Chapter Text
Steve Harrington has always known that he isn’t smart. His dad might be an asshole, but he’s right about that. He’s never done well in school, hiding his report cards from his parents while his friends got theirs hung up on the fridge. He used to try to pay attention in school, but ten minutes into any teacher’s lecture, their words started to sound like the nonsense language of the adults in Charlie Brown. At some point, he stopped making an effort to listen, because trying to get good grades and still failing was much more embarrassing than not trying at all.
Then Steve got older, but no wiser. In fact, he actually thinks he got dumber after everything with the Upside Down. Maybe it’s the concussions or maybe it’s the fact that a girl the same age as him died in his backyard and the dema-gorgon/dog/whatever the fuck Dustin calls them could be back any minute. Some days the paranoia takes over his head, leaving him jumpy and anxious. It’s usually for some stupid reason, like seeing a commercial for a scary movie, having a nightmare, or hearing a random noise when he’s home alone that’s probably just the air conditioning but the irrational part of him thinks it’s someone breaking into his house to murder him. And on those days, being in school is impossible and he skips to smoke or drink or do something equally as dumb so his thoughts won’t be so loud and bruising. (And eventually there were way too many of those days for him to understand what was going on in any of his classes.)
Even so, he somehow manages to graduate high school, but he’s too stupid to get into college so he works at the mall. This leads to being kidnapped by Russians and a whole new set of memories to relive in his nightmares. But it also leads him to his best friend, who is similarly fucked up from her experience with the Upside Down. (Although Steve thinks he might have been a little fucked up even before all of that.)
He’s not good with feelings either. He thinks too much about everything, can’t stop anxiety from seeping into every fissure of his broken body and mind and wrapping around his heart and squeezing until he thinks he might actually die, and all he can do is laugh or cry about it because how lame would it be if he survived actual demons from hell and got taken out by his own fucking nerves.
Despite all of that, he has stopped the world from ending on multiple occasions, so he likes to think he’s not a total dumbass, no matter how much Robin insists he is. But lately, he’s starting to agree with her, because whatever’s going on with him and Eddie makes him feel like an idiot.
He keeps noticing Eddie in ways that he shouldn’t be. Not just noticing his presence or listening when he talks but noticing noticing him. No matter what’s happening around them–whether it’s Dustin’s stupid nerd game or the literal end of the world—he finds himself staring at Eddie. It’s not a terrible problem to have, the guy’s not bad to look at, but the problem is that Steve just can’t figure out why.
It’s creepy honestly, how much he observes. He watches Eddie play with his jewelry and knows it’s because Eddie’s shaken bottle of soda energy makes him unable to sit still. He knows Eddie’s favorite song (I Wanna Be Somebody by W.A.S.P.) and he bought the record just to listen to it. Steve has the shape of his smile memorized, the dimples in his cheeks, white teeth bared dangerously. Steve knows Eddie’s the furthest thing from dangerous. The suburban moms of Hawkins had gotten it completely wrong, because Eddie is stomach-achingly sweet and dorky. But when he smiles, it feels dangerous.
Steve has really got to stop thinking like that. Eddie didn’t ask for Steve to notice all those things and would probably be really creeped out if he knew how much space he took up in Steve’s mind. Which is why Steve is determined to get to the bottom of his weird obsession with Eddie Munson and end it.
Robin notices it before he does, because their thoughts ping pong between each other’s brains without them having to say a word. She thinks this is because the Russian drugs melded their minds together while Steve believes it’s the shared trauma of working in retail.
It’s almost summer and hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk, which makes Steve grateful for his shift and Family Video and their luxurious magnificent air conditioning. He spends the day talking aimlessly with Robin and making fun of the movies they put on. It’s boring, which is a welcome change of pace considering the literal apocalypse that almost overtook Hawkins just weeks before.
He’s playing Hangman with Robin when Eddie walks into the store, and he looks up from their game for a moment to notice him. It’s barely a glance. Eddie looks a lot more alive than he did in the hospital, which is the last time Steve had seen him. He starts to browse the aisles, strands of hair fall into his face as he reads the backs of the movies. He mouths along as he’s reading the summary of one, Steve finds himself staring at his lips, just to try and lip-read. But Steve is definitely not staring.
