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In the months since defeating Vecna, Steve learns that Eddie Munson is an open book about most things. He’s the first to divulge niche interests, the first to own his quirks and express his thoughts, the first of the Upside Down crew to say nope, I am very not okay, what the fuck kind of question is that? So when Steve arrives for their now-regularly scheduled movie night at Eddie’s trailer, he recognizes quickly that something’s… off. Steve pokes and prods subtly and when Eddie responds with nothing more than a shrug and I’m fine, he’s concerned. It’s just not in his nature to hide things, Steve thinks. The especially not from me part is silent but he thinks that, too.
They settle in with generic brand potato chips and a few pre-rolls situated on a paper plate as Eddie presses Play on Little Shop Of Horrors. Steve watches Eddie more than the movie from the left side of the worn couch– his side, as it’s been declared. Eddie sits rigidly still, save for the way he’s twirling his rings around his fingers. There’s no banter, no sarcastic retort to Steve’s questions, and most damning, Eddie isn’t touching him.
Eddie, Steve’s learned, is notoriously touchy and Steve is notoriously touch- starved so he’s acutely aware of the coldness stretching between them, of what he’s missing. He hates that he misses it, the casual intimacy of touch that’s wordlessly become the norm, but he does and it’s eating at him. Steve’s skin is cold, even in the dead of summer, from the lack of Eddie’s shoulder rubbing against his, the way Eddie sometimes ends up with his head in Steve’s lap, the way Steve has so often found himself leaning into the juncture of Eddie’s shoulder and neck when he drapes his arm over the back of the couch. Instead, tonight, Eddie is all the way at the opposite end of the couch with glazed-over eyes and twitching fingers and lips sewn shut.
“Ed, what’s going on? Hey,” Steve scoots over on the couch to take up the middle seat, still keeping his distance but trying to get Eddie’s attention. “Is it the movie? Or, fuck, did I do something?” Steve wracks his brain, searching through their most recent conversations for snark. He’s been trying to reign in some of his harsher snarkiness, but it’s not unheard of for him to accidentally say something out of pocket. He really can’t think of anything though, running a hand through his own hair and leaving it behind his head.
Eddie’s eyes flit over to Steve’s, pulled from the unfortunate conveyor belt of anxiety and stupid thoughts that’s replaced his brain for the evening by the sound of Steve finding a way to blame himself for Eddie having a rough night.
“God no,” he croaks. “You’re good, I’m just–” Eddie sighs and drops his head against the back of the couch. Steve tries very hard to focus on anything but the vein popping out of Eddie’s neck and his secret wish to suck enough bruises onto it that he wouldn’t even be able to see his fucking veins. Another time, Harrington, he scolds himself.
“Just…?” Steve encourages, resting his arm on the back of the couch and testing the waters by carefully curling a piece of Eddie’s hair in his fingers. To his delight, Eddie doesn’t flinch away as he’d worried he might.
Eddie closes his eyes and brings his hands up to his face, rakes them down the skin of his cheeks hard enough for Steve to cringe but not hard enough to leave marks. “You know how I mentioned that like, I’m not alright with the Upside Down shit?”
Steve nods, twisting his body so that he’s fully seated sideways. Eddie’s eyes watch the popcorn ceiling above them, carefully schooling his features out of Steve’s sight.
“Well, it’s not just the Upside Down. I’ve had this like, problem or whatever, for a long fucking time. I get, I don’t know… scared, or nervous, out of nowhere and there’s no reason. And I’ve been fidgety and just feel like the room is kind of spinning and I’m trying real hard here, Steve, not to show it and have a normal, fun night with you but you just have to be so fucking observant.” Eddie’s voice breaks and he wants to rip his vocal cords out and scold them for betraying him.
“Shit man, I wish you’d told me. Am I– is my being here making it worse? Do you wanna just go to bed? I can leav–” Steve doesn’t get to finish the thought before Eddie’s head snaps to the side to finally look at him at a clip that would make any chiropractor twitch.
“I don’t want you to leave, Steve. And I’ll never fall asleep in this, whatever the fuck this is kind of mood.” Steve takes in his friend’s face and feels his heart somehow speed up and slow down simultaneously. He’d jokingly coined it the Eddie Effect when talking to Robin, a secret party trick even Eddie didn’t know he could do.
