#read writes

The being a protective badass part, not all the other ones.

(The other parts Eddie was retroactively filing under “adorable,” and “cute.”)

The expression Steve got on his face when Eddie lobbed his battle vest at him was also priceless, so at that point Eddie figured, fuck it. What did he have to lose from some harmless flirting? The chances of him making it out the other side of this both alive and un-incarcerated were dwindling by the second, and it’s not like he ran any risk of things going anywhere. (Harrington might be a good dude, and alternate dimensions and monsters and superpowers apparently existed, but Steve Harrington being anything other than a straight man with Traditional American Values™ strained credulity—and the Munson Doctrine—far past any acceptable limit.) 

After all, if there was one thing that Eddie had actually learned from D&D, it was that a little bit of flirting and fun could take the sting out of any TPK.

🦇🦇🦇

If Steve was being honest with himself—which he’d been making a concerted effort to try to do since fall of ‘84—he could admit that his…jealousy…of Munson predated Dustin joining Hellfire. His whole climbing-on-cafeteria-tables schtick was kind of obnoxious, sure. But up until he’d wound up flunking his first try at senior year, Eddie'd had this sort of dorky-but-cool aura that Steve wished he was apathetic enough about other people’s opinions to achieve.

For a man who seemed to genuinely believe he was a coward, Eddie Munson was so…loudly and unapologetically himself. In Hawkins, Indiana—a place that quite literally wanted to kill him for how much of a freak he was. And, sure, some of that came down to the whole wanted-for-murder thing. But the man had also spent the better part of the past twelve hours flirting with a former jock—whom Eddie himself admitted to thinking was a douche up until a couple days ago!—so Steve had the sneaking suspicion that there was probably a corner of the town that already had it out for Munson long before Chrissy Cunningham’s body was found in his trailer.

And it wasn’t that Steve wanted to get into metal, or that Dragons game, or start wearing hand-printed t-shirts and attaching his wallet to a chain. He just wished that even after all the years of monsters, and government threats, and Russian torture, he didn’t still feel the need to hold himself to standards set by other people. 

If anyone was a coward, it was Steve.

And there was something kind of…nice—reassuring, even—about the fact that Eddie seemed to feel the same way—but in reverse—about him. Like together maybe they could take the bravest parts of the other and make them their own.

And underneath it all, Steve could admit, was the fact that Eddie was…pretty. 

So. Steve was having a bit of a crisis

“Robin, I’m having a crisis.” 

“We’re all having a crisis, dingus,” she shot back, slapping at his shoulder with the back of her hand.

“No— no, not that.” Steve started emptying one of the bottles of vodka they’d procured into the half-dead grass. “I’m talking about the whole—” Steve waved a hand over towards where Eddie and Dustin were horsing around. “The Eddie thing.”

“Oh, you mean the fact that he’s been blatantly flirting with you since you got eaten by bats?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, Robin, I’m talking about the blatant flirting.”

“And…why is that causing a crisis?”

Steve fish-mouthed at her. “B-because…” He leaned forward with a finger held aloft, ready to waggle it in her face. He paused. Frowned. “Well, because…” Steve threw up his hands. “I don’t know! A few days ago the man thought I was a douche. Literally just yesterday he was, like, hot-and-cold trying to throw me at Nancy, while also ogling my chest hair, and now he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and trying to get into my personal space? It doesn’t make sense, Robin!”

“Welcome to the club, buddy.” She raised her brows at him pointedly. And, yeah, that was fair, he guessed.

“And,” He started again, “And– I’ve also got Henderson insisting that I win Nancy back—he does seem to have finally dropped the whole are-you-secretly-dating-Robin thing, though, which—”

“Oh, thank god.”

“Yeah. But, on top of that Nancy has also been making eyes at me, but she’s still with Jonathan so I don’t know what to do about that. And it’s all just a mess, Robs! I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, well, that’s been true for ages, Stevie.”

“Thanks, Robin. That’s very helpful.”

“What? I’m just saying, if you’re going to tell me that I’ve got to ‘be myself,’ and put myself out on a limb with Vickie, while you’re out gallivanting with Helen or Jackie or whoever—”

“Heidi—”

“Whatever.” Robin waved her hand dismissively. “My point is: you keep throwing yourself at all of these girls who only know the old you—even if you’re trying to give them the new-and-improved model—and you haven’t even tried to go after a guy, and I think we both know why. And now you’ve hit the jackpot of what every tragic gay teenager in smalltown America can only dream of: you’ve got someone blatantly, and undeniably into you, who you also like back, and you’re telling me that you’re having a crisis? Need I remind you of the tableau we were treated to back at The War Zone?”

Steve sighed. “I know, Robs. You’re right.” Steve jammed a funnel into the neck of the bottle he was working on, and the two of them kept building molotov cocktails in the dying evening light, as Steve tried to reassure Robin that she still had a chance with Vickie—which she did, and Robin took his mind off his own impending disaster. But, if Steve had even a shadow of a chance of getting to hook up with a guy, Robin deserved to have a romance of her own. As much as Robin was afraid to see it, Steve was pretty sure he recognized that conflicted look Vickie’d had in her eyes when she’d spotted Robin in the store. There was something there, he was sure of it.

But maybe Vickie was like him. Maybe she’d only just learned this new thing about herself. Robin—and presumably Eddie—had had at least a couple of years to sit with this knowledge about themselves and come to terms with it. But for Steve (and Vickie?) it was still so scarily and terribly new. With girls, Steve knew how to play the field. He knew what was expected of him—what role he had to fill. But with Eddie a guy, all the rules went out the window; all of his scripts: useless. He’d have to start from scratch, and build something completely different from anything he’d been taught to want or expect before.

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, though. Because Robin was right: they had more important things—end-of-the-world shaped things—to worry about. His love life could wait. Eddie could wait.

They all just needed to make it out of there alive.

🎸🎸🎸

Eddie survived. 

They won.

Eddie survived, and so did everyone else, and they won.

Eddie kept repeating it to himself, because he couldn’t quite believe it. 

He couldn’t make heads or tails of the fact that in the end running away was exactly what he needed to do to make sure they all made it out in one piece—more or less. 

He’d walked right out of hell with nothing more to show for it than a few scratches up his sides, and a ring of bruises ‘round his neck. In the end, Steve was the only person other than Red who needed a hospital stay of any kind, because what would have been manageable wounds on day one, had become life-threatening after days of infection and improper care.

A future in a state penitentiary also seemed to be out of the cards. There was probably nothing any of them could say or do to convince the general Hawkins populace of his innocence, but Dr. Owens and his ilk had crafted a cover story believable enough to win over Powell and Callahan, at least. More to the point, though: all charges had officially been dropped, and the case was closed.

Now there was just the mortifying process of figuring out how to move on. Or at least forward. 

That was the part you didn’t see in movies. No one showed the recovery. Because what was so interesting about watching someone pull their life and body back together? As though healing wasn’t just as much a part of the story as the falling apart.

Eddie wasn't ashamed to admit that it was driving him a bit mad. Because these kids all seemed to be seasoned veterans at it. They hadn't just snapped back to their relatively-easy-going-but-bitchy baselines by any means—Lucas and Dustin especially seemed incredibly subdued in response to the extent of Max's and Steve's injuries, respectively—but they moved around one another with a care and familiarity that spoke to years of experience. 

“How did you do this?” Eddie scrubbed a hand through his hair, yanking at the roots. He and Robin were posted by Steve's bedside—he still spent most of his days semi- to unconscious. And while Eddie didn’t necessarily think it made a whole lot of sense for him to be spending more time at Steve’s bedside than the kids did, Robin was only ever dragged away from him kicking and screaming, and as the newest member of the apocalypse posse above the age of twelve, he was in desperate need of her guidance.

“How’d I do what?” Her typically-raspy voice sounded paper thin, and there were deep, dark circles under both eyes.

“I don’t know—!” Eddie flapped a frantic hand around, like he could manifest words and meaning into being. Something about it made the corners of Robin’s mouth twitch up. “Any of it? You–you dealt with a flesh monster, apparently, and you’re just...walking around on two feet, probably ready to graduate—which is more than I could guarantee for myself—”

“Hey, you will—”

“Not the point, Buckley! The point is, up until this new bout of freaky shit popped into existence, you seemed like you were walking around Hawkins without a care in the world. So how’d you do it? What’s your secret?”

Robin scoffed. “If you think I was walking around without being terrified every day, you either weren’t paying attention, or you’re a lot less smart than I gave you credit for, Munson.”

Eddie grimaced. “Sorry, sorry. That’s not what I meant, I just…you seem like you managed to pull yourself back together—whereas I feel seconds away from total collapse.”

“Yeah, that’s not just a you thing.” Robin twisted one of her rings around her finger. “But you wanna know what kept me upright? It was Steve. I don’t think I would have made it through the last eight months without him. And I know he’s gonna be alright, but I am still terrified that something will happen and he’ll get ripped away from me.”

Eddie frowned. He didn’t think he’d been picking up on those kinds of vibes between Harrington and Buckley, but the way she spoke about him… “Are the two of you, like, a thing?”

Robin barked out a laugh. “No! Not at all. I mean, he is the most important person in my life, and I would both kill and die for him. But, like, in a normal, platonic way.”

“...I’ll take you at your word for the ‘platonic’ part, but there is absolutely nothing normal about what you just said. You two are freaky for each other.”

Robin giggle-snorted, and it scrunched her nose up in a way that filled Eddie with warmth. Despite everything about his…everything, he’d never been short on friends—but it always felt nice to find another one. “Yeah, yeah I guess we are.”

“Mmm…Bobbie? ‘Zat you?” The beeping of Steve’s heart monitor picked up a little speed, and the man in question’s eyelids fluttered open. Robin immediately unraveled from the folded-up position she’d adopted in the hospital chair, and reached out to take his hand into her own. 

“Yeah, Stevie, it’s me.”

Steve squeezed her hand, before his eyes started scanning the room—going wide when they landed on Eddie. “Oh. Eddie.” A light pink flush broke over his face, and he averted his gaze almost as quickly as he met Eddie’s. That kept happening whenever Steve woke up, and Eddie didn’t know what to make of it, but it always left him off-kilter in a way he didn’t want or know how to put a name to. He always took it as his cue to leave.

