Something something modern AU where Steve has an onlyfans. It’s fun, he’s good at it and he makes decent money and he hasn’t told his friends outside of Robin mostly because he 100% believes they will go online and find him and start mocking him in his chat room.
So when Eddie’s at his place late one night and Steve tells him sure, you can stay over but you’re on the couch, I have stuff in the spare room, and yeah, Steve should have known better than to just go to bed right then but he was tired, it was late. So of course Eddie goes snooping and in the morning Steve finds himself having to explain why he’s got filming equipment and his laptop all set up in the spare room.
And Eddie sort of goes glassy when he explains and Steve wonders if — look, he wonders, ok, because it’s not like he doesn’t imagine that it’s Eddie that’s watching him when he does what he does.
But then Eddie kind of leaves in a rush and Steve thinks, well, shit, he hadn’t expected him to be a dick about it.
And it gets worse. Eddie keeps giving him the side eye, looking at him like he wants to say something but he doesn’t and Steve catches him standing in the doorway of the spare room staring at his setup with this look on his face and Steve starts to get annoyed. Because Eddie doesn’t get to disapprove, this is Steve’s choice and he’s not sorry about it. But any time they come near the topic Eddie looks all uncomfortable and changes the subject. There’s one day a few weeks later when Eddie’s got that look on his face like he’s just fucking — sad about Steve’s life choices or something, and Steve snaps.
“Will you just spit it out? Just say whatever it is you’re thinking so you can stop looking at me like that.”
And Eddie sighs. “Sorry. I am, I just — you did all this just, by yourself, huh? Didn’t tell anyone?”
Steve nods, says, “all by myself, yeah,” thinking that maybe Eddie’s upset that he was left out of some loop — but then he just looks sadder.
“I’m sorry. It’s like I don’t even know you any more.”
“I’ll get over it, I will, just —“ and he looks up at Steve all beseeching, wants him to understand. “I had to show you how to use emojis on your phone, Steve.”
“And that was only last year! And you remember what happened to your last laptop?”
Steve huffs. You make a small fire one time and no one ever lets you live it down.
“You still don’t understand how to use Uber and it was only a few weeks ago I had to walk you through how snapchat works again.”
Steve mouth opens and closes, astonished.
“But I —“ and here Eddie looks embarrassed, “I went looking, I, uh. Watched your show.” He’s flushed red now, and Steve’s stomach swirls and he wants desperately to know which show and whether Eddie liked it.
“You’ve got lighting, sound all hooked up. Webcams with — you’ve got multiple camera angles. When we FaceTime you can never even get your phone camera working.”
“Hey, it’s not that hard,” Steve protests, “those were plug and play.”
Eddie looks full on betrayed. “How do you even know what that means?”
“Just to be clear — you’re upset that I’m not totally technologically incompetent?”
“It's the foundation of our friendship. We only met because you needed to stop a stranger in the street to ask how to use google maps!"
Steve waves that away. "Did you like it? My show, did you like it?"
It takes some doing and some bluster but Eddie admits he really, deeply, thoroughly enjoyed the show and in no way limited himself to only watching once. Steve immediately offers him a private viewing.
