Work Text:
Blinking awake in Steve Harrington’s bed is probably one of Eddie’s favourite ways to wake up. It might be a cliché way to start whatever Eddie is trying to say about Steve, about whatever he’s made for himself here on the other side of the apocalypse, but it’s where it all starts for Eddie. Slow dawn, golden light meandering slowly up the walls, over the white duvet, up the tanned plane of Steve’s shoulder where he’s lying on his front beside Eddie, his stupid hair flopping in his eyes. Yeah, that’s where everything starts, about two weeks after they’d mostly sorted and patched up the Vecna situation, rolling out of a high induced deep sleep, not hungover enough to feel anything other than desperately thirsty, watching the sun come up over Steve’s shoulder from the comfort of his expensive mattress.
That first time he remembers he stayed in the warmth of the bed, smelling the scent of their sleep sweat, eyes fixed on the salacious curve of Steve’s hip into the shadow below the blankets. Saw Steve without the hair, or the goofy smile, without the focussed frown. He had run his hand in the millimetre of air above the knobs of Steve’s spine, feeling the warmth radiating from his skin, imagining that Steve would let his knuckles — hard bone against hard bone — walk down the line of his back.
And then Steve had woken up, turned his head, and there had been that focus Eddie remembered from high school, the unwavering dangerous look that reminded him this was Steve Harrington, not some domesticated lap dog. A nice boy, sure, but a dangerous boy. Even as his droopy brown eyes settle into a grin and he says “good morning” and Eddie can smell his morning breath, he can remember Steve’s smirk and Tommy Hagan next to him, a wild dog at heel beside Steve’s throne. As the sun rises, the briar shadow of the nail bat rises up the wall, the imprint of the memory that Steve is dangerous .
*
Several nights and mornings after that, Eddie wakes up in his trailer to Steve watching him thoughtfully. It’s important only in that Steve’s hand his hovering over his spine and for a fraction of a second Eddie wonders if he had let his mind drift, that Steve had thought about walking knuckle to knuckle up the knobs of Eddie’s spine.
But then Steve says, “One of the kids is outside.” Eddie realises he was only about to shake him awake.
He moans softly, dropping his face back onto his pillow. “They’ll leave if they don’t get an answer.” The new trailer reverberates with another bang against the door. “Fucking —”
“Definitely Henderson,” Steve murmurs, dropping back down next to Eddie with uncharacteristic calmness. Normally when the kids come knocking he goes into immediate is the world ending mode. “I think he wants to talk to you about your camp whatever…”
“Campaign?” Eddie says after a long moment of trying to decipher whatever Steve means.
“Sure, that. He was telling me yesterday he wanted to go over something with you.”
Eddie takes in his calm, supine form and thinks it looks good on him, this uncaring.
There’s another bang and “ Eddie! ” warbles from outside with the birds.
“How fucking early is it?” At Steve’s shrug, Eddie leans over him to check his alarm clock, ignoring the warmth of Steve’s back beneath his chest. “Eight. Eight in the morning. He can come back later.”
“Not sure he’s going to give up,” says Steve, sounding amused, voice scratchy, as Eddie flops back down next to him.
Eddie lifts himself up on one arm, looking down at Steve. “Oh yeah? Bet you —”
He’s cut off by a loud bang . The door being thrown open. Eddie jumps, thinking the kid has gone and broken the new trailer until he hears the rumble of Uncle Wayne’s voice, obviously coming in from his night shift. Wayne says something like, “He’ll be in his room.”
Then Dustin is saying, “Eddie! Don’t be naked in there!” and throws the door open, little shit.
He stays where he is, leaning on one arm, Steve lifts his head and turns to face Dustin. “God, it’s eight in the morning pal, what are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Dustin says at a decibel some would describe as piercing.
“Hanging out,” says Steve, “with people my own age, thought I’d give it a shot. That okay with you?” He slumps back down, Eddie has noticed he’s not a morning person, and then sits back up to shoot Henderson another glare. “Why are you here this early?”
