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It’s a night absolutely identical to the thousand or so Steve has spent out on these hills. 

The taste of fall is in the air. He hasn’t had to break out the more thickly-woven woolen trousers and clumsily quilted overcoats he’s got in his pack just yet, but he doesn’t think it’ll be more than a few weeks before they’re needed. Night is falling earlier as he and his flock amble their way over their grazing fields, and somehow the smoke off his evening fire seems to even taste a little different, as they’ve meandered out of late summer.

Beemer is asleep at his feet, her legs twitching with some doggy dreams, as if running up and down the green fields all day was somehow not enough adventuring for her. Steve leans down to rub a hand over her soft black ears, and the hound snuffles but doesn’t otherwise stir. The flock is quiet, probably unaware that they’re being chased around in Beemer’s dreams. They’ve scattered across the field, some of them settling underneath the nearby great old oak. Maybe they can feel the coming chill too, clustering around the roots to get themselves some of that deep-reaching warmth, drawn up from the ground.  

Which is fine, if you’re a sheep. For himself, Steve prefers a little more open air. He’s settled his cart and struck up a modest fire with just a shrub of wild roses to break the wind at his back. When he sleeps, he’ll do it under the fine spread of stars overhead. The way he did last night, and the night before that. The way he has slept night after night, stretching back for more nights than he can accurately count. And the way he probably will keep on sleeping, weather and will allowing, until his legs give out. Or the sheep and Beemer realize they can do a better job managing themselves without him. Whichever happens first.

The sameness could be boring, maybe. Could be stifling. But it’s a boredom and a stiflingness (stiflingdom? Steve’s had a lot of time to think about it and he hasn’t decided) that comes from freedom. A freedom he’s chosen and fought for himself. So, until his sheep and his dog mutiny against him, a lifetime of unremarkable and identical nights just like this one will have to do.

“Nice fire you’ve got going there,” a voice comes from the dark behind him. “Room for one more?”

Huh. Maybe this won’t be quite as unremarkable and identical night to every other one he’s spent out here, after all. 

Steve twists, reaching automatically for his heavy staff in case he needs defending. Beemer doesn’t wake, just kicks a little at the dirt, so it’s a good thing that the man standing just at the edge of the fire’s glow doesn’t seem to be a threat. Is in fact clearly trying to silently project I am not a threat louder than he could shout it: open hands lax at his sides, a wide and well-shaped (if slightly nervous) smile, arms spread to show he’s not armed. Steve’s opening his mouth to answer, when the stranger speaks again. 

“What would you ask of me, to let me share it with you a while?”

That stops Steve’s tongue and freezes his blood. The formality of the question, the particular way in which the stranger asks it, draws the air tight around them. And the question itself, the question of favors and of cost, is a clear sign of something Steve’s mother always warned him about: beware the fae folk, and all their fair-seeming bargains. 

Fuck. 

First on the list of tips that he honestly hadn’t thought he had ever needed to put into practical use is: be polite . So he hopes he’s not verging on rude, how he takes a moment to really look at his visitor. 

The thing is, he doesn’t look fae. Steve’s not an expert or anything, but you spend enough time around strange old shepherds or knowledgeable midwives and you learn what to look out for. And mostly what you look for is something…extraordinary. 

Which this guy, frankly, isn’t. He looks like a trapper, or something. Mostly dressed in leathers, as far as Steve can tell in the flickering light of the fire, with long dark hair falling in loose curls past his shoulders. A strap crosses his chest, some sort of rucksack or pack slung across his back, Steve assumes. There’s another sack at his hip. 

Still, Steve figures it’s best to proceed with caution. Until he figures out what he’s dealing with. 

“What would you offer?” Steve asks in return, hopes his smile is friendly enough to not get him blasted with a curse, or something. “That would do me no harm.” he adds, quickly. His mother’s rule number two: be careful with your language. Be careful, be specific . Steve has never been exactly gifted with words, so he’s unfortunately aware that if he’s going to fall into a fae trap of any kind, it’ll probably be because of some mistake along those lines. 

The stranger smiles. No nerves, all charm this time. But how the man’s dark round eyes warm with the look worries Steve even more. That’s what reveals him to be extraordinary after all. 

“Where do you stand on apples?” The stranger asks, reaching into the sack at his hip, and withdrawing one of the small, tart apples that grow along these hills. He turns it back and forth in the firelight ostentatiously before Steve, mouth opening wide in mock-amazement. 

“I’m for them,” Steve says, though he can hear his mom repeat rule number three: accept no food from the folk. But he’s also been told that fae food is beautiful, irresistible, luscious and too divine to resist. And the apple in this man’s hand is just… an apple. A little misshapen, patchy in color. If the food was magical and meant to ensnare Steve’s will with just one bite, surely it would look a little more tempting. 

After one more moment of hesitation, Steve beckons the man closer to the light. “Come on, then,” he says, stomach twisting, hoping this isn’t the beginning of a colossal fuck-up. “Pull up a patch of grass, get comfy.”

“You’re too kind,” the stranger says, and sits at a respectful distance. He slides the sack at his hip free of his belt, and offers it to Steve. As he moves, Steve realizes he was wrong about the strap across his chest: he doesn’t have another bag or pack on his back. It’s a guitar. He was wrong about a few things, clearly, since his leather trousers and jacket aren’t the hardy weathered stuff of a hunter. They’re buttery-smooth and dark, well-broken in but unmarred by dirt or scratches. The tunic he wears is made of thick and finely-woven wool, richly dyed a shade that might be a deep blue or green, and worked throughout with fine embroidery. A pattern of leaves and vines, the silks catching the firelight as he extends the sack of apples towards Steve. He has thick rings on his fingers, shining silver and gleaming brass, shaped like twisted grinning faces of beasts and leering fanged monsters. 

Steve’s fingers brush against his as he takes the bag, and the stranger starts as though he’s been shocked. 

“Sorry,” Steve and the stranger say at the same time, and the stranger bites back a laugh. 

“No, I’m sorry,” the man says. “I’m being weird.”

Absolutely, Steve thinks, but figures that doesn’t fall under be polite or be careful with your words. 

“Nah,” he says. “I’ve spent the last two weeks with only a dog and sheep for company. I’ve got no idea what counts as weird or not.”

The stranger laughs, and Steve is again struck by the dangerous way the sound ripples through the air, the delicious depths of the man’s voice. Watch out, he reminds himself. 

“I’m in the same boat,” he says. “Or the same…field, I guess. I haven’t talked with anyone who isn’t– I haven’t had a normal conversation in a long time.”

Interesting. But Steve doesn’t push. Instead, he pulls an apple out of the bag, examining it in the firelight. He’d passed through a grove of apple trees during one of those last hot days of summer, and filled a bag with the apples he could find that were ripe enough to pick. He’d polished off the last of them just a few days ago, and his mouth waters at the memory of the taste. The apples on these hills are a little sour, tart enough to tingle the inside of your mouth. Refreshing like a drink of water fresh from a spring, a little kick of energy to help the rambling feel less tiresome. 

This looks exactly like one of those apples. Unevenly shaped, red streaked with pale green and white. There’s even a soft mushy place he presses with his thumb, where maybe the flesh was bruised by its fall from a tree, or from bumping against his visitor’s hip. Trustworthy. Familiar. Ordinary. 

Still. Still. He hesitates.

“Salt,” the man says. 

Steve jerks a little in surprise. Glances up to meet those dark eyes, trained on him with a look that’s almost mournful, though the stranger’s still smiling. 

“Do you have salt?” He says again. 

“I, uh… yeah?” Steve has a few small jars of herbs and spices he carries with him always. After a week on the hills, the taste of unseasoned rabbit loses pretty much all of its limited appeal.

“That’ll help,” he says. “With the–” something seems to stop his voice, and he shakes his head. “If you–” he comes to a halt again, mouth working as though he can’t get air. 

With a noise of disgust, he shakes his head in frustration. Finally, he mimes sprinkling something in the air before him, looking meaningfully at Steve. “Salt is good,” he grumbles. Apparently a permitted sentiment, though clearly not one he’s that happy with. 

More and more interesting . “Salt is good,” Steve agrees easily, and goes rummaging in his bag. He pauses, and eyes the stranger. Who is rubbing at one eye with a knuckle, murmuring something inaudible but clearly annoyed to himself. “Would you…would you take some cheese in return for your advice?”

He drops his hand, and rewards Steve with another smile. “Cheese, huh?”

Steve withdraws the cloth-wrapped wheel. The stranger lets out a laugh that’s almost a whoop, and nods happily. 

“Now it’s a party,” he says, and Steve laughs himself as he hands the cheese over. The visitor pats along his belt and pockets until he finds himself a knife, and begins to slice it. 

He doesn’t miss how the stranger’s face takes on a dazed expression when he glances at Steve, smiling with a sort of soft surprise. If they were in a country pub with the candles burning low, he’d know how to interpret that look. And what to do about it. But out here, well… rule number four: never at any point assume you’ve got them figured out. 

So he doesn’t remark on it. Instead he just sprinkles his salt over the apple and takes a bite. Salted apple isn’t exactly a combination he’d recommend, but it’s not awful either. Satisfying enough after a day of chasing down lambs and trying to keep Beemer from eating anything questionable she found along the riverbank. He lets out a hum of happiness, waits to see if he feels bewitched or ensorceled, and when no magical compulsion seems to drop down around his head, he goes in for another bite. 

