Work Text:
Eddie quickly becomes an expert at nodding.
More specifically, he becomes an expert at nodding to whatever Steve Harrington is saying, and as long as Steve Harrington's eyes stay fixed on his, he knows he'll probably keep nodding until his head tips off his neck and rolls away.
1986 hadn't gone the way anyone could have predicted. The monsters, the portals, the child who could probably summon a giant marshmallow man if she tried hard enough. But the most startling development (besides coming out on the other side, scarred and shaken and very much alive) was Steven Fucking Harrington.
Steve Harrington, who was kind, sweet, and all too thoughtful. Who protected people with everything he had and pressed his heart into other people's hands without asking for it back.
And that sucks, honestly. Because Eddie could still remember being invited to parties for drug deals at night and sneered at in the hallways during the day. There were bruises that had long since faded but still somehow ached from when Tommy H had shoved him into lockers while Steve had watched like some all-seeing vassal.
"Fag," they'd hissed, like they hoped it hurt. And as much as Eddie had pretended, his Uncle always said he was made of soft things. An unfortunate truth, truly.
Made even worse with a more all-encompassing and disappointing truth:
Despite the hissed insults, the faded bruises, the sneers and the hair spray holding up fragile egos, Eddie's heart had spoken for him.
He'd always sort of been in love with Steve, even before popularity graced him with its unwelcome presence.
It was a fact that had plagued him for so long. How was it fair? How was it fair that he had to love Steve Harrington, who eyed women with a kind of foul appreciation and marked his territory with harsh kisses across girls' necks. How was it fair that he touched his own neck, just beneath his jaw, and wondered idly how a hickey might look there. How he'd wear it like a rosary at an altar.
And now Steve was kind, sweet, generous, thoughtful?
Well. Eddie was doomed when he held that bottle to Steve's throat.
So yeah. Eddie is deliriously in love. He's not sure when this new friendship will end, but he knows it will end eventually. He'll slip up and Steve will realize he's gay and punch his lights out, or he'll find better, less frustrating friends and leave Eddie and the rest of them in the dust. But until then? He needs to take every moment he has.
And so he nods.
He nods when Steve Harrington asks if he'd like to attend pool parties with the kids. He nods when Steve Harrington asks if he wants to hang out alone and see a movie. He nods when Steve Harrington picks him up from physical therapy.
He even nods when Steve Harrington leans over and asks I'm not imagining things, right? You're, like... into me?
Steve beams. "Awesome," he says, and leans forward to press warm, full lips against his.
It will end soon, Eddie tells himself as Steve's hand presses into his hair and lips leave those all too sacred little dappling pocks along his jaw. So he'll take what he can.
1986 makes way for 1987, and Eddie is still waiting for everything to quietly shatter.
Which makes it all the more frustrating when it doesn't.
Steve is over at their new (government hush-moneyed) apartment almost every day. It's not unusual to see him puttering about, folding blankets or hovering above the stove. Their little home smells less and less like microwaved meals and more like whatever Steve has tried to cook up that day.
Wayne is delighted. "Finally got someone to talk about important stuff with," he crows one night after dinner, sitting in the recliner with a beer while Steve takes the couch besides Eddie. Their fingers link, bodies pressed tight alongside the other. If Wayne notices, he doesn't say anything.
"My stuff's important," Eddie mutters.
Steve just laughs, stealing the beer from his hand to take a swig before pressing a fond kiss to his cheek. "Sports trump everything, Eds," he says, and then goes back to discussing the game playing on the little TV with Wayne.
His thumb rubs back and forth against Eddie's hand the whole time.
Eddie holds tight.
Robin is ecstatic.
It turns out, Steve's transformation had happened long before he'd been aware, and there was less chance of being beaten in a back ally when Steve came to his senses and realized that his exploration had only dragged him back to Hawkins' female population.
"I don't think this is as hopeless as you think it is," Robin tells him during a solo shift at Family video. She was restocking the horror section, mounting a small display of cases that dripped gore and monster teeth. It made Eddie's scars burn.
