Archive of Our Own

So this all had felt like solid, platinum, rock-hard logic at the time. He actually wants to watch this movie, has actually been waiting for this for uhhhh, what, like, twenty years of his life? 

Problem is, there’s another thing he’s been waiting for for almost as long, and it’s sitting right next to Eddie with just a flimsy movie theater armrest separating their arms, their thighs. He’s sitting right there, making little soft impressed noises at Gandalf’s fireworks, flashing quick smiles at Eddie when he offers him the tub of greasy popcorn. 

He’s too psyched for Fellowship of the Ring to just twist in his seat, anchor a hand in that hair, and reacquaint himself with the feeling of Steve’s tongue in his mouth for a full two hours. But he is also too hyper-aware of how badly he’d like to have that tongue in his mouth to like, actually absorb too much of what’s going on onscreen. Good thing he and Dustin already made plans to see it together in two days. Eddie might not even have to pretend to be surprised at the changes from the book and shit, he’s not sure he’ll remember a goddamn one of them. 

He’ll just remember this: the white-hot screaming bliss of sitting next to the love of his fucking life, and not knowing if it’s cool to try and hold his hand or not.

He’s thirty-five and an actual adult by some people’s metrics, and yet when Steve’s sneaker shifts over the sticky floor and his calf presses against Eddie’s for a moment, Eddie worries that he might actually pass out and miss Frodo and the guys making a break for the Buckleberry Ferry. He somehow totally missed Fatty Bolger helping them escape from Bilbo’s new house as it is, so he must be really out of it. 

“Hey,” Steve whispers, just when Eddie is fairly sure he’s going to have some sort of hyperactive anxious hyena-laughing meltdown just as an emergency energy release valve measure. Eddie turns to glance over at him, and his breath catches a little at the way the greens and yellows of the scene play across Steve’s face, catching in his eyes. Illuminating the excitement, the trademark comfortable confidence, but also the hint of uncertainty, of nerves just below Steve’s steady surface. “This is good, right?”

Eddie immediately smiles big and goofy back at Steve, feels his spine liquify against the crappy seat. Huh, and that’s all it takes, apparently. Release valve triggered. Right, okay. He’s not the only one maybe a little unsure how the fuck to handle a second date that’s been fifteen years in the making. 

“It’s so good,” Eddie whispers. He’s not really talking about the movie, but neither was Steve. 

Eddie lets his shoulder settle against Steve’s, presses his leg against his reassuringly, and steals a handful of popcorn. Yeah. It’s good. 

-

It happened pretty slow, until it was happening real fast. 

Eddie believes in cutting right to the chase, so fast version first: 

A week ago, on one of those sharply cold but invitingly sunny early-December days that can pop up sometimes, Steve stopped by Eddie’s to drop off a few DVDs he’d mentioned Eddie might like (“you can take the boy out of Family Video…” “right, right, fuck you”). Eddie’d had a few errands to run after that, and Steve had no other plans, so there wasn’t really so much a discussion about it as Steve just… didn’t go home. Before Eddie really registered what had happened, the sun was setting and Eddie’s nose was a little numb with cold and they’d been to coffee shops and a record store and Steve had dragged Eddie away from an argument with the guy at his until now favorite comic book place about Wolverine (Eddie’s got a thing for gruff hairy heroes who can’t help themselves when it comes to taking care of those in need, what can he say). They’d walked and walked for what felt like miles. Just talking. 

Outside the door to his apartment again, Eddie found himself completely clueless as to how to say goodbye, wrap this up. If he even wanted to? If he could? So instead, buying some time, Eddie rubbed his hands together and grumbled about needing to get some gloves. And Steve, with half a smile on his face like he could invite Eddie to take this as a joke, if he wanted to, had drawn Eddie’s hands into his own. Had pressed them together, skin warm against Eddie’s. Had pressed his mouth over their intertwined hands, and blown hot over Eddie’s fingertips. 

“Holy shit,” Eddie had said. “Wait, uh. What the fuck. This has been a date?”

“I mean,” Steve had said, drawing Eddie’s hands against his chest and leaning in. “I wasn’t sure at first, but when you almost decked that kid in the comic book shop defending my honor–” 

Also, on the flip side of that equation, the pretty slow version:

Lurching into adulthood in fits and starts, trying their best to take care of themselves and each other and the unholy posse of fucking amazing kids they’d somehow accumulated. Staying in each other’s orbits always, despite them all taking their tentative steps away from Hawkins and out into the world, despite the shifting dynamics of friends and lovers and dangers both supernatural and mundane. Seeing each other at the odd group get-together, college graduation, birthday party, funeral, wedding – including Steve’s. 

(For the record, Eddie had been a blast that day. No one had danced more, laughed harder, or cheered louder for the happy couple. Because they were twenty-three and felt impossibly young and way too fucking old, but this was the life Steve had always wanted and had always been meant for. So that was worth celebrating, and worth celebrating hard. And if Eddie got a little annihilated later, ended the night sprawled out on the pool deck with his legs dangling over the side, shoes and socks and borrowed slacks soaking up pool water, staring expressionlessly up at the void of space above him, well. Steve never knew. He was enjoying his wedding night, so how would he ever have known.)

Maybe they didn’t hang out like, guy-to-guy that much after that, but they had stayed close. Had stayed knit together. Fighting monsters and saving each other’s lives and tolerating (okay, fine, enjoying the company of) Dustin Henderson can do that to you. So it hadn’t been weird, when Steve had started opening up to him about the growing cracks in that supposedly cookie-cutter perfection that was his and Megan’s marriage. 

Eddie had felt like a real scumbag about it, the whole time. Real fucking creep, hearing Steve out and making comforting noises and offering advice, the whole time thinking– the whole time wishing– the whole time something thrumming in his chest with a kind of sick. Well. Excitement. Once after a dinner with the three of them, when Steve had gotten up for a piss, Robin had turned to him with wide eyes and said dry as anything, “and the Oscar for Terrifyingly Convincing Supportive Friend with No Ulterior Motive goes too…” and Eddie had felt too tired out by the whole situation to even say something shitty back at her. 

And then: the breaking of the cycle. Steve, to the surprise of all, kicking off a new millennium by liberating himself (and liberating Megan, who they all truly enjoyed) from the kind of joyless eternal slog to the grave that the Harringtons were best at. Steve, getting an apartment in the same city as Robin and Eddie, without even really talking to them about it first, just kind of. Happened. 

“What are you going to do about it?” Robin had asked. 

“Oh yeah for sure I’m going to show up to this housewarming party in a latex trench coat and a lacy negligee. Come on Robin, give me a little credit here. Obviously, I’m not going to do anything.”

“Why obviously? Why is that obvious?”

“Because it’s complicated! Marriage is complicated, divorce is complicated, and Steve and I are complicated.”

Robin had laughed, hitting the perfect note between kind of mocking and kind of sad for pathetic ol Eddie in a way that really set his teeth on edge. “Please. What’s between you and Steve– it’s never been at all complicated.”

He’ll never admit as much to Robin, but it hadn’t felt that complicated once Steve was around more, weaving himself into the fabric of Eddie’s city and Eddie’s life. Maybe that’s why Eddie had really been aware of it, the rising tide of maybe maybe MAYBE that felt like it was really coming in time around. The undertow of Steve’s gaze catching on Eddie’s mouth while he was speaking, the way they snapped right back into the habit of leaning into each other’s space, the hesitant and then purposeful way that Steve started initiating little microdoses of physical contact that were slowly putting Eddie absolutely fucking out of his mind. Death by a thousand brief brushes of Steve Harrington’s fingers. 

But maybe maybe MAYBE – something was really happening here. Maybe more insistently than Eddie could ignore, or pretend was all in his head. Not this time. 

And then, last but not least, this moment that was neither fast nor slow, but existed somewhere outside of time:

Standing outside his apartment on a December evening, hands no longer numb with cold, but instead held steady and strong against the heartbeat that Eddie wanted to plug into an amp, blast at top volume, so he could howl along with the most important beat in the history of history. Steve leaned in, those gorgeous eyes tracking over Eddie’s face like he was looking for any sign that Eddie wasn’t there for this. He absolutely wasn’t going to find anything of the fucking kind. 

