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Eddie needs this to go perfectly.
He’s… okay, saying he’s not an anxious person would be a lie. Eddie is very acquainted with the fight or flight instinct, with the latter of those two options being far more familiar. He’s vaguely obsessive and twitchy and, frankly, puts way too much thought and time into planning one-shots, nevermind regular campaign sessions. He’s got restless leg syndrome and a chronic tendency to ramble when he doesn’t know what else to do.
Yeah. Eddie is the anxiety poster child.
Majority of the time, he likes to have control of a situation. There are reasons for that, plenty of which he knows, some of which he’s gone to therapy for, and more that are on the bedroom and currently irrelevant side of things.
The relevant side of things is the guy in front of him who doesn’t have any sort of ear protection on.
Eddie should mind his business. He really should. Corroded Coffin isn’t even headlining. They’re the openers for the tour of a much bigger band that noticed them and asked if they wanted to tour with them. When that happened, Archie fangirled so hard he passed out. It was a whole thing.
Still, it’s their first real tour, and Eddie is a control freak, and he needs it to be perfect. That means no one gets hurt. This random guy - probably a roadie of some sort from how he’s plugging cables into something Eddie doesn’t know the name of - not having any sort of ear protection counts as someone maybe getting hurt.
Eddie doesn’t even know him, but he can’t have that happen.
Hell, this guy’s friend, someone their age talking very animatedly, has her earplugs looped around her neck on a string like Eddie does. But Hottie - yeah, he’s hot and Eddie’s queer with a healthy sex drive, get over it - has none in sight.
That’s a problem. Eddie can’t have problems, not tonight, not before the first show.
“Hey!” he calls, walking over to Hottie and his friend, who are setting up equipment away from the stage. “You gotta have something for your ears, dude!”
Hottie and his friend exchange a look that Eddie can’t make heads or tails of.
“Thanks man,” Hottie says, and that nickname applies to his voice, too. Good G-d. “But I’m good.”
Eddie frowns and shifts his weight to his able leg. “You need to protect your hearing.”
“Trust me,” Hottie says. “I’ve worked a lot of gigs. I’m alright.”
Hottie’s friend shoots him a look Eddie can’t quite make sense of before going right back to glaring at Eddie. Who’s side is she on?
Okay. It’s fine. Eddie should walk away now. He’s totally capable of walking away. It is, quite obviously, the better alternative to this circular conversation.
But Hottie is gonna hurt himself this way. Potentially really badly if it’s not a one time thing. This is a metal show, for G-d’s sake. He’ll do some serious damage over time.
Eddie needs this to go perfectly, and for things to go perfectly, he can’t be responsible for that.
“I don’t think you get it,” he says. “You’re gonna destroy your ears that way, especially if you do this for a long time. This show is gonna be really intense, hell, the whole tour is! You can get cheap shit at the hardware store, it’s better than nothing-”
At the beginning of his rant, lecture, whatever, Hottie stares right at him. He has a really intense stare. Pretty brown eyes set in a prettier face with even prettier hair on top of his head. Eddie gets distracted by all that pretty and by trying to make his point.
And he doesn’t notice until halfway through that Hottie isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s looking at his friend.
Eddie looks at her, too. Looks at her confused and focused expression. Looks at her hands moving rapidly.
Oh. G-d.
Hottie’s deaf, isn’t he?
“Trying my best but I’m not fluent, Steve,” she says. Her hands pause, and she looks down at them, confused.
Hottie - Steve - shrugs, and his hands move as he talks. “I’m not either. You were doing pretty good, though. I think. Or our mistakes just line up that well.”
“What’s the sign for reverb? It’s the last word he said.”
“No clue. You can just fingerspell it.”
“I can’t remember R.”
“How do you forget R? It’s in your name, Robin!”
The friend - Robin - throws her hands up. “You know I get it mixed up with X!”
Eddie wants to die. This is it. He’s going to melt into a puddle due to sheer embarrassment, fifteen minutes before the doors open to let in the biggest crowd Corroded Coffin has ever played for.
What a shitty way to go.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t-”
Steve cuts him off. “Normally, I can lip read enough to get the gist. But you speak too fast and trip over your words.”
Ouch. Okay.
“I do lights,” he continues. “Robin does sound. We know what we’re doing, and we don’t need you to tell us how to do our jobs, even if you mean well.”
Seriously?
Eddie should have minded his business. He knows that. But G-ddamn, that’s blunt.
