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Before her boyfriend had ever gotten down on one knee, Laura Harrington already knew the exact ring she’d be wearing on her left hand. As did most of Hawkins, because the Harrington name was never passed down without its matching ring. It was a very distinct piece of jewelry; a buffed band with tiny encrusted diamonds surrounding a real emerald stone, gaudy enough to have passed for costume jewelry. And if it had been any other girl from outside of Hawkins, it might as well have been. But Laura knew what it meant, knew what the Harrington name meant, and had spent the last year eagerly eyeing the ring while it sat on her future mother-in-law’s finger. So when Richard Harrington pulled out that ring, he was barely able to get through “will you” before Laura was jamming the ring onto her hand and shrieking, “Yes!”
The ring was worth more than just its asking price. It meant that Laura was the next Harrington lady, and that, for once in her life, she was important. So she wore that ring every day for years, even when the band pinched her skin because Richard hadn’t bothered to get it sized, even when her husband was thousands of miles away with his tongue in another woman’s mouth. Because it meant something not just to her, but to everyone else.
—
A forceful shove sends the wardrobe doors slamming shut. “Pretty sure I can buy the entire trailer park with just the shit in that thing,” Eddie whistles. The summer sun burns through the open windows, but the room has picked up some humidity from him moving around. He unsticks a curl from his neck and looks at the only other person in earshot.
Max rolls her eyes. Her legs are spread in front of her, sore from moving up and down the stairs, and her freckled hands are digging through the heaps of Mrs. Harrington’s jewelry on the floor. Her blanched-blue eyes settle on him as she replies. “We’re in the house of the richest man in Hawkins. The coat rack could probably buy off the mayor.” Her fingers brush over a pair of earrings before shoving them into her shorts’ pocket. Eddie gapes at her.
“Those earrings you just stole are probably worth enough for two years of groceries, just so you know.”
“Oh,” says Max, perfectly pleasant, “those were earrings?”
He cackles. She keeps him on his toes, he swears; it’s been so long since someone has managed to seamlessly bounce off his comments with their own. They’re probably mind melded to some degree from the whole Vecna situation, plus the months they spent in the same hospital room. She’s one of the only people who really gets him, a byproduct of growing up in a trailer park and having a shitty family life. He ruffles her hair as he drops to sit beside her. She squawks and throws a necklace at him, which clatters to the floor as he ducks beneath its trajectory. “Need to work on that aim, Mayfield,” he teases.
“I’m fucking blind, asshole,” she snaps.
Eddie laughs, starting to sort through the jewelry. Their original intention had been to help Steve pack for his move, but now they’re mostly pirating his stuff. Steve had popped his head into the room an hour ago, seen the absolute mess they’d created, and had turned back around in record time. Eddie heard him banging around his room but has yet to see him since then. Lucky for him, Eddie is easily entertained and one of his favorite pastimes is talking shit about rich people.
He dunks his hand into one of the heaps, winces as his knuckles scrape against something sharp, and pulls the offending item out. It’s a ring. An ugly ring. It doesn’t look high brow enough for someone as wealthy as Mrs. Harrington, so Eddie resolves to take it off her hands. He holds it up, gleeful at his steal. The shiny emerald fixture shimmers under the sun’s last beams.
He loves it.
“Find something?” asks Max. He often forgets how good her hearing is and how much she relies on it. She must have heard him stop sifting through the piles.
There’s a soft huff from outside the room, and he turns to see Steve Harrington leaning against the doorframe, looking exhausted. A sliver of guilt wiggles its way down Eddie’s spine (Steve had asked for his help – so rarely did Steve ever do that – and all Eddie had done was encourage Max’s kleptomaniac tendencies) but then Steve smiles and every thought in his head melts to goo.
Steve has a pretty smile. It’s a fact of nature: the sky is blue, Eddie can never grow taller than six foot (fuck genetics, seriously), and Steve Harrington has a beautiful smile. He doesn’t use it as often as he should. The only year Steve smiled in his yearbook photo was his senior year and even then it was a weak, fickle thing.
He’s smiling now, though. Gorgeous boy. Eddie wants to bite him.
“Any steals?” Steve asks.
Max holds up the earrings she had pocketed. They’re tiny teardrops of turquoise glass, a good choice for someone who has no idea what she’d picked.