Steve freed one hand from between their chests to slide those strong fingers along Eddie’s cheek, sinking into the curly mop of hair and gripping strong and right at the base of Eddie’s skull. And Steve Harrington had kissed him, like it was the easiest thing in the world to do instead of the hardest. 

There were teen fantasies, and then there was this. There were times closing his eyes with someone else, mind wandering to What Could Be, and then there was this. Steve Harrington kissed him with a bone-rattling intensity, but his touch— on Eddie’s cheek, Eddie’s waist, in Eddie’s hair— was gentle and reverent.

“Let me take you out,” was the first thing that Eddie could think to say when Steve pulled back eventually, suddenly frantic to wrap both hands around this moment and make it clear that the next date wasn’t going to come down to a fucking accident.

Steve had laughed a little, pressing small sweet kisses along Eddie’s jawline, over his chin, the fucking tip of his nose god. “Sure,” Steve breathed against Eddie’s skin, voice soft and husky and maybe even a little wobbly. “Got something going on later this week?”

Amazed that he could think at all, Eddie had managed not only to do that but to think fast . “I got two tickets to the midnight release of the Lord of the Rings movie. You in?” He didn’t actually, but he could get them. Probably. Steal them, if necessary. 

Steve pulled back just far enough to look into Eddie’s face, before pulling him into a wholly unexpected and tight hug. We’re good at these, Eddie thinks distantly, burying his face in Steve’s neck and breathing him in deep. The number of times they’ve celebrated a reprieve from certain death, they damn sure have gotten enough practice. Nice though, to hold Steve like this. To feel the width of his chest and strength of his arms without the bloody edge of tragedy around them. Those survived-yet-again adrenaline jollies are a good time sure, but this. Yeah. Eddie likes this better.

“I’m in,” he hears Steve say, feels the hum of it jumping from Steve’s heartbeat to his. 

-

Frankly, it’s not like either of them has the best relationship with a full night’s sleep anyway, so it’s an easy call after the movie to head to their favorite 24-hour diner spot, summon a mighty pile of mozzarella sticks and french fries, and pretend their 35-year-old bodies won’t make them regret it in the morning. 

It takes a lot to get kicked out of a place like this, but one of these days their bullshit arguments and cackling laughter might actually do it. The fact that it hasn’t happened tonight, what with Eddie’s extended and expletive-loaded rant about the omission of Tom Bombadil alone, is just one of the night’s many miracles. 

“So who would I be? Out of all of them?” Steve asks after a while, when Eddie’s simmered down a little and admitted that fine, yes, he had indeed cried when Merry and Pippin were dragged away by the Uruk-hai. He sucks up the last of his chocolate milkshake in an unsexy slurping way that Eddie unfortunately still finds pretty painfully erotic. 

Eddie pretends to think about it, like these aren’t exercises that have been playing out in his head during idle moments since high school. “Let’s tally the columns here hmmm. We got a…tall, dark, handsome jock with a heavy burden of responsibility and a great destiny. Looks after a squawking band of little terrors with more guts than common sense. A, uh, a secret romantic,” Eddie makes an expansive voila gesture across the table. “Aragorn, motherfuckin son of Arathorn. For sure.”

Steve runs a hand self-consciously over his jaw and laughs lightly. “Man, I wish I could grow any kind of stubble like that. What about you?”

Eddie shrugs. “Boromir,” and doesn’t feel like elaborating.

Steve is already shaking his head. “I mean, whatever, but if it was going to be any of the human guys I’d say Faramir for sure.”

Eddie’s eyes about fall out of his head to roll across the diner’s scuffed yellow linoleum. Steve, maybe unaware of how he’s just caused the top of Eddie’s head to pop right off, keeps talking.

“He’s a real fucking hero, right,” he says, and the way he’s flipping his plastic straw between his fingers, twirling it like it’s a drumstick or a miniature version of his beloved baseball bat, that’s the only thing that makes Eddie wonder if maybe he is a little nervous, not just casually chatting here. “Not what the people around him expect him to be, but smart, loyal. Strong. People underestimate him, but when it really counts– he changes the game for everyone. Doesn’t just shut up and sit down and do what he’s told. Does what’s right and saves the day.”

There are about fifteen things Eddie could say in response to all that. Instead of touching on the assessment of Eddie as some kind of noble superhero (what the fuck) he finds himself sputtering “Faramir’s not even in Fellowship. How do you know about him?”

Steve shrugs, and so brave, always, keeps his eyes on Eddie’s face. Sets the straw down without looking at it.

“Did a lot of driving over the last—“ waves his hand vaguely to encompass All That Shit. “—and got big into the books on tape. Unabridged, you’d approve.  Must’ve listened to them all… I don’t even know how many times through. It made me think of you.”

No pause in how he says it, no nothing, no impression like he had to dig that up out of the bottom of his chest, to fight through the layers of doubt or fear or whatever to unveil it. Steve just offers it to Eddie straight up across the table, as casually as if it was a mozzarella stick. Made me think of you.

Oh.

Eddie has his wallet out, Eddie is throwing bills down on the table. Eddie is wrapping his fingers around Steve’s wrist, drawing him up and out of the booth. 

“Okay. Okay, a man can only take so much. Take me home.”

Steve laughs, big, happy, fearless and loud, all the way out of the diner. Everyone else in there is probably glad to see them go.

-

In the end, they don’t even make it to the bed. Eddie pushes Steve onto his couch in the shitty one bedroom apartment he's lived in since 1992. Eddie opens Steve’s jeans with a giddy cackle, Steve clumsily helping him to push them and his briefs down over Steve’s hips, and goes down on him like he feels like he was born to do. 

Steve– god, Steve fucking Harrington, the walking, living wet dream– keeps letting out these little desperate noises, high and soft. Eddie's this fucking close to just getting himself off while he does this, lost in the feeling. 

He's glad he waits though—he's barely finished Steve off when he's hauled up and kissed, Steve undoing Eddie’s pants with one hand and getting him off with a sort of ease that only comes with experience (and where did that come from, he wonders, the small part of his brain capable of coherent thought). He keeps his other hand tangled in Eddie's shorter but still shaggy hair, tugging just so at the roots in a way that makes Eddie tremble.

"Don't be so surprised, baby," Steve says; Eddie’s sure he has a look that’s nothing short of gobsmacked. "I had to get a bit of practice in before I graduated to the big leagues." 

Knowing, knowing that he’s going to get shit about this forever, Eddie’s orgasm punches out of him at exactly that moment. 

Yes, Eddie realizes that Steve's probably using sports metaphors to rile him up. But in his post-orgasmic haze, Eddie is also so disarmed that Steve considers Eddie the real deal, a goal worth aiming for, that he almost does something stupid like telling him he loves him right then and there. (It's true, but… but...)

“Though I will say, I haven’t had mostly-clothes-on sex since I was like, nineteen?” Steve says as Eddie slowly floats back down to earth, like he’s just continuing a conversation they were in the middle of having. He tugs on the edge of his own shirt, a playful suggestion. “Not a bad thing, but I’m always up for a different view, you know?”

And Jesus Christ, what a fucking line. If he had been any other guy, Eddie would have kicked him out then and there. But Eddie has always wanted to be on the receiving end of the trademark Harrington charm, so he can’t even bring himself to be annoyed. Eddie obediently fumbles Steve out of his shirt (which absolutely has no small amount of Eddie’s come on it now, whoops) and runs both hands reverently down that chest. He feels like a kid in a way that he never actually did when he was one, extended high school experience and all. 

Wouldn’t have mattered how long it took me to graduate, he thinks, trembling and kind of dizzy, testing the waters by running his thumbnail gently across Steve’s nipple and yes— yes, just what he thought, responsive as hell, Steve’s eyes roll up in his head a little and he groans— it’s not about the time, it’s not about Eddie’s weirdo fucked-up childhood, it’s all about Steve . 