He’s saved, thankfully, from digging himself into a bigger hole.
“Eddie!” Jeff hollers from the stage. “Get your ass over here!”
He turns to walk away, then turns back to Steve and Robin. “Sorry,” he says again.
He turns back around before he can see their reactions and runs back toward the stage. Intimately familiar with flight, and all that.
As he walks, he registers that his socket is getting uncomfortable. Probably too much sweat, with how clammy his palms are. He’ll have to take his leg off, wipe it down, change the sleeve, and put it back on.
Along with some deodorant. He can’t remember if he put deodorant on this morning.
First night of tour, and he feels like he’s going to fall apart.
Shit. First night of tour, and he’s already made an enemy of the light and sound people.
And the light guy is hot.
Really hot.
And he hates Eddie.
This is gonna be a long few weeks.
As that long-haired guy walks away - his friend onstage called his name, but Steve didn’t catch it - Robin nudges Steve.
“Asshole roadies,” she says, sing-song.
“Get fucked,” Steve says with her.
It’s tradition, that little chant. Every gig, there’s always one venue where someone with far less experience says something, whether it’s about Steve not talking to them or being blunt or something else. Steve knows he was blunt and probably shouldn’t have said anything with that tone, but after too many times, his patience is exhausted.
He can’t even blame the blunt thing on ASL. If anything, he’s meaner in English.
It makes sense. He knows English a lot better. He and Robin only started taking the ASL classes two years ago, when he really needed it. His left ear had been pretty much gone for a while (fuck you Billy Hargrove for putting ceramic in his scalp), but he sucked it up and started learning when his right ear started going, too.
(Honestly, he has no idea what caused that.)
Two years of ASL means he and Robin aren’t fluent yet. Not even close. But between that, his residual hearing, and the lip reading he’s relied on for longer, Steve does alright. If he wasn’t at a gig, he’d bring his hearing aids, but that’s a recipe for disaster and broken equipment.
Plus, he’s learned he can’t focus on his job when he hears as well as feels the music.
Robin taps his arm again. You good?
I’m good, he signs back.
They finish setting up before they grab a snack. The venue is pretty tiny, a standing room only place that serves pizza and a few drinks, and that’s it.
The pizza is really good though.
They finish up their slices before they go back to the booth. Robin is particular about not eating around the equipment, and Steve has long given up on fighting her.
Their jobs are pretty easy, in all honesty. The light cues are pre-written, and sound check was an hour ago. All Steve needs to do is hit the cues, and all Robin needs to do is adjust mic levels and turn them on and off as needed.
This leaves plenty of room for a healthy amount of fucking around.
As Robin, always on his right side, starts telling him a story about her friend’s ex’s (who is also her friend, because lesbians are just like that) latest date, Steve watches the crowd file in and nods along.
His mind, however, goes back to that guy. Someone always says something, and it’s always someone new to touring. Steve can just tell. All the rookies do the same thing; they look at the stage with wonder in their eyes. This guy was no different. Just some rookie giving Steve a problem, like always.
Except that this guy was different.
Rookies tend to want to prove themselves. They want to show off their fancy knowledge and make it clear that they belong there along with everyone else who has a career. They want to catch Steve off guard, make him thank them for helping him out.
This guy didn’t do that. He was nosy and pushy and pretty and rambled a lot, but he wasn’t trying to be a dick. He was trying to look out for Steve, even if it was none of his business, even if he didn’t know him.
He ended up being a bit dickish, but he wasn’t trying to be. If Steve were a nicer person, he’d think that might count for something.
Steve is trying to be a nicer person, with emphasis on trying .
His watch vibrates, jolting him back to the moment. He lowers the lights, cueing the openers to go on.
Robin taps his arm. When he looks up, she holds a little case and shakes it.
Steve wonders what kind of sound it makes.
You gonna put them in? she signs with her free hand.
He rolls his eyes, and Robin lightly cuffs him on the back of the head.
You need them, she signs, but she’s already putting them away.
Steve glances at the stage. I’ll be fine.
You always say that. You’re never right.
He grabs her hands to shut her up, and she laughs because she knows this is a fight she won’t win.
The set list, along with Steve’s cues, is in a binder between him and Robin and lit by a book light with a battery that’ll die at least twice with their luck.
The first opener is a band Steve has never heard of called “Corroded Coffin.” If they’re any good, he might listen to their music.
Big emphasis on might because he’s not a big fan of metal. Punk has better bass lines, one that Steve likes to feel in his chest.
