Work Text:
It’s been nearly two weeks and Steve isn’t fucking sleeping. He’s got that itch under his skin, the one that shouts break me, hurt me, make me whole along with Eddie’s name as his hands twist and slip against the sheets, slick with sweat. The nightmares aren’t the worst of it, either.
That familiar ache in his chest comes with fingers tapping, legs bouncing, and the rhythmic heaving of his chest when he allows his thoughts to linger too long on stupid or weak or pretty .
It happens even in the light of day, even in the presence of their friends, and even when he’s doing mindless tasks like stacking VHS tapes or folding laundry. He’s doing the latter when Robin invites herself into his home, as she so often does, and flops sideways onto his parent’s couch, not bothering to kick off her sneakers before propping her feet up over the arm, sending clouds of dislodged earth over the patterned velour. Steve would laugh if he weren’t so damned on edge .
“Sure, Robin, come on in, make yourself at home,” he quips, squaring off a kitchen towel embroidered with farm animals and tossing it on top of a pile of other, folded ones.
Robin eyes his task carefully and huffs a disbelieving laugh. “Are you seriously folding kitchen linens, dingus? This is what you missed movie night for?”
Steve pauses mid-fold and turns to face her, his jaw going a little slack. “Movie night?”
She rolls her eyes with a fond smile. “Yeah, you know, the thing where I grab us another movie that you haven’t seen, because you haven’t seen any of the movies, from the return pile at work so we don’t have to pay for them and then we stuff our face with candy while weighing the hotness level of the leading lady against the hotness level of the last movie’s leading lady and…”
“Ah, shit!” Steve smacks a palm to the center of his forehead and winces, then holds the arm out to point a finger at Robin. “I have seen some of the movies, thank you.”
“Exactly!” Robin swings her legs off the end of the couch and sits up, throwing her hands up around her head. “You have now , because of my guidance and our weekly movie nights!”
Steve ducks his head and tosses another folded towel onto his pile. Stupid, weak, pretty . He closes his eyes and tries to chase it away. “I’m sorry, Rob. I’ve just been kind of distracted.”
Robin’s mouth forms a straight line, the humor fading from her eyes. “Distracted? Well, that’s one way of putting it.”
“Oh? How would you put it?”
“What happened to your face, Steve?”
The laundry basket empties and Steve begins collecting his piles to place back inside it. He busies himself with the task and doesn’t raise his eyes to look at Robin. She has this uncanny ability to see right through his bullshit and he’s not sure he can handle it yet. If anyone could understand, if anyone would accept him, it would, of course, be Robin. But the wound is fresh, his lip still stings when he talks or smiles, and his heart is still all punctured with holes that Eddie created and only Eddie can fill.
“It’s nothing. I just – I got in a fight.”
She narrows her eyes and cocks her head to one side. “A fight? With who?! There are no more Russians or scary beasties, and you and Jonathan seem to be getting along these days.”
Steve scoffs and cuts his eyes at her, in a way that says shut up Robin without saying it, and returns to transferring his piles. “It’s really not important.”
“It’s important to me.” Robin’s face and voice go soft, reminding Steve of the time she’d told him her secret on the floor of the Starcourt mall bathroom when they both thought they were going to die and Steve still hadn’t figured out what he needed, hadn’t discovered what he’d truly craved.
He almost wishes they could have it back, that life or death pressure, that need to say everything you should before it’s too late, so that he could return her the courtesy of trust. She trusts him with everything and he’s been lying to her, of all people, this entire time.
“The kids are worried, too,” she continues, leaning her elbows on her knees and idly plucking at her leather wrist cuff. “Dustin said you cancelled lunch with him and his mom. He doesn’t know why you won’t talk to him. Lucas said you were supposed to give him a driving lesson and you just never showed? That’s not like you, Steve. What’s going on?”
Stupid, weak, pretty . Steve’s hands shake as he finishes his task and has nothing left to keep them steady. A sickening weight settles in his stomach and rises in his throat. His eyes sting and he swallows around it. “It’s nothing, Robs. Really.”
Robin stands and crosses the room towards him, reaching out a tentative hand to touch his arm but stopping just shy of him, like she’s trying not to startle a frightened animal. “Steve, it doesn’t look like nothing. You’re crying . Talk to me.”
Sure enough, two warm droplets roll over his cheeks as she says it, one pooling in the dip that the crack in his lips has formed. Steve tries to inhale, but it sounds painful and withered, catching on the lump in his throat. “I— I just—” He finally looks into Robin’s eyes and he can’t hold the floodgates closed any longer. “I just really fucking miss Eddie?”