“Are you hungover?” says Dustin with all the condescending tone of a teenager who hasn’t been drunk before and is in the ‘it’s not healthy for you’ phase of alcohol tolerance.
“No,” says Steve, snaps really. “I just had too many beers to drive last night.” Not really true, it’d been too much weed but Eddie isn’t going to tell if Steve won’t.
Eddie sighs and resigns himself to the fact a nice lie-in with Steve isn’t on the books today. “Go and sit in the kitchen Henderson. Have you had breakfast? No, good I’ll make something and you can tell me whatever was so important you had to come over at eight in the fucking morning.”
Whatever was so important doesn’t need much input from Eddie, luckily, because most of his brain is taken up with frying eggs, trying not to let Dustin get so loud he wakes up Wayne, and watching Steve with bug eyes as he eats straight from a box of cereal wearing one of Eddie’s Judas Priest shirts. It’s something to do with the oneshot Dustin wants to run as a DM which apparently needs work even though it’s eight in the morning and also just seems to involve Eddie and Steve humming and ahhing in the right spots.
At one point he and Steve make eye contact over the open box of cereal and Steve’s eyes are tired and droopy and amused with that secret sparkle he gets around the kids sometimes which makes Eddie feel fizzy and light and like an idiot. Steve’s wearing his baggy black t-shirt, is all Eddie’s mind can comprehend in that moment, it looks like they’ve just fucked, maybe after a concert and — Eddie can’t lie, he likes the picture. Steve smirks then — and it’s not the same as the one he remembers, where there’s a girl and Tommy H., it’s faded with early morning sunlight and in Eddie’s trailer’s kitchen, and there’s a kid talking a mile a minute about D&D — he smirks and his head cocks at Eddie and he’s still dangerous , like he can read Eddie’s mind.
Eddie gives the egg he burns to Henderson as a fuck you for waking them up that early for fuck all.
*
They take the kids out to the quarry when it gets hotter with Robin, almost everyone else goes to Lover’s Lake. They don’t, for the obvious reasons like the invisible brand on Steve’s ankle where he was dragged down, down, down.
Will, who, along with the rest of the Byers-Hopper family and with the visiting Argyle, are here in Hawkins for the summer as a ‘trial run’, is excitedly regaling Eddie with the tale of how his fake body was found here in the quarry with interjections from Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. Eddie finds it funny how they get all giddy and kid-like when they bring up stuff from before which seems weirdly innocent even though it’s fake bodies planted by the US government.
“Totally believed he was like properly for real dead,” says Mike, sounding excited.
“Yeah you cycled away in tears,” says Lucas.
“Well, duh. You were crying too.”
“Was not.”
“You weren’t crying over me?” Eddie looks over at Will who has got big eyes pointed at Lucas and mischief tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Lucas slaps Will around the head. “Shut up, idiot. It wasn’t really you.”
“Yeah but you thought it was,” says Dustin, “and we were all crying.”
Steve slams the door of his car as the girls bound out of his backseat. “Stop arguing over who cried when they found out baby-Byers was dead . You guys are idiots.”
“Boys are stupid,” says El, reciting like this is a fact she’s learnt.
Max high fives her, grinning. “You got it, El.”
“Don’t worry Will,” says Robin, all mock serious and pinching Will’s cheek, “I cared. The school band did a whole service at your memorial.”
Will bats her away but he’s grinning. “Thanks Robin.”
Eddie watches Steve leaning against his car and tries not to think about boxing him against it and kissing him. He doesn’t get to see the kids like this much but he’s noticed it’s normally only around Steve. When Steve’s not around they act a lot more adult than this, not one hundred percent, and never all the time, but around Steve something changes, a giddy kind of glow which he thinks is them feeling safe to be themselves. It makes him like the sad, tired droop of those brown eyes and the stud of three stark brown freckles on his nose even more.