He hits the cue when they start their opening song, lighting them in reds and purples and-
Oh. Shit.
That guy wasn’t a roadie. He’s part of the opening band. He’s a guitarist.
A really good guitarist.
A really hot guitarist.
Steve is so caught up in stating that he nearly misses the next cue. He doesn’t, though. He’s a professional.
Robin elbows him, and he turns to see her signing. For one hopeful moment, he thinks she’s signing “hungry” and will offer to get them both more of that really good pizza like the wonderful friend she is.
But then she repeats the sign, again and again, and Steve smacks her before hitting the next cue.
“I am not horny!” he whispers, clearly loud enough for Robin to hear through her ear plugs because she laughs.
You think he’s hot, she signs.
Steve rolls his eyes.
I’m right! she teases.
Steve faces away from her for the two seconds it takes for her to tug him back.
“Not fair,” she says, and Steve only gets it because it’s light enough to read her lips.
The band has gone through two songs, and the lead singer, a tall Black guy, is saying something to the crowd. Steve hears it just fine with all the mics, but understanding is too much of a struggle to bother.
He doesn’t really care anyway about what the singer is saying. He likes feeling the music and hearing it with what he has left. His audiologist said it won’t accelerate his hearing loss, so any hearing protection is a waste of money. Robin disagrees vehemently with that on account of the audiologist not saying the same thing about Steve’s balance getting worse.
He will neither confirm nor deny his alleged balance issues. He always ends up wearing something after the first show.
Anything important? he asks Robin.
She shakes her head.
Steve turns back to the stage in time to hit the next cue, casting the band in blue as the guitarist starts playing a really low intro.
Did you hear his name earlier? Steve asks.
Robin says something, but it gets lost in the music and the dim light.
“Hettie?” Steve asks aloud.
Robin shakes her head. Sorry.
She finger spells, messing up once and throwing it out with a wave of her hands.
“Eddie?”
She nods.
Steve hits the next cue and uses the rest of the time to appreciate the view. Eddie really is hot, in his dark jeans and tattered tank top, grin on his face and quick-moving fingers. He doesn’t move much in terms of, like, walking across the stage, but he head bangs and sways in time with the music.
Steve wishes his guitar wasn’t in the way of his hips.
He’s never had a chance to talk to the talent, even if they’re nosy. But Eddie was nosy because he was worried. It would almost be sweet if it wasn’t so condescending.
He didn’t mean for it to be, the terrible little rational part of Steve’s brain pipes up. And he apologized. Multiple times.
Also. He’s kind of right. Your head is gonna be swimming for the next few hours.
The bigger part of his brain reminds him that it doesn’t matter what Eddie meant it as. It’s none of his business. The only person who gets to nag Steve is Robin, and that’s because she’s his best friend and has been with him, dealing with this, from day one.
It doesn’t matter what Eddie meant it as. Steve effectively tanked any hope when he snapped at him before the show.
Oh God.
He has to do a whole tour with this guy. Who he was a total dick to.
Yikes. At least he has Robin, who is-
Currently staring at him and signing “horny.”
Steve smacks her again, which she laughs at and returns instantly before they focus back on their jobs. They’re professionals, goddammit.
Professionals who are already on less than stellar terms with one of the openers.
He’s so not looking forward to the next few weeks.
It’s a few hours before the second show, and the band is already fighting.
“You can’t chicken out,” Gareth says.
“I’m not gonna chicken out!”
“Good, because I’ll tell Wayne if you do,” Jeff says.
Eddie glares at him. “You’re an asshole.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Shut up and get out of here!” Archie says, pushing Eddie toward the tech booth. He complies, but not without another scathing look over his shoulder.
His friends laugh because of course they do. They’re assholes, but, luckily, they’re the same kind of asshole that Eddie is.
They also have the same sense of justice that Eddie does. As soon as he told them about his conversation with Steve, where he got deservedly chewed out, the guys laughed at him, made him feel better, and promptly told him he needed to apologize. They alternated between brainstorming how to do it and continually giving him shit.
Eddie loves them.
But he’s got other things on his mind. He straightens out his shoulders, breathes, and prepares to grovel.
Robin and Steve are setting up just like they were at the last venue. It looks like a mess of cables and boxes from Eddie’s perspective, but Steve and Robin work with ruthless efficiency, alternately talking and signing when their hands aren’t full.
“Um,” Eddie says. G-d, he’s never been this awkward in his life. But this matters, like, really matters to him, and he’s gotta do right. He owes it to Steve to do right.
