Lying side by side atop a picnic table in the park is, as far as dates go, not too bad.
Not a date Steve would have taken a girl on, he acknowledges, but now he’s kind of wondering why not. Possibly, a girl who didn’t want to lie on top of a picnic table in the park wasn’t the right girl for him.
Eddie fits, on this here picnic table. Yes, it has splinters. But they have jackets, and jeans too, so no biggie. The weather’s nice. There are bugs, because they are outside. Where bugs live.
Also possibly, Steve is feeling a tad vindictive about past failed dates.
But back to Eddie. Eddie, whose curly hair spills across the warped wood beside Steve, whose snicker in his ear warms in all the right places, whose smile makes Steve smile back, helpless. Whose bent knee knocks into Steve’s at the punchline of every joke. Whose elbow was bumping into Steve’s constantly until Eddie finally wedged it under Steve’s arm into his ribs, and there it sits, firm, comforting. A sure thing.
But.
It’s still a picnic table, some girl’s voice snarks in his ear. In a park, where you do not have a picnic to eat. No tidy tubs of potato salad. No sandwiches. No sodas knocked over, no blanket to lie down on for some making out, no quaint trail of ants to scream about.
Hell, Steve didn’t even spring for a candy bar.
He finally gives in to his demons. Foregone conclusion. “Sorry, I know this is pretty lame.”
“Lame?”
“For a date.”
Eddie frowns. From this angle, the baseball diamond’s fence turned sideways behind him, his face looks different, though Steve can’t put his finger on how. “No, it’s good. It’s nice out here.”
Steve smacks at the hundredth gnat that tries to land in his ear. “Yeah. Real nice.”
Eddie’s smile is, as always, contagious. “Okay, fine. But really, it is good. Anything to get me out of the house right now. Jeff thanks you too, by the way.”
“Jeff?” Steve asks, lost.
“That’s why Chrissy is currently camped out in Gareth’s dorm and Sam is somehow managing to live in the library.” Eddie’s expression goes thoughtful. “My money’s on one of the movie rooms. Gare thinks it’s the computer lab, the one with all Apple computers?”
“It’s the biggest,” Steve offers, just along for the ride at this point.
“I’m the holdout, unfortunately. Can’t really bunk down at my job and, I’m sorry, but my days of sleeping in the back of that van are over. No one ever tells you about the absolute destruction advanced age inflicts upon your body, oh, my poor abused vertebrae,” Eddie finishes dramatically, a hand flung over his eyes.
“You’re twenty-one,” Steve says, bland, and Eddie makes an affronted sound. “But, wait. Why is everyone being displaced?”
Eddie blinks at him, then snorts. “Knew I skipped something. Okay, so, Jeff’s friend is in town. Partner. You know.”
“Oh.” He’d had no idea Jeff was seeing anyone.
“And Jeff never gets to see them—they live on the other side of the country, don’t ask me how those two make it work, theirs is a relationship born of eternal stardust and light—so when they do get together, being the superb and unparalleled friends that we are, we all try to clear out, give them some privacy. Trust me, it’s in everyone’s best interests.”
“Sexiled,” Steve says decisively, and Eddie lets out another much louder snort.
“I was trying to be delicate, but yeah. Leigh’s here starting—” He counts on his fingers. “Two days ago, staying till the end of the long weekend.”
“It’s only Saturday.” Monday is the day they all have off from school.
Eddie lets out a sigh. “Yeah. So I’ve been sneaking in as quietly as I can, as late as I can, and hoping I don’t overhear anything. So far, I have been...” He counts on his fingers again and makes a face. “Sixty percent successful. It’s actually a good thing I haven’t seen Jeff lately because I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.”
Steve is impressed. “Way to go, Leigh,” he decides, and Eddie bursts out laughing.
“No joke.”
“Well,” Steve says, and fidgets.
Eddie rolls his head to look at him. “Whuh?”
Down by their hips, Steve taps his fingers over Eddie’s, then draws back. “You could stay at mine?”
Eddie looks blank. “I could...?”
“Stay over?” Steve’s heart is thumping so hard. “I mean, it’d be cramped but it’d also be fine. With me.”
Again Eddie fails at the one thing required of him here: speaking. The crickets are very loud. Steve clears his throat. “We were going to spend the weekend together anyway, right? Just makes sense if you...”
“Yeah,” Eddie blurts, then pushes up onto his elbow. “Wait, are you sure? I don’t want to intrude, that wasn’t what I was gunning for with that story.”
