#hellfire radio

“That was real. Right? It was real? That was—” Giddiness causes his voice to spike, break, but he’s too far gone to care. “That was a real monster. Right?”

Eddie can’t make himself stop talking.

There was a monster in the woods. That’s something he needs to process out loud. He knows it’s a problem—that he gets excited and rambles—he’s heard the complaints. It’s the reason he started his own radio show, a place where he could get it all out. But now, here, in the car of a beautiful man, where it would be to his benefit to shut the hell up, he simply cannot stop.

 “My friends aren’t going to believe this! Monsters are real!”

His mouth keeps moving, words spilling out, as the guy next to him remains silent with his eyes focused on the deserted Indiana road.

No, not just the guy. More like the guy. The mystery caller who’d phone into the show once a week or so, knew nothing about cryptids or conspiracy theories, but liked to hear Eddie talk (take that, Gareth, some people liked it when he talked). Without a name to call him by, Eddie jokingly, provokingly, started calling him sweetheart. The first few times it made him stammer, Eddie could practically hear his blush over the line, and then it became habit. He found other things to rile his sweetheart up and no, Jeff, he doesn’t have a crush on a caller, thank you very much. 

Course, then they did the Hawkins episode, and their anonymous caller begged them not to come to town for their own investigation before completely disappearing off the face of the earth, and Eddie had no choice but to come. It was the responsible thing to do.

Eddie hadn’t imagined that his caller with the pretty voice and bitchy attitude would be the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen. Really inconvenient when he’s having a major bout of verbal diarrhea, that it’s making the guy’s mouth form into a stern line, that his knuckles keep going whiter and whiter as they grip the wheel.

His mouth keeps moving, even though he knows he needs to stop. He’s making a terrible first impression, is obviously pissing this guy off, but it’s just—he saw a monster.

He’s horrified to realize that he’s saying all of this out loud, that it’s making a nerve twitch in the jaw of the man he spent several months calling sweetheart. Mid-sentence, he forces his mouth closed, swallows hard enough that his throat clicks.

“You done?” The familiarity of the voice, the hint of disdain, hits him. It rings against his ear drums, stirs his blood.

“Um.” He says. He wants to stop. “Um. Did you know about the monsters? Is that why you told us not to come? Is this--are you allowed to tell me? Will you?”

“I can if you’d stop talking long enough.”

The words snap with condescension, sending heat into his face and blood rushing south. And god, why is he like this, so weak for mean, pretty boys.

“Sorry, I—sorry. It’s a lot, you know? I really want to hear about it, but it’s like how do I take it all in? Add you into the equation—" he mimes his head exploding—“I sorta feel like I’m losing my mind here. I mean, you called in for a month? Two? And then nothing? Had me worried, sweetheart.”

“Steve.”

“Huh?”

“My name is Steve.”

He’s got ten thousand volts running beneath his skin, but he doesn’t want to be the one to break the silence. His three best friends are staring out the windows, expressionless, and he can’t take it if they aren’t as excited as he is.

Honestly, he wishes anxiety had glued his mouth shut when he was alone with Steve instead of now. God, that was so fucking embarrassing.

Hawkins slips further and further into the distance, and it’s only after they pass a highway sign saying sixty miles of interstate separate them from Indianapolis that the silence breaks.

Gareth sits forward, a hard breath escaping him. “Did that really just fucking happen?”

Jeff and Abel both start talking, words bursting out until the whole van is full of them yelling at each other in hysterical excitement. It goes on like that for a while; nothing coherent shared between them until someone—Eddie genuinely has no idea who—asks the first question.

“Rows of teeth?”

“How tall was it?”

“The claws: stilettos or daggers?”

“You get a read on its speed stats?

“Did it smell?”

“On the spectrum of slug to snake, what was the flesh like?”

“Max. hit points, right? Like, rolling crits on every turn?”

Eddie answers the best he can, even though it was dark and he was distracted by Steve doing stuff like existing and being nearby and protecting him.

They talk about it for the rest of the drive, never stopping for a second, barely taking time to breathe, but it peters out as they take their exit, stopping altogether once they’re in their neighborhood.

They get stopped at the light before their block, and Jeff looks at him. Eddie doesn’t turn, but he feels the intensity of the stare.

“What?” He asks. He reaches out to push Jeff’s face away, but he dodges it.

“That Steve Harrington, huh?”

“What about him?”

Jeff snorts. “What about him,” he mocks. “You finally meet the guy and he’s exactly your type.”

I don’t have a type!!” Eddie gasps. His foot slips off the brake, rocking everyone in the van forward with matching yelps.

“Jesus, man, watch it,” Abel gripes. He rubs his shoulder where it crashed into Eddie’s seat. “You definitely have a type.”

“Do not!”

 “Pretty, bitchy boys.” Abel says. 

“No.” It’s Eddie’s turn to yelp.

“You’re on the line with Hellfire Radio,” the voice low and deep, almost a growl.

“Uhh, hi.” Throat cleared. “Hi.”

“Are you scared, little imp?” Deeper, teasing.

“No. Just. Never done this before.”

“Oh-ho, a virgin!”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I bet you wouldn’t, big boy. What can I do to make you comfortable for your first time?”

