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They’re hooking up in the back of Steve’s car when it happens for the first time. He’s half squished into the musty leather seats and half sitting up against the window, arm pressed into the chill of the glass because the two of their bodies won’t fit unless he folds himself nearly in half, and Eddie is straddling him and kissing him and his hands are at the back of Steve’s neck, scratching blunt nails through his hair. They’re a tangle of pressing limbs and roaming hands and it’s good, it’s really, really, good, Eddie making breathy little pants into Steve’s mouth when Steve grabs his hip, and then Eddie’s hand retreats from the back of Steve’s neck, thumb comes around to stroke at the corner of Steve’s mouth. And Steve honest-to-god flinches.
He tries to recover immediately, tries to pretend (to himself and to Eddie) that the sudden pounding of his heart is due to the fact that Eddie freaking Munson is kissing him, rather than the sudden icy, split-second spike of terror that had just plunged through his stomach.
Eddie’s propped himself up now, leaning back from Steve, one hand bracing against the door handle and the elbow of the other resting on the headrest to their left.
“Sorry,” he says, and Steve is almost-just-a-little-bit pleased to be able to tell that Eddie’s slightly out of breath. “You okay?”
“Yeah! Yeah, of course!” Steve tries to keep the tremor out of his voice, residual shivers still running down his arms to the tips of his fingers. The loss of Eddie’s warmth on top of him makes him realize that being shirtless in the back of a car on a Midwest April night is not a very fun experience, and he tries to tell himself that’s the only reason that there are goosebumps flitting across his skin. “Sorry, that was— can we just…keep going?” Steve reaches for Eddie’s hand against the headrest, and Eddie intertwines their fingers cautiously.
“You sure?” He asks. Steve can’t really see his face in the dim light of the car– the moon is only half full tonight, and the car is pulled about 30 feet off of a back road, parked under the cover of some trees (they had chosen this spot because it was dark, after all, because they didn’t want anyone to see, because this was something for back alleys and parked cars, not for shimmering, exposing daylight) but even in the low, gray light, Steve can make out the furrow of Eddie’s brows.
“Yeah, man, I’m fine,” Steve insists. “You were just— you leaned on one of the bites, that’s all.” He lets out a sheepish laugh that he hopes sounds convincing, even though his voice is still shaky, breath uneven. “Still healing, remember?”
“Right! Sorry about that.” Eddie smirks, apprehension fading from his face, and he leans in a little to run a finger down Steve’s sternum. “I guess I’ll just have to, uh— avoid this whole area then, huh?”
Steve’s breath hitches. “Not— not the whole area,” he gasps out, and then Eddie’s tongue is licking over his nipple, and Steve’s fingers are in Eddie’s hair, and he’s not thinking about hands over his mouth and rough kisses and fingers gripping his arms hard enough to leave bruises, he’s not.
The next time it happens, they’re in Eddie’s bed, and they’ve both had a beer (or three) and Steve is gazing a little unfocused at one of the posters on Eddie’s ceiling, something with black and red and slashes of white, as Eddie leaves marks down the side of Steve’s neck.
That’s the thing about Eddie, though. He’s nothing like Billy— all hard lines and forceful hands, viper-poisonous leer. Eddie’s rough sometimes, sure, clicking of teeth and grappling of limbs and he pulls Steve’s hair, occasionally, which Steve is only a little embarrassed to admit that he likes. But it’s not painful. Even now, with Eddie sucking bruises into Steve’s skin that he knows will be there come next Sunday, it doesn’t hurt. Which is confusing, to Steve.
Because— that was hooking with a guy, right? That’s just how it was. Girls were nice, and soft, and they smiled when you brushed their hair behind their ear; they were silk pillowcases and cushiony beds and waking up together in the morning. Guys were all sharp corners and whispered insults and bruising grips, knees scraped up on concrete in back alleys. Two guys being together… there was no romance there. Not even a chance of softness, a ghost of a smile, other than maybe a smirk. It was just fucking— Billy had made that clear enough, many times. That’s just how it was, and Steve had to keep telling himself that or else he might crack down the middle.
It’s not like he had any frame of reference, anyway. The only guys who had been with other guys that Steve knew about were Billy and Eddie, and he hadn’t even known that Eddie… swung that way until about a week ago. Suffice to say that talking with Robin about sex with guys was a no go, too.
