Archive of Our Own ^beta

The silence in the car is complete. It’s that utter sort of quiet that only ever occurs when all the people in a group are so deep in their own heads that they don’t notice that nobody is talking. The radio hasn’t even been turned on; there’s just the steady rumble of the engine, wheels against the road. Eddie is riding shotgun, staring out blankly into the night. In the backseat, Max has propped her grubby converse up on the back of the center console, her headphones on but Kate Bush mercifully silent. She has her head in the crook of Lucas’ arm, wrapped tight around her. Dustin sits on her right, turned away from them and his usual grin conspicuously absent.

Steve would have tried making some bad jokes, the kind that would mean that the kids would just have to complain about them, but… Opening his mouth feels like an insurmountable task. He feels scraped raw, from the inside. It had been too close, this time. Too close with that asshole Jason, too close with Lucas’ kid sister getting caught, too close with Nancy and Robin getting their life slowly squeezed out of them right in front of his fucking face.

Too close with Max, the fifteen-year-old who’d agreed to play bait for them, sacrifice herself for them. A sacrifice that shouldn’t have been necessary. Hadn’t been necessary, but-…

Fuck.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. A short moment, though, wouldn’t do to survive all this only to crash the car. Short moments are all Steve can get. The red lights of Nancy’s car glow steadily ahead, carrying the rest of the group back towards town.

It had been close for Eddie, too. It had been plain to see in Dustin’s white-knuckled grip on his jacket, when he and Nancy and Robin had come stumbling back from Vecna’s demented manor. In how his t-shirt clung wetly to his side and how his bandana had been ripped from his head to serve as a makeshift compress. In how Steve had practically had to throw him up through the hole to the real world; in how he’d trembled, white as a sheet, as he crawled off the dirty mattress.

Steve glances at the Hellfire clan-leader out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't look like a leader of much anything, right now. He sits slumped against the door, cradling his sides with his arms, staring into the middle-distance like the rest of them. Steve turns back to the road, pressing his teeth together and flexing his jaw. It feels wrong to see him like this. Even back when Steve’s opinion of him had been firmly stuck at annoying as fuck, it had still been plain to see that Eddie was practically vibrating with life, bouncing all over the place and generally making a nuisance of himself.

No wonder he and Dustin got on like a house on fire.

He glances at the kid in the rear-view mirror and finds him in much the same state as Eddie; slumped over, red-rimmed eyes firmly locked on the night outside, lips downturned.

Dustin had been shaken, properly shaken, that much had been plain to see. Steve gets it. Sure, it wouldn't have been the first time someone had died on one of these fucked up adventures of theirs, but it had very nearly been the first time it was one of them. If they’d been even just a little bit slower in getting to Vecna…

They hadn’t been.

But they very easily could have, and the ‘what if’s won't leave Steve alone.

We're fine, Steve tries to tell himself. We're all fine. 

Hell, it looks like the whole thing with the murder charges might even be getting resolved; the one good thing about Jason continuously sticking his stupid face where it doesn't belong. Thank God for the persuasive power of a pissed-off Nancy Wheeler.  

Though, that he’d been there to witness Lucas’ reaction to Max’s unconscious body dropping to the floor probably also served to put some cracks in the foundation of his anger, Steve suspects.

He glances at them, too, in the rear-view mirror. When they’d pulled up outside Vecna’s house in the real world to pick them up, they’d stood out on the lawn, them and Erica, Jason’s gang some distance away. Max had looked so goddamn small, Lucas’ arm tight around her, and both their cheeks had still been wet from tears.

They were just kids. Just fucking kids.

Both their eyes had visibility tallied them up as they’d piled out of the vehicles– checking that no one had died, their various injuries – Lucas’ voice when he greeted them raspy in a way that only came about by screaming yourself raw.

The leather of the steering wheel creaks in Steve’s hands as he squeezes it.

Eddie was the only one who’d stayed in the car. Not that it had mattered; Jason and his sycophants had spotted him the minute they’d pulled up. They only got a few determined steps in, though, before Nancy had pulled up in front of them, thrown her car-door open and come stalking out.

“Hey!”

Eddie hadn’t gotten out of his seat for that, either, but he’d met Jason’s murderous gaze steadily as Nancy chewed him out, hunched over the stomach wounds he was still cradling.

Steve had hung back and let her do the talking, one arm on the roof and the other slung over his own open car door, watching steadily to see if Jason would so much as twitch in the direction of one of his people.

He would have taken his spiked baseball bat to that psycho’s fucking skull if he had.

He glances at Eddie again.

Dustin had been the one to more or less shove him into the passenger seat – gently, though, mindful of his wounds – even though Eddie was already technically at home. He’d traded a hard-set look with Steve over the roof of the car as he did.

Steve had nodded.

Sticking together was better. They wouldn’t leave Eddie behind. 

“This is you, Sinclair,” Steve says, pulling up outside Lucas’ house. Erica is already hopping out of the car in front.

“I’m staying here, too,” Max says, even as she’s clambering out of the car, never letting go of Lucas’ hand.

“Yeah, alright. Take care, kids,” Steve says. “Maybe call your mom, though, Mayfield, okay?”

“You’re already here, aren’t you?” Max says, a few shades more subdued than normal, but somewhat near to that snarking tone of hers. She still nods, though.

Steve has his hand wrapped around the pole for the headrest on the passenger seat, and there’s a slightly too long stretch of quiet while he waits for Eddie to say something.

He doesn’t.

He stares out at nothing, showing no indication that he’s aware of what’s going on around him at all. The sight settles like a rock in Steve’s belly. The kids don’t need that type of stuff to worry about, though, not right now.

“What about you, Henderson?” Steve says, maybe just a bit too loud, turning to look at him in the back. “You getting out here, too?”

Dustin shakes his head, just as Steve had already known; his mom would probably be hanging out the window waiting for him, finger on the phone to call the police.

“No, I better go home, I think,” he answers. “I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Lucas agrees, then closes the car door, raising a hand in farewell as they drive off.

The quiet persists with only three people in the vehicle. Steve blinks his headlights in goodbye as he turns off towards Dustin’s home, Nancy continuing straight in the direction of Robin’s house. She pumps her breaks in response.

The short drive goes by fast, eerily calm and quiet after everything they’d been through.

He starts slowing down far enough away from Dustin’s house that his mom won’t be able to spot the headlights, turning them off. He turns the key in the ignition, too, cutting the engine and rolling the rest of the way in silence, before finally coming to a complete stop just by the driveway.

“You good, Henderson?” he asks, meeting his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

Dustin makes a face, but then nods. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just… yeah.”

His eyes flick over to Eddie. Steve turns to look, too. Eddie still hasn’t moved.  

At least his chest is visibly rising and falling with his breath.

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve says, returning his gaze to Dustin. “Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dustin agrees with a sigh, getting out of the car.

Steve rolls down his window as Dustin closes the door and calls, half-softly, after him: “Call me if anything comes up, okay?”

“Always do, Steve.” Dustin responds, raising a hand in goodbye, without even turning around. “Always do.”

Slightly comforted by those words, Steve holds off leaving until Dustin is inside, then set off towards the final stop.

This time, the two of them alone, the silence feels heavy. Palpable. The engine rumbles, deep on the slow and quiet roads. Hawkins seems almost painfully mundane as the suburban scenery rolls past; it tends to, he’s found, after their near-death experiences. Previous times, he’s struggled with that, with feeling like the ignorance is willful. It doesn’t help being angry, he knows, but he’ll probably end up feeling that way for a while anyway this time, too.

Besides, he thinks, cutting a glance to the side, they got themselves a proper witch-hunt this time. Made themselves deserving of some anger.

He can hear Eddie breathing, still. Some comfort.  

His own rattles and rasps down his throat, and he tries to ignore how it hurts when he swallows.

It’s not far between his and Dustin’s house, only some few minutes. He pulls up to just outside the garage door, then cuts the engine.

He turns in his seat.

“Eddie.”

He startles, a visibly painful jerk, and his eyes snap to Steve. Steve meets his gaze steadily, trying to project calm. Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn’t. Eddie’s eyes does linger on him for a moment before he looks around, though. The house towers above them, dark and empty. Eddie frowns, plainly confused, then glances to Steve and-

Realization dawns, then it’s quickly followed by anger and… hurt? The first quickly eclipses the latter and Eddie flings open the car door.

“See you around, I guess, Harrington,” he spits, beginning to limp away.

Steve is so startled that it takes him a moment to get his bearings.

“Hey!” he calls, scrambling out of the car. “Hey! Where are you going?! You can barely even walk!”

“Home,” Eddie snaps. “And I’m walking because apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t deserve a fucking ride.”

“Oh, for the love of-,” he mutters, then runs the couple of hobbled steps that Eddie has managed to put between them, grabs his arm to spin him around.

“Your home is half portal, idiot,” Steve says. “You’re staying with me.”

Eddie freezes, stares at him.

“With you?” he asks, finally.

“Yeah, man,” Steve says, a little impatiently. “My parents aren’t home.”

Eddie just keeps looking at him.

Steve sighs heavily, dragging a hand through his hair. “Look, if you really don’t want to, I’ll drive you back to yours. But just let me check the wounds first, alright? I’ve got all the stuff for it inside.”

A frown has crept up on Eddie’s face, now, and he keeps looking at him. As though seeing him for the first time. Steve raises his eyebrows in question, jerking his head back towards the house in silent insistence.

“Alright,” Eddie says finally, warily, as though he’s expecting Steve to jump up and pull the rug from underneath his feet now that he’s gotten him where he wanted.

“Great,” Steve says, turning around and walking towards the front door before he gets a chance to argue more.

He’s not sure what part of things Eddie has agreed to – staying the night or just coming inside – but he suspects that his inclination to leave will abate significantly once he’s through the door. Faced with a bed, a shower, and a space free from a hole straight to the Upside Down, Steve’s willing to bet he won’t even remember that he objected to the invitation in the first place.

Steve holds the door open for Eddie, turning on the hallway lights and gesturing him inside. Eddie steps through, if haltingly, eyes flitting across the interior uneasily.

“Great,” he mutters, likely mostly to himself. “I’m gonna get blood on the carpet.”

“I know how to get it out,” Steve replies, nevertheless, shutting and locking the door behind them. Toes off his shoes.“Come on, I have the stuff upstairs.”

He sets off, and Eddie’s hesitation wanes slightly quicker this time. He hears him hiss in pain as he struggles to tug his sneakers off his feet, and does him the courtesy of not turning around to watch. He slows, though, until Eddie has caught up. They hardly make a noise as they walk, socks against carpet.

“I’m guessing you mean antiseptic and shit,” Eddie says, after a moment, with something like a scoff. “Not usually the type of ‘stuff’ people refer to around me.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, throwing a look and a raised eyebrow over his shoulder. “I got some prescription shit as well, if that’s what you mean.”

Eddie’s eyebrows climb. “You, Harrington?”

“Yeah, me,” Steve scoffs. “You were there when we got mauled by the otherworldly hell-beasts, weren’t you? This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Eddie’s expression smooths out with disconcerting abruptness, and Steve sees him clutch his side tighter.  

“Oh.”

Steve slows, turning slightly on his way up the stairs. He realizes, looking back down at him, that Eddie has only managed the first two steps. Is he having trouble lifting his legs?

“They got you pretty good,” Steve says carefully. “You think you need some?”

“No.”

The reply is immediate, sharp, surprisingly so after Eddie’s previous disjointedness. He seems to realize so himself:

“No, sorry, I-…” he trails off, swallows and leans against the banister. “My mom, she-… I don’t-… Not anything like that.”

Steve looks down at him for a moment, processing.

“Okay,” he says then, going down the steps separating them and pulling Eddie’s free arm across his shoulder. “A shower is non-negotiable though, you’re grimy as fuck.”

Eddie looks at him. Steve lets him, holding his gaze steadily.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, finally.

There’s a weight to it that doesn't match the acquiescence to a simple shower.  

Steve nods, once, and they set about getting themselves up the stairs. Eddie does struggle, shaking with effort at Steve’s side.

The upstairs bathroom isn’t actually Steve’s, but his parents’ bedroom is on the floor below and they so rarely have had a reason to come up here that, for all intents and purposes, it is his. At least, he’s alone enough in making use of it that he has felt confident enough to stash his med-kit in there, unexplainably extensive as it is.

At least, with some slightly more conspicuous contraband as a decoy, he is.

“We’ve not even had a first date, Harrington,” Eddie says, voice still a bit thin with pain, as Steve flings a box of condoms and a bottle of lube over his shoulder in his direction

“Shut up,” Steve answers, kneeling in front of the bathroom cabinet and struggling to fit his fingers around the board he’s hidden his stash behind.

