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Eddie goes to see The Princess Bride when it comes out in 1987—and it’s a tentative thing, still, between him and Steve; they haven’t named it, but their hands still brush in the space between their seats, and really if Eddie were pushed, he’d say that they both know exactly what they’re heading towards, that they’re just floating between the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. That’s fine by him; they have time now, so much of it.
And the movie is charming and funny, but it’s not the romance or adventure that hits Eddie in the chest. It comes on unexpectedly, every time there’s a scene with the man reading to his grandson who’s sick in bed: suddenly Eddie can feel the softness of the bedsheets he had when he was young, when the move to Wayne’s was still raw and difficult, and it’s Wayne who’s reading to him softly, back when stories of things turning out fine were all Eddie had.
“Let’s see… where were we?” the grandfather mutters, and Eddie laughs because he can hear so much of Wayne in it, that gentle, wry humour. “Oh, yes. In the Pit of Despair.”
Eddie laughs again, choked. He’s clawed his way out of that damned pit so many times. His breathing catches at the thought that it’s been over a year since the deepest pit of them all, when Eddie once thought that the walls were far too high to climb.
“Woah, hey,” Steve whispers, “what’s wrong?”
Eddie shakes his head, smiling. “N-nothing.”
Their row is empty, and in the dark Steve reaches out, fingertips gently brushing underneath Eddie’s eye. They come away wet.
And Steve gives a little shushing noise, so that only they can hear, and it’s him who makes the leap, easily turning the page into the new chapter.
To some people Eddie’s first kiss would mean nothing at all—in their eyes, a chaste peck of comfort in a movie theatre would be just a speck in the grand history of the kiss itself. But for Eddie, it leaves them all behind.
“Farm boy,” he murmurs, when the movie’s over, smiling because the great, terrible story is done, and he is here; he is here. “Take me home?”
Steve smiles back, winks out the corner of his eye. “As you wish.”