Wait a moment! I literally have written something similar! Wait a second- *pulls out the first escene of his own self-indulgent/never published fic*
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He is standing in there, between the trees– not too far away from his house, not too close to it either– letting the cool breeze of autumn brush through his locks of hair and the orange leaves crunch under his feet.
The boy meets the gaze of the other's one, red rimmed and holding unshed tears in those doe eyes of his, with a buzzcut that didn't help in the cooler days of the year.
The other has stopped kicking the rocks and sticks like if they had personally offended him, now trying hard to wipe away the tears that don't fall. The breeze caresses his cheeks and the sticks break under his feet.
The boy looks around before becoming closer to the other. “Are you lost?” He asks, leaving a bit of distance just in case.
“No, I know how to go back,” the other responds, not meeting the boy's eyes. Ashamed, angry, nervous, the boy doesn’t know.
“Then you know how to go where you want to?” The boy asks instead now, he hasn't seen the other before, he is sure of it.
Tommy likes to make fun of people and the other looks like someone Tommy would make fun of. The boy doesn’t like Tommy but for some reason he always ended up being followed by him. He thinks it’s because of his last name.
(The boy doesn’t like his last name either).
“I-” the other stutters before finally meeting the boy's eyes. Doe eyes looking into hazel ones. “I don’t really know where I want to go.”
The boy nods. “You aren't from Hawkins,” he says, a statement.
“No, I’m not.” The other confirms. “I just moved here. I was just looking around.”
“There’s nothing much to look around,”
They looked at each other for a moment. A pause and a breath. The boy didn't know the other and the other didn't know the boy. And still they were with their eyes locked in each other like old friends.
The boy finally decided. “I could show you around if you like.”
Pause. “Why would you do that?”
The boy shrugs. “I just want to help.”
The other bit his lip before nodding. “Okay, I would like that.”
The boy grinned, bright and childlike. “I'm Steve, by the way.”
The other smiled back, erasing all the anguish from before. “And I'm Eddie, at your service.” he bowed.
The boy laughed while trying to bow back and the other watched with an amused grin.
That day, after running around in town, laughter, and an invitation to visit the Munson's in the future.
The boy became Steve and the other became Eddie.
—
I also see them around the same age (8-9)
Steve and Eddie childhood friends is my kryptonite.
They meet in the woods outside Steve's house when they're eight and nine years old. Steve is out exploring because his parents are fighting again, something about a secretary and a jazzercize instructor that Steve really doesn't understand or want to listen to. He's done it before, venturing outside to explore the forest like it's his own private world. They never notice when they're fighting like that anyway and Steve always finds his way back.
Eddie, on the other hand, is new to Hawkins. He's nine years old and was just dumped on his uncle's front porch because his dad "doesn't need some brat who cries when the wires spark." Eddie was heartbroken and mad and scared and he loved his uncle Wayne but he didn't want to be comforted so he ran into the woods, Wayne too slow to catch him but calling his name.
After running a while Eddie trips on a root falling on his hands and knees, blood slowly blooming from his palms. He looks up and realizes he has no idea which way he came from or how to get back and releases all the tears he kept locked up tight since that night with the car.
That's how Steve finds him. He makes his way over, calling softly to the boy crouched by his favorite tree. The boy looks up, and the first thing Steve thinks is that he looks a little funny. His head is shaved down and his eyes are a little buggy and he's lanky in a way Steve's never really seen before. His second thought is that he always keeps bandaids in his shorts.
Together they sloppily patch up Eddie's knee and left palm, Steve pressing a smacking kiss to the other boy's knee like he's seen the other moms do for their kids at the park. They introduce themselves and Steve takes him to all his favorite places in the woods. They play knight and dragon and talk about how mean dads are until the sun starts to set.
Eddie gets nervous when the sun starts to set, not used to the unique darkness of the woods, but Steve is used to it. He takes Eddie by the hand and asks him where he entered and guides him home. Wayne finds them like that, he's clearly been doing his own forest wanderings in his search for Eddie and is quick to sweep his nephew into his arms and hold him close. Edde excitedly introduces his uncle to his "new best friend, Steve," his mood lifted significantly since that morning.
