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paperbackribs · 4 months

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A Tarnished Copper Boy (4)

Previous | Next Last chapter, Dustin warned Steve against changing the timeline and Steve disappeared in front of Eddie's eyes.

(fair warning: this is a long chapter)

Chapter 4: By His Bootstraps

The opening riff of The Sentinel is precise and full of weight before it falls into a metallic cascade that softly thunders through the trailer. Eddie taps a restless foot along with the ferocious drumming as he sits at the desk in his darkening bedroom. Contemplatively unwrapping its box, he reflects on the grey figurine in his hand.

The plastic monster from the D&D universe is a newly bought demogorgon. Two leering baboon heads perch above a torso that explodes with four sinuous, tentacle-like limbs, and a forked tail snakes behind the body. Tracing its snarling fangs, Eddie broodingly thinks about a young boy defending an older one.

The song ends and Eddie flips the cassette over to the B-side, keeping the volume lowered in respect for their neighbour, Catherine. She had stopped by with a buttermilk pie and the request for one weekend without a headache before she heads out to her evening shift at the hospital.

Wayne had pushed Eddie aside, all aw shucks and I’ll make sure he will and oh, no, we couldn’t accept pie when we’re in the wrong. But Eddie had already stolen away with the treat and perched himself at the kitchen counter, fork deep in the smooth and tangy filling while he gleefully watched his normally impassive uncle stumble over his words.

Catherine has a brash sort of loveliness with her auburn curls and a sharp gleam to her eyes that Eddie respects. Despite the gift to sweeten her request, there had been a sensibly tart tone to what essentially amounted to a command. She had been dressed in her usual practical pants and jacket with low-heeled flats, but the combination of it all obviously does something for his uncle.

Really, Eddie had said later to a faintly flushed Wayne, he should thank him for playing his music so loudly. Wayne had just harrumphed and walked away, not willing to talk about his obvious crush.

Yet, despite the lowered volume, Halford’s muted vocals still soar, reaching and shredding sharp talons into the air, pulling the listener to him with relentless energy. It matches Eddie’s mood. Thinking of a guardian, standing defiantly against an impending darkness inevitable to his future, some event full of death that sends its soldier falling back in time.

Eddie sighs at himself in frustration, tilting back in the chair and throwing his bare feet up on the desk. It’s been a whole month since Steve disappeared from within his closed van, and he can’t stop thinking about him.

His fixation evident in the piled notebooks next to his crossed ankles, full of scribbled lyrics and character ideas for a new campaign. One haunted by battles thick with smoke and screaming demogorgons while a distant hero stands tall, sworn to avenge but condemned to hell.

He scratches at a small tab of plastic on the miniature’s bulging leg that hasn’t come away clean. Eddie should be writing his essay on the illusion of wealth and the decay of the American Dream in the 1920s, but it holds little interest compared to the figurine in his hand. Wondering whether it’s an accurate representation of the creature that Steve has apparently fought and won against, with a bat studded full of nails of all the insane things.

It's such a down and dirty idea for a weapon. A chaotic and deadly contrast against the preppy senior Eddie is peripherally aware of at school. Who knew that the sneaky clean basketball captain and former swimming co-captain was capable of wielding a weapon crafted for maximum fear and brutality?

It’s sort of hot.

Eddie’s musings are abruptly shattered by a thud of impact followed by an unmistakable groan. His head snaps towards the direction of his door and Eddie nearly falls over his chair in his rush to get up.

Scrambling through the doorway he spies Steve sprawled out on the carpet, face down and in the same spot as last time. Rolling over, legs akimbo, he blankly stares up at the ceiling before Eddie eventually makes a noise that has him tilting his head up. He wryly smiles, “Surprise.”

“Steve!” Eddie rushes over, his hand already stretching to help him up. He gratefully takes it, groaning again quietly as Eddie pulls back and stumbles a little at his unexpected strength.

For a beat, Eddie can only see the flecks of gold in Steve’s dark eyes, not the plain brown he had thought in the shadows of the Henderson home.

The long lashes around those eyes flutter a moment before Steve takes a step backwards, and he shakily laughs. “Thanks, man. That is not a smooth landing the second time round, either.”

“Where have you been?” Eddie asks, scanning Steve to make sure he’s not bleeding or broken from the fall. Oddly, he looks unchanged from when he’d seen him last. The same mud-splattered pants and boots, brown leather jacket over a hard, tactical vest, and even the dirt on his forehead and jaw are in an identical shape and place.

Steve laughs again, but it sounds unsteady. He falls back onto the couch, looking up at Eddie with vulnerability hinted at the corner of his mouth. “Could I get a water or something? I don’t think I’ve had anything to eat or drink for hours. It’s all catching up on me.”

Eddie steps back towards the kitchen, “Yeah, man. You want a sandwich as well?” He roots around the fridge and cupboards, “Uh, looks like it’ll have to be a PB&J. That okay? Not allergic or anything are you?”

Steve’s head is against the back of the couch, looking up at the ceiling for guidance again. Eddie feels an echo, a reminder of being captivated by that long stretch of skin last time too. “Yeah, that’s fine," he says, "PB&J sounds great.”

Eddie brings over the makeshift meal and Steve downs the water in one go before wolfing down the sandwich. He brings over another round and Steve takes it a bit more slowly this time, sipping the water and nibbling on the bread.

He looks Eddie up and down, noting his bare feet, blue plaid boxers, and Eddie’s black sleeping shirt, “Shit. You didn’t just come back from driving me to Dustin’s, did you.” He looks towards the slats open over the window, the light of the afternoon fading into a quiet darkness. An obvious contrast to the bright daylight that had washed over Steve the last time Eddie had seen him.

Eddie frowns, sitting on the brown couch and making sure that a few inches separate the two of them, “That was a month ago.”

Steve just nods grimly, a tendon in his jaw flexing as he processes the time that has passed.

“Steve?” Eddie reaches a tentative hand out to him, touching his wrist gently. Afraid to spook him, but it seems to wake Steve from his reverie, and he lets out a hoarse, humourless sound, “I was just in the van. So, I guess, good for me? I’m not going backwards at least.”

