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Eddie doesn’t even hear the slip up that starts it all. One minute he’s picking up dice and character sheets to the soft murmur of conversation on the other side of the room. The next Dustin is shrieking the way he does when he has taken something - usually something that has nothing to do with him - entirely too personally. “Why would you lie about that, Steve?”
Just like everything else involving Steve Harrington these days, the question draws Eddie’s attention like iron nails to a particularly aggressive magnet. He lifts his head to find Dustin doing his damnedest to corner Steve, which is pretty much to be expected. Only, Lucas and Max are right there with him, so maybe this is serious after all. Concerned, Eddie’s gaze flicks to Steve, whose expression teeters somewhere between exasperated and abashed. “Would you cool it, Henderson? I didn’t.”
The silence drags out, an awkward, physical thing. From the corner he’s been more or less backed into, Steve crosses his arms and stares down a gaggle of teenagers. At this angle, Eddie can only see Max’s face, an unimpressed frown tugging at her lips as she crosses her arms right back at Steve, but Eddie is pretty sure that’s the thing that finally makes him relent. “Technically, I didn’t lie.”
“Technically, you’re an idiot,” Dustin grumbles, but before Eddie can decide if the kid has crossed a line, he’s barrelling on. “Just come to my house, then. You know Mom wouldn’t mind. She loves you.”
“I’m not just inviting myself to your house for Christmas,” Steve replies flatly.
Despite their arguing, Eddie can more or less hear the endearingly smug little grin Dustin must be wearing. “You’re not. I’m inviting you.”
The conversation is a little bit indecipherable after that with the kids all talking over each other until Steve finally manages to successfully shush them long enough to speak. “I’ll think about it.”
Oh. Well, that’s worse than a no, really. Steve is a ridiculous pushover. “No” almost always eventually becomes “alright, fine”, but “I’ll think about it” ends the conversation entirely. Eddie isn’t sure he’d have pegged Christmas plans as something Steve would be so intractable on.
For an embarrassing thirty seconds or so, Eddie considers inviting Steve to the trailer, just to give him another option. It’s only ever him and Wayne and sometimes not even that. But even if Steve accepted the offer (he almost certainly would not), it couldn’t be anything but a disaster. Steve might be blessedly oblivious, but Wayne would see right through him, and Christmas wasn’t the right time to tell one of his closest friends that he was maybe more than a little gone on them.
That he told himself the same thing about every other opportunity Eddie’s had since waking up to Steve’s cheek smushed against the hospital bed mattress is entirely beside the point. The point is that he’s got to do something, but inviting Steve to his place definitely isn’t it.
Eddie is so lost in thought that he doesn’t realize Steve is even heading his way until the guy is right in front of him, holding out what appears to be a gift. The box is about the size of his palms if he cupped them, and so neatly wrapped that Eddie is almost preemptively sorry about opening it. Each fold of the silver paper is carefully pressed, the ribbons on top coiled in a colorful explosion of little, shimmery green and red corkscrews.
“Umm?” is all Eddie manages, not sure what to make of the unexpected gift. It’s really not his finest hour.
“I figured I’d give this to you now. You know, in case I don’t see you again before the holiday,” Steve says, as if Eddie’s confusion were about getting something right now and not the fact that Steve got him a present in the first place.
Eddie bites his lip as he picks up the box. He’s not sure he can even remember the last time someone who wasn’t Wayne gave him a present. He picks idly at a bright red curl, wondering if he somehow missed something. “I- Sorry. I didn’t get you anything.”
“No. No, it’s fine. It’s not even anything big. I just saw it and thought of- thought you might like it.” Steve shrugs, a lopsided smile tugging at his lips.
Steve was thinking of him. It shouldn’t be a surprise. The thought shouldn’t wrap itself around his heart and squeeze, and yet… Well, in the abstract, Eddie knows he’s as much a part of this group as any of them these days. It turns out that bonds forged fighting the inexplicable aren’t so easily broken. But it’s one thing to know and another to hold the physical proof that someone values him in some way, even when Eddie isn’t standing in front of them.
X
In the end, it’s Dustin who gives him the idea, however inadvertently. They’re tucked on either side of the tiny table beside Eddie’s kitchen, painting a handful of new miniatures. It had been obnoxious once, the frequency with which Steve’s name tumbles off Dustin’s lips, but now? Well, now it’s a little too relatable for him to hold it against the kid.
