CW for mental health mention, and dead Eddie. I’m sorry. I tried to make it funny though
Steve loves his job, which he never imagined would possibly happen.
He doesn’t have a manager breathing down his neck, the hours are consistent, and the work is rewarding. The customers are hit and miss, but what else is new?
At 8pm sharp, Steve pulls up to Roane Hill Cemetery, whistling a tune to himself as he exits his car and gets all the necessary supplies he needs for the night.
“Keep it down! Some of us enjoy the peace and quiet, Steven.”
Steve sighs and turns to look towards the shrill voice. “Good evening to you too, Mrs. Springs.”
The voice harrumphs. “I don’t like your tone.”
“Sorry. Want me to start on yours first?” He asks, walking to the first headstone in the first row.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
A cold washes through him suddenly, a complete 180 from the humid warmth of the summer air. Steve rubs his arms and mumbles to himself, “I hate when they do that.”
The first time one of the spirits passed through him, Steve thought he was going to have a heart attack. In his interview, they hadn’t said anything about the supernatural, although after Hawkins Lab that didn’t surprise him.
Now it’s been three months, and Steve’s gotten used to them. Despite being dead, all of the residents of Roane Hill Cemetery are pretty much exactly how they were when they were alive. Well, minus a body.
As he makes his way down row after row, cleaning off the headstones and maintaining the plants, a familiar chuckle dances through the breeze, melodic in Steve’s ear. He closes his eyes and just soaks it in before a voice says, “Hey there, big boy.”
Steve runs his brush over the words Eddie Munson 1965-1986 with reverence. “How ya doin’, dude?”
Eddie’s incorporeal voice hums to himself, and Steve can sense the shrug. “Same ol’, same ol’. Oh! Logan’s best friend came by, and oh my god,” he ends excitedly.
Steve perks up, eyebrows raised, and a wide smile on his face. “Tell me! Did he get into State?”
“No, but he got into the dean’s pants.”
“No fucking way!”
It’s amazing what people talk about, what they confess to, when they think no one is listening. The massive amount of information about random people around town that Steve knows from talking with the spirits is ridiculous. He knows more about who cheated on who, who stole money, where they hid it, etc, than anyone else probably. It keeps the seeming monotony of his job interesting.
Eddie had been the reason Steve got this job in the first place. When he went to visit and talk to Eddie’s headstone, he felt…something. Like he was being watched, but not in a horror movie way. It was comforting. Like an angel, if Steve believed in that. At the time, he didn’t know why it would make any difference. It was just an empty casket they buried after all, but when the groundskeeper found Steve scrubbing spray paint off Eddie’s headstone for the fifth time that month, he had been asked to apply so that he could at least get paid for doing the groundskeepers job.
It only took two shifts before Eddie said something, and being the dramatic asshole he is, it was a simple “Hiya, Steve-O” right by Steve’s ear.
Highly effective on someone who is:
1) alone
2) in a goddamn cemetery
and 3) is standing in absolute darkness
Steve still remembers the shiver running down his spine, his body instantly tensing, and breathing picking up dramatically. Eddie had to bring him back from what was pretty much a panic attack, explaining as best he could what was going on. Still, despite everything Upside Down related Steve had been through in his life, he was convinced he finally lost his mind and had a one-way ticket to Pennhurst.
It took Eddie revealing his most intimate secret with Steve to believe that it was really Eddie he was hearing. The secret had been way too good for it to be Steve’s mind making it up.
“Steve, you have to swear on your life that you will never reveal this information to anyone,” Eddie had said sternly.
Steve held back a laugh that threatened to burst out hearing the tone in Eddie’s voice, but he went along with it, sarcastically saying, “I’ll take it to my grave.”
“Uh uh,” Eddie tuts, “even after that. There’s a lot of loose-lips in this fucking place. So, swear you’ll never reveal this to anyone,” Eddie finishes.
Steve rolls his eyes, but still takes a finger, crosses it over his heart like he did in grade school, and holds his hand palm up. “I swear.”
Eddie lets out an unnecessary long breath. “I bought a Wham! tape once.”
Steve’s jaw drops. “You’re fucking with me.”
“Why would I lie about that?” Eddie asks incredulously.
Steve beams at the thought of Eddie Munson listening to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go in his van.
“Now do you believe it’s really me?”
“If you sing Careless Whisper to me, sure,” Steve says with a laugh.
And that was that.
Since Robin and the kids all moved away for college, Eddie had become Steve’s only remaining friend in Hawkins. It should make him feel pathetic, his only friend in town is someone he can’t even see, and some days he does feel that way. That thought doesn’t put a damper on the fact that he has Eddie again. Even if it’s just a fraction of him.
It's fine.
