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Eddie Munson has always been sharp.
Not cruel.
Sharp.
His eyes are always looking for an exit, even when his brain isn’t. He’s always ready to move, muscles taut even as his arms hang loose at his sides. It’s leftover from when he was a kid, probably, when a single wrong move could leave him bruised for weeks.
It comes as a surprise, then, the first time his eyes go to Steve Harrington instead of Steve’s front door.
It started in middle school. The way Eddie’s eyes catch on Steve when he’s in the room. The way he can’t help but watch when Steve’s around.
Of course, in middle school, Eddie’s eyes caught on Steve only after he’d reassured himself that he had a way out.
That changes after Spring Break.
The bats fucked Eddie over pretty bad, and between Wayne’s work and the time he spends catching up on sleep so he can work, he’s pretty much out of commission on the Eddie care front.
It ends up being Steve who comes over, who sits with Eddie through the delirium of pain meds, who feeds Eddie soup when he’s hungry, who reads to Eddie when he’s so bored he can’t think. It’s Steve who changes Eddie’s dressings every four hours or whatever the fuck the doctor said, and it’s Steve who helps Eddie to the bathroom to shit or get clean.
It’s Steve who Eddie starts to rely on.
Two weeks pass, and then a month, and Eddie starts spending a frankly absurd amount of time at Steve’s house. Between Wayne being gone all the time and Chrissy-
Well. It’s no wonder Eddie doesn’t want to spend any more time in the trailer than he has to.
Steve is so goddamn sweet, though, and the more Eddie’s over there, the more he starts to settle into the house.
And then one day, Eddie wakes up on Steve’s sofa and instead of looking for a door first like he’s done since he was eight years old, he looks over at Steve.
Steve is looking back.
“Morning,” he says, voice low and raspy from sleep.
“Mornin’,” Eddie replies.
And he’s done a pretty good job, all things considered, of not staring at Steve. Of only looking at him the normal regular person amount.
But this - Steve, smiling at him, the first thing Eddie sees in the morning and the last thing he sees at night - might cause an issue.
Because this - Steve fucking Harrington - is how people like Eddie get ruined.
It becomes a pattern. Especially after Eddie moves in. Steve Harrington is absolutely magnetic and it’s becoming bad for Eddie’s health.
Not literally.
Obviously.
But on the nights it’s Steve cooking dinner Eddie has taken to sitting on the counter and chattering about whatever comes to mind because he’s damn good at talking and then sometimes he’ll catch Steve’s eye and completely lose his train of thought.
Or sometimes they’ll get three quarters of the way through some movie and Eddie will realize that he has absolutely no idea what’s going on in the slightest because he’s been completely zoned out of the movie and into Steve’s hand on his ankle or Steve’s feet in his lap or Steve’s head on his shoulder.
Or Eddie will look over and Steve will be looking back and he won’t be able to breathe for, like, half a second, and maybe his heart skips a beat but it’s really not skipping more like just… coming in late.
Yeah.
Eddie’s screwed.
Eight weeks into purgatory, Eddie is cleared to drive. He drives the two of them to a meeting at the Squawk and laughs as Steve’s fist clenches so hard around the door handle that his knuckles turn white.
And then he drives them to Steve’s house, and he can feel Steve’s sleepy gaze on him, watching, until about ten minutes before they get there which is when Steve’s eyes slip closed.
Eddie turns his music way down and pulls one knee up to his chest so he can rest his chin on it and just…
Look.
Steve’s hair is sprawled across his face, his mouth open. He’s snoring, a little. Eddie can’t help but smile at that. It makes him seem… human, somehow.
He looks more relaxed than Eddie’s ever seen him. Even in sleep, Steve’s brow is always furrowed, his face always twitching like he’s having a nightmare. Eddie knows the feeling - they’ve agreed to not wake each other up unless it seems worse than usual, because if they wake each other up for every nightmare there’s not much point in going to sleep at all.
Steve’s eyes flutter open almost three hours later. Eddie tells him it was one, because he doesn’t want Steve to feel bad, and then they both go to Steve’s room - Steve’s idea - and Eddie sleeps the best he has in two months.
