Chapter Text
Eddie closes the door softly behind him, stepping out soundlessly as he can in his favorite fuck-off boots, only to drop his guitar bag in surprise the second he turns around, then letting out a little involuntary yelp as he scrambles to grab it and check for dings and scrapes.
Steve, who had been apparently taking a goddamn nap on the hood of Eddie’s van, sits up and blinks at him, looking a little grouchy. Like Eddie’s the one who’s being weird and annoying here.
They look at each other for a second, Eddie fumbling the guitar strap back over his shoulder.
“Henderson,” he says finally.
“Uhh…” Steve’s eyebrows rise.
“Henderson squealed,” Eddie supplies. “Had to have been. Because Little Sinclair lives by a strict no-snitching policy, and she’s the only other person I told.”
“Nope,” Steve says. Slides off the hood of the van, and picks up the duffel bag resting by the front wheel.
“Did you…talk to Wayne?” Eddie asks, because, okay, that is the only other person he told. And it had been a far less dramatic goodbye than the other two, his own uncle just hugging him tight with a gruff “I understand” while those shrimps had carried on like Eddie had said he was going off to war.
Which he wasn’t. That was exactly the point, in fact.
“Are we gonna leave any time soon?” Steve says, “Because I don’t know about you, but this side of four a.m. is a little chilly for me.”
Steve does know about Eddie, so he knows that Eddie could call bullshit on that: it is cold, Eddie knows that intellectually, knows that Wayne’s joints are giving him hell at night and the few Hawkinsites who don’t clam up when he comes near are full of small talk about how summer’s really, truly over. But Eddie doesn’t feel it. He’s got his jacket on more for the weight of it, and the security, not because he’s cold. And Steve doesn’t have a jacket at all– bare arms exposed without even a hint of a goosebump. They’re the same. Or, well, shit. They’ve got some weird shit in common now, anyway.
“You’re not here to stop me?” Eddie asks slowly.
Steve looks at him. Is kind of frowning, sort of his default hey-I’m-serious-about-this look as an attempt to grasp some kind of authority, often surrounded by a pack of teenagers. But there’s something soft in the way his hands drop to his sides. The way his eyes look big and round and dark in this dim dawn light.
“No, dude,” he says. “I’m not here to stop you.”
He walks over to Eddie and takes the guitar from his shoulder, fingers slow and careful, gentle even, as they slide between Eddie’s shoulder and the strap. He takes his own duffle from Eddie’s hand. His fingertips are warm.
“Unlock the car already,” Steve says. “And let’s hit the road.”
Steve falls asleep again almost as soon as they’re out of Hawkins, like he just needed to get the town in his rear mirror and really be sure they were good and gone, before he could relax. And then he’s out like a light, and stays out, even when Eddie gets too caught up glancing at him in the seat next to him and almost swerves into the next lane. But even the (deserved) honks from the other drivers out there don’t rouse him.
Eddie would love to shake him awake. Demand to know what the fuck is happening here, how Steve Harrington has ended up riding shotgun in Eddie’s van. But, uh. He’s here now, right? And maybe Eddie doesn’t actually want him to change his mind. Maybe he doesn’t actually want to do this on his own, after all.
Steve doesn’t explain why he’s there when Eddie eventually does shake him awake, four hours later outside a promising-looking greasy spoon of a diner. Steve doesn’t explain why he’s there when Eddie gruffly rejects his offer to drive for a while. Steve doesn’t even ask where they’re going, will ask Eddie about his tape collection and about what he’d been reading lately and what the mural on the inside of the van was about and anything else that seems to come to his mind but not– nothing about what the hell is happening here.
They stop at a motel that night, and while Eddie goes in to see about a room Steve steps out around the side to make a phone call. When Eddie has the room key in hand and is coming around to find him, he’s not like. Trying to be quiet or sneaky or anything. Maybe Steve is just too focused on what he’s saying, doesn’t hear Eddie come up behind him.
“–Not like that, Robin, I told you,” Steve is saying in a hushed, intent undertone.
Eddie freezes. Okay. Maybe he is a little bit trying to be sneaky. He’d just love to know what that all of this is so apparently not like.
“Eddie’s not a baby,” Steve says, shoulders raised up around his ears defensively. “He doesn’t need me to– he doesn’t need me. I’m the one that–”
Eddie doesn’t make a sound, he knows he doesn’t, but Steve jerks around suddenly. He’s expecting a frown, at least a look of surprise. He’s not expecting the way Steve’s shoulders come down, his face smoothing over, eyes landing on Eddie with a sparkle, a brightening, almost a look of–
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Steve says, blinking rapidly, now frowning a little bit, like he’s just remembered he’s supposed to. “Say hi to the brats for me, if you see them.” And he hangs up.
