Howdy Partner

This is what he gets for imagining the guy in a wet T-shirt. Sure, now an Iron Maiden logo clings to Eddie’s chest, and his nipple ring is fully visible through the gray fabric as he climbs out of the pool, chuckling about being a total klutz. But instead of enjoying the show, Steve is left standing there, soaked in guilt and embarrassment, wondering whether hosting a poolside cookout was really a good idea.

The fact is, this isn’t the first time Steve’s powers have gone haywire when Eddie was around. It’s just like the situation with the lifeguard; things move when they shouldn’t, usually causing some kind of trouble for Eddie. Items will disappear completely, only to show up in the most obvious place—something that’s caused Eddie to linger at Steve’s house more than once, searching for his keys or his wallet.

And then there are the dreams. Beautiful, vivid dreams that have been haunting Steve for weeks. Dreams of himself and Eddie, always with very little plot or substance. They can be sweet, mundane, or sexy—dancing in some misty forest or making out on a twilit balcony. The unifying feature is that he wakes up from each one levitating a couple feet over the mattress, only to come crashing down when he realizes he’s alone in his bedroom instead of doing something like spooning Eddie in an oceanside bungalow.

He can take the dreams. They’re fine, involuntary floating and all. At least they don’t inconvenience his friend. Or, as in this case, drench him in pool water right as they’re about to eat.

Oblivious to the hand Steve played in it, Eddie approaches him for a solution to his water problem. “You got any clothes I can borrow?”

Steve swallows the lump in his throat and manages, “Uh, yeah. Help yourself, man.” He gestures toward the house, thankful Eddie knows where to find his room. It means he won’t have to show him the way and end up magicking the wet clothes away as soon as they make it inside.

No! Don’t think about that. Steve squeezes his eyes shut, desperate to clear the image from his mind. Don’t think don’t think don’t think—

He lets out a relieved sigh when he hears the back door open and close without anybody shrieking in surprise at any sudden nudity.

“Are you alright?” Robin asks. She hovers nearby, holding a bag of chips and eyeing him suspiciously.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” he lies.

She shakes her head, disbelieving, but lets it rest for the time being. Steve knows he’s in for it later, though.

Over the course of the next hour, he might have been able to put the incident from his mind if it weren’t for the fact that Eddie is wearing his clothes.

No, it’s worse than that. When he’d told Eddie to help himself to his wardrobe, he hadn’t considered the possibility of him returning to the party in the tiniest pair of running shorts he owns. If he didn’t know any better, Steve would think he did it on purpose.

The one blessing is that Eddie’s ass isn’t quite as round as Steve’s, so he doesn’t fill out the shorts the same way—at least, not in the back. But that’s more than made up for by the top he chose: an old cutoff T-shirt, the sleeves and sides butchered long ago for the sake of not overheating on a midsummer run. It was a more logical choice than the shorts, sure; Eddie owns a few cutoffs of his own, though they seem to serve a more aesthetic purpose than a functional one. That doesn’t change the way every summer breeze or wild gesticulation teases Steve with a glimpse of inked skin or the silver flash of that godforsaken nipple ring.

He has to know what he’s doing, right?

Regardless of any conscious choice on Eddie’s part, Steve has found it impossible to focus on anything else. He can feel Robin’s eyes on him in turn, either teasing him about ogling their friend or begging him to do something about it. He can’t tell which it is without acknowledging her, which he patently refuses to do.

As sunset approaches, someone suggests they start up a fire. It may be his house, but Steve lets his guests handle it. The last thing he should be doing right now is messing with an open flame.

He should know by now that his powers aren’t that easy to evade.

Around the fire pit, he sits as far from Eddie as he can, not realizing his mistake until he lifts his head and sees Eddie directly across from him in the circle. He feels his eyes go wide, and he knows he must look like he just saw a ghost, because Eddie’s grin fades, and he cocks his head.

“You okay?” He mouths it silently, so as not to interrupt Dustin and Lucas’s animated argument over whose chosen nerd character would win in a hypothetical fight.