He doesn’t know why it comes out as a question, or if it actually explains anything at all, but then Robin’s arms are around him and they’re sinking to the ground together. Or, Steve is sinking and Robin is guiding him, keeping him afloat as his knees give out beneath him. His chest does that heaving thing, his breathing growing difficult and burning in his lungs like stupid, weak, pretty.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Robin is saying, holding his head against her chest and petting his hair. “Hey, woah, you gotta breathe, babe. Help me connect the dots here?”
The tears make it hard for Steve to see, so he focuses on the sound of Robin’s heartbeat, the steady thrum of life within her chest, and breathes in time with it. It’s fast, but slower than Steve’s gasps for air, so it works. After a minute or two, or thirty, he manages to reclaim some semblance of a working brain, if ever he had one, and peels himself off of Robin. He looks at her without really meeting her eyes, because even with her secret he’s afraid of the rejection he’ll find there when he says it, when it’s really out there for someone beside just him and Eddie.
“Me and Ed’s— Eddie. Me and Eddie, we, uh…” He takes a deep, shuddering breath and tuck his hair behind his ear, fidgeting under Robin’s rapt attention. “We’re sort of together?” He flicks his eyes up to hers, wide with shock, before focusing on his own hands in his lap. “We were . We were having sex? A lot of it. But it was like a secret. Or, well, I made it a secret. Which was okay, I guess, until…”
He hears Robin audibly swallow. “Until you got in a fight?” Her hand comes up to trace delicately over the swell of his bruised cheekbone. “Did he do this to you?”
Steve shakes his head. She doesn’t understand, can never fully understand. He’d fucked up, he’d pushed Eddie, both physically and metaphorically, as far as he could and then pushed some more; he’d taken his fucking problem and acted like it was Eddie’s. The only one of them that ever said it had to be secret was him.
“I hit him first,” he tries to explain, shaking his head. “I blamed him for the stupid, shit rules that I put on him and then I hit him. I was so drunk and I fucked it all up. I mean, you think I’d be used to fucking things up by now, right?” He looks up at her with wide, wet eyes. A fresh wave of tears splash from his eyes and his voice cracks. “But really didn’t want to fuck this up. Not with him .”
“ Oh , Steve…” Is all Robin says, pulling him into hug, gripping around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “Oh, honey, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m so glad you told me.” She’s small but her strength right now is astounding, taking the full weight of Steve’s sobs. “It’s all gonna be okay, I promise.”
Steve wants to believe her, he does, but he doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to keep going after what happened, after Eddie . Somehow he got hooked on it all, not just the sting of a slap or the burn of being stretched open, but the all of Eddie, of the way he strips Steve down to his very core and laps at the raw soreness of it. Until this very moment, in Robin’s arms, he can’t even remember the last time anyone but Eddie saw him cry. And somehow, that became addicting to him, baring his soul and letting Eddie touch it.
He gasps for air and tries to steady his breathing. “It hurts , Rob.”
She shushes him and draws circles on his back with her nails, bringing him back to himself with. “I know, I know. Heartbreak is never easy.”
Steve sniffles and sits up, pulling from the hug but taking Robin’s hand instead, needing an anchor. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell yo—”
“Do not be sorry.” Robin keeps drawing circles, just on the back of his hand now. She dips her head to catch his eyes and shakes her head with a sympathetic smile. “It is nobody’s business but your own. It’s yours to decide who to tell and when, if ever. Okay? You’re still the only one besides Vicki that has a clue about me. I’m just glad you decided to tell me now, so I can be here for you. Ya know, kinda the way you were for me?”
She gives his arm a playful shove, not even enough to jostle him. Steve runs a hand through his hair and manages to laugh through his tears, his chest feeling a little lighter, even through the ache. “I guess I was afraid? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to steal your gay thunder or something.”
Robin raises her eyebrows at him. “Uh, are you kidding me, Harrington?” She holds his hand to her cheek and gives it a squeeze. “We’re gay besties!”
They both burst into giggles, and Steve is finally able to stop crying, at least for a little while. If nothing else, his best friend, his sister , has seen the whole of him and fucking loves him anyway. She’s still the best thing to ever happen to him and Steve knows it. He’s lucky to have her in his life at all, much more to have her accept every part of him. She’s seen him puking and she’s seen his face beat in and now she’s seen him get his heart broken by their entirely male , metalhead, drug-dealing friend.
He squeezes her hand back before letting go. “So, what the hell do I do? About this Eddie thing?”
“Hmm.” Robin’s brow furrows and she twists her mouth to the side, considering. “I mean, if he broke things off, there’s not much you can do. Breakups only require one person’s say, unfortunately.”
And there it is. Steve’s head spins. He hasn’t even spoken to Eddie. Not since the fight. There’s nothing that says they’re broken up because they’d never said they were together. It’s been a clusterfuck of miscommunications and now they aren’t communicating at all. Steve grimaces and pulls his shoulders up around his ears in a sheepish shrug.