It plops loose, finally, and he’s able to drag the box it had hidden out on the floor.

“Jesus, did you rob a fucking hospital?”

“Come on,” Steve says, ignoring him and getting to his feet. “Take your jacket and shirt off so I can see.”

“Again,” Eddie says. “Not even the first date…”

This time, though, the joviality is markedly strained.

Steve holds himself back, not wanting to stress him out.

For a moment Eddie simply stands there, breathing. Then, determination on his face, he carefully peels his hands away from the wall. They tremble. Breath coming harshly through his nose, face paler by the second, he brings the left one up to his right shoulder. With jerky movements, he manages to shove the jacket off it, shrugging the garment first off that arm, then the other. It falls to the floor in a heap, and Eddie reaches for the hem of his tattered shirt-

“Shit, fuck,” Eddie swears the moment he tries to lift it, sucking air though his teeth.

He let his hands drop and leans back against the wall, hands splayed and breathing heavily, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.

“Okay, that's not gonna work,” Steve says quickly, taking a step closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Eddie breathes, eyes still screwed shut. “Just-… can’t lift my arms.”

“We’ll cut it off,” Steve decides, bending down to pick up a pair of scissors from his box.

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Eddie agrees, still leaned heavily against the wall. “Fuck.”

Steve moves to stand right in front of him, running his finger slightly along the neckline to pick up the hem. At the touch, Eddie’s eyes abruptly fly open.

“Okay?” Steve asks carefully, holding still.

Eddie keeps looking at him, and Steve becomes aware of how very close they were. Despite himself, he feels his face heating.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “Just-… wasn’t expectin’…”

“Yeah,” Steve echoes vaguely, holding up the scissor for Eddie to see.

Eddie nods, tilting his chin up and out of the way. It’s still a slightly awkward maneuver; he has to hold the neckline away from Eddie’s skin for fear of nicking him, which means that both his arms are lifted high, elbows up by Eddie’s ears.

The fist snick of the scissors is surprisingly loud.

He makes quick work of the rest, all the way to the bottom hem. The fabric doesn’t fall away, though, stuck to Eddie’s body by semi-dried blood. Steve winces in anticipatory sympathy, glancing up at Eddie to check that he’s doing alright.

“I’ll peel it back,” he says. “Not gonna feel good, though.”

“No shit,” Eddie grits out, hands struggling to find purchase, something to steady him through the pain.

“Here,” Steve says, turning them around by careful hands on Eddie’s sides, until he’s leaned up against the sink.

Eddie’s ringed fingers wrap around it immediately, white-knuckled.

“Ready?” Steve asks, looking up at Eddie long enough for him to give a firm nod. “Okay, here we go.”

It’s arduous work. Steve quickly ends up in a sort of kneeling position, continuously trying to peek below the shirt to be able to adjust the way he moves the fabric. The bites are centered around the soft flesh below Eddie’s ribs, just the way Steve’s own bites had been. There are more of them than he has, though, and instead of his shirt being ripped clean off, Eddie’s has torn and frayed and threads of it seems to have been pushed into the wound. The dried blood makes it worse, tearing up in clumps, wringing out half-shouted moans through gritted teeth.

Eddie’s exhales come in short bursts, staccato, and Steve catches himself holding his own breath several times.

Then, finally, it’s done.

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, standing up quickly and pushing the fabric off of Eddie’s shoulder before it could catch somewhere new. “Lean forward.”

The shirt comes loose, and Steve throws it away like something poisonous.

Eddie stands bared before him.

“Holy shit,” Steve swears. “Fuck.”

Eddie laughs breathily, almost deranged. “Jeze, Harrington, don’t lay it on too thick, alright?”

Below the ribs, Eddie is just red. There’s not a trace of skin, and it’s impossible to tell how much of it is bared flesh and how much is just gore spread around. God, Steve hopes it’s mostly just gore spread around, otherwise Eddie’s insides might be falling out at any moment.

“Okay,” Steve says, feeling a bit woozy and panicky. “Okay.”

Higher up it’s looking better – probably harder to bite into ribs than stomach – but he’s still not spared there, fangs dragging lines across the skin where they haven’t gotten purchase. He’s also just dirty, covered in whatever unnamable filth that covers the ground in the Upside Down.

Eddie just looks at him, any emotion gone from his face. Just… looks at him.

Steve shakes his head to clear it. Pulls himself together.

“Okay,” he says again, this time with purpose. “Shower. Take off your pants.”

Eddie follows instructions without jibes this time. Steve wouldn’t have guessed that he one day would miss another man joking about wanting to get into his pants but, now, here he is; missing it sorely, wondering what it says about Eddie’s state of mind that he’s foregoing the taunts. State, period. God, how much blood has he lost? Eddie manages to get the button loose and zipper down on his own, shoves the pants down mid-thigh, but then can’t bend down to pull them off fully.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” Steve hurries to say, shoves them off and then gets to his knees to get Eddie’s feet loose.

“Christ, Harrington,” Eddie says, chuckles weakly and swallows, grip still firm enough on the sink that his fingertips are white as he sways from the pain of moving. “You’re… really not what I thought at all.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, looking up at him, pushing the crumpled up pants away and getting to his feet. “Neither are you.”

He pulls his own shirt over his head, then, sparing himself having to look at Eddie’s face any longer. It’s-… Whatever his expression is, he doesn’t like it. He undoes his own trousers, takes them off. Then they’re both standing there, in only their underwear. Eddie’s black, Steve’s white. Steve’s wounds healing, Eddie’s beginning to bleed sluggishly again with the fabric and scabbing pulled off.

“Shower,” he says, once more, keeping up his newly acquired habit of stating every next step aloud.

He glances down at himself, briefly, then immediately discards the thought; he’s not getting naked with another man in the shower, absolutely not, that’s not the kind of crazy his night has been.

“Come on,” he says instead, positioning himself so that Eddie can use him for support as he straightens up.

There’s only a couple of steps to the bathtub and Eddie takes them with all the grace of a newborn foal – and then comes the trouble of actually getting in the tub.

“Okay, I have an idea,” Steve says, after a moment of them both staring at the seemingly insurmountable obstacle. “Do you think you can sit down?”

“I can try,” Eddie replies through gritted teeth.

Steve transfers Eddie’s arm so that he’s supported by the wall and Steve can get out of the way. He busies himself with getting into the tub himself and turning on the tap, letting the water run warm. Eddie does his best to lower himself down carefully, but his core has been chewed on by demo-bats and, after a little bending, he ends up thudding down harshly, sucking in a sharp breath. Steve winces in sympathy.

“Okay, now-“

“Christ, Steve, I get the idea!” Eddie snaps, indeed already trembling with the effort of lifting his leg, leaning back as far as he can so that he doesn’t have to fold up on himself too much.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Steve chides sharply, leaning over to grab Eddie’s ancle as it begins to near the top and helps him swing his leg into the tub. “Now the other one.”

Eddie doesn’t comment on his unnecessary instructions, this time, jaw working furiously and face pale and sweaty. The effort is visible on his face, but he hasn’t moved an inch before his whole body begins to shudder violently.

“Shit, stop, stop, I’ll do it!” Steve hurries to say, leaning over to grab his leg before he actually manages to hurt himself.

He ends up with his hand wrapped around Eddie’s thigh, just above his bent knee. For reasons beyond his comprehension, as he lifts, he registers how firm his leg is, how the slightly coarse hair feels against his palm. All the girls he’s been with have been smooth, soft.

Bleeding, he reminds himself, possibly dying.

He shifts his hand quickly down Eddies calf once he’s got his leg high enough. That, too, is hairy and muscled.

Then it’s done, to both of their reliefs.

“Well,” Eddie says, winded. “That was only the most painful and embarrassing thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“At least it can only go up from here?” Steve tries, but Eddie just shakes his head.

“Oh no, Harrington, I see no reason to rule out that new lows might be reached this night. At least if I die, you’re the one stuck trying to explain what my half-naked corpse is doing in your house.”

Steve swallows, tries to pretend that the idea doesn’t stab his heart clean through with fear.

“Well, you owe me one, after all of this,” Steve says, just a little bit tightly. “So kindly don’t die, okay? I can’t deal with cops on top of all the shit we’ve already been though.”  

“Eh, that’s fine, just throw me in a ditch somewhere,” Eddie says, flippant as he breathes through his pain. “Fair bet no one’s gonna notice I’m gone, anyway.”

Steve’s heart is pounding. In anger, in fear. Is this a farewell-speech he’s getting? Is this some fucked up way for Eddie to-

“Standing up or sitting down?” he snaps, not willing to indulge the guy in whatever the fuck he’s got going on.

“What?” Eddie asks, looking blearily up at him.

Steve grits his teeth. “Hang on.”

He clambers out of the bathtub, mindful to not as much as nudge Eddie as he does so, and digs through his med-kit. He comes up with a loose blister pack, branding on the back telling him he’s got the right one, and pops out three pills. He takes one for himself, swallows it dry, and holds out the other two for Eddie.

“Here.”

“I told you-“

“Ibuprofen,” Steve cuts him off, grabbing Eddie’s hand and putting the pills in them, then climbs back into the tub.

“Take them,” Steve instructs, when Eddie doesn’t immediately do so by his own volition.

Eddie looks at him with an indecipherable expression on his face for several long moments… then pops both pills in his mouth. Steve deflates slightly, some tension leaving him. Whether it is because Eddie is doing what he’s telling him to, or whether his subconscious thinks that Ibuprofen works as some sort of panacea, he doesn’t know.

He’ll take it, though.

“Now – standing up or sitting down?” Steve asks again. Then specifies: “For showering.”

Eddie grimaces slightly as he considers this, but then finally settles on: “Standing up.”

Steve nods and moves to help. Eddie tries to shrug him off at first, but it quickly proves impossible for him to push himself off the wall with enough force to end up standing and so, eventually, accepts the help. Unfortunately, though, pulling on Eddie’s arms proves not to be a viable option either, each attempt causing hisses of pained protest. So, Steve wraps an arm around Eddie’s torso, pulling him to his feet that way.

“See?” Eddie pants, practically straight into his ear. “New lows.”

“Welcome to the life, Munson,” Steve says, a little winded himself now, and finds a decently untouched bit of Eddie’s back to clap lightly in commiseration. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Leave my dignity behind, you mean?” Eddie asks, using a hand clamped firmly around Steve’s wrist to keep himself upright.

“Yeah, something like that,” Steve concedes, then reaches to tug at the stopper that diverts the water to the showerhead.

It sputters, then rains down a hot torrent over them.

“Fuck, fuck,” Eddie hisses, hand like a claw in front of his wounds, not touching but looking like he wishes he could.

“You need to get clean,” Steve insists, wiping his now-wet hair off his face and back with both hands, shaking the water from his face and leaning slightly to the side so that he’s not right in the spray.

They have to stand one in front of the other, as the bathtub is too narrow to allow for anything else, and Steve’s closest to the tap. He backs up further, closer to the wall, so that he’s standing practically underneath the spray and pulls Eddie stumbling closer by the man’s hold on his wrist.

“Come on,” Steve urges. “You gotta scrub a little.”

“Scrub?” Eddie hisses like it’s the most outrageous fucking thing he’s ever heard, the hand not holding Steve is pressed flat against the tiled wall, and looks like he’d fall over without either anchor.

“Not in your wounds,” Steve clarifies.

Although, looking at them… The blood is caked on, and though the water runs bright red down the drain, he’s not sure everything that needs to is going to come off on its own. There’s also visible grit in the mess of it, tiny stones and dirt, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to go anywhere anytime soon.

Eddie, though, is shaking his head. Won’t stop shaking it, and is doing it in such a way that it finally draws Steve’s attention up from his wounds.

“Harrington,” he says, shaky, then laughs, terrible and breathy and right at the edge of a sob. “Steve. I can’t fucking move, I can’t- I can’t- I-“

Eddie’s words dissolve into shallow pants as he keeps shaking his head, holds Steve’s wrist crushingly.

“Hey, hey, no, it’s alright, I got you, I got you,” Steve says, moves closer to grab on to Eddies neck, holds on tight. It puts him right in the spray, hitting the back of his head and pushing his hair forward towards his face, but he ignores it best he can. “Eddie, breathe, breathe.”

It takes a while, several minutes, but finally Eddies breaths start to go deeper.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Steve says, continuing the steady stream of inane babbling that he’s kept up throughout the whole ordeal. He’s not sure if it’s helpful, but he hasn’t been able to think of anything else. He figures that, if it’s annoying, it’ll at least motivate Eddie to get his shit together so that he can yell at him. “Come on, keep it up.”

“Fuck,” Eddie shudders out, draws several heaving breaths, and then lifts his head to look up at Steve.

