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The heater hummed, fog blooming on the glass like a lazy ghost. Robin had claimed the front passenger seat, feet on the dash until Steve swatted at her ankle. Eddie was sprawled in the back, rings clicking against the window as he tapped out some private drum solo only he could hear. Steve kept his hands on the wheel, jaw loose, eyes on the road like he always did when he was trying really hard to look like nothing was going on in his head.
If he didn’t think about it, maybe his cheeks wouldn’t go hot every time Eddie laughed. If he just…drove, and listened to the radio, and pretended he didn’t know exactly how many days it was until the fourteenth, then it was just another car ride. Just Robin, just Eddie, just air.
“Valentine’s Day’s coming up,” Robin announced, like she was lobbing a grenade just to see where it landed. “You got a valentime this year, Steve?”
She hit the word wrong on purpose, like she was quoting him. Steve’s fingers tightened on the wheel for half a second. Great. So that was a thing now. Say one word wrong when you’re twelve and it follows you the rest of your stupid life.
He didn’t turn. If he made eye contact she’d see everything. “I thought we agreed to be each other’s,” he said, calm and casual like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Best defense: joke it through. Keep it easy. Don’t look at the rearview.
Robin snorted. “Hm. I could’ve sworn I had plans. Actually—might have a date.”
There it was. Steve’s chest did a weird little drop that annoyed him immediately. “Oh?” His voice slid over the word like he wanted the name before Robin could finish the sentence. If she said somebody from band or video store girl he was going to have to pretend to be happy for her while his brain chewed its own arm off.
Robin ignored his inquisition and shrugged, glancing at him sideways, too casual but with a knowing look on her face that made his stomach wobble. She knew. Of course she knew. “Well…since I’ll be busy…” she drawled, stretching it out, “why don’t you ask Eddie?”
Steve’s heart hopped straight up into his throat. For a second all he heard was the hiss of the heater and the click of Eddie’s rings. He checked the rearview before he could talk himself out of it, catching Eddie’s eyes for half a second. Brown, amused, a little confused. Steve made a little serious face—don’t-chicken-out-don’t-make-it-weird—that was definitely not serious.
His mouth moved anyway. “Eddie, will you be my valentime?”
He heard it as he said it. Valentime. God. Of course. The wrong way. The way Dustin and Robin made fun of when they wanted to see him splutter. It sat between them, stupid and soft, sounding more like “time” than “tine,” like he was asking Eddie to spend time with him, not to be his valentine. Which, okay, was technically the same thing but also felt way too close to the thing he wasn’t supposed to be asking.
Eddie rolled his eyes at the mispronunciation, a grin already tugging at his mouth. “You say it like valentime, not valent-tine,” he said, leaning into it, like he was poking a bruise he thought was just a joke. “No thanks.”
Robin huffed out a laugh and tried to bury it in her sleeve. Steve’s ears went hot. “I know how to say it,” he muttered, which was a lie and everyone knew it. “It’s just—” He cut himself off, jaw flexing. Shut up, Harrington.
He leaned back a fraction in his seat, deliberately overplaying it, letting his head thump lightly against the headrest like he was being dramatic on purpose. If he made it a bit, maybe they wouldn’t see the way his stomach had just dropped through the floor. “Come on, I’m being serious,” he said, aiming for joking and landing somewhere mushy in the middle. “I’ll even let you pick the movie. I’ll sit through, like, twelve hours of exploding robots or whatever.”
Eddie huffed out a laugh, head thunking lightly against the window in this lazy, satisfied way that made something in Steve’s chest do a weird little flip. “Oh, tempting,” Eddie said.
“Yeah, no,” Eddie finished, like he was batting a balloon out of the air. “I’m not getting roped into some Harrington Hallmark special where you buy me a drugstore card and a heart-shaped box of…what do you call it, valen-times chocolate?” He dragged the word out, smug.
Robin snorted. “To be fair, he did used to say ‘happy valentimes’ to literally everyone in middle school.”
Steve’s grip twitched on the wheel. “Okay, that was once,” he lied again, because it had been a whole era. He could still see the construction-paper heart banner his mom had made, the way she’d cooed over how cute it was that he said it wrong, like he was a dog doing a trick. “And it was, like, fifth grade.”
