don't you forget about me (part two)
(part one)
Steve doesn’t know how long they sit there in silence, waiting. It’s making him insane. The seconds pass too slow; the seconds pass too fast. His mind is a storm; his mind is empty. He’s feeling too much; he’s not feeling at all. He paces the room; he sits catatonically against a wall. He needs to get out of here; he needs to stay.
He’s been here before, just barely over a week ago, tense and anxious and despairing and waiting for news. But waiting to hear if Eddie will ever remember him again really should not feel this much worse than waiting to hear if Eddie will ever fucking breathe again. Steve thinks there must be something wrong with him. He’s being selfish and stupid. His pathological fucking need to be loved is not what’s important right now. Eddie is alive and awake and okay and that’s the only thing that really matters. That’s the only thing he should really care about.
Steve’s pacing again now, yanking his hands through his hair as he does laps around the room until Eddie finally appears in the doorway.
Eddie must’ve just cracked a joke or something because the nurse is laughing as she pushes his bed into the room and he’s got this adorable grin on his face. Steve’s heart twists in his chest and he nearly bursts into tears all over again because god does he want nothing more than to press a kiss to those dimpled cheeks.
“Good news, boys,” Eddie announces. “My brain is fully intact.”
“There’s no physical permanent damage to his brain,” the nurse elaborates. “His amnesia is likely a result of psychological trauma and the temporary disruption of brain function from blood loss and lack of oxygen that occurred at the time of his injury. But there is no obvious reason why he shouldn’t regain his full memory, given time.”
So there’s hope. Steve breathes a sigh of relief.
“That is good news,” Wayne agrees.
Steve asks, “How much time?”
The nurse gives an unhelpful shrug. “Impossible to say. It could be anywhere from days to months, or even years. I’m sorry, there’s no way for us to know.”
Years. “Okay.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. He can keep it together. He can. “Thanks,” he tells the nurse. “I, uh-” He makes the mistake of looking at Eddie who looks right through him, and Steve can’t keep it together anymore actually. “I gotta update the kids,” he mutters, backing his way towards the door. Wayne nods in acknowledgment; no protests this time at Steve’s excuse to leave.
“See ya, Harrington,” Eddie calls after him, casual, impersonal, like they're nothing more than acquaintances passing by each other in a high school hallway.
Steve can’t get out of that hospital fast enough.
He makes it to his car in record time, slamming the door shut and sinking heavily into the driver’s seat. A ragged sob tries to claw its way up his throat now that he’s finally alone, but he forces it back, staving off his breakdown for just a little bit longer. As much as it was an excuse, he really does have to update the kids.
Steve fishes his walkie out of the glove box. “Code - whatever, I don’t know. Code Eddie,” he says. He doesn’t remember the kids’ system of codes, nor would he be sure which one this news falls under even if he did.
“Is he okay? Is he awake?” comes an immediate, eager response from Dustin. “Over.”
“Yeah, he’s awake, and he’s fine, except he’s got pretty bad amnesia. The doctors say it should be temporary, but right now he doesn’t remember anything since May of ‘85,” Steve explains, trying his best to keep his voice even.
“Steve, come pick me up and take me to see him,” Dustin demands, “right now. Over.”
“Me too. Over,” Mike chimes in before Steve can respond.
“And us,” Erica adds as well.
Steve pauses for a second, both to steady his own breath and to make sure no one else wants to jump in on this too, before he reminds them, “He won’t know you, any of you.”
“I don’t care,” Dustin says, bossy as ever. “Just come get me. Over.”
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Steve mutters to himself. He sucks in another breath; it wobbles dangerously. He’s just about reached his limit on how long he can keep himself from falling apart. “I- I need a minute, alright?” he manages through the walkie. “Can you just give me, like, an hour? And then I’ll take you guys to visit Eddie.”
Steve doesn’t wait for a response before he slams the antenna closed, tosses the walkie aside, and finally, finally lets himself shatter. That sob rips free from his throat, followed by another and another and another. Tears flood from his eyes; his nose runs. It’s an ugly, gross, visceral cry that leaves him exhausted and raw and aching to be held by the time the last sob shudders out of him. Drained and hollow, he craves the embrace of someone who knows him, someone who loves him.
