Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Eddie sees Steve Harrington with his face smashed in, he’s at the corner store off 6th Street choosing a frozen meal to bring home. Not for himself—he already ate at Gareth’s after band practice—but Uncle Wayne will be hungry when he gets home from work at ass o’clock and Eddie knows there’s nothing in the fridge. He’s debating between salisbury steak and turkey when somebody walks into the same aisle, opens a door, takes something out, and then just stands there. Eddie glances at them, and then does a double-take.

“Holy shit, Harrington, what happened to you?”

It’s out of his mouth before he even thinks about it. Eddie doesn’t give one flying fuck about Steve Harrington. He knows who he is, obviously, mostly just as a name. He’s younger than Eddie, and popular, and a jock, but he’s not, like, mean. He doesn’t bully Eddie or his friends, he’s never called Eddie a queer or tried to push him against a locker. He’s just some guy that Eddie doesn’t really think about at all, and never has, except right now he’s standing in K&N Convenience looking like he just got dragged behind a car, holding a bag of frozen corn against his eye. His hair is damp like he just tried to wash his face in the bathroom, but it’s still looking fucking rough, crusty blood everywhere, skin swelling and bruised, lip split.

“Fuck off,” Steve mutters without looking at him, shoulders hunched.

But Eddie isn’t scared of this guy—he’s popular, but he’s alone, and he might play a lot of sports but the guy is built like a stick and he clearly already got beat up once today—so he just sort of laughs, and says, “What happened?”

Steve’s shoulders hunch even higher. “I got into a fight, what does it look like.”

“Like you got trampled by a herd of angry bulls,” Eddie says truthfully.

“Shut up, it’s not that bad.”

“Looks like it is,” Eddie says cheerfully. He turns, leans against the freezer door. “Whoever it was, they got you good.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, his reflection sullen and moody, holding the bag of corn against his face.

“Who was it?” Eddie asks casually, when it becomes clear Steve’s not about to offer anymore information about it on his own.

“What?”

“Who’d you get into a fight with?”

Steve’s eye slides to the side to look at him. Eddie stands his ground, doesn’t move, lets his head loll against the glass.

He doesn’t really expect Steve to answer. He figures the guy’ll just leave, take his corn bag and go. But then his gaze slides back forwards, and he mutters, “Jonathan Byers.”

Eddie frowns. He recognizes that name. It tickles something at the back of his memory. Byers, Byers… “That kid that drowned?”

“Not the kid,” Steve says, finally looking at Eddie full-on. God, he looks terrible. It’s a little bit pleasant, seeing Steve Harrington’s handsome face all fucked up. “His brother.”

Oh, right. Sophomore or something. Eddie doesn’t know him. But still, “Damn, hasn’t that guy been through enough?” Immediately, Steve looks away again, ducking his head. “Why were you fighting?”

Steve shifts the corn on his face. His voice is low when he says, “I said some shit to him.”

“About what?”

Steve looks incredibly uncomfortable.

“Not his brother,” Eddie says, wincing. “Harrington.”

“I was mad, okay?” Steve says, defensive, like Eddie’s opinion matters literally at all. Like he wants to prove himself to Eddie Munson. What a thought. “It was a dick move. I know. I just—I wanted to make him mad.”

“Still,” Eddie says. “Not classy.”

“I know, god, fuck. I know.”

Eddie grins, and watches him, and thinks that today has been an unexpectedly fun day. He turns back to the freezer, digs around for a box that doesn’t look iced over, and expects Steve Harrington to be done talking to him.

But Steve just stands there looking at his reflection in the glass of the frozen foods aisle, and then says, “I’m gonna apologize.”

Eddie blinks, surprised. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie looks at him, maybe reevaluating a little bit, and then reaches out to gently lower Steve’s bag of corn from his face. “Your nose is bleeding again.”

“Fuck.”

“I think it’s broken.”

Steve groans, and prods very gently at the bridge of his nose. “My dad’s gonna kill me.”

“You should get that set,” Eddie tells him. He broke his nose two years ago, when he fell off the roof of the trailer.

“I can’t,” Steve says. “My dad’s friend works at the hospital.”

Eddie thinks that’s very funny information for Steve to just be offering him for no reason. “It’s not like he’s never going to see you again before it heals.”

“I can try,” Steve mutters.

Eddie smiles at him. He’s not sure he’s stopped smiling at Steve this entire time. “You want me to set it for you?”

Steve groans, and wipes his bleeding nose on the cuff of his jacket, and says, “No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Steve sighs, opens the freezer again. Puts the corn back, which is totally disgusting. “I gotta go. Things to do.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, watching him, amused. “Have fun.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Steve says, and meets his eyes briefly before walking away.

Something in Eddie’s gut stirs, a little.

He expects Steve to be gone by the time he finally finishes making his purchase decisions, but when he goes up to the counter, Steve is still there, searching his pockets as the cashier waits. “Shit,” Steve is muttering, “hold on, I know I have a fucking dollar—”

“Here,” Eddie says, already shifting his stuff into one hand so that he can reach into his own pocket.

Steve looks back at him, eyes wide. Eddie pulls out a dollar bill, and bumps him gently out of the way to hand it to the cashier.

“He’s short a dollar twenty-five,” the dude behind the counter says.

“Damn, dude, you’re robbing me blind.” Eddie grapples for another quarter.

“Oh,” Steve says, sounding kind of taken aback, kind of stupid. “Uh. Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The cashier rings Steve up, and Eddie fumbles to adjust his hold on his things before he drops them.

Steve picks up his purchases—some painkillers, Eddie thinks, and a cold Coke—and hovers near the door. “You got it?”

“I got it.” Eddie puts his things down where Steve just picked his up. “Good luck, Harrington.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. He backs away, towards the door. “Um. You too.”

Eddie laughs. “Thanks.”

He turns to the counter to pay, but can’t help but look at the door as it jingles shut, watches Steve Harrington disappear beyond it. He smiles, a little, to himself. And then he shakes his head and makes himself turn away.

*

The next time it happens, it’s just after midnight in mid November, a full year later. Eddie is home alone—his uncle is working—and there’s no reason for someone to be knocking on his door, and yet someone is. He’d noticed the sound of a car approaching, because it’s late and Forest Hills is dead silent otherwise, but he hadn’t thought they’d be coming to his house, to knock on his door. He gets up, wary, and peeks out the window. A car he doesn’t recognize is parked out front, but at least it’s not a fucking cop. Through the window on the front door, all Eddie can make out is a vague outline of a person. He walks to the door, and holds onto his switchblade in his pocket, and pulls it open.

And there’s Steve fucking Harrington, standing on his front doorstep, looking like he just got his face smashed in. Again. “Uh,” Eddie says. “What the fuck?”

“Hi,” Steve says, and at least has the good grace to look embarrassed about it.

“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks. “And what the fuck happened to your face?”

Steve’s throat bobs. His nose is swollen, and he has colourful bandaids stuck to his forehead and his jaw, and his lip is split. He looks absolutely fucking awful. “Do you still sell pot?”

“Still?” Eddie says, because there’s no fucking way Steve Harrington has ever bought weed off him, he would have remembered that.

Steve shrugs. His breathing is kind of wheezy through his nose. “Carol bought from you last year,” he says. “I think. I’m pretty sure. Was that not you?”

Eddie shakes his head in disbelief. “I don’t generally sell out of my house, Harrington.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

For some reason, Eddie starts to smile. “Couldn’t this have waited?”

“No,” Steve says, and then doesn’t say anything else. He looks…really fucking bad. Eddie has seen a lot more of him this year, being in the same grade now and all. They share a couple classes. But they never talk. They never acknowledge each other at all. Steve’s a lot better now—in Eddie’s eyes—having fallen from grace somewhat, become less of a country club douchebag type. But he’s nowhere near Eddie’s level of loserdom. They don’t run in the same circles, like, at all. Eddie hasn’t spoken to him a single time since their run-in at the corner store, not even a hello. And maybe Eddie has looked at him a lot in the past year, out of the corner of his eye, tracking his movement through the halls, watching the way he moves, the way he smiles. Whatever. He’s seen him with that girl, at his locker. That Wheeler girl. Eddie doesn’t give a shit. None of it matters.

But now here Steve is, at his door, bloody and bruised. And swaying, actually, a little bit. Like he might fall down Eddie’s front stairs at any moment. He leans in, and Steve’s eyes go wide, and he flinches when Eddie reaches out to lift his eyelid with his thumb. “Do you have a concussion?”

“No.”

“Harrington.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Steve says, his tone childish, mopy. “My head hurts really bad.”

Oh, good lord. “What happened to you?”

“I got my ass kicked,” Steve says, “what does it look like?”

Eddie smiles at that. Not got in a fight. Got my ass kicked. “Again?”

Steve sighs and says, “God. Yeah.”

“By who? Steve—” Eddie stops, swallows, tastes Steve’s name in his mouth for the first time. Pushes past it and says, “This looks, like, bad. Really bad.”

Steve makes a vague sound and sways again. Thankfully, he moves to lean against the doorframe—it moves him closer to Eddie. “Billy Hargrove.”

Eddie shivers, and not just because the night is chilly and he’s just in a t-shirt. He pushes his hands into his pockets. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie knows Billy. Everyone knows Billy. The new Steve, apparently. But worse. Meaner. He does call Eddie a queer, and Eddie doesn’t say anything back, because Billy seems like the type who will beat his fucking ass into the ground, no holds barred. And it looks like he was right. He wonders what Steve said to him. What made Billy fuck him up this badly. “Why?”

“Man, I really can’t get into it,” Steve says on a sigh. He closes his eyes, like the light from Eddie’s trailer is too bright.

Eddie raises his eyebrows, and leans against the opposite side of the doorframe, facing him. “Then I’m not selling you shit.”

Steve’s face scrunches up, and it looks like it hurts. “Seriously, dude, I can’t tell you.”

“Well then forget about it,” Eddie says, smiling. Looking at Steve, because his eyes are closed, and he can’t see. He looks…so bad. Like, just terrible. Steve Harrington is handsome, with his perfect hair and perfect smile, and right now he looks awful, and Eddie thinks that’s fun, even if he’s sympathetic. He doesn’t want to see Steve in pain, or any fucked up shit like that, but it’s fascinating, to see him like this—vulnerable, unpolished. Something tugs at his heart.

“Come on,” Steve says, a whine in his voice, and that makes Eddie smile, too. Big fucking baby.

“Dude, honestly, I’m not selling you shit no matter what you say,” Eddie admits. “You’re, like, not in your right mind, and I’m not gonna have your death on my conscience. Go home. Come back tomorrow if you still want something.”

Steve groans, and pushes off the wall, and for a second Eddie thinks he’s going to pitch himself right down the stairs. But instead he turns around and sort of half-falls onto his ass on the top stair, and lets his head fall into his hands. “I can’t go home,” he says, voice muffled.

Eddie blinks, and looks at the back of his head. “Dad’s home?”

A pause, and then, “Yeah.”

Eddie presses his lips together. Looks around at the quiet, still night, the quiet, still trailer park. He doesn’t think Steve should get back behind the wheel of his car. He isn’t sure who let him drive in the first place. “Well,” he says. “My front step is free.”

Steve slumps over, head hanging nearly between his knees. Eddie stands there and watches him for what feels like a full minute, but Steve doesn’t move, or say anything. The wind rattles in the trees. “You still alive?” he asks uncertainly.

“Yeah,” Steve says, but doesn’t lift his head.

“Okay.” Eddie shifts his weight, huffs. “Well, I’m just gonna sit here. To make sure you don’t die.” He closes the door behind himself and sits down on the side of the front stoop, lets his legs dangle off the edge.

Steve makes a vague, miserable sound, and breathes noisily into his folded arms.

It’s a nice night, all things considered. It’s not too cold, not too breezy. Eddie should get a jacket or something, but for now it’s just bracing. And it’s quiet, and none of Eddie’s neighbours seem to be awake. It was November last time, too, when Steve Harrington got his ass kicked. Eddie’s thought about that day a lot. Sue him, his life is uninteresting.

“Hey,” he says. “What happened last time?”

“Huh?”

“Last time you got your face kicked in. When you went home.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “I didn’t.”

Eddie laughs a little, surprised by the answer. “What?”

“I. I went to Jonathan Byers’. And. That was the night they found his brother. So. I ended up at the hospital, actually.”

Eddie blinks twice. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Long story.”

“Shit,” Eddie says.

“Yeah. They checked my nose, though. It wasn’t even fucking broken.”

“Congrats.”

Steve breathes noisily. “I think it might be this time.”

Eddie grins.

“Do you have any Tylenol?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and laughs again.

He gets up, goes inside. Finds a sweater to pull on, and then a couple painkillers, a glass of water. When he opens the door, Steve is gone, and Eddie thinks for a moment that he’s just fucking left, but then he hears movement off to the side and sees Steve gingerly settling himself onto the couch on Eddie’s porch. Eddie smiles, and descends the stairs to bring him the pills, the water. “Free of charge,” he says graciously. His fingertips brush Steve’s palm as he drops the Tylenol into it, and he shivers.

“Fuck. Thanks.” Steve swallows them, and Eddie watches the way his throat moves as he gulps down the water.

A drop of water leaks out of the side of Steve’s mouth, and Eddie watches it trail down to his jaw, and then drip off. He tears his gaze away, and moves to sit on the armchair on the other side of the door. “So how’d you end up here?” he asks, sinking back into the chair, getting comfortable. Steve is moving to lie down on the couch. “Like, should you even be driving?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, staring up at the bottom of the porch shade. “I just can’t go home. And I really want to be doing some drugs right now.”

Eddie snorts. “Have you ever before?”

“No,” Steve says, crossing his arms and tucking himself farther into the couch.

Eddie hadn’t expected him to be honest. He never expects Steve to be honest. He grins and says, “Now is not the time to be smoking up for the first time, buddy. With a fucking concussion.”

Steve just groans in response, long and low. And if Eddie files away the sound of it to think about later, that’s nobody’s business. “I think I broke my nose again.”

“I thought it wasn’t broken last time,” Eddie laughs.

“It was broken. It just didn’t need fixing.”

“Does it this time?”

Steve is prodding at it gently. “I think it’s crooked now.”

“For real?”

“Yeah. Fuck.”

“Don’t worry about it, Harrington, you’ll still be pretty.”

He regrets saying it, pretty much right away, but Steve doesn’t say anything about it. Just keeps prodding at his nose. “Can you look at it?”

“Huh?”

“Can you check if it’s crooked.”

Eddie looks at him. Steve’s eyes are closed, and his hands are covering most of his face. “Alright.”

Steve sits up slowly. Eddie gets up, moves over to the couch to sit next to him, on the side closer to the front door. His hands are shaking, just a little, as he reaches over to tip Steve’s face towards the light. Steve closes his eyes, and Eddie is glad, because then he won’t see the way he has to swallow hard, the way he bites his lip.

“It’s swollen as fuck,” he tells Steve. “Can I touch it?”

“Okay,” Steve says, already tensing up.

Eddie touches it carefully. It’s definitely broken. “Yeah, you’re fucked, Harrington.”

“Shit.”

Eddie grins. “You want me to set it for you?”

He mostly asks as a joke, and he’s surprised when Steve says, “Yeah, okay.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Will it hurt?”

“Like hell.”

Steve sighs. “Okay. And you’ll fix it?”

Eddie shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Well, have you done it before?”

“Twice,” Eddie says. Once to himself, once to Randy Hill down the street when Eddie accidentally broke his nose with Mr. Hill’s golf club. “And I look great, don’t I?”

Steve opens his eyes, and looks at him. Eddie forces himself not to look away. Steve chews on the inside of his cheek, and says, “Yeah, okay. Hit me.”