“Pretty,” confirms Steve, “I think she bought those when they went to Turkey.”
Max wrinkles her nose. “Ugh,” she mutters darkly.
Steve laughs quietly, his hair flopping over his ears. He tucks the strands behind them and turns to Eddie. “What’d you find, Eds?”
The ring sparkles as Eddie holds it up in answer. He can’t help but be mesmerized by it, the cut of the stone and the stark evergreen color of it. When he looks up to see Steve’s face, the boy is red. A wave of emotions passes over Steve’s face too quickly for Eddie to snatch one from the rapid waters, and then he says softly, “Interesting choice.”
“You think it’s ugly too, don’t you?” whispers Eddie solemnly.
Steve snorts. “No, it suits you.”
“Are you saying I’m ugly, Harrington?”
“You’re unique looking,” Max chimes.
Hand on his belly, Steve doubles over in laughter. The waves of his chestnut hair fall across his forehead, obscuring Eddie’s vision of everything but his pearly teeth. “Max—”
Max points at him with unsurprising accuracy. She can usually do that if someone is making a lot of noise. “Don’t start, Harrington. You’re as much of a bitch as me.”
With another bright laugh, Steve walks over and plucks the ring from Eddie. He holds it up, laughs again, and hands it back while shaking his head. “You can have it. See if it fits.”
Eddie jams it onto one of his ringless fingers and beams. “Perfectly,” he wiggles his fingers.
Steve pats his shoulder, having sat down while he was putting the ring on. “All yours, then.” He’s suspiciously red again, and his eyes dart sideways as Eddie tries to look at him.
“Is it expensive? Or special to your mom? I don’t want to take anything important,” he says in a rare show of kindness towards the Harrington family (bar the only member of the brood he cares about, sitting beside him in a tank top that shows too much of his sides).
“Nah,” Steve shrugs, “you’d be taking it off my hands. She hates that ring.”
“I suppose it would be the right thing to do,” Eddie agrees. Steve jabs him in the side with his elbow, grinning.
“You’re so full of shit, you know that, Munson?”
“Aren’t we all?”
That gets Steve to make a face. “Ew,” he stands and puts his hands on his hips, eyebrow cocked. “And enough snooping. I need your help loading things into your van.” His tone creeps towards apologetic as he finishes the sentence, and that just won’t do.
Still, Eddie makes annoying grabby hands until the boy pulls him up. He’s just about an inch or so taller than Steve, but it feels like more when Steve looks at him from under his lashes like that. Every cog inside Eddie’s brain stutters to a grinding halt as Steve brushes one of Eddie’s wayward curls away from his eyes.
“So?”
“‘Course, man. Steve. Stevie. In fact, I’ll meet you downstairs. Need to talk to Max about something super important.”
With a shrug, Steve turns and heads to his room, ignorant of Eddie’s eyes following his tanned thighs.
“Oh, gross,” Max groans.
“You can’t even see what I’m doing!”
“You were checking him out, obviously. I’m blind, not stupid.” She whisks past him, hands shoved into her pockets and new earrings hanging from her ears. “Horndog.”
Eddie screeches.
—
Steve and Robin had spent the better part of the kids’ sophomore year looking for a house. Eddie had never seen someone run themselves so ragged until he met the Steve of ‘87. Months of missed smoke seshes, canceled movie nights, and double shifts had paid off because the Harrington-Buckley duo had gotten the lease for a two bedroom house down the road from the Byers’. The outside was painted soft green and the bathroom had a leaky faucet, but Steve had been over the moon from the moment he’d gotten the papers. Happiness was a good look on him.
His van pulls to a stop outside of Max’s trailer, and he snaps his seatbelt off. Max is already outside by the time he makes it around the hood, and she bats his hands away when he tries to help her into the trailer.
“Don’t touch me,” she gripes instinctively.
He holds his hands up, and she pats him awkwardly on the shoulder (misses and swats his neck the first time). “Thanks for the ride, loser,” she grunts, and then the door to her trailer swings shut behind her.
He shakes his head with a sigh before turning back to his trailer. The sound of George Strait’s voice flows out the open door: “All my ex’s live in Texas, and Texas is the place I’d dearly love to be.” Sentimental old man. Wayne had never really taken to Indiana like Eddie had. The door creaks as he pushes it open.