“Mom would have loved to have him. Or Lucas’ parents. Even the Wheelers probably would’ve been fine with it.” It’s hard to say if Dustin is frowning about Steve or the blob of red paint he’s trying fruitlessly to wipe from an ankheg figure he’s working on. It’s a lot of frowning, so in all likelihood, it’s a bit of both. He doesn’t like the idea of Steve kicking around that huge, empty house on Christmas Day either, but Eddie has yet to land on an argument that he thinks might convince Steve to take Dustin (or anyone else) up on the offer. “I don’t know what to tell you. Short of, I don’t know, breaking in and physically dragging him out of the house, I think it’s probably a lost cause.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dustin’s nose crinkles discontentedly. With an overwrought huff, he gives up on the ankheg, dunking the entire thing in the little plastic cup of water meant for rinsing brushes. “I just don’t get why he’s so determined to be alone.”
“I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s probably more like… well Christmas is kind of a family thing, right?” Not that Steve bothered to explain himself to Eddie either, but he takes some measure of pride in how well they know each other at this point. Even if it’s wrong, it’s a kinder answer than pointing out how often Steve ignores serious injuries just to avoid inconveniencing another human being. “Your mom is great, but she’s not his.”
“Okay, but he’s our family. Doesn’t he get that?”
“Maybe he doesn’t.” Eddie pauses, taking little notice of the paint splatters landing on his hand as he taps the handle of his brush against the table, deep in thought. There’s something to that, he decides, and nearly knocks both the paint muddied water and the paladin he’d been painting off the table in his excitement when the answer finally hits him. “Dustin, you’re brilliant.”
Dustin squints at Eddie across the table, head cocked as he visibly recounts the last few minutes in his head. “Okay yes, so I’d normally agree with you, but this once I didn’t actually figure anything out.”
“No, no. You did.” Thankfully, if there’s anyone in Eddie’s life that can keep up with him when he’s feeling inspired, it’s Dustin Henderson. As Eddie explains his idea, Dustin’s confusion melts away into a brilliant smile.
“You know? I think this might actually work.” Dustin is almost visibly vibrating in his seat, looking every bit as excited as Eddie is.
“Of course it’s going to work.” Granted, it might only work because they have friends who are better at executing on a last minute plan than they are, but that’s just details. Eddie is on top of that anyway, already digging through the pockets of his jacket for the tiny notebook he’s relatively sure Nancy Wheeler’s phone number is written down in. All that’s left after that is to figure out a present.
This is the best idea.
X
This was the worst idea.
Eddie shifts his weight from one foot to the other, sighing through his nose as he watches Lucas look for the key Dustin claims Steve keeps stashed beside the back door. That in itself isn’t a problem, but the search has been going on for a solid five minutes now, punctuated by Dustin and Lucas bickering. Eddie would have gone to help, but he’s a little too occupied holding the trunk end of a pine tree, shoulders beginning to burn under the strain. “How do you even know where the spare key is?”
Dustin makes a face like the question is unfathomably foolish. To be fair, it might also be out of dislike for the way the pine needles probably prickle through his gloves where Dustin is holding the top of the tree. “How do you think? He told me.”
The more time he spends trying to wrangle these kids, the less Eddie understands how Steve does it. “I figured that. But why?”
“Oh! There was this whole thing with Billy Hargrove and the demodogs, and like, he seriously got his ass kicked, but he still went down into the tunnels to protect us and once the adrenaline wore off, I guess…” Eddie’s face must be showing some of his discomfort thinking of how badly Steve must have been doing to let anyone do anything for him, because Dustin trails off mid-explanation. “You know? Not really a Christmas story. The point is he told me.”
Mike looks under the legs of the deck table for what has to be at least the fifth time.“Yeah, but how long ago. You don’t think he’s maybe, I don’t know, moved it since then?”
Dustin’s eyebrows scrunch at Eddie from the other end of the tree. “Why would he do that?”
Eddie can think of at least a dozen things Steve probably wouldn’t want Dustin inviting himself to walk in on, none of which are a good idea to me dedicating mental real estate to while surrounded by these gremlins. He keeps his answer as vague as possible. “Maybe he likes his privacy.”
“You seriously underestimate how set in his ways Steve is. Look. I’ll show you.”
“Wait! Don’t just-” Eddie calls out, too late to stop Dustin from dropping the top of the Christmas tree right into the snow. “-do that.”