Weeks had passed for Eddie while Steve experienced seconds, if anything at all, but he’s right in at least one thing. “It’s good though, going forward. Do you think you’ll hang around this time?”

Steve quirks a sardonic eyebrow and Eddie flushes as he remembers that Steve knows just as much about time travel as Eddie does. Namely, what the pipsqueak had told them last time.

“Maybe? I don’t even know if this is good or bad. It’s just, I feel like I’ve come back from war and—” He squeezes his eyes tight, and Eddie hears him mutter something sounding suspiciously like ‘butterflies.’

Eddie decides that it might be best to redirect him from thoughts that aren’t going to help right now. “You want a shower? I can give you a change of clothes.”

Steve lets out a heartfelt moan, mouth falling open and eyes fluttering close. “I could kiss you, that’s a great fucking idea.”

Eddie’s cheeks flare hotly, and he hurriedly stands to move past Steve before the other guy can see the incriminating red on his face. He has no business watching Steve make a veritable o-face. “This way,” he calls, pointing to the bathroom door before heading to his bedroom, “Just leave your shit on the floor and I’ll put down something for you to wear by the door.”

The rumble of the shower starts, and Eddie steadfastly ignores the conjured image of a wet and soapy Steve in favour of finding fresh clothes for him to change into.

They’d been in the living area long enough for the album’s B-side to nearly finish, the deep roiling beat of Heavy Duty pulsates through the room, the singer growling that he knows you like it hot, that you love to writhe and sweat.

Eddie reaches over and firmly slaps the stop button. Not helping to keep his thoughts clean. Ha.

Steve is clearly going through a rough time right now and he doesn’t need Eddie lusting after him like some deviant when what he likely needs himself is a pause button as he experiences time travel hell.

Eddie is listlessly tidying his desk when Steve walks through the bedroom door, hair damp but otherwise clean and dry. He looks up from organising the small paint pots for his miniatures, in order of rainbow, and realises his miscalculation. The borrowed navy sweats leave little imagination to the thickness of Steve’s thighs or the soft bulge between his legs, and the faded Dio t-shirt stretched across his broad chest is likewise tight around firm biceps.

But it is the unfurling tendril of possessiveness that surprises Eddie, the image of a freshly showered, attractive man in his clothes unravelling an unexpected thrill in his gut. That Steve looks soft and a little sleepy only makes the unexpected feeling dig deeper somehow.

Eddie swallows around the pool of spit that gathered in his mouth and motions towards the bed, “You look really tired, man. You want to have a nap or something?” And immediately understands that if seeing Steve in his clothes is enough to make him unsteady then seeing Steve in his bed is going to absolutely wreck him.

“I’ll just wait outside,” he hastens to add, not even waiting to hear Steve agree.

“Wait,” Steve grabs his hand before he flies away. “Stay?” His eyes are worn and a hint of fear shimmers underneath. “This is really scary,” he admits. “I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know when I’ll suddenly disappear. Maybe I’ll just disappear for good? It’d be nice if there was someone familiar around. Plus,” he adds with a weary grin, “You were probably busy before I intruded.” He peers around Eddie to nod at the desk that he'd been standing next to.

Eddie hears an echo of disappear for good and thinks that maybe he wants to watch over Steve while he sleeps too, make sure that he doesn’t pop out of existence under Eddie’s nose.

He banishes the nervousness bound to be in his tone with a business-like clearing of his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be fine. I was actually about to paint my demogorgon — a miniature, not a real one. Obviously. Because I don’t even know what that’s about, but Dustin said something?”

Steve’s blink is slow and edged with creeping exhaustion, “Yeah, that would have been just last year for him. Wow.” He shakes his head and the low lamp of the bedside table reveals hidden hues in the strands of his hair, a tawny richness suited to a golden crown. But Steve’s head seems to hang too heavily for such an unwieldy responsibility right now, and it doesn’t quite suit Eddie’s image of this version of Steve.

Steve moves with deliberate slowness, lowering himself onto the messy, turn-downed sheets while the old mattress creaks. He rolls onto his back, shifting to find the right position before quietly asking, “Have you spoken to him again?”

Eddie wanders back to his desk and straddles the chair. It lets out a small squeak in protest at the sudden weight. “No, you said not to. So, we haven’t. Avoided that side of town to be honest, just in case.”

Steve blows out a breath of relief, “Good, that’s good. Thank you. I haven’t even had a chance to think this through, but he scared me with that butterfly stuff.” The lids of his eyes become heavier, dropping close over fading eyes. “But I don’t want you to get hurt either,” he murmurs before falling asleep.

Eddie should look away, but he can’t just yet. Maybe a little worried that Steve will disappear and maybe just because he’s lovely to look at.

There’s no doubting the appropriateness of his royal moniker, Eddie thinks, as his eyes trace across that straight and sturdy nose, its regal line adding to the sculptured architecture of his face. But it’s his long, dark eyelashes that belie the untouchable strength that being a king denotes.

They cast delicate shadows over thin skin smudged with exhaustion. Each lash hints at another layer of mystery to this boy in Eddie’s bed, whose square face is a warm canvas affectionately kissed with small moles, like delicate constellations scattered across the night sky. Eddie always liked staring up into the night.

He sighs, turning back to his desk and adjusting its lamp so that the light shines further away from Steve. Perhaps it’s time he started on that essay.

---

It feels like hours later, and Eddie must have fallen asleep at his desk because his neck is painfully bent, forehead pressed against a notepad and a warm, wet patch spreads beneath his open mouth. A broad hand presses through his thin shirt to gently shake his shoulder, “Eddie, hey Eddie, wake up man.”

“Mrmph,” Eddie unpeels his forehead from the paper and lets his head fall back, looking upside down at a sleep-creased Steve. He snorts, he can see right up through his nostrils. Steve’s eyes crinkle with affection, “Yeah, you’re out of it. Come on, you’re coming to bed.”

Eddie tries to shake the crust from his brain, the wisps of foggy sleep still sliding in and around his head, “You take the bed. Need it.”

Steve huffs out a laugh, winds an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and hauls him up. Eddie flops over Steve, nuzzling into the warmth of the crook between his neck and shoulder, “Mrmph,” he repeats unintelligently. “Uh huh,” Steve agrees.

