest one is when Steve made the jump from Florida to Maine, where he lived for 19 months according to the video, and that was years ago.

And then the guy, he fucking starts to speculate about where Steve might have moved to next.

"We can't know for sure, but it looks like he headed back west? You can see from the last 3 addresses he's been just jumping state lines to the next place. I'm guessing Oklahoma, Kansas or Nebraska next. If Steve thinks he can try and ruin Corroded Coffin through Robin Buckley, then it's up to us to prove him wrong," the guy is saying, and Eddie thinks maybe this guy is just exaggerating but the comment section is already filled with other people saying vile shit about what they should send to Steve or what they'd like to do to him physically and-

Eddie clicks off the video, to the next recommended. The more he watches, the angrier they seem to get. He goes to the search bar and looks for new react videos.

He finds that everyone has an opinion. He watches videos where his own fans express their disappointment in him. They talk about how Corroded Coffin runs an antibully campaign and then allows their fans to bully an ex and for not calling out the ones doxxing people, wanting to know which was the reason - does Eddie not know, or does he not care? Eddie didn't know. Truly. But he can't help but wonder if he didn't know because he didn't care.

He'd written all his feelings into a song, and now that he's older, he can see that a lot of what he was feeling is an exaggeration and dramatization of what really happened. But the point is, he'd written out his feelings and moved on.

The man he thought he'd marry one day.

His stomach twists uncomfortably as Robin's voice rings in his mind.

He continues his spiral down YouTube until Gareth calling him again breaks through and he answers.

"How is this the first time I'm hearing about Robin's interview?" Eddie demands.

"You've got a damn good PR team, that's how. I guess you fell down the rabbit hole, then?"

"How'd you-"

"Is been almost 4 hours since we talked. Doesn't take that long to watch a 30 minute video."

"Oh. Alright. So, why did you want me to watch the video? Am I supposed to respond to Robin?"

"No. People don't actually want to hear from you. They want to hear from Steve. And that's why you needed to watch. 'Cause Robin's announced that Steve's finally ready to make a statement. Robin's going to post it on her Twitter. Tonight. So, we've got to be ready. If anything Robin said turns out to be true, we might have a problem on our hands. A slander lawsuit being just the beginning."

"Fuck."

"What a way to sum it up," Gareth chuckles into the phone before his tone becomes serious, "hey, how are you doing, though? With it all?"

He thinks about it, and how he really feels, before answering. "It's been years since I've thought about Steve, y'know? I... I've had that luxury. I didn't know.... Did you?"

"No. Hell no! I'd of said something. I mean, shit man, we run an antibully campaign 'cause high school was shit to us. If I'd known at all we'd have been telling them to fuck off. Harassment's just what they call bullying adults."

Eddie swallows. "Guess we just have to wait and see what Stevie has to say."

"I'd come sit on the couch with you and refresh twitter frantically but, well, Indy's a bit of a ways off. I'll call after Robin's posted, then?"

"Yeah, man. Let's see the damage," Eddie sighed. "Talk to ya later."

"Bye."