Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The house was thumping like it had a pulse and a hangover at the same time.

Music came through the walls in waves, loud enough to shake the framed family photos into confession. Eddie climbed the stairs, stone-cold sober, stepping over a girl crying about her ex and another one laughing about nothing.

He felt like the last man alive with a functioning brainstem.

At the end of the hallway, the bathroom door was shut. Laughter leaked out, syrupy and smug.

Of course. Eddie leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded, posture of a man betrayed by his own bladder.

A crash, a muffled giggle, then a moan so theatrical it should've come with orchestral accompaniment. Eddie's eyes went wide.

The girl inside sounded like she was auditioning for an R-rated remake of The Sound of Music. Someone walking past gave the door a knowing grin, as if the moaning was ambient décor.

Then came the banging. Steady, emphatic. A guy's voice joined in, low and absurdly pleased with itself. Eddie considered whether spontaneous deafness might be a blessing.

The rhythm built, a repetitive pounding against the door, rattling the frame. It felt like it went on forever.

It hit its triumphant finale, and stopped dead.

Silence. Holy mercy.

He was still staring when the door swung open. The girl emerged. Beautiful, blonde, tugging her skirt into place. She ran a hand through her hair with a shy smile.

And then came him.

Steve Harrington. Leaning in the doorway, all tousled hair and satisfied grin.

"Thanks," the girl said, gleaming.

"No problem," Steve replied, casual, as if he'd just fixed her car.

Eddie laughed under his breath, a sound that came out halfway between disbelief and indigestion.

Steve turned. "Can I help you?"

Eddie pushed off the wall. "You done?"

"All yours." Steve stepped aside, gesturing grandly, like the bathroom was a suite at the Ritz.

"Asshole," Eddie muttered, brushing past.

"What?"

Eddie stopped in the doorway. "I said—you're an asshole. Did you blow your load so hard it perforated your eardrums?"

Steve blinked, then laughed. Short, disbelieving. "Wow. Okay."

"Y'know, some of us have actual biological needs."

"Yeah. And I tended to mine. What's your issue?"

Eddie gave an incredulous laugh. "Do everyone a favour next time and maybe don't pick the only bathroom in the house to turn into some kind of conveyor belt for getting your dick wet. That's all I'm saying."

"What is your problem? Who the fuck even invited you anyway?" Steve asked, face contorting in confusion.

"I just think it's kind of incredible that you can't go ten minutes without proving how much of a total cliché you are."

"What, like you're not a cliché?" Steve asked, grinning now, dangerous and bright.

"Sorry?"

"The whole 'I'm too cool for the jocks and cheerleaders' thing. Judging everybody while you're—what—selling weed out of a lunchbox in the kitchen?" He waved his hands like he was conducting an orchestra of idiots.

"Wow. Look at that. King Steve knows my résumé." Eddie said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"It's barely a sentence."

"Yeah, well, at least I'm not pretending to be something I'm not."

"Sure you aren't. You're just pretending you're above it all."

Eddie stared at him, speechless for exactly three seconds. Long enough to register the smirk, the ridiculous shine of his hair, the way the party noise blurred behind them.

"I am above it," Eddie presses, the words coming sharper than he expects, anger bubbling up through his chest.

Steve laughs. Light, careless. "While dealing dime bags to high school kids? Real cool, man."

"You don't know shit about me." Eddie's eyes narrow; the need to piss has long since evaporated. All that's left is heat, a rising pulse that feels too loud for his body.

Steve's grin curves wider. "You're not exactly hard to figure out. You just act like you hate everyone because it's easier than admitting you want in."

Eddie laughs once, short and disbelieving. "In on what, exactly? Banging girls you're never gonna speak to again in bathrooms at parties every weekend? It's honestly shocking that someone as shallow as you can actually stand upright."

Steve's smirk flickers, then hardens. "At least I can get girls. You're like—what—some kind of social disease? Always lurking around, judging everyone, acting like you're too good for them."

"A disease? Wow. So original." Eddie's voice is flat, but his pulse stings at his throat.

"Just calling it like I see it." Steve shrugs, too casual.

"Yeah, well, I hope you used a condom in there, Romeo."

"Always do."

"Good. We don't need any more of your genetic material floating around. One of you's already more than enough." Eddie steps toward the bathroom, shoulder brushing Steve's as he passes.

Steve's voice follows, low and infuriatingly amused. "Y'know, if you ask nicely next time I'll let you stand in the corner and watch. I heard you're into that."

Eddie turns halfway, expression caught between disbelief and a laugh that won't come.
"No thanks. You're not my type."

"Sure about that?" Steve smirks, walking backward down the hall, hands in his pockets, too pleased with himself.

"Positive. And even if I wasn't, I'd still double-bag it."

Steve laughs, a bright, careless sound that chases Eddie as he slams the door. The lock clicks; the echo of it feels final.

***

Another insufferable house party.

The house swayed to its own heartbeat again. bass leaking from the walls, laughter bouncing down the narrow hallway like loose change in a dryer.

Eddie had just escaped a small economic crisis in the guest bedroom: four drunk seniors arguing about who paid for weed last time as if they were debating national debt. His pockets were lighter, his patience extinct.

He was halfway down the hall when a bedroom door opened and Steve Harrington stepped out, tugging his shirt over his head, all sweat and effortless charm. A girl slipped past him, giggling into her hand, already halfway to the stairs.

Heads turned, eyes followed, smirks bloomed behind plastic cups.

"My god," Eddie muttered, shaking his head.

"Hanging around for the encore again, Munson?" Steve asked, trailing after him, voice honey-smooth and impossible to ignore.

"Don't flatter yourself. I was just walking by. If anything I'm a victim," Eddie said, dodging a couple making out against the wall.

"Sure you were," Steve goaded, falling into step beside him, far too pleased with himself.

"Maybe if you stopped turning every room in this town into your personal brothel we wouldn't be in this situation," Eddie threw over his shoulder, tone sharp as tinfoil.

"What can I say? I'm popular."

Eddie turned on the landing. "Yeah, like herpes."

"You're the one eavesdropping," Steve said, half-grin, half-challenge.

Eddie snorted. "Yeah, because I'm just dying to hear the Steve Harrington sex soundtrack."

"Jealousy is such a nasty trait to have," Steve replied, mock-pouting, lower lip pushed out just enough to make Eddie want to roll his eyes into next week.

"Oh, absolutely. Every night I lie awake wishing I could be as vapid and soulless as you."

"Every night? Wow. You're kinda doing a shitty job of trying to prove you're not obsessed with me. Really helps that reputation you've built for yourself." Steve grinned, planting a hand on the bannister and leaning forward, hair catching the light like he rehearsed it.

"Course. Because it's Steve Harrington's world, isn't it?" Eddie scoffed, heat rising to his cheeks—rage, he decided, definitely rage.

"You done?" Steve asked, head tilted, the ghost of a smirk still there.

"Yeah. Feel free to crawl back into whatever bed you just oozed out of." Eddie turned, descending the stairs two at a time, jacket flaring behind him like punctuation.

"Works for me. Just don't lurk outside next time, yeah? It's creepy," Steve called after him.

Eddie didn't look back, the laughter and music swallowing Steve's voice.

***

The cafeteria smelled like a slow, predictable animal: reheated fries, decaying pizza, the faint sweet of someone's perfume that never quite matched their personality.

Eddie sat rigid, a pretzel between thumb and forefinger like an accusation, and watched him. Steve. Popping fries into his mouth with that insolent, practiced grin, leaning back so the whole table felt like it belonged to him.

Robin and Jonathan murmured on the other side of the tray, their voices a warm, ordinary current Eddie could have slipped into if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. He wanted to stare.

"What the fuck do people see in that guy?" He said aloud, the words too big for the small, buzzing room.

Robin blinked up from her soda and looked where he was looking. "Which guy?" she asked.

"Which—look at him. That one. The human hair commercial over there." He let the venom curl where it wanted. There's a special kind of contempt you save for perfection that's fake; it tastes like cheap cologne.

Jonathan tilted his head, camera-lazy, and followed his stare. "Steve?" he offered, as if it were some novel discovery.

"Bingo." Eddie said flatly, and the word landed like a snap.

"I dunno. He's just—rich. And attractive. Pretty much the basic formula required to create a high school dictatorship. Apparently." Jonathan shrugged as if he'd just mapped geopolitics with a bored finger.

"He's a walking ego with a pulse." The pretzel went in his mouth at the same time his eyes found Steve again.
"Look at him. Laughing like he just invented humour."

Robin pushed her straw around and watched the scene he was referring to. "I don't know why you let those guys bother you so much."

"Because they've spent their entire lives making ours hell, that's why." The words came hot, and he felt them like a bruise. Old, aching, unfair. They were history folded into the present, every shove and smear and stupid chant returned like an unpaid debt.

"Yeah, well, that's just how it goes when you're us." Robin said, resignation in her voice.

"He walks around like the place owes him oxygen, and everyone just lines up to give him more. It's just fucking crazy to me." Eddie leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him.
"He's loud, he's smug, and everyone's acting like he's the second coming."

"That's kinda the whole crew. They all think they're gods. This isn't new information." Robin's sip was casual, practiced.

"Yeah, I mean you're talking about the same people who used to dump wet trash on my head, man." Jonathan's laugh was a small, private thing.

"That's the problem. I can't not. They spent years making sure people like us knew where we stood."

"Yeah, in the garbage." Jonathan snorted and looked away like it embarrassed him to recall the spectacle.

"Exactly! And then they just get to sit there. Laughing. Soaking up each other's boneheadedness." Eddie's hands curled around the pretzel, knuckles whitening.

Jonathan shrugged, the motion casual as a shrug can be when your shoulders have been doing the same thing for years. "They're idiots. Always have been. Always will be."

Eddie shook his head, a slow, theatrical movement. "There has to be something wrong with him. Nobody's that shiny, that clean, that stupidly perfect without hiding something. There's got to be, like, a dark secret. Some horrible, soul-rotting thing festering underneath all that hairspray." Eddie said it with a relish that surprised even himself.

"Like what, he sacrifices freshmen to keep his hair that fluffy?" Jonathan laughed, because if you can't be mean you might as well be absurd.

"Maybe!" Eddie exclaimed.

"You're insane." Robin said.

"No, I'm observant. That kind of confidence doesn't come from nowhere. It's hiding something. People don't just—wake up like that every day unless they've got demons chewing on their insides." The words left his mouth and landed somewhere between rhetoric and prayer.

"Or, like I already said, money. And good genetics." Jonathan said coolly.

"I just need justice. I need one crack in the golden boy armor. One flaw. Something—anything—to prove he's actually human and not some Stepford jock built in a lab." Eddie seethed.

"Yeah. Wouldn't that be a dream." Jonathan laughed.

"Eddie, just—chill. Who cares?" Robin asked, the patient adult in their trio, trying to defuse a volcano with a paper cup.

"I care!" Eddie snapped. The kitchen of his throat heated with the old, familiar indignation.

"Why? We're out of this place in less than a year. And then we never have to think about him or them ever again." Robin's pragmatism was practical and slightly cruel in its efficiency.

"Why are you defending him?" Eddie asked, and then heard how stupid that sounded as soon as it left his mouth. But he wasn't going to back track now.

"Nobody's defending him! I'm just trying to eat lunch without you summoning Satan to smite Steve Harrington." Robin said, half-scolding, half amused.

"No, no, listen—there's no way the universe lets someone like him coast through life without payback. Something's gotta be coming for him. Bad karma, freak lightning strike, a swarm of bees—I don't care. Just something." Eddie's hands flail, throwing a pretzel onto the table.

Jonathan stole a glance across the room at Steve, who was still laughing with the air of a man who has never once had to negotiate pity. "Yeah. I mean, I gave up hoping that would happen, but—I'd pay good money to see that."

"Oh, it will. It has to. And I can't fucking wait. I want a front row seat and then I'm just gonna—rub that stupid little face of his in it." The last words left him clipped, mouth tight; his lip curled like someone testing a sour candy.

The image was ridiculous and delicious. Rub it in, like the final smear of jam on toast. And for a heartbeat Eddie allowed himself the childish pleasure of imagining the crack.

Around them the cafeteria continued its small, indifferent life: someone elbowed a kid, a teacher's voice echoed faintly down the corridor, fries were dipped and discarded.

Eddie's stare remained fixed on Steve, who had the terrible fortune of being both everywhere and entirely unreachable. The fantasies of erosion are always one part hope, two parts humor; it was easier to picture his fall than to imagine the long, unglamorous climb the rest of them have to keep making to keep up with him.

***

The record store sat like an afterthought at the end of the boulevard, wedged between a pawn shop and a dry cleaner that hadn't been dry or clean since 1979.

The air was thick with dust and the faint smell of old paper sleeves. Posters curled on the walls like wilted leaves.

Eddie lounged behind the counter, one boot hooked over the rung of the stool, flipping through a month-old music magazine and sipping from a melting milkshake. The afternoon had gone nowhere. Just the low hum of the ceiling fan and the lazy bassline drifting from the stereo.

The door burst open, the bell above it screeching like it resented the company.

"Yo! Music time, baby!" Tommy Hagan's voice ricocheted through the store, nasal and jubilant.

Eddie's head snapped up, the milkshake straw still between his teeth.

Carol followed, laughter slicing through the quiet. "God, this place smells like my grandma's attic."

And behind them, inevitably, was Steve Harrington. Hands tucked into his jacket pockets, hair perfect enough to make angels curse, eyes flicking over Eddie and then away. The trifecta of torment.

"Oh, perfect," Eddie muttered, mostly to the milkshake, as if it could share the burden.

Tommy was already halfway down an aisle, sneakers squeaking. "Man, I forgot this dump even existed." He turned, grinning, eyes locking on the counter. "Ah, and the king of the dump himself."

Eddie didn't bother sitting up straighter. "Can I help you find something, or are you just here to kill brain cells in public?"

Tommy's grin widened, the gum in his mouth clicking against his teeth. "Same attitude, huh? Thought maybe working retail would knock that chip off your shoulder."

"Nah. Still there. Want to take a swing at it?"

"Jesus, relax. We're just looking around, man." Tommy's grin had that freckled cruelty Eddie always imagined came from years of too much sun and too little self-awareness.

Eddie wanted to punch it right off him. He wasn't sure he'd stop at once.

"Yeah, if we don't catch something first," Carol said, picking up a record sleeve with two fingers, as if it might bite.

"Wow. You're such a riot. Pure comedic genius. Can I get you a mic, maybe a spotlight?" Eddie's voice was dry as the dust on the shelves.

He glanced sideways. Steve had wandered off to the other side of the store, flipping through vinyl, feigning disinterest. His fingers slid through the sleeves with the same bored rhythm as his voice.

"Careful, Munson. Wouldn't want your boss to hear you mouthing off to customers," Tommy said, puffing himself up like a kid trying on his dad's jacket.

"Pretty sure my boss would pay me extra to throw you out," Eddie said, tone flat.

Tommy snorted. "Bet he'd fire you instead."

Steve turned slightly at that, his profile catching the light from the front window. "Tommy." he said quietly, almost bored, but it was enough to still the air for a moment.

Eddie caught the hesitation, the faint thread of discomfort in Steve's voice, and hated himself for noticing.

"What? I'm just saying hi. We're old buddies, right, Munson?" Tommy said, grin already loaded.

"Not unless you've had a lobotomy recently," Eddie replied, the words dry as chalk.

Steve sighed, that weary sound of someone already regretting being here. "Come on, let's just—look for your stupid tape so we can go."

"What's the rush? Guy's giving us free entertainment," Tommy said, circling an aisle like a shark.

"Yeah, that's me," Eddie said. "Part-time clerk, full-time clown."

"You said it, not me."

Eddie didn't rise to it; didn't even look up at first. But his hand tightened on the edge of the counter, thumb tapping against the worn laminate in a rhythm only barely keeping time with the music.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve moved. Quiet, cautious, to the far wall, flipping through records with the grace of someone pretending to browse.

"God, this place is so depressing," Carol sighed, wandering between the racks. She plucked records out and dropped them back in as if the sleeves had personally offended her.

"Who even shops here? Half these bands sound made up," Tommy added, chewing noisily.

"'Iron Maiden'? Sounds like a bad Halloween costume," Carol said, tossing the album back into the bin.

"Yeah, or a porno," Tommy laughed.

Eddie's teeth pressed together. He didn't look up; just turned a page in his magazine.

"You ever listen to any of this crap, Harrington?" Tommy asked.

"Not really," Steve muttered, still flipping records, eyes down.

That caught Eddie's attention. The tone of it. There was something smaller in it, something worn. Steve's shoulders were hunched; he didn't have the usual shine. For half a second, Eddie almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Then Tommy's voice cut through the room again. "You know what I heard about Munson? Guy's got some real interesting hobbies."

Eddie exhaled, slow and sharp, the kind of breath that keeps the roof from coming down.

"Some of the guys were saying he's got—a thing for watching people. Guys. In the locker rooms, or whatever."

"Oh my god. Stop," Carol said, laughing, her voice high and delighted.

"I heard he got caught jerking off in the corner this one time—"

"Ew! Stop. That's so disgusting. Why would you put that image in my head?" Carol shoved him, both of them laughing now.

"You heard that one, Munson?" Tommy called over.

Eddie looked up slowly, eyebrow lifting. "You wanna run that by me again?"

Tommy's grin only widened. "Or what about the one where your uncle is actually your dad and your whole family is like—some weird incesty cult."

Carol snickered under her breath. "God, Tommy, you're such an ass."

"What? I'm just asking a question!" He turned back toward Eddie, still grinning. "Just curious, man. Everybody's got their—rumours."

"Yeah? And yours is that you've got half a brain. Guess we're both screwed."

Tommy's grin faltered; just enough to make the moment worthwhile. He took a step forward, shoulders squaring, his voice low. "Last I checked, Munson—you never really were that great at putting up a fight. I'd hate to have to knock that look off your face again."

"Enough." Steve's voice sliced through the air like the drop of a needle, quiet but edged.
Eddie turned toward him. Steve stood a few paces away, jaw tight, shoulders set.

"Relax, man, it's a joke," Tommy said, a mock-innocent shrug.

"It's not funny," Steve answered, eyes on him now, no grin left to hide behind.

"What is with you today? You're being more of a freak than the actual freak," Tommy said, gesturing between them.

"Can we just—go? Now?" Steve pressed, already moving toward the door.

"All right, Jesus," Tommy muttered, holding his hands up as Steve pushed through the door, the bell above it shrieking. "Do we need to get you a tampon on the way, Stevie?" he called after him.

Carol trailed behind, hand sweeping across the counter and sending a stack of tapes clattering to the floor. "Aw. Sorry," she said, jutting her lower lip, fake sympathy wrapped in perfume and malice.

Eddie didn't move to pick them up. He just sat there, elbows on the counter, pulse still thrumming in his jaw.

***

The club didn't have a name so much as a rumour. A smudged neon sign that only half-worked, glowing LU most nights, and the rest left to imagination.

It was the kind of place you didn't find unless you were looking for it, wedged between a boarded-up convenience store and a tattoo parlor that didn't believe in hygiene inspections. Eddie liked that about it. The anonymity. The way it didn't ask questions.

Inside, it was all shadow and pulse: bass rattling through the floorboards, colored lights cutting through cigarette smoke like dull blades. The air was humid, the kind of heat that stuck to you, made you shine whether you wanted to or not.

There were no windows. Just the illusion of night stretching forever, as if the outside world had been politely told to wait.

The crowd was a moving constellation of contradiction. Men in worn denim and eyeliner, leather jackets and sequins, laughter that cracked open the dark. They were loud, beautiful, ridiculous; some danced like they were trying to burn calories of shame, others just swayed, eyes closed, like the music was oxygen.

Eddie hovered near the bar most nights, a beer in hand that he never quite finished. He liked to watch, to absorb. The way people found each other with nothing more than a glance.

Every so often, luck, or what passed for it, found him. A stranger's hand on his shoulder, a whispered invitation, the pull toward the back hallway, where the lighting went from dim to mercifully nonexistent.

There were moments. Quick, breathless, anonymous, that felt like something close to being seen, even if it was only skin-deep.

Sometimes it happened in the bathroom, against a stall door that rattled and smelled like bleach. Sometimes it didn't happen at all, and he just went home smelling like beer and someone else's cologne, the night folded up neatly in his pocket.

He told himself it was fine. That these small collisions counted for something. That one day he might find a version of this that wasn't lit by desperation and neon. That love, even a quiet, ordinary kind, might still be out there. Waiting in some less claustrophobic room.

But most nights, he stayed until the last song played. A slow one, always ironic, and watched the couples pair off, hand in hand, disappearing into the same night he'd come from.

The hallway always smelled the same. Concrete and smoke and that particular kind of sweat that belonged to anticipation. Eddie walked through it, past men leaning against the wall like punctuation marks, each exhaling their cigarette smoke in lazy commas.

Someone laughed too loud, someone else stumbled, but he barely noticed. He didn't come here looking for anything most nights. It was just a place to disappear without technically vanishing.

But tonight he wanted something, even if it wasn't much. Someone, anyone, to remind him he wasn't a joke. That he wasn't disgusting. That he could still be looked at and wanted without a punchline attached. Just one night where no one knew his name, and that was the appeal. No expectations, no history trailing behind him like a bad smell.

He pushed toward the bar, the music vibrating under his ribs, all bass and heartbeats. The bartender was busy, a blur of glasses and sweat, so Eddie leaned on the sticky counter and waited.

He wanted something that burned, something that punished him just enough to prove he was alive. When his drink arrived, he took a swallow and felt it claw down his throat, sharp and familiar.

He let his gaze wander. It was a habit. Half curiosity, half defense. The club was alive in its own feral way: men pressed too close, laughter spilling between songs, the flash of someone's smile in the strobe light. Then his eyes caught on a shape in the corner. A familiar one.

Steve Harrington.

Eddie blinked once, like maybe the smoke was playing tricks on him. But there he was. Steve. Pressed into the corner, a guy's hand on his waist, keeping him there with an ease that suggested habit.

They were laughing. Steve's head was tilted down, shy, his mouth soft in a way Eddie had never seen before. It didn't look like the usual Harrington grin, polished and smug. It looked almost real. Vulnerable. He kept glancing down, brushing his hair back, but there was a warmth there that didn't belong to the Steve Eddie knew.

And Eddie just froze.

The drink hung loose in his hand, his pulse thudding somewhere behind his eyes. He couldn't look away, though he told himself he should.

He'd seen enough, more than enough, but he stayed rooted to the floor like some tragic figure in a painting titled Idiot at the Bar. His mouth went dry, his throat still burning from the liquor, but now for an entirely different reason.

Then Steve looked up.

Their eyes met through the haze of lights and movement. The smile slipped off Steve's face like someone had snatched it away. He straightened instinctively, shoulders drawing back, that familiar tension snapping back into place. The warmth was gone, replaced by alarm and recognition.

Eddie didn't wait for whatever came next. His body moved before his brain caught up. He turned, shoving past people, his boots scuffing against the sticky floor as he made a straight line for the exit.

He didn't need this. Whatever the hell this was. Not here, not now. He wasn't about to get dragged into the gravitational field that was Steve Harrington. Fuck that.

"Wait."
He heard it before he saw him. Steve's voice, cutting through the noise, too clear, too human.
"Wait!"

Eddie didn't turn.

"I'm not saying anything!" he shouted over his shoulder, voice raw, breath coming fast as he pushed through the crowd, the air thinning the closer he got to the door.

He didn't look back. He couldn't. Because if he did, he wasn't sure what he'd see. Fear, anger, or worse, something that looked too much like himself.

"Munson, will you wait!" There was the sound of bodies jostling, Steve's apologies and irritated grunts as he shoved his way through the crowd.

Eddie felt a bitter laugh crawl up his throat. Of all the clubs, in all the seedy corners of Indiana, he had to be in this one.
"Let's just forget it, alright?" Eddie called back over his shoulder, his voice ricocheting off the concrete.

He could almost see freedom. The faint red glow of the exit sign ahead. One more step and this would be just another weird, humiliating thing he'd never talk about again.

But then, fingers around his wrist. Firm. Hot.
He stopped short, heart tripping. He turned, yanking his arm slightly, and there was Steve. Closer than he'd expected, breathless, eyes wide and wet with panic.
"You saw nothing. You didn't see me." Steve's voice came out tight, clipped, his finger stabbing the air toward Eddie like punctuation.

"Harrington—"

"No, shut up. You didn't see me here. You didn't see anything." He said it quickly, swallowing hard, jaw tight.

"I said—"

"Because if you go running your mouth, if you so much as breathe this to anyone—"

"Jesus, I'm not going to—"

"I mean it, Munson!" Steve's voice broke upward, ragged and desperate. "I swear to God—"

"I'm not gonna tell anyone!" Eddie shouted back, his voice slicing through the echo of bass and footsteps. Steve flinched. "And even if I wanted to, how exactly am I supposed to tell people I saw Steve Harrington at a gay club without admitting I was there too?"

That stopped him. Steve's breath stuttered; he stepped back, shoulders sagging slightly as if the logic had physically hit him. His mouth opened, then closed again.

"Yeah. Thought that through, didn't you," Eddie said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward despite himself. "Congratulations, we're both fucked."

"I just—I can't have this getting around," Steve said, voice lower now, steadier but still trembling at the edges.

"Yeah, no kidding. Neither can I. You're not the only person in the world, man." Eddie crossed his arms, though he still felt the ghost of that grip on his wrist.

"Then we don't talk about it. Ever."

"Fine by me."

They stood there for a long, loaded beat. Both breathing hard, both pretending they didn't notice. The bass from inside thrummed faintly through the concrete wall beside them. Steady, insistent, the heartbeat of a secret neither of them wanted.

"Do you promise you won't say anything?" Steve asked finally, quieter now. There was something unguarded in it, juvenile, like he wanted to believe Eddie could keep the world at bay for him.

"What part of 'we're both fucked' didn't you understand? I'm not that stupid."

"I didn't say you were."

"You didn't have to."

Silence again. A kind of truce, thin as smoke.

"So we just pretend this never happened?" Steve said.

"That's the plan." Eddie forced a smile.

Steve nodded once. "Good."

"Good," Eddie echoed.

And just like that, the tension snapped back into place, invisible but suffocating. Steve turned first, shoving his hands into his pockets, the picture of control that fooled no one. Eddie watched him go, the echo of his footsteps fading beneath the bassline.

***

The late afternoon light hit the parking lot like a dying bulb. Thin, watery, the kind of light that made everything look tired. Eddie trudged across the cracked asphalt, rucksack slung over one shoulder, fingers curled tightly around the strap. His head was down, hair falling into his eyes, boots scuffing at gravel. Detention again. Not that it was new.

Mrs. Kline, the English teacher, had decided to martyr herself over a misinterpretation of The Crucible. Eddie had pointed out, politely, that the entire play wasn't about witchcraft but about hypocrisy, moral panic, the machinery of fear. She'd told him not to "get smart." He'd told her that was impossible. Hence, an hour writing lines while she pretended to grade papers.

He was halfway down the sidewalk when he heard the low hum of an engine slowing behind him. Persistent, deliberate, the kind of sound that wanted attention.

He turned. A shiny BMW crept along the curb, sunlight glinting off the hood.

Harrington.

Of course.

"Absolutely not." Eddie muttered, rolling his eyes. He kept walking. The car matched his pace. When he sped up, so did it, like an especially smug metal shadow.

"Get in," Steve said through the open passenger window, voice flat and authoritative.

Eddie barked a laugh, incredulous. "Are you fucking serious?"

"Yes!" Steve leaned over the console, eyes flicking between Eddie and the road like he couldn't decide which was more dangerous.

"What part of 'let's pretend this never happened' isn't clicking for you?" Eddie asked, stepping off the curb just to make a point.

"Can you just—get in the car?" Steve said, foot easing off the gas until the car idled beside him. Then, softer, "Please?"

Eddie stopped, staring ahead. The wind picked up, tugging at his jacket. He muttered, "Fuck my life," to the air, then swung his rucksack off his shoulder and yanked open the door.

He dropped into the passenger seat with the same enthusiasm one might reserve for a dentist's chair. "Y'know, just because we have one thing in common now doesn't mean we're suddenly best friends," he said, slamming the door shut, clutching his bag like a shield.

"What?" Steve said as he pulled out of the school lot, brow furrowed.

"I dunno if I've been clear, but I'm not really in the market for forming some weird gay alliance with you. Or anyone. But especially you."

Steve's knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. "We don't have anything in common. Our situations are completely different."

"How?" Eddie asked, half-scoffing, half-curious despite himself.

"If people found out about me, I have way more to lose than you," Steve said, tongue sweeping across his bottom lip like he was buying time.

Eddie let out a dry laugh. "Wow, that's so sweet. I can tell that really came from the heart."

"I'm serious," Steve said, voice low. "My parents—my dad is a fucking asshole, okay? He'd kill me. Not literally but—yeah, maybe literally. He already thinks I'm a screw-up. If he knew about this? He'd make sure everyone knew it was a mistake. That I was a mistake. They'd disown me."

"And what, you think I've got it easier? You think I don't have people whispering about me already?"

"That's different."

"How?!" Eddie's voice cracked through the air, sharp and hot.

"Because nothing's happened! Nobody's seen you with anyone, so they just talk. They call you a freak or a perv, but that's it. You're fine."

"Fine?" Eddie echoed, incredulous. "You think being the punchline to some never-ending joke is fine? You think walking into a room and hearing people shut up mid-sentence is fine? You think minding my business at work and having people like you and Tommy Hagan spew literal bullshit at me while I'm on the clock is fine?"

Steve winced. "I didn't mean—"

"Yeah, you did," Eddie snapped. "You meant that your reputation actually matters. That mine's already in the toilet, so who cares."

"That's not what I said," Steve shot back, tight, defensive.

"You didn't have to."

Steve's jaw flexed. "Also, may I remind you, I didn't say anything to you when we were at the store. I was the one who told him to stop."

Eddie rolled his eyes. "How noble of you."

"You know what? Actually, I've never said anything to you, period. You're the one that's always ragging on me first for no fucking reason."

"No reason, yeah, okay," Eddie said, voice rising, words tumbling now like they'd been waiting years to spill out. "Well—forgive me for being defensive when your friends have made it perfectly clear where I sit in the social hierarchy of the human race for the last five years of my life."

Steve exhaled hard, one hand leaving the wheel to rake through his hair. "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't—this is just—" He faltered, voice breaking into something smaller, thinner. "It's just a lot. And I don't know what I'm doing and I'm freaking out. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I'm literally going crazy. And for some—stupid reason, because the universe is playing some cruel joke on me, you're now the only person I have to talk to about it."

Eddie stared at him, mouth half-open, stunned by the whiplash of honesty. Steve's eyes were fixed on the road, jaw clenched like confession was a physical strain.

Eddie leaned back, arms crossed, heart thudding faster than he'd like to admit. The silence stretched, thick as humidity.
Finally, he asked, voice edged with dry amusement, "And what is it exactly that you want to talk about?"

Outside, the world blurred by—their two silhouettes framed against the dying light, both of them pretending the car wasn't the closest thing to a confession booth they'd ever sit in.

