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Steve rolled his eyes while watching Eddie creep around another corner like he was in a particularly bad spy movie. It didn’t matter that Steve kept his feet light and his voice low as he followed; he had been running for his life for long enough that this shit was instinct. Eddie was a goddamn drama queen.
The fact that Steve found it not at all unfamiliar or unexpected made him mourn his life choices.
“Could you act any more suspicious?” Steve mumbled, hovering at Eddie’s shoulder as he peered around a wall in search of their safest route. He pressed a hand to his side the way he would to ease a cramp, but his still-fresh wounds wouldn’t be appeased so simply. He felt like they were splitting deeper with every step, but he couldn’t wait around to check. They had more important things to worry about.
Eddie whipped his head around to look at him, and Steve jerked back before Eddie’s hair could hit him in the face. “Listen, Harrington, I’ve been dealing with this entire town wanting me dead for a while now, and I’ve managed myself just fine.”
“Yeah, but you’re not by yourself anymore, are you? And I hate to break it to you, but things have been trying to kill me for years now, okay? This, for example?” He gestured at his torso, uncaring of the fact the gore there was hidden beneath three layers—one of which was still Eddie’s jacket, initially gifted for his modesty and now only an added comfort atop a mountain of wrapped bandages and a worn jumper—and that his visual proof wasn’t actually all that visible. Eddie knew exactly what he meant, if the pinch of his expression was any indication. “This isn’t even the height of it. Nothing like being drugged and beaten unconscious in a Russian bunker.” It was in fact feeling worse. Much worse. “You just gotta accept this is yet another area of life where I’m the more experienced one.”
Steve raised his brows and shifted around Eddie so he could peer into the street instead. Eddie didn’t try to stop him, but he did straighten up and stare. Steve should’ve expected what was coming, but his head felt foggy and he didn’t fully hear what he’d said until Eddie’s drawl clued him in. “And what other areas do you imagine I’m less experienced in, exactly?”
Eddie crossed his arms as Steve looked back at him, opening his mouth and then closing it again—thinking better of it. He shook his head and nudged Eddie back out of view. “We’re absolutely not talking about this. Just shut up and let me work this out.”
“Seems to me like you’re absolutely the one who wants to talk about it, sweetheart.”
“Eddie, I swear to God, just—dude, there’s no one even out here, what the fuck were you looking for? Christ, come on.” Slipping around the corner, Steve caught a hold of Eddie’s sleeve and drew him along, walking briskly down the next street.
“You know, you’re making me think I liked it better by myself.”
“Yeah, well, tough.”
It had become a thing, once they’d managed to drag themselves back out of the upside down after coming just a little too close, again, to losing someone. They’d been careful with Max, but seeing Nancy’s eyes film over had shaken them all into the realisation that none of them were safe. That meant no one was going anywhere on their own from here on out. Which didn’t entirely explain how Steve was the one to end up paired off with Eddie Munson.
The weirdest thing had to be how natural it was, how obvious it seemed. Steve couldn’t really tell if Robin had abandoned him for Nancy or if Nancy had sort of stolen Robin from him, but they’d decided they were a team, and Steve was too relieved about it to be in any way upset. Maybe he was expected to align himself with them, or maybe they expected him to stick himself to Henderson and the rest of the kids, as always, or at the very least, they expected Dustin to stick himself to Eddie, but somehow, this was how it turned out.
The truth was, Steve hadn’t really thought about it, and it was better this way. Hawkins was basically becoming as dangerous for them as the upside-down, and Eddie especially couldn’t be let loose here on his own. The only idea Steve liked less was Dustin on his own with the pariah, the two of them poking their heads around corners in search of signs of any angry mobs heading their way. The truth was, this was the best, the only, way that it could’ve worked.
Besides, Steve was pretty sure they’d bonded, or whatever, back there. Even if Eddie was unnecessarily weird about it, and discovering he’d been jealous of Steve in the same way Steve had been jealous of him had at once made him feel better and like a bigger idiot.
Then that had sort of gotten lost, when Eddie decided to be a serious human being for long enough to call Steve a good dude. And like the jealousy had canceled out, Eddie admitting to a new recognition of Steve had made Steve realise he hadn’t really considered who Eddie was at all.
