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“I guess I’m not always thinking about being in a relationship, man.” Eddie sighs one day, and it leaves Steve reeling.
He’s hard pressed to remember the last time he wasn’t thinking about a girl, or being with one, at least.
“What are you meant to- I just mean, what do you do, then?”
“Alright, Casanova, chill out. Not all of us are masters of love.” Eddie must think Steve’s being sarcastic, or something, must be insulted. Steve doesn’t want to come across as rude, wants to leave a good impression, wants to form a friendship.
“No- I don’t think you haven’t, you know…” Steve trails off, not quite sure where he’s going with this.
It’s a stupid conversation to be having with someone he doesn’t know that well. Someone he doesn’t know at all, really. He wonders why he’s so desperate to have it.
Eddie presses himself a little harder into the corner of Steve’s couch, picks at a loose thread on the armrest, looks like he wants the conversation to be over.
“Guess my priorities align more with my interests, I don’t know.” Eddie zones back in on the TV, the light leaving deep impressions on the carpet and the curtains. Steve can’t understand that line of reasoning at all.
“You prioritise, like, D&D, over, what, getting a girlfriend?” Steve pushes the words out feeling weird about them, wondering where they're coming from and why the disbelief in his tone feels weighted and heavy.
He’s never been so passionate about a thing that he gets more pleasure from it than having a girlfriend, is all.
“And guitar, man. Nothing like the good high that comes with an epic riff.” Eddie mimes playing some chords, leans back into the cushions, playing it off as a joke.
It looks like he’s unclenching a bit, though, like the big, wound spring in his spine is slowly releasing all its tension.
“Oh, yeah, your baby.” Steve jokes, but not too hard. That guitar damn near saved their lives.
“Yeah,” Eddie muses, “my baby.” But he’s tense again.
Not for the first time, Steve wonders what he said wrong.
——
Steve wants to do something with Eddie that they both like, but they don’t really…mesh well.
He thinks about the time his dad told him not to talk to anyone from the trailer park because it’d be like serving the devil some holy water, then decides it’s all ridiculously stupid. If he wants to be friends with Eddie, he’ll just have to find a different way.
“Do you think he’d say yes if I asked him to the quarry?” He asks Robin, when they’re both stacking the same new release section, “Or is that, like, too suggestive?”
“It’s only suggestive if you want it to be.” Robin wrinkles her nose, slides the tapes into the correct spots. “Wait, do you want it to be? Suggestive, that is.”
Steve bites the inside of his cheek, “I don’t think so, ” is what he decides on. “We’ll go somewhere else.”
_____
He ends up inviting Eddie back to his house on a whim, after picking up Lucas and Max from D&D. He doesn’t really know where else to take him, even after thinking about it all week.
“We can watch your favourites, Top Gun and stuff, you know.” Steve delights in the way Eddie’s face hardens into a picture of annoyance.
“Not really selling it to me, Harrington.” Eddie leans against his car, and Steve has the brief desire to crowd him up against it, maybe shove at his shoulders or something, tug at his hair until he gets slapped away.
“Maybe you need a better attitude. It’s good to broaden your horizons, dude.”
“My horizons have been broadened plenty, thanks.” Eddie huffs, pulls a cigarette from his jacket pocket.
Steve wonders which parts of Eddie’s body the smoke smell clings to the most, then feels weird about it. It doesn’t stop him wondering if the smell washes off after he showers, or if it’s permanently etched into his skin.
“Look at those little scrubs, all tucked up into Mummy’s BMW.” Eddie coos, brushes imaginary dust off his jacket in preparation to walk over to the shitty second hand pickup he bought after ditching the van.
Too many people were throwing things at it.
“The window is open, Eddie.” Max huffs, shoves her hand out to push weakly at his jacket. “Can you guys stop being weird for one second?”
“I’m serious, though,” Steve says, softly,“mine? Eight?” He shoves Max’s hand off Eddie’s vest, feeling vindictive when she slaps him back.
“Will do.” Is all he replies, and then he’s gone.
“You should try being a little more tactile.” Max suggests later, once Lucas is asleep in the back, face pressed at a weird angle into the side of the seat.
