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They’re… playing chicken.
Steve can’t quite say when it officially started. Could’ve been in the Winnebago, the reverberations of big boy still sitting at the nape of his neck. Could’ve been anytime. But, he definitely knows when he started to play along.
It’s a kitchen table, not too big. Round. The curtains were a weird shade of yellow. The details clung to the moment like a grass stain, rounding out the memory. Eddie had watched as Dustin left, his eyes blinking in faux nostalgia.
“Oh Steve, it must be so rewarding to be the mother to so many wonderful little goblins.” Eddie had then huffed out a reminiscent sigh and placed his hand over Steve’s.
Steve’s world had narrowed down to three things; two pathways and the warmth from Eddie negating the cold of the table. He could do what he should’ve done. Or, he could do exactly what he did.
Steve echoed Eddie’s sigh, placing his other hand on top of the stack. Pats it once, then gazes up at him.
“Oh you should know. Being the father and all. The children love you just as much as they love me.” Here Steve had held up his thumb and finger in the air, spacing them just millimeters apart. “Just about that much. Most of it connected to the fact that I ‘have car, will travel’.”
Eddie’s snappy little grin changed into something else, like he was trying to keep from laughing. His gaze dropped quickly to their hands, and boy the table was suddenly very interesting to Munson, huh? Eddie seemed to have been weighing his options, and Steve had been pleased a bit at the obvious mental gymnastics happening across the table from him.
Eddie raised his other hand like he was going to copy Steve, then he paused because no, that was no good, but then he did it anyway, tapping on top of Steve’s hand once… twice… then he pulled his hand out from Steve’s literal knuckle sandwich.
Steve hadn’t stopped looking at him, doing his best to hide his giddy grin. Eddie finally returned his gaze, and seemed even more sent off kilter to see that Steve already looking at him.
“King of Hawkins indeed.” Eddie said, pushing his chair so that it squeaked obnoxiously.
__________
But this time, it was a rush to the fair grounds. Steve had about half of the brood, Nancy was bringing about the other half. And the other half was coming with Eddie because math was hard. Robin didn’t get a half because she was just sort of embedded with Steve. They met up like generals at dawn, crossing over the sun baked grass and the cracked clay. The teens all ran up together, rivers pouring into the same lake. Nancy lets out a visible sigh of relief, but still gazes fondly out over the kids. Teens. Young adults.
Time was flying by.
Eddie steps up near enough that Steve can see him out of the corner of his eyes. He adjusts himself like someone waving a sheet of aluminum, like he should make a ‘wub wub’ sound. Steve almost told him that, but thank god he was interrupted.
With a characteristically large flourish, Eddie produces an absolutely decimated fistful of dandelions. They shoot out at all sorts of directions, broken as they were. Steve can picture Eddie on the side of the road, just absently reaching down and snatching up a handful, careless. The petals themselves are scrunched and a few of the leaves twirl to the ground like confetti.
Steve finds he doesn’t know exactly what face to make in front of this… gift (?). Eddie reads his pinched expression like a book, face cracking in a triumphant grin. Steve finds it in himself to scoff, not at Eddie, but at the situation. Eddie knows this, and his grin becomes infinitely wickeder.
“I hope you don’t mind dandelions, my liege.” And it’s always in that honey tone that he makes fun of Steve, of his historical royalty. “I caught sight of them just off the road and thought, hmm, those are sure plucky and yellow, just like someone we all know. I grabbed you a bouquet-”
“Manhandled it, more like.”
Eddie pulls the flowers back in a mock-insult, mouth dropping into a scandalized ‘o’.
“Steve Harrington, as much as I am sure you’d love to see me manhandle something, for now you’ll just have to settle for these tastefully arranged wildflowers.” Eddie presses the flowers forward again.
The light hits Eddie differently in the twilight. The orange catches every striking feature, setting them in contrast. His eyes are darker than anything Steve’s ever seen, and for just a moment they sparkle at him. The cacophony of their hoard seems to fizzle out as they near their destination, dissolving into the low roar that was the fair.
Steve watches Eddie for a long moment, then he wraps his fingers around Eddie’s and plucks the flowers from his grasp.
“How’d you know dandelions were my favorites, man?”
Eddie’s hand curls in the air for a lingering second before dropping it. He does that sheet metal wiggle again before setting off in a long-legged lurch towards the rest of the group.
“And why am I yellow?”