Neither of them pay him any attention.
“Excuse me?” he says a little louder.
Robin turns around. When she sees him, her expression instantly sours.
“Hello?” she drawls, sounding bored out of her mind.
Steve turns around, too. When he sees Eddie, his face-
Well, Eddie isn’t sure what that expression is supposed to mean. If he had to guess, he’d say mild annoyance.
Mild annoyance shouldn’t look that hot.
“I just wanted to say again that I’m really sorry,” he says, making sure to talk clearly and loud enough to be understood. He’s not an idiot, he knows that shouting is rude, but he makes sure he can be heard over the general chaos of setting up for a new show. “It wasn’t any of my business, and even if I meant well, it’s not an excuse.”
Steve’s face softens a whole lot as Eddie stumbles through his apology, and then he reaches up to his ears to take out ear plugs.
Huh?
“Mind saying that again?” Steve says with a smile.
Eddie is. So confused.
But then Steve laughs. “You should see your face, dude. I got the gist. Apology accepted, we’re cool.”
Okay, that makes Eddie feel better. A lot better. But he’s still confused.
And his mouth always moves faster than his brain.
“Why are you- why do you have- what-”
Robin rolls her eyes fondly. “This idiot,” she says, pointing at Steve, “always tries to do the first show without the ear plugs he needs -”
“Not this shit again,” Steve mumbles.
“-because, as it turns out, your ears do a lot more than just hear. Like balance-”
“You’re one to talk about balance, Buckley,” Steve says, giving her a light shove. She nearly topples over if not for the fact that he immediately grabs her arm to steady her.
Eddie thinks he might know even less than he thought.
“I want to make it up to you,” he says, and Steve and Robin stop bickering.
“You don’t have to do that,” Steve says, and Robin elbows him.
“I want to,” Eddie insists. “What’s your favorite song? We’ll play it at the end of our set.”
Naïvely and terribly optimistically, Eddie hopes Steve might say something that’s already in their set list, or maybe another one of their songs.
From the way that Robin and Steve are looking at each other conspiratorially, he doesn’t think that’s the case.
“No,” Steve says, laughing and shaking his head. “I’m not making them do that.”
Robin sneaks a glance at Eddie, smirks, and starts signing at Steve.
The only thing Eddie understands about the conversation as their hands move is their facial expressions: Robin with a smirk, and Steve trying desperately not to laugh.
He’s so cute. He gets this little crease on the side of his mouth that Eddie wants to smooth out with his thumb.
Slow the hell down, buddy.
“Fine,” Steve says, throwing his hands up in the air. He turns back to Eddie. “ Pretty Fly .”
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Eddie blurts.
Steve’s eyes narrow. “Aren’t you trying to apologize to me?”
“Sorry,” Eddie says. “It’s just that my bassist and lead singer have been gunning for this song for, like, 6 months. Archie chomps at the bit for fun bass lines, and Jeff just thinks it’s funny as-”
“Slow down,” Steve interrupts.
Right. He talks too fast.
“I’ll play it, but it means caving to my asshole friends,” Eddie says.
Robin cackles. “All the more reason, Steve-o. Told you it was a good idea.”
“Yeah, I love a good bass line,” Steve says. His face is softer again, and Eddie thinks he loves that expression.
He checks his watch. “Soundcheck is soon, so I’m gonna head back. Sorry again.”
“Eddie,” Steve says, and oh.
Eddie loves how Steve says his name.
“We’re good, okay?” he continues with a small smile on his face.
“Well,” Robin chimes in. “After the apology song you will be.”
Eddie laughs. He really likes her now that she’s warmed up to him.
“Noted,” he says.
He heads back with a final wave and ducks backstage, where the band is tuning their instruments.
“Well?” Gareth asks, tightening his snare.
Eddie grabs his guitar, closes his eyes, and sighs. “He wants us to play Pretty Fly as an apology.”
“Let’s fucking go! ” Archie roars, and Jeff gives him a high five.
“No way-”
“Gareth, I know-”
“You dick-hungry traitor.”
“Hey!” Eddie says, sitting down. His leg feels weird again, and he wants to take some weight off it before he has to stand onstage and keep his energy up for half an hour.
“The fucking Offspring, Eddie? Punk? Are you shitting me? Punk just because you want a shot with a hot guy?”
Archie starts plucking out the bass line. Gareth throws a drumstick at his head. Jeff beams it back at him and misses.
