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The door’s not even locked when Eddie steps into the foyer of Steve’s house that afternoon. The place is a fucking mess — muddy footprints in the hallway and a coffee table littered with cigarette butts and crushed beer cans and bowls with crusty, dried-down tomato sauce along the rim. Eddie can see a fly buzzing lazily over one of them, touching down to walk on a stiff piece of old spaghetti noodle like a tightrope, and where the hell is Steve?
Eddie listens for him in the living room. Does a little circle, follows the sound of…
Oh, Jesus Christ. Is that The Smiths?
Morrissey softly wails haven’t had a dream in a long time, and Eddie tracks the sound down the hallway toward Steve’s dad’s office like a detective in a gritty noir film, chasing bloodied handprints to the inevitable scene of a crime.
And what a pathetic fucking crime scene it is.
Harrington’s lying like a corpse on the carpet, arms limp at his sides, palms up, dead-eyed stare at the ceiling and tear tracks running into his temples. Bottle of whiskey propped in a loose fist. Precarious, threatening to tip at any moment and spill all over his dirty shirt.
“Lord knows it would be the first time,” Steve croaks at the ceiling in a ruined off-tune rasp, his lips barely moving as he mumbles along. Jesus Christ. Jesus Tapdancing Christ. This is above Eddie’s paygrade, and he ain’t even getting paid.
Eddie clears his throat, raps his knuckles gently against the doorframe. “Uh. Harrington? You alive in here, man?” he asks stupidly, because, like, what the hell do you even say to a grown man lying on the carpet crying to The Smiths?
“Uh huh,” comes Steve’s weak reply. He doesn’t even look at him. Doesn’t take his sightless gaze off the ceiling beams of his dad’s weird all-dark-wood-everything office.
The record runs out, and then there’s nothing but the soft hiss of static, the vinyl waiting to be flipped, but Steve doesn’t move to fix it, just keeps mumbling the last line of the song to himself like he’s actually fucking lost it for real this time, let his poor booze-soaked brain crack like an egg and leak runny yolk all over the rug.
Eddie steps into the room. One cautious foot forward, then decides fuck caution and marches over to the weepy remains of a fallen King; plants one foot on either side of Steve’s hips, careful not to step on the guy’s arms by mistake.
He looks down his nose at Harrington, towering over him, arms crossed in what he hopes is a stern, intimidating posture that demands attention.
Clearly, it doesn’t.
Steve still won’t look at him, not directly, though his lips tick up a fraction on one side and he lifts his head off the floor just enough to steal another sip from his bottle before he lies back down. Dribbles whiskey down his chin, doesn’t bother to wipe it off.
And Eddie just—
Eddie just falls to his knees right where he’s standing, sinks his body down nice and easy until he’s straddling Steve’s lap, until his palms come to rest on Steve’s warm chest, until they slide up to cup his jaw and lift his head and force him to fucking look.
Steve looks. Smiles for real this time, even as his eyes droop down and he looks so sad. “Hi,” he says, the word cracking on his tongue.
Eddie kind of wants to cry. He rubs his thumb across Steve’s chin, over the edge of his jaw and down his throat, tracing the path of the liquor spill. Wishing he could clean it with his mouth instead.
“Hi,” Eddie answers with a shake of his head. Snap the fuck out of it. His friend is having some sort of crisis of heart and mind and musical taste; it’s just really not the time to go falling apart over the shape of a boy’s Adam’s apple or the smooth glide of skin across wet skin, so he swallows the weird lump in his throat and forces a smile. “Whatcha doing down here?”
“Mm.” Steve’s eyes drift closed, and he flips his hands over, spreads his fingers and digs them into the carpet with a soft sigh like he’s petting a cat. “Floor time.”
“I see that.” Eddie taps his cheek — gently, just enough to keep him here. “Hey. Hey, open your eyes for me, Harrington, come on.”
“Nuh uh,” Steve pouts.
“Steve,” and Steve’s eyes fly open, doll-like, wide and sincere and rimmed with pretty wet lashes.
Eddie’s thumb is on Steve’s chin again, dry now, but Steve lifts his head and sucks the tip of it into his mouth.
“Okay, let’s get you up,” Eddie says before he can do something stupid like push his thumb further in, feel the warm wet heat envelope his— Nope. Not even going there.
He hauls Steve off the floor, the motion accompanied by a series of jumbled groans that might be protest and might be a plastered twenty year old’s last words. Steve’s dead weight in Eddie’s arms, lifeless, heavy limbs, and Eddie doesn’t let himself think about how he was dead weight in Steve’s arms just a couple months ago. Doesn’t let the memory of that black watery void flood his mind as he scoops Steve off the floor and deposits him on a couch, curls him up fetal style, brushes his hair out of his eyes and tosses a spare throw blanket over him and tells him to go to sleep.