“I’m sorry that I’m not,” Eddie makes a flourish with his hand in front of him, “fun tonight, and that I’m so quiet. If you want to leave I get it but I’d prefer if you stay.” His eyes are rimmed in light red, his lips pulled tight, his eyebrows raised.
Steve’s hand drops from Eddie’s hair. “What helps?”
“It’s embarrassing.” Eddie’s voice is low, borderline whispering as he looks down at his hands, covered in the silver rings he’s still playing with.
Steve scoffs. “Do you think I’ll judge you, Ed? Really?”
Eddie’s silence sits in the air and Steve feels it like a plate to the head. “Shit, you do, don’t you?”
“It’s not you, dude. Really, I just— God, I hate my brain sometimes, y’know? It’s like fighting a war against myself and it’s such a pain in the ass.”
Steve hesitantly places a hand on Eddie’s back, rubbing small circles when he isn’t pushed away and Eddie doesn’t flinch. “I get it, Ed. I mean, mine started with the Upside Down back in ‘83 but I can… I don’t know, I wanna help. I promise,” Steve’s hand stops making circles and Eddie looks over at him, brows cinching together, “I won’t judge.”
“Driving. Driving helps. Getting out of the trailer, feeling in control, my brain having something else to focus on. Usually, I don’t know, snaps me back into myself.” He shrugs. “It’s stupid, yeah, yeah.”
Eddie leans forward and covers his face with both palms, trying to take centering breaths but his brain is a broken fire alarm: screaming louder and louder to protect himself from a danger that doesn’t exist.
“Ed… hey,” Steve kneels down in front of Eddie, his knees creaking louder than they probably should at his age. “Can I see your hands?”
It’s surprising, Eddie thinks as he silently drops his hands into Steve’s, just how easy this is— how simple it could be if he wasn’t so terrified of his decidedly Not Platonic feelings for the man kneeling in front of him, holding his hands and gently rubbing his thumbs across Eddie’s knuckles. Steve’s hands are warm if just a little calloused where scar tissue has developed, and they stabilize Eddie enough to open his eyes. Christ, he’s so pretty.
“Hey, there you are,” Steve smiles, a little crooked but entirely perfect when Eddie finally looks at him. “Wanna take me for a spin?”
These are the moments when Eddie remembers why he’s fallen ass over ankles for Steve Harrington.
“Don’t mind the… well, the everything,” Eddie gestures vaguely to the mess on and below the passenger seat. Empty fast food bags, plastic bottles, random bits of who knows what from who knows where lining the floor. He tries to swipe things off the seat but Steve beats him to it, pushing anything on the seat onto the floor and plopping down like it’s nothing.
“I don’t,” he shrugs, clicking his seatbelt into place and busying himself with Eddie’s cassette collection. “What’s our soundtrack?”
Eddie shifts the van into Drive and feels lighter already, a smile tugging at his lips. He’s taken these drives more times than he can count, well before having his own van and maybe a few times before he even had his license. He’s driven passed empty corn fields, passed herds of cows hopefully avoiding herds of bored teenagers, out of town limits, and once to the Michigan line and back but for all of his aimless drives, he’s never had a passenger.
And when he finally does, of course it’s Steve. Who else could it have been but the guy who dragged him out of Hell?
He’s been silent for too long, staring out the windshield lost in his thoughts when a warm blast of Indiana summer air hits him in the face. “Mind if I have the window cracked?”
“Shit— didn’t mean to space out, yeah that’s fine. As for the soundtrack, compromise?”
Steve laughs under his breath, remembering the conversation they’d had one night, stoned and trying to pick music on Steve’s couch. A compromise was what they’d agreed upon— hard enough or old enough for Eddie, and sing-a-long enough for Steve.
“Bon Jovi fair?”
“I suppose you’ve convinced me,” Eddie agrees, elongating his suppose and secretly overjoyed. They’re not bad, sure, but the first time he’d seen Steve singing along to Livin’ On A Prayer, it was like watching the dark side of the moon illuminated— unexpected and stunning. So yeah, he’ll allow this compromise, no questions asked.
