Chapter Text
Eddie is like, moderately high when he comes across the across the ad, so at first he legitimately thinks he’s hallucinating. Because there is no fucking way this is actually real. The premise itself, as ridiculous as it is, is believable enough: pay some guy to come over and clean your apartment while wearing just his underwear. I mean sure, the concept is straight out of a bad porn set up or like, a cheesy rom com where the guy paying a twink to prance around his apartment in his underwear ‘cleaning’ ends up falling in love with said twink and ‘saving’ him, but it’s at least plausible. Honestly, it’s probably more believable as a real thing than it would be as a rom com, because ‘Pretty Woman’ aside, Eddie does not think Hollywood is on that level right now. At least not with the gays.
Not that any guy offering this service would have to be gay, necessarily, or that all the people who hire him as a maid with a heavy side benefit of eye candy are men. Eddie is sure there are more than enough bored, rich women who would be willing to pay this dude gobs of money to bend over and fluff their decorative pillows or whatever while wearing a thong. But like. He’s wearing a thong. In the ad. Which can’t help but seem at least slightly gay coded to Eddie, but hey, maybe he’s just projecting. Chrissy, his better half and sweetness personified, not to mention his agent, claims he does this a lot. Eddie chooses not to worry about it. What he is worried about, currently, is how disturbingly familiar this guy’s thong clad ass looks.
Like, Eddie is pretty sure he’s not fucking insane or actually that high, unless his dealer unknowingly cut his weed with something extra, which Yao would never do, because he’s good shit. It’s just, there is a distinct formation of moles low on the left side of the small of this guy’s back, peeking out just above the neon royal blue strip of fabric delectably framing his ass, that Eddie is sure he recognizes. It’s one that’s guiltily haunted his high school memories, ever since the time he stumbled into an at home swim meet trying to hide from some neanderthal on the football team who got cold feet in the middle of a mediocre hand job and seemed suddenly very intent on redirecting his fist and burgeoning gay panic directly into Eddie’s face. Not a good time, but Eddie’s always had somewhat of an unfortunate penchant for being deeply attracted to repressed jock boys, even if he’s repulsed by them on both a personal and intellectual level. It’s a personal problem. Eddie’s been trying to work on it, really, but his dick has just never managed to get the message.
Which is why, something like six years after the original incident, Eddie is absolutely sure that he is once again gazing upon the wonder that is Steve ‘King Steve, the Hair’ Harrington’s ass. In a thong. What is happening right now? Eddie forces himself to swallow the frankly alarming amount of saliva which has inexplicably gathered in his mouth and clicks the website link on the ad for ‘Stevie’s Cleaning’. And it’s definitely, definitely, Steve fucking Harrington, because Eddie never heard a single person call him ‘Stevie'’ in high school, but between the name and the ass, he is sure that it’s him. Some context clues are so obvious that even Eddie is capable of putting them together. So he clicks the link. What?! Eddie’s always been a deeply inquisitive person (annoyingly so, at least according to the majority of his teachers, who always seemed to feel he had far too many questions they considered irrelevant to the topic at hand, but which Eddie considered vital), and this is absolutely a situation that requires further investigation.
And Eddie doesn’t exactly know what he expected, but what he finds is somehow more. For one thing, there’s a picture of Harrington’s actual face on the ‘Stevie’s Cleaning’ website, which Eddie has very much not forgotten even though he hasn’t seen it in years (they are not friends on social media, unless Harrington follows one of his public accounts, which Eddie very much doubts because he’s pretty sure the guy’s music taste runs much more towards main stream pop and bland classic rock than it does whatever the fuck Eddie’s putting out there). It’s almost as memorable and mole flecked as his ass. His hair is like, exactly the same, Eddie registers as he scrolls through the available pictures, not all of which are solely focused on Harrington’s ass. The dude has not evolved at all, apparently. The fact that Eddie’s hairstyle is also exactly the same as it was in high school, except much better taken care of than it was back then, when Eddie cut it himself in his uncle’s trailer and used 3 in 1 shampoo/conditioner/bodywash, is totally irrelevant. The point is, is that Harrington is obviously still a complete and total douchebag. Now he’s just a douchebag wearing a thong.
Which, actually, probably isn’t all that different than a jockstrap, which is something Harrington probably got used to wearing in high school, what with being captain of like, three different sports teams or something. Totally obnoxious. Not at all hot. And not that Eddie’s thought about it much, at all, ever in his life, much less in the last few years when he wasn’t being hit over the head with Harrington’s apparently overwhelming athletic prowess every day by like, the PA system announcements and half of the Hawkin’s High student body. Because why would he? He would not.