“I hope you don’t mean that literally,” Eddie says, and gets up.

“Where are you going?” Steve nearly yelps.

“I need something thin and strong,” Eddie says. “It needs to go inside your nose.”

“What?”

Eddie goes inside, and finds a couple spoons that’ll do the job. He goes back outside, and tells Steve to sit down, and then stands between his spread knees and tips his face up towards him. Steve’s jaw is hot under his palm. Like his skin is on fire. “You gonna pass out on me?”

“No,” Steve says, and his jaw is solid, stubborn.

“Alright.” Eddie feels his nose a bit, feels where things are out of place. Holds Steve’s face between his hands, just for a moment. “Alright, lie down.”

“On the couch?”

“No, the floor. I’ll need the leverage.”

Steve lies down. Doesn’t ask any questions. Trusts Eddie completely. It’s heady.

Eddie kneels beside him. “I’m keeping your airways open,” he says, and pushes a metal spoon handle up his nostril.

“Oh, god,” Steve says.

“Relax.”

“I’m very relaxed. This is actually so relaxing for me.”

Eddie grins. With the spoon, he can feel where things aren’t lining up. “Steady,” he says.

“I’m so—oh, fuck. Oh, holy fucking shit, Eddie, god, fuck, fuck.”

Eddie feels the click. “I think I got it.”

Steve looks stunned. “Holy fuck.”

“With me?”

“No.” Steve blinks his eyes heavily, staring up at Eddie. “Ow.”

“Hold on.” Eddie takes the spoon out, tips Steve’s face this way and that. “Yeah, I think it’s straight. Can you breathe okay?”

Steve breathes. It sounds better. “Yeah.”

“Alright, I think you’re all set.” He looks at Steve steadily. “You actually handled that pretty well, Harrington.”

Steve groans, and his throat bobs. “I feel like I’m gonna die.”

“You didn’t even pass out, though.” Eddie grins, and raises his eyebrows. “I’m impressed.”

“Is that good? Do most people pass out?”

Eddie laughs. “Some do. It hurts a lot.”

“Yeah. Fuck. I’m very tough.”

Eddie feels a surge of something, fondness or affection or delight, and sits back on his heels. It’s actually very hot that Steve Harrington was willing to get a hack job nose alignment on Eddie’s front porch and took it like a champ, but he’s not going to think about that. “Just don’t touch it if you can avoid it.”

“Oh, god.”

Eddie backs up, and Steve sits up, looking woozy. “You good?”

“Mhmm.” Steve looks like he’s going to throw up. “Can I lie down on the couch again?”

Eddie stands, and then reaches down to pull Steve up. His hand is warm. A little rough. Eddie doesn’t expect that.

Steve goes directly for the couch, lies down, closes his eyes. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“That hurt so fucking bad.”

“Yeah, I thought it would.”

Steve smiles a little. It’s a good look on him. “I’m gonna pass out now. But not because it hurt. Probably the concussion.”

“Whatever you say, Harrington. You want a blanket or something?”

Steve doesn’t respond. Eddie goes inside and gets him a blanket. He shakes it out, throws it over Steve on the couch. Steve says nothing, doesn’t move. He’s already passed the fuck out.

Eddie laughs, and shakes his head. “You better not fucking die out here,” he says. “Or freeze.”

Steve makes a vague noise. Eddie takes that as a good sign, and goes inside.

The next morning, the couch is empty, Steve’s car is gone. The blanket is folded on the couch. So that’s it, Eddie thinks. That’s that. He came, he went. No more Steve Harrington on Eddie’s front porch.

And he called him Eddie. He hadn’t actually been sure Steve even knew his name. But he called him Eddie.

Eddie sniffs, and goes inside, and thinks about Steve’s warm face between his hands.

*

The day after Starcourt Mall burns down, Eddie drives out there to check out the damage.

It’s an impulse thing, really. Living in Hawkins has become increasingly interesting these past couple years—missing kids, that lab admitting it killed Barb Holland, all kinds of shit—but it’s still huge news, for the mall to get destroyed like that, and all those people died. And when Eddie goes to check it out, just out of morbid curiosity, he thinks it’s weird that the roads are all blocked off like a mile away from the mall itself. And the more Eddie thinks about the people that died in there, the weirder he thinks it is. There were like, kids and shit. Without their families. What the fuck were they doing at the mall, at night?

He takes the long way home, because it’s summer and there’s fuck-all to do other than feel really fucking embarrassed about failing to graduate, again. And it’s nice to take the backroads home, through the quiet, empty streets hemmed in on both sides by trees at the edge of town.

He’s halfway down one of these quiet, empty streets when he sees a lone figure sitting next to the road, on a hacked-off tree stump. It’s the middle of the afternoon, hot, muggy, miserable. The trees cast a shadow over the road, not enough to cut the heat, but throwing everything into a still sort of gloom. And it’s weird for anyone to be out here at all, much less someone walking, here where there’s no sidewalk, just a long road, a long line of trees, barely any houses. Eddie slows down automatically, because this town is fucked up, apparently, and all sorts of weird shit happens in Hawkins now, and Eddie wants to be on the front line of it for once.

And he feels like he recognizes this random person on the side of this random road, somehow. He squints, and leans towards his windshield, and nearly slams on his breaks when he sees Steve fucking Harrington, perfect hair falling into his perfect face. When Eddie stops, though, Steve’s head shoots up, and his eyes are wide, scared, hunted. And oh, good lord. His face is fucked up, again.

Eddie swallows hard and leans out his open window. “Harrington,” he says, “we gotta stop meeting like this.”

Steve stares at him for a moment, stunned, and then he visibly…relaxes. It’s nice, it turns out, for someone to relax when Eddie talks to them. And for that someone to be Steve. “Hi,” he says.

Eddie looks him over quickly. He’s not bloody, like the last two times. But one of his eyes is massively swollen, almost completely shut, and most of that side of his face is bruised. His jaw on the other side, too, and there’s a scab where his lip must have split.

“Why are you sitting on the road?” Eddie asks, trying to get a look at the rest of him. He’s in a t-shirt and shorts, so Eddie gets a decent look at his limbs, but they don’t look too bad. Just scattered bruises on his knees and shins, bruised knuckles.

“I’m resting,” Steve says, looking up at him from the ground.

“Resting from what?”

“Walking,” Steve says. Not like he thinks it should be obvious—just like he’s tiring just thinking about it.

Eddie blinks down at him. “Why are you walking here?”

Steve sighs, and his head sort of flops to the side. “Because I don’t have a car.”

“Why not?”

“Because I lost my keys.”

“You lost your keys?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “At Starcourt.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, and then, “Oh, shit.”

He sees Steve smile, a little. A tired, gotcha sort of smile. “Yeah.”

“Shit,” Eddie says. He looks around—down the long, empty road. “You need a lift, or something?”

Steve looks up at him, and their eyes meet with a snap of electricity that Eddie is fairly certain only he feels. “Yeah, sure,” he says. With a soft groan, he gets to his feet, and walks around to the other side of Eddie’s van. The passenger door sticks a bit, and Steve grunts as he pulls it open. Eddie bites back a smile as he watches Steve climb up into his seat, and then settle into it with a huff.

“You good?” Eddie asks.

“Mhmm.”

Eddie wonders, a little, how talkative Steve is when he hasn’t been recently beaten to a pulp. “Where you headed?”

“Home, actually,” Steve says. “For once.”

Eddie’s surprised by the reference to their past two meetings. It feels strange, somehow, that Steve remembers them. That he might think of them. Eddie hasn’t spoken to Steve, again, since last November, even if he’s seen him. In class, around school. And for the past two months, at Starcourt, when Eddie hovers at the edge of the food court crowd to catch a glimpse of Steve in his stupid little sailor outfit. But Eddie will never admit to that. He never even bought any ice cream.

He swallows again. “You want me to take you there?”

“Sure,” Steve says. “If you don’t mind.”

He tells Eddie where to go—it’s about another 6 or 7 minutes, if Eddie drives like a normal person. “Why the fuck were you walking all the way out here?”

Steve attempts to lean his seat back, and it falls all the way back like it always does. He smacks his head against the headrest and groans. “I was checking on someone. They were there with me. At the mall.”

God. Eddie can’t imagine. “Who?”

“You wouldn’t know him,” Steve says, gingerly pulling himself back upright. “He’s a kid. Dustin Henderson.”

Eddie doesn’t. “Why was he there with you?”

Steve’s eyes flick over to him, then away. “Man, I don’t control who’s in the mall.”

Eddie narrows his eyes suspiciously. “What were you doing there?”

“Dude, I work there,” Steve says, like he’s offended Eddie didn’t know. Eddie doesn’t correct him. “I sell ice cream and shit.”

“That late?” Eddie presses.

Steve’s throat bobs around a swallow. He looks determinedly through the window and says, “I can’t talk about it.”

And Eddie has found Steve Harrington embarrassingly compelling for years now, but god, he’s so compelling. He was compelling when he admitted his mistakes about pissing off Jonathan Byers to a near-stranger at the corner store, and he was compelling when he let Eddie set his nose on his front porch after trying to buy weed in the middle of the night, and now, what, he was at Starcourt? At night, when it burned down? And he can’t talk about it?

Eddie is obsessed with him. He can admit it. He already was, and now he definitely is.

He clears his throat, and pretends not to care, and says, “It looks like you got beat up again.”

Steve sniffs, and leans over to mess around with Eddie’s radio, and shrugs.

Eddie bites his lip and doesn’t even stop him. “At least your nose was spared.”

That makes Steve laugh, and the sound makes something warm bloom in Eddie’s chest. “Yeah. At least that.”

“No drugs this time?”

Steve makes a vaguely disgusted noise. “God, no. No drugs. I’ve had enough of drugs.”

Eddie shoots him a questioning look, eyebrows raised.

Steve shakes his head, face pinched guiltily. “Nevermind.”

“Hmm,” Eddie says, and pretends to let it go. He glances at Steve again, though, at his swollen eye and his little shirt and little pair of shorts, wonderfully reminiscent of his work outfit, and he says, “So, you worked there, huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says. “At…Scoops Ahoy. You been there?”

“No,” Eddie says truthfully.

Steve is visibly relieved. “Well, it was a shit job, so. Good riddance.”

“Why was it shit?”

Steve hesitates, and then shrugs and looks around shiftily and says, “It was just boring.”

Eddie wonders how much it would take for Steve to admit to the outfit. He understands why Steve hated it—it was so unbelievably dorky—but god Eddie had loved it so much. Eddie’s summer had started out dark and depressing and terrible, what with the wasted school year and all, but then he had gone to the mall one time with the Hellfire guys to check out the music store, and lo and behold, there was Steve Harrington, dressed as a little sailor. And that didn’t fix all of Eddie’s problems but it sure did fix a few. Every time he was in a particularly dark mood, all he had to do was visit the Starcourt food court and hope to god Steve was working that day. Worked like a charm.

So he’s kind of disappointed the mall is done for. He wonders if Steve got to keep the uniform.

He’s still thinking about that—Steve, Steve’s uniform—when Steve suddenly says, “Wait, turn here!”

Eddie jerks his wheel to the left, and Steve’s head bounces off the window. He groans pathetically, but manages to say, “Sorry, can we make a pit stop, like two minutes tops, I promise.”

Eddie laughs, shaking his head. “Damn, way to take advantage of my act of kindness, Harrington.”

“It’ll be really quick, it’s just down this street, it’s just—” He points. “Can you pull over there? I’ll be in and out.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he really doesn’t mind. He doesn’t have anything better to do than chauffeur Steve Harrington around Hawkins. This is the most interesting thing that’s happened to him in months. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and pulls over.

They’re in a quiet, homely little neighbourhood, not a wealthy part of town like the one they’re heading to. Steve pushes open his door and sort of slides out of his seat, like he doesn’t trust his legs to keep him upright if he jumps. He holds onto the edge of it for a moment, shielding his eyes against the sun, and then slowly trudges his way up a cracked driveway to a peeling white door. He holds up a fist, hesitates, then knocks.

A minute later, it swings open, and there’s a girl there. “Steve!” she says, face breaking out in a smile, and she reaches out to pull Steve into a squeezing embrace.

It’s the girl from the ice cream shop—Eddie recognizes her from lurking around the food court like a weirdo. Eddie had never paid much attention to her, because she wasn’t Steve, but they’d always seemed to be sniping at each other when he saw them together. Now, though, she’s pulling back from Steve to ruffle his hair, and touching the side of his face where it’s swollen, and they’re standing close together, talking quietly. Eddie bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. His stomach drops a little, and he tells it not to. Because Eddie Munson is gay and a freak, but he is not stupid.

“Whose van is that?” he hears the girl say, her voice rising enough to be heard over the hum of his engine.

Eddie looks up, just in time to see Steve glance back at him, squinting against the sun. His bruised face looks even worse in this lighting. Eddie sees more than he hears Steve say, “Uh. Eddie Munson.”

The girl keeps looking at him, even as Steve turns back around. Eddie feels caught out, suddenly. He realizes, with a start, that no one has ever actually seen him and Steve interact, before. Other than that cashier at the corner store. No one really knows they’ve ever talked to each other, much less…well, whatever it is they’ve done. Something about this, about someone seeing them—someone they know, someone Steve knows—and like. Acknowledging that they. What, have some sort of…relationship? Because they really don’t. But that Steve Harrington knows who he is, and talks to him willingly. Once a year. When his face is smashed in.

Whatever. It makes Eddie feel something, even though it shouldn’t.

A minute later, as promised, Steve obviously starts saying his goodbyes. The girl hugs him again, and cradles the side of his face, and Eddie hates himself for looking. And then the door closes between them, and Steve makes his way back over. “Sorry,” he says, climbing back into the seat. “Okay, we can go.”

“As you wish, sire,” Eddie says, shifting gears. He glances at Steve as he puts on his seatbelt and says, stupidly, “That your girlfriend?”

Steve blinks, and says, “Robin? No.”

Eddie hums, grips the steering wheel. “Was she there last night, too?”

Steve hesitates, fingering the strap across his chest. “Yeah.”

Eddie doesn’t want to look at him, but he does. “You two seem…close.”

“We are,” Steve says, no hesitation. “Yeah. I think maybe she’s my best friend.”

“Oh.” Something stirs in Eddie’s gut. “Okay.” He wets his lips, and glances at Steve, the hugely swollen left side of his face, and feels like a total asshole for asking stupid questions when he—and that girl, and that kid, and everyone else—obviously went through hell last night. He swallows hard and says, “Are you okay?”

Steve blinks, and looks at him. “Huh?”

Eddie shrugs, turns back to the road. “Whatever happened at Starcourt…it sounds bad.”

“It… Yeah. It was bad. It was really bad.”

“Are you okay?”

“I…don’t know.” And Eddie hadn’t expected a response like that. He’d wanted honest, but hadn’t expected to get it. But Steve is constantly surprising him. “I feel worse for the kids that were there. They…they shouldn’t have had to see that.”

And Eddie wants to know, desperately, what that was. But he knows he shouldn’t ask. That Steve probably couldn’t tell him even if he wanted to. “Yeah. That sucks, man.”

Steve laughs a little. “Yeah. It really sucks.”

He lets Steve close his eyes and lean back against his seat after that. Eddie thinks he deserves it.

They reach his house a couple minutes later, and Eddie pulls up onto the shoulder next to the driveway. Steve opens his eyes and looks out at the house, grimacing.

“Anyone home?” Eddie asks.

Steve shakes his head, and then stops and cradles his skull for a second. He blows out a short breath. “Well. Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure, no problem,” Eddie says. He looks at Steve carefully, at his swollen face and his rising and falling chest. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Steve visibly struggles to get the door open.

