Chapter Text
It’s 2:38 a.m. when Steve’s conscious mind begins to stir, covers half-strewn forlornly across the floor. Shadows and contours of the water pouring down outside his window play a tape against those same blue sheets, an ocean that perhaps only rises in the dead silence of night when Steve himself no longer holds any control.
Thunder cracks against the sky in such a manner that it starkly parallels the loud bangs that echo from what can be recognized through experience as the front door, and Steve suddenly holds himself sitting vertical atop of his bed, rubbing roughly at the corners of his scrunched up eyes.
Too early, he thinks, and yet he forces himself to connect his barren feet to the cool hardwood floors. His body feels as though it’s moving on autopilot; he understands what he must accomplish but no other thought penetrates his mind, his body practically numb all throughout, his mind most of all. All his body knows is that he must figure out the source of the intrusion and then go back into the dead of sleep.
And yet, despite this, the house around him still manages to chill the small of skin on the nape of his neck, make his heart beat just a moment faster, feet quicken against the floors. Too quiet; too empty.
The front door itself is perhaps the centerpiece to it all; stain glass giving way to the shadows of the rain beating down against it, thudding harshly in a way that could perhaps even hold within it the power to put Steve right back to sleep right here on this very floor, amidst the dark and the quiet and the unaddressed fear pooling out of unseen corners and behind closed doors. Too many doors.
A burst of lightning, and the flash of white light gives way to a tall, unmoving shadow behind the door, staring at Steve with unseeing eyes. One more set of frantic knocks. The shadow grows smaller with the next set of flashes - are they leaving? Wait. Don’t leave - it’s so lonely here. Don’t leave.
The door is open. Steve didn’t even process opening it in the first place. The night is black and wet and frankly cold, and Steve actually shivers, full-bodied and sobering, and within a few blinks he can make out the shaking figure staring at him across the path.
“Munson?” His voice is croaking and small, and Steve doesn’t even know if the man standing before his empty house in a storm at 2 a.m. can even hear him, but it seems to be enough, because suddenly the other man is pushing past him and in his house, and suddenly it doesn’t feel so quiet nor lonely anymore.
Steve’s back inside, and Eddie Munson is dripping all over the hardwood.
If he was at all aware before, he certainly is now. Eddie is more than soaked; his usually fluffy and personified hair now sits flat and tangled, darker than it should be with the endless droplets of rainwater pulling at the ends. His white shoes are waterlogged and heavy, and all together it looks as if he jumped headfirst into someone’s swimming pool, fully clothed, ready and willing, any and all consequences be damned.
He’s pacing, and Steve is standing there watching as if trying to understand a frightened, caged animal. As if maybe by standing here long enough, the problem will somehow just sort itself out.
Steve has never been good at problem-solving. In fact, the only reason Steve is even able to stand in this barren house is because of the people in his life that were smart enough to do it all for him.
He thinks about that, sometimes. Thinks about all the hundreds of infinite possibilities, the millions of different outcomes of how he could’ve met his end, or Nancy or Dustin or anyone that he cares about. The only ones he cares about.
Those thoughts that just won’t go away, no matter how many times he cries or begs or prays down on his knees to any kind of Almighty figure watching this cursed little town from His golden and gleaming throne. To stop the dogfighting in his brain. Shut it off, he’d implore in a hushed and strained tone, let me breathe again.
The thoughts get quieter on certain days. But they never go away. It’s been too long now. He’s learnt to live with the monsters in his head.
Eddie’s left shoe is untied. Steve notices this as the laces make a light noise against the floor, dragging through the puddles of mud and water now mixed together at Eddie’s ever-moving feet.
Eddie’s eyes catch on Steve’s, like a fighter jet locking in on its target. Boom.
“Shit, man, I - I’m sorry - “ Eddie’s leather clad arm is pressed to his mouth, as if holding it there will stop the words from falling out.
Steve is falling to his knees. “Just - just let me help.”
He’s still so tired. So confused. But his pajama pants are soaking in dirty mud-water and he’s sliding off Eddie Munson’s shoes in his foyer like the picture of it all is perfectly regular.