There’s companionable silence for a bit, surprising in how natural it feels. He wordlessly passes one of the strangers' own apples back to him, and takes back a hunk of his own cheese in return. Pulling his knife from its sheath at his hip, he carefully cuts the apple into slices, laying hunks of the cheese atop each before popping them into his mouth. The cheese is from Robin’s farm. He keeps finding wheels of it hidden around the pull cart that makes up his makeshift home while he’s wandering over the hills. It shouldn’t even be possible to hide anything on it since the simple structure only holds his basic essentials: clothes, hunting supplies and fishing rod, bedroll and waxed cloth to erect when the weather’s miserable. No hidden cupboards or hidey-holes. But she’d clearly found a way during his last visit home. She worries he doesn’t eat enough out on the hills, and he’s given up trying to get her to stop. Plus, the cheese is damn tasty. 

“So,” Steve says at last. “Come here often?”

He was going for a joke, but the man’s face takes on a sad, wide-eyed look as he pauses, hunk of cheese lifted halfway to his mouth. 

“I’ve been around here a while,” he says. “I’m… not sure how long.”

“I haven’t seen you before,” Steve says. Maybe forgetting to be careful, with how he says it. 

This gets the guy smiling again, fortunately. “And I haven’t seen you, ” he says with a wicked grin, leaning towards Steve. “Though I’d remember such a pretty face.”

Steve laughs, like it’s a joke, like he’d meant it as a joke. And maybe he had, as the stranger doesn’t push. 

“I’ve been bringing my flock over these hills for years,” Steve offers. “It’s nice, this close to Hallow’s Eve, around here. The apples,” he gestures towards the stranger with one of them, and takes a big bite. “The leaves changing color,” he says, spitting bits of apple inelegantly into the fire. They pop and sizzle when they hit the flames, briefly filling the air with a spiced, earthy smell. 

“This close?” The stranger looks at him, eyebrows raised. He’s got such an expressive face, Steve almost wants to seize him by the cheeks and see how he can stretch it, press it, what shapes it might make in his hands. “How close?”

“To Hallow’s Eve?” Steve loses track of days out here, so he has to retrace the last few sunsets, how many of them have passed since he last waved goodbye to Robin as he brought out the flock. “I don’t know… a week? Little less?”

“That soon,” the man says quietly. Stares into the fire, expressive face gone still. “Almost out of time.”

“Out of time? For what?” 

Round dark eyes fix themselves to his face, stopping his breath with the depth of desolation behind them. How there’s almost a plea there, like he’s begging Steve for help there with a wealth of words he won’t– or can’t– say. 

But the look lasts only for a moment. Just briefly enough for Steve to wonder if he had imagined it, and long enough to be almost certain that he hadn’t. 

The stranger smiles again, provocatively. 

“For learning your name,” he says. “What would you ask of me, in exchange for it?”

Steve huffs out a laugh. “What would you offer, that would do me no harm?” he says again, in a mocking kind of tone. 

Rule number five: names are really, really important. Be very careful about how much of yours you share, and how much of others you ask for. 

“How about an even exchange?” The stranger says. “Like for like. My name is Eddie.”

“Eddie,” Steve says, not missing how the stranger’s–Eddie’s– whole face lights up with surprised happiness at hearing his own name spoken aloud. “I’m Steve.”

“Steve,” Eddie says slowly, drawing the name consideringly across his tongue in a way that unaccountably makes Steve blush. “It’s a pleasure to know you.”

He reaches towards Steve, and automatically Steve extends his own hand. Eddie’s palm is warm, maybe a little sticky with the juice of the apples they’d shared. It fits naturally against Steve’s, and there is that worrying suspicion that palm-to-palm shouldn’t make Steve’s whole body flush with heat, if Eddie was just a man. 

“Know me?” Steve says, a little breathless and trying to play it off with a forced laugh. “You don’t think that’s a little presumptuous? We’ve just shared some apples and cheese on a fall night.”

Eddie shrugs. “Maybe. But maybe I’m almost out of time for that, too.”

He grins, then. Big and wide, and there’s something both determined and sad in it. The kind of smile that soldiers of more heroic days might wear, before riding into battle against a foe they knew they couldn’t beat. Steve’s not much for poetry, but he’s always a sucker for tales like that. 

“But it’s not Hallow’s Eve yet, Steve,” Eddie lifts Steve’s hand, still clasped in his, to his lips. Brushes a courtly kiss across the back of Steve’s hand, eyes still locked on Steve’s face. 

Of course, whether because of the soft surprised inhale that punches out of Steve’s chest, or the motion as he rocks closer to Eddie, this is the moment when Beemer wakes up. The dog is on her feet in a flash, with a ferocious bark of alarm that would be truly impressive if she hadn’t been dead asleep for the last half hour, while the dangerous intruder got himself comfortable and shared a whole meal with her master. 

Steve releases Eddie’s hand and lunges for his dog, locking his arms around her neck to keep her from leaping on Eddie, as she continues barking her stupid head off. 

“Sorry, sorry, she’s really–” Steve falters, the words normally very sweet dying on his lips. 

Eddie has vanished. Nothing left in the grass where he’d been sitting but one apple core, rocking infinitesimally in place as though it had just been dropped. 

Fae . No doubt about it. And Steve had held his hand, eaten his food, given him his name. Shit. His mom would never let him hear the end of it, if she knew. But if Steve vanishes and is never heard from again, she’ll never find out how badly he followed her advice. So there’s that upside, anyway.

Beemer is less concerned by the sudden disappearance of the just as sudden intruder. She’s discovered the remains of the cheese and is snuffling it up eagerly, turning a goofy doggy smile up at Steve, clearly angling for more. 

Steve releases his hold around her neck, and sits back. Regards the fire, the empty field around him, the quiet forms of slumbering sheep. The stars scattered across the sky, and the moon hanging fat and yellow, nearly full above him. The empty space beside him, and the back of his own hand– not visibly changed by Eddie’s lips pressed against it, but tingling with the remembered impression all the same. 

“Some guard dog you are,” he says to Beemer.

Understandably, she ignores him. 

Steve is pretty sure he knows what the smart thing to do would be, the next night. Turn his tunic inside-out, spend the rest of his salt stores in marking a circle around his cart, tuck himself into his bedroll, stuff his ears with wax just to make a sure job of it, and go determinedly to sleep as early as possible. 

Somewhat predictably, Steve does not do any of that. 

“Now this,” Eddie’s voice sounds behind him, just when Steve had started to blink sleep out of his eyes and seriously wonder if he should turn in after all, “is a fire.”

Steve twists around to look at him, smiling up at Eddie cautiously. 

He’s in the same fine leather trousers and jacket as the night before, guitar slung over his back. The tunic underneath is jet black, laces gaping open at his neck and exposing the shadowed curve of an elegant collarbone, and swell of his chest beneath it. The tunic is embroidered with silver thread, in complicated interconnected designs that remind Steve of spiderwebs studded with morning dew. Eddie’s tied his long black hair away from his face, pulled back with a slim thong, the ends of which are long enough to drape over his shoulder. The pack at his hip looks full again, perhaps with a fresh store of apples. That mouth, those lips that he thought surely he had imagined, twist up into an appreciative smile. 

Steve knows he looks pretty much the same. He doesn’t have a lot of options out here on the road, and he’s depressingly aware that he’s going to smell a little bit like sheep and sweat no matter what he does. But he had found a spring during his afternoon tromp after the flock, letting Beemer mind them for a while as he’d stripped down, throwing himself into the freezing water with a yelp before he could talk himself out of it. He’d scrubbed himself down from scalp to toes, shuddering and swearing the whole time and ignoring the flat, thoughtful gaze of about seven sheep who had lined up on the bank to watch him. 

So he’s in the same trousers, tunic, and wool jacket he’d been in the night before. But at least he’s cleaner underneath them. 

Eddie smells the air. “What smells so good?”

“I found a walnut tree, back over that rise,” Steve points, but Eddie keeps his eyes on Steve. “It had dropped some nice, old dry branches. And a good amount of nuts, too.”

Eddie lets out a low whistle. “Yum.”

“Well, ‘yum’ will have to wait for a little bit,” Steve says. “I had to shell and wash them, and they’ve got to sit and dry for a while before we get to the shelling and roasting stuff.” 

He’s about to ask Eddie if he thinks he can wait that long, but bites the words back. He’s spent roughly half of the morning thinking about what Eddie could have meant by running out of time, and he’s not… he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to presume too much. Or inquire too much, either. 

“Well, smells nice now, at least,” Eddie says. “So, Steve the Shepherd. What would you ask of me, as a fit price to pay for sharing your very nice-smelling and very warm fire?”

Steve grins. “Well, Eddie the Mysterious Stranger. What would you offer me, that would do me no harm?”

Eddie rolls his eyes at the name, but lifts the sack again. “Honey cakes? Made them myself, fresh this afternoon.”

Steve blinks. “Made them? Where?”

Eddie’s jaw locks shut. He opens his mouth to try again, but can’t get a word out. With a snarl of frustration, he finally manages to force out a harsh-sounding “in an oven, okay?”

Steve holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Yes, I will accept your honey cakes as payment to sit at my fire.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says gruffly. Thrusts the sack towards Steve, and folds himself down into a seated position. Much closer than last night, Steve can’t help but notice, even if Steve’s question had annoyed him. 

He waits for a moment, holding the sack in his hands. Its contents are still a little warm to the touch. 

“Sorry,” Steve says uncertainly. “I don’t– I don’t know what the rules are.”

Eddie shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye, and shakes his head. Lets out a long breath, and attempts another brave smile. It really does make him look like a noble warrior out of an old tale. Some kind of deposed king, maybe. Robin would kick him for these kind of useless sentimental thoughts while he’s still in the middle of a potentially very dangerous conversation. 