"And I'm telling you, it is. He's just... he's figuring himself out. And he's going to figure out that this was all just a phase or whatever."
"Steve doesn't really do phases though."
"You don't know that."
"Um, actually I do?" She said it like it was the most obvious, natural thing. Which was fair. She and Steve were pretty much connected at the brain. He was pretty sure that if Steve could have crawled into Robin's ribcage by now, he would have. It was eerie sometimes watching the two of them together. He'd compared them once out loud to the creepy twins in the Shining, and somehow they'd come away thinking it was a compliment.
Like he said.
Eerie.
"Well, it doesn't matter, because it isn't like it'll last long anyway."
Robin gave him a look, setting aside the last VHS before moving back to to the counter for the next supply of kids films. "Just do me a favor, Eddie? Don't break his heart, alright?"
He wasn't sure how to tell her that it would be impossible. If anything, Steve was going to break his.
Steve Harrington's phase to figure out himself lasts longer than Eddie would have expected. Long enough for Steve to drag him into bed, confident and shy all at once before taking Eddie apart slowly, putting him back together one little piece at a time.
When Eddie lets the I love you slip out, he waits for everything to crash around him. Waits to become one of those stars on the precipice of bursting into a black hole. Waits to be hollowed out and tossed away and still somehow thankful that he'd been allowed the brightness at all.
But instead Steve whispers something that sounds suspiciously like I love you into the seam of his shoulder. His breath is warm, and it burns the words deep into Eddie's skin, into his bones, into his muscle, into the soul that had long been made to look like the shape of Steve.
Eddie holds even tighter and wills the moment to last forever.
Another year passes. Steve applies for community college and celebrates with Eddie and Wayne and Robin when he's accepted to the social work track. There's talk about moving closer to Indianapolis so the commute isn't as long. Robin already has an apartment with Nancy there while they work out plans for Boston. Plans that Steve has become more and more invested in. There are rumblings of a new life beyond Indiana and Eddie wonders if he feels them the same way people feel an earthquake coming in. If it's a sign of disaster. A sign to run and hide away until it's all over and gone.
But no.
Housing had become more difficult to come by as prices rocketed upwards. Which is absolutely, definitely, positively, one-thousand-percent why Steve turns to Eddie and says, "We'll find something that works for the both of us," and then proceeds to show up at Eddie's work in the little garage on Maple Street with a clipped advertisement for an apartment.
"I visited it today," he says, giddily drumming on the wheel as they drive through the main slot of road and past Loch Nora towards the highway that will take them all the way out to Indy. "Just wait. It's got great lighting. And the landlord says that she'll let us get a pet if we want one!"
"That's... that's great," says Eddie.
And it is a great apartment. Large windows. High ceilings. Lots of closet space. A fire escape that faces the setting sun.
"Which bedroom would you want?" he asks Steve, who's busy opening and closing every door to see how it latches.
"Whichever one you choose," says Steve, like that sentence alone hasn't rocked Eddie to his very core and shaken his heart loose.
Eddie nods mutely which seems to at least get a positive reaction out of Steve. "Oh! And I had this great idea. We could totally turn the other bedroom into a studio for you. How cool would that be!" He went on to describe the pullout couch they could put in the center of the living room. How they could host the kids, his Uncle, Robin, Gareth, whoever else wanted to drop by.
Eddie could only nod along.
And he'd keep nodding as the furniture was moved in, and Jonathan and Wayne and Steve argued over the little bolts and screws while they put together the bed frame in the master bedroom. He'd keep nodding as the walls in that room were painted a lovely, dusted blue and two bedside tables were added to either end.
They didn't argue over sides. They didn't have to. Eddie naturally fell to the right, Steve to the left. Shared books filled the shelves along with sports trophies and twenty sided dice.
He didn't stop nodding when it was their first night there and Steve climbed into bed alongside him, exhausted and clingy, and pressed himself to Eddie's back whispering fantasies about how their life would play out.