“So, this is what it’s like on the other side,” he further muses, humour clear in his voice while he manoeuvres Eddie onto the bed. Steve settles onto the right side, which he had been sleeping on, and pulls the covers over the both of them, “We can share tonight. You’re gonna snap your neck if you stay at the desk.”

Eddie’s eyes are already shut, and he only has a second or two to think that there’s something he should object to before he’s out like a light.

---

It’s the morning light seeping through the curtains that eventually stirs Eddie, the sharpness of it piercing the dark behind his eyelids and waking him from the cocoon of sleep. The trill of a bird calling forth the day is interrupted by a slamming car door and raised voices, Eddie groans and nestles further into the hard pillow below his cheek.

The pillow rumbles with suppressed laughter and Eddie gradually becomes aware that underneath him is the broad chest of a man with an accompanying arm cradling his shoulder. The gentle strokes along his back, rhythmic and comforting, speak to a quiet intimacy lingering in the air.

The feeling is reassuring and makes Eddie even more reluctant to properly wake. He nuzzles deeper into the warmth, savouring the scent that surrounds him. It carries the familiar fragrance of his own washing powder but intertwined with another, more masculine musk, foreign yet inviting.

The strangeness of it has Eddie blinking further awake, a sudden cold wash rushing through him as he becomes horrifyingly sure that he had crawled into bed with Steve in the middle of the night and then crawled all over Steve this morning. Eddie’s eyes fly wide open, and he scrambles back from him.

Would have fallen over the edge too if Steve hadn’t quickly reached out and grabbed him, holding firmly onto his arms while Eddie uselessly tries to gesture with them. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Christ, is Steve going to punch him or something?

“It’s okay. Hey — stop,” Steve shakes him a little since Eddie’s on the verge of a panic attack because he’d been snuggling Steve Harrington and he doesn’t remember when he’d slithered into bed with him, but he must have and now Steve’s going to think that he’s some pervert who’s drooling all over him.

Which, yeah, okay, he has done that a little, but it’s not like he wants Steve to think he’s taking advantage of his situation.

“Eddie, it’s okay. It was just a little cuddling, it’s fine,” Steve’s eyes are wide with concern, flickering over the fear that is surely writ large over Eddie’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie repeats. “I don’t remember getting into bed with you.”

“You didn’t,” Steve assures him. “I moved you. I woke up and you were dead to the world, passed out over the desk. There’s enough room, but I didn’t realise it would freak you out. I’m sorry.”

He grimaces, “I didn’t think about how you might feel waking up with a strange guy in your bed, I’m sorry. Really.” He raps his knuckles against his head while making a sound like hollow wood being tapped, “Not a lot going on up here and sometimes I act before I think.”

Eddie exhales a shaky breath, Steve put them in bed together. Not Eddie. He can work with that. “It’s okay,” he says, but he’s not certain how sure his smile is, and he needs to try and style this out, so he accompanies it with a light-hearted wink. “You’re a great cuddler.”

Steve's cheeks pinken and he scrubs his hand through his hair, “That’s one thing I can offer, at least.”

Eddie very casually rolls out of the bed, picking his way towards the bathroom, “Not the way I hear it from the ladies, Casanova.”

He hears a snort behind him followed by a muttering too low to catch, but Eddie’s fairly sure he’s walking out with his dignity intact, which is more than he thought he would at the outset of that heart-stopping moment. Fuck, Steve smells good and damn it, he had been nice to cuddle.

Before Eddie freaked out.

He rubs at his chest, his heart starting to slow down. Really, he should take this as a win. Snuggling a pretty boy is not the worst way to wake up. And when said pretty boy doesn’t seem to mind sharing a bed, albeit out of pity for Eddie’s poor neck than any sort of attraction, well that’s not too bad either.

He takes a piss before quietly making a couple of bowls of Honey Crunch. It’s getting late in the morning and Wayne is asleep on the sofa bed. A steady drone of snoring emanates from under the rolled covers, covering the man like a burrito. Eddie idly wonders whether Catherine would mind having two blankets in bed, rather than sharing.

He tries to be quiet because, while Wayne is pretty good at filtering out sounds after years of this arrangement, Eddie still wants to respect his space as much as possible. The old man had taken him in when he was a shivering mess, all coltish limbs and terrified in the face of the unknown. Wayne had taken one look at him and had declared that Eddie needed his space in their home, a place to make his own.

It had made Eddie more secure than he had ever thought to understand at that moment. After all, Wayne’s unlikely to kick him out when he has a room designated especially for Eddie. So, he tries to pay him back where he can, money for utilities and silence in his sleeping area.

Steve is flipping through a book as Eddie edges the door open and closed, juggling the bowls over for Steve to grab. He places the book back on the bedside table beside a small mound of pens and digs into his cereal, “Thanks, I’m starving.”

Eddie decides that retreat is the better part of valour and settles on his desk chair rather than risking the bed. He raises one knobby knee to his chin and contemplatively eats his breakfast. “I see you found my new Heinlein collection,” he nods towards the book Steve had put aside.

On its cover, two naked figures are roughly shaded in, framed by sharply dissecting lines while a cloud forms in the background. It has a blooming red centre.

Steve looks down at it, “Ah, yes. The exploding asshole collection of short stories.”

Eddie spits out a spray of milk as he honest to goodness lets out a loud guffaw. The cloud with its red middle point, shooting out straight lines, does look like an exploding asshole now that it’s been pointed out.

Steve grins, seemingly pleased with himself.

Eddie snickers while wiping his chin clean, “Yes, well, other than the unfortunate cover design, I got it because of you actually. The second story, By His Bootstraps, has a time travel plot like the one Dustin mentioned.”

“Yeah?” Steve frowns down at it as if it could contain real explosives, “Any butterflies in this one?”

“Nah, it’s sort of the opposite. Like whatever you do, whether it’s in the past or the future, it's inevitable. A fixed point in time that can’t be changed no matter how much you struggle against it.”

“Struggle?” Steve asks uneasily.