Steve receives no answer for either of his questions, and he finds his petty revenge in seeing how many he can sit in Eddie’s monster of a mane before he notices. Absently lacing the crooked stems into the curls before letting the flowers float there, the curls gently kissing his fingertips.
Eddie never notices, and at the gate Steve throws the remainder of the dandelions over his shoulder. Robin casts him a strange look, eyes darting from the flowers on the ground, up to Eddie’s hair, and then right back to Steve. He flaps his arms ineffectively in a mockery of a chicken, and Robin shoots him a stare that Steve couldn’t even begin to comprehend. So he offers her an exaggerated shrug.
El, who had gotten redistributed behind Eddie in the rush for the gate, leans around to catch his eye. She speaks in that steady, pronounced cadence.
“I like your hair.”
Eddie gives her a smile. “Thanks, I grew it myself.”
Later, Steve catches Eddie leaning against one of concession stands, a lit cigarette perched loosely on his bottom lip. He’s thinking… or entranced with the back of a neighboring stall. Steve finds a spot next to him.
Without a shared word, Eddie takes a sharp breath and pinches at the cigarette, holding it over to Steve. He never huffs it out, and Steve watches, mildly fascinated, as the smoke just sort of seeps out of him, floating away in hazy swirls. Steve takes the cigarette and does his best to not taste it. Him. Something. Eddie finally turns to look at him, and with a jolt Steve realizes the flowers are still in his hair.
Steve chokes on a snort, covering it with a cough and then actually dissolving into a coughing fit as the smoke constricts his lungs. Eddie makes a face, and it’s soft and amused and about a hundred different things Steve can’t stand to put a name to.
He takes back his cigarette. “Ever the princess, huh Harrington?”
Steve’s hair stands on end, the same prickling nervousness that makes a tightrope walker look up. He reaches a hand over and, like a magician pulling a coin out of someone’s ear, disentangles a flower. Eddie hadn’t flinched at the initial proximity, but at seeing the flower come away in Steve’s grasp, he gives a little start, eyebrows creasing in confusion. His free hand jumps instinctively to the back of his head, fingers twisting through his hair and finding the other dandelions there. He begins to pluck them out.
“Have those been in there-?”
“All day? Yup. Put them in there as payback, figured you would notice. Then I- uh, kind of forgot about them in the dark.”
“You mean I, Eddie Munson, Hellfire’s wrathful leader, have been running around looking like ABBA all day?” Eddie lets out a puff of air, “I’m sure that helped the old reputation.”
Steve plucks the cigarette out of Eddie’s hand before he can take another drag, holding it between his finger and forefinger and actually getting a good long pull this time. He turns about, so he’s leaning on his shoulder and can fully face Eddie, and he narrows his eyes.
“You know, you really shouldn’t be so worried about your ‘reputation’.” He uses the cigarette for emphasis, waving it in the air as he gestures congenially. Sarcastically he adds, “You should be more like me, never worried for that shit a day in my life.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up, surprised and amused, and he turns as well, putting one elbow up on the wall and leaning at an angle. Steve leans into the wall a little bit more, shortening his stance. This microcosm of movement makes Eddie positively loom over him. If he tries he can smell his skin, but he violently, definitely does not try.
“Is that so, Stevie?” Said low, coolly. The purr of a devil and the questioning tones of an angel. Eddie’s fingers slide against Steve’s as he takes back his cigarette. The one-two punch has Steve mentally on his knees, just waiting on the uppercut that’ll knock him out cold. Eddie doesn’t speak until after he’s taken a long thoughtful drag. And then he still doesn’t. Just holds Steve’s gaze for, apparently, as long as Steve was willing to hold it for.
Eddie is content to let the conversation die there. He dips his head in the mockery of a cowboy tipping his hat.
“Your highness,” he rumbles as he pushes himself off the wall. The sudden absence of -heat weed aquanet- is just that uppercut.
__________
“No! No… no. That’s not… whatever you called it. That’s messed up, Steve.”
Steve finds himself with only a shrug to offer her, helpless at her hysterics. Her eyes widen and she makes a hand gesture, as if that could encompass all of this.
“I mean, it’s harmless. He’s messing with me, too, I don’t see why you’re running the crusade after me.”