It's all there for us to take, says Steve against each notch of Eddie's spine. I can't believe we get to take this adventure together.
And play out their life does.
They move to Boston in '89. Eddie finds a new band. Steve begins working for Boston General Hospital in their pediatric wing where he holds kids hands and talks them through what scares them before surgeries. Sometimes, he brings Eddie along. The kids always shriek and laugh and ask to touch his guitar, and Steve watches Eddie with a kind of Love that could spin the world off its course when he plucks the first notes of a favorite Tears for Fears song.
Robin and Nancy live just next door, because Steve and Robin have separation anxiety and Nancy declared herself and Eddie to be best friends that couldn't live without the other.
"I won't be able to suffer through those two alone," she says reasonably, because Nancy Wheeler had always been (above all else) reasonable. "Which means we either need to meld our minds or be just as gross as them."
"We are not gross!" Steve says, as he takes gum out of his mouth and offers it to Robin, who takes it happily in exchange for her lollipop.
"Gross," Eddie agrees while Steve and Robin boo him between trying to figure out how to straddle one another platonically on the couch.
Nance just sighed, fondly.
That was a new development, too. Nancy and Robin becoming NanceandRobin. They were infuriatingly loving in the privacy of their apartments. Robin used the word girlfriend like it would never go out of style, and Nancy wrote articles for gay rights journals in her spare time. They were a force to be reckoned with, their love a kind of weapon as much as it was an always blooming garden.
Eddie wondered often what that was like. To know someone loved you that much in return. To know that something might actually last, because you're both willing to jump into the unknown together.
He wished he could be greedier.
He wished he could tell Steve what he wanted.
He wished, he wished, he wished.
But instead, he nodded along.
There are great moments. And terrible ones. Sometimes there are fights and slammed doors and Eddie always waits for the other shoe to come crashing down, and yet it never does. He and Steve always find one another again.
Which is... odd.
Mostly because he's never heard of any other friends-with-benefits case working quite like theirs.
He brings it up once with Gareth on a weekly phone call.
"I don't get it," he says. "I mean... you'd think the guy could find himself someone to spend his life with. He's just... he's so great. He's just perfect. Do you know how torturous this is? Waiting for the dude to actually make up his mind and stop stringing me along!"
There was silence on the other end. And then;
"Eddie?"
"Yeah?"
"You're an idiot."
Eddie spluttered and hung up. He didn't bring it up again at their next call.
The 1990's come and go. The year 2000 is celebrated with a kind of raucous glee followed by '01, '02, '03. Steve becomes head of the social work department. Eddie has stopped touring and is instead teaching music in an elementary school, where he plays music to children who hang off his knees and scream about wheels on school busses. They're happy in ways he couldn't have dreamed they'd ever be.
2004 arrives with the purchase of their first house, an occasion marked with Steve dragging Eddie from room to room, christening each one with an attention that borders on religious.
Eddie blames it on homeowner stamina and has to wonder why buying a house with your "booty call" (as the teens are now calling it) is something worth celebrating.
Though he supposes it makes said booty call more accessible, and makes it a little easier to struggle through the intense love and adoration that fill his chest at all times.
He's never believed in a God, but if he did, he'd probably ask what he did in a former life to deserve this. Even if he can't have Steve, he can still have him in any way that Steve is willing to give.
Which is why, ten years later and still somehow living out his dream, Eddie is left so completely and totally confused when all of his friends and family plan to swarm Boston to celebrate... something.
He's not really sure what they're celebrating.
But they're definitely celebrating something.
Not that there isn't a lot to celebrate. The Seahawks had won the super bowl (something Steve was apparently happy about for some reason, but who was Eddie to question sports), weed was legal to purchase in Colorado (one of the reasons he'd been prodding Steve about a vacation), and gay marriage was officially allowed in all 50 states.
And while all of those things were great and amazing and worth every pedestal they stood on, it still didn't solve the mystery of why people were suddenly celebrating him.
It's when he finds paperwork during an attic cleanout that he finally realizes it.