“Yeah, Bob, the protagonist, he goes back and forth in time while coming across these pricks.” Eddie traces the edge of his bowl with the spoon before dropping it into the sweetened milk. “One guy who tries to get him into trouble with petty pranks and another who’s a boss sort of guy from the way far out future.”

Eddie snorts, “Even calls himself Diktor — get it, dictator. Anyway, Bob’s just trying to survive as he goes back-and-forth in time, but the more he tries to change what’s happening the more obvious it is that every event has already happened.”

Steve shakes his head, holding up a hand, “Wait, I don’t get it.”

Eddie hums, thinking about how to explain it as he places his bowl to the side. Holding his hands in the air like it's a circular clock, he positions his finger up at midnight. “So Diktor is a chief of the future, has slave ladies and everything." He moves his finger to the imaginary six, neatly sectioning it in half. "And he tricks Bob into going through a time portal and sort of steers him towards decisions that Bob didn’t intend. With me so far?”

Steve nods with furrowed eyebrows, concentrating on Eddie's hands.

“Right. And Bob resists because he doesn’t like how Diktor’s manipulating him." Eddie slides his finger around to just before midnight, hovering in a wagging motion like it's waiting to move forward. "He hates it so much that he travels to the future ten years before Diktor himself arrives so that he can become the boss. Because, if he's in charge, then Diktor can't mess with him anymore."

Triumphantly, Eddie slides his finger back into the original midnight position. "But by doing that Bob actually becomes Diktor — which is the name for chief in the future-world’s language.”

“Shit!” Steve’s mouth hangs open and Eddie nods excitedly, dropping his pretend clock. “Yeah, what a fucking plot twist. So, Bob is destined to turn into Diktor who will inevitably harass his past self so he can once more — become Diktor. It’s a loop and there’s no origin because they just keep going around and around in an eternal circle.”

Steve pales and Eddie reigns in his excitement, reminded of Steve’s reaction to the Bradbury theory. This is all very real to Steve, not just a thought experiment as Eddie had first allowed himself to think of it.

“So,” Steve begins, “I could reach 1986 and then just start falling again until I meet you last month, going to the beginning of a loop.”

His head falls into his hands, and he continues to say, muffled, “I might forget everything and start all over again. Or maybe, it'll be weirder than that. Maybe I’ll just get older and older while still hitting the floor of your trailer. Then they’ll be like fifty of me everywhere and I’ll never escape, I’ll just be the boy in a never-ending fall, in the wrong time—”

“Hey, Steve, hey.” Eddie shoves off his seat and hastens onto the bed, crawling until he’s hovering over Steve, hands outstretched but unsure what to do with them.

Steve peeks up at Eddie through his hands, his voice full of anguish, “You don’t get it, Eddie. I’m not clever enough to work this out. I’m either going to step on a bug and he’s going to win, and everyone is going to die or we do win, great, but I’m stuck falling onto your floor for the rest of my life.” He laughs hysterically, “Either option is pretty fucking grim.”

Eddie looks down at Steve, scared and looking a hairsbreadth away from losing his mind and thinks fuck it. He scoops Steve into his arms, drawing his head down onto his chest. Steve immediately circles his arms around Eddie, a tight band pulling them together. He can’t hear it, but from the slight shuddering of his shoulders and the wetness starting to soak through his shirt, he knows that Steve is silently crying.

It breaks his heart a little that he’s hiding it so well.

Gingerly and because his spine is starting to ache, Eddie inches down until his back is against the headboard, feet spread out and Steve practically in his lap. He’d only have to move one leg and Steve would be straddling Eddie, but he simply shuffles so that his upper body is stretched out with his head in the crook of Eddie's shoulder. He snuffles a little.

Knowing how embarrassed he feels when he cries, Eddie mildly offers Steve some advice, “My shirt is soft and easily washed, much like a handkerchief. Go at it.” He hears a watery chuckle and Steve suddenly feels less stiff in his arms. He can’t help but smile that he was able to lessen Steve’s tension just a little bit.

Gently, Eddie smooths one hand down Steve’s back, a repetitive motion designed to give simple comfort. Steve’s trembling breathing has ebbed and tears stopped by the time he draws back. His eyes are puffy and nose red, and Eddie lies, “Well, thank fuck something is fair. You can’t be hot all the time.”

Steve chortles, briefly burrowing down into Eddie’s chest and dramatically smearing his nose against the shirt. “I’m always hot, shut up.”

Eddie hums a neutral sound, “You know you’re not alone, right? I’ll help you.” Steve stills in his arms. “If nothing else, I clearly can’t get rid of you.”

This must be the wrong thing to say because Steve becomes rigid once more and he pulls out of Eddie’s arms. Drawing away to sit with his back against the headboard too. Although his face is slightly averted, Eddie can see the downturn to his mouth.

“That’s me. Like a bad smell, hanging around long past where I’m welcome.”

Sometimes Eddie feels allergic to sincerity and his usual knee-jerk reaction is to crack a joke, but he’s not a total idiot and is maybe capable of learning from his mistakes. It's clearly a sore spot that he pressed on while trying to lighten Steve’s mood, so Eddie takes a deep breath and feels out the words before he says them.

“I’m glad,” he says. Steve’s eyes cut to him, unsure and a little suspicious.

“I know we’re not friends right now, but I hope that we are where you come from. Because I think we could be good friends, and maybe friendship usually doesn’t involve time travel and its dire consequences, but I’m willing to brave that because I think you’re probably a good dude, Steve Harrington. Rich, popular guy like you, it sort of flies in the face of the Munson doctrine. But I think you are and, if it’s okay, I’d like to help.”

Steve’s eyes flicker over Eddie’s face like he’s trying to divine his honesty. “You know, you’ve said something similar to me before.”

Eddie smiles smugly, “So, you’re saying I’m consistent.”

“I’m saying that I think I’d like to be your friend too,” he sighs, tipping back his head with his eyes closing, “I for sure don’t have the smarts to work this out though. What do you think I should do?”

“I’m barely passing senior year a second time, man. I don’t think I’m the egghead you’re looking for.”

Steve doesn’t open his eyes, but his voice is disgruntled, “That’s clearly bullshit. I know that a guy who runs his own business—”

Eddie snorts at being called a business owner for dealing a little weed on the side.

