Work Text:
What it boils down to is this:
He’s man enough to admit when he gets it wrong—but it’s…it’s just that he was pretty damn sure he knew the boy fairly backward-forwards by now, honest to god: Eddie could be, had always been a storyteller, a weaver of grand tales long before he slotted monsters in and mastered his dragon cave or whatever it was called. Even after he minded his dungeons, though: there had always been a softness, hidden deeper, something you had to look for harder and harder still as time went on but when you found it, it was the same beating heart of love and sacrifice and almost innocent romance, trussed up in blood and gore and certain death by dice roll, so far as he could tell.
Point being, Eddie’s always been a soft heart, forever to his detriment, but even so: Wayne never even once thought all this shit would have started with him; with his own blood.
Now, in fairness: Steve’s as close as his these days himself; holding the blood of the boy you consider your own inside his body on a trek through hell does wonders for skirting the awkwardness, the prejudices of names and families and reputations, jumping knee-deep into the getting-to-know-you part of it all, trudged through across Eddie’s hospital bed when Steve stops in for his god-knows-how-many-times-a-day rounds to the occupied rooms holding the worst off of their numbers. There should be one holding Steve, at that, but Wayne doesn’t pry. Not his place—sure as shit not yet, at least—and Steve does seem disturbingly old hat at the whole thing. Best to leave the man to his routine.
And so, y’know, all-in-all, for Wayne’s part for certain: he’s been pleasantly surprised by just how much he’s liked what he’s found in the trenches, drugging through the mud of getting to see who the hell Steve Harrington…is.
So when Eddie wakes up, and the Harrington boy’s not actually there, but Wayne tells him how often he most certainly is, the way Eddie stops, and stares, seems surprised but something close-akin to hopeful, so: Wayne figures he’ll watch how this thing goes.
When Eddie slips back to sleep before Steve makes it back from one of the other rooms—too late for the volunteer drive, for sorting clothes and canned goods, so he’s got to be standing guard in another patient's hall—but just before Eddie slides back under he begs, and Wayne thinks the franticness can only be blamed so much on the meds when he insists tell him I wasn’t trying to be a hero, please Wayne, make sure he knows I listened as good as I could, I really tried and then he’s out, and Wayne thinks: oh yeah.
He’ll be watching real close how this thing plays out. Whatever it is. However it meanders from here.
Which starts slow but then again not; Steve pops into the trailer once Eddie’s settled back at home between pickups and drop-offs at the community center-type setup that’s still taking over the high school, helping with bandage changes and checking if meds have been taken, which amounts to something like 10 pitstops a day on average and not enough time in between for Eddie to completely lose the flush in his cheeks, which Steve takes in with concern by the end of the day and asks Eddie about twenty times if he’s sure he took all his antibiotics, all the pills meant to treat any fever or infection, everything—
Wayne’s walked in from work in between that back-and-forth enough times to have it memorised by rote.
“Nurse Harrington keeping you on the straight and narrow, boy?” he quips every time, not just to prove the red cheeks aren’t something to worry over. And maybe he does exactly what Steve takes to doing, which is counting the day’s pills just to be sure, be safe.
He only does it once, though. Steve’s not satisfied until something closer to round three of them all adding up right.
But the meandering of it all starts to take real shape when Eddie’s bandages start getting smaller, start coming off to look just a little too raw but they’re ready to breathe and scab thicker now, they’re told over and again, but where Steve could lay off? His stops don’t change one bit in frequency, just in task: he washes the tender skin with practiced hands that know how to do this far too well, more experienced than Wayne really wants to dwell on save to be grateful because despite a pharmacy’s worth of various medical miracles apparently up for fighting off demotic rabies—Wayne may not know what happened exactly, but he knows what a goddamn bite mark looks like—and, well. Wayne doesn’t really want to dwell on questions that he won’t get answers to, especially when the answers are also certainly more tragic than the wondering to be done, so he just…sits and stays grateful for someone willing to make sure his boy’s coming along not just well, but…‘exceptionally well’, according to that Owens fellow.
And that’s down to Steve. No bones about it.