“That you, Ed?” calls Wayne. He reaches over and turns down the radio.
“Yeah,” he calls back. Yanks his sneakers and socks off and heads to the kitchen for a soda.
Wayne’s eyes draw up to him as he holds the soda out in front of his face. “How was—” he makes an impressively accurate strangled noise (and Eddie has seen someone being strangled, so). He slaps Wayne on the back a few times, and Wayne shoves him away with another cough. “Jesus, boy, you tryna’ make me lose my lunch?”
Eddie shrugs. “You were choking.”
“Well, you ain’t gonna be a doctor, that’s for sure.” Wayne says with a huff of laughter. Then his eyes drop back to his nephew’s hand. “Where’d you get that ring?”
“Huh? Oh, Steve gave it to me.”
Wayne frowns. He takes off his cap and rubs his forehead, trying to smooth the permanent wrinkles away with his knuckles. “Steve Harrington?”
“How many other Steves do you know?” he snips. Wayne raises an eyebrow. “Right. Bad comeback.”
“You ain’t steal it?”
“No!” He’s almost offended that his uncle asked, but it's probably best practice. Too many times he’s come home to Eddie sitting on the steps, Chief Hopper leaning against the rickety side of the trailer with his usual frown deepened tenfold.
Wayne pauses, looking suspiciously misty eyed. “Huh. Congrats, then. Your boy’s got guts.” He takes a long drink of his soda.
“Congrats?” He stares down at the ring, and the emerald winks back at him as he turns his hand. When he looks back up at Wayne, the man is quietly dabbing at his eyes. “Wayne?”
“Sorry—” Wayne sniffs. “Jus’ never thought I’d be around to see the day. He’s a decent kid— a good man, Eddie, and he even knows how to change a tire—”
“What?!” he shrieks, ignoring the jab at his car knowledge (or lack thereof). “Who the hell are we talking about!”
His uncle gestures to his hand. “Your— your boy. Steve.”
Eddie gapes at him. Steve isn't his. He wants him to be, of course, but that's about as realistic as him getting into Harvard: it just wouldn’t happen. It was something he allowed himself to daydream about, something he thought of when his mind was too overwhelmed to allow sleep. Lying on his side, pretending Steve was curled against him, back against Eddie’s chest. Steve’s fancy cologne would stink up the room, his hair would tickle Eddie’s cheek as he exhaled softly. Their hands would be held over Steve’s chest, and he’d feel the thump of his heartbeat underneath his calloused fingers.
Thinking about Steve in his bed brought upon some very not PG thoughts, featuring Steve sitting on his hips and pressing him into the mattress, Eddie’s fingers digging into the delicious skin around his hips, Steve’s face pressed onto the sheets—
Wayne has gotten over his crying fit and is now looking at Eddie, deeply unimpressed. He grins weakly and tries to think of something unsexy, but his mind drifts to puppies and Steve reminds him of a puppy and puppies make such cute noises and Steve could—
“Oh, Heaven’s sake, boy.”
His face scrunches in embarrassment. “I’m thinking about Steve! You brought him up.”
“Yeah, I know you’re thinkin’ ‘bout him. You got that funny look on your face. Makes you look dopey.” Wayne sighs. “Whatever. Just tell me when you guys figure out the venue.”
Eddie nods absently. He was thinking about puppies again.
—
Four years of Upside Down related nonsense would make anyone neurotic, but Joyce Byers has a special sort of neuroticism that aligns exactly with Eddie’s brand of crazy. That is to say: he likes her a lot. Her boyfriend likes Eddie less.
Which is why he was already on thin ice before he was invited to Will’s oneshot campaign. And despite Eddie’s longterm allergy to law enforcement and also just Chief Jim Hopper himself, he refuses to reject Will’s invitation. He was going.
The poor boy has barely opened the door before Hopper is shuffling him out the way, broad shoulders knocking into either end of the doorframe. Eddie suppresses a shiver. “I’m not going to have to pat you down, am I?” Hopper asks.
“I don’t think so,” he says truthfully. Leaving room for plausible deniability, always. But sometimes he leaves his baggies in his pockets, and he hasn’t washed this pair of jeans since last week. Per the Munson Doctrine: thou shall not wash thy jeans until thou has worn them at least thrice.