Steve isn’t sure how to answer. He purses his lips and nods slightly, praying it comes across as casual.

Eddie’s grin returns, and he nods back.

With a steadying breath, Steve risks a glance at Robin. Sure enough, her gaze is fixed on him, equal parts knowing and frustrated.

It’s not that simple, Rob, he tells her in his mind. Hypocritical, given his harping on her pining after Vickie—but it’s the truth. There’s no telling what might happen if he worked up the nerve to tell Eddie how he feels, only for him to say they’re better as friends. He has a hard enough time controlling his magic’s emotional responses without outright rejection.

He looks past the fire again. Eddie has joined in the discussion, pointing out the holes in Dustin’s logic. He’s smiling wide and throwing his head back to laugh, putting his neck on display. Steve wishes he could leap across their circle and kiss it. He wants to wrap his arms around him and hold him close, just like in those gravity-defying dreams. The borrowed outfit is one thing, but there’s something extra attractive about Eddie’s laughter.

He’s too hot for his own good, Steve thinks.

Which is a dangerous thought to have while they’re sitting around a fucking campfire.

Suddenly, the flames between them start to shudder and lean unnaturally toward Eddie. At first, he’s too engrossed in the conversation to notice. He doesn’t seem to register what’s happening.

It’s not until Max shouts, “Dude, you’re on fire!” that he even stops talking.

He opens his mouth to shoot a snarky reply her way, but it snaps shut again as his nose twitches—no doubt picking up the subtle shift from wood smoke to burning cotton.

The panic starts a moment later. Eddie’s shirt smolders at the neckline, like someone held a match to it. He slaps at it fruitlessly while everyone scrambles for something to douse it. Dustin and Mike both toss their drinks at him and miss spectacularly. Robin runs off for a bucket, but she and Steve both know the closest one is in the garage.

None of it matters. Before Robin is more than a few steps away, there’s a wild splash as Eddie ends up in the goddamn pool again.

Steve rushes to the edge and looks down just as he did earlier, with eyes wide and cheeks aglow with chagrin. As much as he wants to play the hero for putting out the fire, he didn’t know what he was doing this time any more than he did before. In the same fog of terror as everyone else, he just happened to remember they were standing next to the pool, and his unconscious mind happened to be able to do something about it from several feet away.

His unconscious mind also happened to cause the terror in the first place, but at least it corrected itself.

Everyone falls silent. They stare at Eddie while he spits and coughs, a blue ghost in the glow of the pool lights. Worry rolls off of everyone in suffocating waves.

Finally, Eddie sweeps curtains of wet hair out of his face and quips, “Well, Stevie…you got any more threads I can borrow?”

Steve can’t take it. Eddie is looking up at him in the aftermath of being tossed into the pool by phantom hands again—not to mention being set on fire—and he’s giggling. There’s an easy smile on his face, like this is exactly where he expected to end up tonight.

The whole situation is too absurd for Steve to handle, so he does the only thing he can think to do. Without a word, he walks past his friends, around the edge of the pool, and into the woods behind his house.

The trees are hatefully gorgeous tonight, with fireflies flashing among the branches. Normally, it’s Steve’s favorite thing to witness in the early summer—dark boughs glittering with little yellow pinpricks of light—but right now it feels more like a crowd of rabid paparazzi, there to snap a picture of him at his lowest.

His legs carry him down the familiar path he used to take when he was little, after his dad pissed him off and he would threaten to run away. He isn’t sure how long he’s been walking, but he recognizes his surroundings when he stops and looks around, so he can’t have gone too far.

He leans against the trunk of a sturdy beech and puts his head in his hands. Things have gotten so far out of hand. It only took three months of friendship for Steve to start pining so hard that he can’t go more than a couple hours without causing some kind of ruckus.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters.

“I’ll say,” a familiar voice chirps, and Steve’s lungs stop working.

