Don’t ya, big boy?

But then while Jonathan’s going on about how hurting Lonnie would be a bad idea because what if he goes running his mouth about some girl with powers and gets you found and El’s like fine then I won’t use my powers to hurt him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. And Jonathan’s curious about what that means but isn’t going to ask. Will does though and that’s how Jonathan ends up driving them to a safe distance far down the street from Lonnie’s place to watch the pipes in Lonnie’s place burst and see him run out into the lawn upset before speeding off l before Lonnie can spot Jonathan or Will

My brain’s like why not start a third fic when I’ve just come back from a 3 year disappearance and haven’t updated anything yet

Eddie stops walking too at that. He completely misreads the deflection momentarily and asks “Wait, Harrington’s into guys?” but realizes it was not the thing to say when Nancy is visibly shocked and confused and asks “What?” So Eddie echoes “What?” to buy himself time to think of something better, just to only make things worse and more obvious when he adds “Let’s just pretend I didn’t say that” and then starts walking again and is glad when she does too and doesn’t say anything about it (or at all)

Meanwhile Robin and Steve were hanging back chattering together and happily bickering. They heard none of it until Nancy’s outburst that was loud enough to cut through their conversation, but then they blatantly listened in with their ears perked up in time to catch that last part of the interaction

They start exchanging glances because hold on they know another queer person? But also because is Steve into guys? He hadn’t realized Eddie was an option but one thing he’s sure into is attention and he’s been enjoying Eddie’s so does it really matter if he’s a guy instead?

So Steve’s visibly considering if he’s into guys and Robin’s visibly noticing something’s going on and trying to silently ask him what his face means with her face. And then Steve’s trying to figure out what her face means and they’re getting nowhere. But before they can sort anything out at that moment, Nancy yells at them to hurry up and catch up (partly because they really have fallen behind and now completely stopped walking and partly because she’s still not sure what to say to Eddie after that and can’t decide if it’s worse to play along and pretend she didn’t hear it or say something to try to make him less noticeably fidgety since he said it)

It’s not Eddie responding to bite me with actually biting Steve without a second thought that gets them suspicious though. Eddie does weird impulsive shit just because people wouldn’t expect it all the time. Sure, they think biting Steve is grosser than his usual stuff but they’re not reading anything into it beyond Eddie being Eddie and okay gross he’s pulling a whole vampire act at the cost of having to bite Steve until Eddie’s eyes go all wide as he realizes what he has done in front of the flock of children and he starts stammering something barely half coherent that mostly amounts to “I just…” with no actual context while visibly flustered