Which may or may not make sense, he’ll work it out later when he doesn’t have the essential work to do of following his thumb with his mouth and sucking, a little hard, Steve actually full-body twisting under him. Eddie is reeling that he's so unashamed, so responsive. 

There’s no real rush here, right now, both of them still in the sort of hazy afterglow, refractory period doing its thing. Usually Eddie isn’t a Could Go All Night kind of guy, and has in the past even been known to roll out of bed as soon as he got his breath back and head out of there (hey, he’s not proud of it). Even with the handful of long term-ish relationships he’s had, he hasn’t even really been a fan of cuddling after. 

But here—god. Even if they can’t get hard again so soon, the idea of taking his hands, his mouth, his eyes off of Steve Harrington. Flat sacrilege. Impossible. 

Eddie sits up for a second to take his own shirt off (it’s only fair, he supposes) and Steve makes this delightfully bitchy disappointed noise as Eddie pulls back. Steve just saw his dick, obviously, got his hands all over it even, but pulling his own t-shirt over his head is somehow what makes him feel the most embarrassed and vulnerable. Eddie’s not a particularly imposing guy, not rugged and sexy and manly like Steve, who’s still swimmer-fit at thirty-five, with that golden skin and those tight abs. He’s just…him. Pale and skinny and practically hairless, a smattering of tattoos and piercings and getting just the tiniest bit soft in the middle. And scarred up all to hell, but that part at least they’ve got in common.

Steve sucks in a breath like he's hurt, and Eddie mumbles something wholly humiliating like "you okay baby?" 

“These new?” Steve says instead of just answering the question , thumbing at the bars in Eddie’s nipples, pressing just this side of painful-hot. His huge, callused hands spread over Eddie’s chest piece, something not exactly but also not unlike a Demobat. Not apparently in need of an actual answer, he runs his hands down Eddie’s sides, framing the bleeding heart he got on his thirtieth birthday, in that tender space between his navel and his pelvis. “You’re gonna be the fucking death of me.”

Eddie opens his mouth in the hopes that something cool, badass, suave will come out of it. The only thing that does is a tight ah , one part shock, one part pure need, all parts pretty fucking embarrassing. 

Steve reaches up and takes Eddie’s face in his hands, regards him for a second, and then maybe reads on Eddie’s expression that he’s either going to start laughing at Steve or burst into tears, possibly both, and cracks a smile. 

“What’s so funny?” Eddie says, meaning for it to come out playful, but it sounds far more unsure. Great. Way to go, Munson. Regain the power of speech, and this is the best you can do?

“Just never over seeing your face so clearly like this, man. When you first chopped it all off, I just about had a heart attack.”

Eddie allows himself to be held, though a sizeable unquenchable part of his fucking broken brain wants to turn his head quickly and bite Steve’s palm. Mmm, actually—save that thought for later. 

“Yeah? Good heart attack or bad heart attack?”

“Both,” Steve sighs, hand sliding behind Eddie’s ear like he’s tucking back long hair that isn’t there anymore. “As always, with you.”

Eddie finally gives in to the impulse and turns his head in Steve's hand, but kisses his palm instead of anything involving teeth. He lets out a little watery laugh, because there’s a tell-tale burning behind his eyeballs for sure now, and he needs to break this heady eye contact before he really fucks this up.

The whole group of them, they have ways to take care of each other. Some of them have given therapy a try and loved it, some of them have given it a try and hated it, and some of them didn’t bother with trying in the first place (two guesses which approach Eddie went for). Eddie has always felt that whatever help they all needed and got outside of those who had experienced it— that was secondary to the ways they all knew how to watch out for each other. With him and Steve, that’s not always talking about the big shit. It’s not really digging into the emotional guts of the thing— even during his divorce, Steve wasn’t about to fall weeping into Eddie’s arms (ha! Eddie would have fucking combusted)— their way is more a combination of dry observations, leaning on nerdy-ass metaphors (okay, that’s mostly Eddie), and puncturing the moment with (frequently flirty, in retrospect) over-the-top humor and teasing.

So it’s not wrong, when Steve leans into it, makes fun of Eddie a little because that's, generally speaking, what he needs to bring him back down to Earth. Or back up.

"Oh baby, it's okay to have big feelings. Who knew the tough guy was so sweet?"— but while it’s kind of perfectly right, it’s also just too much and Eddie can feel his stupid eyes well up and spill over. 

Steve’s demeanor turns from cocky to concerned in nanoseconds. He leans up into Eddie’s space and starts babbling utter nonsense: “Shit, um, I’m sorry, uh? it's great that you have feelings, I also have feelings, don’t worry about it–”

“Glad we’ve established we both have feelings,” Eddie says, trying to get his shit together and unfortunately needing to take his hands off Steve’s hips in order to scrub them over his face (aka: hide for a second, god he does miss the long hair sometimes but never for like, the badass reasons). “Big relief all around there.”

“I mean, honestly? It is.” He can’t see Steve, but he knows he’s being Earnest and Sincere and goddammit, Eddie has loved him for fifteen years so this should be old hat by now, but it hits him fresh every time. Like he’s simultaneously the crowd surfer lifted up high by the strength of many hands, and also the guy in the pit who was looking the wrong way and gets kicked in the head by the crowdsurfer’s shit-stomping boot. The giddy high, the lifting rush, and bam— the no less giddy impact right between the eyes. 

Steve manages to pry Eddie’s hands off his face, laughing kindly when Eddie makes a croaking noise of protest. “Hey now, I want to see that pretty face.”

“Look who’s talking,” Eddie mumbles, and can’t be bothered to put a smug spin on the sincerity. 

He knows he’s a talker – it’s what makes him so good at DND, what helped him ace his trade school exams and land a better gig than dudes who were technically more skilled, what’s gotten guys out of the bar and into bed with him every time – but Steve makes him babble. Makes him want to say every stupid, romantic thought that has ever popped into his head. 

Eddie doesn’t really consider anything in his life to have been wasted. Have enough extremely near death experiences and no time you’re given after that is wasted. He has regrets, sure. He has things he wishes could have gone differently, absolutely.

He and Steve are here now, Steve gorgeous and glowing even with his stupid “oh gosh I’ve been an accidental asshole again please forgive me” face on, naked and held between Eddie’s thighs and all he has ever, ever wanted. The time it took for them to get here, that wasn’t wasted time. It was just time, part of the span of days that Eddie has been given for no good fucking reason, but is now more than happy to grab and make a run for it.

Still. Eddie’s gonna make damn sure whatever he did to contribute to those years of not having this— he’s not going to do any of that shit again.

“They are,” he says to Steve, dropping his hands and kind of just accepting the fact that he probably looks weepy and bug-eyed and ridiculous right now. “Big feelings. The. The biggest feelings, actually.”

“Okay?” Steve says gently, weaving his fingers through Eddie’s, looking up into Eddie’s face with an expression that is much less wow what a bug-eyed ridiculous freak and much more enchantment healed his weary feet/that over hills were doomed to roam.

“Have been for a while,” Eddie says softly, looking at their hands folded together. “Since. Well, since ever.”

Okay, talking. Munson, you can do this. The stakes are high, never been higher, you gotta fucking just man up and do this because this is when it really fucking matters and maybe this is just some kind of whim for Steve maybe this is his post-divorce midlife crisis but it’s more than just a fling for you and both of you need for him to know that and if you don’t tell him how can—

“I love you, Eddie,” Steve says. 

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes. “You—“

“Big feelings,” Steve confirms, grinning and reaching for Eddie’s face again, slowly drawing him back down. “The biggest. For a long, long time.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. Articulately. 

Steve opens his mouth to say something else, probably something even more devastating, but he yawns instead, a big, loud noise that cracks his jaw a little. He looks up at Eddie, suddenly bashful.

“Aw, is it past somebody’s bedtime?” Eddie says, though it comes out in less of a teasing way, given how I love you too is stamped all over every syllable. 