Steve ignores him to continue, “—and a school club too is probably resourceful, imaginative and, honestly, if you can corral the little buttheads in Hellfire, you automatically have my respect.”

Eddie is deeply flattered, never having thought to see himself in the way that Steve paints him; the unexpectedness of it causes him to blush a deep crimson colour that he can feel spreading from his cheeks towards his chest.

It’s already a heady feeling, and Steve continues, “You can quote complicated novels that Dustin might one day convince me to read, but I’m not looking forward to. And you’re kind. That counts a lot in my book.”

Eddie looks away from Steve, unable to bear the sincerity on his face and the honesty in his voice. Eddie may not be a bad guy, and he’s a lot better than some of the rich assholes or outright bullies at his school, but it’s another thing to hear someone sincerely lay out all the reasons that they think you’re a smart and good person.

He clears his throat because he’s sure that if he tries to speak first then his voice is going to crack like it hasn’t since he passed the worst woes of puberty. “That’s… thank you.” He says, unable to think clearly but perhaps redirection is called for before he combusts. “Not a time travel expert though. But let’s try pulling this tangle apart.”

Steve looks tired already, but he nods and gestures for Eddie to start them off. “Okay,” he ticks the points on his fingers, “One, you come from a time where something bad happens, but you or your crime-fighting team win the good fight. Two, the Bradbury theory says that you can’t change anything otherwise you may lose said fight and you’ve mentioned that that’s a bad thing.”

Steve watches Eddie, a grave mien hanging over him, his sombreness lending credence to Eddie’s image of him as a soldier at war. “World endingly bad, yes.”

“Third,” Eddie hastily continues, trying to shake off the idea of an event so terrible it can end the world, because he doesn’t think Steve was using hyperbole. “Heinlein’s theory says fuck it, do what you want because you can’t change a thing so you’re going to win no matter what you do.”

“They’re both on the opposite spectrum of what I can choose to do though and it’s not like we know whether either theory is correct, this is all just based on fiction.” Steve pauses, grimacing, “We may not be time travel experts, but there are other people out there who could be. Science people”

“Like Dustin?” Eddie asks, confused at how many smart pipsqueaks there are in Steve’s fellowship. “Do you have like a gaggle of geniuses in your family or something?”

Steve laughs ruefully, “No, though I do babysit a bunch of smart-asses, Dustin being one of them. No, there are these government agents who would probably have something to say about it. But they’ve been the cause of all this more than the solution before. I’m not sure that I can trust them.”

“Good call,” Eddie says, faithful to the anti-establishment. “And if the Bradbury theory holds true then involving the government is a big freaking butterfly.”

“So,” Steve says slowly, “If I do what I want to do and try to save the people who have died in my time, I could be Bob or Diktor, whoever: they die all over again regardless, but—good news—we still win. Or I try to save them and, in doing so, I step on the butterfly: maybe I save them, maybe other people die instead, and we don’t know what happens after that.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face in frustration, “I have the chance to save people, people who died in horrible ways, and talking this out makes me feel like I think I’m God or something. Deciding who gets to live or die.”

“It’s beyond your feelings though, isn’t it,” Eddie hates to add, but he thinks it needs to be said. “There’s the third outcome: you try to save those people, but they die and even more after that because you didn’t stop the world from ending. That’s what this is about, right? The bad guy you mentioned. You said he’s going to kill everyone. That didn’t sound like a figure of speech.”

Steve’s lips thin like he’s holding back his words and, considering that he’s still on the fence about what he can say or do, Eddie figures that he probably is. “Yeah, it's not just an expression, this has real consequences. I have to go with the butterflies, don’t I? In the end, my strategy should be avoidance because we won the championship and if I change out the players then we might lose this time instead. That’s the worst-case scenario. The best case is that I still let people die, but he’s also beaten and that’s better. It’s better for everyone, but… shit, it still sucks.”

Steve looks so defeated, tired and worn and Eddie can’t help but feel that letting people die is more responsibility than a young man like Steve should be taking on. Eddie reaches out to squeeze his hand, urging him to feel that he’s not alone. He has Eddie, at least for right now. “It does suck. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that you go through what you do. But yeah, I think you’re right. You’re gonna have to watch where you step.”

Steve squeezes back, a steady connection between the two of them. “What about you? I don’t have a magic wand to erase your memory, and you now know a lot more than you should.”

Eddie nibbles on his lip while he thinks. He doesn’t feel like his wings have been squashed under a boot, but that’s the point. They won’t know whether his talks with Steve, getting to know him before he should, will change the timeline. But from what Eddie can see at this point, the milk has been spilled and there’s no point in crying over it.

He looks up to share his thoughts and catches Steve quickly averting his eyes away, a light blush spreading over his cheeks.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” Eddie says, ignoring whatever was going on with Steve. “You probably shouldn’t tell me any big events before they happen, but I know the basic outline. I already know you to a certain extent.”

“So just keep it simple,” Steve ventures.

“Yeah, like I can’t know when we get to be friends,” he winks at Steve who responds with a light laugh. “Or whether I’m involved in all this.” By the way Steve averts his eyes again, Eddie can guess that he is. “I suppose that my place is at least in the firing path since you said the portal is here?”

Steve thinks for a moment, “I don’t think I can tell you much about that either. It’s too close to what we’ve been talking about. But I do get to know you, you’re right. A little bit in the future.” For the first time since they started talking about Bob slash Diktor and his unfortunate time adventures, Steve’s smile brightens.

“And I know that we become friendly in a couple of years,” Eddie adds mischievously.

“Yes, but I’m not saying when,” Steve responds in a similiarly playful manner.

“No,” Eddie agrees mock-solemnly, “Stay on the time tourism’s path and away from prehistoric bugs.”

“I think Dustin said crusti-saurus.”

“Cretaceous.”

“See, I said you were smart,” Steve says with a twinkle in his eye, like he’s joking again but not at Eddie. It stirs something in Eddie’s gut, taking flight and fluttering in his throat. He flops back onto his pillows to escape the inconvenient feeling.

