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I.
The first time Eddie notices is when they’re trekking through the woods, looking for some gate that Dustin keeps muttering about. It’s not like there’s a path to follow, and he’s not exactly paying attention to where he’s putting his feet, and there’s no many other things to think about, and to not think about, like poor Chrissy, stuck on the ceiling like that–
Since the moment he learned to walk Eddie’s been at odds with gravity and his own sense of balance. Trying to avoid tree roots while lost in thought and trailing just behind Steve Harrington’s very distracting head of hair does not at all improve his chances of staying upright.
He faceplants.
When he finally manages to roll himself over he’s not expecting anyone to hold out a hand to help him up, much less Harrington, but he’s got a less than stellar chance of getting back upright on his own, so he takes it, gets his feet under himself, and they move on.
It’s not until a few minutes later that he realizes what was off, what stood out to him from the corner of his brain that never shuts up about the stupid, useless little details it notices. For all that he was very much a jock, Harrington’s still a rich kid who shouldn’t have had to work a day in his life, cruising through on his daddy’s reputation. But there, on his palm where their hands touched, were calluses, rough and pretty prominent. Eddie’s been a musician for years, has his own calluses to prove it, nearly every finger tip broken–in past the point of sensation, just the same as Harrington’s palms.
It’s just… It’s weird is all. Something he hadn’t expected. Something that doesn’t quite fit.
(An hour later he watches “King” Steven goddamn Harrington rip a demonic bat from an alternate Hell dimension in half with his teeth before he scoops up a busted up oar and starts swinging. His grip is sure and he doesn’t even hesitate, like this is all just a normal Tuesday for him.
Like the new blisters Eddie earned from swinging around his own oar don’t match up almost exactly with the places Harrington’s hands are worn rough.)
II.
It’s not that he’s looking now. It’s just that–
Well, it’s just that Eddie is a spaz, and he’s hot wiring a trailer at the moment, so there’s not much else to look at besides what he’s doing.
Besides his hands.
There are scrapes down the backs from the woods and their happy little portal vacation, and now there’s grease smeared everywhere as he tries to get a grip on the goddamned fuckin’–
There’s a hand on his shoulder, solid and sure, and when he looks at it he can see bruised knuckles that are just starting to scab over, and a scattering of little white scars where the skins been flayed open before and he’s never noticed, never bothered to look, but Harrington’s got a couple’a crooked joints, like they broke and never got set back quite right–
He follows the hand to a wrist to an arm to a shoulder and right before he gets to perfect Steve’s perfect face–
The wires spark. The engine kicks on. Harrington yelps.
Eddie grins, wide and feral the way he only usually does around Wayne, lets Robin tug him out of the way so Harrington can fall into the driver’s seat, and they’re off.
He tries not to think about where his brain had been going, with that last train of thought. Stupid and dangerous and pointless, looking at a straight boy like that. He rubs at the grease on his knuckles.
That way, he thinks, there be dragons.
(They make a plan, they start the plan, they follow the plan.
They don’t expect it to go so very, horribly wrong.
Eddie didn’t think he’d see Steve’s knuckles all bloodied up again. but here they are sprawled out on the filthy, ashy ground of the Upside Down. Robin’s cradling Dustin’s head to her chest, and Nancy’s digging through her giant bag, and Steve’s–
Well, Steve’s doing his best to keep Eddie’s insides where they’re supposed to be, but he’s getting cold, and the edges of his vision are going black, and he’s maybe not the most lucid right now which is probably why it seems like a great idea to tangle their fingers together and tell him–
“Got the prettiest damn hands, Stevie.”
And then, because Wayne’s right and Eddie’s a little shit who always likes to have the last word, he passes out.)
III.
Eddie wakes up again, which is the first surprise.
The second is Wayne, sprawled in one of the plastic chairs next to the hospital bed he’s in, head tipped back and snoring like a damn freight train.
The third is Steve, on his other side, slumped over to rest his head on his folded arms, dead asleep.
He’s still holding Steve’s hand in his, and he’s on enough painkillers that the voice that should be telling him that’s a bad idea is quiet, so he doesn’t let go.
He just… looks.
There’s a contrast there, past the way Steve’s skin is tanned while Eddie’s always been lurking-in–the–basement–playing–nerd–games pale. There’s the scars, and the calluses, and most obviously there’s Eddie’s chipped black nail polish.
It’s a mess. He’ll have to see if one of the girls will help him redo it. He can ask for that, right? That’s something a friend would help with.
…Are they friends?
At his side Steve twitches in his sleep, but he doesn’t let go of Eddie’s hand.
They have to be his friends now, he decides, whether they like it or not, because everything he knows about D&D says that’s what happens when you fight an evil monster together. If they didn’t want to keep him they should’ve left him to the bats.
Steve’s hand is warm in his, scarred and scabbed and rough, with nails that might have been neat before the world tried to end and a hellscape tried to eat them all. Now they’re cracked and worn, with gray Upside Down dirt stuck underneath them, covering up those little silver scars he’d noticed earlier.
They look out of place almost, next to Eddie’s, pale and scrubbed clean.
That’s okay though. He wants to hold Steve’s hand anyway.
He doesn’t want to let go.
(Eddie wakes in the middle of the night to empty chairs at his sides and the sound of water running nearby. The door to the connected bathroom is open just a crack, just enough to let the light leak through, and over the water Eddie can hear–
Robin’s voice is gentle for once, instead of the vibrant volume she usually uses. She’s whispering reassurances and pet names and keeping up a constant stream of sweet words, but over it all Eddie can hear Stevie’s whispers about the blood on his hands and how it won’t wash away.
