Chapter Text
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the girl sitting across the table from Steve, with her soft blonde bob and pearl headband; baby blue cashmere sweater and sticky lip gloss; boring conversation and unfunny jokes.
It was just…there wasn’t really anything right, either.
She was just a person. Someone he’d probably forget by next week.
He wondered, for perhaps the dozenth time that night, why he had agreed to this when he could have been sprawled out on Eddie’s couch, teasing him for liking his popcorn “only a little burnt” and watching one of the weirdo B-movies Eddie insisted on showing him.
Steve drummed his fingers against the crisp white tablecloth while he waited for the check, wishing he’d instead just grabbed burgers and fries at the diner with Eddie.
“Steve, are you okay?” the girl asked, batting her long, mascara-clumped eyelashes at him.
His gaze snapped back over to her. “Oh—” An awkward chuckle escaped him. “Yeah. Just—the service here is kind of slow isn’t it?” It certainly seemed that way when he had nothing to say. Steve was a listener; he needed a talker or the conversation would die. Sure, he was a master of putting on the charm and flirting his way into a girl’s good graces, but talking about himself and leading a real conversation was not his forte. Luckily, Eddie never seemed to run out of things to say, and Steve never got bored of listening. It was amazing how he suddenly found himself caring about Dungeon and Dragons and all sorts of other nerd stuff he’d sworn to Dustin he’d never engage in when Eddie was the one telling him about it.
His date arched a brow at him. “It’s seemed fine to me. Are we in a hurry?”
Yes. “No. No. No rush. What did you think of the food?” Steve caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for the check, eyeing her half-eaten seafood pasta. “I just don’t want to hold anyone up. The waiters have to turn tables, you know.” He pushed his hand through his hair, Robin popping into his head and scolding him for the nervous habit. He wasn’t sure when she’d turned into his inner voice, but he supposed her laidback teasing was better than his father’s angry judgement.
“That’s—considerate of you.” She says it like it’s anything but, her mouth pressed into a line, the corners turned down ever so slightly.
The waiter drops off the check (finally) and Steve’s eyes nearly bug out at the cost. Jesus Christ. Thirty-five dollars? For an hour of stilted conversation, fake smiles, and a mediocre steak. God, dating was the worst.
“Is there something wrong with the check?” she asked.
Steve sighed, no longer bothering to hide behind the charming mask of romance. There wasn’t going to be a second date, and if she hadn’t realized that yet, well, that was on her. “No. It’s fine.” He tucked the rest of his cash into the bill folder, glad he had enough on him to leave a decent tip, and stood from his chair with such fervor, his hip knocked into the table. The glassware rattled and Steve cringed, while his date crossed her arms over her chest with a light huff.
Once they were outside, Steve swirled his keys around his finger and nodded his head toward his car. “That’s me. I’ll—uh—I’ll call you. This was…nice.” He offered her a kind smile; a consolation prize, if anything. They both knew she wouldn’t be getting a phone call.
She twirled a strand of honey-colored hair and curled her fingers around Steve’s wrist, stopping his anxious fidgeting. “Look, I think we both know tonight was a dud.”
Steve winced. “I’m sorry, I—”
The girl cut him off with a chuckle and a wave of her hand. “No, it wasn’t just you. I just don’t think we mesh like we were maybe both hoping.”
“Yeah. I mean you’re great and all but—” But you’re taking way too long to tell me how much your night sucked and I have to get back to—
“Just because you’re not planning on asking my dad for my hand, doesn’t mean tonight has to end. I mean—you’re attractive enough—” Steve huffed out a laugh at that, “—I could come back to your place.” Her fingers trailed from his wrist, up the length of his arm, before settling on his bicep.
Steve hesitated; silently staring in shock as if he had never been propositioned by a pretty girl for casual sex before.Yeah, it had been months since a date had even wanted to hook up, and he was in the middle of a dry spell of such severity that Dustin had started trying to set him up with some of Suzie’s older Mormon friends. (Steve still didn’t understand what garments were.) Yet, for some reasons his dick would never understand, he said, “Not tonight. I have plans.” Well, not really. But Steve knew Eddie would be happy to listen to him complain and crack open a couple beers with him.
She shrugged. “I get it. Well, see you around, Steve.”