“Why are you staring at Eddie?” Robin asks in a whisper voice, poking him on the arm.
Steve blinks, tearing his eyes away from Eddie. He opens his mouth to respond before realizing he doesn’t really have an answer.
“Why are you staring at me staring at Eddie?”
“Aha!” Robin whisper-shouts, pointing an accusing finger in his face. “So you admit that you were staring at Eddie.”
Steve shoves her hand away, rolling his eyes. “I was staring at a customer! One of us actually has to do our job so we don’t both get fired-”
“And is our job to check out the customers? Wait, I mean it is because we do check out their movies the cash register–”
“Robbie, you’re not making any sense,” he interjects.
“–but you were checking him out checking him out!”
“Shut up, Robin!” Steve says a little too loudly, causing Eddie to glance up from the movie he’s looking at and give the two of them a small smile.
A month has passed since they had stopped Vecna from taking over Hawkins and the government had swooped in and spun a story for the masses. The string of murders had been pinned on a serial killer named Gregory Christenson, a guy who didn’t actually exist and was all too easy to “capture.” The FBI invented him out of thin air, forged images and mugshots and told everyone that he was the monster who had killed their children and, after a few weeks, made an announcement that he was now safely behind bars in federal prison. As for the gateways converging, 7.8 magnitude earthquake is the story they went with. Miraculously, the townspeople of Hawkins bought it.
Except for Steve and his friends, who were saddled with a stack of NDAs and small fortunes worth of hush money just hours after they arrived at the hospital, which was a dick move. Max was in a coma and Eddie was still wanted for murder but their top priority was fucking paperwork? Steve might have yelled at them for that a little. But once Max woke up and Eddie’s name was cleared, the FBI declared their job done and left Hawkins and moved on. Like everything is just fine now. And everything is fine. Except for the nightmares and injuries and the fact that he can’t stop staring at Eddie, who is walking up to the counter.
“Hey, Munson.”
“Harrington, Buckley. How’s the shift going?”
“Oh, it’s the height of excitement,” Robin gestures to the empty store. “How’s your day?”
“Super busy. Leading cults, eating babies, et cetera, et cetera,” he slides Grease across the counter, “I’m getting this.”
“Dude,” Steve slides the movie back across. “You have like twenty unpaid late fees.”
Eddie digs through his jean pocket, dropping spare change on the counter. “Would this,” he pushes them towards Steve, “change your mind?”
“Nope. I take this job extremely seriously,” Steve deadpans. Eddie huffs, rolling his eyes and grabbing the movie off the counter.
“Sure you do, Steve,” he starts to leave, movie still in hand.
“You need to pay for that!” Steve shouts.
In the doorway, Eddie pauses to say “Make me!” before he sprints off into the parking lot.
Steve shakes his head and turns back to Robin, who’s staring at him with that scrutinizing look on her face that she gets when she’s figuring something out.
“What?” He asks.
“Nothing,” she pushes the paper they’re using for Hangman towards him. “It’s your turn, guess a letter.”
“Is it ‘Vickie has nice boobies’?”
“Please stop guessing that every time,” Robin groans. “The word only has six letters.”
“Is it ‘Vickie’?”
She whacks him in the head with a magazine and he doesn’t think about Eddie again until he’s moving Max and her mom out of their trailer park a week later. Eddie’s perched on the Mayfield’s coffee table, with the kids circled around him as he tells them stories about all the people who lived in the trailer park before Max.
“And before that guy lived here, there were the neighbors who had like ten kids, and they were always screaming. Did I tell you about the milk incident yet?”
Max shakes her head, not even feigning disinterest like she usually does at everything. The rest of the kids are also interested, hence why Steve was moving boxes alone.
“Okay so,” Eddie starts with hands braced in front of him, gesturing around so wildly that it almost looks like dancing. He holds some of his hair above his lip for a pretend mustache cause he's a fucking dork. When he lets go of the hair, Steve watches it fall back into its place with a bounce. The thing is, the story he’s telling would probably be boring if it were anyone else. Eddie’s kind of incapable of being boring. Everything he does is interesting.
Robin bucks his shoulder and Steve feels like he’s coming out of a trance.
