#one plot complication down

“Most of it’s for your room-” wait, what “-so it’s not very uh- accessible to you right now, but-" Steve pointedly doesn’t look at Eddie as he reaches into the bag. “I thought that for now you might at least like this.”

Eddie’s breath catches on a disbelieving laugh as a fond warmth licks its way through his veins. He feels a bit dizzy with it, eyes caught on the familiar green and blue cover of the book held out in Steve’s hand.

Steve’s bought him a copy of The Hobbit.

“You bought me The Hobbit?” 

Steve’s hands drop the second Eddie grabs the book, looking strangely shy as a bit of color flushes into his tan cheeks. Eddie can’t bring himself to look away from it. “Figured you lost your other one and I knew how much it meant to you.” 

Eddie smiles softly, a finger mapping out the letters on the cover absentmindedly.

“Plus we never did finish it.” It’s said with a shrug but Steve’s entire frame is tense. It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to talking about them as in past them- Ozzy and Eddie them outside of an answer to a question or his very recent panic attack. It leaves Eddie truly and utterly floored, even more so than the book itself does or ever even could. Steve seems to take his stunned silence as rejection though, and not the wonder that it is. He squares his shoulders with an awkward breath of hissed laughter, gesturing over his shoulder and saying that he’s going to go make dinner like he didn’t just flip Eddie’s entire world upside down. Because-

Because-

Oh.

Oh. 

And it all finally clicks. Eddie finally begins to understand. 

Steve has missed him just as much.

It floors him but it doesn’t. Ozzy- Steve came back once before.

And now he’s here, and he sleeps behind Eddie each night just because he asked him to stay. 

“You asked me to stay. I’m staying.” 

And he has, and he does, and he's here, and-

“Hey, Steve?” He runs a thumb over the spine of the book, smiling as Steve stutters to a halt, his beautiful brown eyes looking through his honey-brown hair over his shoulder. Familiar, breathtaking.  “Thank you.”

Steve hesitates before he nods with a small smile, leaving Eddie alone with the olive branch he unknowingly, lovingly, most likely impulsively gave.

But all the same accepted- forgiveness trickling in. 

He opens the book with a fondness licking his bones as the sounds of Steve cooking begins to fill up the space around his heart. But instead of an empty cover he expected there’s a note in Steve’s own chicken scratch handwriting. 

Eddie, It reads. Thanks for not dying. 

He can’t help the smile that blooms over his lips, so wide it hurts as he looks back up to the spot Steve had stood. Huh. 

They’re supposed to be watching a movie, really Eddie is supposed to be watching a movie given that he’s the one to suggest the activity, but he’s not- and he doesn’t even feel a lick of guilt about it. Not when Steve Harrington is asleep next to him. 

This isn’t the first time Eddie’s seen Steve sleep, far from it actually, but this is the first time that he’s really paid attention. It’s funny how easy it was to ignore his own feelings when anger replaced anything good. And this- this is good. The lack of rage, the gentleness of them, the way Steve is facing him on the couch as if his eyes had been on Eddie when they slipped closed. The thought makes him feel giddy for reasons he’s known for years, a blush spreading unwatched over his face. He doesn’t feel embarrassed by it, dragging his knees onto the couch as his eyes trail from Steve’s own down his face. He halts there, feelings he doesn’t need to name tugging wildly at his heart as he watches Steve’s mouth form each breath. He wants to kiss him. Not for the first time. 

But this is the first that has knowledge and forgiveness behind it.

For a moment he lets himself wonder. He’s had Steve’s lips on his once before but that had been the first time his heart stopped. Steve had given him a broken rib for that too. He remembers neither, only of when others had told him so. For a moment he lets himself imagine. 

Steve’s lips look soft, the way they always have even in the hellscape that is the Upside Down. They look soft and pink, not like a girl, but something purely Steve. There’s a small freckle right above his top lip- just to the right of his nose. Eddie wants to kiss it- kiss him. He imagines those soft, Steve-pink lips against his own chapped ones- worried ones- scars on the inside from the number of times he chewed too hard while writing a campaign or a song. He imagines Steve leaning into it- far more experienced than Eddie in everything that matters. Sure, Eddie’s kissed people before- Sandy in elementary school in a dare from her friends, Rick that one mortifying time, Brian at the club, Richie- also at the club, but those had all been fleeting. And all except for Sandy, Eddie had been thinking about Steve. 

He imagines Steve swiping his tongue over Eddie’s bottom lip, tugging it between his teeth the same way Brian had done that made Eddie weak in the knees. He imagines threading his fingers through those honey-brown locs and tugging him closer until they’re both breathing heavy into each other’s mouths. He imagines that Steve tastes sweet, or maybe warm. If warm could be a taste. Eddie’s sure that if anyone could figure out how to taste as such it’d be Steve. 

God, he’s so in love with him.

And- well. This isn’t new either. He loved Ozzy, he’s always wanted Steve. And- well, they’re the same. 

Briefly, he remembers Steve's pained reaction when Eddie had asked to see him as a wolf, had asked to see Ozzy, and he all at once understands.

Steve thinks that Eddie separates him and Ozzy.

And he wasn’t wrong, not then that is. But Eddie gets it now.

When Steve wakes he’ll tell him. Make him know that he gets it. ‘I want to see you, all of you.’ 

I love you.

But- kissing. He really likes thinking about kissing. He imagines that Steve would take charge, pushing and pulling at Eddie until he’s a mess in his hands. Those strong hands that had carried him to safety, brought him back to life. He never did thank him for that, did he? Another thing for when he wakes. Steve sighs in his sleep and Eddie smiles, eyes trailing down his mole peppered neck to his chest. He’s wearing a shirt that can’t be described as anything other than soft. It’s rumbled, wrinkled, baby blue- perfect. 

But Eddie suspects that is only because Steve is the one wearing it.

His hand twitches as he imagines tangling his fingers into the fabric, pulling at Steve until their bodies no longer know space. He tries to imagine what Steve would sound breathless, realizing he hasn’t ever heard so before. Maybe the wolf part of him makes that hard to do, and his imagination takes a dangerous turn when he begins to wonder what all might make Steve breathless beneath him. He promptly turns his eyes away at that. 

The Hobbit stares up at him from the coffee table, right next to their empty plates and the reflection of the TV over the shine of it all. 

Next to him Steve sleeps, and Eddie loves.

He loves. 

He-

He remembers Steve’s and Robin’s conversation in the mobile home.

Part 37

___

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