Steve starts snoring almost immediately, so Eddie makes himself at home, goes about making dinner and setting the place to rights while Steve sleeps it off. Which should be weird, maybe, wandering around the Harrington McMansion unsupervised, but he’s had a key to the house “for emergencies” since the graduation party back in May, and Steve likes having Eddie around.
He told him as much, one time when they were sharing a joint on the top of Steve’s roof. Climbed a ladder in the backyard to sit up above the garage, and Steve looked over at him with those big, pretty eyes and exhaled smoke and said, “‘S just nice. Having someone cook for me for once.”
Then he went back to looking at the stars like nothing happened, so.
So.
Eddie flutters around the house like an overeager maid while dinner cooks. He soaks dishes in the sink and mops the foyer floor, plucks soiled socks out of the couch cushions and sweeps crushed popcorn or some shit from the grout in the kitchen tiles. He’s just putting the finishing touches on the chicken alfredo he whipped up when Steve comes stumbling into the kitchen, one eye closed, shirt rucked up, scratching at a patch of scarred skin beside his happy trail.
Got no fucking business making a hangover look like that.
“Oh, good, you didn’t die,” Eddie says, ignoring himself.
Steve groans, winces like the words have knives in them, like the sound is slicing his head clean in half. “Nrrgh. What time is it?”
“Time for some aspirin and a joint for you, I’d wager.”
“Har har. No, really, I can’t—” Steve scrubs his eye with one hand, gestures at the clock with the other. “My eye’s doing the thing again, I can’t read it.”
Ah, right. Steve's bad eye. The left one, the one that goes all wonky and shuts off on him sometimes when he drinks too much or sleeps too long or not enough, or when his migraines just feel like being especially petty with him that day.
Eddie hands him a bowl of pasta. “It’s just after eight.”
“Thanks.”
They eat in silence at the kitchen island, nothing but squelching noodle noises and the metallic scrape of forks and a big, painful gulp when Steve swallows the aspirin Eddie handed him. Eddie’s not sure if Steve meant thanks for the food or the water or the pills or the cleaning or the not letting him throw up and die on his dad’s floor, but he accepts it. The gratitude. Hungover and half-assed though it may be.
“So…” Eddie drawls when they’ve slurped their bowls clean.
He’s trying to figure out how to ask, how to get to the part where he says hey, why did Wheeler call me to say that Sinclair called him to say that Dustin’s been crying all week because you won’t talk to him and now he thinks you fucking hate him? Why did the little twerps send me on a rescue mission? Why’d I find you half-drowned on the floor?
Only he doesn’t really know how to say it. How to make it more succinct. He’s having a hard enough time keeping track of who said what when and what it all has to do with Harrington giving his favorite kid the cold shoulder all week until said kid broke down in tears, and he’s thinking that maybe he should just give up; drop the subject, crack a joke, ask why the fuck do you own a Smiths record in the first place? Who are you, huh? Jonathan’s sadder, lamer cousin?
As always, Steve beats him to it. Cuts to the chase, tone flat and eyes dead in a way that unnerves Eddie when he says, unprompted, “Dustin called me bullshit.”
And maybe it’s not really fair to be unnerved, because Steve’s the one who’s actually seen the light leave someone's eyes. Eddie’s eyes, glazing over while he bled out on the ground and that just- that just—
“Bullshit?” Eddie asks to shake the thought. There’s something important about the word, a significance to the way the syllables pour from Steve’s mouth, like he’s trying not to regurgitate them right into his dinner bowl. “What, uh- what does-?”
Steve stares at his fork. Twirls it around, stabs it at nothing, and then his eyes are welling up and he's pinching the end of his nose and Eddie's scooting closer, tugging his wrist away from his face because he hates when Steve refuses to let himself cry.
"None of that now, come on," he admonishes gently. “What does bullshit mean?”
Steve looks at him then, tears clinging to his lash line, desperately grasping the quarry cliff’s edge. “It’s what— what Nancy called me. What she said to me, the night she- when she…”
...Oh, fuck.
Oh, goddamnit, Henderson. What the fuck, little man? What the actual fuck?
Eddie sucks his teeth. “And Dustin knows that?”
“Yeah.”
Yeah, Steve says, the way a grieving mother says it when she identifies a body. Jesus Christ.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says aloud, “That’s just— that’s… You’re not, you know.” He gives Steve's wrist a little shake, because it’s suddenly imperative that he knows this. He has to know this. “You know that, right?”
Steve lets out a noise that would be a laugh if this were the slightest bit funny. “Sure.”