So. Eddie was confusing, to him. Because he wasn’t Nancy, doe eyes and smooth skin, but he also wasn’t Billy, all jawline and knuckles and harsh, cheap cologne. He wasn’t either, but he was both. Something in between. Something that Steve didn’t even know existed, could exist, until that first kiss in Eddie’s living room a week ago.
Eddie nips at the pulse point in his neck, and Steve curses softly, letting out a frustrated groan. “Jesus, Munson! You gonna tease me all night?” It was another thing he didn’t get about Eddie— the kissing. The hickeys. It felt… soft, slow, like Eddie was taking his time, like Steve wasn’t just something to be used for a quick fuck and then left in the gathering darkness of a parking lot, still hard in his jeans. Like maybe Eddie wanted something more.
Steve squirms under Eddie, trying to buck his hips a little to get some more friction. He’s half-hard already, though to be honest, the alcohol might be an impeding factor. “Come on, dude!”
“Shhh,” Eddie laughs, still a little tipsy, and he pulls back to press a finger sloppily against Steve’s lips in a shushing motion. “Wouldn’t want to wake up the neighbors.”
Steve doesn’t think— his body just reacts , and it takes him a good two seconds to wonder why his ears are ringing before he realizes that he’s shoved himself away from Eddie violently, back of his head smacking into the wall behind him.
Eddie’s face is blurry in Steve’s vision (partly because of the beer and partly because of Steve’s head connecting with the wall) but Steve can see that his eyes are almost comically wide with surprise. Eddie sits back on his heels, bringing his palms up in an abortive placating gesture before thinking better of it and letting them hang at his sides.
“Sorry, man,” Eddie says slowly, taking in Steve’s posture— still pressed up against the wall, knees curled tight into his body. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Steve says immediately, shakily, feels his hands starting to tremble uncontrollably. “I don’t— I don’t know what that was. Sorry.” The words sound hollow, flat, clearly false, even to his own ears. Eddie sinks back again, farther from Steve, elbows coming to rest on crossed knees. He’s studying Steve carefully, an expression that Steve can’t read flitting across his face.
“You… don’t like it when I touch your mouth?” It comes out slowly, both like a question and like a statement, and Steve is shaking his head violently before Eddie has even finished speaking, because if they go down this road, if Eddie pulls and unravels and sees him— the frayed, jagged edges of him— he’ll leave. Steve is sure of it.
“No! That’s not it. That’s totally not— I can be into it. I promise.” Steve can feel twin flames of disgust and shame coil in the pit of his stomach, at the fact that he’s practically begging Eddie to do this to him, to make him like it, the fact that he wants.
Eddie shakes his head. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to like it. There’s a ton of shit that I don’t like— foot stuff, for one. Uh… anything to do with choking. But we can get into that later.” He runs a hand down his face. “Look, Steve, I’m not gonna do anything you don’t want.”
“You can, though.” Steve’s voice doesn’t sound like his own when it comes out of his mouth, disembodied and hollow. “You can do… whatever you want. You can, uh— hurt me, if you want. It’s fine. I can take it.”
And this is how it goes. Here he is again, making another deal, another quid pro quo with another boy in another dimly lit room, except it’s Eddie, not Billy, and Billy never really gave him a choice, anyway, and it’s going to hurt no matter which way it goes. Whether Eddie takes him up on it, fucks Steve and doesn’t care if he hurts him and doesn’t care if Steve gets off and Steve won’t be able to say anything about it, because he was the one who asked for this. And it’ll burn an empty hole in his chest, hurt so much more because he likes Eddie. Because he trusts him. Or he wants to.
Or whether Eddie looks at him with the expression that’s on his face right now, horrified and pitying and maybe a little disgusted, and he says that Steve’s too fucked up, that he just wanted someone to fool around with, and Steve’s heart will break off into the pit of his stomach but maybe that’s okay, maybe he is a little too fucked up for this, maybe he never really deserved Eddie in the first place.
Eddie clears his throat after a minute, seeming to still be searching for the right words. “Look, uh— I guess we haven’t really had the Kink Talk yet, so… Yeah, there are people who are into pain. Sometimes. And I’m not saying that I’m not one of those people.”