Steve is so fond of this guy. “I know.”
“You—” A huff of air. Eddie glances around the park, at twilight falling between the trees, and finally back down at Steve. “You’d be okay with that. With me over for a night?”
“Two nights.” More, if you wanted. He hopes Eddie can’t hear his heart making this godawful ruckus.
“Yeah, Stevie.” Eddie’s smile is soft. “I’d love that. Thank you.”
f*ck it. Blanket or no, Steve is getting a kiss out of this.
He curls his fingers in Eddie's shirt and draws him insistently downward. Eddie goes without fuss.
**
So now Steve’s in the bathroom he shares with three of the other guys, attempting to get ready for bed but mostly standing at the sink and shuffling with his toothbrush.
He is possibly moving too fast?
He frowns harder at himself in the mirror. Is it moving too fast when there’s no sex involved? Usually it’s like, Don’t take them to bed too soon! You need time to get to know each other! And Steve’s taking Eddie to bed, but not for sex. He doesn’t think for sex, anyway.
“No,” he says, bracing on the sink and leaning forward until his nose is an inch from the mirror. “Not for sex.”
This isn’t like what he used to do. It isn’t. He is fine and this is fine, and everything will be fine.
He tries not to picture Robin, the face she’d make if she knew what was going on. Like, he’s not even going there in his mind, okay? He’s not hypothetically telling her because he Does Not Want To Hypothetically Know. Right now, her response is still this nebulous thing, and he can ignore even approaching it, because what he is doing is fine.
“You’re a grown man. You can have your boyfriend stay the night if you want.”
Of course he can. Eddie knows the situation. First one to know the situation and to take Steve at face value, actually.
It’s been extremely unsettling, to speak his truth and have it laughed off by whichever person he happens to be speaking it to. He’s still not used to that. Not something that ever happened to him, growing up. There wasn’t much disappointment in his early life. His parents pretty much gave him whatever he asked for. They were more passively involved as he got older, as they spent more and more time on his dad’s business trips, but his truths were his truths and no one told him he was full of sh*t.
Except Nancy, but that was in a different context.
Here’s what he’s come to realize, though.
When you do this stuff enough times, you kind of train yourself to enjoy it? Not the sex itself, though that isn’t usually bad. It generally feels good, after all, having an org*sm, the physical fire of nerve endings and flood of dopamine. It’s more the build-up that’s become an acquired taste. Like... it’s not good, exactly. But he’s learned to expect the weird and anxious tension, the vaguely off-putting sensations he feels, and it’s not exactly enjoyment that he’s feeling, but it’s normal, he’s familiar with it, and it leads to nicer stuff eventually.
So he kind of anticipates the weirdness now, he relishes the normality of this particular discomfort, and... Well, it took him a long time to figure out that maybe that’s not how it should feel.
Or rather, how he wants it to feel, for him. A brand new truth.
Each to their own.
It’s confusing. It’s even worse trying to explain it. That conversation with Robin was hell on outrageously squawking wheels as he intermittently hunted for words he didn’t know and hauled Robin back down to the carpet whenever she jumped up to go find that bitch and pummel her face! or to go call the hotline, do you want me to call the hotline, I can do it for you, it’s okay, I’m here—
He loves her so, so much. She is the best friend anyone could ever have in ten thousand years.
But she took some time to convince that he didn’t have some bizarre self-imposed form of Stockholm Syndrome, and he really isn’t looking forward to trying for round two with Eddie. Because surely Eddie’s going to want more information, just like Robin did. More justification for why Steve is the way he is.
He can’t boil it down to one revelatory moment. More like it was simmering inside him for unknown ages until all of a sudden, it was there like it had always been there and he’d, what, finally looked up and noticed? Been so out of touch with everything that the time before feels like it’s been covered over in used plastic wrap.
He feels so removed from his own life some days. But there are a couple of key moments that have bobbed to the forefront as reasons Steve Needs To f*cking Pay Attention To Himself Now.
Because one time, there was this party, and because Steve couldn’t not be the player, couldn’t not hop in bed with the girl of his dreams, couldn’t for once let himself be himself... a girl slipped off his diving board drunk and hit her head and also cut her hand wide open, and no one did anything until Steve came downstairs to get a drink for him and Nancy and to kind of climb back into his skin like he usually had to do after sex, and saw the blood, and Barbara Holland lying on her back at the side of the pool while people danced and drank and staggered around her, and then behind him, Nancy screamed, and then everything was chaos.