“Don’t apologize,” Eddie says quietly. “I don’t even–” he grinds to a halt, and waves a hand in a way that pretty clearly says there, you see?  

“You don’t know all the rules either?” Steve guesses. 

Eddie fixes his eyes on the fire, and grits his teeth so tightly that Steve can see a muscle work in his jaw. His eyes linger there, almost missing the minute shake of Eddie’s head. 

Steve thinks for a second. “Fair enough,” he says at last. 

Beemer, who had been investigating the sheep, pads over to the fire. Eddie stiffens, maybe expecting a similar welcome to the one she’d given him last night, but a Beemer awoken from a deep sleep is a much more fearsome creature than one full of the satisfaction of bullying forty sheep into her preferred nighttime arrangement. She approaches Eddie like he’s an old friend, tail wagging and tongue out. 

“Hello again,” Eddie says, in a low, coaxing voice that Steve thinks he’d probably sit, stay, and roll over for if Eddie ever used it on him. “Aren’t you a gorgeous girl?”

“Her name’s Beemer,” Steve says, as the gorgeous girl in question sniffs Eddie’s offered fingertips, before butting her head against his hand in a demand for pets. 

“Very nice to meet you,” Eddie says seriously to the dog. 

“What, no gift for her in return?” Steve asks as he opens the sack and pulls out a perfectly shaped, perfectly browned honey loaf. Studded with nuts on top, and glistening with sweetness. Steve holds it to his nose, and inhales deeply. Fuck, it smells so good. 

When he looks up, Eddie is regarding him with open hunger. Steve holds his gaze, until Eddie clears his throat and looks away. 

“Well,” Eddie says gruffly. “I think these stellar ear-scratchies are a pretty fair exchange.”

Steve laughs, and turns the bun over in his hands. Hesitates, though his mouth is watering with how much he wants to just bite into it. 

“I burned the bottoms,” Eddie says casually, his focus apparently all on Beemer’s happy face, her back foot thumping when he finds a magic spot just under her right ear. “Just a little. Just so you’d know.”

So I’d know they were safe, Steve thinks, heart swelling a little. Fae food would never be marred by so much as a smudge of ash from their ovens. 

“Salt probably wouldn’t do much for the taste,” Steve says. 

“Not so much,” Eddie snorts. “But I won’t mind, or anything. If that makes you more comfortable.”

Steve considers him. Eddie ignores his gaze for a little while, though eventually he raises his eyes to meet Steve’s over the frenzied back and forth of Beemer’s wagging tail. 

“I wouldn’t offer you anything that would harm you,” Eddie says quietly. “Now, or ever.”

After a long moment, looking into Eddie’s face, Steve finally nods. And takes a big, eager bite of the honey cake. 

“Oh, fuck,” Steve moans around a mouthful of cake. It’s warm, and sweet, and the flavor of the honey explodes against his tongue. It tastes like Martinmas night and Easter morning all rolled into one, with the added bonus of not having to rush every delicious bite because he’s about to be hustled off to services. As it is, he still has to remind himself to slow down, to really savor each bite. 

Eddie lets out a laugh, hands stilling in Beemer’s fur. With a huff of disappointment, she loses interest in him and goes to curl up on Steve’s other side. Eddie doesn’t appear to care, or even notice– those dark eyes are locked on Steve again. 

“That good, huh?” He says, voice as honeyed as the half-demolished cake in Steve’s hands. 

“You know it is,” Steve says. 

Eddie shrugs with such an air of fake modesty that Steve has to laugh. After one more bite, he drags the back of his hand across his mouth. 

“I have a few bottles of ale,” Steve says, as though he’s just remembered this. It’s about as convincing as Eddie’s modest act, probably. “And I have a price in mind, if you’d like one.”

“Oh?” Eddie rests his elbows on his knees, and leans in closer to Steve. “And it’s a steep one, I bet. Gonna take me for everything I’ve got, Steve?”

Steve takes a long, slow look down Eddie’s leanly-muscled leather-clad thighs, over his ring-decked fingers, up across the breadth of his shoulders and his face. Which looks a little red, by the time Steve gets to it. 

“Mmm,” Steve rumbles, low in his chest. “Maybe later.”

Eddie goes still, as Steve reaches out a hand towards him. His eyes are consumingly deep, dark with anticipation and with promise, as Steve’s hand lands on his chest. 

“But for now…” Steve hooks a finger under the strap across Eddie’s chest, giving it a gentle tug. “Why don’t you show me what you can do with this thing?”

“Oh, I’ll show you–” Eddie looks down, and seems to come back to reality. “Ah. The guitar, you’re talking about the guitar.”

Steve lets out a laugh, and sits back. “Yeah, the guitar. Show me what you’ve got, play me a song.”

Eddie tries to scowl at him, but can’t quite keep the smile from breaking through. “Fair enough price,” he grumbles, swinging the guitar around to rest across his lap. “Though that ale better be something special, for everything I’m going through to get it.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Steve promises. Very much not talking about the ale (which is Just Fine, if he’s honest. Robin is better with cheese than brewing, but she does love to have about four projects going at any time). 

He gets a narrow-eyed look for that, before Eddie rests his hands on the strings, and starts to sing. 

Steve has heard stories about the fae, and the types of humans they snatch away to their land. Humans of incredible beauty, sure. But also humans of particular talent: a gift for metalworking, or embroidery. For poetry, for wit, or– maybe beloved by the fae most of all– for music. 

He wonders if that’s how Eddie got into… whatever situation he’s in. The way Eddie’s fingers dance across the strings, and the rich, throaty tone of his voice when he opens it to begin his ballad, Steve thinks he could see it. Watching how Eddie’s focus turns inward, how every bit of his being seems to suddenly be bound up in his guitar, no longer a piece of wood and some strings but a beautiful extension of his own self, Steve gets how it could happen. If he was some terrible fae lord, and he had happened on Eddie like this. He’d probably try to spirit him away to keep forever, himself. 

Half ashamed of having such a selfish, greedy thought, Steve makes himself focus on the words of the ballad. It’s a rousing story, one he’s never heard before: about a brave young maiden who was raised in a tower, and how she escaped the wicked sorcerer keeping her there, who would bind her power for his own sinister uses. Steve gets caught up in the tale, his heartbeat quickening as Eddie’s fingers speed up over the strings as he describes her panicked flight through the woods, letting out a long breath when the story slows and she encounters a pack of scruffy but good-hearted thieves who are hunting for a lost member of their band. 

The story wanders from there, the missing thief’s mother appearing and enlisting the aid of an old soldier, all of it somehow connected to the kingdom’s spoiled young prince and his sharp-witted bride, but Steve doesn’t try too hard to hang onto every individual twist and turn of the plot. He lets himself sit back, the music washing over him as he slowly finishes the honey cake and simply watches Eddie. His face, glowing in the firelight. His fingers, pressing and flicking and strumming over the neck of the guitar. The motion of his mouth, as he sings. 

If this is ensorcellment, Steve thinks to himself. It could be worse. 

The ballad comes to a rousing, triumphant conclusion, the wizard vanquished, the lost thief found, all the young lovers rejoicing, etcetera. Eddie lets the last chord ring out with a flourish, turning a grin on Steve as the sound slowly fades around them. 

Grinning back, Steve rummages in his pack and wordlessly hands Eddie a bottle of ale. Grabs one for himself as well, and toasts Eddie with it after twisting off the top. 

Glowing with satisfaction, Eddie returns the gesture, and takes a deep swig. Steve knows it isn’t great ale, but Eddie lets out a deep sigh of satisfaction, twisting the amber bottle before the firelight to admire Robin’s (slightly slapdash, since she usually stamps them when she's been “testing” the ales for a bit already) label. 

“How did you learn to play like that?” Steve asks, hoping it’s a safe question. 

Fortunately, Eddie opens his mouth and speaks without any sign of his magical gag. “I don’t even remember the first time I picked up a guitar,” he says. “My uncle tells me that one of the bards passing through left his own unattended for a second when I was barely walking and bam– I had it in my little grubby hands, trying to coax any kind of sound out of it with my chubby little fingers. I was a real energetic kid, getting in everyone’s way and tearing the place up. But get some music in front of me, and I’d just… calm right down.”

Sounds like he was raised in an inn, or something. Steve wonders if it’s one of the local ones he knows, or if Eddie’s wandering has taken him far from home. He doesn’t quite dare ask, but the image comes easy of Eddie resting an elbow on the worn wooden bartop of Steve’s favorite (The Iron Bat, closer to where Steve will end this journey across the pastures than Robin’s hut in the village behind him) dreamy-eyed as he listens to one of the troubadours who’ll haunt the place for a few weeks at a time. 

“My mom ran out of lullabies for me, so I started making up my own instead,” Eddie laughs. “And if they were really good, she’d end up falling asleep instead. And then I’d get more time to run around in defiance of bedtime until she woke up again or dad got home. So, good motivation to hone my craft there.”

“Was your dad a musician too?”

The smile fades from Eddie’s face. “No,” he says simply. Steve is pretty sure it’s not magic stopping his tongue now. 

Steve draws another honey cake out of the sack. Splits it in two, and offers half to Eddie. Eddie accepts it with a nod, not quite meeting Steve’s eyes. 

“It’s not a gift like yours,” Steve says cautiously. “But I got into this in the same way, sort of.”

“Oh?” Eddie says, eyes lighting up with interest. “Traveling bard leave his sheep unattended?”

Steve laughs. “Almost. My parents left me unattended. For months at a time while my father was charting out trade routes and overcharging people on silks, or spices or whatever the hot new thing was. I was supposed to study up, learn the business so I could join them. But… I’ve never been that great with books.”