“You look kinda bad,” Eddie tells him.

“No, I’m good. I’m okay.” He slides out of his seat again, and then just stands there in the open door for a moment, holding onto the top of the van. He blinks slowly. “See ya.”

“Probably not,” Eddie says, and then winces.

Steve looks at him, and frowns, and says, “Oh. I mean, I guess not.”

Eddie drums his fingers against the wheel. “My front step is free if you ever have another concussion though.”

Steve huffs a laugh, and sways a little. Eddie wants to reach for him. “Okay, yep. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Steve doesn’t move for another second, and then pats the roof of his van, turns around, and crumples in a dead faint.

“Holy shit!” Eddie says, half-laughing, scrambling to turn off the van and get out. “Steve? You okay?”

Steve doesn’t respond. Eddie feels a little insane, rounding the front of his van to find him just…passed the fuck out on the grass at the very edge of his front lawn. Eddie kneels next to him and taps his cheek a little frantically. “Steve? Hey, Steve, are you dead? Don’t be fucking dead, man, I couldn’t handle that.”

Steve groans, and stirs. His eyes flutter open. He sees Eddie hovering over him and jolts, eyes wide and terrified, raising both hands in defense.

“Whoa,” Eddie says quickly, and stops touching his face. “Dude, hey, it’s okay. I mean, are you okay?”

Steve blinks, and then squints, and says, “Eddie?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and once again, Steve goes limp with relief. It knocks Eddie the fuck out. He swallows hard and says, “You just hit the floor, dude.”

Steve groans, lifting both hands to his face and then wincing when he rubs over swollen skin. “Fuck.” He reaches out blindly, and one hand fists in Eddie’s shirt for a moment. Eddie grasps for it automatically, and Steve’s fingers wrap around his. Biting his tongue, Eddie pulls him up into a sitting position. “Thanks. Sorry, it’s like. So hot and I walked a lot and I got beat up really bad.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and feels breathless. He fucking knew Steve got beat up. But it’s not the time to ask questions. And Steve is still holding onto his hand. “You wanna go inside?”

Steve nods, and Eddie carefully helps him up, lets Steve sling an arm around his shoulders. They walk to the door, and Steve fumbles a key out of his pocket. He can’t seem to get it into the lock, so Eddie takes it from him, warm fingertips against his palm, and does it himself.

The door swings open, and a wave of cool air wafts out. Eddie helps Steve in, and they stumble to the nearest sitting room—the house is massive, and Eddie suspects there’s more than one of them. He carefully gets Steve down onto the couch. Steve sighs and lies down, murmuring his thanks.

Eddie straightens up and looks around and feels like the world could not get more strange and fucked up than this—him, standing in Steve Harrington’s house, taking care of him. “You need anything, man?”

“No,” Steve says.

Eddie snorts a little. “Bullshit.” He wanders away, to the kitchen he can just see into. Finds a clean washcloth and wets it with cold water from the sink, then digs up a glass and fills it with more water to drink. He brings both to Steve, who looks like he might be about to pass out again.

“Sorry,” Steve says, reaching out to him blindly. “I’m all, like, fucked up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie says, and drapes the washcloth over Steve’s entire face so that he stops staring at it.

Steve huffs a laugh, but doesn’t move it. “Thanks.”

“This isn’t even the most fucked up I’ve seen you,” Eddie tells him.

“Yeah.” Steve’s throat bobs, and he weakly pulls the cloth away from his face. Looks up at Eddie through his good eye. “You must think I’m real cool.”

Eddie thinks Steve is a lot of things that he’s not going to admit to. But all he says is, “I like you better like this.”

“Fucked up?”

Eddie grins and shrugs and says, “At least you’re interesting.”

Steve sighs and says, “I wish my life would get a lot less interesting, honestly.”

Eddie hums, and takes the washcloth from him, and folds it to lie over his forehead. “I’m putting your water here,” he says, setting it down on the coffee table. “Look, I’m even using one of these little coaster things. Drink it when you can sit up.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. And then, “You’re leaving?”

Eddie swallows thickly. “You want me to stay?”

Steve licks his split lip. “I— No, no, you can go, man. Thanks for not leaving me to die.”

“Not really my thing,” Eddie says, pushing his hands into his pockets before he reaches for Steve’s face again.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Steve’s eyes flutter shut. “You’re never, like. What I expect.”

Eddie presses his lips together and tries not to feel anything too stupid. “You either, Harrington.”

“Well that’s good, I guess. I think.” Steve sighs. “You want some advice?”

“From you? Desperately.”

Steve doesn’t seem to notice his tone. “Don’t be a hero,” he tells him, eyes still closed. “Fucking sucks.”

Eddie breathes a laugh and says, “I’ll keep that in mind, big guy.”

He leaves before anyone can say anything else, feeling wrong-footed in that house, in that space, alone with Steve. It’s one thing to see Steve at the corner store, in the trailer park, at the side of the road. Steve doesn’t belong in those spaces, but Eddie does. He doesn’t belong here. Especially not with Steve.

He thinks about it for a long time, though. Steve’s swollen face, and the way he relaxed around Eddie, and everything he said. About the mall and the kids and about Eddie. The way he reached up for him. He thinks about it for a long, long time.

*

That fall, when school starts again, Eddie recruits a couple weird kids in the cafeteria to join Hellfire, and he learns who Dustin Henderson is.

He’s a cool kid—Eddie likes him the best out of his little friend group. He’s precocious, and he knows his D&D lore. But he does not stop talking about Steve Harrington. It turns out they’re, like, friends now, or something. And despite the fact that Eddie has never mentioned Steve to him, nor has anyone else ever brought him up, Dustin has personally launched a campaign to convince everyone that Steve Harrington is cool, actually, and a badass, seriously. It takes a lot of personal strength for Eddie to not tell him that he has quite a bit of evidence that what Steve really excels in is getting the shit kicked out of him.

But he is, admittedly, somewhat invested in Dustin’s reasons for thinking Steve is god’s gift to man, so he does listen to him, maybe prompts him a little bit. And the little shrimp never even gives him any proof. He always gets real quiet and shifty, never even mentions Starcourt. It adds to Eddie’s growing list of things that make Steve Harrington so goddamn compelling. But is also really fucking annoying.

However well he seems to know Steve, he apparently doesn’t know that Eddie already knows the guy, and he also doesn’t seem to notice anything familiar about the NPC in Eddie’s current campaign that the party only ever meets when he’s been recently roughed up, so. Guess Harrington has a couple secrets up his sleeve.

Anyway, Eddie doesn’t need evidence that Steve’s a badass. He let Eddie set his broken nose on his porch. But he’s not going to tell Dustin that.

A month after that, Eddie walks into Family Video with Gareth after band practice—Eddie doesn’t have a VCR, but Gareth does—and nearly stops short when lo and behold, there he is, the man the myth the legend himself, in a little green vest. He’s facing away from Eddie, leaning against the counter, but Eddie knows who it is. And he’s chatting with Robin-from-the-mall, who looks up when he enters, and instantly clocks him.

Her eyes slide to Steve. Eddie feels weirdly breathless.

Steve turns around, and freezes. Eddie watches it happen—watches him lock up. Steve’s eyes flick back to Robin, like he’s nervous, and then. He just sort of disappears into the back. And he doesn’t come back for the entire time Eddie’s there.

“Sorry about that,” Robin whispers when Eddie goes up to check out his movie. Her head tips towards the door at the back.

Eddie sniffs and says, “About what?” and doesn’t meet her eyes.

A week after that, he sees Steve again, like the universe has a personal bone to pick with him saying they wouldn’t. He’s at a Hellfire meeting, and they’re all collecting their shit and cleaning up so they can go home, and then there’s a knock at the door, and a familiar head pokes in.

“Steve!” Dustin says, grinning.

“I know, I know, call the press,” Steve says. “Your mom asked me to pick you dipshits—” His eyes meet Eddie’s suddenly, with a snap, and he trails off.

“You should come in!” Dustin says eagerly. “Come meet the guys, I keep telling—”

“No, no,” Steve says, tearing his eyes away from Eddie’s. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got shit to do. Sinclair, Wheeler, you’re both coming with me, too. Chop chop.”

The boys groans and complain, but they grab their things and go. Eddie watches, waiting, thinking Steve might look at him again, might say something, might just…acknowledge that he exists, and that they’ve spoken to each other. But he doesn’t. He just herds the kids out, and is gone.

“So Henderson wasn’t lying,” Jeff says from behind him. “Harrington really does hang out with kids.”

“Maybe he took up nannying after graduation,” Gareth says, and everyone laughs.

Eddie shakes his head, and shrugs the whole thing off.

As it turns out, those aren’t the only kids Steve is hanging out with. In mid-October, the Mayfields move in next door, a single mother and her daughter. Eddie helps them move their shit, because the two of them are struggling with the couch, and then doesn’t really ever talk to them again. But a week later, Eddie looks out the window and there’s Steve fucking Harrington, sitting with the kid, Max, on the front steps. They just sit there, for like an hour, chatting or whatever. And then Steve leaves, and the next week he’s back. Same thing. Just hanging out with that kid on the steps.

He keeps coming back, every week. Eddie never goes outside, Steve never sees him. But Eddie watches them a lot, and. Once or twice he sees Steve look over, too. At Eddie’s trailer. But he never approaches, never acts like he’s been there before, like he slept on Eddie’s porch.

But Eddie forgets about a lot of that shit when, after a couple weeks of Steve coming around, Eddie looks out his window and sees, to his unending bewilderment and delight, Max trying to teach Steve Harrington how to skateboard.

It’s the funniest fucking thing Eddie’s ever seen. Steve’s terrible at it, just an absolute disaster on four wheels. Eddie watches him through the trailer windows, watches him hold tight to Max’s skinny shoulders, trying desperately to balance, knees wobbling, eyes wide. And over the weeks he watches him learn how to step onto the board and start moving, inching along the cracked pavement. Hears the two of them yelling at each other, even when the windows are closed, because Steve thinks Max is pushing him, and Max insists she’s just holding him there, stop whining, oh my god.

It’s hysterical, and it makes something very embarrassing turn in Eddie’s stomach. But at least it sort of makes up for the loss of the sailor outfit.

It’s late November now, though, and it’s going to be too cold for Steve to skateboard around the trailer park soon. So maybe Eddie is trying to take advantage of it while it’s still possible, sitting at the table where he can see through the slits in the blinds. It’s a clear day, chilly but bright, and Steve is out there in tight-ass jeans and a corduroy jacket that probably isn’t doing shit against the wind. And Eddie is having a nice time, just watching them. It’s the Starcourt food court all over again.

He doesn’t actually see Steve wipe out. He’s gotten up to change the radio station, and in the moment of silence between songs, he hears Max yell, “Shit, Steve, stop!”

He turns off the radio on instinct, and hears Steve yelling, “I don’t know how to fucking stop!”

“Just jump off, there’s a hill, oh my god—”

By the time Eddie makes it to the window, Steve is on the ground, and it looks bad. Max is crouching over his prone form at the bottom of the incline outside Eddie’s trailer, and she’s saying, “Holy shit, Steve, Steve, don’t move, oh my god—” and she’s wiping a bloody hand on her jeans, and Eddie is outside before he even really registers what’s happening.

“Is he okay?” he asks, voice loud and sudden.

Max’s head shoots up, and she looks scared, pale. Her eyes are huge and watery. “He hit his head, there’s a lot of blood—”

And of fucking course he did. Of fucking course there is.

Eddie jumps down the stairs, over the railing, and runs to them, breath caught in his throat. Steve is on his back on the asphalt, and there is blood, like, everywhere. But with head wounds, Eddie knows, that doesn’t mean much. “Go inside,” he tells Max quickly. “Get me a clean towel and some water.”

Max gets up and runs. Eddie gets on his knees next to Steve and holds his face between his hands, holding it still, and says, “Steve? You with me?”

Steve groans. His mouth is full of blood, too, and it stains his teeth red as he says, “Fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie says. “You hurt your neck?”

“No,” Steve says, and rolls onto his side to spit blood on the pavement. Eddie lets go of him, sits back on his heels. But when Steve’s hand reaches out for him, flailing, Eddie catches it. Pulls him upright.

Max comes running back out. “Oh, thank god,” she says, dropping the towel in Eddie’s lap, cracking open a water bottle. “I thought you fucking died.”

Steve laughs a little, and it’s an interesting sight, considering his face is literally covered in blood. “Not this time.”

“Tip your head back,” Eddie says, sliding a hand over the back of his skull, pulling very gently on his hair. “I’m trying to see how bad it is.”

“I can’t fucking see,” Steve complains.

“There’s blood in your eyes,” Eddie tells him, and starts pouring Max’s water over his face.

It’s not actually as bad as it looks. He’s split his eyebrow, and it’s absolutely gushing blood, but that’s the worst of it. He’s got road rash on his forehead and chin, and his cheek is probably going to swell, and he looks thoroughly fucked up, but it’s all surface shit. His hands are scraped and bloody, too, and he’s torn a hole in the elbow of his jacket, but Eddie suspects the biggest hit has been to his pride.

Still, “We have to get this to stop bleeding,” Eddie says, pressing the towel over his eyebrow. “You might need stitches in this.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Steve sighs. “Mayfield, you’re insane if you think I’m ever getting on that thing again.”

Max laughs a little, still looking shaken. “You’re the one who wanted to learn.”

“You pressured me,” Steve says. He’s holding onto the wrist of Eddie’s hand holding the towel to his face. “This was peer pressure.”

“You poor baby,” Max coos.

“You got anything else for this?” Eddie asks, nodding at Steve’s scrapes. “Bandaids and shit?”

“Yeah, I’ll go get them.” Max wipes her hands on her jeans, and grimaces. “You good out here? I need to like, change. And wash my hands.”

“Yeah, go for it, doc,” Eddie tells her. “I’ll keep him stabilized.”

Max huffs a laugh, goes to fetch her board from where it’s rolled away, and heads back to her house.

It’s quiet for a few moments, Eddie keeping steady pressure on Steve’s brow and Steve just sort of sitting there, taking it, and then Steve swallows and says, “Hi.”

Eddie snorts, adjusting his hold on the back of Steve’s head, and impulsively says, “Oh, so we are friends.”

“Huh?”

Eddie shakes his head, even though Steve’s eyes are closed and he can’t see him. “Nothing.” He sniffs, shivering in the chilly breeze. “What are you doing hanging around here, anyway?”

“I’m learning how to skateboard,” Steve says. “Obviously.”

“I saw you hanging around before the board came out,” Eddie says flatly. “She your cousin or something?”

“No.” Steve opens his good eye—the one not still covered in blood—and peeks at the scrapes on his hands. “Shit, this stings.”

“I would think so.”

“Feels like I went through a meat grinder.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, checks briefly under the towel. It’s starting to soak through, but the blood’s still coming.

Steve is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Is she coming back?”

“Mayfield? No, not yet.”

Steve’s mouth twists. “Billy was at Starcourt.”

Eddie blinks. “What?”

“Billy Hargrove,” Steve says. “Her brother.”

Eddie has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. Well, he knows Billy was at Starcourt—he died at Starcourt—but, “Her last name’s Mayfield.”

“Step-brother,” Steve says. “He was there, and. So was she.”

And so was Steve. God, what a nightmare. “You were with them?”

Steve shrugs. “We were all kind of together.” He picks at a thread on his jeans, and closes his eyes again. “I dunno. It’s not my fault she doesn’t have a big brother, but. I feel like. She needs one.”

Eddie’s insides go liquid. It’s very embarrassing.

The door to the Mayfields’ house bangs open again, and Max comes out, in clean clothes and carrying a plastic bag full of first aid shit. She sits down on Steve’s other side and grabs his hand a little roughly and starts cleaning it, picking gravel out with tweezers.