Something shutters behind Steve’s eyes, and Eddie continues quickly. “I wouldn’t want to do anything like that, though, unless I knew you were into it, too. I wouldn’t want you to just be, like, going along with it. Putting up with it. That’s fucked, man. I wanna do things that you like. That you actually want to do.”
Steve meets Eddie’s eyes miserably, feeling like there’s a script that he’s supposed to follow here, a line that he’s supposed to know, except he thought that he knew what sex with guys was. What it was supposed to be. And now everything’s been flipped on its head and he doesn’t know the right words, wishes Eddie would just tell him what to say.
“What does it matter what I want?” He asks, and he can tell the words sound weak, pleading, even to his ears. “We’re just— we’re just fucking, right? It shouldn’t matter.”
“Yeah, uh…” Eddie’s brows furrow even more than they already are, if that’s possible, gaze flicking over Steve’s scrunched form like he doesn’t where to look. “What do you think fucking is, Steve?”
“I don’t know.” Steve scratches awkwardly at his denim clad knee, legs still cramped underneath him. It’s like this is some kind of test, but he gets the horrible feeling that no matter what he says, it’ll be the wrong answer. “It’s just… physical. It doesn’t really matter what I want, or what I like, it just matters that you get off, right? I thought that’s what this was.”
“Right, okay.” Eddie’s voice is shaky. “And you think this because of… past experience?”
Steve wants to scream. He doesn’t know why Eddie’s talking to him like he’s a kid, like he’s a wounded animal, like he’s going to bolt at any second. It might have something to do with him still being pressed up against the wall, shoulder wedged uncomfortably into the side of the bookshelf, but. Still.
“There was a guy, a while ago,” Steve grinds out. “We… had a thing. I don’t know. It didn’t last for that long.” God, he had wanted to avoid this conversation. If he didn’t bring up Billy, didn’t picture him in his mind, didn’t think about Billy and Eddie in the same thought, maybe he could pretend that Billy had been a long time ago. Another fucked up life.
“And this thing was… just sex?” Eddie asks.
Steve barks out a hollow laugh. He can’t quite imagine Billy Hargrove picking him up in his car for a dinner date. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, just sex.”
“And I’m assuming that you didn’t, uh… talk? About the sex?” Eddie asks, and Steve feels once again like he’s being talked down to, like Eddie is tiptoeing around something, and he wants to both grab Eddie’s face and shake it, and also to never have to look into those brown eyes pooled with pity again.
He averts his gaze. “No. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about anything. We weren’t… friends, really.” Not that he and Eddie are friends. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t really feel like he knows anything, anymore. “I just— we fucked when he wanted, and we both kind of needed it, and it didn’t really matter, what I wanted.” Steve lets out a shaky laugh, but it’s devoid of any humor. “He wasn’t really the type to do long, stare-into-each-other’s-eyes conversations.”
“Okay,” says Eddie, and Steve can tell that he’s fighting to keep his tone neutral. “Well, I do want to talk. I think it’s important that we— that we establish— shit, Steve, we should have done this, like, ages ago!”
“You only kissed me last week,” Steve points out, but Eddie shakes his head.
“Before that. We should have talked before that. Back when you were shooting me those glances that you thought were subtle from the back room of the Family Video store.”
“I wasn’t— shut up!” Steve lets out a shocked laugh, feeling just a fraction of the tension and stiffness bleed out of his muscles a little. “God, you’re so full of it!” He chucks one of Eddie’s pillows at his head, but it misses by a good few inches.
“Whatever you say, Stevie,” Eddie smirks, but then his expression becomes serious again. “Look, I’m just saying, I want to talk. About stuff. About sex. About us.” He pauses. “You know… like… about consent, and stuff, right?”
“Yeah— Jesus, Eddie, yeah! Of course!” Steve is so offended that his brain nearly skips past the “about us ” that makes his heart somersault a little in his chest. “I’ve been with girls before, you know.” He crosses his arms and fixes Eddie with a glare. “I’m not a complete fucking idiot, Munson, I know no means no and all that shit. What, are you gonna give me the sex talk?”
Eddie, to his credit, looks vaguely admonished. “No, man. No. I’m just— consent isn’t just a thing for girls, you know?”
“Yeah…?” Steve isn’t quite sure where Eddie is going with this, his heart constricting painfully in his chest and his throat getting a little tighter with every breath.