Hopper’s eye twitches like a ladybug trying to take flight. Rhetorical question, then. He’s bad at telling those apart from normal questions. He slaps his hands over his pockets and beams sunnily. “Nope. Don’t need the shakedown tonight.”
The chief’s eyes dip down to where Eddie has awkwardly moved his hands to his hips. “Are we good?” he asks, aiming for intimidating and mostly sounding like a balloon losing air very slowly. Hopper’s hands flex. He prays for a swift death. (He really does. He’s not sure why people think that because he’s anti-cop he’s not afraid of them, because he is. Very afraid.)
“Your ring,” Hopper almost snarls, “where’d you get it?”
The ring again? Maybe it’s just that older men can’t get over Eddie wearing what is clearly a woman’s ring. He rolls his eyes. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Harrington give it to you?” asks Hopper through gritted teeth.
“Huh. How’d you know?”
A vein pulses at the corner of Hopper’s jaw. “Lucky guess.”
He reluctantly steps aside and lets him through. Will is waiting beside the door, doing a bad impression of not eavesdropping. He nods at Eddie and sticks his hand out. “Will Byers,” he introduces, as though Eddie hasn’t spent months hearing Mike and Dustin and Lucas talk about him like he’s the messiah. In a way he sort of is, having come back from the dead and all.
Will’s hand is clammy when he shakes it. “Edward Wayne Munson,” he returns grandly.
“Well. Er, I’m William Matthew Byers then.”
“Lead the way, Sir William,” he bows deeply and flutters his hands.
‘Sir William’ giggles. He is much softer spoken than the other boys, more like Jonathan where Mike is like Nancy and Dustin is like Steve.
He hasn’t seen Steve since the day he’d given him the ring. Any of the times he’d tried to reach him had been foiled by the Harrington-Buckley voice mail:
(“Hi, you’ve reached Robin Buckley. And Steve Harrington, I guess. We’re either not here or we’re ignoring you, so leave a message after the beep. Steve do I—”
“No, Robin,” says Steve, long suffering.
Then Robin is back to breathing into the receiver. “Yeah, after the beep. Beeeep!” followed by the actual answering machine’s beep.)
The thing is, he’s very fond of Steve. Super fond. So seeing him every day would be ideal, and it had been ideal up to last week, where Steve had mysteriously evaporated and left Eddie to sit by his phone like a desperate housewife. When will my husband return from war and all that. It was deeply humiliating but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it.
“The air around you turns stale; you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand as something brushes across your shoulders; the forest seems to close in around you, squeezing, trapping— Prince Llywellyn!” Will slams his hands onto the table with a resounding bang, and Lucas shrieks. “What is your move?”
“Uhhh,” says Lucas.
“Do an intuition check,” Dustin suggests. He’s on the edge of his seat, cap dangerously close to falling and exposing his hat hair.
“Silence!” roars his dungeon master. “Is your name Prince Llywellyn?” Dustin looks appropriately cowed as he shakes his head, cornflower blue eyes darting towards Lucas once more.
Lucas taps his fingers on his jaw. High school has evened him out, and he’s settled neatly into the space between D&D crazy and uninterested in the game. Basically, he’s not grinding his teeth down to stubs like everyone else at the table. “I want to swing at whatever is behind me,” he decides.
“No!” shouts Mike.
“As you wish, my Prince.”
Lucas takes a deep breath and closes his palms together. Gently, he presses a kiss to his knuckles before letting the D20 clatter onto the table.
“Three,” drawls Will. “Well, Prince Llywellyn, it has been nice playing with you but your journey is over.” And in a gesture that nearly smacks Dustin in the face, he knocks over the thimble that is supposed to be Lucas’s character. The table groans.
Lucas sighs, giving them a What can I do? face that he’d clearly picked up from Steve. “How’d I die?”
“From being a mega loser,” Max butts in, the screen door slamming behind her as she enters the house. She levels the group with an unimpressed look, and yeah. Yeah, Steve is rubbing off on the kids because her eyebrow raise is an uncanny copy of the boy.
Poor Sinclair flushes several colors in the span of a second. “What— no— I’m!”
“A loser,” El finishes for him. She appears behind Max with armfuls of groceries; a lone chip bag floats behind her, bobbing up and down cheerily. Lucas pouts.