"I don't know! I don't know yet!" Steve snapped suddenly, his palm hitting the steering wheel with a dull smack that echoed in the small, sealed space.

"Okay, well—where are we going right now?" Eddie gestured toward the windshield, as though the empty Indiana road might offer an answer.

"I don't know," Steve said, shaking his head, his jaw tight.

"So—this is, what? Some kind of kidnapping?" Eddie deadpanned.

"I'm just—I need to clear my head, okay?" Steve pressed, his voice all tension and breath, eyes darting between the road and nothing.

Eddie exhaled heavily, letting his head fall back against the seat, the vinyl cool against his hair. "I guess I'm just—a little fucking confused, man."

"About what?" Steve asked, not looking at him.

"All of it," Eddie said, his voice rough around the edges. "Mainly your—secret double life."

"If I have a secret double life, then so do you." Steve's tone was sharp, but there was a thread of exhaustion winding through it.

"Yeah. Obviously. But I see you coming out of bathrooms and bedrooms with girls against my will on a fairly regular basis. You're not exactly subtle about it." Eddie gave a short, humorless laugh that died somewhere near his throat.

"I've never had sex with those girls," Steve said quietly, fingers flexing on the steering wheel like he needed to hold onto something.

"What?" Eddie turned to look at him, sure he'd misheard.

"We don't—we don't have sex. It's just—" Steve's voice lifted and faltered, like a car stalling mid-hill. "We pretend to have sex. At parties or whatever. It's mutually beneficial. We have an arrangement."

Eddie blinked at him, disbelieving. "An arrangement? What the fuck are you? Al Capone?"

"No, I mean—they ask me to help," Steve said, still staring dead ahead.

"Help," Eddie repeated, tasting the word like it might bite.

"Yeah. Like—if someone wants to get back at an ex, or shut down some rumor, or whatever, I pretend. We pretend." Steve's voice softened, almost confessional. He exhaled, the air hitching like he'd been holding it for years. "We'll go to a party, disappear for a while, make some—noises. Come out looking a little flushed. And people just—assume."

Eddie frowned, staring at him, trying to make the pieces fit. The golden boy of Hawkins High, patron saint of bathrooms and backseats. Faking it? "You're gonna need to—speak more words, Harrington."

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "It started with one girl. This guy was spreading crap about her, and she asked if I'd pretend, you know, that we hooked up. So people would stop. And it worked. Then another asked. And then it just—became a thing."

Eddie leaned forward, looking out at the road. "So—you run fake hookups like it's an extracurricular activity?"

Steve's shoulders stiffened. His eyes stayed fixed on the asphalt ahead. "I just—it helps them. Keeps people off their backs. And it helps me too."

"How?" Eddie asked, voice tilting with incredulous amusement.

"Given—y'know. Me." Steve's hand lifted vaguely, the word me doing all the heavy lifting. "They don't know. I don't tell them. It's just—easier this way. Keeps people asking the wrong questions."

"And none of them have ever asked why you're so willing to jump at the chance?" Eddie asked, brow raised.

"No. They just think I'm a nice guy who doesn't not-kiss and tell. And I'd prefer to keep it that way."

Eddie was quiet for a long moment, the tires humming under them like a held breath. He looked out the passenger window at the blurring fields, his reflection faint in the glass. "Jesus. That's—"

"Messed up? Yeah. I know," Steve said, scoffing, but it sounded more tired than defensive.

"Well, I was gonna say exhausting," Eddie said with a shrug.

"That too." Steve nodded, eyes softening a little.

Eddie studied him in profile. The jaw, the small muscle twitching near his temple, the hand drumming once against the wheel.

Steve's lips pressed together, the faintest hint of a bitter smile. "Anyway, better a liar than a target."

Eddie looked at him then, really looked, and thought that was the saddest kind of honesty he'd ever heard. The road stretched ahead, long and empty, and he couldn't help but laugh under his breath. Quietly, disbelievingly. Because somehow, even the great Steve Harrington had built himself out of smoke and panic.

And Eddie, God help him, almost felt sorry for him.

The car hummed along in uneasy silence, the sound of wind slipping through the barely rolled-down window. He watched the world slide by in pieces. Bare trees, a mailbox shaped like a cow, a kid on a bike racing against the car and losing.

Steve drove like he was trying not to think, which, judging by the white-knuckled grip on the wheel, wasn't going particularly well. His posture too straight, his jaw working like he was chewing on something invisible.

Eddie cleared his throat.
"So, uh," he started, watching Steve's profile shift slightly, eyes still on the road. "This whole—thing." Steve glanced at him, brows twitching, before returning to the windshield. "The, uh, the club thing."

"What about it?" Steve asked, voice flat but wary, like he already knew this was headed somewhere uncomfortable.

"How long have you been—y'know. Doing that?"

Steve didn't look at him. "A while."

Eddie tilted his head. "'A while' as in months, or 'a while' as in you've got a frequent flyer card?"

Steve grimaced, exhaling through his nose. "Maybe the second one," he said quietly.

"Okay," Eddie nodded slowly.

Steve's hand drummed on the steering wheel, the rhythm uneven, hesitant. Then—"How long have you—" he started, then stopped. "Y'know. Known."

Eddie squinted. "Known what?"

Steve shifted in his seat, shoulders hunching like the word itself was heavy. "Y'know. That you're—whatever."

"Gay?" Eddie said it easily, almost amused. Steve said nothing, his jaw tightening. "Uh—I don't know. Always kind of suspected, I guess. I just didn't have the word for it. Then in middle school, there was this kid. He smiled at me once, and I couldn't think straight for, like, a week. Then I realized that was the problem—'straight.'"

Steve snorted softly, despite himself, and Eddie rolled his eyes. "Look, man, if you're coming to me because you think I'm some kind of gay oracle and that I have all the answers or whatever, you're sorely mistaken. Even without the fake hookups, you've probably had way more action than me. You're gonna be fine."

"I've never—" Steve's words caught, stalling like the engine might at any moment.

"What?" Eddie asked, turning toward him fully now.

"Why the fuck am I telling you all of this," Steve muttered, exhaling hard, sucking his lips inward. "I've never had sex. With anyone."

Eddie blinked. "What?"

"I've never had sex with anyone," Steve said again, quieter this time, like saying it louder might make it worse.

Eddie stared at him, dumbfounded. "Wait—you mean like, never never?"

"Never," Steve said simply.

Eddie continued to stare. His brain was trying to compute that Steve King of Hawkins High, Bedroom Czar, Hair Like a Greek God Harrington had apparently never actually done it.

"Can you stop looking at me like that?" Steve asked suddenly.

Eddie's brows jumped. "How?"

"The—way you're looking at me right now."

"No, no. As in how?" Eddie said, gesturing vaguely, a grin tugging at his mouth.

"What?"

"How have you never had sex? You're Steve Harrington. Half the school would line up if you snapped your fingers."

Steve's mouth twisted. "Yeah, that's kind of the problem."

Eddie laughed under his breath, incredulous. "I've seen people practically faint when you walk by. You could sneeze in someone's direction and they'd drop to their knees. How the hell does that guy end up—"

"I've—done stuff with people. Girls. And I've had girlfriends. I just always—broke it off before it got to that point or they started asking questions," Steve said, words tumbling now, eyes still glued to the road.

"But—you just said that you've been going to the club for, like, a while. You've not met anyone there?"

"I'm just too much of a pussy, I guess," Steve said simply. "People hit on me and I just—blank out. Then I go home. I kind of just spend most of my time watching how—easy it looks for other people. How happy they are. S'kinda nice, I guess. Like maybe if I wasn't me, and I was anywhere else, I could be like that."

For the first time, Eddie didn't have a snarky comeback. He just looked down at his lap, his hands twisting in the strap of his bag.

The words settled somewhere in his chest. It was weirdly familiar.

The car slowed. "Here," Steve said softly.

"What?" Eddie asked, glancing up.

"Well, you live here, don't you?" Steve said.

Eddie looked out the window. The familiar outline of the trailer park emerging in the dusky light. "Oh. Yeah," he said, fumbling for the handle. The door creaked open.

"Please don't—" Steve started.

"I'm not going to tell anyone. About anything," Eddie said firmly, turning back to meet his eyes. "I promise." His voice was steady, almost gentle.

"Thanks." Steve nodded, a shaky breath slipping past his lips. "Guess I'll see you around."

"Sure." Eddie shrugged, stepping out, the gravel crunching beneath his boots.

He shut the door and stood there for a moment, watching the taillights fade down the road until they were swallowed by dusk. Then he huffed a laugh. "Jesus Christ, Harrington."

***

Jonathan was sprawled at the foot of Eddie's bed, a joint dangling from his fingers, his socked feet crossed like he owned the place. "Oh. My god," he exhaled, smoke trailing from his mouth as he passed the joint back.

"Yeah." Eddie nodded, taking it, though his heart wasn't in it.

"Oh my fucking god." Jonathan started laughing, that wild, disbelieving laugh that filled the whole room with something close to hysteria.

"I know." Eddie shrugged, the joint glowing between his fingers as he took a drag.

"That is—" Jonathan paused, eyes half-lidded in thought. "Incredible."

"It's not incredible," Eddie said flatly, exhaling smoke that curled up toward the ceiling. "It's—whatever the hell it is. Messed up. Sad." He tapped the ash into the overflowing tray between them and handed it back.

"No, man, think about it." Jonathan leaned forward, eyes gleaming with the excitement of someone spinning a story. "We've been waiting for that guy's downfall since freshman year. And now? You've got it. Right there in your pocket."

"What?" Eddie frowned.

"Leverage. Dirt. He's got the whole school worshipping him, and now you've got the truth." Jonathan grinned, taking another drag and holding it between his fingers like punctuation.

"Yeah, that he's miserable and scared out of his mind. Real satisfying," Eddie said, his tone dry, almost brittle.

"I'm just saying—you could use it. After everything his crowd put you through? You're the one that said he deserves karma."

"I know I did. But—not like this." Eddie shook his head, curls falling into his face. The idea of holding something over Steve felt like carrying a live wire. Hot, dangerous, guaranteed to backfire.

"Don't act like it hasn't crossed your mind." Jonathan laughed, voice echoing in the small room as he passed the joint again.

"It hasn't," Eddie said pointedly, eyes flicking to the wall as though that might make it truer.

"Come on. A couple of words in the right ear, and Harrington's king-of-the-hill routine is done. You don't even have to tell them about the whole gay thing. That's too far. But you could at least tell them about the whole—fake sex act."

"I said no!" Eddie snapped, voice cutting through the haze. The silence after was thick and startled.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. "You're serious."

"Yeah. Because I'm not them. I don't ruin people for fun." Eddie leaned back against the headboard, eyes half-closed, the joint smoldering between his fingers.

"You've got a weird sense of mercy, Munson," Jonathan said, sitting up, stretching his back until it cracked.

"Yeah, well, somebody around here has to." Eddie muttered it like a defense mechanism.

"You don't even wanna mess with him a little bit?" Jonathan asked, hopeful, almost teasing.

"No." Eddie didn't even look at him. "Plus what would I even do? For me to start any kind of rumour it would require people to actually listen to me. Which they don't," Eddie said, smirking faintly, though his eyes stayed fixed on the ashtray.

"Or, better—make him think you're gonna tell someone, then pull it back. Keep him nervous."

"Jesus, Jon." Eddie scoffed, shaking his head, the motion slow and weary.

"Alright, alright, last idea. Hear me out." Jonathan sat cross-legged now, hands raised in mock surrender.

Eddie rolled his eyes, already bracing himself.

"You could make him fall for you."

Eddie let out a snort. "Yeah, that's hilarious."

"No, seriously. Get him to trust you, like really trust you. Let him think he's safe. Then, when he does—break his heart. Give him a taste of what he's been dishing out his whole life."

Eddie blinked at him, the words hanging in the smoke-filled air like something poisonous. "That's twisted, man," he said flatly.

"Then what? You just let him off the hook?" Jonathan challenged, leaning forward again.

"I just want him to leave me alone. I'm fine with forgetting that any of this ever even happened." Eddie sighed, rubbing at his temple. The room felt too small, too warm.

"Fine," Jonathan said finally, shrugging, exhaling a thin stream of smoke that curled toward the ceiling like a sigh.

***

Eddie was halfway across the cafeteria with his tray, thinking about nothing in particular. Maybe the angle of the sun against the window, the way the fries were sliding toward the edge of the plate—when a foot appeared where feet should never appear.

Gravity, always solicitous, answered without delay. The tray flipped, his chin met the linoleum with a clean, indignant thunk, and food and milk exploded in a suburban constellation across the floor.

The laugh that rose up was unanxious as smoke. Someone shouted something and another someone's face lit up like a radio antenna picking a signal.

"Whoa! Watch it, Freak! Guess balance isn't your strong suit, huh?" Tommy's voice cut through the room, bright as a snare drum. He laughed, sharp and public.

Eddie's hands were already doing their automatic work. Rub the chin, check for blood, try to find dignity. He stood, almost slipping as he steadied himself.

Steve was sat opposite them at the table, wide eyed, lips thin and firm like he was trying not to give anything away.

Tommy's voice amused itself again. "Careful, man, or you'll end up face-down again."

There were people who enjoyed the business of falling; Carol supplied the appropriate chorus: "Probably likes it that way."

The cafeteria performed its ritual. Giggles, rolling eyes, the predictable choreography of malice.

"Yeah, hilarious. Shame you're all gonna peak right here in this cafeteria as backup dancers in the Steve Harrington show because you can't come up with one original thought between you."

The sentence felt deliciously excessive in his mouth, an over-seasoned retort that made the nearest table hush. Steve wasn't looking at him. Of course he wasn't; stepping into a glare required a risk Steve possessed the luxury of rarely needing to take.

"You hear that, Harrington? He's making fun of your friends, man. You just gonna sit there and not say anything?"

For a moment the room held its breath. Steve hesitated, the movement small and almost polite. Then he laughed. It was a manufactured noise, the sort that has been practiced in mirrors.
"Sorry you got stains all over your one good shirt. I know you won't be able to afford another one."

Eddie felt something curdle in his chest. Righteous and sour and oddly comic. The sound of the laughter felt suddenly obscene, like an orchestra tuning up to play a requiem for decency.

"Oh. Nice. Good to see you found your spine—as long as someone else's hand's up it, right?" Eddie shot back.

A few people ooh. He watched Steve let out another laugh. It landed into place like a coin in a jar.

Oh, the human capacity for cowardice dressed as humor.

"Someone should probably alert the janitor. His mop's developed feelings." Steve sneered.

Eddie's mouth made the motions of reply, but the tongue felt heavy, insistent with a hilarity that was mostly pain. He kept his face still and let the silence be another kind of voice, one that named the absurdity: he was the freak, they were the chorus, and the world continued to supply them with reasons to be cruel.

"You can leave now. Freak," Tommy said, hand flicking him away with the bored contempt of someone flipping a page.

Steve lowered his head to his lap and, for the first time that day, something like unease gathered in the set of his shoulders.

Eddie didn't watch him watch; instead he carved a path through the laughing bodies and made a beeline for Jonathan and Robin. The motion was automatic. Knee to knee, then slid into the warm, familiar space at their table as if returning to a dock.

"You okay?" Robin asked, her voice soft as a hand across his shoulder, and the concern made him feel ridiculous and small in one quick, useful pulse.

"Eddie. You good?" Jonathan pressed, always the practical one, his eyes already cataloguing the mess and the possibilities in the aftermath.

Eddie's stare snagged on the place Steve occupied. A grin welded to his face. The thought that rose in him was simple and bright and terrible, like a match struck in a damp room.

"I am going to ruin his fucking life." He said it low, not because he meant the exact violence of the words but because they tasted good and dangerous and made him feel a tiny, ferocious warmth.

***

The lamp on Eddie's nightstand hummed faintly, its shade casting a thin halo of amber light over the chaos that was his room. Posters drooped at the corners; magazines and cassette cases lay strewn across the quilt.

Eddie was half-reclined against the headboard, Walkman balanced on his knees, music leaking tinny through his headphones as he lazily flipped through a dog-eared issue of Guitar World.

The world felt comfortably small. Just him, the paper between his thumb and forefinger, and the static of his tape.

Then came the noise.

A faint, rhythmic tap-tap-tap that threaded itself through the music. He frowned, lifted one earcup, and froze. Nothing. He slid the headphone back into place.

Tap-tap-tap.

Urgent this time. He tore the headphones off, heart giving one stupid jump.

It was coming from the window.

Eddie launched off the bed, bare feet smacking against the carpet. He crossed the room in two strides and yanked back the curtain—half expecting a branch, maybe a stray cat.

What he found instead was Steve Harrington. Standing there in the dim yellow wash of the trailer park's lone streetlight, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket, hair wind-tossed and ridiculous, looking up with the kind of guilty expression reserved for kids caught stealing from the candy aisle.

Eddie blinked once, twice, then unlocked the window and shoved it open. "What the fuck?"

"Hi," Steve said, almost sheepish, voice carrying up through the night air.

"Are you lost?" Eddie leaned on the sill, elbows planted, giving him the slow once-over like maybe he was hallucinating.

"I just—I wanted to say I'm sorry." Steve's voice had the strained politeness of someone who wasn't familiar with that word.

"For?" Eddie asked, eyebrows lifted in deliberate cruelty.

"For what I said in the cafeteria. I didn't—I didn't mean it. It was shitty. Everyone was just—looking at me, and I panicked, and I know that's not an excuse, but I'm sorry." Steve exhaled, shoulders rising and falling, breath visible in the chill.

Eddie studied him. The apology sounded practiced, terrified. It wasn't guilt so much as damage control. So he said nothing.

"I brought you a peace offering," Steve added quickly, producing something from his pocket. A crumpled joint that looked like it had survived a hurricane.

Eddie plucked it from his fingers and held it up to the light, turning it like an artifact. "Did you roll this yourself?"

"Yeah," Steve said.

"Were you blindfolded and spun around ten times?"

Steve laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I know. I'm—kinda bad at it."

"Yeah. Something like that," Eddie muttered, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Do you—forgive me?" Steve asked after a beat, and there it was: the pleading note that made Eddie's stomach flip in that uncomfortable, inconvenient way.

Eddie hesitated, watching him shift from foot to foot in the gravel below. And then something sly took over.

A thought, sharp as glass.

"Yeah. I forgive you." He nodded solemnly. "I mean, I thought about it and it's probably for the best, y'know? Like—I think you did the right thing."

"What?" Steve's brow furrowed.

"Yeah, I mean—if you suddenly start being all nice to me, people will know something's up. Probably make it worse for both of us." Eddie shrugged with mock sincerity.

"Yeah. I guess." Steve frowned, deflated.

"So, we're cool. It's fine." Eddie smiled, soft but pointed.

"Okay. Thanks." Steve nodded, rocking back on his heels. "Well—I'm gonna go." He turned, the gravel crunching beneath his sneakers.

"Hey, listen—" Eddie called after him. Steve stopped, glanced back, wary. "If you ever—need someone to talk to. About stuff. Y'know. All that shit. You can talk to me."

Steve blinked, voice low. "I thought you said you didn't want to be in some—weird gay alliance." His eyes darted around, scared of anyone overhearing.

"I don't," Eddie said quickly, almost tripping over the words. "I just mean—I get it, y'know? I know how lonely it can be when you're trying to figure it all out. And all that shit you said about your parents, they sound like assholes. So—if you just need to get away from it all or whatever, you know where to find me." The words spilled out too fast, like he wanted them gone before he could second-guess them.

"Really?" Steve asked, voice softer now.

"Yeah." Eddie nodded quickly, almost embarrassed by the sincerity bleeding into the space between them.

"Okay. Thanks." Steve smiled. Small, crooked, so un-Steve that Eddie felt his chest tighten.

"You're welcome," he managed, awkward as hell.
Steve gave a short nod, turned, and started down the grass toward his car. Eddie watched him go until the night swallowed him, just the sound of retreating footsteps and the faint squeal of car tires somewhere in the dark.

He looked down at the joint still crumpled in his hand.

Chapter Text

Under the bleachers, the air always felt a little stale, a little cold, as if the school's entire history of misery funneled down into this one spot.

Eddie sat cross-legged in the dirt, his lunchbox beside him, a squashed sandwich still trapped inside its crumpled Saran wrap like it was awaiting execution.

Beside him lay a notebook he and Jonathan had desecrated with their disastrous mind map. Arrows going nowhere, circles leading into other circles, question marks like accusations.

Eddie stabbed at his sandwich without opening it. "I genuinely thought I could play the long game here but I'm actually losing braincells with every passing second I spend in his presence."

Jonathan's legs were sprawled out, leaning back on one hand, chewing so loudly Eddie could hear it over the distant shouts from the football field. He raised a brow. "How many times have you even hung out now?"

"Thrice. Three times. And it is painful." Eddie's head knocked back against a metal beam. It made a hollow sound that perfectly matched how he felt inside.

Jonathan snorted. "What do you guys even talk about?"

Eddie lifted a finger, as if about to deliver a lecture. "I'm just gonna clarify something super quick here. We don't talk. He talks. All he does is talk for like—an hour. And I just sit there thinking about all the ways I could put myself into a medically induced coma using only items in his car. Then we sit in complete silence until he decides to drive me home."

Jonathan laughed, nearly choking on his chips. "Talks about what?"

Eddie straightened his spine and puffed out his chest. "My name's Steve Harrington and my obscenely rich parents are never home. They just leave me alone here in my castle with a stupidly large allowance to throw ragers, and drink shooters, and have everyone tell me how cool I am. My steak is too juicy, my lobster is too succulent. I wish I wasn't so hot so people saw who I really am inside. Blah, blah, fucking blah."

Jonathan rolled his eyes toward the heavens. "Jesus Christ."

"Yeah. Exactly."

Jonathan wiped crumbs on his jeans. "Just stick with it, man. It's just a matter of wading through all the woe-is-me bullshit and finding his weak spot."

"He is a weak spot," Eddie insisted, arms flung out. "He's like—a walking, human bruise. I don't even know why I have to do all of this extra shit. We already have all the information we need to knock over the pedestal he sits on like some kind of—Calvin Klein cryptid."

Jonathan jabbed the notebook with his pen. "Because we need more information for our brainstorming!"

"How much more information? I miss sitting at home. Alone. On my bed. Smoking a joint in peace. This is a full-time fucking job."

Jonathan leaned forward, eyes narrowing with purpose. "Eddie. Need I remind you that this is the same guy who called you 'Freak' so often that people started using it as a substitute for your actual name? Who, in sophomore year, glued the pages of your sketchbook shut the day before you had to hand it in for grading so you failed? Who told the entire cheer squad that you live in a van behind the school?"

Eddie winced. "I forgot about that."

"Who—publicly berated you? Laughed at you? Insulted you? Physically hurt you? Since freshman year?" Jonathan pressed, voice hardening.

"I know."

"He purposely called Robin the wrong name in algebra for a whole year and laughed every single time Carol made fun of her clothes. She said she looks like she raided the lost and found at a truck stop. She thinks about it every single time she looks in the mirror to this day. They've shoved me into lockers and called me a creep so many times I lost count. He's the one who sat by and let Tommy spread that bullshit rumour about the whole locker room—"

"Okay, okay! I get it!" Eddie snapped, louder than intended. His voice echoed under the bleachers. "Can we stop bringing that up? Jesus." He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing.

Jonathan sighed and settled back on his hands.
"It's not a single big stab. It's a hundred little cuts—public jokes, whispers, staged embarrassment. That's what they do. They make you seem ridiculous and then everyone goes along because it's easier than being the odd one out."

Eddie glanced down at the dirt. "I just didn't realise you were keeping score like that. You didn't seem to care that much when I brought it up the first time."

"Of course I cared," Jonathan said, soft but firm. "I just thought it was hopeless. Now I know he's easily breakable. I keep score because the pattern matters. This isn't a single mean-boy moment. It's a habit. Little, lateral cruelties that build a wall around you. He's a jerk with good hair and a permanent hall pass. That's all he's ever been."

"Yeah, I guess." Eddie's voice was smaller now.
Jonathan nudged him.

"I'm just reminding you why we're doing this. This isn't just for you, it's for us. You have him in the palm of your hand right now. He's scared of you. You have leverage. Use it. Plus you're the one who said you wanted to ruin his life."

"Yeah, because I was mad. I'd just dropped to the floor like a sack of shit in front of everyone. It wasn't exactly a prime moment for me to be making rational decisions."

"Then get mad again," Jonathan urged, eyebrows raised.

A head suddenly popped between the bleacher slats, nearly causing Eddie to fling his sandwich into the stratosphere.

"What are we talking about?" Robin asked.

"Jesus!" Eddie clutched his chest.

"Nothing!" Jonathan blurted, sitting up ramrod straight.

Robin's eyes narrowed, suspicious and hungry.
"Mhm. Sure." She ducked, sitting herself down cross-legged opposite them.

Robin pointed at the notebook accusingly.
"What's this?"

Eddie and Jonathan both jolted like they'd been caught writing ransom notes.

"English—project." Eddie blurted.
"Science homework," Jonathan said simultaneously, voice cracking.

Robin blinked once, slowly, then grabbed the notebook before either of them could react.
"Leave it!" Jonathan lunged uselessly, fingertips grazing air.

Robin held the notebook like she'd found nuclear codes. "'Operation Destroy Steve Harrington's Life?'" she read aloud, eyebrows rising so high they practically hit the bleachers. "You can't seriously still be going on about this."

Jonathan huffed, exhaustedly.
"We're making progress."

"Progress?" Robin repeated. "What progress?"

"Slow progress. But progress." Jonathan gestured helplessly toward Eddie. "Eddie's been hanging out with him practically all week."

Robin's head snapped toward Eddie so sharply he felt it. "What? Where? Why?"

"I dunno." Eddie scratched behind his ear, avoiding both of their eyes. "We just—drive around."

Jonathan jabbed a finger in Eddie's direction.
"He was supposed to be getting vital intel to help us take him down. Probing him. But instead he just sits there not doing anything."

Eddie threw both arms out defensively.
"I don't know what you want from me! He gives me nothing! He's miserable! He's a closeted gay guy living in a town in butt-fuck nowhere who clearly bullies people and pretends to sleep with people to keep everyone from knowing! That's it! It's a tale as old as time! He's not special!"

Robin tossed the notebook into the dirt between them like it offended her. "You're doing it all wrong."

"What?" Eddie's eyebrows shot up.

"This plan. It's all wrong. This isn't going to work." She popped open her Tupperware of carrot sticks like that settled the matter.

"We haven't even fully started yet," Jonathan muttered defensively.

Robin stared at them blankly. "Yeah. I can tell. Because you two are operating on a Steve Harrington from, like, sophomore year. 'King Steve.' Big man on campus. Says something mean, everyone laughs, he struts around basking in the glow of his own hair." She stabbed a carrot stick at the air like she was delivering a prophecy.
"That Steve is dead."

Eddie gawked. "What are you talking about? He's right where he always is. Laughing. Basking."

Robin flapped a hand dismissively. "No. That's a hologram of Steve. A Steve-shell. Steve Classic used to bully people personally. But now? He's outsourced."

Jonathan squinted, leaning in. "Outsourced?"

"Yes!" Robin said, exasperated. "Haven't you noticed? Think about the last time he actually threw an insult your way that wasn't prompted."

Eddie opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "Well—he said that thing about my shirt—"

"After Tommy told him to," Robin snapped. "He only piles on when someone else starts it. It's peer pressure." She pointed to the imaginary "Harrington Ecosystem" in the dirt. "Tommy's basically his attack dog now. Carol handles the gossip. The rest of the jock brigade provides the background chorus of mooing. Steve's not the bully anymore—he's the brand."

Jonathan's face tightened in concentration.
"So—what? We can't get to him?"

"No." Robin leaned forward like the world's most terrifying strategist. "You just have to work from the outside-in."

Eddie blinked. "Meaning?"

"Meaning," Robin said, popping a carrot in her mouth, "you don't go after Steve first. You go after the people who orbit him. You undermine the ecosystem before you topple the king. You make his crew confused, paranoid, disloyal. You separate the herd."

Jonathan sat up straighter, eyes gleaming.
"Divide and conquer."

"Exactly." She flicked her wrist with casual menace. "Drive wedges. Make Tommy doubt Steve. Make Carol doubt Tommy. Make their friends wonder if Steve said something behind their backs. They implode, and once the foundation cracks, Steve just—"

Eddie's eyes fall to her hand as she limply flicks her wrist.

"—falls through the floor."

Eddie stared at her. "Jesus. Remind me never to piss you off."

Robin shrugged. "I'm tired, I'm gay, and I spent three years watching those idiots toss my gym shoes in the trash. I have notes."

Jonathan nodded, impressed. "Okay—so outside-in. Step one?"

"You start with Tommy," Robin said. "He's insecure, jealous, and two brain cells short of understanding nuance. Manipulate him and the whole social pyramid buckles."

"And once Tommy goes down..." Jonathan began.

"Steve's stranded," Robin finished. "Cut off from his power supply. And then? You can take him apart cleanly."

Eddie rubbed his face, overwhelmed.
"Okay, that's all well and good, but how exactly do we do that?"

Jonathan snapped his fingers.
"Maybe, like—planting a seed that Steve and Carol hooked up or something. Tommy finds out, gets jealous, rages, Tommy and Steve fight, the pack fractures."

Eddie winced, shoulders lifting.
"I don't know. Starting a turf war over a fake hookup is—intense."

"I mean, we just established that Tommy's ego is fragile," Robin said, punctuating each point by waving a carrot stick. "If we make him think Steve slept with Carol—someone Tommy thinks is 'his' social territory—he'll explode. Everyone will pick sides. Steve's got to defend himself to the guys, and if his defense looks like he's covering something, they'll sniff it out. It splinters the pack."

Jonathan leaned back with a wicked grin. "We could just—leave an anonymous note in Tommy's locker."

"Yeah," Robin nodded, chewing thoughtfully. "We could keep watch and wait for snack period. We slip the note in."

Eddie stared at the both of them like they'd begun speaking in ancient tongues. His sandwich drooped out of his hand.

"Steve will be isolated by suspicion," Robin continued, already mapping out the downfall with surgeon-like precision. "The guys will push him to explain, and if he stumbles—if he says anything that sounds like a cover-up—it looks worse. Even if he tells the truth, Tommy will already be grinding. Emotions override facts in high school."

Eddie held up a hand. "Okay, no. Stop."

Both heads swivelled toward him.

"What?" Jonathan asked, genuinely confused.

"I don't wanna do anything where people could actually get hurt." Eddie grimaced, rubbing his face. "That doesn't make us any better than them. Tommy's insane. That's already established. He could go completely catatonic and seriously hurt him."

Jonathan's expression sobered, shoulders sinking a touch. "We don't set anyone up for violence, Eddie. We just make him look ridiculous and shaky. Plus, this isn't set in stone. Brainstorming."

"But it is a solid idea," Robin added.

"Agreed," Jonathan nodded. "We'll pick our timing. Eddie's busy trying to get Steve to fall for him. And when he does his vulnerability will be at its peak because he'll be all mushy. And that's when we strike."

Robin jerked upright, eyes wide. "Woah, what?"
She looked to Eddie like he'd personally betrayed her.

"Jonathan. I've already said I'm not doing that," Eddie muttered, sounding exhausted down to his soul.