“Well,” he started, with forced cheer, and a shit-eating grin. He pushed himself up from the chair and dusted off his knees. “I’m gonna leave you two lovebirds to catch up,”

“Not lovebirds—” Steve slurred, at the same time Robin exclaimed, “Ew, Munson!”

Eddie just cackled and sauntered off with a jaunty salute.

🦇🦇🦇

Steve felt like he was losing his mind. 

He'd been out of the hospital for a few weeks now, but he almost wished he was back there, because every waking second was just a never ending parade of pain and confusion. 

Fuck, why did almost dying always hurt so much?

The upside of being awake and ambulatory, was that Eddie had finally stopped running out of the room whenever Steve was awake for longer than two seconds. The down side—which was unfortunately directly connected to the aforementioned upside—was that Eddie was being weird.

And, okay, Steve had an admittedly shallow pool of evidence from which to draw his comparisons from. But the fact remained that Eddie’s behavior towards him pre- and post-Vecna-slaying were worlds’ apart. And he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d tried everything: playing coy, bringing him small gifts, finding excuses to talk to him one-on-one when the rest of the group was gathered together. But none of it seemed to work.

What Steve wanted was to just be able to rock up to the trailer with a bouquet of flowers and ask him out to a night at Enzo’s. But even without the whole recently-wanted-for-murder thing, the two of them going out on what was obviously a date in Hawkins was not only a bad idea, but actively dangerous. And without his typical romance rituals to fall back on, Steve was at a loss as to how to proceed, when the object of his affection was acting so damnably fickle.

“I just don’t get it, Rob. One minute he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and getting all up close and personal, and the next he’s looking like I killed his cat!”

“You have got to stop using other people’s trauma as analogies for your love life, babe.”

Steve waved a hand. “Mrs. Henderson’s not here.”

Robin threw up her hands. “And that makes it okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Fine, whatever.” Robin ruffled her hair in frustration. “Maybe he’s just nervous!”

“Nervous! Why would he be nervous?”

“I don’t know, Steve. Why are you nervous?”

“Because I like him, and I don’t want to get hurt again!” Steve shouted, startling himself by the force with which the words came tumbling out.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Steve sighed. “I mean, it’s not just that, though, it’s…” Steve waved a hand into the open air between them. “I don’t know how to do this, you know? If this was a girl, I’d be thinking ‘oh, she’s playing hard to get—’”

“I can’t believe that’s a real thing people do,” Robin deadpanned.

“I mean, sometimes it really is just that they don’t like you—except that then they don’t keep trying to, like, hang out and joke with you—which Eddie does, he’s just hopelessly awkward about it.”

“Steve. Eddie is a hopelessly awkward person. It’s like a defining character trait.”

“Well he wasn’t with me.” Steve wiped a hand over his face and groaned. “I’m just nervous I misread the whole thing, you know? And if I did, and I ask him the wrong thing in the wrong way…what if he doesn’t want to see me again? Like, at all?”

Robin reached out and took his hand. “I hate that you have to know what that feels like,” she said, soft and careful. “But even in the wild event that Eddie is either a: entirely straight, or b: just not into you, I don’t think there’s any version of him that wouldn’t want to talk to you at all. So you should ask him out.”

“Okay, Rob,” Steve sighed. “Only on one condition, though.”

“Oh, no. Ohhhh, no you don’t—”

“You’ve gotta ask out Vickie,” Steve finished, holding out his hand with a smirk.

“Uggggh, fine. Deal.”

🎸🎸🎸

Steve was acting weird.

He’d been acting weird since getting discharged from the hospital—acting all shy and blushy one second, and then turning around and bringing him a new set of dice the next—but it’d really been cranked up to eleven for the past week.

And, look, Eddie knew he was new to the monsters-are-real crew. He knew that in order to make space for him they had to alter whatever their established dynamics were to fit him into them. But that didn’t account for the fact that all of a sudden Steve seemed to be completely unable to string two sentences together in front of him. 

Maybe the two of them weren’t quite friends yet, but he missed the ease with which they’d been able to talk and be honest with each other only a couple of weeks ago. Hell, they’d had more chemistry together down in the Upside Down.

Oh.

Oh, fuck. 

Maybe that had been the problem all along. Maybe Steve had finally clocked his doomsday-flirting for what it was, and was trying to establish boundaries. Eddie thought he’d pulled back since they'd all crawled out of hell—broken, but alive. As soon as the danger was clear there was no reason to play the bit anymore, right? It’s not like his flirtation attempts had ever been more than a way to liven up what had been an unmitigated shitstain of an experience. Sure, Harrington was pretty, and nice—and there was clearly more to him than met the eye. Eddie had really enjoyed getting to know him over the course of the past few weeks. He wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, if he was being honest. But it looked like the door was closing on that chance if he didn’t straighten things out.

“Hey, Harrington?”

“I thought I told you to call me Steve, Munson.”

Eddie smiled his ‘malicious compliance’ smile and clasped his hands behind his back, rocking onto his heels as he said. “Alright: Steeeve.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but there was a little smile on his face that belied the general bitchiness of the rest of his demeanor. “What do you want, Eddie?”

Eddie spread his hands out in front of him like he was unfurling a map into the air between them. “Just figured I ought to clear the air.”

Steve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You know—the whole reason you’ve been all weird around me lately? I figured it’d be best if I put all of my cards on the table.”

The frown dropped off of Steve’s face—replaced by an expression that Eddie couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t…bad? There was no apprehension to be found there. Steve looked almost expectant. Hopeful, maybe. Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense—but Harrington didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so maybe Eddie was just misreading whatever he was seeing there. 

“You know it was all just in good fun, right? That it didn’t mean anything?”

The frown returned. “What are you talking about?”

“Back in the Upside Down. You know I was just messing with you, right, man? Just a bit of good ol’ fashioned I’m-about-to-die flirting, you know? Nothing to get all worked up about.” Eddie kept a wide smile fixed in place, tried to really lean into the whole ‘non-threatening gay guy’ vibe—an uphill battle for him, specifically on one of his best days. He’d do jazz hands if it’d help sell the performance any better. But each word out of his mouth felt more like a lie than the one before.

A thin fissure appeared on Steve’s face—a crack that Eddie could almost see through, but not enough to be able to make any sense of what was on the other side. “Oh,” Steve said. His voice was shaking and Eddie couldn’t figure out why. It set off alarms in the part of his brain that was always primed to run at the first sign of danger. “So you’re…not gay?”

Eddie frowned in confusion. Of all the ways he thought Steve might react, that was not one of them. So Eddie forced a laugh, trying to disarm the question. “Oh no, I am a flaming homosexual. I just want to make sure you know that doesn’t mean I’m interested in you.”

The frown slid off of Steve’s face, and the fissure smoothed itself away like it’d never been there. The Steve standing before him was blank-faced as a statue, and it made Eddie want to puke. In all his worrying about Steve being uncomfortable with the idea that Eddie was hitting on him, specifically, he’d entirely forgotten to be worried about Steve being straight up homophobic. At least he wasn’t throwing punches. That was something, right? But Steve was looking at him with such a totalizing coldness behind his eyes that Eddie felt like he’d been left out to sea. 

Steve gave a stiff nod. “Right, of course not,” he said, but the words came out wooden. He threw a thumb over one shoulder and twisted on his heel, back toward the beemer. “I’ll just…I gotta go.”

And then Harrington turned his back to him, and walked away.

Eddie didn’t have a crush on Steve.

So why did it hurt so much to watch him leave?

⛵⛵⛵

Robin sped down the stairs when she heard the banging at the door. There weren’t many people who would bother turning up on her doorstep unannounced. Even fewer who would make such a concerted effort to try to knock it down with the force of their pounding fists.

She swung the door open to find a tear-stained Steve standing before her.

“What happened?” She gasped out. Was it back? It couldn’t be back. El and Will had both sworn on pain of death that it was over. Maybe there was a new horror in town? Maybe Nancy had gone missing? Or Dustin? One of the other kids? Maybe Eddie? 

Steve cut off the racing of her thoughts with a sobbing gasp. “Nothing, Robs.” Somehow, he looked worse than he had after the Russians. His head was hung low, and Robin could swear there was a shadow of phantom-bruising around his eyes. Like he’d been emotionally decked in the face. He took a step forward to come inside at the same moment that she took him by the wrist and yanked him across the threshold.

“What do you need?”

“Bathroom,” was all he said. And then Steve swapped his-wrist-in-hers for her-wrist-in-his and he pulled her further into her own house, toward the second-floor bathroom. When they reached it, Robin plopped down on the floor with her back against the tub while Steve took up his position with his back pressed up against the toilet bowl.

“What happened?” She whispered.

Steve was silent for a long stretch of time. He turned his head to the side, as though he was trying to look out of the small frosted window high up on the wall beside him. “He doesn’t want me.”

“Who? What? What are you talking about, Steve?”

Steve turned back to face her. “Eddie. He doesn’t want me.” Steve no longer sounded sad—he sounded vacant.

Robin’s nose scrunched up like she’d smelled something wrong, because that didn’t make sense. Robin might not be good at clocking other gay people—she wasn’t that good at reading people, period—but it’s not like Eddie’s flirting with Steve had been subtle. And even beyond that, he was always looking at Steve while he was asleep in the hospital bed, in a way that Robin thought meant something… There was just no way that Eddie didn’t have at least a little bit of a crush on Steve, right? So what had he said to make Steve so certain about that he didn’t? “How d’you know that?”

Steve laughed, half-hysterical, as he tipped his head back onto the lid of the toilet. “He said it didn’t mean anything—the flirting.” Steve wiped a hand clear across the length of his face—chin to forehead—before digging his fingers into his hair. He laughed again. Or—it was more a puff of air, than anything else. And there was definitely no humor behind it. Just a bitter kind of resignation. “And then—he said—he told me he was gay, but that he just wanted me to know that it doesn’t mean he’s interested in me.” Steve covered his face with both hands and let out a broken sob. “God, he and Nance should compare notes.”

Robin could feel the lines carving an angry space between her eyebrows, and a fire in her heart. How dare he? Maybe Robin had misread Eddie's whole vibe toward Steve—but how dare he just trample all over and discard his heart like that? It didn’t make sense—but it was happening, and she had to fix it, because no one was allowed to break her other half. 

“Hey Stevie?” She asked, trying to keep her tone light.

“Yeah?”

“Where do you keep your little nail bat nowadays?”