But considering what he’d seen so far, he thought it was probably in the realm of ‘good dude’, too. Probably even more so than Steve, if he was being honest with himself. Which meant Steve couldn’t, with his ever-growing conscious, let Eddie run about and get himself killed.
It meant expanding his babysitter role to a twenty-year-old high-school-student with terrible taste in music and ridiculous hair, and no matter how insane that was, Steve was the good guy, so he’d suck it up and get on with it.
And despite the sass and bravado, Steve had enough experience to know the last thing Eddie wanted was to be by himself. He could see it in the shiftiness of Eddie’s gaze, in the distress in his constant movement, could hear it in the thready tones of Eddie’s voice when he asked after some new horror or recalled his own. He could feel it, in the slight tremble of Eddie’s hand against the back of his fingers where he still gripped Eddie’s sleeve, preventing him from straying too far.
He could recognise—if he was being honest with himself—that he knew, because maybe he was the one who really didn’t want to be by himself.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Eddie asked, bumping into Steve’s side as he glanced back over his shoulder.
Steve wrapped his hand more fully around Eddie’s wrist. “Back to the others, hopefully, but somewhere we can hide you better at the very least.”
Eddie flapped his hands, drawing Steve’s along with it. “Great. Just great,” he muttered, elongating the just.
“Do you have a better idea? Everyone agreed the boathouse should be our base again now that the Wheelers’ isn’t an option, so we’re basically just going to yours, so you shou—”
He cut himself off at a clattering sound, freezing in place and drawing Eddie to a halt. They’d been sticking to back streets and hoping the darkness would offer them enough cover, but that also meant their sight was limited. Which meant by the time they could see the group of teens hanging by the side of the liquor store, the group would have a pretty good chance of seeing them.
Steve inched himself in front of Eddie and nudged him back a few slow steps, speeding up in increments, until it felt safe enough to turn tail and run.
It hadn’t been far enough. Steve heard a shout, another clatter, and the pounding of footsteps, and reeled around a corner with Eddie still in his grip.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Eddie muttered, sprinting along beside Steve like they still had demobats chasing them down. Steve was fairly sure they might as well have; wondered if, at least for Eddie, this was even worse.
Steve abandoned all sense of direction now in favour of getting away, of finding somewhere that they could hide, that would mean Eddie was safe. But that meant they couldn’t go anywhere, and that left limited options. It left them losing ground and running out of breath, left Steve’s entire upper half burning, left Eddie’s swears growing increasingly frustrated and fearful as they tried not to trip over each other until, finally, Steve saw an opportunity and took it, and yanked Eddie into a dark alley.
“Jesus Christ,” was all Eddie got out before Steve clamped a hand over his mouth. He tucked them as far into the alley as he could, pressing Eddie into the wall and blanketing him once more with his own body as he hissed at him to shush. Eddie didn’t have much choice but to obey, and as well as entirely silent, he went completely still. His breathing grew laboured against Steve’s palm, and when Steve finally looked at him, his eyes were wide and looking right back.
He was also very, very close.
The sound of footsteps grew closer, and Eddie made a panicked, hitched sound that Steve muffled by pressing his hand more firmly against Eddie’s mouth. His fingers gripped Eddie’s cheek as Eddie’s lips parted against his palm, and they stared at each other, eyes equally wide. The footsteps blended with unfamiliar voices, close enough now to make out the words.
“That was definitely him, wasn’t him?”
“Oh, come on. There’s no mistaking the Freak. Who else would be running away like that? Hey, you think there’s a prize for whoever gets him?”
“A gruesome death?”
“Guys, I don’t think it was him. Like, that was Steve Harrington, wasn’t it? Why would he be with him?”
“Nah, man, that wasn’t Harrington, was it?”
“It probably was. I mean, he works at Family Video with that band chick and I’ve seen him hanging around those weirdo kids. Dude turned into a complete loser. Wouldn’t surprise me if he got into some weird shit.”
“Okay, but, he’s hot.”
“Bet that cheerleader thought Munson was, too, and look what happened to her.”
Eddie flinched. Steve tipped his head closer, cheeks an inch apart and breaths in each other’s ears, and otherwise pretended not to notice.
“Would y’all shut up and remember what we’re doing? Come out, come out, Freak!”