The kids start down towards the water, where the afternoon sun reflects brightly off the water. The rocky shore crunches as they start running, tearing off their clothes (luckily all already wearing their swim stuff underneath) and racing toward the slight waves lapping at the pebbles.
“These fucking kids,” Steve sighs, crossing over to Eddie’s van to pull out the lawn chairs. He’s lost his jacket when Eddie was momentarily distracted by watching the kids splashing into the still, dark water, and now his bare arms in that loose tank top are flexing as he lifts out one of the chairs to pass to Robin.
“You carry it,” she says, “you’re the macho man.”
He pulls a face at her. “Thought you were trying to teach me about sexism.”
She blinks at him for a long moment. “This is a lesson,” she seems to decide, “I’m being sexist to you.”
Eddie laughs and takes the chair he’s still holding out to her. “She’s got you there Harrington.”
“Shut up.”
They watch the kids being kids under Steve’s watchful eye until the sun starts losing its heat and Eddie pulls Robin up and down into the shallows, kicking off their shoes as they go and they yell until Steve rolls his eyes and follows them. The kids all scream in delight as they see Steve coming down to join them and Eddie watches as he tussles with Lucas, keeping the kid in a headlock and laughing. He’s still so gentle though, it isn’t until Eddie looks at his rippling reflection in the dark water he remembers Steve is dangerous.
Robin grabs Steve around the waist and leads him splashing and tumbling into something resembling a waltz. He stumbles after her, letting her take the lead and spin him round and Eddie doesn’t know where to look. Can’t look at Robin’s nails digging into Steve’s bicep, the way she leans forwards to whisper something, the bob of Steve’s throat as he laughs. Eddie chases Dustin through the shallows, gets tackled by a giggling Max, wonders because Max is laughing like a child and not once the whole time they’ve been neighbours has he ever heard that sound. He tries to ignore his jealousy as he catches sight of Robin and Steve out of the corner of his eye as Steve presses a kiss to her cheek.
El, Mike, and Will are floating a little way out, the two boys swimming, El on her back like a starfish, wispy hairs just starting to grow back in seeping black against the dark water. Eddie watches them for a moment, tears his attention away from Steve.
And then Steve is beside him, eyes dancing.
Eddie frowns at him. “That’s mine ,” he realises, tugging at the strap of the black tank which had been an old t-shirt of Wayne’s Eddie had cut the arms off a summer or two ago.
Steve grins. “Yeah, sorry.” He doesn’t sound particularly repentant.
He narrows his eyes, forgets about the splashing kids jumping around each other as Robin leads them in some sort of conga. “You’re dangerous, Harrington.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” says Steve but he’s grinning and it’s dangerous.
*
Eddie looks out of the wind shield of Steve’s BMW with a frown. “The junkyard?”
He shares a sceptical glance with Steve who twists in his seat to look at Dustin and Lucas in the backseat. “Why the fuck did you want to come here?”
“Well,” says Lucas, “basketball is kinda awkward now so I thought I might try out for baseball?”
“And I said I’d do it with him,” says Dustin, eagerly.
“Willingly?” Eddie thought he and Dustin were on the same wavelength about sports, apparently not.
“So we thought we’d come here so Steve can teach us how to play,” says Lucas.
“I don’t know how to play baseball,” says Steve, doubtfully.
“And why the hell am I here?”
“You were there when we asked, it seemed rude not to invite you,” says Dustin.
Eddie sort of remembers now. He and Steve had been very high sitting in Steve’s kitchen eating cereal at three in the afternoon when Lucas and Dustin had barged in with a bored looking Max. Eddie is pretty sure he remembers he was wearing Steve’s Wham! t-shirt and everything was really funny though he’s not sure either of the boys noticed they were baked because they were so set on the baseball idea. He remembers Steve saying “Sure, baseball rocks dude” and bursting into giggles. He remembers Max’s displeased face, that had been funny too.