“Snacks!” Joyce Byers sings, brushing past Max and El.
He wanders over as the kids start to gorge themselves on chips. Joyce beams at him, teeth off white from coffee and cigarettes. Ugh, he loves this woman. “Ms. Byers,” he begins, “thank you for having me.” Twenty one years and those Southern manners Wayne taught him were missing from his vocabulary, but somehow she’d managed to wrangle them to the surface without knowing. It was a miracle.
Joyce’s eyes soften. “Of course, honey. Will was so excited to meet you.”
“Mooom!” Will hisses.
Laughing, Joyce shakes her head. She looks over at Eddie and winks. He grins at her, tugging his hair nervously.
“Oh!” she says. Her hand flies to her mouth, covering her surprised smile, but her eyes twinkle nonetheless.
“Ms. Byers?” he asks.
“Your ring,” she says breathlessly, “did Steve give it to you?”
He sighs, “I don’t understand why everyone keeps asking me that. He gave it to me last week when we cleaned out his house. Is it cursed or something?” That would be pretty metal, actually. It would add to his image: satanic metalhead with long hair, now with a cursed ring!
“Or something.” Joyce puts a carton of orange juice on a shelf of the fridge, closes it with her hip. “He didn’t tell you what it was?”
“No?” he frowns.
She rolls her eyes fondly. “That boy, I swear.”
He shrugs helplessly, mystified as to how she and Steve had such a close relationship after Jonathan and Steve’s potholed relationship. “Is it… a joke?”
“Oh, no, honey,” she rushes to say. “No, not at all. You should probably talk to him.”
“I’ve been trying,” Eddie grumbles, “but he’s been busy. Or he’s avoiding me.”
She shakes her head as if used to Steve Harrington and his caprices. “He has Mondays off, if that helps any.”
“It helps plenty. Thanks, Ms. Byers.”
“Of course,” agrees Joyce. She pats him gently on the back and leans in to whisper, “He’s just shy, I think.”
Steve Harrington, shy? Hell hath frozen over. The bastard is hiding something from him, and it seems that Eddie will just have to shake it out of him.
—
Before he can do that though, he has to go home and sleep. Then he has to play guitar because he's rusty and he misses his sweetheart (she's predictable, unlike Eddie’s other sweetheart). The weekend passes in a weed fueled haze, and before he can go anywhere on Monday, Wayne is pinching his ear and ordering him to pick up his prescription.
Wayne takes the same medicine the doctor prescribed Steve after he’d been diagnosed with PTSD, but Steve's never actually taken any of it. He’d “lost” the doctor’s note. If there’s one thing that was imperfect about Steve Harrington, it was his vehement refusal to take any and all medication. It was like feeding a fussy child cough syrup, except the child was an adult male that could snap Eddie’s neck with his thighs.
But the meds helped. Eddie knew that, and it’s why he’s so strict about Wayne taking his pills every day, even on the good ones. It’s also why Eddie keeps trying to wheedle the pharmacist into giving him Steve’s unfilled prescription anyway.
“I need ID from the patient,” Jess, said pharmacist, says. She looks more amused than anything.
“Doesn’t everyone know Steve Harrington? You know Steve Harrington,” he tries. He leans over the counter, fluttering his lashes.
“I do not.” Jess punches some buttons on the register and hides her smile behind a well placed elbow.
Eddie spins around, his braid nearly smacking Jess in the face. “Miss! Do you— oh, Ms. Henderson!”
Laughing, Claudia Henderson replies, “Hi dear. How’ve you been?” She’s in line behind him, hands clasped over her purse and toffee hair in manufactured curls.
“I’ve been pretty good, how about you? You’re looking young and beautiful as always, Claudia.” He leans backwards against the counter.
Jess coughs very loudly. “Mr. Munson.”
“Right, sorry!” He turns around, grinning weakly. “You know how I get around pretty women.”
“Annoying?” Jess mumbles under her breath. She hands him his change and Wayne’s meds, then grumbles, “Please have Mr. Harrington come by himself next time.”
“You got it, Jess!” They both know Steve will not be coming around, but it’s the thought that counts.
He steps aside and waits for Claudia to pick up her prescription. “How’s Dustin?” he asks.
“You see him every day, dear.”
“How’s Mews the Second?”