Just like Lucas, Dustin lifts up the table, and just like before, there’s only the wooden deck beneath them. “Huh. It’s not here.”
“Right. Just like I’ve been saying,” Lucas grumbles. It doesn’t stop him from helping Dustin dig through the snow around the table in case it slid out from under the table somehow though.
Finally, Eddie gives up and does what he probably ought to have right from the beginning. The tree is already half lying in the snow anyway, so he decides he can’t make it any worse by dropping his end. By the time he reaches the door to Steve’s house, he already has a lockpick kit out.
“I didn’t know you could do that.” Lucas has drifted over from where he’d been sifting through a snow drift to watch Eddie kneel in front of the door handle.
“Well, hotwiring isn’t the only thing my old man taught me.” He can more or less hear the question Dustin is gearing up to ask as he hovers behind Eddie’s shoulder. “And no. I will not teach you. Don’t even watch. I don’t need to add encouraging teenage delinquency or whatever it’s called to the list of morally questionable things I’ve done this year.”
“Eddie. You literally stole an RV with us,” Dustin points out.
Eddie pauses to halfheartedly glare at Dustin over his shoulder. “That’s different. Circumstances were pretty dire at the time, trying to… save the world and all that.”
“Circumstances are dire now. We’re trying to save Christmas.”
“You’re… not wrong,” Eddie concedes with a reluctant smile, unable to resist the implied heroism Dustin imbues into their current misadventure. “I’m still not teaching you how to pick locks.”
There’s no getting Dustin and Lucas to stop watching, but at least they don’t argue any further, and, despite all his complaining, for a solid thirty seconds Eddie feels like he’s just about the coolest person on the planet. That’s about the time he starts to realize that either Steve’s door is uniquely very difficult or that he’s way more out of practice than he thought. Thankfully, or maybe not so thankfully, Eddie doesn’t get to work at it long enough for the kids to catch on how badly he’s failing.
He has a hook pick stuck in the door handle, slowly feeling out the lock tumblers when he hears the quiet crunch of tires over snow. He thought he’d had more time, but all Eddie can do is retrieve the lock picking tool and jam it back into the case, scurrying off the deck.
“Shit, shit, hide!” Eddie sort of whisper shouts as Dustin and Lucas follow him to duck around the side of the house. There’s an incredibly obvious trail through the snow and the tree is still lying there beside the deck, which is not at all what he wanted Steve to come back to, but it’s going to have to do.
Only, it isn’t Steve that appears around the side of the garage. From the other side of the house, Nancy’s features scrunch in obvious confusion as she looks between the three of them peeking very obviously around the corner and the tree they abandoned in the snow. “What are you doing?”
“We thought you were Steve,” Eddie starts to explain.
Dustin nods, adding, “We’re sort of… troubleshooting how to get into the house.”
As much as Dustin is currently trying to distance himself from the problem, Lucas is having none of it. “Dustin said he knew where the spare key was, but it’s not there.”
“Oh!” Nancy’s mouth curls up in an amused smile as she heads for the door, a small army following behind her. “It gets stuck between the boards sometimes. It’s probably hard to see in the snow.”
Sure enough, it takes her all of about thirty seconds to find the crack the key had fallen into and dig it out again. She’s already got the door open by the time Eddie reaches the deck again.
“See? I told you I knew where it was,” Dustin says, motioning to the deck like they hadn’t all seen it.
Lucas gives Dustin a pointed look. “You couldn’t find it either!”
Really, Eddie has no idea how Steve does it. No wonder he does the hands on his hips thing so often. Shaking his head, Eddie picks up the trunk of the tree once more. “Less arguing about the stupid key and more helping me get this inside.”
Jonathan picks up the other end while Dustin and Lucas shake out the tree’s branches, so at least the trail they leave from the door to the living room is pine needles and not melted snow.
Foolishly, Eddie thinks that’s the end of wrenches being thrown in their plans, and it is. Right up until he and Jonathan manage to hoist the tree upright. It’s then that he had considered the important things, (The tree. Obnoxiously colored lights. That sort of thing.) but completely forgot something to keep the tree upright.
Cursing under his breath, Eddie casts about for something he can rig up for the time being, but he’s never been much of an engineer. He’s just checking his watch, wondering if there’s some place open he can run to and get one before Steve and Robin get back when Nancy taps his shoulder.