🎸🎸🎸

Let it not be said that Eddie Munson didn’t know how to pull off a top-tier wallow. Ozzy’s pleading vocals were pouring out the speakers, while Eddie was laid star-fished out on the mattress, staring at the ceiling like it might give him answers, and torturing himself with the memory of Steve Harrington biting into the tail of a hell-bat.

Is it me or is it you?

Things are so much different now

But nothing lasts forever

He really should have known that whatever kind of rapport he and Harrington had going was too good to be true. Once a rich dickhead jock, always a rich dickhead jock, right? He almost felt bad thinking that. But what else was he supposed to think? The second Steve Harrinton had found out he was gay he’d turned his back on him. That was pretty cut and dry.

A loud banging at the trailer door cut through his thoughts and over the sound of Ozzy singing looks and glances can't repair, talking could if we'd just dare.

Eddie had half a mind to just ignore it, but there were even odds that it was one of the UD Crew as it was a member of Hawkins’ resident angry mob. So Eddie peeled himself off the bed, leaving Ozzy blaring behind him, and yanked open the door. “What—?” He started, but came up short when he registered an absolutely livid Robin Buckley staring back at him.

Eddie hadn’t thought to take into consideration the idea that the person at the door might be a UD Crew member taking up the role of angry mob members. But Robin Buckley was standing on his stoop looking half-ready to commit a murder. The second the door was open, she shoved past him and into the trailer.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Munson?”

“Wh-what are you talking about, Buckley?” Covering his face with a piece of hair wasn’t enough—he wanted to melt into the floor. Had Steve really sent Robin to beat him up for being gay? That was some next level gymnastics in avoiding making physical contact with another man so that you don't seem gay.

Robin yanked at her hair and started pacing around the common area, glaring daggers into the floor (but thankfully not at him). “What am I talking about, he asks! You really are a medical grade idiot, aren’t you?”

“I—”

“No, shut up, I don’t want to hear it.” Robin abruptly swung around on her heel to rush at him and jab a finger into his chest. “You broke Steve’s heart. And I don’t care if you were never into him—because I know that you can’t help who you like, or love—but you had no right to be so fucking cruel about it!”

A penny dropped.

“Robin. What are you talking about?”

Steve was heartbroken? That didn’t make any sense. He should have been relieved, he should have—

Robin laughed, hysterical, and threw her hands into the air. “I am talking about the fact that you told my best friend who has been pining over you for fucking weeks that all of the very obvious flirting you’ve been doing ‘didn’t mean anything,’ and that you just had to let him know that you weren’t interested in him specifically.” Robin paused to take a deep breath and kept barreling on. “And I get not wanting to lead someone on, Eddie—but even I know that was the least tactful way you could have gone about letting him down.”

Eddie shook his head, backing up toward the nearest wall like a cornered animal, because what Robin was saying didn’t make any sense. “I— I don’t—I mean, I do like him. I thought he didn’t like me! I thought he was straight!”

That brought Robin up short. Her shoulders remained set into a tense line, and her brow was still furrowed in distrust, but some of the unrelenting ire slipped away. “You didn’t—? Did he not—? What the fuck, Stevie!” The last part Robin muttered under her breath.

“Did he not, what, Buckley?”

“He didn’t ask you out?”

“No. What? Was he planning to?”

“Yes, numb nuts! Steve’s been trying to ask you out for weeks! I mean I guess mostly this past week—but that’s because before then he’d just been trying to beam the knowledge directly into your head through your thick skull.”

“Oh, shit.” Eddie’s heart dropped into his stomach as the full ramifications of what he’d said caught up to him.

“Yeah, ‘oh, shit,’ Munson.”

“Buckley—” Eddie rushed over to clap both of his hands onto Robin’s shoulders. “Robin. I’ve gotta fix this.”

Robin rolled her eyes. They were still creased at the corners, but the rest of her seemed to have softened a bit. “Yeah, you do,” she said—all low and serious. “You’re gonna have to fucking grovel.”

Eddie nodded. “Can you help me?”

Robin narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But let me make one thing fucking clear, Munson: I am doing this for Steve, not you, capiche? You put one toe out of line and I’ll go to the Wheeler house and grab one of Nancy’s guns.”

Eddie held up his hands in placating surrender. “Message received, loud and clear.”

Robin nodded, satisfied.

Eddie grinned back. “Let’s go get my man.”

~*~*~*~

Eddie wanted to die. Nope, no, he wanted to commit a homicide. 

Actually, scratch that, being wanted for murder sucked.

What he wanted was for the world not to be full of a bunch of entitled little shitsacks who had never been taught how to talk to another human being who didn't have a white collar around their neck.

At least his bed was there to support him. The mattress was a little lumpy, sure, but nothing could outmatch the satisfaction of dramatically flinging oneself onto a flat surface after a shity day at work. 

The sound of running bath water filtered into Eddie's awareness. 

Okay, maybe one thing.

Steve usually allowed him a few minutes to sulk and brood when he got home feeling like shit. Sometimes interacting with any human (even someone he would literally—and nearly did—die for) was just too much. 

"Eds?"

"Mmph." Eddie spit some of the hair that had landed in his mouth out, but didn't bother to raise his head more than half an inch off the bed to do so.

Steve chuckled. "Okay, five more minutes—otherwise the water will get too cold. I'm gonna go make us some tea."

Eddie raised an arm and waved vaguely in the direction of Steve's voice in acknowledgement.

He let himself drift for his five minutes to the sound of Steve puttering around the kitchen—grabbing mugs, teabags, the sugar jar—before peeling himself up off the bed when the shrill whistle of the kettle pierced through the relative silence of the apartment. If he wasn't in the bath by the time Steve made it there he'd be in trouble. Which could be fun, but it wasn't what he was in the mood for today. 

Eddie stripped off his—itchy, sweaty, suffocating—uniform as he padded over to the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes behind him as he went.

~*~*~*~

Steve waltzed back into the bathroom with two steaming mugs in his hand to find Eddie already situated in the tub, knees pulled up under his chin, hair piled up in a messy bun, and one hand dragging lazily across the surface of the water. 

Steve set both mugs down on the ground next to the bath. "Hey, baby," he murmured, pressing a kiss to his boyfriend’s temple.

"Hi." Eddie's voice was low and subdued.

“Bad day?” Steve asked as he pulled his shirt up and over his head.

Eddie shrugged. “You could say that.”

“Wanna talk about it?” Steve shucked off his jeans.

Eddie shook his head. “Not much to talk about.”

“Okay.” Steve folded his clothes, set them in a neat stack atop the closed toilet lid, and carefully lowered himself into the bath behind Eddie.

The water was just a touch too hot for his own comfort, but Eddie ran cold and preferred his baths on the scalding warmer side. (Shared showers were a trial. Eddie insisted that Steve was trying to murder him with frostbite. Steve maintained that Eddie was trying to boil the both of them alive.)

Some of the tension had already bled out just from being in the bath. Eddie’s shoulders were no longer curled up around his ears—instead, he was slouched forward into the water. 

Steve wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist and pressed a kiss to the patchy birthmark high up on his back, smiling when Eddie responded with a humming little sigh. “Wash my hair?” he asked.

“Sure thing, Eds.”

Steve reached over to grab the shampoo and tiny bucket they left in the shower just for this. “Wanna drink some of your tea before I douse you?”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but reached out blindly to grab one of the steaming mugs next to the tub. Steve didn’t bother holding back a snort that he’d managed to grab the “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Crabby” mug they’d nicked from Wayne. 

Eddie took a slow sip of the tea, and the second he’d set it back down and straightened back up, Steve dumped a bucket of warm water over his head.

Eddie spluttered. “Babe, what the fuck!”

Steve snickered from behind him. “Just wanted to make sure you were here on earth with me, bedhead.”

Eddie shook his head like a rain-soaked dog. “You could have at least taken out the ponytail first!”

“I suppose I could have,” Steve said, lips twitching up into a smile as he reached up to start pulling Eddie’s dark curls from where they’d gotten tangled in the hair tie. “I got you talking again in something other than a monotone, though.”

“Maybe I was enjoying playing the dark, broody hero.”

Steve pinched Eddie’s side, which resulted in a high-pitched squeak, and a wild flail that had water splashing up around them. "Behave," Steve chastised—though the warning was undercut by the laugh of unconcealed delight he barked out as Eddie’s arms swung around him. 

"You're the one assaulting me in my time of suffering!"

"Suck it up, buttercup,” Steve shot back, combing his fingers through wet curls and gently detangling each and every knot he ran into. He couldn't help but rub the silky-soft strands between his fingers as he went. Steve's own day had been slow and uneventful, but a quiet sort of unease had been hovering at the edges for hours. Drawing Eddie a bath and settling in behind him to wash his hair helped settle Steve back into his body just as much as it did for Eddie. 

Steve began working shampoo into Eddie's roots, massaging his fingers into his scalp, and Eddie's head tipped back as he let out a pleased hum that sounded almost like a purr. "Love your fingers in my hair, Stevie," he mumbled, sounding a bit hazy.

"Yeah? Is that the only place you like my fingers?" Steve asked, right into Eddie's ear. 

Eddie scrambled back upright and turned to face Steve with an alarmed expression on his face. "No! Why would you think that? Did I say something to make you think that? Please, I’m so sorry, baby. Please know that I love your fingers anywhere on me. Or in me. What if they went somewhere else right now?" 

Steve laughed, grabbing Eddie's shoulder to turn him back around with one hand, and dipping the bucket back into the water to rinse the suds out of Eddie's hair with the other. When Steve was sure he'd thoroughly rinsed Eddie's hair he leaned past him to grab the conditioner and whisper in his ear, "You can get them somewhere else a little later if you're good for me, baby," before leaning back and clicking the bottle open.

"I'll be so good for you, Stevie. Just tell me what I gotta do."

"Keep still and don't sass me for the next five minutes."

Eddie's mouth opened and then immediately snapped back shut as he clearly decided that whatever his response to that was gonna be probably qualified as "sass."

"Good boy," Steve said simply, dropping another kiss to Eddie's back. 

"I can be good when I wanna be," Eddie grumbled. 

"Careful," Steve shot back, gently chiding. He methodically worked the conditioner through Eddie's hair in sections, tugging gently as he did, just for the soft satisfaction that ran through him every time Eddie let out a soft gasp in response to it. 

"Always careful, Stevie," Eddie mumbled back, eyes fluttering shut. 