“Well fed.” She glances away, blushing. Her pearl necklace stands out against the pink flush traveling down her neck. “How’s your uncle?”
He stares at her, open mouthed. “Really?”
“He’s a very nice man!” she admonishes.
“Not to me,” he whines.
“He’s lovely to you, Eddie.” He huffs and crosses his arms, the very picture a petulant toddler. “Congratulations, by the way! I haven’t been able to catch Steve, but I’m overjoyed for you two. He looks happy these days. Poor boy, you know how he tends to be; just so very sad sometimes.”
Eddie frowns at her. At least he isn’t alone in thinking that Steve looks like a kicked puppy. It’s those big hazel eyes, he swears. “Thank you?”
“The ring is gorgeous! You’re a very lucky man, Ed.” She toddles over and pats his cheek. Her rose scented shampoo overwhelms his senses briefly, and Eddie sputters her name as he’s tugged into a hug.
“Oh!” gasps Jess. She leans over the counter and smiles. “Congrats, Mr. Munson. Er, Mr. Harrington?”
“What?”
“Tell me when Steve is free. I’ll bring over some cake!” Ms. Henderson giggles before waving goodbye.
Eddie turns to Jess, wide eyed. “What was that?” he wonders.
Instead, Jess gives him an incredulous look. “What? Do you not want people to congratulate you on your engagement?”
“My what???”
“Oh dear,” says Jess with a sigh.
—
The door to Steve’s house groans under the weight of his hands as he pounds against it. “Steve Harrington!” he yells. “Open this door or I’m going to break it!” Wood gives way under his fists and he yelps as he tumbles face forward towards the ground.
Robin catches him before he can crack his skull on the concrete steps. “Oh good,” she calmly says, “we’re finally doing this. Steve!” She swings a bag over her shoulder and pushes past Eddie. “Have fun!”
Eddie is still reeling when Steve appears at the door. His shirt is untucked and his bronze hair is smushed to one side like he’s been lying on it. He stares at Eddie, then the empty space where his car once was, then back to Eddie. He sighs.
“Eddie,” Steve grimaces. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he breathes. He tucks his hair behind his ears, then untucks it, then tucks in only one side.
“Is there something you need?” he asks.
“I think we need to talk,” says Eddie decidedly and pushes past Steve into the house. Steve makes a garbled, anxious sound from behind him.
“About what?” he manages to say.
“I think you know what, Steve.”
The boy’s face cycles through a few different emotions before it settles on guilt. “I can explain.”
Eddie gives him a wry smile for his troubles. “Good.”
“I’m going to make tea first.” Steve turns. The backs of his ears are darkening to a soft red as he scrambles to the kitchen.
Eddie has been in his house once before, on the day he was given the ring. The walls are the same cream color they were then, but now there are picture frames breaking up the blank space. He pauses at a picture of Steve with his arms around Dustin and Robin, squeezing them to his sides and beaming so hard his eyes are closed. Robin’s hair is a mess of golden strands and sand, and there’s a nasty sunburn crawling its way along Dustin’s bare shoulders. 1985 is written in thick, black font underneath Steve’s face, over the shirt he’s wearing.
“That was a month after Starcourt,” Steve whispers. He’s somehow crept next to Eddie while he was observing, and when Eddie turns to look at him his eyes are warm. “I couldn’t let either of them out of my sight. I was like that after spring break, too.”
His eyes fall to another picture, this one more familiar. Eddie is leaning against his bed’s headboard, guitar pick caught between his teeth. Steve is laying over his feet, a vinyl cover turned over in his hands as he reads what’s on the back. “I really care about you, Eddie,” says Steve. Something hot and uncomfortable sticks to Eddie’s throat as he nods.
“Tea?”
“Oh, yeah,” Steve remembers. “Tea.”
He scampers off. Why is Eddie mad again? Is he even mad? It had been hard to wrangle an emotion to the surface of his overcrowded mind when he’d been driving here, even harder now that Steve Harrington is looking at him with his doe eyes. But while Eddie may have flunked out of calculus two times, he isn’t dumb. Steve knows what the ring means and gave it to him on purpose. Steve likes him.
“Eddie?”
No, Eddie isn’t mad. He’s not really even upset. But he’s not going to leave without pulling the truth straight from Steve’s mouth.