“Steve.” Robin’s nostrils flare and her jaw goes tight in that way that it does when she’s really annoyed by him. “He did break it off with you, didn’t he? Isn’t that what all this is about?”
“I’ve kind of been…” Steve says, screwing his eyes shut, before rambling out the rest in a single breath, ripping off the bandaid as quickly as possible, “avoiding him and any social gathering that he might attend because I’m scared to face him after what happened because I’m afraid he hates me now and never want to see me again?”
His voice goes up at the end like a question and he squints one eye open at Robin, who is shaking her head with her eyebrows hitting her hairline. “You’re joking.”
“Nope,” he answers, popping the P. He scrubs a hand over his face, his whole being suddenly feeling tired, exhausted . “It’s not like he’s exactly been showing up on my doorstep, either.”
Robin sucks on her teeth and scratches at the side of her head, looking more agitated by the moment. “And you said this fight? It was your fault? You started it?”
Steve scoffs at her. “I didn’t start it , Rob. Jesus, this isn’t kindergarten.”
“Was it your fault, Steve?”
“No. Yes?” He throws his palms up, a gesture of surrender. “I don’t really know, okay?! I did and said a lot of shit, I was an idiot. But then he did and said shit back, too, so.”
“Were any of the things he said, ‘Steve Harrington, I am breaking up with you.’?”
“No, no.” He avoids her eyes, picking at the hem of his jeans. “It’s hard to explain. The stuff we do— its— it was like sexual stuff.”
Robin makes a disgusted face. “Oh, god.”
“So it was like, I don’t know. Sexual fighting?”
“I don’t want to know what that means.”
Steve's cheeks are burning. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined trying to explain his and Eddie’s weird bdsm dynamic to anyone . “Yeah, like, he was mean. Well, he’s always kind of mean but this time it was like for real? And he never hurts me this bad. Usually it’s just a fun hurt, like a…”
“Okay!” Robin shouts, covering her ears with both hands. “Stop, stop, stop! I got it, I got it!”
“You asked!”
Robin drops her hands and deflates, dropping whatever premise of sibling squick factor she’d been working with and looking him dead in the eyes. “Alright, okay. Now that I know, um, that . The facts that I’m getting are this: “One, you and Eddie have been hooking up but not dating, though clearly there are feelings.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “I don’t know about clearly… ”
She forms a mouth with her hand and closes it in indication that he should do the same. “Two, you guys had a fight that was the direct result of you drinking too much and getting belligerent about said feelings.”
This time, Steve only nods.
“And three,” Robin says, poking him in the chest with her three outstretched fingers, “you have been hiding away in your house, pining over him and expecting him to make the first move because you’re afraid ?”
“That’s the long and short of it,” Steve sighs, hooking both hands around the back of his neck. Stupid, weak, pretty.
“Steve!” Robin jumps up to her knees, holding her arms out at either side of her in a dramatic display. “He’s not knocking down your door, but you can easily go knock on his! Why are you sitting around here moping when you have the power in your hands, right now, to go get your man?!”
Steve climbs up from the floor, grabbing the coffee table to hoist himself to standing. “And if he doesn’t want to see me?”
He turns and extends a hand to Robin to help her up as well. Before he has a chance, she swipes the laundry basket full of folded towels from in front of him, perching it against her hip. “Are you kidding me?! Eddie looks at you like you hung the moon. I mean, I guess now I know why , which is totally something I should have seen, but we only ever talk about babes, so I didn’t know you were playing on my team, too. Or, well, against my team? No, on my team…”
“Robin!” Steve feels his stomach flutter at the thought. “He does?”
She snaps her head to him, a smile on her face that means she’s proud of herself, like she’s solved yet another mystery that could put their life in the balance. “I’ve got the towels.” She nods her chin towards the front door. “Go get him.”
**
Knock knock knock.
It’s four in the afternoon, according to Eddie’s clock radio, when he rolls out of bed to the sound of someone rapping on his front door. Uncle Wayne would have left a while ago for the evening shift at the plant and Eddie isn’t expecting anyone. There’s no band practice until Friday and no Hellfire meetings until next week. If it’s Dustin, he’s going to throttle the kid for waking him out of his afternoon nap, even if it directly seceded his morning nap. Yeah, Eddie hasn’t been doing so hot.
Knock knock knock.
He tugs his black and white checked sweats up a little on his hips, tightening the drawstring and tying it off, then throws on the first shirt he sees hanging off the end of his dresser, a faded Slayer tour tee with the arm holes cut out. Admittedly, he looks exactly like who he is, some asshole drug dealer living in a trailer park, but it’ll do for whoever the hell is knocking on his door.