“Harmle-” A pause, where Robin purses her lips and grinds out a breath. “Steve. You put flowers in his hair. The same flowers he had just picked for your, offered up like some sacred blessing.” Steve feels his stomach fall out, a mounting panic zapping up his spine. He opens his mouth for rebuttal, but Robin presses on. “You held his hand in a breakfast nook like an elderly couple from Tucson. You’re-” And here, Robin pitches her voice down ridiculously low and hisses in lowercase. “flirting.”
The door snaps open and in walks-
Steve fumbles the cassette tape in his hand, cringing as it tumbles and takes two other VHS’s down to the ground with it. He ducks down to try to catch them, eyes bugging up to Robin. Robin, who at least has the decency to offer a perky wave.
“Hi Eddie!”
“Helloo Buckley,” Eddie responds coolly, voice muffled slightly from Steve’s spot on the ground. Steve considers his options, none of them good, and pops up. He can feel Robin cringe, and tries to bury his own. “Harrington.” And just like that he’s prowling the store. Or walking normally. Some of the words he has used for Eddie he’d figured had to be hyperbole. No one could be that lyrical.
Steve turns wildly to Robin, who suddenly, oh darn would you look at that, so much to do in the back office. Leave it to her to send him out on a life boat in cleats. Steve remembers trading a cigarette back and forth in the dark, hardly smoking it and more just to-
Eddie’s behind him.
Steve turns around, and Eddie’s sort of half looking at the back of a movie cover. His gaze slides up to meet Steve’s.
“You’d say you know a lot about dates, right?” Eddie says it preciously, a man who already knows the answer to his own question.
“Dates? Yeah I’ve been on a few. Good dates, hot dates. Fun. Bad. What kind are you hoping for?”
“While the latter does sound tempting… I was more hoping for promising.”
Steve inhales sharply through his teeth, an effort in regret. “I’m sorry, man, I can’t help you there. The closest I can get you is Definitely Not Disappointing. That one’s sort of my specialty.”
Eddie gives an aborted little laugh, and props two movie cases on top of the shelf. Ladyhawke and Fright Night peer down at him.
“Which one would you suggest, oh slinger of cinema?”
Steve tries to keep the affronted frown off of his face. Both of those options are horrendous. And he says as much, ignoring Eddie’s insulted little whine.
“You’re on the right track with Fright Night. You want to pick something scary, but not like so scary that you get scared too, you know? You want the tension, you want them to-” And he ends his phrase with a hand gesture that he hopes encompasses all of what he intended. It doesn’t. He pulls one off the shelf blindly, and Eddie plucks it out of his hands.
“I find it hard to believe that anything scares you, Harrington, I’ve seen you in action.” There’s a balmy reverence in his words. “You’re the thing that hides under monsters’ beds. And besides, what could scare a freak, eh?” The air is suddenly bitter, but one wouldn’t know it by looking at Eddie. His stance is buoyant, his grin still soft, and Steve can remember what his curls felt like as he carefully snared dandelions into them.
“They only call you that because they don’t know you.” Steve says, before his brain can keep the words off of his tongue. He suddenly feels like Robin, folding clothes hap hazardously because she couldn’t focus on two Herculean tasks simultaneously. Fold a t-shirt and talk to a cute girl. “If they knew you like I- we knew you, they wouldn’t call you that.”
“Like you know me?”
“Yeah, w-we know you.” The stutter might has well have gotten the baseball bat out of his closet and broke his knee caps with it.
flirting… decidedly in lowercase. Eddie doesn’t look at Steve like he’s used to him looking at him. Eddie’s expression was calm, thoughtful even. He was looking at Steve, but not looking to Steve. That dark gaze flits over Steve’s face lazily, like he was looking for something but in no hurry to find it.
Then, Eddie takes back the movie he put on the shelf.
“Yeah, I think this’ll work.”
“For your hot date?”
“For my Hopefully Better Than Average But Definitely Passable date.”
Steve fakes a swoon, happy to be back on more comfortable footing. “You’re gonna put me out of the business, Munson.”
“The movie business? I could never. The expertise you just showed, guiding poor little lost me to my darling sheep of a movie. Like a gentle shepherd.” Eddie can hardly contain his own mirth, but then his grin is wolfish and Steve has been around him long enough to recognize the swinging pendulum of Eddie’s favor. “The dating game, though? I could do that.”
