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What if it all started with a single hair tie?
What if there was no Upside Down and no fear for one's life when they chose to wander the lonely streets of Hawkins Indiana in the midst of night?
What if one of those nights one lonely boy stumbled across another? One with a recently broken heart and the other failing at holding back drunken sobs over his broken home.
It could be either of them really.
For yes Nancy had just called Steve bullshit and stomped his heart so deep into the ground it looked as if it had become one with the roots and soil at his feet. His parents having done much the same not more than three hours prior, announcing their divorce along with the impending sale of the only home he'd ever known.
And Eddie, sweet sobbing Eddie, curls laden with fallen rain and an aching, blooming bruise to his cheek had just seen his father for the first time in years, free from his shackles, only for the man to spit slurs and tell him of his mother's death with not a single ounce of remorse across his ashy, foul face. Wayne had been at work when it happened and Eddie, without another thought ran to the only other person he'd thought he could find solace in. A boy, one with blonde hair and blue eyes who at night held Eddie close to his chest and kissed the pain away as much as he bruised it into his skin. Never had he thought that affection was only one for night skies and whispered words beneath bedsheets. Never had he thought a cry and a sob would elicit the man to strike him with already blackened knuckles in the light of day, uttering words his father said to him not even an hour prior.
Sad, sobbing, drunken and distraught they found themselves at skull rock feeling more alone than ever before.
The rain falls heavy, soaking soft cotton and ageing leather and two boys who have spoken nary a word to one another in the span of three years sit side by side. Asses in the rain wet dirt and backs to the cooling stone of a rock that looms over them with the face of death.
Words never do make it to the humid air between them, but when a rather awful sob racks through Eddie's body making him shake and shudder, Steve looks over. And through his own tear blurred eyes he catches the frustration and fear, the exhaustion and the mixture of so much more accompanying the purpleing skin of Eddie's face, he's never seen those emotions accompanied by the colours of abuse look so remarkable.
For the shortest second it allows Steve to catch his breath.
The longer he looks the more he sees. And along with the slope of Eddie's nose and the strength of his jaw, Steve too notices the way ring adorned fingers catch and pull and grasp at sopping curls to remove them from where they want to cling to porcelain tinted cheeks.
It hardly crosses his mind when he does it, really he'd go as far as to say it doesn't at all. But with a shaky hand, stained with the remnants of spilled booze and tears of his own, Steve pulls a single black hair tie from his wrist and sets it on the bareness of Eddie's knee.
It'd been Nancy's, one he'd kept for the times she'd huff and brush her hair behind her ear, a wrinkle in her brow formed by the frustration the annoyance had caused. And in those moments when he'd hand it to her and ease her troubles, he felt useful, worthy of the love that apparently was never there.
But handing it to Eddie or rather setting it on pale skin that pokes through the rip in his black jeans, it feels different somehow. It's not like anything Steve can explain, but there's an odd twist in his gut that accompanies the motion. Tears are still slipping down his cheeks along with the ever falling rain, but there's something else, something unexplainable lingering there in the moment.
Eddie chokes back his tears to wipe roughly across his face, wincing when brushing the blooming bruise on his cheek and for a moment he's quiet. Eyes tearful and dark, full of so many emotions as he simply stares at the black hair tie resting on his knee.
And then he looks at Steve.
And for the first time in his life Steve feels as if he's being seen.
The colour of the rain sodden soil beneath them, glassy in ways that give away to so much pain, Eddie eyes meet his and for a moment that probably only lasts seconds, Steve feels like he can see a lifetime in that gaze.
It lingers and eventually shifts along with the barest twitch of Eddie's down turned lips, but Steve can't bear to look away. So he watches. He watches as Eddie grabs the tie and pulls his hair back, fingers roughly combing through soaked strands until they're tied in a low knot at the base of his skull. Snug and sitting above the collar of a leather jacket Steve can smell in their close proximity and the rain. Loose tendrils falling and framing. Showing off what seems to be a few silver hoops through the skin of a porcelain ear.
And still Steve watches.
Because how can he not?
He watches until Eddie turns to face him again, a rushing of heat in his cheeks along with the feeling of being caught floods through him and for the faintest of moments Steve feels an odd rush of fear.
Fight or flight.
Or stay, another voice says, that twist in his gut turning into a gentle flutter.
Stay.
So he does and after Eddie's eyes sweep across his face once more, Steve feels the weight of the other man settle against his side.
Where there was once a small space for rain to fall and cold air to lie, there's now two arms pressed together. Leather and cotton. Eddie and Steve. Two halves of an eventual whole.
Hesitantly, seaking a comfort that hopefully can be found in such a space, Steve leans into the warmth and weight, his head falling to Eddie's shoulder with just as much ease.
It's there, where it starts.
Where two boys, broken nearly beyond repair, find each other.
And it's a hair tie, something so small and insignificant, something that can be found in the millions, that binds them to one another. Through the years it'll change hands, or wrists for that matter. Steve or Eddie. Eddie or Steve, but no one else.
It'll feel the nervous snap against Eddie's wrist when he shows up to Steve's for the first time invited for something other than a party. Stuttering his way through what Eddie assumes couldn't possibly be a date.
It'll feel the silk of Steve's hair when it grows long enough for a hardly there French Braid, pulled into place by deft, guitar string bitten fingers. Eddie to his rear and an accidental kiss laid to his shoulder.
It'll be there for the first date, the first kiss and the awkward moments leading up to both. It'll be there for held hands and sharp laughs. For the moments that aren't the best and sometimes even the worst, but it'll be there too for the repair of those times. For the whispered words, the tearful apologises and the kisses and cuddles that follow.
It'll be there for the first apartment.
The first pet.
The first home.
And the moment when Steve drops down to one knee, Eddie having planned to do the same no more than a blink of an eye later. On their 13th anniversary. In the place where a single hair tie seemed to have started it all.
And when they ask for one another's hand to hold through a lifetime and more.