Eddie nods, and Steve’s shoulders relax at the realization that this is not some kind of unpleasant surprise to Eddie. He just accepts it. Even years and years later, Steve is still braced for that shame and judgment, apparently. He should maybe work on that. 

“But the estate my parents had moved us to included a flock, and a grouchy old shepherd who for some reason tolerated my running around, getting in his way. I think he started teaching me how to take care of sheep just to distract me long enough so he could get some peace. By the time my parents wanted me to step into the work, I was out of the house for weeks and months at a time, moving the flock. I missed a whole slate of meetings my dad had wanted me at, because it was shearing season and we needed every hand.”

Eddie chuckles. “So I’m guessing you won the day,” he says, waving a hand across the field and its sleeping, occasionally bleating inhabitants. 

Steve nods. “He tried to starve me out, at first,” he says with a laugh. “Turned me out of the house, said I could ramble the fields if I wanted to but I wouldn’t get a penny from him until I was willing to see reason. But he let me stay with the flock, which was all I wanted or needed. I learned how to live off it. Who to take milk to when the time of the year was right, for cheese and soaps to sell at market. Who would buy the wool, and spin it into something fine. That first year was pretty rough, but. We made it through okay.”

He’s surprised by the way Eddie is looking at him, when he’s finished that story. His eyes are practically shining in the firelight, like Steve is some kind of marvel. 

“Wow,” Eddie says. “You’re a pretty amazing guy, Steve the Shepherd.”

“I don’t know about that,” Steve says, embarrassed. “I’m just stubborn, really. I plow on ahead, when I think I’m headed in the right direction. It’s kind of boneheaded, but. I’m not afraid of fighting for what I want, I guess.”

Eddie’s mouth twists into a little disbelieving smile, shaking his head. Steve takes him in, the fall of his curly hair down his back, the gentle arch of his fingers at rest, where they’re curved over the body of his guitar. How Eddie’s gaze flicks over Steve’s face, dropping unmistakably to his lips. 

Steve, feeling like he knows the steps of this dance pretty well actually, raises his bottle of ale to his lips. Tips his head back, closing his eyes and taking several long sips. Is rewarded by the sound of a string of soft muffled curses, and Eddie’s eyes fixed on his neck when Steve sets the bottle back down again.

“I have another song for you,” Eddie says, voice low and intent. “Will you let me name my price?”

Steve hesitates, some part of him still trying to be smart for once. “Worried that what I have to offer could harm you?” He says, trying for a joke while he tries to think. 

“Oh, it probably will harm me,” Eddie says slowly. “Might end up being fatal. But I want it anyway.”

Fuck. 

And fuck being smart. 

“Alright,” Steve says, breathless and hot all over. “You can name your price.”

This time, when Eddie starts to play, he doesn’t hunch over his guitar. He doesn’t seem to fold into it the same way he had for the last song, when he let the music and the lyrics consume him. His playing is no less expert, his voice no less captivating. But this time he keeps his eyes on Steve like that’s what’s consuming him, like the sight of Steve, sat in the grass at the edge of the fire in his much-patched over wool jacket, is what he’s actually sinking into. 

Steve clenches the knees of his trousers so tightly he wonders distantly if the dig of his fingertips will leave bruises. He doesn’t really care. 

This ballad isn’t a rousing adventure, or even a sweet love story. It’s in a language that Steve doesn’t know, the vowels and soft hissing syllables skating expertly across Eddie’s tongue and over Steve’s skin with a force he swears he can feel. The music of this one is simpler, but more powerful– an insistent, pulsating beat returned to time and time again, the pace inching up slightly with each reprise. Calling Steve’s hammering heart to follow it, match it, the coaxing words in a language he doesn’t know still speaking directly to the core of him. 

He almost feels dizzy, gasping when the tempo ramps up to the final call of the sound, Eddie’s voice sounding across the clearing in an almost devastatingly clear peal of perfect sound. The pulsating beat slows at last, fainter and fainter until there’s silence. And the song is done. 

Steve is shaking. He’s risen up, kneeling before Eddie, hands still fisted tight in the fabric of his trousers. 

“Name it,” Steve says. It’s now or never, he figures. Now he finds out if he has truly fucked up, if he’s about to have to offer up a firstborn child or a moderately important internal organ. If this is the last night he’ll ever be seen on the mortal plane again. Or if– or if– or if he’s been lucky instead of smart, and the direction he’s stubbornly plowing towards has ended up being as right as he feels it to be. “Name your price.”

Eddie pulls the strap of his guitar over his head, setting it on the group behind him without more than a glance. He rises to his knees too, facing Steve. 

“A kiss,” he says. 

Steve falls on him in a moment. 

He’s never felt so hungry for someone in his life. The first touch of Eddie’s lips against his shatters any remaining caution. Any fragments of fear are blasted apart by the sweetness of Eddie’s breath mixing with his. He cups Eddie’s jaw in his hands, thumbs sweeping across his cheeks as Eddie shakes against him, hands gripping hard against Steve’s hips, a groan Steve can feel pressed against his own chest. 

He slides his hands up into the sleek wealth of Eddie’s hair, fumbling with the twine holding it back until he works it free. Curls fall around Eddie’s shoulders, and Steve works his fingers tight against his scalp. Eddie moans against his mouth as Steve holds him still against him. 

Eddie bites his lip, and Steve gasps. It’s all the chance Eddie needs to sweep his tongue across Steve’s, the taste of it sweet with honey and warm with ale. Steve’s head spins, and all he can do is pull Eddie closer, reassuring himself with the human press and weight of him, fumbling with the edge of his tunic in search of hot, welcoming, electric skin. 

But at the first touch of Steve’s palm against the small of Eddie’s back, pressing their hips directly together, Eddie rocks back with a gasp. Overbalances, and topples over onto the grass.  

Steve leans after him automatically, catching himself on one hand. Pants out a laugh in surprise, and at the wild-eyed look of shock on Eddie’s face. 

“Are you okay?” Steve asks. 

He doesn’t follow Eddie down to the ground, though the sight of him is utterly tempting– hair spread out over the grass, tunic loose and riding up his stomach to expose pale skin and a trail of fine dark hair leading underneath his leather trousers. God it’s tempting. But Eddie had pulled back, and Steve just wants– wants to make sure. 

“No,” Eddie says with a groan, but he’s smiling. “I was right.”

“About what?” Steve says. 

Eddie pushes himself up, sliding away from Steve and standing. Just out of reach, and Steve tries to suppress the devastated whine building in his chest. 

“The price I named might be fatal to me after all,” Eddie says. 

He’s not smiling anymore. He looks at Steve with a look of such need, such desperation, that it takes his breath away. He wants to fold Eddie into his arms again, and tell him that whatever it is– whatever has put those shadows behind his eyes– it’ll be okay. Steve will tear them away, do whatever it takes to banish them forever, and it’ll all be okay. 

“Eddie–” 

Eddies reaches out a hand, runs it soothingly across Steve’s cheek. Brushes across Steve’s lips, feather-light, with his thumb. 

Steve doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like the chill he feels in the air, the impression that the night has turned without either of them wanting it to. 

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Eddie says sadly. 

Steve’s mouth is open to protest, when one of the logs from the dwindling fire falls with a crack and a shower of sparks. Alarmed, he automatically turns to look, twisting away from Eddie’s touch. 

At once, he realizes his mistake. But it’s too late. When he twists back around, so quickly that he almost falls over again– there's nothing but empty sky before him. Eddie has vanished without a trace once more. 

If Beemer notices that it’s a quieter Steve, a more thoughtful Steve, pacing along the old footpath with her the next day, she politely doesn’t mention it. The whole day, which is bright and clear in complete opposition to Steve’s mood, his mind is only half on what he’s doing. He’s tugging a lamb free of a pricker bush, and he’s thinking about Eddie touching his cheek. He’s throwing a stick for Beemer to chase (she never brings them back, but she loves running after them anyway and will wait for Steve to catch up and throw them again), and he’s remembering the taste of Eddie’s lips against his, how his hair had felt knotted in Steve’s fingers. He’s sitting in the midst of the flock, running a hand over the back of the oldest ewe as she companionably ignores him, and he’s trying to decide what he’s going to do once night falls. 

He’s still trying to decide as the sky ribbons with purple and pink clouds, the sun pulling a velvety blueness across the sky as it sets. Steve builds a fire even bigger than the one from last night, tossing the last of the old walnut branches into the blaze once it gets going. 

He has a quiet dinner of crusty bread and Robin’s cheese while Beemer makes her goodnight rounds among the sheep. Helps himself to a bottle of ale, and watches the flames dance as night falls around him, and Beemer returns to fall asleep at his feet. 

He startles awake, only aware he’s drifted off when his chin thuds against his chest. After the third time this happens, Steve lets out a heavy sigh. The fire has burned down low, the moon and stars are spread bright over his head. And he’s still very much alone. 

Steve rubs at his eyes, and stops trying to fend off the disappointed pit in his stomach. So, that’s it then. It was just a tale of two strange nights, with nothing to come from it but one magical kiss and countless questions. The type of questions he’ll probably spend hours agonizing over, looking for impossible answers, until time passes and the details get cloudy. Until he loses the rhythm of Eddie’s songs, the feel of Eddie’s teeth biting into his lip, the perfectly-wrought embroidery of his tunic soft against Steve’s fingers. Until the whole tale isn’t something he thinks about every hour, or every day. Or every week, or month, even– until it catches him only at the odd, unexpected moment, once in a very long while. And feels distant enough that he’ll wonder if it was all just a dream, after all. 