It wasn’t until she pulled out of the parking lot that Steve realized he wasn’t even quite sure he remembered her name.
###
Eddie let Steve into the trailer with sympathetic eyes paired with a mocking smile, and Steve had to resist collapsing into his friend’s arms in defeat. Instead, he bee-lined for the fridge and took out two beers, cracking them open on the vinyl countertop.
“That bad, huh?”
Steve merely groaned in response.
“Well, lucky for you, I have just the thing to take your mind off your pathetic love life.”
“Thanks for that, Eds.” But Eddie was right. His love life was pathetic.
Eddie clapped him on the shoulder, beaming widely. “Anytime, Stevie-boy.” He picked up a VHS from the coffee table and presented it to Steve. “You’re in for a treat tonight.”
“The Toxic Avenger? That looks terrible.” But Steve couldn’t help the fond smile that found his lips. He hid it behind a sip of beer.
Eddie threw himself over the top of the sofa, landing sprawled upside down, hanging off the edge. “Don’t say such things to me! This—this—is a masterpiece. Pure art.”
Steve shoved Eddie fully onto the floor with a sharp kick to the ass, and settled on the couch himself, while his friend landed in an uncoordinated pile of lanky limbs. “You said the same exact thing about the wonton soup you got from that one takeout place that always gives you food poisoning.”
Eddie scrambled to his feet and shoved the VCR tape into his TV, before pointing an accusatory finger at Steve. “First of all, it’s only made me sick two and half times. Second of all, I meant it. Sometimes the best things in life require sacrifice, Stevie. You’d do best remembering that.” He bopped Steve on the nose before taking his spot next to him on the sofa.
Steve scoffed, batting at Eddie’s prodding fingers. “Yeah, I had to sacrifice my favorite sweater taking care of you that night. The puke stains never came out.” And despite how much he missed that sweater, and how vehemently he’d pleaded with Eddie not to order the damn soup that night, he’d take care of the bumbling mess of a man all over.
“Hey! You should feel honored to have my vomit permanently bestowed upon you.”
Steve snorted in response and let his body sink into the cushions, beer heavy in his belly. His head found purchase against Eddie’s side, earning a sharp prod from a ringed finger against his scalp.
“Your skull is digging into my ribs. You’d think with all this hair your head wouldn’t feel like such a damn bowling ball penetrating my bowels.” Eddie tugged on a lose strand as if to highlight his point, and Steve made a face at Eddie’s frankly, horrid word choice, and hoped it was enough to stifle the pleased groan that pushed its way up his throat.
“Can’t you just say things like a human?” Steve complained, readjusting himself so his head lay in Eddie’s lap instead, his legs sprawled across the rest of the sofa. Just as Eddie’s fingers sank into Steve’s hair, he yanked his hand away, making Steve wince as a few stray strands caught on his rings. “Jesus, ow, man. Be careful.”
“You wound me, Stevie,” Eddie cried and collapsed backwards, head hanging off the back of the couch, his arm draped theatrically over his face as if a true crisis had occurred.
Steve shifted to scowl up at him and pawed at his arm, nudging Eddie’s hand back into his hair. “Wound you? You nearly scalped me with those damn rings.” His eyes fluttered closed as Eddie continued his ministrations. Steve reveled in the comfortable warmth and soothing pressure.
“But my heart! Steve—you have wounded the very core of my being! And to think I considered us friends.” Eddie let out a howl reminiscent of some sort of feral beast as his body shuddered with fake sobs. “I can’t believe you’d ask me to dim myself for your own fragile sensibilities. Next you’ll be asking me to watch your stupid laundry basket game on TV. And after that, well—it’s all downhill into capitalist hell from there. Might as well get the suit and tie out. Shave off these precious tendrils and accept my fate.” He did the sign of the cross and looked up to the ceiling. “Here lies Eddie Munson. Killed by conformity—and Steve Harrington. Not even Daddy God could save him.”
“Hey, I’ll have you know my sensibilities are hard as shit. Are we already forgetting my nursing you back to health while you leaked from more than just your damn bowels?” Steve tipped his head back further into Eddie’s grip, finding the touch was making his tongue feel thick in his mouth. “Now, stop being an asshole and shush. I’m trying to pay attention to your weird-ass movie.”
“No you’re not.”
“Shh.”
