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Eddie comes to before sunlight kicks his ass into waking; has no clue where the fuck he is.
Until he does.
Until absolutely he does.
Holy fucking shit.
They’d been drinking, but not enough that that’s why Eddie’s here. It’d been celebratory. They were flying out to record a demo tomorrow, a real fuckin’ shot and they’d just wanted their friends to send them off for good luck and of course they’d delivered, not least because, here, their friends were mainly people they played with, other bands at the less-than-Hideout-level of rundown bar they shuffle nights with; Robin Buckley, who’d taken the Greyhound all the way from Northwestern; and then—
The man next to him in the bed.
In that man’s room. Inside that man’s Indianapolis apartment that Eddie half-lived in even though every time said man had floated that there’s plenty of room and you’re always here anyway in the last eight months since he’d also made the leap to ditch Hawkins, and ended up on the slightly-nicer side of town three blocks from Eddie’s little shithole—but every time the idea of cohabitation came up, the immortal thing that wouldn’t die no matter how hard Eddie tried to suffocate it for his own sanity; that deathless fucking thing reminded him that he couldn’t be asked to live with Steve Harrington like it was just a…a point of convenience.
Reminded him he’d never get over Steve Harrington—time and distance or fame and fortune be damned—until the day he died: Eddie would never get over Steve, despite never having even had him to lose in the first place.
But then there’s the fact of the here and now. So he flicks back farther in what he can recall of the previous evening—
The other bands had gone. Everyone still left in Gareth’s apartment was all Hawkins. Robin had long been closest with him of the boys, since Gareth actually played in the school band versus the rest of them—percussion was actually a thing they liked to have, so—and Steve, well.
Stevie may as well have just been one of them, by now, for how attached Eddie had never stopped being to the man’s side.
But then Eddie remembers the drinking had gotten heavier, the joints had been rolled, Eddie had only partaken of the latter at that point, shared it with Steve and a puff or two for Birdie, while his bandmates had gone all-in on clearing out the empties—by which they meant, bottles close enough to empty, practically begging for them to make them clearable.
So their tongues had been loose and their tact—while usually difficult to find anyway—was full-ass nonexistent by the time numerous halfs-worth of vodka from the table had been thrown into one of those heavy duty Hefty bags in the hopes they wouldn’t break out and shatter on the way to the dumpster later on.
“We score this, you could bag anyone,” Dougie had been gesturing all wobbly at Eddie with a bottle of Captain Morgan that looked like it had about three shots left inside.
“No more,” he hiccuped, and everyone laughed, save Eddie, who was not loving being under the microscope of his particularly shitfaced friends, particularly involving his nonexistent love life: “no more Eddie the Banished from everyone’s goddamn bed!”
Hearty cackles followed, while Eddie tried to focus on not turning beet-red because fuck them, he…sometimes gave a blowjob outside of a club, he wasn’t a monk.
“And making his blue balls our problem,” Jeff added on, and yeah, y’know what: fuck them.
They didn’t even know Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he actually got a blowie himself in exchange, and that was nobody’s goddamn business—
“Not anyone,” Gareth did the slurring, and Eddie had to go back—Doug had said he could get anyone in bed if they landed a record deal and became famous. And Gareth was doubting, like, even with all that? Fuck hi—
“Still couldn’t nab Harrington.”
Gareth piped up and added that in with a sigh, a shake of the head that sloshed his bottle, like he was being sympathetic instead of blowing wide open the one secret Eddie still had from Steve, the single thing that he’d kept his trap closed about to be able to keep Steve in his life in any capacity—to not lose Steve altogether.
Eddie’d felt…fucking sick.
“Oh shit, yeah, he’s gonna be your white whale, man,” Dougie lamented, like maybe drunk-him had a little of sober-him poking at his consciousness, letting him know he should feel sorry, but he was putting the pieces together wrong over what for; “can’t even sneak in as a rebound.”