There’s enough spray from the shower that it might account for all the wetness on Eddie’s face.

Steve doesn’t comment.

“Hold my shoulder,” he says instead, lifting his arm up carefully so that the distance between it and his wrist won’t be too long.

Eddie does as instructed, making the switch fast, digging his fingers in hard. Steve pretends he doesn’t feel how he shakes.

“Now, just stand here, and I’ll get you cleaned up. You won’t have to move.”

Eddie’s eyes take on a sharpness that is encouraging, even though they narrow dangerously, and he spits: “Like hell you’re going to wash me, Harrington!”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “What you gonna do about it?”

Eddie flounders and Steve brings up a hand to rub at a spot of black dirt on his pec.

What in sweet hell is even my life?

Outwardly, he makes sure to look like this is just another Tuesday. “See? Neither of us burst into flames.”

Eddie’s chest rises and falls as he stares at him, outraged and something else, and Steve’s holds still while he waits to see if Eddie is going to throw a punch. The punch probably won’t land if he does, but he might fall over if he tries and then Steve will have to catch him. Eddie doesn’t, though, thankfully. He just closes his eyes, sighs heavily, and says: “Bye-bye, dignity.”

Steve gives a vague hm in mock-consideration. “Not as though you really had that much in the first place.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie shoots back, but it’s nearly a chuckle, only the slightest bit wet.

“I’ll start with the bits of you that doesn’t look like ground beef,” Steve says. “Once your wounds are clean, they might start to bleed a lot, so we should probably take those last. Sound okay?”

Eddie nods, and Steve gets started on his task.

Only... He has absolutely never done anything like this. His closest point of reference is a couple of friends that has worked with old people, who’ve commented briefly on the awkwardness of having to wash another person. But, this isn’t that. And Eddie isn’t old. What he does know, though, is that he can’t make this weird. That this is about as vulnerable as a person can be, and that he and Eddie wouldn’t even have greeted each other crossing paths on the street, before this Vecna-shit started. So he keeps his freak-out internal, tries to exude clinical disinterest as he drags his hands over the mostly-unharmed parts of Eddies body. He doesn’t use soap, scared of what it might do to the wounds, so it’s just skin-against-skin. He’d started on the shoulders, nice and safe, Steve’s clapped dudes on the shoulders about a million times. Pecs – he’s already touched that, totally fine. Back – can’t even really see what he’s doing, completely fine, he only has to wrap his around Eddie a little to reach. Arms – one hundred percent un-weird to drag his hands down another man’s arms, Steve’s doing great.

Face.

Steve stares for a moment.

Then snaps back, not making it weird remember, and pulls the showerhead from its holder.

“Close your eyes,” he instructs.

Eddie stares at him for a moment, but then does as asked.

Steve nearly dissolves in relief as he realizes he’s inadvertently given himself the space for a small external freakout. He squeezes his eyes shut as he cringes at himself, just for a moment, before hurrying to point the stream of water at Eddie’s head. His long locks grow heavy and flatten with the water, coming even further down his chest.

That water too, runs red.

Abruptly distracted from his significantly more trivial freak-out, he asks sharply: “Did you hit your head?”

Eddie scoffs. “They tore me to the ground, Harrington; I dare you to find a piece of me that I hasn’t gotten all banged up.”

Grumbling under his breath at this flippant response, Steve digs the fingers of his free hand into Eddie’s scalp. A small hitching of breath is all the admonishing he gets for this violation, for not warning beforehand.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters. “Just need to check that you’re not hiding a headwound underneath all that hair.”

It’s slightly too long a beat, but eventually Eddie says, just a little bit unsteadily: “Don’t diss the hair, Harrington.”

“I wouldn’t,” Steve replies reflexively, entirely too honestly.

They lapse into silence after that, Steve working his fingertips methodically across Eddie’s scalp. Headwounds, he keeps telling himself, headwounds. But the water is running almost entirely clear now, making it seem increasingly likely that there’d simply been some dried blood tangled up in the strands, and Steve’s finding it a bit hard to cling to the severity of the situation.

It probably makes him a terrible person.

He finds a decent bump on the back of Eddie’s head that makes him wince when Steve probes it lightly, but the skin isn’t broken and it doesn’t seem large enough to be of immediate concern.

“Just tell me if you feel like you’re gonna throw up or anything, okay?” Steve says, withdrawing his hand from the wet locks.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, keeping his eyes closed. “Sure, whatever.”

Steve shoots him another glance, not quite sure what to make of the expression on his face, but then decides to disregard it and resume his task.

He’s unspeakably grateful that Eddie hasn’t opened his eyes, because he doesn’t think he could have survived it if he’d had to look into his eyes as he carefully brushes the dirt from his face. He makes sure to keep the stream of water pointed straight at it, just to really discourage him opening them.

Christ, Steve thinks, staring at Eddie’s dark lashes fanning out over pale skin, Christ.

After that, though, he can refocus on the intact bits of his upper body. There’s not too much left, just going over places he’s missed. After that, though, comes his lower body.

The legs, Steve decides nigh instantaneously, absolutely nothing but the legs.

Still, even washing those just seems like a whole ‘nother level of weird, compared to his torso. So, after some cursory directing of the water towards particularly dirty spots – knees mostly, and a quick brush-over on the outside of the left thigh, where a bite has torn the fabric and small clumps of whatever clung stubbornly to the hair –, Steve’s ready to call the mission completed.

(Looking down at Eddies legs left him with a weird sense of vertigo, off balance and a little guilty, like he was breaking unspoken rules and letting his eyes linger on another dude in the showers after gym. He tried looking away, half on reflex, but realized that was hardly productive to trying to get him clean, and- And jesus fuck, his own boxers were practically transparent, good job, why the hell had he chosen white this morning, holy-)

He feels almost relieved when he realizes that being done with the washing means that he now has to focus on the life-and-death stuff.

He’s most definitely a terrible person.

“I’ll start on the wounds now,” Steve warns. “Once I’m done, we might have to move fast – I’m not sure how much they’re going to be bleeding.”

“Wait,” Eddie says. “Do yourself first.”

Steve blinks.

“If we’re gonna be in a hurry after you’ve scraped my wounds clean,” Eddie says, “then you might as well get yourself clean before you get started.”

“I- eh…?”

“You’re going to be disinfecting me after this, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

“Yeah, so, just get yourself clean enough that you won’t be dripping Upside Down-germs into my open wounds, then,” Eddie says impatiently.

Steve hesitates.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Soap yourself up, hero-boy.”

Steve eyes Eddie uncertainly, but does pick up his bottle of soap, helping Eddie move his hand from his shoulder to the wall opposite before he does. Once sure that he is stabilized, propped up in the corner, he makes quick work of washing up, muttering all the while that it’s not like I wasn’t gonna dry off, Jesus, and giving Eddie some side-eye. It’s weird to be soaping up with his underwear still on, and he feels practically on display as Eddie just stands there. He’s also painfully aware of the transparent state of his boxers.

Then, abruptly, as his hands move swiftly across his body – he remembers the feel of Eddie’s against them. Gets the thought in his head that he’s practically smearing traces of Eddie all over himself.

And that is most certainly not how anything works, but now he’s stuck with that thought, stuck on it, freezing suddenly, mid-motion.

“Harrington?” Eddie asks uncertainly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve hurries to say, nonsensically, giving up on the soap and shifting the spray so that he can rinse himself off.

He turns his back to Eddie and puts his face in the water, scrubs it with both hands and then drags his fingers through his hair, as though that’ll clean the strange thoughts from his mind.

“There you go, Munson,” Steve says then, facing him again and shaking his head a little to get rid of the last droplets wanting to go in his eyes. “Good enough for you?”

Eddie nods, once, a look on his face that Steve can’t quite parse.

Serious, Steve tells himself, life-and-death.

And it is. It is. Steve quickly convinces himself almost too well, that cold sliver of fear coming creeping back in.

“Ready to hurt like hell?” Steve asks, trying to sound light and not anything at all like what he’s actually feeling.

Eddie winces at the reminder – as though he’d genuinely briefly forgotten – and draws in a shuddering, bracing breath. Then nods.

Steve carefully loosens his hand from the further wall and puts that hand back on his own shoulder, brining Eddie back into reach of the spray. His mouth is pressed tight and small, Steve notes, and his eyes has focused determinedly on what looks like could maybe be the label on Steve’s bottle of shampoo.  

Steve, too, takes a bracing breath. “Okay, well… here we go, then.”

He steels himself, then turns his attention to Eddie’s stomach. In isolation, it barely even looks like something that’d be attached to a body. It’s a lumpy reddish brown, fleshy and horrifying, like a prop from some slasher. Steve tries to make sure that the water only hits it indirectly, lets it run down from Eddie’s chest so that no jet of water will go straight into an open wound. The run-off is still coming away a deep red, rusty, lumps of coagulated blood spilling down the drain.

Eddie stands with his jaw screwed shut, eyes on the ceiling, sucking in breaths through gritted teeth when Steve has to run barely-there fingertips over something to make it come loose.

It feels like it takes an age. Steve's so tense that he's hurting with it, each of Eddie's flinches reverberating through his own body, terrified that he'll fuck everything up. That he'll just hurt him worse. 

Finally, finally, most of the grime is gone, and Steve can see the extent of the damage. There are scratches all over him, red and raised and a number of them leaking trickles of blood made pink by the running water. There’s barely any untouched skin at all, not until he’s halfway round Eddies sides, where the extra layer of his jacket has shielded him somewhat. The scrapes looks like they hurt like hell, and a number of them might be well on their way to getting inflamed, but they’re not something that would kill a man – not when antiseptic is a thing. The real danger is the six slightly pointed circles that mark the places where demo-bats had gotten a proper hold of him, sunk their teeth in. They’ve torn definite chunks out of him, sized a bit bigger than a ping-pong ball… but they’re relatively shallow.

Relief shoots through Steve like a drug, making his head swim and his extremities go briefly numb.

“You’re lucky, Munson,” Steve says, looking up at him with a grin. “I can work with this.”

A startled and disbelieving laugh slips out, and a – if somewhat shaky – grin blooms across Eddie’s lips. “Really?”

“Yeah, man, would I lie to you?” Steve answers, going back to examining the wounds and pretending he hasn’t noticed Eddie’s eyes going watery.

The wounds are bleeding, though, like he expected, and he’s worried the water’s covering up just how much.

“Celebration later, though,” Steve says quickly, turning to shut off the water. “We need to get you patched up.”

He steps out of the tub, provoking a nose of protest from Eddie when the abrupt movement puts him off balance. Dripping and as good as naked, Steve briefly contemplates wrapping a towel around himself, but quickly determines that he can’t afford that dignity when it might get in the way.

“Come on,” he says instead, holding out his arms for Eddie. “No time for just standing around.”

The red is soaked up by the black boxers, giving the illusion of it disappearing – briefly, at least; thin, pink-ish rivers of it have already started snaking down Eddie’s legs.

“Come on,” he urges again, waving Eddie forwards.

“I-…” Eddie hesitates, his body likely seizing up at the prospect of causing himself that much pain.

“Look, man,” Steve says, taking on his most reasonable, most dad-iest voice, “there’s nothing left that can tear, so it won’t be as bad as it was going in. You just gotta do it. Quickly, like pulling of a band-aid. Don’t worry about falling, I’ll catch you.”

Eddie looks at him with wide eyes, a little like he thinks he might have gone insane. But, then, also- also a little like he might actually trust him. Steve almost wants to shrink back when he sees that, admit the terrible truth that he has no idea what he’s doing just about a hundred percent of the time. But he can’t, not if Eddie believes in him.

So he stands there, arms out.

“Steve, man, you-…” Eddie says, squarely between laughing and crying, shaking his head in disbelief and pinning him with those huge eyes of his. “Okay- okay. But you gotta catch me, alright?”

“Yeah, of course, I- omphf!”

Steve nearly buckles, because Eddie’s suddenly out, Bambi on ice, legs everywhere and nowhere near steady enough to support him, and Steve only barely manages to catch him enough that their chests doesn’t just smash into each other, arms trembling under the strain. It’s a wobbly affair, tile wet and slippery beneath their feet, but eventually it feels like they’re both steady.

“You okay?” Steve asks, a little breathlessly, hands still firmly in Eddie’s armpits to hold him up.

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes, shakily. “Thought for sure I was gonna pass out there, for a bit.”

“Well, glad you didn’t, you’re heavy enough as is,” Steve says, a bit absentmindedly as he looks around for somewhere to deposit him.

His eyes go to the toilet, lid down, and he could sit him there. He almost starts to, but then realizes the cabinet to its right is going to be in his way, and that a sitting position means that there’s likely to be folds in Eddie’s stomach, and that that’s not going to be helpful either for cleaning or for putting on a bandage.

