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“Steve,” Dustin calls as he skids into the Harrington kitchen on Christmas Eve Eve with his muddy shoes still on.
“Dude.” Steve throws a pointed glance at the kid’s sneakers. “Dude!” he says again, because Dustin kicks the filthy things off right where he’s standing and starts pacing around in his socks.
Steve knocks the shoes off to the side. “In the foyer, man, come on. This is a food prep area,” he tells him, waving his hands over the trays of Christmas cookies he has prepped and ready to batch bake. “I don’t want your grubby little germs in my baked goods.”
“How the hell would they get from my shoes to your—? You know what, never mind. Never mind, Steve! I have no time for your shit today; we have a real calamity on our hands here.”
“A calamity?”
“Yes, Steve. A calamity. Do you know what a calamity is?” he asks with such sickly sweet condescension that Steve has to suppress the urge to shove the little dickhead into an air vent and leave him there this time.
“Uh, yeah, I know what a calamity is,” Steve scoffs. “Why can’t you just say it normal?”
“Do you mean ‘normally,’ dipshit?”
“Normally I’d be this close to kicking your ass right now, Henderson; do you have news or not?”
Dustin nods gravely. “Terrible news.”
“Calamitous, some might say,” Eddie pipes up gleefully from the couch. His mouth is full of caramel corn, and why is everyone Steve knows disgusting?
“Not you, too,” Steve begs, palm out like a stop sign. He pinches the bridge of his nose. To Dustin, he asks, “So what, dude, no luck? Are you sure you checked everywhere?”
“Uh, of course I did? I biked to four different gas stations and three grocery stores — yes, even the Supercenter off Highway 14, and no you can’t tell my mom I biked there, she will panic.”
Well, shit, Steve kind of wants to panic at that; there’s not even a proper sidewalk over there, just a thin shoulder on the edge of a busy four-lane road.
“I’m telling you, dude,” Dustin continues before Steve can freak out about bike safety, “there are no Little Debbie Christmas Cakes in Hawkins. You’re gonna have to drive over to Colby or Smithfield.”
Fuuuuck. He was afraid of that answer. Steve takes his apron off and hangs it up on the wall. He has to go now; Robin will be so sad if he doesn’t, but god, Smithfield’s nearly an hour from his house. Colby’s closer, but…
Ugh. No. That place is unbearably bleak; it’s all cowshit and warehouses with busted out windows and shopping carts strewn all over the parking lots for no goddamn reason. He scratches at his jaw, turning away from Dustin as he considers his options. His eyes drift to the dark, fluffy curls spilling over the back of his parents’ couch.
“Hey, Eddie,” he calls before he even has a chance to fully formulate the thought.
Eddie twists on the couch.
“You up for a day trip?”
“Boy’s trip!” Dustin whoops with a fist pump.
“First of all, ew,” Steve scowls and prods at Dustin’s collarbone. “Don’t call it that. Secondly, you’re staying here.”
Dustin squawks. Steve shrugs like, way she goes, man. “Seriously?” Dustin asks, jaw dropped in offense. “You’re supposed to be watching me!”
“You’re fifteen, you can handle it. Besides,” Steve says, pointing to the cookie trays, “someone has to stick around to manage these.”
“So you stay and do it!” Dustin protests.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t drive, so I gotta go.”
“Okay, so then let’s you and me go and leave Eddie here.”
“Wooow,” Eddie drawls, clutching his heart and pretending to die as he rolls off the couch.
“I can’t leave Eddie here alone,” Steve says, nodding to where Eddie is now dramatically starfished on the ground, twitching in his death throes. “You trust him to watch the cookies by himself?”
Eddie sits up, revived. “I wouldn’t,” he agrees.
Dustin ignores him. “So leave us here and go by yourself!” he shouts.
“No!” Steve shouts back.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to, asshole! Also because I trust the two of you together even less than Eddie on his own.”
Steve glances at Eddie for backup on the point, finds the fucker chowing down on popcorn again, watching the argument unfold like it’s a Wimbledon match. “Whatever,” Steve rolls his eyes and turns back to Dustin. He points a thumb at his own chest. “My house, my rules.”
“Oh, okay, dad,” Dustin sneers, and Steve just smiles at him with faux sweetness, pinches his cheek a touch too hard and side-steps him to scoop the car keys off the counter. He throws his jacket and shoes on and grabs his wallet, and Eddie joins him at the front door, hopping into his unlaced combat boots.
“Mind the timer!” Steve calls as they leave.
Dustin flips him the bird with both hands.
“Jesus Christ, the attitude on that kid,” he mutters under his breath as he and Eddie climb into the beemer.
Eddie fiddles with his air vent. “Yeah, we did not raise him well.”
“We didn’t raise him at all!”
“You’re right,” Eddie shrugs. “Think we should call off the road trip? We can swing by Claudia’s work instead, let her know what a shit job she did.”
The laugh that rips out of Steve is too loud for the small space; he wriggles a finger in his bad ear, wincing. “I’d pay good money to see that, man. She’d either, like, burst into tears or chase you out of the building with a broomstick.”
“My money’s on the broomstick.”
🎄🎄🎄
They make the drive to Smithfield easily enough. The sky stays surprisingly clear for a late December day in Indiana, and they only get into one argument over the music when Eddie tries to change the station in the middle of Steve’s favorite ABBA song.