He closes his eyes and lets the drugs drag him back under. This isn’t something he needs to hear.
This isn’t a contrast he wants to remember.)
IV.
They get three weeks.
Three weeks to heal and plan and get everyone together, to bring Wayne in on the loop because he refuses to be left out, to bring everyone up to speed and to introduce Eddie to the infamous Will the Wise and his sister with the kick ass superpowers.
Three weeks of living in each other’s pockets, him and Steve and Robin and Nancy, and eventually Jonathan and a guy named Argyle too, all of them clinging to each other for comfort and for safety. Just in case.
They get three weeks, and then they’re back in the trailer they stole and “forgot” to give back, strapping on weapons and bracing themselves for the worst.
Steve’s fingers are tapping an aimless rhythm on the table, and his nails are even and clean again, his cuticles neat and cared for and so, so different from Eddie’s, bitten nearly raw from the nerves of planning a final strike at a goddamn evil dude with powers so gnarly the kids named him after fuckin’ Vecna.
He tucks his hands away under the table where he won’t be tempted to keep picking at them, and tries not to stare at Steve’s instead.
(Steve’s sitting next to him on the bench, their shoulders pressed together as he winds a strip of cloth around his wrist, between each finger. Steve leans on him, humming quietly as he wraps his hands for war, and Eddie can’t help but watch.
He wants to hold them again, without the blood or the drugs in the way.
He thinks if they make it out of this, he may even let himself try.)
V.
They’re running again, him and Steve and Dustin, because it seems like no matter how carefully they plan it’s always gonna come back down to them doing their level best to impersonate track stars so they don’t get eaten by monsters.
Eddie’s in the middle, Steve’s ax in one hand, and he’d thought it was weird at first, the way Steve had offered it to him without a second thought, except–
Well, there's a massive wooden bat that’s bristling with long, iron nails slung over his shoulder, and it fits in his hands so much better. It’s carried with a familiarity and fondness that Eddie wonders at, wielded with a fluid grace that fills his head with thoughts of knights and heroes and paladins that ride in to save the day.
Dustin’s three steps ahead of them, shrieking into the walkie, trying to find the others so they can start to regroup, and they’re crashing through the cursed fuckin’ woods and–
Eddie’s been at odds with gravity and his own sense of balance since the moment he learned how to walk. Trying to avoid evil vines while hauling ass away from a pack of things called demodogs does not improve his chances of staying upright.
He faceplants.
He's not expecting them to stop, not expecting any kind of help when the hounds–of–actual–Hell are hot on their heels, but–
Steve’s hand is right there, reaching for Eddie the way he had the first time, the same beautiful calluses and scars and bruises and bandages that have been driving him crazy since that day in the woods.
Eddie reaches back, gets his feet back underneath him, and runs.
(This time, Steve doesn’t let go. His fingers are shorter than Eddie’s, but his palms are wider, and their hands stay tangled as they follow Dustin through the dark.
They fit together perfectly, and even as they tumble back to the real world, even as the gate seals shut behind them and El Hopper wipes the blood from her nose with a vicious and satisfied grin, Eddie doesn’t let go.
Steve doesn’t either.)
I.
In the aftermath of, well… everything, it’s hard for Steve to pick out the exact moment he realizes he’s in love.
It could be the night after, when he and Eddie and Robin had all piled into his bed, curled together and shaking from the adrenaline and the exhaustion, Eddie’s fingers still slotted between his.
It could have been a week later, when they had sat on the couch together, his arm curled around the crook of Eddie’s elbow and Robin’s legs in his lap and Nancy and Jon and Argyle curled up on the floor in front of them, and Steve hadn’t been able to stay awake through the movie, but when he woke up his head was tucked safely against Eddie’s shoulder, and he could feel gentle breaths against the top of his head, lips pressed to his hair.
Really, it was probably two weeks after that, when they sat at the edge of the pool Steve drained two years ago, watching the stars and sharing a cigarette. Eddie had turned to him with those bright brown eyes and that smile, and Steve didn’t really have a choice, did he? He had to lean in and kiss him.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is they have time now, and Steve is careful to spend it well, to hoard each moment like one of Dustin’s made up dragons would hoard gold. He carefully tucks away every little detail: The drag of callused fingers over his cheek as careful hands brush his hair away from his face, making way for the gentle kisses Eddie presses to his eyelids every night when they curl around each other under the covers. What matters is the feeling of love songs traced down his spine, one honeyed word at a time, pulling him from a nightmare so gently he’d hardly notice the shift to the real world if not for the joy in his chest when he opens his eyes and sees who’s waiting for him.
What matters is Eddie’s hands are rough and battered and beautiful, and he remembers the way Eddie’d swung so viciously at the monsters they ran from, but it’s hard to match that violence to the hands that handle him so carefully.
That treat him so gently, right up until they don’t.
There are tender bruises dotted along his hip bones, left over from where Eddie had closed the space between them and played his fingers along Steve’s skin just as skillfully as he could the two guitars hanging on the wall, crooning in Steve’s ear the whole time that the noises he made were Just as fuckin’ sweet, you sing so pretty for me, don’t ‘cha Stevie baby?
There are hiccups and fuckups and fights, because of course there are, but even more than that there’s laughter and kisses and nights spent falling asleep to Eddie’s heartbeat under his ear and his arms wrapped around his middle, clutching him close.
There’s the future, and the certainty that they’ll go there together.
(They reach across the space that separates them, their hands finding each other and clinging, and it doesn’t matter really, that they’re built so differently.
Not when the spaces between them line up so well.)