“Ow, shit,” Steve says, hand jerking away. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

“What, saving you from infection? Yes I am.” Max snatches it back. “I told you to stop, you know.”

“I don’t know how!”

“You can literally just get off the board whenever you want, did you know that Steve? You’re not glued to it.”

The two of them bicker back and forth while Max cleans and bandages his hands, and Eddie watches, entertained, while he holds the towel to Steve’s forehead. Another five minutes and they’ll have to go to the hospital if it doesn’t stop bleeding, but for now they can just sit here, outside on the asphalt, and annoy each other.

“Did you see it?” Max asks suddenly, looking at Eddie.

“Huh?”

“Steve wiping out.”

Steve cringes, and Eddie laughs and admits, “No, I just heard you yelling. Steve gets to keep his pride.”

“Oh, thank god,” Steve says on an exhale.

“Well, it was his own fault,” Max says stubbornly.

“I have no doubt it was,” Eddie agrees. “I’ve seen you skating, you know your shit.”

Max looks pleased, dabbing Neosporin on Steve’s elbow where his jacket tore.

“You two know each other?” Steve asks, his good eye bouncing between them.

Eddie shrugs. “We’re neighbours, so, kind of.”

“He helped me and my mom move,” Max says.

Steve’s eye moves to Eddie and stays there. “Oh yeah?”

Eddie sniffs, embarrassed. But he says, “You guys settling in okay?”

Max shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Let me know if you ever need anything, okay?” Eddie says, not looking at Steve. “Forest Hills is mostly just boring and shit, but if you feel unsafe or anything, you can call us. Me or my uncle are usually home.”

Max folds her arms, and shrugs again, and says, “Yeah, okay.”

Eddie nods, and checks on Steve’s head wound again, and pretends not to see his smile.

The door to Max’s house opens again. “Maxine!” her mom calls. “Lucas is on the phone for you!”

Max sighs, and rolls her eyes. “Coming!” She looks at Steve again. “You’re okay out here with Eddie?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I’m a big boy.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Max says, and then pats his shoulder and runs inside, yelling, “Just leave my stuff by my door later!”

“Will do,” Eddie says, waving to her, and then she disappears.

Steve clears his throat. He looks at his hands, clean and wrapped, and says, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

Steve shrugs. He says, “I could hold the towel, I think.”

Eddie’s fingers flex against the back of his head. “I got it. Your hands are gross.”

“They really hurt,” Steve admits.

“Worse than your head?”

“My head can take a beating. Thick skull.”

Eddie laughs. “Nose is fine, though. Open your mouth.”

“What?”

“Open your mouth.”

Steve does, and Eddie looks inside. “Still got all your teeth. Still pretty, Harrington.”

Steve’s throat bobs. “I think I bit the tip of my tongue off.”

“Probably when you smacked your chin on the pavement. Stick out your tongue.”

Steve complies—he’s getting pretty good at following orders.

“Nah, you just cut it on your teeth. It’s barely even bleeding anymore.”

“Hurts like hell.”

“That’s what happens when you’re stupid.” Eddie checks on the towel again, pulling it away gingerly. “Oh thank god, it’s stopped.”

Steve’s shoulders slump in relief. “How bad does it look?”

“Pretty gross. But you’ll have a cool scar, at least.”

“Oh, goody,” Steve says dryly.

Eddie digs through Max’s bag. “Mayfield’s got a couple butterfly closures in here. So you should be able to avoid stitches.”

“Yippee.”

“Hey, I’m keeping you out of the hospital, Harrington. You should be thanking me.”

Steve sighs, and rolls his head on his neck, and says, “Yeah. Thanks, Eddie. Seriously.”

The use of his name makes Eddie’s insides clench, a little. He clears his throat. “Come on,” he says, heaving himself upright. “We can actually wash out those wounds with soap and shit in my house.”

Steve looks up at him, still sitting on the ground, legs stretched out in front of him. He sniffs and says, “How many times are you going to fix me up after I get fucked up?”

Eddie blinks down at him. “I dunno. As many times as it takes for you to learn your lesson, I guess.” He stretches down a hand.

Steve takes it. “And what lesson is that?”

“To not make stupid decisions,” Eddie says, hauling him to his feet. “But hey, you didn’t even lose a fight, this time. Well, not with a person, at least.”

“I won one of those fights!” Steve says.

Eddie raises his eyebrows, and remembers to drop Steve’s hand. “Which one?”

Steve’s throat bobs, and he looks away. “I did,” he mutters.

Eddie hums, biting back a smile, and leads the way back to his trailer.

Steve looks confused when he walks in, somehow, looking around with the eye not crusted with drying blood.

“What?” Eddie says, grabbing the back of his jacket gently to pull him towards the kitchen sink.

“I didn’t see inside last time,” Steve says, stumbling a little. “That’s a lot of hats.”

“Thanks.”

“Are they yours?”

“Have you ever seen me wear a hat, Harrington?”

Steve looks at him thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think so.”

Eddie huffs, and pushes Steve’s head towards the faucet. “Close your eyes.”

“Are you trying to drown me?”

“Why would I stop you from bleeding out on the asphalt just to bring you into my house and kill you here? That’s a terrible idea.” He turns on the faucet, cups water in his hand to bring it to Steve’s face. “Don’t breathe.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to dr—” He stops talking as water gets in his mouth, and he gurgles.

“I think you’re thinking of waterboarding,” Eddie says, gently cleaning his wounds. “And this isn’t how it works.”

Steve spits pink water into the sink. “Well it feels like torture.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a fucking baby.”

“You know, I’ve actually been tor—” He stops short, and then snorts water up his nose and starts coughing violently.

“Oh my god.” Eddie can’t help but laugh. “Can you literally not stop talking for one minute?”

“I can’t hold my breath for that long!”

“You could at least try.”

He gets the wounds clean after a minute, though, and lets Steve stand back up, wet hair dripping onto his shoulders, soaking the neckline of his shirt. Eddie sits him down at the table, where he’d been watching Steve out the window ten minutes ago, and finds some paper towel to blot his face dry with.

“Tip your face up,” Eddie says, wielding the Neosporin tube.

“Is this gonna hurt?” Steve says warily.

“Only if you struggle.” Eddie wets his lips, and holds Steve’s face steady with a hand on his jaw, and uses the other to dab ointment over his eyebrow, and then his forehead and his chin.

Steve stares up at him through it all, refusing to close his fucking eyes. “You’re good at this.”

“Huh?”

“This first aid shit.”

Eddie swallows hard, and turns to find the bandages. “When you’re poor, you don’t go to the hospital. You fix your own shit.”

“Doesn’t mean you automatically become good at it.”

“You learn,” Eddie says, and shrugs. He picks out two butterfly closures and tilts Steve’s head towards the window, where the sunlight comes through. “I got hurt a lot as a kid.”

“From what?”

“Roughhousing and shit. Hold these.” He hands the bandages to Steve, then holds onto his jaw again, carefully pinches his wound closed as Steve hisses. Concentrating hard, he says, “You’re not the only one with experience getting punched in the face.”

Steve’s whole face cringes away from his hands, and he closes his eyes. “Oh yeah?”

“I learned my lesson, though.” He takes one bandage from Steve, unwraps it, and sticks one side to his brow just next to the wound, then pinches the skin together and sticks the other side down, slow and steady. He takes a moment to look at Steve, like this. With his face cleaned up, even if it’s still pretty beat up, and so close to Eddie. Warm under his hands. Eddie feels exhausted by how much he likes this weird fucking moron. “Instead of getting into fights, I just worked very hard until everyone ignored me instead,” he says. He bites his lip and adds, “Did a little too good of a job.”

Steve exhales slowly; Eddie feels it against his wrists. “What did you get into fights about?”

“This may shock you, but I was always a weird, loud-mouthed kid,” Eddie says with a soft laugh. He gets the other bandage ready, places it carefully next to the first. “What can I say, I was off-putting. And queer.”

Steve’s eyes snap open. He looks up at Eddie, startled.

Eddie’s stomach drops. Oh, shit. Fuck.

“Oh,” Steve says.

Eddie swallows thickly, pulls his hands away from Steve’s face. “Everyone knows.” He knows it—that rumour’s been going around since he was a kid. And he’s never once denied it.

“Oh,” Steve says again.

“Don’t fucking tell me you didn’t know.” Eddie really does not want to hear that right now.

Steve’s throat works around a swallow. He doesn’t fucking blink. “No, I. I—” His jaw goes tense. “I just don’t automatically believe shit that I hear from, like, Tommy H.”

Eddie’s stomach turns. “Well, even Tommy H is right sometimes.”

Steve exhales again. “Yeah.” His eyes flutter closed. “That’s the real shocker.”

Relief flows into Eddie like a warm drink. He feels his shoulders relax. It’s been a while since Eddie cared what someone thought of him—since he cared about what someone might think of him being queer, beyond possibly trying to beat him up for it. He’s surprised by how strongly he felt about Steve knowing. He shouldn’t have been, though. He should know by now that he’s got it bad. For Steve Harrington. It’s humiliating. “Alright, Harrington,” he says, voice just a little weak. “You’re all fixed up, unless you want a big fat bandage on your forehead.”

Steve groans, and shakes his head. “No, I look bad enough already.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Eddie says cheerfully.

Steve looks at him. “I thought you said I was still pretty.”

Eddie bites his tongue, and really wishes he hadn’t, right now. “As pretty as that face can get.”

Steve snorts, and rakes his fingers through damp hair. “Right. Well, doc, am I free to go?”

“Yeah, should be.”

“Thanks,” Steve says, and looks at him steadily. “Seriously, man.”

Eddie shrugs, a little stiffly. “Right. You know me. Eddie Munson, your local poorweather friend.”

Steve frowns. “What?”

“You know, like opposite of fairweather.” Eddie offers him a crooked grin. “I’m only around when things are looking bad for Steve Harrington.”

“Oh.” Steve looks surprisingly disgruntled by that. “Right.”

Eddie fumbles a little. “You need anything else?”

“No.” Steve shakes himself, stands up. “Tell Max thanks for me, yeah? I should get going.”

“Sure, yeah,” Eddie says. “Yeah. I’ll, uh.” He almost says, see you around. But he doesn’t want to think about that. “I’ll see you next time you get roughed up.”

“Right.” Steve clears his throat, pushes his hands into his pockets. “Bye.”

Eddie feels wrong-footed, as he leaves. Like he misstepped. Said the wrong thing.

Probably shouldn’t have told Steve Harrington he’s queer.

*

Eddie would have really loved for the reveal about why Steve Harrington is getting fucked up and hanging out with kids all the time to come before the gruesome deaths and murder allegations, honestly.

He should have known, he supposes, that when shit started hitting the fan in his life—when Eddie Munson finally did end up on the frontlines of all the crazy shit happening in Hawkins—Steve Harrington would be there. It just makes sense. Not that he was at his best or most rational when Dustin and the others showed up at Reefer Rick’s, obviously, but once he’s been sat down and everything has been very haphazardly explained to him, he does sort of think, of fucking course. Of fucking course he’s here.

Things just start slotting into place, that’s all.

But he thinks it all really starts to make sense when they’re out in the boat on Lovers Lake, looking for some sort of…gate to the underworld, or whatever, and then Steve stands up and starts taking off his shirt and says he’s going to jump in.

“This is fucked up,” he mutters, watching the lake where Steve has disappeared with a splash. “You know, this really explains why he’s always getting his face pummeled.”

“Huh?” Robin says, eyes on the water.

“He’s fucking stupid,” Eddie says.

Nancy glances at him. “He’s brave.”

“Exactly,” Eddie says. “Stupidly brave. It explains everything.”

And as always, all Eddie can do is sit around and wait for bad things to happen to him. He’s been doing that a lot these past couple days. Just waiting. Steve Harrington would never.

Of course, when the bad things do start to happen—when Steve comes up to tell them that he found the gate, and then promptly disappears again, dragged underwater—Eddie really wishes things would just stop happening, period. He could really use a break from things happening. But Steve is in danger, and Wheeler is jumping in after him, and so is Robin, and fuck it, right? Fuck it. It’s time for Eddie to see whatever shit keeps happening to Steve actually happen to him, or whatever.

He thinks, briefly, about what Steve told him. After Starcourt. Don’t be a hero. He’s thought about that a lot since then.

Of course Steve would say that. Fucking moron.

He jumps in.

It strikes Eddie, when he’s beating demon bats from hell off of Steve’s prone form, that this is the first time he’s actually seen Steve sustain an injury. All this time, he’s just been seeing the aftermath, and here he is, actually experiencing it. It’s fucked up, is what it is. And he doesn’t like it at all.

Dustin was fucking right though. He is a badass. Steve Harrington fucks shit up.

They don’t get a good look at Steve’s wounds until they’re at Skull Rock—or, well, the underworld version of Skull Rock, or whatever. And Eddie’s seen Steve look bad before, but this is a different kind of bad. This is deep puncture wounds in his stomach bad, bleeding sluggishly, dripping into the waist of his jeans. This is actual flesh missing from his body, and deep wounds along his back where he was pulled across the ground, and red lines around his throat where that tail was wrapped around it, choking him. Eddie’s never seen Steve like this before.

But, well. Wheeler’s got him covered in the aftercare department, this time around. She’s ripping her shirt to bandage him up. And Eddie obviously doesn’t care, because Steve’s getting taken care of and that’s what’s important, Eddie’s stupid but he’s not that stupid, there are like twelve other things more important than who patches Steve up after he gets chewed up by demon spawn. But he turns around anyways. Because he’s still a little bit stupid.

But not stupid enough that he would care if Steve still has a thing for Nancy, because having a crush on a guy that lasts several years and taking care of him a couple times when he gets roughed up doesn’t make him delusional. And if he throws his denim vest a little too hard at Steve afterwards, it’s not because their little flirtatious banter act is affecting him in some personal way. They’ve just. They’ve got shit to do. Lives to save (their own). So. He just wants to get that train moving, and if it’s in a direction away from heterosexual flirtatious banter, then that’s just a bonus.

Later, though, when they’re tramping through the spooky version of the woods towards the Wheelers’ house, Steve calls ahead to him, stops him. And Eddie turns around, and Steve meets his eyes and says, “I just want to say thanks. For saving my ass back there.”

Eddie sniffs and says, “Shit, you saved your own ass, man.” Steve frowns at him, and Eddie says, “I mean, that was a real Ozzy move you pulled back there.”

“Ozzy?” Steve just looks confused now.

“When you took a bite out of that bat,” Eddie says. And when Steve still just gives him a blank look, “Ozzy Osbourne? Black Sabbath? He bit a bat’s head off onstage.”

“I don’t—”

“No?”

“No.”

Eddie waves it off. “Doesn’t matter. It’s very metal, what you did. That’s all I’m saying.”

“...Thanks,” Steve says, still sounding perplexed.

They fall into step for a moment, side-by-side in this fucked up forest. Eddie wets his lips and says, “Henderson told me you were a badass.” He flicks his eyes to Steve. “Insisted on the matter, in fact.”

Steve looks back at him. “Henderson said that?”

Eddie hums. “Yeah, that kid, like, worships you,” he says, a mixture of fond and exasperated. “Kind of annoying, actually.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “He tells me about you, too.”

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up, and he turns to look at him. “Does he?”

“Yeah. All the time. His new best friend Eddie.”

Eddie snorts, jumping over a protruding tree root. “I figured he thought you didn’t know who I was.”

“Well.” Steve jumps over the same root. “He made sure I did. Guess he wants us to be, like, friends or something.”

Eddie’s stomach turns a little. “Wouldn’t want him to think we already are.”