"We need his defences to be down!" Jonathan insisted, leaning forward.

"Then—think of something else!" Eddie snapped. "I don't want to whore myself out anymore!"

"Anymore?" Robin repeated, eyebrows climbing.

"Well—I haven't started yet but my point still stands," Eddie grumbled, arms folded.

Jonathan tapped the notebook with the enthusiasm of a man unveiling a master thesis.
"You get close to him. Like close. Make him think you're softening, that you feel bad for him. You talk, you flirt, you play nice. Then when he's finally comfortable—bam. You drop him. We swoop in. Total social assassination."

Eddie stared at him, jaw slack.
"Jonathan. I can't flirt with Steve Harrington. It's impossible. My body would physically reject it. I'd seize up. I'd break out in hives."

Jonathan laughed through his nose. "Nothing's impossible. You're dramatic, you're weirdly charming when you're not being mean, and for some reason he keeps talking to you even though you insult him all the time."

"Yeah, because I'm right," Eddie said, pointing to his own chest. "That's not flirting, that's public service."

"You just gotta dial it down from homicidal to teasing. Make him think you actually like him a little," Jonathan pressed.

"Yeah, let me just bat my eyelashes and tell him how pretty his fucking hair is." Eddie rolled his eyes so hard it nearly sprained something. "That won't be suspicious at all."

"It'll disarm him," Jonathan said simply. "He won't know what's real. You'll be in his head before he even realises it. He loses his friends, he loses you—the guy he's in love with—and his entire world falls apart. It's perfect."

Eddie's stomach dropped.

"Wait, love? How far is this going?" Robin demanded, alarm painted across her face.

"My sentiments exactly. Pray tell, Jonathan," Eddie echoed, hands thrown up.

Jonathan shrugged. "You don't actually have to sleep with him or anything. Just get close enough that he thinks you might. Make him trust you, crave you a little, maybe get a taste of something he can't have. That's where it'll sting."

"You're a sociopath," Eddie said frankly.

"No," Jonathan said calmly, picking at the edge of the notebook, "I'm strategic. Emotional destruction 101. You don't nuke someone's life—you let them hand you the detonator."

"Christ," Robin said in a low voice, like she wasn't sure she wanted to be here anymore.

"Think of it like—a science project," Jonathan continued, warming to his metaphor. "You're the experiment. He's the data."

"Great," Eddie sighed. "And when the experiment ends with him trying to get into my pants?"

Jonathan chuckled, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Then you improvise. Tell him you're not ready. Tell him you're a romantic. You're creative, man, you'll think of something."

The distant bell trilled across the field.

"Thank god I don't have to be a part of this conversation anymore," Robin said, scrambling out from under the bleachers and stalking off without looking back.

Jonathan remained seated long enough to stretch, then stood, brushing dirt from his jeans with practiced resignation. His grin sharpened as Eddie rose beside him. "Look—think bigger than just locker notes. You don't have to take him to bed to take him down. You make him betrayed. You make him confess. You make him fall for the idea of you—emotionally—and then you pull the rug."

Eddie's face contorted into pure disbelief.
"That still sounds like you want me to be his boyfriend, Jonathan."

"You don't have to be his boyfriend," Jonathan insisted. "You just have to be the person he trusts. The person he thinks sees him. He tells you everything—his stupid fears, the things he loves, his hopes, his dreams. He gives you the keys. Then you close the door."
Jonathan leaned in as they entered the hallway's fluorescent wash.
"He gets to be the pathetic one in the very medium he abused: intimacy. He loses credibility. The guys walk away. Tommy gets jealous or triumphant, Carol gossips, and the rest of the school watches a throne wobble. We leave this place next year after graduation knowing all our hard work paid off."

Eddie huffed, peeling away toward class. "Fine. Whatever. I'll work on it."

"I believe in you," Jonathan called after him, voice echoing down the corridor like a threat dressed as encouragement.

***

Steve's BMW eased into the trailer park like it always did. Slow, cautious, never too close to Eddie's place, as if parking outside his actual home might cause the car to combust. From Eddie's window, the headlights swept across his room in a soft, brief glow, announcing Steve's arrival like a ritual.

Eddie sighed, long and practiced, the kind that already carried the weight of whatever tonight would be.

He shoved his feet into his beat-up sneakers, jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, and trudged outside. Gravel crunched under his soles as he crossed the distance to the car. He opened the passenger door, slid in, and let it close with a soft thud.

Steve didn't look at him. He never did at first. Instead, he did his usual anxious sweep of the rearview mirror, then the side mirror, then the windshield, as though expecting spies in the bushes of a place no one willingly visited.

Then he drove. Also part of the routine.

Normally, within thirty seconds, Steve would crack like a shaken soda can. Something about the latest fight with his dad. About how his mother pretended not to overhear. About a D on his algebra test and how he'd probably get grounded until retirement.

Eddie had grown weirdly accustomed to just listening. Nodding. Tossing in the occasional dark joke to make Steve huff a laugh.

But tonight was different.

The stereo was off.

Steve Harrington's personal brand of quiet wasn't peaceful. It buzzed. It radiated. It pressed at Eddie's skin like static. Steve's grip on the steering wheel was too tight, his knuckles pale, his jaw clenched so sharp it could've cut glass. He didn't glance over. Not once.

Eddie stared at him, then stared out the window, then back at him, like checking for signs of life.

Nothing.

The silence thickened the longer it lasted, squeezing around them, crawling over Eddie's nerves in slow, deliberate circles. He shifted in his seat, bounced a knee, drummed fingers against his thigh, swallowed loudly just to hear something.

Still nothing.

Eventually, Steve turned into the dirt road near the junkyard, the car's tires crunching over debris. He pulled into the clearing where abandoned metal rusted lazily in the moonlight, then put the car in park. The engine ticked softly, the only sound between them.

Steve stared straight ahead, shoulders locked, breath shallow.

Eddie stared at him, throat tight.

They sat there. Silent. Unmoving.

"So—" Eddie said finally, the word dragging out of him like a reluctant confession. His fingers tapped against denim. "How was your day?"

Steve blinked, slow and startled, as if Eddie had spoken in Morse code. He turned his head an inch, but his eyes stayed glued to the center console. "My day?"

"Yeah," Eddie said, shrugging one shoulder, casual on the surface but internally gripping the wheel of panic.

"Why?" Steve asked, at last flicking his eyes up to Eddie's face.

"Because I'm making conversation, Harrington." Eddie waved a hand with performative irritation. "You haven't said a word since I got in the car. Usually you just sort of—bombard me in a relentless onslaught of things I don't care about."

Steve's brows knit together, confusion creeping in like a draft. "Yeah, but—you don't usually ask me stuff like that." His voice was soft, uncertain.

"Well, I just did." Eddie snapped the drawstrings of his hoodie, wrapping them around his fingers.

Steve frowned harder. "Why do you care?"

"I just asked. That doesn't mean I care." Eddie said, a little too quickly.

"Then why ask?" Steve pressed, turning in his seat now, shoulders tensed and expectant.

"Jesus Christ, I was trying to be nice, alright?" Eddie's voice spiked, more defensive than loud.

Steve's arms crossed instantly, a shield. "Yeah, but you're never nice to me. That's what I'm saying."

"Well maybe I'm trying something new!" Eddie exclaimed, eyes wide like even he didn't buy what he was selling.

"Why?" Steve insisted, leaning forward, still frowning as if Eddie were a badly drawn map.

"Oh my god—does everything have to be a cross-examination with you?" Eddie huffed, letting his head fall back against the headrest with a dull thud.

Steve looked at him like Eddie was the confusing one. "I'm just saying, it's weird. You don't suddenly start being nice to someone you hate."

Eddie's face screwed up. "When did I ever say I hate you?"

"You don't have to say it for me to know. I'm not stupid," Steve scoffed, staring straight out the windshield again, jaw clenched, knuckles white on his biceps.

"Okay, fine." Eddie leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Then why do you wanna spend so much time with a person that you think hates you?"

Steve's gaze dropped instantly to his hands, twisting together in his lap. He didn't answer.

"What, you're keeping an eye on me?" Eddie continued, voice sharpening with sarcasm. "Making sure I don't spill any of your dirty secrets in some Hawkins High gossip column? Transcribing our private conversations and pinning them to the bulletin board?"

"Why are you treating this like a joke? It's not." Steve's head whipped toward him, eyes bright with something close to panic. "It's serious. This is—my life. It could be the end of my life."

"I know," Eddie murmured, tension draining from his shoulders just a fraction.

"Then—stop acting like I'm just being fucking dramatic," Steve said, clipped and tight.

"I'm not going to say anything," Eddie sighed, running a hand through his curls.

"I don't know that. Not for certain," Steve shot back.

"My god." Eddie squeezed his eyes shut, nostrils flaring as he fought down a flare of temper.
"I wouldn't do that. I already said I wouldn't. I don't tend to do things to people that I wouldn't want done to me. Call it a fuckin' mantra."

He bit back the rest. I'm not like you.

"I was literally just asking you how your stupid day was," Eddie muttered.

Steve stared at him for a long beat. Then:
"It was fine."

"Great! Fantastic! Amazing!" Eddie slapped his palms against his jeans. "See how easy that was?"

Steve didn't move.

"This is the part where you ask how my day was," Eddie prompted.

Steve rolled his head along the headrest, slow and heavy, until his eyes met Eddie's.
"How was your day?" he asked, forcing a thin, strained smile.

"Fine. Thanks for asking," Eddie said sweetly, batting his eyelashes in exaggerated gratitude.

"You're welcome," Steve replied, bobbing his head pompously, his first hint of normal tonight.

Silence pooled again, but this time with a different flavour. Tense, confused, waiting.

Eddie inhaled sharply, Jonathan's words scratching at his throat. He looked out the window, grimaced, looked back at Steve.
"You look—decent today," he muttered, as if dragged through broken glass.

Steve's head snapped toward him. "Decent?"

"Good. You look good." Eddie said quickly, almost choking on it.

Steve squinted. "Why are you saying that?"

"Oh my god," Eddie snapped, lurching forward, "because it's—y'know." His hands flapped, empty of explanation. "Your hair."

"What's wrong with my hair?" he asked. His hand flew immediately to his head, fingers combing through the strands like he expected to find something broken there.

"Nothing! It's—doing the thing."

"The thing?"

"The—swoopy thing." Eddie said, gesturing frantically with his own hair, miming the motion like a madman. His fingers curled through the empty air, embarrassed by their own existence.

Steve blinked, touching the side of his head gently, smoothing an already smooth wave. "The swoopy thing?"

"Yes. The swoopy thing! It looks—nice." Eddie's voice dropped into a reluctant grumble, the words dragged unwillingly out of his chest.
"You always look nice." He said it like an accusation. Like it hurt.

Steve stared at him, head tilted slightly, lips parted as though he'd forgotten how to close them. "What the fuck is happening right now?"

Eddie groaned, dragging both palms over his face until his fingers caught in his hair. "I don't know." His voice cracked around irritation and something else. "I'm—complimenting you." He confessed through the cage of his hands.

Steve let out a soft laugh. Surprised, disbelieving. "Are you?"

"I was trying," Eddie said miserably, dropping his hands with a slap to his thighs. He rolled his eyes like they offended him. Like Steve offended him more.

Steve narrowed his eyes, studying him. "So you think I look—nice."

"Don't say it like that," Eddie snapped immediately, recoiling like Steve had poked him with a hot stick.

"Like what?"

"Like you're trying to catch me in some confession!" Eddie shot back, gesturing wildly at the empty air between them.

"I'm not—I just didn't expect you to say something like that," Steve argued, brow furrowing, voice pitching defensive.

"Yeah, well, I didn't expect it either, but here we are. Congrats. You're pretty. Can we move on now?" Eddie huffed, folding his arms and sinking so low into the seat that he practically liquefied.

For the first time all night, Steve's face softened. His lips curved. Smug, not self-satisfied, but something small and startled. "I'm pretty?"

"Yes! You're pretty, Harrington! Happy?" Eddie barked, exasperated.

"Kind of, actually," Steve said quietly, as though admitting it to himself more than to Eddie.

"It's not like you don't already know that." Eddie scoffed, turning his head to glare at the dashboard instead.

"It's just—nice to hear sometimes," Steve murmured, eyes drifting to the windshield, that shy smile flickering again. The kind of smile Eddie would deny noticing even if tortured.

"Stop smiling. You're symmetrical. I'm not made of stone," Eddie muttered, slouching further.

"I'm not smiling," Steve said, absolutely smiling.

The silence stretched after that. Eddie tried very hard not to breathe too loudly. Steve fidgeted with the keys, tapping them against the ignition. Nervous, restless.

And then, as though pulled by a current he didn't understand, Steve slowly reached across the small space between them and placed a hand on Eddie's knee. Just rested it there, feather-light, heat spreading through denim.

Eddie looked down at the hand. Looked at Steve. Then back at the hand.

He blinked once. Then twice.

Then, in a voice flatter than the Midwest:
"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

Steve jolted, snatching his hand back like he'd been burned. "Nothing. What are you doing?"

"Why did you do that?" Eddie demanded, eyebrows halfway to his hairline.

"I'm—"

"Why did you just fondle my knee?" Eddie pressed, gesturing accusingly at his own leg.

"I didn't fondle your knee," Steve said, offended, voice pitching high. "It was barely a touch."

"It's a hand. On my knee. That makes it a hand-knee situation, Harrington," Eddie shot back.

Steve huffed, cheeks coloring. "I thought you wanted to—y'know—"

"What?" Eddie asked, expression blank.

"I thought you were trying to initiate something. Like—you wanted to make out or something." Steve's voice shrank at the end, panic slipping through.

Eddie stared at him, head tilted. "Make out."

"Yeah. Maybe," Steve muttered, sinking slightly in the seat.

"How did you even come to that conclusion?" Eddie demanded, gesturing wildly toward the universe outside the windshield.

"You were being nice!" Steve insisted, motioning wildly back. "And you said I—looked good!"

"Right. Because nothing says 'kiss me' like aggressively neutral small talk and mild compliments," Eddie snapped, silently cursing Jonathan to the deepest circle of hell.

"Okay. Fine. I'm sorry," Steve exhaled, slumping back.

"S'fine," Eddie muttered, folding his arms tightly.

Silence. Again.

Then Steve inhaled, bracing.
"Can I ask a question?"

"If you absolutely must," Eddie said, monotone.

Steve's voice was tentative. "You've—had sex with guys, right?"

Eddie blinked hard. "...Wow. Okay."

"I'm asking," Steve insisted, fingers twisting together.

"Yes, Harrington, I've had sex," Eddie said dryly. "Plural. Multiple times. Shocking, I know. Try to contain your horror."

Steve looked blindsided, blinking fast. "So you've, like... full-on... with actual guys?"

Eddie leaned back, smirking. "Yes. With actual guys. Flesh-and-blood men. Not imaginary ones. Not cardboard cutouts."

Steve flushed pink. "I didn't— I mean, I wasn't picturing cardboard—"

"You asked," Eddie reminded him, smirking. "Don't get squeamish now."

"I'm not squeamish," Steve lied, visibly squeamish.

"Uh-huh," Eddie shot back.

Steve shifted, voice small. "So you've—done it. Multiple times."

"Is there an echo in here?" Eddie asked. "Yes."

Steve stared down at his hands, jaw tightening. "Was it—good?"

Eddie snorted. "Depends on the guy. Depends on the night. Depends on whether the universe decided to cut me a break. But yeah. Sometimes it's good."

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek. "Wow."

Eddie raised a brow. "What? Surprised someone like me can pull?"

"No!" Steve said quickly. "No, I just—I didn't think it'd be that easy."

Eddie huffed a laugh, the sound thin and wry as it drifted into the stale air of the parked BMW. He slouched deeper into the seat, one boot tapping absently against the glove compartment.
"Oh, trust me, it's not easy. Half the time it feels like espionage. But once you know where to go and the right kind of people to talk to? You manage."

Steve watched him, jaw flexing as though trying to decipher a language he didn't speak. His fingers rubbed nervously along the seam of his jeans, worrying a thread loose. "So you're—experienced."

The way he said it, soft, hopeful, almost reverent made Eddie's mouth curl. He lifted his brows, amused. "Is that you fishing for details, Harrington?"

Steve recoiled like the words had teeth. "No! No—God." He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at it in frustration. The gesture made his shoulders slump. "I'm just trying to understand. That's all."

"Well," Eddie said, shrugging lazily, "understand this: I'm not some hopeless virgin wandering the earth alone. I know what I'm doing."

Steve swallowed, eyes flicking away, then back. As if bracing himself. "Okay," he said quietly, "so—what if you just—slept with me?"

Eddie's spine straightened so fast it was audible. His hand slapped the side of the door as he stared at Steve like he'd grown a second head.
"I'm sorry—what?"

Steve had preemptively lifted his hands slightly in surrender, but Eddie was already plastered against the passenger door, legs drawn in like he was preparing for escape.
"Just—hear me out"—

"No. Absolutely not. Zero hearing." Eddie cut in, palms raised.

"Munson, I can't be nineteen and still a virgin," Steve blurted, voice cracking on the word virgin. "It's embarrassing."

Eddie shook his head violently.
"No it isn't. Jesus was way into his 30's and still a virgin. You're fine."

Steve groaned, throwing his head back against the headrest with a dull thud. "Come on, man. You're experienced. You clearly—know what you're doing."

"Oh my god, don't say it like that!" Eddie yelled, slapping a hand over his own face.

Steve threw his arms out. "Like what?"

"Like you're asking me for some kind of—small favour. Like helping you move a couch."

"It is kind of like a favour." Steve said, shrugging one shoulder, trying for nonchalance and failing spectacularly.

"No it is not a favor! A favour is lending someone a tape deck or giving them a ride, not—whatever this is!"

Steve's fingers scraped through his hair again, frustrated. "I just thought maybe you could help me. You know. Get it over with."

Eddie let out a sputtering scoff, body twisting in disbelief. "Get it over with'—wow, you really know how to flatter a guy."

"I didn't mean it like that!" Steve insisted, staring hard at the roof as if divine intervention might descend through the upholstery.

"Then how did you mean it, Harrington? Walk me through the logic."

Steve's voice softened, tilted toward vulnerability he clearly hated. "If my first time is gonna be weird anyway, it might as well be with someone who won't make it worse."

Eddie stared, horrified. His whole face scrunched. "I am not your gay training wheels."

"I never said you were!" Steve shot back.

"You implied it!"

"I did not!"

"You did! You absolutely did! You basically called me the DMV of sex!"

Steve blinked, baffled. "What does that even mean?"

"It means I am not administering your road test!"

Steve groaned loudly, dragging both hands down his face. "I'm not asking for romance, Munson. I'm just asking for—help."

"Help," Eddie repeated, flat as concrete.

Steve leaned forward suddenly, hands slicing through the air. "You think I want this? You think I want to be sitting here asking you this? This is—fucking humiliating."

"Yeah. It is! That part I'm with you on."

Steve rubbed his palms over his eyes, defeated.
"Look, you don't have to freak out. It was just an idea."

"A bad one." Eddie said sharply.

"Okay! Fine! Forget it!" Steve barked, voice tight.

"Oh, trust me, I am already trying to scrub it from my memory with bleach." Eddie muttered.

Steve crossed his arms, turning toward the windshield, lower lip tightening in a wounded line. "You don't have to be such a jerk about it."

"I'm being a reasonable human being about it! That was a nuclear-level proposition! That's a big deal, Harrington. I don't typically make a habit out of taking people's virginities as favours like I'm collecting fucking trading cards!" Eddie exclaimed, hands flying.

"Not nuclear—"

"Nuclear." Eddie snapped.

Steve huffed, chest rising and falling unevenly. "Alright. Message received."

"Good," Eddie said, twisting away, forehead almost pressed to the cold glass of the passenger window.

A taut, miserable silence settled. Steve's breathing was sharper now. Short, offended inhales. "Fine," he said stiffly.

He reached forward, jamming the key into the ignition. The engine growled awake again.
Steve shifted the car into gear with unnecessary force.

"What are you doing?" Eddie asked, startled, head whipping toward him.

"Taking you home." Steve muttered, already rolling forward. His jaw was clenched hard enough that the muscle fluttered. He didn't look at Eddie. Not once.

Eddie opened his mouth, then shut it.

The BMW picked up speed, each turn a little sharper than it needed to be. Not reckless, but undeniably sulky.

Steve's profile was a stubborn silhouette against the glow of the street lamps. Eddie stared at him for a full thirty seconds, watching every twitch of Steve's fingers on the wheel, every flicker of his lashes as he pretended not to feel watched.
Finally, Eddie blurted, voice slicing through the quiet: "Why are you pissed?"

Steve's hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles a sharp white. "I'm not," he said instantly, too quickly, like a kid insisting he hadn't been crying.

"Yes you are." Eddie pressed, leaning forward, eyes narrowing.

"I said I'm—" Steve's voice jumped, loud and defensive, before he cut himself off. His shoulders rose, then dropped on a sharp exhale through his nose. "I'm not pissed."

Eddie cocked his head, watching him. "Are you seriously that upset because I said no to sleeping with you?"

"I'm not upset," Steve snapped, his whole body stiffening as if bracing for impact. He kept his eyes locked on the windshield, cheeks hot, pride hotter. "I'm fine."

He muttered something under his breath, too soft to catch, though Eddie caught the shape of the self-pity in Steve's mouth.

They drove in silence the rest of the way. Eddie could feel every small motion Steve made. The irritated shove of the gearshift, the rigid line of his spine, the way he blinked too often like he was stopping himself from looking over.

When they reached the familiar turn into the trailer park, Steve pulled into the same worn patch of gravel he always did, the headlights tossing long shadows across Eddie's front steps. The engine ticked in cooling pings.

"Alright," Eddie said as the car rolled to a stop. He unbuckled slowly, sarcasm his only remaining armor. "Well—this has been—a treat. Truly."
He reached for the door handle.

"I'll pay you," Steve said abruptly.

Eddie froze. His hand slipped off the handle like it had burned him. "I'm sorry—what?"

Steve's eyes went huge, face flushing a frantic red. "Not—not like that. Jesus. No. I didn't mean—God." He dragged both hands over his face, rubbing furiously as though trying to erase himself. "I meant—I'll do whatever you want."

Eddie stared, unblinking, caught between horror and disbelief.

Steve huffed through clenched teeth, leaning back in the seat like he was about to combust.
"I'm just saying—I'm serious. I need help. I don't know what I'm doing. With any of this. And you're the only person I can—talk to. You're the only person who gets it. And trust me, I wish that wasn't the case but it is." His voice vibrated with something raw and dangerous.

"So that means that naturally you would try to hire me for sex?" Eddie asked, voice flat.

"I'm not trying to—" Steve stopped himself, squeezing his eyes shut. "This wasn't how I wanted it to go. I had—a plan—"

"A plan? A plan of what?" Eddie's voice rose, incredulous.

"On how to ask you!" Steve exploded, hands flying up before falling defeatedly onto the wheel. He was breathing like he'd sprinted across town.
"Okay—okay, listen. I mean it. I'll do whatever you want. I'll get Tommy to lay off you—"

"What?" Eddie snapped, eyes narrowing.

"I'll tell him to stop messing with you! And Carol too. I'll make them quit it." Steve said quickly, leaning forward urgently like if he physically moved closer Eddie might understand.

"Oh my god," Eddie muttered, dragging a hand down his face. "Is this your negotiation tactic?"

"I'm trying," Steve hissed back, voice cracking with frustration. "I'm giving you—stuff you want!"

"I don't want your little popularity coupons, Harrington," Eddie scoffed, a laugh bursting out of him despite himself.

"I'm offering incentives!"

"Dude," Eddie said flatly, "you're offering loyalty points."

Steve ignored the jab completely, desperation pooling bright in his eyes. "I'm just saying I can fix things! I can make your life easier if you just help me with this one thing!"

"I don't need my life 'fixed,' Harrington."

Steve threw his hands up, helpless and agitated.
"I just—I'm offering what I have!"

"And what you have," Eddie said, pinching the bridge of his nose with a pained groan, "is a bunch of petty social bribes I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole."

Steve let out a sharp scoff, rolling his eyes hard. "Oh, give me a break."

Eddie blinked slowly. "Excuse me?"

"Don't act like all this stuff wouldn't help you out," Steve snapped, crossing his arms like a sulky prince mid-tantrum. "Like—come on, Munson. You wouldn't get shoved into lockers, or tripped, or have random crap thrown at you. You'd actually get to eat lunch like a normal person instead of in that—little corner."

"My 'little corner' is a table, Harrington," Eddie said pointedly.

"By the fucking waste station. Nobody wants to sit there." Steve gestured angrily toward nothing in particular, hair bouncing with the force of it.
"Point is—you pretend you don't give a shit, but you do."

"Is that right?" Eddie let out a tight, humorless laugh.

"Yes," Steve snapped. His eyes were bright now. Hurt, angry, pleading all at once. "You'd love it if Tommy shut his mouth. You'd love it if Carol stopped making those faces at you. You'd love it if people didn't look at you like you were contagious."

Eddie's eyebrows flew up. "Wow. Incredible. Truly. Please, go on. Tell me more about my tragic existence."

Steve threw a hand out, fingers trembling.
"I'm being honest. You could have it better. And I'm saying I can—help with that!" His voice dropped low, furious and desperate.
"You always say I'm shallow, so I'm just using the only tools in my toolbox."

"Yeah, well your toolbox sucks," Eddie said, leaning back with a sneer.

"You're impossible," Steve scoffed, flinging an arm over the steering wheel.

"I'm impossible?" Eddie's voice cracked upward. He pointed at Steve like accusing him of arson. "I'm impossible? You're offering me fucking cafeteria immunity in exchange for sex!"

Steve screwed his face up, cheeks blotchy with humiliation. "You have this—this whole thing where you pretend you're above everything and nothing bothers you and it's bullshit. You don't get to stand there and act like you wouldn't enjoy even one day of people treating you like you're not a joke."

Eddie stared, stunned into silence. The words hung between them, vibrating like struck metal.

"And I could do that for you!" Steve insisted, chin lifting, eyes blazing with some stubborn, reckless sincerity.

Eddie shook his head slowly, breath shaky.
"God, this is fucking insane."

Steve turned toward him, eyes wide, breath shallow.
"Why is it insane?"

The dull orange glow from the junkyard lights flickered over Steve's face, making every twitch of his jaw look sharper, more volatile. Steve's hands were braced on the steering wheel, knuckles flushed, the tendons in his forearm pulled taut as wire.

"Oh, you wanna know why this is insane?" he snapped, leaning forward, voice so sharp the air seemed to flinch. Steve's head jerked a little, eyes flicking to Eddie's mouth, then away.
"Fine. I'll tell you why. Because you, Steve Harrington—are exactly the kind of guy who built this whole personality out of being shallow and mean and pretending that's the same thing as charisma."

Steve stiffened, shoulders rising like he'd been struck.

"You walk around acting like the world is your personal red carpet. Like you're made of gold and everyone else is just background noise. And it's all just—this huge cover, right? This giant, shiny, hairsprayed shield to hide the fact that you're terrified someone might actually see who you are underneath."

Steve bristled instantly, the muscle in his cheek jumping. "That's not—"

"You're spiteful," Eddie threw back, so close now that Steve had nowhere to look but directly at him.

Steve's nostrils flared. Offence, indignation, something almost wounded, but he didn't speak.

"Don't look offended, it's true. You get petty when you're scared, and you get mean when you're cornered, and you hide behind people like Tommy because God forbid you ever face anything alone." Eddie's voice was low now, seething.  "And you've been like that forever, man. Since freshman year. Since before that, probably. And it all makes sense now." Eddie let out a small laugh—dark, disbelieving.
"You spend all your time pretending you're untouchable and then the second something cracks? You lose your mind. You scramble. You panic. You throw out bribes and insults and any pathetic thing you can reach for because the idea of not being in control for five minutes makes your head explode."

Steve's eyes darted across Eddie's face, searching, almost pleading for a version of himself that wasn't being skinned alive in the passenger-side glow.

"You're like—you're like a vending machine full of ego. You only have two buttons: 'smug' and 'defensive,' and both of them spit out bullshit." Eddie shook his head, curls brushing his cheek. "You're terrified someone might actually get close enough to see you're not some monster. You're not. I know you're not. You're just some fucking guy who somehow became the king without ever having done anything to deserve it apart from winning in some genetic lottery and making people afraid of you. The legend." Eddie exhaled hard, jaw tight.
"And that's worse. You're just a scared, lonely nineteen-year-old who's been propped up by assholes for so long you think it's structural support."

Steve swallowed, hard. A flush crept up his neck, high and hot. He looked like he wanted to argue. Wanted to fight. But the words didn't come.

Eddie kept going, the momentum carrying him like a runaway train. "And now suddenly you want me to think you're deep? Or complicated? No. I'm not buying it. Not for one second. Because every time you open your mouth, you prove exactly who you are. And you've been proving it for years."

The silence that followed was a drop into water. Total, enveloping, disarming. Steve's chest rose and fell like he'd been sprinting; his fingers flexed on the steering wheel, then released it entirely, dropping helplessly into his lap.

Eddie finished with a sharp exhale.

"Are you done?" Steve asked. Rough, frayed, like the words scraped coming out.

"Why? You got a comeback you've cooked up in that pretty, empty skull of yours?" Eddie pushed.

But Steve didn't answer.

He moved.

A sudden lurch forward, hands cupping Eddie's jaw with a desperation that felt almost violent.

Before Eddie could react, Steve kissed him. Hard, hot, fierce, breath shaking against Eddie's mouth. His fingers dug into Eddie's jawline like he needed something to anchor himself to, something real. Something that had teeth.

Eddie felt the tremor in his hands, the ragged, startled breath he exhaled as if he'd been drowning for years and finally surfaced.

Eddie ripped back a few inches, breathing sharp, eyes blown wide. "The fuck are you doing?"

Steve's lips were red, swollen, parted. He didn't flinch.

"You want to do your whole—psychoanalysis thing? Fine. Here's mine." His voice was rough, gravelled by something that felt too big to swallow. "You act like you're the patron saint of honesty, but you're full of shit. You pretend you're better than everyone, like you're above all the petty high school crap, like you float around on some moral cloud looking down at everybody—when really? You're exactly like me."

"I am nothing like—" Eddie started, fire sparking in his throat.

"Yes. You. Are." Steve leaned in, eyes blazing like he could burn Eddie open with just a look.
"You're mean as hell, Munson. Meaner than me sometimes. The only difference is I admit I'm an asshole. You dress yours up like it's some intellectual personality trait."

Eddie's mouth opened, closed. No retort strong enough to cut through the heat of Steve's gaze.

"You push everyone away before they can even get close. And you call it self-preservation, but it's just fear. Same as mine. You think you're too good for people because you're terrified they won't want you if you actually try. You stand in those hallways like the world already rejected you, so you beat everyone to it."
His voice cracked.
"You're lonely as shit, just like I am, but at least I don't pretend I'm okay with it."

Eddie's throat tightened; he couldn't tell if it was anger or something much worse.

"You think you cornered the market on being alone? You think being poor or weird or whatever gives you some kind of monopoly on loneliness? Guess what—my house is huge and empty and cold as hell, and my parents don't even know what grade I'm in. So don't act like you've got a trademark on feeling like shit."