“What?”
“Eddie. He’s like, a traumatised dog or something. If you run at him, he’s gonna slink off with his tail between his legs.” Steve frowns at the metaphor.
“What, like you?”
“I don’t run, I bite.” Steve huffs out a laugh.
“Should I like, back off a bit or something? Jeez, it feels weird talking about this with you when you’re like, eight.”
“Do you want my help or not?” Steve’s silence confirms his assent. “He loves Monty Python. Maybe you could lead with that.”
“Thanks, Red. I will, I will.”
_____
“Heard through the grapevine you like Monty Python.” Steve divulges, waiting for the hot chocolate to warm up on the stove.
It’d started raining as he left Family Video (yes, he’d gone back for Eddie’s movie. Maybe Max had gotten to him more than he’d realised.)
“What grapevine?” Eddie laughs, pulling out marshmallows from the back of the cupboard, “Max?”
“She’s a good source of info, actually.”
“Oh god, she gave you the dog metaphor? Tail? Between legs? Me?” Steve doesn’t know why Eddie worded it like that (like a question he knows the answer to), but yes.
“Yeah. Is that- is she wrong?”
“Probably not,” Eddie rubs at the side of his neck. “I promise I’m not gonna like, run away screaming or anything. I just never…I like being alone, mostly. Or coexisting in silence. D&D is like, my most social event of the week.”
“We can be silent.” Steve suggests, pulls the tape out of the bag on the counter and shakes it in the air. He has lots of practice in silence.
Then he pours the hot chocolate into two mugs and watches as Eddie puts way too many marshmallows in his own.
“If we’re going to be silent, we can’t watch The Holy Grail.” Eddie bites his lip to stop from smiling.
“Why not?”
“We’ll laugh too much.”
_____
“Okay then, how about an eight ball?” Eddie asks, stretching on tiptoes to reach the top of his shelf.
His hair has grown longer, and it dips below his shoulders in curly waves. It looks kind of knotted, though, and Steve thinks about brushing it out.
“Lies,” Steve says, “complete lies and slander.”
“A dark wizard is fine but an eight ball is where you draw the line?”
“An eight ball isn’t actively trying to kill me.”
“Well…” Eddie returns with it, sweeps a pile of his clothes out of the way (all covered in pins and patches) and lays it on the floor between them.
It sits in the silence ominously.
“Ok, ask it a question.” Eddie laughs boyishly, pushes it towards him.
“I don’t want it to like, expose me or anything.”
“So you do believe in it!” Eddie jumps up, fist pumping in victory before flopping back down with a goofy smile.
“You’re an idiot.”
“And you’re deflecting. What, scared?” He hums, “Poor Stevie, defeated by a magic eight-”
“If I ask out Leslie Cline, will she say yes?” Steve shakes the ball with confidence. The little blue triangle bobs to the surface.
It says ‘Very Doubtful’.
Eddie laughs for a solid five minutes, but Steve can’t bring himself to feel bad about it.
____
Steve has a dream about Eddie. It’s one of those dreams where you can’t see the person’s face, but you feel their presence beside you, and something fundamental in you recognises them.
____
“I’m not freaking out!” Eddie yells, and it’s all strained and trembling.
“Eddie, listen to me, just breathe, match my breathing. Ready?”
“It’s not-this isn’t working.” And the phone line goes dead.
Steve pulls into Eddie’s driveway (or whatever the equivalent is in a trailer park) 15 minutes later.
Eddie’s rocking back and forth on the front porch, cigarette long forgotten on the ashtray beside him, squeezing at his own knees.
“Eddie?” Steve says, hesitant, remembers Robin coaching him on the difference between helping and intruding.
Eddie looks up, and distantly one of the neighbour’s dogs barks at the commotion. He stands up on shaky legs and Steve follows him inside, is gentle with the door behind him.
Eddie asks him for a hug, then, and crashes into him with little to no grace when Steve nods. He says he’s sorry and then asks Steve to hug him tighter anyway, says he didn't think Steve would come.
____
“Okay, but knitting is a decent hobby. Like, there’s an end product, you know?” Robin argues, and her tone is way too serious for a conversation so light.