“So the guy that you were with,” Eddie continues. “Did you ever have a conversation about that? Did you talk about consent? Did you… give consent?”
The tips of Steve’s fingers are feeling a little tingly now, like all the blood is leaving his arms and pooling in his chest, which would make sense because his brain feels like it’s not getting enough blood either but his heart is racing in a skipping, stuttering beat. He clenches his hands into fists a few times before answering. “No, we didn’t… I don’t know. It wasn’t really like that. It wasn’t like this. We didn’t talk.”
That wasn’t entirely true, though. Billy had talked, sometimes. Enough for both of them. Had called Steve names, mocked him about Jonathan and Nancy, told him he would freshen up the bruises painted across Steve’s face when they had started fading after a few weeks. He never lived up to that promise, actually. Steve, though, hadn’t talked. Hadn’t said yes, hadn’t said no, hadn’t said stop when he felt the indents of Billy’s fingers purpling on his hips.
“Jesus, Harrington.” Eddie runs both hands over his face now, letting out a sharp breath. “So, you fucked. But you never told him that you wanted to? Or that you didn’t want to?”
Steve shifts uncomfortably, his heart still stuttering in his chest. “No, I just— we did what he wanted, when he wanted, which was fine, it was— it was good, for me—” He doesn’t know, now, whether he’s trying to convince Eddie or himself, and the look Eddie is giving him is too sharp, too painful, too grim and devastated and knowing for Steve to handle right now.
“Look, man, I don’t get the point of this conversation. We can talk about us, all right? We can talk about, like, us having sex, whatever you want, I just don’t get why we have to talk about him.” Something drops into place, then, a strange flicker of realization. “Wait. Are you, like… jealous?”
“Jealous?” Eddie’s voice rises a few octaves in incredulity. “Jesus, Harrington, you’re impossible! No, I’m not jealous!”
“Then why are we talking about—”
“Because I’m trying to figure out how badly this guy fucked you up!” Eddie’s voice echoes around the small room, and Steve thinks a little disjointedly that they’re slightly past concerns of waking up the neighbors.
“Shit,” Eddie says softly, uncrossing his legs and scooting a little closer to Steve then. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not— he didn’t fuck me up,” Steve hisses out, head filling with Billy’s blood-wet smile, all sharp teeth and predator. “I mean… we were both kind of fucked up, like, the whole time. It was just kind of… a release.” That was how Billy had described it actually, one of the few times that he and Steve had ever really talked about what they were doing. Well, that Billy had talked. Steve can picture him, zipping his jeans up, flicking his cigarette onto the ground, grinding it into the dirt with the heel of his boot.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Harrington,” Billy had smirked. “This is just getting off.” And Steve had nodded blankly, hollowly, because totally, that’s what it was for him, too.
“Right,” Eddie says flatly, as though he doesn’t believe a word coming out of Steve’s mouth. (In fairness, Steve doesn’t know if he does, either.) “And were there any other guys you were with, after this guy who totally didn’t fuck you up?”
Steve’s eyes narrow. This line of questioning is veering dangerously close to the teetering precipice of memories and emotions that he’s been shoving down for somewhere close to a year. “Yeah, you’re totally not jealous,” he sneers, trying to inject a derision that he doesn’t feel into his words. “Don’t worry, Eddie. Other than Billy, you’re the only guy who’s had their dick up my ass.”
Eddie freezes. “Billy… Hargrove?”
Steve slaps a hand over his eyes in mortification. Jesus Christ. He just had to go and say it. He would blame it on the beer, but he’s feeling a distinct lack of buzz coursing through his veins right now. It seems to have worn off, leaving behind a pounding headache and a roiling uneasiness in the pit of his stomach.
“You had a… thing with Billy Hargrove?” Eddie sounds a little queasy now, too. Steve nods wordlessly, not looking at him. “Jesus, Harrington,” Eddie breathes. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but that kid was a grade-a asshole. He nearly knocked my lights out a couple of times.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, before he can think better of it. “He had a hell of a right hook.”
Eddie flinches a little, looks at Steve in poorly disguised horror. “Did he— when you—” He can’t quite get the words out, but Steve gets the gist.