Steve waves goodbye and slips away before Wayne can insist on taking him home in the truck, but that's far from the last they see of Steve. After that night, every time Steve's parents get in a fight or his parents go to one of their long, important business dinners without him he makes his way through the woods and to the Munson trailer. The first time it happens Wayne doesn't even know what to say. Steve looks every bit the little Harrington that he is with his little Khakis and perfectly pressed polo knocking on the trailer door all proper-like.
"Hello, I'm here to see Eddie. He's my best friend."
Before Wayne can figure out what to say there's a blur of oversized black hand-me-down clothes barrelling through the door and tackling the younger boy to the ground.
"STEVE!" Eddie absolutely screeches. Wayne is half worried he might take out one of the kid's eardrums, but seeing the wide smile Eddie has plastered on his face, Wayne decides not to say anything.
From there on Steve and Eddie are thick as thieves. Steve spends all his free time at the Munson trailer playing with Eddie and the stray animals. Despite some of Wayne's concerns, their friendship remains strong through the years. With Eddie in the grade above and the grades almost completely separated, they hardly get to interact at school, which only serves to fuel Eddie's disdain and Steve's disinterest in school. Middle school is much the same. They spend almost every waking moment together in the woods or in the trailer but live almost separate lives at school. It's not even that they're trying to hide it, it just never comes up.
When Steve starts climbing up the social ladder it isn't intentional at all. He doesn't have a lot of friends in his grade, certainly not any that come close to Eddie's status in his life, so he kind of just talks to everybody. He plays on the middle school basketball and baseball teams and does well, and before he knows it people are suddenly flocking around him and vying for his attention. He doesn't pay it much mind honestly.
Eddie on the other hand never fits in anywhere. Steve and Wayne are just about the only people in his life he cares about, and despite their overwhelming love and acceptance he can't help but turn out cynical. He struggles with anger management those first few years with Wayne, frustrated with being abandoned by his dad and separated from Steve and it all culminates in him being ostracized from his peers.
It isn't until high school that the rest of Hawkins clues into what's been in front of their faces the entire time. The high school is much less separated so while they won't be sharing any classes, there are many more opportunities for them to hang out.
On day one of Steve's freshman year he's already on the roster for both the basketball team and the swim team and there's already a small group of boys hanging around his locker ready to ride his coattails. They notice Steve seems distracted, turning his head back and forth when he's not struggling to get the lock undone. When he finally manages to wrestle the thing open, Eddie makes his move.
In a move reminiscent of that first day on Wayne's front porch, a blur of black second-hand clothes and dark curls barrels into Steve from the side taking him down to the linoleum floors. The guys around Steve's locker are ready to step in and beat this guy to a pulp until they hear raucous laughter coming from the both of them. They are treated to the sight of rising King Steve and established Freak Munson rolling around on the floor like unruly puppies and don't know what to do with themselves.
When the boys calm down and stand up, arms slung comfortably around each other's shoulders, they're met with the very confused faces of Steve's kind-of-friends.
"You know this guy Steve?"
"You and Munson are friends?"
"What the fuck was that?"
Steve and Eddie share a very confused look, neither of them having realized that people have no idea they're friends. They look back at the guys with two devastating "are you dumb" faces and say:
"Uh, yeah, Duh."
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Years down the line, after queer awakenings, a healthy dose of heartache for them both, and a properly dramatic star-lit confession Eddie and Steve both absolutely love regaling anyone who will listen with their love story. Steve insists that he knew from the moment Eddie looked at him with those big bug eyes that he would love Eddie Munson for the rest of his life. Eddie, on the other hand, insists that's bullshit and instead insists that he was the one who fell first "it doesn't count if you were a child Sevie you didn't understand what love was!" that day in the hall when he realized how tall and handsome his best friends has become when they got up off the floor.
Either way, they both eat up the looks people give them as they share their tales of pining, self-discovery, and true love.