“I’ve told you- both of you- that I don’t need a new hobby.” Steve complains, fed up.
Most of his days (between Family Video shifts) are spent lazing around, and he’s actually pretty content with that. His midriff is soft and his fledgling beard is patchy. He feels more like himself than he has in a while.
“A hobby, Steve. Not a new hobby, just a hobby.” Robin says.
“Jenna Gray likes guys that have self-sufficiency,” Eddie supplies, unhelpfully.
“And how would you know that?” Steve tilts an eyebrow.
“She told me while I was handing over the weed, like, I was mid-step out the door. Kept me on the porch for at least fifteen minutes.”
“Steve, please don’t ask out Jenna Gray. She’s the biggest gossip in town, I know she’ll have something to say about me.” Robin whines, “I take it back, you don’t have to learn how to knit. You don’t have to learn how to do anything.” She throws her hands up in mock annoyance.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Steve stretches his arms above his head, “-and, hey, what’s wrong with Jenna? Apart from the gossiping stuff.”
Eddie and Robin exchange a meaningful glance.
“What?” They don’t say anything, “Hey? What? What’s wrong with her?”
____
“Okay, you have a choice,” Eddie begins, and Steve feels the corner of his lips tick up, “no fingers or no hair.”
“Are you serious? What happened to originality?” Eddie had asked him last week if he’d rather be crushed under the metal boot of a giant cyborg or wake up strapped down on an island full of tiny people. Then he quietly admitted he’d read Gulliver’s Travels too many times and had always wanted to know what someone else would say.
“I’ve run out, Steve. It’s too much of a burden for me to handle, carrying not only my originality but also yours, too.”
“No fingers.” Steve snorts.
____
“It’s just, it’s hard not to notice him, you know?” Steve sighs, pressing his head into Robin’s thigh. She runs her fingers through his hair gently.
“Not really.”
“He’s always bouncing around and stuff,” Steve continues, Robin’s unhelpful input discarded and thrown away, “like a puppy.”
“Like a rabid racoon, maybe.”
“Robin, you’re not listening.”
“What am I supposed to be hearing? I’m bad at subtext, you know this, Steve. Subtext. Oh!” She yanks at his hair and he groans in pain.
“Is it…do you want it to be suggestive!?” Robin does this thing where she references old conversations and Steve has to scrabble to catch up.
“Jesus Christ, take your hands off me, woman.” His scalp hurts, and he rubs at where it's most tender.
“You do! You totally want to bang him!”
Steve murmurs in pain when she tugs on his hair again, accepts his fate.
____
“Steve!” Dustin is vibrating so hard his cap is almost falling off his head. Steve imagines twisting a wind-up on his back and watching him buzz down the hall. “Eddie finally got a girlfriend!”
Steve feels his heart drop out the bottom of his chest, a goddamn stone. Oh Jesus, he’s an idiot.
“She’s like, a total babe, too. Same style as him, maybe slightly less cool because she doesn’t know what D&D is, but cool nonetheless.” The more Dustin rambles, the more Steve blanches.
It feels like a strangely endless cycle of going pale and simultaneously wanting to throw up.
“Um, are you ok, man? I thought you’d be happy for him. You guys are friends now, right? Oh, shit! Did I read the whole thing wrong? Forget I said anything!” Dustin scrambles.
Dustin didn’t read anything wrong, but Steve obviously did. GOD, UGH, SHIT.
“Uh, look. That’s great and all, but I’m kind of on the clock.” Steve gestures to his work vest, but it’s a flimsy excuse considering it’s just them in the store.
“I don’t understand you, Steve, Robin is literally-”
“Dustin,” Steve sighs, runs his hand over his forehead, doesn’t blame the kid for anything but does find him annoying at least five times out of ten, “go away.”
____
“-and there’s this whole section just for Tolkien, like special editions and shit, hardcovers, full-on…you okay?”
“Yeah, just, got a migraine coming on, I think.”
“Wait here.” Eddie says, comes back with a cold washcloth and some Aspirin and way too many blankets. He always does that: has too many things. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? I would’ve come to yours.”