“We need to lay you down,” he informs Eddie, beginning to back out of the room, shifting an arm to go around his back and reaching out to flip open the cabinet door with the other, grabbing a clean towel.

He’s never been grateful before that his bathroom is kind of cramped.

“Okay,” Eddie agrees, a little breathless again. “But, careful, okay?”

“Yeah, careful,” Steve agrees, eyes on the red lines going down Eddie’s legs. “Of course, careful.”

He hurries them as much as he’s able, though, half dragging Eddie along and taking his weight more than he doesn’t. Thankfully, his bedroom is just across the hall. He manages to flip out the towel across the bed one-handed, tipping Eddie down on it as carefully as he’s able. He still lands with a bounce, though, breath knocked out of him as he goes rigid from pain.

“Right back,” Steve assures him, practically skidding out the room and nearly falling on his face as he stumbles back into the bathroom.

He grabs the med-kit from the floor, yanks another clean towel from the pile, and then scrambles back into the bedroom.

“I’m back,” he says, needlessly breathless for the short distance. “I’m back, okay, right.”

Eddie stares up at him, some fright having crept back into his eyes, and Steve realizes he needs to get a hold of himself.

“Okay,” he says again, forcibly calmer this time. “I’m going to start by drying you off a bit. Ready?”

He holds up the new towel, as though Eddie won’t know how fucking drying works, but just he nods and doesn’t comment.

Focus, he tells himself, and carefully begins dabbing the water off of Eddies torso, mindful to steer clear of the wounds and deeper gashes. He tries to be both as quick and as thorough and as gentle as he can, but is not quite clear on how well he succeeds on either of the points. Once done he’s about to throw the towel to the side, but suddenly spots that Eddie’s covered in goosebumps. He’s cold, too, he realizes. He wipes down Eddie’s legs, quick, just one big swipe with both hands for each, then again is about to discard the towel – only to realize that he’s dripping.

“Oh, for fucks-…”

He dries himself off as quick as humanly possible with the slightly damp towel, scrubs it through his hair as thoroughly as he can, all the while not taking his eyes off Eddie’s wounds. It feels as though he’s bleeding out, while Steve just stands there, toweling off like an idiot.

He doesn’t want to drip shit into Eddie, though, soaped off or not.

Finally he can stand it no longer, and throws the towel to the unoccupied side of the bed. The bleeding does seem more sluggish now, though, thankfully, without the water diluting it and keeping it running.

“Okie-dokie, Eddie,” he says, glancing briefly up at him to meet his gaze. “Time to get this party started.”

It’s possibly a little too jovial, but by now Steve’s half out of his mind with stress he can’t show.

“Just get on with it, man,” Eddie urges, either reawakened or anticipated pain robbing his face of color.

Maybe both.

Probably both.

For a brief moment, when Steve looks down at the wounds, he just feels overwhelmed. Yeah, it doesn’t look immediately deadly now, the way it pretty much had been before they’d gotten him cleaned up, but there’s till chunks of him missing.

If we’re gonna keep this up, I need to go to med-school. That’s hardly a right-now kind of solution, though, so he needs to make do with what he has. Stop stalling, Harrington.

Right.

He picks up the antiseptic solution the pharmacist had recommended to him, gloves and wipes.

Right.

“I’m gonna touch you now,” Steve says, once the gloves are on.

“You’re not deflowering me, Harrington!” Eddie complains through gritted teeth, “Just fucking get on with it!”

“I’m just trying to be polite!” Steve protests, holding out his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Before Eddie has time to object any further, though, he drags a wipe over one of the gnarlier scratches across his chest. Eddie goes immediately rigid, jaw working as he inhales sharply through his nose.

“Okay?” Steve asks.

“Stings,” Eddie says tightly. “Get on with it.”

Lest he has to repeat himself again, Steve does.

For a while, he’s terrified of doing wrong, shoulders so tense that it hurts his neck. For every swipe, he’s terrified he’ll hurt him needlessly, mess up something irrevocably. Then, slowly but surely, he starts feeling like he’s getting a grip on things, his focus narrowing until all of his thoughts, all of his worries, all of everything, seeming to fall away. Done with the antiseptic, he flushes the wounds with saline to get out any remaining grit. When a few pieces still won’t come loose, he sterilizes some tweezers and plucks them out, hands perfectly steady. One by one, he hands gauze pads to Eddie to press against each wound as he finishes cleaning it, in order to stop the bleeding. Thankfully, all of them do stop, one after the other, as Steve goes back to check on them. And when they do, he carefully applies the big, fancy, multi-layer adhesive dressings that had cost him an arm and a leg back when he’d gone and bought them.

Then he’s done.

The world comes flooding back in again.

He sucks in a breath, feeling like it’s the first for hours, and stumbles to his feet with the coordination of a marionette with its strings cut.

“You’ll be alright, Munson,” Steve says, just barely more coherent than a mumble as he tears the gloves off, and manages to round the bed enough that he won’t fall on top of Eddie when he collapses onto it.

He rolls to his back, staring up at the ceiling, and feels completely wrung out. Fuck, if Eddie hadn’t been there, Steve might just have had himself a good cry. His eyes do sting, throat going tight, as the night’s events comes piling down at him all at once – Max, Robin, Nancy, Eddie – but he just squeezes them shut, decides later.

He’s been doing that for a couple of years, now. He figures it’s working.

Even though he can’t cry with Eddie there, and even though they’re just lying there in silence, his presence is rather nice. The dark tends to put him on edge after their excursions into the Upside Down, but with Eddie there it’s… less. Which is silly, of course, because it’s not like either of them would be able to put up much of a fight if so much as a demo-dog showed up.

Still, though.

He wouldn’t die alone, at least.

“Steve,” Eddie says suddenly, cutting through the silence.

Steve blinks, pulled from the depths of his ponderings. “Yeah?”

There’s a pause. He hears Eddie swallow.

“Thank you.”

Steve closes his eyes.

“Of course,” he says, trying his best not to make it sound flippant. He’s not an idiot, he knows that Eddie isn’t-… that he doesn’t-… He knows that the guy needs to hear that he means it, is all. “You’re one of us now.”

There’s a pause. Too long again. Not that Steve minds waiting.

Finally, Eddie says: “What, you’re telling me I’m already past the return policy?”                

He doesn’t quite nail the tone of easy banter that he was probably going for, but Steve lets that pass.

“Yeah, sorry, way too late,” Steve says easily. “Come to think of it, it was probably too late about two weeks after you first met Henderson. Kid’s like a fungus.”

Eddie laughs, a bit hoarse but still genuine. Steve can’t help but laugh a little bit, too, hearing it.

“Oh god,” he groans then, with how it jostles his body, “I’m so fucking sore. I’m gonna be, like, purple tomorrow.”

He’s uncomfortable enough that it motivates him to roll out of bed and head towards the dresser. It’s not like it’s going to help with his aching body, but at least he doesn’t have to be wet and cold, which might make him feel just a little bit better.

“I’m gonna change,” he warns-slash-informs Eddie. “You want a pair?”

Eddie makes a noise somewhere in the vicinity of a groan in response.

“Dude, I might be uncomfortable in these,” he says, gesturing with his hand toward his soaked underwear, “but nowhere near uncomfortable enough that you pulling them off me and then wrangling me into a new pair is the better option.” 

“Fair,” Steve agrees, maybe just a little bit too quickly, and turns his eyes firmly back to the boxers in his own hand.

Then pauses a bit in the process.

Come on, what would I do if it were literally anyone else? Steve has played a collection of team sports practically since he could walk and, as such, has changed in front of more guys than he could probably count. The impulse to leave the room just to pull on a new pair of underwear seems therefore somehow embarrassingly telling. But, then again, maybe it’s because this is his bedroom and not a changing room? That it’s not a place where he normally gets naked with other people – not unless he plans to have sex with them, at least.

That thought shoots like panicky lightning through him, and suddenly he realizes that he can’t just stand there any longer. In a burst of motion, utterly devoid of thought, he has abruptly pulled his boxers down. Then the realization of what he has done almost makes him freeze up. But, that’s about the dumbest thing he could possibly do while completely naked, so instead he hurries to pull the new pair on, all the while staying awkwardly hunched over and trying furiously to convince himself that of course Eddie isn’t looking, of course he can’t see.

He straightens, brushing damp strands of hair from his face and trying oh-so-casually to glance over his shoulder…

Eddie’s eyes are fixed to the ceiling.

Relief shoots through him. And then it is cut through by something else, the light feeling instead somehow sinking.

Shaking his head minutely to himself, he goes back to his side of the bed and lays down. He’d laid quite far down the bed, before. About a foot or so below where he usually has his pillow. Now, though, he lays like he normally would, which puts him nearly shoulder to shoulder with Eddie, just shy of touching. Their shoulders do touch together when their inhales sync up.

Steve has never felt so unable to pin down a reasonable breathing rhythm.

Get a grip, Harrington, he admonishes himself. Jesus Christ, this fucking day. He lifts his hands to rub at his face.

“How do you think the little dweebs are doing?” Eddie suddenly asks, voice quiet in the dim light of the room.

“The kids?” Steve asks, turning his head towards him. “I think they’re probably doing alright. Not the first time they’ve been around this block, remember?”

Eddie scoffs, a little self-deprecatingly. “Yeah, right. Keep forgetting I’m the new kid.”

“Hey, you did fine,” Steve insists.

“I’m a level one bard, Harrington,” Eddie shoots back. “I got fucking wrecked.”

“I don’t really speak nerd,” Steve says. “But you really helped us out back there; we couldn’t have gotten in to Vecna’s without you drawing the bats off.”

“Oh, chill with the platitudes, man, like Henderson wouldn’t have been able to make some fucking noise on his own.”

There’s something vicious starting to creep into Eddie’s voice, and Steve doesn’t like it.

“Hey,” he says sharply. “I wouldn’t have left the fucking kid alone, okay? No way. If you hadn’t been there, he’d been with Max and Lucas or something, and then the whole thing would’ve probably gone to shit.”

He feels, more than sees or hear, Eddie process that, in the utter stillness of the mattress beneath them.

“Well,” Eddie says, in a tone like he’s almost about to argue. “… whatever, I guess.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve says shortly, a bit annoyed still, glancing at Eddie out of the corner of his eye. Then he sighs, deflates slightly. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that Dustin barely had a scratch on him, while you’re all chewed up. So… thanks. For doing that, I mean.”

“I wasn’t gonna let-…” Eddie starts, sounding a bit riled up, but then cuts himself off abruptly.

Yeah, you fucking idiot, Steve thinks exasperatedly to himself, I don’t even get why you were so hung up on always running away in the first place.

It wasn’t like it was a strange reaction, either, not to everything they’d faced. They’d all done their fair share of running away; it was how they’d stayed alive this long.

“Think you gave him a fright, though,” he says, more conversationally, “watching the bat-thingies get to you like that.”

There’s a pause, this time, before Eddie answers. When he does, it’s barely loud enough to hear. “Yeah. I was… pretty sure I wasn’t gonna make it.”

Steve turns to look at the side of Eddie’s face.

“Like…” Eddie’s Adam’s apple moves as he swallows, and he closes his eyes. “Even when we’d gotten out, I thought that I’d just-… I dunno, like, fade to black in your car, or something. It hurt so goddamn bad, it just-… I guess I figured a person couldn’t survive that sort of thing.”

He laughs, brief and devoid of humor.

“I probably sound like a fucking wimp, right?” Eddie says, a twisted grin spreading. “Like, it wasn’t even that bad, in the end. I was just such a melodramatic little chicken-shit that I thought it was. Even, like, in the bathroom, I was so sure that I’d just move weird and then I’d fucking die.”

He barks another laugh, cruel and mocking.  

“Dude,” Steve says, a bit incredulous, getting up on an elbow to look down at Eddie. “First of all, creepy-ass bat-creatures ripped pieces out of you! I think that makes you entitled to a bit of a freakout. Secondly, I thought-!”

Steve cut’s himself off. He can’t say that. He can’t say that. He can’t say it because he’s been trying not to show it ever since he’d gotten Eddie’s shirt off, and he can’t say it because-… because it feels revealing, somehow. Like he won’t actually be able to say the words without something else slipping out with them. He feels pinned beneath Eddie’s brown-eyed stare, even though he’s leaned in above him.

“You thought… what?” Eddie asks, frowning slightly.

He’s reminded how much his throat hurts, suddenly, how it feels kind of like Vecna’s vines wrapped tight enough that his neck’s now permanently indented. It’s hard to get the words through.

He falls back onto the bed.