He places them on the rug to dry. Eddie’s feet are bare, pale and cold. They tremble under the light brush of Steve’s fingers.
“Wait here.” It’s not a question, and Eddie doesn’t take it as one either. He’s no longer pacing, just staring after Steve like he’s some kind of specimen lit up beneath an expensive microscope, like he’s the one who owes Eddie the explanation.
He comes back with towels. Not cheap ones either, but thick, soft ones; each a heavy and dark mahogany. Steve throws one over the wet floor, and it immediately darkens with the intake of liquid. Eddie steps onto it without having to even be told.
“Take it all off. You’ll catch a cold.”
Steve is drying Eddie’s feet with his parents’ expensive towels in his parents’ expensive foyer. It’s 2 a.m. on a Friday.
Eddie’s stripping above him. Steve throws another towel, this time upwards, which Eddie catches with ease, but Steve can determine with only a slight glance that his hands are still trembling.
Steve stands, knees cracking as he does so. Eddie doesn’t say anything.
He’s wrapped himself in the towel like it’s a shock blanket, long, lithe fingers gripping over the top of each section. His shirt and jacket are thrown to the side in a wet and pathetic looking pile, and Steve doesn’t know what to say or do anymore.
“Did you -“ he struggles on the words, voice faltering as he finds what to say, “did you walk here?”
It’s a ridiculous, stupid question. Steve knows that now - Eddie’s van wasn’t outside, and, furthermore, he was completely soaked, and all the way to the bone at that. But why here?
“I’m sorry.” The words hit Steve, and he feels like he might just fall right over.
“Why - “ he struggles for a moment, once again, searching for the right words that simply aren’t there, “why do you keep saying that?”
Eddie seems taken aback by this, his expression hardening a little, his head tilting like a dog leaning to understand the words of its owner. Wanting to get it right.
Maybe they’re not so different after all.
Eddie’s chewing on his bottom lip, fingers running against the soft fabric of the towel still hung around his bare shoulders in a repeated motion of self-comfort. “I couldn’t be alone.”
The words hang in the air, a sudden change of subject that Steve can’t even begin to address in his fatigued and weary state. He watches as Eddie shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and the towel slips a little from his right hand shoulder, revealing the faded ink of a scribbled tattoo. Steve can’t make out what it is.
“I couldn’t be alone. Y’know, in the trailer. The gate’s gone, I mean, you’d never even know, but,” Eddie’s voice hitches, caught on an inhale. It pitches upward with his following phrase, “but it’s still there.” He brings trembling fingers up to his hair, gesturing, tapping at his head, “in here,” a pause, “she’s still there.”
Steve’s face softens. He hadn’t even realized the deep furrow of his brow, or his mouth sat slightly ajar as he struggled to understand. But he does now.
He does, because he has been Eddie.
He has been sat awake at night, face pressed into a too hot pillow, as if maybe if he sinks himself in deep enough, the sleep will magically engulf him and take him away from the thoughts flashing through his mind, a never-ending slideshow of guilt and gore. There’s no pause button, no fast forward. And even should sleep consume him, would his mind even allow him the break of peace? Or will he shoot upward in the darkness panting and sweating and shaking, face twisted and contorted in a silent and holy plea.
Steve realizes that he hasn’t actually responded to Eddie, who’s looking back at him like perhaps this was all a mistake and he never should’ve come here at all, and Steve feels as though his heart just might break in two.
There’s something about the way his big, round brown eyes look at Steve that makes him feel so indescribably small; forcing themselves to see into each and every single piece of him that he usually keeps locked up tight - the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. It makes Steve’s skin erupt in goosebumps, and he plays with the loose fabric of his pajama pants absentmindedly to attempt to ease the self-consciousness oozing through his body under Eddie’s intruding gaze.
There’s another flash of lightning, and for the smallest of moments it turns the entire house to sunlit daytime, and in this light, Steve can make out faint traces of reddened skin along Eddie’s wrists, as if he’d been squeezing them and perhaps even digging his nails in.