“Huh?”

And Eddie is tired and stressed and feeling a little bit like a dick, so he says, louder, “Wouldn’t want him to think we already are.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Yeah, I mean. I guess not.”

God, yeah, Eddie should have kept his fucking mouth shut. “Not good for your street cred,” he says, clearing his throat. “Being friends with Eddie the Freak Munson.”

“Wait, what?” Steve jogs a little to catch up with him, and Eddie wishes he wouldn’t. “Who says that?”

He says it like he’ll beat up whoever it was. Fucking Hero Steve. “No one,” he says with a breathy laugh. “I mean, everyone. That’s just fucking fact, man.”

“I don’t say that,” Steve says stubbornly. “And Dustin doesn’t think that. Obviously.”

And it’s probably just because Eddie’s had a really bad fucking couple of days that he says, “Yeah, well, you certainly didn’t jump at the chance to fraternize with me in public.”

There’s a moment of silence wherein Eddie feels extremely stupid about saying that, and then Steve says, “When?”

Eddie scoffs, and pretends it doesn’t matter and he hasn’t been thinking about it for months. “Like, every time we have crossed paths in the last year.” He sniffs and adds, “It doesn’t matter, you know? We’re not friends. I’m just saying, you can own up to it.”

Steve is quiet for a couple beats again, walking next to Eddie through the forest, eyes on the ground, watching his step. “Do you mean in Family Video?”

Oh, so he does remember. Eddie thinks maybe that’s worse. “Sure, yeah, in Family Video.”

Steve shrugs, and rakes a hand through his hair, and then visibly winces in pain. “I wasn’t— I mean, I didn’t. You don’t—”

“I don’t?” Eddie says, incredulous.

Steve frowns. “You’re the one who said it. We only ever—like, talk. When I’m fucked up.”

Eddie looks at him and frowns back. “Well, that’s just the fucking truth.”

Steve shrugs. “You’ve never talked to me outside of those situations, either.”

“You didn’t say something first!” Eddie can’t believe they’re talking about this, right now. Even if he’s the one who started it. “I walked into Family Video and you, like, bolted out of there.”

“I didn’t know what to say!”

Eddie laughs, too loudly for the quiet, eerie forest. “You left because you didn’t know what to say?”

“Yes, okay? I’d only ever talked to you when I was, like, concussed and on death’s door.” His throat bobs. “And you said you liked me better like that anyway.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says, and shakes his head. “You think I only like a fucked up, concussed Steve Harrington?”

“No,” Steve says, but it sounds kind of like a yes. “But you don’t even know a non-fucked-up Steve Harrington.”

“And whose fault is that?” Eddie asks him.

“I don’t know!” Steve shakes himself. “You said you were only ever around when things were bad. For me.”

“I was stating a fact.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve audibly grapples. “It sure didn’t seem like you ever mentioned me to Dustin.”

Eddie looks at him like he’s crazy. “It sure didn’t seem like you ever mentioned me. He didn’t even know we knew each other!”

“Exactly!” Steve says.

They walk in silence for a moment, at an impasse.

“This is fucking stupid,” Eddie says. “You’re the one who tried to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Steve huffs, and shrugs, and says, voice a little pathetic, “I didn’t know what to say.”

Despite himself, Eddie cracks a smile. He swallows, and clears his throat, and says, after a long moment, “I didn’t even have to patch you up, this time.”

“Huh?”

“Looked like Wheeler had that covered.” Eddie tries very hard to sound normal about it. “Looks like I’ve been replaced.”

“Oh,” Steve says. And then, voice low, “Being honest? These wrappings aren’t doing shit. I think I need, like, first aid attention. Stat.”

Eddie snorts a laugh. “You think?”

“It kind of hurts,” Steve confesses. “Real bad.”

“Yeah, well, those bats did a fucking number on you.” Eddie glances at him, at his wrapped torso where the blood is starting to soak through. At Eddie’s vest, over top. It looks…good on him. Not the bloody bandages. “You seem like you’ve got experience, though.”

“Oh, yeah.” Steve huffs. “Wildly enough, though, all those other times it was just, like. Regular people beating the shit out of me.”

“And the pavement,” Eddie reminds him.

“And that. But the first time it really was Jonathan. And then Billy. And then. Russians.”

Eddie stares at him. “Fucking Russians?”

“Yeah.” Steve shoots him a grin. “Me and Robin got kidnapped by Russians. It was a whole thing.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“We got tortured,” Steve says cheerfully.

“Jesus Christ.”

“There’s always fucking monsters around, though,” Steve says. “But this is the first time they got me.”

“What about Billy?” Eddie asks. They’d mentioned that, earlier. When they were giving him the debrief. “I thought he was, like. A monster.”

“Not when he beat the shit out of me,” Steve says. “He was just a regular human then.”

“Oh, okay.”

“He was a monster when I hit him with my car.”

Eddie stares at him. “No shit?”

Steve grins again. “No shit. Actually, it wasn’t my car. We stole it.”

Eddie blows out a breath and shakes his head. “I fucking knew Hawkins had some shit going on, but Christ.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I would have preferred staying ignorant to it all.”

Steve laughs softly. “Yeah. Me too.”

Eddie glances up ahead to where Robin and Nancy are walking, then back at Steve, who’s picking at the wraps on his stomach. “So, you and Wheeler…?”

“She has a boyfriend,” Steve says, short and quick.

“Right. But?”

Steve shrugs. “But nothing. We’re friends.”

“She was real quick to jump into the water to save your ass,” Eddie says, and doesn’t know why he’s pushing it. Masochistic tendencies, probably. “That’s love, baby.”

Steve makes a vague sound. “Robin jumped, too,” he says. “So did you.”

Eddie swallows hard, and doesn’t know how to feel about the comparison. “I just didn’t want to be left alone up there.”

“Doesn’t matter. You jumped. You were scared, and you fucking jumped.” Steve glances at him, shrugs. “That’s love, baby.”

Oh, god. “Yeah,” Eddie chokes. “I owed you one.”

“After all the times you’ve cleaned me up?” Steve laughs. “I don’t think so.”

And that’s when the fucking earthquake starts.

Eddie doesn’t really get, like, a single fucking second to breathe after that until they’re back in the right side up, or whatever. He isn’t sure when the last time he slept was, but he’s not feeling all that tired as they talk to Dustin and the other kids interdimensionally, and then bike from the Wheelers’ back to Forest Hills, and then climb through a fucking rift in spacetime. The exhaustion only really hits afterwards, once they’ve pulled Nancy and Steve up (down?) through the gate, and hustled everyone over to Max’s place. He makes sure all the kids have places to sleep, tucked into bed and other available flat surfaces, and when he steps out of Max’s room —after making sure she has her Walkman and the other kids are nearby to keep an eye on her—he runs into Steve, who was getting Nancy settled in Ms. Mayfield’s empty room.

“All good in there?” Eddie asks, peeking over his shoulder.

Steve nods, still looking shaken. “Robin’s in there with her, so.”

“Yeah. Okay, good.” Eddie looks him over quickly. “Are you good?”

“Yeah,” Steve says promptly. “Yeah, I.” He clears his throat. “I think I’m okay.”

“I mean, you did get chewed on,” Eddie reminds him. “Pretty viciously.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Yeah. I take it back, I should probably check on that.”

Eddie wets his lips. “Well, Mayfield has a pretty decent first aid supply, if I recall correctly.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.”

Eddie goes to find it for him, listens to Steve settling down on the couch from the bathroom as he washes his hands and rifles through the cabinets. Hears a hiss of pain, and a muttered, “Oh, fuck.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Eddie says, keeping his voice low as he returns, familiar bag in hand.

“It looks worse,” Steve says, voice a little thready.

Eddie looks, and sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Fucking hell, Harrington.”

“Yeah.” Steve bites the tip of his tongue, tugging on a bit of fabric that’s stuck to forming scabs. It doesn’t budge. “What do you think, better or worse than when I wiped out on the skateboard?”

Eddie laughs, a harsh breath of sound. “Yeah, maybe a little worse. Oh, god, that looks bad, Steve.”

“It feels really bad.” He closes his eyes tightly, tugs again, and whimpers. “You got, like, bleach in there? I think I need bleach for this.”

“I don’t think that’s recommended practice. Here, lean back.” Eddie perches on the couch next to him, reaches for him, then pulls back a little. “Can I?”

“Yeah, dude, you’re like. My #1 doctor.”

Better than Nancy? Eddie wants to ask, but he doesn’t, because he’s not fucking stupid, and because Nancy just got fucking…possessed, or whatever. Not the time. “Alright. This is gonna hurt.”

Steve stuffs a disgusting fist in his mouth, and groans as Eddie checks on his bindings, still stuck fast.

It’s all…pretty fucking bad. The puncture wounds he’s able to uncover on his sides are pretty deep, and his back and shoulders are fucked up, too. And about half of the bite wounds have really sealed themselves to the cloth Nancy wrapped around them—not her fault, just the result of blood and other fluids soaking into them and then drying there, into the forming scab. Eddie’s going to have to rip them off, eventually, but for now he wets them down with a sponge and clean water and leaves it, moves on to Steve’s other wounds. He bites his tongue and goes over them carefully, disinfecting them as best as he can, plucking out rocks and dirt with tweezers, the way Max did with his hands in November. The rest of the house is quiet—everyone is sleeping, Eddie hopes—god he wishes he was sleeping—but Steve continuously has to muffle groans and yelps, flinching away from Eddie’s hands.

“You got this,” Eddie says, about a million times. “Almost done. You’re taking it like a champ, Harrington.”

“After this, I’m done,” Steve says hoarsely, face buried in his hands, elbows propped on his knees as Eddie cleans his back with the damp sponge. “No more hero shit. I’m retiring.” “Fat fucking chance,” Eddie says with a breathy laugh. “You eat that shit up.”

“Not because I want to.”

“No,” Eddie agrees, dabbing at the back of his neck, over the raw red lines there. “You’re just a fucking natural.”

Steve sighs, back flexing under Eddie’s hands. “I—I get scared too, you know. I’m scared.”

Eddie blinks at him, at the back of his head. “Yeah?”

“I don’t do this shit because I’m not scared.”

“Right.” Eddie has to scrub a little bit at the scrapes along his back, and Steve arches, hissing. “That doesn’t make you any less cool, though.”

Steve coughs out a pathetic laugh. “Thanks. Yeah, I’m glad.”

“I think I’m in the minority, you know, thinking King Steve got cool after he fell from grace.”

Steve hums, spine curving up into Eddie’s touch as he pats his back dry with a paper towel, like a cat. “That’s when I stopped wanting people to think I was cool.”

“Well, you did a shit job of it,” Eddie tells him, just to hear him laugh again.

He thinks he’ll need to be laughing, for this next bit. “I gotta get these bandages off, man.”

Steve grits his teeth. “Yeah. Do it.”

“It’s gonna hurt like hell,” Eddie tells him.

“Uh-huh.”

Eddie expects it to be bad, but it’s bad. A good four inches on each side are stuck hard to the bandages, and even with Eddie letting them soak for ten minutes, they’re not coming up easy. Steve makes a variety of agonized sounds as Eddie peels back the cloth millimeter by millimeter, and Eddie shushes him and winces sympathetically, trying to keep him talking, keep him distracted.

“You got this,” Eddie tells him again, pretending not to notice the tears leaking from Steve’s eyes. Steve holds onto Eddie’s shoulder and squeezes hard. “You fucking got this. What about those fucking Russians? Didn’t they do worse?”

“They just fucking drugged me, man,” Steve says, voice high and tight. “You didn’t even have the decency to drug me.”

“This may shock you, but I don’t keep anesthetics on me,” Eddie tells him. “Also, I’m pretty certain the cops took all the drugs in my place.”

“Could have at least, fuck, checked.”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “You want me to go now? Leave you here for a bit?”

“No, no, shit. Just rip ‘em off.”

“That’s a last resort,” Eddie tells him. “I might have to, though.”

“Can you knock me out?” Steve asks a little pathetically. “Please? I’m pretty good at getting punched in the face.”

Eddie laughs. “I’d miss your company, though. We’re having such a nice time.”

“I’m having so much fun,” Steve agrees. “I love this.” Eddie tugs on a new section of the bandage, and he whines high in his throat. “Fuck, Eddie, Eddie, stop.”

“So much for ripping it off,” Eddie says with a laugh that’s only a little shaky.

“It hurts so fucking bad, man.”

Eddie knows he’s just going to have to go for it. In the end, some of these wounds might need to be cleaned—they probably all need to be cleaned—and he’s just prolonging the agony by doing it slow and careful. He looks at Steve, who looks back at him with wide, wet eyes, a determined slant to his mouth. So fucking stubborn. So fucking brave. He got fucked up like this because he jumped into hell just because someone had to, and he was able. And now he’s here, on the couch with Eddie, letting him peel away his bandages, trusting Eddie to take care of him. Trusting Eddie to do whatever it takes. Something lodges in Eddie’s throat, and he gets a good grip on the cloth at Steve’s waist.

“Hey,” he says, looking up into Steve’s pretty fucking face. “You wanna know a secret?”

Steve is trembling, a little. From the pain. From the adrenaline. “Sure.”

“I had a crush on you.”

Steve’s eyes go wide, and Eddie yanks the cloth back a half inch. Steve swears and bites back a strangled scream. “God, fuck. On me?”

Eddie huffs, and readjusts. “Uh-huh.”

Steve’s eyes are wide, and glued to his. “When?”

“The whole time.” Another tug, but Steve holds his gaze. “Since I set your nose for you, maybe. Or maybe since Jonathan Byers punched your face in and you still went to apologize to him.”

Steve just stares at him, mouth agape.

“Oh, come on.” Eddie finally looks away, down to his waist. There’s about an inch to go. “Like people having crushes on you is new and strange.”

“No, just.” Steve’s throat clicks audibly in the silence. “I. You—”

“Yeah, me,” Eddie sighs. “Embarrassing, I know.” He lifts his eyes back up to Steve’s, and Steve stares back, close enough that Eddie can feel his short, quick breaths on his face.

Eddie pulls the last of the bandage off with a short, quick tug.

“Oh, mother fuck,” Steve grits out, eyes snapping shut. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

“Shh,” Eddie says, clamping a hand over his mouth. “The children are sleeping.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says against his palm, tears leaking out of his eyes. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Eddie laughs, and holds up the cloth, finally free. “All done, though.”

“I hate you so much.”

Eddie smiles, drops the cloth into the pile of things they’re going to have to burn, and gets up to wash his hands in the sink. He doesn’t think about the imprint of Steve’s mouth against his palm. “Awfully rude thing to say to someone trying their best to save you from supernatural infection.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Steve mutters childishly. “Are you coming back?”

“Yes, your highness.” Eddie dries his hands quickly and returns, carrying over a new bowl of clean soapy water. “Time for round two of this torture.”

“God, fucking kill me.”

Eddie grins, and sits down again. Steve’s hand goes to his knee immediately, holding tight. For comfort, Eddie thinks, more than anything. It’s still novel, to think that Steve might draw comfort from him.

He swallows hard, starts bathing his wounds carefully with his sponge. “That wasn’t why I always fixed you up,” he says.

Steve’s eyes flick to him. “Huh?”

“Because I had a crush on you.”

“Oh. Yeah, no, I. I didn’t think that.” Steve’s throat bobs. “You’re just good like that.”

Eddie huffs, ducks his head. Keeps his eyes on his task. “And you’re just stupidly brave and keep throwing yourself into situations where you get fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and doesn’t even try to deny it. “We’re a good match.”

Eddie glances up at him, and Steve meets his gaze, unflinching. Eddie’s stomach dips, and he looks away again, gets to work. These wounds won’t fucking clean themselves.