“It’s one time,” Eddie says.
“Unless your cute roadie likes it enough,” Jeff teases.
“He’s not my anything.”
“Not yet,” Archie adds.
“Not ever.”
“Fucking pessimist,” Jeff says.
A tiny crashing sound makes them all turn toward the drum set, where Gareth is lightly thumping his head into the hi-hat.
“I’m gonna have to do the backing vocals for Pretty Fly ,” he mutters.
“Your fault for sounding like a prepubescent chihuahua.”
Gareth throws his other drumstick at Jeff. “I’m not begging you for shit.”
“Do it for the bit,” Archie says. “You love doing it for the bit.”
Gareth picks his head up. “I do love doing anything for the bit.”
“Soundcheck in five!” someone calls.
“Thank you five!” Eddie yells back. Shit, he’s gotta tune his guitar. And fix his leg.
“I got it,” Jeff says, holding his hand out.
“You’re the best,” Eddie says, handing him his guitar.
“I know.”
Eddie wants to snap back with something clever, but he doesn’t have the time to waste. He rolls his pant leg up and eases his prosthetic off.
“Ooh, look at me, I’m Eddie, and I had to shell out thousands of dollars for a leg,” Gareth teases, same as he always does whenever Eddie has to adjust something.
“Ooh, look at me, I’m Gareth, and I paid someone way too much money to chop off my tits,” Eddie mocks right back.
Archie wheezes, even though this is basically a daily argument.
“They didn’t even let me keep them, man,” Gareth says. “That’s so fucked. I grew them myself.”
Eddie wipes out his socket, puts on a new sleeve, puts the prosthetic back on, gets all the air out, and rolls his pant leg back down by the time Jeff hands him his guitar back.
“Thanks,” he says, but it’s drowned out by someone screaming for soundcheck.
Archie swings his bass onto his back. “Let’s rock and roll, boys.”
Gareth smacks him on the back of the head for the shitty pun, like always.
Soundcheck is a breeze, and, after that, the time flies. Before he knows it, they’re out onstage, playing their usual set list.
Eddie doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this. The energy, the lights, the sounds, G-d, all of it. There’s nothing like being onstage and playing until his fingers hurt, nothing like joining in on the backup vocals, nothing like hearing the crowd roar with them.
It’s perfect. Touring is everything he dreamed of and more.
Eddie wants to do this for the rest of his life. They’re gonna headline one day, he knows it like he knows his own name, but this is an amazing start.
What Eddie doesn’t want to do is talk, at Jeff’s request.
“Okay, okay,” he says, getting the crowd to quiet down. “We’ve got two more songs. The first one is one we’re playing because I fucked up.”
“And because he finally caved to us,” Jeff adds.
The crowd laughs, but it doesn’t feel mocking. Eddie laughs with them.
“So, Steve, consider this the final part of my apology-”
“And my peak embarrassment!” Gareth adds.
The crowd laughs again, and Eddie sighs, fondly long-suffering. “Let’s do it.”
The backing vocals are fucking embarrassing. Eddie’s with Gareth on that one. They suck, and he feels himself flush for reasons other than the heat.
But he imagines Steve smiling as he watches the show, and Archie is clearly having the best G-ddamn time on the bass, and Jeff is basically cackling his way through the song, so it’s worth it.
They get through it and then their closer without a hitch.
“We’re Corroded Coffin!” Jeff tells the crowd. “Y’all were amazing, so keep that energy up for the other opener and for the main act!”
The crowd roars, the lights black out, and they make their way backstage.
In the green room, on Eddie’s guitar case, is a note.
Apology more than accepted. Here’s my number in case you want to apologize again. Or maybe grab a coffee.
Text, don’t call. In case you haven’t noticed, my ears don’t work.
-Steve.
Eddie has never added a contact faster in his life.
I think I saw a 24 hour diner down the road. Hopefully they have good coffee.
Steve’s response is immediate.
Do you really think I care about the quality of the coffee?
You could be a coffee connoisseur for all I know .
You and I don’t know a lot. Hence the date.
Date.
Woah.
Eddie tries to get his heart rate under control and text Steve back. He’s never been good at multitasking though, so by the time he’s able to formulate words again, the lights have gone down and the second opener is on. Steve’s working, and he shouldn’t be bothered.
Besides, Eddie should probably use the time between now and the end of the show to think before he speaks for once in his life.
You’re an idiot, Robin signs.
Steve hums noncommittally as he loops cables the correct way to clean them up and pack them up onto the truck.