“Steve, I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
“Please look at me,” he begs, because his eyes keep darting away, wandering off toward the dark corners of the room like he wants nothing more than to go curl up in one of them and hide. Eddie grips his jaw. “I mean it.”
Steve kisses him. Messy and sloppy and not on the mouth, just a wet drag of lips along the curve of his jaw as Steve falls forward and buries his face in Eddie’s neck, shoulders shaking. He’s getting Eddie’s shirt all wet, and Eddie couldn’t give a shit, just wraps his arms tight around Steve and lets him shake. “Come on,” Eddie says. “This is a couch activity.”
He doesn’t let go as they make their way to the living room, just hugs Steve from behind and waddles behind him in big awkward steps that make Steve laugh through his tears. Plops down sideways on the couch with Steve still wrapped up in his arms, with Steve’s back against his chest. With Steve between his open legs.
Eddie kisses the crown of his head. “You’re okay.” You’re perfect. I like you so much. He turns the TV on low for the background noise. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Steve wipes his face and fumbles through a toned-down retelling of events, clearly trying not to make himself cry again, and Eddie scratches circles into Steve’s back with blunt nails as he speaks.
It goes like this: Dustin was pushing him about something like he always does, and Steve was acting like an obstinate bitch about it like he always does, and somewhere along the way they both forgot the part where they're supposed to back off and apologize when either one goes too far, so the argument just built and built and built until Dustin hit the nuke button. Went for the jugular, game over, boom!
“I just left him on the sidewalk,” Steve sniffs miserably. “I told him to get out of my car, and I just left him to walk all the way across town. God, I’m such a shit.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am! Who fucking does that? It was getting dark out. He could have gotten hurt.”
He's not wrong, and the news anchor drones on in the tense moment that follows. They both know too well all the ways this town can hurt a kid when the sun goes down.
But they don't need to worry about that. Not this time, at least. Eddie presses his forehead between Steve’s shoulder blades, squeezes him tighter for a second. “I drove him home that night."
“You did?” Steve whips around, twisting his spine to try and look at Eddie.
“Yeah,” Eddie huffs a little laugh, turning him back around. “Spotted him while I was driving home, gave him a ride in the van, sent Claudia all my love, et cetera. Safe and sound.”
Steve’s shoulders relax, but he brings a hand to his mouth. Chews the skin around his thumbnail. “Did he seem… Did he seem okay?”
“Hmm. Seemed pissed. Wouldn’t talk to me, but I didn’t really pry. Figured it was standard Party drama.”
“Was he really crying when Mike called you today?”
“That’s the word on the street, yeah. You haven’t talked to him in a week, man; he’s probably losing his goddamn mind. Little dude’s obsessed with you, Steve.”
Steve hangs his head and groans. “Shit. I know. I know, I just… I mean, how do I even, like… I mean, yeah, I’m still, like, kinda hurt, or whatever, but surely Dustin knows I wouldn’t just ditch him. He’s my brother.”
“I know that. Pretty sure he does, too, just, uh. Y'know. He might need to hear you say it.”
“What would I even say now? ‘Fuck you, bud, I love you’ doesn’t really feel like it’s gonna fix anything.”
Eddie snickers into Steve’s shoulder, and Steve turns around again, pouting with his arms crossed. Looks way too cute for Eddie to be sitting this close to him right now, Jesus. “Well, what would you recommend then, asshole?”
Eddie laughs again, biting down on a grin as he reaches a hand up and pokes Steve right in his furrowed little brow. “It’s easy, Stevie boy. First, you tell them how you feel, and then you make sure they know you’re not going anywhere.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Oh, so pretty much exactly what I just said?”
“Is ‘fuck you’ a feeling you’re having?”
“Toward you right now?” Steve smirks, “Yeah, kinda.”
“Oh, well fuck you, too, then!” Eddie laughs. He leans in and puts his lips right to the shell of Steve’s ear, drops his voice, lets it rumble low and smooth. “Bit of advice, sweetheart?”
Steve shivers. “Yeah?”
“Don’t be mean to me when you’re in tickling range,” and then it’s on; Eddie pins Steve between his thighs and tickles him for dear life, fingers digging into his scarred sides while Steve thrashes and hollers and squeals, begging, “Okay, okay, I yield!”
“Damn right, you do,” Eddie grins, drops a quick, triumphant peck on a scattering of moles. They should talk about this. The kissing. They haven’t yet, so they should.
But fuck it. Eddie doesn’t want to, and Steve’s got enough talking to do. “So you’ll talk to Dustin?”
Steve sighs and settles into Eddie’s hold. “Yeah, I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Another quick kiss, this one right above his ear. “Good boy.”