Eddie: Well, Well, Well... If It Isn't My Old Friend: The Dawning Realization That I Fucked Up Bad

Eddie: Well, well, well... if it isn't my old friend: the dawning realization that I fucked up bad

Okay, but imagine Robin who hangs out at the diner on weekends because the senior citizens go there and are fun to hang out with. She knows all the ins and outs of who is who in Hawkins thanks to Janice. Gladys has shown her how to knit, which the first thing she made was a very off-putting and weirdly shaped sweater she gave to Steve (Steve absolutely wore it even if it is not correct. Anytime anyone mentions it he just goes "its called fashion"). Charles has lamented about how the outfits the kids wear and their attitudes ("All these bright colors and for what? To be a dick? Might as well have put a big flashing sign that says "I'm a prick"").

One day, there is a new guy at the diner. Robin doesn't catch his name but he seems nice (and younger then the majority of the crowd). Robin is telling them about Steve's failed attempts at flirting, when the new guy chuckles and cuts her off mid sentence. "Almost as bad as my kid...God love him," He smiles and looks at the ceiling before taking a sip of coffee. Robin would feel frazzled getting interrupted if the guy didn't go on to tell the most hilarious story she ever heard. The poor kid was apparently so flustered trying to flirt he had actually tripped and spilled his drink on himself; somehow, the story ended with the kid looking like a sewer rat with twigs in his hair and a bloody nose, but an award winning smile cause he got a number.

Robin immediately wants to meet the kid who is "around your age". He seems sweet and funny, at least this man is so surely the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Janice is the one to suggest Robin meets the nephew and brings Steve along ("That poor boy needs more friends his age, always cartin' those kids around" "If he ever wants an older friend you tell him to-""Rhonda! He could be your grandchild!""I have eyes Janice, just because I'm old doesn't mean I can't see""You're legally blind."). Robin earnestly agrees. As they leave, Robin makes plans with the man, making sure the others can't hear so they don't show up. Robin makes plans for Tuesday at 4.

Except on Tuesday she gets sick. She's laying on the couch pathetically, lamenting about how she never gets sick. Steve is like "oh nooooo guess we have to cancel" with a shrug, cause he could not care less (he had wanted to spend a relaxing night off). Robin convinces him to go. Cue Steve meeting Eddie at a diner, essentially a blind date. Steve shows back up at the apartment him and Robin share and is smitten. Starts telling Robin all about the date not date. Eddie goes home to Wayne, gives him a grumpy look (he didn't want to go out to some "stupid" hangout), then goes to his room. Wayne could hear his squeal of delight and then hear Eddie talking to himself about the prettiest guy he's seen. Wayne just sips his coffee and goes back to reading the paper.

Eddie: *spits mouthful of blood onto floor* You've become far more powerful since we last crossed paths

Dentist: Please stop, there's literally a sink right next to you

Okay to expand on this I just think: Steve who’s been in a couple of tv shows and is having a moment, famous offscreen for his hair and his charm and onscreen for his ability to find chemistry with anyone (and also, again, his hair).

And Eddie who is a complete unknown; he’s been in some stage productions and had the tiniest bit parts on TV but nobody’s ever, like, recognized him on the street.

Eddie auditions for a new HBO show. When his agent tells him that Steve Harrington is already attached Eddie is like cool, I’ll never get this part but the audition will be good practice so why not. They’re never gonna cast him. He’s sure he’s playing it too weird, and he hasn’t cut his hair (but he will when a part needs him to) but then he gets a callback. Twice.

And then he’s getting called in to do a chemistry test with some of the other actors. The show is like a modern Freaks and Geeks but with a slow burn murder mystery, and Eddie’s actually dead in the main timeline but about half the show is told in flashbacks so it’s a big part. When he meets Steve he doesn’t know what he’s expecting from the paparazzi darling but the guy is super genuine, makes Eddie feel way more comfortable than he has so far. They do their read together and Eddie is just thinking to himself like… damn, this guy really is good, because that felt crazy. He’s acted opposite some insanely talented people but it’s never been that easy. That must just be what it’s like working with Steve.