The two of them fell into a comfortable silence, Eddie never removing his hand from Steve’s hair for the entirety of the movie. If it hadn’t been such a godawful film, Steve would have almost been sad when the credits rolled and Eddie stood to turn the television off.
“So, do you want to talk about it?” Eddie asked, quirking an eyebrow at Steve before settling back next to him.
“Talk about what?” Steve sat up and frowned, hoping the topic would die there. No, he didn’t want to talk about his pathetic lack of game, actually.
“How you’re self-sabotaging.”
Steve sputtered. He’d expected Eddie to tease him for another failed date; needle him for all the boring details and tease him some more. What he hadn’t expected was such brutal insight into his garbled psyche. “I am not self-sabotaging. Plenty of people go on plenty of bad dates. That’s just, like…life, or something, man.”
“But why are you going on these dates? I mean, you complain about them for days leading up, and then you basically speed over afterwards to complain some more. At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself—what are you looking for in these dates?”
Steve’s heart thudded painfully against his sternum, Eddie’s line of questioning leaving him feeling strangely cracked open and vulnerable. “I don’t know—I don’t know! Isn’t that the point of dating? To try and figure out what I want? I always kind of thought I would know it when I see it.”
Eddie tapped a finger to his chin as he pondered this and Steve weirdly wanted to reach out for his hand.
“Well, clearly that’s not working.”
“Clearly,” Steve muttered with a scowl.
“So, you’ve got to change it up.”
“How the hell do I change up dating? It’s dating. You meet someone and you go on a date. Then, you decide if you want to go on another.”
“You change it up by figuring out what you want beforehand instead of waiting for it to happen to you.”
“And what? Somehow that’ll lure my soulmate out of whatever hole they’re hiding in?”
“Maybe,” Eddie sang with a smirk. “Just humor me. What does your ideal relationship look like in your mind’s eye?” He tapped Steve in the middle of the forehead.
“I don’t know, dude. I want—I want someone where being with them doesn’t feel like effort. I can just come home and and sit next to them on the couch and drink shitty beer with them and talk about nothing and somehow it’s still fun. I’m tired of going out with these girls and putting on this mask and trying to charm them into liking me enough to want to take the mask off. It’s exhausting. I want something easy. Something where there are no expectations—not that, like, they shouldn’t have standards, or whatever. I mean, I can be a gentleman. I can be chivalrous. I can flirt out of my ass all day long.
“I guess I just don’t want them to expect a certain version of me that doesn’t exist. I want a relationship where I’m not setting the other person up for disappointment.” The end came out half choked, the rawness of his words burning his throat like charcoal.
“You’re not a disappointment, Stevie. You’ve only ever exceeded my expectations,” Eddie said so tenderly, it kind of made Steve want to cry.
“At least I have that going for me.” Steve was constantly gobsmacked at Eddie’s ability to reach into his mind, his heart, and pull at the tangled threads he could never figure out himself, until they loosened enough for him to fall apart. Besides maybe Robin, Steve didn’t think anyone understood him quite like Eddie did. Being friends with Eddie was like cracking himself open and showing off his messy innards in a way he still hadn’t fully come to terms with. Never had Steve allowed himself such vulnerability around another person. As much as Eddie pretended to be all harsh edges and sharp points, he was actually softness and sunshine and his warmth melted Steve into the rawest version of himself. At that, a laugh gurgled its way out of Steve’s mouth.
Eddie gave a long-suffering sigh, filled with nothing but obvious affection. “I thought we were having a real bro-on-bro moment here. I’m trying to stroke your ego while you lick your wounds and you have the audacity to laugh at me. The disrespect! And in my own home, too. I thought you were better than this, Stevie-boy.”
“I’m not laughing at you. Actually, I really appreciate you, Eds. So much.”
“Then what’s so funny?”
Steve debated saying what he was thinking, but he was never one to avoid putting his foot in his mouth. “I’m thinking—I think I just described you.”
Eddie went rigid beside Steve and when he spoke, his voice was pitched like he couldn’t quite breathe. “How—what do you mean by that?”
“I mean—Eds, I think you might be my ideal date.” Steve leaned back with a groan. “God, this sucks.”
“Am I that bad?” he asked quietly. Any teasing was missing from his tone.
“Are you even listening to me? You’re great! That’s why this sucks.”