“Seventh,” Robin corrected instantly. “You signed my tape case ‘from your best valentime, Steve.’ I still have it.”
Eddie wheezed. “That’s incredible. Oh my god. Of course King Steve invented his own holiday. Valen-time. Time of valen. The time…of Steve.”
He was hamming it up, voice theatrical, hands sketching shapes in the air Steve couldn’t look at because if he did, the heat in his face was going to hit dangerous levels. He forced a scoff, tilting his head like he thought the whole thing was stupid too. “You’re all hilarious,” he said. “Really. Comedy gold back there.”
They laughed, Robin loud and ugly, Eddie softer, the sound bubbling around the car. Normally, Steve liked that. Liked filling the space with noise that wasn’t monsters or yelling or crying. Right now it just made the inside of the beemer feel a size too small.
He risked another glance in the rearview. Eddie had his head tipped back against the seat, curls spilling everywhere, eyes half-lidded with amusement. He looked happy. Relaxed. Comfortable enough to say no without thinking twice about it, because of course it was a joke. Of course Steve asking him out—even as a bit—was just another set-up line.
That was the part that stung, if Steve was honest with himself for, like, one second. Not the rejection. He’d been told no a lot; it rolled off him these days. It was the way Eddie didn’t even pause. Didn’t even entertain the idea that Steve might want it for real.
Which, whatever. Good. That was the whole point, right? Keep it a joke so you don’t have to watch the realization cross somebody’s face.
He swallowed, tongue thick, and tapped his knuckles against the steering wheel in time with the radio, syncing up his breathing with the drumbeat like he always did when his chest started to get tight. One, two, three, four. You’re driving. You’re fine. It’s funny.
“Relax, Stevie,” Eddie said after a second, still grinning. “I’ll get you a card that says ‘you’re my favorite valentime’ or something. We’ll frame it. Make a shrine.”
“Wow, thanks, man,” Steve said, aiming for light. “Can’t wait to put that right next to my ‘congrats on not dying this time’ balloon from last month.”
Robin snickered. “That was a great balloon. You loved that balloon.”
“I did not love the balloon,” Steve protested automatically, grateful for the easy track to slip into. Banter was muscle memory. “It had a clown on it, Buckley. A clown. That’s cursed.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one who reads ‘valentime’ off the card and thinks it’s spelled that way, so maybe don’t talk to me about curses,” she shot back.
Eddie made a little ooooh sound under his breath, delighted, like they were roasting each other on stage and not just carving him open a little at a time. “She’s got you there, sweetheart.”
The word shouldn’t have done anything; Eddie called everyone that. But it landed low in Steve’s spine anyway, humming. He forced a grin Robin could see in profile and kept his gaze locked on the smear of headlights ahead, because if he met Eddie’s eyes he was pretty sure it’d be written all over his face.
“Whatever,” he said, shallow and easy. “Enjoy your lonely single valen-times, both of you. When I’m rich and famous and taken, you’re gonna be so jealous.”
“Uh-huh,” Robin said, but her voice had gone a little softer, like she could see the way his shoulders had crept up around his ears. She bumped her knee against the console, their old code for hey, you good? without saying it out loud.
Steve twitched his fingers off the wheel and back down again, the barest shrug. Yeah. Fine. It’s nothing.
Behind him, Eddie had gone back to tapping his rings against the glass, rhythm back to that private drumline only he knew the pattern to. Steve listened, counting along in his head, trying to make it just noise again instead of something his heart kept syncing to.
By the time they hit the next red light, the laughter had faded, Robin was fiddling with the radio, and Eddie was humming under his breath. Steve swallowed the tiny sting sitting in his chest and drove on, pretending the whole thing hadn’t landed anywhere at all.
Later, he knew, Robin would nudge him in the video store or the break room and say, quietly, “hey, he really didn’t get it, you know that, right?” and he’d roll his eyes and tell her there was nothing to get.
For now, he just kept his hands steady on the wheel and told himself that valentime was just a dumb word he said wrong, not a thing he kept accidentally meaning.
It was the next day. Valentines day.
