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By the time Wayne gets in from his shift, now, the sun’s already up. It’s strange, feels like the days are getting longer earlier every year. Eddie’s almost done with what’s looking very much like his last senior year, wonder of wonders. Wayne’s proud as hell of him. But that’s also how Wayne tells the time of year best: he doesn’t remember kicking Eddie out to class in the bright of day like this.
Maybe something got turned on its head by whatever caused those ‘earthquakes’. Scrambled dawn and dusk a little, like a goddamn egg. Who fuckin’ knows.
It’s a Saturday, anyway, so no dragging anyone out of bed for school either way. Wayne unlocks the door, knows Eddie spent the night at Steve’s, figures he’ll brew some coffee just for the sake of something warm, and then try for some shuteye.
He doesn’t startle, so much as freeze, when he sees the figure standing in his kitchen.
Which in itself isn’t so out of the norm; Eddie’s rarely up this early of his own free will, but ever since the he’d gotten tangled up with the Harrington boy, well before they started tangling up, that kid had become something of a fixture overnight as soon as Eddie was discharged from the hospital. And Steve Harrington was a morning person.
But again: Eddie had left to spend the night. Last night.
At Steve’s.
So Mr. Morning Person standing in the kitchen just now is, in fact, a little unexpected.
Steve had been staring at the floor until the door had opened, his hair’s all flopped over his face; gives him away. But his head sure as shit snaps up to look toward Wayne now.
“I…” Steve starts, blinks a little lost and owlish before he clears his throat, plants his feet, squares his jaw and meets Wayne’s eyes dead-on.
“We need to talk.”
Wayne wonders if this is the tone of voice the kid uses to fight the monsters they don’t talk about.
“Say again?”
Steve rolls his shoulders back and crosses his arms and oh yeah. That’s a soldier right there. Wayne’s heard about this version of the boy who smiles all dopey at this nephew like he’d hung the goddamn moon and shat out the stars, who yelled at the television with him over a couple beers on game nights. Never seen it in person before.
Looks pretty fierce.
“I love your nephew,” Steve’s saying without much give in his voice, save that his eyes are a little brighter when he adds: “More than I could ever have planned or hoped for.”
Then his eyes get darker, narrowed when he continues on:
“And you love your nephew. Better than he thought he could ever get when he showed up.”
Wayne doesn’t like to dwell on how Eddie came to be here with him, on how he was when he arrived and why. Wayne likes instead to focus on what Eddie was able to grow into, and how. Wayne can even feel a little joy in having had any hand in it, so he goes with listening not to what the boy didn’t think he could have, and instead what he ended up with that was good, even if it came as a surprise.
“And I like you, Wayne,” which sounds like a nice thing to say, except for how it’s fucking said: “and I want to believe better of you than what it all looks like.”
Wayne doesn’t say anything, because honestly he’s already just so goddamned confused. He keeps his stance neutral, and his face the same as best he can. Watches. Tries to puzzle this out.
“I don’t know if it’s just gotten too much, after everything? Or if who he likes is all well and good until it’s in your face, in your home?” And oh, Steve’s getting more than a touch of venom in his tone now, and his eyes are sharp, getting sharper by the second; “if you can’t accept that he,” and Steve takes a half step forward, and it almost looks like an accident, like he’s getting just swept up but it’s not. No.
No, it’s measured and it’s matched with a stare that’s cold as all hell and Steve wants it to be that way. Wayne thinks he means it as a warning, but fuck if he can figure out what for.
Until Steve goes ahead and tells him.
“If you think kicking him out is—“
“Now hold on now,” Wayne cuts him off because yeah, sure, Steve could tell him the what.
Didn’t mean Wayne was gonna understand it for shit.
There is one thing he definitely thinks he does understand, though:
“Are you working up to threatening me, boy?”
Steve, to his credit, doesn’t falter. He’s got some balls, if nothing else.
“Sit down,” Wayne flicks his eyes over to the couch but Steve doesn’t budge. Wayne just sighs. His feet hurt, goddamnit. And he would like to make his coffee.
“Did Eddie tell you I was kicking,” and actually, no, he doesn’t want his coffee just now because when he actually says the words implied for himself, they taste about as bitter as he can stand all on their own; “that I was kicking him out?”