“Steve, please. Before I go insane. Explain to me what you mean.”
“In this scenario, you’re the person of my dreams, right? So, I just need to somehow find the girl version of you. But part of the reason you’re so perfect is because, we’re just two dudes, you know? How can I recreate that with a girl?” He sighed. “Basically—I’m doomed.”
Eddie leapt off the couch as if Steve had stabbed him straight through the heart, and gathered the empty beer bottles. “You should go. I’m—You’re—You should just go.” He kept his back to Steve as he set the bottles on the counter and wandered to the sink, rinsing off some dirty dishes.
“What? Why? I thought I was staying over?” Steve stared at him in confusion, something like dread pooling in his gut. He had the distinct feeling he’d said something wrong—something very wrong—but he wasn’t totally sure what.
“Nope! No!” Eddie was beginning to sound hysterical, prompting Steve to rush over to him.
“Did I do something?”
Eddie set down the plate he was rinsing and chuckled manically into the darkness of the kitchen. “Did he do something, the man asks.” He said it to himself more than to Steve.
“Eddie, you’re kind of freaking me out here, man. Look, I’m sorry I said I wanted to date you, I mean it wasn’t in like—a gay way, or anything. Jesus, dude. I didn’t think you of all people would care about stuff like that. I just meant it in a friendship way.”
“Not in a gay way, he says. Just in a friendship way, he says.” The plate clattered in the sink, water still running and Eddie whirled around to face Steve, a manic glint in his eye. “That’s exactly the problem. Dude.”
“What? What do you mean? Eds, come on. I’m not good at this. Please, just tell me what you mean.”
“You know, I thought I could do this. I really did. And maybe—maybe that’s my fault, you know.” He stared at the ceiling as he spoke, still not meeting Steve’s gaze.
“Do what? What can’t you do?” Steve wanted to throw himself at Eddie’s feet and beg him to slow down, to explain in a way he could understand. Because as much as Eddie was able to read Steve as if they shared a mind, Steve struggled to make sense of Eddie’s ramblings and lost trains of thought.
“Be your friend, Steve!” he shouted, finally looking him straight in the eye.
Something broke deep inside of Steve’s soul.
“Oh. You—you don’t want to be friends anymore?” Tears pricked the backs of his eyes. Whatever was happening hurt worse than any breakup Steve had ever faced. He hadn’t even cried when Nancy had shoved her tiny fist into his chest and torn his heart straight out in Tina’s bathroom.
“No, Steve. No. I never wanted to be just friends.”
“Just frien—oh. You’re—?” And just like that, the crack in his soul started to put itself back together. It wasn’t that Eddie didn’t want Steve enough, it’s that he wanted Steve too much. And that realization shouldn’t have been as comforting to Steve as it was.
“Yes, Steve. I’m gay. I like sex with men. Men like sex with me. Best friends with Dorothy—”
“Who the hell is Dorothy?” Steve demanded, unable to stop the bud of jealousy from blooming.
“And I’m in great, big, all-consuming gay love with you.” Eddie threw his hands up in frustration as if this was the worst thing to ever happen to him. Steve wouldn’t blame him if it was.
“That’s cool. I’m cool. I’m not gonna, like—beat you up, or anything.”
Eddie started pacing, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. “And I was okay with that, you know. I had accepted that I was just another sucker to fall for the infamous Harrington charm. I was totally at peace with being quietly in love with you for the rest of my life. It was fine as long as I had a least a piece of you.”
“And you still can. Eddie, c’mon. Nothing has to change.”
“Everything has to change, Steve. Because while I am over here pining after you like a goddamn stray dog following you around for scraps, you’re going on bad date after bad date—and apparently, apparently—you’re wishing they were me the entire time. Or, the girl version of me, that is.” He let out a humorless laugh that punched Steve harder than Jonathan, harder than Billy, harder than the goddamn Russians. “And that—that is my line.” He pressed his palms into his eyes and groaned. When he looked back to Steve he said, “I love you so much, Stevie. But hearing you say that? I’ve never hurt like that before. I damn near got eaten alive in a hell dimension by mutant bats and hearing you say that still hurt more.”
Tears tracked down Eddie’s cheeks; shame burned Steve’s.
“I’m sorry,” Steve all but whispered.
“Please, just go.”
And Steve did.