Steve inserts the cassette and they both jolt.
“Jesus Christ!”
“What the fuck?!”
Steve scrambles to turn the volume down, clearly left all the way up from Eddie’s last drive.
“You just casually listen to music that loud driving around town?!”
“How else do you listen to Dio?” Eddie deadpans, waiting for his heart to return to a normal rhythm. They’re on the outskirts of town now, and Eddie wants to go farther, pushing into the wide open spaces of rural Indiana. “Down for a little field trip?”
Stupid question, Steve thinks, I’ll go anywhere with you. “Just don’t get us murdered in some barn, alright?” He answers instead, grinning when Eddie laughs.
“I’ll do my best, Harrington.”
“You give love, a bad name!” Steve shouts along to the music as they fly down Route 6, not a streetlight or car in sight, watching the stars fly over them in streaks through the windshield. Eddie’s trying to focus on the road and on not driving into a cornfield, but God, Steve’s so beautiful like this. His hair flops around in the breeze snaking in through the cracked window, a bright smile on display as he belts out the lyrics and gestures to Eddie to join in.
“C’mon, out-sing me, rockstar!” Steve heckles as the tape moves onto the next song, a guitar solo starting.
“You really think you can sing louder than I, frontman of a metal band?”
“Sounds like you’re stalling to me, that’s all,” Steve has the audacity to wink at him before turning back toward the windshield, drumming along to the song’s quickening tempo.
And well, Eddie would be loathe to deny Steve just about anything so he leans into Steve’s competitive side. You can take the jock out of the sports but not the sports out of the jock or something like that, he thinks.
Steve starts first, unsurprisingly good. His voice is a perfect blend of husky and breathy, and he matches the key perfectly. Eventually, Eddie wants to work on something with him but that’s for another time. Tonight, he wants to bask in moonlight and Steve and forget the angry, throbbing parts of his brain that house all of his worst thoughts.
It's all the same, only the names will change
Every day, it seems we're wastin' away
Another place where the faces are so cold
I'd drive all night just to get back home
Eddie’s turn, and Steve would be outright lying to himself if he tried to pretend this wasn’t some excuse he’s cooked up to hear Eddie’s voice— rumbly, deep, true rock and roll.
Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days
The people I meet always go their separate ways
Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink
And times when you're alone, well, all you do is think
“Louder, c’mon, you can do better than that!” Steve eggs him on, face practically splitting in two and Eddie’s forgotten almost entirely that he ever felt anxious.
I'm a cowboy
On a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted (wanted), dead or alive
Wanted (wanted), dead or alive
Eddie outdoes him on that verse, completely losing himself in the song as he looks over at Steve, who he finds looking over at him. It feels different than the other times they’ve shared the front seat— different from the RV riding into an apocalypse, different from Steve’s car full of bickering children, different from the times they’ve driven around town hot boxing. Hope sits between them, nestled into the center console, and bears witness to this moment of light between two men who’ve only just recently begun to shake off the darkness that’d attached itself to them.
And I walk these streets, a loaded six-string on my back
I play for keeps 'cause I might not make it back
I've been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all
Steve’s voice melds with Eddie’s as they sing the last verse together, cracking halfway through but if Eddie notices, he doesn’t care enough to say anything. Instead, he drums on the steering wheel, Steve copying the rhythm against the dashboard, and busts into nearly hysterical laughter as he pulls into a little side road attached to an empty field and parks.
The laughter is too infectious, too beautiful, for Steve not to join in. His throat is a little sore from the screaming, but Eddie’s laugh sounds like music and he wants to sing along to that too, so he does in his own way— by laughing with him, leaning over the center console to rest his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder, body shaking. Eddie cards his fingers softly through Steve’s hair, happy to have closed the distance of his own creation from earlier.
Eventually, when they’re both able to speak, Steve has the wherewithal to ask where they are and why they parked.
“I thought I said no getting us murdered, remember?”
“You said no getting us murdered in a barn,” Eddie gestures around them. “I see no barn.”
“Well, I didn’t bring my bat so you better be ready to fight if some creep tries to make meat suits out of us.”