Eddie's breath stuttered. He said nothing.

Steve huffed out a humorless breath, eyes glassy without tears. "You're just like me. You hate people because you're scared they'll see you. And you hate me because I see you anyway."
He swallowed, jaw trembling for the smallest second.
"And I hate you because you figured it out. And I can't even say the—word without choking on it."

Eddie stared at him, heart rattling against his ribs.

"Well?" Steve pressed, voice thinning. "You gonna yell at me or—"

"Shut up." Eddie said fiercely.

"Wh—"

Eddie grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, yanked him forward, and they crashed together again. Hard, messy, furious. Teeth clacking, breath hot, Steve making a startled, involuntary sound as he clutched Eddie's hoodie like he was bracing for impact. Like he didn't know whether to fight or fall into him.

The car had never felt so small, so stifling. Like it had folded itself around them the moment their mouths collided. Their breath fogged the windows in soft, uneven clouds, the trailer parks distant porch lights throwing long, tremulous shadows across Steve's face.

They kissed for a long time. Long enough for Eddie to lose track of where his own breath ended and Steve's began, long enough for Steve's hands to find his hoodie and cling like he was afraid Eddie might vanish.

Steve kissed like someone starved, clumsy at first, then urgent, then desperate in a way that felt older than him.

Eddie pulled back suddenly, chest heaving.
"Okay. Okay—shit."

Steve froze, wide-eyed, pupils swallowing whatever brown was left. "Wh—what? What's wrong?"

Eddie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes flicking to their surroundings. The empty benches, the dark living-rooms, the nowhere-ness of the trailer park. "Nothing's wrong. Just—get in the back."

"...What?" Steve asked slowly, like the words had been delivered in another language.

"Get in the back seat." Eddie said, breathless, voice pushed out through tight ribs.

Steve let out a nervous, incredulous laugh. "Wait, wait, wait—hold on—what are you—what are we doing?"

"Giving you what you wouldn't shut up about wanting." Eddie said flatly.

Steve blinked, spine going rigid. "I—I didn't think you'd actually—"

"What?" Eddie asked, brows knitting with impatience.

"I didn't mean— I mean I meant it but not—like—" Steve stammered, voice tripping over itself.

"Harrington. Get in. The back." Eddie said, lowering his head and locking eyes with him like a dare.

Steve's throat bobbed.
"Oh. You're serious."

"Yeah," Eddie quipped, sharp, breath still shaky.

"Okay." Steve nodded, too fast, too tight, still processing.

He climbed over the console with all the grace of a newborn fawn, elbowing the horn as it honked pathetically, muttering apologies to no one.

Eddie followed, knees bumping, sleeves catching, both of them awkward as hell in the cramped space.

Steve settled against the seat, hair mussed, cheeks flushed. "Okay, it's just, uh—I thought it would be—y'know on a bed, or—or in a house. Or with—lighting."

"Well, my uncle's inside. I don't really feel like explaining this to him. Do you?" Eddie asked, breath coming out through his nose as he manoeuvred himself beside him.

"No," Steve said instantly, small, terrified.

"Well then." Eddie murmured, leaning forward and catching Steve's mouth again.

Steve let out a small, involuntary whimper, fingers rising to Eddie's cheek, thumb pressing into his jaw like he was trying to memorize the shape of him. Eddie felt the shiver travel down Steve's arm, the way his mouth opened too eagerly, too grateful.

Steve was a good kisser. He hated that he noticed that.

Eddie slid a hand down Steve's side, feeling the jump of muscle under cheap cotton. He grabbed Steve's thigh, squeezed, then dragged his thumb along the inside of it, making Steve jolt and swallow a gasp into Eddie's mouth.

Steve kissed him harder after that. Like that one touch had unlatched something.

Eddie broke away, breath hot, Steve's lips chasing him instinctively before he realized Eddie was shifting.

Steve watched as Eddie kicked off his shoes, each thud hitting the floor with too-loud finality.

"Aren't people gonna see us?" Steve whispered, voice tiny, like a kid afraid of the dark.

Eddie didn't look up as he unbuckled his belt.
"It's dark. It's a trailer park. Most people here are either geriatric and in bed by eight or drunk out of their minds and passed out on the couch. Trust me. We're fine. I've done this before."

"Which part?" Steve asked, swallowing hard.

Eddie sighed through his nose. "Look, if you don't wanna do this—"

"I do," Steve said quickly, too quickly, almost tripping over the words.

"Okay, but—if you're having second thoughts just—say the word. We can stop."

"I know." Steve nodded, breathing hard.

"Okay." Eddie echoed, quieter. "Take 'em off." He gestured vaguely toward Steve's sweatpants. Steve obeyed. Silently. Nervously. Hands fumbling.

Eddie shifted to the side with a soft grunt, pulling his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. He flipped it open, retrieved a condom, and passed it to Steve without ceremony.
"Here."

"You keep one in your wallet?" Steve asked, staring at it like it was an ancient artifact.

"Yeah." Eddie shrugged, shucking his jeans off his hips and down his thighs. Steve stared at him openly.
"What? It pays to be prepared."

The car was nearly black inside. Only the streetlamp slanting through the window lit their bare legs, their uncertain hands.

Steve tore the condom open with his teeth, making a face as the foil slipped. He shook the condom out and stared at it like it might give him instructions. The thing drooped limply between his fingers.

Eddie watched him flail, eyebrows rising.
"Do you—"

"I know how to put it on. I've been in health class." Steve snapped through clenched teeth.

"Alright. Just checking." Eddie said, pulling his jeans off the remainder of the way and kicking them off by the ankles.

He leaned back, arms folded, trying very hard not to enjoy watching him struggle.

But Steve was struggling. Badly.

Eddie side-eyed him as Steve fought the condom like it was trying to escape him.
"Shit," Steve muttered, breath shaky. He glared at Eddie. "Can you stop watching me? You're throwing me off."

"Okay. Sorry." Eddie said, hands lifted in surrender, but his voice shook with silent laughter.

A moment passed. Two. Five.

Eddie huffed. "I can help—"

"I don't need help. I'm fine. I'm just—my hands are shaking. Low blood pressure or something." Steve said, dismissive and probably dying inside as much as Eddie was.

Eddie rolled his eyes, jaw tight.

"Okay. I think I got it." Steve announced finally, breathless, triumphant, completely disheveled.

"Great," Eddie exhaled, long and sharp, before pushing himself forward. First a reluctant scoot, then another. By the time he reached the center, he hesitated. Just long enough for the absurdity to sting, then shifted one leg over Steve's lap, then the other, clumsy and graceless in the cramped space.

The move wasn't smooth; it was more of an improvised climb, an awkward negotiation with gravity and poor life choices, until finally he ended up straddling Steve, breath unsteady, face too close, like neither of them quite believed he'd actually done it.

Steve stiffened beneath him, back hitting the seat with a soft thud, eyes blown wide and glassy like he'd stumbled into someone else's dream.

Eddie cleared his throat, awkwardly. "You okay?" He asked, searching his face for any sign of retreat.

Steve nodded, just barely. His throat bobbed.
"Yeah. Fine. I'm fine." It came out as a whisper. "Are you?" he tried, small, earnest, terrified.

"Oh yeah. Just—y'know. Trying hard not to think really." Eddie offered him a thin-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes before leaning in, close enough for him to feel the brush of Steve's breath against his cheek.

Eddie reached down, shifting Steve's boxers with a rough, practical tug, eyes flicking to the tangle of fabric around Steve's thighs.
"This is gonna be a bitch," Eddie muttered, mostly to himself.

"Why?" Steve asked, voice cracking up the middle.

"Oh y'know. Confined space. My lack of coordination. Your lack of lubrication. Perfect recipe for a great time." Eddie said casually, as though he were commenting on the weather.

Steve winced. "Sorry."

"S'fine." Eddie assured, except it sounded nothing like assurance, more like resignation.

He lifted himself to adjust, misjudged the distance, and cracked the back of his skull on the car roof. "Ow. Jesus." His face scrunched, eyes squeezing shut. "This is harder than I thought it would be."

Steve blinked at him. "You just said you've done this before." His voice trembled with a new worry.

"Yeah, but like—in the back of a van. Not in a fucking car the size of a broom closet." Eddie grunted, reaching back, bracing one palm against the window while the other fumbled between them. He was balancing his entire body weight on quivering thigh muscles, brow furrowed in concentration. "Can you at least fucking hold your dick? Why am I doing all the work?"

"Oh. Sorry." Steve said immediately, startled into action. He reached down clumsily, fingers brushing Eddie's hips in apology before spreading his legs wider, too wide, nearly pitching Eddie off balance.

"Jesus—" Eddie gripped Steve's shoulders for leverage, trying to regain his center of gravity.

He knew this wasn't going to be pleasurable. Good wasn't even on the table. Mechanics alone were a battlefield: cramped space, awkward angles, the backseat springs groaning in protest.

Jonathan's whole master plan had sounded deranged but at least structured: flirt a little, get in his head, build tension like you're setting a booby trap. Make Steve work for it. Make him fall. But none of that had happened.

Eddie hadn't even had to try. One lousy compliment, one moment of not biting his head off, and Steve had folded like wet cardboard. Desperate, eager, terrified, practically begging for any scrap of attention. Pathetic, Eddie thought. Pathetic in a way that made Eddie's stomach twist, because it wasn't the pathetic you could laugh at. It was the kind that made you feel like kicking the ground for looking.

Beneath all the hair and the swagger and the stupid perfect face, Steve Harrington wasn't some untouchable golden boy Jonathan imagined taking down. Eddie knew that already. But not like this. He was a lonely, scared kid sitting in the backseat of his own car, waiting for someone as low down on the pecking order as Eddie, to want him back. And somehow, that made the entire thing feel ten times worse.

Eddie's hand moved blindly, trying to guide them into some semblance of alignment, his fingertips brushing clumsily, searching for the right spot and missing it more than once.

"Stop moving," Eddie hissed, his breath a warm rush against Steve's neck.

"I'm not!" Steve protested, though his entire body trembled like a live wire.

"Yes you are!" Eddie barked, shifting again, planting a knee more firmly into the seat for leverage. His palm slid down Steve's chest, steadying himself. He inhaled, one steady breath, exhaled through his nose.
"Okay. I think I got it."

And for one suspended second, they were perfectly still. Breath interwoven, limbs tense, that charged moment before the world tipped over the edge.

There was no grace or enjoyment to it; only the precarious choreography of two people doing something they had not, in any universe, been built to do together.

He reached behind himself, spreading himself with a practiced but reluctant precision, posture taut with concentration. His other palm, flat and steady, held him upright against the seat as he began to lower himself.

"Stop." Steve's voice cracked. Soft but urgent, his eyes snapping to the window.

Eddie froze mid-descent, bracing muscles trembling. "You good?"

"A porch light just went on," Steve whispered, like the world outside had teeth.

"They're motion sensor. Probably a raccoon or something." Eddie muttered, leather squeaking beneath his knee.

"Just—wait." Steve's hand shot up to Eddie's chest, warm and shaking. His palm pressed flat, a boundary and a plea. Eddie rolled his eyes skyward, hanging suspended for a few seconds like a marionette held by the chest.

"Okay. Fine," Steve breathed, lowering his hand.
And Eddie sank down.

A sharp, burning intrusion. One he'd forgotten the specifics of until this exact second, threaded its way through him. Not unbearable, just a hot, insistent reminder of muscles stretching around someone else for the first time in too long.

His jaw locked. His breath caught. He stared over Steve's shoulder at the fogging window like it would offer a distraction.

"Jesus Christ," Steve hissed, his grip clamping around Eddie's waist with sudden, desperate fingers. "Okay. Okay, okay, okay—" he rambled, eyes crushed shut.

"Can you stop talking? I'm trying to focus." Eddie muttered through clenched teeth.

"Sorry, I'm just—" Steve swallowed hard, breathing through his nose like a man preparing for impact. "Okay. Okay. This is actually happening."

Eddie sank down fully and felt something like a bloom. Unpleasant, pressurised, but grounding. Terribly real. The kind of sensation that forced him to exist in his body whether he wanted to or not.

And Steve? God, Steve gasped like someone had switched his lungs to manual. His hand flew up, slapping flat against the window, palm squeaking faintly as his head fell back. "Oh my god."

"Harrington." Eddie muttered with a grimace.

Steve looked wrecked. Halfway to throwing up, halfway to blind euphoria. His face pinched, breath punching out of him in bursts.
"Shit," Steve seethed, bowing forward until his forehead pressed into Eddie's chest, his hair brushing Eddie's chin.

"What?" Eddie demanded.

"Shit, shit, shit—" Steve's hands tightened on Eddie's hips. "Oh my god. No."

Then he went still. Completely still.

"What?" Eddie repeated, fear creeping in.

"No, no, no, no—"

"What the fuck is happening? I haven't even started," Eddie snapped, voice climbing in alarm.

Steve didn't lift his head; he just stayed buried against him like he was hiding from the world.
"I'm sorry," Steve said, resignation flattening his tone.

"For what?" Eddie asked, dread already forming.

Steve lifted his head slowly, eyes squeezed shut like the confession hurt. "I, uh—" His throat bobbed. "I think I just—" He finally forced himself to look up at Eddie. "Y'know."

"Already? Seriously?" Eddie seethed, each word hitting like a slap.

"Wh—what do you mean 'already'?" Steve asked, horrified.

"Harrington. That was—five seconds."

"It was not five seconds."

"I barely even pulled my fucking pants down."

"Okay, well—time moves differently when you're under pressure!"

"What pressure?! We were literally just—I didn't even start doing anything yet!"

"Oh my god. Kill me." Steve groaned, letting his head thunk back against the seat, mortification sinking into his bones.

"Jesus Christ," Eddie muttered, lifting himself off with a wince and tugging his boxers back up. His legs trembled as he moved, disgruntled and undignified. He scooted to the other end of the back seat with the energy of someone fleeing a crime scene.

"I don't know what to do with this," Steve said weakly, gesturing to his now-soft, still-condom-wrapped problem like it was a malfunctioning appliance.

"I dunno. Throw it out the window or something. Or keep it as a trophy. World's quickest orgasm." Eddie grumbled, shaking out his jeans.

"Will you stop?" Steve snapped, mortified as he peeled the condom off.

He rolled the window halfway down and, with the solemn shame of a man burying evidence, chucked it into the dark. Untied, hopelessly limp.
"Had I known this was—going to happen I would have jerked off beforehand or something."

"Yeah, like that'll help," Eddie scoffed, one humorless bark of a laugh escaping as he yanked his jeans on.

He buckled his belt with a sharp metallic click that echoed too loudly in the cramped space.

Steve sat slumped against the backseat, boxers tugged up but sweatpants still limp around his thighs, like he'd lost the energy, or the will, to complete even that much dignity.

Eddie cleared his throat. "Well"—he started, because silence was suddenly unbearable.

"Please don't," Steve said quickly, eyes screwed shut as if bracing for impact.

"I wasn't going to say anything," Eddie replied.

"You were absolutely going to say something." Steve snapped.

Eddie raked a hand through his curls, pulling them back only to let them fall forward again, the motion jittery with disbelief. A laugh slipped out of him, uncontained and slightly manic. "This is so weird."

"Yeah. Obviously." Steve's voice was clipped, thin around the edges.

"Like, so weird."

"Fully aware."

"We kissed," Eddie said, as if the words might help him categorise what the hell had just happened.

"Yep."

"And then we—"

"Do not say it," Steve warned, eyes shooting open.

"—had sex."

Steve groaned like the word physically wounded him. Eddie shrugged.

"Not good sex," he added, unable to stop himself.

"Munson." Steve shot him a look, cheeks flushed, jaw tight.

"Barely sex," Eddie smirked.

"Stop," Steve snapped.

Eddie laughed under his breath, pulling his sneakers back on as Steve just sat there.

"So, now what?" Steve asked.

Eddie lifted his hands helplessly from the laces. "I mean, I'm probably going to try to erase this from my memory."

"Right." Steve nodded, staring down at the makeshift disaster of his pants. "Do you regret it?"

"I regret the part where I did all of that and it lasted five seconds," Eddie said, tilting his head toward him with a cruel little smile.

"Oh my fucking god." Steve let his head fall back in a despairing thunk.

"I'm being honest!" Eddie said, breaking into laughter.

"Be less honest!" Steve barked back, mortified.

Silence seeped in then, thick and damp, the windows fogged and the world outside feeling impossibly far away.

"Can I just have one do-over?" Steve asked.

"No." Eddie crossed his arms, drawing an X across his chest dramatically as he laughed.

"Just—hear me out!"

"No! I'm done hearing you out tonight. This is where hearing you out has gotten me." He gestured between them with a flourish of exasperation.

"That did not count," Steve said flatly.

"It very much counted. I was there."

"I am not losing my virginity like that." Steve said lowly.

"Oh my god—" Eddie dropped his hands over his face like he wished he could press himself out of existence.

"I refuse. I refuse. That cannot be the thing I remember for the rest of my life."

"Harrington—"

"Look, not now. Not tonight. But another day. My house. My bed. With—conditions."

"Conditions?" Eddie repeated.

"Yeah. Like—you don't make fun of me. And it actually lasts longer than the time it takes to microwave popcorn. I have dignity." Steve hissed, pressing his hand to his chest.

"Debatable," Eddie snorted.

"Munson," Steve growled, low and warning.

"What makes you think I ever want to do this to myself again?" Eddie demanded.

"I don't think anything. I'm just—asking to do it—for real. Properly. The way other people get to do it. On their fucking prom night, or—like any other normal night. Not, like—this." He gestured helplessly at the backseat, the dim dome light flickering above them like even the car couldn't believe it.

"Sounds an awful lot like romance. Which is what you said you didn't want," Eddie said.

"I don't. I just—don't want it to be in the back of a car in the dark where everything's terrifying."

Eddie closed his eyes, breathing through the absurdity of all of it. "Fine!" he snapped. "You get one try. One. But I'm calling the shots."

"The shots?" Steve repeated.

"We're not doing it at your place. We're doing it here. At mine. I refuse to sneak out of your castle and—walk myself home like some kind of—dial-a-hooker when I'm doing you a favour. And I pick the day." Eddie said, jabbing a finger at himself.

"What about your uncle?" Steve frowned.

"I'll pick a night when he's at work. He works nights at the plant."

"Okay," Steve said quickly, nodding like a man accepting a sentence he wanted.

"Great," Eddie muttered, rolling his eyes as he grabbed the door handle. "Now put your pants back on, Romeo, and get off my land before I change my mind."

"Munson," Steve called after him as Eddie stepped out into the cool night air.

"Oh my god, what?" Eddie huffed, turning back.

"Thank you," Steve said.

For a moment, just a moment, Eddie's expression softened, surprise catching him unguarded.
He shook his head, retreating into gruffness.
"Whatever," he said, and slammed the door shut behind him.

In any normal universe, one governed by logic, lust, and Eddie Munson's usual brand of reckless curiosity, he wouldn't have even thought about passing this up. Not in a million years.

Sleeping with someone way out of his league? Someone with cheekbones sculpted by vengeful gods and hair so unfair it offended him on principle? Someone bratty, bitchy, gorgeous, and infuriating in all the ways that usually made Eddie sharpen his teeth?

He would've jumped at the chance.

He would've treated it like a challenge. Something to conquer, to brag about, to replay for months afterward when he was alone and bored and in need of a good memory.

But this?

This wasn't the fantasy version. This wasn't some cocky golden boy begging to be taken down a peg.

Steve Harrington looked like he'd shatter if someone breathed too hard. He was all bravado melting at the edges, all noise covering a hollow center, all want with nowhere to put it. And staring at him. Flushed, rattled, swallowing down humiliation like it burned. Eddie just felt that same sinking weight: there was no fun in this plan anymore.

No thrill.

No victory.

Just the uncomfortable truth that Steve wasn't built for the game Jonathan wanted Eddie to play. He wasn't even playing. He was just... handing himself over. And that made all of it feel less like revenge and more like cruelty.

And now he'd just signed himself up to do it all again.

That was the part Eddie couldn't wrap his head around. Not the sex—not the almost-sex—not the five-second catastrophe of it all. But the fact that he'd said yes to another round. A real one. In his room. On a night he'd choose.

It wasn't that Eddie wanted anything else to come of this. He didn't feel any particular way about Steve. Not in the way that mattered, not in the way Jonathan would crow about.

There was no great stirring in his chest, no yearning, no tragic crush blooming like a fungus. Steve Harrington was still... Steve Harrington. A problem. A headache. A walking bundle of contradictions and good hair.

But Eddie couldn't even be proud.

He couldn't even lean back and think:
Steve Harrington wanted to fuck me. Or Wow. I fucked Steve Harrington.

Because he hadn't. Not really. And what he had done, what they'd done, felt less like victory and more like being handed responsibility he'd never wanted.

He felt like he had to take care of him.

Like Steve had pressed something fragile and trembling into Eddie's palms and expected him to know what to do with it.

And suddenly Eddie was trapped in this weird, gnawing place where Steve was relying on him. Clinging to him in some unspoken, desperate way Eddie wasn't prepared for.

And then what?

What was supposed to happen after the "real" time?

After Eddie gave him what he wanted?
After he scratched "virginity" off Harrington's existential to-do list?

Did Steve go back to pretending Eddie didn't exist? Did Eddie go back to hating him? Did they sit in the front seat of his car in awkward silence forever until one of them combusted?

Eddie didn't know.

And that, somehow, was worse than everything else.

hang out with me on tumblr (and i have twitter now lmao) im very new on stan twitter pls be my friend 

Chapter Text

When Eddie opens the door, a flicker of satisfaction crosses his face. Too quick, too practiced, something he'd never admit to feeling.

Steve stands on the porch like he's not sure whether the structure will hold him. Shoulders slightly hunched, hands shoved deep into the pockets of a grey windbreaker that looks more like armor than clothing.

A single strand of hair has fallen loose over his forehead, softening him in a way he clearly doesn't intend. He glances at the door as though he's rehearsed what to say but already forgotten the lines.

"Oh, good. You do know how to read," Eddie smirks, stepping aside with the kind of theatricality that doesn't quite disguise his nerves.

"I can't believe you put a note in my locker," Steve huffs as he walks in. He surveys the cramped, over-decorated living room. The mugs piled on shelves, the hats, the tiny controlled chaos of a life that doesn't apologise for itself. The longer he looks, the more Eddie feels the air pinch around his ribs.

"And?" Eddie calls back, already making for the hallway. He moves quickly, not wanting to witness Steve's judgments. Steve follows almost automatically, feet carrying him before he seems to think about it.

"I haven't done that since, like, sophomore year," Steve snorts, the sound bouncing off the narrow walls.

"I'm sorry, was I supposed to walk up to your table at lunch and say: 'hey Steve, is tonight a good night for me to take your virginity. Again?'" Eddie throws over his shoulder.

"Will you shut up? Jesus," Steve hisses as they step into Eddie's room.

Eddie had tidied for the occasion, if changing sheets and rearranging piles of clothes counts as tidying, but the room is still unmistakably his. The old sheets, the too-flat pillows, the faint smell of must and vinyl. Steve glances around with a brief, assessing frown, and Eddie feels the warmth rise in his neck.

"We're inside. There's nobody else here," Eddie says flatly, trying to hide his own discomfort by calling out Steve's.

"Doesn't matter. These walls look—thin. You wanna full government name me out the window with a megaphone while you're at it?" Steve retorts, eyes flicking toward the nearest window concealed by old, drawn curtains like he genuinely expects it to have ears.

"Tempting," Eddie smirks.

"Whatever, man. I'm just saying," Steve mutters, brushing past a stack of records like he's afraid of touching anything for too long.

"Then say less. You're the one who wants to do this."

"Don't say it like I'm forcing you. That's weird," Steve grimaces, leaning in to squint at one of Eddie's posters with the kind of faux interest of someone meandering through a pretentious art museum.

"Well, I can think of several things I'd prefer to be doing right now. But sure. This is fine," Eddie murmurs under his breath, too low for Steve to catch it clearly.

He picks a record, sets it on the turntable, and lowers the needle. Something loud, messy, too full of guitars to leave space for thinking.

"Yeah, can we maybe not do the whole—music thing?" Steve asks, bratty in that thoughtless Harrington way that always lands just a little too hard.

"Fine." Eddie moves the needle with a stiff little huff.

Steve wanders the room with restless energy, touching nothing but looking at everything, while Eddie reaches into his bedside drawer for the practicalities. A condom, a bottle of lube with a questionable history but valid expiration date. He holds both items like they're part of a transaction rather than an encounter.

"What are all these for?" Steve asks suddenly, brushing a finger along the chains that dangle from the handcuffs hooked to Eddie's closet.

Eddie turns, snorts. "I'll tell you when you're older."

Steve rolls his eyes, and Eddie straightens, only for his expression to tighten as Steve pulls a pill packet from his back pocket and pops one into his mouth like it's breath mints.

"What was that?" Eddie asks, the frown immediate.

"What?" Steve's voice is strained as he dry swallows.

"What'd you just take?"

"Oh. I stole some of my dad's Viagra." Steve says it so casually Eddie feels something in his brain stop moving.

"You—" Eddie closes his eyes, letting the initial earthquake pass through him. "What?" The word grinds out through clenched teeth.

"What?" Steve repeats, as if Eddie's the unreasonable one.

"Why?" Eddie asks, unmoving, staring at him like Steve has just announced he ate a handful of thumbtacks.

"Why'd you think?" Steve breathes, baffled.

"Have you ever taken it before?" Eddie asks.

"No, Munson. I'm half a fucking virgin. Obviously I haven't taken viagra before." Steve sneers, stuffing the packet back into his jeans.

"And you choose to do it now? In my fucking house?" Eddie bursts out, hands flying upward.

"Okay, first of all, this isn't a house." Steve said, gesturing around with his index fingers like a bitchy realtor.

"Harrington!" Eddie throws his hands out.

"What? It's not a big deal! I'm just being responsible!" Steve insists, exasperated.

"That is the opposite of responsible!"

"Munson, chill the fuck out. My dad takes it and he's fine. And I'm half of him."

"Holy shit. You actually might be the stupidest person I've ever met," Eddie says, raking his fingers through his hair hard enough to hurt.

"It's Viagra. Not crack."

Eddie spins round to face him, incredulous.
"You don't know that! Maybe it is crack for your cardiovascular system!"

"Oh my god, will you relax? First of all, you're a fucking drug dealer. Second of all, it's supposed to help."

"Help? You lasted five seconds because you panicked, not because your dick needed pharmaceutical intervention!"

"That's not—okay, yes, I panicked, but still!"

"Still what? You think taking your dad's—dad pills is the solution?"

"You're making it sound weird."

"It is weird!"

Steve throws his hands up. "I just wanted to level the playing field!"

"This is not leveling the playing field! This is you going into the rematch hopped up on drugs like some kind of horny Lance Armstrong!"

"Munson—seriously—it's fine," Steve huffs, tilting his head with practiced boredom.

"No, it's not fine! What if you die in my bed? What then? I'm gonna have to call 911 and explain that Steve Harrington overdosed on boner meds under my supervision!"

"You're being dramatic." Steve shrugs off his jacket, placing it on Eddie's worn leather desk chair with a cautious grimace.

"And you're being dumb," Eddie fires back.

"Well, I already took it, okay? Too late." Steve shrugged.

Eddie stares at him, horrified. "Oh my god."

"Look, can we just—get it over with? Then I'll go home and you won't have to worry anymore. Out of sight, out of mind. If I start having heart palpitations I'll leave and go die somewhere else. 'Kay?" Steve smacks his lips, smile taut and smug.

Eddie stares, then rolls his eyes so hard he feels the tug on his retinas. "Fuck my life."

Steve sits at the edge of the bed, posture stiff like he's bracing for a medical exam. Eddie turns on a lamp and flicks off the overhead light, the soft glow making the room look smaller and somehow more intimate.

"Nice ambient lighting," Steve says, tugging off his sneakers and letting them thud to the floor.

"Shut up," Eddie scoffs, straightening his pillows. Scowling at the curve of Steve's spine and the movement of his shoulder blades.

"A candle wouldn't go amiss. Maybe some rose peta—ow! Jesus!" Steve yelps as Eddie throws the lube bottle at his head.

"I miss when you were a nervous wreck," Eddie mutters, moving round to face him.

"You missed me? I thought we weren't doing romance," Steve smirks.

"Harrington," Eddie says, flat as a table edge.

Steve lifts his hands in surrender, palms outward, fingers long and helpless. "Okay, okay. Sorry for trying to lighten the mood."

The apology is half-hearted; everything Steve does seems only half as sincere as it should be, like sincerity is something he has to borrow from someone else's closet.

Eddie rolls his eyes because it's easier than saying anything else, easier than acknowledging the little flare of nerves curling behind his ribs.

He grabs the hem of his own T-shirt and yanks it off from the back. Quick, practiced, a motion meant to spare himself the awkwardness of peeling it off over his face while Steve watches.

The bare air of the room hits him, cool and ordinary. Then he reaches for Steve's shirt, pulling it up from the bottom with more force than finesse, a grin crossing his mouth before he can restrain it.

Steve flails a little as he wriggles out of it, voice sharp with alarm. "Hey, hey. Jesus, can you go careful with that? It's Tommy Hilfiger!"
His head pops back through the collar, hair mussed brutally out of place, eyes bright with indignation. Eddie has to look away for a second before the sight does something stupid to him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, your majesty—didn't realise I was man-handling the royal garments," Eddie says, tossing the shirt to the floor.

He tries not to notice the chest hair, the soft roll at Steve's stomach when he inhales, the constellation of moles across his skin. The things that pull at him, dangerously, without permission. He focuses instead on the insult he knows is coming.

"S'fine. Not like I'd expect you to be able to tell the difference," Steve says, sarcasm coating the syllables as if it protects him.

Eddie laughs. Too loud, maybe, but it pushes down the warmth rising in him as he steps closer. Close enough that Steve's gaze has to tilt upward, that Steve's breath catches while pretending it doesn't.

"I'm really not letting petty insults from a man that took Viagra like it was a Flintstones vitamin affect me," Eddie says, tilting his head just so before planting his hand on Steve's shoulder and shoving him down onto the mattress.

Steve lands with a startled oof, limbs splayed in the graceless way that makes Eddie want to laugh and soften at the same time. His eyes go wide, stunned, watching Eddie the way someone might watch smoke forming shapes.

"You're still hung up on that?" Steve tries to sound casual, but his voice has that brittle edge that gives him away.

"Oh, I'm absolutely hung up on that. It's the funniest thing you've ever done," Eddie replies, climbing onto the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight as he kneels over Steve's hips.

For once, Eddie feels entirely in his element, unselfconscious, a little drunk on the way Steve can't seem to figure out what to do with his hands, hovering near his own chest, fingers twitching like he's waiting for instruction.

"Shut up," Steve mutters, quietly, almost pettily, as if the words could shrink him out of embarrassment.

Eddie laughs again, eyes dropping to his own hands as he moves to undo his belt. "Yeah? That the Hilfiger talking or you?"

"If you rip anything else off my body, I'm sending you the bill," Steve warns, trying to reassemble his dignity as Eddie whips the belt free in one smooth motion and lets it fall to the floor with a soft slap.