“It’s, like four in the morning and I’m thirty-five years old,” Steve says. “I don’t think I’ve seen this hour in years.”

“Ah yes, the typical nine to five drag,” Eddie says. He kind of makes his own schedule, the benefit of basically running the auto garage, but Steve just got a promotion at the school and he still needs to behave himself. “I suppose you’ll want to rest up for work tomorrow.”

“Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to work tomorrow, kids will just have counsel and guide themselves for a day,” Steve says, and Eddie immediately runs the mental calculations as to whether or not he can get away with just. Staying in bed all day with Steve. Since apparently Eddie is the universe’s favorite child and that’s somehow an option that’s really on the table. “Would it be too presumptuous to ask if you have a toothbrush I could use?”

“I should have a spare,” Eddie says. “You can stay as long as you want.” Stay forever, he wants to say, but that’s too big. They’ve done enough of that for tonight.

And maybe it comes through anyway, in the way his hand finds its way to Steve’s chest when they’re lying in bed together later, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath Eddie’s favorite Judas Priest t-shirt. 

He’s not sure if either of them are really going to get all that much sleep. He sure as shit is wired as anything and the sky is looking suspiciously light through the slats of his flimsy plastic blinds. But he doesn’t have the usual Oh God This is Fucked insomnia anxiety about it or anything. Because here they are. Steve Harrington loves him. 

And Eddie gets to wake up tomorrow, and do his damndest to get him to say it again. 

-

A few still-giddy weeks later, Eddie picks up his work phone on his lunch break, and before he can even say “hello?” Dustin Henderson is practically shouting, “Why did I find out from fucking Robin that you and Steve finally sorted your shit out?”

“Hello to you too, Henderson,” Eddie says, taking a bite of the sandwich Steve made for him this morning, clad in nothing but black boxer briefs and Eddie’s oldest Dio shirt. (This shirt-stealing is becoming kind of pathological, so Eddie has started similarly making free with Steve’s buttery-soft sweaters and even the occasional polo shirt, on principle and not at all because of the way it blows Steve’s pupils right up.) “Did it ever occur to you that I might be nervous about disclosing that information?”

“Why would you be nervous about telling me that?” Dustin says at a more human decibel level, seemingly realizing that his volume wasn’t ideal. It took the kid thirty years to figure that one out, and clearly still a work in progress.

“Well, I tend to keep my personal life— that aspect of my personal life, Henderson— private. Not a lot of people know and I want to keep it that way.” If he sounds kind of prim and formal as he says it, it’s not his fault. This fucking weirdo world-saving family of his has done this to him. 

“First of all, if you think I didn’t already know that you’re gay, you’re out of your goddamn mind,” Dustin says, completely unphased by Eddie’s attempt at being authoritative. Figures. “Need I remind you that my childhood best friend is gay? That you brought a ‘friend’ to Mike and El’s wedding that you danced with basically all night? I’m insulted that you think my sleuthing skills are so sub-par.”

Eddie feels a twinge of guilt about that. He’s never intended to hide it from the kids– they’re in their thirties now, they’re not kids, but he’ll always think of them that way– but aside from Will, they’re all straight (well, maybe not Max, but she doesn't talk about it and he knows better than to ask. That’s sort of how their relationship works). It’s legitimately never occurred to any of them, in fifteen years, to really ask. He figures their first impressions have cemented their view of Eddie as either the loner weirdo, or the rock god badass who’s swimming in one night stands and likes it that way (the way there’s no in-between with them legitimately cracks his shit up). And yeah, maybe there is a part of him that doesn’t want to somehow disappoint Dustin. Being gay is small potatoes in comparison to everything else they’ve all been through, but his relationship with Dustin started with a grand perfomance. Pretending to be straight, if only by omission, has just been part of that.

He could say all that, but instead he says. “Well, you know now.”

“I’m coming in,” Dustin says, and hangs up before Eddie can finish saying “wait what do you mean” in response. 

A second later, the door of the shop jingles and in walks Dustin, holding his brick of a cell phone, because of course that nerdy motherfucker was the first person Eddie knows who got one. Eddie sees him a lot, talks to him on the phone even more, but he’s struck every time by how grown up Dustin looks. Adulthood has been kind to him in a way that his teenage years were not, and he is a confident, thriving man who is finally being recognized as the powerhouse he has always been. But when he hugs Eddie, a full body embrace that nearly knocks him off his feet, Eddie sees the playful, sweet kid that’s still in there. He never did change, after all. Not in any of the important ways.

Despite Eddie’s little cough as the impact knocks all the air out of his lungs, Dustin just squeezes harder, the pressure an instant tonic. “Jesus Christ, Eddie, did you really think I’d stop being your friend if I knew? That I’d stop loving you? This feels like Will all over again. Hopeless. ”

There’s so much emotion tangled in that, but that’s kind of how Dustin is with everything– heart on his sleeve, ready to love and be loved. “Why aren’t you giving Steve shit about this?”

“Oh, he was my first stop, don’t worry,” Dustin says. “You’re handling the ambush considerably better than he did.”

Eddie laughs– his real one, not the wild, wicked thing he does for their occasional one-off DND campaigns. “Do you have a minute? I don’t have any appointments until like 3pm. We can hang.”

“As if I didn’t take the day off work for this,” Dustin says, and takes a seat, waiting patiently for Eddie to flip the sign to “closed” and sit down across from him.

They shoot the shit for a while, studiously avoiding the original purpose of the visit. Claudia is having some health issues, so Dustin has been in Hawkins a bit more (“it’s basically a ghost town, I keep telling her to leave but she’s so stubborn–”); they start tossing ideas around for a one-off game they’re having for Eddie’s birthday in June (“everyone’s already taken off work and found accommodations, so don’t worry about hosting us, don’t make that face, Munson–”); El’s in her second trimester with her and Mike’s first kid, which Eddie already knew, but it’s a nice thing to get updated on (“I’ve seen her kill people with her mind and this is still the most badass thing I’ve ever seen her do–”). When the catch-up starts to die down, Dustin levels him with a look.

“Out with it. Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, I get why on the surface, but…” he trails off, wanting Eddie to fill in the blanks.

“I, uh. I know we’ve been joking about being your dads for basically forever. But with Steve– I didn’t want to make it seem like something serious if it wasn’t going to…be that,” Eddie says weakly. No posturing, no vague-isms. That’s the bare bones truth. Steve told Eddie that he loved him on their first night together, after their second date (not even waiting for the third, such scandal, what wanton behavior), and Eddie believed him. Believes him. But there’s still that wildly insecure twenty-year-old kid rattling away in there, that part of him that’s shit-scared and certain that no, no way, there’s just no fucking way he’s getting this. The part that still urges him to cut his losses and just run .

“Yeah, well, from what I gather that’s the kind of shit that made it nothing the first time around,” Dustin says waspishly.  “So happy to see the growth there, buddy.”

Eddie gapes at Dustin, slightly tempted to kick this grown man in the shin. “You’re really cruisin’ for a bruisin’, Henderson.”

“You would never,” Dustin says. He’s right, of course. “Alright, all of your utter chickenshittery aside, I’m happy for you. You’re a way better fit for him than Megan ever was.”

Unlike the rest of the group, Dustin had never really cottoned on to Megan, no matter how hard she tried to befriend him (and she had really, really tried). It was actually kind of painful to watch, even if there was a small part of Eddie that felt a sick glee about it. So it’s not like it’s a surprise that Dustin would feel this way, but Eddie feels his cheeks warm, has to give an awkward kind of shrug to mask how gratifying it is to hear. No disrespect to Megan (who he likes! Cross his heart and hope to almost-die for the fifth time or whatever!) he just happens to agree. He and Steve are a better fit. The best fit. 

“–and I’ve only met the one ,” Dustin gives another aggrieved sigh, pressing a hand over his terribly wounded, wounded heart. “But I’m gonna go ahead and say Steve is better than your exes too.”