“Well… I thought you were going to die, too,” Steve says, addressing the ceiling, not sure what tone he’s aiming for and even less certain of what he ends up on. “So, you know… We both pretty much freaked, is all I’m saying.”

Eddie is silent for a long time, after that.

“You’re an odd one, Harrington,” he says then, voice low.

Steve’s lips quirk up slightly. “It’s all Robin’s fault.”

He feels Eddie look at him, and tries to pretend that he doesn’t.

“Somehow,” he says quietly, “I doubt it.”

Eddie doesn’t look away, and Steve’s skin starts to tingle. It feels like some sort of pressure is rising within him, slow but steady, and he’s not sure what’ll happen if it gets too high. He feels restless, unsure of what to do with himself.

It doesn’t stop.

“You need anything?” he blurts, practically springing up from the bed. “Water? More Ibuprofen? Something to eat?”

Eddie’s still looking at him, though now with a small frown.

“I… yeah, some water. Thanks.”

Steve nods, already on his way out the room. He forces his mind blank as he goes, down the hallway, down the stairs, to the kitchen. Opening the tap, he allows himself to collapse against the sink, burying his head in his arms. What the fuck is going on? What the fuck? He shakes his head, which in the position he’s in mostly means that he rolls his face back and forth against his forearms, and a mangled sort-of groan makes it way past his pressed-together lips.

Get a fucking grip.

He straightens up, shakes himself again, and grabs a glass from a cabinet. It’s adrenaline, he decides filling it. Like, withdrawal, or something. Overload. I just have to sleep it off. He gets another glass, fills that too, and…

And then takes a very deep breath. Steels himself.

And heads back upstairs.

“Water, as promised!” he says, stepping through the doorway.

‘Water, as promised’?! Jesus fucking Christ, what is wrong with me? His berating of himself is cut short, though, by the sight of Eddie Munson on his bed. He’s in the exact same position as Steve had left him in, so it really shouldn’t be a surprising sight. But… it is, somehow. He’s got tattoos that Steve hasn’t really registered before now; the bats on the arm he’s seen, as well as the puppet on the other, but there’s also some sort of dragon-looking thing on his right tricep, a spider on the left side of his chest, and a horned skull below the spider, just the corner of it covered with a bandage.

He's also, like, basically naked.

Steve’s stomach plummets in a way that he doesn’t like, and he feels like someone has switched his walking to ‘manual’ when he goes to set down the glass on the bedside table. How high are knees supposed to go?

“Here you go,” he says, praying to god that his voice comes out normal to Eddie’s ears.

He doesn’t react to it, at least, just says, “Thanks,” and leans over carefully to pick it up and drink.

Briefly distracted by relief at the proof of increased mobility, it takes him a moment to spot the spot of pink on the towel where Eddie’s head had rested.

“What’s that?” Steve asks sharply, leaning over to look. “I thought you didn’t hit your head?”

“Woah,” Eddie protests, hurrying to put away the glass before he spills. “No, I told you I did hit my head. You’re the one that checked me over!”

Steve would reply but is too distracted by his task. He puts a knee up on the bed to support himself better, tilting Eddie’s head forward with his hand and parting his hair so that he can see his scalp at the back of his head.

“No, I don’t mind, go right ahead,” Eddie mutters sarcastically under his breath, but doesn’t struggle against his hold.

Steve ignores him.

He does find a cut, in the end, right in the middle of the back of his head. It’s half an inch wide, and has already stopped bleeding. He deflates slightly with relief.

“You’re good,” Steve declares.  

“Thank you,” Eddie says, then adds pointedly: “Again.”  

“Well, you’re welcome,” Steve retorts in the same tone, but his eyes travels critically across Eddie’s body as he does.

Are there other wounds he hasn’t caught?

“C’mon,” he says, putting his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and tugging slightly. “Can you roll over a bit, do you think? I wanna check that I haven’t missed anything.”

“Christ, Harrington,” Eddie gripes, looking a bit flushed, likely from the exertion. “The mother henning never stops with you, does it?”

He turns over as best he’s able, though, with Steve helping prop him up. He tries to be as fast as he can, feeling things out more than he looks on account of the meagre amount of space between Eddie’s back and the mattress. There are the raised bumps of scrapes, spots where Eddie winces when his fingertips trail over them, but Steve’s hands come away clean when he pulls them away.

“Lucky you had that jacket,” he says, helping Eddie lower himself back.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “It’s a nice jacket.”

Steve hums absently, not quite listening. He moves his hands down Eddie’s chest, mindful not to touch anywhere that the skin has split fully. The shallowest scratches aren’t as raised now as they were before, the redness looks like might be fading, and the skin doesn’t feel too hot. The deeper ones don’t look very different from before, but at least they seem to be scabbing over. He checks the edges of the bandages, too, and the adhesive seems to be holding well. Glancing lower, Eddie’s legs seem to have been mostly protected from the attack, but there’s scrapes where the worn-though holes over his knees were. He tilts his legs this way and that, trying to spot whether there’s any dirt in it that needs to be cleaned out.

“Harrington.”

There doesn’t seem to be, but, even though he can’t spot any distinct teeth-marks, he thinks it’s probably not a bad idea to wipe them down with some antiseptic. Another line catches his eyes, thin-looking, but he still wants a proper look, so he moves his hands up to angle Eddie’s leg out.

“Steve.”

“Yeah, hang on, I just need to see,” Steve says absently, pushing harder when Eddie tries to resist.

“Steve, no, Steve, wait,” Eddie says, getting his other leg in the way, so Steve puts his other hand on that one and tries to push that out of the way too, and- “JESUS CHRIST, STEVE, JUST STOP FUCKING TOUCHING ME!”

Steve jumps away, startled by the shrill crack of Eddie’s voice. He holds up his hands and sits back on the leg he’s got up on the bed.

“Chill, Munson, I’m just trying to make sure that you won’t die of an infection or something,” Steve says, a bit annoyed.

“Yeah, well, maybe don’t,” Eddie snaps, scooting up towards the headboard and away from him best as he’s able.

It’s not very well, considering that Steve’s got his knee placed between Eddie's both, and that limits his movements quite significantly. Also, stomach wounds. Plus, Eddie doesn’t seem willing to use his hands for whatever reason, both of them covering-

Steve freezes.

The whole fucking world freezes.

Eddie is hard.

Eddie’s-… Eddie is-…  Eddie’s hard. Eddie is hard.

Steve can’t stop staring. He’s horrifyingly aware of what he’s doing, but he still can’t stop staring, even though he can basically only see his hands. His face feels like it’s on fire, likely looks like a tomato. How?, some gobsmacked voice in his head demands, Why? And, as though in answer, his own actions begin to replay in mortifying slow motion: his fingers trailing down Eddie’s back, his chest, moving down to his legs, taking hold of them. Grabbing his thighs and spreading his legs.

And before, checking his head, he’d-

Oh god. Oh god. He’d practically cradled Eddie’s head against his crotch.

Steve doesn’t know if he should apologize, weep, or melt through the floor. 

“I-…” Steve says, but then genuinely can’t think of a single word that might follow.

Eddie’s head has fallen back, eyes squeezed shut, and there’s a flush going all the way from his neck to his cheeks.

“I’ll take some more demobats, now, please,” Eddie says, miserable and a bit hoarse.

“No,” Steve hurries to object. “No, Eddie’ that’s-… I mean, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

Eddie laughs. “No, Harrington, in absolutely no way is this anywhere near fine.”

Steve suddenly feels like he’s got Eddie cornered, so he tries to back off. Only, when he stands up, that makes it feel like Eddie’s gonna think he’s trying to, like, flee, or something, and that’s not at all what he wants him to think. He quickly climbs onto his side of the bed and tries to project, like… chillness, or something.

Oh, god, Robin, what do I do?

“Stop fucking fidgeting,” Eddie snaps. “It’s not like you couldn’t take me easily, right now, anyway.”

Steve chokes on air and Eddie seems to realize what he’s said.

“Take me out,” he clarifies, panicky. “Overpower me.”

It’s not helping. It’s really not helping, and Steve doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

“Fucking hell,” Eddie moans, moving a hand from his crotch to bury his face in the crook of his arm.

“It’s fine,” Steve tried to reassure, voice admittedly pitched a bit higher than normal. “It’s fine.”

“Stop saying it’s fine!” Eddie bursts. “I’ve rolled a crit fail in basically every aspect of my goddamn life, I need this one fucking thing not to be wrong with me!”

“Hey,” Steve protests, a bit offended. “There’s nothing wrong with being-“

“Yeah, well,” Eddie interrupts, “try telling that to the batshit Christian mob currently trying to string me up by my fucking balls.”

“Oh,” Steve says.

Because… yeah. That’s-… that’s a pretty fair point.

“And I’m not!” Eddie suddenly bursts. “I’m not! I- I fucking wasn’t, I haven’t-…! Fuck!”

Steve reels a little, not quite sure what to do with this information, wishing even harder that Robin was here. Well, not here-here, because he’d absolutely never live it down, but, like… telepathically present. Or something.

“Well, that’s-…” he swallows another ‘fine’, tries to find something else. Scrambles, wildly. “I mean, there’s been a lot going on, and like, hormones, and shit, probably. You almost died. And I- I just,” his voice seems to climb half an octave, “touched you, like a bunch, so maybe it’s just, like- like physical stimulation, or-…”

Eddie lifts his arm from his face and looks at him, cutting his rambling short. And the look makes it very, very, clear that it’s not just physical stimulation. Not hormones. Not a near-death experience. Just Steve.

The realization runs like molten lava down his spine, stomach swooping tight. It goes to his head, literally, his cheeks flushing so hard it actually burns, and the room starts to sway. He opens his mouth to say something, but his mouth is dry and his mind wiped blank. Perhaps something of it is visible on his face – he’d be more surprised if it turned out it wasn’t, honestly – because Eddie’s arm drops away from his face and he frowns slightly at him.

“Steve…?” he asks, warily.

Steve blinks, tears his eyes away from Eddie’s body – when had he even started looking? – and meets his gaze, feeling caught.

“Yeah?” Steve says, trying to sound as causal as possible.

Eddie’s frown deepens for a bit, then it smooths out and he squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“Fucking hell,” Eddie mutters under his breath.

Steve’s eyes seem to seize the opportunity to dart downwards on their own. Eddie’s hand is still cupped protectively above his junk, but it seems that… that it has gone down, now. Not that Steve had been able to see much before, with both his hands shielding himself, but the, like, general outline-

Get a GRIP, Harrington!

“I’m, like, in your bed and shit, too, aren’t I?” Eddie asks, snapping him out of it. “This is your room?”

“What, uh, yeah?” Steve replies, scrambling a bit to pick up the thread of conversation.

“Shit,” Eddie swears. “I’ll get out of your hair, Harrington, just-… gimme a moment…”

To Steve’s horror, Eddie begins to try to get up as he speaks, voice going thin with the effort.

“Nononono, what the hell are you doing, man!?” Steve yells, jumping to – carefully – push Eddie back down with a hand on his shoulder. “You trying to undo all my hard work?!”

Eddie thuds back to the mattress, a little wide-eyed and cheeks pink, but expression near instantly souring.

“I’m trying to give you some fucking space,” he protests, mouth tight.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want it at the cost of you bleeding out,” Steve says, a bit angry.

“I’m not putting you out of your own goddamn room,” Eddie snaps. “Your own bed.”

“Well, good that I’m not going anywhere, then!” Steve exclaims.

Eddie looks confused, and perhaps a little worried.

Steve barks a laugh at the expression. “What, you thought I’d just peace out and leave you here? The other bedrooms are on the first floor, Munson, if you needed help, you’d bleed out before you got to me.”

Eddie stares at him.

“You’re… staying?”

“Yeah, man.”

He meets Eddie's gaze steadily, challenging him to argue further.

Which he does. Of course he fucking does.

Eddie’s baffled expression crumples into frustration, and he shakes his head. “Steve, you-… you barely fucking know me!”

Doesn’t seem to have been much of a hindrance for you, earlier, his mind immediately supplies, making his face flood with heat. He tries to shake the thought off.

“Yeah, well, I’ve found that time spent in the Upside Down usually makes for a pretty persuasive bonding experience.”

That argument, though, unfortunately doesn’t seem particularly compelling to Eddie. Instead, he only looks like he’s getting angrier.

“I just popped a fucking boner from having your hands all over me, you barely fucking know me, and now you’re just going to share a fucking bed with me?!”

“Yeah, I am!” Steve says, trying to pretend he’s not flushing scarlet, and throwing his arms out in a ‘so what’ gesture. “I’ve told you, it’s-“

“If you say fine one more goddamn time, Harrington…!”