Steve reached down to brush one hand over the scars running down Eddie's side. "Not always," he whispered, just a little sadly, as he pressed a firm kiss to the mostly-faded ring of scars at his throat. 

"Mm, don't be sad, baby."

"Not sad. Just glad you're alive."

Eddie was quiet for a stretch, and Steve chuckled. 

"What? What were you gonna say, asshole?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, love," Eddie replied, all faux innocence.

"You were gonna say something sassy just then, that's why you went all quiet. So, out with it, come on. How were you gonna sass me in response to me saying I'm glad you're alive?"

"Promise you won't hold it against me?"

"Yeah, baby." Steve leaned over to press a kiss to Eddie’s nose. "This one's a freebie."

Eddie looked over his shoulder with a wide grin, and a twinkle in his eye. "I was gonna call you a sap."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Oh, well, fuck me for being happy my boyfriend's alive I guess."

"I was actually hoping that you would fuck me," Eddie replied. 

"You're pushing your luck, Eds," Steve warned, yanking lightly at his hair. 

"Sorry, baby."

Steve ran his hands up and down the sides of Eddie's arms. "All forgiven, Eds." 

Steve let his hands drift as he waited for the conditioner to rest—digging his fingers into the dense coils of muscle in Eddie's neck, smoothing his palms down the ridges of Eddie's spine, ghosting his hands up Eddie's sides. When time was up, he grabbed the bucket, turned on the tap to fill it with clean, warm water, and spilled it over Eddie’s head. Steve combed his fingers through the chestnut locks again, making sure he’d thoroughly rinsed them once more. The two of them fell still and silent, like two little stones in the river bed. 

Steve loved this. The quiet trance they fell into, as Eddie relaxed into the water, and Steve pressed kisses into his lover’s skin, and they both forgot the mugs of tea that Steve made. 

Steve separated Eddie’s hair into even sections, savoring the feeling of freshly cleaned locks passing through his fingers as he wove the strands together—over-under, over-under, over-under—and plaited Eddie’s hair down the length of his back. When he was done, he flipped the end of the braid back over Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie leaned further into him, pressing the length of his back against Steve’s chest.

Steve let his hands start wandering, and Eddie let out a soft gasp of surprise when the pads of Steve's thumbs brushed over both nipples. "Steve."

"Shh, I got you baby," Steve murmured, and let one hand drop down to where Eddie was stiffening up beneath the water.

The ring of the doorbell pierced through You take my hand and tell me I'm a fool, and Steve contemplated just lying there and letting whoever it was stand there awkwardly, knowing they were being deliberately ignored. 

It’s not like it was anyone important—it couldn’t be one of the kids, because any of them would have opened with a flurry of repeated bell-ringings. It couldn’t be Robin, both because she had a key, and because she wouldn’t make him have to stand up and greet her at the door right now. He supposed it could be Nancy, or Jonathan, for some reason—except if there was an emergency they would at least try to call first, and Steve couldn’t think of any good reason that they’d show up on his doorstep unannounced that he was inclined to deal with right now. The only people he thought it could possibly be who he wasn’t better off leaving high and dry were Joyce or Mrs. Henderson—and that was actually enough to get Steve standing, because if Claudia was standing on his doorstep with food and an open smile and he ignored her when he was obviously home, it’d break her heart. 

There was already enough of that going around. 

Still, he made a detour to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face, and at least attempt to mitigate some of the “I’ve been mired in self-pity for the past 48 hours” that was clearly visible in his face, his hair, and his clothes. 

The doorbell rang for a second time, punctuating the lilt of Part time love just brings me down, and Steve huffed a frustrated sigh. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” He was going to the door just in case it was Claudia, not because he really thought it was her, and he was predisposed to being annoyed at every possible alternative to Claudia Henderson (or Joyce Byers) who could possibly be on the other side of the door. 

None more so than the person it actually ended up being when he dragged open the double doors devoid of any of his typical flair. “What are you doing here, Munson?” he asked flatly.

Eddie stood framed in the entryway, curls pulled back into a neat bun, earnest expression on his face, and wearing what looked to be a threadbare black button-down under his usual leather jacket. He had one arm folded behind his back, the other half extended toward the doorbell—which he promptly dropped down to his side when he registered Steve standing before him. He looked unfairly good, and Steve wanted to die about it. (Or commit a murder—he wasn’t feeling overly picky right at that moment.)

“Did you not hear me?” Steve bit out. “What are you doing here?”

Eddie’s face fell, and his cheeks flushed a bright red. “I—”

Steve cut him off with a twisted sneer. “Did you come to really rub it in? It wasn’t enough to shoot me down the first time, you wanted to come and twist the knife again—just real up close and personal this time? Did you wanna revel in how far the 'king' has fallen?” In the background, you’re hurting me baby, hurting me baby ricocheted down the halls and rang in Steve’s ears.

“No, I came here to apologize, Steve, I—” Eddie cut himself off with a tilt of his head, and wrinkled his nose as the next line rang out clear, But you know that I’ll forgive you! “—are you listening to Wham!?”

Steve stared at him, incredulous. “Are you making fun of my music taste right now? Is that really what’s happening?”

Eddie shook his head frantically. “No, that’s not what I—! Fuck, I’m doing this all wrong.”

Steve scoffed. “What else is new?” he asked, the bitchy curl to his lip forming unbidden.

Eddie flinched, and Steve almost felt bad about it, but it was buried too deep under layers of hurt and bitterness. “I’m sorry,” Eddie said, looking contrite. “That was…a dumb thing to say. Which I am apparently full of this week.”

“‘Apparently’?”

Eddie swallowed. “I am completely, one hundred percent, full of bullshit.” Steve couldn't quite hold back a flinch at the word choice, but he didn't think Eddie caught it. “And—” Eddie unfolded the arm he’d been holding behind his back to produce a bouquet of flowers with a small flourish. “—I’m really sorry.”

Steve stared down at the flowers for several long moments, blinking slowly as he tried to parse out what he was seeing in front of him. Because it clearly wasn’t some premade drug store arrangement. The arrangement was a bright mix of purple, green, and white—a few large hyacinths dominated the bundle, mixed together with green carnations; sprigs of ragweed and fairy lilies filled in the empty spaces. A lot more thought and effort had gone into this than Steve’s own hasty purchase of a dozen red roses for Nancy two years ago. And while there was a florist in Hawkins, the chances that Eddie could walk in there without immediately causing a scene were pretty slim—especially if he’d been even a little too honest about the reason for the arrangement. Steve’s eyes drifted back up to meet Eddie’s. “Where did you get those?”

“There’s a, uh…there’s a gay florist? Up in Indy. That's how I was able to get a bouquet with green carnations so last minute.”

Steve nodded along as though that made perfect sense, even though he had no idea why green carnations would be of any particular significance to gay people. His gaze dropped back down to the bouquet, and he plucked it from Eddie’s hands, turning on his heel to make for the kitchen without saying a word. If Eddie was really so eager to apologize, Steve figured he could keep him on his toes. A moment later, Steve could just make out the sound of Eddie’s tentative footfalls, followed by the sound of the front door snicking shut. 

Steve bent down to open one of the cupboards next to the underside of the sink, digging around until he found an old glass vase his mom never used anymore. He deposited it on the counter, before turning to pull open the miscellaneous tools drawer (his mom always hated it when someone tried to call it the ‘junk drawer’) to grab a pair of scissors. 

“So. You’re sorry.” Steve kept himself faced away from Eddie as he filled the vase with water, unwrapped the bouquet, and trimmed the stems. There was a hurricane brewing in him, and having something to do with his hands kept him still at the center of it. If he had to look at Eddie’s face right now it’d all come flying apart. “What are you sorry for, exactly.”

“I’m sorry for lying to you.”

Steve carefully set down the scissors, and pressed his hands flat to the countertop. He didn’t let his head fall. He didn’t let the small, sad gasp that was stuck in his throat escape. He could keep the mask on. He could keep all of his insides from spilling out around him. “What do you mean?” Apparently he couldn’t keep the rasp out of his voice.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Eddie repeated. His voice was closer now.

“What are you talking about?”

“When I said I wasn’t interested in you. That was a lie, and I shouldn’t have said it.”

“And–and the other part?” Because what did it matter if he had some hollow, surface-level interest in him if it meant—

“What other part?”

“Munson—” Steve was gritting his teeth. This was a mistake. He shouldn’t have let him in, he shouldn’t have—

“Oh, I—the ‘it didn’t mean anything’ part?” Eddie let out a blustery sigh, and Steve fought against the impulse to spin around and see what kind of gesture or expression might have accompanied that. “That’s…complicated. I–I think it did always mean something, but I wasn’t exactly lying when I said it was it was all ‘in good fun.’ That’s what it was supposed to be, at first, but then…I didn’t expect to like you.”

Steve laughed. “Thanks, Munson.”

“Please, Stevie—” 

“Don’t call me that!” He snapped. And that was too much, he was giving to much away—

“Okay, I won’t.” Steve could almost hear the way he raised his hands and backed away. “But…please. Stop calling me that, too, okay? I thought we’d moved past that.”

“Yeah, well, I thought we had too,” Steve spit back through gritted teeth. 

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He wanted to say it. But if he did, he’d melt away. He’d succumb to the hook and line tugging at his gut that told him to try, to trust, to open up. But there was only one person who was allowed the keys to the castle anymore. He should have learned long ago to stop making copies.

“I know, Steve, and…I really am sorry. I–I didn’t mean to—”

“Then why did you?” His patience—such that it was—was rapidly dwindling.

“I— What?”

“If you didn’t mean what you said, if you didn’t mean to hurt me, if you didn’t mean to like me—then why? Why did you flirt with me? Why did you try to get to know me? Why did you bother?” Steve wanted to throw something. He didn't want to break something, exactly, but he also didn't want th echoing chasm of silence opening up between them.

Steve’s shoulders were shaking with the effort of holding himself upright, and Eddie still wasn't saying anything.

“Would you look at me?”

“I don’t know if I can, Eddie.” He coughed up the name like he was choking on it.

“I don’t think I can keep having this conversation to the back of your head.”

Steve closed his eyes; pinched the bridge of his nose to help fight back a fresh wave of tears. “Fine,” he bit out. “Have a seat.” He gestured loosely behind him before heading to the fridge, still keeping his back to Eddie as the sound of a stool scraping across tile echoed in the space. “Want a beer?” he asked. He could have this conversation sober, or with eye contact—but it could only be one or the other.