He sweeps up his broken pieces, wipes the mess of tears and snot off his face, and drives to Robin’s house.
“Steve, oh my god.” Robin pulls him into a hug the second she opens the door and sees the look on his face. Steve clings to her. “What happened?”
“Eddie’s awake,” he mutters dismally.
“Oh! Not the tone I’d expect you to deliver that news in, but okay.” Robin pulls back, looking at him with narrow-eyed concern and confusion as she analyzes his puffy eyes and red nose and swollen lips. “And you look like you’ve just been crying because…?”
“Because he doesn’t remember me, Rob,” Steve sighs. “He doesn’t remember anything from the past 11 months.”
Robin’s eyes go wide now. “Shit,” she says, so plainly it startles a short laugh out of Steve.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Shit.”
She asks him more questions as she walks down the hallway so they can talk in her room. Steve once again reiterates what was said at the hospital.
“So you didn’t tell him you two were a thing?” Robin asks, closing her door behind them.
“Of course I didn’t.” Steve flops back onto her bed. “I didn’t want to spook him.”
She sits beside him. “You didn’t want to spook him,” she repeats, looking down at him with raised eyebrows, “but you told him about Vecna.”
“Well, yeah. I just-” He lifts his arms to gesture vaguely into the air as he tries to explain himself. “I mean, imagine how you would feel if you woke up in a hospital and some random guy you’ve spoken to maybe twice was by your bedside telling you you’ve been in a relationship with him for the past 9 months.”
“Uh, I don’t know, dingus, probably about the same as I’d feel if said guy told me I’d nearly died fighting some evil twisted creature from a hell dimension,” Robin retorts.
Steve drops his hands onto his chest with a huff, shaking his head. “No, trust me. He seemed far less surprised by that than he did to hear that we were even just friends,” he says, a bit bitterly. Tears are pricking at his eyes again as he looks up at his best friend. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me, Robin. All he saw was King Steve.”
Robin softens, snark replaced with sympathy. “That sucks, Steve. I’m so sorry.”
Steve sighs in agreement that yes this really fucking sucks. He sits up and scoots back so that he’s slumped against the wall, hitting the back of his head against it. “I think I’m a horrible person,” he admits, just venting now, “because of course I’m glad Eddie’s alive and all I really want is for him to be okay, and I know the nurse said he should remember eventually, but there’s still some sick part of me that thinks maybe it would’ve hurt less if he had just died.”
“I don’t think that makes you a horrible person,” Robin assures him as she settles next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “I think you’re just grieving, and grief is weird sometimes.”
“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever felt,” he mutters, “when he looked at me without recognition. To see it on his face, just the- the absence of everything that we’d built. I’ve never felt so- so- I don’t know, it was like I couldn’t breathe. He just- he doesn’t know that I love him. He…he doesn’t know that he loved me...”
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s not that he’s lost someone that he loves, it’s that he’s lost someone who loves him. Because Eddie’s not gone, just his love for Steve is, and that’s what’s tearing him apart. It’s the fact that there’s one less person in the world who loves him. It’s the fact that Steve’s got this big gaping hole inside of him that’s always made him so desperate to be loved, liked, wanted, needed; and his biggest fucking fear is becoming obsolete. He could probably trace it back to his parents, the first to forget him, the first to stop loving him, but the fact remains that now Eddie has fulfilled that fear too. Now Eddie has carved that pit a little deeper, a little darker, validating the voice that whispers within it and tells Steve that he is forgettable, unlovable, so easy to abandon and erase.
“Well, I love you,” Robin tells him, like she can read his mind (which, at this point, she probably can). She slides an arm around his shoulders, hugs him close. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Fragile as he is right now, Steve falls apart again in her arms, and she holds him together. Because she knows him, because she loves him.