He stands, grimacing at the creaking of his knees, before walking carefully around Beemer to where he had left his hand cart. He throws his bedroll to the ground with probably more force than necessary, but it relieves his feelings a little, at least. Kicking it open helps too. 

Steve drops down onto the bedroll, ready to let himself fall back and really have a nice sulk before he drifts off. He’s about to do just that, when there’s a quiet and polite sound of a throat clearing right beyond the circle of firelight. 

He sits bolt upright, eyes landing immediately on Eddie. 

Here after all, if skulking a little bit in the shadows. Gone are his fine leather jacket and the richly embroidered tunics. He’s in simple black trousers and a sleeveless tunic, red lines picked out at the hems and neck. Arms exposed to the night with no sign that he feels a chill, the surprising revelation of tattoos twining across his shoulders and arms standing out in stark relief against his pale skin. His hair hangs wild around his face, color high on his cheeks like he’s been running. Steve wonders when he decided to find him, after all. Wonders how many times today he’d gone back and forth, unsure what he would do when night finally fell. Wonders if he was thinking of their kiss every moment, the way Steve had been. 

Eddie takes a cautious step closer, into the light of the fire. And lifts a hand in a little wave. Which he immediately regrets, if the way he winces is any indication. Steve tries not to smile, worried he might scare Eddie off if he does. 

He and Eddie stare at each other for a moment. Steve thinks of all the things he had wanted to–hoped to– say to Eddie, if he did show. Those questions he was sure he’d spend a lifetime wishing had answers. Tell me what’s going on. Explain what’s happening. What kind of a curse are you under? Who are you really? He opens his mouth, ready to let it all come out. 

“Come here,” he says. 

Well, actually. Sure. Maybe that’s all he needs to say after all. 

Eddie makes a little anguished noise, twisting the hem of his tunic like it’s personally offended him. 

“I haven’t brought anything,” he says, in a strangled voice. “I don’t have anything. I can’t–”

He rubs both hands over his face, taking a half step towards Steve and narrowly missing stepping right into the fire. 

He drops his hands, and fixes Steve with a wide-eyed, pleading look. Pleading, but… hungry too, eyes flashing in the firelight as he sweeps his gaze up and down Steve’s body. Lightning fast, like he’s afraid to look for too long. 

“I can’t offer you anything,” Eddie says at last. 

Steve looks up at him. Then, he extends a hand towards him, fingers just barely trembling. 

“Come here,” he says again. 

Eddie comes. Drops down to his knees on the bedroll in front of Steve so hard it must hurt, but Steve doesn’t think that’s why he lets out a groan as he seizes Steve’s face in both hands, bringing their lips together. 

Steve was wrong, earlier. Kissing Eddie could never become a worn-through memory. Could never dull, or recede to the realm of dreams. He’s sure now, as Eddie parts his lips and kisses him deeply, that the memory will stay sharp as a knife, lodged right between his ribs, until the day he dies. 

It’s as though time stops around them. The sheep don’t stir. Beemer doesn’t wake. The fire barely even sputters and cracks, as Eddie lowers Steve down and reverently tugs his tunic up and over his head. 

Eddie can’t seem to stop touching Steve, or deciding where he wants his hands to light. He kisses Steve the whole time, while he skates his palms along Steve’s sides, wraps his fingers tight around Steve’s arms and shoulders, digs his fingernails into his back to urge Steve closer, closer, closer. His eager hands measure themselves against the swell of Steve’s ass, taking two handfuls and yanking Steve’s hips against his sharply. He’s apparently satisfied with how it fits, if how he growls into Steve’s mouth and pulls away long enough to sink his teeth into the side of Steve’s neck is any kind of hint. 

Steve blinks dazedly up at the bright stars above him, hands in Eddie’s hair and half-aware that he’s babbling– so beautiful god so gorgeous yes fuck there Eddie yes– as Eddie works his trousers over his hips and down his thighs. 

“Wait, wait–” Steve please, finding a grip on Eddie’s arms and pushing him a little ways back. “I just need–”

Eddie is grinning, expression open and dazed, full lips glittering in the firelight and swollen with the determination of his kiss. “What do you need, baby?”

Momentarily derailed by the sight of Eddie’s smile, how he’s outlined by the stars above him, Steve tries to get himself back on track. 

“I need to see you too,” he says, tugging on the neck of Eddie’s tunic. 

Eddie’s gaze softens. “Anything for you,” he promises. 

He sits back on his heels, pulling his tunic off and blinking down at Steve. Shudders a little, either in the chill of the air or the warmth of Steve’s eyes. Steve reaches for him, sliding his hands up Eddie’s stomach, over his chest, marveling at the lean muscles and the soft skin, the rippling shapes of tattoos in patterns more simple, rustic, and beautiful than any of Eddie’s fine embroidery. 

When his hands finally make their way to Eddie’s face, the grin has fallen away. He’s looking down at Steve with a much more serious expression, hopeful and fearful in almost equal measure. Steve pauses there, hands cupping Eddie’s jaw tenderly, adding that expression to the list of things he’ll never live without the memory of. 

Eddie opens his mouth as though to speak, but can’t seem to find the words. Whether because of the curse, or because he’s having about as much luck with stringing a thought together as Steve is, Steve doesn’t know. 

Steve waits what he thinks is a polite length of time for Eddie to collect his thoughts. And when he concludes that won’t happen any time soon, he sticks his thumb in Eddie’s mouth instead. 

Eddie groans, turning his face into Steve’s touch, eyes fluttering shut as he closes his lips around Steve’s thumb and sucks hard. 

It goes through Steve like a lightning bolt, and he pulls Eddie down again, rolling them almost off the bedroll so he can get Eddie underneath him, and free them both from the rest of their clothing. 

The stars wheel above them, as the walnut-scented fire burns down low. Steve’s heart hammers in his chest, his whole body alight as Eddie takes him fervently apart with his mouth and body, pressing into him with their hands locked together over Eddie’s chest, so Steve can feel his own heart beating just as wildly. Eddie hisses out half-formed promises and oaths and prayers into Steve’s hair, against the back of his neck, and Steve wants to hold him to every single one. 

When they finally still, breathing hard and arms wrapped around each other, Steve can’t stop smiling. The fire is just coals now, too dark to make out Eddie’s face anymore, but he hopes he’s smiling too. 

“I want to keep you,” Steve murmurs against Eddie’s chest, feeling sleep coming up to claim him. It’s pulling him down into luxurious darkness as Eddie’s hands run slowly over his back, through his hair. 

“You could,” Eddie says, voice a heady rumble against Steve’s ear. “If you’d fight for it.”

Steve throws a leg over one of Eddie’s, slotting their thighs together and pulling himself closer to Eddie’s heat. He has half a thought for reaching for one of the blankets that’s been kicked somewhere, half a thought on how delicious Eddie feels against him, and no thought at all to what he’s saying. 

“I would,” Steve mumbles, pressing a clumsy kiss over Eddie’s heart. “I’d do…’nything.”

Eddie’s chest rises sharply underneath him, and by the time he lets out a long breath, Steve is asleep. 

He wakes up, and there’s no sky above him. He knows, before he even opens his eyes. It’s the kind of thing you can tell right away, when you spend almost every night of your life outside of the stifling confines of four walls and a ceiling. 

Steve is bolt upright and out of bed (a bed!!!) before he’s even fully conscious. Before he registers all the places in which he’s deliciously sore, and how he is in fact, still very much naked. 

“Augh–” a female voice twinkles from nearby, clearly distressed. “I’d say don’t freak out, but clearly–”

Steve blinks, and slowly lowers his hands (raised automatically into defensive fists) to meekly cover himself. He’s standing in the middle of a rustic looking one-room cottage. There’s a small loom close to the fireplace, a table for one set with bread and cheese and a large tea kettle. There are bookshelves stacked not with anything to read but with stacks and stacks of fabric in a riot of colors, patterns, and textures, a large hoop standing half-picked with an embroidered pattern of summer fruits. Seated next to the fireplace, her hands over her eyes, is a small fair-haired woman, dressed in simple but finely-made homespun cotton. 

“Uh, sorry, I–” Steve fumbles to a halt. He’s kind of waiting for the explanation to come back to him, for the gaps to fill themselves in between what he last remembers (falling asleep, fucked out and happy, in Eddie’s arms) and where he is now. The gaps are remaining stubbornly unfilled. He’d had one bottle of ale, and Robin’s shit is not that strong.

Steve gives up. “Where the fuck am I?”

The woman drops her hands, keeping her big blue eyes trained on the ceiling until Steve shuffles back over to the bed and wraps the blanket around his hips. She has a face that’s meant for ballads, certainly: rosebud mouth, creamy complexion, decided air about her of someone who is meant for great things despite her humble surroundings.

“I’m a friend of Eddie’s,” she says gently. “My name is Chrissy.”

“Oh,” Steve breathes, a little relieved. That hardly answers all his questions, but at least there’s some tenuous connection between what happened last night and how he woke up this morning. And there is an excited flutter in his chest, at meeting someone who knows Eddie. He figures it’s better to keep his hands occupied with holding up the blanket, rather than risk exposing himself again by offering her a handshake. “Where is he?”

Chrissy looks at him for the first time. Knots her hands together in her lap, and chews at her bottom lip. 

“It’s a long story,” she says. “But hopefully one that you’ll be able to end.”

“Me?”

“I hope so,” Chrissy says, extending a hand to the small table in a wordless invitation for Steve to sit. He shuffles over and carefully settles himself down across from her, adjusting the blanket before he takes up a teacup with a seriously intense feeling of unreality. “And so does Eddie. That’s why he magicked you here to me.”