“Sure,” Eddie whispered back.

Steve nodded into the cold air of the fridge, and came back up with two bottles, which he promptly uncapped against the bottle opener affixed to the wall. He sat one down in front of Eddie, before seating himself in a stool on the opposite side of the island. It was all about keeping distance. If Eddie was going to come picking at his walls, he would just have to keep throwing up physical barriers to slow him down. 

Steve took a pull from his beer. “So?”

Eddie took a breath, like he was steeling himself for battle. “I thought I was going to die.” Eddie laughed, and while it certainly wasn't hollow, it was entirely empty of humor. There was irony, maybe. Or hysteria. “At best I thought I'd end up in prison for the rest of my life.”

Steve frowned. “What does that have to do with—?”

“It has to do with everything, Steve!” It burst out of him like a dam cracking—and after the first crack, so came the flood. “No matter what was gonna happen on the other side of all that shit, I thought—one way or another—that my life was already over, man! 

“So, yeah, I flirted with the pretty jock who made my heart beat a little too fast and my pants a little too tight—who looked fucking divine with blood dripping out of his mouth—and I didn’t think too much beyond the cute little smiles and flustered looks you sent back, because it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Because it didn’t mean anything. 

“Not because you don’t mean anything—not because you’re worthless or unlovable or whatever other crap is circling the drain in your head—but because I thought you were straight! I thought I’d have a harmless bit of fun in the dying light of the end of the world. I thought I’d get a laugh and a smile out of it—I thought I could carry that sweetness with me into the afterlife, or–or have a warm memory to hang onto after I got locked away. Because there was only ever one of two ways that was gonna end, right?” 

There were tears tracking down Eddie’s face, but he wasn’t sobbing—there was only a slight hitch in his breath to give him away—and he barely seemed to notice them; he just kept going. “And then we made it. We made it out, and then I had to figure out how to fucking live—how to piece back together all the shattered remains of what Vecna took from me. And you were in the hospital, and you were barely conscious most of the time, and when you were you could barely even look at me. And I thought…”

“You thought I’d figured you out,” Steve whispered, clarity taking shape.

“Yeah, man. I thought you’d figured me out.” Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face. “Not right away, though. At first I thought…I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that you’d realized you’d been flirting back, and that’s what made you uncomfortable?” Eddie reached as though to grab at a strand of his hair, only for his hand to drop back to the countertop when he remembered it was pulled into a bun. He took a swig of his beer, instead. “But you just kept getting weirder and weirder, and then it just…it hit me. That maybe you’d realized that I was gay, and hitting on you, and that maybe you thought that…I don’t know. I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t a threat. And—at that point, I don’t think I’d even fully realized that I do like you like that—I just knew that we were starting to become friends, and whatever else was true I didn’t want to lose that. And if keeping your friendship meant denying whatever else I was feeling, that’s what I was going to do.”

Steve blinked at him slowly. “You’re an idiot.”

Eddie laughed, eyes crinkling up in the corners to indicate there was some actual humor behind it this time. “So I’ve been very reliably informed. You know that every single woman in your life is fucking terrifying, Harrington?”

Steve shook his head and couldn’t help the wry smile that broke across his face. “Believe me, I do.” Steve smirked at Eddie, allowing himself the flirtatious edge of glancing up at him from beneath his eyelashes. “So, what, Robin read you the riot act? Did she actually bring the nail bat?”

Eddie sputtered, and a spray of beer landed on Steve’s face. “I’m sorry, the nail what? And you knew she was gonna come after?”

Steve laughed, open and loud, as he wiped the spittle from his face. “Oh, yeah, I guess you’ve never seen it before.”

“Seen what, Harrington!” Eddie shrieked. “Why in the world do you have something that can be called a ‘nail bat’?”

“There are monsters in Hawkins, dude,” Steve said simply. “Were,” he corrected with a shake of his head. “There were monsters in Hawkins.”

“Yeah. I’ve only seen them once and I still don’t believe they’re really gone.”

Steve nodded. 

Eddie exhaled, and then steepled his hands under his chin like he was considering evidence. “Okay, so: you have a freaky bat filled with nails, and your freaky life partner stormed into my trailer so that she could threaten my freaky ass with it. Great, awesome. What the fuck is my life?” Eddie dug his fingers into his hair, heedless of the way it yanked some strands out of the bun entirely, and left others in disarray.

Steve shook his head. “I’ve been asking myself that for the past four years, man. If you come up with an answer, let me know.” 

“And—And!” Eddie jumped up onto the stool so that he was perched atop it, balancing on the balls of his feet. He started gesticulating wildly into Steve’s face. “On top of all of that I’m supposed to believe that strait-laced Steve Harrington was acting all weird and evasive because he was working up the courage to ask me out?”

“You know, for someone who talks a good game about nonconformity, you’ve sure got a lot of preconceived notions about what other people are supposed to be like.”

Eddie dropped back down onto the stool like the wind had been taken out of his sails. “I know,” he said, expression serious. “I just…sometimes you’ve gotta jump to quick conclusions to keep yourself safe.”

Steve nodded, staring down at his hands as he picked at the label of the sweating beer bottle. “Yeah…that makes sense. And it’s not like I always would have been a safe guy to flirt with—jokingly or not.”

Eddie shrugged. “Maybe not. But that was a while ago. I think this version of you deserved for me to give you the benefit of the doubt. I could have at least fucking asked why you were being so cagey around me, instead of jumping to conclusions.”

“You can now,” Steve offered.

Eddie smiled. “Okay…I’ll bite: Steve, why’d you keep acting like a skittish little rabbit around me?”

“I did not—”

“You totally did! Always vibrating, looking like you were seconds from hopping off.” Eddie bit his lip, glancing down with a shy smile—and then Eddie got to pull off the flirtatious glancing-through-the-eyelashes thing. God, what a classic. Steve felt himself flush in response. “It was kind of cute, honestly.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you must know…” Steve trailed off, the light tone slipping away. “You’re the first guy I’ve ever wanted to ask out.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, staring off to the side. “I was scared too, you know? I was pretty sure you liked me—I mean, at least I didn’t think you disliked me—but even with all the flirting, I couldn’t be sure, you know? It’s all so…different. From what I’m used to. Even beyond that, I haven’t—” Steve cut himself off, not sure he could give away this last piece of the puzzle.

“You haven’t…?”

“I haven’t felt this strongly about someone since Nancy. And I can’t—I don’t think I could stand something else blowing up in my face the same way that did.”

Eddie was quiet for several beats. “How’d things with Wheeler blow up?”

Steve turned back to meet Eddie’s gaze. “I think that’s a conversation for another day. This one’s already got me beat.”

Eddie nodded, and let silence fall between them for a bit. For the first time since Eddie’d come in, he didn’t feel like he could taste ash on the air. “Hey Steve?”

“Yeah, Eddie?”

“You wanna try now?”

“Try what?”

“Asking out a guy for the first time.”

“Oh…” Steve studied Eddie’s face carefully for a few long, silent moments, before determining there was nothing to find there beyond a simple and honest certainty. “I think I’m still a little mad at you.”

“Do you think you’ll forgive me?”

Steve smiled sadly with a tilt of his head. “You know I will.”

“Man, I’m not holding you to the contents of fucking Wham! lyrics just because they were the soundtrack for your gay wallowing.”

“Oh, but if it was a different song playing in the background you would?” Steve asked.

Eddie scoffed and rolled his eyes, “Yeah, ‘course I would.”

“I thought we’d established that now was a bad time to be critiquing my music taste.”

“I don’t fucking care if you listen to, Wham!, Steve—I just don’t wanna listen to them.”

Steve smiled and leaned forward. “I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m kinda ambivalent about them, but Dustin made that mixtape for me when I was getting over Nancy.”

“Huh. There’s…a lot going on there. And I think I’ve probably stuck my foot in it enough times today to avoid trying to wade in.”

“You’re a smart man, Eddie Munson.”

“Tell that to Ms. O’Donnell.” Eddie grabbed one of the strands he’d pulled out from his bun earlier and pulled it in front of his face. “So, are ya gonna do it?”

Steve smirked, leaning further into Eddie’s space. “Am I gonna do what, Eddie?”

“You know what, Harrington.”

“I thought I told you to call me Steve.” 

As Eddie opened his mouth to reply, Steve closed the space between them and drew him into a kiss. 

When Steve pulled back a moment later, he was rewarded with the sight of Eddie’s eyes fluttering back open as he breathed out Steve’s name on a sigh.

He reached up to tuck the strand of hair that had fallen from Eddie’s slackened grip behind his ear. “So, Eddie Munson—would you like to go out with me?”

“I’d love nothing more.”

Eddie’s apology bouquet:

Hyacinth (purple): “please forgive me”

Green Carnations: symbol of love between two men, popularized by Oscar Wilde wearing a green carnation as an accessory

Fairy lilies (Rainflower): “I love you back” / “I must atone for my sins”

Ragweed (Ambrosia): love is reciprocated

Meanings pulled from Wikipedia’s “List of plants with symbolism” (although I did already know the green carnations one before writing this). I did not do a whole lot of research into properly constructing bouquets so as to convey messages/meaning, so if you’re an expert floriographist, please don’t look at me (or: feel free to point out everything I got wrong, because I do actually find the language of flowers really interesting). 

Also, we are hand-waving away the fact that it probably would have taken Eddie more than a day to get a custom bouquet, okay? We are also ignoring the fact that most people are allergic to ragweed—if it tickles you I'm declaring that Steve is not but Eddie is and made himself sneeze the whole way over to Steve's house.

The heart react came within seconds, which kicked Steve's own up in pace. He tried not to feel too disappointed when the actual response came through.

Eddie😈💦 Unfortunately I am ZONKED tonight, but otherwise I am always up for cake

Steve didn't have time to come up with a response before another text popped up

Especially yours 😏🍑

Steve leaned back, staring at the ceiling as he deliberated his response.

Steve Oh yeah? Which would you eat first?

Eddie😈💦 the one with the lowest chance of causing my untimely demise wanna really savor the flavor of both

Steve was that… a roundabout way of asking if I'd sit on your face?

Eddie😈💦 Stevie I cannot emphasize enough how much I think of little else. God gave you that cake for it to be devoured, and I, for one, would like my mouth Stuffed

Steve reached down to press the heel of his palm to his growing hardness as he pictured it too.