Knock knock knock.
“I’m fucking coming, Jesus Christ!” He yells, lumbering down the hallway and scrubbing his hands over his face in an attempt to wake the hell up.
Ever since that night, the fight with Steve, like the big, actual fight , Eddie feels like he can’t get enough sleep. He doesn’t touch his guitar unless he’s got practice. It reminds him of Steve with his fingers under Eddie’s on the frets, trying and failing to follow the chords, of both of them laughing at every sour note. He hasn’t worked on any campaign stuff, or spoken to Dustin at all. The kid talks about Steve too much. Practically every other word he says is Steve something and Eddie thinks he’d need an oxygen tank by the end of the conversation.
Because he’d been right. Breathing in a world where he can’t touch Steve Harrington anymore fucking sucks . Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever had his heart broken before this, because nothing has ever hurt him quite this bad. It’s put a heavy boot to his chest and ground him into the earth, forcing him down with the creatures that scurry on their bellies just below the surface, where he belongs for what he’d done to Steve.
Knock knock knock knock knock…
The pounding doesn’t let up this time, the sound rattling around inside his skull with all the other screws he’s got loose up there. “I said ,” Eddie grits out, practically stomping the rest of the way to the door and pulling the handle, “I’m. Fucking. Comi— ”
And sure as shit, there he is, all unassuming, in a rust colored sweater and his hair flopping into his eyes where it’s grown too long, looking every bit the perfect picture he always does — except for the injuries. His left cheek is mottled yellow and purple, slightly raised off the bone, and there’s a deep split to the right of his bottom lip, still red where it struggles to heal, probably cracked over again many times since Eddie put it there. Eddie put it there .
“Harrington,” Eddie says, looking over Steve’s shoulder to avoid his wide, wet, eyes that glow like amber in the low, autumn afternoon sun. His lungs won’t work at all if he has to look directly at them. “What are you doing here?”
Steve barrels past him, pushing his way past Eddie and into the trailer. It’s brief, but the brush of Steve’s shoulder has Eddie staring down at his own chest, dazed by even a passing glance of a touch. He’d hurt Steve, he’d unlocked the cage and let himself be ruthless. The things he said, he can never take back, and yet, here Steve is.
Eddie turns to face him, still keeping his gaze cast down. “Come on, man. You can’t just barge in here.”
“I— Eds, I wanted to tell you— I wanted to say— I’m— look, I—”
Steve’s voice comes small and broken, his half-assed ideas about what he could get from Eddie, coming here like this, all separated out by awkward pauses and fumbled words.
Eddie clears his throat loudly and studies the bold red check mark at the side of Steve’s sneakers. “You gonna spit it out today or?”
“Am I—” Steve stops his stuttering and glares at Eddie with a look that is probably supposed to be punishing but on Steve it just looks pained. “Don’t be a dick. I’m trying to tell you something important, okay, can you at least hear me out?”
“I haven’t kicked your ass out of my trailer yet, have I?” Eddie asks, leaning his back against the wall and crossing both arms over his chest. “Pretty good sign, all things considered.”
Steve swallows hard and the corners of his mouth turn down. He smooths both hands over the front of his shirt and Eddie can tell they’re shaking, tapping and shifting in that familiar, nervous way that makes him wish he could trust himself to hold them. Eddie can’t trust himself, not anymore.
“Anytime I can’t see you,” Steve starts to say, then pauses, shakes his head, and tries again. “Anytime I’m away from you, anytime I can’t be with you, I get like this itch? It’s like under my fucking skin and I can’t scratch it. I try to dig it out but it’s too fucking deep, you know? Like you get inside me in a way I can’t ever shake. And I tried to forget, after everything got fucked up, but it’s always there. I need to be with you.”
Eddie lets the words wash over him like a late summer storm, knocking out all his power systems, prolonging an already seemingly endless night. They rumble in his bones like thunder, shaking loose whatever resolve he’d had to remain fucking calm about all this. “If you’re just here for a fucking lay , Harrington? You can go buy a fucking back scratcher for your little itch. Get the fuck out.”
Steve blinks, his lower lip quivering, giving Eddie flashes of all the times it’s done that right before he’d kissed those quakes away. He scoffs and levels Eddie, damn near takes his knees out, with a look of pure bewilderment.
“I’m not here to fuck you. I’m here for you, asshole.”
Before Eddie can even register him crossing the room, Steve is in his space, fisting his hands in Eddie’s hair, pressing him to the wall, and kissing him. He’s kissing like his fucking life depends on it, like he’ll dissipate like a storm cloud, bursting apart in a thousand tiny raindrops, if he doesn’t keep his lips, his teeth, his tongue on Eddie.