“Steve. Boxes.” She gestures towards the pile of boxes that still need to be packed.
“Hey, dipshits,” Steve calls out. The kids and Eddie turn to look at him. “These boxes aren’t gonna pack themselves!”
“We know, that’s why you’re here,” Dustin calls back. God, he’s such a little asshole. Steve loves him so much.
“I almost died,” Max says, since she’s been using that as an excuse to get out of anything because she’s also a little asshole.
“We appreciate you, Steve!” Will says genuinely because he’s the least asshole-ish out of all of them.
“I’ll help,” Eddie stands and suddenly all the kids are clamoring to move the boxes because they’re like twelve and Eddie’s their god.
Eddie reaches past Steve to grab a box, whispering, “They like me more than you,” as he does.
Steve feels his face go red. Must be the summer heat, he thinks.
They finally finish moving all of the Mayfield’s stuff, a lot faster with the kids actually helping. Robin and Eddie gravitate towards his trailer at some point, having a private conversation away from everyone else. Since he’s giving Robin a ride home, he doesn’t really have any choice but to wait for them to finish. He’s not really sure how Eddie and Robin became such fast friends—when he asked her, she just said “common interests.” But she assured Steve that he would always be her bestest friend, so he doesn’t think he has anything to worry about.
Robin says something that makes Eddie laugh, and he throws his head back because he laughs like a maniac. It’s the first time Steve’s ever seen him in a t-shirt, which exposes his surprisingly muscular arms. He’s a band nerd, why is he so jacked?
“Why are you staring at Eddie and Robin?” Dustin asks, also waiting on Steve to drive him home. “Is this the jealousy thing again? Do you think he’s gonna steal your girlfriend?”
“What? There was never any jealousy thing! And for the last time, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“There was definitely a jealousy thing,” Max calls from the moving truck.
Dustin gestures to her and gives him a look that is scarily reminiscent of Mrs. Henderson. “See?”
“You’re riding in the trunk,” Steve mutters and Dustin just closes the door and proceeds to argue why he should get the front seat and not Robin, who always gets it, until Robin finishes talking to Eddie and joins them. She opens the passenger side door and immediately begins to threaten Dustin with blackmail until he agrees to get in the backseat.
“How’s Eddie doing?” Steve asks in a casual and smooth way as he drives out of the park.
“He’s good? Why do you ask?” Robin replies, giving him that look again.
“No reason.”
Robin narrows her eyes at him before turning to the backseat to talk to Dustin. And Steve doesn’t think much about Eddie again until he comes by the store on a Saturday to return his stolen copy of Grease. It’s a slow day, so he and Robin are playing Hangman again and watching Princess Bride.
Eddie rudely interrupts their busy work by clearing his throat and holding up the movie.
“Hi. I’m here to return a movie. It’s my first time actually giving one of these things back so I don’t really know how it works–” Steve reaches out and plucks the movie from Eddie’s hand.
“Here, lemme process that for you,” Steve chucks the movie over his shoulder without looking, eliciting a startled laugh from Eddie, and turns back to the Hangman paper. “Does it have any more vowels?”
“Uh,” Robin considers for a moment, “yeah.”
Eddie frowns, leaning over the counter to look at the paper, his hair brushing Steve’s arm. “Jesus, is this really how you guys are spending your Saturday? Playing hangman and watching the Princess Bride?”
“I picked this movie out, dingus,” Robin says at the same time Steve asks “What’s wrong with Princess Bride?”
Eddie throws his hands up, “Nothing, nothing. I’ve actually never seen it.”
Robin gasps, grabbing his hand with both of hers and shaking it. “We have to watch it!”
“Steve, you don’t have plans,” Robin assumes. He wishes she wasn’t right. “We’re coming over to watch Princess Bride.”
“Yipee,” Steve replies.
“Did you consider, perhaps, that I might have plans tonight?” Eddie asks.
Steve scoffs in disbelief. “And do you have plans?”
“No I do not,” Eddie says confidently. “I’ll be at yours at 8, Harrington.”
True to his word, Eddie shows up at his door at 8, walking inside as soon as Steve opens the door and immediately pulling a joint out of his pocket.