“Anyway,” he says quietly, smearing Neosporin all over everything, trying not to think too hard as his fingers dip into torn flesh. Steve’s hand moves to wrap around his wrist, a hot, tight circle of contact, and Eddie will let him, if it gives him some sense of control. “Sorry for telling you that.”

“Huh?” Steve’s fingers flex.

“About having a crush on you. It was the most distracting thing I could think of.”

“No, it’s. You don’t have to apologize. For that.” Steve squirms under his hands, hisses as Eddie pokes at a particularly deep puncture. “I totally told Robin I was into her last year. During the Starcourt thing.”

“Oh.” Eddie clears his throat. “Didn’t work out?”

Steve laughs a little. “No, she uh. She was not interested.” He shrugs. “For the best.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re friends now, you know? She’s my best friend. And that’s good too.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, unrolling strips of gauze. He glances up at Steve and says, “Friends are good, too.”

“Me and Nance, we’re just friends, too.” Steve lifts his arm so Eddie can start patching him up, muscles flexing under his hands. “Like, I love her a lot. But I’m learning…you can love someone a lot, and not be into them like that.” He pauses, clears his throat. “And like, vice versa.”

Eddie frowns, glances up at him. “Huh?”

Steve’s face is red. “Anyway, she’s too good for me,” he says quickly.

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Eddie concedes with a grin. He fixes the last of the tape in place, leans back to survey his work.

Steve huffs. “I need someone who’s a bit of a loser,” he says. “Like me.”

Eddie looks up at him, and Steve looks back, and something shivers between them. Eddie’s breath catches in his throat.

And then a quiet voice calls, “Steve?” and Steve is standing up quickly, looking to the hallway.

“Yeah, Rob?” he calls back.

“Can you come here?”

“Right, yeah, I—” He glances at Eddie. “I should go check on them.”

“Sure,” Eddie says. “Yeah, you’re all set.”

“Right. Thanks, Eddie.”

Eddie swallows, and shrugs. “It’s what I do.”

Steve looks at him for another second, like he wants to say something, and then he nods and turns and disappears down the hall.

Eddie blows out a slow, tremulous breath, and lies back on the couch. God, what the fuck.

*

In the end, it’s not a difficult decision, to stay and to throw himself at the fucking demobats.

The thing is, someone needs to do it. Someone needs to be brave, and give Max and the others more time to do their thing, beat Vecna, save the world. Eddie’s not much of a save-the-world type. He’s not a big hero type. He’s no Steve Harrington.

But someone has to do it. And maybe that’s Steve Harrington all over, in the end. And he told Eddie, right? He didn’t do that shit because he wasn’t scared. And Eddie is. Scared. He’s terrified. But he’s done running. It’s his turn.

He feels bad for Dustin, though. Leaving him alone. He wishes he didn’t have to do that.

And in the end, he gets the full Steve Harrington experience, he supposes. When those bats end up ripping through his leather jacket and reaching flesh. And Eddie is more scared than ever, in that moment, on the ground in this terrible place, monsters tearing at his stomach, in the worst pain he could have imagined. The fear might be worse than the pain. It’s hard to know for sure. He’s scared of a lot of things, suddenly, there on the ground, feeling blood dripping from his body. Scared of dying, obviously, but. He’s scared of his uncle never knowing what happened to him. And what will happen if this wasn’t enough to help everyone else. And he’s scared of never getting to do all the things he wanted to do. And he wishes the end didn’t have to be so terrible.

When all those evil little fuckers go down, though, the fear and the pain both melt away. Like the wounds they inflicted died with them. And Eddie mostly feels nothing, except very, very cold.

He’s glad when Dustin comes for him. Because he didn’t want to be alone. Maybe that’s selfish. He wonders if Steve would think that’s selfish.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Dustin tells him, hands on his throat, stemming the bleeding. “We just gotta get you to a hospital.”

Eddie smiles, and grabs for his wrists. Dustin keeps talking, and Eddie doesn’t really remember what he says in response. Warmth is starting to spread through his body. Which is a nice way to go, he thinks. “I love you, man,” he says. Because he does.

Dustin is crying, holding onto him. “I love you too.”

He hears Dustin calling his name, after that. And then, in the distance, other voices. More voices. Familiar ones. They’re calling his name, too.

“Oh, god,” someone says, and there’s Steve fucking Harrington, his face blurring into view. “Oh, god, Eddie. Fuck.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, and he lifts his hand a little. Touches warm fabric. “Good. You made it.” He tries to swallow.

“Fuck, Eddie.” Steve’s eyes are bright, too. His hands are pressing on Eddie’s stomach, keeping pressure there.

“Your turn,” Eddie says, choking on it a bit. “To put me back together.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna put you back together, okay? You’re gonna be okay, man. You’re gonna be fine.”

“I don’t think so,” Eddie says, laughing a little, mostly choking. “Not this time.”

“No, no, you’re gonna be okay.” He turns back, over his shoulder. “Robin! We need to get him out of here.”

“On it!” Robin says, somewhere in the background.

“Steve, I don’t know if we should move him,” says Nancy, and her voice feels very distant. Steve’s seems a lot more solid.

“We’ve gotta fucking move him, he’s not— We can’t just leave him here.” Steve’s hands fumble at his throat, touch his face. “Stay with me, okay? Just stay with me.”

Eddie tries to swallow. There’s a lot of blood in his mouth, in his throat. “Dude, I don’t think I— I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

Steve shakes his head violently. “Yes you are, don’t fucking say that. Don’t you fucking die on me, man.”

“I’m glad you’re—you’re okay.” Eddie tries to touch him again, his arm, his chest. He can’t reach his face. “You take care of Dustin for me, okay?”

A hot tear splashes from Steve’s face onto Eddie’s, right on his cheek. “Eddie, come on, man.”

“And tell my uncle I was good,” Eddie says. His vision is going dark, and he can feel unconsciousness tugging at him. “Tell him I was—I was brave. Okay?”

“You were,” Steve tells him, wiping roughly at his eyes, keeping pressure on his throat. “You are.”

Eddie smiles. “Not as good as you,” he says. “Not as brave.”

“Better,” Steve tells him. He turns and yells, “Robin, come on!”

“And Steve,” Eddie says. Tastes his name in his mouth one last time. Better than blood. He tries it again. “Steve.”

“Yeah?”

“I still have a crush on you,” Eddie tells him. Because what the fuck. “I made it sound like it was—was in the past. But it wasn’t.”

Steve swallows noisily above him, breathing hard. “Yeah?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says, and tries to smile again.

“No, don’t apologize.”

“I’m sorry I have a crush on you.”

“No, Eddie, you don’t have to say sorry for that.” Steve’s breath hitches. Eddie wants to ask him to hold his hand. Steve doesn’t have to keep pressing on his wounds like that. He’d rather someone was holding his hand.

“Sorry for dying in your arms,” he tells Steve. It’s getting harder to see him.

“No, no, you’re not dying,” Steve says viciously, like he can force it to happen. If anyone could do it, it’d probably be Steve. “Stay with me, stay awake. Hey, you wanna hear a secret?”

Eddie swallows again. All blood. “Yeah.”

“Then you gotta stay awake.”

“I’m awake.” Barely, but he thinks it counts.

“I’ll tell you when we’re out of here, okay?”

Eddie huffs, chokes. “I can’t—can’t hear it now?”

“No, it’s gotta wait,” Steve says. His face is all blurry, vague. But it sounds like he’s crying. “It’s gotta wait until you’re out of here, so you’ve gotta stay awake.” He’s wiping blood from Eddie’s mouth, cradling Eddie’s face while he holds something—his shirt maybe—to Eddie’s throat.

“Steve!” Robin calls. “Come on! Get him over here!”

“Okay!” Steve looks down at him, holds his face between his hands. “You’re gonna stay awake, right? You’re gonna stay with me.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, even though he thinks it’s a lie. “I wish I could stay with you.”

Steve sniffs, and shifts to push his arms under Eddie’s body. Agony erupts all over him, all at once. He must make a noise, because Steve says, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Come on, stay with me. If it hurts that means you’re alive.”

“I feel very alive,” Eddie tries to say, but it’s hard, his mouth is clumsy. Everything is getting very dark.

“Stay awake,” Steve tells him.

“I’m awake,” Eddie says, and then he isn’t.

*

When he does wake up again—and he does, which is honestly, just, truly shocking—everything is really white, and really bright, and incredibly painful. Eddie winces away from it all, tries to like. Pull his consciousness back into his brain, somehow. Oblivion had been so, so nice.

He can’t really move his body, but he turns his head a bit, squints against the lights. There’s someone sitting next to him, hunched over. It’s Steve, and he’s going to get a spine deformity, sitting like that. “Hey,” Eddie rasps, throat paper-dry. “Steve. What was the secret.”

Steve jolts awake, blinks at him, and then says, “Oh my god. You’re awake.”

Eddie blinks a few times back at him. Everything feels, just, so bad. “Unfortunately.”

“Oh my god.” Steve looks around wildly. “I need to, like. Call the nurse. And. Tell people. Shit—”

Eddie coughs weakly. “Can you get me some. Water first?”

“Fuck, yeah, shit. Here—” Steve picks up a clear plastic cup, slides a hand under Eddie’s head to tip it up a bit. A little water runs past Eddie’s lips, and he chokes on it, like he forgot how to swallow, but then he gets a little more and he manages to swallow that.

After a minute, he feels slightly more human, stretching his jaw and blinking heavy eyes. He looks up at Steve, who is hovering next to his bed tensely, like he’s ready to spring into action or like, face down a fucking monster. He’s wearing new clothes. A knit sweater, with his little polo collar poking out of the neckline. Eddie thinks he looks very cute. “What was the secret,” he says again.

Steve looks at him like he’s crazy. “That’s what you ask about?” he says, incredulous. “Not Vecna, or like, the state of the world, or if everyone else survived or anything? The fucking secret?”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah, I guess that other stuff too.” He sniffs, blinks. “But I want my secret.”

So Steve fills him in. About Max, and the fight with Vecna, which sounds metal as hell, and the people from California, the kid with the magic powers and shit. They got to Vecna in time, Steve tells him, and Eddie exhales shakily. The fourth gate didn’t open. Max came out of it with two broken arms, but otherwise intact. Lucas knocked Jason Carver out cold.

“Fuck,” Eddie groans, closing his eyes. “He’s gonna fucking kill me, isn’t he.”

Steve shrugs. “Eleven has some connections,” he says. “We’re in, like, a secure hospital right now. They’re gonna clear your name. Or that’s what I hear.”

“Won’t stop people from holding personal grudges,” Eddie mutters.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and Eddie feels warm pressure on his bandaged hands. He glances down, sees Steve holding one of them gently, barely there. His heart pounds against his ribs. He tries not to think about how badly he wanted Steve to hold his hand, there at the end. When he thought it was the last thing he might do.

“So.” He swallows thickly, glances back up to Steve’s face. “What was the secret.”

Steve laughs, shaking his head. His hair is a mess, falling in his face, but at least it’s washed, at least he’s been able to, like, shower and shit. Eddie supposes he must look different, too. He’s in a little white gown and everything. Not metal at all.

Steve looks at him, pink in the face, and he says, “I had a crush on you, too.”

It takes Eddie a moment to register it. “What?”

Steve shrugs, gaze shifting away from him, a little shy. His ears are red. “I dunno. You kept, like, showing up and taking care of me. It made me feel things.”

“You’re shitting me,” Eddie says. “You— You don’t even like boys!”

Steve looks disgruntled. “Says who?”

“Says me! I’ve been crushing on Straight Boy Steve Harrington for years, man. This is my area.”

Steve huffs a laugh. He’s still holding Eddie’s hand. “Yeah, well, I have spent a lot of time thinking about girls that I don’t actually like romantically after all, so pardon me if I’ve also thought about boys that I maybe do like romantically, or whatever.”

“This is fucking insane,” Eddie tells him.

“Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I just, like. Had a lot of feelings about you touching my face all the time.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie says, and thinks about Steve touching his face. In the Upside Down. When Eddie thought he was done for. But his stomach turns a little at his wording, and he sniffs, looks away. “So when did that end? Was it the murder accusations, or did Henderson tell you too much about me?”

“Oh,” Steve says, “it didn’t. It’s still ongoing.”

Eddie feels like he chokes a little, which is painful because he got, like, mauled in the throat a couple days ago. “What?”

“It got worse,” Steve says with a shrug.

“Oh my god.”

“So now you’ve gotta get better,” Steve says, wetting his lips, playing casual like his life depends on it. “So I can ask you on a date and shit.”

Eddie feels dazed, and he’s pretty sure it’s not just the drugs and the injuries and the two-day coma. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Yeah. No dying.”

“That’s right,” Steve says. “That’s the agreement we came to.”

“I’m getting, like, so good at it.”

“You could do better.”

Eddie smiles, looks up at Steve’s face. He’s so fucking handsome. And it didn’t even get fucked up this time. And he wants to ask Eddie Munson on a date. The world really must be ending.

“Hey,” he says. “Is the world ending?”

Steve frowns. “Uh? Not imminently. I don’t think that Vecna creep is really truly dead or whatever, like that shit’s gonna come back eventually, but. We’re in the clear for now, at least. We usually get 6 to 12 months off in between world-ending events.”

“Oh, good,” Eddie says. “I really fucking wanted to graduate.”

Steve snorts. “Yeah, we can probably work something out.”

Eddie sighs, and lets his head roll back against his pillow, and stares up at the ceiling. Steve Harrington is still holding his hand. And has a crush on him. And saved him from certain death. Maybe it’s the recent coma and interdimensional travel, but everything feels very unreal right now. “Is my uncle here?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, he went to get some food. He should be back soon.”

“Okay, good,” Eddie says, desperate suddenly to see him, to explain everything to him. But all he says is, “I gotta tell him I might get a boyfriend. He’ll be so proud.”

Steve laughs, and squeezes his hand, just a little. It hurts a lot, but Eddie doesn’t tell him that.

“You get your wounds sorted?” Eddie asks him, glancing at his torso, covered up now. “Like, you didn’t pretend you were totally fine, right? That would be fucked up.”

Steve grins, looking down at his stomach. He pulls up the hem of his shirt with his free hand, shows off some fresh, white bandages. “Someone else finally got to me, Munson. Putting you out of business.”

“How fucking dare they,” Eddie says, and pretends the thought of it doesn’t actually make him a little cranky. “You feeling okay?”

Steve huffs. “Yeah, Eddie, I’m fine. Are you feeling okay?”

“Not at all,” Eddie says cheerfully. “But Steve Harrington has a crush on me, so.”

Steve’s eyes are bright and fond. “I felt better before I got all these fucking stitches, honestly. I think your Neosporin was doing something.”

“It was my magic touch.” Eddie has to close his eyes—if he keeps looking at Steve he might die. “And my vest.”

“Shit, your vest,” Steve says. “Dude, I still have it. I’m gonna give it back, okay?”

Eddie grins up at the ceiling. “Classic move, Harrington. Keeping my clothes so you have an excuse to talk to me again.”

“What, you’d rather I kept it?”

Eddie wets his chapped lips. “I don’t think I’d mind. If you wore it.”

When he opens his eyes, Steve is surprisingly pink in the face. Like he’s flustered. Like Eddie Munson is capable of flustering him. Him. He smiles, though, and bites his lip. Looks at Eddie in a way that makes his stomach backflip.

But then he pulls his gaze away, says, “Shit, I should call the nurse. They said you’d woken up a couple times, but this is the first time you’ve been, like, coherent. They’re gonna want to run tests on you and shit.”

Eddie groans. “Do I have to? I’m, like, totally normal. I could jump out of bed right now.”