He goes to Wayne after that, and he tells him everything. Everything. Because Wayne has already heard it all, already knows about Eddie’s evergreen thing for Steve Harrington, already knows how bad it’s gotten.
Wayne laughs.
A little.
And then he sees how desperately serious Eddie is about this and he gets serious too.
“Look, kid,” he says, “I’ll admit I don’t know much about this… romance stuff. But I know people.” He leans back in his chair, takes a sip of water. Eddie has his knees pulled up to his chest, chin resting on them, fingers tapping an anxious rhythm on his ankles.
Wayne blows out a slow breath. “That Steve boy of yours is good people.” He says it with a little nod, as if agreeing with himself. “He won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt him. Even then I doubt it. Whatever happens with him… I think you’ll be okay.”
He’s right.
Eddie knows he’s right.
Because, see, the thing is, Steve is sweet.
Eddie is not.
It’s like comparing broken glass to- to goddamn candy floss is what it is, and so Eddie decides to do something for Steve. Something that will kind of, sort of live up to all Steve’s done for Eddie these past weeks.
Now that Eddie’s moved in officially, after all, he has a little more agency over what happens in the house. At least, according to Steve. And so after Eddie is settled, after he gets his things set up where he wants them, after the space becomes inexplicably theirs, Eddie sneaks out during one of Steve’s boring Squawk shifts (the ones where they’re not doing anything Upside Down related, which happen more often than Eddie would’ve thought) to buy paint.
He’s seen Steve glaring daggers at the dining table more times than he can count, and so when Steve arrives home that afternoon, the table is well on its way to matching Eddie’s tattoos.
He grins at Steve, because what else is there to do? “Hey. Saw you glaring at this thing the other day. Figured I’d fix it up for you.”
Day breaks on Steve’s face. Seriously. It’s as if nobody’s ever done anything nice for him.
“Thanks,” Steve says softly.
Eddie’s grin softens a little, and he somehow works up the courage to say, “No problem, Stevie.”
Stevie. Eddie’s pathetic.
But Steve just smiles and bumps his shoulder into Eddie’s on his way to the fridge.
“Hungry, Eds?”
Well not anymore. Not now that Eddie’s stomach is twisting itself into knots. Eds? He’s going to throw up.
“I’ll take a snack,” Eddie says, because he’d rather puke all over himself than see that disapproving look Steve sometimes gets when he denies food.
And so Steve brings him a little plate of dill pickles and peanut butter, and then he retreats to the other side of the table to collapse into a chair with his own pickles (sans peanut butter, because he thinks Eddie’s a heretic for even suggesting them together) and settles in to watch.
And so Eddie keeps painting. The walls and the doors and the fucking appliances because it makes Steve beam every time. He can’t help but cackle when Nancy and Jonathan see it for the first time at a party, both of their mouths falling open.
“What the fuck,” Nancy says, and Eddie wants to make a joke about the princess of Hawkins High brought so low as to say fuck but actually she might genuinely shoot him with a gun and he’s laughing much too hard anyway.
They settle in the living room, where Eddie has painted the walls purple and neon yellow and is still figuring out how to dye the sofa. Steve collapses onto the sofa next to Eddie and lies against his side like he belongs there and Eddie is honestly having a hard time finding a reason he wouldn’t.
Especially when they finally fill him in on what’s been hiding in Hawkins and God, Eddie knew about the Russians but he hadn’t heard about practically anything else.
He does what he can for Steve, which turns out to be combing fingers through his hair while he describes horrors even Eddie can’t imagine.
And then they get to the baby demo, and Eddie has to seriously weigh the pros and cons of driving over to Dustin’s house to smack him over the back of the head.
“Dustin kept a baby demodog in his house?”
“He named it Dart,” Steve says wearily. “It ate his cat.”
“What the fuck.”
“Thank you.”
And they finish the story and Eddie is reeling, a little bit, because they all have seen shit that hasn’t appeared in his own worst nightmares.
No wonder Steve wakes up screaming so often.