When they pass a sign for Smithfield city limits, Eddie cuts himself off mid-story, interrupting a pretty excellent retelling of the time Great Aunt Beverly’s dentures fell into the plate of Christmas ham to ask, “What’s the deal with these Little Debbie cakes anyway?”
Steve looks at him like he’s got a booger hanging out of his nose. “They’re amazing?” he answers, eyebrows pinched. Jesus. And Dustin’s the one with the attitude problem?
“Wait, what about Aunt Beverly?” Steve asks.
Eddie waves a hand dismissively. “Oh, she died,” he says, and Steve honks a startled laugh. “I guess I meant more, like, uh, why all the trouble for the Christmas tree cakes specifically? They’re all good.”
“‘Cause she wants the Christmas trees,” he says, like it’s that simple, like it makes perfect sense for him to drive two hours round trip to hunt down a pack of snack cakes just because his bedridden best friend asked for them, and maybe it is; maybe it does.
“I don’t know, man,” Steve shrugs, “they introduced them last Christmas, and they kinda just became our thing. Mostly because they had that totally insane commercial, you know? With the…?” He starts humming a jingle under his breath.
“Oh, my god,” Eddie barks when he remembers the commercial Steve’s talking about. “With the fucking, like, anthropomorphic cake man or whatever? I thought I got too high and made that shit up!”
“Right?” Steve laughs along with him, all his teeth on display. “Robin was totally obsessed with it, she sang that stupid jingle at me for months.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, sends it cresting over his forehead like a wave. “Anyway, yeah. I can’t just let her sit there all sick and sad on Christmas, you know? I figure if I can’t do anything about her having the flu, I can at least try and cheer her up. Plus, the cakes are honestly pretty good.”
Eddie stares at the side of Steve’s head. Steve’s cheeks are pink, his eyes fixed on the road. “You’re a really good friend,” he tells him plainly, because it’s true. Steve looks at him from the corner of his eye, hesitant, almost hopeful. The kind of glance they’ve been stealing from each other for months, if he’s honest.
Steve’s lips twitch. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” Eddie nods. “Now prove it and let me change the station, man, I’m begging you!”
“Munson, don’t you dare—!”
🎄🎄🎄
Three fruitless, cakeless stops later, Steve comes stomping out of a grocery store, empty handed and spitting mad and also literally spitting.
“Jesus Christ,” he grits out as he flings open the driver’s side door and folds himself into the car. His face is screwed up like he just bit into something rotten, and he reaches over Eddie and fishes an individually-wrapped wet wipe from the glove compartment, ripping the packet open with his teeth and scrubbing at his face and hands until they go a little pink. Eddie’s never seen a more thorough cleansing.
“Are you, uh, prepping for surgery over there?” he snorts.
“No,” Steve grumbles, lifting his sleeves to get at his wrists, too. “Might need a hospital later, though. Goddamned cashier sneezed in my mouth.”
“Excuse me?”
She did. Steve had approached her while she was restocking the shelves to ask about the cake situation; she was perfectly nice, a plump, gray-haired woman with apple cheeks and a gap-toothed grin and a nametag that read ‘Caroline’ in big, looping cursive, and she’d smiled apologetically at Steve when she told him that they were sold out but that she wished him a Merry Christmas, anyway, and Steve had turned to go, but then Caroline had dropped a box of pine-scented potpourri, so Steve had stooped to pick it up right as she crouched down, too, and then she’d sneezed right in his open fucking mouth.
“Oh, gross!” Eddie snickers when Steve finishes the play-by-play. “Don’t tell me you’re a germaphobe, though,” he adds, because Steve is still scouring his hands. “I’ve literally seen you covered in interdimensional Hell goo before.”
“Yeah, well, the Hell goo didn’t come with influenza. At least not to my knowledge.”
Steve balls up the used wet wipe. Eddie snags it and stuffs it into the passenger-side cup holder before Steve can lean over to stash it in the glovebox; having Steve draped over his lap once per car ride is all his horny little brain can handle, thanks. “Still no luck on the cakes then, huh?”
Steve starts the car. “Nope.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.”
“Dude, stop popping your Ps like that, you sound way too much like Robin.”
“God, don’t ever tell her you said that,” Steve says. He’s adjusting the rear-view mirror, as if anyone would have touched it during the ten minutes he was in the store; Eddie kind of suspects he just wants an excuse to check out his hair.
Steve flicks his head minutely, that perfect honey-brown swoop falling artfully to one side. Vain little fucker, Eddie thinks, eyes fond.
“So what now?” he asks as Steve backs out of the spot, right hand perched on Eddie’s headrest as he turns the wheel with his left (not that Eddie’s watching the way his tendons flex or anything.) “We’ve tried all the stores here, right?”
Steve throws the car in drive, sighs as he reaches into his zipped up jacket and pulls out a flyer printed on green construction paper. Eddie irons out the wrinkles against his thigh.
“Join us for the 27th Annual Colby Christmas Bazaar,” he reads in a deep, narrating baritone, pausing to add: “Wait, I thought we were trying to quote ‘avoid Colby like the plague?’”
Steve’s sigh is somehow more long-suffering and loud than the last one. “Yeah, well,” he frowns, “the plague cannot be avoided. Caroline made sure of that.”
“God, you’re such a mean girl,” Eddie swoons.