But then Eddie gets his balance back. His strength back, his stamina back—little by little, it’s nothing like overnight but it happens, and Wayne is grateful. And the community hub closes to just weekend pickups with lines of cars backed up to block the whole street because the need’s still there but the urgency’s passed, always does when people hurt for whatever the suits and the feds deem to be ‘too long’. And Steve Harrington’s presence never…closed up shop, like everything else once the crisis has dimmed.
Steve Harrington stays.
Sometimes he stops by the trailer a few lots down—Mayfields, if Wayne remembers, she’d been bad off and Eddie’d tried to explain her downright impressive recovery out of nowhere in wizard speak that Wayne couldn’t make heads or tails of but she’s on crutches now, out of the wheelchair, doing well enough with a pair of glasses it seems and Wayne’s happy to see it, but sometimes Steve starts there. Leaves a Pyrex with foil on the top and ruffles her hair and grins big when she ducks and smacks him away and sees well enough, apparently, not to miss even once.
But then?
Steve Harrington makes his way to the Munsons' and, well, yeah; he stays.
And when Eddie stops needing bandages rewrapped, and rides to appointments for stitches to be snipped out and healing to be evaluated because he’s technically not cleared to drive—once he is, and once the appointments are set to six-month intervals just as a precaution, Steve Harrington stays for…long periods of time, lengthier stretches at a go. Not just pitstops between other obligations.
The door on Eddie’s room stays shut for the hours Wayne’s home more than it ever has before, and, well.
Wayne’s not blind enough not to guess where this particular road’s meandering off to.
And then there are all the little additions. There’s a brown-glass bottle that looks like it might be a health hazard that Eddie’s scrubbing, and a bundle of yellow hyacinths—Wayne’s never seen those before, but their presence may have something to do with Eddie’s day-long trip a day or two ago out toward Notre Dame—and then they’re gone between one shift and the next just to be replaced with an empty Yoo-hoo with the label clearly shellacked for posterity—and to avoid taking the brunt of any drips, because the damn thing’s full to bursting it daffodils, but only the orange-headed ones.
Eddie would have cut off a toe before admitting his favorite flower.
Well. Before
Eddie from before would have done that. Eddie right now is staring with goddamn hearts in his eyes at the frankly absurd bouquet, chin in his hand and looking…
Aww, hell.
Wayne realizes, in that exact fucking instant, two things. One: he’s pretty sure he knows what Steve Harrington’s favorite flower is. And two?
He’s never actually seen his boy in love before.
Now he sees it. Sees it all the goddamn time, and it warms him as much as it makes him wary, ‘cause as much as he’s warmed to Steve, hugged him over a touchdown or threw up hands at a pisspoor ref, shared and beer and forewent a shovel talk because while part of him still wants to give one, it’s hard when these two numbskulls look at each other quite the way they do—he just worries, less because he thinks either of them will misstep, not meaning to, but more because the world is what it is.
But he lets the whole thing go about its meandering, and it’s mostly just more of those little things, for at least a little while. But it’s not a little while; it’s close-on to every day, even if it’s just a second, a peck on the lips when Steve’s giving Maxine a lift to school, a ride to work that neither strictly needs just to spend the drive with their hands both covering the gearshift, Eddie on his way to the auto shop that’s taking a chance on him because a guy at the plant’s brother owns the place, and Steve’s got a gig with the Buckley girl at the new Subway a block away since the video place got quaked to pieces, and it’s close enough to the highway she can make her classes at the community college before she moves next year, or the year after, whenever her paychecks add up just right.
It’s nearly every day, and the little things? They’re not just little things. They’re small things that clearly mean big things, even if Wayne only thinks he can suss out about half of either. Eddie’s guitar pick, the one he’s worn as long as he’s lived here, disappears one day and Wayne starts looking around the place as casually as he can for where it might have gone until Steve shows up the next day, polo unbuttoned so the familiar chain’s on full display, and Eddie?
Eddie’s got himself a new pick on a new chain with a spiky bat etched into the center, and a…dirty, but not quite rusty nail curled around it in a way that took some real effort, the pointy part dulled deliberately and with care as Eddie plays with the metal almost obsessively, like he’s prone to with his hair but instead of hiding he’s…
Preening. Good god.