The sun was already angling low, thinning the light until everything looked like someone had set a sepia filter over the world. Steve stood on Eddie’s wobble-step, cheap red teddy bear hidden awkwardly behind his back, heart doing the thing where it tried to climb out through his ribs. He could feel every stupid decision he’d made to get here—borrowing change from Dustin, driving over at the dumbest time, rehearsing the line in his head until it sounded fake even to him—and none of it helped the way his palms were sweating.
He knocked, practiced bravado taped around the edges of his real voice. There was shuffling, a muffled curse, and then the door swung open like the whole car ride had been the wrong movie. Eddie stood there in sweats and a band tee, socks but no shoes, hair like he’d been fighting pillows for hours, and for a second Steve just wanted to melt into the porch, make himself small and nonthreatening.
Do it, his brain said, which meant: don’t die of shame, Harrington. He swung the bear out from behind him because that’s what people did in movies and movies were at least predictable. He shoved his smile on like armor, voice bright and ridiculous. “Eddie Munson,” he announced, absurdly ceremonial, “will you be my valentime?”
For one beat Eddie just looked. Steve counted that half-second a thousand times—was it pity? amusement? confusion?—and felt the world tighten. Then Eddie barked a laugh, high and easy. “Yeah, no,” he said, and the words folded like a knife.
The door closed. The click of the lock punched through Steve like a thud.
He stood frozen for a second after the metal slammed shut, ears ringing with nothing, because sometimes silence hits louder than anything Eddie could have said. He knocked again, because he was a coward and also maybe a complete idiot who kept trying anyway. “Eddie?” he called, and the voice that came out sounded small in a way he hated. “Come on, man, open the door. It’s a joke, okay?” He knew the second the lie escaped his mouth that it wasn’t true; jokes were a shield and also a way to make things soft enough not to bleed. He told himself he was protecting himself and also that he was protecting Eddie from having to look at the real earnestness in his face.
There was nothing. Maybe a floorboard creak, a distant cough, and the trailer held its breath.
Steve waited like someone waiting for a phone call back that never came, then knocked softer, as if politeness could coerce a person to kindness. “Eds. Seriously.”
Silence again. The kind that let his chest do the thing where the ribs felt too tight and somewhere far away his throat tightened into a knot. He stepped off the wobble-step and circled the trailer, gravel grinding under his shoes like tiny betrayals. He ended up at the bedroom window because he had no other plan and because standing by the door felt like standing in a spotlight.
He tapped the bear’s plastic paw against the glass like a kid trying to get out of detention. “Knock knock,” he said, sounding like a cartoon, ridiculous, trying to keep things light because if he didn’t he’d have to say real words. “Hi Eddie, it’s me, your totally real valentime. I would like to respectfully request entry—”
The curtain jerked and the window cracked open. Eddie’s face filled the gap, closer now, curls frizzed into a halo, eyes wide and sharp. “Harrington,” he hissed, part annoyance, part something Steve wanted to put a name to. “Stop, my neighbors are gonna see you.”
Steve’s heart did another dumb flip. Neighbors. The word landed with the weight of humiliation and a weird, hot little hope at once. He could picture Mrs. DeMarco out front, knitting needles paused midair, watching like the entire world was an improv show where he was the punchline. He imagined that and his cheeks burned, and then he felt ridiculous for caring.
He held the bear there, mid-knock, fingers tight around its fuzzy ribs, and all the things he almost said jammed up behind his teeth. For one wild second he pictured himself just blurting it—no joke voice, no cartoon—Eddie, I’m actually asking, I bought this thing and drove over here and I’m standing under your window because I like you, you idiot. The words lined up in his head, way too sharp and bright.
Instead what came out was a shrug that felt like it scraped his bones on the way up, his mouth pulling into that crooked half-smile he used when he wanted people to think he was fine. “Yeah, okay,” he said, eyes dropping for a second. “Didn’t mean to, uh, embarrass you.”
And that was the worst part: he meant it. The thought of being something Eddie had to be embarrassed about made his stomach twist. He could take being a joke, he’d been that before, but the idea that some neighbor catching a glimpse of King Steve with a dumb bear under Eddie Munson’s window might make Eddie’s life harder—that made his chest go cold.
Eddie’s face shifted, like there was a word trying to push its way out. His mouth opened, then closed again, like a tape catching. “Go home, Steve,” he muttered, but it wasn’t sharp this time. Softer, like the edge had been sanded off. “You’re ridiculous.”