Steve scoffs. “As if. Do you not see the swarm of girls lined up just to flirt with me?” Steve swings his arms out in a wide arc, gesturing to the decidedly empty movie shop. He had been in a dry spell, but who wouldn’t be after getting choked out by a demo-bat in hell? The people he saw sifting through the store just didn’t have the same appeal they once had. There were bigger things on his plate, and he simply chased his pleasures elsewhere.
Eddie makes a show of peering around, furrowing his eyebrows. He’s illuminated suddenly by a discovery, and he points over Steve’s shoulder. It’s close enough that Steve can make out the design of the ring on that finger. Wonders what it would feel like. To wear.
“Oh! There’s one now!”
Steve whirls around, making quick eye contact with a surprised Robin who’d just made her grand reappearance. Instinct twists his face in chagrin, and she quickly mimics the look back at him.
“You can’t just look at people like that Harrington!”
Eddie breaks out into a chortle and tosses the cassette tape in the air deftly as he makes his way to the counter.
“I am very sorry to break this to you, Robin, but you two might be little peas swaddled into the same pod.” Eddie says, sliding his tape across the counter. His palms hit the countertop and then spread out, effectively making him take up the entire space. Robin’s chagrin morphs into a fake wretch. “You have been terminally diagnosed with Harrington.”
“Please never say that me and Steve are swaddled into anything. Ever. Again. I like him, but at arm’s length.”
__________
The autumn wind is chilly as Eddie heads out from the grocery store. It picks up, tousling his curls and causing him to burrow into his jacket a bit more. His brilliant idea on the way there, in the broad light of day, was a good brisk jaunt in the sun. He’d forgotten the instantaneous darkness that fall brought to Hawkins, and it was dark as pitch when he steps out of the shop. He huffs out a breath, and watches it curl up into the sky.
“Good using the old noggin there, Munson.”
Eddie sets off in a slow jaunt, resigned to his chilly fate.
Now, never let it be said that Eddie was paranoid. Healthier to call it what it was, which was proactive reasoning. Eddie had seen what people were capable of, given the right pressures. He’d also seen the monsters that actually hide under people’s beds. It was the easiest thing in the world to say that now, in retrospect, he thought so little of them. They didn’t scare him because he’d overcome both of them and everything that fell between. That’s what he told himself. That’s what he told Dustin. That’s what he told Steve, even in the face of those big doe eyes and all that floppy hair. He’d lied to their faces.
“Get in there, freak.” A weight pushes in on Eddie abruptly, and he’s being shoved into an alleyway. A man hits him like a linebacker, shoulder diving into his gut, stopping only when Eddie is slammed into a wall. His head snaps backwards into the brick so hard he sees stars. He can make out the sound of his groceries flying off to Narnia, but doesn’t really have a chance to think about that.
The man fists his hands in Eddie’s shirt front, and pulls him up.
“Some nerve you’ve got, you fucking murderer. Think you can just waltz around town like we don’t remember?” The man is incredulous, fists so tight that he can see the veins in his neck popping.
“I’ve never waltzed anywhere in my life!” Eddie manages to spit out, legs scrambling to gain some sort of traction against the wall. Yes yes good Eddie! Antagonize him!
A hand disappears for a split second only to reappear in a violent right hook that catches Eddie across the cheekbone. He lets out a surprised huff, like he’s just been submerged in an ice bath.
“You don’t get to be smart with me. I’m going to fuck you up like you fucked up those kids-”
“Awfully bold of you to think I did that to those people and still want to try and kick my ass,” Eddie snaps, his voice all venom. He thinks he can take him. His head tells him he can, but it also supplies the headline of the morning paper. Murdering Freak Beats Up Innocent Man in Alleyway! Menace? He remembers Erica recounting her brush with the witch hunt as they nearly maimed a fucking child. He really almost broke my arm. You didn’t tell me you’re stupid club came with baggage. He thinks of his friends, guilty by association, and he rolls with the next punch. His calves burn as he stands on tiptoes to try to mitigate the force of the uppercut that comes next. Eddie’s going to stand there and take it. He’s going to take it and he’s going to sit in the alleyway until he can walk and he’s going to get home later than he intended but laugh it off. And no one will be the wiser. No one will know and this man will have had his pound of flesh.
There’s a knee to the stomach that makes Eddie stoop, and then that fist connects with his eye. A hand entangled in his hair snaps his head back into the wall over and over again. Things become a blur, his vision caving. He can feel something on the back of his neck, wet and dripping. You’re bleeding. He says to himself, small and sing-songy and just so pleased by the whole situation. I know you didn’t think he’d kill you, before you did your whole ‘hero thing’ but he might, actually kill you.