On it goes, though, a steady rhythm between them that sets Wayne’s bones at ease: Eddie loses a ring and gains a new one, more classic but still so utterly him it almost fits better, certainly worn with more pride while the one it replaced shows up next to the pick around Steve’s neck, and Wayne doesn’t really need to read too far into that. Nope.
But it goes on, is the point, until Wayne’s coming home from his shift to find Eddie in…
A button down shirt Wayne’s never seen before, in a material Wayne’s never seen up close before because why the hell would be? Couldn’t afford that in a million years.
Eddie looks slick as hell in it, though.
“Harrington wining and dining you all fancy?”
Wayne doesn’t think it comes out as anything more than a question. But there’s something a little sick in his chest that even he doesn’t like, not because of how it feels but because it’s there at all: Steve doesn’t deserve the tug below his sternum that wonders if Steve thinks he can buy his boy. Wayne knows he doesn’t have to.
Wayne knows he’d never do that.
“Hmm?” Eddie looks up where he’s—dear lord—trying to figure our cuff links and Wayne’s been in a handful of weddings, this part he knows works the same no matter the cost.
“Oh, ummm,” Eddie’s flustered, good lord, there’s a first for everything; “the first part for sure. Not the second part, really. Once in a while, for like,” and Eddie clears his throat, smiles when Wayne lets go of his wrists and shakes out the sleeves playfully, more himself: “fun.”
Fun, huh. Right.
“He knows I don’t like fancy so much, so he wouldn’t ever make it like a, a regular thing,” Eddie explains, smoothing his shirt, trying not to wrinkle it while he seems to try and decide whether it should be tucked in; “it’s just sometimes, as a,” he glances as himself sidelong in a mirror that doesn’t stretch low enough to be helpful, slipping the hem up like it’s hidden inside his slick black trousers, then letting it fall, weighing his options: “a little special thing. Sometimes.”
Eddie bites his lip, frowns, and undoes his belt—plain, leather, nice leather—and opts to tuck the shirt.
“So he’s wining and dining you every other day of the week,” Wayne observes, even if he’s not sure what he’s trying to get at; “but not-fancy.”
“Except tonight,” Eddie agrees, and pulls his hair back like that’s the next question—tie it or not; “we’re like, really close to having enough almost half the money to rent that little place on the edge of town?”
And Wayne’s well aware of it. It’d fit them, and Buckley too for as long as she sticks nearby. And maybe when she leaves they look for something of the same, but follow her lead as to where. It is a step forward worth celebrating. But—
“All this is from the places Steve’s dickwad father orders his clothes from,” Eddie spins a little, because if he lifts on his toes he can check his profile; “and we’re going to a place he takes clients to when he has to pass through town.” Eddie reaches up and apparently decides that where said place actually is, merits tamed-and-tied hair.
“Steve’s like, ninety-nine percent sure his secretary won’t even bat an eyelash,” Eddie says through the hair tie held in his teeth; “especially since they’re probably screwing.”
Wayne snorts; because of course. It’s Richard Harrington.
“And you’re going to…” Wayne asks it like the leading question it is because men can’t go on a goddamn date in this town. In most towns. Not together. Not overt. Not out loud like this—
“I work for a record label,” Eddie says through a grin, playful as his twists up his hair. “It’s a working dinner.”
Wayne swallows a sigh, or something real close. Shit, his boys are bold.
“It bothers him,” Eddie adds, voice lower, more sedate and sensitive. “Not being able to take me out,” he clarifies, glances out the window to see if his ride’s pulled in. “I don’t mind, like at all, y’know, and I’ve tried to tell him, but I think maybe I don’t care because I knew it was never in the cards,” Eddie shakes his head, his smile not quite sad, but…close.
“He,” Eddie breathes out slow, eyes still fixed out the window; “he spends so much time thinking up ways to show me,” and Eddie doesn’t have to spell out what he wants to show; not for either one of them, and especially when he wraps up with a different sigh, a little dreamy:
“But he already does. Every day.”
