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It’s 5am. Steve’s clinging to his couch, and everyone he ever knew is standing in his house. His gaze floats across the crowd, eyes dancing across the house. They yearn for the sight of deep brown, frizzy curls. Maybe even hidden under a bandana.
He’s not surprised by the disappointment anymore.
Girls spin around him like vultures, eager to eat up what’s left of him. But, Steve just can’t look at them, can’t see anything attractive in their open flirtation and grabby hands. Instead, his eyes are caught up in distractions, fatal attractions to boys from locker rooms.
Still there in the darkness, where everything started. Steve thinks maybe he really has become a heartless monster.
Eddie was right, in the end. Steve was hungry for the feeling of skin against skin, can’t stop thinking about the times they were heavy. But, all that’s left in his stupid nights is tragedy. Because he couldn’t give enough, couldn’t be enough.
“I wonder who you’re looking for,” Robin crashes down onto the couch next to Steve, pushing through the girl (Brenda? Rachel?) who had been stroking her hand up Steve’s arm. Affronted, she leaves, while Robin barrels on, “your brain may as well be leaking out your ears dingus.”
Steve blushes, worrying again about whether she knows, or if she’s even suspicious. “I’m coming undone, Robs.”
“Yeah, you ever gonna come down from Mars and tell me what about?”
“I’m dumb,” is all Steve gives in reply.
She forces a laugh and grabs his hand. “Look, I get that you’re not there yet.”
“No, Rob,” Steve sighed. “I think I am ready to tell you, I just. Fuck, I’m a dumbass.”
“No shit dingus.”
When Steve doesn’t keep talking, Robin stands and yanks him up off the couch with her. “I’m kicking you out. No more parties, we’re going to talk.” Steve followers her lead as they head up the stairs.
They have to kick a couple out of Steve’s room, luckily they were still (mostly) clothed.
As soon as they sat down facing each other, Robin grabbed Steve’s hand. And, he found the last 5 years running out of his mouth. Every messy detail of it, since the day in middle school when he’d first seen Eddie being bullied. The day he’d gotten his first crush on a boy.
It wasn’t until he started seeing him at parties that Steve really admitted what it was. And Eddie noticed, then before either knew it they’d been falling into each other in dark rooms and hidden places. But, when Eddie wanted to know Steve, wanted to hold him, Steve pushed away. He couldn’t burden Eddie with the monsters he’d come to know. Steve had gone hard and fast in falling into Eddie, but at the same time he’d taken his foot off the breaks with everything else at the parties. Eddie was dealing with him blackout drunk, and turning him down when he asked for more drugs, harder drugs.
They burned up. And then, Eddie stopped coming to the parties. Everyone knew by now to buy from him after school before they came, but Steve kept going, kept looking.
“But he won’t go to parties anymore.”