“Steve.”
“Robin.”
You’re gonna be a zombie tomorrow, Robin points out before gathering up the binder and light to throw into her bag. She picks up the sound board and carries it over to the pallet cart, which they’ll wheel to the truck once they’re all cleaned up.
“I’ll have coffee,” Steve says.
“No, I’ll have coffee. You’ll forget.”
That’s why I have you, he signs now that his hands aren’t full, Bestie.
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, so he counts that as a win.
The show finished up at 11:30. Steve thought it would finish at 11:00, but between the mic malfunction after the second openers and the completely unscheduled encore that no one bothered to tell him and Robin about, causing them to make up cues on the fly, pushed the end time a half hour.
Between that and the absolute ordeal of cleaning up, dealing with people who want to talk to him but talk too fast or too mumbled and having to not look like a bitch, forgetting to take out the ear plugs, putting in his hearing aids, adjusting the levels of the hearing aids while Robin treats him like a microphone by only saying “testing, testing, one, two, three” instead of anything helpful, and getting his ass over to the diner, it takes Steve until 1:00 before he finally walks into the diner.
The bus leaves at 6:30 tomorrow. He’s praying to god that Robin will have coffee in the morning.
Eddie, luckily, either got held up the same way Steve did, or he waited for him. Steve is honestly a little afraid to ask. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with the answer.
When he stumbles in through the doors of heaven (twenty four hour diner lit up far too brightly for this hour) he makes eye contact with the gatekeeper (exceptionally bored middle aged hostess) before landing on an angel (Eddie).
Holy hell, Steve needs sleep.
“Hey!” Eddie says, and how he has so much energy right now, Steve has no idea. He moves to stand on his left, but Steve quickly redirects him.
“This side,” he says simply as the bored hostess silently leads them to a table.
Eddie looks at him, confused. “But you’re wearing-”
“It doesn’t do much. Right side has a lot more hearing that the aid can actually help with.”
Steve glances at Eddie. He’s biting his lip like he wants to say something else.
“You can ask,” he says, and he means it. Steve doesn’t mind answering questions when he knows they’ll be asked, and it’s better to get them out of the way now.
“Why bother wearing one on that side then?”
“If I didn’t, you’d think I could hear there.”
Eddie’s lack of response is all the confirmation Steve needs.
The hostess leads them, thankfully, to a good table. It’s one far enough from the kitchen to not hear any of that noise, one away from windows so the sound of the road isn’t too loud. It’s a tiny table for two, one side booth, one side chair, in the perfect place.
Steve wonders for a split second if the fact that it’s so perfectly placed is coincidence. Then the hostess’s eyes flick to his hearing aid and back, and she gives him a knowing smile.
He smiles back. It’s different when it’s someone who gets it, rather than someone who pities him. And anything that eases the mental gymnastics it takes for him to go to a restaurant now helps.
He’s trying to be a nicer person, with emphasis on trying.
“Can I take the booth side?” Eddie asks.
“Sure,” Steve says. He has no preference at this point, not when he’s in a quiet space where he can easily see Eddie’s mouth.
It’s a nice mouth, beyond lip-reading reasons. Pretty and pink and plush.
Eddie flops down pretty heavily onto the booth. Steve starts taking a look at the menu. Definitely no coffee at this hour, but maybe orange juice would be nice. Or lemonade. Lemonade is always good.
He’s deciding between a chicken or turkey sandwich when a flash of movement catches his eye. He looks up to see Eddie holding a high top sneaker.
With a leg attached to it.
They both freeze. Steve stares at the carbon-fiber leg in Eddie’s grip, and Eddie stares back at Steve like he shouldn’t be confused.
“You didn’t…” Eddie trails off helpfully.
“Didn’t what?” Steve asks. He idly thinks that Eddie should probably put the prosthetic down. He might accidentally flag a waitress, and Steve isn’t ready to order.
“You didn’t know I had a prosthetic?”
“Why would I know that?” Steve asks. “I’ve only ever seen you in long pants, onstage.”
“Well most people can hear-”
Steve raises his eyebrows.
“-the difference,” Eddie finishes half-heartedly. “Most people can hear the difference. You’re not most people. You can’t hear.”
“Very observant,” Steve drawls.
“Shit, I didn’t-”
“Eddie,” Steve says, consciously softening. “You’re good. I’m the idiot in this situation for gawking at you like you’re some sort of fr-”
“You’re not an idiot,” Eddie says softly, so softly that Steve can only get it from lip reading.