“He dress you up fancy often, then?” Wayne asks when the silence stretches, mostly just to fill it, and maybe a little to put the unwelcome sting that’d risen in his gut in the first place to rest for good.
“God no,” Eddie snorts; “we mostly go out, give each other little gifts and stuff,” and he smiles, so soft and genuine and at peace in a way that Wayne doesn’t think he’s ever seen on those features before, not once.
“And it’s good, because I’ve got the hours at Rich’s,” which Wayne remembers getting to share a night with the boys when Eddie hit a whole month at the shop; “and then Steve and Will, you know Will?” Wayne nods; the Byers boy. He remembers Joyce behind him in school. Remembers Lonnie as someone he wanted to punch to daylights out of more days than he didn’t.
“They said they thought I could sell the paint jobs I do on my little,” he twiddles his fingers, in the way he does when he looks for a word for a thing that Wayne will understand; “y’know the little statues I do?” Yep, Wayne nods. Eddie grins soft. “They said mine were good enough to try and sell at the game place in Indy and like, I thought they were full of shit but they tricked me,” Wayne’s not even sure Eddie tries to sound scandalized, it comes out giddy either way; “and asked for some for themselves.” And then Eddie’s eyes soften, kinda glow, and Wayne’s practiced enough to know what’s coming when that look takes hold.
“Steve kept all of his,” Eddie says soft with a smile that’s somehow still softer; “but then he drove Will up and they sold all of his ones before the place closed the same day so,” Eddie gestures a little aimlessly, but it definitely explains all the odd streaks of paint around these days. “Now I can treat Stevie, too.”
And…the little weighted thing in Wayne’s stomach’s wholly gone, now, and if it hadn’t been?
The gravel crunches and Steve arrives and he only comes in so he can kiss Eddie reckless behind the closed door, and then he unties Eddie’s hair, eases it tenderly over his shoulders before kissing him one more time and leading him to the car for their…business dinner.
———————————————
It’s a number of months later, nearly a year—Wayne thinks the boys might be at the movies—when hell rains down upon the trailer.
Not really, definitely not in the terms they’d had to get used to in spring of ‘86, but the crash in Eddie’s room is something…cataclysmic in its own right. Wayne thinks he jumped a foot for it, and is pretty sure the way his pulse leaped was at least an equal concern for a man of his age.
He runs into Eddie’s room, which he’d never do uninvited and especially not without Eddie present, he’s not that kind of man, but he’s worried, and—
A poster fell and knocked over Eddie’s paints.
Of course it did.
Wayne takes a moment to get his breath back, and survey the damage at large—there’s some spillage, but he knows the pants aren’t top of the line, and it’s not a bunch, and most important there are no shattered miniature…fairies or minotaurs or whatever the things he sells to the Indy people actually are , so that’s good. Probably most important.
Wayne refuses to think about the reason there’s a whole box of Kleenex in reach when he wipes up the puddle of blue and then trashes the remains before bending, joints creaking predictably, before he grabs the culprit that started the domino effect—not a poster.
A…calendar.
Which, his boy hasn’t ever predictably known what month it is, let alone what day and why it might matter. The hell has he got—
A fully-filled calendar.
His boy sure as hell ain’t that busy of a man, either. So what the hell—
And Wayne doesn’t mean to pry, exactly. But it’s right in front of his face and makes not a single lick of sense. If his eyes roam, that’s just the way it is.
Maybe Eddie should invest in stronger thumbtacks.
First time we held hands
Wayne frowns, looks at which month it’s opens to now: March. End of March. Early March is largely empty though, but Wayne can feel the pen-denting on the next page, can’t hurt to look what April—
First night in the trailer because it made sense
Mid-month. Wayne frowns as he sees a few scribbles, shorter and more note-like, vague in Ed’s shorthand and not necessarily less important but definitely nothing Wayne’s going to figure out. So: end of the month—
First night in the trailer because it felt right
Maybe it’s a timeline. Or a time…capsule. The big things about his recovery a year ago, though Wayne’s not sure why he wants to commemorate—
First night at Steve’s
Oh. Oh—that’s not what’s being commemorated. What’s being tracked and marked and kept.