There, in her outstretched hand, is a tree stand. Because of course there is. He has no idea how she manages to think of everything, but at the moment he’s too grateful to question it. “You, Nancy Wheeler, are an actual angel.”
“It’s just a tree stand.” Nancy laughs and shakes her head before returning to the garland she’d been in the middle of hanging up. But it’s not really just anything, is it? Eddie’s floored, as he really looks around for the first time since he arrived at Steve’s place. The kids, even Mike (with shockingly little complaining) are helping Nancy hang decorations. Jonathan and Argyle are keeping the tree upright, patiently waiting for Eddie to come back with the stand. It’s the first time they’ve all really rallied around a single project since they dealt with Vecna, and Eddie, for one, can’t think of any better reason for them to be doing it now.
X
Things do go smoothly after that. They breeze through decorating with the urgency of critters trying to outrun a forest fire, and even manage to move vehicles out of sight before Steve’s BMW pulls into the driveway. The lot of them manage to hide with varying degrees of success, but luckily Steve is too busy talking to Robin to notice the Argyle and Dustin shaped disturbances in the otherwise pristine drapes.
From his vantage point in the doorway of the downstairs bathroom, Eddie has the enjoyment of watching Steve get halfway into the living room before it even registers to him that anything is amiss. Even then, it’s not the tree or the greenery or the lights that draw his attention. It’s Mike sneezing where he’s hunkered down behind the couch.
“What-” Steve goes through an impressive array of responses, tensing at the obvious intrusion like he’s gearing up for a fight. His posture loosens as he takes in what they’ve done with the living room, wariness becoming confusion and then outright shock when his gaze lands on the tree, lit up and adorned with about twice as many ornaments as it probably actually merited. “-the hell? Robin?”
“Don’t look at me.” Robin holds her hands up in surrender, and for all of two seconds she manages to look serious before breaking into a pleased smile. “I was just the distraction.”
It kind of breaks Eddie’s heart the way Steve stares between Robin and the living room around them, so wide eyed you’d think he’d somehow never seen a Christmas tree before. “I don’t understand.”
Dustin caves first, poking his nose out from behind the curtains. “Surprise?”
Eddie takes that as his cue, emerging from the bathroom to stand in the doorway of the living room. “You wouldn’t come spend Christmas with any of us, but you didn’t say we couldn’t bring it to you.”
Steve’s head jerks to the side, focusing all his attention on Eddie. It stings a little, that as everyone gives up their hiding places, he’s the one Steve looks most startled to see. Mostly though, it just makes Eddie realize that maybe Christmas isn’t a bad time to tell Steve what he’s thinking. Maybe it’s the perfect time.
As far as Eddie can tell, Steve has always had a surprising capacity for hiding what he’s feeling. Eddie has seen Steve face down almost certain death without flinching. He shepherded them through the worst days of their life (or at least the worst of Eddie’s). He carried Eddie out of the Upside Down, grim but determined. Even now, even for the little things, he makes himself a buffer between The Party and much of the unpleasantness of the world they live in. So it means something, probably, that Steve keeps blinking, suspiciously bright eyed. It means something that he’s quiet and croaky when he murmurs, “I don’t know what to say.”
Robin bumps her shoulder against Steve's, which breaks whatever spell had kept people at any sort of distance. “Pretty sure it’s usually Merry Christmas.”
X
This is, decidedly, the best Christmas Eddie can remember. It’s everything the movies make it out to be. There’s catching up with the theoretical grown ups over a bottle of wine. There’s the laughter and shouting of rambunctious kids tearing through the house. There’s warmth and comfort and just… family. Maybe not in a traditional sense, but he can think of no better word for the way they gravitate towards each other when it matters the most.
All through it, he steals glances at Steve, who smiles more in the span of a few hours than Eddie usually sees over the course of a week. It’s a better measure of success than anything else, coiling warmly in the pit of Eddie’s stomach and making a home there. It’s gone pretty well, but even if the whole thing had been a complete disaster, it still would have been worth it for the way the corners of Steve’s mouth turn up, even when no one is looking.
The sky has gone dark, snow glittering under the stars and the street lamps, by the time people start to drift back home again. Nancy and Argyle split the kids between them, and Eddie is just oblivious enough not to realize what they’re doing until he sees Robin and Nancy whispering as they walk by him. Robin grins, glancing over Eddie’s shoulder where Steve is starting to clean up. “Merry Christmas.”