A voice at the door suddenly says, “Kid, you are many things, but normal has never been one of them.”

Eddie looks up quickly, his throat screaming in pain, and sees his uncle in the doorway. Tears spring instantly to his eyes. “Hi,” he says.

“Hey, kid,” Uncle Wayne says, and his eyes are similarly bright. “Welcome back.”

Steve is hastily letting go of Eddie’s hand, shrinking back shyly. Eddie laughs a little, inwardly, and says, “Uncle Wayne, that’s Steve.”

“Ah,” Uncle Wayne says, although they have clearly met before. “Steve Harrington. Frozen corn.”

Steve blinks and says, “What?”

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, feeling his face go red.

“Eddie’s told me a lot about you,” Uncle Wayne says, gaze flicking between them. “Over the years.”

“OH my god,” Eddie says.

Steve smiles crookedly, uncertainly. “Um. Well, he’s awake. So. You can talk to him now.”

“I will,” Uncle Wayne says, and Eddie can tell he’s amused, but to Steve he probably looks dead serious. “Run along, son.”

Steve disappears out the door. Eddie watches him go, smiling, and says, “That’s my boyfriend.”

Uncle Wayne sits down in Steve’s vacated seat and reaches out to hold the same hand. “Good boy,” he says. “I’m proud.”

Eddie grins, and looks up at him, and tries very hard not to cry.

“So,” his uncle says. “You mind telling me what you’re in the hospital?”

“Oh, shit,” Eddie says. “Yeah, that might be the more pressing matter.”

It takes, like, a really long time to tell him everything. About Chrissy, and Reefer Rick’s, and the gang showing up. About Vecna and the Upside Down. About all the wild shit that’s been happening in Hawkins, and how he accidentally became a part of it. And his uncle listens, never flinching, never doubting. Eddie wishes, desperately, that he could have known all along. That he didn’t have to spend so much time not knowing.

“And then at the end I didn’t run away,” he says, swallowing hard. “I went back and I. I helped.”

“I know,” his uncle says, fingers wrapped tight around Eddie’s. “Steve told me. That you were brave.”

Eddie sniffs, and smiles, and tries to take a deep breath. It hurts like hell. “Hey, any chance you can tell me why my ribs hurt so fucking bad?”

His uncle huffs, and glances at the door. “I believe it’s because Frozen Corn Steve Harrington broke three of your ribs doing CPR on you while they waited for an ambulance to get to you.”

Eddie blinks, and his insides go liquid. “Oh.”

“Hmm.”

Eddie wets his lips. “Mouth to mouth?”

Uncle Wayne snorts. “Imagine so.”

“Damn.” Eddie thinks about that. “So we already kissed and I wasn’t even conscious.”

“Sorry to break the news,” his uncle says.

Eddie grins. “He’s a certified lifeguard.”

“Happy for you.”

“Me too,” Eddie says, and means it. He’s—he’s really happy.

A minute later, the nurse comes in, and she’s pretty mad that nobody called her when he woke up. She asks Eddie a bunch of questions to, like, make sure his brain is functioning and shit, and then she shoos Uncle Wayne out so that can do some tests or whatever.

He holds tight to Eddie’s hand to the last second. “I’ll be back later,” he promises.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says quickly. “I’m sorry about everything.”

His uncle shakes his head. “Don’t be. You did really good.”

“Okay.” Eddie wipes at his eyes quickly. “And Uncle Wayne?”

“Yeah?”

Eddie sniffs. “Send Steve back in after, too. I want him to ask me on a date.”

His uncle huffs, shakes his head. Squeezes his arm one last time. “Alright, kid. I’ll see you later.”

Eddie lays back, and closes his eyes, and smiles.

*

Eddie Munson is getting ready for a date.

This is not, he realizes at some point, something he ever really thought he would be doing. Eddie doesn’t know much about the experiences of other weird gay metalheads, but he always kind of figured he would one day have to resign himself to a life of, like, either celibacy if he never got famous, or a string of meaningless sex if he did. He didn’t really want either of those things, but it was something he tried not to think about too hard, because it really stressed him out and he needed to focus on actually graduating high school and shit first.

Anyway, the problem is, Eddie never thought he would be getting ready for a date, especially not one with Steve fucking Harrington of all people, but he is, and he’s feeling abnormal about it. It’s been three weeks since he almost died and also a lot of other crazy shit happened, and slightly less than three weeks since Steve Harrington told him he was going to take him on a date at some unspecified time in the future, and three weeks simply hasn’t been enough time to wrap his head around it all. There was so much to wrap his head around, and his head is only so big. And he’s also trying to graduate high school, which is really taking up a lot of the available real estate.

He stands in his room, which is even more of an absolute fucking mess than usual, in just a pair of jeans. He hasn’t put on a shirt yet, because lifting up his arms continues to be quite painful, and he only wants to do this once. Most things are quite painful, if he’s being totally real. Breathing, for starters, which is a thing he has to do, like, all the time. Also, like, leaning forward while he sits, and laying down in any position except on his back, and moving any part of his upper body. His lower half is doing pretty good, though, so that’s a plus. Eddie wonders if he could feasibly have sex in this condition, and then very quickly stops thinking about that, because he’s getting ready for a date. With Steve Harrington.

Eddie’s never had sex before, either. That’s something he’s been thinking about a lot, and wishing he wasn’t.

Steve said he was coming over at two o’clock, and it is currently 1:55, so Eddie really hopes he’s not the type to show up early. The problem is, Eddie has never considered before what he should wear on a first date or any date at all and he realizes, now, that he only has one type of clothing, which is loud graphic tees with, like, demons and shit on them. And despite all prior commitment, Eddie is somewhat over demons. Like sorry to Black Sabbath, but he does not want Steve to look at him and think about Demogorgons or Mind Flayers or Vecna or any of that shit. He wants Steve to look at him and see Eddie, and have a crush on him.

The sound of a car approaching jolts him into action, and he makes a wild grab for literally anything, pulls it on gingerly over his head. It’s black, and he thinks it used to be a Judas Priest shirt, but the graphics are so faded it’s hard to really tell. He’s also ripped the sleeves off, he realizes as soon as it’s on, but by then it’s too late to change his mind because now his ribs really hurt and he can also hear the car outside turning off its engine. He rakes a hand through his hair quickly, looks at himself in his mirror, and walks out of his room. And then quickly walks back in, swearing, and puts on deodorant.

By the time he comes back from that, he’s so flustered and panicked that he goes straight to the door and pulls it open, even though no one’s knocked yet. Steve is getting out of his car directly in front of him. He stops, and looks up at Eddie in surprise. Eddie stands there in the doorway like a fucking idiot. “Hi,” he says.

Steve straightens and blinks a few times. He looks so fucking cute, it’s awful. He’s wearing shorts, and a little striped shirt. Eddie likes him so much it makes him physically ill. “What the fuck happened to your hair?”

Eddie’s hand flies to his head. “Oh, um. My uncle cut it for me. He can basically do anything.”

“But why?” Steve asks. “I thought you were going for a whole look.”

Eddie shrugs, and feels like he’s going to throw up. “Being totally honest, there was a mat at the back from being on bedrest that I was never going to recover from. I almost just shaved it.”

Steve nods slowly, looking him up and down. Eddie tries not to shrink away. He can’t tell if Steve approves or not. He should have worn something else, fuck. “It looks different,” Steve says.

Eddie cringes. “It looks bad, doesn’t it.”

“No,” Steve says quickly, and starts walking towards him, across the grass. “No, it’s. I like it like this. Too. I liked it the old way, and like this.” He climbs up the stairs, stands on the one right below Eddie. He reaches up, and tangles his fingers briefly in Eddie’s hair at his crown. Pulls on one curl over his forehead. Eddie shivers, and swallows hard, and Steve smiles.

He drops his hand, and on the way down, he catches Eddie’s. It feels electric. “You ready to go?” Steve asks.

Eddie wants to kiss him so bad it makes him want to pass out. “Uh-huh,” he manages to say. “Um. Where are we going, exactly?”

Steve shrugs, swinging Eddie’s hand a little. He still has a few healing wounds on his palm, where those fucking bats got him, but they don’t hurt anymore unless he picks at them. He’s glad it doesn’t hurt for Steve to hold his hand. “I was thinking we could go to Family Video. Pick out a couple movies, watch them here or at my place, whatever you want. I didn’t want to, like, make it a big deal.”

Eddie swallows thickly. His lungs feel too big for his chest. Maybe that’s the broken ribs. The ribs that Steve broke to keep him alive. “It kind of is a big deal,” he says. “To me.”

Steve smiles. “Yeah. Me too.”

He swings their hands again, and then steps to the side. “Well,” he says, and starts to turn, “my chariot a—” And then he steps right off the side of the stairs and pitches over the edge with a yelp.

“Fuck!” Eddie says, dragged down by Steve’s hand still holding tight to his. He falls down hard on one knee, trying to catch himself before he rips open a bunch of wounds, and feels his face smack hard off of Steve’s head.

“Ow, fuck, my knee,” Steve says.

“Are you—” Eddie starts to say, and then sort of chokes on blood.

Steve gets up from where he’s half-crumpled on the grass, turns his face up to Eddie, and immediately receives a complimentary drip of blood from Eddie’s gushing nose directly on his face. “Oh, fuck.”

“Guh,” Eddie says, trying his best to catch the flow of it in his free hand, the other still held captive by Steve. Blood drips out from between his fingers, onto Steve’s shirt.

“Shit, Eddie,” Steve says, scrambling properly upright, rounding the stairs again, limping a little. “Come on.”

Eddie allows himself to be pulled upright and then into the house, trying in vain not to drip blood everywhere. It’s also extremely painful to be stumbling along like this, having jostled his fragile half-healed demon wounds, but Steve is talking nonstop, an anxious stream of, “Oh, god, I can’t believe I fucking busted your nose, I’m such an idiot, are you okay? Did I break it? God, my fucking knee, here, stand in front of the sink, oh my god there’s blood everywhere, this is disgusting, I’m so sorry. Here, tip your head forwards, don’t lean back okay, sorry this probably hurts your fucking throat, oh my god you’re bleeding so much.”

Eddie smiles, leaning forward under Steve’s gentle hand so that the blood from his nose drips steadily into the kitchen sink. Steve turns on the water, and Eddie pushes his bloodstained hands under it. Steve’s hands join them, wipe blood from them carefully. “Sorry,” he says again, “sorry, shit. Are you okay?”

“My fucking nose,” Eddie says, and then starts laughing.

It hurts to laugh, honestly. Like, a lot. His ribs hate it, and his stomach wounds hate it, and it’s hard to get enough air when his nose is bleeding like a fucking faucet. But it’s so fucking funny, and he can’t help it, and Steve is looking at him like he’s gone completely insane.

“What,” he says, “stop that, are you— Eddie, stop laughing, Jesus Christ.”

“I can’t,” Eddie says, shaking his wet hands into the sink, which is looking increasingly like a crime scene. His eyes are watering from the pain radiating from his face and his stomach and also from laughing so much. “You fell off my fucking stairs.”

“I know, god, I’m so— And I busted your fucking nose.”

“You couldn’t— You couldn’t—” God, it’s so funny, Eddie’s going to throw up. “You couldn’t stand my nose being straighter than yours.”

“Christ,” Steve says, but he’s starting to smile, Eddie can hear it in his voice. “Here—” A handful of paper towels appear, pressing under his nose. “Go sit down.”

Eddie goes, moving gingerly, and collapses onto the couch. He watches Steve rinse down the sink quickly, and then bring more paper towels over to drop on the floor, wiping up blood splatter from the linoleum with his foot.

“You’re a walking biohazard,” he tells Eddie, smiling crookedly, and then walks over and stands between Eddie’s splayed knees, holds Eddie’s face very gently between warm hands, tipping it up slightly to look at him. It makes Eddie’s stomach drop through the floor; he stops laughing. “You okay, man? Seriously.”

Eddie swallows—tastes blood—and nods a little. “Your skull is rock hard, dude.”

Steve huffs, and Eddie’s feels his thumb stroke over his cheek. It sends a bolt of electricity straight to his gut. “It’s basically just solid bone all the way through. That’s why I’m so fucking stupid.”

Eddie smiles, and he’s glad the paper towels are covering his mouth because he’s sure it looks dopey as hell. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

“Oh, gross,” Steve says, wiping at it. It just smears across his cheek. “You okay here for a sec? I need to look at my knee, I think I fucked it up pretty bad.”

Eddie wants to say no, wants to keep Steve here between his knees forever. But a quick glance down tells him that Steve is right. “Fuck, man, you’re bleeding.”

Steve hisses, stepping back to toe off his shoe and prop his foot up on Eddie’s knee to get a better look at his wound. He’d scraped it up on the edge of the stairs, Eddie thinks, and it looks pretty nasty—basically the entire top layer of skin over his left kneecap is gone, and the ragged edges are dark and swelling, and blood is dripping sluggishly down his shin. Eddie wraps his free hand around Steve’s ankle and leans in to get a good look at it, sucking a sympathetic breath through his teeth. “We gotta wash that.”

Steve huffs a laugh, holding onto Eddie’s shoulder for balance. “Worry about yourself, man. I just crushed your nose.”

“I’m multitasking,” Eddie says. “Is my nose still bleeding?”

Steve straightens, pulls Eddie’s hand with his paper towels away from his nose. Thumbs blood from his upper lip. “Only a little.”

Eddie blinks up at him, and with his mouth suddenly free, impulsively leans forward to kiss the unbroken skin next to Steve’s knee. The sudden movement tugs at his stomach wounds, but it’s worth it for the way Steve inhales sharply, throat bobbing. Eddie smiles and says, “Go wash it in the bathroom.”

“Uh,” Steve says. “Okay.”

He drops his foot to the ground and looks at Eddie for a moment, looks at his mouth—Eddie can feel blood dripping over his lip—and then turns around quickly and heads for the bathroom, one shoe still on, the other foot in just a sock. Fondness squeezes at Eddie’s stomach.

He comes back a minute later, blood washed off his cheek as well as his knee, holding Eddie’s bag of hospital shit, with which he had become intimately familiar in the past three weeks. “Can I use some of this?”

Eddie nods, checking on his nose again. The bleeding has stopped, though he’s sure his face is a mess of it still. “Here, sit down, I’ll do it.”

“No way, man, you’re like. An invalid.”

Eddie looks up at him, smiles a little. Says, “I want to do it.”

Steve stops, and wets his lips. “Oh. Okay.”

He sits down on the couch, and Eddie pats his lap until Steve swings his leg up over his thighs. Eddie takes the bag from him, cleans his hands with one of the alcohol wipes inside. And then with careful, steady hands he gets out the antiseptic ointment they gave him for his healing wounds, spreads it all over Steve’s twitching knee with the gentlest touch he can manage. He gets out a square of gauze, one of Eddie’s closest friends this past month, and places it over the raw wound, and tapes it on. It’s a short procedure, but Eddie takes his time. Takes care.

“Look at us,” he says, smoothing down the last piece of tape. “Right back where we started, Harrington.”

He looks up, finally, and sees Steve staring at him, eyes a little wide in his stupid pretty face.

Eddie licks drying blood from his lip, stomach wobbling. “What?”

Steve blinks, swallows. “I want to kiss you so fucking bad.”

Eddie feels more like he got clonked over the head than ever. “Oh,” he says breathlessly.

“But we haven’t been on our date yet,” Steve says, like it’s his greatest regret in life. “And I just fell off your stairs and broke your nose.”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Eddie says. “I definitely have blood in my mouth, though.”

“I don’t care.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“I have no standards left,” Steve tells him very seriously. “I want to be kissing you so bad, all the time.”

