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“Please.”
It’s said to him so quietly, Eddie almost doesn’t hear it. The same way he can’t really see, can’t make out the shapes in the room despite the one light through the window. Maybe it’s the panic in him, while he’s trying to fight his way through tears as he pulls his clothes back on. But the word whispered at his back makes him take pause.
A desperate little word. He wants it to mean something.
Eddie swallows. Quickly, he goes back to shimmying his jeans back on. Hits his rings on the belt buckle currently hanging loose from the loops of his pants.
It’s not that he wants to go, but it’s that he should. He’ll give some lame excuse later. Something about Wayne needing him back home—despite it being late at night, despite the fact that everybody knows Wayne works the nightshifts. He’ll say it’s because he gets anxious sleeping in other people’s beds. That he even wets the bed sometimes, even if he stopped doing that more than a decade ago. Gets nightmares so violent and lurching, he’s afraid he’ll hurt somebody. He could say that he actually hates sleeping with another person in his bed.
Despite everything in him screaming that he needs it. Because he’s a lonely, lonely person. And always wanted somebody there, needed them so close they could almost climb inside his ribs.
But he fastens the buckle of his belt and continues on with finding his t-shirt.
“Please,” whispered again, so singular, yet so drawn out, and so heartbreaking. The word pierces through Eddie’s back, kills his heart on impact, and exits his chest in one clean pass. It makes him stop searching again. “Don’t go. You don’t have to go.”
Oh, but I do, Eddie thinks, because if I let this go on any longer than it already has, I’ll have to admit how much I love you. And if I admit it and you say nothing in response, I’ll implode right on the spot. I’m saving myself. I’m saving you.
He sniffs. Grabs a random t-shirt from the bedroom floor and begins to pull it over his heavy head of curls. It’s not his shirt, he comes to find, but isn’t surprised. It’s loose on his chest, but tight on his biceps. The shirt is lightly worn. Smells like amber, like cinnamon and vanilla. Not his cologne. Not like cigarettes or marijuana or citrus-bergamot from his Irish Spring. Eddie plucks at the fabric, pulls it farther away from the skin of his chest, where his heart—resuscitated—tries to kiss the shirt with every beat.
If he doesn’t get out of here, he’ll do something stupid like break down into tears. If he doesn’t get out of here, he won’t save face. And if he doesn’t get out of here, he can’t move on.
A pleading, “Eds, please,” hits him. “Please don’t go. Don’t do this to me, too. Please, baby, come on.” Then, the bed behind him shifts. And there’s warmth on his back. A gentle brush of lips to his neck.
Steve wasn’t as sleepy as Eddie thought. Go figure.
“I…I gotta go, Steve,” Eddie states quietly, “I checked my watch. Gotta be home for Wayne, y’know?” He remains as still as he possibly can. Because Steve can read him, he’s come to find. He’ll know that Eddie’s lying if he shifts from foot-to-foot even an inch.
“He’s not home right now,” Steve immediately points out, “it’s dark out. And it’s a weekday, he’s working.”
Eddie swallows again. “I just have to go, Steve.” He doesn’t face him, doesn’t think he could. Doesn’t move, also doesn’t think he could. Just hopes, beyond all else, that Steve will just accept that and go back to bed and forget this night ever happened. That he ever touched Eddie that way. That he ever let himself get involved with a person like Eddie—not because he’s a freak and not because he’s in a different tax bracket, not that he’s above Steve, not that he’s below Steve…because he’s just him.
He hears Steve heave a deep breath.
Then, soft and tiny, “I was going to make you breakfast,” Steve says, “but this doesn’t have to…we can forget this happened if that’s what you want to do.”
“I…Steve”—
“It’ll be hard for me to let go, but I can try.” That makes Eddie turn to Steve. To see him. His limp, sweaty hair and the fact he’s only wearing boxers. The downcast eyes and twisting, nervous hands in front of him. “You’re not the first, so I’ll be fine.”
Eddie’s stomach churns and his palms sweat and he swears that his heart is the loudest thing in this room—screeching and beating and crashing straight out of him. But he brings himself to meet Steve’s volume, to ask, “What do you want, Steve?”
“I want you to stay,” Steve immediately responds, “I want you to stay in bed with me. And…and I’ll wake up first and maybe I’ll find out that you drool in your sleep and then I’ll brush back a stray strand of your hair and I want to get up and make you breakfast and then you’ll be over the moon when I hand you a cup of coffee and it’s made the exact way you love it and then we can…we can…you can…”
He blinks. Blinks again. Harder the third time. “You can…?” Eddie prompts.
“You can find somebody worth loving out of me,” Steve timidly answers, “because I already love you.”
Unable to hold himself back anymore, he takes the few steps forward to put him face to face with Steve. And, in a moment of bravery, holds Steve’s head between his hands and kisses him. Soft and exploratory. Then, passionate and disbelieving. And another, for good measure, that’s in the shape of all the words he wants to say.
“You want that with me,” Eddie states, though it sounds more like a question. Steve nods anyway. “With me. Wow. I…I wish I was better at this part, at saying the good shit. But I do love you, Steve. I’ve been in love with you since we started this whole thing between us but I…I’ve never had something like this and it terrifies me the way you’ve nestled your way into my brain.” He runs his thumbs under Steve’s eyes, catching tears he won’t acknowledge, because he’s sure he’d start crying, too.
“Do you still have to go?” Steve asks quietly, small in a way that’s unlike him. “I don’t want to keep you here if you don’t want to be”—
“I’ll stay, Steve. I’m sorry that I…I’ll stay, I promise. Let me just—let me get dressed down again and I’ll make all this up to you, swear it.” He’s jittering out of his skin; he wants to run laps through the whole house, wants to climb the walls, scream if he has to. But, in a way that’s unlike him, he continues to cradle Steve’s face in his palms and with languid, thoughtful movements, he kisses Steve between his eyebrows, under his eyes, the tip of his nose, and again on his mouth. “I’ll stay as long as you want me,” Eddie promises, “you won’t have to worry about somebody leaving ever again.”
Steve smiles sticky sweet and soft like a stack of pancakes. “Good,” he whispers, “because I never want to let you go.”