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they don’t know what it is, why it happens, but the bat bites that eddie and steve share run cold. it could be the hottest day in the midpoint of summer and the spots that litter their skin are icy to the touch. it started as a party trick, showing off their scars with big wide grins and daring people to touch them, feel the differences between two patches of skin. but that gets old quickly. summer turns to fall, to winter. it leaves them shivering when the nights get cold, even worse when the bed they’re in is empty.
steve wraps himself in a sweater and a heating pad, bundling down into the mattress and wrapping his arms around his stomach. eddie has it worse, he has too many places where flesh was torn out of him, too many places that don’t feel human anymore. he piles blanket after blanket onto his lumpy bed, zips his jackets up tight around him and shoots well quality vodka to get some warmth into his bloodstream.
it only takes a few bad nights where steve can’t sleep and eddie is too drunk to have any self-control to not call steve crying about how cold he is for them to realize they should work together. steve goes to eddie’s, bringing his arsenal of heating pads and expensive blankets his mother would scold him for taking. they wrap up once more in eddie’s makeshift cocoon and whisper to each other until the sun comes up.
then it’s a habit. one of them will make their way to the other’s bed and cuddle down close, sharing secrets and trauma and the warm air that puffs out of their mouths. his hands fit over steve’s scars perfectly one night as eddie shuffles around trying to get comfortable, the heat from his palms forcing a gasp out of other man’s lips. an electricity seems to jolt under his hands that makes its way up to their eyes when they really look at each other for the first time.
steve nods, small and barely there. tangles his socked feet with eddie’s under their mess of blankets. leans forward just a touch to press his mouth gently to the corner of eddie’s. it has them shivering for a better reason now. eddie doesn’t need the vodka anymore, just the warmth of steve’s smile and his palms pressing into old scars reminding him that even if parts of him don’t feel real, that he is and so is steve. if they’re cold, freezing down to their bones, they’ll just have to warm each other from the inside out from now on to remember what it feels like to be human.