“Magicked me?” Despite getting some explanation, he’s not getting any less confused. “Why wouldn’t he wake me up? Why wouldn’t he just…”

“Talk to you?” Chrissy raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow. “Have you noticed anything, about what happens when Eddie tries to, y’know… talk?”

“I might have,” Steve says, head spinning. “Doesn’t seem to go too well for him.”

“A lot of things haven’t gone too well for him,” she says, sadly. 

“But you can talk to me about it?” Steve asks. “You can tell me what’s happening?”

Chrissy nods. “Almost all of it. And then you get to decide what you want to do next.”

“What I want to do?”

“It’s probably the other reason Eddie didn’t stick around for this part,” Chrissy admits. “So he wouldn’t pressure you, one way or the other. Or… so he wouldn’t have to see it if. Uh. If you decide you’re not up for any of this.”

Steve digests this. 

“Guess you better start explaining what it is I might not be up for, then,” he says, and takes a sip of tea. Mmm, rose. Very nice. 

“Guess I better,” Chrissy says, with an approving kind of chuckle. 

She takes a sip of tea herself, and sits back thoughtfully. 

“Eddie and I grew up together,” she begins. “Not anywhere near here. And maybe looking at the two of us, you wouldn’t have guessed why exactly we got so close. We were around the same age, sure, but we were also a couple of oddballs, each in our own way. Neither of us exactly fit in, and no one in our village, least of all our parents, really knew what to do with either of us. But at least we had each other.”

Steve, stomach stinking, hopes this isn’t the least easy letting-down he’s ever had in his life. “Oh?”

“Yeah, oh,” Chrissy says, rolling her eyes and mimicking Steve’s voice, pitching her own light tinkle down deep. “As friends, we had each other as friends. Who knows why Eddie is the way he is, he’s just a freak, I guess,” she laughs affectionately. “But for me– I eventually got the explanation for why I never seemed to fit in. The one I had always longed for. Though it didn’t take me long to wish I’d never gotten it in the first place.”

Serious now, she takes another sip of tea, before spreading her fingers across the tabletop, as though to steady herself. “When I was eighteen, I was visited by an emissary from the Wild Folk. They told me that I was a changeling child, and that it was time to come home. To swear fealty to my Lord and Lady, and leave this mortal world behind forever to join in their service.”

Steve lets out a long breath. Looks at Chrissy as though for the first time, like he’s trying to see the otherworldly touch of the fae in her upturned nose and slight gap between her front teeth. She shakes her head sadly, like she can tell exactly what he’s looking for. Like she’s familiar with that journey, having tried to find the same answers in her own face often enough. 

He notices, for the first time, that he can’t see any mirrors in here. 

“I didn’t want to go,” she says quietly. “I was scared. They’re– they’re scary . And I don’t know the courts, I don’t know the folk. I know my life here , and the people in it. The life they had waiting for me, it… I didn’t want any part of it.”

Steve nods slowly. 

“I told Eddie everything,” she says simply. “I didn’t have much hope that I’d be able to get out of it, but I wanted him to at least know where I had gone. Not to think… I didn’t want him to think I had left him all alone. He took it more calmly than I had expected, but when the emissary came back to bring me away, Eddie was waiting with an offer, to try and get me free of them.”

“Ah,” Steve’s heart swells. 

Chrissy nose, smiling again. He suspects that, despite the shadow of grief in this story, she’s the type of person who’s best suited to smiling. 

“They offered a chance for me to escape my fate, and live free of them. But to do it, Eddie would have to take my place. Become a thrall to my fae family, unless he could find someone to win his freedom. Saving us both.”

“And of course, he couldn’t tell his champion anything about it,” Steve finishes for her. 

“And of course, with a ticking clock on it,” she nods. “If he couldn’t find his champion by the time the Wild Hunt rode out, three Hallow’s Eve hence, he’d have to ride out with them and be theirs forever. And until then, he had to live in the realm of the Folk by day, only able to walk the hills under the human sky at night.”

Steve swallows. “Kind of hard way to meet someone,” he offers. 

“And took him like, over a year to figure out the ways they kept trying to sabotage him getting out in the first place,” Chrissy says. “Though I kind of think maybe they just gave up when they realized how good he is at sabotaging himself. His pick-up moves really are a tragedy.”

“Maybe he figured that part out too,” Steve says, and feels himself blush. 

Chrissy laughs, a sweet sound like a tolling of a bell. “Gross,” she says. “But also, clearly true.”

“And Hallow’s Eve is…” almost out of time, Eddie had said. “Shit, it’s this week?”

Chrissy shakes her head mournfully. “It’s tonight. The third one, since he struck his bargain. And you– you’re his champion. If you want to be.”

She folds her hands in her lap, and looks at him. 

“You owe us nothing,” she says simply. “You don’t know me at all, and you barely know him.”

Steve watches her, turning his tea cup in his hands. 

“It’s a lot to ask, for you to put yourself at risk of the folk’s anger,” she goes on. “And whatever might happen to you, if you fail. But you don’t have to do any of that, risk any of that. You could stay on the hills, with your sheep. Keep your peaceful life. I wouldn’t blame you for that. He wouldn’t blame you for that.” 

“Knowing him,” and she smiles again, with a little roll of her eyes that seems to say that idiot, “he’ll be grateful no matter what, for what you’ve already shared.”

What we’ve shared, huh? Steve’s eyes start to inexplicably burn, so he turns them to stare out Chrissy’s windows. To the rolling hills beyond, the shadow of a lake sparkling in the sunshine almost just at the edge of sight. He thinks of Eddie, trapped underground, waiting for night to fall so he could at least see the light of the moon. He thinks of Eddie, framed by the stars above him, smiling down at him with wonder shining out of his dark eyes. 

You barely know him, Chrissy had said. 

I want to keep you, Steve had said. 

You could, Eddie had said, lips in Steve’s hair, arms holding him close. 

“You’ll need to tell me what to do,” Steve says, setting down the teacup firmly. “And maybe lend me something to wear.”

Chrissy laughs approvingly, eyes bright. 

The waiting is not, based on what Chrissy had told him, going to be the worst part. But standing crouched in this ditch, for what has felt like endless hours as the day passed around him, had felt pretty damn miserable. Chrissy hasn’t stayed– hadn’t dared, she’d explained, with a twist of her mouth, and one way or another she wouldn’t be able to see the deed done. She was working on her own plans, given the last-second arrival of Steve as Eddie’s champion, and she’s got a Plan B she won’t tell Steve about to prepare.

Good luck, she’d said, and pulled him into a tight hug. For as little as she was, her grip was strong and she felt solid in his arms, and it seemed to pass a measure of her own strength on to Steve. And she’d departed, taking her smell of roses with her, turning back one last time at the edge of the clearing, and raising a slim hand in farewell. 

Not, Steve hopes, a forever one. 

The Hunt is bound to ride through here, according to Chrissy’s information. This clearing in the woods leads to one of the entrances to their Great Hall, and the road passing through it will leads them on their way out. It looks simple enough, much like any number of patches of forest around here. But Chrissy had pointed at the signs, that he hadn’t known enough to mark before: rings of toadstools in unusual colors, nests close to the ground and filled with eggs that very much did not belong to any birds he knew, and– as darkness began to grow around Steve’s hiding place, surrounded by wild roses– glimmering lights swirling just at the edge of his vision, dancing with the wind and the motion of the trees, vanishing when he tried to look at them directly.  

Steve shifts, tugging at the borrowed hose Chrissy had pressed on him. His fingers feel thick and clumsy in the elbow-length leather gloves, and the green tunic is thick with embroidery. It’s all finer than anything Steve has worn since he’s started roaming the hills with his sheep, and he’s had plenty of time to admire Chrissy’s handiwork, spilling across the fabric: a pattern of roses in whites and yellows and blushing oranges, a few discreet sigils woven into the thread. The fabric is stiff with her work especially over his heart and down his sides, and he wonders if it won’t serve as good as armor. The thick green cloak is unadorned, but a good solid wool, not unlike the one he left spread out across the field, the blanket he never had quite managed to pull over him and Eddie as they slept. 

He hopes it’s still there. He hopes it’s all still there, Beemer and his flock, his hand cart and Robin’s too-bitter bottles of ale and hidden wheels of cheese. He hopes he can find it again. Wonders if he can. Wonders if it could be that simple, to just pick up the pieces of his old life. 

Wonders if it’s a bad sign, that he’s already thinking about it as his “old life.”

“Wait for night to fall,” Steve mutters again to himself, slapping his arms together to try and warm them. “Wait for night to fall, and for the procession of the Hunt.”

It’s like all of nature realized with one breath that it’s Hallow’s Eve, and has changed its late-summer tune accordingly. He could spot a few yellowing leaves in the trees above him before darkness fell, and the air has that October dry chill to it now. That’s why he can’t seem to warm up. Well, that’s probably why he can’t seem to warm up. 

“They’ll all be masked,” he says to himself, doing a few squats and slapping at his thighs and knees. “You’ll know Eddie by the horns of his helmet, and the horns on his horse’s he–”

A horn sounds, almost at the word, and Steve startles so bad that he almost falls into a rose bush. Peering around the shrub between him and the fairy track, a cold wave breaks over him, freezing his blood. 