And Jeff, even Jeff jumped in with something like compassion over that, like even if any of this were acceptable or on the table or possible in any goddamn universe ever: like hell Eddie would try and step in when Steve was currently fresh off the end of a five-month relationship that, far as he’d told Eddie, had seemed to be going well—until it wasn’t.
Fuck, just, fuck.
Eddie’d needed air, he doesn’t know if anyone had tried to stop him, or called out when he all but ran for the door, just knows he’d knocked a bottle and heard it splinter on the way out.
He remembers still breathing shaky and lighting up his third cig when a hand had landed on his shoulder.
“Eddie?”
He remembers that he couldn’t even tense, because Steve was there, hand on Eddie’s shoulder, and he’d make it all bearable. Like he always did.
Or else he would, until he remembered what Eddie’s asshole bandmates had been saying, then there’d be no Steve ever again and—
“You look like you’re either gonna puke or pass out, man,” Steve had turned him around, eyes wide with the way he always felt concern, and care, and worry so deep; “come on.”
And Eddie…no matter how his heart was thrashing, no matter how scared he was of the fallout to come: Steve had taken Eddie’s hand in his to keep him steady, to lead him and Eddie didn’t even think where they’d go, just knew there wasn’t a world where he didn’t follow Steve.
And then he’d blinked, and they’d walked those few blocks to the nicer side of town, and up the stairs to Steve’s apartment.
To Steve’s bedroom.
“Steve, I,” Eddie remembers very clearly feeling tongue tied. Remembers how his heart hadn’t once stopped racing.
“Were they being dickheads?” Steve had asked, running a broad palm up Eddie’s cheek in a way he’d never done before huffing a breath, rolling his eyes, then starting again, almost more intense the second time around, the shape of his hand on Eddie’s skin a dizzying thing:
“Or I mean, just dickheads?” and Eddie would have huffed a little too, like a tiny cousin of a laugh, if he’d been able to breathe at all.
Steve’d eyed him carefully, looking for something, or sizing him up for a test Eddie knew already that he’d fail spectacularly.
But all he did, when his best friend didn’t shift away—his best fucking friend, who he’s been in love with now for years—was blink, and try to figure out if he’d heard wrong when Steve leaned in a little, breath so warm as he asked:
“Do you want this?”
Eddie distinctly remembers Steve’s hand then coming to his chest; noticing Eddie still had his own shirt on but Steve’s had come off somewhere along the way and—
And Eddie, hand to fucking god, thought it had all been a dream. Because what he’s remembering now, in vivid detail, is the best sex he’s ever even thought of having. And so he is entirely justified in relegating it to dream-status because no way in fuck Eddie Munson gets that kind of experience, hell, maybe no way in fuck that kind of experience even exists at all for anyone to have, not in real life.
But…he’s in Steve’s bed right now.
He’s in Steve’s bed. With Steve.
He shifts; the meat of his thigh’s a little stuck in a wet spot he must have either missed or simply hadn’t cared enough to avoid, he’s sore where he’s never been sore before, not like this, but close enough to things he does know that it can only mean that it was real.
It was…real?
“Hey.”
And Steve’s hand is on Eddie’s bare chest this time, because he’s fucking naked in Steve’s bed; they’re both naked in Steve’s bed—
Steve’s hand can’t miss the way Eddie’s pulse has leaped up 0-to-100 between fucking breaths.
“That wasn’t just to make a point.”
Steve tilts his head the way Eddie loves in him, when he gets confused even the slightest bit, but Eddie can’t appreciate it. Because once the possibility hits him, once he says it without even thinking it fully through first, launching it into the world like that: they’d said Eddie would be able to bed anybody.
Except Steve.
And Steve is a good man with the biggest heart and he’s the best friend Eddie could ask for, and he’s the one who came after Eddie when he’d run from the laughter, and he’s the one who took Eddie home, who asked if he wanted, if they had just been—
“Eds?” Steve asks, so gentle. So fucking gentle.