Eddie brushes some of Steve’s sweaty hair off his forehead with the back of his hand, feeling for his temperature, but Steve grabs his wrist.
“Look, I should probably just head home, to be honest."
He should head home, because he wants to press Eddie into the couch and wipe the stupid concerned look off his face with a kiss. So much so, that he feels, suddenly, enormously stupid. Because he’s finally learning now; Love is unattainable, and it’s decidedly not him wrapping his arm around his high-school girlfriend’s shoulders, or steering her through the crowded halls with a hand on her hip.
It’s finding his gaze lingering on Eddie’s smile too much, wanting to see him so filled with joy he can’t sit still, wanting to press his thumbs into the creases of his forehead when he frowns in concentration and listen to all the stupid shit he says, because Steve is equally if not more likely to say stupid shit.
It’s a massive, immovable force, and it’s going to make him miserable.
“I could drive-”
“No. Eddie, look, I don’t even know why I came over, man,” Steve says, instantly regrets it when a look of sadness overshadows Eddie’s face, “I’ll, um, I’ll call you? When I get home?” Eddie just nods, moves back from where he’s bracketing Steve on the couch, lets him pass.
Steve doesn’t call.
____
Steve shuffles past the break room at noon, almost ready to clock out when he overhears Robin on the phone.
“-yeah, he’s fine. Listen, Eddie, he just…he needs some space. It doesn’t really have anything to do with you, specifically.” Steve just hears, “-yeah, I’ll tell him,” as he ducks back out past the register, shoves his vest into his locker first before he flicks off the lights.
If she knows he was listening, Robin doesn’t say anything about it when they leave, doesn’t even mention the phone call. Steve loves her, then, more than the fucking universe (still platonically, though).
____
Steve asks Leslie Cline out the next day. She turns him down.
____
When he pulls up to the D&D session on Friday night, he tells himself he’s going to stay in the car. No Robin today as a buffer, no anything.
The double doors open and the kids filter out into the night. He sees Eddie in the rearview mirror, pulling out a lighter as he checks to make sure they all clamber into their respective cars.
Max opens the door, crawls into Steve’s BMW and immediately starts in on him.
“What the fuck did you say to him?” She demands, wraps her arms around Steve’s headrest from behind.
“What are you talking about?” He frowns, pretends to have no idea.
“Eddie! We’re not leaving until you fix whatever you did!”
“You don’t even play D&D, Max.”
“Neither do you, but you’re here picking me up.”
“Fuck,” Steve breathes, “you’re not going to let this go, are you?” The silence answers for the both of them.
Lucas pulls the door open and steps in, asks Max if she’s staying over again and Steve takes the opportunity to clamber out, ignoring Lucas’ questioning protests behind him.
Eddie won’t even look at him when Steve slides down the wall beside him, tucks his chin into his knees and blows smoke out of his mouth sadly.
“I’m sorry.” Steve admits, lays his head on the bricks behind him, opens his mouth but-
“No, I-I’m sorry,” Eddie tenses up even more, if possible, pushes himself into the corner of the concrete stairs where they meet the wall.
It gives Steve odd deja-vu to the first time they hung out by themselves, when Eddie pressed himself into the corner of his couch, like he was trying to disappear into it. “For, um, you know. If I made you uncomfortable. I don’t- yeah.”
“Why would you make me uncomfortable?” Steve frowns, casts his mind out for a good answer, comes up with nothing.
“You know,” Eddie rubs at his neck, “I get, like, weirdly obsessed with people, sometimes.”
“If you crossed any boundaries, Eds, I would’ve let you know.” Steve laughs, dry and humourless.
Eddie knows Steve better than himself these days, would probably never cross a boundary Steve didn’t ask him to. And he doesn’t really know what he’s saying, now, actually. “I shouldn’t have, like, gotten mad at you the other day, about the migraine thing.”
Eddie nods.
“I just, it was a long day at work, no excuse, but Dustin told me about your girlfriend and stuff, and I guess I felt-”
“My girlfriend?” Eddie puts out his half-smoked cigarette on the ground, screws up his face in the dark, “What girlfriend?”