“Well, it seems like it’s actually you who’s stuck with me,” he turns his head to gauge Steve’s reaction but notices a dark maroon patch on his white and blue striped sheets. He reaches out to finger it, dry to the touch. Looking up he asks, “Steve, are you bleeding?”

But Steve’s not there.

Again.

The only trace of him is left in the indent of where he had been sitting against the pillow that had sat between his back and headboard, puffing out as it gradually expands into its original shape. Eddie lays a hand on the mattress; it’s still warm from Steve’s missing body.

If you liked anything, please consider leaving a comment over on Ao3 :-) It would make my day!

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#all your comments and reblogs have been so generous that I'm releasing the chapter early this week #time travel #steddie #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #a tarnished copper boy #paperbackribs writing

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The first Velvet Underground show in Boston - 10/29/66

In Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 I devoted many pages in service of fleshing out just how important Boston was for VU in the late sixties. But what I didn't get to talk about was the very first time the band appeared in the city on 10/29/66, which happens to be 57 years ago this week. It's a fine excuse to briefly stop thinking about the ceaseless horrors of the larger world and collate/post a bunch of info I've collected about that show as well as their first show in Massachusetts all together in Provincetown a few months prior.

The Exploding Plastic Inevitable—Warhol's multimedia bombardment of lights, film, live music, performance, and dance—was less than a year old when it was scheduled to appear in Boston. This EPI, featuring the music of the Velvet Underground, was to serve as the culmination of Warhol's exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art (the ICA), which at this point was located at 100 Newbury Street (where H&M currently resides). This was only Warhol's second museum exhibition and the mere booking of it at the ICA led to robust conversation in local art cliques. Boston was titillated and ready to have strong opinions about the new pop sensation whom some were calling genius and others a charlatan. More on that in a bit.

But before that exhibit even opened, Massachusetts had gotten a preview of the full Warhol experience late that summer at the Chrysler Art Museum in Provincetown, the coastal resort town located at the very tip of Cape Cod.

The Chrysler Art Museum is the large white building in the background of this postcard on the right.

Since the late 1800's, Provincetown had been in contrast to much of Puritan-singed Massachusetts, welcoming artists and writers as residents and visitors, presenting experimental theater, and supporting thriving art colonies. In 1916, the Boston Globe wrote that Provincetown was 'the biggest art colony in the world.'" By the time the Warhol entourage rolled through, it was also quickly becoming known as a safe haven for LGBTQ folks as well. "There had been a gay presence in Provincetown as early as the start of the 20th century as the artists' colony developed, along with experimental theatre. Drag queens could be seen in performance as early as the 1940s in Provincetown." This, far more than Boston, was the kind of environment you'd imagine the Velvet Underground would be welcomed with open arms. But that's not how things panned out at all.

The Boston Globe previewed the event in late August:

By the time the EPI was set to come to Boston, the Globe preview of that booking (published 9/18/66) was far less dismissive; the write-up noted how the Exploding Plastic Inevitable grew out of Warhol's statements to the press that he had given up on painting (which was a terrific lie):

But back to Provincetown and the Velvets. Save for album opener "Sunday Morning," the debut VU album was already complete at this point, but would not be out until March of next year. Earlier in the summer, the band's first single had been released with Nico on lead vocals on both the A & B side. This no doubt frustrated Lou Reed if not all of the other Velvets. Warhol had convinced VU they needed a mysterious chanteusse in the mix, and they reluctantly, begrudgingly agreed to facilitate Nico's membership in the band while always simultaneously keeping her at arm's length (though both Reed and Cale also eventually both had affairs with her).

On the single version of "All Tomorrow's Parties," the six-minute prepared piano tour-de-force fades out after the 3 minute mark, undercutting its power substantially. The single did not chart. Reed claimed "All Tomorrow's Parties" was about the scene he witnessed at The Factory ("I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things," he explained) while Cale contends it's about a woman named Darryl they were both pursuing. In any event, it's highly unlikely anyone in Provincetown had heard the single before these performances but, factually, there *was* recorded VU music available out in the world at the time.

The complete EPI entourage in Provincetown featured all the Velvets—John Cale, Sterling Morrison. Nico, Lou Reed, and Maureen Tucker—Warhol himself, dancers Gerard Malanga, Mary Woronov, and Eric Emerson, road manager Faison, and Warhol assistants Paul Morrissey and Ronnie Cutrone. Relatively new to the group was Susan Bottomly (aka International Velvet) with David Croland, her boyfriend.

While it's certainly been mentioned that Susan Bottomly was from Boston (well, Wellesley, specifically), I haven't seen anyone chronicling the VU story or its primary players note that she was also the daughter of John Bottomly, who was not only the State Assistant Attorney General but also the chief of the special “Strangler Bureau," aka a key player in the infamous Boston Strangler saga.

International Velvet's father had never conducted a criminal investigation before heading up the bureau created in order to capture the phantom-like serial killer who had been terrorizing Boston for years, murdering over a dozen women. Bottomly was criticized for the interrogation methods he used on lead Strangler suspect Albert DeSalvo, guiding him directly towards certain ideas and details, for instance, and even more so when he became a paid consultant on the 1968 film The Boston Strangler. Between Bottomly's controversial Strangler hunt being recounted in Gerold Frank's best-selling '66 book, The Boston Strangler, and working on the Tony Curtis-starring-film of the same title, his daughter danced in the EPI, had flings with Lou Reed and John Cale, and appeared on the FEB '67 cover of Esquire sitting in a trash can. Being able to draw a direct line from the Boston Strangler case to the Velvet Underground is truly a hallucinatory, peak-1960's kind of footnote.

But according to Warhol, this was not how the Bottomlys actually felt about Susan's trashcan cover turn and current direction in life: "Her parents weren’t happy with her new ‘career’ - modeling in New York - and later on, when she was on the cover of Esquire, photographed in a garbage can (‘Today’s Girl, Finished at 18’), they were really upset... but they went on supporting her, and she went on supporting lots of her friends.”

Along with Nico, Bottomly was one of the few performers in Warhol's Chelsea Girls film that actually lived at the Chelsea Hotel. Bottomly also appears in the Andy Warhol 1966 film "The Velvet Underground and Tarot Cards" in which, over the course of 65 minutes, all members of the band get their tarot read (there's more on VU's unlikely interest in astrological signs and other occult topics in my book). The film is extremely difficult to screen, but here's a short silent clip featuring Susan.