“Reporting back to your better half?” Eddie asks.
“Ugh,” Steve steps away from the phone. “You get the room?”
“Sure did,” Eddie says. “Compliments of Uncle Sam.” He could ask. But he doesn’t.
“Lead the way,” Steve says.
Steve doesn’t say anything when they get to the room, not even when they realize simultaneously that there’s just one bed. It’s big enough for the both of them, and Eddie’s not worried about it because like—the whole crew of them, they’ve slept in weirder, less comfortable configurations than this. He and Steve even, though weirdly, there has tended to be at least another person in the room at least, every time. But he knows he sleeps like the dead once’s he’s out, doesn’t move much. Doesn’t gravitate towards a warm body, just because it’s there. He’s pretty sure Steve is the same.
So there’s nothing to worry about. There’s nothing to worry about. To prove it, Eddie maintains a dumbass monologue on his impressions of the motel desk clerk and her choices in hair color while he sheds his jeans and slides under the covers, not looking to see what Steve is going to wear to bed. Falls silent only when Steve turns out the light and gets in too, like the switch flipped on his ramblings too.
“Level with me,” Eddie says at last, turning over to face Steve. “How did you really know I was going to be leaving today. El give you a–” he wiggles his fingers in the dark, even if Steve can’t see them, “ –sneaky peek at my plans?”
“Eddie,” Steve laughs. “I didn’t find out from anyone. You told me.”
“The hell I did,” Eddie says immediately.
“Last week?” Steve says. “After the uh–”
“The ambush,” Eddie says grimly, and then with a breath of realization. Because yeah, there had been the sit-down with those tombstone-faced military ghouls, the calm steady tones about skill sets and applicable knowledge and for the good of all, all of them lined up listening and nodding along in a neat row like pins in a bowling alley. Ready and happily waiting for the strike.
And after, they’d–
“You dragged me to the Hideout, finally,” Steve laughed. “And we all got, uh. We all got a little drunk.”
Eddie puts his hands over his face. Shit.
“I guess that’s what happens when you let the Russian suggest a drinking game,” Eddie mutters. “Though I really thought I had mostly remembered that night.”
“But not the part when it was just us? After Murray got everyone out on the dance floor?”
“Hideout doesn’t have a dance floor.”
“Well, Murray decided it did that night. And then it was just the two of us, at the table, because you hated the music and I, uh– I didn’t feel like being anywhere near the sight of Hopper cutting a rug.”
“Cutting a rug, huh?” Eddie says, somehow sure that wasn’t the reason.
“Yeah, you weren’t impressed when I said it then, either,” Steve laughs. The bed shakes a little bit with it. “We were sitting at the table, and you had your. Uh. Your arm around me. And you were just ranting about some shit, I don’t even remember, but then you stopped all of a sudden. Tipped your head against mine, and you said–”
Oh shit, Eddie’s hands are in fists now. “What did I say?” He says now, slowly.
“You said, ‘I’m not cut out for the lab rat life, man. And neither are you,’” Eddie laughs in surprise, because shit yeah, that’s a thought he’s had. “And you said, ‘I’m gonna play out the week, be on good behavior and get my shit together, and then Friday I’m getting the fuck out of here. Stealing away in the dead of night, before they can stop me. And you’re coming with me.’”
“I was drunk,” Eddie says, heart hammering and shit.
“Yeah, but you meant it,” Steve says. “I could tell that you meant it.”
“You could tell I meant it,” Eddie repeats slowly. “And you showed up.”
“Sure,” Steve rolls onto his side now, facing Eddie. It’s too dark to make out his face in much detail, but he can see the sharp line of his nose, the shadow of his eyelashes as they brush across his cheeks. The upward twist of his lips. “You told me to. So I did.”
Eddie kisses Steve three weeks from now. They’ll be just fifteen miles south of the Canadian border, set up in a campsite under the stars. Far enough away for no one to think it strange, that they’re both in light jackets with winter in the wind around them. For no one to see, when Eddie takes Steve’s face in both hands, turning him towards him, to see those eyes glittering with starlight. Brings their lips together, a sweet and urgent heat, that Steve laughs into as he pulls Eddie closer.
That’s when Eddie kisses Steve. Not now, in this hotel room, just a day away from Hawkins but feeling like it’s a whole lifetime behind them already. But now, now is when Eddie knows that he will.