And now he can’t breathe. The hand that isn’t tangled in his curls is wrapped around his throat, throttling him. But just as quickly as the fear sets in, an force slams into the man holding him, pitching Eddie to the ground in an ungainly pile.
“Get the hell off of him!” And there he is, outlined dramatically in the overhead lighting of the streets, his savior, his fighter, his barbarian, his co-parent.
Steve snarls, swinging wide and missing as the momentum of the tackle carries him further than he imagined. That in turn saves him when the man tries to counterattack. It’s a blow for blow after that, a dirty messy brawl. Eddie tries to get up, but his brain lurches like one of those oil-and-water contraptions with a boat in it. He finds himself sliding down the wall into an inelegant heap. It gives him a good view of the fight, though. Steve doesn’t fight like someone who knows how to fight, but someone who’s just trying to survive. It’s a knee-jerk, teeth bearing kind of style, and it makes him fight dirty. Punch lower, grab an abandoned leg of a chair sitting next to a dumpster and absolutely crack it against the man’s ankles. That sort of stuff. To watch him fight is to believe the track record of fights won and lost (mainly the latter) Dustin had told him about. The kid’s voice had dripped with an almost sort of hero worship, and now here, in that alley, Eddie can say he gets it. Watching Steve win that fight with… something… was it’s own sort of awe inspiring. Eddie wasn’t sure if he’d call it skill or sheer bullheadedness, but there he stands afterwards, triumphant and radiant in the dim yellow overhead light.
Eddie can’t take his eyes off of Steve, and the usual chest rattle that causes is diminished somewhat by his still-hampered ability to breathe comfortably.
Steve spits and it lands heavy by the boot of the now-unconscious man. Eddie can tell its mainly blood. Steve may have won, but the other man took as much of him down with him as he could. He finally turns to face Eddie. He looks pissed, and it’s not an expression Eddie’s sure has ever received from him.
“What the fuck, man?” Steve finally manages, gesturing to the man on the ground. Eddie’s unable to think of something to say, and is unwilling to think about anything else, really, than the fact that Steve Harrington had just White Knighted in to save him. So he grins up at Steve, wincing as it pulls the bruises already forming there.
Steve’s on him in a second, and having those mother hen tractor beams trained on him was a little overwhelming for a moment. Those hands were everywhere, all at once, like he was some many-palmed spirit of healing. And then he’s talking.
“Why didn’t you kick that guys ass? You threw me across a boat house the first time we met, I’ve seen you in a fight it’s-” The long-winded rambling coupled with the exhaustion from the fight has Steve’s face flushed all the way down his neck. He wipes absently at his sluggishly bleeding nose, smearing it wildly across his face. Then he lets out a breath like he’s overwhelmed. “No, wait, I’m sorry. I can ask that in a minute.” Eddie is instantly grounded by those hands placed gently on his jawline, fingers curling so that they brush his ears. His entire world is narrowed down to those two big, brown eyes. “Are you okay?”
Eddie can’t look away, and he finds himself helplessly adrift. Can’t answer, can’t make a face. Absently he brings his own hand up to Steve’s face, thumb brushing at a drop of blood intermingling with the freckles. Like he thinks that’s an answer. Steve doesn’t make a move to remove Eddie’s hand, yet he jerks it back nevertheless.
I’m okay, what’s a low grade brain trauma to an altruist? Is what he front loads in to say. What he says instead is:
“You’d make a wonderful knight.” Steve’s hand moves up the side of his face now, brown eyes searching.
“So you have brain damage, that’s fun. How many fingers am I holding up?” The absence of that skin contact is disappointing, so when Steve holds up three fingers, Eddie holds up three as well, entangling them with Steve’s until they’re holding hands there in the air between them. Steve’s gaze shifts to their hands for a good solid moment, and then Eddie feels gentle fingers on the back of his scalp. His head leans into the touch before they rub over something that causes his vision to blank out momentarily.
Steve’s cursing up a streak to make a sailor blush. Eddie doesn’t fight it as Steve corrals him into his car, doesn’t fight when he say’s he’ll be back, I’ve gotta call Hopper to sort this out. Doesn’t fight when Steve throws himself into the driver’s side and keys the car to life.