“A gift for the host,” he says, holding it out in offering. Robin eagerly snatches the joint out of his hands, because she’s a degenerate without manners.
“You know you didn’t have to bring that, right? We will definitely take it, but you didn’t need to bring anything to be invited,” Steve says. Eddie smiles at him, all teeth with dimples marking his cheeks.
“Henderson was right about you, you really are just a teddy bear,” Eddie pokes him in the face.
“No, I’m not. I could kick your ass, man,” Steve shoves his shoulder, trying not to smile.
“I just brought you free weed and you’re gonna kick my ass? Rude.”
Steve starts to respond Robin interrupts from where she’s perched on the kitchen counter, trying to light the blunt with a candle lighter.
“Guys. Please stop flirting until I’m high enough not to notice it,” she jokes, finally getting the blunt to light and taking a hit.
Eddie takes it after her, blowing the smoke out of his nose. Steve isn’t sure why, but he feels high just watching him. And after that, his memories of the night get fuzzy.
He remembers that Eddie liked the movie, that Steve and Robin acted out the fight scene between Wesley and Fezzik, stoned out of their minds. He remembers telling Robin and Eddie they could stay the night, remembers them all going to his room to change into borrowed pajamas.
And Steve knows his scars are ugly. His side still twinges when he stretches and his stomach looks like a wild animal used it as a buffet. So when he sees Eddie staring at his torso while they’re changing, he’s prepared to make some joke about keeping his eyes to himself even though it’s not really funny. But when Eddie sees that Steve notices him staring, he just takes off his own shirt and drops it unceremoniously on the floor.
“We match!” Eddie grins and points between the two of them. Steve stares at the healed wounds on Eddie’s torso, the same ones he finds so horrifying to look at on himself, and smiles so wide his cheeks hurt.
“We match,” Steve agrees, his chest and face feeling suddenly hot. “Now put on a shirt, slut.”
The three of them don’t stop laughing for a long time. And for a minute, it feels like they’re just normal teenagers, who became friends in a normal, non-apocalyptic way, who aren’t afraid of swimming or the dark or even bats. And Steve knows they’ll never be as normal as that, but for a moment he feels alright with it. And they all climb into Steve’s bed, cramped together with limbs thrown over each other, but they sleep without nightmares and when Steve wakes up, he’s not alone.
He thinks about Eddie again when he and Robin are shopping at this vintage store she likes and he’s picking through their collection of rings to find something for him.
“You’re buying jewelry for Eddie?” Robin asks, eyebrows drawn together in confusion.
“Yes,” Steve replies, still focused on the rings.
“Why?”
“A graduation present. Hey, do you think he’d like this one with the bat on it or is it too soon?”
“Steve, this is really thoughtful,” she sounds surprised.
“I guess,” he shrugs, “I used to do stuff like this for Nancy all the time.”
Robin narrows her eyes, clasping her hands together and pointing at him.
“Just to be clear, you are comparing what you’re doing now, to Eddie, to something you used to do for your ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah, so?” Steve asks, genuinely confused by where she’s going with this.
She opens her mouth like she wants to say something then closes it again. “Nevermind. I think he’ll really like the bat one. He loves ironic shit.”
Eddie does love the bat ring. Steve gives it to him in the parking lot after his graduation when Eddie’s still in his cap and gown. When he sees the bat, he lets out a choked laugh and throws his arms around Steve in a hug.
“Thank you,” he says, raw emotion in his voice.
Steve stands there for a moment, unsure what to do. He doesn’t hug people much outside life or death situations, his parents never do. But Eddie is holding him so tight he can’t help but wrap his arms around him and squeeze back.
Something shifts after that, and maybe it’s because Eddie is out of school and has nothing else to do, but he’s with Steve all the time now.
Eddie’s in his kitchen burning toast, on his patio smoking, in his bathtub writing songs because of the “rich people acoustics.” Surprisingly, Steve doesn’t mind it. He’ll never admit it out loud, but he likes having Eddie around. He tends to spiral when he’s alone, stare too long at family photos and think too much about why everyone leaves him. Eddie takes up too much space for Steve to ever feel lonely, invites himself over too much for Steve to feel unwanted.