"I'd be dying to go to bed with Susan Bottomly (International Velvet)," whom Lou was also fucking on the side," Cale wrote in his 2000 autobiography. "Unfortunately [Lou] caught me in bed with Susan and he threw us both out of the apartment." How much of this had already transpired by the time the New Yorkers landed at the curled edge of Cape Cod is unclear.

"Everyone is uptight for amphetamine," Gerard Malanga wrote upon the crew's first impressions of Provincetown and the lack of connections to a dealer in the area. "We're all waiting in front of the museum to go to the beach." Enjoying the beach might have been the last good thing to happen to the EPI team in Provincetown. For starters, apparently, the toilets in the house Warhol rented did not work and members of the entourage were "throwing shit out the window."

Next up, one of the EPI entourage stole various items from a local shop for the show, and the police arrived on stage during one of the performances. They "untied Eric Emerson from a post (which he was strapped to in preparation for being whipped by Mary Woronov) in order to retrieve some belts and whips that were stolen from a leather store." (Source: Up-tight)

Additionally, Gerard Malanga was running out of patience with how little control he had over any visual aspect of the EPI and having to compete for the literal spotlight with the Velvet Underground. In Provincetown, Susan Bottomly refused to dance where Malanga instructed her to and then, during "Heroin," she blocked the spotlight that provided him with any source of light to navigate the space. "I'm in total darkness. Mary is also in total darkness," he wrote in his diary. "Andy seems oblivious to the situation and to my personal feelings."

In a letter written to Warhol but never sent, Malanga griped about the Cape Cod performance: “I thought the Provincetown show got off to a rough but very good start, until you were so kind enough as to let Susan and everyone else not directly connected with the show to get involved with Mary and I on stage…You are slowly taking this away from me by allowing outside elements to interfere with my dance routines…From my vantage point on stage to have more than two dancers the show becomes a Mothers of Invention freak-out.”

Even worse, new dancer Eric Emerson tried to steal a priceless piece of art from the museum "just to see if he could get away with it" and negotiations to return the art without charges being pressed were only narrowly achieved.

Finally, to tie a bow on the cursed Provincetown engagement, the large photograph on the back of the debut VU album was taken during one of the Chrysler Museum performances, and that particular image led to a legal issue which severely affected the impact the first VU LP was able to have with the listening public. It all has to do with the head above the projection of Lou's head, both hovering above the band. That upside down man is would-be art thief and EPI dancer, Eric Emerson.

The best, succinct explanation of the debacle comes from Richie Unteberger's excellent White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground day-by-day book:

“Seeing how no one asked [Eric Emerson] about putting his picture on the jacket, he asked Verve for a lot of money,” Morrison later explains in M.C. Kostek and Phil Milstein’s critical Velvet Underground discography. “Verve got scared and airbrushed it out.”

As an immediate consequence, The Velvet Underground & Nico – which has only just entered distribution and the lowest levels of the charts – has to be pulled from stores while Verve/MGM alters the artwork. The delay effectively kills the record’s chances of rising up the charts – not that it goes very far, peaking at a lowly Number 171 on Billboard...When the album finally reappears, Emerson’s image has been airbrushed out, leaving a murky, yellow glow where his face once appeared. Even worse, some copies simply paste an ugly, black-and-white sticker with the album title and Warhol’s production credit over where Emerson’s face had been. There are no winners in this battle.

But how was the music? The Boston Globe's Ray Murphy covered the event and his specific references to the Velvet Underground sound more like how you might describe different shades on a painter's palette than an innovative rock band comprised of five unique individuals:

The performance ended when "all the fuses in the room blew out under the strain of all the projectors, amplifiers, and lights. The quiet made you dizzy."

"It was a wild affair and difficult to analyze," Murphy concluded.

"They got run out of Provincetown on a rail," Cutrone said in summary.

---

Less than two months later, the EPI/VU gang marched right back into Massachusetts for a rematch, this time in Boston proper.

Andy's appearance at the ICA in early October for the opening of his exhibit kicked off the Beantown version of Warhol-mania. The Globe reported:

Guess who this chic hangman was? That's right...

The Boston Globe spelled her last name incorrectly here, but other articles about her get it right.

Warhol, as he often did, just stood there and let people project their ideas onto him.

The paper declared Warhol "the hottest living art personality since Picasso and Dali." Then it was off to the races, with droves of Bostonians visiting to see what all the fuss was about, making it the most popular exhibit in the ICA's history.

Future Fletch novelist Gregory Mcdonald covered the phenomenon weeks into the exhibit for the Boston Globe. Mcdonald conjectured that it's not just people who love his art and hate his art, but also a third category of person who knows it's a fraud but finds it delightful that he's pulling one over on the sophisticated art world.

"His work has the limited future of a soup label," Mcdonald writes, unaware how wrong he'll eventually be proven, but then again, Warhol felt the same way. "My work has no future at all," he told the reporter, "I know that." Outside of a good caption joke about an older patron confused about whether she was at the supermarket or an art gallery, the Mcdonald piece concludes in what can only be described as the writer spiraling out trying to put the artist's ethos and its consequences into words:

"What are you currently reading exists this morning in 600,000 copies," he declares, "but by 2:30 this afternoon will not exist at all." And yet, here I am, reading those words and thinking about that same artist. No one saw what was coming.

The EPI event promptly sold out and an additional performance was added for 11PM on October 29th at the ICA. In the lead up to the show, the Velvet Underground are referred to in the press as a "cultural mafia," a preview of the event says the band will be "unleashed," and that "Boston has not seen anything like it." Admission was five dollars.

---

Just like the Provincetown trip, Boston had its own unique roster of ancillary players involved with the EPI and VU, and a few of them had some connection to a scene that was just starting to develop up on Fort Hill in Roxbury. The Mel Lyman Family, or Fort Hill Community, like Warhol, would soon receive reams of press coverage in an attempt to figure out who/what/why they precisely were. For now, Lyman and Co. had just acquired several dilapidated houses on Fort Ave. in the wake of Mel's initial audacious claims that he was God. Their alternative newspaper, Avatar, would start the following year in June of '67.