Thank God Barbara Holland hadn’t fallen into the pool, but instead off the other end onto the patio.
Barbara Holland was in a coma for over two months. Steve-and-Nancy didn’t survive it, the little white lies to cover up what they’d been doing, the assumption that Barbara Holland had been completely, if uncharacteristically, irresponsible that night, the way they both kind of let it stand. Until Nancy couldn’t anymore and came clean.
And it definitely wasn’t the first sexual experience that left a bad taste in Steve’s mouth, but it didn’t help.
She had to relearn how to read when she woke up. Barbara Holland. Her name always comes into his head fully formed, first and last. Like she’s not whole if he lets himself call her anything less formal.
To make matters worse, he chose to escape into sex afterward, which just tangled it up even tighter. Made it stranger, more off-putting. Alienating. A constant reminder that this was because he’d f*cked up somewhere but also that he didn’t know where, and he went through date after date, girl after girl, and some guys, all the way up into his second year of college if he’s being honest with himself (he’d talked the talk to Robin in year one, but not falling back into old habits took longer to catch on), trying to find that perfect combination of… endorphins? Personality? Intimacy? Whatever combination it took to make it feel good and right, take all of this stupid discomfort away.
So Steve could absolutely have Eddie wrapped around his pinky finger by taking him to bed, by laying him down and edging him to the brink of a breakdown. He could f*ck him hard, or soft, finger him until he can’t breathe and eat him out so good that Eddie forgets to get up and leave on the second morning.
He could let Eddie f*ck him instead, come while inside him, and that would hook him, Steve’s sure. He’s good at that. He knows it works.
How does he keep a guy as amazing as Eddie interested without sex, though? It’s always been Steve’s go-to, his ace in the hole. He knows what he’s doing and when he didn’t have anything else to keep a person interested, he had his body and what it could do for the other person.
It’s tempting. It would probably be more what Eddie’s expecting.
Steve’s done it before.
But the idea of backing up like that, now after he’s come so far, stuck to his guns like he has, and then the idea of the others in the house hearing it, or even just thinking that it had happened, using it to define him once again in their heads… This idea of who Steve Harrington is and what he wants out of life.
High school all over again. Makes him shudder.
A knock on the bathroom door. “Hey. Steve? You almost done?”
Eddie’s tone is low, uncertain. It strikes Steve for the first time how strange it must be for Eddie, here in this house. He only knows Gareth, who is not here, and otherwise, Steve. Who has been standing in the bathroom lost in thought for God knows how long.
A house full of frat kids who up until the middle of last year had worn their badge as campus terrors proudly.
f*ck. Is Eddie scared?
Steve hurriedly unlocks the door and steps out to find Eddie standing very close. He’s barefoot on the thick rug, wearing a worn Tool shirt with a freaky double eyeball on it and a pair of nondescript boxers. His hair is tucked behind his ears. No eyeliner, no jewelry. He looks young and somehow smaller. Soft, above all.
“Hey,” Steve murmurs. There’s no one else in the hall but he can hear voices downstairs, and music from beyond one of the closed bedroom doors. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to leave you alone.”
Eddie gives him a winning smile. He clasps his hands behind his back and leans forward, putting Steve in mind of a kid with a secret. “S’okay, Stevie. You’re here now.”
A second later, the playfulness is gone; Eddie reaches up to lay a fingertip between his brows.
“What?” Steve wonders, a little cross-eyed.
“Frown lines.” Eddie smooths the skin, and flickers down over the tip of Steve’s nose as he pulls back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
He heads back down the hall before Eddie can pursue it, leads him through the door into his bedroom.
It’s not a big room—those are reserved for double, sometimes triple, occupancy—but it is Steve’s alone and that’s a prize. Perks of being upper class and in frat leadership. It’s not even Hargrove’s old room, thank God. Steve doesn’t think they’ve ever gotten the smell of his particular cologne out of that rug.
No, this one is entirely Steve’s, up on the top floor with a slanted ceiling that follows the roofline outside. It’s kind of hot in the summer but no one else stays in the summer anyway so Steve can sleep wherever, and it’s so cozy in the winter.
Steve’s bed is a double, which is plenty of room for just him but is going to be close quarters for two grown dudes. Eddie’s been in here already, obviously, his stuff is on Steve’s desk chair in the corner. He is as aware as Steve is of what the sleeping arrangements are.
He doesn’t seem bothered, though. So maybe Steve can steal a little of that unbotheredness for himself.