The window slid shut.
Steve stayed where he was for a beat too long, eyes on his own wavering reflection in the glass. Ridiculous sounded safer than unwanted, so his brain grabbed it, clung to it, tried to make it a bit. You’re being dramatic, he told himself. It was a joke, he told himself. You knew he was gonna laugh, what did you expect, a marching band?
But the quiet of the park pressed in around him anyway, all long shadows and the distant buzz of a TV from another trailer, and it made the inside of his chest feel hollow. Eventually he backed away, the gravel under his sneakers loud in the silence, and trudged around to the front.
He climbed into the car like he was climbing into someone else’s life, buckled up on autopilot. The teddy bear he set carefully in the passenger seat, facing forward, its permanent plastic smile just a little crooked. It looked stupid and cheap and also like proof that for once he’d tried to do something honest and it had blown up in his face.
He stared at it for a long second, jaw tight, something hot burning at the back of his eyes that he absolutely refused to name. “Yeah,” he told it, voice low and almost amused if you didn’t listen too hard. “He said ‘yeah no’ to you too.”
That helped, a little—spreading the humiliation around, making the bear a co-conspirator instead of just an accessory. He turned the key, the engine coughing to life, and pulled away from the trailer park with the bear’s red heart catching the last scraps of light, grinning up at him like a punchline he hadn’t quite meant to write.
He parked in a half-empty lot, killed the engine, and let the silence grow until it felt loud enough to press against his ears. The teddy sat upright in the passenger seat, its stupid plastic heart pointed like an accusing finger. He fished the crumpled receipt from his pocket, the number circled in shallow permanent-marker like a scar, and stared at the tiny square like it held instructions for how to be less pathetic.
He laughed, a short sound that tasted halfway between a sob and a joke, and folded the paper once, twice. Folding felt deliberate, like he was trying to make the world neat again, and when that failed he tore it into ragged bits and shoved the pieces out the window, watching them scatter like trash confetti. Part of him wanted witnesses to his humiliation; part of him wanted the moment buried.
The bear kept grinning. Steve wiped at his face because he was tired of feeling like an open wound, and then, on some reckless autopilot, he tucked the bear under his arm like it was something embarrassing he could hide. He drove a few blocks with the heater humming and the world sliding by in late-afternoon blur, thinking of all the ways this could have gone differently—less dumb, less loud, less public—and feeling how none of those changes would guarantee anything.
He steered toward the old arcade because it always smelled like fried food and quarters and bad decisions, and because noise and neon were better at swallowing feelings than silence. Inside, the machines blinked and buzzed in a language that made his chest unclench a fraction. He put the bear on a prize shelf between a dented plastic robot and a stack of VHS tapes, thinking maybe if he left it among other stupid things it wouldn’t sting as much. For a second he felt like he’d hidden something important in plain sight, which was almost the same as holding onto it.
The bell over the door jingled and he left before he could rethink it, before he could let the impossibility of fixing things sit on his shoulders again. He slammed the car door with more force than necessary and drove off into the cooling night. The street lamps flickered on, the wind moved the branches the same way it always did, and the trailer park stayed its same dim, murmuring self—TVs bleeding light through curtains, a dog barking far off. He pictured Eddie out the window, lungs filling with cigarette smoke, looking up at the sky like it was a secret map.
Nothing around him changed because of his humiliation. The world kept turning, indifferent and steady, which both soothed and stung. He tried to tell himself that was fine, that being denied didn’t rewrite anything important, but the hollow in his chest had already booked itself a long-term stay.
He thought about going back and taking the bear off the shelf, driving to Eddie’s and knocking until he had an answer that wasn’t a laugh. He thought about rewriting the whole scene in his head so it ended differently, with Eddie’s face softer and a card handed over like a peace treaty. He thought about calling Dustin to come over and make him feel less ridiculous, then thought about how dumb that sounded.