“No!” He says quickly, but then amends. “Well— I don’t know. Not really. He, uh, kind of beat the shit out of me once. But it was before we started doing… whatever the hell we were doing. Not really during.”
“Not really.” Eddie’s lips press into a thin line. “Right. And that means…?”
“He was… rough,” Steve mutters, feeling embarrassment color his face again. “He would, uh— grab me, or shove me, whatever, but it wasn’t like— God! This is stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair a little frantically, unable to meet Eddie’s gaze, not wanting to see the pity or revulsion or shame that he knows is reflected there. He’s dealt with so much worse than this, Russians and monsters and fucking hell itself, and this is what he’s most scared of? What he could never fight off? What he can’t talk about without feeling like he wants to claw off his own skin? Fucking weak, Harrington. Billy had spat that at him on more than one occasion.
“This is pointless, okay? He didn’t fuck me up, and he didn’t hurt me, and it doesn’t even fucking matter anymore, so—”
“Yeah?” Eddie’s eyebrows arch in a challenge. “So why do you freak out every time I put my hand on your mouth, then?”
Steve shoves away from the wall, finally, irrational anger coursing through his body, limbs stiff and cramped from being pressed into the corner for so long. “Fuck you, Munson,” he spits, sliding off of Eddie’s bed and striding across the room. “This is fucking— I’m done with this.”
His hand is on the doorknob before he feels Eddie’s fingers encircle his wrist, and he wants to pull away, he really does, but Eddie’s touch is warm and sure and it doesn’t hurt. He’s not grabbing Steve. Just holding him.
“Sorry,” Eddie says quietly, but Steve doesn’t turn to look at him. “Steve. I’m sorry, okay? Just… stay. Please?”
Steve doesn’t want to turn his head to see the imploring look in Eddie’s deep brown eyes, knows he’ll be lost if he does. He keeps his gaze fixed resolutely on his own hand, wrapped around the doorknob. It’s only shaking a little, now.
“Fine,” he grinds out, after a moment of silence, and he feels, more than hears, Eddie let out a little breath of relief behind him, puffing across the back of his neck.
“Good.” Eddie releases his wrist and takes a few steps back, towards the bed, away from Steve at the door. “Sit?”
Steve crosses his arms petulantly and stays where he is. It feels like Eddie’s treating him like a child, but in all fairness, he’s not doing much to counter that image.
“Fine.” Eddie huffs out a breath. “God, you’re impossible,” he mutters, for the second time that night, and Steve opens his mouth to deliver a biting retort, but Eddie continues over him. “Look, there’s some stuff we need to talk about, okay? I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable, or whatever, I seriously— I didn’t mean to bring up all of that shit, okay? I’m not very good at this… feelings stuff. I like you, Harrington, and I want to keep doing… whatever we’re doing, and I want to see where it goes, but I can’t do that if you won’t even tell me what to do, or not do, or what you like, and if I don’t know if you’re just hooking up with me because—” His gaze snaps to Steve’s suddenly, a dawning look of horror spreading across his face. “You didn’t do that with me, did you?” Eddie asks, voice strained. “You didn’t, like… only fuck me because you thought it was what I wanted? Because you thought I might… beat you up or something, otherwise?”
“No!” Steve says quickly, because whatever fucked up shit happened with Billy, he has always wanted this with Eddie. Always wanted whatever sliver of attention, of a look, of a laugh, of a kiss, Eddie would give him. “No, I want this. I have wanted this,” he amends. He’s not sure if he’s ever said yes , with Eddie, per se— wasn’t sure if that was something that was allowed, didn’t know that it was something that he was supposed to do— but he’s definitely never said no. Never even thought it.
“Good,” Eddie says, seemingly unable to hide the giddy little smile that’s twitching at the corners of his mouth. “‘Cause I, uh. I want this, too.”
Steve can feel a similar grin spreading across his face at Eddie’s words, a blush creeping up his neck again, but for an entirely different reason this time. “Good. Yeah. Great. So, glad we established that,” he gets out, hand coming up scrub awkwardly through his hair.
Eddie smirks at him. “You’re cute when you’re flustered, Harrington.”
Steve feels his face get impossibly hotter, tries to direct a glare at Eddie but is pretty sure he fails miserably. “Fuck you,” he says, but there’s no bite behind it. He crosses the room, finally, to sink down on the edge of the bed next to Eddie.