“It is, though!” Steve argues. “It is fucking fine, I don’t- don’t-…”

Your hands all over me. Steve had been so focused on checking the damage that he genuinely hadn’t been paying attention to what he was doing. Now though, at Eddie's words, it seems like his brain is gathering together the neglected strands of memory, of sensory input, pushing rewind on a recording he didn’t even know had been made. Eddie’s still damp hair running through his fingers. The muscles of his back, the bumps of his spine. The weight of his thighs in his hands, the softness of the inside of them as he’d pushed them apart.

“… I don’t care,” Steve finishes, lamely.

And realizes immediately that he’s very much lying.

Christ.

Christ.

What’s he gonna do?

Eddie has literally said that-… But Steve’s mind doesn’t seem to want to let it parse; like sure, yeah, he can like get that that’s how it happened and all, but that it would mean that-… no. That just doesn’t seem possible, like-… No. Just no. Steve should feel confident now. Definitely would have, if it had been a girl. But it isn’t, so he definitely doesn’t. Instead, he feels like he’s been put on entirely unfamiliar ground. 

He feels like he’s the one getting exposed, in all of this.

I want to touch him, Steve thinks, realization coalescing from the jumbled mess of his insides. His heart is thudding in his chest, his face warm and his hands clammy, and his whole body seems to throb with the beat of it.

God, I really want to touch him.

It’s absurd how forbidden it suddenly feels. How taboo. He’s already got his hands basically all over him, showered with him, so he’s not sure why it’s suddenly so different – only sure that it is. Is different, is going to, like… reveal all these things that he’s trying to stuff back on the inside. Wants to un-know.

Except… except parts of him doesn’t. Doesn’t at all, because while he’s terrified and out of his depth and the room feels like it’s spinning… he’s also suddenly hyperaware of so many things. Of the couple of inches separating his knee from Eddie’s hip. Of the way Eddie’s hair is spilling out over the pillow Steve usually sleeps on. Of how Eddie is practically naked, in his bed. Of potential, even though it’s unlikely and terrifying and a little bit world-ending.

It's… quietly exhilarating, and Steve doesn’t want to not have that.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, Harrington?” Eddie suddenly asks, almost suspiciously.

Steve startles, badly, feeling like he’s been caught with his whole arm in the cookie jar. And, for some goddamn reason, his first impulse is to commit.

His hand flies out and clamps down around Eddie’s wrist.

It’s dumb. It’s so fucking dumb, and Steve’s a fucking idiot, because the touch fucking burns in his palm, feels like every single little sensory bulb, or whatever, has suddenly relocated to his palm. He feels the sharp bump of his bone, the tickle of individual hairs, the warmth of his skin… and Steve’s palm fucking tingles with it.

He blushes wildly.

But he doesn’t let go.

“O-kay…” Eddie says, and blushes too.

Steve feels hugely transparent, but Eddie’s eyes are flitting between his hand and his face, confusion writ large, and he realizes that he’s mostly being weird. Very weird.

Feeling like he’s never had less game in his life, he slides his hand down to Eddie’s. It’s kind of a really weird angle, Steve sitting cross-legged at Eddie’s side, and it ends up being mostly like a really strange sort of hand-shake hold, and… fuck. Fuck. Why does he feel so much? He’s acutely aware of the shape of each finger, the callouses from his guitar, the fucking whorls of his fingerprints, it fucking feels like.

Holding hands, Steve, really, he berates himself. What are you, five?

He can’t bring himself to look up at Eddie’s face. He stares at their hands, instead, palm against palm because he hadn’t been able to intertwine their fingers from this angle. His is on top, Eddie’s fingers lax but sort of loosely curling around the back of his hand. Even with as little as is visible, it’s… very much a dude’s hand. And Steve’s a little bit freaking out about how not freaked out his is about it, but… fuck it.

Fuck it.

Carpe fucking diem, or whatever.

Steve’s a little winded, heart pounding.

“Are you…” Eddie starts, a strain in his voice. “… holding my hand?”

He sounds like he’s doubting his own sanity.

“Yeah,” Steve confirms, just a little bit unsteadily. “Yeah, I am.”

He can’t just keep staring at their hands. He’s got to see how Eddie’s reacting, what he thinks, what he’ll-… He looks up. Anti-climax. There’s no way of telling what Eddie’s thinking from his face. He’s startled, clearly, yeah, but Steve had already been able to tell as much; he needs to know if it’s good-startled or bad-startled. If he needs to back off, if he's going to be needing to dodge a punch.

Their eyes lock.

And Steve knows that he’s gonna try to kiss Eddie, now. ‘Try’ because… holy fuck. Holy fuck. He’s gonna be kissing a guy, be kissing Eddie. Even entirely ignoring the giant 'if' of whether Eddie's going to let him or not - it almost doesn’t feel like it’s gonna work. Like it’s going to be like matching poles of magnets and just repel, like someone’s gonna burst through the door and tell him that he can’t. That this isn’t something he’s allowed.

Despite popular belief, his entire existence hasn’t been one of complete obliviousness. He knew that being gay was, like, a thing before he met Robin and she’d told him about herself. He’d, like, heard people at school talk and shit. Had seen the people they’d whispered about and shot meaningful looks at. He hadn’t dedicated it much thought, though. And… okay, he hadn’t quite realized that it was something normal people could be, before Robin. Not that Robin is normal in any way, shape, or form, of course, but… Well, digressing. His point is, it’s not like it was obvious, with her. That she’s just, like, a person.

It still feels far more reasonable for a girl to like another girl though. Because girls. Steve’s frankly mostly surprised that there are people who don’t see the appeal. A guy with another guy though… that’s weird. Like, objectively he knows that roughly half of the human population is into guys, but, like… it feels like something you’d know from birth. Like you’d pop out and you’d just get a message like, yeah, sorry, unfortunately you’re gonna be into dudes, of all things, condolences.

Except now here Steve fucking is, and no one has told him. And can this really be how these things work?

It’s almost enough to make him chicken out, back off and take ten or something, but he wants to. Wants to really badly. And he’s gotten pretty good at being brave, of late.

So he lets go of Eddie’s hand, swings his legs around to get up on all fours, and puts one hand down on either side of Eddie’s face. Eddie stares up at him, frozen. And that’s… good, and all, considering the state of his stomach, that he’s not leaning up or anything. Steve just wishes he had a little bit more of a hint as to whether Eddie’s actually okay with his plan or no. He could ask, but… No. No, scratch that, he probably literally, physically, could not bring himself to verbalize it as a question. Even thinking about it makes him want to cringe in on himself and disappear.

He doesn’t want to do anything that Eddie’s not up for, though, so he lowers himself down as slowly as his muscles will allow, trying to project as clearly as he’s able what he’s intending to do. He’s also very aware that Eddie’s physical ability to put a stop to things is a bit limited, currently, so he keeps his eyes open until he’s nearly going cross-eyed from the strain.

Then, what feels like suddenly, he’s so close that he can’t see him properly anymore, barely a finger’s width between them. He can feel Eddie’s breath against his lips. He shuts his eyes.

Closes the distance between them.

It worked, Steve thinks dumbly, genuinely a bit surprised.

They’re just, kind of, smushed together, and Steve has never in his life thought about how weird kissing is before; just mashing your mouth up against someone else’s. Eddies’ lips are soft and dry and feel very plush against his own, and he likes it, likes it a lot, but he’s also a little bit freaking out that he’s somehow read things wrong and fucked up completely.

He pulls back.

“So, um, yeah,” Steve says, like an absolute idiot, hovering a few inches above Eddie’s face.

Eddie stares up at him, face still inscrutable. Then his tongue darts out to wet – taste? – his lips, and Steve’s eyes snap down instantly.

You’re literally right up in his face, could you be any less discreet?

His face burns, and he forces his eyes up to meet Eddie’s again. Not that that feels that much less perilous, though – when did eye contact get so fucking intense? Steve barely knows where to look, what to do with himself, and for every second that silence stretches he becomes increasingly more sure that-

“That’s all you got, Harrington?” Eddie asks, suddenly, voice low.

Steve starts. There’s something like a smirk in the corner of Eddie’s lips, a little tentative, but more like one of his regular expressions than anything else he’s seen tonight and… there’s something of a taunt in it. A challenge, and it makes goosebumps rush down Steve’s arms.

Trying to gather up some of his swaggering confidence of old, he manages to smirk back. Then he says, leaning back in: “Oh, I’ll give you what I’ve got, Munson.”

And it comes out about a million times filthier than he means for it to sound, implications he’s not sure he can live up to, but a second later their lips are pressed together again and Steve does know how to kiss. He throws himself at it, pulls out all the stops and all the tricks, a desperate attempt to wipe what he’s just said from Eddie’s mind; slow to start with, steadily deepening, pressure just so…

The surge of panic and frantic focus is enough that he barely consciously registers what’s happening at first. Then, suddenly, he’s right in the middle of it; his nose pressed against Eddie’s cheek, lips sealed together, tongue in his mouth. And Eddie has stubble, not a lot, just enough that there’s a slight coarseness against Steve’s own skin, and it’s- it’s-… it’s different, distinctly different, and the same at the same time. He likes it, though. Really likes it. Likes the taste of him, like the feel of his tongue against his own, likes that it’s Eddie. And he’s a little bit in disbelief, that he’s doing this, that he gets to do this, that-…

Shit, what if he’s fucking it up?

What if Eddie doesn’t like it?  

Seized with worry that he’s mucking up his one and only shot at this, he redirects all his focus to kissing again. Gives it his all, just in case this is his one and only shot. Pushes deep, pulls back to sink his teeth gently into his lips, sucks, and licks, and-… He pushes his hand into the hair at the back of Eddie’s head, nearly dry now at the roots, and digs his fingertips in just a little, just enough to push, to angle.

And Eddie makes a noise into his mouth.

It sends a jolt through Steve’s entire body, making him falter in what he’s doing and causing them to break apart.

“Holy shit, Harrington,” Eddie breathes when they do, pupils blown wide. “Now I get why you always got all the girls.”

Despite feeling like half his brain is still struggling to power back on – that sound seeming to reverberate through him endlessly – heat still pools in his belly at the flattery, at the assurance that he’d actually liked it. Steve feels, almost childishly, proud. He can’t think of anything smooth to say, so instead he dips back down for one more deep drag of his tongue. His legs are starting to hurt from the awkward position, though, and so are his arms, so he pulls away and lays down, propped up on an elbow so that he can still lean in over Eddie.  

And it’s just… it’s Eddie. He’s almost a little overwhelmed by it as he stares down at him, pulled away far enough that he can do so without going cross-eyed. Eddie’s big brown eyes; Eddies curls, only just starting to bounce back fully after having been wetted down; Eddie’s lips that he’s kissed pink.

Steve almost expects him to turn into some random girl between one blink and the next.

“Second thoughts, Harrington?” Eddie asks, a little taunting.

He looks like he might actually be worried about it, though, shoulders starting to tense up. Or… maybe Eddie is the one getting second thoughts? He said that he wasn’t-… But he also clearly liked it, so can’t have been too freaked out by the kiss. Hopefully. Maybe.

“No,” Steve says, a little too quickly, perhaps. Does he sound defensive? “No, I-… Was that… okay?”  

Maybe he should have done anything.

No, like, actually – maybe he really shouldn’t have done anything. Eddie’s beaten up pretty bad and, even though he’s not going to die from it, it’s not like he’s going to have an easy time getting home if he wants out. And he can’t even really go home, since there’s a portal taking up half the ceiling in his tiny trailer, and, oh god, Steve has really fucked this up, hasn’t he?

Eddie… laughs.

“Was it okay?” he repeats, incredulous. “That you kissed me? Man, I thought it was pathetically obvious just how okay I thought it was.”

Steve flushes. His conscience is still twinging, but there’s something about Eddie’s straightforward honesty that… cuts through it.

Eddie studies his reaction, an upward turn lingering in the corner of his mouth. He almost looks self-assured, laying back like that and looking up at him; a little like the old him, stirring up shit and not caring what anyone thinks.

“Is it a one-and-done type deal?” he asks, then, raising his eyebrows.

Christ, is Eddie flirting? It sure sounds like it, that little undertone of teasing challenge in his voice. And this really ought to be Steve’s home field, his comfort zone, but instead he finds himself scrambling for something to say.

“Do you want it to be?” is the best he can manage, about half the amount of swagger that he meant to put in it.

Eddie’s smile widens.

“What do you think?” he asks, voice low and sure.

Fucking hell, Eddie Munson has way more game than Steve has.