It's fine as long as he can come here every day.
It’s fine as long as Eddie isn’t just a bloodstained memory he revisits in his nightmares and daydreams.
------------------------------------------
“Hey, Harrington, wanna play 20 questions?”
Steve wipes the sweat from his brows. The heat from the ninety-nine degree day is still lingering, even with the sun far past setting. “Sure.”
“Okay, cats or dogs?” Eddie starts.
“Both,” Steve answers, still scrubbing away and cursing the assholes that keep vandalizing.
“You swing both ways, eh?”
Steve chuckles and shrugs. “I guess.”
Eddie hums to himself. “Favorite ghostie here?” Steve can practically see the wide, shit eating grin Eddie would undoubtedly have if he could see him.
“Oh, that’s easy. Phyllis. She promised me her banana bread recipe.” Coldness hits his shoulder, like someone smacked him playfully.
“Hardy har har, you’re fucking hilarious. Then Gary is my favorite groundskeeper, so screw you.”
Steve laughs. “Gary retired, like, two months ago.”
“But he’ll live in my heart forever,” Eddie says, ending with a wistful, dramatic sigh that makes Steve snort. “First relationship?”
“Oh god. Uh, I was in seventh grade, and Linda Albright and I dated for a single day,” Steve says, turning his head towards Eddie’s voice with a smile. “She said I was too clingy when I asked to hold her hand, like, five times.”
Eddie chuckles. “I’m sure Linda Albright is kicking herself to this very day.”
Steve snorts again and shrugs.
“Have you ever been in love?” Eddie asks next.
Steve hesitates a moment, and tries to keep his voice neutral when he answers, “Yeah…a couple times.”
“What happened?”
“Well, you know about Nancy.”
“Yeah.”
“And for a minute, there was Robin.”
“Who is gay,” Eddie says matter-of-factly with a chuckle.
Steve laughs. “Who is very gay, yep.”
“Anyone else?”
Steve pauses for a moment, thinking about the week from hell and the man that unwittingly changed his life. His mind supplies him the image of a wide grin, dark curls, and deep, brown eyes that made Steve feel like they could swallow him whole if he looked at them too deeply. His stomach twists the way it normally does when he thinks about the possibility of what could have been, but what ended along with Eddie’s heart beat.
“Almost,” Steve whispers. They’re both quiet for a moment, and he starts scrubbing the slur in red spray paint with vigor. “What about you?” he asks.
“What about me?” Eddie replies, voice lower, and with a twinge of sadness that makes Steve’s heart ache.
“You ever been in love?”
Eddie’s quiet for a while, and Steve thinks he might have left, gone to wherever they go when they’re not hanging around him. A coldness slowly moves closer to him, like Eddie is sitting right next to him now. Steve imagines Eddie twisting his rings, eyebrows furrowed.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, voice as close as Steve expected.
He wishes he could reach out to him, to comfort him in the ways he’s most familiar with. Since he can’t, Steve asks, “Wanna tell me about it?”
A dry chuckle, and Eddie says, “As long as you promise not to punch me in the face.”
“Little hard to do considering I can’t even see your face, dude.”
“Touché.” Steve waits, letting Eddie take his time. If he can give Eddie anything, it’s time.
“I guess I should start by saying it’s a guy. Kind of an important fact,” Eddie states, clearing his throat despite not having a need to. “Probably the straightest guy I’ve ever met. Or, at least I thought so.”
“What makes you think he’s not?”
Eddie sighs. “I don’t know. There were some moments between us, like, in the 24 hours before I… y’know, became bat food and all that,” he chuckles. Steve doesn’t. He sits there at attention, hand stilled and gripping the brush.
“I had always had a crush on this guy, and always hated the fact that I did. What really sealed the deal though was finding out he was actually… a pretty good dude,” Eddie pauses, and Steve feels that wave of comfort wash over him. “And then this guy kept looking at me like…like maybe he felt the same way. I don’t know, it’s stupid. It doesn’t matter.”
“Eddie —”
“Hey, it doesn’t matter. He’s got a full life waiting for him, and I have the afterlife,” Eddie says with a forced laugh. “Que sera sera. Or whatever Doris Day sang about.”
Before Steve can respond, the coldness and comfort are gone, and he’s left with a hollow ache in his chest where his heart should be.
In the weeks after, Eddie acts like it never happened, and Steve doesn’t know what he can say. In his mind, there’s no happy ending here. No possibility that what he wants, what they both want, can come to be.
So, Steve does what he knows. He shows up, he upkeeps the grounds, and he spends precious time with the man that could have been more.
____________________
SORRY! Inspired by this post, but make it sad. Thank you @sidekick-hero for looking over this and making me feel better when anxiety brain was being a right bastard.
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