Eddie's grin spreads slow and wicked.
"Sweetheart, if I rip anything else off your body, you're not gonna be thinking about the bill."

Steve swallows. "Okay." The word cracks in the center, thin and fragile.

Eddie exhales a small laugh through his nose, trying to smother the fondness crawling up his throat. He shouldn't find Steve endearing. Not here, not now, not when all of this is happening. The feeling ambushes him regardless.

"Move back," Eddie says.

Steve lifts his head, blinking like he's only now remembering where he is, where the pillows are, where Eddie is in relation to everything else.

He shuffles backward awkwardly, elbows catching on blankets, legs tangling in sheets that have seen better years. Eddie unbuttons his jeans and drags the zipper down, crawling forward in a slow, unhurried line until he's over Steve again.

Steve looks up at him with an expression too open for his own good. Innocent, startled. As if he's waiting for Eddie to tell him what happens next.

Eddie settles against him, their bodies aligning for the first real moment of closeness, and then he leans down and kisses him.

Eddie can taste Steve's breath. Mint and nerves. And there's a moment where it almost feels like Steve is clinging to him with his whole face.

Eddie has one hand braced by Steve's head, gripping the mattress like it might steady him, the other working clumsily at Steve's belt. The metal clicks, the fabric slackens, and the noise seems louder than it should be in the dim room.

When Eddie finally pulls back, Steve's head follows, searching for his mouth with a sort of helpless instinct. He always did that. Leaning in as if Eddie had taken something from him by moving away.

Eddie pretends not to notice.

He rocks back on his heels, dragging Steve's jeans down. Steve tries, pathetically, endearingly to kick them off his ankles, but he just ends up looking stranded, limbs caught between effort and embarrassment.

Eddie's head feels too full. Louder than it ever was in the backseat of Steve's car. Shadowed and cramped where the dark swallowed whole anything either of them didn't want to acknowledge. Here, the room is bright enough. Open enough. Too much space for his thoughts to echo.

Steve lies beneath him, almost still. That's what gets Eddie the most. Steve Harrington, who talks too much, who complains even more, suddenly goes quiet in moments like this. Quiet in a way that makes Eddie hyperaware of his breathing, of Steve's hands hovering uselessly at his sides like he's terrified of getting it wrong. Terrified of overreaching.

Eddie doesn't say anything. Instead, he just presses his palm firmly against Steve's boxers. Just enough pressure to pull a reaction from him. Steve's breath breaks against Eddie's mouth, a startled gasp, and Eddie can't help the small, crooked smile that slips out. And listen, the feeling of him sheathed through a thin piece of fabric was obviously enough to make Eddie's mouth pool with saliva and want. But not in a, I can't wait to have you inside of me, way. In a way where Eddie wants to take him apart in his entirety and can't. Won't. Because that would make Steve run a mile.

There's something satisfying about being able to draw sound out of someone who tries so hard to pretend none of this matters.

But Eddie isn't going to take this anywhere drawn-out. Not with Steve. All that slow, delicate, wandering-through-each-other's-skin stuff. That belongs to people who want closeness, who want meaning. It's intimacy, and intimacy isn't part of this arrangement. Not when Steve's here out of practicality, and Eddie's here out of something like obligation mixed with humiliation.

Eddie pulls away just enough, stripping out of his own jeans with quick, practiced motions. He tosses Steve the condom. Steve catches it against his chest. Less fumble, less fear. There's relief in that, weirdly. He also hands him the lube, and Steve manages that, too, with something almost like composure.

For the first time tonight, Steve doesn't look confused or frightened or waiting for instruction.
He just looks at Eddie. Wide-eyed, quiet, almost trusting in a way Eddie isn't prepared for. And Eddie feels that tiny, traitorous shift inside him.

Eddie hadn't forgotten how much he hated this. The angle of it. The imbalance of it. The way his hands had to brace against the wall like he was keeping the whole room from collapsing on top of them.

Being on top like this always made him feel foolish, overextended. Like some creature caught mid-climb. It wasn't that he didn't like control; he did. Control was easy. But this posture made him feel exposed in a way he couldn't disguise, even with sarcasm or bravado or the feeling of being full of Steve.

And yet, he knew anything else, anything that required initiative or closeness or trust, would have sent Steve bolting for the door. So here he was, choosing the option that left him feeling ridiculous because it kept Steve from panicking.

Steve, for his part, wasn't looking at him. At all. His gaze stayed fixed somewhere around Eddie's stomach, unfocused, like he was staring through him, like the thought of lifting his eyes any higher might reveal something he didn't want noticed.

His breathing came ragged and uneven, catching at the edges like each inhale was something he was wrestling into submission. Caught between wanting to appear unaffected and failing miserably.

His hands stayed pinned to his sides, like he didn't trust them. Like touching Eddie on purpose might give something away. Every so often Eddie felt the barest brush of an index finger against his thigh. Light, accidental, hesitant. Like Steve had thought about reaching for him and lost his nerve at the last second.

Eddie tried to ignore the way those tiny touches made something hopeful flicker in his chest before he stomped it out.

He could get through this. He always could. That wasn't the problem. The problem was how stupid he felt. This awkward, vertical give-and-take of motion that made him hyper-aware of every breath he took, every bead of sweat at the back of his neck, every tremor in his legs. It made him feel displayed. Vulnerable. Silly.

So he did what he always did when he wanted to disappear from his own skin: he stared at the wall. Hard. As if the uneven paint, the stray nail, the shadow of the lamp could pull him out of the moment.

Beneath him, Steve's breath stuttered again, and Eddie felt the faintest tremor of it. He stops abruptly, the motion jarring enough that the mattress gives a loud, complaining creak.

His breath comes out in a huff. His arms fall from the wall, hanging uselessly at his sides as he looks down at Steve, at the frown, the bewildered stiffness, the way Steve looks like he's been caught doing something wrong even though he hasn't done anything at all.

"Y'know, if you actually want to learn how to be good at sex you do kinda have to do something," Eddie says, pointed, the words sharper than he intends but not sharp enough to take back.

"What?" Steve looks up with a frown, baffled, like Eddie's speaking a language he only half recognises.

"Like—you could actively participate."

"I am actively participating!" Steve gestures vaguely between them, as if the mere fact of existing counts.

"Barely. You're like—decorative."

"Decorative?!"

"Yes, Harrington. A very pretty, very useless centerpiece. You're a certified pillow princess. I'm breaking my back for you here. I can feel a cramp starting."

"You're such an ass," Steve scoffs, rolling his eyes in that teenage, bratty way that makes Eddie want to throw a pillow at his face.

"Feel free to prove me wrong."

"Okay, fine. Tell me what to do."

"Wow. Shocking. Steve Harrington wanting instructions," Eddie fires back, sarcasm curling like smoke around the words.

"Do you want me to do something or do you want to keep complaining?" Steve says flatly.

"Okay—fine—yeah, switch, whatever." Eddie grumbles as he shifts off of him, rolling onto his back beside him. The mattress dips, springs squeaking.

Eddie spreads his legs without ceremony. Not an invitation so much as a resigned gesture of practicality. Steve sits up, moves between them, kneeling awkwardly with his hands resting on Eddie's knees like he's afraid they'll give out.

"Okay, now what?" Steve asks.

"Oh my god. Do I have to do everything?" Eddie blurts, sitting up abruptly.

"Just—help me!" Steve flails, hands coming up briefly like he's surrendering to gravity.

"Put your dick in my ass, man! It's not rocket science!" Eddie snaps.

"Oh my god, fine!" Steve snaps back. He leans closer, muttering, "Move your leg—yeah—there."

Eddie rolls his eyes but adjusts, and Steve settles over him. The shift and his abrupt re-entry knocks the wind out of Eddie for half a second.

"Is that okay?" Steve asks, voice tentative.

"Yes. Congratulations," Eddie says flatly, refusing to acknowledge the momentary flutter in his chest. Steve leans down over him, bracing himself, his breath warm against Eddie's cheek as he settles his weight.

"See? Not useless," Steve murmurs, sarcasm softening into something almost light.

"Debatable," Eddie grumbles.

But then Steve smiles. That awful sweet smile, the one that looks misplaced on his face, like it belongs to someone gentler, someone who knows what he's doing. Eddie hates that smile because it feels like Steve is seeing something Eddie doesn't want seen.

"What?" Eddie demands.

"You look really nice, by the way," Steve says, simple, unadorned, too sincere for the moment.

Eddie narrows his eyes. "Say that again and I'm pushing you off."

"Jesus, okay. Noted." Steve exhales with a huff, then starts moving. Hesitant, clumsy, as if he's trying to find a rhythm written in a language he never learned. One hand braces near Eddie's head, the other curls under Eddie's thigh, holding on like he needs the anchor.

It doesn't make things less awkward. If anything, it makes it infinitely worse.

Face to face now. Nowhere to look but each other. Eddie tries to stare at Steve's chest, at his throat, anywhere but his eyes.

He's gentle, somehow. Uncoordinated but thoughtful, like he's terrified of hurting him.
Then Steve ducks in to kiss him. A soft collision of mouths, and Eddie lets him. It gives him something to hide behind. Something to do. Something to silence the frantic question of what Steve's face might look like if Eddie actually met his gaze.

But somewhere in the middle of that, Steve's movements falter. He stutters, loses whatever rhythm he almost had, and his head dips away like he's ashamed of the mistake before Eddie even reacts.

"Okay, stop. Stop." Eddie says, harsher than he means but shaped around an attempt at gentleness.

Steve freezes. Says nothing. Just looks at him, wide-eyed, like a student certain he's failed a test that hasn't been graded yet.

"Just—move with me. Not like you're trying to escape a bear trap." Eddie places a steady hand at Steve's lower back, right above the curve of him, grounding him. "When I press my fingers." He waits. Steve nods.

Eddie presses. Steve follows.

They try again. And slowly, painfully slowly, Steve begins to understand. His body finds the pattern, the give and take, the shared motion instead of two people working against each other. And Eddie realises, with a tight swallow, that it's actually starting to feel good. Good enough that he could pull his hand away.

He doesn't.

And Steve kisses him again. And again. Even when he runs out of breath, reduced to tiny bursts of air from his nose that Eddie can feel against his skin. Steve's hand tightens around Eddie's thigh, earnest, needy. And Eddie tries, desperately, not to think about what that means.

Eventually Steve's face finds the curve of Eddie's neck, like he's seeking shelter there. Eddie feels him breathe. Warm, sweet, uneven. The kind of breath where it wets the skin and lingers. It's almost too much.

Eddie tries not to react. Tries not to make anything obvious.

But sometimes his toes flex against the mattress without his permission. Sometimes his breath slips off rhythm. Sometimes he closes his eyes for a second too long.

There's a tenderness in all of it that Eddie doesn't know what to do with. Doesn't want to do anything with. Steve's lips brush his neck, not in a romantic way, nothing deliberate. Just small, soft reminders that he's there. That he's touching Eddie. That he's trying.

And for a moment—just a flicker, just a treacherous, private second—Eddie wants to put his hand in Steve's hair and hold him there. But he doesn't. He won't. Because that would mean something, and this isn't supposed to mean anything.

Then it's over.

It comes on quickly, a quiet crest inside him. Eddie takes a sharp inhale, his back tightening for a moment before easing again. A small sound escapes him, hardly anything, and then his whole body softens.

He doesn't want to draw attention to it, doesn't want to make it a moment.

Steve must notice, because he slows almost immediately, and then stops altogether. Not out of confusion or frustration, more like recognition. Like Eddie reaching that point was the final instruction, the signal to let go. He doesn't chase his own ending. Doesn't demand anything else. He just stops.

And then he rolls off him, careful, giving Eddie space without fanfare or awkwardness, as though crowding him would be some kind of breach neither of them signed up for.

They both lie there on their backs, staring at the stained trailer ceiling like it's the most fascinating thing in Indiana. No words. No forced jokes. Just breathing. His, then Steve's, then the echo of both settling in the small room.

Eddie eventually tilts onto his side, reaching over the edge of the bed to grab a T-shirt from the floor. Something clean enough. He wipes himself off with quick, efficient motions. Not ashamed, just wanting the moment to pass quietly, privately, without scrutiny.

He doesn't look at Steve while he does it.
And Steve, mercifully, doesn't look at him either.

Steve eventually inhales, the kind of breath that feels like he had to convince himself to take it.
"...So?"

"So, what?" Eddie replies, not moving, not giving anything away.

"So—how was it?" Steve asks, tilting his head toward him with an earnest, almost boyish expectation like he's waiting for a grade.

"Are you seriously asking for a review right this second?" Eddie asks.

"Well—yeah. I wanna know." Steve shrugs, the movement small, almost embarrassed.

"You're so needy," Eddie exhales, staring at the ceiling again.

"You're stalling."

"Is a man not entitled to a single moment's peace after arriving at—completion?" Eddie says pointedly, putting unnecessary dramatic weight on the last word.

"Do not call it that. Ever." Steve winces, and Eddie huffs out a laugh that feels too natural.

"Well, then." Eddie clears his throat and rolls off the mattress with the kind of gracelessness he hopes Steve doesn't observe too closely. Standing feels better. Practical. Safe. "All I need right now is a cigarette and to stare at a wall." His voice comes out rough as he finds his boxers on the floor and steps into them.

Steve rolls onto his front, chin propped on folded arms, watching him in a way that feels too attentive. Eddie tries not to look at the curve of him, tries not to register the intrusive, hungry thought that flashes through him like static of sinking his teeth into his bare ass.

"Sounds like it was good," Steve says.

"Don't get cocky." Eddie shoots him a narrow look over his shoulder.

"I can't get anything right now. Believe me," Steve grumbles.

"Right. Yeah. Your situation." Eddie snorts as he walks to his closet, rooting through a pile of clothes.

"Stop calling it that," Steve mutters.

"What else am I supposed to call it? You took a prescription-strength boner grenade and expected what, exactly?" Eddie says, tugging on sweatpants, keeping his back turned.

"I thought it would help!" Steve exclaims.

"Well it didn't. You didn't even finish," Eddie says plainly.

"I can't finish," Steve says, annoyed. "Maybe I should have just—taken half." He mumbles to himself.

"Can't believe I just got rail-roaded by the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of erections and for absolutely no payoff," Eddie laughs sharply.

"I dunno why you're so mad about it. You finished," Steve says pointedly.

Eddie turns. Steve is staring up at the ceiling again, totally at ease in his own bare skin. Eddie looks away before he lingers.

"Because I'm a professional," Eddie says.

"Professional asshole," Steve grumbles.

Eddie snatches Steve's clothes from the floor and unceremoniously dumps them on top of him.

"Ow!" Steve protests.

"Put these on. It's horrifying to look at," Eddie smirks.

Steve stands, pulls off the condom and tosses it in the bin. Eddie mentally notes the need to bury it in tissues so Wayne won't see, and starts getting dressed.

"You still haven't answered my question," Steve says.

"Which one? You have many," Eddie replies, reaching for his carton of cigarettes atop the desk. The familiar cardboard weight in his hand steadies him. He lights one.

"Was it good?" Steve asks, tugging his jeans on with a hopeful, almost eager glance, like the answer matters too much.

Eddie groans. "It definitely wasn't my worst experience."

"Really?" Steve's surprise is so honest it's almost disarming.

"I have a feeling you wouldn't leave if I said anything else, so yeah. Beyond you being a complete pillow princess, it was fine." Eddie rolls his eyes, tapping ash into a mug. "Congratulations, I guess."

"On what?" Steve asks.

"Well, you're not a virgin anymore," Eddie shrugs, pretending it's a joke, not a truth with strange weight to it.

Steve laughs under his breath, looking at the floor. "Yeah. Guess not."

"You hanging around for a medal or something? Certificate? 'I survived losing my virginity in a double-wide,'" Eddie teases as Steve sits on the edge of the bed to pull on his sneakers.

"Shut up." Steve smiles. That soft, nervous thing that never matches the rest of him. "Feels weird."

"That you finally joined the ranks of the sexually initiated? Yeah, it changes a man," Eddie says around a drag of smoke.

Steve ties his laces, stands, retrieves his jacket from the chair, and lingers.

It's the lingering that undoes Eddie a little. Like Steve wants to say something.

Like Eddie doesn't want to hear it.

"Well, I should probably go," Steve says, swallowing.

"Probably." Eddie tries to sound flippant, misses by a mile. "Before your dick alerts the National Guard."

Steve snorts. "It's fine."

"You can barely walk," Eddie says, eyes flicking down before he can stop himself.

"Neither can you." Steve attempts a joke. Small, uncertain, like he's testing the boundaries of what's allowed.

"Shut the fuck up." Eddie barks a laugh, softened around the edges.

Steve laughs too, quietly. Then: silence. He shifts his weight. Breathes. "Thanks. For—y'know."

"Yeah, well. Someone had to do it," Eddie says, sighing like the whole thing is a burden he volunteered for.

"Doesn't mean it had to be you."

"Oh, trust me, I'm well aware."

Steve looks at him then. Really looks. And there's something unbearably sincere flickering across his face, something Eddie can't let himself register.

"Still. I'm glad it was."

Eddie looks away immediately, as if the air has become too bright. "Alright. Go on, get out. I'm liberating you. You've been liberated."

"I'm going." Steve steps into the doorway.

"Enjoy your new life, Harrington," Eddie calls after him.

"I will." Steve's voice echoes faintly as he heads down the hallway.

Eddie waits for the sound of the screen door slamming shut.

When it finally does, he exhales. Long, slow, hollowing. Like he's been holding his breath since Steve walked in.

***

The phone's shrill, insistent ring slices through the quiet of the trailer, cutting straight through the fog he's been floating in.

The last thing Eddie remembers is exhaling a generous cloud on his bed from his bong and thinking—vaguely, lazily—that the spinning ceiling fan looked quite beautiful if you let your eyes blur enough.

He jolts awake with a sharp inhale, the crusted drool at the corner of his mouth tugging him back into his body too fast. Everything feels cotton-heavy. His limbs refuse precision. He pushes upright anyway, one hand scraping over his face, the world tilting as though gravity hasn't recalibrated yet.

He staggers, guiding himself along the hallway by dragging his palms over the wallpaper like it's the only stable thing left.

The living room light flicks on, immediate and cruel. He squints, blinking furiously, vision swimming. The phone still screams. He grabs it like it's a lifeline.
"...'lo?"

"Munson. I—I need you to come get me."
Steve's voice. Tight. Strained. Panic edged in every syllable.

"What?" Eddie blinks, half-convinced this is some stress dream conjured by cheap weed.

"I need help."

He stares blearily at the Garfield clock on the shelf, its tail ticking back and forth like it's mocking him, and squints to read the glowing red numbers.
"Harrington, it's two in the morning—"

"I'm serious. This is serious."

Eddie presses his forehead to the cool wall, letting it ground him.
"How did you even get my number?"

"Oh my god, it's not important!"
His voice snaps sharp, brittle. Eddie straightens just slightly.

"What's wrong?"

Steve's voice drops to a frantic whisper, like he's afraid even the walls could hear.
"I need to go to the hospital."

That does it. Eddie sobers instantly, heart lurching. "What? Why?! What the fuck's happened?"

Silence. A long one. Too long.

"Harrington. What's happened?"

Another pause.

"I have a four-hour erection."

Eddie blinks. Once. Twice. Words processing late.
"...A what."

"Four. Hours. Munson."

"You're joking." A smile creeps uninvited onto his face.

"I'm not joking! I can't sleep, I can't walk, I can't even look at it—"

Eddie wheezes, laughter bursting out of him before he can stop it. "Holy shit—"

"It's not funny!"

"It's a little funny."

"It says on the box four hours is when you're supposed to go to the ER!"

"Jesus Christ," Eddie groans, scrubbing a hand down his face, the reality of the situation slowly overtaking the absurdity.

"I'm dying. I'm going to die."

"You're not dying," Eddie says automatically. "You're just... extremely excited." The grin creeps back, traitorous.

"Munson, I swear to god—"

"Okay, okay—just—Jesus—why me?"

"WhothefuckelseamIsupposedtocall?!"

A reluctant snort slips out of Eddie. "Fair point."

"Please. I'm home alone. I can't drive like this. I can't even bend."

He exhales slowly, the weight of reluctant responsibility settling over his shoulders.
"I'm—I'm still really high, man."

"I don't care if you're floating!" Steve snaps, voice pitched with desperation. "Please. Please just come get me. I don't wanna die with a boner."

"Nobody dies with a boner."

"I could very well be the first."

Eddie stares at the chipped coffee table, the scattered ash, the lingering haze in the air. He inhales deeply. Thinks. Regrets several things simultaneously.
"Fine. Fine. But if I get pulled over by Hop again I swear to fucking god—"

"I'll pay the fine. I'll bail you out. I don't care. Whatever! Just—get over here."

Eddie huffs and slams the receiver back down harder than necessary.

For a moment, he just stands there, breathing, eyes half-lidded. He could stay. He could not go. He could curl back up and let Steve Harrington suffer the consequences of pharmaceutical incompetence.

But he knows Steve will keep calling. Knows the panic won't fade. Knows he'll probably, maybe hate himself if he doesn't go.

How did he even get his number?
Is it actually getting bigger? Like, by the minute? What is happening down there? More importantly why does this keep happening to him?

He trudges back to his room and throws on clothes in a chaotic blur, buttoning nothing properly, cursing the day he ever laid eyes on Steve Harrington in that stupid club. The day his life split clean in two and somehow never quite stitched back together.

***

The waiting room hums with the low-grade fatigue of 2 a.m. Fluorescent lights buzzing, vinyl chairs sighing under the weight of people who no longer know where to put their hands.

Eddie sits folded in on himself like he's been wrung out and forgotten, fingers knotted, forehead pressed against them, the sweet chemical fog of the bong still clinging to his thoughts. His spine aches where he's collapsed, gravity winning every small argument it offers.

Beside him, Steve's knee bounces in a jittery, relentless rhythm, his bundled jacket clenched against his lap like a shield. He looks as if someone has threatened to announce his most private shame over the hospital intercom.

Across the room, a kid with a bandaged, bloodied head slouches next to a girl in pajama pants and slippers who radiates quiet fury. Eddie feels an unreasonable kinship with her.

"What the fuck is taking so long? There's hardly anyone else here," Steve hisses.

"They're probably all pulling straws to find out who's gonna have to have their eye poked out," Eddie mumbles, not bothering to lift his head.

"Shut up." Steve's voice cuts sharp. "I can't believe this is happening." He swallows, eyes darting. "People take them all the time and nothing happens. So why is it happening to me?"

"Trust me, I'm asking myself the same question," Eddie sighs, finally straightening and slouching back, legs stretched long, like a man surrendering to an endless layover.

"Stephen Harrington?" A woman's voice rises. Older, composed, efficient. Brown hair scraped back, white coat hanging with practiced authority.

Steve launches upright, jacket slipping before he clutches it tighter, posture suddenly formal. "Yep. Yeah. That's me."

He stands so close his alignment is impossible to ignore; Eddie grimaces.
"Jesus, careful where you put that thing."

"Why are you still sitting there?" Steve peers down at him.

"I'm not coming in there with you," Eddie lets out a weary laugh.

"What? You have to."

"Um—I quite literally don't. You asked me to take you. I took you. Be grateful I'm waiting here to take you home again."

"Please." Steve's voice breaks into something almost pleading.

"No way, man."

"Is there a problem?" The doctor tilts her head, eyes flicking between them with calm curiosity.

Steve whips around, flashing a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "No. No problem." Then, quieter, to Eddie: "Munson, please. I'm literally begging you, do not leave me alone right now."

"Oh my fucking god." Eddie slaps his thighs and stands, shoulders sagging with theatrical resignation. "I literally hate you." He falls into step beside him.

They move into a small exam room. Desk, bed, three chairs, a curtain waiting for privacy that will not be dignified. The doctor holds the door. "Okay, have a seat."

Eddie drops into a chair with a soft thud. Steve hovers, stranded. He keeps that jacket pressed to himself as if it could erase the entire night.
"Are you gonna be—the one to—y'know. Look at me?" Steve asks.

"Yes. That would be me," she replies, thin-lipped but composed as she crosses the room and takes a seat at the desk.

Steve hesitates; Eddie squints up at him, baffled.
"Um—I'm really sorry. I don't wanna be—that guy. But—is it possible to speak to a guy doctor—a man. A man doctor."

"Oh my god," Eddie mutters under his breath.

"And it's not because I don't think women can't be doctors. I love women. Women are great. I love—my mom. I'm sure you're—great at what you do. Probably the best in the field. I think it's great that—you're here doing this. It's just—uh—a guy problem and I don't wanna put you through that."

"I appreciate that. But, unfortunately, I am the duty doctor tonight, so it's either me or you come back tomorrow and try again," she states, eyes calm, patient, unwavering.

Eddie wants the floor to swallow him.

"That's fine. That's cool. This is fine," Steve nods rapidly, sinking into a seat.

The doctor lifts her clipboard. "Okay, so"—she scans—"The triage nurse said that you're having a reaction to some medication?"

"Yeah," Steve nods.

"I can see that blood pressure was elevated when you arrived along with your heart rate. The bloodwork shows no underlying blood disorder or infection, which is good. However, your toxicology screen did detect sildenafil, which would be the active ingredient in Viagra." Her voice trails off, looking to Steve beneath her brows. "Is that what you took?"

Steve swallows. "...Yeah."

"Right." She nods, as she plucks a pen from her collar and writes something down. "And how old are you?"

"...Eighteen."

She looks up, expression flat as a winter sky. "Why."

"It was—uh. A dare," Steve answers, voice thin with mortification.

"So you took non-prescribed erectile medication. For a dare."

Eddie presses his lips together, staring at a crack in the tile like it might open into mercy.

"Yeah." Steve gives a weak laugh. "Pretty stupid. I'm pretty stupid."

"And when did the—issue begin?" She asks.

"Five hours ago."

"And it hasn't gone down at all?"

"No."

"Have you tried anything like a cold shower or an ice pack?"

"Uh—no. I kinda just—waited. And then when nothing happened I panicked and came here. That's—what it said to do on the box." Steve shrugged.

"And you haven't tried to"— she starts. "Relieve yourself?"

"Didn't even cross my mind." Steve says, voice strained.

The nurse sighs. "Alright, Mr. Harrington. We'll take you out back and get you seen. See what we can do for you." She rises, slightly unnerved.

"Okay," Steve nods.

"But next time, if someone dares you to take medication you don't need—maybe try saying 'no.'" Her smile is thin, almost pitying.

"Will do." Steve nods.

"I'll be back to get you in a moment." She says, leaving the room as the door clicks shut behind her.

"Did I seriously need to be here for this?" Eddie asks, exhaustedly.

"Why is she so mad?" Steve asks, ignoring him.

"Because she works nights at a hospital and some idiot jock just came in with the world's angriest erection. Be grateful she didn't slap you," Eddie says flatly.

***

Eddie sits slumped in a plastic chair along the hallway, spine curved forward, hands dangling uselessly between his knees. The wall opposite him has a dull institutional green, the kind meant to soothe but only manages to feel endlessly tired. He zeroes in on a single scuff mark as if it might whisper answers, time stretching thin like cheap taffy.

Then, a door creaks and slams.

He looks up just as Steve shuffles into the corridor, moving stiffly, face flushed an unmistakable red. His sweatpants are cinched tight, knotted with unnecessary aggression, like he doesn't trust fabric anymore.
"Let's go."

Eddie's lips twitch. He lifts his head, eyes brightening with mischief he doesn't bother suppressing.
"Well? What'd they do to make it go down? Ice pack? Sage cleansing? Holy water?"

Steve keeps walking, jaw tight, gaze fixed ahead.
"Shut the fuck up."

Eddie pushes to his feet and falls into step beside him, grin widening as the silence dares him not to fill it.
"Did they spray you with a hose out back?" He laughs, the sound echoing slightly off the corridor walls.

"Munson." Steve glances around, mortified, voice lower now. "We are not talking about it."

"Oh my god, they did something weird." Eddie's jaw goes slack with theatrical awe.

"They did not do anything weird," Steve insists, chin lifted in stubborn, shaky denial.

"Then why won't you tell me?" Eddie presses, delighted by every twitch of Steve's discomfort.

"Because you'll keep talking about it." Steve whips his head toward him as they walk through the automatic doors, cool early morning air rushing in, swallowing the sterile scent of antiseptic.

"Correct. So what happened?" Eddie insists as they approach his battered van.

Steve stops at the passenger door, exhales hard through his nose.
"There was a needle."

"A needle?" Eddie freezes, eyes widening in horror and fascination. "...In the boner?"

"I'm not talking about it anymore." Steve climbs in with rigid determination.

Eddie dissolves into hysterics, laughter bubbling uncontrollably as he slides behind the wheel and slams the door shut. The van rattles faintly with the force.

"Stop!" Steve snaps, cheeks burning even brighter.

"This is gold. Truly." Eddie wipes at his eyes, still choking on giggles.

"Just take me home!" Steve demands, staring straight ahead as if refusing eye contact might erase the memory entirely.

***

Eddie pulls up outside Steve's house and keeps the engine running, the low thrum of it vibrating faintly through the steering wheel as dusk settles over the too-perfect suburban street, porch lights flickering on like staged reassurance.

Steve sits rigid in the passenger seat, shoulders drawn inward, eyes not quite meeting Eddie's, his hands resting uselessly in his lap. "Thanks."
Steve says miserably, voice quiet and rasped thin with leftover nerves. "For, uh—driving me."

Eddie glances over, noting the tight pull of Steve's mouth, the way his jaw flexes like he's bracing for judgment. "No sweat." Eddie shrugs, deliberately casual.

Steve shifts, nodding once as though rehearsing courage. "And, uh—the whole—hospital thing." He gestures vaguely, eyes flicking toward the dashboard.

"Consider it my good deed for the decade." Eddie smirked, leaning back, one arm draped carelessly over the back of his seat.

Steve swallows and finally looks at him, just briefly. "I mean it. You didn't have to. You could have just—laughed at me and hung up."

Eddie exhales through his nose. "Please. If I hadn't taken you, you would've shown up in the ER hitchhiking with a blanket over your lap. I did the world a favor."

Steve lets out a soft, breathy laugh that barely reaches his eyes. "Still. Thanks."

Eddie shifts in his seat, fingers tightening slightly on the wheel. "Whatever, Harrington."

Steve grows quiet, worrying at the seam of his jacket, gaze dipping downward like he's searching for the right words in the fibers.

"What?" Eddie asks, watching him from the corner of his eye.

"...Y'know, technically"—Steve started, voice small, hesitant, "Both people are supposed to, uh—finish. For it to actually count as sex."

Eddie lifts one finger slowly, like he's stopping traffic, eyes turning toward the windshield as though sensing a tectonic shift in the universe. "Hold on a second."

"What?" Steve asks, head tilting.

"Did you feel that?" Eddie murmurs.

"Feel what?" Steve glances around, confused.

"I think the world just stopped spinning for a sec." Eddie frowned, exaggeratedly
contemplative.

"What?" Steve repeats.

"That's the first time a man has ever uttered those words." Eddie says.

Steve scoffs, shaking his head, breath puffing out through his nose. "Shut up. I'm just saying—if we're being accurate—last time doesn't really—y'know... qualify."

