Chapter Text
“So.”
There’s a thing about Wayne, or, well: there are multiple things about Wayne, but one thing about Wayne is that to the casual observer, the man seems stoic, kinda inscrutable.
But once you know him, he’s got the worst fucking tells.
Case in point: how he stirs his coffee. It’s slow, and deliberate, and scrapes the sides of the mug at odd intervals.
And, most importantly, it’s wholly fucking unnecessary because he only does it to make a fucking point: man drinks his swill black like a heathen, there’s nothing in there to stir.
Eddie bites at his tongue to keep himself from flinching, from giving any reaction whatsoever, when the scrape of the spoon, metal on ceramic, screeches at a pitch even Eddie doesn’t love.
And he kinda thinks of himself as a bit of a “screeching” connoisseur.
“So?”
Eddie keeps his voice even, which he’s proud of; he’s drumming his fingers too much, though, too fast, his rings clinking to hell and back and, well. He also has his tells.
Goddamnit.
“Your boy,” and Wayne doesn’t have to say more than that, and the bastard knows it too because his lips quirk up when Eddie feels his own eyes go wide as the blood floods to warm his cheeks: his boy.
That’s…that is…
“What’s that look for?”
Eddie finally forces himself to focus on the oddly soft thing that’s all over Wayne’s face as he sips at his coffee; and it doesn’t go away really, like, at all, not even as Wayne narrows his eyes the slightest bit to ask, way too fucking casual, like a shrug in his tone:
“You sweet on him?”
Turns out: Eddie is not so composed as to keep himself from snorting, from huffing not a laugh, really, but a…probably more like an incredulous choke on the genuinely cruel dichotomies of the universe because…god, god, like, consider those words, right, think them straight fucking through: sweet on him.
“Yeah,” Eddie’s a little breathless around that word: just that one fucking word and he’s kinda a goddamn mess.
Enough of a goddamn mess to just come out and say it, apparently, and not even try to cover up the layers blinking neon underneath, Jesus H.
“Hmm?”
And there’s Wayne again with his soft unsubtlety—but then add in the nudging. There’s this…this undercurrent of nudging he won’t commit to ever because Wayne’s not an active meddler. But that almost makes it all the fucking worse.
On account of the not-meddling-nudging being that absolutely goddamn unsubtle.
“More than,” and that’s more proof of the wreck of him, diving into it all like Wayne’s quiet but sophisticated assault on his admittedly-shitty ability to shut his mouth just had to make a little pin-prick in the ballooning ache of his overfull chest to have it spilling out unsalvageable; and Eddie’s voice comes out over gravel for it, rakes across coals:
“More than sweet on him, I’d say.”
Or maybe that’s just what it sounds like when you tear up the thing you’re saying from the insides of this chest, from the lining parts of your whole fucking heart, the slick bits not meant for the light of day.
Maybe that’s what it sounds like when you give those bits a voice.
“Don’t sound so glum about it,” Wayne says, and it should land harsh but it pillows, it’s goddamn fucking soft and that almost makes it worse, that the tender parts of him betrayed in Eddie’s own tone are…safe when they shouldn’t have been.
There should be consequences for laying yourself out raw this way, y’know? Like touching a hot stove and burning yourself as a warning, a learned response inside your body not to do that shit again.
“That boy thinks the sun shines out your ass,” Wayne comments between sips, tipping his cup further as he gets closer to the bottom—convenient, the sly old man, to hide his face inside the mug when he says that shit as Eddie splutters because Eddie thinks that about Steve but the other way around’s fucking stupid because, because—
“He does no—”
“Then there’s you, without a goddamn subtle bone in your body,” and in the exact opposite of Wayne’s defense, here, it’s not like it’s impressive that he carries on talking as if Eddie said absolutely fucking nothing, he’s had years to perfect the skill; “thinking he shat out the stars.”
Eddie folds his lips over his teeth and mashes them together hard enough to hurt; he will neither confirm nor deny said allegations. Namely because they’re minor compared to the full-on truth but that would be the reason for the lip-mashing, the way he’s risking pushing a tooth straight through the skin like the most implicitly-metal-but-actually-the-whole-ass-lovesick-opposite lip piercing in history.
Considering his current affliction of being unable to stop the flood-rush of all the built up wanting around his heart, he’s gotta at least…try and take precautions.
Even if he can feel his shitty dams cracking in real-time.
“S’a perfect fuckin’ match if there was one,” Wayne swallows, runs a tongue across his teeth as he set down his mug and props his elbows on the tables to lean in and stare Eddie down not…not threateningly, but too intent to feel comfortable.
“So you wanna tell me why you believe that as much as I do,” and Eddie does, the last part at least, silence was assent and he should have owned to it rather than tear up the inside of his fucking mouth for nothing; “but you’re still all sourpuss with the cartoon eyes about it?”