“Well, all you have to do is throw balls and we’ll bat them,” says Lucas. “I just need a bit of help, come on! I thought revisiting the spot where we witnessed you murder those Demodogs with a baseball bat would really help us get in the right mindset.”
In the rear-view mirror Eddie can see that Steve is making the mistake of looking at Lucas and Dustin’s combined puppy eyes before Steve groans and slouches out of the car.
Then… “ Huh ! What, sorry?” He follows the other three out of the car. “Steve was doing what to what?”
He gets a full rendition from the boys complete with framing, and a very descriptive setting including rolling fog and bright moonlight as he follows them into the junkyard with a sheepish looking Steve.
“Wa-bang!” says Lucas and Dustin dives over the front of one of the rusted cars. “Just like that!”
“Man,” says Eddie at a lull in their excited storytelling, “sorry I missed that, sounds metal as fuck. Maybe even more metal than you biting the head off that bat.”
Steve groans and punches Eddie on the shoulder.
“Oh my god, do you remember when Steve —” starts Dustin, and then rather than baseball they wander around the junkyard for ten minutes with Steve begging them to stop recounting every badass thing Steve has ever done. Eddie reckons they both might have a tiny crush on Steve, not that he can talk.
Finally Steve tells them to stop kissing his ass and starts throwing baseballs for the kids. Eddie sits on the front of a rusted tincan of a car and watches. He tries not to think about Demodogs in the moonlight as Steve tries to show Lucas the right way to swing a bat.
*
Steve is shirtless, in the blue light of the pool as it grows dusky Eddie can see the tiger stripes of the mottled scars of his bat bites. Eddie has matching ones and he pointedly doesn’t think about how they’d match up if they were close right now.
Duran Duran is playing softly from inside the house, Eddie floats on his back listening to the slow build of Hungry Like the Wolf rolling up and out into the sky, the lapping of the pool against the tile. He thinks he hears Steve softly singing from his spot on the lounger.
He swims back over to him, towards the low humming of his voice. “Another, Harrington?” he asks as he pulls himself up onto the side of the pool.
“Yeah,” he says, blinking at Eddie with sleepy eyes. His hair is mussed, he’s unguarded.
Eddie sits on the other pool lounger and rolls a new spliff, aware of Steve’s eyes on his fingers as he packs the paper. “What are you looking at?” he murmurs, glancing up at Steve before bending down to lick the paper.
Steve doesn’t say anything, just smiles. Eddie had wondered if he might say “you”, break the taboo of silence between them. In the blue chlorine light, Eddie wants to kiss his matching scars, press his hand against the skin he knows will be warm and taut over Steve’s stomach.
Hold Back the Rain is starting now and Eddie wonders when he started knowing Duran Duran’s whole discography. He takes a few puffs and passes to Steve, lies out on the lounger beside him so their matching scars are level. Both of them are in boxers, Eddie’s are soaking, like this is normal bro time or whatever, not something they need to sleep. Like they won’t end up curled in on each other in the same bed. Like they didn’t spend all day today with the kids, Eddie trying to learn skateboard tricks off Max, Steve shooting hoops with Lucas.
“Can’t we listen to something better,” he says, just for conversation really.
“We’ve been over this, I’m not listening to metal when I’m trying to get high, it’s not chill enough.”
It’s an old argument they’ve had plenty of times, soothing in its familiarity.
Later, Steve changes out of his wet boxers right in front of him, pulls on Eddie’s Black Sabbath t-shirt and a clean pair, and flops into his bed without a word. Eddie stares at him for a long moment before doing the same and pulling on Steve’s spare boxers, one of Steve’s swimming meet t-shirts, crawls in after him, feels the warmth coming off him in waves. He thinks this is dangerous, its like they’re married , the casual sharing of intimacy, this space between them which feels like something and nothing all at the same time. He thinks it’s dangerous for him to pretend Steve sees it the same way, that one day Steve’s droopy, kind eyes are going to see right through him and he’ll lose this. This being a side of Steve’s bed that is his, a nightstand where his rings always pile, a drawer of shirts in Steve’s bedroom that only Eddie uses. He can’t lose it, so he shuts his mouth, turns out the light, and watches the slow breathing of sleep fill Steve’s chest.