“In my mouth, Eddie!” And Eddie can’t really think about Steve’s mouth anymore at the moment, germ-riddled or not, so he distracts himself with the view of the highway from his window, pressing his forehead against the cold glass.
There is… truly nothing to look at out here. Jesus. They’re winding down two-lane county roads with numbers for names, Steve scratching his head and leaning over to squint at the directions at every fork and stop sign he comes to, and it’s all just fucking beige. Barren corn fields and leafless trees and a thickening blanket of clouds dimming the afternoon sky to a dull sepia shade. Even the grass is kind of khaki.
“You really never think of getting out of here?” Eddie asks after a while. “I mean, it’s been almost a year since…”
He doesn’t say since when, but Steve looks over at him sharply, shoulders tensing, and then there’s a hand on Eddie’s knee. “Put your feet down,” Steve murmurs instead of answering, “it’s not safe to sit like that.”
“Okay, mom,” Eddie tuts, but it comes out way softer than he means it, and he lets his legs be pushed into the footwell.
Steve moves his hand. He’s quiet for a minute, just the sounds of the road and the static-y radio cutting in and out, and Eddie’s starting to wonder if he should repeat the question or drop it altogether when Steve says, “I do think about it. Getting out. But…” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. Where would I go? The kids are all here, Robin’s here, you’re—”
His voice wobbles, and he trips over his words for a moment, cheeks going pink again. He kind of blushes a lot, actually. It’s pretty, Eddie thinks, a pale shade dusted over olive-toned skin. Carnation pink. Maybe peony, or like, the color of the blooms on that one hydrangea bush by the skate park where Eddie used to do most of his deals before the cops started keeping a closer eye on the place.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Steve is saying when the lovesick Victorian florist in Eddie’s brain decides to can it. “Indiana kind of sucks, but like, most places kind of suck, eventually. Even the beautiful ones, ya know?
“I used to travel with my parents a lot when I was a kid, and like, the cities or resorts or whatever were always so cool, like— like real dream vacation stuff. But— I don’t know, mostly it was just, just lonely, after a while. Didn’t really matter how nice the scenery was. I guess my point is, like…”
He sniffs and pinches the end of his nose. “I don’t know,” he says like he knows all too well. “You can be lonely anywhere.”
“Even beautiful places?” Eddie asks, voice rough.
“Yeah,” Steve croaks, “yeah, even then.” His eyes are bright when they meet Eddie’s, and Eddie glances away, back and away and back again, gaze drifting to the moles on Steve’s neck.
Steve clears his throat. “Uh, anyway,” he says with an embarrassed chuckle, lifting a hand from the wheel and waving it as if to dispel the fog of his sudden mood. He turns the radio up a notch. There’s some jaunty old country tune crackling over the airwaves, the kind of plucky bluegrass thing that Wayne loves. “Enough of whatever that was. What about you? Where would you go?”
Eddie looks at him, bites his lip. He could give a real answer, a serious one, but Steve seems kind of done with seriousness for now. “Mmm…” he hides his smirk behind a lock of hair. “Probably Colby.”
“Oh, fuck off!” Steve laughs.
🎄🎄🎄
The 27th Annual Colby Christmas Bazaar is hard to miss. It’s huge, a gaudy, blinking arrow directing them to a massive gravel parking lot flanked by Christmas tree nurseries. The main building is a rusted-out sheet metal warehouse that looks like an old aircraft hangar, and it’s fucking freezing outside, a light flurry picking up as the sun sets, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping the hoard of last minute shoppers.
“What the fuck is this place?” Eddie asks delightedly as they step inside.
Steve has no idea but he echoes the sentiment.
The bazaar is… completely insane, to put it mildly, a crafting collision on the corner of gun-toting grandma and her surly punk grandson. There are crosses and camo and crochet everywhere, but also vendors offering stuff that looks like they snatched it right out of Eddie’s closet, shredded black fabric and acid-washed denim and leather decorated in zippers and pins and chains. There’s even a few rainbow flags on display.
Steve frowns in utter confusion until a young couple walks by, and his eyes catch on their sweatshirts and he remembers Robin telling him about a little fine arts school tucked in the middle of nowhere somewhere nearby. The Colby-Oakmont College of Arts, he recalls, getting a better look at the kids’ festive sweaters. The guy’s reads ‘Have a COC-y Christmas’ with a crude arrangement of a candy cane stick and two peppermint rounds, and the girl’s says ‘COCA Class of ‘86’ with what appears to be the Coca-Cola polar bear snorting cocaine off a pile of presents.
Eddie follows Steve’s gaze and tosses his head back in a huge laugh when he sees the sweatshirts. He claps Steve on the shoulder. “We gotta get one of those for Rob.”
“Something tells me those were custom,” Steve grins.
“Aw, really?” Eddie asks sarcastically. “You don’t think they sell those at the campus library? Damn.”
Steve rolls his eyes and shoves Eddie away from him. “Jackass.”
“You love me,” Eddie proclaims with a playful wink, and before Steve can overheat like one of Dustin’s failed science projects over that, Eddie grabs him by the wrist and tugs him into the crowd, saying, “Come on, I want peppermint hot chocolate.”