Eddie grins and returns Steve’s wink from earlier. “Always ready to fight for your honor, Steve. Now come on.”
Steve doesn’t have a chance to respond because Eddie is out of the van and wandering over to Steve’s side, waiting for him to do the same.
Eddie guides Steve into the field. He briefly wishes he’d brought a blanket but he wasn’t exactly planning this until they’d gotten halfway out of Hawkins. Eddie’s come here himself a handful of times, laid on the van or in the field and stared at the sky, imagining constellations and watching clouds paint the starry canvas. His brain is always so loud, so fast, and it’s nice now and then to experience silence, and quiet, and peace. He never considered that he could share those things with someone else, that someone else being present could help his brain slow itself, help his body calm itself.
“Wow,” Steve breathes, “it’s really…”
“Boring?” Eddie supplies, worrying at his lip. He hadn’t thought about Steve’s side of this until now— a boring empty field in the middle of bumfuck nowhere is not the movie night they’d had planned, after all.
“Pretty.” Steve finishes, looking up at the sky with his hands buried in his pockets. Out here in the middle of nowhere, it’s harder not to pull Eddie into him, to squeeze the self-deprecation right out of him, to kiss him. So, he keeps his hands in his pockets until Eddie stands right next to him, moved that Steve actually seems to like this place, and sinks to the ground.
“Come on, sit.” Eddie pulls lightly at the leg of Steve’s pants and Steve obliges. Obviously.
Sitting turns to laying, and before they know it, Eddie’s turned horizontal with his head resting on Steve’s stomach, legs outstretched and hands folded on his own stomach. The grass beneath them is soft, a slight dew coating each blade, and Steve relaxes with his arms behind his head, ankles crossed. It’s been quiet for some time, but not the kind of quiet from earlier that night, not at all. It’s a comfortable silence, something shared that doesn’t need to be filled or spoken. Stillness stretches between them as a bridge, not a mote.
Absentmindedly, Steve brings one hand down to his chest, and then to the top of Eddie’s head, letting his fingers work their way into his tresses and softly massaging his scalp.
“This okay?” Steve whispers, not wanting to disturb the grass growing or the stars twinkling.
Eddie hums and nestles into him, turning his head from one side to the other. “Very.”
Steve’s eyes flit between the stars and Eddie, unsure of which he finds most marvelous, most miraculous. Ultimately, he decides that it’s Eddie, watching the sky with wide eyes and a goofy grin when he makes a joke about the shapes of made-up constellations.
Time passes like this, Eddie’s anxieties long forgotten and replaced with the peace he always seems to be chasing.
“You don’t mind? I know this wasn’t the uh, big movie and smoke ourselves into oblivion night we’d planned.” Eddie makes wide hand gestures above him as he turns onto his side, facing Steve. How he manages to miss the way Steve looks at him, love and wonder seeping from every pore, is beyond them both.
“Nah, man, this was way better. Not that the original plan wasn’t too, and not that I’m glad for why we ended up here but I uh, I don’t mind. No.” Smooth, Harrington, he scolds himself. “Is there anything that like, triggers you or whatever? To feel how you did earlier?”
Eddie shakes his head. “Wish it was that easy. I mean, there’s the obvious shit after being bat food,” Eddie laughs but Steve doesn’t. “Reminders and nightmares and all of that, but nights like tonight just sorta happen. I’m normally good at keeping it under wraps but, alas, I sometimes fail. And now we’re here.”
“Now we’re here,” Steve parrots. “How come you try to hide it though? You’re an open vault with everything else, why not this?”
“Don’t know really, I guess it’s a little… uncomfortable, y’know? To talk about?”
“Are you uncomfortable now?”
“No. You don’t make me uncomfortable,” Eddie clarifies quickly, trying to cut what he’s come to learn is Steve Harrington’s Self-Blame Spiral off before it can start.
Steve nods and watches another cloud pass in front of the moon. If the moon were conscious, it’d know all of their secrets.
“If I ever do, you’d tell me, right? To fuck off or whatever?”