“He is,” Eddie agrees. Uncle Wayne absolutely thinks so, and has waxed downright eloquent about it during their weekly phone call. Eddie has freely ignored Wayne’s input on most of his other romantic choices, so it works out pretty well that the first guy that he’s actually approved of is the one who Eddie fully plans to keep around for a while. 

Before the smirk on Dustin’s face can resolve itself into another smartass remark, the shop door jingles again, the thing rattling desperately as a familiar figure practically kicks it open. 

“Babe, Dustin knows!” Steve Harrington proclaims to the store (does no one realize that Eddie might have actual customers in here) “and I think he should and I want everyone to know, I really do, but I figured maybe if you wanted to–”

Steve finally, miracle of miracles, finally reads the room.

Dustin swivels slowly in his seat to face him, his smirk now more a grin of predatory glee. 

“If you wanted to what, Steve?” Dustin says innocently. “Come up with a game plan? Get your stories straight?”

“Ha, straight,” Eddie mutters to himself, and Steve shoots him a deeply betrayed look. 

“Wanted to…take you out to lunch, Henderson!” Steve says, grasping at straws in the most incredibly obvious way. “Together. To. Celebrate?”

“Nice save,” Eddie says. 

“I will accept lunch,” Dustin says magnanimously. “It’s some comfort for being so terribly left out of the loop. Oh, and–” he brightens at the thought. “–hey, we could see if there’s a screening of Fellowship we could catch? Obviously I’ve already seen it twice, but we never did get to see it all together, since you…”

He trails off. Eddie, sensing where this is going, again mourns the loss of hair he could hide behind. 

“Canceled on me because of a stomach bug!” Dustin exclaims, pointing an accusatory hand at Eddie. 

“I told him to say that, to be entirely fair,” Steve says, holding a hand up, and mercifully leaving out the way that he was sucking marks across Eddie’s chest while whispering with absolute sin in his voice that Eddie should just cancel, say whatever, as long as he stayed in this bed. Between that whopper of a memory and the fact that Steve has a few more years on Eddie when it comes to wrangling Dustin, Eddie lets him take the lead. “Look, I’m sorry, if that wasn’t abundantly clear. We can absolutely go see Fellowship, if you think you can sit through Eddie complaining about the changes. I’ve heard this rant, like, five times.”

“And I get more and more correct each time,” Eddie mumbles. Steve smirks at him. Then glances at Dustin and, clearly making his mind up about something, crosses the floor to stand next to Eddie and take his hand. When Eddie doesn’t do anything other than look up at him, surprised and more than a little charmed, it’s apparently invitation enough for Steve to press a quick kiss to the top of his head. So, casual affection in front of friends. A thing that they can do now, wow. Eddie tries not to grin too big about it. 

“Oh God, is it always going to be like this? I thought Mike and El were bad, Jesus.” Dustin sighs. “Okay, I’ll drop it if you answer one question honestly. No bullshit.”

“You got it,” Eddie says, and Steve nods in agreement.

Dustin closes his eyes, waits a beat. “Does Will know?”

Ah yeah, there it is. Eddie has always made sure to not press when it comes to this subject, but Will knowing things that Dustin doesn’t has always been a source of pain for him that Eddie can sympathize with. And it’s not even about the wild and wacky end-of-the-world stuff this time, or anything to do with Will’s telekinetic or telepathic telewhatever souvenirs from the Upside Down. It’s more simple, and more deeply rooted, than any of that. There are certain dynamics within the hobbits that Eddie isn’t necessarily privy to, but he knows what it’s like to be an only child who just wants to be liked, afraid the people he cares about most don’t care about him nearly as much. Healing from old wounds isn’t linear, and he owes it to Dustin to strike a delicate balance between being careful and not patronizing him.

“He doesn’t know about Steve and me, but he has known about me being gay,” Eddie says. “But that’s different, Dustin, you have to know that.”

“I don’t,” Dustin grumbles.

“Yeah you do, dipshit,” Steve says, his tone suddenly sharp. “It’s way easier to have that conversation with someone who gets it than with someone who doesn’t.” 

Dustin recoils a little bit at that, and Eddie’s hand shoots out instinctually to take Dustin’s. He looks at Steve with an expression that he hopes says whoa, slow your roll, buddy. 

“Will came out to me first,” Eddie says, “he was just looking for– advice, I guess, someone to talk to. Sometimes it’s easier the first time, you know, to tell someone who you aren’t all that close to. He could talk to me about it before you guys because– well, he could afford to lose me, if it went bad. The real high-stakes coming outs, those can take some working up to. Just. That’s just how that goes.”

Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand, and Eddie’s struck by how the three of them are all connected right now, a little chain of emotional dudes who love each other, this little family of theirs that kind of started as a joke, but didn’t stay a joke for very long. Eddie sits with that feeling for a second. 

Before pivoting seamlessly to Little Shit mode. “And he was soooooooo shocked when I told him I was gay too.”

Dustin perks up at this. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. He had no clue.”

Dustin turns to Steve. “I totally knew Eddie was gay.”

“Yeah, man?”

“Totally.”

“Sleuthing skills,” Eddie says, letting go of Dustin’s hand so he can flick him right in the middle of his forehead. “Top-notch.”

-

Instead of anything overly formal, Dustin merely insists on bar pie from the dive down the street from the shop and, yes, another showing of Fellowship. He shoves himself in the seat between Steve and Eddie (“so you actually watch the movie, for fuck’s sake–”), clearly drawing the line between Supportive Ally and Gross I Don’t Want To See You Two Getting Handsy, which is fair. Even if Eddie would certainly have preferred to get just a little handsy, at least being forced to actually pay attention this time around provides the extra benefit of revealing even more things that Peter Jackson managed to fuck up. It also stops him from thinking (too much) about the easy way Steve had held the door for him on the way in, how he just slapped down his AmEx to pay for their tickets, a wordless offer of his jacket passed over Dustin’s head when Eddie got cold in the theater, because he’s never really warm nowadays (it’s on the list of leftover Upside Down things that he Upside Doesn’t Think Too Much About). 

When Boromir is breathing his last, Strider’s hands pressed around his face, Eddie (who already cried a little bit again about Merry and Pippin, fuck ) feels his throat close up a little. I would have followed you, my brother, Eddie glances over at Steve, who is already looking at him (unobstructed, since Dustin is practically in the fetal position, transfixed by the movie and gripping the back of the seat in front of him). My captain. My king. 

Steve, unsmiling but with eyes bright, slowly shakes his head. Faramir, he mouths. And Eddie twists his lips together to try and keep the smile from breaking out, rolling his eyes but daring Dustin’s wrath to risk reaching across his back, squeezing Steve’s shoulder gently. Steve grins at him then, so fucking open and affectionate, and whether he’s Boromir or not, Eddie knows he’d follow him anywhere. 

The small, cynical part of Eddie, the one that keeps him in check so his heart doesn’t burst, figures that this floaty, loving feeling will dissipate once they step outside the theater. But Steve’s joking around with Dustin, who's sprawled in the backseat of Steve’s new-ish Subaru, and he doesn’t take his hand off Eddie’s knee the whole ride back to Dustin’s car.

(The Beemer had infamously died back in 1998, when Steve and Megan were on their way to Columbus to visit Megan’s parents. Eddie hadn’t spoken to Steve for the better part of six months – nothing catastrophic, just life being busy– but when he picked up the phone to Steve’s intentionally casual tone, the one he used when he was upset but trying to keep the other person calm– he hopped in his car and drove six hours to meet them. As Megan chattered happily in the backseat, Steve had given Eddie a look halfway between grateful and…longing? Wistful? Eddie had learned long ago to not endow emotions onto others, especially when it came to looking for things that were not there. But it was hard at that moment, to not try and get a read on what was happening with Steve, when Eddie himself was sure he was being cataclysmically obvious. The derailment of his entire day, just to save Steve and his wife two hours of inconvenience, was testament enough to how he himself felt. But if Steve could see it, he never mentioned it. Maybe Eddie hadn’t been the only one trying not to read into things too much.)