So he drove. The arcade lights blurred past in little glassy streaks and the bear’s plastic heart caught the glow like a tiny moon in the window until he was far enough away for it to fade from view. For now, that had to be enough.
the day after valentine’s was always this weird limbo, and today it felt worse. family video was dead—just the fluorescent buzz and the hollow clack of plastic cases—but steve’s brain was loud enough to make up for it. he stood behind the counter pretending to reorganize the return bin, hands moving faster and sharper than they needed to, like if he stacked tapes hard enough he could crush the memory of a red teddy bear and a slammed trailer door.
every time the bin thudded, his mind helpfully replayed eddie’s “yeah, no” in perfect surround sound. he kept catching himself glancing at the store windows, half-expecting a familiar van to pull up, half-hoping it wouldn’t so he wouldn’t have to pretend he wasn’t still stinging. he’d tried telling himself it was nothing, that it was his fault for making it a joke first, but his jaw kept clenching on its own like his body hadn’t gotten the memo.
the bell over the door jingled and cold air rushed in. steve didn’t have to look up to know it was eddie—there was a particular kind of movement that came with him, all jangling and too-big energy that made the store feel suddenly smaller.
“morning, sunshine,” eddie said, leaning his elbow on the counter like this was just another day, like yesterday hadn’t happened at all. “got anything good for your favorite customer?”
normally, steve’s mouth would have answered on autopilot—some dumb flirt, some “depends who’s asking”—but the words just sat there, heavy. the idea of acting normal, of slipping back into their usual bit while his chest still felt bruised, made something in him go flat. he didn’t even try to force a smile; it felt like his face had forgotten how.
he dropped the stack of tapes into the bin harder than he meant to. “break’s over, robin,” he called, eyes fixed on the plastic, not on eddie’s face. if he didn’t look, he didn’t have to see whether eddie looked confused or amused or totally fine. “i’m taking mine.”
before eddie could get a word in—before he could crack a joke steve would be tempted to laugh at—steve shoved through the little swinging door. the backroom felt like the only place in the world where he could let his shoulders drop without an audience. the door clicked shut behind him, neat and final, and he leaned against it for half a second, breathing like he’d just sprinted.
out front, eddie blinked at the empty space where steve had been like someone had yanked the record needle off his favorite song.
“okay,” he muttered, trying to make it a bit for himself. “that was… new.”
he straightened, scanning for context. robin stood a few feet away with a cart of tapes, frozen mid-shelf. she had that tight look she got when she’d decided not to say something three times already.
“what’s up with grumpy pants over there?” eddie asked, aiming for light, like maybe this was just about a bad customer or a headache.
robin shut her eyes for a second, like she was counting to five. when she opened them, she looked at him the way you look at a puzzle that’s missing the most obvious piece. “you’re actually serious.”
“about him being in a mood?” eddie lifted a shoulder, trying for a grin that didn’t quite stick. “kinda hard to miss, buckley.”
she set a tape down a little too hard. the plastic smack made him flinch more than he wanted to. “you,” she said, pointing the case at him like an accusation, “are such an idiot.”
eddie’s first reflex was to laugh it off, toss back something about that not being news, but the words snagged. under all his usual noise there was this weird, hollow sensation, because steve bailing like that hadn’t felt like a bit. it had felt like… avoidance. from steve. of him.
“uh, okay, rude?” he tried anyway. “what did i do, steal his favorite tape slot?”
robin stared at him like she was trying to decide whether to smack him with the clamshell in her hand. then she blew out a breath. “you totally broke his heart yesterday, munson.”
the laugh he’d been trying to muster just… didn’t show up. his brain flashed the image of steve on the trailer step, breath fogging in the cold, that stupid little bear clutched in his hand. eddie had been so busy being blindsided and embarrassed and defensive that he hadn’t been thinking about how it would land. he’d been trying to play it off like nothing, like the valentime thing was a dumb joke, but now the memory shifted and all the empty space filled with small, awful details: the way steve’s fingers had curled around the bear’s ear like he was afraid of breaking it, the way his smile had thinned into something tentative and almost apologetic, the quick slide of his eyes away when eddie laughed.
eddie’s chest felt weird and hollow, like someone had scooped out the part of him that kept things light. he kept telling himself he’d meant well, that he hadn’t meant to hurt steve, but the justification tasted thin. robin watched him, arms crossed, like she’d seen this play before and knew the punchline. “you didn’t even see it, did you?” she said.
heat crawled up eddie’s neck. “i— i thought he was messing around,” he said, voice smaller than he planned. he could already feel the grocery-list of excuses forming—cold, embarrassment, misreading cues—but each one sounded worse than the last.
robin shook her head. “you made a joke and he took it as you laughing at him.” she paused, then softened in a way that made eddie feel younger and more exposed. “and he’s not good at that. he’s… he’s soft about things like that.”
guilt did a slow roll through eddie’s stomach. he pictured steve on the trailer steps, the bear in his hands like an offering that got tossed back. he imagined the slammed window, the way steve had retreated, and for the first time all the little performances—his teasing voice, his shrug—felt like cruelty by accident.