“-ell it to my heart! Tell me I’m the only one-” Steve jabs his entire hand at the radio so hard, it slams the dial over about ten different stations. The cacophony sets Eddie’s aching brain off, and his eyes flutter backwards for a moment.
“Eddie!” Steve’s voice is high pitched and frantic and kind of cute, actually.
“Unclench your pearls, Maryweather.” Eddie mumbles, vision slowly swimming back. The colors bleed out and in and they’re green and that’s trees. Eddie’s seeing trees. They’re flying by in a rush as Steve heads for what Eddie hopes is a hospital. Or a man with a bottle of whiskey and a sanitized needle. Steve could be that man, probably. He’d seen him do a lot of things in what little time he’s known him, many things previously thought of as impossible. He could do something that Eddie knew was possible, he was sure of it.
“What happened?”
Eddie tries to lay his head back and quickly finds that to be a bad idea. Rolling it on his right ear so he can watch the dizzying whirl of Hawkins fly by is also undeniably bad, so that only leaves his left ear.
Steve’s profile is too distracting to pay any attention to the trees out the other window. Eddie speaks haltingly.
“Just some fuckers, you know… thinking they can get their pound of flesh from Eddie the Banished. The Banished.” Steve’s face twists, it’s angry and it’s sad. He opens his mouth to say something, but gives up and gnaws at his lips, discomfort playing in the taps of his fingers on the wheel. Eddie metes out Steve’s reaction as he carries on. “They weren’t the first ones, and they won’t be the last.”
“But, you’re… a trash can lid Eddie! For fuck’s sake, you fought off a swarm of bats infected with ‘fuck you’ with a trash can lid and you survive all of that to come back to have your shit wrecked by some nobody in an alleyway?” Steve’s profile isn’t really looking too welcoming anymore, but Eddie knows there’s no where else to look.
“You know we were different people down there.”
“No, we weren’t different people down there.” Steve snarls it, like he’s had this same conversation with himself multiple times. Regret snaps hot in Eddie as Steve’s voice cracks. “We are the same people up here because down there we were brave and big fucking heroes.” For the first time, Steve’s eyes come off the road, darting down to instantly catch his gaze. Eddie’s breath hitches. “Eddie, be honest with me. Did you let that man beat you up?” Eddie finds a sudden interest in the armrest on the driver’s side door. His adrenaline’s tanking and Eddie is suddenly so very tired. “I’ve felt what you could do, and you nearly picked me clean off my feet and held me against a wall.”
Eddie’s tongue has always been faster than his brain. “’S that an image you go back to often, Harrington?” After a loaded moment of silence, Eddie glances back up to Steve’s face and finds a familiar expression there. It’s the look he got, more and more recently mind you, when he was trying to decide what to do with Eddie. Was he going to play in the space with him, as it were. He’d gotten good at it, so good Eddie was beginning to imagine. Which was bad. No good. Steve did it with just this sense of aplomb, like it was just so natural to do the things they did. Like it was right. You held his hand back there.
Eddie opens his mouth, but Steve beats him to the punch.
“What if I said it was? Hm?” The words say one thing, but the facial expression says another. The tone is so quiet, he might as well have whispered it to him for all the effect it had on Eddie. The ‘hm’ is an afterthought, added to continue a charade of a joke. Eddie knew he thought about it, and Steve swallows thickly. He remembers him at the fair, leaning into him and away simultaneously, vulnerable yet too high of a mountain for Eddie to climb. He had looked so much smaller there, subdued, cowed, like Eddie could’ve reached over with one finger and tilted his head to the side, exposing his neck.
Eddie blinks and Steve is looking at him face-to-face. The sudden fear that Steve is going drive them into a tree is too much, and he jerks his head too look at the road. Which wasn’t there. They were stopped in front of the ER, parked safely, and Steve’s entire face was red. The blush extends down his neck and into the blue collar of his shirt and Eddie thinks ‘is your chest red, too?’ But apparently he actually says it because Steve lets out the single wildest noise he’s ever heard.
Eddie’s eyebrows raise and he files that reaction away for later.
“Get out, jackass. We’ve gotta check your fucking head.”
__________
The door swings open and Steve tries to offer something besides the half raised groceries and the wobbly smile on his face. Eddie is cool as usual, taking him in for a few mortifying moments before leaning on the door frame.
“Oh Steve, my secret midnight caller. To what do I owe the honor?” Eddie taps one long finger to his mouth in thought. Eyebrows tented to give the illusion that he was trying to solve a riddle he had already answered hours ago.