Eddie doesn’t even try to glare at that honestly kinda offensive description—the truth hurts and whatever but kicking a man when he’s down is harsh; kicking a man when he’s teetering on the perpetual sword-point of heartbreak is cruel.
“I’m in love with him.”
Which sums it up, even without the wet, desperate wobble of the words. The strongest force set to decimate the remaining levee standing paltry guard scoring his ribs—that’s the last assault, and it breaks down every defense he has, just to let it settle in the air.
Fuck, he knows it’s a muscle, and remembers running for his goddamn life how those felt when taxes too sharp but hell-on-a-popsicle-stick: is your heart supposed to beat so fast it burns?
“Big word.”
Eddie snaps out of his focus on the firing-squad stylings of his pulse to turn to Wayne who…is swirling what has to just be dregs by now in his cup, and lukewarm ones at that.
“You’re not surprised.” It’s not a question, because…Wayne’s tone’s just observation. Not speculation.
“Not even a little,” he confirms with a little shake of his head and shit, shit: Eddie wasn’t trying to be coy about it anymore, largely because he sucked enough at it to ruin the choice for himself altogether but he hadn’t been wholly prepared for the way his chest caves inward with the frank acknowledgement, not just the floodgates failing but any structure of him giving the vaguest hint of some degree of restraint just…crumbling to dust. Blowing away in the breeze of frantic lungs and back clapping heartbeats too quick to count.
“I,” Eddie licks his lips, a rote response; tastes more of nervous sweat than hints of long-abandoned coffee; “I want to,” and he pauses, heart in his throat as it is: but it’s the way it trips that seems to shake the last caught words in my free, because then.
Then, fuck if he can hold any of it back, keep any of it in.
“I want to see him first thing, when I wake up, like whether it’s his face or his hair all crushed up under my chin or his cheek all pulled weird against my chest, or the hair on his chest if I fall asleep there,” Eddie sucks in air sharp because Jesus fuck, he breathes more between his words when he’s pontificating from lunchtables.
“I, like,” Eddie tries to find his footing, a little head-swimmy all of a sudden, maybe for lack of the breathing thing, but just as likely maybe from the overwhelming gravity of, of this.
“I think about it, y’know,” and way too much at that, he thinks it way too much but:
“I want to kinda like,” and his hand goes to his chest, massages down from the scar-marred ink and follows toward the center, traces the pounding under his fingertips to where it piques the goddamn Richter scale and his hand just, just sits there, presses, presses because—
“Kinda wanna pull my heart out and just give it to him,” he kinda wants to look up at Wayne, then, to check in if it’s all real because the thing, this thing, is so so much but he doesn’t, he stares at his own hand where it jumps above the hammering and it’s not a, a figurative sort of thing, or else not just that, he just wants something that he could drop at Steve’s feet like a rabid dog with the one living soul it loves and pledges loyalty to, dragging teeth-marked offerings to prove devotion, and if he can’t do that maybe this would suffice somehow and it’s weird, he’s insane but he, it’s never, he’s never—
“‘Cause it feels more real,” he tries to explain, to himself and to Wayne, to the universe and the heart-offering under his hand; “I I feel more alive around him,” and Eddie knows what that means because he remembers what the alternative felt like, so the polar opposite is pure life and that’s this—
“And that has to mean it’s where it belongs,” where I belong, he can’t not think it when it feels like the syllables, the individual letters are what pumps in his goddamn veins;
“With him.”
And he’s breathless, and he feels small when he finally looks up at Wayne with wet eyes where the tears haven’t fallen; but then he feels so big, overwhelmingly momentous, so much at the exact same time, and he’s, he just—
“Is it normal to want to give another person all of you?” he asks like a little boy, a tiny bit lost, except for the words in his veins: where I belong with him.
Wayne takes a moment, chews a little at his lip before he swirls dead fucking cold leftovers around the bottom of his mug, thoughtful if nothing else:
“I don’t rightly know it from experience,” Wayne watches the bottom of the cup, tips his head; “but,” then he looks up, pins Eddie serious with his gaze:
“I do reckon that’s what they mean, when they use the word love.”
And, well. Well: yeah
“It scare you?” Wayne asks like maybe it doesn’t cause tectonic shifts, or change the rising of the tides. Like maybe it just…is.
“Yes,” Eddie answers simple because, maybe it’s both world-changing and commonplace at once. “Fuck, yes,” he huffs a laugh without humor, more with disbelief, or overwhelm: “but,” and he blinks, he swallows, he tastes the fear of it.
Then he meets Wayne’s eyes on him and fuck everything, he can’t help but smile. The rise of something joyful through his ribs is too much to ignore.