First time he made me breakfast, fuck his eggs are good, kinda want to ask how but kinda just want him to make them for me always
Wayne catches himself grinning a little. He remembers that morning. Eddie’d never been one for a big breakfast but he’d asked Steve for seconds. Wayne’s eyes trail further:
First movie night—just us
First time in the trailer
First time at Steve’s
It takes Wayne longer than he’d like to admit to the realize what the underlining means, when the first nights spent together in either place, presumably in either bed, has already taken up their respective dates. But Wayne adds up Eddie getting cleared for physical activity mid-summer and…
Wayne flips the page because those are things he didn’t need to know about his nephew, or his nephew’s bedmate. Boyfriend. Either. Both.
No.
First time in the van
Nope.
First time in the beemer
Nope.
First trip to Indianapolis
Okay. Safer. Wayne remembers them planning. Steve’s first time to the capital with…a certain kind of destination in mind. Just to feel it out. Just to be free with themselves. Just to kiss and worry about nothing but one another.
Wayne smiles a little to himself again, because no one’s here to say jack shit about it.
First fancy-ass ‘business dinner’
Ah, okay. Wayne’s skipped around a lot but that one sticks out. It’s even got a lopsided smiley face in the corner. From all Wayne could tell—namely Eddie’s undimmable grin for near-on a week—it’d been a good night.
First time Steve let me drive his car
Now that, Wayne is well aware from both Eddie and all the munchkins who come in and out of their space on any given day, is a sign of love.
First time Steve remembered every word to Rainbow in the Dark
Wayne smirks. Of course Eddie would want that recorded for posterity.
First time I serenaded Steve
Wayne thinks that’s inaccurate, given how many times he hears Eddie sing at Steve in all possible contexts, but. Maybe this was just special.
First trip to Indy
Ugh. No. Wayne knows what those underlines mean.
First time Steve serenaded me
That’s more surprising. Weirdly endearing. Wayne didn’t know Steve’s could sing. Maybe he can’t.
Maybe it’s sweeter if he can’t.
First ‘I Love Yous’ said with words
And if there’d been a time Eddie had been happier for longer, unshakably and unapologetic with it, than he had after his fancy record executive dinner? It’d been this. It’d been the start of saying the word out loud every chance he got, and Steve meeting him in it beat for beat every time. Watching his boy float on air in a way where he wasn’t alone in the clouds, but was somehow also never in danger once of falling from the heights?
That’d been a gift.
First time making love at Steve’s
Wayne almost doesn’t care that he doesn’t get a warning with an underline this time, in the next date’s little square. Love’s a powerful tool to make a man feel forgiving.
First time making love in the trailer
However, twice in a row is just about as forgiving as he’s feeling.
First I made him dinner—NOT total disaster!!!
Wayne chuckles: it hadn’t been. There’s only a tiny scorch mark in the paint by the stove as proof. Given the givens, and given his nephew, that’s almost a flat-out win.
Wayne doesn’t read the rest, not that he didn’t skim past half of what was written anyway, not even counting the chickenscratch notes, because good god, was every day a fucking anniversary?
Except…maybe it was. Is. Maybe that’s where all the gifts and the dates and the fact that Wayne doesn’t remember a night where Eddie was without Steve in…shit. He doesn’t remember.
Jesus H.
But maybe that’s what it’s all about.
So he finds the right month, goes to the kitchen for a better fucking tack, and puts the calendar back where it belongs before he closes the door to Eddie’s room and fixes on getting some dinner sorted.
And; yep. Wayne’s not so proud as to pretend it didn’t arrive as a little bit of a surprise when the truth came out like this, save that it’s a truth that’d been staring him in the face for months if he’d been looking, or else knew what he was looking for. Because while Steve clearly doesn’t fight it—in fact he fucking relishes it, Wayne sees how that boy glows, like a lightbulb in his chest, behind his eyes that’s smart enough to know it can only shine at full strength behind closed doors but beyond those closed doors it’s gonna be goddamn blinding—but the push, the initial putting-the-foot-down? The documenting, the listing, the calendar that barely has any blank spaces left?