It’s a quieter cry this time, soft and sniffly. Whereas the last one wracked through his body and left him fatigued, this one flows from him almost gently, and when his tears finally subside and he lifts his head from where it had been buried in his friend’s shoulder, Steve actually feels a little bit better, a little bit stronger. Which is good, because he’s gonna have to face Eddie again soon.
“Thank you,” he says quietly as he pulls away from Robin, wiping at his eyes and glancing at the clock on her nightstand. It’s definitely been an hour by now, probably more. He stands. “I have to go, I promised the kids I’d take them to see Eddie.”
“Then I’m coming too.” Robin stands with him. “For moral support.”
Steve gives her a grateful smile. “I love you so fucking much, you know that?”
“Yeah.” She grins at him. “I know.”
~
The nurses have changed his bandages and upped his morphine, so Eddie’s considerably hazy now but at least he can raise his headrest and prop himself up a bit without nearly blacking out from pain. He’s boredly flicking through channels on the shitty TV in front of him, alone since Wayne had to leave for work, when Harrington returns followed by a very unexpected group consisting of Robin Buckley and four strange children.
“Sorry,” Harrington announces their presence with an apologetic shrug, “I know you don’t know them anymore, but they insisted.”
“Eddie!” a pudgy, curly-haired kid shouts before Eddie can even react, coming barrelling towards him and trying to hug him.
“Ow!” Eddie yelps, pain flaring even through the extra morphine. “Fucking Christ, kid! Be careful!”
The kid jumps back immediately, eyes wide. “Shit. Sorry.”
“S’fine,” Eddie grumbles.
The kid looks at him expectantly for a moment before seeming to realize, “Oh, right, you don’t remember me. I’m Dustin.”
“Ah, so you’re the guy I sacrificed myself for,” Eddie mutters, and Dustin looks a little sheepish. That means these must be ‘the kids’ Harrington had been talking about earlier. He surveys the group for a second. “Actually, I think we have met before,” he tells Dustin. “And you too.” He glances at a pale, dark-haired kid. The other two - a Black boy with a flat-top and a younger Black girl - look less familiar, though. “There was this, uh, open day thing at the high school for next year’s incoming freshmen; I talked to you about Hellfire.”
“Yeah!” Dustin’s whole face lights up, so bright and infectious it makes Eddie grin too. “Yeah, you did!”
“So you guys joined the club, then?”
This sparks a very animated conversation about D&D, the rest of the kids (Mike, Lucas, and Erica, as they soon reintroduce themselves) gathering around his bed now too to join in. It makes him feel a bit more like himself again, familiar, normal. Except, of course, for the fact that they’re not only talking about how they defeated Vecna in Eddie’s “totally epic” and “sadistic” campaign (adjectives courtesy of Dustin and Mike respectively), but also filling in more pieces of the story of how they defeated him in real life too. Still, it’s nice, fun. He totally understands how he could’ve gotten attached to these kids.
At some point, Eddie glances over to find Harrington hanging back and just watching them talk, fondly, wistfully. Robin whispers something to him and he sort of smiles, just a trace, and whispers something back. They seem close, intimate. Eddie wonders if they’re dating, and then he wonders why that thought makes him feel a bit sick. He waves them over. Harrington looks like he’s about to protest, but Robin gives him a Look and he allows her to grab his hand and drag him to join the crowd around Eddie’s bed.
“So, what’s your deal, Buckley?” Eddie asks her. He doesn’t know her very well, they’ve only crossed paths a few times in the bandroom, but right now that makes her the most familiar person in the room to him. “Are you and Harrington a thing now? Is that how you’re involved in all this?”
Robin wrinkles her nose and drops Harrington’s hand. “Ew, no. Definitely not.”
“She’s my best friend,” Harrington says.
Eddie snorts, doesn’t know why he finds that so comical. (He’s starting to get tired and it’s making him loopy. Or maybe it’s just the morphine.) “You've got a funny choice of friends nowadays, don’t you? Me and band geek Buckley and a bunch of nerdy freshmen.” He looks at Harrington with incredulous amusement. “Who would've thought, huh? Steve Harrington, collector of geeks and freaks.”