“Yeah, that’s kind of the point,” Eddie jokes, smirk still playing around the corners of his mouth, before it falls off again sharply. There’s a look in his eye, once again, that Steve can’t quite recognize. “I wanna kiss you, Harrington,” Eddie says suddenly, and Steve leans forward a little expectantly, but Eddie shakes his head. “We need to talk first.”
“Dude!” Steve throws his hands up. “What the fuck have we been doing for the past, like, 20 minutes?”
“I’ve been talking, and you’ve been avoiding shit,” Eddie says pointedly, and Steve rolls his eyes.
“Talking? Try grilling me.”
“Fine.” Eddie holds up his hands. “I won’t grill, then. But we do need to talk, before we… do anything else. About boundaries. About what you like, and especially about what you don’t like— for real this time, Steve!”
Steve had been opening his mouth to protest, but he thinks better of it, sinking back against Eddie’s pillows with a groan. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s get this over with.” He eyes Eddie critically. “I tell you this shit, and then you fuck me, right? Deal?”
“God, you’re horny, Harrington.” Eddie lets out a long suffering sigh. “Yeah, deal. You tell me all of your deep-rooted trauma, and then I’ll fuck you.” Steve shoots him a glare, and he holds his hands up. “Kidding! Sorry. You don’t have to give me details, seriously. Just… broad strokes. General things. I need to know what not to do.”
“Right. Fine.” Steve stares resolutely back at the poster on Eddie’s ceiling; he doesn’t think he can look Eddie in the eyes for this. “So, uh… hands near my mouth. You know that one already. I don’t like that.” He pauses, not sure if he should expound, but Eddie is silent beside him, letting him take the lead. “Billy used to put his hand over my mouth,” Steve says finally, and if his voice cracks on the name just a little, breath hitches, Eddie doesn’t indicate that he notices. “When we were… yeah. Whatever. He would hold me down, and he would put his hand over my mouth, and he’d say that I was being too loud, that people were gonna hear, but I don’t— I don’t know if that was true. I think he just liked doing it. And I think he liked that I didn’t.”
Beside him, Steve can hear Eddie swallow thickly, shift a little on the mattress, but he doesn’t say anything. Steve continues. “So, yeah. I don’t like people holding my wrists too tight, either. Similar idea. One is fine, but if it’s both at the same time, I feel a little— I don’t know. Claustrophobic.” His mind flicks through moments with Billy, trying to pinpoint the worst of it, things that he definitely doesn’t want to repeat with Eddie.
“Blowjobs!” He says suddenly, alighting on the memory of one particularly uncomfortable instance, and Eddie lets out a startled gasp of a laugh next to him. “Sorry, not, like— not all blowjobs. I mean, not to be presumptuous,” Steve amends quickly. “I just— I like to be able to use my hands. There were a couple of times when he made sure that I couldn’t use my hands, and I couldn’t really—” He cuts himself off. “Anyway. Yeah. Choking on someone’s dick isn’t an experience I wanna repeat.”
He was trying to breathe some levity into the situation, but when his gaze flicks to Eddie’s face, just for a second, and then away again, Eddie’s expression is stony. “Fucking asshole,” he growls, and Steve can feel the tense rigidity of the muscles in his thigh where it’s pressed against Steve’s shoulder. “Kinda wish I had been there to see him getting ripped apart by that Mind Flayer thing, now.”
“You really don’t,” Steve says, and he’d been going for joking, but it falls a lot more flat than he was intending.
“No,” Eddie agrees, eyes flicking down to meet Steve’s. “You’re right. Sorry.”
There’s another moment or two of silence, Steve rolling words around behind his tongue before he speaks. “This one is dumb,” he starts, but Eddie fixes him with a stern look, and Steve continues quickly. “Right. Okay. Um.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t like being called pretty.” His eyes rove to Eddie’s face again, worried that he’s going to laugh, or something, but Eddie just nods. “Billy called me pretty a lot,” Steve goes on, pushing through the embarrassment that heats up his face. Words? He can’t deal with words, now? Get a fucking grip, Harrington. “It wasn’t, like, in a nice way, though. He used it as an insult, I think. Like I wasn’t supposed to be. He’d say it a lot, when he was— when we were fucking.” The words leave a sour taste in his mouth, for some reason, for the first time. It doesn’t seem right to call it that, makes it sound like they were both equal parties, like they both wanted it just as much. But Steve’s starting to realize that maybe that isn’t true. “He said it to make fun of me. To— I don’t know. To humiliate me, I guess.”