Eddie slumps back, rubbing his face with a tired laugh. "You are unbelievable."

Steve straightens slightly, defensive. "What? I'm being factual."

Eddie turns his head slowly to look at him, eyes narrowing with mock seriousness. "You're being horny. Which, in your condition? Dangerous."

Steve swallows, a faint hopeful light creeping into his expression. "So—see you soon?"

Eddie straightens at once. "Woah. Slow your roll, Romeo. I promised you one do-over. One. Singular. Uno."

"Okay, but—" Steve leans slightly toward him, brow furrowing.

"So, congratulations. Stamp your punch card, the ride's over." Eddie cuts in firmly.

"Seriously?" Steve frowns, confusion knitting deeper in his face.

"Harrington, you dragged me to the ER because your dick wouldn't clock out. I think that legally ends our arrangement." Eddie scoffed out a laugh.

Steve leans forward, hands braced on his thighs. "Okay, fine, but still—doesn't mean we have to be done."

Eddie exhales, shaking his head. "Yeah, it does. That was the deal. One do-over."

"So you're just cutting me off?" Steve asks, eyes narrowing in disbelief.

"Princess, if this was a bar, you'd have been cut off hours ago." Eddie says frankly, staring straight ahead.

Steve turns his face toward the window. "Wow. Cold."

Eddie shifts uncomfortably, jaw tightening. "Not cold. Merciful. I'm protecting both of us."

"From what?" Steve asks, forehead creasing.

"From your medical-grade enthusiasm." Eddie laughs lightly, though something strained hums beneath it.

Steve huffs and looks down. "So that's it? Really?"

Eddie shakes his head faintly. "Yeah, Harrington. We're done with this now. For real."

Steve falls silent, visibly processing, mouth slightly parted, eyes unfocused.

Eddie leans forward, voice firmer. "Hey—look at me for a second."

Steve turns. Eddie exhales sharply. "I'm serious. This isn't happening again. It can't happen again."

"Why?" Steve asks, voice lower now.

Eddie gestures vaguely between them. "Because this—whatever the hell this is—it's already gone too far. It wasn't supposed to be anything."

"It isn't anything." Steve says.

"Yeah, see—that's the problem. You keep saying that, but I don't feel like you actually mean it." Eddie presses on, jaw set. "You—latch on. You get this look like you expect something from me, and I can't—"

"Expect what? I'm just saying—" Steve starts.

"No, you're not. You're hoping. And you shouldn't be." Eddie cuts in.

"Why not?" Steve pushes.

"Because you're you, Harrington. And I'm me. And whatever weird black hole of loneliness we've both been circling lately? It's just—" Eddie stops, running a hand through his hair, staring out at the quiet street. "This started because you were desperate and I was stupid enough to get dragged in. And if we do this again, it stops being a one-off screwup and starts being—"

"Being what?" Steve presses.

"Something I'm not letting it become." Eddie answers quietly.

"And what do you think it's becoming?"

"It isn't. But if it was it would be something where you start relying on me. Something where I start—worrying about you. Something messy. And I can't do messy. Especially not with you."

"Why not me?" Steve asks, eyes narrowing. "I just like hanging out with you."

Eddie sighs, leaning back. "No, you don't."

"I do."

"Harrington. Come on."

"What? Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

"Because it's not real. You don't like hanging out with me—you like hanging out with the only other gay guy you know." Eddie snaps, frustration bleeding through.

"That's not—"

"It is. It's exactly that. I'm convenient. I'm safe. I get it. But that's not the same thing as liking me." Eddie presses harder.

"You think that's the only reason I'm here?"

"Yes. I do."

"So what? That's bad?"

"It is when you're gonna wake up one day and realise you don't actually want me in your life. You just needed someone to talk to before you figured your shit out." Eddie exhales slowly. "You might not think that's fair, and maybe it's not. But it's honest."

Steve says nothing, staring at his hands. Eddie watches his silence. "Just—let me be right about this one thing."

"Okay." Steve murmurs, nodding faintly.

"Okay. Good." Eddie says with finality.

"Well—goodnight then." Steve says, risking one minute last glance, placing his palm over the handle.

"Yeah." Eddie says softly.

Steve opens the door and steps out, shutting it softly before jogging up the driveway.

Eddie watches his silhouette disappear before he drags a hand over his face, compartmentalising blinking hard, shaking his head.

***

Eddie sits on the edge of the guest bedroom bed, the mattress dipping slightly beneath his weight as he counts the worn bills between his fingers, methodical and precise, while neat little bags of weed sit lined up like obedient soldiers inside the dented metal lunchbox on his lap.

The bass from downstairs pulses through the floorboards, laughter and music bleeding through the door in distant, chaotic waves.

He tries not to think about the fact that he hasn't spoken to Steve in a week. Though he's been painfully aware of him in the hallways at school, the way one is aware of a ghost or a bruise, something that exists whether acknowledged or not.

Steve never looked at him. At least Eddie didn't think he did, because Eddie never looked at him.

He told himself it was for the best. Normality restored. Peace, apparently, reclaimed.

Then the door opens.

Steve steps inside, shutting it quietly behind him, momentarily sealing them off from the world's terrible soundtrack.

His presence changes the room instantly. Posture careful, hands shoved into his pockets, something cautious in his eyes.
"Hey."

Eddie glances up at him briefly, mouth curling as if on instinct, then goes right back to the money.
"Well, well, well. Look who's here." He smirks faintly. "Here was me thinking you'd figured out how to enter a room without dramatic intent."

"I don't have dramatic intent." Steve insists, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"You shut the door. That's dramatic intent." Eddie raises a brow as he finishes sliding the last of the cash into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"I need a half ounce." Steve says plainly, businesslike but still somehow tentative.

"A half? Jesus, Harrington, planning to hotbox the entire zip code?" Eddie snorts.

"Can you just—" Steve exhales sharply, already tired of him. "Do you have it?" He asks.

"Do I have it, he asks." Eddie mutters theatrically as he opens the lunchbox again, fingers sifting through the bags. "Of course I have it. Who do you think I am? Carol's dealer?"

"How much?" Steve asks while Eddie pulls one bag free.

"For you? Double."

"Why?" Steve frowns.

"Annoyance tax." Eddie shrugs with an easy grin.

"Bullshit."

"Inflation, Harrington. Supply and demand. And I demand that you annoy me less."

Steve sighs, already resigned, pulling his wallet out and slapping the cash into Eddie's waiting hand. "Keep the change."

"Oho. Big spender." Eddie practically guffaws while counting the bills.

"Shut up." Steve scoffs shyly, eyes briefly dropping away.

Eddie hands the bag over the bag with a smirk. "Pleasure doing business with you, Your Highness. Even if you did buy enough weed to tranquillise a linebacker for whatever reason."

Steve takes it, then hesitates, turning the bag in his fingers, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "How much... for you to come to my place and smoke it with me?"

Eddie blinks, then stares outright. "Sorry, what?"

"I'm asking. How much." Steve repeats, quieter now, stubborn.

"What, like I'm some premium add-on service?" Eddie laughs, standing and snapping the metal lid of the lunchbox shut.

"No. Like I'm happy to pay you what you'd be missing out on by not being here."

"More than you can afford, sweetheart." Eddie tilts his head, amused despite himself.

"Try me." Steve presses.

"You don't need me to supervise. Go and collar one of your adoring fans out there instead."

"Well, the idea is that it would be you." Steve replies, eyes steady this time.

"Why?" Eddie asks.

"Because I want to hang out with you." Steve shrugs, like it shouldn't be a problem.

Eddie exhales sharply through his nose, unimpressed on purpose.
"Harrington, we talked about this."

"About what?"

Eddie steps closer, lowering his voice.
"I shouldn't be hanging out with you. Not at mine, not at yours. Not in your—car. Not in broom-closet bedrooms at random house parties while you loom at me like you've got a revelation to deliver." He gestures vaguely between them, irritation curling into something else. "Every time I hang out with you, something incredibly stupid happens. Emotionally stupid. Physically stupid. Sometimes medically stupid."

"I just—have something I wanna show you. Okay?" Steve pleads.

"Show me what, exactly?" Eddie presses.

"You'll just have to come and find out."

Eddie watches his face for a lingering second before scoffing.
"I'm not playing these games with you, man." He moves to pass him.

Steve spins around quickly.
"It's not a game. I'm serious."

Eddie falters mid-step.
"Well, then just—show me now." His patience thins.

"I can't show you now. And also it's not like—a physical thing."

"If it's not a physical thing then what the fuck am I supposed to be looking at when I get to your house?"

"Do you wanna see the thing or not?" Steve huffs.

Eddie narrows his eyes. "Is it illegal?"

"No."

"Is it weird?"

"Maybe. I dunno."

"You don't know?" Eddie challenges, leaning forward.

"It might be a huge mistake. I'm not sure yet."

"Oh, fantastic!" Eddie throws his hands out.

"Look, just—come to mine and find out. And if you're not into it you can just go. I swear."

Eddie exhales sharply. "If this is another 'help me with something weird and personal' situation, I swear to god"—

"It's not that." Steve cuts in. "I swear."

"Then what is it?"

"You'll see." Steve backs toward the door. "I'm gonna head there now. Just—come whenever." He opens it and slips back into the chaos of the hallway.

"I never said I was going!" Eddie calls after him, but Steve is already swallowed by bodies and noise.

"My fucking god," Eddie mutters to himself.

***

Eddie stood outside the ominous red huge door of the Harrington house, the paint so polished it almost reflected him back at himself like an accusation.

He shifted his feet, heartbeat ticking too loudly in his ears, every instinct telling him to turn around, to get back in his van and disappear before he made this worse.

He didn't want to knock. He wanted to run. Instead, he huffed, annoyed at his own cowardice, and banged his fist against the wood, rolling his eyes as if that small gesture could shame him into bravery.

Steve opened it almost instantly, the hinges creaking with too much grandeur for such a simple moment. He looked flushed, stressed, like someone who'd been pacing holes into the floor.
"Hi." He says.

"Hi yourself." Eddie says sceptically, gaze flicking over Steve's face, the tension in his jaw, the way his shoulders sat just a little too rigid.

Steve just stands there awkwardly, blocking the doorway like he's forgotten what doors are supposed to be for.
"Come in." He says abruptly, like he'd suddenly remembered how to speak.

Eddie looks at him beneath his brows as he steps inside, the vastness of the entryway swallowing him whole.

Steve shuts the door behind him, already darting off down the entranceway, too fast, too desperate.
"Uh—do you want something to drink? Water? Coke? Sprite? I have—orange juice? Maybe?"

Eddie raises his eyebrows, taking in the panic in every syllable. "Jesus, Harrington, relax. I'm not the health inspector."

Steve stops walking and turns to face him, trying to force casualness into his posture.
"I'm not—I mean I am. I am relaxed." He nods quickly, like if he says it enough times it might become true.

"You're vibrating at a frequency only dogs can hear." Eddie says flatly, eyes wandering past him to the sterile opulence of the house.

He takes in the decor. A painting of birds. A rug with birds. Everything too big, too curated, too untouched by real living.

"What's with all the fuckin' birds?" Eddie asks.

"I dunno. My mom likes birds." Steve shrugs.

"Yeah. I see that." Eddie mutters, dragging his attention back to Steve as his patience thins.
"Okay, so—what did you wanna show me?" He asks, gesturing loosely with his hands.

"Sit." Steve says.

"Excuse me?" Eddie asks with a laugh that carries more irritation than amusement.

"You can sit down. If you want." Steve says, gesturing toward the couch. "Please."

Eddie stares him down for a moment, weighing whether this is another terrible choice, then huffs and walks over to the couch, throwing himself down onto it with deliberate carelessness. Steve just continues to stand in the middle of the room, hands hovering uselessly.

"Well?" Eddie asks, looking up at him.

Steve takes a deep breath, chest rising and falling. "Okay. I just—I wanted to—do something. For you."

Eddie blinks, thrown. "For me."

"Yeah."

"Why does that sound like you're about to hand me a bomb?" Eddie asks.

"It's not"— Steve starts and cuts himself off, pacing a few steps. "Look. You've been—you know—doing stuff. For me. Helping."

"That's one word for it." Eddie huffs out a laugh.

"And I didn't want it to be—like—it's just you doing things. For me. All the time." Steve says, voice light and nervous, eyes darting like he's afraid of being seen too clearly.

Eddie frowns. "I'm not following."

Steve exhales, frustrated with himself. "I'm trying to say I want to—give something back. To you. I just want things to be—not one-sided."

"One-sided how?" Eddie asks, leaning back slightly.

"Okay—okay. I'm trying to—god, this sounded so much better in my head." Steve starts pacing, the anxiety rolling off him in visible waves.

"You haven't said anything yet."

"I did! I said I wanted to do something for you." Steve exclaims, voice pitching higher.

"That's not a thing. That's a sentence shaped like a thing." Eddie says firmly, eyes following Steve as he moves.

"I'm not good at this stuff. The—initiating stuff. The giving stuff. The—whatever." Steve says, gesticulating wildly, hands carving nervous shapes through the air.

"Words, Harrington. Words exist. Use any of them." Eddie says, leaning forward, hands clasped in his lap, watching him unravel.

"I'm trying! But I don't want you to think it's weird, or that I'm being desperate, or that I'm assuming things, even though I am assuming things but only the things you've"— Steve stops walking, huffs, looks at the ceiling.
"And then I started thinking maybe you'd think I was, like, trying too hard or being pathetic, and then I almost cancelled but then I thought cancelling would look even worse because then you'd think I was chickening out, which I kind of am, but I'm also not because you're here, and now I'm talking and I can't stop—"

"Oh my god, man. Breathe." Eddie says, eyes wide.

Steve sucks in a breath like he's been underwater. "Right. Yeah. Breathing. Good." He nods. "I just— look, the last time we...did stuff—"

"Had sex. You can say it." Eddie says.

Steve ignores him. "—the last time we did stuff, it was kind of a mess and you did, like, all the work. But I can do things, I just—never have. Not really. Not with anyone. And you're the only person I trust not to laugh in my face or tell someone or—I just don't want you to...reject it." Steve's voice trails off.

"Reject what?" Eddie asks, something cold creeping into his stomach.

Steve hesitates, then exhales and moves toward Eddie quickly.

"Okay, I'm just gonna show you"— Steve drops to his knees in front of Eddie as Eddie jerks back.

"Woah, woah, woah." Eddie says, holding a hand up. "The hell are you doing, man?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Steve asks.

"I—I don't know! Yoga? Having a stroke? You can't just kneel in front of people without a briefing, Harrington!"

"I didn't know what else to do!" Steve exclaims.

Eddie scans his face for a moment as the realisation washes over him. "Oh my god. This was a ruse." Eddie says.

Steve's mouth falls slack. "It wasn't a ruse—"

"A scheme, then." Eddie says.

"I wasn't scheming—"

"This was an elaborate, stupid, very on-brand Harrington scheme because you want to suck my dick." Eddie says firmly, pointing to Steve.

"No!" Steve cries out, face burning. "I— okay, yes, but not in, like, a weird way!"

"Holy shit, dude." Eddie rubs his hands over his face.

"I've been practising!" Steve says.

Eddie's hands drop to his lap. "Practising what, exactly?"

"This." he gestures vaguely at Eddie's lap.

"...Practice. How." Eddie says flatly.

"It mainly just involved eating a lot of popsicles. Like—a lot. Like—four boxes. Maybe five. I lost count. I got a brain freeze so bad on Tuesday I thought I was gonna die."

Eddie just looks at him dumbfounded.
"What the fuck is happening right now?"

"You're the one who said you didn't want it to all be about you doing everything! I just— I wanted to be good at it! For you! Which, trust me, I am deeply regretting saying out loud." Steve rambles.

"Okay, stop. Stop, stop, stop." Eddie shuts his eyes, waves his hand at Steve to repel him. "Just—get up." He says firmly, and Steve does, wordlessly. "Sit." Eddie says, pointing to the couch, and Steve does, perched awkwardly on the edge.

Eddie turns to face him, voice lower now. "Just so we're clear, the reason I told you we couldn't keep doing this wasn't because I thought you were bad in bed."

Steve frowns immediately. "You literally said—"

"I said you lasted five seconds and that you're a pillow princess. That's not the same thing as being bad." Eddie clarifies.

"It feels like the same thing." Steve grumbles.

"Well, it's not. And that's not why this is a bad idea." Eddie says.

"Then why is it a bad idea?" Steve asks.

"Oh my god, how aren't you getting this?" Eddie exhales, pressing his fingers to his eyes. "Because you've fucking—you've—latched onto me, Harrington. You can't just keep throwing yourself at me and hoping the outcome magically changes." He gestures to Steve, hands flailing.

"I'm not—throwing myself—"

"You asked for a do-over. I gave you one. That was the deal. And now we're done. Stop trying to turn this into whatever fantasy you've got going on in that over-gelled head of yours." Eddie said flatly.

"I don't have a fantasy!" Steve clamours.

"Harrington. You ask me to have sex with you so you don't have to be a virgin anymore. You show up at my house. You take Viagra. You drag me to hospitals. You tell me you want to 'keep hanging out.' You drop to your knees in your living room. If that's not throwing yourself at me, I don't know what is!" Eddie exclaims.

"I was trying to do something for you!" Steve snaps, defensive, flushed.

"And I appreciate the popsicle dedication, okay? I do. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm not your boyfriend."

"I never said you were." Steve looks at Eddie like he'd said something insane.

"You didn't have to. You're acting like it. You're using me as a replacement for everything else that's missing in your life. And I'm not signing up for that. I'm not your safety blanket. I'm not your emotional support gay. And I'm not—not—your boyfriend." Eddie says firmly.

"Okay, but why we can't keep doing what we're doing. No strings. No labels. Just—whatever this is."

"Because this is nothing! This is nothing! Whatever this is, is nothing!" Eddie explodes. "It can't physically be any less than that. And also, I feel like I know you well enough at this point to know that you're not built for 'no strings.' You wouldn't last five seconds!"

"Oh my god, that is so not true." Steve scoffs.

"You ate thirty popsicles to impress me, Harrington!"

"But it doesn't have to mean anything. It means something because you're making it mean something!" Steve argues.

"It does. To you, it does. And if it doesn't right now then it will."

"Why are you making this so complicated?" Steve asks.

"Because you're pretending it's simple when it isn't! Because I say 'we're done' and you show up a week later with a half-melted bomb pop and a blowjob coupon disguised as a casual hangout! You seriously think we can just keep hooking up in your perfect little no-strings bubble and nothing will go wrong?" Eddie snaps.

Steve doesn't say anything. He just looks down at the floor.

"I'm not going to sit here and apologise, man. Because I feel like I have made my feelings abundantly clear. I literally don't know what more I have to do to get you to understand this. I gave you what you wanted, now we go our separate ways. We're good. Everything's good. Let's keep it that way." Eddie says.

He stares at Steve, waiting.

"Yeah." Steve nods, small, practiced. "Right. Got it. Sorry." He says, voice raw as it cracks. He nods again, forces a brittle smile. "This is cool. This is good. We're good."

"Yeah." Eddie exhales with a nod.

"Cool. Good. I'll just—see you whenever then. At school or whatever." Steve forces himself to look at Eddie then quickly looks away, the smile trembling on his face as he gets up and walks toward the kitchen. "If you could just, uh—pull the door closed behind you when you go. The latch gets stuck."

Eddie's shoulders sag as his molars grind. He slaps his hands against his thighs, gets up, every movement heavy and reluctant, and moves toward the door.

He opens it, peers down the hallway as if hoping Steve might still be there, but the space is empty. So he steps out into the cool air and leaves, shutting the door behind him, pulling it as instructed. The echo of it ringing in his head.

Chapter Text

The cafeteria hums with that familiar institutional clatter. Trays scraping metal, the dull percussion of forks against plastic, the sour-sweet smell of overcooked vegetables and something that might once have been meat.

Eddie moves beside Jonathan through the line, his tray already warm in his hands, the faint tremor from too much caffeine and too little sleep still curling in his fingers.

"Revolutionary War started in 1776, not 1775." Eddie says flatly.

He doesn't look at Jonathan when he says it, just watches the lunch lady ladle something grey and tragic onto a kid's tray.

"It started before the Declaration, genius. The fighting began in 1775." Jonathan's voice has that stubborn lift to it, like he wants to win this on principle, not facts.

"The quiz asked when it started, not when people felt like starting it." Eddie shoots back. He nudges his tray forward, the metal rattling.

"What did you put?" Jonathan asks pointing to the mush for the lunch lady.

"1776, obviously. Because I know how to read." Eddie snorts.

"Because I know how to read." Jonathan mocks.

Eddie rolls his eyes, lips curling, but he can't quite hide the tiny spark of pride that flares when he knows he's right. They drift forward, a slow shuffle of sneakers and impatience.

"What did you put for the Treaty of Versailles one?" Eddie asks.

"1918." Jonathan says simply.

Eddie actually stops walking for half a second, eyes closing as if the universe itself has betrayed him.

"Dude. It was 1919." Eddie exhales, throwing his head back with a groan.

"It ended the war, so 1918 makes more sense." Jonathan exclaimed.

"Signed in 1919, Jonathan. We literally went over this not even that long ago." Eddie huffed, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry but I'm not taking judgement from the guy who thought Mesopotamia was a type of dinosaur." Jonathan snorts.

"That was, like, three fuckin' years ago, man." Eddie shoots him daggers.

Jonathan grins, entirely too pleased with himself.
"The causes question fucked me up too, not gonna lie." He said.

"Why?" Eddie asks.

"I put Militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism but I felt like I was missing something."

"Yeah, dude. Assassination."

"No, because I feel like that's implied."

Eddie lets out a bark of incredulous laughter, too loud for the acoustics of the room.
"Oh my god, y'know what, I'm gonna stop selling weed to you. It's frying your brain. Your mom's gonna kill me." Eddie laughs.

"You smoke more weed than anyone I've ever met."

"Yes, but it enhances me. It turns you into fucking pocket lint." Eddie says.

Jonathan scoffs, nudging him as they near the cutlery.
"How the fuck did you get all this studying done when all you've been doing is sitting in cars smoking cigs and waxing poetic with Steve Harr"— Jonathan starts,

The name hits Eddie like a shot of cold water. Instinct overrides thought. His elbow snaps out, sharp and fast, landing hard in Jonathan's ribs.

"What the fuck!" Jonathan exclaims with a groan as he rubs the spot, the lunch lady scowling at them both.

Eddie's pulse spikes, a fizzing panic threading through his nerves.
"Keep your fucking voice down, idiot. Are you insane?" Eddie hisses.

He doesn't turn. Not even a fraction. He knows where Steve is. He always does. It's like some cruel homing instinct that insists on mapping the room around him.

"Jesus Christ." Jonathan says, eyes wide as he grips his side.

"Yeah, Jesus Christ is right." Eddie says.
"And anyway, we haven't hung out in weeks." He adds flatly.

"Still think I did better than you." Jonathan grumbles.

They reach the end of the line, fingers curling around pudding pots, the lids already slightly fogged.

"Yeah? You wanna bet on it?" Eddie asks.

"Five bucks." Jonathan grins.

"You're so fucking cheap." Eddie scoffs.

"Sorry. Not all of us are gold members at the bank of Rick." Jonathan mocks him.

"For good reason. You'd smoke it all."

They pivot toward the tables, and Eddie feels it before he sees it. The shift in air, the tension tightening, like the room itself knows what's coming.

Tommy's table. Carol's artificial giggle. The slight, sickly sweetness of gum snapping between her teeth as she plays with her hair. Tommy's lazy grin, smug and certain.

And Steve.

Opposite them, big shoulders curved inward, fork absentmindedly nudging at his untouched lunch like he's somewhere else entirely.

Eddie keeps his gaze just beside him, pretending indifference while being acutely aware of how Steve doesn't look up.

"Aw, look who it is. The charity case twins." Carol coos with a fake pout.

There it is. The performance Eddie's been waiting for. It was only a matter of time before those few sacred weeks of respite would be over.

"More like the fucking faggot brigade. You guys getting a little bite to eat after finishing up in the showers?" Tommy says as he laughs, loud and unabashed.

The word lands sharp and ugly, slicing straight through the noise of the room. Eddie's chest tightens. He feels his jaw flex, a quick intake of breath as his mind scrambles between fury and fear.

Eddie opens his mouth to speak.

"Tommy, will you just shut the fuck up?" Steve says, head snapping up to meet Tommys gaze.

The room pauses. Forks stop. Conversations thin out into whispers.

Eddie's stomach drops. Not because Steve spoke, but because he spoke like that. Loud. Clear. Unapologetic.

He said it loud enough that people looked around and were looking at them. Eddie just stares, because he can't help it. The way Steve's jaw is set. The way his eyes aren't joking. The strange, impossible courage vibrating in his voice.

"...what?" Tommy asks, confused, grin faltering.

It's as though the linoleum itself has shifted an inch, as though all the fluorescent lights have dimmed by some fractional merciful degree. Eddie feels the moment before it fully arrives, the quiet inhalation of the whole cafeteria, every tray suspended mid-air, every whispered conversation evaporating into a wet hush.

Steve leans back with a huff dropping his fork onto the tray. "I said shut the fuck up."

His voice is even, almost bored, but there's a tightness at the edges of it Eddie recognises. That Harrington restraint, the one that always seems to hover between fury and something more fragile, more exhausted.

His shoulders are pushed back now, like he's decided there's no point in retreat. His eyes, when Eddie dares glance at them, are distant and cold, like someone walking through a storm refusing to flinch.

"The hell's your problem, man?" Tommy asks, frowning.

Tommy's confusion is genuine, and that scares Eddie more than if he'd laughed it off. That crack in his grin, that faltering bravado. It feels dangerous, like whatever comes next won't be contained.

"My problem is that you just spout the same tired bullshit every day. It's boring." Steve said, gaze permeating.

He doesn't throw the words. He places them down like a tired verdict, like he's been carrying it around too long and is finally exhausted enough to let it go.

"Boring?" Tommy echoes.

"Yeah." Steve says simply, staring at Tommy blankly unaware of everyone looking. Unaware or uncaring. Eddie can't tell.

"I'm just sick of you thinking you run the place when you can barely hold anyone's attention for five minutes. You're just an asshole." Steve says, he pushes his tray away from himself, pushes his chair out, it screeches. It splits the silence like a claw.

Eddie flinches. Steve rising feels monumental, like watching a statue crack open in real time.

"Are you fucking serious?" Tommy asks but Steve's already walking past. Still doesn't look at Eddie. Just has that firm, determined Harrington look.

Eddie notices that more than anything else. The fact that Steve doesn't look at him. As if this isn't for him. As if it isn't about him at all.

Tommy stands.
"Harrington!" He calls after him, furious but Steve's already gone.

The canteen is silent. The quiet isn't peaceful. It's sharpened, rattling, vibrating with anticipation. Carol's just looking between the three of them like she got lost at a tennis match.

Tommy turns to Eddie and Jonathan.
"The fuck are you looking at? Go." Tommy barks and Eddie and Jonathan speed walk away.

Eddie moves without thinking, legs stiff, pulse erratic, the echo of Steve's voice ringing like a bruise inside his ribcage.

"Holy shit, dude." Jonathan leans in to whisper as they walk.

"Just keep walking." Eddie says, watching everyone watch him.

They reach their table, the regular commotion ensues again in the cafeteria.

"Holy shit." Jonathan puts his tray down and leans over it. "What the fuck was that?" He asks.

"I don't know." Eddie says, voice clipped.
It comes out shorter than intended, colder, like he's trying to cut off his own thoughts before they can grow legs.

"You don't know?" Jonathan asks, sitting down.

"No, I don't know!" Eddie snaps.

"Okay, then I'll tell you. That was fucking huge." Jonathan says, index finger to the table.

"It's literally nothing." Eddie says, shaking his head, eyes still flickering up to everyone glancing back at him.

"Eddie. That was step one." Jonathan says, leaning in across the table.

"What?" Eddie asks, picking up a fork and picking at his mac n cheese.

"Cracking the armour. Isolating him. Making him look unstable in front of his own troops." Jonathan continues.

"I'm sure they'll be back to normal before last period. They're always—roughing each other up and hurling insults at each other. It's what they do." Eddie grumbles, not looking at Jonathan as he forks Mac and cheese into his mouth. It tastes like paste.

"No. No way, man. No way. Not after saying all that shit. Publicly. In the cafeteria. That's not nothing, that's social suicide." Jonathan shakes his head.

"Oh my god." Eddie says, mouth full.

"This is strategy, man. This is chess and he just moved his queen without realising. Now Tommy's pissed, Steve's off-balance, and everyone's watching. She's open for the taking. That was the first fissure."

The word fissure echoes somewhere unpleasantly inside Eddie.

"Okay, sure. Whatever you say." Eddie shrugs.
He presses his tongue against his cheek, tasting salt and something dangerously close to panic.

"Why don't you care about this?" Jonathan asks.

"Because it's just—I dunno"— He cuts himself off, because the truth feels too close to the surface.

"Eddie, you don't abandon a mission when the target starts sabotaging himself. Alienation, Eddie. Social erosion. What, you like him now or something? You're—friends all of a sudden?" Jonathan interjects.

The fork slips from Eddie's hand with a small clatter. "No! I don't like him. I just"—

"You just what?" Jonathan presses.

Eddie thinks. Swallows. He thinks of Steve's voice, steady and final. He thinks of the way the chair shrieked protesting as though even it knew something had changed.

"This isn't a movie, Jonathan. I don't think this is gonna pan out the way you think it's gonna pan out." Eddie says, voice low.

"No, it's better. Because this time we're not just taking the hits." Jonathan whispers excitedly.

"You're assuming a lot."

"I'm observing momentum."

"Jonathan—"

"He's wobbling."

"He's not wobbling."

"He is. And you're the one standing closest to him."

"That doesn't mean anything." Eddie huffs.

And yet his eyes drift again, toward where Steve used to be sitting, toward the empty space he left behind, the vacuum still humming with electricity and Tommy's frantic hand movements as he tries to aggressively compartmentalise what the fuck just happened.

"It means you need to get back in there and keep pushing. Keep playing nice. Keep letting him think he's safe and then we decide how hard he falls."

Eddie just watches him.
"You're insane."

"Maybe. But today? Today was progress." Jonathan says with a tilt of his head.

Eddie doesn't respond.

Because somewhere beneath the noise, beneath Jonathan's tactical nonsense, beneath the echo of Tommy's fury, all Eddie can think of is how Steve Harrington didn't look scared when he spoke.
Just exhausted.

And suddenly, unbearably real.

***

The club breathes around him. Heat, sweat, cologne sharp like static in the air. The lights fracture faces into sins and halos, and the bass trembles through the floor like a second heartbeat Eddie doesn't remember agreeing to carry.

He's backed against the wall again, shoulder blades pressed to peeling paint, while some guy with soft eyes and an earnest smile stands far too close, like he's mistaken proximity for intimacy.

Eddie doesn't know why he's here. He doesn't know why the guy is still here either.

He'd said his name earlier. Eddie forgot it immediately, the way you forget things that never land anywhere meaningful.

The guy is decent-looking. Nice enough jaw, careful hands. But everything about him feels flat, like a song played too softly to care about.