That’s got Munson stamped all over it, more often than it doesn’t.
But it wasa surprise, a little, and Wayne’s also not too proud to admit that, frankly? It fucking shouldn’t have been, and not just for all the clues. It shouldn’t have been for Wayne. Hell: the boy’d wandered out of his room to catch Casablanca when Wayne had watched it one evening mostly for background noise, only to catch Wayne with those watery eyes stretched with something like horror, like he’d been personally offended because it wasn’t a romance. It set itself up to be, but it wasn’t. It ended sad.
Wayne had tried to be as gentle as possible in telling him it wasn’t all sad, plus sometimes love ends sad, or ends and not all endings have to be sad, but.
Yeah. That hadn’t stuck one bit.
And Wayne really should have figured all this out sooner.
He knows now, though. And he’s lucky that there were enough clues he missed that he’ll never have to admit to seeing the calendar, at all. Ever. No part of it. No underlines.
He’s also lucky his nephew’s the worst at taking out his trash and will never think twice of the paint-soaked tissues and the bottom of his garbage can.
That, much like the barely-there paint scorch in the kitchen, counts as a win.
———————————————
Wayne’s sitting down with some heated up lasagne—one of the many perks of Steve Harrington’s presence in their lives has been his ability to cook, which has slowly but surely increased Eddie’s ability to not burn their home down, which leaves Wayne with very edible leftovers when he’s getting ready for a night shift. Not that that’s the selling point: he loves Steve. For the person, and the love, and the joy he brings out in Eddie. For the person who is his own love and joy that is just Steve Harrington, for all he is that got twisted and overlooked too long. And because these boys, these improbable boys who maybe shouldn’t fit, who maybe only got a chance to figure out how well they do because all the goddamn horrors they can’t speak out loud save to one another: they do, though. They did.
They fit. They’re a matched fuckin’ set.
Which is why it’s notable, and noticeable, when Eddie’s in the living room sprawled on the couch, just boxers and a shirt so full of holes it barely counts as clothing, tube socks pulled as far as they’ll go, when Steve couldn’t be more than half an hour out.
Eddie’s absolutely worn this outfit exactly to greet his lover, no question, but he usually waits for Steve in his room. They keep most of the heavy stuff for when Wayne’s out but they’ve come to an understanding that the make out session that follows any separation more than twenty minutes is one Wayne doesn’t strictly have to play audience to, is all.
So Wayne breaks the ice. ‘Cause he’s only got thirty minutes at the most to help Eddie navigate whatever he’s worked up into a crisis, here.
“Lover’s spat?”
“What? No,” Eddie startles and is quick to refute; almost too quick: “no.”
“Hmm,” Wayne hums and lifts a forkful of noodle to his mouth, blows to cool it down.
“I just,” Eddie doesn’t even take the full length of Wayne’s breath against the utensil before he cracks, sighs, moans pathetically as he throws a hand over his eyes: “I fucked up.”
Wayne balances his plate and takes a seat in his recliner but leans forward, full attention. It’s not that he wholly doubts that his nephew could and maybe very well had fucked up, though he highly doubts that’s not a particularly dramatic and probably inaccurate way of phrasing it. It’s more that, if Wayne’s picked up anything about the relationship Eddie’s built over more than a year, now, it’s that it’s one of odd but undeniable equals. Adults, who squabble, and shout, and sometimes storm out but usually only because they recognize the need to step away, to take some air, to get some space. Adults who disagree, and sometimes in big loud ways, but still don’t spend their nights alone. Almost ever.
So: whatever the fuck up is? Wayne’s…he’s just not too concerned.
“How’s that?”
Eddie’s eyes flick up from what he’s reading, not even scared. More…ashamed.
Devastated, and ashamed. Wayne aches more than a little for it.
If Eddie’s boy sees it, when he gets here, though? That man’ll reel back like a hole’s blown clear through his chest. It’s one of the best and hardest parts of watching his Eddie be loved so well as all this: Wayne doesn’t like to see Steve hurt so hard either, when the main reason either of them does hurt is just for the size of their hearts for one another.