Steve frowns then, and leans against the counter and ah. Wayne thinks he recognizes something in his glare, in the tilt of his chin that fits what he’d heard Ed say about some ‘king’ figure Steve had played at once upon a time. He’ll give the boy his due: looks like he’s pieced together something of whatever that’d been, that fits this whole ‘take you out back and maybe skin you’ shtick here and now.
“He showed me the newspaper clippings you’ve been leaving him. Job listings. From wanted ads in the fucking Star.” And, well, yeah. Wayne would have figured that Eddie’d show Steve. Why wouldn’t he?
“You don’t even want him in your town,” Steve bites that one out something savage, spits it vile and Wayne really isn’t fucking getting this, but he’s a simple man, and a fairly patient one for the givens. He doesn’t want to jump half-cocked when he doesn’t understand just yet.
And he’s not dumb, Jesus; he well knows not to spook any creature, human or otherwise, that’s already poised to strike. And he’s fucking got one of those, it seems, coiled to pounce in front of his goddamn oven.
“The Buckley girl’s leavin’ for college,” Wayne grunts a little, keeps his voice clipped. Steve doesn’t so much as blink.
“Got into Butler, ain’t she?”
Still no blinking.
“You follow her,” Wayne offers simply, because well, hell. He sort of figured this one was as simple as it got. “He needs to follow you.”
So, sure. Eddie’ll need to pitch in for food and rent and shit. He only cuts out the jobs Eddie can do and that pay a fair wage, give him at least that much.
“I’m not going to college,” is what Steve does give Wayne, and in truth, Wayne does not even try to hold back a scoff because: honestly.
“Not what I said, was it.”
And Steve tilts his head to the side and good god, Wayne can almost see the breath where Steve tips from whatever this has been so far—still not sure exactly what but, been fairly consistent at least—into something…something else.
“Do you think he’s,” Steve starts, and his eyes glint like a fuckin’ cartoon villain. “Do you think he needs watching, like a, like a pet?” Oh, and Wayne had thought Steve spat his disgust before; he’d been wrong. “Is that what he is to you?” Then Steve scowls, and it’s real rage in him when he asks:
“Do you think that’s what he is to me?”
“Hey now,” Wayne snaps just a little, because whatever this is, nobody gets to ask if Wayne thinks something like that of his boy. Nobody. “The hell’d you get that idea?”
“He needs to follow me?” Steve’s breathing a little heavy, gearing for a fight. “He doesn’t ask you for shit, Wayne, he does everything he can, still thinks he owes you for shit he didn’t even do, but if you want him out? He’s a grown-ass man!” Steve’s hands fly up at that, the most motion, the most visible feeling he’s betrayed so far. “He doesn’t need a fucking babysitter, doesn’t need to have—“
And it’s actually the moving that flips the switch in Wayne’s head. Helps him start to piece together at least a picture that maybe could fit some of the things that don’t fit at all. This piece mainly being; how the hell can Steve Harrington live with and love with his Eddie, and not see front-row-center that needing to follow Steve was about the needing—that kind of bone-deep thing that’s just shy of dangerous—and not really at all about the following?
“Steve,” Wayne tries, because whatever else is going on, Steve loves his boy. More even than Wayne probably gave him credit for before, and Wayne kinda thought they seemed straight out a storybook. If this boy loves his nephew enough to stand there, in another man’s home—no matter how much he was welcome, no matter how much he’d made himself a staple in it—and stand toe-to-toe against that man on his turf, about his own flesh?
Well, shit.
Wayne’s just glad that, at the end of this, he knows whatever Steve’s this riled about isn’t actually fuckin’ true.
“I’m not going anywhere, because Eddie isn’t going anywhere,” Steve’s laying out plain, unshakable, like leaving never crossed his mind even if his best friend was on her way to greener pastures, and well. Huh.
“And Eddie isn’t going anywhere until Eddie goddamn wants to,” and Wayne, much as he was trying to be and will continue to be supportive of his nephew, and hell, supportive of this bullheaded kid his nephew loves, too? Wayne’s actually kind of glad to hear that. He’s not…not entirely ready to say goodbye right after graduation.