And Eddie might be fucking scared to death – stoic, determined to keep both their hearts hidden safely away where they belong, locked in a storm cellar, isolated from the winds of change and, shit, fucking gravity – but he’s still only a man. He kisses Steve back. His arms encircle Steve’s slender waist and his hands splay wide over the familiar curves of freckled skin and shoulder blades.
He lets himself be lost in it, lets Steve run long fingers over the slant of his jaw and pet gently at the sides of his neck; he lets goosebumps break out on his skin as he parts his lips and Steve’s tongue slips easily inside, tangling with his own. They part to gasp for air, only managing to steal more of each other’s, then fall back together, a crashing wave, a fucking unstoppable surge of want and need and miss.
Yeah, Eddie’s only a man, caught up in a fucking hurricane, so when Steve’s nimble hands slip beneath his shirt, nails taking up his stomach towards his chest, he pushes Steve towards the hallway by his hips. “The bedroom, let’s go.”
Steve misses the cue to walk ahead and keeps kissing Eddie, walking backwards down the hall and dragging Eddie along with him. They stumble and bump against the corner of the stove, then the bathroom door, nearly falling in, giggling into each other’s mouths like a couple of kids sharing a secret. They make it to the bedroom door in one, still-kissing piece and Eddie reaches around Steve to twist the knob on his bedroom door, pushing it open and backing Steve inside.
There’s a spot at the threshold where the carpet is peeling back, the edges yellowed with age and smoke, and Eddie’s toe gets caught up on it like he hasn’t done it a hundred times before, like he doesn’t know better, and he trips like a goddamn idiot, sending them toppling onto the floor. Steve takes most of the fall, but Eddie manages to get a hand behind his head to stop it from cracking. Eddie’s done enough damage, no need for a split open skull on top of it all. Eddie’s done enough damage.
He stares into Steve’s eyes, noticing for the first time that they’re ringed with red and sparkling wet lashes. Eddie’s own eyes drift down the sharp angle of Steve’s nose and the soft, pink, pillowy shape of his lips, settling at last on the angry cut at their corner. Eddie’s done enough fucking damage . He leans in and brushes his lips over it, feather light, then kisses the whole of Steve’s lips, harder, and says against them, “I’m so fucking sorry , sweetness.”
Steve sobs into the kiss. Whatever levy that had been holding back his tears breaks wide open, his chest heaving and his shoulders shaking with the weight of the flood. He shakes his head and brings his hands up to cup Eddie’s face. “No, no, no, no. Eddie, this was me. I fucked it all up.” He gasps for air between his words to keep his voice from choking off. “I didn’t want to. I tried not to, but I did it anyway. I got drunk and stupid and I blamed you for my own fucking problems. I did this to us.”
Eddie knows that on some level Steve did push him, did blame him, but right now that sounds so fucking ludicrous and off base to him, because Steve’s face is broken in several places as fucking evidence of exactly what Eddie had done.
He shakes his head to clear his own tears, now stinging at the corners of his eyes, but when he speaks his voice betrays him, cracking on every other syllable. “What? No. Look at what I did to you.” He can’t help himself, has to kiss Steve again, and again. His hand comes up to hover carefully above the healing bruise on Steve’s cheek. “Look at how I hurt you. And I— I just took what I wanted and I’m— I let this fucking thing inside me take over. Something’s fucking wrong with me . How could I do this to my baby?”
The last question barely makes it out, squeezing its way out of his tightening throat. Steve’s eyes go sad and sympathetic at the sound of it, and it makes Eddie feel all the more guilty. He doesn’t deserve that, all the love and light and tragedy that make up this beautiful fucking boy.
“There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t wrong with me,” Steve says quietly, placing both hands on the small of Eddie’s back, beneath the fabric of his shirt, and sitting them up together, pulling Eddie forwards to straddle his lap. His eyes grow hooded as he sweeps them lower, over Eddie’s mouth, neck, chest, and his voice shrinks even smaller. “I missed you so much, babe.”
Chills break out over Eddie’s skin, lightning static, as Steve’s hands splay wide on his back before curling in, running blunt nails over his skin. His breath catches, his dick twitching in response. God, any touch from Steve and he’s a goner, nothing has changed in that respect.
“Missed you, too,” he sighs, resting his forehead against Steve’s. “Didn’t want to hurt you again.”
Steve slides a hand around to Eddie’s front, rakes his nails upwards before flattening his palm to the space where Eddie’s heart resides. “I hurt you, too.” He dips his head to the side, leaning down to press his lips to the back of his own hand through Eddie’s shirt. “‘M sorry I hurt it.”