All that to say, Steve and Eddie are friends. Dustin, of course, is astonished by this.
“Eddie, what are you doing here?” Dustin asks, having stormed into Steve’s house like he owned the place while they were having breakfast.
Eddie blinks sleepily at him, taking a sip of coffee that has a disturbing amount of creamer in it. “I murdered Steve and I’m squatting in his house now.”
Steve nods from the stove where he’s making pancakes. Dustin rounds on him.
“Steve, what is he doing here? Did something happen?”
The barely concealed worry in his voice makes Steve abandon the pancakes in favor of patting Dustin on the head, who gives him an annoyed glare the way he always does when Steve messes with his hair.
“Chill out, man. Eddie just slept over.”
Steve’s house has a million guest rooms and no one to use them, so Eddie sleeps over a lot. He doesn’t sleep well in the trailer anymore, for obvious reasons.
“Why would Eddie sleep over?” Dustin asks, sounding even more concerned than moments before.
“Cause we’re friends?” Steve replies in an equally questioning voice, giving Eddie a look to say, what is with him today? Eddie shrugs and a point that Steve takes to mean, I dunno, probably your fault though. Steve sticks his tongue out at him.
“You guys are friends?” Dustin is practically shrieking now. “Like actually friends? You actually hang out, outside of me and the Upside Down stuff?”
“Hate to break it to ya, Dusty-buns,” Eddie slurps his coffee loudly, “but we do actually have lives outside of you and your merry gang of assholes. Stevie, your pancakes are burning.”
“Ah shit,” Steve turns back to the stove. “Hey, can you drop me off at work?” He asks, even though he has his own car and asking for a ride there just means he’ll have to call Eddie for another ride at the end of the day.
“Sure,” Eddie replies easily. “But we’re not listening to ABBA again.”
“But you like ABBA.”
“Liking Dancing Queen does not mean I like ABBA. Everyone likes that song, it’s objectively awesome. We’re listening to Ozzy.”
Steve rolls his eyes, and somewhere deep in the recesses of his brain, where he keeps all the things he’s not allowed to think about, he stores the thought that he could have this argument with Eddie every day for the rest of his life and never get tired of it. Dustin stares at the two of them, jaw dropped in shock.
“Hey, why’d you stop by anyways?” Steve asks.
And that’s when Dustin explains that “the Party,” that Steve is apparently a part of, is getting together in the Wheeler’s basement in a few days. Dustin begs them both to come, claiming it’d be a healing experience for all of them after everything with Vecna. Part of Steve wants to decline, because he must have something cooler to do on a Friday night than hang out with a bunch of preteens in his ex-girlfriend’s basement. But seeing his friends in person–knowing they’re alive and safe–soothes his ever-present anxiety of danger lurking around the corner. Plus, Eddie seems excited to go, so Steve gives his word that he’ll be there.
And so, Friday night finds Steve in the Wheeler’s basement along with Nancy, Robin, Eddie, and their hyperactive children, who are spread across the mismatched furniture, having twenty different conversations at once and giving him a headache. (The headache is more likely from the fact that Steve hasn’t been sleeping, but he’s ignoring that.) He looks around the room, watching Dustin and Mike arguing over some nerd game thing, Eleven watching them with intense fascination as Will and Lucas talk excitedly about something in the corner, their faces lit up with childlike joy that makes Steve’s heart clench. They’d spent half their childhood facing near death experiences, carrying themselves like adults because they’d had to. So even though Steve pretends their immaturity annoys him, and sometimes it really does, it’s nice to see them be kids.
He turns his attention on Max, who’s sitting on the floor with Eddie having some intense conversation about a movie they like. As they talk, she weaves his hair into very messy French braids, exposing skin which was usually hidden behind Eddie’s mane of curls, where freckles dotted his neck, the ink of a tattoo peeking out from under his shirt. Steve tries to make out what it is, but then Eddie bends his head backwards to make some absurd face at Max that went along with the story he was telling, his eyes warm and bright.
Robin elbows him, pulling his gaze off Eddie and Steve feels like he’s coming out of a trance. He forgot he existed for a minute, that he wasn’t just a fly on the wall watching Eddie’s performance. Robin’s staring at him, which, okay fair, Steve is being kind of weird.