Steve stops and finds himself smiling. “You’re not either.”
“Well-”
“You’re not,” Steve insists. “And I’m really sorry if I made you feel that way.”
“You didn’t,” Eddie says. At least, Steve thinks that’s what he said. It very well could have been you did.
From his smile, though, Steve is willing to bet it was the first one.
A waitress - her name tag says “Dani” - comes to take their order. She talks too fast and too high pitched for Steve to understand much of what she says, and the angle isn’t quite right for him to read her lips. Not to mention she’s standing on his left side.
It’s okay, though. He knows the script for these kinds of interactions, and when she looks at him expectantly, he smiles and tells her, “A lemonade, please.”
She smiles, takes Eddie’s drink order - that, Steve can understand is a vanilla milkshake - and leaves.
“Hey,” Eddie says, lightly tapping Steve’s hand where it rests on the table. “Want to start over?”
Steve cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Eddie says, and Steve can see how he’s consciously slowing himself down, and god if that doesn’t do something to him, “We started talking because I insulted you. And then I kept putting my foot in my mouth. And then you looked at me like a deer in headlights because I assumed you knew I was disabled, too, but you didn’t.”
“Seems like a pretty shitty start,” Steve admits with a smile.
“That’s why I’m saying we can try to get off on the right foot,” Eddie says, picking up his leg again and wiggling his eyebrows.
It’s dorky. It’s adorable. Steve really, really likes him.
“That’s your left leg,” he points out, and Eddie laughs, loud and unabashed.
Steve thought he grew past wanting to hear things like he used to. He’s proven wrong by the light glinting off Eddie’s teeth.
“Okay,” Eddie says. “We can start on the right foot.”
Dani sets their glasses down on the table. Again, Steve loses most of what she’s saying, but thank god for scripts. He orders the turkey sandwich, doesn’t catch much of Eddie’s order, and then Dani and the menus are gone.
“Vanilla milkshake?” he says with a pointed look at the tall frosted glass.
“Best flavor,” Eddie says, and he takes a long sip through the straw. Steve wishes his lips were wrapped around something el-
Woah. You are too tired to be horny. Shut up.
“Chocolate’s the best,” he says, steering the conversation back to normal, safe territory.
Eddie looks at him like he grew a second head. “I don’t think I can go on a second date if you think chocolate is the best milkshake flavor.”
Right. Date. Because that’s what Steve called it in the text.
This is a first date. A bizarre, exhausted, silly, tentative first date, but still a first date.
Steve is good at first dates. He can so do this.
“Shouldn’t we get through the first date before you decide?” he asks, leaning in. He takes a chance, picking up one of Eddie’s hands and toying with a ring. “Let me walk you back to your door, give you a kiss, then decide?”
He looks up from Eddie’s hand to see him staring at him, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. It’s a cute look on him, very different from the magnetic confidence he exudes onstage.
Steve likes both looks, though. He just likes Eddie, dorky, impulsive, and charming as he is.
Eddie uses his other hand to tug a piece of hair over his mouth, and he mumbles something Steve has no hope of catching.
“You can either mumble or cover your mouth, but I’m kind of screwed if you do both,” Steve says lightly.
Eddie drops the hair. “Sorry,” he says, still looking a little flustered.
“Don’t be. What’d you say?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Isn’t that what first dates are for?”
“That’s the thing,” Eddie says. “I haven’t gone on many first dates. I don’t have a great idea of what I’m doing.”
Oh.
That’s so fucking cute. Steve wants to squeeze him.
“Aren’t you, like, a rockstar?” he says.
“Well, we’re not big.”
“Yeah, but people dig guys in bands.”
“They don’t dig nerdy high school losers who turn into musicians with no other focus but their band. And the one leg thing scares off more people than you’d think.”
“I’m not scared off,” Steve says.
Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by their server setting down their plates at the table. Steve picks up his sandwich and watches as Eddie cuts into a short stack of massive chocolate chip pancakes.
“Listen,” Eddie says, punctuating his words with a flourish of his fork, “I don’t go anywhere with twenty-four hour breakfast without taking advantage of said breakfast.”
Steve chuckles and shakes his head before taking a bite of his sandwich. It’s either really good, or Steve is just that hungry. Before he can think it through, he takes another bite, then another.
From the way Eddie eats his pancakes, Steve thinks he has the same thoughts running through his head.