Eddie rolls his eyes and flips back over onto his back. “I surely would, Steve. I’ve just never had to. Not even in school, when you were King and I, just a lowly freak. Even then, you never really did anything to bother me. And you definitely don’t now.”
Steve nods, still unconvinced that he hadn’t done something earlier but notes that Eddie doesn’t seem finished with his thought and lets the silence sit, giving Eddie room to continue. It gives Eddie too much room, too much confidence, and words pour from him like water traveling downstream.
“It’s not you, Steve, I trust you and I love you, y’know? My brain just takes over sometimes and it makes me think this shit that’s not actually coming from me and– oh fuck.” Eddie realizes halfway through his thought that he’s just confessed something he can’t take back. Not that he would— he means it— but he didn’t want to say it like this, not by accident. Not when they aren’t even dating.
Eddie feels Steve’s hand freeze in his hair, his stomach muscles tightening beneath him. He braces for something— he doesn’t think Steve will commit a hate crime out in this field but he’s not expecting a promising response.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
No matter where Steve tries to put the emphasis, the meaning stays the same. He feels something stirring inside of him, something that’s lain dormant in the darkness for so long just waiting for the warmth of Eddie to bring it back to life.
Seconds have passed and Eddie has been trying to back pedal, stuttering out choppy phrases like didn’t mean it like that, friends can love each other, I swear I didn’t, fuck I’m an idiot, please don’t hate me. Steve can feel the dopey, slow smile spreading across his face as he gently places a hand on top of Eddie’s over the panicked man’s chest. Eddie stops in his tracks and his brain follows suit– apparently, he’s found a loophole to shutting his brain the fuck up and as usual, it’s Steve.
“I love you too, you dope.” Now it’s Eddie’s turn to make sense of the words of which he’s found himself on the receiving end. He wants to turn back over and look at him, but his body feels frozen on the spot, the warm Indiana summer has grown icy.
“Don’t pity me, man. You don’t have to say that. Don’t, don’t say that if you don’t mean it like I do, it’s fine. I can handle the unrequited. Seriously. Just forget that I said that.”
Eddie’s face burns, red and splotchy, and he tries to move away to lay next to Steve rather than on top of him. Steve catches him first, pulling back down so they’re chest to chest, nose to nose with a soft humph.
“Eddie,” Steve lifts his chin with one finger to bring them eye to eye. “I don’t… I don’t want to forget you said it. I love you, too. I mean it. I’ve been sitting on that for fucking weeks now, man.”
Maybe I crashed the car when we were driving. That makes sense, yeah, shit, we’re both dead or in comas or something. Henderson’s gonna bring me back from the dead to kill me all over ag—
His thoughts are cut off by the soft touch of Steve’s thumb tracing his jawline and grazing his bottom lip. “Ed,” he whispers, “can I kiss you?”
Definitely gotta be dead, Eddie decides. And if they’re already dead, fuck it. He may as well lean into the fantasy he’s harbored from day one.
“About time,” he says, barely finishing the last word before he feels Steve’s lips against his and realizes with acute clarity that he’s very much alive. Creativity be damned, he knows he isn’t capable of conjuring up the way his body responds, the lightning he feels from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, the fire suddenly lit aflame in his chest, the somersaults in his stomach. No, this is real and this is happening, and Steve just told him he loves him. Steve is kissing him. The same Steve who’d just tried to out-sing him to Bon Jovi, who’d held his trembling hands in the trailer, who’d taken this drive with him just because. It’s been in front of his face the whole time, and that realization makes him laugh against Steve’s mouth.
“Are you fucking laughing at me?” Steve asks, incredulous and ridiculously besotted.
“No, I’m laughing at me!” Eddie chokes out. “I’ve— I’ve been pining away like an asshole for I don’t even wanna tell you how long, and then I have a fucking anxiety attack and take you to an empty field and that’s what finally does it? I just— dude, this is hysterical.”
Much like the van earlier, it’s impossible for Steve not to join in with Eddie’s laughter until he pulls him back down, this time fully on top of him, and kisses him breathless. Kisses him the way he deserves to be kissed.
And maybe they say a few more things, maybe they do a few more things, but that’s between them and the sky over a green Indiana field. The moon does know all of their secrets, after all.