“Why are you being weird?” She asks, knocking his shoulder with hers.
“Maybe you’re finally rubbing off on me,” he replies.
She sticks her tongue out at him and he does the same. Eddie laughed at the two of them and Steve’s head turned involuntarily to look. Eddie caught his stare, still laughing at him which made Steve smile.
He stands up to grab a soda and black spots dance in his vision, which happens often, but this time, it doesn’t go away after a few seconds. His head starts to pulse and he vaguely feels his knees buckling beneath him as his thoughts slip away.
Ever since he got his first concussion, he’s had to deal with dizziness and being lightheaded, but as the injuries piled on over the years, he began to occasionally pass out. He’s usually alone when it happens, barring that one time his dad was there, but he just patted him on the shoulder and said “Walk it off, son.” Fainting is basically just an impromptu nap. People take naps all the time. Steve is fine. It’s not a big deal.
Plus, after waking up from passing out, he always forgets who he is for a moment. Forgets the name Harrington, forgets that he peaked in high school and that he can’t sleep without the lights on. Forgets that the only real relationship he ever had was apparently bullshit and forgets that he’s so unlovable his own parents can’t stand to be around him. And Steve knows it’s bad to say it, but those few seconds of confusion are the most at peace he ever feels.
He opens his eyes. Blurry outlines of faces hover over him, his vision still swimming. He thinks he mutters something like “where am I?” to which he hears a distinctly Dustin-like voice saying “holy shit, he doesn’t know where he is. What if he’s got amnesia—”
Then his vision focuses and he realizes what had happened, stifling a groan. Fucking embarrassing. He tries to sit up, pushing himself up by his hands, but a wave of dizziness hits him and he shuts his eyes tightly. Then someone’s hand is on his shoulder, pulling him back to lean against something solid. His eyes flutter open realizes it’s Eddie’s arm that was slung across his chest and it’s Eddie that he’s laying on top of.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m really fine,” Steve mumbles, trying again to escape Eddie’s grip but he just holds him tighter, rubs his arm with his other hand and hooks his chin on Steve’s shoulder. Steve feels warm at every point of contact and he can’t help but focus on how good Eddie smells.
“Holy shit, dude. That did not look fine,” Eddie’s voice seems to tremble a bit and his hands are shaking in their place on Steve. He takes the hand slung across his chest and intertwines it with his own, rubs a thumb across his palm to try and calm him down. Not only was fainting in front of everyone embarrassing, but probably scary for Eddie and everyone else considering all the near-death and actual death experiences they’ve had.
“Steven, what the fuck!” Dustin shouts, standing over them with his hands on his hips. He looks exactly like his mother right now. Steve surveys the rest of the room; everyone’s crowded around him, staring at him expectantly, which really makes him want to go back to sleep.
“My bad, guys,” Steve offers, his face flushing when he hears Eddie’s snort of laughter next to his ear.
Robin taps his knees to get his attention, “Hey, what day is it?”
“I don’t have a concussion, Rob,” Steve tells her. “And that’s not a fair question, I never know what day it is.”
“It’s Friday,” Eddie supplies helpfully.
“Eddie! You can’t help him!”
Everyone starts shouting over each other and Dustin’s still talking about amnesia so Steve pushes himself up and shouts over the noise.
“Guys! Jesus, calm down, I just forgot to drink water so I blacked out for a second. It happens, I’m fine.”
“Steve, you were unconscious for like two minutes!” Robin says in a high pitched voice, her blue eyes wide and frantic.
“What do you mean by ‘it happens’? This is not a normal thing to happen,” Max asks.
Steve stays quiet.
“This isn’t a frequent thing that happens to you, right?” Nancy asks as she hands him a water bottle.
“Pfft, of course not! It happens to me the same normal amount that it happens to you guys,” Steve says.
“Which is never,” Mike clarifies.
“Never?” Steve says incredulously. He assumed everyone passed out occasionally. But that’s a thought that should probably not be voiced right now. “Yeah, right. I never pass out.”
“But you just did,” Mike says.
“Shut up, Michael,” is the best comeback Steve can come up with.