And that’s so cheesy, so intensely romantic and ridiculous, that it shouldn’t work, but Eddie can’t help the way he cants his hips down, rocking himself against Steve, and feels that it’s working for Steve, too. He reluctantly pulls himself away, getting his feet under himself so he can stand. For the briefest of moments, that puts Steve’s face just inches from where his erection is straining against the front of his sweats and, for that moment, Eddie remembers the tears and the pain and you make me this way .
He extends a hand for Steve, helping him to his feet before taking him back in his arms. His lips are drawn to that ugly reminder of how he’d punched Steve, twice, both slamming unforgivingly into the delicate crest of his cheekbone. He kisses it as gently as he can manage before parting his lips and running his tongue over the ghost of the wound, the remains of the hurt they’d caused each other. “Can’t believe I did this to you.”
Steve shakes his head as Eddie tugs at the hem of his shirt, guides it up and over his head. Eddie takes in the sight of him, runs his hands over that broad chest and soft belly, his hands hooking in the waistband of Steve’s jeans and tugging him closer. He kisses over the pattern of freckles on Steve’s shoulder, along the ridge of his collarbone, back up his neck, his jaw, until he finds that terrible split in his lip. “Does this hurt, angel?” He asks, voice barely a whisper, and kisses it again.
“Mhm,” Steve admits, leaning his forehead on Eddie’s. “A little. S’ok. Just keeps breaking open every time I talk too much or laugh or whatever, like any little thing makes it bleed again.”
“Might leave a scar.” Eddie brings a hand up and, goddamnit, he can’t help himself, he runs his thumb over the reddened flesh surrounding the split. A nagging guilt, like a knife, foreign and carving right for that unwanted animal he keeps locked away, twists slowly into his stomach. “Fuckin’ scarred this perfect face. Fuck, I’m disgusting.”
Steve’s hands fly to Eddie’s face, too. He inhales slowly, like he’s stifling rage rather than petting gentle strokes over Eddie’s cheeks. “ No ,” he says, like it’s the only thing he’s ever known, like he needs Eddie to hear it. “No, there’s nothing disgusting about you. I love the things you do to me.”
Their lips meet again and it grows fevered, their breath mingling hot together and raising the temperature around them, like a goddamned force of nature. Eddie’s hands slide over the soft triangle of hair between Steve’s pecks and over the soft curve of his abdomen, until his fingers settle back at the button of Steve’s jeans. It dawns on him, then, with the warm metal pressed to the pad of his thumb, that he’s never asked permission before.
His eyes flick up to Steve’s, which are watching his face intently. “Can— can I take these off of you?”
Steve’s breath catches, and he makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. “‘M yours. You can do whatever you want to me.” And when Eddie starts to look away, to let go of the button, because Steve is so much more than just his , Steve puts both his hands over Eddie’s and helps him slip it from the loop. “You can always have me.”
Eddie growls at that, the need that sparks in his chest rattles the beast’s cage, waking it long enough to remind him it still lives there, as he pushes Steve’s pants and briefs all the way off so they drop to the floor and Steve can step out of them. He walks Steve back towards the bed and pushes lightly at his chest.
“Lay down?” Eddie asks another question, earning another desperate sound from Steve. “Wanna look at you.”
And Steve, his beautiful fucking baby, just does it, just lays himself out on the sheets, arms crossed over his head in the way he knows Eddie loves, like there was never any trust broken, nor a moment lost. Eddie could cry at the sight of him, the perfect lines of his long, elegant form, tan skin stretched taught over wiry sinews and all soft around the middle, and he does. A singular tear rolls out over his cheek as he lowers himself over Steve, counting every freckle with his eyes before they’re ineluctably drawn to the strong left swerve of Steve’s cock, red and leaking with want.
He flicks his eyes up to where Steve’s are watching, waiting, ever the patient princess, and all for Eddie. He doesn’t deserve it. He never has. No one so violent should be able to touch something so delicate, so perfect. “I’ve thought about you every day,” he says quietly into the space between them. He dips his head and places a kiss where Steve’s neck fades into his shoulder. “Thought about this gorgeous fucking body, how I’d broken it.” The next kiss, he moves a little farther up, in the spot he knows that Steve is sensitive, and is rewarded with the breathy giggle he’s gone too long without hearing. “Missed your sweet laugh, your smile.”
He reaches Steve’s jaw and trails a line of kisses up the side of his face, over his brow bone, then back down his nose. “Missed kissing your pretty face,” he continues, kissing just below Steve’s eye and moving across to his battered cheek. “Didn’t mean to hurt you like this, shouldn’t have, not this bad, not when you didn’t— You’re so good for me and I— ‘M sorry daddy hurt you, sweetness.”