They bought their house ten years ago.
That must have been it!
Ten years of being homeowners come and gone.
This is made even clearer when Steve looks over his shoulder, curses, and says, "I forgot all about that."
"Me too."
"We should probably think of remortgaging soon." Steve tousled his hair with a sigh. "Not like it'll be any fun, but..."
"Look at you," says Eddie, hating how sour Steve's pretty face had become. He leaned over and pressed a kiss by Steve's ear, pleased to see him perk up. "Being an adult and everything."
"I can say the same for you."
"Don't you dare," says Eddie with a laugh.
And yeah, sure, maybe that didn't seem like much of an achievement, but Eddie was happy to give what he could. Which was why, when Steve asked him late one night (hands held tight, like they could somehow hold the galaxy together) if they wanted to make it official after all this time, he said yes. Not that he much understood. They'd owned the house for a while. Then again, refinancing might have made it easier to pay off eventually. And so when Wayne arrived at the airport and practically broke down in tears, tugging Eddie into a hug to let him know how proud and happy he was for his boy, Eddie could only just smile and nod.
If his Uncle wanted to cry about Eddie repainting some walls and tending to a garden and making consistent mortgage payments to the stupid bank, who was he to stop him? Maybe that was just part of becoming old.
"Can you even believe it?" his Uncle asked in the car ride back to their home.
Eddie laughed. "I mean, I don't think it's that big of a deal."
"You just can't see it for what it is cause you've been doin' it for so long."
Which was a fair point. He had been a homeowner for a while now.
"I guess," he agreed, and Wayne smiled and pat his shoulder and asked him all about his job. He tells Wayne all about a group of six year olds who've all learned about becoming tea pots (short and stout).
Two days later (much to Eddie's consistent shock and confusion), Steve dresses in his best suit and helps Eddie knot a tie covered in tiny skulls and drags them both to town hall. They wait in a line on the third floor, Eddie looking around a little dazed and unsure, until they're finally let into an office and Steve (through tears) signs his name on a line before turning to Eddie and clasping their hands tight together.
"Eds," Steve says. "You gotta sign it too."
And Eddie, who had been nodding since 1986, can only nod again and reach for the pen.
He's not entirely sure why everyone arrived to celebrate them renewing their mortgage. He didn't even know City Hall made a huge fuss over the financial gains of two middle aged men from middle America. But his friends and family are waiting in the lobby. They're all crying, even though he's not really sure why, but that just triggers him into crying. Even more when the kids (though they're not so much kids any more) clump around them with hugs and tears and shouts about how excited and proud they are.
"It's about time," Dustin sobs.
"I mean, I guess," says Eddie, wondering why Steve hasn't let go of his hand yet.
But he's not going to let go.
He doesn't find out until one year later when Steve surprises him with a trip to Hawkins. They meet Uncle Wayne first thing before going off to explore their old haunts, flipping their middle fingers out the window at the high school, stopping off at one of their favorite old diners that still served what Steve considered to be the most okay chocolate milkshakes in the entire world.
Their waitress was a lovely older woman named Dotty who looked moments away from pinching Steve's cheeks when she collected their menus.
"What are you folks here for?" she asked. "Haven't seen you around here!"
"We used to live here," said Eddie. "We moved away."
"And we're celebrating," countered Steve.
Eddie blinked, considering the date before he remembered. "Yeah," he agreed with a nod.
"Oh, how lovely!" Dotty clasped her hands around the sticky diner menus. "What's the occasion."
And before Steve could get in a word, Eddie apparently decided to leap headfirst off idiocy mountain and say, "we refinanced our mortgage."
There was silence.
"Oh..." said Dotty, finally. "Well. That's... nice?"
Across the table, Steve stared at him.
Eddie couldn't shake the feeling that he'd said something wrong. "Um." He reached for a napkin, tearing and twisting it between his hands. "Yeah. Totally. It was a, uh. A big deal."
"Was it...?"