The Hunter’s Moon hangs full and heavy directly overhead now, framed by the uplifted branches of the trees. The glimmering lights, which had just twinkled in his peripheral vision when he’d first settled in to wait, are now thick enough to be unmistakable. They writhe across the clearing now, dancing in an irregular formation, like a ceaseless stream of sparks from a fire. The path, which honestly he had had to take Chrissy’s word for at being anything more commonly used than a deer track, seems to have deepened and widened, and Steve would almost swear that he can now make out cobblestones where once there had only been grass. 

The horn sounds again, and Steve crouches low to the ground. 

He breathes deep. Breathes even. Reminds himself of how warm Eddie had felt, spread out boneless and satisfied next to him. Remembers the touch of his hand against Steve’s face. Remembers the shape of his smile, pressed against Steve’s shoulder blade. 

Steve clenches his hands into fists. It’s time. 

It’s time. 

He hears chiming bells next, and a bright peel of laughter. A merry sound, and one that makes him break out in goosebumps all over his body. There’s something revolting about it, for all that the beautiful tone of the laugh seems to tug at Steve, urging him to come in closer. 

There are hooves, next. The whinny of a horse, and a carrying cry. 

The Wild Hunt has arrived. 

Steve inches his way closer, bringing the road into full view, to watch their approach. 

It’s hard to gauge the size of the party, as they seem to be riding one or two across. The courtly folk ride horses bigger than Steve has ever seen, some of them shining as though they’ve just come up out of the water, some of them covered in shaggy fur, or scales. Smaller creatures dart in amongst the horses legs, bow-legged goblins and bat-eared imps, chittering creatures squabbling and chirping and only just managing to avoid being trampled. As Steve watches, one of them isn’t so lucky– a creature with tusks jutting up almost to the tip of his nose evades the hooves of a plodding grey horse, but draws the attention of its rider. The figure, masked and dressed from neck to ankles in shimmering ropes of pearls (and nothing else), flips the spear she’s holding in one hand and strikes out lightning-quick— the tusked creature yowls in shock, clawed hands wrapping around the shaft suddenly jutting from its chest, and falls still. 

The woman in the pearls laughs, before shaking the corpse free of her spear and riding on. 

Steve swallows hard. 

Only one figure pauses as they ride by, the dark eyes of his mask fixed on Steve’s hiding spot. He’s dressed in armor of dark red, and a mask covers him from nose to forehead in the same odd, glistening material. It rises up into points, jagged and uneven, like a crown made of grisly bones. His hair is blonde above the mask, almost shockingly normal, and his exposed mouth is full and lush, curled up in an absent smile, as though someone’s just told him a vaguely funny joke. 

No one has though, as far as Steve can see. He’s riding alone, not even the goblins and imps coming near him. And while he pauses, eyes fixed on the snarl of wild roses where Steve lies, the entire train comes to a stop behind him. 

Steve is afraid to breathe. He wishes, with everything that he had taken from Chrissy, he had thought to ask for some kind of a weapon. He wonders if he should run. He grits his teeth instead, lips parting in a fierce scowl at the rider. 

The Red Man smiles in earnest, and Steve can hear the low sound of his laugh. But he spurs his mount on, the train starting up again. 

Steve has only a second to let out a long, ragged exhale, and to think what the fuck with heartfelt sincerity. And then– he sees Eddie. 

Like the Red Man, Eddie rides alone. As Chrissy had said, he’s wearing a silver mask, with a pair of horns twisting high into the air above his head. The mask has the face of some kind of demon, hollowed-out cheeks and a row of fangs extending over Eddie’s mouth. He’s unarmored, wearing a sleeveless white tunic and white hose, exposing his bare arms and the dark lines of his tattoos to the cold October air. But he doesn't seem bothered by the chill. His hands hang loose on the pommel in front of him, and Steve can see he’s not even holding the reins– there are none, in fact. The black horse he’s riding, whose horns are a match for Eddie’s except they seem to be growing directly out of the creature’s head, walks steadily on without any input or control on Eddie’s part. 

Eddie doesn’t seem bothered by that, either. He looks straight ahead, and what little Steve can see of his face is blank. Expressionless. Accepting, maybe. Ensorcelled, possibly. There’s no way for Steve to know. 

Not from here, anyway. Not from this distance. Not for as long as he squats here, in the dirt. And if he sits here much longer, shivering with the cold and the terror– he never will find out. 

Fuck that. Steve doesn’t give himself any more time to think. He pushes himself up, stumbles a little as he scrambles out across the clearing onto the fairy road, and seizes Eddie by the hem of his tunic with both gloved hands. 

There’s an instant uproar, as Steve hauls on Eddie with his whole weight. Eddie goes, apparently without any resistance, falling bodily on top of Steve and bringing them both to the ground. The horns sound again, howls and yelps and hooting cries rising around them. Hoofbeats pound on the path around him, and Steve shakes stars out of his eyes. 

“Eddie?” He says, mouth pressed close to the cold metal of his mask, not even sure if Eddie can hear him over the din. “I’m here, Eddie, I’m not going to–”

He grabs Eddie by the shoulder and turns him towards him. Behind the silver mask his eyes are huge, deep pools of darkness– and look back at Steve with an expression of utter blank unfamiliarity. 

Steve’s grip on Eddie’s shoulders loosens at this unpleasant surprise. Until– once you’ve got him, don’t let him go , Chrissy had said. So Steve tightens his grip and hauls Eddie into a fierce hug, kneeling in front of him in the dirt. 

“I’m here,” he says again. 

“What a noble display,” a low, bewitching voice purrs above him. Steve tilts his gaze up, and is unsurprised to see the Red Man has turned his great horse around, a circle of quiet in the riotous fae around them. “It touches the heart, it really does.”

Steve bares his teeth at him. Eddie is still limp and lax in his arms, his breath coming evenly against the side of Steve’s neck.

The Red Man tilts his masked face to the side, dark eyes glittering. “So, you have him,” he says silkily. “But will you be able to hold him?”

And, to Steve’s horror, Eddie begins to shudder and jerk against him. He locks his arms around Eddie’s waist in desperation, ducking his head as Eddie’s arms and legs begin to thrash wildly, digging up furrows of dirt in the road around them and– and– he begins to change. 

The white tunic and hose strain and split, as Eddie’s very skin and bones seem to ripple with terrible energy. Steve is hauled up off the ground as Eddie twists himself onto all fours, letting loose a horrible yowl as his limbs thicken and extend. 

The horned mask falls from Eddie’s face, forced off his head by the sudden growth of a wolf’s snout, black hair growing along his neck and back, teeth gleaming and sharp as Eddie snaps his jaws at the moon above them. 

Steve buries his face in Eddie’s fur, locks his heels around Eddie’s stomach. Remembers, desperately, how Eddie had laughed in the light of Steve’s fire, how his eyes had sparkled looking at Steve. 

The wolf twists, and howls, but Steve holds on. 

There’s another ripple, and Steve hits the ground hard as Eddie’s arms and legs recede entirely, thick fur giving way to slippery scales as the yellow eyes of the wolf dart around wildly, pupil slitting, and a great serpent lashes its tail against the ground, and Steve along with it. 

All the air is knocked from Steve’s lungs, and he has to wrap his arms tightly around the snake’s body, leather gloves finding little purchase against the slick scales. He presses his cheek against them, remembering the sweet taste of the honey cake Eddie had brought him. 

The serpent hisses, venom spattering across the ground and leaving sizzling columns of steam behind. But Steve holds on. 

There’s a great flapping sound, Eddie’s muscles warping in his arms again, and Steve’s legs are suddenly kicking against empty air. With a yelp, he twists to look around and– he’s got his arms locked around the neck of a giant black bat. Leathery wings beat against the air, battering against the sides of Steve’s face, and the bat opens its mouth to let loose a cry that’s barely audible but drives into Steve’s ears like knives. 

Steve screams in agony, his face wet with tears and maybe, who knows, blood. But his arms hold strong. He doesn’t let go. 

The wings flap once more, bringing them well above the heads of the Hunt’s procession, before vanishing entirely. Steve plummets out of the air, wrapped up tight around the many-legged body of a giant scorpion. Claws snap scant inches away from the edge of his nose, and Steve pulls his legs in close to his body. He doesn’t want to fool around with that spiked stinging tail, and he can feel the scorpion twisting in the air as they fall, like he’s trying to get Steve within striking range. 

The scorpion, with all its twisting around, takes most of the impact of their fall. Steve wonders, with a flash of wild hope, if that had actually been on purpose. If, somewhere, Eddie is actually in there. And if he’s fighting to hold on, too. 

The scorpion chitters at him, legs waving in the air on either side of his body. Rocks back and forth, with enough force that Steve feels like he might be sent flying in the next second. 

But he holds on. He can barely feel his fingers anymore, but he’s holding on. 

He thinks at first that he might have been deafened by Eddie’s bat-noise, but slowly it comes to him that the Hunt has gone quiet. And that Eddie, no longer beast or fish or fowl, but the whole human beauty of him, is lying still in his arms. If anything, this is the most alarming of all. Steve clutches him tightly, afraid to look into his face. Afraid what he might see there, blank contempt or fear or– or, Eddie’s lying so still, so cold– maybe it’ll be nothing in his face at all. 

He can’t look. But he holds on. And it’s quiet, it’s so quiet around them. 

“Peace,” the Red Man says. Steve doesn’t look up, hauls Eddie in even closer to him instead. “Peace it is done.”

“Done?” Steve stays, Eddie’s hair in his mouth. He lifts his face, blinking up at the Red Man. “He’s free?”

The Red Man nods. Not so much with the shit-eating smile now. He looks distinctly unamused at this turn of events. 

“The time comes for us to ride,” the Red Man says. “And he will not ride with us.”

“Say it–” Steve pants, afraid to believe it, afraid to let Eddie go. “Say that he’s free.”

