Chapter Text
The boathouse door slammed open and Eddie moved before his brain caught up, bottle finding grip, arm finding body, back finding wall.
Stopstopstop
But his arm was already across Steve's chest, forearm pressed hard against the sternum, the jagged green glass at his throat - Steve's throat, right there - Steve's hands were up, empty, shaking slightly at the wrists.
"- okay, okay, okay, it's me, it's just me -"
He could swear Dustin's voice was coming from somewhere. Somewhere far away. Pleading. White noise.
"Eddie please please please it's Steve, it's Steve, you know Steve -"
But Eddie's hand didn't loosen. His breath came ragged, too fast, the boathouse swimming in and out of focus. He could feel Steve's pulse under the glass. Could feel the jump of it, rabbit-fast, but Steve wasn't fighting. Wasn't even trying to pull away. Just stood there, hands open at shoulder height, chin tilted slightly up to bare his throat like an offering.
This is Steve.
The thought arrived distant, underwater.
This is Steve, not Jason. This is Steve, not whatever the fuck got crumpled up in Chrissy that he couldn't see because it was too dark and she was already gone. Eddie's arm trembled pressing the bottle's edge slightly, a shallow line appearing on Steve's neck.
Steve didn't flinch.
"- please, Eddie, please, just let him go, we can talk -"
It was Dustin. Dustin was here. They liked Dustin. Why was Dustin here?
Why is birdie here? Robin was frozen in the doorway with both hands clamped over her mouth. Robin, who worked at Family Video with Steve, who Eddie had exchanged maybe twelve words with total, all of them about late fees. Why would she be here? Why would she care?
Why is red here?
Max. Max was here.
Max, who he'd only ever seen in passing. At school, a flash of red hair between classes. At the Wheelers', camped on their couch like furniture. At Family Video, commandeering Steve's recommendations at the register. At her own porch, a dozen times from his window across the street. Steve's Beemer parked at the curb, Steve hauling those little crockery dishes up the walk, Steve planted in a plastic patio chair talking at her for hours while she stared into space and occasionally stole his food. Not Steve's stray. Steve's sister. Steve's quiet, stubborn insistence that she keep living.
She'd never come to Hellfire. Never shown any interest. She wasn't his kid. She was Steve's.
So why is she here?
Why are any of them here?
They're not here for me.
The thought crystallized, sharp and certain. They were here for Steve. Steve, who'd driven them here. Steve, who Dustin was pleading please please please at. Steve, who had a bottle at his throat and was being very, very still about it.
They're here to make sure their friend doesn't get his neck opened by the town freak.
That's what they're worried about. That's what this is.
"- Eddie. Eddie. I need you to hear me."
Steve's voice. Low, quiet. Not the King Steve drawl from freshman year, not even the exasperated babysitter voice Eddie had overheard a hundred times in the Family Video aisles. Something else. Something that didn't ask, didn't demand. Just... waited.
"You're in the boathouse. It's late. You're with me, and Dustin, and Robin, and Max. No one else is here. No one else is coming."
How does he know what I need to hear.
"You're safe. I'm safe. We're all safe. You don't have to do anything right now except breathe."
Eddie's hand was shaking. The bottle rattled slightly against Steve's skin.
Breathe. Right. Breathing. He said breathe. He dragged air into his lungs. It came out in a shudder that rolled through his entire body.
God, Steve runs warm.
The thought slipped in sideways, unbidden. Eddie could feel it through his entire left side - the press of Steve's chest against his own, the solid heat of him through leather and denim and whatever expensive sweater he'd grabbed off his bedroom floor. Steve was radiating, a furnace running on coffee and repressed trauma and whatever the hell else Harrington was made of these days. Eddie felt like he'd pressed himself against a space heater in January.
Very warm. Very solid. Very -
Steve shifted slightly, adjusting his weight, and Eddie caught the edge of his jawline in the low light.
- pretty. Shit. Don't think about that.
Don't think about the fact that Steve Harrington is currently letting you hold a broken bottle to his throat and hasn't once tried to disarm you. Don't think about how steady his breathing is. Don't think about the way he's looking at you, steady and patient, like you're not a threat, like you're just something that needs to wait out the storm.
Don't think about how you can smell his shampoo.
Don't think about how you're holding a bottle to his throat and he's still looking at you like that.
"- please, Eddie, please, you're scaring me -"
Dustin's voice cracked on the last word and something in Eddie's chest snapped. Not broke - snapped, like a rubber band pulled too tight finally releasing. Dustin was scared. Dustin was scared of him. Dustin, who looked at him like he hung the moon, who thought his DMing was the second coming of Tolkien, who'd defended him to Lucas when Lucas said Hellfire was getting too weird-
Dustin is scared of me because I'm holding a broken bottle to Steve Harrington's throat.