“But if he’s not welcome here?” And shit, that’s…hell. Wayne’s starting to get the maybe-picture. If Eddie didn’t plan to leave, didn’t want to yet, at least, Wayne can make a few very misguided and unfounded leaps to get to something like a roundabout hint to pack up and go to…Indianapolis?
Shit. Sure.
“You’d better fucking man up and say as much straight to his face, no more toying with him, leaving these little hints, picking at him so he’s all anxious and aching, because,” and Steve leans in, and god that kid could go work for the mafia, he’d be a hell of an enforcer, or whatever the guys are who beat people up and carry all the muscle.
“I do not take well to people hurting my boyfriend. Not well at all.“ And actually, maybe a no for the mafia, because Steve kind of looks a little pained, if still full-on resolved, when he tacks on:
“And there are consequences for hurting him, that I don’t think you’ll like.”
And Wayne doesn’t actually plan for it, and he doesn’t do it to be cruel, no mean-spirit to be found, he swears. He also doesn’t fucking doubt Steve Harrington for one single minute as to the truth of his words.
But all that shit aside: Wayne busts out cackling. Full-body guffawing. He would offer the tactic to Steve’s enemies if he didn’t love the kid at the end of the day, because it stops him dead in his tracks, eyes all wide and fucking young, if only for a second.
That’s all Wayne really needs, though.
“Sit the fuck down,” Wayne tries again as he catches his breath, and maybe Steve’s still knocked off-kilter enough to listen, but then Wayne thinks twice before he makes it to the couch:
“Actually, call your boy, wherever he is,” Wayne wonders if Eddie’s still asleep at Steve’s house; “and tell him to get here. ‘Cause we’re gonna set this straight.”
Steve stares for a minute, mouth a little dropped open, and Wayne just shakes his head, chuckles to himself as he passes Steve to the side and slaps his shoulder:
“Then sit the fuck down.”
While Steve dials, Wayne takes the opportunity to finally brew his goddamn coffee.
And it’s good, actually, in the end. Sitting them down and spelling it out, because Wayne gets to hug Eddie hard and tell him firm that he’d never, he’d never hurt him on purpose, that he always wants Eddie to come to him with his problems even if the problem is him, how Eddie’s home will always be here no matter what other homes he finds. And because, in explaining his intentions, Eddie catches on so much quicker than Steve to what Wayne had meant in knowing point-blank that Eddie’d follow Steve without a second’s thought, like an instinct already. Eddie agrees like an instinct too, automatic and immediate and it’s a quick thing to clear up, really, but it also makes clear how Steve doesn’t jump on board near as quick, doesn’t see it quite as plain as anyone else with fuckin’ eyes, so Eddie tells him. Tells him again. Kisses him long enough that Wayne goes and brews another pot of coffee in the middle, and promises he’ll make Steve know it every single day, he’ll tell him and he’ll show him and maybe his nephew’s a dramatic sappy fool, but he’s a good man, and he loves a good man, and Wayne mostly figures he couldn’t ask for more than that—so.
All’s well that ends well, or however that shit goes.
Though when Friday rolls around, Wayne maybe grabs a few bills out of the emergency cash he keeps in an old chew can, and buys a six pack of some of the rich-boy beer he’d seen when Steve hosted that engagement to-do for Joyce and Hopper; Steve rarely drinks it, definitely not at the trailer, but Wayne has the strange-but-very-pointed urge to get him…not a gesture of apology, exactly, because while Wayne hugged the hell out of his nephew after explaining that he was trying to help, he didn’t actually do anything wrong here—and anyway, Steve had baked him one of those fancy chocolate pies he liked so well at Christmas as a very unstated but very fuckin’ clear gesture of his own.
So maybe it’s a thanks-for-loving-my-boy-so-well-you’ll-come-after-his-own-blood-if-you-think-they’re-the-cause-of-his-hurting-and-probably-take-them-out-with-your-crazy-ass-bat gift.
Yeah, that’ll do.
And when Steve comes over next for the game, Wayne grabs a bottle and brings it to the couch, and Steve turns red before he pops it open and tilts it toward Wayne’s can in recognition of something they really don’t have to say out loud, because that boy’s stupid like a fox.
Damn straight be he can read between the lines.