#love the idea that steve gets into music bc eddie unknowingly plays the enabler

[red-bat-arse]

steddie musician AU where Eddie makes it big after s4 and invites Robin and Steve to live with him in Chicago so he can tour and always have a home base -and now he has the resources to buy a bit more for himself so he makes sure a good studio space gets installed in the house

and ofc Robin's already musically inclined so she likes to help Eddie fuck around with weird trumpet solos for experimental songs, and Steve learnt piano as a kid but never had the opportunity to get creative with it -so when Eddie's gone and Robin's in class, he putters around the studio, learning guitar from Eddie's books and adapting to a keyboard and having fun with synths and singing. that lack of expectations and freedom to have fun is what trips him into making his own music

he puts together a few songs and asks Nancy to listen to them -he knows she'll be honest about whether he's wasting his time with this, since he at least wants to make music Robin or Eddie could give a pass to. but to his surprise she tells him he's good, and if he wanted to he could make a little extra money playing alternative nights at clubs. needing a second, more objective from a personal connection standpoint, opinion, he asks Argyle, who actually worked at a record store for a bit

Argyle, without asking bc he thought it went without saying, passes the cassette on to a few buddies of his in the local live music scene and later introduces them to Steve when they want to have him at one of their regular places. Steve goes with Robin who he asks not to tell anyone -he doesn't want to distract Eddie while the guy's making a big name of himself, and maybe Steve feels embarrassed or inadequate about being late to the game and doing it as a hobby, so he also uses a pseudonym. 'Zdev' maybe, if we want to parallel 'Djo'

he finds out he really likes it, so he starts doing small gigs for bars or parties Jonathan connects him with. puts a short album on cassette that he recorded at home, has fun with it even as the songs become more personal. but by then 'Zdev' has a little local fame and one of his cassettes is picked up by some label and they reach out -Steve definitely doesn't expect it, because psychedelic rock kind of faded from radio play after the 70s, but now he's being faced with a record deal he isn't sure he wants and no idea how to handle it

so he calls Eddie, who comes racing back from recording with the band out in LA, thankfully not ditching at too inconvenient a point

and Eddie nearly doesn't believe it at first but once he gets his hands on a tape so he can get an idea of the sound, he's obsessed. while he's a metalhead to the core, he's never heard Steve sing before (let's use twenty twenty as the album here) and there's something about the way Steve ties the groove to a sense of melancholy that digs into his skull. it also doesn't help that some of the songs set off alarm bells bc they talk about loving a girl or packing up and leaving or feeling adrift and they make him want to stick as close as possible lest they turn out to be true

he helps Steve through it, pretty well versed in the industry by now (i'm thinking its about 5 years post Vecna) but he's quietly worrying over the album's content the whole time. they go through the re-recording process, which ofc Eddie really wants to hear, but with Steve still being embarrassed he doesn't end up sitting in on any; but they talk over each song before and after and its so easy to drift back into hinting at the mutual attraction they'd each independently resigned to pass them by, back when Eddie first moved away after 86. and eventually it comes out that the album was Steve's way of, yeah, having fun, but also exorcising feelings from his past in Hawkins. that there's only one song that's really about his life now, and he didn't put it on the cassette but he's planning on including it on the LP

by now its pretty obvious to Steve that Eddie is flirting back, not to mention the guy put a hold on recording his own work to help Steve out, which is easy to read into. so he finally invites Eddie to sit in for the recording of the last song, which he's hoping will be subtle enough that he can bluff if it doesn't go well, but if Eddie is on the same page, it'll be clear. the song he plays is Mutual Future (Repeat)

it's got a long winding intro of just guitar that Eddie sits through, unaware, and Steve starts singing low, almost just his speaking voice the croon is so subtle, and when he meets Eddie's eyes through the glass to ask will you be mine?

well, Eddie gets it. and while there's not a lot of privacy in a recording studio, he eventually finds a small filing room he can kiss Steve stupid in until quitting time for the day comes and goes