Harrington doesn’t seem to find it as funny. He shrugs. “Yeah, well, it’s better than King Steve, collector of asshole bullies and shallow one-night stands.”
“Yeah, ‘course it is,” Eddie agrees through another huff of laughter that breaks off into a yawn. “Didn’t mean it as a bad thing, Stevie. Was a compliment.”
“Alright.” The barest hint of a smile flickers across Harrington’s face now, but then he’s looking away and corralling the kids and saying, “We should head out, let you get some rest.”
And Eddie kind of wishes he’d stay.
(part three!)
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Steve and Eddie go through the whole adoption process in 1996, despite how difficult it was to find somewhere willing to help them at all and despite their conflicted feelings on adoption.
The way they saw it though, providing a loving home for a child who needed one was better than the alternative. Eddie had enough experience with temporary foster homes to know stability was better than constant moving and questionable foster parents.
They get a foster placement almost immediately, a six year old girl named Amelia. She’s quiet, but not in a way that worries them. She’s very focused, and enjoys going to school more than any regular children’s hobbies. Neither of them know what to do with that other than keep encouraging it.
She stays for months, months turn into a year, and the agency finally gives them the go ahead to complete the adoption process.
But they don’t do anything without talking to Amelia.
She’s happy there, her therapist signs off on it immediately and explains that Amelia has shown more personality development and less signs of trauma with them than she had even living at home. Not to mention they actually brought her to appointments, unlike her previous guardians.
To celebrate, they throw a party with all their friends and family and tell Amelia she can invite anyone from school she wants. She invites everyone.
Turns out their daughter is a social butterfly and is friends with everyone.
At the party, Eddie pulls out his guitar, plays a bunch of popular kid-friendly songs after a very scathing look from Steve as a reminder to behave.
Amelia walks over to him after a few songs, on a sugar high like he’d never seen on her before, and asks to play the guitar.
He’s hesitant, but not because he’s still protective of his guitars, more because he doesn’t want her to embarrass herself in front of her friends. Kids are cruel, even and especially at seven, and the last thing he wants is this to be the thing that kids talk about for the next ten years.
She sits on the couch and holds it, arranging her fingers…correctly. Eddie watches.
Steve is watching from across the room.
She starts strumming, very quietly at first, not as confident as she’d been a moment ago. And then she starts really playing.
It’s one of the songs Eddie wrote. He played it for the last four months nonstop as he perfected it, and she’d apparently been watching.
Eddie’s jaw is on the floor and he quickly looks over to Steve, who has a similar look of surprise on his face.
He doesn’t interrupt her. She makes it through the entire song.
She looks up.
“When did you learn to play guitar?” Eddie asks.
“When I was watching you.”
“But have you played before tonight?”
Amelia shook her head, looking down. “Didn’t wanna touch it without asking.”
Eddie pulls the guitar from her hands and sets it aside, then pulls her into his lap and hugs her. Steve sits down on the couch next to them, hand on her back.
“You can always ask, sweetie. And if you’re this interested and this natural, we can buy you your own guitar if you want. I didn’t think you were interested in playing.”
“I wanna be like you,” Amelia admitted against his shoulder.
Eddie was done for. He looked at Steve, half-panicked, trying not to cry in front of these people, but Steve wasn’t faring any better.
“Then we can go get you a guitar tomorrow. You can get your own picks, too. They might even have purple ones.”
“Can I have red? Like yours?”
“Of course, sweetie.”
It only took them two days after that to realize she could play by ear, just like Eddie.
And then it only took another day after that to realize she had taught herself to read music too.
They spent hours and hours every week playing together while Steve cooked dinner or checked her homework or just watched them.
When Eddie’s band decided to record another album and go on tour when Amelia was 12, Eddie insisted that she get to be on it.
She ended up helping write one of their songs, played on the track on the album, and with a lot of work, convinced Steve to let them homeschool her for the entire 8 months they’d be on tour so she could perform on stage with her dad.
“Can’t believe she’s not even genetically yours. Are you sure you didn’t have an affair?” Steve asked the night before they were leaving for Europe.