Steve squeezed his eyes shut and pressed closer, sliding his free hand to the back of Eddie’s head—to his ridiculous hair—and guiding it down, turning his own head in close to make them as small as he could. Hopefully, if anyone passed and did chance a glance down, they wouldn’t see anyone recognisable. They’d see two figures tucked away, tucked close enough—
Actually, Steve wasn’t going to think about what they’d see. He was going to pray nothing would be seen at all. Just like he was pretending he wasn’t hearing anything at all.
But a part of him couldn’t help it, and mourned the blown cover. He was Steve Harrington, and if it came down to it, very few people in this town would’ve batted an eye if he’d tossed Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson right into Jason Carver’s psychotic hands. They wouldn’t have ever guessed Steve would’ve died before even considering it. He wouldn’t have been lumped in with the nerds and the freaks, that was for sure; he wouldn’t have been someone this town felt like hunting for sport.
Up until now, at least, he could have believed that. Instead, it seemed clear he wasn’t the only one who knew he’d been dethroned long ago, and now there was absolutely no pretending otherwise.
He waited for the noise to become inaudible again, then let out a breath. “When I let go, stay quiet, okay?” he warned Eddie lowly. “We don’t know if they’ll come back this way.”
He eased his hands away and went to step back, but before he’d let go of Eddie, Eddie had grabbed onto him, his hand curled into the side of Steve’s—his own jacket. When Eddie looked up, still wide-eyed and breathing too quickly (and too close), Steve stayed put. He watched as Eddie visibly gathered himself, his gaze open and vulnerable for all of two blinks before it went blank and his trademark smirk slid into place. “Warn a guy, Harrington. I didn’t take dark and dirty to be your vibe.”
Steve rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t deny he was somewhat relieved at the normality. Despite the fact that combining the comment with Eddie’s teasing expression and proximity was making Steve feel uncomfortably warm. “Yeah, well, you don’t actually know me that well,” he eventually managed to respond, only to instantly regret it when Eddie’s brows rose in interest.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m starting to figure that out.”
They looked at each other for another silent moment, Steve feeling relieved that Eddie’s panic seemed to have ebbed, though he hadn’t let go of Steve. The longer Steve looked, however, the more it crept back in, until Eddie was basically bouncing on the balls of his feet and glancing over Steve’s shoulder, out towards the street. He waved towards the end of the alley with his free hand and said, “Could’ve saved yourself a lot of energy just then. Think the town could learn a good lesson if their witch became the ritualistic sacrifice and they were still being picked off like flies.”
Hearing Eddie say it, Steve was even more sure he could have never entertained the thought. “Not all of us have a death wish, Munson.”
It took Eddie a second to focus on him. “Could’ve fooled me when you were jumping into a lake and then through an inter-dimensional hole.”
“A gate, dude, we call it a gate, how many times have we been over this? And I was very much dragged. There was no jumping. Absolutely against my will.”
“Yeah, you seemed to have a real hard time, what with your stripping and swan-diving.”
Steve chose to ignore that. “You’re the one who jumped in there after us, so you have zero legs to stand on. And you’re one of the party now, so you gotta at least start learning your lingo, alright? Worse than the goddamn kids, don’t listen to a thing.”
Eddie swayed onto his toes, making Steve go cross-eyed in his attempt to see all of Eddie’s wry smile. “Excuse me if I was too busy worrying about your self-sacrificing ass to fully grasp the new vocabulary.”
Steve didn’t have anything to say to that. He almost thought he’d misheard, but he’d been staring at Eddie’s lips the whole time, and they matched. But then again, maybe it was all one big hallucination. Maybe he was getting bat rabies. Or whatever the upside-down version of rabies was. It certainly felt like something was clawing apart his insides and flaying him alive.
He was saved from having to respond when Eddie barreled on. “Seriously, though. They would never have known. Pretty sure King Steve wouldn’t have made it onto their list of suspected cult members.” He raised a brow, smiling wryly. “You messed up, getting stuck with me.”
“Thought you were the one stuck with me,” Steve said, attempting to be jokey or lighthearted or anything other than a doomsday-bringer for all of five seconds, before feeling like it wasn’t enough. Not if any part of Eddie meant what he was saying. “Look, we’ve just agreed I’m not whatever the hell they thought I was, man. And neither are you. It doesn’t even matter what you are, other than one of us. That overrules any freakiness. Actually, freaky is probably a condition for acceptance.”