Every thought in his head screeches to a halt. Had he been that obvious that they noticed? Had Steve noticed? But, by the time Eddie gets his mouth cooperating enough to ask, they’ve left him standing there in the middle of the living room.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want,” Steve says once the last of their friends are out the door. He shakes the trash bag he’s holding at Eddie like it’s not obvious otherwise. “I’m just cleaning up.”
“Now what kind of person would I be to throw a party at your house and leave you with the mess?” Eddie teases. To be honest, he’s sort of glad to have something to do with himself, picking up plates and cups off the coffee table to distract from the gift burning a hole in his pocket.
“You did this?” Steve freezes with the trash bag dangling from his fingers, looking at Eddie like it’s the first time he’s ever seen him. “You… you really didn’t have to go to the trouble.”
“Puh-lease,” Eddie says , nudging Steve’s foot with his on the way by. “Like I was going to let you spend Christmas by yourself. Like any of us were going to.”
They clean in companionable silence, the calm only broken when Steve comes across one of the boxes of ornaments and pulls something from the cardboard. “You haven’t opened it?”
Right. No more running. Eddie swallows, taking a breath before he turns around to see Steve cradling the wrapped box in his hands. “Well, I just thought since I was going to be here, it’d be nicer if I waited until I could give you yours.”
He doesn’t dare look at Steve’s expression as he pulls the present from his jacket pocket, afraid he might chicken out if he does. Before he can change his mind, Eddie holds out the tiny package to Steve. It’s not wrapped nearly as neatly as the one Steve gave him, carefully creased gift wrap traded for newspaper and entirely too much tape, but it’s the thought that counts, probably. Maybe.
“Well, you should open yours,” Steve prompts, handing the gift back over to Eddie. The way he shifts from one foot to the other is so unfamiliar that it takes Eddie a little while to register that Steve is nervous.
He tries to be careful, honestly. Eddie picks the tape away from one of the folded edges as gently as he can, even though he thinks he might combust with the sudden need to know what’s inside. Despite his best efforts, the edge of the paper tears at some point, and then there’s no reason to do anything other than rip the whole thing away.
Under the ribbon and paper is a plain cardboard box. The tape holding it shut gives easily under the notched side of his house key, and there, nestled within it, cradled in white tissue paper is… a treasure chest? Eddie isn’t really sure what he expected, but he does know that wasn’t it.
He pulls it from the box anyway, and once he’s got it out, Eddie notices the little swing latch on the front just begging to be pulled free. So, of course, he does. The chest is full of dice, glittering like gemstones. The chest also happens to be full of teeth. It’s… Eddie sucks in a surprised breath. It’s a mimic.
“Is it… not good? Dustin said you’d probably appreciate the reference, but I don’t… shit. I don’t know enough about the game to get if it’s actually that funny or not,” Steve mumbles, not quite meeting Eddie’s eyes. Eddie has seen his friend awkward or embarrassed on rare occasions, but when he looks, Steve’s cheeks are positively scarlet, the color stretching down to the collar of his shirt.
A number of things occur to Eddie all at once. The biggest, most obvious one, is that Steve is a liar. That’s way, way too specific for Steve to have stumbled across in any of his usual haunts, and if he asked Dustin about it, it wasn’t the spontaneous, spur of the moment thing he made it out to be originally. That’s… well, Eddie feels like if he weren’t already sitting that he would desperately need to be, even before acknowledging the effort Steve went in an effort to understand enough about the game to get something Eddie would enjoy. It’s not that no one has ever given Eddie a thoughtful gift before. It’s just that he can’t think of a time someone who wasn’t Wayne chose to go so far outside their own comfort zone to do it.
“No no no. That’s not it,” Eddie scrambles to say when he trusts himself to speak again. He grins at Steve in hopes of getting his point across, biting his bottom lip in a helpless attempt to reign in how elated he is when the sentiment feels like it’s getting away from him. “It’s perfect.”
“Oh.” Steve lets out a gusty sort of breath like he’d been holding it, his posture loosening as he smiles back at Eddie. “Good. That’s… that’s good.”
He doesn’t have a crush, Eddie realizes very abruptly. He’s not even falling a little bit in love. No, Eddie wants to spend the rest of his damned life getting adorable nonsense gifts and reminding Steve that he’s so, so much more than a bulwark between a handful of kids and a world that would hurt them.