"Mmmhm," he squeaked, trying hard not to look at the way Steve was gaping at him. "We've, uh... we've been roommates for a while, so."
Steve looked moments away from sliding off the booth and into the earth's core.
It wasn't until Dotty left (a little confused and befuddled) that Steve sprung up, grabbing Eddie by the arm, marching them both into the parking lot.
"Refinancing our mortgage!" Steve stomped little circles around the concrete. A family walking by crossed to the other side of the street. "We're refinancing our mortgage!"
"Steve, you're uh. You're scaring people..."
"You're scaring me!" Steve tossed his hands into the air.
"Right. Uh... I got that? But... why? Am I scaring you?"
"Because you said we're roommates!"
"But. We are roommates?"
"We-!" Steve froze, mid panic.
Eddie, taking a chance, snuck forward and gave him a little poke. "Uh. Steve? You rebooting?"
Steve blinked. He reached up and scrubbed his face. He looked back up at Eddie before squeezing his eyes shut and counting back from ten. When he opened them again, Eddie was amazed to find there wasn't a blue screen behind Steve's eyes.
"Eddie," Steve said. "You honestly think I took you to city call to refinance our mortgage?"
"They're important documents," Eddie said.
"And that we've been roommates for over twenty years?"
"We're very good roommates," said Eddie, weakly.
Steve's eye twitched. "Roommates don't have sex, Eddie!" Another family very quickly shuffled around them and down the sidewalk. Steve kept ranting. "They don't tell each other they love each other! They don't get married!"
"I never said we were traditional roommates! I just said-" And then Eddie stopped, Steve's words finally striking ground. "Wait..."
"Yeah."
"Wait."
"Mmmhm."
"Wait!"
Steve waved his hands. "Now he gets i- mph!"
Whatever he was going to say was cut off by Eddie dragging him quick into a kiss.
Dottie arrived back at their table just as Steve and Eddie slipped back into the booth, looking a little mussed and tossed about, lips red and eyes shining.
"Still celebrating that mortgage?"
"Actually," said Eddie, "it turns out, we're married!"
"Isn't that nice."
"It is," agreed Eddie, accepting his hamburger and shake. "Did you know I've been in love with him since high school?"
"How sweet! And how long have you been married?"
"A year!" Eddie preened.
Steve accepted his own burger. "He just found out," he said.
Dotty wasn't sure what that meant, but the two of them looked happy enough. Who was she to question a good marriage?
Steve had always wanted to be a father, and Eddie had always loved children, and the both of them were drawn quick towards people who needed help the most. It was something of a marvel truly. To think that just years ago, Steve had been made of spite and sharp edges, and now kneeled on the front porch, holding out a stuffed bat towards a small girl cusping on six years old with Eddie just besides him. The two of them are made of Love, so much that it spills over and surrounds the children that fly through their door.
There are trips in RV's with their countless new family. Their Aunt Robin is loud and brash and clumsy and their Aunt Nancy is sharp and quick and smart. Their grandfather is gruff and quiet and gives the best hugs, squeezing them tight to his chest, telling them stories about their Daddies in his midwest twang.
Eddie and Steve are all affection and embarrassing pet names. They're always armed with flowers, with new favorite songs, with gifted guitar solos, with new recipes.
And yet it is their anniversary that falls short of romance. A day that's all laughter and knowing looks and sly nostalgia. A day where Wayne laughs about his poor son's cluelessness. A day where Robin laughs so hard she nearly folds in half. A day where Nancy rolls her eyes fondly and Gareth asks about booty calls and the kids all drag out pictures of weddings like it's an inside joke. Because it is.
A day where their children run shrieking into their bedroom, jumping between their parents to shout, "Happy Roommate Day!"
"How many years has it been?" Eddie will ask, and Steve will laugh and ask, "Depends. Do you want to know how many years we've been together or how many years since you figured it out?" To which Eddie will reply curtly that his dumbassary is part of his charm.
If other people don't understand, that's alright.
They've obviously never refinanced their mortgage.