Steve arcs his back at the word, those five letters that drive them both so fucking crazy they could catch fire, and leans up to catch Eddie’s mouth, to pant against it. “Still want you. Still wanna be your babygirl. Still want you to put your hands all over me, hurt me when I deserve it. What does that say about me? We’re the same, you and me.”
Eddie has to close his eyes, get away from the seductive brilliance of Steve’s lust-blown eyes, taking shallow breaths through his nose. The way he’s talking, his pretty flushed cheeks and the fucking warmth of him, is grabbing the bars of the beast’s cage and trying to pry them open. “Shhh,” he begs more than commands, “Need you to be good for me, alright?”
He doesn’t wait for Steve’s answer, barely registers a fervent nod as he kisses down the other side of Steve’s neck, listening carefully to the way it makes him cry out and twist against the sheets. Eddie wants to remember it, in case he ever fucks this up for good. His hands skirt over Steve’s side, digging into the demulcent flesh of his hips, those enticing love handles that Eddie can never keep his eyes off of. He shifts lower, kissing over the rise of Steve’s collarbone and the swell of his peck, taking a pert nipple between his lips and sucking.
Steve throws his head back in ecstasy, curses fumbling from his lips, and thrusts up against Eddie, his rigid dick sliding against Eddie’s middle through his shirt. “Ed’s, I’m so hard. Please. ”
Eddie sits back on his knees, reaches behind his back to yank his shirt up and off, tossing it aside. He watches as Steve’s eyes roam over his body, as his tongue darts out to wet his sweet, pink mouth, and he struggles to keep his hands above himself. Eddie lowers himself back down, a hand on either side of Steve as he draws a path to Steve’s navel with his tongue. “I know you are, baby. I know.”
He slides his tongue sideways over the thick tufts of hair that lead down towards Steve’s cock, then latches his mouth to a hip bone and sucks the skin into his mouth. Biting down, just the slightest bit, he creates an easy pressure just shy of what would be painful. Something to quell that need inside him, that beast that’s always threatening to rear its ugly head. Steve gasps and mumbles something incoherent that sounds like harder, please .
When he skips over Steve’s cock entirely, kisses the fuzzy, fleshy curvature of his inner thigh, then creates that same easy but unrelenting pressure with his teeth, Steve mewls like a goddamn kitten, rutting up against nothing. “Missed you so much. Gonna take care of me, Daddy?”
Eddie’s fucking breathless, like he’d run all the way home in the storm, when he answers, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got you, fuck. ”
He sits back and hooks his arms under Steve’s knees, bending them up so he can examine them. They’re still littered with tiny scrapes, or the remnants of them, from where the gravel had cut him, even through his jeans, when Eddie had forced him to kneel. The beast mocks him from its cage.
“Do these still hurt?” The red, jagged marks continue about halfway down Steve’s calves, so Eddie follows them with his mouth, kissing and lapping at the wounds.
“Nuh uh,” Steve manages, lifting his head off the pillow to watch Eddie kiss all the way down to his ankle bone, grasping it delicately with a circling of his fingers and darting a tongue out to trace it.
Eddie flattens his tongue and turns his head to run it over the top of Steve’s foot, all the way down to his toes before taking it in both hands and running his thumbs up the arch on the underside. Without thinking, without questioning it, because every inch of this boy is fucking beautiful, he presses a kiss to the ball of Steve’s foot. Steve sucks in a sharp breath and Eddie darts his eyes up to see him still watching and gnawing at his bottom lip on the side that’s still intact.
“Can I do that?” Eddie asks, noting the way the rise and fall of Steve’s chest grows erratic. He asks the next question against the arch at the center of Steve’s foot. “Can I kiss you here?”
“Mhm.” Steve nods, and his eyes flutter closed as Eddie places his open mouth against it, flicks his tongue over the tender skin. He moans low and long when Eddie turns his head, sucks a line up the outside edge, then runs his tongue back inward just beneath the line of his toes. “Oh, fuck .”
Eddie chuckles, floating a little, himself, now, high on the ability to explore every part of Steve, to be able to know how every millimeter of his skin tastes when he’s all hot and flushed. He lowers Steve’s leg back to the bed and presses them flat again, winding his eyes back up the stairway to heaven, drinking down the sight of the way Steve’s cock bobs against his belly and the way his face has turned all red as a goddamn cherry tomato. He’s so fucking gorgeous, and Eddie loves him so fucking much.
It rips across his chest like the beast is clawing, but it’s something new. A larger, more ferocious thing that leaves the beast cowering in the corners of its confines, afraid to make a sound. He feels powerful in a brand new way, and he crawls back up on top of Steve to kiss him hard on the mouth, to slot his tongue inside and taste the fucking depths of him. He’ll never want anyone else.