Eddie was staring at him with increasingly high eyebrows, and Steve shook his head, neatly diverting his gaze from Eddie’s as he pressed a hand to his aching stomach. “Point is, it doesn’t matter what some assholes, or this whole godforsaken town, or you think of you, because, now you’re ours. And from what I can tell, you’re good, man. Definitely better than I was when I was first thrown into all this. But,” he jabbed a finger into Eddie’s chest, “if you think I’d hand you over, you’re an ass.”
Eddie looked down at the point of contact and then back up at Steve with something like a smile. “Woah, watch it. Starting to sound like you care there, Stevie.”
“Alright man, let’s not push it,” Steve said, too tired to really infuse the joke in his tone but also too tired to prevent his responding smile, balancing out.
Eddie snorted at that, and Steve might have teased him for it if he wasn’t so pleased to hear it. It was better than the way Eddie’s eyes slowly dimmed again; but maybe not better than the feeling of his palm flattening against Steve’s side, a steady fourth layer over his throbbing wounds.
“I don’t wanna die, Harrington,” Eddie admitted softly, looking down to where his hand rested. “But more than that? I don’t wanna watch it happen to anyone else.”
There it was. Steve had been wondering when Eddie would offer proof that watching two people be brutally, supernaturally murdered in front of him had been traumatising, aside from the signs they all simply recognised. It was the closest Eddie would come to admitting exactly what scared him and just how much, and it was so on track with what Steve had felt for the past few years that he could do nothing but agree.
“Me neither.” He pressed his hand a little more firmly to his stomach, feeling the responding pain and letting it ground him, lest the brush of Eddie’s wrist against his fingertips raises the fuzz in his brain to dizzying heights. “So that works, right? You don’t wanna die and I don’t wanna see it, and vice versa. That means neither of us are going anywhere, especially if the other has a say in it, yeah?”
Something complicated happened to Eddie’s expression, as if he didn’t know what to feel and definitely did not want any of his feelings to show. But he nodded, serious for a moment, before his lips quirked once more. “That’s the corny charmer I was expecting. Just when I was getting used to dark and dirty.”
“Good thing I can do both.”
Eddie’s eyes darkened long enough for Steve to wonder what he’d done wrong before Eddie was looking away, searching the end of the alley once more, tongue flicking over his lips. “We should get out of here.”
Steve drew his gaze away from Eddie’s mouth. “Yeah, no, we should.” He looked over his shoulder, finding the street they’d run from dark and deserted. “Probably best to get you out of sight before anyone else tries to kill us. If we go the way they came there’s little chance we’d run into them again.”
Eddie hummed. “That, and I’m not gonna be able to carry you back once you pass out.”
Steve whipped his head back around to him and felt a rush of dizziness. “What? I’m not…”
“Hate to break it to you, Harrington, but you’re getting a little red and sweaty and it’s not the way I pictured.”
It took Steve a moment to process the statement as Eddie’s gaze flicked over him, head to toe and back, lingering on where both of their hands were still pressed to Steve’s abdomen. The more the words clicked, the less sense they made. “Wait, what?”
“Home time, Princess, for some proper medical attention,” Eddie diverted, patting Steve’s side pointedly before taking his touch away, slipping from his spot between Steve and the wall. Before Steve could succumb to the sudden lack of support he hadn’t realised Eddie was offering, it was back, warmer and sturdier in the form of Eddie’s arm around his waist. This time, it was Eddie who held onto Steve and guided him carefully out of their hiding spot, wary for only a beat before he began towing Steve through the streets with newfound purpose.
“What did you mean, about the way you pictured?” Steve asked, once Eddie was lending him enough strength to make the pain bearable and his mind a little clearer. “Pictured what?”
Eddie glanced over at him, then away again with that secretive little smile, as if he held more wisdom about you than yourself. “I’ve been told you’re smarter than you look, so I’ll let you work that one out.”
“Who the hell told you that?” Steve muttered, sure that Dustin was likely the only one who ever talked about Steve, at least to anyone like Eddie, and how unlikely it seemed that he would say anything like that, even with Eddie’s claims of worship.
“You wanna tell me you’re not?” Eddie raised a brow, smile secretive enough now that he wasn’t even hiding this was a trick in the guise of a challenge.
Steve was smart enough to know that, but not so prideless that he could ignore it. “Alright, fine, I’ll figure it out myself.”
Eddie’s smile now guarded none of his glee. “Lookin’ forward to it, Harrington.”