What the fuck am I doing?
His arm dropped. The bottle clattered to the floor, rolling in a sad little arc before coming to rest against Steve's shoe. Eddie's stumbled back and twisted till the wall hit his back, slid down the wall, leather jacket groaning against old wood, until he was sitting crumpled on the boathouse floor, his knees too close to his chest, his hands empty and wrong and shaking.
Steve didn't move for a beat. Just stood there, hand finally lowering to touch his neck, fingers coming away with a faint smear of red.
I cut him. I actually cut him. Oh god.
"Okay," Steve said quietly. He didn't sound angry. Didn't sound scared. Just... tired. "Okay. That's okay. That's progress."
After Eddie word-vomited and Dustin's adrenaline-fuelled planning drained, the kids left eventually. Dustin, crying quietly, only leaving after Steve promised he'd be right behind them. Robin, shooting Steve a look that contained entire novels, then shooting Eddie a softer version of the same. Worried, Eddie registered dimly. She looked worried. But worried about what? About Steve? About the guy who'd just held glass to her friend's neck? About the supposed evil wizard?
She shouldn't look at me like that. She doesn't know me. None of them know me.
Max lingered in the doorway. Her eyes swept the boathouse- Eddie crumpled on the floor, Steve crouched nearby, the broken bottle glinting in the low light- and her expression didn't change. That same flat, assessing look she wore when she was calculating something no one else could see.
Then she looked at Eddie. Directly at him.
Not fear. Not pity. Not even really concern. Just... recognition. Like she'd seen this particular brand of shattered before, from the other side of someone else's living room window.
Why would she look at me like that? She doesn't even know me.
Steve said "I got this," and Max nodded once, sharp. Then she was gone.
A gentle touch held his shoulder steady. Steve was saying something but his panicked thoughts made everything feel like he was under water. Steve seemed to be waiting for an answer and when none was given he slinked out the boathouse following the others.
Then the door closed and it was just him.
Alone.
Eddie listened to their footsteps fade. Listened to Dustin's muffled sniffles, Robin's low murmur, the sharp tap of Max's Docs on the boathouse steps. Listened to the Beemer's doors open, close. Listened to the engine catch, that familiar European purr, and then pull away, the sound of it swallowed by the lake and the dark and the thick, heavy silence they left behind.
He didn't move.
Didn't know how long he sat there. Minutes. Hours. His spine against the wall, his hands empty in his lap, his breath coming shallow and useless. The broken bottle still lay against Steve's shoe print. He stared at it. Didn't pick it up.
The boathouse creaked. Settled. Creaked again.
Door.
His head whipped up, neck protesting, pulse slamming back into his throat-
Steve stood in the doorway.
One hand still on the frame. Slightly out of breath, like he'd jogged back. His sweater was still wrinkled. His neck still marked. His eyes, in the low light, were very steady.
He raised his hand. Two fingers. Little wave.
Eddie stared at him.
I didn't hear a car? I didn't hear anything? He came back. Why did he come back?
Steve didn't explain. Didn't announce himself. Didn't ask permission. He just crossed the boathouse floor, slow and easy, like he had all the time in the world, and slid down the wall next to Eddie like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Not touching. Just... adjacent. Shoulder near shoulder. Hip near hip. Knee near knee.
Eddie stared at the opposite wall. Steve stared at the ceiling. The lake lapped gently against the pilings.
Ten minutes. Twenty. Eddie's breathing slowly, reluctantly, stopped trying to escape through his ribcage.
Then Steve's shoulder bumped his.
Not hard. Just a nudge. A gentle, solid pressure, like a cat confirming you were still there.
"The kids are home," Steve said quietly. "Robin's crashed on the couch. Max is in the guest room. Dustin's in his sleeping bag on my floor, already plotting how to guilt-trip me into ordering pizza tomorrow. They're safe. They're asleep."
A pause.
"Sugar plums and everything."
Eddie let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn't gotten stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat. "Thought sugar plums were a Christmas thing."
"It's almost spring. Dustin's a planner."
Another silence. Easier, this time. Steve's shoulder was warm against his. Solid. Present. "You don't have to be okay," Steve said. Not looking at him. Just stating a fact. "That's not why I came back."
Then why did you come back?
Eddie didn't say it. Couldn't. But the question must have leaked out somehow, because Steve shifted slightly, resettling his weight, and when he spoke again his voice was different. Softer. Less like a babysitter and more like someone who'd spent a lot of nights on his own floor, staring at his own ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.
"After Starcourt," Steve said, "I couldn't sleep for like a month. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in that elevator. Or the tunnels. Or—" He stopped. Started again. "I'd just sit on my floor in the dark and try to convince myself I was actually awake. That it was over. That nothing was going to crawl out of my closet and finish the job."