“You can ask, you know,” Eddie says, thankfully, between bites instead of during them when Steve would have to ask him to repeat himself. “God knows I’ve asked you enough stupid questions.”
Steve, if he were nicer and a little less honest, would say “They weren’t stupid questions.”
Instead, he says, “I don’t think it’s my place to ask.”
“Well, I’d tell you, but my limited knowledge tells me that’s not a standard first date conversation.”
“Eddie, my extensive knowledge tells me that no part of this date has been standard.”
He laughs again, like he did before, and Steve thinks that even though he can’t hear it quite like he used to be able to, he wants to put his hand on his chest and feel it, full force.
He has the sneaking suspicion that he’ll be able to do something like that soon.
“Extensive knowledge?” Eddie asks, eyebrows raised.
“Story for another time,” Steve says. “Like a second date. I’m getting your story now, since you want to tell me.”
Eddie smiles. “Short version or long version?”
Steve checks his watch. 2:00 already, and they haven’t even gotten the check.
“Short version, then, so I can get it out before we have to get back,” Eddie says. “Accident happened where my leg got cut open. It got infected, antibiotics didn’t work, docs cut it off below the knee. Then the docs realized they fucked up, that the infection spread more than they thought, and they got it right the second time.”
“Jesus,” Steve says.
“I’m Jewish, so, kind of indifferent about him.”
Steve snorts so hard in the middle of taking a sip of his lemonade that it almost comes out of his nose.
“But now I have a custom, expensive leg and can treat my limited dates to the first class privilege of handicapped parking, so I think it all works out,” Eddie says.
“Still sucks, though,” Steve says, finishing up the last of his fries.
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie says. “Parts of it are always gonna suck. But there’s good things, too.”
Steve thinks about seeing the world differently, about learning a new language, and, most importantly, getting to shut off a part of the world when it gets to be too much.
“Yeah, there are,” he agrees.
When Dani comes back around, Eddie asks her for the check. Steve insists on splitting it. He nearly slips into ASL to argue with Eddie because that’s how he usually argues with Robin before realizing Eddie won’t be able to understand him.
He does win that fight, though. They end up splitting the bill.
Steve hands it back to the waitress and turns to Eddie, who is putting his leg back on. Steve glances away, not sure if it’s an invasion of privacy or not.
“You can look, if you want,” Eddie says. “I don’t really care either way.”
“Okay,” Steve says, and he turns back but doesn’t stare. He checks his watch again and hopes he can get some good sleep before they’re on the road again.
Eddie waves his hand a few feet away from his face to get his attention. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” Steve says, and he takes Eddie’s offered hand to get up from the chair.
The walk back is infinitely better with company. Eddie, on his right side without Steve asking him to be, talks about his bandmates and their backstage shenanigans. He still rambles and mumbles, but he’s never mad about Steve telling him to slow down, just like Steve isn’t mad about walking a little slower than he’s used to.
It’s nice. It’s really nice.
They reach Eddie’s bus first, and, like he promised, Steve walks him up to the door and gives him a kiss.
It’s a chaste kiss, one that holds the promise of a second date and wanting to get to know him. Of getting it, just a little, even if it isn’t the same.
Or, it would have been a chaste kiss if Eddie didn’t immediately bury his hands in Steve’s hair and tug him closer.
Goddamn.
He almost sends them sprawling with that move if it wasn’t for the hand Steve planted against the side of the bus.
Eddie says something against Steve’s lips, but he doesn’t understand it, not when it’s too quiet, not when he’s so focused on his warm breath against his skin.
“Bad balance?” Steve guesses.
Eddie nods.
“Me, too.”
Steve pulls back so he can see Eddie’s face more clearly in the lights of the parking lot. They cast him in shadows and gold. It makes Steve want to redesign the light cues, bathe Eddie in gold all the time.
Maybe next time, if he’s lucky.
“Goodnight,” he says.
“Goodnight,” Eddie says, too quiet for Steve to hear, clear enough to lip read.
“I’ll try to find another diner,” Steve says.
Eddie cocks his head to the side in confusion.
“For our second date,” Steve explains.
“Oh,” Eddie whispers.
Steve smiles. “Goodnight,” he says again.
He walks back down, and when he casts a look back, he swears he sees Eddie fist pump before he goes inside the bus.
It’s not a far walk to where he and Robin and some other people are sleeping before they have to head out. He makes it to the door soon enough, and his last thought, when he’s done thinking about Eddie and vanilla milkshakes and adjusting for the people you really like, is that she better have his goddamn coffee.