“i didn’t mean to—” eddie started, and the words fell apart. he wanted to fix it, to go back to that time yesterday at the trailer and say, “i’m sorry, i was an asshole, come in so i can show you the stupid card i made,” but he also knew how big his mouth could be and how clumsy his apologies were.
“do you even care?” robin asked, blunt and sharp. it was the question eddie hated because it didn’t let him hide in a joke. he swallowed.
“of course i care,” he said, but it came out defensive. he hated that about himself—the flash of needing to prove it when what really mattered was showing it.
the bell above the door chimed again like a tiny accusation. everyone in the store seemed to be holding their breath for what he’d do next, but of course that was just in eddies head, in reality nobody had even looked his way. eddie’s hands curled into fists on the counter. he could see two choices: run, which had always been his muscle memory, or stay and try the stupid, vulnerable thing that might actually mean something.
he felt the weight of how he’d been when he knocked at steve’s trailer, how small and hopeful steve had looked holding that bear, and something in eddie unclenched.
“i’m going to fix this.” he said, not loud, just steady. robin’s eyebrows went up. “what?” she said.
“i’m going to apologize. properly.” he pushed off from the counter, the decision making the cold in his face feel less like punishment and more like a wake-up. “i’ll— i’ll say the right thing. and if he wants me to fuck off, i’ll respect that. but i’ll try.”
robin watched him for a beat, like she was weighing whether to believe it. then she sighed and shoved a tape into his hands like passing him a talisman. “don’t be an idiot,” she said. “and no grand gestures, munson. just… say it like you mean it.”
eddie swallowed, the tape heavy and useless in his palm, and the joke in his head finally quieted. he pulled his jacket tighter and left the store, the cold cutting at his lungs, the bell chiming behind him like a small, persistent hope.
by evening steve was on the couch, TV flickering low like it was trying not to bother anyone. an open bag of chips sat on the coffee table, half-eaten, and he was in that kinda mood where everything tasted like cardboard anyway. he’d been rewatching the same stupid scene for an hour and pretending it was a movie.
a knock at the door made him flinch. his first thought was to ignore it, pretend he hadn’t heard, but curiosity and that tiny annoying hope tugged him up anyway. he padded to the door expecting dustin or one of the kids, not eddie’s particular brand of chaos.
when he opened it, eddie stood there a little out of breath, hair doing whatever it did, denim jacket hanging off his shoulders like he’d shrugged it on in a rush. he looked like he’d run halfway across town and then decided that was the only reasonable thing to do.
steve’s face shuttered. he fumbled for a joke because his body still wanted something to hide behind. “we closed an hour ago,” he said, the quip flat. “if you want a movie, tough.”
eddie rolled with it faster than steve expected, a crooked smile trying to make the edges softer. “Yeah, I’m not here for your stellar customer service,” Eddie says, trying for a smile that doesn’t really land. he held up something small—a folded piece of red construction paper, a lopsided heart drawn in black. “i, uh. brought you something.”
steve’s eyes dropped to the paper and then away like it burned. “i’m not really in the mood for another joke, man.”
“it’s not a joke.” eddie stepped over the threshold, tentative. “can i… come in? just for a second?”
steve hesitated like the answer might hurt less framed as a number. “two minutes,” he said finally, and moved aside.
eddie shut the door and turned to him, card clutched as if it could hold him together. “robin told me,” he said, words tumbling. “about yesterday. about me being—” he waved at his head, “—terminally stupid.”
steve folded his arms. “she talks too much.”