Eddie stands up from behind Steve, standing in front of him and holding out a hand to pull Steve up. And even though Steve’s head feels like a ball of cotton and his eyes feel like lead, Eddie's hand is holding his and it feels like he’s touching sunlight. So at least he’s got that.
For the rest of the night, he lets his overprotective friends fuss over him and tries not to compare it to how his parents never do. At the end of the night, Robin offers to drive him home since he’s not feeling well, which he declines. It’s a sweet gesture but she would crash the car and kill them both. She then enlists Eddie to drive him, a task for which he is all too enthusiastic for.
“Seriously, I can drive myself, it’s fine,” Steve protests as Eddie starts the engine and puts the car in reverse, placing his hand on the back of his seat to look behind him.
“Why, you think I’m a bad driver?” Eddie asks, raising an eyebrow at Steve as he starts down the empty road.
“I know you’re a bad driver.”
Eddie yanks the steering wheel side to side, causing the car to lurch back and forth and Steve with it. He yelps in surprise and clutches the arm rest—Eddie laughs at him.
“You asshole!” Steve punches him on the arm, to which Eddie only laughs harder, tilting his head back against the seat and exposing the pale skin of his neck that Steve couldn’t help but stare at. Some traitorous voice in the back of his mind whispers kiss him there.
Where the fuck did that come from? Steve doesn’t know. And he quickly decides not to investigate, pushing the thought deep deep down with the rest of the things he’s not allowed to think about, which seems to include thoughts of Eddie more and more these days. But he’s not going to think about that either.
He spends the rest of the ride listening to Eddie talk, enduring a rant about how he can’t believe Steve’s only seen one Star Wars movie when he pulls into Steve’s driveway.
“Thanks for the ride,” Steve moves to leave the car but Eddie puts a hand on his shoulder, lightly pulling him back into his seat.
“Hey, Steve?
“Yeah?”
“Where are your parents?”
The question is completely unexpected, and Steve hates that he has to think for a couple seconds before remembering.
“New York.”
Eddie looks like he’s contemplating saying something else for a few moments, chewing on his lip before finally saying in a careful voice, “How long have they been in New York?”
“A week. But before that they were in Boston, I think.”
“But when was the last time they were home?”
Steve didn’t want to answer because of the way Robin reacted when she found out how little his parents were home. She told him she was sorry for him and even though she meant well by it, her pity just made him feel worse.
“They were home for a few days three weeks ago. They never really stay in one place for long,” he shrugs, hoping he made it sound like it’s not a big deal, because it’s really not and he got over it ages ago, but Eddie just stares at him, his brown eyes inscrutable. He huffs, a little frustrated sound that Steve hopes isn’t on his behalf. Because he’s fine. He doesn’t miss them or anything.
“Can I sleep over tonight?” Eddie asks, taking Steve off guard for the second time in the last few minutes. Steve wants to protest that he’s not a kid. He doesn’t need supervision. He doesn’t need anything from anybody. He hasn’t since he was 10 years old and his parents left him alone for a weeklong trip without supervision for the first time.
He opens his mouth to say all of this, but “Sure,” is what comes out instead.
They’re not high this time but Eddie still sleeps in Steve’s bed. They don’t discuss it. They discuss a lot of other things, and the house is completely silent except for them so it feels like they’re the only two people in the world. It’s not a bad feeling.
Steve goes to sleep on his side of the bed, wakes up with Eddie’s foot pressed against his calf and his arm thrown across his chest. Eddie’s still sleeping, his mouth wide open, face smashed into the pillow. Steve smiles without really meaning to and tries not to enjoy the feeling of Eddie’s warm skin against his. Then Eddie wakes up and groans into his pillow, begging Steve to get up and close the blinds. Steve teases him about not being a morning person, Eddie hits him with a pillow, and Steve wants every morning to start like this.
Wait. No. That’s not… He’s not supposed to think like that. Steve shakes the thought away and climbs out of bed, careful not to touch Eddie the rest of the morning.
“Hey, you okay, man?” Eddie asks after he patted him on the shoulder and Steve flinched away like he’d been burned.