Steve brought the boxers and ratty shirt he slept in into the bathroom and Eddie had gotten dressed while he was in there fretting, so there’s not much else to do but hit the sack. There’s some weight to going to bed tonight that wasn’t there before. Steve feels like his bedroom is narrowing down, losing its edges to the darkness where the bedside lamp doesn’t reach. It’s just him, and Eddie, and thick blankets.
“Just gonna warn you,” Eddie ventures, looking wary as he tugs on socks at the edge of the mattress. “I’m probably going to get too hot in the middle of the night and pull my shirt off. Socks too.”
Steve shrugs. “Okay.”
“Always losing the damn things.” Eddie climbs into one side of the bed as Steve climbs into the other. “I kick them down to the end of the bed and then I can’t find them in the blankets.”
“So you’re saying you’ll be paying me for accommodations in socks.”
“Whether I like it or not.” His eyes brighten. “Whether you like it or not.”
Steve thinks about it. “I prefer reinforced heels.”
“Coming right up!” Eddie crows, flopping onto the bed and kicking his feet into the air.
It always feels so good to laugh with him.
The bed is a snug fit. But it’s also nice. Eddie tucks up behind him without discussion, slides an arm round Steve’s waist so that his hand rests over his belly, and fits his bent knees behind Steve’s.
Oh. It’s been a while since Steve was held.
He might take a moment, too long, wallowing in the unexpected gift.
“…ing tomorrow anyway?”
“Huh?” sh*t, he totally zoned out. He’s got a hand wrapped around Eddie’s wrist. Should he let go? Maybe they can sleep like that.
“I said,” Eddie chuckles, biting the shell of Steve’s ear, “what are we doing tomorrow anyway?”
Steve wants to touch the spot where Eddie’s teeth nipped. He fights a smirk. “Oh, I think that’s a question for Tomorrow Eddie. Stop stealing his moves.”
“Dick,” Eddie says affectionately, and blows a raspberry behind Steve’s ear. Steve yelps. So Eddie does it again, naturally, then rests his cheek against the tender skin there. “You’re really not going to tell me?”
Steve turns off the lamp and wriggles more securely into the crook of Eddie’s body. “Thought you liked living on the edge.”
“Fine,” Eddie huffs, “keep your secrets. Just so you know, though, I left Jeff a note. It’s on Chrissy’s Lisa Frank notebook paper right in the center of the fridge. Maybe it won’t happen this weekend, but one day he’s going to have to come out of his sex cave to eat and when he does, he’s going to see that I’m not there and tell the cops the king of frats murdered me.”
“Plenty of time to get away,” Steve murmurs, hugging Eddie’s arm closer. Eddie hums agreement into the nape of his neck.
**
Steve wakes up in comfort.
He wouldn’t say he didn’t dream, exactly, but he dreamt nice, calm things. None of the usual anxiety dreams of being driven around by Maxine Mayfield, one of the kids he used to sit for, trying again and again to crawl through to the front seat and take the wheel as she careens through nighttime Hawkins, but unable to fit all his limbs between the seats. Or the one where he and Dustin Henderson are trying to find the cat Dustin lost when he was in eighth grade, but they keep walking and walking along the railroad tracks and never get anywhere, and Steve is running out of treats.
No, this morning he wakes from a deep sleep in stages. He realizes he’s awake. He realizes he’s deliciously warm. He realizes he can feel arms around him, the rise and fall of a breathing, dreaming body against his.
He realizes it’s Eddie and he smiles.
They’ve turned over in the night. Now Steve is lying on his back with Eddie half on his chest, the blankets slumped past their shoulders. The air in the room is close and still. Peaceful. Steve is loath to break the fragile silence by moving.
Eddie does move, a tiny stretch before slipping back down, nuzzling into Steve’s chest. He lets out a half-whimper, half-snore, and it’s wonderful. God, how long has it been? How long since Steve even took anyone to his bed? Longer still since anyone in the bed stayed until morning. Eddie smells like mint and faded aftershave. Steve wants to stay here forever, wants to drop back, to drowse, except—
Oh. Oh, no.
Eddie’s hard.
He’s pressed full on against Steve’s hip, and every tiny twitch as he sleeps makes it more glaring.
Oh, crud. Okay.
Steve inches toward the side of the bed, but he only gets a little way before Eddie’s arm tightens around him and draws him back. Right back. Like, all the way.
Steve flushes hot, head to toes.
“Hm?” from Eddie.
“You’re, um.” Good morning, he should be saying, sleep okay? Not this! He can’t find the words.