“Eddie.” Steve’s hand lands gently on his shoulder. “Tea?”
“Tea,” he nods.
They sit in the family room, hip to hip, staring at the blank TV. Steve is breathing shakily beside him. The warmth of the tea settles into his lungs, and he licks the taste off his lips. “Claudia thinks we’re getting married,” he begins.
The knee beside his jerks, knocking into the side of the couch. “That wasn’t—”
“Your intention?” Eddie sets his mug on the table and looks at him, eyebrows raised in mock surprise. “Because I think it was.”
“If you know it, then why are you acting stupid?” Steve glares at him. This is the Steve Eddie is the most acquainted with; Steve from high school. Except, not really. Steve has changed since then, has apologized innumerable times and made amends, but he’s still an argumentative bitch at his core.
Lucky for him, so is Eddie.
“You think I’m acting stupid? You’re the one who proposed to me without ever explaining that it was a proposal!”
“It wasn’t supposed to be. You wanted the ring so I gave it to you.”
“And you didn’t know how people would react when they saw it, right Steve?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Of course I knew. I don’t see how that’s a problem, unless you’ve got something against people thinking you’re gay.”
“I am gay, you asshole!” Eddie flings his hands up. “I’m gay and in love with you, if you haven’t noticed. Open those pretty eyes of yours, Harrington!”
Steve gapes at him. His mouth opens, then closes, then opens, like he’s chewing very slowly. A dark blush splatters across his collarbones, and this time when he opens his mouth a weak uhh sound is all that he says.
“And I’m not an idiot. You like me, too.”
The blush spreads further down and oh, Eddie wants to know just how far down it goes. To his chest? To his stomach? To his—
“I’m— yes, I mean. Yes, I like you.”
Eddie grins. He shuffles his legs so he’s on his knees and crawls closer, placing one hand on the armrest and trapping Steve between him and the couch. Steve squeaks. “That so, Stevie?”
“Yes. Yeah, Eddie. It’s so.”
He leans down. Their faces are millimeters apart, yet it feels like miles of distance. Steve keeps licking his lips. “You wanna tell me your thought process on the ring, baby?” he prods teasingly.
Surging up against him, he tries to press his lips to Eddie’s. Eddie leans back at the last moment and grabs his jaw between the hand not trapping Steve, squeezing his fingers into soft, plush skin. “Nuh uh, Stevie. You tell me or I leave.”
“Eddie—” Steve jerks against his hand and glowers. “It wasn’t like it was planned. But you picked the ring and I thought—” he surges up again, mouth temptingly pink and teeth flashing in a snarl when Eddie pushes him back. “Fuck you, dude. Do you want me or not?”
Eddie laughs. It’s not a very nice laugh; it’s the one he reserves for belittling asshole preps, and for when one of his players rolls a shitty number and he’s allowed to do the fucked up thing he’s been planning. Steve’s hazel eyes widen. “Aw, baby. You know I do. But right now I want you to keep talking.” He shakes Steve’s jaw. “Can you do that? If you do, I’ll give you that kiss.”
“You— you picked the ring. Said you wanted it. I knew what people would think and I realized I wanted them to think that. I wanted them to know that you were mine, I was yours, I don't know, Eddie, kiss me!”
He kisses him. Steve makes a soft, pleased sound and winds his arms around his neck. Their mouths press together in rushed, sticky movements. Eddie’s hand settles over Steve’s sternum and spreads possessively atop of him. There is that familiar urge to crawl into his skin, to bite him, to never be apart. He wants to ruin him so thoroughly that Steve won’t ever take his ring back, because there will be no one after Eddie. His hands travel down to Steve’s stomach, pressing up on his knees to lie over him.
Steve makes a weak sound of protest as Eddie digs his thumbs into his waist and presses him onto the couch. He gasps as he hitches his thigh up and licks into his mouth with broad, filthy strokes.
“Eddie,” he whispers, and that was the last complete word he could say for some time after.
Later, as they lay together on the couch, Steve rubs his cheek against Eddie’s chest. “I really like the ring on you,” admits Steve. “It’s never suited anyone in my family.”
“I like you,” he says. Steve’s hand is steady as he moves to press the ring more firmly onto his finger. Eddie drops a kiss to the crown of his head and grins.