“she talks just enough,” eddie snapped back, and then his voice softened. he thrust the card forward even before steve reached for it. “look, when you showed up with the bear, i thought it was a bit. like you were razzing me. i panicked and i—i slammed the door. i didn’t ask. i assumed.”
the hurt that’d been coiled in steve since the trailer day cracked open. “i don’t do that anymore,” he said, sharper than he wanted. “I’m not that guy anymore. I wouldn’t come to your house just to make fun of you.”
eddie’s face folded in on itself for a second—shame and urgency and something like devotion. “i know,” he said, and you could tell he’d been chewing over that word all day. “i realized five seconds too late. i panicked, and i slammed the door instead of asking what you meant. and that was an asshole move.”
there it was—the small, awkward honesty eddie could actually do. steve looked away, jaw tight, thinking of the cold and the bear and the way he’d stood on that step small and ridiculous. “you made it pretty clear what you thought,” he muttered.
“i thought,” eddie said quieter, stepping closer, “that if you, Steve Harrington former king of hawkins high, showed up with a bear it had to be a joke. if it wasn’t, then—” he stopped, swallowed. “then i was terrified, steve. scared that you meant something real and i didn’t know how to be anything but a clown.”
steve let out a short laugh that wasn’t funny. “try being on the other side of the door.”
“i know.” eddie’s apology wasn’t slick; it was raw and clumsy and honest. “i’m sorry. not the oops kind. the i’ve-replayed-it-so-much-i-feel-sick kind.” finally he eased the card into steve’s hand, letting their fingers touch for the barest second. the paper was warm from him.
steve looked down. the heart was crooked, the handwriting messy, and inside it read: will you be my valentime for real this time? (y/n) — idiot who’s in love with you.
the words hit his chest like a fist and like a feather at the same time. his first instinct was to raise the wall, to protect the bruise with sarcasm, so he muttered, “you can’t just fix it with arts and crafts and expect me to forget you slammed a door in my face.”
“i don’t expect you to forget,” eddie cut in fast. “you can absolutely hold it over my head forever. make me reenact opening the door correctly every year like it’s, like, valentime’s past or whatever.” his mouth twitched, but he didn’t chase the joke. “just… don’t let that be the last time. please.”
he was closer now, close enough that steve could see the tiny tremor in his hands. none of the usual performance was there; it was just eddie, raw and nervous, like he’d peeled himself down to the wire for this.
steve stared at him, then at the card, at the sign off, then back. “you’re really in love with me?” he asked, the words coming out smaller than he meant.
eddie huffed out a laugh that sounded like relief and terror tangled up. “yeah, man. have been for a while. did not plan on confessing via crooked heart project like im in fifth grade again, but.” he gestured weakly at the card. “my options were ‘show up’ or ‘keep replaying your face on that porch until my brain melts,’ so.”
there was a long, wobbly beat where steve could’ve said something sharp, could’ve twisted the knife just to make them even. instead, something in him finally uncoiled. he stepped forward, grabbed a fistful of eddie’s jacket, and kissed him.
it wasn’t smooth. their noses bumped, steve’s teeth clicked against eddie’s, and eddie let out a startled, undignified squeak against his mouth. steve’s heart hammered like he was back on the trailer step, only this time the door wasn’t between them. eddie recovered quick, hands coming up to cradle the back of steve’s neck, kissing him back like he’d been waiting for someone to hit play.
they broke apart on a shared breath, foreheads almost touching. eddie’s eyes were huge and stupidly soft, his grin a little stunned. “so is that a yes,” he murmured, “or do i need to bring, like, three more cards? maybe a whole construction paper bouquet?”
steve rolled his eyes, but his mouth wouldn’t stop trying to smile. he tapped the edge of the card against eddie’s chest. “it’s a ‘don’t ever slam a door on me like that again,’” he said. “and… yeah. it’s a yes.”
eddie let out a breath like he’d been holding it since yesterday and just folded himself around steve, arms wrapping tight. steve went without a fight, letting his cheek press into eddie’s shoulder, the leftover ache in his chest finally starting to fade under the warmth and the steady thump of eddie’s heart against him.
“happy valentimes, harrington,” eddie mumbled into his hair. Keeping up with the purposeful mispronunciation.
steve snorted, voice muffled against denim. “you’re never letting me live that down.”
“nope.” eddie squeezed him, card crinkling slightly between them. “it’s a good thing. means i get to keep it.” he tipped his chin against steve’s head, a little reverent. “and you.”