for a moment , eddie hears angels sing . his fingers weave some unspoken language in steve’s hair , trace it along the skin of his broad back ; his lips are just as soft and sweet as he thinks heaven must be … before the rising heat between them drags him to hell . ‘ i——— ’ he moistens his lips , mouth suddenly dry , a wave of nausea lapping at his insides , ‘ um … ’ in his mind there exists one steve harrington , the king , ever out of reach . at his fingertips , painfully so , there is another : and this one he thought was beginning to know. this one , with the way he looks at eddie , presses himself against eddie … this one , with the way they seem to work in tandem even despite their differences : THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD , HEAVEN AND HELL … is this evil ? it had felt damning in the dingy bathroom of a rock ‘n’ roll club : not all the way evil but tinged with wickedness ——— something like fire in his veins and a middle finger to the world. ( SODOMY ! : who knew sin could feel this good ? ) this feels different … like two trembling hearts and a longing to be closer , closer … his hands begin to shake . eddie backs up , a frightened animal , eyes wide .
‘ i thought——— ’ thought what ? that the heat between them was a magnetic field ? / all of the above ? … none of that seems to matter with this new distance between them , tongues speaking separate languages . ‘ shit . shit , shit . shit . ’ stupid . crazy . fucking . freak ! of course this was how it would end ——— how it always would end : because royalty , even deposed , does not come down from its throne to slum it in the gutter with the royally depraved . a muscle works in eddie’s jaw as his teeth grit , whole face tense . ICARUS , THEN : he reaches out to embrace the flame , only to find himself melting beneath what he imagines to be the king’s hateful glare . throat closing up , he hangs his head , a quivering hand tugging a fistful of hair forward , as if it’ll hide his face or erase his shame. he wants to hide , to run away again , but steve’s in his trailer ; he has nowhere to go .
‘ um , you can go now , dude . sorry . ’ it’s all a mumble , the last word barely audible : more mousesqueak than any heavy metal scream . if steve wants to tell the town of hawkins what a FILTHY FREAK he is ——— well , it’s not like it changes anything . eddie shrugs with one shoulder towards the door , hoping and half - praying for a disgusted exit over the alternative of white and bloodied knuckles , of a knee driven into his gut.
steve can still taste eddie on his lips (cigarette smoke and grave dirt: it’s the sort of taste your lick out of gutters and dirty bar glasses, not out the mouth of a beautiful boy in his less than beautiful bedroom, but steve wants more as immediately as he loses it-- he wants it so badly that it scares him). fear is just the other edge of excitement, the sharper blade that juts free from the curved handle. steve can fit his palm around it, but that doesn’t mean he can truly ever hold it. his tongue sneaks out to press against the warm crease of his lips ... there, eddie is still held, a taste that he knows mouth wash won’t be able to clean from him. he lifts his fingers, pressing a thumb against his own bottom lip-- a breath is stolen, an attempt to steady himself. doubt creeps in. he is staring at eddie with wide - eyes as if the fire - laced prophet will somehow divulge some hidden truth (he wonders if eddie is looking for the same thing in him: too bad that his mouth, usually a fountain of truth, had curved itself into a liar’s line, flat and crumbling). eddie almost speaks, then doesn’t. steve’s mouth parts around words that don’t quite make it out. without the other to hold him up, he sags against the desk, letting it creak below the sigh of his body weight. hands rise to wipe at his eyes, as if clarity could be reached in a place like this-- they just sink further into confusion.
before steve can gather himself, eddie is already eating raw profanities and spitting out their bleeding lungs. his hand runs shakily through his hair as eddie, as charged as a lion, wraps that warm mouth of his around shit, shit, shit. forest of hair greets the deposed prince as his head dips-- steve thinks of how a crown could never fit there. there should be demon horns growing through the fuzz, a sign that eddie was not of this world (there was nothing quite devilish about him, and evil did not sit in his blood, but still ... there should be a warning sign above eddie’s head). danger: bad decisions will be made here! it feels grimy to call what happened here a bad decision, but he doesn’t have any other words for it. words had never been his strong point-- you’re welcome to ask nancy wheeler all about that. ‘‘ i’ve never done that before, ’’ steve says, quietly, trying to interrupt eddie’s babbling. it’s hard to get a foothold when the other starts, though. ‘‘ i mean, i’ve kissed people before. duh. girls, though, not ... you know, girls. ’’
a cough leaves him when eddie dismisses him. he stands to his feet like a chastised schoolgirl, indignant and ashamed in all the worst of ways. ‘‘ okay, dude, ’’ steve scoffs, like eddie is the weird one. he mellows when eddie apologises: this is awkward. steve feels itchy beneath his collar. ‘‘ are you, like, demanding i go, or? ’’