“I’m scared fucking shitless, but I trust him so much, more than anything,” and it’s not even about the bats, or the Upside Down, or saving Eddie’s goddamn life by hefting him into his arms and holding his blood in his body as best as those perfect hands could, and they could, they did, Eddie is here because of it and they’re able to have what they have because Steve was strong enough to fight death when Eddie couldn’t; Steve was good enough to want to try at all when Eddie meant next to nothing to him, to keep him without ever knowing they could be, could be…
It was that, but almost on the periphery. Almost just as a prologue. Because Eddie trusts in Steve’s hand in his watching a movie. And Steve’s kisses at the crook of his neck after a nightmare. Steve’s eyeroll at his music but complete lack of attempt to eject the tape. The way he gathers Eddie when he shivers after he comes too hard, wraps him against his chest so they can just breathe and breathe and breathe, but that together, too. The way he blows on the spoon before Eddie steals a taste of dinner. The fact that they share dinner. The way he lights up when Eddie plays a new song that’s undeniably about Steve. The way he kisses Eddie like he matters in this world but more: like he matters to Steve’s world, something he couldn’t possibly have predicted for his life.
He trusts Steve, but, but also: he trusts in Steve. Which is different, and somehow so much more.
“And like,” Eddie chews up and down his lip like a fucking corncob, tries to pick out what he means, what words he needs next from the eruption of everything still gushing up from under his sternum; “I feel so safe, with him,” and he does, and again it’s not just having been cradled in his arms on the way out of hell, not just coming to terms with the last memories he thought he’d have of life at all being warm and soft and having this rhythmic drumbeat that felt kind, the universe giving him music one last time on his way to the exit—coming to terms with it having been Steve’s arms, and Steve’s chest, and Steve’s heartbeat as the song he’d cling to; but again, again, that’s just the start, and he needs the words—
“You know, like, the bird sanctuary?”
Wayne’s face doesn’t betray any surprise, he’s had plenty of exposure to Eddie’s non sequiturs, but like, yeah. Yeah, it’d felt right when he’d shaped his lips around it, even if it took a second to figure out why but he’s gotten there already: they went with school in elementary. Up near Indy.
“He’s like a sanctuary,” Eddie tries to explain, tries to infuse the idea with all the conviction pressing on his bones and stretching in his veins for its heft, its persistence; “because he’s this protector and he tends my wounds, more than just the ones in my skin,” so much more, things he thought were long healed, or forgotten, things he didn’t know were bleeding and had been maybe for always until Steve found them and kissed them clean to scab over smooth and it’s:
“He’s like,” Eddie breathes in deep, and finally, finally it feels like it steadies something inside him, grounds him in the glorious, unfathomable landslide of what it means to feel, to love the way this, the way Steve’s taught him to do it; to know it.
“S’like, if I had wings?” Eddie smiles, a little small but, more small than sad and that’s important, he thinks, like: really goddamn important.
“I think maybe they’ve been a little broken, for maybe a really long time, but he,” Eddie shakes his head, smirks but want-like, wonderingly; “it’s like he’s nursed me back to flight and he isn’t releasing me into the wild because of it, like he’s not sending me away even though he could, he just seems happy I have the choice? The freedom,” and that’s it, isn’t it: Steve doesn’t turn him away ever, for anything, but where Eddie’d worried a little once upon a time, that if he ever found himself in anything resembling a relationship, unlikely as it was—and fuck all, then every unlikely thing became his whole goddamn life and suddenly there was this, suddenly there was Steve—but he’d worried then that even back alley arrangements might’ve pressed too close and made him feel caged, but with Steve, with Steve he is held close, almost treasured beyond understanding sometimes and never, not once, has he felt anything but…but home.
Like maybe he never fully grasped that concept for all it could hold, before now. But Steve would never chain him. Would never ask him not to find another home if that’s what he wanted.
Except he, he couldn’t—
“Except I’d never choose not to be with him. I’d…I’d never.”
As if he could…as if the thought could even enter his head and hope to finish. It’s not actually physically thinkable.
He nods to himself—that makes sense, that’s as it fucking well should be—but then he looks up, and Wayne’s…Wayne’s eyeing him kinda like he’s…Eddie doesn’t quite know. It’s the soft look again, but it’s…more than that.
He give up quick because fuck it, he’s curious by nature. Half the trouble he’s known in his life’s probably traceable to him never knowing when to leave a stray thread be.
“What?”
“Was wrong, I think,” Wayne shakes his head, a smirks down at his hands folded on the tabletop; “that’s not what they mean by love,” and the emphasis matters, Eddie can tell even before he goes on:
“Think that’s maybe more what love means before people can try to fuck it up with their bullshit.”
And if Eddie’s heartbeat does a little skip-thing in agreement, in fucking celebration of the truth being seen and said then: fuck yeah it does. It deserves no less.
And it’s not made anything but that by what Eddie knows has to follow. Because: the truth has to be the whole truth. He can’t just pick and choose.