“Please,” Eddie half-gasps because the possibility in what he’s thinking is…is feeling more like a probability every second that passes by; “tell me.”
And he makes himself swallow, makes himself look up to say:
“Tell me that wasn’t just to prove a point.”
He can’t say tell me it wasn’t just pity once you heard what they said, once you knew, can’t bring his lips to shape around those words.
Fuck if what he does say doesn’t sound exactly the same as what he can’t get out; as what’s eating away like acid at his chest, either way:
“A point?”
That head tilt again, that Eddie can’t even enjoy.
He bites his lower lip to near-bleeding, tries to steel himself.
He’s naked in the bed of the man he’s been in love with for nearly all of his adult life so far. He…he needs a second to try and breathe.
“You either never knew, before they said,” Eddie finally manages, barely a whisper but that’s still a something; “or you did an admirable job ignoring and still being here anyway.”
And that would be Steve’s way; he’d never shame Eddie, laugh or embarrass him. He’d walk next to him as his brother-in-arms to the end. It’s who Steve is.
Eddie doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.
He’s thinks worse.
“But apparently now you know, that I’d sell my soul for you,” Eddie wonders if it’s the nakedness of his body that’s tearing open every piece of him to bleed free all of a sudden as he keeps fucking talking: “I’d tear up my ticket, give up the demo thing,” and he would, he will—
“I would make it my mission in life to coax this,” and it surprises him as much as Steve, given the way those amber eyes widen, when Eddie’s hand splays on Steve’s naked chest, over his galloping heart; “to beat harder just to try and catch it on my tongue, fish it out from your chest because my ribs could keep it better, safer, loved like you deserve,” and Eddie means it, feels a little bolder, a little steadier even if it doesn’t mean much for how shaky he is to his bones: but defending Steve. Making sure Steve is cared for like he fucking should be, always—that’s a place to stand rooted, for Eddie. That, he can speak to without shaking so hard.
“Better than all the assholes before, Stevie,” and he thinks to Steve latest ex and how undeserving he was, how they all always are, how Eddie in his perpetual cycle of jealousy, to guilt—because Steve’s only ever wanted love, and a partner, and Eddie should be happy for his friend—to constant suspicion largely centered on the belief that no one could be good enough for Steve, period, that inevitably ends in vindication when it crumbles—and more guilt, because Eddie should feel nothing but sorry, and sympathy for his best fucking friend who just wants to find love.
Eddie…Eddie’s far enough gone now, this time, to lay out how he’d have done it different from the jump:
“And I’ll fumble, I’ll fuck it up but I won’t ever let it hurt, let you hurt like they—”
“Eddie,” Steve’s voice is soothing, now, talking someone off a ledge where Eddie feels so fucking close to tears, crumbling in some way messier, less easily pieced back up into a whole. Steve just covers Eddie’s hand and breathes and Eddie, he, he needs—
“Tell me. Either way, just,” he pleads, hates that he has to, but he needs this:
“Tell me.”
He needs to know if Steve just did this because he saw his friend in pain. Eddie needs to know if there was anything to how his whole entire body felt like it understood what making love meant—for maybe the first fucking time—under Steve’s hands. His lips, his body just hours before.
Unfathomable, or utterly heartbreaking: he needs to know.
“I think, I think maybe I was the asshole,” Steve starts, and Eddie stills because…
What does he even mean?
“Maybe not in the beginning, like, when I was just a jock-y kinda dick in school,” and Eddie shakes his head because Steve was just…he was just the standard high school douche, he was never—
“But I, I had this, idea, right. One I thought I was supposed to want, but don’t think I ever really did.”
“Your nuggets,” Eddie half-mouths more than speaks, and for it to tie back to such a fucking disaster, to the trauma of that single week: Steve smiles soft at him anyway. Fond.