“Ah,” Steve objects, tugging back against Eddie’s hold and spinning him around. “Focus, Munson,” he says, two fingers darting between them in an ‘eyes on me’ motion. “We came here for cakes, and I think we can still beat the worst of the snow if we hurry, so. No distractions, alright?”
Eddie salutes. “Sir, yes, sir!”
“Jesus,” Steve hisses, “did you actually go to military school? Keep your voice down!”
Eddie sticks his tongue out and laughs at Steve’s frown. “Fine,” he says at a normal volume, drawing out the word. “No distractions, I promise.”
“You’re such a fucking liar, man.”
“Okay, one distraction, but that’s all! Honest.”
Spiked hot chocolates in hand, Steve herds Eddie through the endless rows of vendors, palm pressed to the small of his back as they make their way to the food stalls. He does his best to keep Eddie on track, but it’s a bit like trying to walk Tews on a leash. Eddie gets distracted at every third stall or so, pointing out weird handmade crafts that are so not what we came here for, dude, come on.
Steve, to his credit, only gets distracted enough to stop once, when they pass a booth selling greeting cards with the kind of pissy anti-platitudes that Max would adore. One of them just says this is literally the first card I saw in plain white letters on a plain black background, and when Eddie looks over his shoulder and catches Steve looking, he mocks ‘Cakes, Harrington, focus’ with an unbearably smug grin and starts snapping his fingers in Steve’s face until Steve flicks him on the forehead.
The hustle’s a moot point in the end. They don’t find any Little Debbies in the back of the market (not that Steve had expected to, honestly, but, no stone unturned or whatever), and by the time they get back to the entrance, it’s fully dark outside and snowing hard, thick plumes of white swirling under the streetlights like a living thing. Steve can’t even make out his car in the lot.
“Shit,” he groans. A few employees sweep past him and start shoving the heavy barn doors closed against the sudden gale.
Eddie steps up beside him, throws an arm around his shoulders. “Shit,” he agrees, dipping a little closer, tucking his chin to make sarcastic eyes at Steve. “So about that quick day trip…”
His breath tastes like peppermint.
“You’re a pest,” Steve mutters, tossing back the dregs in his cup. Eddie gives him a fond squeeze and steps back, trotting their empty cups over to a nearby trash can. Steve crosses his arms and eyes the snow through the windows. Chews his lip. “Yeahhh,” he sighs when Eddie bounds back over to him. “I don’t think we’re driving the backroads in this. Damn it, I’ll go call Dustin.”
“You do that,” Eddie nods, grabbing Steve’s coat by the lapels and pulling it tighter around him, “and I will take on the very important task of procuring another round of boozy hot cocoa.”
Steve hustles around the side of the building to a payphone. The wind stings his face and hands, sends icy flakes down the back of his shirt, and he shivers as he slips into the booth, straining to see the coin slot in the dim light. Fucking standard time. It’s barely after five.
He rings his house first, tells Dustin about the storm, that their little outing is going to take longer than expected, and that he’s welcome to crash at his house for the night but to please make sure to turn off the oven and lock all the doors if he’s going to bike home.
“Can I at least order a pizza as recompense for your child abandonment?”
“Oh, my god.”
“I’m sorry, do you want me to burn the rest of these cookies?”
“Oh, my god.”
“Taking that as a yes, Steve!”
Steve slams the phone on the receiver.
There’s an ad taped up for a motel just down the road, so Steve calls them next, secures a room for the night and then rushes back inside, rubbing his frozen hands together. He finds Eddie standing on a table top, regaling a crowd of onlookers with a wildly embellished version of the Great Aunt Beverly story, double-fisting spiked hot chocolates and gesturing so widely that he nearly spills them three times.
“And then she died!” he finishes to a round of applause as he springs off the table and sticks the landing like a gymnast. One of the drinks sloshes over, a thin trickle running down his pale wrist, and he laps up the spill with his tongue.
“Steeeeve!” he calls when he spots him in the crowd.
Steve takes his hot cocoa from Eddie’s outstretched hand. “Show off,” he teases, blowing on the top.
“Showman,” Eddie corrects and boops the tip of Steve’s nose. Sways a little, his cheeks a bright, blotchy red. Christ. Steve sniffs at his cup, wondering if Eddie charmed a barista for extra schnapps or something, but… These drinks are still mostly full. Surely he’s not…
Oh, but is he?
Is Eddie Munson — drug-dealing, leather-clad, capital M Mean and Scary Metalhead Edward R. Munson — a fucking lightweight?
Steve nearly burns himself snorting into his drink. “Are you having fun?”
Eddie makes a happy hum and rocks back on his heels, so obviously tipsy from like, three sips of alcohol that Steve gives up on hiding his smile, letting it scrunch up his nose and the corners of his eyes as it takes over his whole face. Eddie asks ‘What?’ and Steve shakes his head, giddy.
“Oh, hey,” he says after a moment, “I got us a room for the night, by the way, I hope that’s cool.”
Eddie looks like he just swallowed his tongue. “Uh,” he chokes, eyes impossibly wide. “I- I mean, yes! Yeah. Very cool, man. Good call.”
Steve takes a long sip. “You know Dustin told me he knew we were going to get stuck here?”
“Did he?”
“Yep. Said he checked the weather channel right after we left and thought it would be ‘funnier to let us learn from our mistakes’ than to walkie us and let us know.”
“Oh, that rotten little fucker!” Eddie cackles.