*
“Listen to your mom,” Eddie growls, sinking deeper into the passenger seat of the BMW as the kids get louder in the backseat.
“Shut up, dad,” says Mike. “And shut up, Dustin! It’s obviously not going to be a fake out, is it Eddie?”
“I’m not giving you information on the campaign,” says Eddie, not for the first time. “Now shut up like Steve told you to.”
Nobody shuts up, only becom ing more shrill.
Steve sighs, exchanges a glance with Eddie, stops the car even though they’re about a minute from the arcade. “Get out or shut up,” he says. “Final warning.”
“Steve,” Dustin whines. “It’s important that we have a discussion after playing. For strategy. To exacerbate the fun. Right, Eddie?”
“I don’t know why you’re turning to me for help, I’m on Steve’s side. He’s been nice enough to give us all a ride back from D&D, now shut up.”
“Of course you would side with Steve,” says Mike darkly.
“Just shut up,” says Will, Eddie really doesn’t know how they’ve all managed to fit back there, “or Steve really will make us walk.” He’s eyeing Steve sort of plaintively like maybe he can get Steve to just take him back if he’s going to kick the others out.
“No he won’t,” scoffs Dustin, who obviously hasn’t clocked the dangerous look in Steve’s eye.
“Are you not going to shut up then?” asks Steve, and now there’s a dangerous note in his voice too. Eddie definitely doesn’t shudder. “Because then I’m not moving this car.” He pulls out his keys and sits back in his seat like he has all the time in the world. He turns to Eddie. “So, what do you wanna do once I’ve dropped the kids here, I’ve suddenly got a free afternoon.”
Eddie grins. “Really? Me too. Suddenly opened up now we don’t have to hang around outside the arcade to pick up children.”
“Okay you’ve made your point, we’re sorry,” says Lucas.
“Yeah, sorry or whatever,” mumbles Mike.
“Very sorry, and thank you Steve.” Will smiles hopefully.
“Sorry,” says Dustin.
“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought.” Steve starts the car again and starts in the direction of the arcade. “Now I better hear no more stupid arguing about whatever Eddie has planned for you next, alright? Because it’s annoying and I don’t give a shit. Be back here in an hour fuckers or we’re leaving without you.”
The kids pile out of the car muttering to themselves. They don’t go to the arcade much, in fact Eddie remembers a time it had been childish and totally boring but apparently there’s a new game that’s been installed they just have to try out even if they’re totally better than hanging out at the arcade now .
“Fucking kids, man,” says Eddie, getting his cigarettes out of his pocket as they watch them cross the parking lot.
“Fucking kids. Still up for those milkshakes?”
“Sure, sounds good.”
*
Steve and Robin are sitting across the table from him, both deadly hungover and sharing greasy diner fries looking sorry for themselves. They look as bad as Eddie feels, fighting his way through bitter coffee that he’s never enjoyed no matter how much sugar or milk he puts in it, trying to feel slightly alive again.
Suddenly Robin groans, “Incoming urchins. Three, two, one.”
Eddie drops his head on the table at the exact same time as Steve, he feels the vibrations. He feels Robin kicking them both, there’s a silence from the end of the table he can only assume is a gathering of teenagers.
“They’re your kids, don’t make me deal with them,” says Robin.
“You guys are hungover,” Lucas says, far too gleefully for Eddie’s liking.
“Oh yeah, Sinclair?” says Steve, “I heard you were throwing up everywhere when you were hungover.”
Eddie lifts his head to grin at Steve. He likes the two knobs of Steve’s collarbones he can see out of the neck of Steve’s shirt (well, Eddie’s shirt).