“Okay.” Eddie takes it in stride. Doesn’t laugh at Steve, call him a pussy. “Checking ‘pretty’ off the list. Got it.” He doesn’t even crack a joke about Steve’s eyes, or his hands, or his hair, all of which he’s lamented being “oh so pretty” in the past. Billy talked about his hair, too. He said worse things than “pretty,” Steve remembers. Called Steve a fairy. Fag. Bitch. Fucking whore. Said he took it like a girl. Because Billy was the one doing the fucking, Steve supposed, and Steve was the one getting fucked. Like that absolved Billy of also being a fag.
Steve doesn’t tell Eddie about the rest of it, though. Doesn’t think he could stand hearing his own voice say those words, echoing around the room, see Eddie’s expression afterwards.
It’s another minute or two of silence, and then Steve props himself up on his elbows. “So. That’s it, I think. I mean, I’m sure there are other things— little things— I don’t know. There might be more, that I think of later. God, that’s fucking depressing, isn’t it?” He flops back down on the bed and covers his face with his hands.
“It’s not depressing, Harrington,” Eddie says, and there’s a gravity to his tone that weaves its way somewhere between Steve’s ribs, makes him feel flustered and grounded at once. “I’m glad you told me. Seriously. And if other things come up, you can tell me those, too. Whatever it is. No judgment.” Another few seconds of silence, and then— “So, you’re not gonna grill me about my extensive trauma?”
“Shit!” Steve scrambles into a sitting position, guilt spilling across his mouth. “Sorry! I didn’t even—”
“It’s fine, Harrington,” Eddie says, laughing a little. “I get that you’re new to this whole talking about feelings thing. And I was kidding about the extensive trauma. And about the foot stuff, actually. Not so much about the choking, but… there’s mostly just one thing. Uh— non-negotiable.”
Steve inclines his head in what he hopes is an encouraging way, waits for Eddie to continue. “Belts,” Eddie states, helpfully. “Not really… belts on people,” he expands, after a moment. “Or off people. Just… people holding belts. Or using them as, like, a restraint.”
Steve wants to ask, but Eddie let him take his time, before, so Steve sits back a little, waits.
“Belts were kind of my dad’s thing,” Eddie says after a minute. “He was an asshole when he was drunk. Speaking ill of the dead again, I guess.” He lets out a humorless chuckle.
“Jesus, Eddie,” Steve breathes out. “I’m sorry.”
“Yup.” Eddie pops the p. “Well, he’s dead now. So. You know.” He plasters a mocking grin on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, spreads his arms out wide. “Rest in peace, I guess. Or maybe burn in hell, I don’t fucking know.” He laughs again, a little more real but still echoing with that hollow tone. “We’ve been to hell now, Stevie. Surprised I didn’t see him there.”
Steve doesn’t know what to say to that— doesn’t know if there’s anything to say, anything that will make it better. “I’m sorry,” he says again softly after a minute, wishes that he had more words.
The grin slips off Eddie’s face slowly, tumbling into a black hole of a box that Steve can almost see Eddie packing up and locking in the back of his mind, and Steve hates that he knows exactly what Eddie’s doing. Hates that he does the same thing.
“So that’s it, then, huh?” Eddie says, and Steve knows that there will be more conversations to come, that maybe at some point Eddie will have pulled the entire sordid, fucked up story from Steve like little shards of broken glass, but he knows what he means, too. For right now, they’re okay.
“I don’t know, Munson.” Steve stretches out across the bed, knows that his shirt is riding up his stomach, but plays coy. “You were the one leading this goddamn Girl Scout meeting, right? Did we get all our feelings out?”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Harrington. Just get up here and fucking kiss me already, okay?”
And they collide in a clash of teeth and some of Eddie’s hair might be in Steve’s mouth but he can’t really bring himself to care because this is soft lips and fading, jagged scars and the curling scent of cigarette smoke, something sweet underneath, something sharp. This is Eddie. And for the first time in a while, there’s no one else’s voice in the back of Steve’s head. There’s no one else.