Half to shut him up, half to hide his furiously blushing face, Steve kisses him again. Tries to do all the things that worked before, just to one-up him in some sort of way. This time, though, Eddie’s hand comes up to cradle his face, and just the warmth of it makes it hard for him to hold on to his thread of thought, his rings heavy and hard against his jaw. And, soon, Steve’s careful techniques dissolve into just kissing, into getting Eddie’s mouth to fit against his in all the way that feels best. He just wants to get closer. He pulls him tighter by the hand in his hair and – very mindful not to push against his stomach – slings a leg over Eddie’s. He loves how it feels, Eddie’s warm skin against his, the slight coarseness from the hair on his thighs. He kisses deeper, wants to get closer still, pulls his leg up a bit to-

“That can’t possibly come as a surprise to you,” Eddie says, a bit out of breath, hand still in his hair.

Steve blinks dumbly because, while maybe it shouldn’t, it still does.

It’s just his leg, but for the first time in his life, Steve’s got a hard cock pressed up against him.

Eddie’s boxers are still damp and feel a bit cold because of it, but there’s still a warmness to the touch that really seems to emphasize just how thin the layer of fabric is that separates them. And Steve’s head is sort of spinning with how big it feels, pushed up against him. Not because-… well, maybe also because of that, possibly – he can’t really tell just from this – but also just because… there’s usually nothing there. He hasn’t even seen another hard-on than his own, except for, like twice, in the real porn rags that aren’t just women posed in tiny underwear.  

And Eddie’s, like, really hard.

Steve’s definitely been getting there himself, that district throbbing and heaviness steadily increasing between his legs, but he hadn’t-

Hadn’t. Past tense, because now he’s fully, definitely, completely hard.

“Man, I got there from just your hands, what did you think would happen once you got your mouth involved?” He grins at him, teasing, but he’s also definitely a bit freaked by Steve’s reaction.

He can tell by the way the smile isn’t quite big enough, how his eyes flit around his face looking for… something. And Steve would feel bad, but…

“Can I touch it?” he blurts.

Eddie’s smile disappears in an instant.

“You can say no,” Steve hurries to reassure him. “I just…”

He wets his lips slightly, forces himself not to glance down.

“I just… I want to,” he finishes, awkwardly. “If you’re okay with it.”

Eddie stares at him. Steve holds his breath.

Then Eddie nods, jerkily.

Heat floods his body at the permission, but it feels unsteady enough that he can’t actually bring himself to move. He finds himself unable to verbalize anything, though, so he just ends up stock still, staring down at Eddie’s face.

“Goddamnit, Steve!” he erupts, after a few breathless moments. “Are you waiting for fucking written permission, or something!?”

Steve hurriedly ducks his head to press his lips to Eddie’s neck, face crimson.

“Don’t be impatient,” he chides, trying to cover for his own weirdness.

“Don’t be so fucking slow, then,” Eddie shoots back, but the words lack any real bite.

Steve ignores him and lays his head down completely, a little bit on top of Eddie’s shoulder but mostly on the pillow beside him. It feels safer, to do so, because it means that Eddie can’t see his face.

Then he lets himself look.

From the angle, he can’t really make out much detail. There’s no question, though, that Eddie is hard. His black underwear is visibly tented, the unmistakably domed shape of the head lifting the bottom-most edge of the elastic slightly. His own leg is pushed up against the length of it, a stark contrast against the black.

He reaches out tentatively, his hand almost looking like it belongs to someone else. At his side, Eddie stops breathing.

He puts his hand down.

Eddie makes a small, choked noise.

It’s… kind of like touching his own dick. It’s way less overwhelming, for some reason, than it was having it against his leg. Probably because it is like touching his own dick, with his hand, which he can’t do with his leg. It’s… a little thicker than his own, though, he realizes as he squeezes down, cheeks heating. Similar in length, though that’s a bit harder to judge. That the fabric is damp makes it hard to get a smooth slide of his hand if he has some strength in his grip, so he switches to dragging his fingers across it, instead. He feels along the protrusion of the head, the ridge down the length of him, cups his balls briefly.

Eddie’s still barely breathing.

Steve, made bold by the subjective privacy of Eddie not being able to see his face, tries out everything he can think of. Everything he wants. Drags his palm up and down until he starts getting used to the heft of him. Plays with his fingertips along him just to get a feel of the details. Tries things he might do to himself, to see if Eddie might like it, too. Tries to adapt his movements to the hitches in Eddie’s breath.

The fact that the wet underwear is acting as a barrier soon becomes frustrating, though.

“You sure you don’t want me to get you out of these?” Steve asks, aiming for suave and missing by a mile.

A startled laugh bursts out of Eddie, but it sounds like he’s laughing with him, at least, rather than at him.

“Christ, Harrington,” he says, grinning wide and turning to look at him, their faces just barely far enough apart to allow it.

It makes Steve’s stomach flip-flop to see it, mortifying though it is to admit. Horribly enough, it also stokes the arousal smoldering in his belly and, without thinking, he squeezes down tight around Eddie’s cock in response. They’re still looking at each other, though, which makes it a whole different thing from before, for some reason. He sees the smile fall from Eddie’s face, how his eyelids drop at the sensation, and feels a puff of air on his face as he gasps.

Steve’s not sure if he even felt this out of his depth the night he lost his virginity.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, a little unsteadily. “Yeah, okay, take them off.”

Steve gives him one last squeeze, then moves downwards, trying not to seem too eager. He settles with one of his legs between Eddie’s two, drags the pad of his thumb just above the line of his underwear, mindful of the bandages, simply because he can’t help himself.

Eddies stomach jumps a bit.

He barely dares to look at the outline of Eddie’s dick in his damp boxers, somehow too visible despite being entirely covered. Steve decides to start at the back, just to preserve his sanity slightly. He moves his hands around and digs his fingers into the waistband there.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

Steve gives them a brief countdown, and then Eddie cants his hips upwards at the same time that Steve pulls down. Eddie only manages some fractions of a second before his stomach muscles give in, though, and it twinges Steve’s conscience.

“Maybe we shouldn’t-“

“Shut up, Harrington,” Eddie snaps, a little breathless. “One more time.”

He counts down again, and this time he knows to be fast. He yanks down, the dampness of the fabric causing a bit more resistance than usual, making him put a bit more force behind it, and-…

Suddenly they’re around Eddie’s thighs.

Eddie’s dick slaps up against his stomach, and Steve’s pretty sure he’s not the only one startled by the sound of it.

Suddenly, he so flustered that he hardly dares glance at it, fears that his eyes with just stick there if he does, and looks everywhere else to such a degree that he probably looks slightly deranged. He hurries to pull the underwear off the rest of the way, eyes kept firmly downcast, then flings them away and practically throws himself back down on the pillow beside Eddie, pretending firmly that his peripheral vision doesn’t work.

“Hi,” he says, a little breathlessly, inches away from his face.

“Hi,” Eddie replies, looking a bit flustered, too. Then, a bit dumbly: “I can’t believe I’m naked.”

A laugh bubbles up from Steve’s chest at the absurdity of the statement, at the situation, at how he’s been having the same thought bouncing around in his head.

“Yeah,” he says, giggling like a loon. “I know what you mean.”

“Freshman-me would absolutely freak,” Eddie tells him, sounding half delighted and half deranged. “Like, completely. Steve The Hair Harrington? No fucking way.”

“What, because I’m a guy?” Steve asks.  

“Because you’re a fucking jock,” Eddie says. “Like, literally the titular King Jock. The guy-part is like, a thousand percent secondary.”

“Glad to know your priorities, I guess,” Steve says, snorting a bit in disbelief, the smile sticking stubbornly to his face.

“Oh like King Steve wouldn’t be horrified to learn he was one day going to get with a D&D-playing, grade-repeating, metalhead, nerd?” Eddie challenges.

“Man, it’s been a long time since then,” Steve says, huffing out a laugh and shaking his head. “Do you know how many years it’s been since I managed to get a girl to give me the time of day? These days, I’m just- a full-time babysitter. I’m pretty sure Dustin thinks you’re cooler than me. If anything, I might be punching up.”

Eddie just looks at him for a bit, at that.

“Dustin Henderson,” he says then, voice gone low. “The ultimate authority on all things cool.”

His tone is mocking, but his smile has gone a bit soft. The arm Steve’s half-laying on lifts slightly until Steve can feel fingertips tracing along his lower back.

“Shut up,” Steve mutters, and it’s a weak comeback, but it doesn’t really matter because Eddie’s other hand comes up to the back of his head and pulls him down into another kiss.

It’s still pretty much as consuming as it was the first time, still very palpably Eddie.

Beckoning from the edges of his awareness, though, is the fact that Eddie is naked.

But he doesn’t want to seem too eager, so he just keeps on kissing him for a bit, mind just the slightest bit split. But it just seems to grow within him, to the point where he catches himself becoming absentminded and flustered with just the thought of it.

He said you could, he reminds himself. Just do it.

He lifts his right hand away from Eddie’s hair.

Eddie stiffens.

Steve pauses, waiting to see if he’ll be stopped.

Nothing happens.

He’s pretty sure that Eddie has figured out what he’s doing, but he still doesn’t want to just, like, go for it. He aims for his hip, instead, misjudges slightly, and ends up on his upper thigh, but that’s kind of nice, too. He squeezes down a little before moving up to the hip, playing in the dip by his bone with his thumb. He can feel Eddie tense up even more at his movements, his mouth growing distracted against his own. And Steve’s not much better, honestly, to the point where their lips are basically only resting against the other’s, both their focus on Steve’s hand. And, he really probably ought to, like, tease him or something. Build things up. But Steve’s almost out of his mind with anticipation, shaking with it, and can’t possibly hold off any longer.

He grabs it.

Eddie makes a noise into his mouth.

It’s hot. Very hot, skin petal-smooth despite the way the lingering dampness makes his fingers catch a little as they move across him. He squeezes his hand around the head, and wetness leaks onto the side of his thumb.

Steve’s whole body pulses.

It’s like restarting the whole exploration again; trying everything he did before in this new light. And it’s better, so much better, and Eddie probably thinks so too, judging by the way his breath keeps catching.

Steve likes it. Really likes it.

Except… His palm keeps snagging a bit on the slightly damp skin in a way that makes him feel self-conscious, feels like it might hurt. He keeps shifting his hand around, trying to get a better grip that’ll prevent the problem, but the only thing he manages is to make himself feel more flustered. He wants to be good at this, wants to keep impressing Eddie, like with the kissing, and right now he feels he can’t even manage to move his hand up and down a dick – the one thing about this that he’s got plenty of experience with. Might be expected to be proficient at. 

“Wait, hm, I- lube,” he mumbles against Eddie’s mouth, beginning to move away.

“It’s fine,” he protests, catching his arm. “I’m good, stay, just keep going.”

“No,” Steve insists, swatting his hand away and getting up on his knees. “You’re injured. I’m pretty sure there’s something in the med-pack, just, hold on…”

He climbs astride Eddie’s knees and leans over the edge of the bed to reach down to the bag of medical supplies, starts to rifle around to find the moisturizing gel that he knows should be in there.

“My dick isn’t injured,” Eddie argues, a frustrated whine in his voice, but Steve ignores him.

It just takes him a couple of more seconds to find what he’s looking for, a medium-sized blue bottle with white text, and he feels entirely justified in the small delay.

“Aha!” he says, straightening up and holding his prize out for Eddie to see.

“Great,” Eddie says, long-suffering tone undercut by the twitch in his lips. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Steve says in a superior tone, just to be a dick about it, and uses his thumb to snick the lid open.

As he does, though, his eyes fucking slips, focusing beyond his hands - straight down at Eddie’s cock. Heat floods his face immediately.

Exactly what he’d feared happens, exactly: he can’t look away. Eddie’s a bit thicker than him, just like he’d felt when he’d had him in his hand, and he juts up to the right from a patch of dark hair. He’s flushed dark, tip wet with precome.

I could put it in my mouth.

Steve nearly flinches at his own thought, blushing so hard he must be glowing by now. But… some sort of ache begins in his jaw as he stares, a sensation of emptiness in his mouth that he’s not sure he’s ever experienced before. The bottle of makeshift lube in his hand almost entirely forgotten, the notion is hard to shake. Because he could. He really could. And Eddie would probably like it, right? Steve’s always enjoyed it when girls have done it to him.

“Hasn’t anyone taught you it’s impolite to stare?” Eddie asks, words light but a tension in his voice betraying his discomfort.

Steve flushes bright red and hurries to look up at his face – which immediately makes him realize how completely obvious he’d been about the whole thing.

The embarrassment is not quite enough to derail him, however.

Taking a deep breath, he asks, voice catching a bit in his throat as he does: “Can I?”

Eddie looks at him, and it’s clear that he doesn’t understand what he’s asking. Steve tries to indicate downwards with his head, raising his eyebrows slightly in question, cheeks flushing as he does.