“And then he extorted me for pizza money!”
“Truly, I suspect that we are raising a supervillain.”
“Let’s ship him off to military school.”
“Could you imagine? He’d break out within a week.”
Steve’s too busy cracking up at the mental image of a toothless twerp taking down the entire US military from the inside to respond, so he just leans his forehead against Eddie’s shoulder and lets himself shake.
When he lifts his head, Eddie’s gaze is warm, his cheeks somehow more flushed. He brushes a lock of hair out of Steve’s eyes. “Hate to spoil your good mood here, Stevie, but um, did another sweep of the place while you were out. Still no Little Debbies.”
His eyes dance over Steve’s face, big and dark and endless. Lovely. Steve wonders if Eddie might kiss him, right here in the middle of the market.
But then Eddie raises his voice, flings an arm out and lets his hand come to rest on his forehead like some swooning maiden, overcome with the horrors of it all. “Alas!” he exclaims, “we are adrift! In a Debbie-less void!” Fucking drama queen.
Steve makes a big show of reacting to Eddie’s news-that-isn’t-actually-news, matching his theatrics with a puppy-dog pout and a huge, heaving sigh. Eddie beams at him, and Steve shrugs, dropping the act. “Thanks for double-checking, anyway. You want to help me find her something else?”
Eddie links their arms together like he’s escorting Steve to a ball. “‘Twould be my honor, my good man.”
“God, you are such a nerd.”
🎄🎄🎄
They fall into the motel room that night, arms laden with shopping bags and gift wrapping supplies, and Eddie dumps his share of the haul on the breakfast table and throws himself across the nearest bed.
“Twizzle me,” he calls, lifting a hand over his head, and Steve tosses a bag of twizzlers onto his chest because Eddie can’t catch for shit.
“How could you possibly want more sugar right now?” Steve asks. He lowers himself to the floor and starts laying out his gift wrapping supplies, and he’s still pleasantly buzzed from the schnapps, but his mouth feels fuzzy from all the hot chocolate. And the fudge. And the powdered donut holes, Jesus Christ.
“I ‘unno,” Eddie mumbles around a mouthful of licorice. He turns the tv on, and they watch cheesy Christmas movies in companionable silence while Steve works, wrapping toys and books and sweets for all the kids, more gifts for Claudia and Wayne and Hopper and Joyce, another still for Eddie. (That one, he’d already purchased days ago — had kept hidden in the trunk of his car and then smuggled into the room under his sweater — and he wraps it in a frantic rush when Eddie briefly leaves the room to brush his teeth.)
Eventually, Steve hears snoring from Eddie’s side of the room, and he looks up to see Eddie sprawled over the covers with his jeans still on. He can’t tuck Eddie in without waking him, so he grabs a spare blanket from the standing wardrobe in the corner and spreads it over Eddie before stripping down to his boxers and climbing into his own bed.
When he rolls over to turn the bedside lamp off, his eyes catch on Eddie’s face, sleep drawing his features slack and peaceful. He looks so young like this, so soft, with his fluffy curls fanned out over the duvet, his long lashes fluttering and casting shadows over his cheek bones in the warm yellow light, his full lips pink and parted and pretty against his pillow. Steve feels like there’s a hand behind his ribcage, some invisible grip clenching tight inside his chest.
He squeezes his eyes shut and turns off the light.
🎄🎄🎄
Eddie wakes up screaming. He doesn’t remember why — can’t discern any narrative from the maelstrom of vague horrors flashing through his mind, already fading as he shifts into consciousness — but he flails in a panic, kicking at the blanket tangled around his legs, fingers flitting over his sides to check his scars. His wounds had been open again, in the dream, shredded apart and bleeding streams of sticky, sickly red, and then they’d been Steve’s wounds and—
And suddenly Steve is there, crawling into the bed with Eddie and slotting in against him, his warm, broad chest pressed along the length of Eddie’s back, his arms caging Eddie in, one palm coming to lie flat over his rabbiting heart.
“Shh,” Steve soothes, sweeping Eddie’s hair off his sweaty neck. “You’re okay. You’re safe,” he whispers, pressing the palm more firmly to Eddie’s chest to guide his breath. Deep inhale in, slow exhale out. They breathe together until Eddie’s racing pulse starts to calm, Steve hugged against him like it’s second nature, even though they’ve never done this before.
Not one-on-one, anyway. There was that first month or so, after everything, where they would all fall asleep in a pile after movie nights, too afraid to sleep alone without lamps on, but it’s never just been Eddie and Steve, and when Eddie stops whimpering long enough to turn in Steve’s hold and look up at him, he can see Steve coming to the same realization, the way his arms go a little tentative and slack.
“Sorry,” Steve says. His hand pauses where it was petting Eddie"s hair. “This usually helps, with Robin, I mean, so I just—”
“—N-no, don’t, it’s, um… Really fucking nice, actually,” Eddie admits on an exhale, and he hugs Steve back. Steve folds Eddie into his chest, the crown of Eddie"s head tucked under his chin, and his hand is warm and big and solid where it presses between Eddie"s shoulder blades.