Eddie feels like he’s going to lose his fucking mind. “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

“I’m going to teach you,” Steve says, with somewhat surprising fervour. “Holy god, Eddie.”

Eddie starts to smile, despite everything. “Why aren’t you, then?”

Steve’s throat bobs. “I’m trying to be normal.”

“Steve Harrington,” Eddie says, “you are so abnormal, it’s literally insane. It’s my favourite thing about you.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Can I kiss you?”

“Being real, I kind of figured you would be, by now.”

Steve immediately shift his leg so that it’s hooked around Eddie’s knee, and scoots in close, and pushes a hand into the hair just behind Eddie’s ear. Eddie exhales shakily, and watches Steve lean in, hauling Eddie in closer as he does. Eddie groans—half pain, half sickening want—and closes his eyes.

Steve Harrington’s mouth is a fucking revelation. Warm and soft and eager. Eddie presses into that first kiss with a desperate sound, and doesn’t give a single fuck that this position is pulling at his healing wounds. His hands scrabble for purchase, curling around the back of Steve’s knee, into the side of his shirt, and he pulls Steve in, revelling in the soft suction of Steve’s mouth, and then the immediate press of warm lips again.

It surprises Eddie, a little bit, the way kissing Steve makes him want to do it even more, forever, and never stop. There has been a low fire burning in Eddie’s gut for years, a desire to kiss boys and be kissed by boys, a desire to kiss Steve specifically, and actually doing it is just stoking the flames. He feels a little bit like he’s on fire himself, trying to haul Steve in closer, trying to kiss him deeper. He opens his mouth, and tilts his head, and ignores the pain in his stomach and his throat and radiating from his nose because this is so, so infinitely more important.

And Steve is kissing him like he doesn’t want to stop, either. He’s breathing hard through his nose, one hand curled around the back of his head, the other curving around his jaw, holding him steady, holding him in place so Steve can kiss him. He’s kissing Eddie slow and deep and eager, and it is literally changing Eddie on a psychological level. He’s becoming a new person. He wants to eat Steve Harrington alive.

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans, trying desperately to keep up.

Steve sucks his lower lip into his mouth, and then pulls away with a huff of laughter, saying, “Is this incredibly painful for you?”

“I don’t care,” Eddie says. “This is all I do now.”

“We could—”

“No, shut up. Kiss.”

Steve kisses him. Eddie’s toes curl against the floor, his insides clench. It’s so fucking good. Steve’s scratching gently at his scalp with one hand, and the other moves to his shoulder, his chest, his upper arm. Eddie wants it absolutely everywhere. He’s too focused to move his own hands, trying a little fruitlessly to copy whatever Steve is doing that feels so fucking good, shifting restlessly to try to find a position that hurts slightly less while also pressing into every kiss. Presses a little too hard—his nose flattens against Steve’s cheek, and he makes a pained noise.

Steve rips his mouth away with a wet sound. “Oh god, sorry, sorry—”

“Nooo,” Eddie says pathetically, but also leans back gratefully, sides and ribs protesting. “Fucking hell, Steve.”

Steve grins at him, lips red and shiny. “Good?”

“Ow,” Eddie says. And then, “Also, yeah, fucking…wow.”

“Wish it was more of the wow and less of the ow.” Steve is breathing a little heavily, and Eddie finds it bizarrely endearing. “God, there is really a lot of blood on your face, it’s disgusting.”

Eddie laughs, and then winces. “Can you get me, like, a damp cloth? And also a frozen corn from the freezer? My nose hurts so fucking bad.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says, pulling away, standing up. Eddie instantly regrets asking for anything. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Huh?” Eddie asks, watching him walk away, feeling pulled towards him magnetically.

“The fucking…corn bag.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “No, I’m actually serious about that. I told my uncle about it when it happened and we made jokes about it for weeks and now it’s just, like, normal in our house. To frozen corn a wound. There’s some in the freezer for sure.”

“Oh my god, that’s worse,” Steve says, but he goes to the freezer, pulls it out. Eddie thinks it’s been in there for the entire two and a half years since the original incident. He grabs a washcloth, too, and wets it under the tap to bring to Eddie.

He reaches for it as Steve approaches, but Steve holds it out of reach, steps between his knees again. “Let me,” he says, and Eddie swallows thickly, tips his face up.

Steve slides a hand into the hair at the back of his head, smiles down at him. Scrubs gently at his upper lip. “Handsome,” he says.

Eddie feels his face go hot. “Okay, Romeo.”

“Eddie Munson, I think you’re so fucking cute,” Steve tells him. He drops the washcloth and then picks up the frozen corn bag. Instead of moving it to his face, though, Steve bends down and kisses him again, chaste and simple. And then again, and again, just short, nothing kisses. They’re not nothing. Eddie feels like his bones are turning into soup.

But finally, Steve pulls away, and presses the corn bag to his face, and says, “Do you still want to get movies? Or did I ruin this date before it started?”

“It’s not ruined,” Eddie says. “I got kissed, like, so many times.”

Steve laughs, and thumbs the corner of his mouth. “Not much of a date, though.”

“We can still get movies,” Eddie says. “After I ice my nose for a bit.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“And you can just sit there,” Eddie tells him, “and look pretty.”

Steve adjusts the bag on his nose, and looks at him steadily, and says, “Do you remember when you called me pretty? After I wiped out on Max’s skateboard?”

Eddie blinks, feels his face go warm. “Yeah.”

“I had never felt so fucking queer in my entire life,” Steve tells him seriously.

Eddie coughs out a laugh. “That’s the day I told you I was queer.”

“I know,” Steve says. “Double whammy.”

Eddie grins up at him. “Did you have a crush on me?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Before that, probably.”

Eddie hadn’t expected him to say yes, somehow. “Fucking hell.”

“I can’t tell if all the accompanying head trauma made it harder or easier to deal with,” Steve says thoughtfully.

“There was really, just, so much head trauma,” Eddie says. He curls a hand around Steve’s wrist, pulls it and the frozen corn away from his face. “Hey.”

Steve blinks down at him. “What.”

Eddie smiles. “Kiss me some more.”

And Steve does, no hesitation, leaning down to suck a kiss from his mouth, humming, pleased. And every single time it makes Eddie's stomach do somersaults, makes his blood pound through his veins. He still doesn't know what he's doing but he likes it so much, likes being able to wrap his hands around the backs of Steve's thighs, play with the edges of his shorts. He likes licking quickly and clumsily at Steve's lip, and the way it makes Steve groan. He likes how much Steve obviously likes it. He wants to make out with him forever.

It takes them a good ten minutes to actually get off the couch and go to Family Video. Eddie regrets saying they should go until Steve says, “Fuck, my shirt is bloody. Do you have something I can wear?” And as much as Eddie enjoys his dorky little outfits, it’s a fucking pleasure to pick out a shirt he can wear, and watch him strip out of his own to put it on, and then press him against the wall and kiss him because he’s wearing Eddie’s clothes and it’s exciting and he’s Eddie’s boyfriend, he thinks. And it’s fucking amazing.

Robin is working, and she clearly has been informed of the date, because she’s not at all surprised to see them walk in. “Hey, lovebirds,” she says, glancing at her watch. “I was expecting you like half an hour ago, Harrington. What were you two up to?”

“Making out,” Steve says, pulling Eddie in by the hand. “Where’s Keith?”

“Lunch break. Hey, Eddie.”

“Hi,” Eddie says, a little shy. He’s spent a good amount of time with Robin these past couple weeks, really likes her, really loves that she is a raging lesbian. Thinks that they’ll become really good friends, and likes that. But she’s Steve’s best friend first and foremost, and. Steve is his boyfriend (probably). He wants her to like him.

“Is there anyone in the adult section?” Steve asks.

Robin rolls her eyes. “No.”

“Okay great thanks Rob,” Steve says, and pulls Eddie through the shadiest door he’s ever seen.

Eddie’s never actually seen the adult section of Family Video, and he’s not going to now, either, because Steve is pressing him back up against the door as soon as it’s closed, and crowding in close, and Eddie never wants to look at anything else. “Oh my god,” he says, lifting his chin as Steve kisses along his jaw. “We could have literally just stayed at my house if you wanted to make out.”

“No I wanted to get movies,” Steve says against his cheek, pressing his whole face against it. “I’m just obsessed with you.”

Eddie laughs, and catches his face between his hands, and kisses his mouth.

They do eventually come out and pick out movies, though, and Robin helps them and chats with them and teases Steve happily, and at the counter Steve looks at the sign for renting VCRs and says, “Do you have a way to watch movies at your house?”

“Huh?” Eddie says, distracted by looking at his face. “Uh, no. We don’t have to go back there, though. Like, if your place is an option.”

“It is, but I’d rather not,” Steve says with a shrug. “Your house is more comfortable.”

“It’s small,” Eddie says. “And messy.”

“It’s nice,” Steve says, and sounds like he means it.

Eddie thinks about Steve’s big, empty house and says, “Yeah, okay. We can go back to mine, then.”

So they do. They rent a VCR, and their movies, and they say goodbye to Robin. They go back to Forest Hills, and they figure out how to hook the thing up to Eddie’s shitty TV. He cleans all the random shit off of the fold-up bed in the living room, and Steve helps him pull it down, and they position the TV in front of it. Eddie lies down carefully, relieved to be propped up and horizontal again, and then Steve climbs on after him and tucks himself all the way along Eddie’s body, close and warm. There isn’t much of a choice, because the bed isn’t all that wide, but it’s still heady. That Steve wants to be close to him. That Steve is, like, into him.

They don’t even make out. Or, well, not at first. Steve settles in close, being careful of both of their stomach wounds, and lets his head rest on Eddie’s shoulder, and then the first movie starts and they actually watch it. Like, the whole thing, beginning to end. Steve is an extraordinarily annoying movie-watcher, constantly making comments and scoffing at characters’ decisions and asking questions about things they’re obviously not supposed to know yet, and Eddie smiles and thinks that this might be the happiest he’s ever fucking been in his life. He curls an arm around Steve’s shoulders, holds him there, and presses his face against that famous hair, throat thick.

When it ends, Steve gets up, stretches. Eddie feels sad that he wears his shirts so big, because it doesn’t ride up on Steve’s midriff the way Steve’s own do. “Next movie?” Steve asks, and Eddie makes a vague sound of assent.

So Steve rewinds the first one, and then ejects it and puts it away, and slots the next one in. And then he gets back onto the bed, but he curls over onto his side this time, slings his bad knee over both of Eddie’s, slides a hand over his chest. He props his head on Eddie’s shoulder again and peers up at him, a bare inch away, and says, “This okay?”

Eddie isn’t sure if he means injury-wise or intimacy-, but either way he swallows hard and hums. Steve smiles at him brilliantly, and reaches up to scratch through the short hair at the side of Eddie’s head.

Steve Harrington, it turns out, is sweet as hell.

And he touches Eddie so much. The movie starts, and Steve curls his head down onto Eddie’s chest to watch it like that, but he’s touching Eddie in so many places, and like, actively. He runs his fingertips up and down Eddie’s side, avoiding his injuries, and rubs his cheek against Eddie’s chest, and taps Eddie’s foot with his toes. He squirms constantly, readjusting, and pulls up the edge of Eddie’s shirt to peek at his scabbed-over wounds. He looks away from the TV to tip his face back up to Eddie’s, just to look at him, and touches his cheek. “Hey,” he says, breath warm against Eddie’s mouth.

Eddie swallows hard and says, “Hey.”

Steve smiles. “You wanna make out?”

“God,” Eddie says, “so bad.”

Steve laughs, and pushes himself up to catch his mouth.

The thing about Steve is that he kisses with his whole body, somehow. Like he can’t help but strain into it. Pressed up against him like this, Eddie can feel the way he pushes into every kiss, all the way from his feet up to his hands and chest and mouth. And he seems to know exactly how he wants to do it, like he’s been thinking about it, imagining it—he holds onto Eddie’s jaw and holds it exactly where he wants, presses on his chin until he opens his mouth wider, fumbles to find Eddie’s hands and moves them to his back, his waist. And Eddie lets him, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and Steve really does, and one day Eddie is going to get so good at kissing and then it’s going to be his turn to do it how he wants. But for now he likes this, likes Steve guiding him, telling him silently how he likes to do it. How to make it good for him.

Not that Eddie isn’t allowed to follow his own whims, of course. He rubs his hand up and down Steve’s curved back, where Steve put it, but eventually he can’t help but push it up into Steve’s hair, pressing him into a longer, harder kiss, and then let go and slide it all the way down his body to the back of his thigh, hitched up over Eddie’s legs. He pulls it higher, presses his fingertips into soft, warm skin, and Steve groans, bites gently at his mouth in response. And that makes Eddie feel wild, that he can do something selfish like try to get his hands on Steve Harrington’s thighs, and that it’ll make Steve a little crazy. It’s fucking magic.

Not to be outdone, evidently, Steve’s hand finds the hem of Eddie’s shirt, pushes up under it. Skates over his wounds and then slides, open-palmed, over his sternum, up to his chest. Thumbs over his nipple, which sends a bolt of electricity straight down Eddie’s spine. He makes a sound that he will later never be able to reproduce.

Steve pulls away from his mouth with a smack, blinking hazy eyes. “Sorry,” he says, hand retreating, “sorry, I’m like. So insanely into you but I’ve also never made out with a guy before, so. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

Eddie swallows thickly and says, voice hoarse, “No, it’s good, it’s. It’s really good.”

“Is this—?” Steve says, and touches his chest.

Eddie nods enthusiastically. “It feels good.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and drags his thumb slowly over his nipple again.

Eddie seriously considers just dying now. He will have lived a fulfilled life.

Eventually, the movie ends, and Eddie has no clue what it is was about. They just keep lying there in silence, mostly just cuddling, sometimes kissing. And Eddie sighs and stretches and links his fingers with Steve’s and says, a little bit shy, “This has been a good first date.”

“Has it?” Steve says, sounding warm and sleepy, staring up at the ceiling next to him.

“Mm. Except the part where you crushed my nose.”

Steve huffs a laugh, squeezing Eddie’s hand. “Okay, fine, I’ll take that into consideration for next time.”

Eddie feels a little giddy at the thought of there being more times. “Yeah, less blood. Jot that down.”

“How about monsters? Do we like monsters?”

“No, no monsters,” Eddie says, grinning.

“Right, okay. No blood, no monsters.”

“Same amount of kissing,” Eddie says, “that’s where you really shine.”

“Now that’s fucked up, Munson,” Steve says, like he suggested getting eaten.

Eddie laughs. “I still need to find out if I still like a Steve Harrington that isn’t in dire need of medical assistance.”

“God, yeah, that’s fair.” Steve bumps his head against Eddie’s. “But you’re so very handsome when you patch me up.”

“Maybe I’m handsome doing other things,” Eddie says. “You wouldn’t know.”

“That’s true. I didn’t even get to watch you play guitar. Dustin said it was very cool.”

“It was fucking awesome,” Eddie admits. “But I said no monsters.”

Steve laughs. “Yeah, fine. But I can come watch you play a gig sometime, maybe. If you guys start playing again.”

Eddie swallows thickly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Eddie feels like his chest is too small for his heart. “Can I call you my boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “If you didn’t I would get fucked up about it.”

“Would you really?”

“I like being someone’s boyfriend,” Steve says. “I want to be yours.”

“God.” Eddie feels like maybe he died. “You’re fucking cute.”

Steve hums. He lifts his head suddenly, at the exact same time that Eddie impulsively leans in to kiss the side of his head. It cracks against his nose, and pain erupts across his face.

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie says, reeling back.

Steve sighs, and sits up. “Fuck me. I’ll go get the frozen corn.”