Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mind if I sleep here tonight?” Steve asks. 

He pats the carpet beside his head as he speaks, elbows bent upward, and his hands feel slow and clunky. Beneath them, the carpet is — kind of scratchy, actually. Not soft. But he can’t imagine getting up any time soon, even as the alarm clock on Eddie’s nightstand marches toward three in the morning; he could very well cry out at the notion of abandoning this odd relief he’s found, the way his muscles have unwound from each other. 

“Like, right here?” he adds. “On the floor.”

Eddie breaks out in a wild laugh, bright and spontaneous — tearing out of him as if by accident. The sound catches Steve off guard. Makes his heart jump. He quirks an eyebrow at the sound with a grin and a lazy roll of his head, his vision drifting curiously across the profile of Eddie’s splayed-out body. It’s hard to see much, at a horizontal, the both of them laying on the ground at opposite angles a few feet apart; but he catches Eddie’s chin jutting upward from the column of his throat, his chest heaving under his cutoff tank top as he cackles. For a moment. Then it’s over as soon as it started, only echoing in Steve’s skull.

“Sure,” Eddie answers, a leftover smile in his voice. “It’s a nice floor.” He spreads his arms out against it, brushing an invisible snow angel into the carpet, slow-motion. Measuring the soft scratch of the fibers against his bare arms. 

Steve cringes, imagining the ragged texture against anything other than his palms, and is grateful for the loose sweatshirt he’d tossed on before driving over. But other than that — yeah. It’s a nice floor. He finds himself sinking into it, into the entire room. 

They’d barely even smoked anything. Hand to God, he imagines telling Robin — a habit he returns to when navigating situations like this one, these casually agonizing one-on-ones he keeps finding himself a part of. Nights spent toying with the deceptive comfort of Eddie’s presence, where eventually the silence might stretch and Steve might start feeling rough and apprehensive. Like if he so much as breathes the wrong way he’ll get caught with all the darker thoughts in his head. The Robin that lives in his head is a lifeline, an ear for all his distressed and melodramatic longing; as is the real one he’ll inevitably end up spilling his guts to, a couple days from now. 

We barely fucking smoked anything, he’ll tell her, exaggerating a little or maybe a lot, and then we had to lie down, like, right away. No, he didn’t “lace it with something,” Rob, you sound like a moron.

They’re just kind of tired, is the thing. Well — Steve is, at least, but he can assume the same of Eddie, who’d spent a clumsy few seconds clearing the floor of half its typical chaos before flopping over with a huff. Steve had ended up in much the same position a little later in the evening, sliding down from his seat against the side of Eddie’s bed, down like a sinking ship. 

Those days where everything seems to catch up to him, mentally or emotionally or, tonight, physically — he’s discovered over the years that they tend to be a shared occasion. If he calls around he’ll find somebody else is off-kilter, tossing around in that uncomfortable blend of restless and weary. So he goes for a drive with Robin or nods his way through one of Dustin’s elaborate rants over the walkie-talkie, going mhm and totally and no way.

Or — more and more often — he ends up here, in the Munsons’ new trailer, or wherever else he and Eddie might have landed after a long day. Bone-dead and heavy. Dizzy on one thing or another.

Whatever smoke that’d drifted between their lungs and into the air is long gone, having slipped out the cracked window; and whatever meager high they’d wrung out of it is probably on its way out, too. But everything’s still kind of shifting in place, calm — drowsy and weightless at the same time. Everything is soft and warm from inside Steve’s sweatshirt. And the floor is, indeed, nice. 

“Mhm,” he finally agrees, almost absently. He’d turned back towards the ceiling sometime in the last thirty seconds, now finds himself studying the empty space. The only uncomplicated surface in Eddie’s new room, free from posters or clutter or anything scrawled in Sharpie. “S’nice.”

“Yup,” Eddie says. A moment passes, then the next, pleasantly quiet. The hum of the AC and the cicadas buzzing outside the cracked window harmonize in the meantime. 

Eddie clicks his tongue before he speaks again, musing — “I think if I tried to move my spine would snap in half.”

Steve barks out a laugh, hears Eddie mirror it with a chuckle. “What the fuck? What happened?” he asks, voice twisting between amusement and concern, and he cranes his neck to look at him again. More effectively this time, at least, propping himself up on an elbow and tilting his head.

“Slept on it funny, I guess. Fucking—” Eddie curses, trying to stretch his arms where they’re still spread, before cutting himself off with an exaggerated shout. At least Steve hopes it’s exaggerated. “AGH! Shit!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be lying on the floor,” Steve says, as Eddie knocks his head back against the carpet in annoyance, grumbling.

“Fuck you. We just established how nice the floor is,” he bites, but he’s getting up anyway, pushing himself off the carpet with a hushed sound of discomfort — high-pitched, but deep in his throat, a two-note thing that ends on a question. Steve would hesitate to call it a whimper, from the disturbed look Robin would give him, but that’s kind of what it is. (And who is he kidding — he’d say it three times over just to rile her up.) 

Something in the pit of his stomach snags on the sound, replays it in his head as if to make sure he’d really heard it right, and then the derangement slips away again. As it does.

But he’s kind of staring, he realizes, at the back of Eddie’s tank top, the speckled impressions of the carpet etched into his lean arms. Staring, still, as Eddie lifts them over his head and stretches with a deep, creaky breath in, his cutoff tank riding up enough to expose the small of his back. A few notches of claw marks curl around his right side, shiny pink against pale skin. And, peeking over the edge of his jeans, his boxers are red today.

Steve breathes very carefully over the course of the next fifteen seconds, just shy of actually counting out every inhale and exhale. Eddie busies himself making that weird, long sound people make when they’re practically about to pull a muscle, then twists his back left, and right, his face scrunched up whenever Steve catches a glimpse.  

“No, it’s fucked,” Eddie determines, ceasing his movements and slumping forward a bit, cross-legged. He sweeps a few frizzy curls over his shoulder with the side of his hand, patting haphazardly at the errant strands. There’s a lamp in the corner casting a dim, yellowish light over the slow-motion of everything. It kind of grates on Steve when he’s in a worse mood — he doesn’t like feeling like he can’t see very well, like the shadows might start moving or the world might start spinning — but it always looks nice on Eddie’s hair. Brings out the warmer tones. 

“I used to give Nancy massages,” Steve says. 

It’s out before he even knows where it came from. Really it’s like somebody else said it, commandeering his voice — the thought process didn’t happen, or if it did, it happened without Steve’s supervision. Maybe something to do with brown waves of hair, dimmed lights. He’s too busy balking at his words to retroactively connect any dots, at the moment, so he can’t be too sure.

Eddie’s just as confused, it seems, because he goes completely still. The silence hangs heavy, for the three or four seconds it’s there, and Steve wishes he could see Eddie’s face. Finds himself incapable of guessing at the expression he might be wearing, right now. He just has to stare at the back of his head, the tensed line of his shoulders, until Eddie finally says, “Oh, yeah?” 

He sounds softer than Steve expected, under that layer of derision. And he turns his head, too, as he says it — not enough to face Steve, but enough to betray some level of curiosity. Like he wants to listen a little more closely. 

“Uh,” Steve says, glancing away once he catches the edge of Eddie’s cheekbone, electing to study the carpet instead. Picks at it idly, feels guilty when a fiber comes loose. “Yeah. When we were together. Her backpack always weighed like, twenty pounds.” He laughs a little, smiling as he tries to twist the thread back into the floor. It’s not the kind of smile he really feels deep down; all he feels, kind of indifferently, is the memory losing warmth — a couple years old and split off towards Emerson. “Probably still does.”