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

Eddie becomes more visible as he approaches on the path, holding up his hands and raising his eyebrows. “Just looking for you, man. Figured you probably shouldn’t be out in the woods by yourself.”

Steve scoffs. If anything, he’s probably the safest creature out here.

Eddie frowns. He hasn’t changed out of his soaked clothes; they cling to his frame like a second skin.

Steve looks away before his mind can betray him and mumbles, “I can take care of myself.”

“Sure you can. Am I not allowed to be worried about you anyway?” Eddie’s attempt at levity is transparent. It also happens to be exactly what Steve loves about him.

“Of course you are,” he snaps, unable to contain his frustration.

“Damn. And here I was thinking I was breaking the rules. What’s this gonna do to my reputation?”

Steve’s jaw twitches. He stares at the forest floor.

It must tip Eddie off to a deeper hurt, one he won’t be able to fix by joking around. Because after a silent moment, his voice is too serious when he asks, “Stevie, you’ve been weird all day. I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”

Through clenched teeth, Steve says, “I can’t.”

“You can’t, or you don’t want to?”

“Oh, I want to. You can believe that.” He still stares at the ground. It’s hardly visible in the dark, but he swears he sees the dry dirt in front of him swirling like a little tornado.

“Then can you at least tell me why you can’t tell me?”

“Because you wouldn’t believe me!” he explodes. At the same time, the ground shakes beneath their feet.

It startles him enough to meet Eddie’s gaze, which he finds just as shocked. Though he’d raised his voice, it hadn’t been near loud enough to cause a tremor like that.

There’s a heavy pause between the outburst and Eddie’s pointed reply: “Try me.”

Steve swallows. “I, uh…okay. It’s gonna sound nuts, so just…promise you’ll let me finish before you say anything.”

“I promise,” Eddie says with a solemn nod.

“Okay,” Steve repeats. He takes a deep breath, then launches into the spiel his mom gave him after the first incident at Hawkins pool. “There’s this…thing in my family. Not the Harringtons, but my mom’s family. Apparently for every generation there’s a kid who ends up with magical powers.” He stops to add, “It’s a lot like how El can move things with her mind and remote travel, but…different.”

“Different how?” Eddie asks, then, remembering his promise, mutters, “Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says. “It’s hard to say. I guess it’s more like magic than the shit they were doing at Hawkins Lab.” With a grimace, he goes on, “Whatever. Maybe it’s the same. The point is, I got these powers from my mom, and I can’t control ’em, and that’s why I’m acting weird.”

Eddie lets the words settle for a moment before tilting his head expectantly. “That’s all?”

Steve bites his lip and nods.

“Hm.” Eddie stares at him with narrowed eyes for an uncomfortably long time. Then he purses his lips and declares, “I don’t believe you.”

“I swear it’s true,” Steve protests. “When I was in middle school, my mom told me—”

“No, not that,” Eddie interrupts, impatient. “I mean I don’t believe that’s the whole story.”

Steve feels his face get hot. “Oh.”

“So?” Eddie’s voice is soft, and he takes a step into Steve’s space, not letting him look away. “What’re you leaving out?”

“Nothing,” he fibs.

“So it’s a total coincidence,” Eddie continues, moving even closer, “that you always act the strangest right after something strange happens to me?”

“Maybe.”

“And that those strange things seem to only happen to me?”

Steve blinks as the truth dawns on him. He should’ve known Eddie would figure it out on his own—he’s never been very subtle with his crushes, even when they don’t have him throwing anyone in the pool. And yet…Eddie’s not backing off. He’s not running away.

In a moment of either weakness or faith (he can’t decide which), Steve closes the short distance between them and presses his lips to Eddie’s. He’s so delighted to feel him kissing back that he barely notices his feet leaving the ground. He’s not surprised they do; this is just like one of his dreams.

Eddie lets out a small, startled laugh when he notices they’re in the air. He breaks away from the kiss to glance at the ground, then smiles at Steve. “If you like me that much, you should’ve just said so.”