And oh look, there’s a picture of Harrington’s ass in jockstrap right there on the ‘Stevie’s Cleaning’ website, because that’s apparently one of the underwear options you can pick for him to clean your apartment (or house or whatever the fuck) in. And yes, there are options. Starting with the very helpful initial split categories of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, just to get you going in the right direction. Eddie, haplessly enticed by the image of Harrington’s ass clad in a bright red jockstrap, immediately clicks on the ‘masculine’ category, which takes him to a plethora of available subcategories: jock straps, briefs, boxer briefs and boxers. Which, boxers? Boring! Eddie seriously can’t imagine anyone picking that option unless they’re like, deeply intent on recreating that famous Paul Newman breakfast photo shoot, which is admittedly both hot and achingly domestic, but also contingent on Harrington cooking, which Eddie isn’t even confident he knows how to do. I mean, it’s not like he became a chef.
There’s only one more category under the masculine tab; ‘European’, whatever the fuck that means. Eddie clicks into it and discovers it seems to designate panties, but like basic, conservative ones designed for men. Okay, sure. There’s also an icon inviting him to ‘pick his color!’ once he’s chosen a specific type of underwear. There’s like, 7 different color options, what the fuck. How many pairs of various, seemingly endless, types of underwear does Harrington now own? He’s like an actual fucking Ken doll or something, which tracks, because Eddie always remembers him being kind of vacant behind those pretty, honey brown eyes back in high school. Just like, fucking glazed. Jocks, what are you gonna do, not the brightest bulbs on the tree in the first place, and all the concussions they’re prone to certainly don’t do anything to help. Eddie’s pretty sure he remembers Harrington taking a couple of particularly nasty hits to the head over the course of their shared high school career, and he also remembers him barely graduating, so there’s that.
And yes, it may be true that Eddie himself didn’t exactly graduate on time, but he also wasn’t a golden boy jock with a rich mommy and daddy to smooth things over for him, so it’s not really a fair comparison. Eddie is fully confident in the assertion that he is much smarter than Steve Harrington, which he feels is validated by the fact Eddie is on the verge of blowing up to full blown rock star status thanks to his genius song writing skills (and the rest of Corroded Coffin, he’s not enough of an egotistical asshat yet not to give the boys their due credit) while Harrington is currently cleaning people’s houses in his underwear. Evidently, it’s still true that all King Steve is really capable of bringing to the table is that body of his. Total. Fucking. Ken doll.
The Ken comparison sort of falls apart as an analogy (Simile? Metaphor? Something? Whatever, semantics, Eddie doesn’t actually care) when Eddie stumbles upon a front facing shot on the website. Harrington is wearing tighty whiteys so true to their name that it’s obscene. You can see everything, and while Harrington’s package doesn’t look ridiculously huge or anything, he’s definitely not working with blank space between his legs. It’s not unappealing (okay, so it’s very appealing, whatever) and Eddie can admit to a sick little thrill of gratification over the fact that he’s definitely bigger than Harrington. Like, somewhat significantly. He must know what to do with what he’s got though, at least if the high school rumor mill is to be believed. If only all those girls who whispered and giggled in the halls about how good Harrington gave it to them could see King Steve now, Eddie muses.
He scrolls back up to the top of the webpage, about to click over onto the ‘feminine’ side of things, when he sees it; the ‘custom’ option. Eddie seizes on it immediately, because at this point, how can he fucking not? Breathlessly, he discovers that if he pays just a bit extra, he can get Harrington to come clean his apartment wearing any pair of underwear that Eddie wants, just as long as they’re new and unopened and he sends them along to a specified, anonymous PO box. Eddie falls back heavily into his chair, too drunk on the knowledge that Steve fucking Harrington cleans houses in his underwear for a living to care that he almost tips himself over. He is absolutely fucking doing this.
“You are not fucking doing this,“ Gareth says flatly, reaching around Eddie to shut the lead guitarist’s laptop with a misguided sense of finality.
Eddie immediately pops it back open, the ‘Stevie’s Cleaning’ webpage and Harrington’s prominently displayed assets contained therein rematerializing instantly, much to Gareth’s evident exasperation and displeasure, given the way he sighs loudly and hastily averts his eyes.
“Um, pretty sure I am, GarBear,” Eddie informs his long-suffering drummer, voice brimming over with a level of gleeful anticipation that boarders on deranged. Gareth rolls his eyes at him in response, which, rude. And also, Gareth should know by now not to underestimate either Eddie’s tendency toward intractable stubbornness or the degree of delight he takes from creating and then subsequently reveling in chaos; they’ve known each other since middle school and Eddie’s been DMing for him just as long. These are core tenants of his personality.