He’s so caught up in the pleasant little fantasy that it takes a moment to realize that Steve hasn’t unwrapped Eddie’s gift. Prodding, he nudges Steve’s socked foot with his own. “So, are you going to open yours?”
Steve blinks at the little package like he’d forgotten it was even there. “Right. Yes.”
It’s stupidly endearing how careful Steve tries to be. It’s just newspaper, but Steve carefully peels the tape away and unfolds the comics section to reveal the contents inside the wrapping. “It’s… a tape?”
Eddie frowns, heart thudding in his chest when he thinks he’s going to have to explain, but to his relief, Steve is already reading the insert, silently mouthing the names of the bands. Cyndi Lauper. Foreigner. REO Speedwagon. He looks up when he reaches the end, staring at Eddie with wide, doe eyes. “You… Eddie. You don’t even like these.”
“You do.” And that was the point, really. He had resisted the urge to do this with the songs that were familiar and beloved in favor of trying to speak in a language Steve would understand without jumping through hoops. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Subjecting himself to a little bit of (a lot of) pop music might not have been his favorite thing in practice, but it’s absolutely worth it for the way Steve looks at him right now, lips parted in something like awe.
“These are-” Steve looks back down at the tape, thumb swiping over the plastic that covers the song list. When he speaks again, it’s so soft that Eddie barely hears him. “They’re all love songs.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, chokes out, really. He’d been so caught up in the moment he’d honestly forgotten to be afraid of the risk he’s taking, but now, in the awkward purgatory of Steve realizing what he’s holding, Eddie thinks he might be sick. Worrying that he’s gotten this all wrong, he hurries to add a qualifier. “I don’t expect-”
“Do you mean it?” Steve interrupts, and oh. Oh. Of course Steve would be every bit as twisted up in knots as Eddie is. He looks so soft and earnest, lit up in nothing more than the lights on the tree, visibly nervous, but with no trace of distaste to be seen.
“More than anything I’ve ever said, I think,” Eddie admits, the confession coming so much more easily than he would have expected.
He has made a lot of assumptions over the years about Steve Harrington, and it seems like maybe Eddie’s still making them, because the hand cradling his jaw surprises him. Not that it’s there. It’s a welcome presence, after all, proof that this is really a thing that’s happening. Just that it’s such a careful, tentative thing. “Can I?”
As if Eddie was going to say no. He nods his head anyway, and in the end he’s not even sure it’s Steve who closes the space between them. No matter who started it though, Steve immediately ruins Eddie for anyone else as far as kissing goes. There have been kisses that were more compelling, an obvious prelude to something further, but none that have ever left Eddie feeling like something so precious before. It’s a soft thing, a careful, tentative press as Steve’s mouth slots against his. All too soon, Steve ends it. He lingers close though, fingers loosely tangled in the hair at the nape of Eddie’s neck, leaving so little space between them that his words come in a warm puff of air against Eddie’s lips. “I thought it was just me.”
It’s not the right time to be laughing, but Eddie can’t help it. His fingers instinctively curl in Steve’s sweater when he pulls back with a frown. “No, no, come back. I’m not laughing at you. I promise.”
Steve’s so expressive up close, that Eddie swears he can see the exact moment he chooses to believe that. He lets himself be tugged more fully into Eddie’s arms, and even allows another kiss before pressing. “What’s so funny, then?”
“It’s just… Steve. Steve. I went out of my way to sit through Cyndi Lauper for you.” And oh, that’s actually kind of embarrassing now that he’s saying it out loud. Eddie shakes his head, pressing his nose into the crook of Steve’s neck and humming contentedly at the hands that automatically settle between his shoulder blades. “If that wasn’t love, I don’t know what is.”
For a few seconds, there’s nothing but silence and Steve’s arms around him. The laughter is a subtle thing at first, so quiet that Eddie only recognizes it by the way Steve’s body stutters against him. It breaks through eventually, endearing little aborted noises as Steve tries helplessly to stifle it, and Eddie isn’t mad, but he is thoroughly confused enough to lift his head. “What?”
“Sitting through Dustin explaining why a mimic full of dice like gem stones is funny,” Steve gets out between giggles.
They find their way, eventually, into a position that feels sustainable, stretched out and tangled together the length of the couch. Between lazy, indulgent kisses, Eddie decides he had it right the first time after all. This was the very, very best idea.