A little hysterically, Eddie thinks that some less shaken future version of himself is going to lose his shit over the fact that a nearly nude Steve Harrington is currently stroking his hair, his long, graceful fingers combing through the strands, smoothing them back into their curl patterns, soothing Eddie’s hair the way he’s soothing Eddie, too, but—
But this Eddie just hiccups and sniffs and apologizes for getting his germs all over Steve’s chest hair. “Do you want me to get you a wet wipe?” he tries to joke, but it comes out a little too pathetic to really land.
“Shuddup,” Steve coos, hand still weaving through Eddie’s hair. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
Eddie’s breath catches. “I don’t— it’s not… Jesus. I can’t really remember the details, or, at least, not in a way that makes any sense when I wake up. It’s like- like watching a movie in reverse, you know?”
Steve nods like he knows, and maybe he would know, even without the shared trauma; he certainly rewinds enough of them at work.
Eddie cracks a smile at his own stupid thought, but then the mental image of Steve alive and well in his Family Video vest clashes horribly with a flash of the mangled version from his nightmare where Steve was hurt, Steve was dying, he was dying and Eddie couldn’t stop it, couldn’t do anything but watch and scream as he—
“Hey. Eddie, hey,” Steve shushes, because Eddie’s crying again, shoulders shaking as he clings to the living, breathing version of the boy he watched bleed out in his dream.
“You were hurt,” he gets out between sobs. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Steve’s fingers trace the worry lines over Eddie’s brow, smoothing those out, too. “I’m not hurt now.”
They’re quiet for a long time after that, just the sounds of their breathing filling the room. Steve’s breath is slow, a steady rhythmic guide to Eddie’s ragged gulps, and Eddie splays a hand over the curve of Steve’s ribs and does his best to match him. In-2-3-4, out-2-3-4. Steve’s skin is warm, pale and soft beneath Eddie’s palm, and Eddie lets himself trace a constellation of moles.
When his tears run out, he asks, in a voice so small he’s surprised Steve even hears it, “Can you… stay? Please?”
Steve leans in, lets his lips follow the path his fingers laid, and he doesn’t kiss Eddie’s forehead so much as rests his mouth against it, but his lips brush Eddie’s skin when he speaks. “Yeah, okay.”
🎄🎄🎄
The next morning Steve wakes up on his back, sweating and half-naked with an armful of Eddie, frizzy curls tickling his nose, and he looks down to see Eddie snoring on top of him, and oh, shit. He’s hard. They both are, and, as nice as it feels to have the length of Eddie pressed against his hip, Steve really needs to extract himself from this before Eddie wakes up and notices the way he’s tenting the blanket.
“Mrmph,” Eddie groans as he stirs. Shit. His chin digs into Steve’s sternum. “Hi,” he says, voice soft and rumbly with sleep, a contented smile on his lips as he rubs a fist against his eye.
“Hi,” Steve breathes, blushing hard, and they look at each other, sharing space, sharing breath, Eddie moving gently with the rise and fall of Steve’s chest like a buoy in a rippling lake, and then Eddie’s eyes go comically wide as his brain seems to catch on to their current position.
“Fucking—!” Eddie all but shrieks. He flips himself backwards off the opposite edge of the mattress, landing in a crouch that looks like he’s been reading too many Spiderman comics, the acrobatic little weirdo, and he mutters something about needing to pee as he sprints off to the bathroom. Steve shakes his head at him, amused and a little mortified and so fucking warm as he sinks back into the pillows.
They make it out of the room, eventually. It takes a while for Steve to coax an embarrassed Eddie out of the bathroom, and a while longer to get ready and load up the car. Eddie’s still giving Steve shit for his “45-step hair care routine” when they finally slip-slide across the icy parking lot to the motel lobby for breakfast.
“Pretty much just Raisin Bran and Yoohoo today, folks, sorry about that,” the gravel-voiced woman at the front desk greets them.
“No eggs?” Steve asks. For clarity. Definitely not for disappointed pouting purposes.
“My cook got snowed into his driveway. There’s a vending machine around the corner if you want to try your luck with that.”
“Great, thank you,” Steve clips. His face feels too tight, like whatever polite smile he’s trying to pull is coming off as more of a grimace, but whatever. There’s no hot breakfast and he hasn’t had any coffee yet, alright? There’s only so much he can do.
Eddie leans in and whispers “mean girl” in Steve’s ear, and Steve can hear the smirk, so he really doesn’t feel all that bad for trying to elbow Eddie in the ribs. Eddie dodges, anyway, sways out of Steve’s space with a graceful maneuver that belies none of his lightweight antics from the night before, and skips a circle around him like a playful puppy.
“Hey, Eddie?”
“Yes, Steve?”
“...Please tell me you’re not a morning person.”
Eddie Munson is a morning person.
Gross.
They round the corner, and Steve spots two machines tucked into an alcove at the end of the hall. There’s one for soda and one for snacks: gum, candy, chip bags, granola bars, and little—
—holy shit. Are those…?
Oh, holy shit!
“Eddie,” he breathes, eyes wide and fixed on the glass.
Eddie hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder. “Mmhm?”
“You seein’ this?” His eyes are glued to the bottom row, afraid that if he blinks the vision will disappear, and Eddie follows Steve’s line of sight. Blinks. Stares. Blinks and stares some more.
