#most of us grew up listening to the oldie country bc its all our parents and grandparents listened to

[puppy-steve]

Misty Taste of Moonshine - ao3

Six months into their relationship, Steve realizes how different Eddie is when he's around certain people. He doesn't put on the theatrical facade he wears when he's at school or hanging out with the party, all loud and brash and in your face as the name Eddie Munson has come to be known.

He's been to enough Corroded Coffin practices to see the way Eddie interacts with the band. Little inside jokes and a casual affection that should make him jealous, but in those moments, he sees himself and Robin and feels nothing but warmth. That even after everything, Eddie can still have this with the handful of people that know him better than anyone.

Even so, they don't know the Eddie that resides at the Munson trailer. The real Eddie, not the one dimensional being that deals in the doorway under the dim porch light and in the shadows, the one that's on the receiving end of sneers and the word "devil" spat at his feet like his face isn't even worth the trouble of aiming for.

Steve learns that when Eddie was four, his mom died in a car accident on her way to pick him up from the babysitter's. His dad had never been around, so her brother Wayne was the only next of kin eligible to take him in.

"I don't really remember my mom," Eddie says one night after dinner. He and Steve are in Eddie's room. Wayne's already left for work so they've got the trailer to themselves until morning. They could use the time to fool around like the teenagers they aren't, but tonight, Steve just wants to hear Eddie talk. There's an acoustic guitar he keeps in the closet, a gift from his grandpa before he and Wayne moved to Indiana. He strums it quietly as they sit on the bed. "I remember she used to sing to me a lot, though. Lots'a Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash." He's got a soft smile on his face as he plucks the strings absentmindedly.

"My first real memory is of me sittin' on my great grandma's knee in her kitchen. She had this rocking chair in the corner by the window that looked out over half the holler." He turns his smile to Steve. "I'm takin' you there one day, Stevie. You gotta see it."

They don't know the real Eddie. Steve considers himself lucky that Eddie trusts him and feels comfortable around him to let every single carefully constructed wall come crumbling down when they're alone in the safety of the trailer.

They don't know that the voice they hear everyday isn't his real one. The one he grew up speaking with. When it's just them, Eddie's outside voice fades into one with a soft twang and it makes Steve's insides melt like butter in the screaming hot cast iron skillet that's seasoned and so well loved by both Munsons. Steve can cook, don't get him wrong (with his parents gone for weeks at a time it was either he learn how to use the stove or starve) but compared to Wayne and Eddie, his food is on par with a ten year old who just learned how to boil water.

Eddie always appreciates Steve cooking for them. He stands behind him at the stove with his arms gently wrapped around his waist and his chin on his shoulder, gently swaying back and forth. In the beginning, Steve would get embarrassed with Wayne in the room and brush his boyfriend off, but now it's almost second nature to lean back into his hold and accept the kiss on the nape of his neck and the quiet "smells good, baby" in his ear, the man who has come to be more of a dad to him than his own father watching with fondness behind his beer can.

Steve has always known that Hawkins wasn't home to Eddie, not really. He knew that, to him, home was deep in Carter County, Kentucky where lived with his uncle and grandparents. And his great grandparents and various aunts and uncles and cousins. Unlike Steve, Eddie never grew up with a shortage of love. There was always plenty to go around, even if they didn't have much money. Then Wayne got laid off from the coal mine when Eddie was thirteen and they moved up here to Indiana where he got on at the Sattler quarry. From what Eddie's told him, though, most of his family moved out of the holler and into the southern regions of Ohio. Only a few cousins stayed behind to keep their grandparents' cabin in the family.

To this day Steve still kicks himself for not fully noticing Eddie sooner. For not befriending him before Tommy H. and Carol dug their toxic claws into him and turned him into the douche bag he's still revered as. He remembers the new kid being introduced at the beginning of seventh grade and how hard he tried to make friends. He remembers how he was shut down every single time with laughs and cruel comments. Kids outright making fun of his accent and his clothes until he no longer tried reaching out and hung back from everyone. He eventually met Jeff and Gareth, and Steve was so grateful to them for getting Eddie out of his shell again, but the damage was already done and it followed him every year since.

Sometimes Steve will ask Eddie to sing to him, and he'd settle further into the pillows on the other boy's bed (the trailer was more his home these days than his actual house) and listen with his heart almost bursting with emotion as Eddie played a tune on his acoustic. A Johnny Cash song that Steve vaguely recognizes, a song that Eddie says almost every Appalachian family has their own rendition of. Steve thinks it's also eerily fitting for everything that's happened in the past year.

And when he's finished, Steve will pull him into a kiss and vow to never take for granted this version of his boyfriend only he's allowed to know.