Steve gestures around as it to say, it’s not even seven, and then lets the groceries drop to his side with a defeated rustle.
“You invited me.”
Eddie snorts then backs out of the door, gesturing for Steve to enter. The door closes softly, and for some reason Steve panics, a tightness drawing across his skin and a skitter of something down the back of his neck. Nerves? Couldn’t be. It was just Munson.
“You wanted to come.” Eddie’s voice is closer than Steve had clocked, and he jumps a bit as the taller man prowls by. Doesn’t prowl, walks. Walks like a fucking person because that’s what he is. Just a person. An Eddie.
Steve sighs, wondering if he’ll get out of the evening in one piece.
“I wanted to check on your head. That guy did a number to it and I-” Steve pauses to actually think about what he was about to say, and then word vomits through his fingers anyway. “-I wasn’t confident you were taking care of yourself.”
Eddie’s grin grows impossibly wider as he presses his back into the counter.
“All that worry and you still made me invite you? Couldn’t just show up and break in my window with enough bandages to mummify me?”
“I wasn’t just going to invite myself over to the guy who just had a concussion’s house. That seemed… rude.”
“Rude.”
Steve feels the blush tingling across his scalp like static electricity and wishes the floor would swallow him. He’s not sure when he lost his ability to talk to Eddie, but it was very apparent now that the guy gummed up his works in the most mortifying ways possible. Robin’s voice still snaps at him, asking him how he could be so dumb? They’re standing there, a good seven feet apart, and yet Steve feels like he needs to be over there right now please don’t walk over there, Steve, don’t do it you idiot.
Steve is standing beside Eddie before he even notices, their shoulders brushing. He settles the groceries on the counter and ignores Eddie’s quirked, curious eyebrow.
“I’m making dinner.” What Steve had meant to ask was if Eddie minded if he made him dinner. Eddie waves him off gently and goes to sit on the couch.
“If that’s what Stevie’s heart desires, then so be it.” Stevie’s heart. What Stevie’s heart wants. Stevie’s heart wants to tell Eddie that his hair was the softest he’d ever touched, wants to ask if he can touch it again. Wants his fingers to get lost in the curls. Robin had said one little word that opened the entire floodgate that Steve had been so desperate to ignore. And here he was, standing in front of Eddie as he lights a cigarette on the couch. The lighter hits a coffee table with a clatter and he throws his arms out wide on the back of the couch. When he notices Steve looking, he seems to preen a bit under the attention.
Steve is super mega turbo doomed.
While they eat, Eddie shoves a movie into the VCR and flips on the television. Steve absently recognizes it as the movie he’d blindly led Eddie to. It was two days late by his disgruntled calculations, but he was an expert at hiding late fees.
Eddie is comfortable on the couch, or at least he looks it. Arms thrown over the back, he looks more liquid than human. Steve wonders if there was always so much of Eddie to look at, but all to keenly knows the answer to this.
“Relax babe, I can hear your gears turning from over here.” When Steve says nothing, Eddie lets out a huff through his nose. He wiggles a bit to get his arm behind his back, and pulls out a decorative pillow covered in the same green as the couch. He drops it on the floor between his spread legs, and gestures towards it.
Steve doesn’t move, and Eddie lets out another puff of air. He straightens on the couch, sitting up straight and pushing himself back as far as he can manage.
“Come here, Steve.”
Steve moves at that. Floundering for a handhold, he puts his palms on Eddie’s knees to lower himself until he’s eye level with a coffee table that would’ve, actually and in that 20/20 hindsight, been the perfect thing for him to grab onto. He wonders if the back of his neck is red.
Steve tenses when Eddie’s hands drop onto his shoulders.
“I know you came to check on little ol’ Eddie, but if I recall, someone else got beat up in that alleyway.”
Steve hums, doing his best to not lean in to those mischievous fingers too much. They rub, and then Eddie digs his thumbs in right where his shoulders meet his neck and Steve lets out an accidental little groan.
“Yeah, but he’s in jail now. Hopper said he got him on public intoxication, or something like that. Did his best to keep your name out of it.” Steve says it all in a rush, trying to hide the needy little sounds chomping at the bit to get out. Eddie’s fingers brush up against one of the bruises he’d gotten on his neck when the man had tried to choke him out. Steve feels him sweep aside his hair to fully reveal it.