And then he explodes with laughter, a delighted bark so loud it sets off Steve’s tinnitus. Steve steps aside as Eddie doubles over, cackling with a hand pressed to the vending machine for support, and Steve’s wiggling a finger down his ear to try to rid himself of the goddamn ringing again, but then he’s laughing, too, begrudging giggles bubbling out of him like soda burps, and it’s… so funny, actually; it’s so fucking funny, and he and Eddie are red in the face and belly-laughing and Steve could cry from the absurdity of it all.
There, on the bottom row, slot E4, is a Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake. Six of them, to be exact, six perfect white triangles with festive red and green frosting that Robin is probably going to get all over her gross little face when he delivers them to her. Steve shoves a fist into his pocket for spare change.
🎄🎄🎄
They get back to Steve’s place an hour later with fast food lunch and six boxes of Little Debbie Christmas Cakes, which Steve had bartered for with the motel manager in exchange for two crocheted hats and a pair of chevron-patterned mittens. Dustin’s still there when they arrive, and he’s clearly had zero qualms about making himself right at home in their absence because he’s got a fire going with old Christmas movies playing on the TV, and he’s sprawled on Steve’s couch in head-to-toe flannel with his feet up on the coffee table and—
“Dude,” Steve says as he drops a Big Mac meal into Dustin’s lap. “Are those my dad’s slippers?”
“Yeah,” Dustin shrugs, tearing into his lunch bag. Steve eyeballs him. “What? They’re comfy!”
“God, who raised you,” Steve complains, because the kid’s talking with his mouth full of half-chewed burger meat, bread stuck between his braces, and a glob of sauce spilling down his chin. Jesus Christ.
Eddie palms the top of Dustin’s head with an amused grin, messing up his curls as he vaults over the back of the couch to take a seat beside him. “Sorry we abandoned you, Dusty dear,” he sing-songs sweetly, all concerned, caring older brother as he squeezes him in a side hug.
Dustin isn’t buying it. “Whatever,” he mumbles, “you’re not getting my french fries, so you can stop trying to butter me up now.”
Steve goes to the kitchen to eat his meal at a table like a civilized person, and when he looks over his shoulder he sees Eddie pouncing on Dustin, the two grappling as Eddie swipes at the bag and Dustin plays the world’s least effective game of keep-away, shouting, “Eddie! I said you’re not getting my french fries! Eddie!!”
“Ah-hah!” Eddie exclaims as he somersaults off the couch. He holds a lone french fry out like a sword, victory posing with a foot up on the table and his fist propped on his hip, and he shoots a manic, triumphant smile at Steve.
Steve should really just stop trying not to smile back. “Can you please stop acting like a child before you break everything in my living room?” he asks, voice entirely too fond.
“Okay, Stevie,” Eddie says, just as soft.
Dustin ruins it, of course, because he’s the fucking worst (well, second worst; that honor goes to Mike, actually), and how is Dustin’s mouth full of food again already? “Don’t worry, we’ll just break a couple things.”
“Chew then speak, asshole.”
“Whatever you say, douchebag.”
“Shithead!”
“Turdhammer!”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“I’m sorry, and I’m the childish one?” Eddie asks, fingers steepled over his collarbones in mock offense.
Steve gives up and finishes his meal in silence.
🎄🎄🎄
They drop Dustin off at his house after they eat — because it’s Christmas Eve and he has “very important Henderson hot cocoa traditions to attend to,” whatever the hell that means — and then Eddie and Steve drive over to Robin’s house to deliver her share of the loot.
And like… Okay, Steve kind of forgot about the part where Robin has the plague and is quarantined in her room right now, so he once again finds himself throwing rocks at a girl’s window.
“You had a lot of practice with this, King Steve?” Eddie smirks.
“Shut the fuck up,” Steve mutters, not unkind.
Robin throws her window open after the fourth pebble lands. She looks like complete shit, to be honest, and her voice is hoarse and nasal when she leans out and yells, “I swear to god, Steve, I will cough into your MOUTH, what do you want?”
“FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION THAT!” Eddie hollers back, laughing harder when he looks over and sees Steve’s nauseous expression.
“Ew! What?!”
“Never mind!” Steve shouts, because he really doesn’t want to think about that moment ever again. He fumbles with the bag at his feet, gets the Little Debbie boxes out, and waves them over his head so Robin can see. Her face lights up, and the movement must tickle her nose or something because it sets her off into a sneezing fit.
“Ugh, gross, sorry,” she says when she comes back to the window a minute later with a tissue shoved up her nose. “Are those what I think they are??”
“Five full boxes of ‘em, baby!” Eddie whoops. “Had to rob a motel in Colby for these bad boys.”
“No, we fucking didn’t.”
“Sweetheart, let me have this.”
Steve rolls his eyes. There’s that feeling again, like an invisible fist is squeezing gently behind his ribs. “Merry Christmas, Robbie,” he grins up at her window, squinting against the sun. “Sorry we can’t hand deliver these. I’ll drop ‘em off with your mom at the door, okay?”
“Steeeeve,” she whines, voice watery with begrudging sincerity (or phlegm. Or both. Probably both.) She wipes her eyes with her sleeve, laughs as she says, “Eddie, I’m so sorry, but this is the best gift anyone’s ever given me, and Steve and I have to elope now.”
“What are you apologizing to me for?” he asks, grateful that his hair hides how red his ears are. Robin raises her brows.