The story started there for them, in so many ways, and maybe enough time has finally passed where that’s the only part that really counts.
“Nuggets,” Steve huffs with a little laugh; “who I had,” then he leans, bumps his forehead into Eddie’s shoulder: “who we had,” and he says it like it means something: “raised ‘em up right and everything, straight into college.”
All but Erica. Who they honestly always needed to worry about the least, and—
“But I lied to them back then, the people I’ve been with since,” and she pauses, shakes his head kinda rueful before he tacks on:
“As much as I lied to myself.”
Eddie knows Steve’s less set on the mobile-home and the pack of Harringtons than he maybe used to be—or apparently convinced himself to be, maybe?
“But you didn’t mean to,” Eddie’s quick to defend him, to clarify that there’s a stark and real fucking difference. “And you were good to them anyway. So good,” Eddie softens, the glaze of heartache in the reminiscing taking hold as he murmurs; confesses:
“I heard the rumors. I paid attention to the pretty boy I couldn’t have.”
Steve flicks his ear, which feels all sorts of strange as a response when they’re still naked next to each other in bed.
“Stop that shit. You could have the whole fucking world,” and Steve says it like you state a fact; preposterous. “You’re gonna, too, and soon, and you’re gonna make some lucky motherfucker so goddamn happy, to be yours.”
And those eyes are so wide, so earnest, even if they tip a little sad where Eddie can’t comprehend, but: not the point because—
Steve squawks when Eddie flicks his ear back; two can play that game.
“Stop changing the fucking subject. You were good to them, even before I knew you,” Eddie emphasizes, doesn’t bother stopping himself from brushing Steve’s hair behind his ear; his cards are all on the table now, no sense pretending: “and learned how ‘good’ was an goddamn understatement.”
Steve takes a long few seconds to watch him; seconds that feel like eternity. Then he breathes in deep enough that letting it out flutters Eddie’s curls.
And just because Eddie isn’t so pathetic as to note in his head that his heartbeat flutters just the same, doesn’t make the fact of it untrue.
“Agree to disagree,” Steve shrugs, which is honestly insufficient, but he’s on to more words before Eddie can fight the point:
“Past that point, I know I was the asshole, but I meant to be,” and the way he says it without any hint of apology, or shame, is frankly…new.
“I guess it helps that I hurt ‘em early, or made sure they wouldn’t want more but. I was the asshole,” Steve goes on, almost reflective; “when they asked for more than I had, when they asked for more of me.”
And for having been Steve’s friend for this long, Eddie wouldn’t have guessed there was a way left that the man could look at him that’d feel any kind of new.
Given the way he pins Eddie with his eyes now, open in a way Eddie doesn’t possess words for: he’d have been so much more than just wrong.
“Because I couldn’t lie as if more of me was even on offer. Like I was holding it back for spite, or some power play or whatever. I was just already taken,” Steve says, pointed and forceful and overfull with feeling before he heaves another fluttering-breath and splits Eddie’s world in two:
“I was just yours. Always kinda…yours.”
And now the world exists in halves: before this moment; those impossible words; the jolt in Eddie’s heart that crackles through his veins and doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to stopping—that he’d be happy, if it never saw fit to stop at all. A line between all of that.
And whatever’s gonna come next.
“I never thought this was on the table, that we could ever,” Steve shakes his head, a little ruefully again, and traces the scars closest to Eddie’s nipple on the left, then over to the line of his ribs at the right before his eyes flick up again and he says, like a confession as much as like a vow:
“Anything of me, worth a damn, has kinda only ever been yours.”
And Eddie blinks. He blinks, and his veins crackle, and his heartbeat shivers, clumsy but too flooded with a wild kind of hope that he’s scared to give into with everything, not just yet.
Because Steve…if this is real, and Steve means it?
Eddie will give him everything.