“Your-” Steve falters. He’s never actually seen this girl, come to think of it. “You don’t-”
“I think I’d know if I was suddenly heterosexual, Steve.” Eddie laughs a bit, and his body is unwinding slowly, his knees becoming looser, spine retracting, and Steve’s mental jaw drops but he tries to keep his expression neutral. “Maybe he was talking about Em. I had a friend visit from Indy, thought maybe Robin might like to meet her, but…uh, you know.”
“We’re a package deal.” Steve swallows, feels like a massive fucking asshole, and also really mad at Dustin and his seemingly 24/7 assumptions and madder at himself, still, for taking it at face value.
“Why were you-” Eddie starts, stops.
“Why was I what?” Steve scrapes his nails over the bumpy ground beneath them, bites his lip, hopes to god Eddie will say it because he's not sure if he's brave enough.
“Why were you so upset at the idea of me having a girlfriend? I mean, you could probably get any girl you wanted. Does it matter that much if I-”
“It wasn’t the girl I was upset about.” Steve rushes out, rips the proverbial bandaid off in one giant, fell swoop. “I wanted- I want you to be my new hobby.” Steve feels his face instantly flood with red, and he’s glad it’s dark outside because why the fuck did he say that.
“But like, full-time, rest of my life, like, committed hobby.” He’s making it worse, Jesus fuck.
“Are you- what is this metaphor?” Eddie’s laughing, full-body, snorting, falling into Steve’s side, and Steve feels his chest loosen in an instant.
“I don’t even know, but there’s more to it,” Steve turns to face Eddie head on, grasps his chin in his hand just to see Eddie’s breath stutter.
The horn honks on his car, and he hears something that sounds kind of like ‘hurry the fuck up’.
“Mine, 10,” he says, kisses Eddie’s forehead before he can stop himself and scampers back to his car wordlessly.
He sees Max smirking as they drive off. Little shit.
____
Eddie turns up ten minutes after ten.
“Maybe you’re just early,” he argues, depositing The Meaning of Life on the countertop.
“Yeah, maybe, if we weren’t in my house,” he crowds Eddie against the counter, gives in to the urge that overtook him all those months ago, wraps a curl around his finger and tugs until Eddie is swatting at him.
“Wow, okay big boy, fancy house, fancy car, fancy-” Steve kisses him because he’s selfish, but mostly because- no, he’s just selfish.
“Okay?” He asks, leans his forehead against Eddie’s when he pulls away.
“Yeah, more than.” Eddie pulls him back in, grabs Steve’s wrist and brings it to his waist, “I accept.” He says, and Steve pulls back, takes in his flushed cheeks and his heaving chest and just wants.
“What?” He goes in for another kiss, but Eddie pulls back again, keeps their lips centimetres apart, tilts his head like he might duck back in but just keeps talking.
“I accept. I’ll be your full-time, rest of your life,” Steve groans, pulls away and stares at the ceiling as Eddie gets louder, “like, committed hobby.”
“Oh my god.”
“I even beat knitting, would you look at that?” He leans back against the counter and Steve just knows this is going to be lorded over him his entire fucking life. Huh.
“That was- yeah, that was terrible, okay? I admit, I hang my head in shame, whatever you want,”
“Whatever I want?” Eddie smirks, and Steve moves closer again, slides his cold hands into Eddie’s belt loops to pull him closer and then slips them under his shirt.
“Yeah, whatever you-” Eddie grabs the tape off the counter and makes his way over to the couch, starts setting it up wordlessly.
The rest of his fucking life, oh my god.
____
Steve shakes the magic eight ball again, Eddie fast asleep, tucked under his chin.
The heating’s out in the trailer, so Steve had vowed to drive over with the ugliest sweater he could find in his own depressingly beige closet to wrap Eddie up in, only to have been startlingly humbled when Eddie teared up a bit at the knitted reindeer pattern around the collar.
“Do I deserve this?” He whispers, shakes the ball, waits for the little blue triangle to bob up.
He runs his fingers through Eddie’s hair, eyes the rings on the countertop, their clothes mingled together on the floor, his cassettes stacked beneath Eddie’s. Feels cool under the soft scattering of moonlight through the window.
‘Without a doubt’ it says.
____