They shift to small talk after that, Eddie still toying with Steve’s hair because it makes both of them breathe easier and because he’s a little stuck on the Russians and the Demos and- Well. Everything.
But he tunes in enough to participate, tunes in enough to accept when Jon offers him a beer, tunes in enough to feel Steve finally laugh against him.
He does not tune in enough not to be surprised when Robin blurts that she’s gay out of nowhere.
And he certainly does not tune in enough to think about his reply before he says, “Same.”
Steve goes suddenly still against him, stiff as a board.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck.
But Eddie can’t run, he has an audience and Steve is still pressed up against his side anyway even if it feels like he’d rather be anything else, and so he continues. “Although I’m sure you’ve all already heard the rumors. Thanks for telling us, Buckley.” He forces a laugh that sounds natural because things he practices always tend to and keeps his fingers in Steve’s hair because that’s the only thing keeping him sane right now.
Of course, that’s ripped away when Steve stands abruptly and pulls Robin into the bathroom.
Eddie smiles when Nancy and Jonathan awkwardly tell him they never really paid attention to the rumors anyway even though he knows they did because everyone does and he plays along and tells them it’s fine and pretends he’s not about three seconds away from hyperventilating.
It takes eight minutes for Robin to return, Steveless. Eddie counts the seconds because it’s better than having a full breakdown.
It takes almost twelve for Steve to return. When he does, he looks… different. He’s loose. Relaxed. His face is a little flushed, a soft smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
Eddie wants desperately to have been the one to make him look like that.
You okay? Eddie mouths, because he has to know.
Steve bites his lip and grins and nods and then he sits back down except that this time instead of leaning against Eddie he slips under Eddie’s arm and curls into his side.
Eddie is going to hyperventilate for a completely different reason now. Talk about whiplash.
Still, his fingers make their way tentatively back into Steve’s hair, and when Steve sighs softly and goes boneless, Eddie figures that whatever that was probably has nothing to do with him at all.
By the time Steve rolls over to face him, Eddie already knows he was wrong. Whatever happened in the bathroom earlier one hundred percent had something to do with him. He miscalculated. Because Steve’s been staring at the ceiling for almost fifteen minutes (which Eddie knows because he’s been staring at Steve). Because Steve’s breathing isn’t steady, isn’t relaxed - it’s a little shaky, like he’s nervous about something.
Eddie has prepared himself for everything. To be kicked out of the bedroom. Of the house. To be told that Steve doesn’t like him, actually, that they aren’t even friends. To be told that Steve would rather die than share a bed with someone like Eddie.
So when Steve rolls over to face him, Eddie stops breathing.
“Hey,” Steve whispers.
Eddie swallows around the lump in his throat. “Hey,” he manages to whisper back.
“I’m gonna tell you something.”
This is it. Eddie’s ruined it again. Ruined everything. Because the kids will side with Steve, inevitably. That’s always the way this works. And in one fell swoop, Eddie is about to lose everything.
“What’s up?” he asks softly, praying Steve can’t hear the tremble in his voice. His hands are shaking under the covers, he can feel it.
“I like you.”
What.
“Like, a lot a lot.”
A blush crawls up Steve’s neck to his ears, and Eddie is pretty sure his heart is going to explode because what.
Eddie just barely manages to keep from running for the door as the past few months rewrite themselves entirely in his brain. Months of sleeping together, of stealing Steve’s sweatshirts because it was an accident the first time but it made Steve smile (oh), of sitting pressed knee to hip to shoulder on the sofa with Eddie’s hands in Steve’s hair because he can’t help but touch Steve, can’t help but hold him close. Months of coming down to breakfast already made, of dancing in the kitchen, of movie nights and reading and-
Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever smiled this hard.
“Stevie,” Eddie says, “I’ve liked you for months.”
And he pulls Steve into his arms, heart beating wildly out of control, and he still kind of wants to run because he always runs and it’s everything and nothing because Steve is everything and it’s a little overwhelming but it’s also nothing to stay (even though Eddie is probably definitely having a major cardiac event) because Wayne was right, Steve is good people.
“I like you, too,” Eddie says into Steve’s hair. “Like, a lot, a lot.”