“Are you serious?” Eddie barely fucking breathes. “Are you fucking serious?”and his voice gets pitchy in enough of a way that it makes Steve fight a grin, and that in itself lets the hope in his chest unfurl a little more but Eddie has to know for sure, first, because he’s wanted so long and never believed there was a chance, and if he lets this feeling go free, for real?
There’s no way it goes back in. It either gets met, and held, and loved in return, or it withers and dies in a…fucking spectacle.
So, Eddie just…needs to know.
“It was all real?” he asks it, nearly timid, nearly terrifying. “Last night, you meant—”
And he’s not prepared for Steve’s lips just then, but the kiss pressed to his open mouth is tender. Slow and soft and doesn’t last, but doesn’t need to.
It’s comfort. Reassurance. It’s a touch that already knows him.
It’s a kiss that coaxes the impossible hope in him that much closer to the surface.
“I wanted to make you feel as special as you are,” Steve murmurs, lips still close enough to feel the words as much as hear them; “to feel as precious as you are, to me,” and Eddie shudders, his pulse does the same, and Steve leans back a little, and maybe Eddie whimpers to lose the closeness but then his eyes are on Steve’s eyes and he’s drowning like he’s never had the chance to but always kind of dreamt of as Steve exhales low, and little unsteady, too:
“Especially if it was my only chance.”
And Eddie…cannot actually entirely believe what he’s hearing because it can’t be like this. It can’t just, they can’t have just been…
But if Eddie can’t believe it, the pace his heart’s still keeping makes it feel like the believing part might be more of a skill issue, and this is…this is—
“But now, it’s sounding,” Steve’s saying slow, careful, but the smile that wants to unfold from his lips is teasing strong as fuck; “and it’s feeling,” and the smile gives way and shines when Steve gets a groan from Eddie as he shifts his hips just enough to catch the hard line of Eddie’s dick, more than half-chubbed, only held back by the wash of disbelief still coursing through him, but:
“It’s feeling like that might not be the case at all.”
And Steve…Steve just stares at him. Hopes through his eyes, at Eddie, that he’s been wrong the whole time. That they both have been. That it was never one shot. That it was always on the table. That they’d just been scared, and blind, and, and, and—
“I love you.”
And it’s simple. It’s the truest thing Eddie knows, and so he says it that way: unquestionable.
“I’m in love with you. You’re the definition, you’re what the word ‘love’ fucking means,“ Eddie says it in a rush, gasps a little at the end: knew this feeling in him was enormous, but didn’t have a fucking clue the true vastness of the space this thing took inside his chest until he gasps a little around what it feels like to finally have set it free.
And to see Steve’s smile unfurl like the fucking sunrise for it, right in front of Eddie, close enough to touch.
“Good,” Steve answers, and Eddie tries to think how to reply but Steve has him beat there, is pressing pursed lips to the corner of Eddie’s mouth:
“It’s sucks to be alone, in it,” he murmurs, then moves across to the other corner; “and it’s important to be on the same page,” then he runs his nose over the mostly faded but still traceable line of scar tissue there, and that touch is a form of intimacy Eddie hadn’t fathomed before, couldn’t have guessed at wanting, save that he trembles for it harder than for any touch he’s ever known before all of a sudden, like a curse inside his blood’s been lifted because someone touched that raised pink line with an affection almost too deep to name, almost too delicate to try.
“Reading form the same book, I mean,” Steve kisses the divot at the bow of Eddie’s upper lip then leans back again, grins at Eddie brighter, more joyful than Eddie’s ever seen him before he nuzzles the tip of his nose to Eddie’s, playful and full of so much heart:
“Even if it just a dictionary. If we’re talking definitions.”
And of course Eddie stares. Eddie wants to pinch himself to see if this is really fucking happening. Because how in the fuck can everything he’s ever wanted be next to him, can be a heat his flesh can feel, a beat his heart can match?
Fucking how?
“I love you,” Steve whispers, his hand on Eddie’s chest again, palm stretched wide, and again here, too, he asks:
“Do you want this?”