Ronna Page, who would dance in the EPI that night, had previously done a Warhol screen test and is the co-"star" of one of the most infamous scenes in Chelsea Girls in which an amphetamine fueled Ondine slaps her after she calls him a phony. It's a real, unscripted moment. It's also one of the most exploitive, squirmish moments in all of Warhol's work. Warhol said the unexpected violence made him uncomfortable and he had to leave the room while it was happening but Mary Woronov, in her memoir Swimming Underground, reported that privately the director said, "it's our best film yet. It's so beautiful."

The description of her screen test: "Ronna Page, lit only from the left, stares hard at the camera without blinking, until her eyes tear up halfway through the roll."

It was Page who introduced filmmaker Jonas Mekas to Mel Lyman at the Paradox Restaurant in New York, a connection that would lead to Lyman's first book, Autobiography of a World Saviour. It's unclear if she was ever a full time member of the Lyman family or just a friend on the periphery. In 1967, a member of the Fort Hill Community wrote of Page in the pages of Avatar:

The darkly voluptuous superstar, Ronna Page's metier is seducing swamis, and there's more and more work for her every day. Everyone's off to see the Master these days. The Beatles, Shirley MacClaine, Mrs. Frank Sinatra (that's Mia), Kandy Kane, Bobby Vinton are all looking for someone to help them on the journey to spiritual salvation. Can't you just see it! In a few years everyone will be going to their "psychia-christ" to the tune of seventy love — dollars an hour. But as long as our lovely Ronna is around, she'll weed out the swamis who are not bent on salvation but are bent over something else.

The subtext of this gossipy blind item is unknown, and whether this is in praise of Page or a dig is hard to say. In the 1966 "Expanded Arts" issue of Film Culture, Mel Lyman is listed as available for "A full evening show alone or together with Eben Given, Ronna Page, Jonas Mekas, light, images, voice, human presence" (Film Culture 43 [1966]: n.p.).

Also part of the Warhol entourage in Boston is artist and future art critic Rene Ricard, who was actively trying to avoid the Cambridge police for living illegally on Harvard property "and numerous flower thefts - from gardens, flower shops and particularly an alleged heist of one of Andy’s flower paintings."

In a November '67 article in Avatar, apparently Rene wrote an anonymously disparaging piece about himself:

A raging, high-pitched, red-eyed little transvestite called, get this, Rene Ricard, attacked Mel Lyman the other night in the back room (the place) of Max's Kansas City. Mel, slightly startled, but always the Master of the situation, just shut the little thing up by slapping his face. It turned out the reason for his attack was somehow everyone in New York thinks he's ME and he feels that I am ruining his name — YOUR name, you little bitch, think what you're doing to MINE!

Uh, ok. Sure. Maybe you had to be there.

Some of the NY entourage stay with Gordon Baldwin, others with Ed Hood, and because Nico only appears with the Velvet Underground a few times in Boston, this date is a fairly good candidate for one of the times the band stayed in the houses of the Mel Lyman Family. From AW68:

On one such occassion, when Nico simply helped herself to someone’s bed, the German singer was bluntly instructed to find somewhere else to catch some sleep. Personnel from the band and a Fort Hill Community member had certainly crossed paths at least once before; Faith Gude and VU’s whip dancer Gerard Malanga had a brief affair in the early sixties.

At 9PM, Saturday, October 29th, the first Velvet Underground show in Boston began.

Gerard Malanga sets the scene in Up-Tight:

In Jack Bernstein's review of the event for MIT's The Tech newspaper, he knew he had seen something ahead of its time:

To borrow a phrase, "it's the shape of rock to come." Andy Warhol's Expanding Plastic Inevitable featuring The Velvet Underground with Nico performed their new 'psychedelic rock' at the Institute of Contemporary Art Saturday. The biggest difference between this music and the stuff you get on 'frantic forty' radio is that you have to see this to believe it.

Bernstein describes the disorientating nature of the opening of the EPI with its lights, films, and a sense something was about to happen. And then:

Their first number, 'All Tomorrows Parties,' which, incidentally, has been released by Verve records, featured Nico singing, and the Underground, electric bass, electric guitar, electric piano, and supersonic drums, providing the most driving backing I've ever heard...the technical armament of Velvet Underground is something fantastic to behold...the most starling of all was two huge gas-discharge lamps which would flash in syncopated time as the music reached its climax. The only aspect of the performance which could been improved upon was the group's tendency to rely on the background material for too long between numbers, but once the music started, all was forgiven.

It sounds like an unadulterated win, but just like Provincetown, apparently, the New Yorkers left feeling down about the gig. EPI entourage member Susan Pile had a fairly grim assessment of how it all shook out in the end in a letter to her friend:

"Boston’s reaction was an incredible rejection. The thing is, those who do not get involved with the show tend to react in loud objection; those who do get involved are too overcome with the experience (capital E) to do much of anything. And the show in Boston was beautiful--it was a stage show in the auditorium - no dancing by scum on the floor."

But Pile also noted, "the Velvets are getting so much better--their album is done, but everyone is becoming disenchanted with the idea of touring." In truth, it wasn't quite done, and it was going to be awhile before it came out, and even then, it wasn't going to get the praise and adulation it deserved for decades, arguably. A long, long wait was ahead for the band, as an entity and even as a name. Think of the anticipation and crazed majesty of this first performance compared to the final Boston VU show, at Oliver's on Lansdowne St in 1973 with no original members and Doug Yule leading a competent bar band through a set that included some Velvet Underground songs. There would be a long free fall towards obscurity before they would be crowned one of the greatest to ever do it.

"One of the more celebrated rock groups..." indeed.

As would become tradition, the post-VU-Boston-show after party was held at Ed Hood's place in Harvard Square. Pile recalled, "A totally paranoid party - millions of people at Ed Hood’s in total isolation, everyone stoned beyond belief and uncommunicating."

The EPI in Boston generated an avalanche of stimuli, information, and discussion. Maybe everyone had done enough communicating for the night.

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#the velvet underground #andy warhol #Boston #ICA #Youtube

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