“Why though?” Gareth asks tiredly, like he’s already exhausted by Eddie’s entire being even though he’s only been over at his apartment for like five minutes. Which, actually, that’s probably fair; Eddie’s in a little bit of a manic state right now. But I mean, can anyone really blame him, given the utter revelation that is currently gracing his laptop screen? This is fucking huge!
“Are the reasons not both legion and obvious?” Eddie demands of Gareth, waving a ring clad hand at his computer screen, on which King Steve’s ass is shown to its utmost advantage encased in delicate, pink lace panties.
“High school was half a decade ago now man, the fact that you’re still hanging on to your weird little hate crush on the guy is kind of weird at this point.”
“I don’t have a hate crush on him!” Eddie protests. “And it’s not weird, Gareth. You had a crush on Cindy McNamara and she was like, evil incarnate stuffed into a cheerleader uniform!”
“Um, yeah, except the difference is that I’d totally moved on from it by the time we all graduated. The fact that we’re now 24 and you recognized Steve Harrington from a still of his ass is at least mildly concerning, dude.”
“It’s a very distinct ass!” Eddie protests. “The moles, Gareth! The moles!”
Gareth has the nerve to roll his eyes at him. Again. Un-fucking-real.
“I never got why you were so fixated on him anyway,” Gareth tells him, seeming unreasonably judgmental about it.
Eddie narrows his eyes at him. “Straight people,” he says pointedly. “Are so fucking annoying.”
“He’s not that hot,” Gareth says immediately in response, like a fucking liar.
Eddie sputters, gesturing emphatically at Harrington’s pert, perfect ass, still displayed prominently on his laptop. Is Gareth blind as well as straight?
“He absolutely fucking is, Gar,” Eddie says, because it’s just true. “But regardless, I am not fixated.”
Gareth levels him a flat look which very clearly communicates, ‘uh, yeah, you are’ before switching up his tactics.
“I thought you already had a house cleaner anyway,” he points out. “That blonde girl? Lydia?”
“Right, Lydia,” Eddie says. “I gave her the week off.”
Technically, Eddie has not done this yet, but he will now that Gareth has oh so helpfully brought it to his attention. So same difference.
“Lydia is nice Eddie,” Gareth lectures, like Eddie isn’t aware of this when he’s the one who employs her. “You can’t fire her just for a chance to see Steve fucking Harrington in his underwear.”
“I’m not firing Lydia!” Eddie protests, because he’s absolutely not, especially not over some rich asshole like Harrington. That would be like, entirely against his ethos.
“So what, you’re just going to have two housekeepers?” Gareth asks, voice veritably dripping with implied judgement. “Is that really necessary, Eddie?”
In a moment of divine inspiration, Eddie reaches forward to snag a throw pillow from the couch, tossing it dramatically onto the floor. “I dwell in a realm of filth,” he declares.
“You dwell in a realm of delusion,” Gareth counters, steamrolling right on before Eddie can do anything more than let his mouth fall open indignantly, poised for protest. “What’s your goal here anyway, man? To humiliate him or something?”
“Um, yeah,” Eddie says, because obviously. “And also, as a treat, I get to do it while he’s wearing panties.”
Gareth grimaces, like either the idea of Eddie setting all of this up just to purposefully humiliate Harrington, or the image of the other man in panties (both, it’s probably both) is distasteful to him. Prude.
“How do you know he’ll even be embarrassed?” the drummer asks. “This is like, his job, apparently. I doubt he’d be doing it if he hated it, man.”
Eddie huffs, in absolutely no mood for Gareth’s logic. Besides, he’s wrong anyway. “The fact that it’s his job is what’s humiliating, Gar,” he says slowly, the ‘duh’ heavily implied in his overly patronizing tone of voice if not actually spoken out loud.
Gareth raises a challenging eyebrow at him.
“Dude, Harrington has like, no shame,” he says blithely, apparently absolutely determined to ruin Eddie’s fun. “Don’t you remember he worked at Scoops Ahoy in high school and they made them wear that stupid fucking sailor uniform with the little hats? This hardly seems much worse than that.”
“He’s scrubbing people’s toilets wearing a thong, Gareth! How is that not worse?!” Eddie demands, voice gone slightly screechy in the face of Gareth’s utter unwillingness to either match his energy or see his point of view about this.
Gareth simply shrugs, unbothered. “Maybe he likes wearing a thong.”
“Why would anyone like wearing a thong? It’s a garment literally designed to get wedged uncomfortably up your ass, Gareth! Nobody likes that!”
“And let me guess, you definitely want him to be uncomfortable and not like it,” Gareth says flatly.
“Uh, yeah, obviously,” Eddie admits easily, not seeing the problem here. “That’s like the whole fucking point, Gar, keep up.”
“Isn’t that kind of shitty?”
Eddie scoffs defiantly. “Like Harrington wasn’t more than ‘kind of shitty’ in high school.”