And Eddie’s no fool, at least not in this, not now. And definitely not about reading Steve, understanding. If this is real, and it seems to be, against all odds—if Steve is offering a them, then Steve is offering his heart on his sleeve as much as on a silver platter. He’s all in, even if he would’ve said otherwise, even if he tried just now to beg off as some knave leading anyone on: no. No, Steve was always looking for the right one. Even if he’d been true to every word he’d said about already being spoken for—he’d also said he never thought it was possible. Which means Steve’s as single-minded and whole-hearted as he’s ever been, and when he’s asking Eddie if he wants this?
He’s asking Eddie if Eddie wants him. In the forever-and-always kind of way that Steve’s been searching for; aching for.
The way Eddie’s been feeling the same way about, for Steve and Steve alone, for so fucking long.
“With every part of me.”
It’s the only answer Eddie has. The only words that he could possibly say.
Steve gathers him from beneath both shoulders, presses them chest-to-chest tight enough to make breathing a struggle, but to also feel each other’s heartbeat as a given, as they both pound ecstatic enough to shake foundations; redraw the future.
Eddie is so fucking ready for the future they’re gonna make, now.
“Then you’re gonna get on that plane tomorrow, and you’re gonna record a kickass demo,” Steve mouths into the column of Eddie’s throat, nips at his wild pulse there, too:
“And you’re gonna take this with you, knowing it’s all and only yours,” and Steve lifts up only enough to grab Eddie’s hand and press it even tighter to his chest; to his heart.
“And I’ll be here,” Steve leans to kiss half his mouth; “waiting for you. Ready to pick you up at the airport,” then he kisses the other half, and Eddie can’t help the grin that starts to stretch wider there, matching Steve’s as he breathes:
“And then I’m gonna kiss you so fucking hard and show you how fucking proud I am of you,” Steve tells him with his whole chest, with his real feeling, and then he kisses Eddie in similar fashion, full on and giving everything, holding nothing back.
Eddie meets him, of course, beat for earth-shaking beat.
“What was that for?” Eddie pants, when they finally pull apart.
“Just for how proud I am of you, always,” Steve says simply, like it doesn’t squeeze in Eddie’s chest so tight he’s nearly moved to tears; “just of who you are, and how I’ve been lucky enough to know you, be a part of your life this whole time.”
Eddie cannot believe this is how the story goes, now. He cannot fucking believe.
All the hope in his chest’s taken flight, now, wings unfurled and ribs broken as necessity for it to soar.
“Okay,” he breathes, and then he grabs Steve’s face in both hands and drags him in to find a deeper way to kiss, a place inside his soul even he hadn’t found, to excavate and offer from his tongue into Steve’s safe keeping, for always.
Given the way Steve gapes at him, kind of marvelling, almost on his way to astounded: Eddie thinks he managed okay.
“Then get ready for me to kiss you when I get off that plane for all those same reasons, but then multiplied by a hundred, and added on to with, like, effervescent fucking joy and giddy disbelief and shit, wrapped around all that pride, all that and more pride at the idea that I’m going to get to be a part of the rest of your life,” Eddie’s breath catches, not just because he smooshed all those words frantic into one already breathless lungful, but because Steve’s eyes are shining so bright, he’s so close to the same tears Eddie can feel at the edges of his own eyes, brimming, because holy fuck.
Holy fuck, they’re really here.
“And I’m gonna have the privilege of you being the beating heart of the rest of mine,” Eddie whispers, overcome entirely, tingly in his limbs and only realizing one of the tears have escaped when Steve reaches up to catch it, to trace Eddie’s cheekbone adoringly, to caress his jaw like something sacred.
And more of those tears find good reason to fall again, when Steve leans in, presses his words against Eddie’s temple, waits a breath like he means to, like he plans to: so the first and last letters can catch in the beating of Eddie’s pulse and spread through him like a promise:
“Looking forward to it.”