Eddie didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"And Robin would come over," Steve continued, his voice carefully even, "and she'd just... sit with me. Not talk. Not try to fix it. Just be there. And eventually I'd realize I wasn't alone, and my heartbeat would stop trying to punch its way out of my chest, and I could breathe again."
He bumped Eddie's shoulder again, softer this time.
"This is that. Just me, sitting here. Not trying to fix it. Just... here."
Eddie's face crumpled.
He didn't mean for it to happen. Didn't feel it coming. One second he was staring at the wall, holding himself together with duct tape and spite, and the next his face was breaking, folding in on itself like a paper castle in the rain.
He tried to turn away. Hide it. But Steve was already moving, shifting, making space and Eddie's forehead was against Steve's shoulder and his hands were fisted in that expensive sweater and he was making sounds he didn't recognize, sounds that belonged to someone smaller than him, younger than him, someone who hadn't spent twenty years learning how to armour himself in leather and loudness.
Steve didn't say it's okay. Didn't say you're okay. Didn't offer platitudes or reassurances or any of the easy lies people told you when they didn't want to sit in the mess with you.
He just put his hand on the back of Eddie's head, gentle, steady, and held him there.
Eddie cried until he couldn't anymore. Cried for Chrissy, for the way she'd looked crumpled in her cheer skirt like a broken doll. Cried for himself, for the boathouse, for the broken bottle still lying against Steve's shoe. Cried for Wayne, who'd raised a s-nephew who didn't know how to ask for help. Cried for Dustin's voice cracking on please please please, for the smear of red on Steve's neck, for the fact that Steve was here, in this dusty boathouse in the middle of the night, because Eddie Munson had finally snapped and Steve Harrington had shown up anyway.
And Steve just held him. Hand steady on the back of his head. Shoulder solid under Eddie's cheek. Warmth bleeding through leather and denim and every defence Eddie had ever built.
Eventually, Eddie's grip loosened. Eventually, his breathing evened out. Eventually, he became aware that he was, in fact, crying in Steve Harrington's lap now, his face pressed against Steve's thigh, Steve's fingers carding absently through his hair like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He should move. He should absolutely move. This was weird. This was very weird. This was Steve Harrington petting him like a traumatized cat and he should move-
But Steve's fingers were gentle. And his thigh was warm under Eddie's cheek. And Eddie was so, so tired of running.
So he stayed.
The sky was starting to lighten when Steve finally stood. Gray-blue seeped through the boathouse windows, painting everything in soft, underwater light. Eddie watched him stretch, watched his spine crack in three places, watched him roll his shoulders like he was shaking off the night.
Steve paused at the door. Turning back.
"You've got a walkie?"
Eddie blinked. Fumbled in his jacket pocket. Produced the battered walkie like a kid presenting show-and-tell.
"Yeah. Yeah, I've got it."
"Good." Steve's hand was on the doorframe. His silhouette was backlit, edges soft, almost glowing. "If anything happens. Anything at all. You call."
Anything at all.
"Okay."
"And I mean anything. Weird noise. Bad dream. You run out of Oreos. Whatever."
A ghost of a smile tugged at Eddie's mouth. "That a standing offer, Harrington?"
Steve's expression shifted. Not quite a smile, but something close. Something that made his eyes go soft at the corners.
"Yeah," he said. "It is."
He raised his hand in a little wave. Two fingers, casual, like they hadn't spent the night tangled together on a boathouse floor. Like Eddie's face wasn't still puffy and his eyes weren't still red and Steve's sweater wasn't wrinkled and damp in a perfect Eddie-shaped crescent.
"Get some sleep, Munson."
Then he was gone. The door eased shut behind him. The boathouse settled back into silence.
Eddie sat there for a long time, staring at the empty doorway. His fingers found the walkie. His thumb traced the antenna.
If anything happens. Anything at all.
He thought about the weight of Steve's hand on the back of his head. The patient steadiness of his voice. The way he'd said you don't have to be okay like it was the simplest truth in the world. He thought about the warmth. God, the warmth. How Steve ran hot like a furnace, like a space heater, like he was burning through something that everyone else kept safely banked. He thought about Steve's jawline in the low light. The careful steadiness of his hands. The way he'd tilted his chin up, bared his throat, trusted Eddie not to press down.
Shit.
Eddie slumped back against the wall, tipped his head up, and stared at the water-stained ceiling.
That's what I need on top of all of this.
A heron cried somewhere on the lake. The walkie was warm in his palm.
I have a crush on Steve Harrington.
He closed his eyes. The gray-blue light swam behind his lids.
Great. Fantastic. Perfect. Just what this situation needed.
He didn't sleep. But for the first time in hours, his hands stopped shaking.