“Shut up,” mumbles Lucas.
“Are you going to buy us lunch, Steve?” asks Dustin.
“Absolutely not, fuck off.”
“Can we drink?” says Dustin.
“No. Lucas will let you know it was an awful decision.”
“Fun though,” says Lucas.
Eddie sighs. “Do it together and in moderation, you’ll be fine.”
“Don’t tell them they can drink,” says Steve in a pained voice, obviously remembering all his stories from that age or probably younger. “They make enough trouble sober.”
“They’re old enough to make the decision themselves,” Eddie decides.
“Not our problem,” says Robin sagely.
Steve shrugs as if this works for him and stares them down tiredly. “Go on, go away.”
They all seem to be there, staring between the three of them like it’s a tennis match.
“We’ll go and get drunk then,” says Mike.
“Knock yourselves out,” says Steve, like he knows they won’t (because honestly, where would they get it from).
“Robin, why are you wearing Eddie’s shirt?” says Max, because of course she’s looking at what Robin is wearing, she’s decided Robin is a god amongst mortals as of recently.
“Oh my god, is that why you won’t date Steve? You like Eddie?” Dustin looks inordinately enthused.
He and Robin pull identical faces of disgust and — oh , Robin is… oh . That makes a lot of embarrassing sense, actually. He and Robin make eye contact like you? Oh? You too? Wow.
Steve laughs. “That’s my shirt.”
“Eddie wears it all the time,” says Max.
“It says ‘Farm Fest ‘83’,” says Eddie, trying to put as much disgust in the words as possible, “it has a smiling corn on it. You thought that was mine?”
“You wear it a whole lot.” Mike has too much sass, Eddie isn’t one for beating your kids but maybe…
“It’s a funny shirt,” he says defensively. Why is he defending the farm fest shirt? “It’s ugly. I love it. It’s my favourite one to steal from Steve.”
“Farm Fest ‘83,” says Steve, staring off as if reminiscing, “what an event.”
“How many ladies did you pull at Farm Fest, Stevie?”
“So many, had those farm girls surrounding me in droves.”
“Love a strapping young farmer.”
“You would have loved Farm Fest. I’ll take you next time I go.” Steve grins at him.
“Farm Fest, the sights, the sounds, the magic,” says Robin.
“You guys are boring,” announces Mike and stalks off.
“Hey!” Eddie shouts across the diner, but they’re already disappearing into a booth. “If I had never started hanging out with you, Harrington, I could have convinced those kids I was cool for life.”
“Oh I know,” says Steve, “you made them so horny and terrified when they first met you.”
“Ew, Steve,” snaps Robin, throwing a fry at his head.
Eddie grins. “I know. It was so fucking awesome, they believed every word I said.”
“Sometimes I think Carver was right about you,” says Robin, “you’re a right little cult leader.”
He can only laugh.
*
What he wanted to say about Steve Harrington is long and confusing and starts and begins a new chapter in Steve Harrington’s lovely, comfy bed. It’s difficult to say in so many words and snapshots which don’t seem all that important except Eddie knows what Steve’s callouses feel like, what his armpit hair looks like, knows how sweat beads on his golden skin. It’s that Steve is dangerous, in his bed, in Eddie’s clothes, pulling Eddie into this domestic whatever with him. Playing house, they’ve even got kids. Together. He’s practically got space in Steve’s wardrobe.
He’d like to say ‘starts and ends’ because that seems more clean. He doesn’t think this will ever end though, Steve’s got him properly entangled.
They’re not high when it happens, surprisingly.
Eddie’s over because they had watched a movie Star Wars , the “one with all the cute bears” as Steve calls it. Eddie’s sort of forgotten the name himself, even though he loves Star Wars , because now it’s “the one with the funny little bears” and “the one where Han Solo gets frozen” and had one beer and a pizza. Now they’re getting changed, Steve’s pulling on one of Eddie’s shirts, Eddie is standing at the foot of the bed taking off his jeans.