Steve I think you're mixing metaphors there now, Eds

Eddie😈💦 yeah, well, I deserve some extra icing

Steve laughed out loud.

Steve Oh do you now? 🤨

Eddie😈💦 If not, I could earn it from you, sir

Steve fumbled his phone, nearly dropping it in his haste to hit the call button.

Robin stares down at her hands where they’re folded in her lap. She squeezes them into fists. Stretches them wide. Tries to convince herself that she can connect sight and sensation to the fact of her body’s existence.

It’s been five days.

She’s alive.

Slotting herself back into the world that she’d known before she plummeted into the depths of the earth has felt impossible.

Though maybe that’s because there’s nothing left to slot herself into.

No school to return to, yet. No job to speak of—its remains a pile of rubble at the outskirts of town. No friends who know what happened.

No old friends, anyway.

There’s Steve.

He doesn’t quite feel like a friend though. He’s something…more. Something that exists beyond her understanding of what friendship or even love used to be. She’s never had a sibling—never wanted a sibling—and neither has Steve, so neither of them know enough to gauge if the weird, intense bond that’s sprouted between is sibling-like in nature. But it doesn’t feel like something so simple as that. She feels at once like she chose him, and like he was a gift to her from the universe.

It’s been five days. And he’s already the most important person in her life.

Robin sighs, and squeezes her eyes shut again, listening to the echoing silence of her house. It’s Tuesday. Her parents had taken the first few days after Starcourt off to help take care of her and Steve. Not that they were necessarily a huge help. But they’d made soup, and helped Steve with his bandages when needed. And it was just…nice to have them around. Their presence was grounding. Not so much because they were an especially calming pair, and more because their existence was so fundamentally at odds with the remembered atmosphere of the bunker and the tunnels, that seeing and hearing them made it almost impossible for Robin to forget where she was.

But today is their first day back at work, and the silence feels tangible. If she closes her eyes for too long she’ll be back in that cell, hands tied together, while a man spits sludge at her and asks what she knows; threatens to hurt her little friend if she doesn’t give up the intel he needs. Never touches her, never hurts her, but speaks with a glint in his eyes and a leer on his face that sets her teeth on edge and makes her stomach flip.

It’s been five days.

“Steve.” Her voice is hoarse, desperately scraping up her throat. She wants to hold his hand— rain bearing down, staring blankly at joined hands, linked fingers as her heart races—“Steve.”

Steve’s head rocks back and forth, and a small whine escapes him as he stretches and blinks against light. “Robs?” he voices is soft and slurry; it almost makes her smile.

“Morning, sleepy head.”

“Mmph.” He sits up, squinting heavily as he stares at her. His hair is all mussed, sticking up in every direction, and a thump of fondness beats in her chest, because she’s pretty sure that there aren’t many other people who get to see Steve “The Hair” Harrington without his signature coif. Maybe she should feel bad that she’s having such a stereotypical straight girl thought about it, but it’s not like she’s happy he’s in love with her or anything, it’s just…he’s hers now, and the way he’s trusting her like this makes her think that maybe she’s his now, too.

She’s never been another person’s favorite person before.

Her parents like her, sure. Love her, even. But she’s pretty sure she’s not their favorite person. She’s too anxious. Too loud, in the wrong ways, and never quiet in the right ones. She thought at one point she was Barb’s favorite person, but then Nancy came along and you can’t exactly ditch someone as easily as Barb ditched her if they’re your favorite person, right?

God, she needs to think about literally anything else right now.

“I’m hungry.”

Steve’s stomach growls the moment she says it. He scrubs a hand over his face and glares into the open air, like he’s offended his body has physical needs. “Me too, apparently.” He pushes himself upright, looking around the room. “‘time is it?”

Robin glances over at her clock. “Eleven.”

“Ugh. I want to sleep forever.” Instead, he pushes himself up and to a standing position. “C’mon, let’s go make some breakfast.” He reaches out a hand to her, and she accepts it with a decisive nod.

“That sounds like a great idea. Although I’m really more in the mood for lunch fare? At the very least something heartier than breakfast. Well, not heartier, because really a good breakfast should be pretty hearty since you’re eating for the first time in several hours and your body needs the extra boost. But, still, breakfast foods are so limiting, you know? Like, why are pancakes only a breakfast food? And eggs? I guess eggs can be an anytime food, but they’re usually a breakfast food, and for some reason there are some types of egg preparation that are extra especially breakfast-food-only. Like, who’s ever had an omelet for dinner, you know?”

“Robin.”

“Yeah?”

Steve stares at her for a beat, and for a second her heart rate kicks up—like going on some dumb little monologue about breakfast food is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and makes him realize he doesn’t want such a weirdo for a friend.

He smiles. “I love you.”

Robin thinks she should balk at that. He’d just confessed to having a crush on her five days ago. She doesn’t want them to go on with him carrying a torch for her that she’ll never be able to accept.

But… Well. Robin’s not exactly an expert on romance. Even less an expert on reading people. But she thinks she’s figured out the secret code to Steve Harrington, and he’s not looking at her with tortured, lovelorn puppy eyes. He’s looking at her like she’s the sun. Like she’s some miraculous thing. But there’s nothing romantic there. He’s not staring at her mouth, or her chest. He’s looking at her like she’s nothing more and nothing less than the best thing he’s ever seen, and like that would be true no matter what she looked like.

She shakes her head. Smiles. “Love you too, dingo.”

“That one’s new.”

Robin shrugs. “Just possibly watching you take a bunch of punches to the gut from Russian spies made me feel like ‘dingus’ was a tad unfair.”

Steve laughs. “I’m flattered, but you can call me dingus all you want.”

“Okay then, dingus. What’s for breakfast-lunch then?”

“I think that’s just called ‘brunch,’ Bobs. But, um…how about soup and grilled cheese?”

“Only if you’re cooking, or want cold cheese on toast.”

Steve stops in his tracks and turns to stare at her. “Robs…do you not know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich?”

Robin shakes her head, feeling her cheeks warm a little. She’s more than capable of fending for herself when it comes to food. Can even cook a couple of staples. And she’s great when it comes to baking, and recipes with highly detailed instructions. But grilled cheese always felt like one of those kinds of things that are deceptively complicated. Like the fact that it’s supposed to be so simple is exactly the thing making it so hard. She was certain if she ever tried it’d come out a half-burnt, half-unmelted-cheese mess. “No…?”

“How did you go through life so far without knowing how to make a grilled cheese sandwich?” Steve looks genuinely distressed by this newfound knowledge.

Robin shrugs. “Never seemed important, I guess. Never really liked them when my mom made them, so I never bothered to figure out how, even once I realized that you can make them with cheese that isn’t glorified plastic.”

Steve gives her a despairing look. “Please don’t tell me your only experience of grilled cheeses have been ones made with Kraft singles.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you!” She says brightly.

Steve looks to be on the brink of tears.

“Hey…it’s okay, Steve. I promise you can pop my good-grilled-cheese cherry!”

Steve’s expression, if anything, grows even more pained. “Please, for the love of God, do not put it like that.”

Robin just grins at him, watching as he opens her fridge to take a look around. He rummages around for far longer than seems necessary for sussing out ingredients for a grilled cheese, but maybe he’s just taking stock of the contents for later? He comes back bearing all the cheeses currently residing in the Buckley fridge (sans the package of Kraft singles): a sharp cheddar, pepper jack, muenster, and swiss. He sets them down on the counter in front of them “Okay, pick one to three of these.”

Robin throws him a skeptical look, but points to the pepper jack and the muenster.

“Beautiful, okay. Now, lets see…” Steve sweeps his gaze across the kitchen, taking stock of the cabinets. He makes for the narrow one crammed between the stove and the sink, pulling it open to reveal the small stock of spices. He moans in disappointment. “I’m taking you grocery shopping after this. This is pathetic, Buckley. What do you all even eat?”

Robin shrugs, feeling a little self-conscious. “Mostly pasta, and sometimes roasted veggies, I guess?”

Steve turns to look at her, and his gaze is a little too sharp. A lot too knowing. The semi-judgmental look drops from his face, and is replaced by something more…tender? “Okay, yeah, me too, until I figured out how to cook for myself. My parents weren’t really into the whole ‘family meal’ thing.”

Robin shrugs. “Mine either.”

Steve looks surprised. “Really? But…I don’t know, they seem like they’d be into that kind of thing.”

Robin snorts. “What makes you say that?”

“Your parents seem to actually like spending time with you.”

“Do they?” Robin’s never gotten the sense that they hate being around her or anything. But sometimes she feels more like an inconvenient stray they took in than their kid.

Steve shrugs; stares down at his feet. “More than mine, anyway.”

“Yeah, well. Something tells me that’s not a high bar to clear.” Robin doesn’t know much about Mr. and Mrs. Harrington, but the fact that it’s been nearly a week since their son almost died and she’s seen neither hide nor hair of them speaks for itself. “But, no, my parents think that family meals and the ‘standard nuclear family’ are capitalist propaganda designed to create corporate drones who will destroy the planet. So. No family dinners. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that the reason some people do it is to have an organized reason to spend time with their family.” Robin tilts her head, considering. “Then again, they aren’t really into ‘organization’ in general.”

Steve nods with a small frown. “So…we both have fucked up parents, but in directly opposing ways?”

Robin hesitates. “I don’t know if I’d call them ‘fucked up,’ but they’re definitely not what you’d call functional parents, no.”

“Well, it’s a travesty that you’ve made it through 17 years on this planet without a proper grilled cheese, so I’m going to do the best I can with your meager offerings, and then we’re going to go shopping so that you’re armed to the teeth for any future grilled-cheese-making expenditures you may wish to embark on.”

Robin raises an eyebrow and shoots him a look. “I think Dustin’s rubbing off on you, buddy.”

Steve blinks and visibly plays back what he just said. “I don’t know where any of that came from,” he whispers in a joking panic.

Robin pats him on the shoulder. “It’s alright. Comes with the territory of befriending someone with an obnoxiously large personality.”

Steve grins at her. “Looking forward to it.”

Robin’s heart turns to goo and the smile she shoots back at him feels like it might split her face in two. “Me too.” Robin places her hands on her hips and turns to stare at the spice shelf. “Now, what exactly do you think we’re lacking on the spice front?”

“Robin, I don’t think we have time for me to list every single thing this cabinet is missing.”

“Fine, then tell me the things you wish were in it right now.”