Across the floor, bodies move like liquid, couples folding into each other, laughter too loud to be real. Eddie's jaw tightens. His eyes drift over it all as if searching for something he'd promised himself he wasn't looking for.

The guy leans in, voice almost tender in its politeness. "You want another drink?"

His breath is warm against Eddie's ear, asking more than just the words. Eddie barely turns his head. "Uh"—

He doesn't even look at him when he says it, gaze snagged somewhere past the sea of people, somewhere that feels unspecific and yet painfully precise. "Nah. I think I'm gonna go and get some air." Eddie shifts off of the wall.

A small step. A mercy, perhaps.

"You good?" The guy asks.

Eddie almost laughs. The concern feels unearned, but sincere enough to annoy him.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm good. Just—hot. I'll be back in five." Eddie shrugs.

But probably not.

He doesn't wait for permission. He just turns, shoulders slicing through bodies, past the bar with its sticky surface, up the ramp where red light paints everyone like stains. The concrete hallway stinks of stale cigarette smoke. He pushes through the door and the night air hits him, cool and indifferent.

Outside, the queue snakes around the building. He walks until the music becomes dull, until the noise dissolves into a faint echo.

He stops at a stretch of wall near the parking lot and leans back, finally letting out the breath he'd been holding all night. He thinks about pulling out a cigarette. But the act of lighting it, inhaling, exhaling, was more than what he wanted to do right now. His eyes close.

When he opens them, he sees it.

That burgundy BMW.

He squints. The interior is dim but there's movement. A hand dragging across a face, a shuddered inhale.

Steve Harrington, behind the wheel, wiping at his cheeks and under his nose like he thinks if he erases the wetness fast enough it'll stop being real.

He's crying.

Eddie feels it before he names it. A sharp, intrusive ache. Something unwelcome and inconvenient blooming behind his sternum.

"My god." He mutters to himself, rolling his eyes, like annoyance might dull whatever this is. He stands there, motionless, as if choice itself is a burden.

Then his feet move anyway.

He crosses the distance too quickly, like the space between them had already been mapped long before tonight. He leans down by the driver's side, rests one arm on the roof, and raps sharply on the glass.

Steve flinches violently. "Jesus fuck"—

He clutches his chest, eyes blown wide, face flushed and wet, breath ragged. Eddie watches him without apology.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Steve exclaims, voice muffled by the glass.

"Roll down the window." Eddie says frankly.

"What?" Steve squints.

"Roll down the window." Eddie says louder.

Steve shakes his head, frustration pinching his brows. "I can't hear you."

Eddie exhales hard, impatience sparking.
"Roll"—

"Hang on." Steve holds up a finger, fumbling with the crank until the window lowers with a tired mechanical whine.

"Jesus." Eddie rolls his eyes with a huff.

"You scared the shit outta me." Steve says, voice tight and breathless.

"What are you doing?" Eddie asks, snappily.

"Nothing. I'm just—sitting." Steve says, glancing around his car, as if the answer is somewhere in the upholstery.

"Were you in there?" Eddie asks.

"No." Steve looks at his hands in his lap. "I didn't make it in."

Something in Eddie shifts, irritation curdling into something heavier. He stares at Steve for half a second longer than necessary, then moves around the car, yanks open the passenger door, and drops inside like gravity itself insisted.

Steve turns toward him, startled, uncertain.

"Talk." Eddie says flatly.

"About what?" Steve asks.

Eddie studies his profile. The red-rimmed eyes, the trembling mouth, the way the night has stripped him of everything effortless.

"Well, we could start with why you're sitting in your car crying in the dark in a parking lot like some—rejected vampire." Eddie says firmly.

"I wasn't crying." Steve laughs, but it's brittle, too quick.

"You were crying." Eddie says flatly.

"No I wasn't." Steve presses.

"You definitely were."

"I'm fine. I'm completely fine. I'm just not feeling it tonight so I'm gonna head home." Steve says, trying to smile but it wavers.

Eddie watches the performance fail in real time. He narrows his eyes, then exhales sharply and reaches for the door.

"Okay, then. Goodnight." He says, already shifting his weight to leave as the door swings open.

"Wait." Steve says abruptly.

Eddie stops, turns to him with a wearied tilt of his head.

"...I was crying." He says, voice small.

"Wow. Shocking. Truly, I'm shocked." Eddie says with a huff. He lets the door fall shut again with a dull thud.

"You don't have to be an ass about it." Steve grumbles, fingers worrying at the hem of his striped polo like it's the only thing keeping him grounded.

"You're right, I don't. It just happens." Eddie shrugs. "So are you gonna tell me why?"

Steve inhales shakily, eyes fixed forward like he's confessing to the windshield instead of Eddie.
"I was—in the queue. I got to the front. The guy went to stamp my hand and I just—froze. Like I couldn't even—lift my fucking hand. Then I just—ran back to my car like a fucking coward." He says quietly. "I don't know why I even came. I just kept thinking I could do it and then when I got there it just felt wrong."

Eddie listens, jaw tensing, mind skidding uselessly between irritation and the inconvenient realisation that he cares.

"Wrong how? You've been coming here for months." Eddie asks, not getting what the big deal is.

"It's different now. Like it's all caught up to me or something." Steve shrugs. "Now I just—feel like I'm undercover in my own life or something. I don't feel like I belong here." He says.
"I don't feel like I belong anywhere." He says even quieter, his voice breaking slightly.

Eddie frowns, the expression foreign and unpracticed.

"I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't know how to be this person. It feels like everyone else got a manual and I just—missed out." Steve lets out a dismal laugh. "I don't even think I'm a real person."

"What." It slips out sharp, flat, edged with disbelief, like the concept itself has offended him.

"I mean—I am obviously, but it feels like I'm... split." Steve says, like he's self conscious of it.

Eddie stays still. No smirk, no joke, no deflection. Just eyes studying the way Steve curls inward as he speaks, shoulders subtly hunched, fingers clamped at the fabric of his shirt.

Steve's voice dips as if he hates himself for every syllable.

"With my parents I'm this constant disappointment who never does enough, never gets it right, never lives up to whatever ghost they apparently raised instead of me. I can feel it every time my dad looks at me. Like he already decided I failed before I even opened my mouth."

His shoulders tighten as he speaks, chin lowering toward his chest, eyes fixed stubbornly on his lap as though the truth might burn less if he doesn't meet Eddie's gaze.

"And with Tommy and Carol I'm this person that's supposed to laugh at the right things and say the right stuff and keep them comfortable. Big, loud, untouchable Harrington. The guy who never hesitates. The guy who always wins."
He exhales sharply through his nose, humourless, exhausted.
"And at school I'm—whatever everyone says I am that week. King Steve who threw that awesome party that weekend when his parents were out of town and was left to clean everything up on his own. Or just some rich, preppy asshole who everybody's scared of. I hear it all and none of it actually feels like it belongs to me but I still have to wear it anyway."

His breath catches slightly, and when he finally looks up, it's tentative, fragile, like he's stepping onto thin ice.
"And then there's you."

The words hit Eddie like he's been named in a story he doesn't remember agreeing to be part of.

"And I don't even know what I am to you." Steve shrugs.

"Annoying." Eddie says flatly.

The reflex comes too fast, like muscle memory. But even as it leaves his mouth, he sees the faint twitch of Steve's lips, the tiniest acknowledgment that he hears the affection buried beneath the insult.

Steve looks back down again, safer there.
"I don't know how to fix it," he continues. "I don't know how to make it stop. I feel like I'm constantly performing and I don't remember when it started or who I was before it did. I don't know which version is supposed to be real."

His voice breaks, soft and raw, and he doesn't even bother to hide it. Eddie's throat tightens as he watches a single tear slip down Steve's cheek.

Some part of him—reckless, startling—wants to reach out, brush it away, erase it, pretend none of this ever had to exist. But his hands stay locked where they are, fingers curled uselessly against his own thigh.

"It's like I keep getting cut up and handed out in pieces. And the worst part is I don't even know which one is me anymore. And what happens when school's over?" Steve murmurs.
"When none of this exists anymore."

Eddie exhales slowly, leaning back a fraction, trying to pull logic back into the spiralling conversation. "Then you graduate like the rest of us and go be miserable somewhere new," Eddie says.

"No, I mean—what happens to me." Steve presses. "What if that's all I ever was? What if the only thing people remember about me is how awful I was?"

"You're assuming a lot of nostalgia there." Eddie says.

Steve squints slightly, like he's trying to visualise the future right here on the dusty windshield.
"I'm serious. After all this, I'm just—some guy. Some guy everyone remembers as an asshole they went to high school with. I don't have anything else," Steve continues. "No plan. No talent. No version of myself that feels solid. Just—this reputation that everyone's already waiting to watch die."

He laughs, but it's hollow, bruised.

"They all want me to fail. I can feel it. Like they're just waiting for the headline. Once I'm not King Steve, what the fuck am I? Who even cares?"

"Newsflash, Harrington," Eddie says quietly. "You're already just some guy."

Steve finally looks at him then, searching his face for something. Reassurance maybe, or truth.

"And yet here you are. Still breathing. The earth is still spinning. Nothings on fire." Eddie says.

"But that's not exactly inspiring." Steve grumbles.

"It's realistic," Eddie shrugs. "Not all of us get to be legends."

Steve exhales shakily. "I don't wanna be a failure."

"Then don't be."

"It's not that simple." Steve says frustratedly.

"No, but it's also not permanent," Eddie says, softer now. "High school isn't a tombstone. It's just—a really gross, sweaty waiting room."

Steve falls quiet, jaw shifting, teeth grinding lightly as he mulls it all over.

"Is this why you shut Tommy down?" Eddie asks, carefully casual. "This—existential spiral?"

"No. He was just—pissing me off." Steve shakes his head, jaw tight. "He's gotten way worse lately."

"Worse? Shit. Didn't realise I had it so easy before." Eddie snorts, leaning back in his seat.

"I mean, he's always been an asshole but not like this," Steve mutters. "I don't even wanna be around him anymore," he admits, voice low. "It feels gross. Like every time I'm around him I'm just—shrinking."

"Well, it's good to know you draw the line at all the faggot stuff and just prefer your bullying to be purely based on income and appearance." Eddie puts one foot up on the dash, casual, posture deliberately flippant.

"You know what I mean." Steve says.

"So you finally hit your limit." Eddie says with a drawn out exhale.

"Yeah," he breathes. "And now everything feels weird. Like I kicked one of the legs out from under my own chair."

"Good," Eddie mutters.

Steve looks at him, surprised.

"Maybe you should've snapped a long time ago," Eddie adds, softer than he probably means to be.

Steve lets out a quiet, uneven laugh. "Guess I'm late to my own identity crisis."

"Surprising to no one." Eddie grins.

Steve smiles then. A real one. Warm and unguarded. But it falters.

"I don't wanna be that guy anymore. The one who just goes along with whatever makes him popular. I wanna change."

"That supposed to impress me?" Eddie asks, raising a brow.

"No," Steve says honestly. "Just—explaining." He slouches slightly, draping an arm over the wheel.
"Wow. I think I hate my friends," Steve says quietly, staring at the dashboard like it might argue with him.

"Join the club. We have jackets." Eddie says.

"I don't think they've ever actually been my friends. Not really. I just look good standing next to them. None of it has anything to do with who I am."

Steve's voice loosens, words spilling faster now like a dam has burst.

"I see you with your friends and it's—different." Steve swallows. "You actually care about each other. You show up. You defend each other. You're not just hanging out because it makes you look better."

He lets out a bitter laugh.

"I think I've probably always been jealous of that. Even before I knew why."

"Jealous of my loser friendship circle? That's bleak." Eddie says.

"I mean it," Steve insists. "You have people that would still choose you even if you lived in a shoebox and drove a rusted scooter. The second I stop being useful? I disappear. Or worse, I become the next punchline." He swallows hard. "I have—too many secrets to let that happen."

Eddie doesn't respond straight away. He just watches Steve breathe through it, eyes glossy, world temporarily stripped of performance.

Somewhere, deep beneath the sarcasm and resistance and instinctive denial, Eddie realises that Steve Harrington doesn't look like a villain anymore.

He looks like someone who is finally trying to survive himself.

And for reasons Eddie refuses to admit aloud, that realisation unsettles him more than any slur or punch ever could.

"So you stuck with them anyway." Eddie says.

He watches Steve's profile, the side of his face barely gilded by the amber streetlight bleeding through the windshield.

"Yeah," he admits, voice fragile. "Guess it was better than being alone."

"You think we're not alone?" Eddie asks.

Steve shrugs helplessly. "You're alone together. You look like real friends. Like something that isn't conditional." He says it as though he's peering at Eddie's life through glass, trying to imagine a way in.

"Does that annoy you or something?"
Eddie finally looks over, brow raised, as if daring him to admit it hurts.

"It makes me sad," he whispers. "Because I don't even know how to have that. And I don't think I ever will."

And there it is. Not jealousy, not bitterness. Those messy, jaded emotions that made it all too easy for Eddie to push back on. Just grief. Quiet and unguarded.

"You know," Eddie says quietly, staring out the window, "you're still not exactly invited to the sacred inner circle."

He keeps his eyes forward, pretending this is just another joke, when really it feels like a line he doesn't quite want to draw.

Steve gives a weak huff. "Figures."

"But." Eddie shifts slightly, he lowers his leg, the vinyl seat creaking beneath him. "Doesn't mean you're as unredeemable as you think you are."

Steve turns to him, surprised again, eyes soft but uncertain, like he's trying to decide whether to trust the gentleness behind the insult.

"Just don't let that go to your head," Eddie adds with a small grin. "We've got a strict 'no emotionally fragile jocks' policy."

Steve chuckles. A sound that briefly warms the cold night between them. "Guess I'm failing on all fronts."

"Consistently," Eddie agrees, but there's no cruelty in it. The sarcasm is familiar, safe. A way back into equilibrium.

Suddenly Eddie shifts forward with a grunt, the resolve hitting him like a muscle spasm.
"You know what I think you should do?" Eddie says, looking at Steve.

Steve glances at him. "What."

"I think you should wipe your face, and get back in there." Eddie says firmly.

Steve exhales weakly, shaking his head. "No. I can't."

Eddie leans forward, head near the dash, hands clasped in his lap, voice quieter but insistent.
"You can. And you should. Because those are your people. That's the one place you're allowed to just exist without auditioning for anything."

He pauses, then adds, softer, more honest than he means to be, his voice losing some of its edge.

"And yeah, okay, sometimes it is conditional. Life's a scam. But this?" He nods vaguely toward the door of the club. "This is the closest thing you've got to something real."

Steve swallows, throat working. "I don't know what I'm doing in there."

"Good. Neither does anyone else. You'll fit right in." Eddie shrugs. "Even if it's just to stand in a corner and look terrified, at least you're there."

Steve exhales, nodding slowly. "Okay."

Eddie studies him now, the uncertainty, the way the night has softened him.

Then he squints. "But fix your hair first."

Steve frowns slightly. "What's wrong with my hair? You just said I need to wipe my face."

Eddie scoffs and leans in, hands rising almost without permission, cupping Steve's cheeks and tugging him forward. "Here."

Before Steve can protest, Eddie's fingers rake through his hair. Rough, possessive, messy. Destroying the pristine perfection and leaving something real in its wake. The product clings to his skin, waxy and sharp, but Eddie keeps at it, reshaping, ruining, reimagining.

"Ow! Jesus." Steve seethes as Eddie just continues.

"Hold still," Eddie snaps, tongue pressed to his cheek as he concentrates.

Then his hands move lower, grabbing the front of Steve's shirt, yanking the buttons apart, tugging the fabric in practised frustration like he's styling a mannequin too beautiful to exist. He undoes another button, stretches the collar, leaning back to inspect the chaos he's made.

Steve looks devastating like this. Ruined. Alive. Unrecognisable.

And a thought flashes uninvited and violent. Steve beneath him, breathless, undone. So quick it almost makes Eddie pull away in shock.

He swallows hard. "There," Eddie says.

A small, nervous smile flickers across Steve's mouth. "Thanks," he murmurs.

"Don't get sappy. Makes me itchy." Eddie replies, already pushing open the passenger side door. "C'mon."

"Wait." Steve says abruptly, loud.

Eddie pauses, hand still on the door, turning back slowly.

"I was the one who"— Steve starts, fear shadowing his face.

"What?" Eddie asks.

He takes a sharp breath in. "I was the one who told Tommy to start the rumour about—the locker room thing." He says, voice small.

"Oh, I know." Eddie says casually.

Steve blinks. "How?"

"Because Tommy's a fucking idiot. He wouldn't be able to come up with something that convoluted on his own." Eddie snorts.
"You're a smart guy, Harrington. You just need to use it better."

Steve studies him, like he can't quite reconcile this response.

"You don't hate me?" He asks quietly.

"Well, I never said that." Eddie teases, though his voice softens as he exhales. "I don't hate you." He adds simply. "S'kinda hard to hate somebody who's crying alone in a parking lot on a Friday night because they're treating a gay club like it's a haunted house."

Steve actually laughs. Surprised, small. Eddie smiles back, faint and crooked.

They both step out of the car. Steve locks it with a nervous click.

They cross the lot side by side, the chill biting at their skin, Steve's shoulders squaring with each breath he takes.

"Just breathe. The only thing you need to be scared of is the fact you're here underage." Eddie says as they approach the entrance.

"Okay." Steve nods.

The bouncer barely looks up when Eddie flashes the faded stamp on the back of his hand, the ink smudged into something half-recognisable, half-forgotten, like the rest of the night already feels.

Steve steps forward beside him, shoulders squared too tightly, producing what Eddie can already tell is a pretty terrible fake ID. The laminated edge curling a little at the corner, the confidence in his grip not quite matching the nonsense name printed on it. The bouncer studies it, then shrugs, nodding them through with bored indifference.

And the second they cross the threshold, the air changes.

Hot, wet, dense with sweat and smoke. The bass reverberates straight through Eddie's ribcage, deep and invasive, and the lights fracture everything into red and violet shards.

Steve stiffens beside him instantly, posture locking, chin dropping as if he's afraid someone might recognise him simply by the angle of his face. He keeps his eyes on the floor, on his shoes, anywhere but the people moving around him.

Eddie watches that, the way fear creeps so obviously into his shoulders, the way his breath goes shallow, and without thinking too much about it, he reaches out.

He ushers him toward a wall by some of the booths, hands settling on Steve's shoulders, steering him gently but decisively, like a pilot guiding a plane through rough air.

"Stand here. Try not to piss your pants. I'm gonna get you a drink. 'Kay?" Eddie shouts over the noise.

Steve nods, a little too fast, eyes still wide, still overwhelmed. "Okay."

Eddie pushes through the crowd toward the bar, bodies slick and careless against him, strangers shoving past without apology. It's already two deep, elbows knocking, voices shouting orders drowned in music.

He glances back over his shoulder and sees Steve exactly where he left him. Arms wrapped around himself, like he's bracing against a cold wind instead of heat, watching people dance and laugh and crash into each other like he's observing a foreign species.

He orders, waits, feels the sticky drag of the floor beneath his shoes, the way the whole room vibrates under his skin. When the glasses are finally pressed into his hands, sweating and cold, he turns and weaves back through the chaos.

"Here." Eddie shouts, placing the drink into Steve's tentative hand. "Rat juice."

Steve peers at the murky liquid like it might bite him.

"Rat juice?" he asks loudly, just to make sure he hasn't misheard.

Eddie cracks a crooked smile, stepping beside him, shoulder brushing his. "It's just what I call rum and coke."

"Why?" Steve asks, brow furrowing.

"I dunno. It's just fun to say." Eddie shrugs, taking a sip.

He watches Steve mimic him, hesitant, like the taste itself might confirm some terrible suspicion.

"See? Not scary. Just sweaty." Eddie says.

"Yeah." Steve nods. But his eyes don't quite believe it, still flicking nervously to every sudden movement.

They stand like that for a minute. Steve pretending to drink, Eddie pretending not to watch him breathe.

Then a flash of blond arrogance cuts through the haze. A guy with spiky hair and a too-tight vest, eyes sharp, movements jittery, strides right up to Steve, blindly confident.

"Hey," the guy says, voice slick, insistent. "You party?" He flashes a small bag, grin stretching too wide.

"What?" Steve asks, leaning in.

"Wanna split some coke? It's good shit I swear."

Steve startles slightly, politeness snapping into place. "Oh. No, thanks."

But the guy doesn't move. He looms closer.
"C'mon, pretty boy, don't be boring."

Eddie straightens immediately, muscles tightening, heat flaring under his skin.
"He said no," he cuts in, voice firm despite the noise. "Try reading the room."

The guy scoffs, dismissive. "I wasn't asking you."

"Well you got me anyway," Eddie replies, shifting subtly so his body shields Steve's, instinctive, weirdly protective.

"I'm just offering, man." The guy laughs hollowly.

"And we're just declining. You got, like, a whole club of people who might actually be into your weird coke salesman routine. Go roam." Eddie says bitchily, flicking his hand like shooing a pest.

The guy doesn't retreat. If anything, he edges closer, testing the boundary like it's optional.
"What are you, his handler or something?" he sneers. "He can speak for himself."

Eddie's expression goes flat. "No," he says, voice dropping into something colder, sharper. "I'm the guy telling you to back the fuck up."

Steve shifts behind him, like he might say something, but Eddie steps forward again without even turning, a silent barrier.

"He already said no," Eddie continues. "And now I'm saying no. And if you're still confused, that's a you problem."

The guy pulls a face, muttering something under his breath. "Relax, man. I'm just trying to have a good time."

"Great," Eddie leans in just enough to make the point land. "Go have it. Somewhere that isn't two inches from his face."

The guy glares once more, then finally stalks off, disappearing back into the mass of sweat and lights.

Eddie exhales slowly, settling back against the wall like nothing happened, though his hands are still buzzing faintly with adrenaline.

"Wow, you're so right. Not scary at all." Steve murmurs sarcastically into Eddie's ear, voice low, dry.

Eddie snorts softly, lips twitching. "It's not. You just gotta know the right people to talk to."

"And that guy was...?"

"Very much not it. Avoid at all costs." Eddie says, nodding once, sure of it. "You just gotta read the vibe. Find the ones who aren't going to pressure you into chemical enlightenment five seconds after meeting you."

Steve huffs a quiet breath, a tiny patch of humour softening his face.

The lights flicker in staggered waves over the club floor, casting everyone in something between neon confession and deliberate disguise. Eddie can feel the heat rising behind his ribs, sweat prickling along the nape of his neck, the bass briefing his bones on a rhythm he's known too long to notice.

Still, Steve's voice cuts through it like something unplanned, almost fragile. "And how do you know who those are?"

Eddie turns slightly, leaning his shoulder more comfortably into the wall, letting his weight settle, trying to look like he hasn't just been watching Steve breathe between sips.
"You don't," Eddie says easily. "You just learn who to say no to faster."

He glances sideways at him, catching the way Steve's brows knit, like he's filing the advice away under something dangerously important.

"So what was it like when you came here alone before?"

Steve's mouth twitches faintly, a humourless almost-smile. "You already know it was pathetic."

"I know you freaked out," Eddie says, studying him.

"Pretty much just this. I kept thinking if I stayed long enough I'd magically stop feeling like an imposter. But I never did. Then I'd just leave. Drive around for a while. Sit in my car. Feel like an idiot. Go home." There's a ghost of shame in his voice, like even remembering it bruises him.
"And then I'd do it again the next week."

Eddie's expression softens despite himself, the sharpness in his jaw easing slightly. "You kept coming back though. That's something."

"Yeah. I guess." Steve shrugs, as if determination itself feels foolish.

Eddie hesitates, eyes tracing the curve of Steve's profile. The concentration in the set of his lips, the way his fingers shift nervously around his glass. He leans just a little closer, lowering his voice.

"I saw you with that guy—when I saw you here the first time."

Steve turns, confused. "What guy?"

"I dunno. The one in the corner. Hand on your waist. You looked happy."

"I wasn't." Steve shook his head, gaze drifting away again. "I wanted to look like that." The admission feels heavier than it should.
"I didn't feel it though. I just kept thinking, this is what you're supposed to want, this is what this is meant to look like."

His brow furrows, eyes fixed on the blur of bodies in front of them, but he stands close enough that Eddie feels the warmth of him.

"I was just scared," Steve replies. "Because he was confident. Because I didn't wanna ruin the moment by being weird." He glances down at his hands. "I was thinking of ways that I could get out of it because I knew if I let it go any further, I was gonna screw it up somehow."

"You think you'd ever go home with someone from here?" Eddie asks, aiming for casual, landing just shy of it.

Steve considers him briefly. Shrugs. "Maybe. One day. When it doesn't feel like I'm forcing myself into some kind of costume."

Eddie nods, takes a slow sip, trying to anchor the thought somewhere safe.

"Have you ever—gone home with anyone from here?" Steve asks.

Eddie snorts. "Yeah. Obviously."

"That didn't sound very romantic." Steve laughs.

"It's not," Eddie says dryly. "To be honest we rarely even make it out the door. That last bathroom stall has seen more of my life choices than my own reflection."

Steve blinks. "You're serious?"

"Deadly."

A reluctant laugh slips out of Steve. "So you just... hook up with people in the bathroom?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's a mutual understanding. Sometimes it's desperation. Sometimes it's 'we both made eye contact too long and now we're committed to whatever the fuck is about to happen next.'" Eddie shrugs.

"And you're fine with that?" Steve asks, curiosity openly perched behind his eyes.

"Fine is a strong word," Eddie shrugs. "It's easier than pretending I'm looking for my soulmate next to the jukebox."

Steve looks fascinated, almost soft with it. "And you're not scared?"

"Terrified," Eddie says cheerfully. "Just better at ignoring it."

Steve nods, thoughtful, taking another testing sip. Eddie watches the way his lips wrap around the rim of the glass, how focused he looks just performing that simple act.

And then Eddie hears his own voice spill forward, fast and strangely earnest. "Just—do me a solid and don't base your own experiences on mine and feel like you should be doing something differently. Or that you should be more like—me. I'm positive there's plenty of people out there who would say you're not meant to speedrun your sexual awakening behind a sticky bathroom door. Trust me, I'm not the poster boy. If anything at this point I'm just a walking tourism brochure."

Steve's eyes narrow slightly, thoughtful. "Have you ever had a boyfriend?"

Eddie exhales a soft huff. "Nope."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Do you want one?" Steve asks, cautious, sincere.

"I dunno." Eddie winces.

"That's not an answer." Steve smirks.

"It's the only honest one I've got," Eddie mutters.

"What?" Steve squints, voice carrying over the music.

Eddie clears his throat. "Most people at home aren't exactly signing up for a long-term emotional investment with the resident freak."

Steve frowns. "You're not a freak."

"Wow. Big day for compliments," Eddie deadpans.

"I'm serious."

"Yeah, yeah." He swallows. "Guess I just never let myself think that far ahead."

"And now?" Steve asks.

"And now I'm standing in a sweaty club having a heart-to-heart with Steve Harrington, so clearly my life has taken a sharp narrative detour."

Steve smiles faintly. Something warm, almost dangerous.

Then a hand clamps around Eddie's arm. He flinches instinctively, yanking it away before realising who it is.

"Five minutes," a voice snaps. "That's what you said."

"Jesus. I got held up," Eddie winces. "Life-altering emotional stuff, you know how it is."

"I don't," the guy deadpans. "But I do know you just ditched me."

Steve stiffens beside Eddie, shoulders tightening like he expects impact.

"I'm standing there looking like an idiot, and now you're back acting like nothing happened."

Eddie's mouth opens. Closes. "Okay, yeah, fair. But—"

"But what?"

Steve shifts. "I can leave if—"

"No," Eddie says instantly. Then steadier, "I just—lost track of time."

"So?" the guy pushes. "We still doing this or what?"

"Uh..." Eddie rubs the back of his neck. "I think I'm gonna call it tonight."

The guy stares. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

He scoffs. "Wow. Okay. Guess I'll just go fuck myself then."

"Yeah, probably," Eddie mutters. "Good luck with that."

The guy snorts once, eyes flicking over Steve, then disappears into the crowd, swallowed whole by sweat and music.

Eddie exhales slowly, the ghost of tension still buzzing under his skin as he turns back to Steve, who hasn't moved.

Eddie feels Steve's stare settle on him after that small, jagged silence. The kind that gathers when something unsaid has already begun to rot.

Eddie's practically gulping his drink in annoyance, the sharp burn coating his tongue like a distraction he's trying to convince himself is enough.

"You didn't have to do that." Steve said.

Eddie shifts his weight, eyes averted, forcing a shrug that doesn't quite feel natural in his own shoulders. "S'fine."

"But you were gonna go with him, weren't you?" Steve presses.

"Wasn't exactly a fairytale brewing," Eddie says, lips curling with half-hearted sarcasm.

"Still."

"Still nothing," Eddie firms, cutting it off before it becomes something heavier. "Come on. Down your drink."

"What?" Steve blinks at him. "Why?"

"Because we're going over there." Eddie jerks his chin toward the dance-floor. A chaotic, swaying mass of limbs and glitter and poor life choices that pulse in sync with the bass like a living organism.

Steve's eyes widen. "No, absolutely not."

"Why?" Eddie laughs, but there's pressure behind it, insistence cloaked in humour.

"I'm not dancing." Steve says, stepping away slightly, shoulders stiffening again.

"Who said anything about dancing?" Eddie scoffs.

"That area is exclusively for dancing."

"We're just gonna stand and move slightly."

"I don't move slightly," Steve argues. "I either freeze or embarrass myself."

"Perfect, you'll blend right in." Eddie says, placing a hand on his shoulder and guiding him forward.

Steve shrugs him off. "I'm serious."

"So am I. Drink. Now." Eddie says, gesturing toward the glass like an ultimatum.

Steve stares at it for a beat, then reluctantly downs the rest, face tightening as though preparing for something invasive.

Eddie grins faintly. "See? Brave already."

"I hate you." Steve murmurs, depositing his empty glass on a narrow ledge behind him.

"No you don't. You're just nervous. For literally no reason, might I add." Eddie nudges him forward, though Steve's feet appear welded to the ground.

"I'm not going out there."

"You are," Eddie says, already tugging him by the sleeve. "Because if I can make eye contact with several guys I've already fucked while a strobe light makes me look like a Victorian ghost, you can survive five minutes of gentle swaying." Eddie walks backward now, balancing humour and urgency.

"I don't sway!" Steve protests.

"You will. I'll teach you. But you gotta focus, it's very advanced choreography."

They edge into the crowd, just enough for the music to pulse beneath their bones like second heartbeats, lights washing over their faces in feral colours.

"There," Eddie says. "Now move your shoulders approximately one half inch."

"This is stupid." Steve groans.

"You're doing great."

And weirdly, he doesn't flee. Doesn't fold. He stays. Even moves, the faintest, tentative rhythm.

"Oh my god," Eddie smirks. "You're doing it. You're rhythm-adjacent."

"Shut up." Steve's lips thin in annoyance.

Eddie notices it before Steve knows he's doing it. His eyes drift. Linger on two guys nearby, close enough to feel each other's breath, laughing into smiles edged with careless intimacy. One cups the other's cheek, lips finding home like it's the simplest thing in the world.