Eddie glances further over his shoulder to look at him; Steve catches the movement in his peripheral vision, something subtle. It grabs right back at him, though, forces his attention like someone slinking into class ten minutes after the bell. Like some of the few times they’d ever caught eyes before their shared apocalypse, actually — lifetimes ago in Eddie’s second senior year. Steve had thought he was kind of interesting, then, but mostly weird. His eyes were always really wide or really narrowed, and either way always searching. Judging. There was a weight behind the way he looked at things.

And there it is again, that weight. They’re staring at each other for an entire two seconds, wherein Steve isn’t sure anymore who got caught looking at who, before Eddie blinks away. “Yeah…” he sighs through a faint laugh, belated. Steve misses his face the second he can’t see it anymore.

He feels like he’s supposed to keep talking. He’s supposed to keep talking, right? He was telling a story; Eddie’s waiting for the ending. He has the urge to pull at the collar of his sweater, all nervous, like he’s sweating behind a podium in some big crowded room.

“Anyway,” he gets out, awkward, because he doesn’t know what ending Eddie’s looking for but he figures he has to get there somehow. “I guess it kind of helped. I mean, she said it was, y’know— Nice.” 

“Mhm,” Eddie says, nodding almost imperceptibly. Then his voice dips down, mocking, and he’s probably smirking too; “Oh, I’m sure it was.” 

“Ugh, that’s not what I meant,” Steve rolls his eyes, thudding back against the carpet. But he’s not sure what he expected, bringing up Nancy in his presence — Eddie’s still weird about the two of them, even when he tries to hide it. And Steve notices, sometimes, when he tries to hide it.

This time, Eddie just giggles, like a toddler or a cartoon villain or some other kind of menace, and clambers up off the floor. And he has a funny way of moving, even when he’s not whatever they both are now — he’s always swaying and stumbling in wide arcs, like his center of gravity is somewhere outside of himself and his body’s left trailing behind. Steve tracks him with a quizzical sort of smirk, jerks away a little when Eddie dives headfirst into bed just a foot or two from Steve’s spot on the floor. 

After a moment of shifting and creaking and Eddie going ow — sounding more offended than actually injured — as he resituates himself, his head pops into view from over the edge of the bed. Right above Steve, staring down at him with those wide, impish eyes. 

“‘Sup,” he says, folding his hands on the edge of the bed where he rests his chin. “Are you tired?”

“Not really,” Steve says, because he isn’t anymore. He thinks if he lifts his head up, up a few inches, Eddie’s hair would probably brush his cheek. It’s hanging in a soft curtain above him, framing Eddie’s face, and he wants to run his hand through the waves. He wants to curl his fingers and pull. 

Instead he stacks his hands against his lower chest, like a body laid to rest. Here lies Steve Harrington. And isn’t that the last thing Eddie needs — another corpse in his house.

“You?” he returns, after a beat.

“Dying,” Eddie says, inexplicably. Eyes wide, tone grave, lips just barely turned up in a smile. There’s a scar etched by the corner of his mouth that might remind Steve how, less than a year ago, the joke would have been less funny; but the thought passes by without settling anywhere. 

“Oh,” he laughs. “So do you want one?”

Eddie scowls at him, dipping his head. “Want what?”

“A massage.”

Steve doesn’t have a name for the face Eddie makes at that — it’s subtle, eyebrows raising just barely, the depth of his gaze flickering with something he can’t read. Too complicated. Or maybe Steve’s just completely out of the loop, again and seemingly always.

“I don’t know. Might help,” he continues, fighting through the dead air, wondering a little how his own expression might read at the moment. Casual? Sincere? Fucking desperate? “Since you’re dying and all,” he adds with air quotes.

“Funny,” Eddie says, that heavy look slipping from his face when he rolls his eyes, unimpressed. He sounds almost insulted, which sounds like fire alarms going off in Steve’s head. “Very funny.”

“I’m not joking,” Steve insists, then blinks hard enough to reset himself. “I mean— the dying thing was a joke.”

“It was my joke.”

“I know,” Steve rolls his eyes. Although I’m not sure I really get it. “I’m genuinely asking, though. Do you want one?”

They frown at each other for a moment, Steve breathing in and forgetting to breathe out, before Eddie breaks. “What— Seriously?” he says, huffing out a sharp laugh and shaking his head dismissively, “You don’t have to.”

“I know,” Steve says. “I’m just asking.”

Just asking, he repeats in his own head, sounding both defensive and unconvinced. In the voice of the former, he tacks on: Not a big deal. And he wouldn’t lie to Robin — at least, not like that, not with any hope she’d actually believe him — so he must be talking to himself, now.

Eddie goes unreadable again. Chews his lip for a moment, and Steve feels jealous of both parties. 

“Okay, sure,” Eddie finally sighs, wagging his head with the words, voice drawn-out and crossed between condescension and resignation. He leans back and away from Steve’s vision, muttering, “You better have, like, magic hands or something.”

Well, shit. Steve’s hands — somehow they feel even more anxious than the rest of him, kind of pins-and-needles all the sudden. He makes fists around the childish tingling in his palms, as if he could strangle his own nerves. He wanted to do this. He wants to do this. It doesn’t have to be weird.

Standing up, he finds Eddie sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed, rubbing idly at his shoulder and watching Steve from the corner of his eye. Steve pulls at the edge of the blanket, straightening out the fabric that’d crumpled up beside Eddie — he can’t stand that lumpy sort of texture underneath him, but then again, who can?

Then he’s walking on his knees across the bed before he can think too much about anything like is this a bad idea and yeah this is probably a bad idea. He kind of stumbles a bit on his way over. The high’s not gone, then; or maybe something else is making him unsteady.

“You said you slept on it funny?” he asks as he settles behind Eddie.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, glancing back at Steve before facing forward again. He slips his hand away from under his tank to frisk through his hair, shaking it all out, then yanks a hair tie off his wrist to loop it around the mass of curls in a high ponytail. It’s a swift, practiced movement, just as perfectly disheveled as the rest of him. A couple strands fall to rest against the edge of his cheekbones.

Steve clears his throat. “Where, exactly?” 

“Uh, fuckin’ everywhere, I guess,” Eddie shrugs. “Not sure how I managed that.”

Steve snickers, almost teases him — seriously? Because Steve has a pretty good idea how Eddie might have managed that. They’ve had dozens of impromptu little sleepovers and slumber parties, or whatever the grown-up terms for those events might be; they’ve even shared a bed exactly six times, probably seven when he sticks around tonight. It’s an elaborate dance of nerves, desire, and self-restraint every time, made all the more difficult by Eddie’s continuous frenzy of sudden movements. He twists and kicks and rolls around in his sleep, alternates between taking up the entire bed and folding into himself — even since before the nightmares, he told Steve one morning, sometimes I wake up all twisted like a pretzel.  

“Yeah, I’m not surprised,” Steve says, instead. He shuffles forward a bit, sits back on his heels. “So, I’ll just start with the shoulders…?”

“Okay,” Eddie says.

Steve nods, as if Eddie can see it, pushing the sleeves of his sweater halfway up his forearms. Flexes his hands once, twice, before reaching for Eddie’s crooked shoulders. Eddie jumps a little as soon as — oh man — Steve’s touching him. 

“Relax,” Steve tells him, and also himself, pressing lightly against Eddie’s shoulders. They’re warm through the beaten fabric of his tank top; solid. “But also if I fuck something up then tell me.”

“Uh-oh,” Eddie drawls, “you mean to tell me you’re not a professional masseuse? An expert in the field?” He cranes his neck to frown up at Steve through his eyelashes, all melodrama. Grimacing as he does it, almost imperceptibly, but Steve is always catching the little things. “Am I in danger here, Steve?”

“Yeah, if you keep twisting around like that! Come on, turn around,” he scolds, lifting a hand to gesture at him, making a spinning motion that Eddie tsks at before obeying. “And, like—” Steve continues, hands returning to Eddie’s coiled shoulders, “Just loosen up a bit.”

“Mhm,” Eddie hums. “And how exactly shall I go about all that?”

Steve scoffs an exasperated laugh, trying to focus on the points above Eddie’s shoulder blades, lightly pressing his thumbs into them. “Just take deep breaths or something,” he says. “I don’t know.” 

“Or something,” Eddie repeats in a put-upon mutter. “Great bedside manners on you, dude, stellar.”

Steve digs the heel of his hands into Eddie’s shoulders, shakes him a little. Which is fine, because they shake each other around all the time, they fucking tackle each other, kick shins and bump shoulders. Guy stuff. This— this is, arguably, guy stuff. 

“Dude, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Steve’s reminding him, though, because Eddie’s been all flighty about it, and a little rude—

“No, sorry, wait,” Eddie says hastily, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. “I’ll shut up now.”

Steve pauses, frowning at the back of Eddie’s head for a good second or two, then tries to resume where he left off. Which — well, he hadn’t made it very far. And God, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if he were suddenly horrible at this? He tries to shove the thought out of his mind before it eats him, tries to focus on the last few times he did this, instead; calling on muscle memory as he rolls his palms against Eddie’s shoulders, the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. 

There was a girl named Katherine he’d gone out with for a little while, months ago; he’d been annoyed that it clearly wasn’t going anywhere, but terrified, somehow, that it would. Robin had called that fascinating. Anyway, it’d been their… fourth date or something. They had dinner somewhere unremarkable, skipped a movie because her parents were out of town. And Steve remembers her room had been spacious and messy and mostly shades of green, and her bed had been soft. Remembers curling over her back as she laughed, helping her take off her bra, dragging his hands across her back. 

It hadn’t been guy stuff then — whatever. Something can be multiple things. And he’s not concerned about any of that right now, as he makes circles with his thumbs up into Eddie’s neck. He’s concerned about— actually, wait— he’s concerned about Eddie’s neck.

“Dude,” he says, rubbing his thumb back down the stubborn muscle, into his upper back. Even through the shirt, he can feel the knots under Eddie’s skin. “How’d you fuck it up this bad?” 

“What’d I do?” Eddie says in a blur of syllables, sounding a little out of it; he tries to turn around again, like he wants to see for himself. 

Steve counters the movement just as instinctively, palming the back of Eddie’s neck with his left hand. “Don’t—” he starts, and Eddie’s already gone still. Steve’s ring finger just grazes the rough edge of his jawline. That’s nice. Kind of terrifying. 

“Uh— your neck, right here,” he explains, tapping just above the angle meeting Eddie’s neck and his left shoulder, “And all the way through here.” He lowers his hand, then, to stretch at the hem of Eddie’s shirt — Eddie flinches, makes a small sound — and then he’s gently pulling down the fabric, skating his finger down Eddie’s incrementally exposed back. The kind of thing you do without thinking, except it’s the only thing, suddenly, that’s ever existed worth thinking about. He can’t tell whose skin is burning. The entire room is on fire.

“It’s all stiff,” he finishes, heart pumping. “Like, cramped.” He finds a spot to the upper left of Eddie’s spine, presses his thumb into the stubborn muscle. The shirt hooks around his knuckle. “Do you feel that?” What does it feel like? Good?

“I don’t know,” Eddie says. 

“Gimme your hand,” Steve says, holding his free hand out by Eddie’s head. Somehow he can feel Eddie scowl at it, a disturbance in The Force type shit, but he reaches back; Steve grabs his hand to direct it down towards the trigger point. It’s high up enough that Eddie can reach it easily — could probably find it without Steve yanking his hand around, but neither of them seem quick to point that out. He smooths his fingers against the muscle, hand working under Steve’s palm. 

“Uh-huh.” His voice is quiet, at least by Eddie standards; kind of distant. “Weird.”

“Yeah, it’s all stiff, like I said. That can happen if you overuse a muscle, or...” Steve finds another knot by his shoulder, rubs at it with his thumb idly; his other hand still held against Eddie’s, affixed, seared into place. “Maybe— Oh, shit,” Steve remembers, “Probably from the garage? ‘Cause you’re hunched over the cars all day. Or like, underneath them.”

Eddie nods. Takes another few seconds to respond out loud. “Yeah, maybe.”

Steve frowns, again, at the back of Eddie’s head. This is weird. It’s been weird from the start — from the moment they first spoke to each other, really, bodies pressed together and jagged glass at Steve’s throat — but this is a different weird. Eddie’s not usually so quiet, not this shaky, slow-motion kind of quiet, unless he’s brooding. Feeling guilty over something. 

“You okay?” he asks, softly pulling his hand from Eddie’s, the other from the fabric of his shirt. Parks them gently on the edges of his shoulders. Somehow the careful brush of his fingertips, there, feels just as criminal.

“What— yes,” Eddie says immediately, like it should have been obvious, glancing back at Steve and snapping away again in the span of a half-second. He pulls his own hand away, tightens his ponytail and clears his throat. “Uh, magic hands. Back to it.”

Steve huffs a laugh. Kind of wants to be a dick about it, what’s the magic word or something, but he holds off. 

“Aye-aye,” he says instead, waves a vague little salute that Eddie can’t see anyway, and skates his hands back down Eddie’s spine. Probably too quick to be anything soothing, but he’s digging right under the neckline of Eddie’s shirt instead of pulling the fabric away, this time, and he’s trying not to dwell on the fact that — that’s a little insane, he thinks. He might as well be shoving a hand down his pants.

He hears Eddie suck in a silent breath, feels his back straighten under the pads of his fingers, startled. Searching for another trigger point, he tries to let himself breathe, wants Eddie to do the same. His skin is blazing under Steve’s fingers, painfully smooth over the ridges of his spine, the planes of his shoulder blades. He rubs his thumbs in circles, down, across. Slow and insistent, his heart freezing at the now-and-then shudder of Eddie’s breathing. And then there’s another spot — a stubborn twist of muscle halfway down the right side of his back — and Eddie makes a sound when Steve digs into it, like ah-h, quiet but it rings in Steve’s skull. And it means nothing, necessarily. Except that Steve is doing a good job. Which is good.

He’s really stretching out Eddie’s tank like this, though. “Could we take off your shirt?” he asks. “I’m fucking up your shirt.”

Eddie makes a breathy sound that was maybe supposed to be a laugh, or that maybe he’s hoping sounded like one. In a similar, disbelieving sort of wheeze, he says, “I guess,” and reaches back to grab at the neck of his tank. Steve helps him peel off the shirt, pulling it up from his sides and over his head. Tucks a lock of hair back over his ear. He knows he’s being indulgent, now — but this entire ordeal has been acutely indulgent. Something can be multiple things, or whatever. 

Eddie tosses the shirt somewhere unimportant. He could be chucking it at an open window or towards an open flame, he could be launching hand grenades, somehow, and it would still be unimportant. His back is on full display in the dull light, lithe and pale, and Steve is allowed to touch him in about a third of the way he wants to. And he wants. He’s sick with how much he wants, the kind of sick that shows up in your dreams like an omen. Wakes you up with a warning, some kind of imperative — call a doctor. Check the lock. Jack off about your friend, quick, before you can feel too guilty. 

Steve ignores the hot twist in his gut — or tries to, very gallantly and with zero success — as he works his hands across the exposed skin. Gently rocking into him with the touch and pretending it doesn’t feel the way it feels. Hah. Okay.

“I could show you some stretches, sometime,” he offers. “If this kinda thing happens a lot.”

“I’d probably just fuck it up worse,” Eddie chuckles.

“No,” Steve says. “Not with me, I’m a good teacher.”

He doesn’t really have any evidence to support that claim, not off the top of his head, but Eddie doesn’t ask for any. Or if he does, Steve doesn’t hear him. His eyes are caught on a small tattoo a few inches above Eddie’s waistband. A scratchy, beetle-looking thing near his left hip; Steve must have missed it earlier, when the tank top had ridden up. 

It feels illicit for some reason, that location. Feels entirely sinful when he touches it — presses his index to the center of the beetle, all impulse. He almost jerks his hand away immediately, startled at himself and at Eddie’s responding shiver.

“When did you get this?” he says, praying his voice doesn’t sound as rough as it feels to use it. “The buggy thing.” 

“Scarab,” Eddie corrects, and the word sounds familiar but if there’s a dot Steve’s meant to be connecting, it eludes him. “Uh, maybe a month or two back? Thought I showed you already.” He twists around, peeking over his shoulder and lifting his arm out of the way. “How’s it looking?”

“No, I’ve never seen it. It looks good,” Steve says, tracing a finger along the wingspan as he studies the drawing. “I mean, I don’t know what a scarab is, but the lines are pretty clean.”

“It’s — a kind of beetle. From Ancient Egypt and stuff, y’know?” 

Steve nods, paying attention but also kind of thinking about pressing a little harder into the softer flesh there by Eddie’s hip. Mostly thinking — don’t do that. But he does it.

Eddie stutters. “Uh, yeah. So it’s— supposed to be symbolic, or whatever,” he continues, sounding almost frantic to play it cool. Steve hums, dragging his finger like he wants to feel the ridges of the tattoo itself, delicate lines across warm skin. Eddie must have actually gotten it somewhere decent, paid good money. And here’s Steve, probably fucking it up somehow. 

Except Eddie would be hollering at him if that were the case, but he's just sort of watching Steve prod at him. And Steve could almost laugh — they’re both totally out of it, aren’t they? He has no idea how much time has passed in the last ten minutes. 

“Death and resurrection, and all that,” Eddie adds after a moment. It clicks into Steve’s head, raw.

He glances up at Eddie’s face, eyes catching on the scars across his torso and chest, the notch by his mouth. Eddie meets his eyes with a wide stare, full lips parted, and Steve still doesn’t know how to respond. Just stares with creased brows, caught somewhere between Eddie’s eyes and his open mouth. It would be so easy, just to lean down—

Eddie twists away, laughing soft and a little hysterical sounding. “Don’t know why I got it there,” he rambles. “Nobody’ll ever see it. I can barely see it.”

I’ve seen it now, Steve thinks. He’ll probably see it forever. 

“I like it,” he says instead, resuming the massage, and he’s not sure what else to say so he doesn’t say anything. 

It’s easier, with the tank top out of the way, except it’s also a lot more difficult — every time he makes new contact, the room feels feverish, blinding. He avoids the few places where Eddie’s scars curve around into his back, not wanting to hurt or discomfort him. If they’re anything like the jagged etches on Steve’s sides and shoulder blades, they don’t really hurt anymore when touched, but they don’t feel nice either. Kind of tight and numb, every time he nudges one by accident in the shower or at the pool. 

And there’s the emotional aspect, too; the sinking in your ribs about it, the half-formed flashback. The weird looks from anyone who happens to catch them — at the gym, in the bedroom. The fucking grocery store when he has to reach for something on a high shelf. 

He doesn’t take his shirt off with girls anymore, if he can help it, which is probably part of why he and Katherine were never headed anywhere. Like, symbolically.

So he tries to be careful where he touches and digs at. More careful than careful — fucking vigilant. But it’s getting harder to focus, to keep his thoughts from churning around in vulgar directions and his face from heating up as it happens anyway. Eddie’s making those little sounds again, hums and sighs of relief that Steve suspects he’s trying to stifle. And he understands, obviously, why he might be trying to keep quiet. There’s a layer of embarrassment in… pretty much everything, Steve has learned, but especially in something like intimacy — the kind of embarrassment even Eddie can’t bite through with a wicked grin. 

But also it’s kind of unfair, right, because Steve’s trying to help him out here. So it would be totally fine if Eddie would just — loosen up. Exaggerate it, even, like he does everything else, and Steve is thinking on a downward spiral here, digging his palm into a twinge in Eddie’s lower back; make that sound you made earlier, he pleads, that half-whine, let Steve be the reason he made it, let Steve be the reason he couldn’t hold it back, please.

Eddie’s breath hitches, and for a terrifying nanosecond Steve fears he’d said it all out loud, which would be some sort of tragic irony. But then Eddie tilts his head back a fraction and chuckles in kind of a sad way, saying, “Oh man, I think I might be a masochist.”

Steve enters a different kind of terrified, ripping his hands away, all but shrieking — “Am I hurting you?!”

“No! What? Shit,” Eddie rushes, a garbled staccato that’d make Steve snort in any other circumstance. “I didn’t mean to—” 

He cuts himself off as he looks back at Steve, for a moment, and his face is red, about as red as Steve feels. Then he’s staring resolutely downward, and Steve can see him clenching a fist in the blanket beneath them. “No, it’s nice, you can keep, uh, going.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve bursts out, hands still tensed up by his own chest, blood cooling anxiously as the apprehension sets in. “What are you talking about.”

“Nothing,” Eddie says, stubbornly. He shakes his head, dislodging another few curls from his ponytail. “It was— nothing. I was just being weird, in my head.” He seems to will himself into looking back at Steve for all but a second, tapping at his head as if to demonstrate — then scrunches his face together and turns away again. “Doesn’t matter. Sorry.”

Steve watches uselessly as Eddie curls into himself, falling sideways into the bed with a huff. His legs are still half-crossed, body bent at an odd angle; it’s an awkward shape, and Steve marvels for a moment at Eddie’s strange physicality. But the detail slips away, and worry fills back in. Not for the first time in his life, he feels like he has no idea what’s going on; and, not for the first time, he’s afraid whatever’s happening is his fault. 

“Uhh,” he says slowly, tilting his head and leaning slightly over, trying to peer at Eddie’s face. “What do you mean, you were being weird in your head?”

“I just— I made it weird, okay, like with everything,” Eddie fusses. 

“Okay,” Steve says. He doesn’t want to freak him out, prod at him or anything, but he’s being so cagey and erratic that it’s hard not to. “...What do you mean?” he repeats.

Eddie makes a strangled, irritable sound that almost makes Steve jerk backwards, sends his eyebrows flying upward. “Ohhh man,” he complains, and flops over to lay on his back, muttering under his breath something okay fine and whatever before frowning up at Steve. His voice — when he finally talks at a volume Steve can somewhat comprehend — is pitchy, a little choked. 

“I have… feelings. About you.” 

Well. 

It’s certainly a confession, in the sense that Eddie says it like he’s admitting to some kind of crime, his face still scrunched up and voice dragging out of him. And it’s vague, dreadfully fucking vague but words like feelings are involved, so. Steve feels himself go completely still, stomach sucking in like he’s bracing for impact — everything freezing to a halt except the nervous heartbeat racking his chest. 

Eddie keeps going, the words seeming to spill out of him now, clumsy and imprecise. “And you— you’re, y’know, got your hands all over me, and you were talking about Nancy, right, like,” he takes a breath, just half a second, “You said you used to do this to— for her, right? So I guess a part of me was just—”

And he bites his lip around whatever word’s supposed to come next, eyes squeezing shut like he’s trying not to scream or lash out or cry or God knows what. Steve should probably be a little more tactful, then, but he’s losing his mind and his heart is in his throat, so he just gets out a rough, “Just what?”

Another one of those exasperated sounds, and then Eddie says, at the highest possible pitch, “Pretending?” He says it like a question, and then rushes to answer it, clawing his hands across his blushing face — “To be her, I guess? Or someone, in general, that you— That you…” 

An awful little grief washes over Steve as Eddie trails off, the words that might come next too daunting for the latter to say out loud. Someone that you like. Someone that you want. Someone that you’d fall in love with, maybe. Everything Eddie is, to Steve, that he thinks he isn’t.

He peeks at Steve through his fingers, eyes deeper and more frenzied than ever. Steve’s stomach is tying itself into knots, guilty and confused and — somewhere deeper, toying with all the secrets Eddie’s admitted to — a little thrilled. “Eddie,” he says, aching.

“M’sorry,” Eddie grits out, voice still all reedy, and he thumps his head against the bed a few times, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Most of his hair has escaped the ponytail, by now, fanned out messily underneath him and across his face. Steve wants to brush it away, to fix whatever’s storming around in Eddie’s head; he wants to apologize. But he’s frozen in place, watching Eddie tear himself up. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I was being weird, I told you.”

“Eddie—”

“And— also, it kind of hurts, right? Like, it doesn’t feel good, in the actual, uh… emotions of it all.” All the tension leaves him, then, at least physically — sliding off his frame as his arms fall to his sides, shoulders slumped backward and eyes closed. He draws out the words in that particular self-deprecating lilt of his. “But I keep doing it anyway.” 

He waves at himself, hands brandished in a half-hearted ta-da! as he laughs darkly. “Masochist.”

Whatever it was that held Steve so firmly in place throughout Eddie’s torn-up little monologue must be what propels him forward, then, finally, but kind of inexplicably — he grabs Eddie’s raised arm in a sudden rush, simply tightens his fingers around Eddie’s wrist and jostles him a bit. Eddie snaps his eyes open, gawking at him. 

“Eddie,” Steve repeats, forceful and almost harsh. Third time must be the charm, because Eddie for once doesn’t find something more to interrupt him with, just stares up at Steve with huge eyes and minutely lifts his chin in some possibly-subconscious kind of a nod. Again, a little thrill rings in Steve’s chest, but right now he just needs Eddie to stop torturing himself. Very suddenly, and without much grace, he needs him to know what he’d been dying to keep a secret less than an hour ago. 

“You don’t have to do all that, okay?” he begins.

“Okay,” Eddie says tentatively, an echo of Steve’s own confusion from only minutes ago. “All what?”

“All of that. Beating yourself up, man, first of all — I keep on telling you not to be so fucking hard on yourself all the time,” Steve explains, then pauses to try and veer himself back on track. “But also— the pretending thing.”

“The…?” 

“The pretending thing. You were just saying.” God, this would be difficult enough without Eddie randomly acting like his mind’s been wiped. Steve squeezes his wrist a little, but, watching Eddie’s gaze flick between his hand and back to Steve’s face, he’s not sure if it jogs Eddie’s memory or just disrupts it further. 

“You don’t have to pretend to be Nancy or anybody else, that’s just— you don’t have to do that, okay?” he explains. “And I’m sorry I brought her up, if it was… confusing. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t even mean to.”

He breaks eye contact, like he’s trying to catch his breath; sometimes when he’s looking at Eddie’s face he forgets to blink. Glancing downward, his eyes land at the curve of Eddie’s collarbone, then the weird zombie-looking face tattooed on his chest, the shiny scar torn through it. 

He smiles softly, shrugging. “I just wanted to touch you.”

Eddie’s eyebrows jump, just minutely, except it’s terribly easy to catch when Steve is leaning over a little ways above him. Eyes trained on his face, again, at the new flush of color happening there. “You—” Eddie says, then breaks off in a nervous laugh, a stuttered breath more than anything. “What?”

“I wanted to touch you,” Steve repeats, grinning — trying to hold back a laugh, because the last thing Eddie needs is another mixed signal, a detail he’ll wrangle into a reason to doubt himself. Things are still kind of precarious, Steve knows it. But saying the truth out loud feels electric, like the rigid weight he’d wrapped around his every thought has been extinguished, exploded into raw energy. He rubs his thumb against Eddie’s wrist, shifting his grip to trace up the side of his hand and down again. “Since, like, forever. ‘Cause of feelings. I thought I was kind of obvious.”

“Well you kinda were ,” Eddie practically yelps, and Steve can’t reign in a shocked laugh as Eddie struggles returning to a normal volume. “But there’s always that little voice, y’know, that’s like — chill out, man, he doesn’t actually wanna fuck you.”

Steve raises his eyebrows, smiling just a little smugly but mostly in genuine surprise, and Eddie looks for a moment like his mouth had just gone off ahead of him again. But then he narrows his eyes and seems to double down, raising his own brows right back at Steve and lifting his chin like a dare. Letting the words hang in the small box of empty space between them.

Steve does the same, not that he really means to. He just strokes the side of Eddie’s hand again, and reaches out with his left to trace a thumb down his cheek, skin hot to the touch. Gently, he takes Eddie’s chin in his hand. Holds him there lightly by his thumb and index finger. Eddie chews on his lip and juts his chin upward again, still in Steve’s grasp — in defiance or surrender, Steve doesn’t know, but his heartbeat sinks into some liquid kind of heat either way. He wants to pry his mouth open with his fingers. He wants to kiss him on the cheek. Sweetheart.

More than anything — he wants to hear those sounds again. To crawl over and pull them out of him, louder, gasping. He feels his face heating up again and his heart thudding in his skull and wonders if Eddie can hear it, or is he too busy gnawing through the meat of his bottom lip, waiting and waiting for Steve to say something? 

“Eddie,” is all he can think of. It’s not even a breathy, infatuated thing; just soft and a little chiding. He shifts his hand to ghost a thumb over Eddie’s lips as he says his name, lightly traces the wet spot where Eddie’s immediately stopped biting — his mouth parting at the contact like Steve had pressed a button. He holds the touch there, marveling, and holds Eddie’s wrist in what might be a vice grip, and holds his gaze like he can’t stand to lose it. Dark eyes, flickering.

And then — finally — he’s closing the gap. Shifting his touch back to Eddie’s jaw, pressing his wrist against the mattress because he’d fall over without a way to keep his balance, leaning all the way in like this, with the world still all heavy and slow. Eddie gasps a little as he moves in, makes a small sound like oh! , and when their lips meet Steve feels him choke around a sob. 

It’s a chaste thing, all things considered, though the sound Eddie makes underneath him could just as quickly drive Steve’s tongue down his throat; there’s a warm press of their lips together, a breath shared between them as their heads tilt, before Steve pulls away enough to check that Eddie’s alright. 

And, well. He’s as beet-red as he’s ever been, chewing his lip again and scrunching his nose, jaw working like every piece of him is trying to hold something back. His mouth is wet. His eyes are wet. Oh, fuck, is he actually—

“I’m not crying,” Eddie snaps, voice indignant and wavering. “I’m not gonna cry.”

Now Steve’s gonna fucking cry. Or come. Not actually, but — Jesus. Eddie’s done some terrible thing to him that makes his head, heart, and dick jump at the same details. “What’s going on?” he asks with another gentle laugh, brushing a few strands of hair from Eddie’s cheek with the same patient tenderness. But his hand shakes as he does it. God, he wants this. 

“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Eddie says. A tear slips down across his cheek; he swipes at it roughly with his free hand, the one not pressed into the sheets. “Fuck, can you just kiss me again? I’m not gonna cry.”  

“It’s okay if you do,” Steve assures him, leaning in to kiss softly at his cheek. “I might cry.”

“Yeah, right,” Eddie laughs. Puts on a voice that comes out crackly and unpolished. “Whatever for?”

Steve rolls his eyes, grinning. “‘Cause I’m kind of in love with you,” he says, discovering it for the first or the thousandth time, practically giggling, and Eddie moans something oh my God -like as Steve finally meets his lips again.

Chapter Text

If the sounds Eddie makes are electrifying, the feeling of them against Steve’s mouth — the vibration from the back of Eddie’s throat, the choked air between them — is a goddamn lethal injection. Tangible, flighting dangerously through his bloodstream, and Steve has to fight not to keel over and coast into an easy, anti-climactic death. Here lies Steve Harrington, he thinks for a second time, as his heart rockets with a force that must be fatal.

“Fuck,” he mumbles against the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “You’re making me a crazy person.”

“You are a crazy person, you— okay,” Eddie says, interrupting himself. He reaches for Steve, finally , curling his free hand around Steve’s shoulders. The touch blazes straight through his stupid sweatshirt, warm and fierce and still too far away. 

“Get— Get on top of me,” Eddie urges.

Steve obeys with a sharp grin, rearing back enough to swing a leg over one of Eddie’s. He presses his thigh up between Eddie’s legs just as he licks back into his mouth — not exactly intentional but not exactly sorry for it — and savors the muffled yelp Eddie responds with. Eddie’s already hard, duh , and then Steve wonders on a self-indulgent kick: since when?  

Was he squirming, red-faced, as Steve worked the tension out of his back? Did he hold his breath when Steve caught him by the back of his neck? Is Steve a total sicko for moaning at the thought, biting at Eddie’s lip to hide his smile?

“Steve,” Eddie says, warningly, as Steve grinds his leg harder into Eddie’s crotch. 

“Mhm,” Steve nods, mouthing down over his jaw again, and down further. He relinquishes the hold on Eddie’s wrist — he likes holding him down a little, maybe, but he’s not aiming to cut off his fucking circulation here. And he likes skating the heel of his palm down Eddie’s side, too; he burns for it, finally unrestricted. Easing the touch as he passes over scar tissue, digging at the smooth dip in his waist as he kisses down into his neck. 

“Steve,” Eddie says again, voice strained between unsteady breaths. He hooks his arm over Steve’s neck, pressing him closer into the side of his throat, making it that much harder for Steve to respond. The skin burns like a furnace against his lips, tongue, teeth — this close, Eddie even smells like heat, a hazy warmth tinged with smoke and sweat and something vaguely minty. Steve licks into it, brushes his fingers roughly through Eddie’s hair. Would fucking eat him if he could; the smell, the taste, the sound he makes when Steve tugs at his hair. Somebody told him, once: love makes you hungry.

Eddie trills, going for stern but coming out desperate: “ Steve .”

Steve makes a sound deep in his throat, not even sure if it’s audible outside of himself, and laughs. Braces himself over Eddie enough to quirk an eyebrow down at him, all games, like his hands aren’t shaking with need. “Do you have something to tell me or are you just saying my name?” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie hisses, grabbing loosely at his sweatshirt as Steve pulls away. Then— “ Oh,” as Steve curls his hand behind Eddie’s hip, skating his fingertips over where Eddie arches his back in surprise, brushing lightly under the waistband of his jeans, “Y-yeah.”

The movement drags Eddie up against Steve’s thigh again, and Steve can feel the frantic hardness of him as clearly as he can read it on his face. He’s undone — breath shaking out of him, skin hot and hair wild. Eyes screwed shut in that way that makes Steve feel fucking evil, and more evil for how much he enjoys it. But he’s allowed to enjoy it now, isn’t he? Yes, he thinks, yes, yes. So he digs his thigh into him, pinning him harder against the feather touches on the small of his back, if only to watch him gasp through gritted teeth.

“What do you want?” he asks. 

“You,” Eddie breathes, eyes blinking hazily open to shoot Steve straight through the chest. The word alone is enough to wind him; he feels it deep and warm in his blood, all that terrible wanting mirrored back at him.

“I’m here,” he says. All yours. He grinds into him again, watches Eddie squirm against the touch, stomach tensed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Anything,” Eddie says, shaking out a laugh, but Steve has a feeling that it’s not a joke. A little lightning flashes inside as Eddie looks him over, pursing his lips in a tight line like he’s trying to steel himself. After a beat he gets out, “Lose the shirt.”

Steve is already grabbing at the hem before Eddie adds, in a small, broken note — “Please.” Maybe in some stumbling endeavor to sound more polite, or less commanding; and for what it’s worth, he doesn’t sound like either. 

The word holds Steve by his throat, by his aching dick, makes him pause to meet the darkness in Eddie’s gaze, eyes wide. Like if he stares at him hard enough he doesn’t have to tell him out loud: You should keep saying that.

He only nods at him, slow, feeling some impossible fusion of careful and cruel. Then he’s shucking off the garment, tossing it forcefully toward the same nowhere Eddie’s shirt must have landed in, and they’re going again — Steve at Eddie’s neck before he even remembers leaning in, Eddie skittering his hands over Steve without the goddamn sweatshirt in the way. Across his shoulders, spine, waist; across all the scars neither of them have to explain to each other, God . It’s gratifying in a way Steve doesn’t have to waste time thinking about. Just gets to feel Eddie trace his hands around the torn-up pieces of him, sighing as he digs into the muscle and fat of his chest, his stomach. 

Maybe that’s what it takes for Eddie to realize Steve’s a little (entirely) at his mercy here, too, not just emotionally but bodily, because he kicks his thigh up between Steve’s legs out of nowhere and it’s almost funny the way they both moan at the same time. Only the sound Steve makes is punctuated by a low, punched-out fuck, and Eddie’s by another, deliberate grind up against the hard line of Steve’s dick, driving the slot of their legs together tighter.

“Big boy,” Eddie croons, and that’s another little phrase Steve twitches at, has him lifting Eddie up from the small of his back on the bare impulse to force them closer, harder. “Oh— yeah ,” Eddie gasps, for the second time, moving his hands from the cramped space between them to knead at Steve’s shoulder blades. “Just go ahead and— do that , Jesus.” 

Steve laughs, lifting him up again; Eddie’s doing half the work, anyway, near weightless in Steve’s grip with the way he’s arching his spine. And Steve is pretty sure he could get off like this, just the two of them dragging against each other’s thighs, only half-undressed, hands everywhere. He’s pretty sure that Eddie’s well on his way to doing so, himself — can feel him breathing ragged and stiff, shuddering in that erratic pattern of someone trying in vain to keep still. 

But he wants to wring everything out of him. See if he might get louder, loose-lipped; see if he might say please again.

So he kisses across Eddie’s throat, shifting onto his elbow as he moves to the other side of Eddie’s neck; working out a plan that mostly consists of get closer go deeper get your hand down his pants . He’s distracted at every turn, of course. Can’t help but picture Eddie catching all the little marks he’s leaving across his skin, later, his face going pink in the bathroom mirror sometime tomorrow. Pictures him palming over the faded red-and-purple stains the next time he jacks himself off — goddammit. Steve’s throbbing. 

Get your hand down his pants, he remembers.

“Can I touch you?” he asks.

“Christ, yes,” Eddie answers. 

Steve makes enough room to pull his hand from behind Eddie and drag it hastily across the front of his jeans, palming his dick through the rough denim. He has less experience in this particular area (read: none), but whatever uncertainty might be hanging around in his head is dulled by the crack in Eddie’s voice as he whines, inches from Steve’s right ear. 

“Mother fuck— ” Eddie starts, the full line of his body stuttering against Steve. “Take them off, take ‘em—”

“Your jeans?” Steve palms him again, drawing back to look over him, eyes flickering over the marks on his neck, the blush crawling over his collarbone. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Yes, obviously, please—”

Please. It rings like a bell in Steve’s mind; gets the both of them what they want. He lands another kiss on his lips, quick and wet, and leans harder against his elbow, fiddling with Eddie’s fly one-handed. The zipper fights him for a moment, locked in place, and when Steve finally manages to yank it open the sound is obscene, layered with shallow breaths and a vague expletive from Eddie. And there’s those boxers again — only twice as red as Eddie’s skin, now, the way he’s hot all over. 

Eddie’s gripping the underside of Steve’s bicep where it’s braced beside his head, ducking down to kiss over the muscle like a man starved, and it makes wrestling the jeans over his hips that much more complicated. Together they manage to drag them halfway down his thighs, just above where Steve’s still half on top of one leg. He can’t keep himself from grabbing at the soft skin the moment it’s exposed, awed at how much of Eddie’s thigh fits under the width of his palm. He wants to leave a handprint there. A bruise. 

“Steve,” Eddie pleads, bucking into nothing and tracking hot spit over Steve’s bicep, “Stevie, come on.”

Steve slides his palm up, lets his fingers brush under the edge of Eddie’s boxers for a tortuous second; then he’s grabbing him, nothing but a thin layer of worn cotton between his touch and Eddie’s hard dick. And it’s wet — the underwear soaked over the head, enough to make a dark spot that Steve hadn’t caught, somehow, moments ago. 

“Oh, baby,” he coos, the words falling out of him in a tone like pity. 

Eddie is twitching against his touch — his dick and the whole rest of him, trembling. “Yeah,” he murmurs, voice tight. “Yeah, I know, m’sorry.”

“Don’t—” Steve starts, glancing over to scowl at him for getting all guilty again, but he’s mostly met with brown curls and long eyelashes; finds Eddie twisted in place to stare down at Steve’s hand against his tented boxers, the edge of his forehead still dragging against Steve’s arm. Like if he doesn’t maintain as many points of contact between the two of them as possible, he’ll float away. 

It hooks into Steve, right into the meat of his heart. Hooks them together. “It’s okay,” he says. “Jesus, how long have you been worked up like this?”

“Ah— Kinda started when you started touching me,” Eddie admits. Steve holds back a curse at the confession, another dirty vision flashing in his mind. “Then when you— held my neck. And my hand. And—”

Steve lets his touch slip into the gap in Eddie’s boxers, just a soft trace of his ring finger; hadn’t meant to interrupt Eddie but he’d felt, suddenly, a wave of urgent boldness. Eddie freezes, and Steve can hear the soft click of spit in the back of his throat as his mouth hangs open. 

“Sorry,” Steve breathes, enraptured. “I— You can keep going.” 

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Eddie says. “It doesn’t matter. Can you, uh…?”

It does matter, to Steve — it matters very much, in the sense that it’s making him feel impossibly more unhinged. But Eddie’s voice drifts high as he trails off, soft and pleading, and the sound melts into Steve with everything else. Sends another crash of heat to his groin, wills him to play nice, be patient. 

Or, possibly, it wills him to make Eddie patient. Which wouldn’t be playing very nice at all.

“Okay,” he says, and he pulls away a bit, gently retracting his arm from Eddie’s grip. “Lay back for me?”

Eddie chases him for a moment; rubs his head into Steve’s arm before drawing back, craning his neck just enough to shoot Steve an exasperated look from under those dark eyelashes. Eyes narrowed, brow creased — another little fuck you, though he doesn’t say it out loud. Steve lets out a dumb little smile, a laugh that comes out mean and adoring. When Eddie huffs and flops back against the bed, hands thrown up where his hair fans out beneath him, Steve swoops down to kiss his cheek. Sweetheart, sweetheart; he might even be saying it out loud. 

“You’re killing me, man,” Eddie mutters. Trails off under his breath, jaw working. “ Been killing me…”

Steve sits back on his heels, careful not to land too hard on Eddie’s leg beneath him. Takes another long look at the lithe body stretched out under him, flushed skin and twists of scar tissue and a faint trail of hair disappearing under his underwear, and breathes hard through another smile. “Tell me about it,” he says quietly, feeling hysterical. Like his eyes are open too wide.

He shuffles forward a bit, gets his hand over Eddie’s boxers again. Pulls at the waistband, slow — lets Eddie hiss as he drags him out from under the cotton fabric. He’s not sure either of them are breathing much except in these drawn-out, anxious inhales. And Steve’s done slow before, and steady, and the goddamn wine-and-dine, but the pace he’s moving now feels alien. Feels nothing like chivalrous. 

And fuck off, maybe a part of him is stalling. He’s looking at another guy’s dick, up close and personal, which has technically happened before but not at all like this — he’s got the ridiculous urge to get his own cock out and compare the two, make things more familiar. He’s also got the urge to put him in his mouth, but, hey. Maybe next time.

“Eddie,” he says, holding Eddie’s straining dick over his ruined boxers, just holding it and Eddie’s already squirming tightly in place, humming high up in his throat like the end is fucking nigh. And that’s what it is, really, beneath the excitement and the inexperience, and the seemingly everlasting high that makes time move thick and lazy: Steve knows he’s only got a couple minutes here. Wants it to feel like a lifetime. “Eddie, I mean it.”

“W— What?” 

“Tell me,” he repeats. Gathering up all the wetness at the head and finally pumping over his dick, just once, tight and deliberate, like he’s mapping out the weight and feel and how Eddie reacts to his fist. And it’s kind of pretty, isn’t it? The long vein down the side and the angry-sticky shine at the head, and the way Eddie might be crying, again, if the little choked-off sounds he’s making are anything to go off of. 

“Tell me— just. What you’d been thinking about, earlier, when I was massaging your back. Or— what you’re thinking about now,” Steve explains. Drags his fist over him again, again; groans when Eddie sobs, something like fffucking— fuck me. “Yeah, yeah, like that, baby, just talk to me.”

“I—“ Eddie starts. Chokes on the vowel when Steve swipes over the slit, again, and starts really pumping his fist, the sound of it slick and accelerating. “F—Fuck, you’re kidding, Steve, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” He pauses to spit in his palm, meeting Eddie’s eyes as he drags it slowly over his cock. Watches him tangle his fingers into his fucked-up hair, feels himself twitch as Eddie contorts his entire body away from Steve’s touch and then into it again. “Just keep going. You’re good, you’re doing so good.”

“Oh God,” Eddie gets out. “Okay, I was— hah— I was thinking about— About how bad I wanted you.”

“Yeah?” He slows the next pull of his fist, drawing out a strangled sound from Eddie’s throat and another jerk of his hips. “When?”

“All—” a choked laugh— “All the time. When I was taking off my shirt— S’when I…” He curses under his breath, screws his eyes shut, cheeks wet. “I thought about you pressing me into the mattress. F—face down. Wanted your hand on my neck, again.”

Steve moans, his hand burning with the memory of everywhere it’s been on Eddie’s skin and the fervor of where it is now, pumping hot and tight over his cock. The sound of it weaves into Eddie’s breathing, blazing in Steve’s skull. It’s taking everything in him — his last fucking shred of dignity — not to start humping Eddie’s thigh underneath him. He’s not sure how long he can keep up that charade. Dignity.

Eddie’s breath hitches as he speaks up, again. His voice is all up-and-down, random spikes of volume whenever Steve thumbs over the head. “‘N I was thinking about— you taking care of me, like you do. All the time. You’re always— Driving me insane — Actin’ like you want to,” he says. “I want you to want …”

“I do, Eddie,” Steve breathes. To take care of him, to drive him insane — he wants . It bubbles up inside of him, and his jeans feel like a goddamn straitjacket. “Shit, shit—” He can’t make out any more of Eddie’s babbling as he sits up enough to fight his fly with his free hand, blood rushing in his ears, his fingers stumbling over Eddie and making him gasp. 

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie hisses, glancing down to catch Steve wrestling down his jeans. His mouth is so wet. Steve can hear it even when he’s not looking. “God, I want you to fuck me.”

“I will,” Steve swears. Finally manages to yank his aching dick out of his briefs and all but collapses forward, grinding their hips together in a stutter of desperate movement. Skin-to-skin, searing; his hand still trapped between them as he fights to keep his grip in the cramped space. “Want to so bad, baby.”

“Want—” Eddie sobs; arches into the firm hand Steve finally gets around them both, pumping them together. “—you to fall in f—fucking love with me.”

“Told you,” Steve says, curling down to kiss against the side of his mouth, bucking into his own fist and the feeling of his cock against Eddie’s. Eddie gets a hand in Steve’s hair, drags him closer. “Told you I—”

“Tell me again.”

“I love you,” Steve tells him. He means it. He means it, he needs Eddie to know.

Eddie gasps. “Again, please, please—”

“Eddie, I love you,” Steve says, panting; and Eddie’s kicking up against him with a shout, bowing off the mattress and into the solid weight of Steve’s body as he comes.

“Please,” he’s still begging, jumping in Steve’s slick fist, hot and wet and writing everywhere. “Ah— S—say it…”

“Love you, love y— so fucking much, God ,” and then Steve’s coming, too, working the both of them through it with his hand and his hips and a mouth on Eddie’s jaw. He sounds pathetic and he knows it, right up by Eddie’s ear, but he doesn’t care. No — he cares, but in the opposite direction; he wants, for once, to sound exactly how he feels. To devour Eddie for every depraved little whine that tears out of him, and to repay him in full with his own rough chanting, the both of them crashing into that blackout point of pleasure. 

—

A short eternity later, he’s fallen like a dead weight across Eddie, his hand still crushed between them, sticky and warm and halfway to pins-and-needles. He realizes Eddie’s entire torso is in much the same position — Steve’s probably crushing him, heavy and dumb like he gets after sex.

“Fuck.” He moves to peel off of Eddie, wiping his hand on the sheets beside him and doing an awkward little half-roll that Eddie immediately whines at. “Let me grab something to—”

“No no no no,” Eddie rushes as Steve clambers upward, chasing after him with an exhausted kind of haste. Steve lets himself fall back against the mattress at Eddie’s insistence, landing softly on his back with an oomph and curling his arm over Eddie’s shoulders as the latter wraps himself over his side. 

“Let’s just stay here a minute,” Eddie says, face pressed into the side of Steve’s chest. His voice is all soft and scratchy — funny, that his voice can be both of those at once — like he’s just woken up from a nap. Or like he’s about to slip into another one. 

It’s cute, dreadfully cute. Almost sexy, in a weird way, an I made him feel good and I can hear it in his voice way. The satisfaction of satisfaction. Let me be the reason you feel good, Steve remembers thinking, kind of, just a little while earlier. Maybe in different words.

“We gotta clean up,” Steve says, even as he tucks Eddie closer against him, smiling as he feels eyelashes flutter against his skin. 

“No…” Eddie disagrees thoughtfully. Smooths his palm up and down Steve’s chest, tugging lightly at the hair. 

“Do you at least wanna put your pants back on?” Steve jokes, tapping at Eddie’s exposed thigh where his jeans are still yanked haphazardly down. Doesn’t look too comfortable, Steve thinks, but Eddie hums another no against him. “Do you wanna take them off?” 

“No,” Eddie says, huffing as he wriggles closer, “I wanna just stay here a minute.”

“Do you—” Steve starts. And he can’t help himself. “Eddie, do you love me, too?”

Eddie stills, the hand on Steve’s chest squeezing against him. All Steve’s left with, for a dreadful second, is the echo of how foolish he sounds. How much he is. Immediately he’s on damage control — but it isn’t damage control to try and explain himself, he reasons, it’s just being honest. “It’s— it’s okay if you’re not. Totally fine, I swear. I just need to know, like. I need to know… where you are.”

Eddie props himself up on an elbow, glancing sideways like he’s working something out in his head. “Shit, did I not— I didn’t say…?”

Steve laughs, a little nervously. “I mean, you said feelings, but I didn’t want to assume.”

“Oh, Jesus, Steve, please assume,” Eddie says. He brings a hand up to Steve’s jaw, tilts his head to face him straight-on with the soft press of his finger, and Steve is probably smiling like a moron but maybe that’s what makes Eddie smile like one, too. “Yes,” he confesses. “Yes, I love you, I’m in love with you, I’m obsessed with you, all of the above.”

“All of the above?” Steve raises his eyebrows.

Eddie nods. Twists down to force his jeans over his knees and kicks them the rest of the way off with all the huffing and puffing he seems to think it requires, before hooking his leg over Steve’s, leering down at him again. “I need you, I dream of you,” he lists, rolling his eyes at his own dramatics. “I fantasize about you, I cry about you, I sing along to Judas Priest about you…”

“I sing along to Journey about you,” Steve says.

“Oh, boy,” Eddie hums, raising a brow and sending Steve a light smirk. “What song?”

“Tons of them. Like... Patiently.”

“Which one is—”

“One!…,” Steve croons, but of course it sounds like WAHHH-AHNNN, loud and long-winded and completely out of key. The tired murmuring under Eddie’s breath, something along the lines of Oh, here we go, means it must be recognizable enough — probably since Steve’s put Infinity on about a dozen times around Robin and Eddie, and belts along, like this, to almost every song. “ One in a millionnnnn… ”

“Okay—” Eddie fights, and fights his own laughter, and does not win in either case.

“Oh, ohhhh,” Steve continues, howling unintelligibly, breaking off into wavering giggles of his own as Eddie burrows against him and continues to plead for mercy. “ Whooaa, ooh, whoaaa, ooh— ow, okay! Jesus, did you just bite me?”

Bite is a strong word, but Eddie doesn't seem to mind, running his teeth into the same tender spot on Steve’s side by way of confirmation. Steve yelps again and yanks him closer, grins at where Eddie gazes up at him, hazily mischievous. His eyes are bright with laughter and dark with lasting comfort, and there’s still the faint, textured shine of drying tears streaked across his face, and it feels like Steve is continually remembering how much he loves him. Over and over. He imagines he’ll be doing so for a long while yet.

He drags his hand lightly over Eddie’s shoulder, idly traces it down his spine. Taps at the scarab tattoo by his hip with his other hand. Eddie hums sleepily, eyes falling shut, and Steve’s probably not too far behind — though he’s distantly distracted by the fact that they’re super gross right now. There’s a part of him that isn’t looking forward to waking up sticky and sweaty and probably sore from how they’re tangled together. There’s another part of him that is very looking forward to it.

“Your back feel any better, at least?” Steve says, quietly. Eyes on the ceiling again, drowsy — and God, a lot’s happened since he last stared at the blank face of it. 

“Hm?” Eddie mumbles. “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well— hm.” 

He twists around a little, rolling his shoulders as he seems to take stock of himself. Steve politely refrains from hissing when an elbow inadvertently knocks into his gut. 

“I’m not sure…” Eddie tells him, a smirk in his voice even as he drifts off. Steve snorts as he finishes: “Might need another session, sometime.”