This thing is too important. Steve is worth too much.
“But he,” Eddie tips his head down mostly so he doesn’t have to shake it? Doesn’t have to deny a thing because it’s not entirely the right response, even if it’s close, but more than that he’s weak, at least a little, and if he has to speak it he’s gonna spare himself this little bit of extra hurt on top of he can: “he’s like, he doesn’t,” and Eddie sucks his breath in through his teeth to force it to be measured, or close to. To give himself a second more to process. Okay.
Okay.
“He feels so much and I think,” Eddie breathes out and is absolutely fucking floored how steady it is, how much he doesn’t shake, though maybe that’s a sad thing, actually, because it probably just proves how much of a truth he’s dealing with, how much he’s accepted the facts and is still…here. Feeling all of this and willing to accept the utter and inescapable devastation that’s on the horizon, that’s already drawn in his cards: because Steve is worth it. More than worth it. For a second of everything he’s gotten to feel and know across these months: Steve Harrington is basically worth the whole goddam heart in his chest, so if that’s the cost, then: fuck.
Worth the price of admission and then some.
“I think he’s just built to love, a little, kinda,” Eddie finds himself saying and honestly, it’s for Wayne, but he think there’s something a little jagged in him the catches on the whys sometimes, like likes to trip him up by thinking on impossible things like world exist where they could happen, let alone for Eddie, and maybe saying it all out loud as he knows it in his bones will quiet that stupid nagging thing in his chest to a more manageable pitch.
Or maybe it’s just that the fact of the matter if none of this is news, Eddie knows all this and has known from the very start and none of that knowing stops him thinking about yanking his heart out and leaving it where it belongs anyway, no matter how it ends because at least it’ll be happy, and safe: Eddie’ll hurt either way but like, maybe his heart could fare better than the rest of him and that might be the most terrifying part in all of it.
He’d give his whole heart in a second, knowing he’d never get it back, save maybe in shreds he wouldn’t know how to piece back to beating. Wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.
“And I’m not what he’s looking for, not like, for always,” Eddie lays that out plain, because he means it—Steve cares for him, probably loves him in a way and it is such a good way; Eddie doesn’t doubt him when he talks around the word, and doesn’t think too hard on how he doesn’t say it straight out. Because:
“I’m not the kind he’s waiting for, you know, the kind he deserves,” Eddie shrugs, and if he hugs around himself a little for it, then, fuck off, maybe he’s just a little cold, the trailer’s new but the draft’s still a bitch. “He’s waiting on that apple pie kinda life, that picket-fence love, y’know?”
Wayne’s face doesn’t change, his expression doesn’t shift. Eddie is ninety-nine percent sure his mug’s empty but he reaches for his spoon and starts to stir. Scrapes at the sides.
“But like I said,” Eddie clears his throat, no fucking clue as to what Wayne’s trying to nudge toward now because Eddie’s actually feeling like he’s got a trajectory, he knows his course here, because:
“For however long it takes for him to find those things he’s waiting for, the things he deserves?” Eddie says, and it’s maybe a little melancholy, but it’s not…it’s not more loss than it is gratitude, so much fucking wonder and gratitude:
“I get to be selfish and feel like I belong somewhere,” and Eddie refuses to feel guilty about that, not when it feels warm in his chest like it does, not when thinking of Steve’s hands on him, Steve’s body on his, Steve’s eyes and Steve’s focus and Steve’s smile, turned toward him, like Steve wants it too, even if it’s not as much, or not for long, Steve wants some part of this, too;
“Not everyone gets that, even for a little while, so,” Eddie shrugs like it isn’t heartbreaking, focuses on the part of it that’s the only thing Eddie’s ever seen, let alone felt and known, that could rightfully be called a blessing.
“I just gotta believe that loving, even for just a short time’s worth it, when it feels like this,” and Eddie does believe that. Deep down, even if it’s alongside doubting and hurting. Eddie believes it, else he’d have run ages ago.
Loving Steve Harrington is worth it.
“Ed,” Wayne starts his tone a little off, a little…probably tied up in the something Eddie doesn’t have a clue as to what he nudging at, still, but whatever it’s—
Eddie thinks he about shoots his head up through the ceiling of the trailer—which would be a goddamn shame because again: new trailer, still a draft, doesn’t need a hole—when he hears the clatter of something heavy not more than ten paces behind him. Which places it still in the kitchen, where he is but only just.
Eddie whirls, heart pounding, ready for the worst—
And his eyes lock with Steve’s. Steve, who it appears has placed one of his mother’s fancy-ass pie plates covered in aluminum foil near the phone in the corner by the door. Which he’d have opened, y’know, with his key. Because they lock the doors now, still, just in case.
But Steve has his own key, and—
Oh.
Oh, that might have been what Wayne was nudging toward.