Steve doesn't gawk. He studies. Just long enough to remember what quiet longing looks like.

"You okay?" Eddie asks, tone deliberately gentle.

"Yeah." But his eyes hesitate before obeying his instinct to look away.

Eddie watches the two guys again, then Steve.
"What, they not teach you that yet?" he adds lightly.

Steve huffs a restrained laugh. "They just make it look so easy."

"Yeah. Disgusting, isn't it." Eddie smirks.

"I mean—yeah." He hesitates. "But kind of nice too."

Eddie swallows the echo of that. Looks at the way Steve's face glows under violet light, the soft unraveling of guard lines. And something combusts. Something fragile and terrifying.

Then, without warning, Eddie moves.

His hands find Steve's wrists and pull him closer against the wash of bodies. Steve startles, confusion rippling across him. "What are you doing?"

"Just—stop thinking," Eddie says, voice nearly devoured by the pounding rhythm.

And before Steve can question it, Eddie leans in and kisses him.

It's not perfect. It's raw. A spark between two raw nerves.

Steve pulls back instinctively, breath sharp, eyes wide and startled.

"Sorry," Eddie blurts, louder than he meant.
"You just looked like you needed proof it was okay to want it."

Steve scans the room. Aware, exposed, caught in the whirlwind of observation.

Eddie leans closer, cheek to cheek, mouth by his ear him so that his words couldn't be misconstrued through the endless thrumming bass. "Nobody here knows you. Nobody here gives a shit that you're Steve Harrington. You're background noise at best." Eddie says, looking over Steve's shoulder, seeing it twitch slightly beneath his chin.
"The place isn't on fire. The world kept spinning. You're okay."

He pulls back and lets the silence speak before reaching again, slower this time, tentative. Fingers brushing along Steve's jaw, a silent invitation.

There's a quiet ache in his expression, a subtle tension in his jaw like he's swallowing words he doesn't trust himself to say, lips parted just enough to suggest a breath he forgot to finish. It's vulnerable in the most accidental way, the fragile kind of look that says too much without meaning to, like he's already given himself away and only just realised.

Steve hesitates, then leans in.

It's different. Still uncertain, but real. Lingering. A softness on the edge of surrender. And Eddie feels it pulling him apart. The want so immediate it shocks him, and the dread so sharp it scales up the back of his spine.

This isn't lust the way he knows it. This is terrifying. This is wanting to feel something that might actually matter.

He should hate how good it feels. How Steve melts even just slightly, like the moment has slid beneath his skin. Eddie feels every flicker of warmth and panic twine through his limbs, caught between craving and fear, as though one more second might mean never finding his way back out.

And then Steve finally pulls back, breath undone, eyes wide and shining, lips flushed and swollen and for a heartbeat, the music hushes.

All Eddie feels is the weight of that kiss pressing into his chest like something fate-shaped and dangerous.

The lights strobe once, twice, slicing Steve's face into fragments of colour and shadow, and then his mouth opens and the words seem to fall out of him before he has time to decide whether he believes them. "We could go back to mine," Steve blurts. "My parents aren't home."

There's a raw, reckless hunger in the way he says it, like he's trying to outrun the echo of his own fear, like speed might somehow prove certainty.

Eddie just stares at him for half a second, the way you look at someone who's walked straight into a storm with their arms open, then he laughs. Soft. Warm. Almost fond, and deeply dangerous in its tenderness. "Jesus Christ, Harrington," he says. "You go from 'I don't belong here' to 'come defile my childhood bedroom' in record time."

Steve blinks, confusion folding into embarrassment, his confidence collapsing back into itself. His hands twitch uselessly at his sides.
"I just—I meant—I thought maybe—"

"I know what you thought," Eddie says, still smiling, and the smile surprises even him. "You're terrifyingly proactive."

He gestures around them. The pulsing crowd, the damp heat, the careless choreography of bodies that have no plans beyond the next beat. And it feels, suddenly, like the world might be breathing just fine without needing either of them to decide anything.

"Just—enjoy the moment, Harrington." His thumb brushes Steve's knuckles almost absentmindedly, a touch so light it barely counts as contact and yet somehow louder than the music. "You're allowed to have one without trying to own it."

Steve exhales, the sharpness in his shoulders easing, gaze lowering like he's ashamed and relieved all at once. "Sorry."

Eddie smiles and nods, softer still, something easing behind his ribs. "You're okay."

***

People spill out of the club like fragments shaken loose from some feverish dream, all flushed skin and laughter and the sharp sting of night air sobering them too quickly.

The bass still pulses faintly through Eddie's chest as he follows Steve across the lot, the asphalt dark and faintly glittering under weak lamplight.

Steve's fingers dig into his pocket, fishing out his keys, metal chiming softly as he walks.

"Did you drive here?" Steve asks.

His voice still carries a trace of breathlessness from the dancefloor, like he hasn't fully come back down yet.

"Nope. Fully prepared to make terrible decisions. I took the bus." Eddie says as they close in on Steve's car.

He watches the way Steve's mouth lifts at that, the corner quirking with amused disbelief.
"So I'm assuming you need a ride?"

Eddie's already circling to the passenger side, hand hovering over the door handle as if the answer has been settled long before the question.
"Uh-huh." Eddie says.

Steve laughs, and the sound lands softer than it should have any right to.

His cheeks are flushed, hair curling from the damp of sweat, forehead shining under the weak bulbs. There's a dangerous clarity to the way Eddie realises, uninvited, that Steve looks beautiful like this. Not polished. Not perfect. Just real and undone.

They get in. The door shuts with a muted thud that seals them into a confined pocket of night. Steve slides the key into the ignition, the engine purring to life. Eddie forces his gaze forward, anywhere but at Steve's hand as it flexes around the gearstick. Deliberate, confident, absurd.

"Can't believe you took the bus."

"It's called public transport, Harrington," Eddie replies. "Very avant-garde. Very community-minded."

Steve snorts softly. "I just didn't have you pegged as a 'wait for scheduled services' kind of guy."

The word hits Eddie's brain and detonates, sharp and obscene and wildly inappropriate. He freezes mid-motion, lips twitching as something feral and juvenile leaps behind his eyes.

"Oh, trust me," Eddie says slowly, turning his head just enough for Steve to catch the gleam there. "You have no idea what I look like when I get pegged."

Steve blinks. Once. Then again. His brows knit together, innocence tripping over curiosity.
"...What?"

Eddie watches the blankness unfold on his face, the pure unfiltered confusion, and something unexpectedly fond curls beneath his ribs.

"Do you not know what that means?" Eddie asks.

"No?" Steve says carefully, as though bracing for either instruction or disaster. "Is that like—a bus thing?"

A startled laugh tears out of Eddie. He drops his head, shaking it. "Oh my god. I forgot for a sec how sheltered you are."

Steve scowls faintly, wounded pride creeping in. "You're the one who said it."

"Yeah, but you used it first," Eddie points out.
"And I just handed you the most inappropriate possible interpretation of that."

Steve waits, tense, clearly regretting his choices but too curious to abort the mission.
"Okay but what does it mean?"

Eddie drags his hand down his face, already knowing this conversation is going to haunt him.
"It's—" he starts, then sighs. "It's a sex thing."

Steve stiffens slightly. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Like, what kind of sex thing."

"You really want the visual?"

"You already said it."

There's a second where Eddie could salvage the conversation. He doesn't.

"It's when, uh," he gestures vaguely, searching for a word that doesn't exist, "someone straps on a dildo and uses it on someone else. Thats literally it."

Steve goes very still as he drives. A receiver of information he was never meant to possess.
"Oh."

The silence that follows has weight. Texture.

"I did not mean that pegging," Steve says quickly.

"No shit," Eddie mutters.

"...Is it, uh," Steve begins, hesitant. "Is it common?"

Eddie glances sideways, smirk sliding in despite himself. "Only if you're brave."

Steve swallows. "Huh."

And Eddie knows, knows with absolute certainty, that Steve Harrington is going to lie awake one night far too soon and replay this exact moment until it burrows permanently into his bloodstream.

"Anyway, don't start acting like you're morally superior because you and your absurdly expensive car have beef with public transit."

Steve glances smugly at the dashboard. "It does have leather seats."

"Yeah, well the bus has character."

"Yeah. It also smells gross."

"Adds flavour."

Steve chuckles, shaking his head.
"You're ridiculous."

That laugh again, warmer now. Easier.

"And yet here you are, chauffeur to the bus boy." Eddie grins smugly.

And Eddie could feel it. A thread tightening. A thought refusing to loosen.

And the uncomfortable realisation that he just explained a kink to Steve Harrington in a car at 1am and somehow, impossibly, doesn't entirely regret it.

***

The car idles in the familiar half-light of the trailer park, gravel crunching beneath the tires as Steve pulls to a stop. Still that same polite distance away, as if respecting an invisible perimeter Eddie never asked him to honour.

Somewhere a dog barks, raw and persistent, and then the sharp crack of glass shattering echoes faintly through the night, followed by a muffled shout that dissolves into quiet again.

Steve's hand tightens briefly on the steering wheel before he exhales, turns the key in the ignition, and the headlights die.
"Here you go." Steve says tensely, taking in a sharp breath as he turns the key in the ignition and the headlights go out.

His posture is stiff, arm rigid, like the silence has weight and pressure now.

"Thanks." Eddie says with a nod. He lets the quiet thicken, waits a moment before he reaches for the door, as if this second might stretch into something safer if he's careful with it.
"Well, goodnight"—

"Why did you kiss me?" Steve says abruptly, voice raised an octave.

They speak over each other, the collision of words stopping Eddie mid-motion, his hand hovering awkwardly before it moves slowly back to his lap. The air feels brittle.

"Back there?" Steve adds. His hands retreating back to his lap.

His jaw tightens, uncertainty curling behind his eyes.

"I thought you said we were done after last time," Steve adds, voice careful, almost scared. "Like — we weren't doing whatever this is."

Eddie finally turns his head, studies the tension in Steve's profile, the way he refuses to fully look at him. "We're not doing anything."

"Then why?" Steve presses. "Was it, like, pity or something?"

The word lands wrong. Heavy. Sharp.

Eddie scoffs softly, a sound more tired than amused. "Do I look like the pity-kissing type to you?"

Steve swallows. "The problem is that I don't know what I look like to you."

It slips out like an accusation, and Eddie feels it sting, that vulnerability disguised as confrontation.

"I didn't kiss you because I felt sorry for you," he says, more seriously now. "I kissed you because you wanted to be kissed and you looked like you were going to talk yourself out of it forever."

Steve's eyes tighten slightly, the muscles in his jaw shifting as he holds that information.

"You were staring at those guys like they'd unlocked some secret to the universe," Eddie says. "Someone had to intervene before you started spiralling about it in your car again."

"That's not exactly romantic." Steve says, almost dry.

"Good," Eddie shrugs. "I'm bad at romance."

"So it wasn't because you felt bad for me?"

"No," Eddie says firmly.

"Then what was it?"

Eddie looks away, jaw flexing as he searches the windshield for something less complicated than Steve's expression. "It was a moment."

Steve studies him. "And those just happen for you all of a sudden?"

"Sometimes," Eddie mutters. "Sometimes you just have to take them before you scare yourself out of it."

"And what about now?" Steve asks, softer, lower. "Was that moment real or are you gonna pretend it didn't happen tomorrow?"

Eddie exhales slowly through his nose, the sound deliberate. "I'm not pretending anything."

"So, what?"

"So don't overthink it, Harrington. You're really good at ruining things with that." Eddie snaps.

Steve's eyes flicker away toward the dashboard, retreating into thought, the tension still coiled in his shoulders.

"And for the record," Eddie adds, voice lower, more certain, "if I didn't want to kiss you, I wouldn't have."

"Okay. Well—thanks. I guess." Steve shrugs, arm folding tighter around his torso like something still aches where confidence should be.

Eddie watches his profile, the flex of his jaw, the way his lips part then close again as if he's holding back another thought.

Eddie exhales, leans back in the chair and looks ahead of him at his own trailer in the distance. Quiet, dim, ordinary, suddenly aware how close everything feels.

"I wanna be really clear about something, Harrington."

Steve straightens slightly in his peripheral.

"What we've been doing? The almost-kissing, the staring, the almost-stuff?" Eddie huffs a quiet, humourless laugh. "That's not how I usually do things."

Steve's brow furrows. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm not"— Eddie stops himself, clamps his eyes shut. The words feel heavier when they're real. "I don't do the whole mutual fumbling discovery thing."

He finally opens his eyes and meets Steve's gaze.

"I take control. I like control. That's what I'm into. That's what I do."

Steve goes still, clearly processing, breath shallow. "Oh."

"And you've never done that before," Eddie continues, voice steady, not unkind, just unflinchingly honest. "You've barely done any of this at all. So I'm not doing this halfway and I'm definitely not doing it if you're just saying yes because you think you're supposed to."

"I wasn't—"

"I know," Eddie interrupts, softer. "But you're new. And I need you to understand that if we go there, it wouldn't be what you've been imagining. It wouldn't be like what we've been doing already."

Steve swallows. His throat bobs. "And if—I'm not into that?"

"Then we don't," Eddie says simply. "End of story. No pressure. No ego bruised. I'm not about to turn you into some experiment or some panic decision."

He shifts slightly, uncomfortable in the honesty but unwilling to retract it.

"I just needed you to know what you're walking toward, if you are walking toward it at all. I'd rather you tell me no than say yes and hate it."

A pause settles and Eddie feels it constricting in his throat.

"Thanks for telling me," Steve finally says.

Eddie lets out a breath that sounds almost like a scoff, but gentler. "Yeah, well," he mutters. "I'm an asshole, not a monster."

Eddie can still feel the echo of the club's bass humming faintly beneath his skin, like his body hasn't fully returned to itself yet.

Eddie was cursing himself for saying anything at all and regretted everything that just came out of his mouth. He wanted to bolt. His fingers flex once against his thigh, an old instinct to run stirring behind his ribs, but he stays, rooted to the passenger seat as if the silence has weight.

Steve hesitates, breath shallow, then asks it anyway. "What would that—look like, exactly?"

Eddie glances at him, reading the question carefully. Not just curiosity, nerves, uncertainty, something fragile that feels almost breakable if mishandled.

"It wouldn't be rushed," he says after a beat, voice calm, deliberate.

Steve nods barely, eyes still fixed somewhere just past the steering wheel, like he's picturing it instead of looking at Eddie.

"It'd be controlled. Intentional. I'd tell you what to do. Where to be. What I need from you. And you'd always have the right to say no—or stop— at any point." Eddie keeps his tone steady, grounded, as if building something careful out of words. "It's not about hurting you or proving anything. It's about trust. You'd be safe," Eddie says firmly. "That part isn't negotiable."

Steve looks away, jaw tightening subtly.

"But it's also intense. It's not soft-first-kiss-high-school-movie stuff. It's a power dynamic. You'd have to actually want that, not just think you should."

Steve processes that, gaze dropping to his hands resting loosely in his lap, knuckles faintly pale.
"And if I wanted something different?" he murmurs.

"Then you say so," Eddie replies. "And we don't. Simple as that. I'm not gonna drag you into my preferences just because I'm more experienced."

"That's a lot," Steve admits with a low, dismal laugh. "I dunno I guess I—wasn't expecting that."

"Yeah," Eddie says quietly. "It is. Which is why I'm not asking for an answer. Not tonight. Not in this car."

Steve looks up at him. "You're not?"

"No. I'm just telling you so you can actually decide, not just fall into it because you're scared of being alone."

Eddie's eyes flicker back to Steve, the curve of his face caught in the weak streetlight, the conflict behind his eyes painfully visible. For a second, there's a clear internal hesitation. How much honesty is too much, how close is too close.

"Can you, like—give an example?" Steve asks.

Eddie lifts his shoulders and lets them drop again, fatigue settling into his spine, brain struggling to stay coherent under the weight of this conversation. "It's just stuff like—telling you where to put your hands. When to move. When not to. Guiding you. Keeping control of the pace so you don't spiral or try to overthink every second of it."

Steve swallows. "Like giving instructions?"

"Yeah," Eddie says. "But not barking orders for the hell of it. It's more like—structure. Direction. Making sure you don't feel lost."

"And I'd just—follow them?"

"Only if you wanted to," Eddie adds quickly. "You'd still get to say what you're okay with. You'd still get to stop it. The whole thing only works if you trust me enough to let me lead."

Steve looks thoughtful, not scared. Just processing, like he's turning the idea slowly over in his hands. "And you'd like that?"

Eddie exhales through his nose, gaze drifting momentarily to the darkened trailer ahead before returning to Steve. "Yeah. I would."

A soft silence stretches, breathable now.

"It's not about you being powerless," Eddie continues. "It's about you not having to carry everything for once. Letting someone else hold the weight."

Something flickers across Steve's face. "That actually sounds..." he trails off. "Not as scary as I thought."

Eddie's mouth twitches. "That's because you're picturing it with me and not some random coke goblin from the club."

A small laugh escapes Steve, quick and nervous but real.

"But listen," Eddie adds, more serious again. "You don't owe me curiosity. You don't owe me yes. You don't owe me anything. I'm just answering your question."

Steve nods slowly. "I know."

For the first time, Steve doesn't look like he's trying to decode his own existence. He just looks like he's thinking about what he might want.
"If I'm—picturing it with you. And not some—coke goblin or whatever." Steve starts, then pauses, weighing it. "Does that mean you're picturing it with me?"

Eddie goes very still at that. Breath catches somewhere behind his chest. The silence stretches, long enough to choose whether he's going to lie.

"...Yeah," he finally says, voice low, honest.

Steve's breath catches, just a little, like the word landed somewhere deep.

"I wouldn't have brought it up if I wasn't thinking about you specifically," Eddie continues. "I'm not in the habit of giving out the emotionally vulnerable sex ed talk to just anyone."

A faint, nervous smile tugs at Steve's mouth. "Good to know I'm special."

"Don't let it go to your head," Eddie mutters, trying, and failing, to smother the curve of his own smile, eyes still anchored on Steve's. Steady. Certain.

"When I picture it with you," he admits, "it's not about control for the sake of control. It's about you trusting me enough to let me take care of the parts you don't know how to navigate yet. I'd want you. Not just the situation."

Steve nods slowly. "Okay." Words threaded through with something dazed and new.

"Okay?" Eddie echoes carefully, uncertainty brushing the edge of his tone.

"Well, to be honest I think you're kinda the only person I let tell me what to do anyway." Steve says, voice smaller now. "You push, and for some reason I don't automatically fight it. I just do it. And that's not normal for me."

"That's alarming information, Harrington," Eddie scoffs out a breathy laugh.

"Well, you've been ordering me around all night," Steve says firmly.

"Yeah, well, you're very suggestible. Tragic flaw."

"What do you think?" Steve asks as he leans back in his seat and turns his head fully toward Eddie.

Eddie exhales slowly, gaze softening despite himself, trying to push down the dangerous thought of how devastating Steve looks like this.
"Maybe because you don't treat it like a power thing."

"What do I treat it like?"

"Like you trust me," he admits, almost reluctantly.

Steve's voice drops. "I think I do."

"You should unpack that with a professional," Eddie mutters weakly.

"You're the one who likes control."

"Yeah, but I don't usually get given it so willingly. I have to earn it. I want to earn it."

Steve swallows, fingers shifting slightly in his lap.
"So this is what then?" he asks quietly. "A no strings situation, if we were to go into it?"

Eddie doesn't answer right away. He actually considers it, lets the question breathe instead of burying it under sarcasm.

"I don't really do strings," he admits. "That's usually the rule. No expectations. No future panic. Just what it is in the moment."

Steve nods once. "And with me?"

"That's where it gets—messy," Eddie mutters.

"Messy how?"

"Because I don't think you're built for 'no strings.' And I don't think I am either when it comes to you." He exhales, gaze flickering toward the windscreen, the world beyond suddenly feeling far away.

Steve's expression softens. "So not nothing."

"Not nothing," Eddie confirms.

He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated, tired, painfully aware of the line they're walking.
"Just—think about it, okay? Like I said, you don't owe me an answer tonight."

Eddie realises then that he no longer wants to bolt, he's just scared of how much it already matters without nothing having happened yet.

Steve nods, but he doesn't move to start the engine. He just looks at Eddie, nervous and earnest and far too open for someone who once hid behind a perfect smile, as if the act of not smiling anymore has stripped him bare.

"Can I..." he hesitates, thumb brushing anxiously over the curve of the steering wheel. "Can I kiss you again?"

Eddie goes still, breath hitching just once, a tightness settling at the base of his throat as he searches Steve's face for even a hint of second-guessing. All he finds is sincerity so unguarded it almost frightens him.

"Yeah," he says quietly.

Steve leans in this time. Slower. Less like he's bracing for impact and more like he actually wants it. The kiss is soft, tentative, warm. A question and an answer wrapped into one, lips barely pressing, like he's testing the edges of something too precious to rush. Eddie feels it bloom through him all the same, a weightless ache he hadn't prepared for.

When they part, Steve doesn't look away.
"Again," he murmurs, barely audible, breath tremoring.

Eddie's mouth twitches, something like a smile threatening to break through his habitual sarcasm. He leans in anyway.

The second kiss is a little surer. A little deeper. Still careful, still unhurried, and Eddie's pulse stutters traitorously beneath his skin.

When they finally pull apart, Steve frowns and Eddie notices it immediately, the way his brows knit, worry flickering behind his eyes.

"What?" He asks.

Steve's voice is quieter now. Bare.
"If I don't like it, but I still want you around... then what do we do? If I can't give you what you want?"

Eddie doesn't joke. Doesn't deflect. He just looks at him, really looks at him, at the anxious tightness in his jaw, at the fear of being discarded written into every line of his posture.

"Then we don't do that," he says simply. "And you don't stop being around."

Steve blinks. "It's not that simple."

"It actually is," Eddie replies, voice steady, anchoring. "You're not a vending machine where I put tokens in and expect a specific outcome."

A tiny, strained breath leaves Steve.

"If you try it and it's not for you? Then you tell me. We adjust. We figure out something that is right. Or we don't do anything physical at all and you still get to stay in my life if that's what you want." Eddie says simply, the honesty heavy but unwavering. "You not matching my preferences doesn't make you 'not enough.' It just makes you...Steve."

Steve's eyebrows quirk slightly at the rarity of Eddie saying his name, and for a second Eddie acknowledged how foreign it felt coming out of his mouth.

"And yeah, maybe it would take me a minute to recalibrate," he admits, eyes flickering away briefly. "Because I'm not immune to being disappointed. But I'd rather have you around as yourself than have some forced version of you trying to fit what I like."

Steve swallows, eyes a little glassy, a soft shine catching the streetlight. "You'd really still want me around?"

"Yeah," Eddie says without hesitation. "Just maybe in a different lane. But still here."

Eddie's gaze flickers to Steve's throat, watching it bob as he swallows down the words.

"You just have to keep being you. And maybe stop assuming everyone only wants you for what you can offer."

"I guess I just don't understand." Steve presses. "You were so dead set on not doing this with me. You practically had it tattooed on your forehead."

Eddie stares out the windshield for a long second, jaw tightening as if bracing himself.
"Yeah," he exhales. "I know."

"So what changed?"

"You did," Eddie says simply.

Steve blinks. "That's not an answer."

"It is, you just don't like it."

"I barely did anything!"

"That's the problem," Eddie turns slightly now, more serious. "You stopped doing things. You stopped pretending. You actually talked to me. You let me see you instead of the version everyone fears or worships. And tonight?" Eddie continues. "You didn't flirt for power, or panic-reveal because you were scared. You just—existed. With me. And I realised somewhere between the bathroom stall autobiography and you looking at those guys like you were scared to hope for literally anything in this life that I didn't actually want to shut this down."

"So why did you try so hard to?" Steve asks.

"Because you're dangerous," Eddie says bluntly.
"Not in the scary way. In the ruins-my-defences way. And I don't tend to survive that particularly well." Eddie laughs quietly, humour brittle.
"It's just me giving in to something I was pretending wasn't already happening."

"You could still change your mind," Steve says carefully.

"Yeah," Eddie nods. "And so could you. Right now I'm here because I want to be," he says. "And I'm talking because I trust you just enough to not run. I don't want you trying to become some version of you that fits me better. I want the awkward, overthinking, weirdly sincere Steve Harrington who offers his house up after one kiss."

Steve glances away, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "That's not exactly flattering."

"It's honest," Eddie shrugs. "And it's you. I'm just asking you to be deliberate. To choose. For you. That's it."

Steve nods slowly, the rigid tension easing from his shoulders.

"Okay," he says. "I can do that."

"Good," Eddie replies, voice softer now, gentler.

Eddie shifts in the seat, the intimacy growing too thick. "Alright, Harrington," he says. "Go home. Go to bed."

Steve blinks. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"So when can I see you again?" he asks.

Eddie smirks, already opening the door. "Why do you think I told you to go to bed?"

Steve frowns. "What?"

"In your dreams," Eddie adds lightly, sliding out into the cool night air.

"Oh, come on," Steve protests weakly.

Eddie leans back slightly, hand resting on the open door, gaze lingering just a second longer than necessary.

"Don't worry. You'll survive one night without me bossing you around."

"That's debatable."

"Get some sleep," Eddie says, more sincere than the teasing suggests, the words heavier than he means them to be. He shuts the door gently and walks toward the trailer, the echo of Steve's presence still warm on his skin, like a promise he isn't ready to define but already knows he doesn't want to lose.

He was practically vibrating, like his whole body forgot how to exist normally. The gravel crunches under his boots, each step too sharp, too real, and his hands keep clenching and unclenching like they don't know what to do with all the extra air in his lungs.

He climbs the steps, fingers trembling just slightly as he unlocks the door.

He pushes inside. Shuts the door and exhales, drags both hands down his face, palms rough against his eyes and cheeks. His heartbeat is still skidding around like a nervous animal, and his brain is already staging a full-blown argument against itself.

Maybe he said too much, maybe he pushed too far, maybe Steve's going to drive home and spiral into terror and regret and decide Eddie is a mistake waiting to happen.

He huffs, flips the light switch.

The trailer blinks into visibility, every object exactly where it always is, which somehow makes the stillness feel accusatory. Too quiet. Too empty. Like it's holding its breath.

Eddie dumps his keys onto the small cluttered coffee table, kicks off his sneakers, trying very hard not to replay the way Steve kept looking back at him every five seconds in the car, like he was afraid Eddie might vanish if he blinked too long.

He tells himself to stop spiralling. He tells himself to breathe. He tells himself this is nothing. This is just another bad decision in a long line of bad decisions and he should absolutely not care this much.

There's a knock at the door.

His body freezes mid-breath. Pulse kicking up into something almost painful as his hand reaches the handle. He pulls it open.

And Steve is there.

Breathless. Flushed. Hair still chaos from Eddie's hands. Eyes wide and determined.

"I thought about it," Steve blurts as he slams the door behind him, the sound sharp in the quiet.

"What"—

He doesn't even get to finish the sentence. Steve steps forward and grabs him by the front of his shirt and kisses him.

It's reckless. Certain. Burning. No hesitation this time. No nervous pull-back. Just urgency and decision and relief all tangled together like he's afraid if he pauses he might lose this version of himself.

Eddie makes a startled noise against his mouth, shock slicing through him but his hands come up instinctively, gripping Steve's sides like anchors, grounding them both as the kiss deepens. It's still careful, still real, but there's heat in it now, hunger and clarity.

When Steve finally pulls back, his forehead rests against Eddie's, breaths mingling, skin warm and damp.

"I don't want to overthink it," he pants, eyes searching Eddie's face like he's memorising it for safety. "I don't want to lose my nerve. I just know that I want you. Even if I'm, like, kinda terrified. Even if I don't actually know anything yet. I wanna try."

Eddie stares at him, stunned and undone and trying desperately to hold his composure together with bare hands. His heart is doing terrible, hopeful things and he hates it and wants it at the same time.

"You realise you just dramatically violated my 'go to bed' instruction, right? You're already off to a pretty terrible start."

Steve huffs a nervous laugh, breath still uneven. "Gimme a break, man. There's no way I was gonna be able to fucking sleep after that."

A beat pulses between them. Eddie's hands are still on him. He hasn't moved away. Doesn't want to.

He studies Steve's face one last time, searching for doubt, fear, anything that says stop. Instead, he finds resolve. Raw and shaky and terrifyingly sincere.

"Okay," he murmurs.

Steve's lips tug up, cautious but hopeful. "Okay?"

"Okay," Eddie repeats, softer but certain.

And then Steve's lips are on his again. Feral, hands everywhere he can reach, fingers gripping Eddie's neck, his shoulders, his back, like proximity alone might not be enough.

Eddie's still clutching his shirt, tugging him closer as he moves them toward the wall.

Steve's back hits the paneling with a soft thud, Eddie's hands already at his jaw, tilting his face, their mouths finding each other like gravity ceased to exist. It's messy. Warm. Desperate in that fragile way that somehow feels reverent, like touching something sacred by accident and refusing to look away.

They break apart just enough to breathe, lips swollen, foreheads almost brushing.
"Can I see you tomorrow?" Steve asks, already leaning back in, voice barely more than breath.

Eddie laughs softly against his mouth. "Jesus, you really don't believe in easing into things, do you?"

They kiss again, slower now, Steve's fingers curling into Eddie's shirt like he's afraid Eddie might vanish if he lets go.

"I'm serious," Steve murmurs, forehead bumping gently against his. "I wanna see you."

"Mmm," Eddie hums, lips brushing his. "And I want you to learn your first very important lesson."

Steve tilts his head. "Which is?"

"Patience, sweetheart."

He presses another kiss to the corner of Steve's mouth, lingering just to watch his eyes flutter. Then he pulls back just enough to look at him, letting it settle. "I've got stuff to do tomorrow. Real life. Responsibilities. Work. Tragic, I know."

"So that's a no?" Steve frowns, but he doesn't pull away.

"That's a 'not tomorrow'," Eddie clarifies. He noses lightly along Steve's jaw, teasingly slow, watching the way Steve's breath stutters.
"You wanna see me again," Eddie murmurs, "you get to sit with that a bit. Let it build. Makes it sweeter."

Steve sighs, but not annoyed, almost pleased in spite of himself. "You're impossible."

"I know." A slow, deliberate kiss. "But you're learning."

"So when?" Steve presses, stubborn and hopeful.

Eddie smiles against his lips.
"You just have to wait and be a good boy."

Steve freezes just slightly, eyes widening by a fraction. "Was that deliberate?"

"Very," Eddie grins. "And now you'll think about it all night."

Steve exhales, half-laughing, half-ruined.

He leans in again, stealing one more slow, intentional kiss. Not rushed, not frantic, just precise, before resting his forehead gently against Steve's, breath warm, steady.

"Tonight's enough," Eddie whispers. "Go home. Dream about it. Practice your patience."

Steve swallows, dazed but smiling. "Fine."

Eddie finally releases him, hands sliding away slowly as he steps back, still watching him like he doesn't quite believe he's real.

Steve just stands there for a second, like his brain needs a full reboot, then a laugh bursts out of him. Bright, startled, full of too much feeling. He goes to the door, opens it, and leaves, one last bewildered grin thrown back over his shoulder before the night folds him away.

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