“Daddy, please, I need it. Need you,” Steve whines against Eddie’s mouth, frantic and sounding like he’s lost his mind, at last. “Wanna come. Wanna come with you. Please, daddy , touch me?”
Eddie sits back again, just briefly, to undo his pants and tug them down just enough to free his cock, hissing as it meets the open air. He watches the way Steve’s eyes go right to it, savors the hungry little noise he makes, and grins like a fucking idiot. It takes him a moment, laying himself out next to Steve and turning his body so they’re facing each other, for Eddie to realize that it’s because he’s fucking happy.
He wraps one arm around Steve’s shoulders as they tilt their foreheads together, and takes both their cocks in his other hand. “Don’t deserve you,” he gasps out as the friction of his cock grinding raw against Steve’s sends a wave of pleasure through him, nearly taking his breath away. “So fucking good for me. Such a sweet thing. Don’t deserve to put my filthy hands on you.”
Steve thrusts into Eddie’s fist, against his dick, a cascading current of uh s and ah s pouring from his mouth. His eyes tear away from where they’re transfixed on their erections, rutting against one another, to look directly into Eddie’s, shining fucking golden in the lamp light. “You didn’t make me this way.” Steve finally lowers his arms, cupping Eddie’s face in both his hands. “You showed me who I am, what I need.” He swallows thickly and has to pause to attempt to catch his breath, though he fails miserably. “ God , Eds, never stop thinking about you. Want you all the fucking time. Want your hands on me, want you inside me, want you hurting me. Holy fuck, fuck! Please, can I come?”
And hearing that, Eddie is almost there, too. The brutal friction and pace of their thrusting, aided only by the slick of their precome dribbling over Eddie’s fist, has his climax quickly building already. Not that it would matter. Right now, Eddie will give Steve any fucking thing he asks for. “Fuck, yeah. My sweetness. My good boy. Come for me, baby.”
Steve screams Eddie’s name as he spills hot all over their joined cocks, over Eddie’s fist, his hands grappling at Eddie’s neck, his shoulders, his hair, trying to hold on as his orgasm wracks his body. Just the sight of that pretty pink mouth falling open, the sound of his name on those lips, the thought that he’s doing this for Steve, has Eddie falling apart right behind him. He kisses Steve hard to stifle the wail that creeps out of him, too high and honest, as he rocks himself against Steve until every last drop has emptied from him and the aftershocks are shaking them both.
When he lets go, all Eddie can think to do is pull Steve close, hold him tight to his chest, and whisper praises in his ear. “So perfect. You’re so good. You did nothing wrong. God, you’re incredible.”
Steve clings back, burying his face in Eddie’s neck and creating a well of soft kisses there, tucked away and sacred. When his breathing evens out, he cranes his head back, though he doesn’t unwind himself from Eddie, and gets this look on his face. It reminds Eddie of the time he did a flip into another dimension, miraculously landing on his feet. It’s pride.
“I told Robin,” he says plainly, a new, different kind of blush creeping onto his cheeks. “She’s happy for me. Told me to go get you back.”
A smile spreads slowly over Eddie’s face, grows wide and stupid happy and makes his face ache. “Glad I got the Buckley stamp of approval.”
Steve nods, still grinning, but his eyes leave Eddie’s, roaming the walls around them, thinking, searching for something. Eddie waits for it patiently, doesn’t rush Steve to speak or assume he’s lost, the way the others sometimes do. Finally, those eyes come back to life, considering Eddie as they return to him.
“I was thinking we could maybe try telling someone else?” Steve asks with a hopeful lilt to his voice.
Eddie doesn’t know if his smile can get any bigger, but it sure as hell tries. “Hell yeah. Who you got in mind?”
“What if we…” Steve kisses Eddie’s chin, then nuzzles gently against his cheek. “…told Dustin about us? We could do it together.”
“He’s a good kid, smart ,” Eddie supplies, kissing Steve’s forehead and running fingers down his spine, trying not to let his mind get too caught up on the us of it all. “I think that’s a wise choice. He’ll totally get that we’re…” His words trail off. He still doesn’t know what goes there, not really, not even after all of this, so he asks the question without asking it.
But Steve, his quick-thinking, unexpectedly observant Steve, hears it all the same. Without missing a beat, as calm as if Eddie had asked him what he had for breakfast, he says, “Yeah, he’ll totally get that we’re together. It’ll make sense to him.”
The new, larger beast that’s taken over inside him curls up in a comfortable heap and purrs. His soul feels soothed, whole. If it wouldn’t look insane he’d pinch himself, just to check. “Together?”
“Mhm,” Steve nods, burrowing back into the crook of Eddie’s neck. “Together. Okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”