The Red Man might – it’s hard to tell, but Steve has the firm impression that he maybe just– rolls his eyes. “He’s free, and may depart this place with you.”

“And never be troubled by you or your folk again?” Steve presses. 

“It is finished, he is free, and will be troubled by us no more,” the Red Man snaps. “Thrice it is said, and done.”

There's a ripple, a murmur of the folk around him. It falls away to chilly silence when the Red Man’s helm snaps around to try and locate the whisperers. 

“Come,” the Red Man says, his low voice somehow carrying loud in the night air. “What loss is this, just one of our sport? There’s more to be found tonight.”

He fixes Steve with a look one last time, and speaks in a quiet, cajoling tone just for him. “And walk carefully tonight, sweet boy. Lest you be the sport we find after all.”

Fuck off, Steve manages not to say. His mom was pretty serious about politeness with the folk, after all. Even if they’re massive assholes. Still, he’s pretty sure the guy can read it in his face. 

The Red Man moves off, and the rest of the host with him. Steve doesn’t watch him, or any of them go. He just tucks Eddie’s head against his, afraid to loosen his hold on him, afraid to look him in the face. He’s so still, so cold, and Steve can’t— he can’t–

The last horn sounds, seeming to come from a long way off. The pixie lights go dim, and fade, and vanish altogether. The road under his bruised and battered knees is just a clearing again, a clear place in the woods, a path for deer and other gentle things. 

With a groan, Eddie stirs. 

Steve yelps in surprise, and lets him go. Clearly unprepared for this, Eddie falls out of his arms, and hits the ground with a thud. 

“Ow,” Eddie groans, turning bright eyes up at Steve. But he’s smiling, he’s grinning, lying naked and beautiful in the grass and looking up at Steve. “Is it over?”

“Fuck,” Steve laughs. And then, to his own alarm, the laughter turns to tears within seconds. “Yeah, it’s over.”

“Awww, Steve, Steve,” Eddie sits up, wincing as he reaches to take Steve’s face in his hands. “Don’t cry, love. You were so brave, back there. I couldn’t believe it.”

“What do you mean, couldn’t believe it?” Steve grouses, though he lets Eddie hold his face tenderly, lets him kiss the tears away. “Thought I couldn’t hold onto a little wolf-bear-scorpion thing?”

“Thought you wouldn’t want to,” Eddie says quietly, lips pausing against Steve’s cheek. “Thought you’d be– I would have understood if–”

Steve gently pulls himself away, and fumbles the cloak free at his neck. Swings it gently around Eddie’s naked shoulders, and fastens it carefully closed at his neck. Hesitates, and then leans in. Presses his lips to the dip of Eddie’s collarbone just above it. 

“I wanted to,” he says simply, lips brushing against Eddie’s skin.

“Yeah?” Eddie twines his fingers into Steve’s hair, holding him close. “What else you want?”

Steve lets out a long breath. “To take you home,” he says. There’s more, but– they might have a long walk back over the fields to get back to Steve’s flock. So maybe they can get to that as they go. 

“What a coincidence,” Eddie says, staggering to his feet with Steve’s help, clutching the cloak around his naked body. “That’s what I want too.”

The moon hangs high in the sky above them, full and bright. The stars, too– and better then bright, they’re familiar . Steve is reasonably confident, as he leads them out of the clearing, away from the path and into the less fae-traveled parts of the woods, that he’s heading back towards his flock. Eddie corrects their course a little one or twice, urging Steve towards one path over another, gazing assessingly at a gnarled old oak before nodding that they should head on the mosswards side of it. But otherwise he lets Steve lead the way, leaning on his arm, holding onto him tight. 

He talks, though. With a delicious glee, now that the spell has loosened his tongue. Tells Steve about growing up with Chrissy, their oddball friendship, and the frightening surprise of her true parentage. Of how he had faced down the Red Man, made his bargain with him, even though any fool knows there’s no winning a bargain with the fae. 

“He didn’t count on you, though,” Eddie says with a grin. Tugging Steve to a halt, and kissing Steve gently. 

“Sure didn’t,” Steve says, kissing Eddie back. 

Gently at first, though he can’t help hauling Eddie a little closer, deepening the kiss until Eddie bobbles back out of his arms, with a laugh.

“Later–” he promises, eyes alight with joy. “Later.”

They break through the tree line and onto fortunately familiar hills, and Eddie starts to tell Steve about his life with the fae. The revels, and the hunts, and the masques he had first enjoyed, and then dreaded. He hesitates over the details, as past pain rises fresh in his mind as thought it was new, and Steve takes him by the hand. Holds on tight, as Eddie grins gratefully and begins a frankly bewildering story about inter-court politics he had first aggravated and then defused last year, and how he’d had to find hidey-holes and scrapes to sleep in for three months afterwards to avoid the possibly fatal fallout. 

“You’ve got a talent for making friends, huh?” Steve grins at him. 

Eddie shrugs modestly. “What can I say? I make an impression.”

“You sure do,” Steve says, and tugs him in for another kiss. 

The sky is lightening, dawn coming on as Eddie’s voice starts to fade and his bare feet seem to have a harder time finding purchase on the loose soil. Just when Steve is starting to look around them, thinking of suggesting a place where they could at least sit and rest for a bit, a high bark sounds through the crisp Hallow’s Eve air. 

“I know that bark,” Steve says. 

“I think I might too,” Eddie laughs. 

Sure enough, there’s a streak of black lightning coursing across the green towards them, yipping excitedly and with increasing volume. 

“Beemer,” Steve calls, and a sheepdog barrels into his arms and carries him to the ground. She keeps yipping at him disapprovingly even as she licks all over his face, Steve laughing and scratching her behind the ears. 

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, fondly pushing her away and getting up again. “Sorry for worrying you, girl. You take care of things while I’m gone?”

Beemer tilts her head at him, one ear flopping over. 

Steve looks at Eddie, who points at him threateningly. “You keep that dog spit face away from me, man.”

Steve signs mournfully. “After all my thrilling heroics, undone by dog spit.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that ballad,” Eddie says, as Beemer starts impatiently herding the two of them towards wherever she’d gathered the flock. 

“Pretty sure you could write it,” Steve says, and they debate lyrics back and forth until Steve spots the first fluffy white shape, picked out against the sky. 

Eddie gasps beside him, but when Steve turns he’s not as similarly struck by the beauty of a sleeping sheep. His face is turned east, to where the sun extends over the horizon, painting the sky above them pink and orange. 

Eddie reaches blindly for Steve’s hand, gripping it tight. 

“This is the first sunrise I’ve seen in three years,” he says quietly. 

Steve looks at him. Takes in how in the light of a new day, the color of his hair is more brown than truly black. How there’s chocolate warmth in his deep eyes, and the divine surprise of a barely visible dusting of freckles across his cheeks. 

“Beautiful,” Steve says. 

Eddie turns to grin at him. And then, with a whoop, he shrugs himself free of the cloak and dashes off across the field, naked and laughing, Beemer leaping around at his heels and barking joyfully too. 

Steve gathers up the cloak and follows after them, stopping on his way to check in on the flock one by one. Their gentle faces turn towards him with blank but affectionate familiarity, like they weren’t at all worried by his absence. If they even noticed he was gone in the first place, which he doubts. 

By the time he gets to his handcart and his bedroll, still laid out across the hill, Eddie is back in it. Lying flat on his back, arms outstretched, squinting up at the sky. 

“Come here,” Eddie says. 

“We could use a bath,” Steve says. “And a meal, and the sheep–”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie says, and flaps an arm at him. “There’s time for all that, later. Come here , let me lie in the sun with my hero.”

Well. Blushing with embarrassed pride, Steve kind of feels like he can’t say no to that. Still, he hesitates. Look back over the flock, squints over to where he remembers the spring leading, wondering if he should go and bring some water back for Eddie, so he could– 

“What would you ask,” Eddie says, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “To lie in the sun with me?”

Steve sucks in a breath, and feels his chest tighten. 

“Hmmm,” he pretends to think. “That’s a tough one.”

“Like for like?” Eddie suggests. “I lie in your arms, and you lie in mine?”

“Tempting,” Steve says, coming to the edge of the bedroll, and sinking down to his knees. “But not quite dear enough, I think. My mother always warned to me to be careful about making deals with strange men. You never know what you might end up getting.”

“Wise woman,” Eddie says. “So what’s your price then, O Master of Bargains?”

Steve leans in, runs a hand up Eddie’s bare thigh. Delights in the feeling of hair against his palm, the softness of the skin on the inside of his knee, the rich warmth of the sun spilling over all of him. 

“What would you offer me?” Steve asks, as Eddie sucks in a breath, face full of wonder and joy. 

“Hey, what happened to bargaining smart?” Eddie asks, lacing his fingers through Steve’s, and tugging both their hands gently up and over his hip, his stomach. “Not worried I’d offer you harm?”

“No,” Steve says, crawling over him slowly, holding himself up with one arm over Eddie’s body. Eddie squints against the sun to look at him, grinning. “So what will you offer me, to lie down with you?”

“Everything,” Eddie lets out on a soft exhale, quiet and gentle as a prayer. “Everything I have. Everything I am. I offer it to you.”

Steve stares down at him. At his wild dark hair, his bewitching eyes, the body bathed in sunlight that he hopes he’ll have a lifetime to learn, at all times of day or night. 

“Well?” Eddie raises an eyebrow challenging. “What do you say? Deal or what? I can throw in a sheep, if you want, I’ve seen one or two lying around–”

Steve takes his offer. And stops him with a kiss.