“I guess,” Gareth sighs. “But everyone’s kind of inherently shitty in high school, dude.”
Fair point, but Eddie fails to see how it’s actually relevant to what they’re currently discussing, so he promptly disregards it the moment it comes out of Gareth’s lecturing mouth.
“And it’s not like he ever really did anything to you specifically, right?” the drummer continues, apparently undeterred by the complete lack of receptiveness to what he’s saying that Eddie has been radiating at him ever since he opened his mouth.
“I mean, I don’t exactly remember Harrington being an aggressor. That was always more Hagan and Carver's role.”
“Right. And Harrington would just stand there and laugh while they called people fags and shoved them into lockers. What a paragon of social virtue.”
“I’m not saying he was an angel, man,” Gareth says tiredly. “I’m just saying he usually didn’t start shit.”
“No, he just didn’t care if other people did. Indifference is the most insidious danger of all, Gar,” Eddie says sagely.
Gareth screws up his face, clearly trying to remember the context of the quote Eddie just bastardized. He scoffs when it hits him. “Dude,” he says, looking appalled. Which, rude.
Okay, so was it maybe a tad over the line to quote Elie Wiesel when he’s talking about Steve Harrington being a bully and not, you know, the Holocaust? On reflection--possibly. Eddie can acknowledge that. But still, Gareth doesn’t need to be such a little bitch about it.
Frankly, his best friend has been really judgy about this entire situation so far, and it’s kind of uncalled for in Eddie’s opinion. Like, why isn’t Gareth, who was just as big of a nerd in high school as Eddie was, if a hell of a lot less obnoxiously loud about it, not on board with this? He was definitely on the receiving end of more than a few ‘pranks’ and nasty comments from Harrington and his shithead friends over the years. So, like, what gives?
“You know that quote is meant to apply to like, real problems and not some fantasy, ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ bullshit you’re intent on enacting on someone who only sort of bullied you in high school, right?” Gareth questions.
Eddie folds his arms stubbornly across his chest. “Didn’t you learn anything from when they made us watch ‘Bully’ in eighth grade health class, Gareth? Or did you miss that day along with Harrington?”
Gareth looks like he’s valiantly trying to summon the last of his patience, and Eddie really hopes he finds it, because he’s like, far from done.
“It is a real fucking problem, man,” he spits out. “So don’t sit there and try and minimize what a major league asshole King Steve was in high school, or how shitty it was for him to stand there with a blank look in his eyes and just let it happen while his minions tormented people he considered to be lower lifeforms.”
Gareth sighs, again, and reaches up to rub at his temples, a sure sign he’s getting a tension headache, which is enough to make Eddie feel a tinsy bit bad for him, but not enough for him to be willing to back down from making his very valid points in an attempt to alleviate his friend’s pain.
“I’m not trying to minimize it, and I’m not saying Harrington wasn’t a jerk,” Gareth says eventually. “I just think you give up the moral high ground when you set out to like, completely humiliate the dude five years after the fact. Especially in a way that has weird, sexual overtones. Also, did you really just use a sports metaphor? That’s like, the clearest sign yet that you’re suffering from some kind of mental break here.”
Eddie says nothing in response to this, probably because he knows deep down that on some level, Gareth is right. If anything is capable of breaking his brain and reducing him to using sports metaphors (*shudder*) it’s definitely Harrington’s ass. Eddie directs his eyes back towards his computer screen, choosing to focus on said ass rather than Gareth’s implication that his motivation might not be entirely pure here.
But like, what the fuck ever, so what if it’s not? So what if Eddie wants to see Steve Harrington in panties and maybe order him around and degrade him a bit while he’s wearing them? Who fucking wouldn’t?! Well, okay, Gareth for one, obviously, but Gareth is a straight man and therefore his opinion doesn’t matter. At least not when it comes to this.
Eddie’s not a perfect person, and he’s never claimed to be. He’s allowed to be a petty, horny bitch sometimes. It’s only fair.
“You don’t even know who he is now,” Gareth offers, once it becomes obvious Eddie isn’t going to give him a verbal response to his previous point. Actually, he’s fairly intent on ignoring it entirely, so it’s really for the best that Gareth moves on. “Maybe he’s like, grown as a person.”
Eddie scoffs. “Yeah, I highly doubt that.”
“This is so fucking stupid,” Gareth tells him, blunt as ever. “And kind of gross too, honestly, man. I really don’t think you should go through with it.”
“Well, it’s too late, because I already spent a ridiculous amount of money ordering custom panties for him, and as soon as King Steve gets them, I’m confirming my appointment,” Eddie says snippily.
Gareth lets his head thunk back against the wall, looks like he’s strongly considering doing it again out of pure, frustrated exasperation.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters.