Work Text:
“Yeah, sure, I’ll come.”
“Please, Steve, it’s just gonna be one night and—wait, what? You’ll come?”
Steve shrugs in an awful attempt at looking nonchalant. He raises his shoulders a little too high to be believable and he doesn’t quite drop them fast enough to fool anyone, but lucky for him, Dustin is still too shocked by his answer to notice.
“Yeah,” Steve confirms, shuffling a few VHS tapes around on the counter just for something to do with his hands. “Sounds fun. What time?”
Dustin gives him a look that is best accompanied by the phrase have you lost your mind? “It sounds…fun?” He raises an eyebrow.
The “casual” shrug that Steve tries to pass off this time does not go unnoticed. In an attempt to avoid interrogation, he starts babbling. “Yeah, it sounds fun, what do you want from me, Henderson? You asked me to come, I said I’d come, if you don’t want me to say yes then next time don’t ask, I mean, really, I was trying to do you a favor, I have better things to do with my Thursday night, anyway.”
Dustin squints at him. “You’re acting weird.”
No shit. “What? No I’m not. You’re weird.”
“Is it because you’re still jealous of Eddie? Because I really thought after the whole getting-stuck-in-the-upside-down-together thing, you’d get over it.”
Steve chokes on his own spit; one of the tapes he’d been pretending to sort flies out of his hands and lands on the ground, its cover popping open on impact.
Yeah. He’s jealous. That’s why he’s acting weird about joining the little dorks in their D&D session later tonight. No other reason.
It’s certainly not because Steve had come to the conclusion recently that while yes, Eddie did drive him crazy at least nine times out of ten, Steve also kind of liked that. Liked him. In a I think you’re pretty and I want to do something about it kind of way. And when Dustin had walked into the Family Video ranting about how Mike had to cancel and could Steve please sit in for him, just this once, he’d shelve all the returns for the rest of Steve’s shift if he said yes, Steve certainly didn’t have an epiphany about creating a character for the sole purpose of flirting with Eddie under the guise of playing along with a good story, and he certainly didn’t jump at the chance to use Mike’s absence as an excuse.
That would be crazy. He’s Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington is familiar enough with flirting that he doesn’t have to hide behind fictional characters to do it.
That being said: it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it out. Since the opportunity’s presented itself, and everything. Might as well take advantage of it.
“No, of course not,” Steve settles on answering. It’s the truth this time, no stuttering or forced indifference about it, but he’s sure that Dustin somehow finds it even less convincing all the same.
“Sure,” Dustin responds, skeptical as Steve had predicted. He bends over and picks the accidentally discarded VHS off the ground, snapping the case shut as if to punctuate his suspicion before tossing it on the counter. “Just…don’t make anything weird, okay?”
Steve hardly thinks he’s referring to making it weird by flirting with their mutual friend right in front of him, but still. He can’t make any promises. “Mm,” he hums in response, hoping it’s vague enough to be taken as an agreement without being a binding statement.
“Jesus Christ,” Dustin mutters under his breath, and Steve can tell he’s not buying it. He would argue, but like. What, he’s going to tell Dustin that he has a crush on Eddie? No thanks. The kid would be way too smug about it.
“Look, it’s gonna be fine,” Steve insists, hoping to God it doesn’t turn out to be a lie. “I’m fine. Me and Eddie are fine. Shut up and restock the returns like you promised.”
Dustin groans, even as he resigns himself to his task. Steve is at least eighty-five percent sure he’s going to end up having to re-organize everything by the time Dustin’s finished, but he figures if he locks the door a half hour early it won’t set him back at all. Hell, maybe he’ll make it an hour. It’s not like anyone comes in to rent a movie on a Thursday night, anyway.
In the end, Steve leaves Family Video at eighty thirty. They’re supposed to close at nine.
He’s only sort of sure he moved all the tapes back to their correct spots on the shelves after Dustin leaves. Robin is almost certainly going to kill him when she comes in tomorrow and catches something in the wrong place, but hey: there’s goblins to kill. Or vampires. Or whatever. He’s not exactly sure how the game works.
Most importantly, there’s a boy to seduce.
The group meets in the Wheelers’ basement, which Steve had of course known beforehand, but it isn’t until Nancy answers the door when he knocks that it really sinks in. He really hadn’t thought about having to explain himself to Nancy Wheeler. The only thing that could make it worse is if Robin suddenly appeared behind her.
Nancy twists her mouth to the side when she swings the door open, trying and failing to hide a smile. Somehow, Steve doesn’t think the smile is because she’s just happy to see him. He knew it was a mistake to tell her about his big stupid crush. “What brings you here, Steve? You know it’s the kids’ game night, right?”
Steve clears his throat, tries to play stupid. “Hm?” Nancy raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, yeah, uh—Dustin? He said little Wheeler wasn’t going to be here tonight for some reason, practically begged me to fill in.” Not technically a lie. “Wasn’t going to say yes, but you know how stubborn he can be.”
Nancy nods, squinting down at her watch. “Doesn’t the store close at nine?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s eight forty-five.”
“Yeah, I uh. Closed early?”
“In a rush to get here, Steve?”
Right. So Nancy wasn’t going to let him even think he was getting away with this one.
“I know what you’re thinking, Nance,” he says. “And you’re absolutely right, but if you say anything about it, I’ll tell Robin about that time that you—”
“Okay!” she shouts, cutting him off and shoving him through the doorway. “Basement’s downstairs, I’m sure you remember,” she continues. “If that story ever leaves your mouth again, I’m calling Robin and telling her exactly where you are right now.”
Steve scoffs. “Robin and I don’t have secrets,” he says. Thinks about it, doubles back. “But I would like to tell her myself so she doesn’t break down my door at three in the morning, so. Your dirty secrets are safe. For now.”
Nancy rolls her eyes, knocking their shoulders together as she leads them down the hallway. “Have fun with your boyfriend,” she practically sings, leaving him sputtering on the top step of the stairs for a good couple minutes before he descends.
He takes the steps two at a time, gets nervous, and practically tiptoes down the last three. On the final step, he forgets about the loose board and the fact that it tilts downward if you step on it wrong, and almost falls flat on his face on the concrete floor. He rights himself, thankfully, but not without halfway crashing into the wall and making more noise than anyone’s ever made by simply walking down a flight of stairs.
Yeah. Operation: seduce Eddie Munson was off to a great start.
The kids react like assholes. Obviously.
“Jesus, Steve, did you just learn how to walk?”
“Oh my god, we’re all dying tonight. We should just pack up now.”
“Are you sure he was the only replacement you could find?”
“Steve, please tell me you can roll dice better than you can walk down a flight of stairs.”
And then Eddie, sitting in a crouch at the head of the table and staring at him in amusement, a smirk playing across his lips: “Hey, Stevie. In a rush to see me?”
Well. Yeah, technically. But he thinks Steve’s about to admit that? Like hell. “You wish,” he says, thankfully making his way to the table across the room without any more mishaps.
When he sits, Eddie tosses a small box at him and whatever’s inside rattles when Steve catches it. He opens it to find a few oddly shaped dice, almost identical to the ones on the table except for how they’re a dazzling shade of bright blue while the others are black and red. “Figured you wouldn’t have any of your own,” Eddie explains. “Picked these up for you on my way here.”
It’s stupid. They’re dice. Eddie isn’t even looking at him when he says it, instead scribbling something down behind the folders that obscure the view of his section of the table. And honestly, Steve still isn’t sure what the dice are for, beyond just rolling them. He’ll probably never use them again, after tonight. Even so, he’s oddly warmed by the gesture.
“For me?” he asks. Not unsure, just slightly dazed despite his best efforts.
“Yeah,” Eddie responds, looking up from his work and flashing him a confused smile. “Couldn’t let you borrow Henderson’s,” he explains, “kid has the worst luck. You’d never make it past the first fight.”
At the mention of his name, Dustin speaks up. “Are we going to get started, or what? I didn’t spend two hours doing Steve’s job just for us to postpone anyway because you two can’t stop talking.” When Steve looks over at him, across the table, Dustin sends him a pointed look. Eyebrow raised and everything. Steve would hazard a guess that Dustin no longer believes his earlier weirdness was because he was jealous.
Christ, Steve is fawning over dice. Really pretty dice from a really pretty boy, to be fair, but still. Dice. He’s going to put his head through a wall.
The game is slower than he expects, given the stories Eddie has regaled him with over the phone late at night when neither of them can sleep. Not that it’s boring, or anything, he’s just pretty sure he was supposed to have seen at least one dragon by now. At one point, he hears the kids arguing and catches something about how they’ve only been traveling for about forty-five seconds. By then, he’s already been in the Wheelers’ basement for half an hour.
It takes another full hour before Steve even gets to participate, Eddie gesturing at him to introduce himself with an exaggerated flourish of his hands.
“Uh,” Steve says. “Hi?”
Lucas drops his head in his hands. Dustin mutters a Jesus Christ under his breath.
Eddie gives him a crooked smile. “Hey, Steve,” he says, dropping the voices he’d been putting on for the frankly confusing number of characters he’d been playing. “Care to introduce yourself?”
Steve stares at the rest of them, wide-eyed. They know who he is. What’s he supposed to be introducing? No one told him he was supposed to have an ice-breaker ready.
They don’t take pity on him.
“Your name?” Eddie asks, affecting an exaggerated accent that Steve can’t tell if it’s part of the game or just Eddie being Eddie.
Steve blinks. “It’s Steve?”
Eddie laughs, though not unkindly. The sound sends a trace of electricity down his spine. “Your character’s name, Stevie,” he clarifies.
Right. His character. Who he’d totally been thinking about while the others had been doing their thing leading up to his introduction, like he’d been told. Because he hadn’t been swept up in Eddie’s theatrics at all, staring too long at his mouth when he spoke or studying the movements of his hands when he gestured along with his speech, like he was creating a picture out of thin air. The way he was constantly jumping in and out of his seat, never sitting still for more than a minute or two at a time, the frantic energy of his performance unfairly endearing.
None of that had Steve preoccupied. Not at all. Nope, he’s spent the past hour crafting the best character anyone has ever seen, in or out of dungeons and dragons, no distractions to be heard of. Perfectly on task.
“Oh, uh,” Steve starts, stretching out the uh in a poor attempt to stall for more time. “Steve?”
Amidst the groaning from everyone else at the table, Eddie nods his head in assent. “Okay,” he says, very kindly doing Steve the favor of not making fun of him for being boring in front of a group of teenagers. There is an undercurrent of amusement when he speaks, but Steve’s doing himself the favor of assuming that it’s more out of fondness than anything.
“Steve, then,” Eddie continues, once again putting on a voice for a character that Steve, for the life of him, can’t remember the name of. “What brings you to the castle, Steve?”
“Adventure?” Steve questions, rolling each syllable off his tongue one by one, as if they were separate words.
“We’re totally dying this session,” Lucas announces.
“Totally,” Dustin agrees.
Eddie raises a hand, signaling for them to be quiet. “Lay off,” he says, “it’s his first game.” He shifts in his seat, twisting until he is once more in a crouch in the chair. His elbows rest on his knees, one hand dangling and the other rising upwards, fingers curling into a fist to rest beneath his chin. “Steve,” he says. “Adventurer.” There’s a slight twinkle in his eye when he speaks. Has been almost all night, though it seems to be brighter now that it’s turned on him. It drives Steve crazy.
“You’ve been traveling with a group of rangers,” Eddie decides, weaving the narrative that Steve had been too preoccupied to come up with on his own. It should be embarrassing how hot Steve thinks it is that he’s able to come up with something this quickly, right out of thin air like that. Although, given his track record, he doesn’t think anyone should be surprised that he has kind of a thing for people who are exceptionally competent at what they do.
Nancy Wheeler. Robin Buckley. Eddie Munson. They kind of had a lot in common in that regard.
Eddie continues his narration, head tilting this way and that as he decides Steve’s backstory on the fly. “You got separated from your group,” he says. “Cold and tired and with your last battle leaving you a bit worse for the wear, you stumble towards the closest shelter you can find—an old, stone castle. There’s another group standing just outside—” he gestures to the group sitting around the table “—and you walk up to speak to them. They fill you in on their journey so far, why they’re here and what they’re looking for. You’re lucky to have stumbled across them—this isn’t a place you want to be in alone. You take the steps inside together, and while you don’t know these people, you feel bolstered by their confidence. Their bravery.
“As you explore, you all begin to hear a noise coming from one of the chambers. A faint whispering, low and frantic. What do you do?”
“I go in,” Dustin says, no hesitation.
“What, and I’m the one who’s getting us killed?” Steve asks, incredulous.
Lucas gives him a look. “So what, we stay out here and the campaign gets cut off because you’re too scared to walk through a door? Come on, Steve.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Steve concedes, shrugging. “We’ll get whispered to death.”
Eddie smiles at Steve in amusement. “You open the door,” he says. “There’s a man inside, his features mostly obscured by a long, dark robe, the hood pulled over his head.” He leans forward, letting some of his hair fall into his face in demonstration. “Your new friends, Steve, they recognize this man as a person they need information from. But he can’t know why you’re here, or what you’re after. Things could go very, very poorly for you if he did.” Eddie turns his attention to the table at large. “How do you all proceed?”
“Who has a high persuasion modifier?”
“Can any of you go invisible?”
“We could just kill him.”
“You want to kill him before we get the information? Are you stupid?”
The ensuing argument makes Steve’s head spin. Christ, he’s glad these kids are all at least slightly better at agreeing to a plan when they’re fighting the upside down, otherwise they all would have been dead ten times over by now. At least when they argue in that context, they usually argue themselves into a solution. Steve’s not so sure that’s about to happen here.
He lets them go for a minute longer before he interjects. “Guys, shut up,” he says. “I’ll go in and talk to him.” If nothing else, their inability to agree on a plan has left Steve with a pretty good opening to enact his own.
“You?” Dustin looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “Steve, I made your character sheet, I know your persuasion modifier is a plus zero.”
Steve knows fuck all about what that means. “Yeah, and I’m just a fill-in. If I get whispered to death, you can thank me later for taking one for the team if this doesn’t work.” He turns to Eddie. “I’m going in first. I’ll talk to him, try to get him to trust us or whatever.”
“Alright, Stevie, time for your first roll,” Eddie announces, and he looks absolutely delighted about the fact. God, what a nerd. Steve watches the excited smile take over his face and he kind of wants to kiss his teeth about it. “How were you thinking you wanted to do this?”
“Oh, I’m going to flirt with him,” Steve answers, matter of fact.
The excited smile on Eddie’s lips turns into a wide, indulgent grin. “Of course you are. Give me charisma, then.”
Steve blinks. “Like…you want me to start winking, or what?”
Dustin groans. Lucas is staring blankly at the wall in front of him, evidently already resigned to their terrible, inevitable fate.
Steve supposes he should’ve spent the hour and a half leading up to this actually paying attention to how the game was played, especially if he wasn’t going to bother using that time to nail down a character, but, again: he was a little distracted. At least he was finally getting to the part he came here for.
Eddie leans over his wall of folders, crowding himself into Steve’s space and pointing at a spot on the sheet of paper that Dustin had shoved at him when the game started. “This number right here,” he says. One of the dice gets pressed into Steve’s palm. “Roll this,” Eddie continues, curling Steve’s fingers over the hard resin, “and then add that to it.”
Steve switches the die to his other hand, flexing his fingers. Cool. Roll the dice, add some numbers, he gets the guy, the end. Piece of cake. Steve could do this with his eyes closed.
He tosses the die onto the table. A golden number one stares back at him.
Now, Steve doesn’t know much about this game at all. Hasn’t been paying attention in the slightest, as has been previously established. But he knows this particular die goes up to twenty, and he knows one is significantly lower than that. The lowest possible outcome, actually. And judging by the pained groan he hears from the others, he’d be correct in assuming that rolling a one is an absolute disaster.
“Uh,” Steve says, willing the number to change as he speaks. “That’s a one?”
“Not quite,” Eddie says, and he has the decency to sound at least slightly remorseful. “Your character sheet says minus one, so. Zero.”
Zero. A zero. Steve Harrington rolled a zero for flirting. He’s in hell. He spent four years in a row fighting interdimensional monsters with a pack of children and this, this, is somehow worse. What the fuck. Robin is going to make fun of him so bad when he tells her about this later.
“Sorry, Stevie.” Eddie scrunches his nose at him, as if to say bad luck. “Even you can’t charm everyone.” And before Steve can react to that, Eddie clears his throat, shifting in his chair in a way that Steve has come to recognize means he’s getting into character. “So,” Eddie says, “you try to charm him into trusting you, tossing your hair over your shoulder—” he punctuates this by flipping his own hair and fuck him it is a pretty accurate depiction of how Steve usually tries to turn on the charm “—and flashing that gorgeous, pretty boy smile of yours—” Steve practically chokes on his tongue “—before a wound in your side pulls, causing you to trip two steps into the chamber and fall flat on your face. He looks down on you and extends a hand.”
Eddie reaches out a hand towards Steve, palm up, mimicking the movements of his speech. When Steve doesn’t immediately take it, Eddie looks pointedly at where his hand sits lamely on the edge of the table and wiggles his fingers. Still, it takes Steve a minute to process the request, and when he does finally move into action his limbs are full of so much nervous tension that his arm jerks to the side a little, nearly knocking over the two figurines closest to him on the table. Eddie curls their fingers together, his hold loose and teasing, a small, self-satisfied smirk on his lips. “Oh, darling,” he breathes, tone a little mocking, a little mean, his voice pitched low to match the character he’s playing. “You’re lucky you’re pretty, Steve.”
And yeah, okay. Steve is definitely going to be thinking about that one for a while.
“Hm?” he responds. It is admittedly not his strongest moment. He thinks his hands might be getting a little sweaty. Someone kicks his chair under the table, hard enough to push him back an inch or two, but it hardly registers.
In the back of his mind, Steve is keenly aware that he’s surrounded by teenagers in a dimly lit basement that smells like stale chips and mildew, pretending he knows a single thing about dungeons and dragons other than the fact that there are supposed to be dungeons and dragons and up to this point he has seen none of one or the other, waiting an hour and a half for his chance to flirt with a cute boy and completely fucking it up six ways to Sunday on his first try. A perfect one-two-three strikeout right in front of a group of fifteen-year-olds. In a basement. None of this is exactly going to plan.
And here he is, eyes wide and lips parted, absolutely fucking enraptured all because a character Eddie was playing called him darling. Said he was pretty, even.
Oh, oh, Steve is getting bested at his own game. It’s sickening. Embarrassing. He loves it.
It barely registers that the game has continued on, the sounds of the kids’ bickering and the dice clattering across the table fading into the background as Steve’s brain catches on words like darling and pretty boy and gorgeous. Steve has to kiss him. He’ll die if he doesn’t.
He rolls the dice himself, a couple more times, doing passably better than he had on his failed attempt at flirting, but still getting no higher than a twelve. It’s not great, he surmises, but it’s enough that he hasn’t been killed yet. And he hasn’t gotten anyone else killed yet, either, which had apparently been a near thing if Dustin’s relieved sigh had been anything to go by. That has to count for something.
Really, it’s amazing that Steve still has enough of his head screwed on straight to be able to even pick up the dice in the first place, let alone roll them at the right points. He’ll take what he can get.
It is pretty funny how Steve only agreed to this whole thing in the first place to try and flirt with Eddie and it backfired so badly that he can hardly even think anymore, he’ll admit it. Like, yeah, I’m Steve Harrington, I’m great at flirting, I’ll just waltz in and do my thing and boom: instant boyfriend. Only to be knocked on his ass because Eddie said like three words to him.
What Steve most decidedly does not find funny, however, is that it happens two more times. Twice. This time in a row. He’s pretty sure he’s cursed.
Each spectacular failure is met by a chorus of frustrated shouting.
“Could you do, like, anything else?”
“You have a negative one to charisma, I don’t even know why you thought that was a good plan the first time.”
“Honestly, I know this game is new to you, but it’s a negative one. That’s bad. Negative is bad.”
“You have a sword, dude. Hit something!”
“You owe us money for this. I’m serious.”
To their credit, they don’t really seem to mind that his character is a man flirting with another man. They’re just pissed because Steve can’t manage to roll well enough for it to be any help at all in advancing the story.
It’s not like he thinks the kids would be terrible about it if he told them, anyway—Dustin’s clearly figured out already and Steve is certain that the kid doesn’t give a shit beyond the fact that Steve is doing very poorly at his little nerd game because of it. Steve’s just…not quite there yet. The only reason he even told Nancy is because he could see her crush on Robin with his eyes closed.
Steve doesn’t have time to really think on any of that too hard, though. Not with the way Eddie keeps sending him that sharp-edged grin over his wall of folders, laughing wildly each time Steve fumbles a roll. Reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder, his arm, the top of his hand. At one point, Eddie brushes his fingertips across Steve’s cheekbone, barely there, and Steve swears he sees God.
It’s constant, even when Steve isn’t trying to score a fictional date and failing miserably. Any time Steve gets lost, staring blankly at his character sheet or the pile of dice in front of him, Eddie stretches towards him, knocking their shoulders together as he explains the differences between dice or points out a reference he’d missed. Each time, Steve can feel the warmth of Eddie’s skin against his own, the tickle of Eddie’s hair against his neck, Eddie’s breath ghosting across his jaw, Jesus Christ. Each time, Steve is pretty sure he’s dying.
He has to ask Eddie to repeat himself more than once. It’s sad.
Here lies Steve Harrington, he thinks. Got so distracted by a hot guy that he accidentally walked into oncoming traffic, probably.
It’s not great, so far as headstone epitaphs go. He’ll work on it.
Luckily, the rest of the game goes by without much more embarrassment. Or, at least, without much roll-based embarrassment. Steve is absolutely positive he still looks like an idiot the whole way through, but at least he doesn’t end up playing a game of Top Ten Worst Pick-Up Lines as Rolled by Steve for the rest of the night. Instead, it’s just a lot of accidentally knocking things over and forgetting when he’s supposed to be talking.
Somehow, all that still gets him to the end of the night, standing on the porch on his own two feet without even tripping over nothing but thin air and braining himself on the stairs. Again. It’s a miracle.
Dustin corners him before taking off on his bike with the others. “I’m going to kill you if you screw this up in real life,” he says.
Steve jumps a little, admittedly not expecting Dustin to pop up behind him and threaten his life. He doesn’t even know what for. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m talking about Eddie, you dipshit,” Dustin clarifies, rolling his eyes. “That really was painful to watch in there. If you don’t make it worth it, I’m going to kill you.”
“Uhhh.”
“Jesus Christ.” Dustin shakes his head. “I’ve been watching you try to score a date with someone you actually like for two years. You finally found him. Don’t screw it up.”
And yeah, sure, Steve had kind of figured Dustin wasn’t going to hate him for this. It was still a bit staggering to hear that Dustin was apparently so okay with it that he was only going to be upset if Steve didn’t come out of all this with a date with a boy. “Wasn’t planning on it?”
“Good.” Dustin throws a leg over his bike, getting ready to pedal off after his friends. “If I have to stop hanging out with Eddie because you’re as bad at flirting in real life as you are in D&D, I’m going to be pissed.”
Steve can’t help it. He grins at him. “You’d take my side over his?”
“I won’t have to take sides if you can manage to get a date. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you, Steve.”
“But it would be my side? You’d pick me?”
Dustin rolls his eyes again, kicking off on his bike and pedaling down the paved driveway. “Shut up and kiss your boyfriend.”
“Hey, Henderson!” Steve calls out to him before he gets too far. Dustin brakes and looks over his shoulder. “Thanks, man.” There’s more that he should say, Steve thinks, but nothing that wouldn’t be too overly emotional for a conversation with a fifteen-year-old at almost midnight on a Thursday.
Dustin’s expression softens and he nods, the simple gesture full of more meaning than Steve thinks he’s even aware of. “Any time, Steve.” And with that, he takes off once more, turning onto the street and disappearing into the dark.
A hand claps over Steve’s shoulder. For the second time in five minutes, he just about jumps out of his skin.
“Oh my god, are all of you trying to kill me tonight? I got eaten by bats, not too long ago, you can’t just—” Steve whirls around, stopping himself short when he turns to find Eddie standing just behind him, hand hovering over his shoulder.
For the third time today, Steve chokes on nothing. He hadn’t expected to end up that close to whoever was behind him. Steve thinks he can see his own reflection in the centers of Eddie’s irises. The porch light is on behind him, casting a gentle glow around his curls, a fuzzy halo of sorts. Eddie might just be the prettiest thing Steve’s ever seen.
The hand left hovering over his shoulder finally drops back down, reconnects. Its newfound position allows Eddie to sweep his thumb outwards, brushing over Steve’s collarbone in a soothing motion. “Just me,” he says, soft, gentle. “Sorry.”
Steve Harrington is going to melt into a puddle on Nancy Wheeler’s front porch. His ex-girlfriend’s front porch. Outstanding.
The front curtains twitch; Steve catches the movement from the corner of his eye. Nancy Wheeler appears, as if summoned, lips twisted to the side like she does when she’s trying not to laugh. She gives him a look. Steve turns and throws a rock at the window. Nancy looks unimpressed.
A warmth appears at Steve’s back. Eddie presses himself right up behind him, chest to back, a chin hooked over his shoulder. “Think she wants us to get lost?” His voice is directly in his ear, and Steve can feel the words travel down his spine. Wry, slow, gently teasing.
Steve hums in response, doesn’t quite have the wits for much else. Eddie laughs against his neck, his breath fanning out across Steve’s jaw. It takes most of his willpower to keep from shivering at the feeling.
“Hey, uh,” Steve says, slightly dazed. He turns back around until he and Eddie are once more standing face to face, closer than before. If Steve leaned slightly forward, their foreheads would be touching. “You wanna follow me home?”
Eddie smiles, and it’s softer than it has been. No characters to hide behind, no narratives to push; this is just Eddie. Just Eddie, smiling at Steve because he asked him to follow him home. “Thought you’d never ask, Stevie.”
“Cool,” Steve responds, a little stupid.
Eddie’s eyes sparkle. “Cool,” he repeats. His smile grows, eyes crinkling at the corners. He bites his lip like he’s trying to hide it. Steve wants to touch a thumb to his lower lip, drag it away from his teeth and trace the shape. Maybe he will, later.
There’s a noise at the window and Steve turns his head in time to see the curtains twitch back shut, Nancy gone from view. Steve is sure she’s probably on her way to the phone in the basement, Robin’s phone number at the tip of her fingers. The story she spins will no doubt be as unflattering as possible—Steve doesn’t quite care. Not now, with the porch light soft overhead, turning Eddie into something holy. Eddie, soft-eyed and grinning, his attention on Steve unwavering.
They can make fun of him as much as they want. Steve would. He put on an incredibly embarrassing show tonight. But right now? Oh, right now, he was floating.
“I’ll, uh,” Steve starts, clears his throat when his voice comes out a little thick. “I’ll see you there, then?”
“Won’t even have time to miss me,” Eddie agrees. “I’ll be right behind you.”
It’s a lie, of course. Because Steve does miss him, is the thing, even if he can see him following along in his rearview mirror the entire time. The ten minutes from Nancy’s driveway to his own feels like a goddamn eternity, and isn’t that just stupid? His fingers drum restlessly on the steering wheel and he hits the gas a little harder than he normally would, imagines he can see Eddie’s knowing grin looking back at him through his mirrors.
All his nervous energy dissipates when they arrive at his front door, Eddie joining him with an arm around his shoulders. A different sort of energy takes its place, still nervous, but less restless. More anticipatory.
Steve manages to get the door unlocked with minimal fumbling. Eddie removes his arm from his shoulders, does a silly little bow and sweeps his arms out in front of him to usher Steve inside. Steve can’t help it—he giggles. Fucking giggles. He's lost it.
“Dork.”
“You love it.”
The inside of Steve’s house is cold, impersonal. Always too big for him alone and too small when his parents are in town. High ceilings, white walls, no clutter. The only pictures on the walls are the ones that make a statement. Eddie doesn’t look like he belongs here. Butter soft leather draped over his shoulders, holes in the knees of his jeans, rings and chains jingling together as he walks. Beautiful, gorgeous excess.
No, Eddie doesn’t fit in here at all, but he fits perfectly inside of Steve’s gaze.
And Steve can take that image, cut it out and put them somewhere else. Somewhere that isn’t too big for either one of them alone, somewhere that could never be too small for both of them together. Steve could fall in love with Eddie Munson. He’d like to. He hopes he’s allowed to.
Eddie lets himself fall backwards in the living room, landing sprawled across the couch. Steve winces—the cushions weren’t chosen for their comfort. Still, Steve follows his lead, although more neatly. He sits sideways, facing Eddie, one leg tucked under him in a way that makes his knee rest against Eddie’s thigh.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better,” Eddie says, “I’d say you were trying to prove something tonight.”
And this, this Steve can do. No dice holding him back, no exaggerated characters between them. Just him and Eddie.
“Yeah? Like what?” Steve leans forward, daring to let his hands go where they please, one coming up to tuck an errant curl behind Eddie’s ear, the other landing on his knee, stroking over the skin beneath the exposed threads in the fabric. Eddie’s cheeks turn the prettiest shade of pink.
For the first time tonight, Eddie is the one stumbling. Jaw working as he fumbles for words, eyes wide and dazed. And for all Steve likes how Eddie is loud and brazen, all wild-eyed and unpredictable, he likes this side of him too. Soft and sweet. Fidgety. Turning his hands over each other again and again, like he is now, rubbing a thumb into his palm and twisting the rings around his fingers. A little shy and a lot nervous.
Steve reaches out, grabs at his hands and gently turns them over in his own. The rings on his fingers are warm to the touch and Steve spins one around, slides it off and claims it as his own, admiring the space it takes up on his index finger. “Maybe I was,” he admits, looking up at Eddie through his lashes as he speaks. He hears Eddie’s breath leave him in a stutter. “Can’t blame me for missing the mark, though. It was hard to focus with you sweet talking me all night.”
“Had to give you something to work with,” Eddie says, words teasing and voice soft. Steve looks up, fully, and his cheeks are still pink, even through the bravado. “You were really bad.”
And it hadn’t been a question, not really, but it was nice to have it confirmed. “So you were flirting back.”
“I wouldn’t say it was flirting back,” Eddie argues, “you didn’t really do your part for that.”
Steve rolls his eyes, shoves at Eddie’s shoulder. “But you were.”