“When would I have had an affair? I came back to the tour bus or hotel with you every single night,” Eddie kissed him softly. “She’s amazing, huh?”
“She is. What happens when she wants to be a full blown rockstar like her dad too?”
“Then we make sure she’s protected and has good people around her like I have. She could be a rockstar easily. She’s got the talent and the presence,” Eddie smiled. “And she’s got me to make sure no one takes advantage of her. But she’s only 12. We’ve got time to worry about that later.”
“You’re bringing her onstage every single night all over the world for the next eight months, baby. I think later is now.”
Eddie sighed. “She’s gonna blow them all away. I’m proud of her. Let’s focus on that for now.”
And she did blow everyone away. The fans and the media had nothing but good things to say, and Steve didn’t have to go into overprotective mom mode at all until she was 15 and signing a record deal of her own.
But between Eddie and him, the entire industry knew better than to fuck with her or them.
They made rules, of course. School still came first, she still had required family events to be at, she still had regular friends at home. She wasn’t allowed at any parties, not even the events for award ceremonies.
But she didn’t really need those rules. She had no interest in parties or abandoning her friends or family, and she was a straight A student who still had hopes of getting into Brown for Journalism like her Aunt Nancy. She had a passion for music and wanted to share it, but not at the cost of the rest of her life.
And Eddie and Steve did everything they could to make sure she got to have everything. That’s what they’d promised her from day one.
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It’s impossible to sneak up on Steve
Like, actually impossible
Dude has eyes in the back of his head. It’s some kind of mom superpower. (Or maybe it’s just the hypervigilance. Whatever)
Eddie first notices because the kids try to sneak past him a couple of times and he always catches them
He even calls them out by name. And he’s always right
Every single time
He catches Henderson trying to get a snack before they’re about to eat (not that Henderson particularly cares he’s been caught; he eats his chips without remorse)
He catches Small Wheeler trying to smuggle an R-rated movie over the Buckley’s side of the counter while Steve’s back is turned (not that Buckley would’ve rented it to him)
He catches Red and Supergirl both sneaking junk food into the cart while they’re out grocery shopping (neither of them are repentant, and Steve rolls his eyes but does exactly nothing about it)
Eddie’s interest is piqued
The first time he tries sneaking up on Steve, Steve catches him before he gets within three feet
How
“You jingle when you walk, Eddie.”
Okay, yeah, that’s fair
Next time, Eddie takes off his wallet chain and all his jewelry
Steve still catches him before he gets close enough to reach out and touch
“Your shoes squeak.”
Eddie’s pretty sure they don’t, actually, but fine. The shoes are next to go
And Steve still fucking catches him. Eddie can hear the goddamn smile in his voice as he says “Hi, Eddie,” just as Eddie is reaching out to grab his waist
“I could smell your shampoo.”
He could smell Eddie’s shampoo?
His fucking shampoo??
Alright, no, actually, that’s kind of sweet. But Eddie can’t exactly stop using shampoo, because then Steve will probably just be able to smell his hair grease or something. Eddie has to get creative, but he makes sure he’s not downwind of the AC vent next time
Yet Steve is the one who manages to ambush Eddie while Eddie is ambushing Steve, turning around and pulling Eddie right into him before Eddie can pounce, kissing him hard and quick, asking if that’s what Eddie was going for when he pulls away
Half dazed, half aroused, entirely frustrated, Eddie demands to know how the fuck Steve caught him this time, and Steve shrugs
“It just... feels different, when there’s someone behind you. The air, maybe? I dunno.”
Is this man even human?
(Given the general state of... everything, Eddie feels this is a legitimate question)
But Eddie isn’t one to give up once he becomes fixated, so he bides his time
He waits
And he waits
And he waits, until it seems like Steve is engaged in something distracting enough that he’s not going to be paying attention to how the room behind him feels, or however the fuck that works, and takes his shot
AND HE SUCCEEDS
He has to promise never to do it again, because his ribs are now bruised from Steve’s very surprised elbow, and Steve is mad and handing him and ice pack and bitching at him at full volume, but y’know what?
Fucking worth it
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