Steve sighs. “Red pepper flakes, for one—although I guess if we’re using pepper jack for this it’s less important. It still makes me despair for the food you’ve been making before now that you don’t have it, though. And, uh…I guess herbs other than oregano and basil? Those are fine, but some variety would be nice, you know? Where’s the sage? The thyme? The rosemary? I guess we can go with oregano for now, though.” He pulls the jar from the cabinet and sets it on the counter. “Other than that I guess this is all we need for now— Oh!” Steve grabs the container of black pepper from the cabinet and adds it to his pile of ingredients. He keeps staring up at the cabinet, hands on his hip, and a small little frown on his face. "I’m still definitely helping you all stock up, because even if you’re just eating pasta and veggies you should still be using more spices than you’ve got here.”

Robin stares at him. “Steve Harrington…are you a cooking nerd?”

Steve’s head whips around and he stares at her, mouth agape. “No? What? Take that back right now!”

Robin crosses her arms over her chest and shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. You are, aren’t you? You taught yourself a bunch of cooking tricks and have them all memorized. You can launch off onto little rants about flavor profiles and culinary technique, can’t you? I bet you have cookbooks stashed under your bed, or something.”

Steve fish-faces at her, waving an accusatory finger in her direction. “I’m…you…how did you know that?”

Robin laughs, delighted. “Genuine guess. But you do? Oh, that’s delicious. Becoming friends with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The Steve Harrington lore is long and varied. You should be studied for science.” She throws her head back with a pleased cackle.

Steve is just staring at her, dumbfounded, a light dusting of pink on his face.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Steve shakes his head, and his eyes lose a little of the glassy quality they’d gained. “Nothing.” His hand reaches up to pinch at his nose for a second before falling away. “I just…do you mean that?”

“Do I mean what?”

“That being my friend is the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”

Robin blinks at him slowly. “Yeah? I mean the how of it wasn’t ideal, but even without the Russians we were already on our way here, right? The trauma just sort of…fast-forwarded it.”

“I…” Steve looks around the kitchen like he’s looking for an emergency exit. “Yeah. I guess.”

Robin feels her face fall. “Do you…do you not feel the same?”

“No! I mean, yes!! I just…” Steve rakes a frantic hand through his hair. “I’m not, uh, used to people liking me that much. I guess.”

Robin frowns. “What are you talking about, dingus? You were literally Hawkins Royalty!”

Steve huffs in frustration. “Yeah, but that’s not…being popular isn’t the same as people liking you, you know?” She doesn’t. Or, maybe she can guess, based on what he said in the bunker. But it still seems…wrong, somehow. Like everything she understood about the world is backwards.

Steve keeps talking, before her thoughts can spiral away from her. “Sure, I was popular. But my only actual friends were Tommy and Carol, and they…I mean, they weren’t bad friends, I guess? Terrible people, sure, but they were actually pretty…I mean, for all the fucked up shit…they always had my back?”

“Until you wanted to stop being a douchebag, you mean?”

Steve grimaces. “Yeah. I think they were…all three of us, really, were trapped in our own misery too much to let other people’s happiness pass without punishment. So I don’t think they liked when I tried to find some of my own.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah.”

A part of Robin wants to ask What about Nancy? the question poised at the tip of her tongue. But he said himself that he’s not in love with her anymore. Robin’s not sure how much she believes that, because he seems pretty smitten whenever she comes up in conversation—not that it’s happened a whole lot in the week since The Bathroom. Then again, that’s also sort of how he talks about her, and Robin’s reasonably sure that his crush petered out about as quickly as it appeared. Once the drugs were out of his system he admitted that he hadn’t really thought of her like that until Dustin had suggested they’d be good together, and after her bathroom confession he realized that while he did love her, it wasn’t actually romantic.

She doesn’t know anything about how Steve and Nancy broke up, though. Doesn’t know what baggage is or isn’t there—maybe it was just a regular teenage break up; goodness knows she doesn’t trust the Hawkins’ rumor mill as far as she can throw it. But she does know that he didn’t offer any caveats to his initial declaration—I’m not used to people liking me—and Robin's not going to go around shining lights in dark corners unless he does so first.

Robin’s stomach growls.

“Okay, sappy hour’s over. I’ve got to eat something stat, or else I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”

Steve shakes his head like he’s shaking loose cobwebs and leaps into action. He’s not finished gathering ingredients, though, apparently. He bustles around the kitchen until he’s added the butter bell, a few cloves of garlic, a loaf of bread, and a small jar of honey to his haul.

“What the fuck.”

Steve points in her direction with the spatula he’s materialized out of nowhere. “Just trust me, Bobbin.”

Robin raises an eyebrow. “Last time I did that I wound up trapped in an elevator to a secret Russian base.”

“Ouch.” There’s a genuine grimace of pain on his face.

“Too soon?”

“Maybe just a little.”

“Sorry.”

“No worries.” Steve turns to the stove, where he’s already unearthed and deposited one of the two frying pans in the house. “Now, let’s get started. First things first: the butter. The goal is to make the outside of the sandwich as tasty as the inside of the sandwich, so you’ve got to find a way to imbue the bread with flavor.”

Robin nods along. “Sure. What’s that got to do with butter?”

“You’re killing me, Buckley,” he says with a beleaguered little groan. He gestures to the frying pan. “First we’ve gotta imbue the butter with some flavor, so that the bread can soak it all up—which is part of why I wanted pepper flakes, but we’ll just have to make do with herbs and black pepper, I guess.”

Robin watches as Steve takes what seems like an obscene amount of butter and plops it into the pan, followed by a small handful of the oregano, a couple shakes of pepper, and a pinch of salt. “Okay, so now we’re going to turn the heat on—at low, we don’t want to burn anything—and we’re just gonna let that sit a bit until the butter melts and we start to smell the oregano on the air.”

“So…we just stand here and watch?”

“You can stir a bit to encourage the butter to melt a little quicker. But otherwise, yeah. Leave it alone. Let the butter and the heat do their thing together.”

“And then what?”

“Well, that should take about a minute or two, so now we can work on assembling our sandwiches. Sadly, you’ve only got Wonder Bread. Next time I’ll pick up a loaf of sourdough or something from Giant Eagle.” Steve waves the spatula through the air. “Or maybe we can make a quick loaf together.”

“Ugh, I hate baking bread.”

“…you know how to bake bread, but not how to make a grilled cheese?”

“…yeah? Baking makes sense. It’s just instructions.”

“I…yeah, okay, that makes sense.” Steve pulls a couple slices of bread from the bag, and starts spreading honey onto each one. “So what’s wrong with baking bread?”

“It’s sticky, and kneading the dough takes so much time, and it’s never the right consistency. I prefer, like, cakes and stuff. Brownies are perfect. Cookies are okay.”

“So: batter over dough, got it.”

“Exactly.” Robin joins Steve in spreading honey onto two slices of her own. “So, why the honey?”

“The sweetness adds some depth of flavor. Honey, butter, and cheese is a flavor profile without compare.” Steve stares in the direction of the pan. “Oh, shit, I forgot the most important ingredient! The garlic. Okay, drop what you’re doing. I should have thought to say this when I was talking about the herbs! The whole point is you want to get all your aromatics going at once, and what is garlic if not the world’s single most powerful aromatic? Nothing, I tell you. Nothing. But that’s okay, we can salvage this.” Steve grabs a couple cloves of garlic, a knife and just fucking…smashes the garlic with the flat of the blade.

“What the fuck…” Robin whispers to herself.

Steve just keeps moving like he isn’t getting up to absolute kitchen-wizardry, peeling away the papery skins from the cloves and tossing their mangled forms into the pan.

“We can give that another minute. The oregano might crisp up, but better to have crispy herbs and garlicky-butter than perfectly toasted herbs and sad, garlic-anemic butter.”

“I’ll just have to take your word on that, dude.”

Steve grins at her. “See, you do trust me.”

“Against my better judgment.” Robin deposits the second honeyed-bread slice on the plate in front of her. “Okay, what next?”

“Cheese!” Steve shakes out a few slices each of the pepper jack and muenster, layering them onto two of the four slices of bread spread out in front of them as the kitchen starts to fill with the scent of herbs and garlic. Robin’s cooked with garlic before, but usually she just chops it up and dumps it into the pot or pan along with everything else, so she’s never had the experience of smelling it on its own. She’s shocked by how much the scent makes it smell like a whole gourmet meal is already close to completion. She thinks back to every time she’s ever been over someone’s house while their mom was cooking and said something like wow, that smells great, Mrs. Johnson, and wonders if the only thing that’d actually been on the stove at that point was some garlic and herbs.

Robin shakes the thought from her head as she realizes Steve’s been monologuing. “…at this point you’ll want to turn the heat up a little.”

Robin nods again like she’s been following along this whole time. “Sure. Okay. Sandwich into butter, that makes sense.”

“Not sandwich time quite yet. Not a closed one, anyway. We want to be able to watch the cheese reach its melting point.” Steve drops two open-faced bread-with-cheese not-yet-sandwiches into the pan side by side, before reaching to turn the knob on the stove up to ‘5’. “Now we wait.”

Robin leans an elbow against the counter, staring intently at the sizzling pan. “How long?”

Steve shrugs. “Until the cheese starts to melt, or until it feels right. Some cheese melts more quickly, and some breads toast faster than others. You’re kind of aiming for the middle point of melty-cheese and golden-toasty-bread.”

Robin nods, and stares into the pan, fixated. Her grandmother’s voice floats through her head—a watched pot never boils, sweetheart. Robin knows it's an idiom, but she’s only ever had it said to her when she was literally watching a pot, waiting for it to boil. But Steve’s doing the same thing, watching as the garlic in the pan turns golden and crisp, and the butter bubbles and pops, and the edges of the bread begin to brown up.

Out of nowhere, she wishes there was music playing. She misses dancing around Scoops with him after close.

“What’re you humming?”

“Huh?” She hadn’t realized she’d been making any sound.

“The little,” Steve twirls a finger through the air and starts humming back at her, and Robin almost starts laughing.

“Apparently I was humming That’s What Friends Are For.” It had been on the songs on the closing mixtape they’d made together, but at the time she’d mostly added it as a joke.

Steve smiles at her, and it’s soft and cheesy, like the sandwiches sizzling away in the pan. He picks up the melody from her, extending a hand for hers.

“Steve, I’ve got two left feet.”