“I wasn’t talking about him. I don’t care about him.” Eddie’s voice is low and his words come out measured, like he’s mad. The thumbs move in a slow, agonizing drag up the sinews of Steve’s neck and brush up into his hair. His eyelids flutter, and his breath stutters in his chest. “Did you even take care of yourself?”
Steve’s head lolls forward in response, giving those hands all the room to play. He’s a bit lost in it all.
“Didn’t need to. I knew it would all heal regardless of what I did. S’not my first rodeo.” Steve had told Eddie some of the details, sparse as they were. He knew there was something about Russians, his first two run-ins with the demo-monsters. He knew it was all maddeningly sparse to Eddie’s storyteller brain, but sometimes the words would just damn up inside of him. There was just too much there. Too many emotions, too much residual fear. The nightmares were still there and he saw creatures in most shadows.
Eddie’s fingers are fully in his hair now, and they pull out slowly, fingers curling so his nails scrape lightly against Steve’s scalp.
Steve’s wired now, and one of his bubbly little thoughts pops.
“Your hair’s real nice, Stevie.” Eddie says.
”Yours is, too. I wanted to say something when I was putting flowers in it, I just couldn’t.”
“It wouldn’t be very sportsmanlike to say what we were actually thinking about each other.” Eddie says. “If we both went around saying what we really thought, I’m not sure if our little game would amount to much, huh?”
So Steve had been right. It had started out as a game. Regardless of how things were going now, Steve knew how things had started. His shoulders sag just a bit, but it’s from relief. He’d been so scared that he had misconstrued Eddie in the beginning.
But how it could not amount to much when it was amounting to this.
“Well, I said something I really thought.”
“Yeah, after I started it.”
“Then, following the rules of combat, I believe it’s your turn again.”
Those hands are still mapping out Steve’s neck. One finds itself delving into his jungle of hair, and the other traces along his ear and down his jaw, ending so gently on his chin.
“I think you like when I call you Stevie. I think you like all of my little petnames. Babe. Sugar.” Steve gives a little jolt. “I think you like that I only call you those things.”
Steve leans fully leans back, and he can feel all of Eddie curled over him on the couch. He’s not touching him, but his presence is. Looming and large, like the big bad wolf.
Steve takes a deep breath, tries to center himself even with Eddie’s fingers playing oh so gently with the underside of his chin, occasionally running whisper soft touches across his jaw.
“I think you like it when I tease you back. You like someone who can go blow for blow with you.” Steve wishes he didn’t sound so wrecked, but he can feel Eddie growing tense above him. “You have beautiful eyes. I could stare at them all day.”
The hand in his hair tightens, and Steve’s mind is short-circuited as Eddie yanks his head back. His other hand rests on his neck, the palm pressing gently against his adam’s apple. Steve knows that Eddie can tell when he chokes a bit on a sound, can feel the vibration of a whimper that he keeps caged in his throat. They lock eyes like this, upside-down, Eddie fully curving over Steve, his curls hanging down and obscuring the two of them. It feels private, more private than being the only two in the house, private like the only two in the world.
“Why, Stevie. You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” Eddie marvels, eyes gently charting Steve’s face. His pupils are blown, making him look positively ravenous. Steve wonders if he looks just as absolutely fucked, but loses that train of thought as Eddie continues. “One little thing and I’ve already got you whimpering.”
“And I think you like that, Eddie.” The hand splayed open-palmed over his throat twitches, and the finger tips are tight there. Not a threat. Not a warning. He thinks if he plays his cards right that it could be a promise. Steve finds himself pushing his head further backwards, just a bit.
Eddie is laughing now. A short, halting, sharp little laugh that could’ve been disbelief, could’ve been sheer delirium. Steve can’t stand it one more moment.
Steve cups his hand behind Eddie’s neck, just as splayed and powerful as the one on his. He pulls, stopping just short of contact because, this? This is new.
“Can I?” Steve asks of him. In lieu of an answer, Eddie’s hand disappear for a split second before they’re on both sides of Steve’s face, pulling them across those final, tortuous inches. It’s careful and tremulous, and every bit a first kiss. They breathe each other’s air after, so close that Steve catches the feel of Eddie’s eyelashes on his skin.
“Full of surprises.” Eddie mutters into Steve’s mouth, like a reassurance. Hot like a brand.
“Never let them know your next move, Munson.”