“What, you think I’m always that nice? I would’ve killed any of the others’ characters. I mean, three nat ones, Stevie. Come on.” Eddie flashes a smile, and if Steve hadn’t been sitting, he would’ve been weak at the knees.
“Gonna let me try again?” Steve asks, placing a hand on the side of Eddie’s neck and brushing his thumb against the hinge of his jaw.
Eddie’s gaze flicks down to Steve’s lips, just for a moment. “If you want.”
“Do I need to roll for this one? See if it works?”
Eddie makes a show of thinking about it, tilting his head back and forth in exaggerated indecision. “Probably not.”
“Only probably?”
“Depends on how sweet you are to me.”
Sweet. Yeah, Steve can do that.
“You drive me crazy,” he says. “You’re this big, loud nerd, and I just can’t get enough. I have no goddamn idea what you’re talking about half the time, but you make me wanna listen anyway. You get this wide smile any time you’re really excited about something, and you start stumbling over your words because you’re talking too fast, and it’s the cutest thing. I never want you to stop.” Steve slides closer on the couch, shifting until he’s sitting with one leg on either side of Eddie’s, a technicality away from sitting in his lap.
“You’re always crowding into my space like it’s nothing,” Steve continues, and as if he were trying to illustrate his point, he moves forward those final few inches, coming to rest with his knees on either side of Eddie’s hips. “Like you have no idea. You’re so good, so pretty, and you’re always there. Taking my hand in some stupid fantasy game, calling me darling, smiling at me because I did something stupid just to make you laugh and it worked. I couldn’t stop looking at you if I tried. I’m kind of obsessed with you, Eddie.”
Steve still has a hand on the side of Eddie’s neck. He can feel his pulse racing. “Too much?” he asks.
It makes Eddie laugh, his breath leaving him in a nervous rush. “No,” he says, “it’s just…” He pauses. Steve waits, rubbing circles into the skin behind Eddie’s ear with his thumb. “Christ, Stevie,” Eddie continues, “you can’t say all that and expect me to function afterwards.”
As if Eddie hasn’t been staring at him with those stupid big brown eyes, all soft and glittering, hasn’t been calling him Stevie all night long, like it didn’t make his heart race and his palms sweat. Steve stopped being able to function hours ago. This was auxiliary power.
“Now you know how I feel,” Steve says. He hooks a finger through one of Eddie’s belt loops, tugs on it a little. It’s not enough to pull him forward, not enough leverage or enough strength, but Eddie lets it drag him closer anyway.
Steve’s name falls from Eddie’s lips in a whisper. The sound curls around the back of his neck, tugging him ever closer, impossibly closer, until their foreheads knock together. Eddie’s hands come up to hold onto Steve’s hips. Steve lets his arms fall to rest over Eddie’s shoulders. He angles his head so that their noses slot together, side by side, his lips just barely brushing over Eddie’s.
There’s a breath, two.
Their teeth knock together at first, overeager. Steve smiles too wide at the first touch of their lips and their first kiss turns into mess of laughter when Eddie ends up kissing his front teeth. He falls backwards, pulling Eddie with him.
“Come on, Stevie,” Eddie murmurs, “your dexterity modifier was way higher than this.”
And Steve has no idea what that means, wouldn’t be able to comprehend it right now if you hit him with the book it came from, but it makes him laugh. Plus five to kissing, he thinks, and it’s a funny enough thought that he has to share it, so he does.
The sound of Eddie’s laugh in response makes a home for itself in Steve’s chest. He has to kiss him. Properly. At least once.
So he does.
Eddie’s lips are chapped from how often he bites them, and Steve is still smiling much too wide, but Eddie makes a noise in the back of his throat when their lips finally meet, an almost wounded sort of whine, and the bones in Steve’s spine turn to liquid.
He slides a hand into Eddie’s hair. The stolen ring on his finger gets caught, a little, in the curls, and Eddie flinches just slightly. Steve pulls it away, gently as he can, whispering apologies against Eddie’s lips. “Sorry, sorry,” he breathes, soothing the sting with a kiss at the corner of his mouth. “You alright?”
“Just fine, sweetheart,” Eddie whispers, chasing after him. “Come kiss me again.”
So, maybe Steve’s grand plan didn’t quite work out the way he’d planned it. But he’s got Eddie leaning over him, Eddie’s hand at his hip, Eddie’s breath fanning across his face as he speaks, the words come kiss me again falling against his lips. He can’t bring himself to call that a failure.