And now it’s dangerous because he really wants the part. He wants to stop bartending to make rent. He wants to be on this show, because the pages he’s seen are good, and he thinks he could really bring something to it. And because he wants to work with Steve. And even the rest of the cast, too, but—

The day Eddie gets the part he gets a text from a number he doesn't know. Hey man, really looking forward to working with you. And then, a few minutes later, It's Steve btw. He's smiling down at his phone so much that his agent, whose office he's in, is like "What, did you just score another life-changing opportunity I don't know about?" And Eddie is like "Nope, just the one, uh—it's just my uncle saying congrats. Anyway—"

They don't make him cut his hair. They don't tell him to stop playing it so weird. Everything goes so well that it feels fucking hard to believe, in fact, like he's just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's one group of them playing seniors in high school, the main foursome of which is Eddie, Steve, and their two girl costars, Nancy and Robin. And then there's a younger group playing freshmen whose story intersects with theirs.

His and Steve's characters are set up as opposites, almost rivals, and at least at first, you're presumably supposed to wonder if it's Steve's rich, popular guy who's killed Eddie's character. Nobody in the cast knows the truth yet; the scripts get revealed to them as they're shooting them and they've been told the murderer won't even be revealed in the first season (so here's hoping they get renewed, because Eddie would really like to know who killed him—and he'd also like to keep making HBO money).

Their scenes are some of Eddie's favorites to film (although he also has a soft spot for the kids—especially Dustin who plays a hilarious and awesome nerd who does D&D with Eddie's DM). Eddie hopes his and Steve's stuff is working on whatever level they ultimately need it to work on—sometimes they do get notes that tell them to pull back or dig into something, to emphasize something else, so he has to trust that they're doing the right things.

They often film out of order so when they eventually film the scene where Eddie and Steve's characters have their first run-in at school, it's far from the first time they've shot together. They get all up in each other's faces in the scene, and they've run the lines, done a table read, but acting it out at full intensity is. A lot. Steve's character is mad because he thinks Eddie's character is trying to steal his girlfriend (really she was just buying drugs from him). The way Steve plays it is all simmering intensity, the threat of violence just under the surface, and this is where Eddie doesn't know if he's reading something into it that isn't there. Because for him, there's also another kind of tension between them. And he doesn't know if it's his real life bleeding into the character; if it's just how Steve can't help being with everyone; or if it's a legitimate part of the scripts that they're supposed to be picking up on and exploring. He doesn't even know if anybody else sees what he does. But they do their takes; nobody tells him he's doing something wrong. And after the director calls cut the first time, Steve winks at him. Just to cut the tension, Eddie thinks, maybe to make him smile, which it does. It's fun watching Steve work, watching him slip into and out of character. He's really easy to work with.

Sometimes they get together to run lines or talk motivation or whatever. “It's crazy, you know," Eddie tells Steve in his trailer one night. Steve's is bigger so all of them usually hang out here. They've been making each other laugh, shooting the shit about increasingly funny backstories for their characters, and Eddie feels high with it. "I mean, you know this is my first real show. It's like—" he gestures between them, trying to encompass everything that happens on-camera and all the fun of working on that off-camera. "I didn't know it would be like this."

"Oh—yeah, man," Steve says and laughs a little self-deprecatingly, running a hand through his hair. "But, I mean, for me, I've done a couple and, with our stuff—it’s never been like this with anyone else, either.”

It's going to be so hard, Eddie thinks, looking back at him, to not read into that more than he should.

Eddie and Steve are out on a little lunch date at a diner that Dustin swears up and down by, and Eddie is filming a video to send to Dustin saying that they’re there and they like the food.

He points the camera at Steve and says, “Stevie, what’s your final verdict?”

Steve, who has been distracted almost the entire video is like, “You’ve been clocked.”

“What?”

“Those girls over there. They’ve been looking at you for like, the last ten minutes,” Steve says thoughtfully and then hisses at Eddie when he turns around, “Don’t look!”

Eddie waves and then grins when they’re like ‘that’s really him!’ He tells them, “You can come and say hi if you wanna. You’re not bothering us.”

Eddie will never stop being amused by how eager fans are once you give them the go ahead. He is caught off guard but ultimately delighted when they bypass him immediately and go up to Steve like, “You teach math, right? Can you help us with our midterm?”