Out of the darkness, a strangled voice asks, “Eddie?”

He forces himself upright, blinks past the dizziness, but he can’t see for shit, and that flashlight—unharmed in his heroic and terrible attempt at self-defense—points uselessly at a tree trunk. With a rustle and snap of twigs, the beam sweeps an arc through the trees until it reveals a square jaw and full lips, a scattering of moles on a sun-browned throat.

“Steve?”

“Did—did you tackle me?” He asks.

“Um.” Eddie’s face flushes hot. “Yeah.”

There’s a second where he thinks Steve might deck him, the way his chin goes stiff and his jaw ticks. He braces himself, thinks he probably deserves it, but Steve’s face goes all wobbly, and then he starts—laughing?

It’s a choked snorting at first, horrible, the least attractive thing he’s seen Steve do, and it still buzzes through his system like his first cigarette of the day. Literally everything Steve does is hot, even this, even when his words are sharp and meant to cut, Eddie can’t get enough. The realization makes him laugh, and then they’re both going, until they’re breathless and tearful. He lets himself pretend it’s all a joke, that this is normal, that every giggle isn’t edged with hysteria.

Just as he’s finally falling to hiccups, his stomach muscles aching, Steve goes sharply quiet in a way that signals danger.

 “Shit, is it—” He can’t help looking--the sharp turn of his head enough to have his hair spinning out around him--but the only thing to see is darkness.

 “No, it’s—stop panicking,” Steve says. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Huh?” Eddie blinks at him.

“Your nose.”

In the Steve of it all, he’d forgotten his pathetic defensive attempt, and he prods at his face. “Oh, fuck,” he groans as the pain blooms.

“You touched it, didn’t you?” Steve’s voice is flat, edged with something like bemusement. Even now, even hurt, Steve's obvious annoyance spikes Eddie’s heart rate.

“I—”

“You’re a mess.” It’s not nice, not affectionate, but Eddie goes warm all the way to his toes anyway.

Feet shuffle through the carpet of dead leaves, and Steve drops to his knees at Eddie’s side.

He shifts to put space between them, Steve’s sudden closeness putting his body on high alert. “What are you doing?” 

“Looking at your nose.” Which makes Eddie shiver when it absolutely should not, and when Steve says, “tilt your head up for me,” his spine straightens, head snapping high.

Shame and arousal pool in his blood, and he wishes he could resist Steve’s words, his charms, his effortless beauty even when he’s anything but.  

They never did find it, the Demogorgon that came after him and Eddie. Every lead turned up a dead end. No gates, no more attacks, no re-awakened hive mind for El and Will.

Steve’s certain it’s still out there, but the how’s and whys are a mystery. It should’ve died when they killed Vecna; it shouldn’t have survived the final closing of every gate. But—

He drives down Hawkins’s dark, quiet streets, fear in the passenger seat, his fingers itching to reach for the stereo dial to tune into Hellfire. It’s a constant battle, like the conflict stuff they talked about in English class—him vs. himself, or whatever.

As impossible as it seems, he fucking misses Eddie. Loud, obnoxious, too enthusiastic. He was like that on the radio too, but Steve didn’t realize that was his actual personality; nowhere close to charming. Still, Steve finds himself flipping through stations just for the sound of Eddie's voice.

He thinks of Eddie the most while he’s doing his patrols, remembers his wild hair and wilder smile; his gleeful, manic laugh and sparkling button eyes; the way those eyes seemed to seek Steve out at every opportunity. And secretly, shamefully, the plumpness of his pink lips, the movement of his sinewy muscles under Steve’s hands, the tantalizing peeks of pale tattooed skin under Eddie's cut-off.

It’s not the act of wanting that makes him ashamed—he’s had plenty of time and conversations with Robin to come to terms with liking guys too—it’s the way he wants him.

What he wants to do to Eddie Munson are things he never considered, never even thought of, before. And he’d seen the magazines, of course, at a little alt bookstore Robin liked in Indy. The half-naked men in leather, the ball gags, the different colored bandanas, but it wasn’t something he was into. He thought. Until Eddie.

Eddie blabbed and blabbed, the excitement literally rolling off him as they drove to Hopper’s, and that only made Steve want it more. The need to demand, to make Eddie behave, rolled through him like thunder, almost more furious than he could contain.

Steve didn't tell Robin. The night of, he was awash in a desire he didn’t understand and then none of it mattered because he and Eddie weren’t allowed to know each other. It was for the best, he knew, but—

Well, he hadn’t really lived a life where he was denied the things he wanted, especially when it came to sex.

He jams his foot on the gas and turns the stereo up until Livin on a Prayer is the only thing he knows.

A chorus of laughter and shouts makes the audio peak.

“He’s got your number, Jeff,” Eddie says, cackling.

“That’s—that’s not fair! He doesn’t even believe in cryptids!” Jeff cries.

“I don’t, but you do.”

“Tell him--,” Jeff says, a little high-pitched. “Tell him I don’t have to think everything is real.”

Eddie still, laughing, “No, no, the man has a point.”

“He does,” Abel and Gareth confirm.

“Look, there’s no credible evidence—” Jeff starts but is drowned out by boos.

“Is there credible evidence of any of this?”