Dustin gives them both huge, full body hugs – Steve first, then Eddie. He whispers something in Steve’s ear that makes Steve smack him lightly, blush tingeing those pretty cheeks. Eddie waits his turn; Dustin and Steve’s relationship no longer confounds him like it once did, but he knows now that he doesn’t need to be privy to every dynamic in his life. Steve ruffles his hair, like he’s still fourteen years old and not in the upper levels of research and development at Eli Lilly. Dustin is still smiling when he practically tackles Eddie, peppering his forehead and temples with kisses like he’s Claudia.

“Those are from El, and this one,” he blows a giant, disgusting raspberry on his cheek, “is from me. Fucking call me more.”

“Yeah, I really should,” Eddie agrees. “Uh, what did you say to Steve before? Not that it’s any of my business–”

“Well, some of it is none of your business, but I mainly told him to be careful with you. You’re sensitive, you know, gotta look out for both of my dads.”

Eddie is absolutely not going to cry in front of Dustin, who has grown up to be something of a sympathetic crier. Instead, he just gives him another hug. “Love you, Dusty-bun.”

“God, you date a Mormon once and you never live it down,” Dustin groans, but he’s also laughing. “Love you, Edward.”

They linger outside just to make sure he makes it off the block safely. When Dustin’s Chevy rounds the corner and out of sight, Steve bumps into him gently, tentative for the first time in weeks. “Ah, back to yours? Sorry you’re always hosting–”

They have been to Steve’s place once– the most bare bones bachelor pad Eddie has ever seen, hardly more than a room with one set of flatware and utensils and an almost complete boner-killer (Eddie had rallied to the task bravely, but still, it was bleak). Steve’s crashing with Robin at the moment while they fumigate his apartment for, like, the third time.

“Steve, as much as I love Robin, I don’t want to fuck at her apartment,” Eddie says, low so just Steve can hear. They may be alone now, and Eddie has structured his life to avoid people talking shit, but he feels a distinct need to protect Steve from the negative pushback he himself has sometimes received. 

“Oh come on, you don’t think she’ll be into that?” Steve teases, but he’s already walking them back in the direction of the Subaru. He links his pinky with Eddie’s for that brief walk, as if he can’t bear to not be touching him for even one whole minute. Eddie waits until they’re both securely in the car before reciprocating with a gentle kiss on the cheek, and is a bit startled to discover the start of stubble on Steve’s normally clean shaven face.

“What’s this scruff?” Eddie teases, running his fingertips along Steve’s jaw.

Steve ducks his head. “You’re too damn perceptive for your own good. Uh, I’ve been trying out the stubble thing? You know, because of Strider and all that– this is so embarrassing, Jesus–”

“Drive,” Eddie says, because he doesn’t trust himself to not say something completely filthy. Steve seems to get the message though, eyes widening before he puts the car into drive and peels out of his spot and into the night.

Ever full of surprises, Steve is careful driving back to Eddie’s place – doesn’t run a single light, doesn’t break the speed limit, boxes around instead of doing the illegal U-ey that Eddie always does once he reaches his block. Once Steve’s redone his parallel park to make sure he’s lined up right with the curb, Eddie teasing him just a little for his perfectionism, they silently walk into the foyer and into the rickety elevator. Eddie wants to press Steve against the wall, but something in him tells him to wait just a little bit longer, that the anticipation will make the inevitable crash between them that much more exciting.

Once they’re finally in Eddie’s apartment, Steve instinctually heads toward the kitchen, Eddie following like a puppy. He putters around like he already lives here, and that thought makes Eddie’s heart do a few somersaults. “You want anything? There’s still some leftovers from dinner the other night, I think, and we could put on some tea –”

Truthfully, Eddie is a little peckish (that movie was damn long and bar pies were a while ago), but if he doesn’t get his hands on Steve right now, he’s probably going to explode. “Just you.” In an instant, Steve is crowding Eddie against the sink and kissing him like they haven’t been able to do all day. 

“Whatever you want, baby.”

Steve Harrington is a man who was born to be someone’s boyfriend. Eddie is just marveling that now, in his teeny tiny kitchen that is barely bigger than the one in the trailer, Steve is his boyfriend, all up in his space like he belongs there.

“I think that went well,” Steve says some time later, his breath hot against Eddie’s temple and his hands pinning Eddie back against the counter. 

“I know you’re not talking about Henderson when we’re getting to second base,” Eddie says, pressing his hips into Steve’s grip, chasing that delicious friction. 

“You know he walked in on me when I was hooking up with a girl once and didn’t leave ?” Steve says, pulling back. Eddie feels a little disappointed, but knows this will be a good story. “Just sat in my desk chair and said he’d wait until I was done.” 

“Please tell me you kicked the little hobbit out,” Eddie says.

“I kicked the girl out,” Steve groans, tipping back into Eddie’s space and adjusting his grip ever so slightly tighter. “He looked so sad, Eddie, what was I supposed to do?”

What anyone else would have done , Eddie thinks, affectionately. Only Steve would take it as a matter of course, that the needs of his little pack of urchins would always come before his own. But Eddie gets it, really, he does. Though not in the same way as Steve, Eddie understands that pull inside to protect these stupid kids, no matter how old they get. 

“I’m going to put it out there right now,” Eddie says, “Dustin ever shows up while we’re in the middle of something and you try that shit, I’ll shave you bald in your sleep.”

Steve, who has gotten extra insufferable about his growing hair since he stopped clinging to a Convincingly Married Heterosexual American Man close crop, gasps in mock-horror. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe not,” Eddie concedes, getting his hands back in the hair in question, enjoying the fine feeling of it between his fingers and how Steve’s breath catches a little, the motion felt against Eddie’s chest. “Might take an eyebrow and a half, though.”

Steve groans, stepping back into Eddie’s space and letting Eddie’s hands in his hair guide him down to Eddie’s neck. 

“See, you’re kind of kidding,” he presses the words against Eddie’s pulse, pausing to tease his teeth against the skin and murmuring approval when Eddie arches against his mouth with a gasp. “But I know you’d do it, you fucking animal.”

Eddie laughs, Eddie moans, Eddie gets the strength to tug at Steve’s hair and murmur “bed, cmon, bed right now,” and take Steve right to it.

In his somewhat limited sexual experience, Eddie has more often than not been the active partner. He had really thought he was being a bold, brave badass with that bandana act in high school, the thrill of communicating something shocking to a town completely (probably) devoid of another person who would ever have picked up on what that communication meant. Maybe it had been a bit of provocation, another in his expansive roster of small non-conformist rebellions, but the bandana itself wasn’t a total lie, after all– he does like to top, though discovering he actually wasn’t that into BDSM once he actually did start getting laid had been something of a surprise. (Turns out facing actual, life-threatening danger and indescribable physical agony makes replicating the same in the bedroom a bit, uh, complicated.) 

However, if one kept pressing the subject, Eddie would be forced to admit that he’s afraid of the alternative: of being vulnerable, of giving over control to someone else. Even with past long-term boyfriends (like Josh, the guy he’d brought to Mike and El’s wedding,a lovely person whose only crime was not being Steve), scaling Eddie’s imposing emotional walls always got to be just too much, and it was ultimately what sent Josh packing. 

“Why can’t you just let your guard down, Eddie?” he had said on the night of their last argument, the second to last time they saw each other (if you count Josh silently coming by to pick up the last of his things without really looking at Eddie for more than five seconds as the last time). “You laugh and you joke and you fuck around but at the end of the day, with the real shit—It’s like talking to a…God, not even a wall, a fucking fortress.”

What could he say to that, really? How could he explain that, even though they weren’t a nightly occurrence, his dreams were frequently filled with visions of creatures straight out of his tattered DND player guides? There was no way to tell the entire truth, that he nearly bled out in another dimension, and almost didn’t get a chance to clear his name. It was the most sick, twisted version of “you had to have been there” that anyone could say to another person. So he didn’t say anything. He just let Josh walk out the door, and spent the night on his fire escape, chain smoking to keep his hands and mouth occupied, the nicotine curling in his lungs and whiting out his brain. 