“Yeah, I know that, Robs,” he says, long-suffering, and takes her hand into his anyway. He resumes his humming, and yanks her into a little slow dance, spinning her around the kitchen like they’re two newly-weds, or care-free teenagers at the prom, blissfully unaware there are portals to hell beneath their feet. Except they’re better than that: two best friends dancing in the kitchen together after saving the world, while one of them teaches the other how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Robin takes over humming some of the lines when she thinks the song switches over from Dionne to Elton or Stevie—which she can’t quite bite back a snort at, when the thought drifts through her mind—and they carry on like that. They’re probably not really following the progression of the song, because neither of them are actually singing, but Robin has snatches of the lyrics running through her head as she concentrates on not stepping on Steve’s feet, and letting herself be dramatically dipped at odd intervals.

Steve hums the melody that Robin thinks matches up to knowing you can always count on me, and she finds herself leaning her head against his chest. His arms come up to wrap around her, and she burrows herself into his embrace. There are stupid little tears welling up at the corners of her eyes, but it barely even phases her. She feels no need to reach up and dash them away before someone can sniff out the sign of weakness. It feels silly, almost, to be so worked up about dancing around the kitchen in her sock-feet with this boy she’s barely known for a month, tentatively liked for a few weeks, and has loved for all of seven days. But that’s where she is, and she doesn’t think there’s any place she’d rather be.

Eventually Steve’s voice tapers off, and he slows them to a stop in the middle of the room. She stares up at him, her vision still a little blurry with tears. Steve’s looking down at her like she hung the moon, and leans in to press a kiss to her forehead. It sends the new tears spilling over, and she collapses back into him. “I’m so glad you made it out of there, dingus,” she says into his chest, right over his breastbone, his heartbeat thrumming against her lips.

“Yeah, me too, Bobby.” He squeezes his arms around her tight.

“…do you think the grilled cheeses are done now?” Her voice is still muffled from her face being buried against his chest. For all that she’s been swept away by emotion, she’s still really hungry.

“Mmm, well, it’d be hard for them to be done with only one slice of bread, but they might be ready to close and flip.”

Steve gently disentangles them and shuffles back over to the stove. The cheese does seem to be nicely melted now, and Steve hums in satisfaction, closing each sandwich with the other two honeyed slices of bread, before taking up the spatula again, and flipping each one with a little flourish. Robin cuts her eyes at him “Am I supposed to be impressed by that?”

Steve smirks. “Are you not?”

“Remains to be seen, Harrington. You might be all flair and no substance. The proof is in the pudding.”

“Well, they should be done in another few minutes, so you’ll get a chance to taste for yourself.”

The bread of the cooked side of the sandwich facing up at them is nicely crisped. Buttery and golden—almost brown in the center, and along the edges—and Robin can feel her mouth watering. She won’t say it until she knows for sure, but it certainly looks like one of the best things she’s ever tasted. She wants it in her mouth immediately.

“Cooking involves so much waiting,” she whines.

“So does baking.”

“Yeah, but unless you’re making bread, all of the waiting happens at the end. With cooking you’ve got all these mini waiting times: you’ve got to wait for the water to boil, or the pan to heat. You have to wait for something to cook the right amount before adding the next thing. You have to wait for the actual thing you’re cooking to cook enough on one side and then you’ve got to flip it and wait that same amount of time for it to cook evenly on the other side. It’s maddening! I don’t know how you do it.”

The corners of Steve’s mouth twitch. “I guess I’ve never thought of it like that. And it’s different with something like this, because this is pretty low on prep work. But with most things you always have stuff you can be doing during the waiting times. You have vegetables to chop, or you can get a head start on washing the dishes you used. If whatever you’re making involves having two pans or pots going you can time it so that you’re always doing something in at least one dish. And a lot of stuff involves active waiting. Like, you’ve got to stir the pot every now and then, or you have to slowly add something to the pan. And, I don’t know, I kind of like the pace of it. Having to keep track of all the little variables. It’s soothing.”

Robin squints at him. “You’re a weirdo, Steve Harrington.”

“Am not!”

“Are too! You’re a tiny little weirdo, who managed to convince the entire populace of Hawkins that you’re a cookie-cutter little rich boy. I’m almost impressed.” Robin pokes him in the chest. “You’re a weirdo, and a nerd, and a dork, to boot!” She’s grinning so wide again her cheeks ache. “And you’re my favorite person.”

“Well you’re my favorite person and you are also a weirdo, so there!”

“Stevie, I think we all already knew I was a weirdo.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever.” Steve picks up the spatula again and carefully shuffles the sandwiches from their warm, buttery home. “Stuff your face so I don’t have to hear you yap any more,” he says. There’s a touch of faux-annoyance in his tone, but there’s no edge to it, and Robin can see a smile just as wide as her own plastered on his face.

“Okay, gimme the goods, Harrington.” She makes grabby hands at the chipped plate he’s deposited the first sandwich onto.

“Alright, alright, hold your horses.” Steve hands the plate to her, finishes scooping his own sandwich from the pan, and turns the heat off. He stares down at the plate in his own hand with a considering look. “I think we can skip the soup; I’ve already spent too much time talking your ear off about the grilled cheese. If I have to walk you through making soup, we’ll be here all week.”

“I know how to make soup!” Robin squawks, a bit offended.

Steve casts another despairing look at the spice cabinet. “See, somehow that’s worse.”

Robin sticks her tongue out at him. “Rude.”

Steve holds up his free hand in surrender. “Hey, I’m just of the opinion that if people are taking the time to make food for themselves it should taste good.”

“You've had soup here before!”

“Yeah, and I’ve also been concussed all week!”

“Rude!” She shouts again. She flaps her hands in his face. “And, I’ll have you know that my French onion soup is amazing!”

Steve narrows his eyes. “I cannot accept that. There is no thyme to be found here.”

“What is your obsession with thyme?”

“It’s not an obsession! It’s a spice cabinet staple!”

“Ugh, whatever. Let’s eat before I murder you out of sheer hunger.”

“I don’t like the link you’re making between those two concepts.”

Robin pats a hand on his cheek as she walks past him to the tiny table tucked against the kitchen wall. “Don’t worry, babe. The giant meat monster put me off of cannibalism.”

“Thanks,” he mutters after her. “That’s so comforting.”

Robin folds herself into one of the vinyl chairs at the table, and Steve drops into the one across from her. She picks the grilled cheese up off the plate with careful fingers, grease immediately welling up from the soaked bread and running down her fingers.

It smells…divine, actually. The bread is perfectly crisp, and she can smell the garlic wafting from it. She leans forward to take a tentative bite, careful of burning herself, and can’t bite back the full-throated moan that pours out of her. Garlic and honey break out across her tongue, followed by the heat of the pepper, and the fatty goodness of the cheeses. “Oh my God,” she groans, fully ignoring the etiquette of waiting to swallow before talking as she speaks around her mouthful. “I’m in love with you,” she says to the sandwich, and she thinks she’s going to cry. There might be actual tears welling up again. This sandwich is better than most orgasms she’s hand—and sure, maybe she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with herself on that front, but up until this moment she also didn’t know what she was doing when it came to making a grilled cheese sandwich, so it feels like a totally reasonable to comparison.

“So…you like it, huh?”

Robin’s head jerks as she tears her gaze away from the sandwich and looks over at Steve, who has a giant, shit-eating grin on his face.

“Oh, shut up, asshole.”

“I’m not the one practically orgasming at the table, Bobs.”

“Am not.”

“You definitely are. I’m flattered, really. I didn’t realize my prowess extended this far.”

Robin flaps a hand in his face. “Ew, disgusting! Stop that!”

Steve throws his head back and cackles. “Oh my god, the look on your face!” He reaches up to wipe away a stray tear, and tilts his head back down to shoot her a fond look. “Seriously, though, I’m glad you like it.”

Robin rolls her eyes, but smiles at him anyway. “Yeah, thanks for making it, dingus.”

Steve smiles right back. “Anytime, dingo.”

Steve's eyes flew open to find Eddie in the doorway, smirking at the spectacle Steve made: moaning around a pair of his own briefs that were freshly soaked with Eddie's cum; hand down the front of his pants. 

A bolt of panic had Steve's heart racing. Heat flooding his veins. His hand didn't pause for even a second as he stripped his own cock. 

If anything, it just made him harder.

Eddie stepped forward, door snicking shut behind him. An invisible tether tied them together — the step forward tugging a cracked whine from Steve's mouth as his fist flew over his leaking dick.

Another step, and Steve moaned, head tipping back.

"You gonna come before I can get my mouth on you?"

Step. Steve gasped, tightening his fist to stave off the climax threatening to bowl him over. He'd rather come down Eddie's throat.

Suddenly, Eddie was in his space, crowding him against the wall and bracketing his arms around Steve's face. "You like the taste of me on your tongue, baby?"

Steve's eyes rolled back; a high, muffled sound spilling from his throat as he sucked at the salty fabric pressed against his tongue.

Eddie used a hand to ball up the excess fabric hanging from Steve's mouth and shove it deeper inside. "Gotta keep quiet. Don't want the party to hear you, do you?"

Eddie's smile was sharp, and Steve had to squeeze his eyes shut as Eddie folded neatly to his knees.

He wanted to cry out Eddie's name as nimble fingers worked open the panel of his jeans. Wanted to scream as Eddie pulled him through the open fly of his briefs and glanced up at him with reddened cheeks to say, "'Big Boy' is right, huh?" Eddie swallowed him down with no fanfare or warning, and Steve's head cracked against the wall at the sudden wet warmth around his cock.

"Eddie, Eddie, Eds—" he chanted into the ball of fabric bulging his cheeks. He had half a mind to use his tongue to leverage it loose and spit the sodden fabric out. But some lucid corner of his mind kept hold of the need to keep quiet. To not get caught. Even though the threat of discovery sent a secret thrill down his spine. 

Steve bucked forward, and Eddie pulled away with a wet 'pop'. "C'mon." Eddie rubbed a goading hand on Steve's thigh. "Gotta be quick. Fuck my throat."

Steve groaned, long and low — and immediately tangled his hands in Eddie's hair and drove forward; chasing his release on Eddie's tongue; seeking bliss at the back of Eddie's throat.

Eddie, who he'd been dancing around for months, now. Eddie, who'd have to finish DMing with a bruised throat and bloodshot eyes. Eddie, who'd slotted himself into Steve's life like he'd always been there.