So Wayne pays extra close attention when Eddie shakes his reading material, oh. Oh shit: a calendar. The calendar. With all the anniversaries on every goddamn day. Each one pride of place like it matters as much as any other.
‘Cause it does, for him. For them. The size of those hearts that hurt so much sometimes, but love so much more, all the time.
Eddie tosses the calendar onto the table next to the couch and moans, despondent:
“I missed one.”
Wayne takes a second to glance at the calendar, hoping it’s long enough to make it look like he’s taking in wholly new information with enough focus to reply meaningfully. As if he doesn’t know exactly what this is.
“Or,” Eddie’s going on and that really is sometimes a boon, Eddie’s tendency to just keep talking: “I maybe missed one, but if it’s maybe, then I’m gonna miss it, and if he thinks I already missed it then what’s even the difference—“
“Slow down,” Wayne instructs in firm tones. “What did you miss?”
It’s just…genuinely hard to believe anything could get missed given the sheer detail of the goddamn ledger in his hands.
“Our anniversary,” Eddie whines, so fucking heartbroken it shakes something in Wayne before Wayne shakes himself, because—
“Ed,” he starts as gently as he can, but good goddamn, is he confused; “don’t you go out at least once a week,” he hedges a little, leans forward even though Eddie’s mostly hiding his face: “to celebrate an anniversary?”
“Not this one!”
Again, Wayne can’t really comprehend any missing dates of importance on this…this, but cutting Eddie off at the pass when he’s this worked up isn’t going to be an option much longer, so he’s got to work fast.
“Which one?”
“Our first date!”
Wayne exhales slow and flips to March, where the first notations started. So many of them sound…exactly like a first date. Like, to the letter.
“What about when—“
“No.”
“Okay, but then you stayed—“
“That’s wasn’t a date.”
“When you dressed up?”
“Not our first date,” Eddie insists, growing more frantic as he adds; “it was a working dinner!”
It takes just about everything Wayne’s got not to laugh. It’s not a laughing matter, he knows. But…seriously, now.
“Which working dinner are we talking about?”
“The first one!” Eddie yells, a little too close to hysterical, before it registers.
That wasn’t Wayne’s voice.
“I,” Eddie scrambles up, looking the most puzzling combination of wholly lost for the situation, and entirely found as soon as his eyes meet:
“Steve.”
It’d be nauseating if they weren’t Wayne’s boys and even then.
Sometimes it pushes the limits.
“Eddie,” Steve repeats, shucking his jacket and his uniform vest before coming to sit precariously balanced next to Eddie’s bent knees on the sofa.
“I love you,” Eddie says to him first, foremost, kinda like a prelude.
“I love you, too,” Steve responds without a second’s hesitation, brushing Eddie’s mess of hair in a clump behind his ear.
“More than my whole life, I love you,” Eddie leans in, like he wants to make it so clear, like he’ll defend it to the death.
“More than my whole life, I love you,” Steve repeats, but much more like just a fact, definitive. Much more curious about why they’re saying facts for fun just now.
And it takes a minute, maybe a couple minutes really, before Eddie takes a deep breath, and gestures to the calendar that Wayne’s smartly relinquished to the table beside them.
“I think I forgot our first date,” Eddie’s voice is so small, and his eyes so big: he’s the little boy at Wayne’s front door again, that first night.
Save he’s in love, and there’s someone next to him waiting to catch him, steady him, soothe him. Bring him back to baseline
“You,” Steve’s stroking Eddie’s cheek with a fond little smile, while Eddie watches every motion, unblinking, even as he leans into the touch.
“Babe, I don’t know if we had one.”
“Of course we had one!” Eddie’s emphatic, but it’s clear he’s fighting not to move like he wants to the emphasize the words lest he shake Steve off. “We have dates all the time!”
Steve nods; knows Eddie well enough that it’s clear there are more words to come but he doesn’t move his hand from Eddie’s cheek for a second.
“So one of them was the first one, and I forgot it!”
Steve moves his hand then; his finger tip, gentle and tender to where Eddie’s mouth is ready to open once more—just a tiny touch against his lip.