None of those guys were Steve, though. Not even close. So when Steve lays Eddie on the bed, pushing at the backs of his thighs gently until his knees are flush against his chest, looking up at him with wide, curious eyes, Eddie gives him a tight nod.

“I got you,” Steve murmurs gently, leaning down to press a kiss against the side of Eddie’s knee and pressing a slicked-up fingertip against the tight furl of Eddie’s body. 

“You’d fucking better,” Eddie laughs through the first breach, closing his eyes against how it fucking shocks him with wonder, at the way he can think every time, it’s like this with the beautiful feeling of building a new backstory. “Or I’ll have to go see what Orlando Bl—“ Steve twists his finger inside him, the asshole, “—Bloom’s got going on.”

“He couldn’t handle you,” Steve says, less of a tease and more of a promise.

“Yeah,” Eddie runs a hand through Steve’s hair again, cupping his jaw. “So handle me, then.”

And Steve does. 

He likes to get his hands all over Eddie, and isn’t that a delightful surprise? Eddie had figured he’d be the tactile one, since that was kind of like. His default mode with most people, even those he didn’t want to pin to the nearest flat surface and lick every inch of their bodies. It was not generally guided by strict principles of what could be called “personal space.”

And Steve had been receptive to it, for sure, when they were just colleagues at their part-time job of saving reality. And when they were just friends, after that. Steve had never seemed uncomfortable when Eddie leaned into his shoulder or clapped him on the back or yelled “think fast!” and thrown himself into Steve’s arms with a force that had unfortunately sent them both tumbling to the ground (during Steve’s wedding, of all events, the booze fueling his lack of inhibitions but fortunately also assisting in Steve’s finding the whole thing to be hilarious). But there was a reason Eddie had been so absolutely wrecked by the way Steve had telegraphed his intentions towards Eddie by quick touches—to an elbow, a shoulder, sometimes the tip of Eddie’s knee. Steve didn’t usually initiate whatever contact happened between them, was the thing. 

Open that door though, throw the gates open wide and tell Steve Harrington that whatever affection he sends your way will be appreciated and returned tenfold, and wow— 

“Wow,” Eddie chokes out as Steve adds the third finger, his mouth falling open a little in concentration, glassy-eyed as he watches Eddie writhe under his touch. He’s braced himself with a hand next to Eddie’s head, catching some of his hair under his palm, and every time Eddie moves it tugs a little, just shy of painful, pinning him in place. 

Wow , and the way Steve likes to get his tongue across Eddie’s tattoos and playing around the body-warmed metal of his nipple piercings, while he twists those genius fingers in a brutal search for the spot that’ll make Eddie scream. He certainly can handle him, and will. Every inch of him, inside and out. 

And Eddie’s so busy being overwhelmed by it all, that he’s completely forgetting to be scared by how totally he’s at Steve’s mercy. It’s too easy to forget any of the reasons why he would be scared of this at all.

“Come on,” Eddie pants, scratching his blunt nails down Steve’s chest, drumming his heel a little bit against Steve’s back. “Come on, come on.”

“Think you’re ready?” Steve asks, eyebrow raised. Asshole. “Gotta tell me if you’re ready, baby.”

He could just say it, but this is part of the thing with Steve, that it’s just fucking fun. “You can’t tell? Ah— fuck.”

He sees stars, and as they dissipate he sees Steve smirking in satisfaction. “I might be picking up some hints. Here and there.”

“Steve—“ Eddie says, and something in his voice makes the smile slide immediately off Steve’s face, suddenly all heat and hunger. “Steve, please—“

“Fuck,” Steve breathes, and Eddie groans around the sudden absence of Steve’s fingers inside him. “Just a second—“

Eddie covers his face with his hands, trying to collect himself a little, palms pressing over his eyes, as Steve fumbles for the box of condoms in Eddie’s bedside table. Eddie looks up in time to see Steve rip the packet open with his teeth, and sucks in a breath. 

“Wow, that definitely works for me,” he finds himself saying, out loud and everything, whoops. 

Steve huffs out a laugh as he rolls on the condom. Glancing up into Eddie’s eyes with a kind of sweet shy pleasure. God.

“You know what else works for me?” Eddie says, leaning back against the sheets and sinking one hand into his own hair, the other one thumbing idly over his nipple, fully knowing what will actually drive Steve over the edge.  “When you get over here and fuck me.”

Steve laughs, is still laughing as he grabs Eddie’s hips, lines up, and presses inside him. Eddie catches Steve’s mouth with his, moans mingling between them.

The first time they did this, they were practically out of their minds with the frantic need of it. Steve had pressed into Eddie with what was almost a shout, and Eddie had sunk his nails deep into Steve’s shoulders, urging him on, ultimately flipping them both over and riding Steve’s dick until Steve was nothing but a choked litany of curses and oaths and prayers, pressing bruises into Eddie’s hips before jerking him off with hellfire in his eyes. 

It’s like that between them sometimes, for sure. Hot, and urgent, and ravenous. Maybe used to a more tender morning sex situation in the past, Eddie has been surprised to notice that that’s when it seems to really hit them strongest. Something about rising from dreams, blinking into the world and out of whatever quiet (or unquiet) place sleep may have taken them— something about turning his head and seeing Steve’s face on the pillow next to his, his arm thrown over Eddie’s middle, right over the physical evidence of how close Eddie came to never enjoying the sight of Steve’s bedhead, well. It makes Eddie horny as fuck, is what it does. 

Maybe he just likes to have Steve screaming his name bathed in the warm glow of the risen sun, the bright light of day the right accompaniment for catching every line of Steve’s body and perfect face. 

And it’s a hell of a great way to start the day too, though Eddie is pretty sure the guys at the garage think he’s started smoking a bowl before every shift, what with how he shows up to work all blissed-out and uncharacteristically quiet.

At the end of the day though, held in twilight and the orange glow of the streetlight outside Eddie’s bedroom window, often it’s a little more like this: sweet. Slow. Quiet murmurs of move for me baby, and just like that, you’re so good and god, Steve, god, god. The first time he took Steve, it was like that. Handled him like a sacred object while the soft sound of snow falling tapped against his windows, opened Steve up with his tongue and laced their fingers together as he spread himself across Steve’s back and rocked into him with brutal tenderness until Steve was pretty much incoherent .  

No snow in the forecast tonight, yet that soft tranquility remains. “I can’t believe it sometimes,” Eddie whispers like a secret, because yeah, Steve gets him babbly. “Can’t believe us, can’t believe you.”

Steve trembles above Eddie, the rhythm of his thrusts going a little bit to shit as he drives into Eddie with enough desperate force to push them both further up the bed. 

“Believe it,” Steve grunts, bending Eddie almost in half to get to his lips, sinking his teeth into Eddie’s bottom lip and gentling the sting with a brush of his tongue. 

Eddie has spent a lot of time mildly embarrassed by his own existence. One would never know, of course, his carefully constructed persona smoothing over his jagged edges, but the mortification remains, hot and unforgiving like summer’s first sunburn. But the open emotion in Steve’s eyes, the determined set of his face, makes him want to step into his sunlight, bask in the rays and get that base burn. Set himself right. Steve loves Eddie, of course, but he likes him too. Ain’t that something?

“Think you can come without me touching you?” Steve says when he pulls back, changes the angle so he’s hitting that sweet spot dead on. “We haven’t done that before.”

Eddie nods feverishly because it’s all he’s capable of at the moment, and Steve grins wickedly, speeding up his thrusts so Eddie can barely catch his breath. When Eddie comes, it’s completely untouched, all over his stomach and chest; Steve swallows his strangled cry with another kiss and begins to slow down.