🎄🎄🎄
“Hey, thanks again for your help with everything,” Steve says as he stoops in front of the fireplace and turns the gas key. The fire roars to life, and he looks over his shoulder at Eddie, who grins and plops down beside him. It’s just the two of them now, side by side in front of the fire, and the Harrington house feels a little less big, a little less empty. “You sure Wayne doesn’t mind you being gone this long, by the way? Shit, I could drop you back—”
“Relaaax,” Eddie cuts him off, voice low and easy. “Wayne always takes doubles the week of Christmas so folks with little kids can stay home. I promise you’re not keeping me anywhere I don’t want to be.”
“No?”
“No, Steve.”
“Cool,” Steve blushes and looks away. “Well then, uh, yeah. Thank you. I had a really good time. Sorry it turned into such a fucking, like…”
“Grand adventure? Quest for the ages?” Eddie supplies.
“Ha. Yeah, exactly.”
Eddie pats Steve’s knee. “Fortunately, I love adventure.”
Steve’s smiling again, can’t really help it, not with the way Eddie’s rich brown eyes are dancing in the orange glow of the fire. “Oh, hey! Speaking of…”
He pops up and grabs a box from the pile of gifts he wrapped last night, tucked away under the little tabletop Christmas tree he’d put out for himself. His knee overlaps Eddie’s when he sits back down, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, are we doing presents?” Eddie asks, eyes flashing with mischief. “Because I actually got you a little something too last night.”
“What? When did you even have time?”
“Snuck off while you were busy arguing with that leather journal vendor.”
“His prices were outrageous!”
“They were hand-sewn, Steve!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Nance better like the stupid thing.”
Eddie leans back, lying flat on his back and stretching his arms overhead to fish a little parcel out of a plastic bag behind him. His shirt rides up with the motion, and Steve watches the scarred skin of his torso twist as he moves. It’s pretty gruesome, sure, but it’s also just… kind of pretty, too, the way the firelight catches on silvery raised ridges and casts shadows in the divots where the bats left their deepest marks.
“Aw, hell,” Eddie huffs from where he’s floundering on the floor — turns out bat bites are shit for the obliques; Eddie’s ab muscles still give out on him from time to time, a little weak and prone to cramping even after months of physical therapy, and he wags his ringed fingers out in front of him. “Help me up, would ya?”
Steve takes Eddie’s hand and tugs, and then they’re sitting upright, knees still overlapping, Eddie’s hand tucked into Steve’s. Eddie doesn’t really seem interested in letting go, but they do after a moment; they need both hands to exchange their gifts.
Steve opens his first. It’s hideous, possibly the world’s most offensive Christmas sweatshirt: a camo monstrosity with the words ‘you better watch out’ in big arched letters over a drawing of Santa Claus sitting in a rocking chair with a shotgun in his lap.
“Dude,” Steve giggles as he slips the sweatshirt over his head. “Am I, like, threatening people with holiday cheer?”
“The back says— the back says ‘be good for goodness’ sake,’” Eddie chokes out through his own laughter.
Steve hands his present over next. It’s a small, rectangular box, and Eddie brings it up to his ear and gives it a hard shake.
“What if that had been fragile?” Steve asks.
Eddie shakes it harder. “Is it fragile?”
“Yes,” Steve lies. “Now you’ve ruined it.”
Eddie grins and tears the wrapping paper off with his teeth. He looks down at the gift. It’s a VHS box, a brand new copy of the 1977 animated Hobbit movie to replace the one that got devoured when the gate tore Eddie’s trailer in half back in the spring, and Eddie stares at the box in his lap for a long moment.
“I know you lost yours, so...” Steve rubs at the back of his neck. “Thought we could watch this one together?”
Eddie looks up, then, his eyes shining bright and wet, his lashes clumped together, and he looks so happy that Steve feels like he might float up through the ceiling.
“Hey,” Eddie starts, blinking the tears from his eyes with a little laugh. He reaches out and takes Steve’s hand again. “Feel free to stop me if I’ve, um, wildly misread this somehow, but uh… Yeah. I’m gonna kiss you now, okay?”
“Y-yeah,” Steve stutters, delighted.
Eddie leans in; pauses. “Like, romantically,” he says, grinning wide. “On the mouth, just, to clarify.”
“Yeah, okay,” Steve laughs, “loud and clear, Munson, get the fuck over here.”
And then they’re kissing, just like that: Steve hauling Eddie in with a fist curled into his collar, Eddie’s hands sliding up the sleeves of Steve’s god-awful Christmas sweatshirt, his fingers winding into the hair at Steve’s nape. Their teeth click together, and their noses bump, and it’s not even a good kiss, technically speaking, because they can’t stop smiling; because they’re not even kissing so much as giggling into each other’s mouths.
It’s the best kiss Steve’s ever had.
He tilts down, pressing his lips to the fluttering pulse point beneath Eddie’s jaw. “Merry Christmas, Eddie,” he says, hugging him tight around the middle.
“Shit, Stevie. Merry fuckin’ Christmas.” Eddie drops a kiss to the crown of his head, hugs him back just as fiercely, and they stay like that for a while, rocking gently back and forth.
Eventually, Eddie breaks the hug to grab the last box of Christmas tree cakes, and he pulls two out of the box, hands one to Steve. “‘86, huh, baby?” he asks, holding out his cake like a champagne flute. “Guess it really is my year.”
“Our year,” Steve corrects and meets his toast.
THE END