Steve doesn’t think then, he just moves in closer to Eddie, whose breath hitches in turn as he watches as Steve takes one of his hands from where it’s gripping the towel and examines it carefully. Eddie flinches as Steve draws his fingers over the sore and delicate skin there, and Steve carefully wraps his two hands around the wrist as if to emulate a bandage. His hands are so cold. Steve wants to warm them.
“It’s okay,” Steve whispers, not looking up, as if not to wake any imaginary soul in an empty house, “you don’t have to explain. You’re safe here. You’re safe.”
Wetness against Steve’s skin. Eddie’s crying again. It’s silent, and he’s trembling more than he was before the contact, and part of Steve is longing to pull Eddie in closer, to envelop him in a blanket of warmth and direction and calmness, to soothe the anxiety running its destructive course through his veins. Because Eddie doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves this. Steve has lived it, he is living it, and he can’t honestly think of a living soul less deserving of the calamity of which that pain brings.
But he keeps the distance that remains, because he isn’t sure if he’s even allowed the thought, and he doesn’t want to scare him. And he’s still so achingly tired.
“Come to bed,” Steve mutters these words as if they don’t hold the utter weight that they do, as if he knows the man clasped within his hands wholly and intimately.
And he obeys. Eddie follows Steve as he trudges back up the stairs, and when yet another stretch of thunder shakes the house, he can feel the ghost of Eddie’s fingers draw suddenly against the skin of his bare back just above the edge of his pajama pants, and he aches for the contact, but bites his tongue against it, continuously stepping forward in a methodic manner until they enter Steve’s room, and the bed looks to him like the magnificent clouds of Heaven, waiting for his body to collapse into.
Eddie is undressed and half-wrapped in his parents’ towel and looking at Steve with the omniscient eyes of an owl watching its prey with every sense heightened and on the verge of overloading.
Steve turns away, reaching over his bedside table and pulling the string of his lamp with a clink, and warm, yellow light floods into the corners of the dark room. He then digs through his drawers and pulls out an old pair of sweatpants before turning back to Eddie and presenting them to him as if they stood as an olive branch between them.
“For your modesty,” Steve mumbles, a reference his brain had dug up in its jumbled state of torpor, “if you’re okay with it.”
Eddie tentatively reaches out and steals them from Steve’s grasp, an action of acknowledgment and acceptance, before slipping the towel from his broad shoulders and handing it back to Steve. An exchange.
It’s dampened and cold now, and Steve chucks it in his laundry pile before guiding his eyes back to Eddie, who’s just finished sliding on the sweatpants. They sit low on his hips, and Steve trains his eyes upward. He doesn’t understand why it hurts him so to stand before him like this. He doesn’t understand anything about this night, or this situation, but he climbs into bed anyways, and his limbs feel heavy and so do his eyelids.
Steve pats the space beside him, and Eddie looks like he’s considering for a moment before slowly padding over, feet making quiet slaps against the hardwood, and suddenly there’s a dip in the mattress and Eddie Munson is in bed with him.
The only sound flooding Steve’s ears is the persistent pattering of the rain against the roof and windows that echos throughout the house, and the small breaths being exhaled next to him. His eyes flicker over, and Eddie’s face still holds an anxious expression, his fingers playing with the edge of the blanket that lays pulled up to his exposed chest. The soft and dewy light of the lamp highlights his face and turns its sharp angles so very soft, his eyes so very round and even more so innocent. Like a child awoken from a nightmare, crawling into their parent’s bed that’s two sizes too big, shivering and crying in their arms. He looks so small, so afraid.
Steve drops his arm into the space between them. An offering. He’s too tired to speak, and yet too awake to not understand the implications of those unspoken words. Nevertheless, he hopes he’ll understand. Steve closes his eyes. He turns his head away.
The weight moves closer. It’s achingly slow, hesitant and unsure, until finally his right side is being pressed down into the bed, and all he can think is the smell of cigarettes and rain and Eddie, Eddie all over him.
Eventually, the breathing against him, tickling his chest, slows, evens out, and Steve is then lost to the solemn forgiveness of a dreamless sleep soon thereafter.