Shuts the kid right up.
“If you did,” Steve assures him; “then so did I.”
If anything, that just makes Eddie’s eyes bigger.
“What does that mean?” And the words are so scared but Steve hears it, gets it—Eddie’s never had a relationship before, and Steve’s never had a relationship like this but between the two of them, Wayne’s confident Steve’s got an answer that’ll fit.
“Not a damn thing,” Steve smiles at him so sweet it give Wayne goddamn cavities to witness but: it makes Eddie soften, still where he’s twitchy. Like he can bear the thought of another day again without all the gloom. “We’re not the sum of the number of our dates, babe.”
Eddie listens, takes it in, but everyone in the room can tell it’s not quite enough. Steve’s reaching for the calendar without once looking away, flipping just like Wayne did to straight to March: of course he knows it, too.
“It’s not any of those,” Steve points at some of the ones Wayne was pretty sure on but Eddie just shakes his head for to pop right off:
“Else they’d be called that.”
“Oh, of fuckin’ course, do forgive me,” Steve nudges his shoulder and Eddie can’t fight the tiniest of grins.
Steve glances at a few more between March and the business dinner, before tossing the calendar back on the table and sighing a little with a shrug.
“Then only two possible times come to mind.”
Eddie perks up, ready to listen.
“If it’s not in the woods in the Upside Down?” And he pauses until recognition dawns in Eddie’s eyes. The consideration. Like a maybe.
“Or the RV,” Eddie adds, brightening a little and Steve chuckles, leans into his side.
“All my nuggets,” Steve tosses back, sly but tender, an inside joke between them that means something.
“But if it’s none of those,” Steve starts, pauses, then grabs one of Eddie’s hands before his voice gets kind of low, kind of soft.
“I tried to buy from you as a Freshman before Christmas break,” Steve speaks the words like a confession between them, like if Wayne could do it quietly he’d give them the room, because it feels like he shouldn’t be privy to whatever this is.
“I was gonna be alone until we came back in January and I just…wanted to feel better about it,” Steve shrugs off every horrible thing those words try to tie up and hide, and now Wayne wishes he could leave because it’s hard to keep the anger in, the rage and the way those people treated their goddamn son.
“You said you didn’t sell to innocent little lambs,” Steve deadpans; Eddie snorts, and Wayne almost doesn’t catch himself before doing the same. “I said that was a shitty business model and that you were only a year older than me anyway. You argued the philosophy of it, and everything just spiraled from one topic to another, it was so easy,” Steve smiles like the memory is sweet, maybe precious: “you talked to me until after sunset on that godawful dry-rotted bench.” Then he nods to himself and adds:
“Definitely felt less alone.” Like it doesn’t mean a little bit of everything.
Wayne wants to find the elder Harringtons and rip them a new one. He wants to hug Steve like he should have been hugged by his father all his life, and make sure the boy knows Wayne’ll do it without question, and without conditions, without stopping. Long as Steve wants.
And if Wayne feels that way?
Eddie’s gotta be…in another stratosphere.
By the time their tongues are firmly in each other’s mouth, he thinks he’s safe to leave them to it without drawing attention, even if his plate clangs. He’s gotta reheat this damn lasagne again before he’s late to work.
———————————————
Next time Wayne sees it—because he’s in to grab Eddie’s trash because while Eddie will take the bags out for the garbage truck, he’s still absolutely useless at emptying his own trash can, and he’s got all his paint shit in there, it’s not like it’s empty—
And Wayne doesn’t think about what else it’s not empty with because his sanity is a loose concept at best. He prefers not to test it.
But that’s why he’s in Eddie’s room at all, and therefore why he sees the calendar: remounted. With the good tack.
And just because, he flips to March, and sees it scrawled in a different handwriting on March 27th, that spreads a little on either side into the date-squares like a holiday weekend:
First Date ♡
And Wayne smiles again for it, because ain’t nobody here to see, before he flips to the current month and sees, later than they’ve made it so far: December 19. Same thing:
First Date ♡
And Wayne chuckles, then, and at least figures he knows what to get his boys for Christmas.
Idiots are gonna need new calendars.