“Don’t stop,” Eddie pants. “Fuck me through it, it’s fine, it’s fine –”

Steve looks unsure for just a second, but nods and slams his hips against Eddie’s over and over, the lewd smack of skin against skin overloading Eddie’s already overwhelmed senses. Despite his athletic prowess, Steve’s not a kid anymore, so it isn’t long before he loses all sense of rhythm and comes, choking on thick air as Eddie edges into that delicious, oversensitive place.

Steve collapses on the bed next to Eddie, half on top of him but mercifully not nailing him with one of those sharp elbows (this has absolutely happened a few times too many). Eddie’s eyes drift closed, less because of the fatigue and more because it’s better that way, listening to the staccato bursts of Steve’s breath as he gets it back, sweeping warm across Eddie’s collarbones.

Quietly, they just breathe together for a little while. 

Coming untouched, huh? Not only new for the two of them, that’s a new one for Eddie full stop. He considers telling Steve that. Maybe not right now. But he will, eventually. Eventually he’ll just tell Steve everything. Open up the lunchbox and let it all shake out. 

Not right now though, right now he’s like. Kind of out of it. 

His chest and stomach are starting to get a little unpleasant though, come starting to dry and tightening over his sensitive skin where it’s striped across tattoos and scars and the odd freckle. He’s pretty sure Steve’s managed to land in some of it too, smeared it across them both with an arm, which is a sexier thought than it should be. 

“Hey, champ,” Eddie says, lifting a hand to brush it slowly down the back of Steve’s arm. “Last one to get up and get a wet washcloth is a rotten egg.”

Steve laughs a little, pushes his nose into Eddie’s shoulder. “Can’t have that.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Would be a blemish on the Harrington name.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Fine,” Steve eases himself up a little with a groan. Blinks at Eddie like he’s surprised to see him there (weirdo), before smiling and brushing some of Eddie’s hair back off his forehead. “Hey.”

Eddie’s heart clenches in his chest. “Yeah, hi.” He says dourly, though he’s smiling all big and goofy, he can feel it. “Whew, what am I smelling? Is that sulfur?”

“Jesus, Munson,” Steve groans, but rolls himself up and away. Stumbles a bit, glancing back and clearly hoping Eddie didn’t see how he tied off the condom and totally missed the toss into the wastebasket. 

Eddie, obviously, didn’t miss it. But he can be merciful. He’ll let Steve have a reprieve before he gives him ball-in-laundry-basket related shit about it. Tomorrow, probably. 

He drifts a little, listening to Steve knock around his bathroom and mutter inaudibly to himself as he eventually runs the tap. Bull in a china shop, that guy, the fuck. Eddie only half opens his eyes when Steve returns, contentedly lying back and letting Steve slide the washcloth over his chest (giving more attention to Eddie’s nipples than is really needed but hey, Eddie doesn’t hate that Steve clearly has kind of a fixation) and stomach. Feeling spoiled in kind of a nice way, Eddie just watches the old navy blue towel make its progress over the shadows of his own body. In this light, the contrast kicks his tattoos into high gear but flattens out all but the worst of the scars on his sides and belly. Not like they aren’t there at all, though. Which is fine, actually. They’re a part of him too, and Eddie wouldn’t wish them away. 

Work done, Steve gives his arm and shoulder a cursory swipe and makes a very dramatic, exhausted noise as he lets himself fall back down onto the bed again. Pulls Eddie against him, drawing Eddie’s arm across his chest and nudging him in the thigh a few times with his knee before Eddie gets the picture and throws his leg over Steve’s. Ha. Pushy. Lucky for him, Eddie likes it.

“Hey,” Steve says into Eddie’s hair after a little while. “I know your secret.”

Coming from just about anyone else in the world, this would be some scary shit to have launched on a guy post-coitus. But coming from Steve, Eddie just shrugs, and smiles into his chest. “You want ‘em? You got ‘em. Resale value’s pretty crap though, I gotta tell you right now.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Steve says dryly. “No, I meant about the movie.”

Eddie doesn’t remember the two of them setting up a camcorder or anything, though wow that sure would be– hey, focus, Munson. 

“Movie?” He asks, shifting so he can look up into Steve’s face. This involves digging his chin into Steve’s chest a little bit, and he winces but is otherwise undeterred. 

“Fellowship of the Ring.”

“Right.” He’d forgotten about that. The movie he’s been thinking about nonstop since he first heard it was happening, the movie he was watching just a few hours ago, and he’s forgotten its entire existence. The Harrington Charm in effect, ladies and gentlemen. 

“You totally love it.”

Eddie lets his face fall back down into Steve’s shoulder, this time for strategic reasons. 

“How dare you.”

“You do!” 

“They turned Gandalf and Saruman into kung-fu masters who duked it out on a rooftop.”

“And you loved it.”

Eddie tries to pinch Steve in the side, right by the scars where Eddie himself knows he’s really sensitive, but Steve is too fast and catches Eddie’s hand in his. “They totally cut out elven hero and total badass Glorfindel, just so they could have Arwen ride a horse in circles for a while.”

“You loved that too.”

“Totally gayed up Sam and Frodo,” he tries to tug his hand free, as he makes this last-ditch attempt at saving face. 

“Well I mean– first of all, that’s all on the page,” Steve says, and god Eddie officially has a kink for Steve casually offering textual opinions on Tolkein’s work. “Second of all, of all the things to have an issue with given what we just did I think that’s extra bullshit, and–” he rolls them over without warning, Eddie letting out a stupid bleh! of surprise as he is suddenly on his back again with Steve over him, and somehow the bastard not only has pinned down Eddie’s pinching hand but has got the other one firmly imprisoned under his side. 

“And third of all,” Steve finishes, triumphant. “You loved it. You love that whole movie.”

“Fine!” Eddie would throw his hands up in the air, if he could move them at all. “Fine, I absolutely fucking loved it all! I loved those old wizards beating the shit out of each other! I loved that Arwen actually got to do some shit besides sitting around being a gorgeous pining elf babe. Sam and Frodo can’t possibly be more gayed up than they are in the book, but even if they were, I’d still find that shit moving, probably! I absolutely fucking loved the movie! And I absolutely fucking love you!”

He can actually, like, feel the blush spreading across his chest. He hopes the tattoos hide most of the incriminating evidence there, but knows Steve will see it creeping up his throat. His pain tolerance is not actually so high that he would get ink there, but maybe he’ll have to consider it given this humiliation. 

It’s just– he’s said it already, of course. In a hundred different ways, with a hundred different words, a hundred other times. Just not. Those specific words. Together. 

Steve is brave. Steve is a hero. Steve could say it straight off, within practically a minute of declaring his interest in the first place. And has never seemed to fish for it, in the weeks since. Has never looked disappointed, or upset, or weirded out by it, that Eddie hasn’t said it back. And he’s felt bad about it, even if Steve hasn’t because like– what’s the hold up? Get a move on, Munson, this holding back shit is a nasty habit that he knows won’t win him any prizes in life. And yet. The specific words. He’s been just a little bit too unsure, too scared, to let them out. 

Well. Fuck that. 

“I am,” he says declaratively, looking Steve dead in the eye, chin lifting like this is some kind of argument he’s still making. “Absolutely fucking in love with you.”

Steve’s face is so goddamn soft right now, picked out in an orange glow from the streetlamp, expression wide open and affectionate and a little gently exasperated. Sort of his standard reaction to Eddie, now that he thinks about it. “Yeah, man. I know.”

Inexplicably, Eddie is flooded with relief. “Oh,” he says. Considers it for a second, and then bats his eyelashes up at Steve. “Another one of my secrets you’d figured out?”

“Not really,” Steve settles in closer, raises their joined hands so he can brush his fingertips against Eddie’s hair, without letting him go. “I just…felt it. I guess. Just knew. You’ve never… I never had any doubt.”

“Yeah,” Eddie grins, tipping his chin up in invitation. “I guess I get that.”

“Just like I knew that you loved that movie.”

“Ugh. I can’t believe how much I love you, when you’re such a jackass.”

“Big feelings,” Steve whispers. 

“The biggest,” Eddie confirms, and kisses him–the easiest thing in the world to do.