“Can you… what?” Eddie asks, confused.

Steve looks at him, willing him to just fucking get it so that he doesn’t have to say the words.

It doesn’t work.

“Jesus, Eddie!” Steve exclaims, patience frayed. “Can I suck your dick?”

As soon as the words leave his lips, his stomach is in knots and he wants to sink through the bed, through the earth. Who the hell asks to do a thing like that? Even the girls he’s been with, if they’ve been the one to ask at all, have asked if he’d wanted them to do it. He should have phrased it like that. Fuck, he definitely should have phrased it like that.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, snapping him out of it. “Yeah, you… Do you want to?”

Steve had been briefly derailed from his embarrassed spiraling by the staggered look on Eddie’s face, but it comes immediately flooding back in at the question at the end.

“I-“ he flounders, some buried high-school version of him wanting to immediately scoff out a contemptuous ‘no!’, but… he doesn’t actually want to lie. He can’t bring himself to say the truth, though, so he shrugs awkwardly and – finally – manages a small nod.

Eddie, at least, doesn’t laugh. He does look at him with disbelief, though, which might have cut deeper if he didn’t also look so… dazed.

“Yeah,” he says again. “Yeah, I mean, definitely, sure.”

Grateful that he’s escaped being teased about his admission – god, even gentle ribbing would have probably made him run clear out the house, at this point – he hurries to position himself; a great excuse to not let Eddie look at him anymore.

Except.

Now Steve’s got a hard cock right in front of his face.

And he realizes he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.  

If it had been a girl, Steve would probably have started with kissing his way down her chest to, like, work her up a bit, for the main event. He probably could have done something like that with Eddie, too, except that Steve’s just disinfected ninety-five percent of his torso and doesn’t really feel like doing it all over again. And also, like, it would probably hurt a lot.

Holy fuck.

It’s just… there. Very there.

He half-expects some sort of feeling of horror to catch up with him, confronted so viscerally with what he’s about to do. But, instead, he finds himself starting to salivate.

And then he just… does it.

Not, like, swallows him down to the root, or something – because Steve really can’t emphasize enough just how little of a clue he has about what he’s doing – but he grabs the shaft in his hand, angles it out, and puts the tip of it in his mouth.

Above him, Eddie lets out a choked-off noise.

He hasn’t done it properly, this time either. Messed up the build-up. Even though working his way down his chest hadn’t been an option, he should have done something. Like… kissed around it, or licking and stuff. But, he’s way past that point already, and he's not actually sure he could have scraped up enough courage to actually start if he hadn't just dove straight in. Taken the plunge. 

Put his cock in his mouth.

He feels almost a little detached from himself, the powerful rush of blood to the head likely not helping, but also just because this is so far from what he’s ever expected to find himself doing. He sucks slightly, cheeks hollowing a bit, and swirls his tongue around the head. There’s precome, slick and hot, and it tastes sharp, a lot, but not… not necessarily unpleasant. He finds that his lips catch on the dry skin when he tries to take him in deeper, so he pulls up higher instead, presses his lips down firm just below the crown.

“Oh- holy-“ Eddie says, sucking in a sharp gasp of air.  

Steve feels the back of his neck heat, both from a sharp spike of arousal and from a sense of embarrassment he doesn't quite know what to tie to. The former is more motivating than the latter is dissuading, though, and he doesn’t feel inclined to stop. He pulls off entirely, though, then leans back in and drags his tongue from the root up to the tip. He wants it wet, wants it to slide past his lips easily.

Eddie quivers, and Steve does it again, and again.

Then he takes him back into his mouth, and tries to go deeper. He’s kind of surprised at how much he has to open his mouth to get it to fit. A bit of it is just to make sure that his teeth don’t catch, but, still. It feels… ‘Indelicate’ sounds like a word from a book of etiquette that his mom might read, but it is the first that comes to his mind. It’s just… he really has to open his mouth, like, all the way. Pornographic, is what it feels like. A little bit embarrassing, still. Vulnerable.

He pulls back, then goes back down again, managing some fractions of an inch more. He meets his lips with his hand, pumping upwards. Then does it again, and again, each time managing a little more. The spit from the back of his throat is slicker, he soon finds, makes it go easier.  

He doesn’t not like it, though, in spite of the embarrassment and vulnerability. Partially, it’s for the same reason he’s always kind of enjoyed going down on girls: making the other person feel good. And he does seem to be succeeding in that regard. Eddie’s thighs keep tensing and releasing, his hips stuttering upwards every so often, and small noises escaping him even though it seems that he’s maybe trying to hold them back.

But… Steve also just kind of… likes it. Likes the way it fills his mouth, likes the way it chokes the air off when it takes it far enough down his throat. Even likes the way it tastes, god fucking help him.

Then Eddie threads his fingers through his hair, tips kneading down.

Steve moans.

For a split second, it’s so embarrassing that he wants to stop everything right at that moment and just leave. Moaning? With a fucking cock in his mouth? Everything about it is just mortifying, down to the muffled and choked-off way it had come out, only serving to emphasize the fullness of his mouth.

But then Eddie moans, too.

“Fuck, Steve, Jesus,” he gasps. “Holy shit.”

Eddie pushes his fingertips into his scalp again – maybe on reflex, maybe because he wants to reproduce the reaction – and Steve, a little bit more prepared this time, manages to limit himself to a very shaky exhale through his nose.

“Hope-…” Eddie starts to say, breathily. “Hope you’re not keeping quiet on my account.”

Steve hums noncommittally around Eddie, unwilling to pull him out of his mouth. It feels a bit like a get-out-of-jail-free card, to have such a ready excuse not to put his foot in his mouth - no room. And indeed, Eddie doesn’t press him about it, just starts carding his hands through his hair, neither pulling nor pushing.

“It’s so fucking good,” Eddie says, almost a whisper. “You-… you’re fucking good at everything, aren’t you, Steve?”

The words hit like a gut punch, in the best way, and Steve surprises himself by pushing down deeper by pure reflex. And, shit, he doesn’t even know if it’s for Eddie he’s trying to enhance the sensation – or if it’s for himself.

But it’s good.

It’s, like, really good.

Good enough that he eventually starts to lose himself in the feeling of it. Starts to forget to check Eddie’s reactions to what he does, to apply any techniques that have been used on him, and instead begins to get caught in what feels good to him. Wrapping his tongue around the head. The smooth and wet glide in and out past his lips. That perfect depth where his air’s choked off but he’s not yet struck his gag reflex.

Unthinkingly, he shifts around so that he can hold himself up with his right hand and arm alone, and pushes beneath his underwear with his left. It’s not the hand he usually uses to bring himself off, but the pressure of it alone is blissful. He squeezes his eyes shut with pleasure, taking Eddie down deeper. He feels a bit uncoordinated at first, the motion awkward with his non-dominant hand, but soon the haze of arousal takes over and he gets into the rhythm of it, starts to lose himself in the joint sensations.  

“Are- are you jerking yourself off?” Eddie asks suddenly, voice gone high with disbelief.

Steve stops moving immediately, shame lancing like ice through him.

“No,” Eddie hurries to say, “No, fuck, don’t stop, that’s-… God, Steve, that’s so hot.”

Hesitating, still self-conscious, Steve can’t quite bring himself to move. He feels stupid and hyperaware of how he has to gape around the thickness in his mouth.

Then Eddie’s hand tightens sharply in his hair, a firmer hold than any previously, and his hips stutter upwards.

“No, Steve, shit, I’m not fucking joking,” he pants. “Holy- please, please, don’t stop.”

And he really does sound frantic. Like it actually, really, turns him on. His cock throbs in Steve’s mouth, a burst of flavor as he leaks precome.

“Steve,” he begs. “Steve.”

He sounds like he’s almost about to come.

The realization is enough to sweep away his last hesitations, for heat to blaze back through him. He pushes down deep, nearly all the way down, fingers just loosely circling the very base of him, squeezing tight around himself as he does.

“Fuck yes,” Eddie breathes. “Like that, whatever you want.”

He likes that. God, he likes that. Whatever you want. It practically dissolves the knot of complicated emotions writing around about his own enjoyment; he can take it, Eddie’ll let him have it, he can do whatever he wants. Feeling brave, feeling insane, he even changes the angle of his arm slightly so Eddie can feel the movement of it against his leg.

“Oh god,” Eddie gasps. “Oh fuck.”

It goes to his head, how much Eddie is liking it, which makes him push even deeper – which causes Eddie to make even more noise. Steve’s nose is hitting Eddie’s pelvis with nearly every downward push, now, breath becoming scarce as he’s nearly perpetually chocked off. He sucks in air desperately through his nose whenever he’s far enough up to be able to, but finds himself increasingly unwilling to pull back that much. His jaw aches and his throat was sore even before he began, but his gag reflex seems nearly flattened by the sheer weight of his arousal, so he just keeps pushing deep, struggles to swallow around him, feeling filled.

“Steve-“ Eddie manages. “Steve, I’m really-“

Steve can tell. Can tell by how his cock is straining in his mouth, how his balls are starting to draw up, by the desperate way he’s clinging to his hair. And it roars through him. Hand moving frantically, he abandons all thought of air, pushing deep, deep, deep, without barely pulling back at all, just wanting more and-

He beats Eddie to it.

Body convulsing hopelessly, mouth so full that he doesn’t make a single noise, he comes. Eddie as far down his throat as he could possibly be, Steve’s orgasm hits him like a fucking boulder. More powerful than any he can remember, he trembles, quivers, blanks out, blood rushing like a waterfall in his ears.

“Fuck,” Eddie’s saying, beyond it. “Fuck, fu-…!”

Then he’s coming down Steve’s throat.

The way he throbs in his mouth feels insane, feels absurd, and Steve’s orgasm seems to swing up towards a second peak instead of abating, just from the feel of it. He struggles to swallow, can’t quite manage, has to back up a bit to get it to work. There’s a lot, though, even so, more than he would have expected, and some of it dribbles past his lips.

“Fuck,” he gasps, once he’s done, sucking in air desperately. “Holy shit.”

He just wants to collapse but, even in the state he’s in, not fucking up Eddie’s stomach even more than it already is takes priority. He manages to lift himself up by his arms enough that he can tip himself over Eddie’s leg and roll over to his back on his side of the bed.

He stares up at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath.

Then he looks down at himself. Most of his come has been caught by the hem of his boxers, but there’s a single stripe up his stomach, nearly all the way to his chest. His hand, still loosely wrapped around his softening dick, is completely drenched.

Making a vague noise of disgust, he removes his hand and reaches for the second towel, the one Eddie’s not laying on.

“Fuck, Harrington,” Eddie says, startling him. “You really came from sucking me.”

Steve whips his head around to look at him, vehement protest on his lips and heart hammering in his chest.

Eddie, though, looks in awe.

It’s not enough to erase the embarrassment entirely, but Steve also finds himself… a little bit pleased with having managed to put that expression on Eddie's face. It also makes his belly curl tight, despite the earth-shattering orgasm he had not a minute ago.

“Yeah, well, I was jerking myself off, too, wasn’t I?” Steve mutters, face bright red.

He busies himself with wiping himself down, then discards the towel. He’ll change underwear – again – when he feels confident his legs will hold him. When it doesn’t feel quite as frightening to allow Eddie to see him upright, away from the imagined safety of the bed.

He lays back down, trying his best to pretend like it doesn’t feel like his whole world has been turned inside out.

Like apprehension isn’t starting to run cold through his blood.

Eddies hand suddenly finds its way back into his hair, right at the top of his head, squeezing down slightly. Steve startles a bit, but then feels his eyelids droop a bit at the sensation as the hand lingers; he’s always been a sucker for people playing with his hair, for the feeling of fingers against his scalp. It’s… a little surprising that Eddie’s still touching him so readily, but he’s definitely not about to complain.

“Didn’t get to touch you, though,” Eddie says, words feeling abrupt in the silence, the blissed-out haze thoroughly gone from his voice.

Steve tilts his head back to look up at him.

“What?”

Eddie looks back.

“You touched me,” he says. “I never got to touch you.”

“Oh.”

He lays back down flat, staring unseeingly at the ceiling.

Steve hadn’t realized. Hadn’t thought about it. Now, though, with the fact pointed out to him, he feels like he’s missed out. It sinks through his stomach like lead…

Until Eddie’s words replay in his mind.

Praying that he isn’t misreading the situation, he says, with forced lightness: “Well, there’s always next time.”

Eddie’s hand stills in his hair.

Steve can’t take the silence. He sits up and turns to look down at Eddie’s face.

Slowly, a smile spreads across it.

“Yeah, Steve,” he says. “I guess there’s always next time.”