“I’m great!” He says in a voice that’s way too high pitched to be believable, but Eddie kindly didn’t comment because he’s so fucking nice. He’s so fucking nice and kind that Steve wants to cry and scream about it. He doesn’t say anything about how weird Steve is being the whole ride back to his car at the Wheeler’s, and Steve tries and fails not to think about Eddie until the next time he sees him, which is when he and Robin run into him at the diner while they’re grabbing milkshakes. Robin insists they all sit together, and well.
Eddie sips his drink loudly, and it’s impossible for Steve not to look at his lips. All cracked and pink and wrapped around the straw and suddenly his mind presented images of his mouth on Steve’s-
Shutupshutupshutupshutup he thought, scrunching his eyes closed and shaking his head like that would somehow get rid of Eddie.
“You okay there, Stevie?”
“Uh, um yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” Steve snaps, sounding harsher than he means to. Eddie raises an eyebrow, creating a little dimple in his forehead that Steve can’t help wanting to smooth down.
“Nothing, you just spaced out for a minute. Wouldn’t want you to take another nose dive, Henderson freaked out last time.”
Was it just Henderson? Steve distinctly remembers Eddie’s terrified expression, his steady hands holding Steve close, his hot breath against Steve’s neck–
SHUT UP! He thinks to himself again.
Robin, his guardian angel, light of his life, puts a hand on his shoulder and intervenes before he says something truly catastrophic.
“Dustin will not stop talking about your D&D campaign,” Robin says with feigned fascination that goes right over Eddie’s head, “What's it about?”
Eddie lights up, happy to ramble about his campaign until he has to leave for band practice. As soon as he walks out the door, Robin drags him into the diner bathroom, which is blessedly a single stall, and locks the door behind them.
“What are we doing?” Steve asks as she sits down on the bathroom floor. She gestures to the floor and he sits down in front of him.
“Steve,” she sounds like she’s addressing a baby or wounded animal.
“What?”
“Are you doing okay?”
He tries to say “yes,” but a sob escapes his lips instead. He doesn’t know where it came from, he doesn’t know why he’s crying, but he can’t stop for some reason.
“Oh shit,” Robin says, because she is not great at comforting people. “Um, it’s okay. You’re okay,” her voice is unsteady, like she doesn’t really believe what she’s saying.
Steve is not okay. His parents think he’s a disappointment and he doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. He’s nineteen and he has to sleep with his bathroom light on because he’s scared of the fucking dark. A butterfly flew by him the other day and he flinched because for a second he thought it was a bat. And he can’t stop thinking about Eddie fucking Munson.
Robin’s holding his head against her shoulder and rubbing his back and he tells her everything, how obsessed he is with Eddie, and waits for her to tell him he’s officially lost his mind. But she doesn’t tell him he’s crazy. She doesn’t even sound surprised at anything he’s saying.
“Is the way you feel about Eddie the same as the way you felt about Nancy?” She asks.
He jerks away like he’s been struck and stays quiet.
“You’ve got to be honest with yourself,” she tells him.
“You know I’m bad at that!” Steve cries out, feeling vaguely like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Robin’s making shushing noises and patting his hair.
“Okay, then I’m gonna be honest with you.”
“Okay,” Steve sniffles.
“I think you like Eddie. In a gay way,” she says.
“But I’m not gay?” He’s honestly not sure at this point, the last few months have been so fucking confusing.
“You can like women and men, it’s called being bisexual.”
“Oh,” he whispers. “I think I might be like that.”
“I think you might be too,” Robin says, like it’s fine and his entire world isn’t crumbling apart right now. “No offense, but you've been really obvious. You seem really pathetically into him.”
Steve groans and lets out another choked half-sob. “He’s just so cute,” he screams into his hands.
“I mean…”
“What? He’s cute!” He protests.
“Steve, he was literally screaming at a 15-year-old the other day because they disagreed about D&D rules.”
“Yeah but that was Mike, he sucks.”
Robin snorts and for the second time in their lives, they’re losing it with laughter and identity crises on a bathroom floor. And even though Steve is slightly in love with Eddie Munson, a little bit bisexual, and very much not okay with any of it, he feels steadier than he has since his whole fixation with Eddie started. He finally solved the mystery at least. Now he just has to figure out what to do about it.