Steve hums slightly, walks over, presses a light kiss to Eddie’s mouth — something so almost platonic it almost doesn’t register for Eddie that it’s nothing out of the ordinary — then pads back around to his side of the bed to sit down and pull off his socks.
“Steve. You —”
“Huh?” Steve turns around to look at him in the yellow lamplight of their bedroom, no, Steve’s bedroom, but the room where Eddie spends most of his nights. His eyes are soft and warm, droopy at the edges.
He finishes taking off his jeans before he falls over or something. Pulls off his shirt, feels Steve’s eyes on him as he grabs whatever shirt is hanging off the back of the chair nearest him. It’s the stupid Wham! shirt from when they agreed to baseball. “You kissed me.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“We aren’t going to talk about it?” That settles uncomfortably in his stomach.
“We can if you like,” says Steve. “I just thought it was a natural progression really.”
Eddie stops what he’s doing, head through the hole, arms held up awkwardly above his head bundled up in the shirt, midriff on show.
Steve laughs at him. “What?”
“We’re dating, aren’t we?” says Eddie, with half his head poking out of Steve’s stupid fucking Wham! shirt which is half Eddie’s, really, just like the Farm Fest shirt. Fuck. “Oh shit, we’re dating. Are you my boyfriend?”
Steve is still laughing at him, almost breathless now. He’s only got one sock on and he’s half lying on the bed wearing the least preppy shirt ever and it’s Steve Harrington he’s supposed to be dangerous. They aren’t meant to be — be… dating . “We’re dating,” he manages to say through giggles. “Holy shit, we are!”
“You didn’t realise either,” says Eddie, sort of pained.
Steve is still laughing.
Eddie pulls the shirt on properly. He jumps on the bed, caging Steve down against the mattress. “Stop laughing.”
“It’s too funny,” Steve wheezes. “Oh god, this is what Robin meant when she said I was stupid.”
“I thought you and Robin had a thing for a while,” Eddie admits.
That makes Steve stop laughing. “Ew.”
Eddie cracks a grin. “You were having a thing with me the whole time.”
Steve ponders that one for a long moment, he looks pretty concentrating like that looking up at Eddie. “I’m wearing your shirt,” he says with a definitive air. “And we have kids.” He leans up and pecks Eddie again and it’s so unexpected Eddie can’t do more than stare at him. “Huh. Isn’t that odd.”
“Odd?” Eddie feels like he’s being strangled.
“We have matching scars. That’s kinda cute.”
Eddie kisses him properly because Steve is an idiot and only has one sock on which must be impairing his brain activity. It’s better than he would have expected. Sparks don’t fly. It feels like kissing your husband of fifty years. It feels like shared shirts and kids you babysit together when they’re really old enough to look after themselves. “God, we’re stupid. Could’ve been doing that the whole time.”
*
In the golden light of his — their — bedroom, Steve shows him a lot of other things they could’ve been doing the whole time.
*
The sun rises. Eddie walks his knuckles down the knobs of Steve’s spine like he’s always wanted to do. The careful roll of their bones across each other makes him feel… peace. Full of peace.
Breakfast is dry cereal eaten straight out of the box and kisses.
It’s nothing special.
It’s the most precious moment Eddie has ever had to Girls on Film by Duran Duran while wearing a Wham! t-shirt and watching Steve, his accidentally acquired through apocalypse boyfriend, try to do the robot and shovel cereal in his mouth. Steve’s wearing a Megadeath shirt.
He comes over and jabs his index finger against Eddie’s forehead, hard bone against hard bone. “What are you thinking about?”
Eddie shakes his head. “Give me some of that, you’re hogging it all.”
It’s a familiar argument; Eddie wants to have it every day from this moment, walking knuckle to knuckle down the hard vertebrae of Steve’s spine.