Luckily, even half asleep, Eddie figures it out and releases him with a soft sound. “Oh, sorry.”
Steve’s side is cold.
“Sorry, baby,” Eddie mumbles again and rolls over, face into the pillow. His breathing evens out again almost immediately.
Steve is left blinking. Was Eddie even fully awake?
Well... It doesn’t matter. Steve gets out of bed and heads for the bathroom to dunk his head under cold water.
By the time he gets back—again after taking too long—Eddie is up and rubbing at his face with one fumbling hand. He looks bleary and confused, a disgruntled puppy, and Steve can’t help snickering.
He sinks back down on the bed next to him. “So grumpy. What gives?”
“Mornings,” Eddie grumbles, slumping into Steve’s side. Steve tucks an arm around him, listens to Eddie’s grateful sigh. Tries not to look down at where the blankets lump across Eddie’s lap.
“You wanna go back to sleep?” he murmurs into Eddie’s hair.
Eddie sighs again and straightens with a yawn. “No. No, let’s… greet the f*cking day or whatever.”
He leaves Eddie in the bathroom with the news that he’s going down to the kitchen to start the coffee, gets Eddie’s muffled yep through the door, and pads down two flights of stairs. The house is its typical Sunday morning quiet, the old staircase creaking comfortingly under each step.
The front end of the house is all stately timbers and Victorian shutters, but someone wealthy (could be anyone in the great annals of the frat’s history, the way this chapter pulls in old money) decided to build a third story, slap on a ground level annex, and push out the back end to make a sunroom with floor-to-ceiling windows, all in the style of an early 1920s luxury liner.
The crowning achievement is the bizarre balcony they stuck up over the porch, made of rounded stucco and gleaming metal railings to grandly display the giant Tau Ep letters.
“What the f*ck?” is the general first sentence out of every pledge’s mouth on their inaugural approach to the building. Steve gets a lot of sad*stic joy in watching them gape at the outrage that is the front façade.
But the kitchen is still the original cozy masterpiece with loads of light. It has three fridges, two stovetops with convection ovens underneath, and—count ‘em—five coffee machines, two with espresso capabilities.
There’s already a pot on, so someone must be up. Steve gets out sugar and milk while the thing finishes percolating, pours two mugs, and sits down at the long wooden table in the center of the room. And he thinks.
Not long into his musing, the creaking staircase begins its serenade, and before another minute has passed, Eddie pads through the doorway, looking around. He slips up beside Steve, still standing; his hand alights on Steve’s back.
“You okay? I’m sorry. About earlier.”
“Eh,” Steve says, “you were asleep.”
“Still.”
Steve doesn’t know what else to say. He takes Eddie’s hand up and presses his lips to his knuckles. Eddie’s fingers squeeze around his. He leans down, meets Steve’s mouth in a sweet kiss.
A whistle, low and somehow un-invasive. “Good morning to you,” Patrick McKinney says, plunking down at the table with a bowl of cereal and a grin. Junior, Business major (which is where Steve met him before he himself switched to Education), soccer goalie, in basketball during the season, frat VP and, finally, the responsible party for the coffee pot.
Eddie breaks the kiss fast. He remains at Steve’s side, but his posture is immediately defensive. Steve doubts Patrick notices. Steve can feel it though, taut against his shoulder, Eddie’s breathing quick, shallow, and above all, silent.
But Patrick just waves at Eddie cheerfully and digs into his cereal.
Patrick’s a good guy.
“Sorry if we…” Steve lifts his mug, gestures to Eddie’s, but Patrick shakes his head.
“Nah, it’s cool. Had mine already, go for it.”
Steve likes the frat house best in the mornings: it’s like it’s slumbering along with its occupants, filling slowly with yellow sunlight and warming back to wakefulness like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. Everyone who is awake is dopey and sleep-fuzzed, toddling around in PJs like little kids and scrubbing sleep from their eyes.
It’s peaceful these days. He loves that Eddie is here to see it like this.
But maybe Eddie’s not so comfortable? Steve thinks back to the night before, the hesitant tap on the bathroom door. The way he’d gone tense when Patrick entered the kitchen.
Before that, he’d been soft and open, folding down into Steve. Nuzzling his cheek.
What Steve’s still worried about is not their closeness, but the way they woke up. And aside from his brief apology when he came in, Eddie truly does not seem bothered by what happened.
So, a hiccup. And it’s fine, really. Steve’s woken up with a hard-on many a time, spent most of his teenage and college mornings on a hurried jerk-*ff before jumping into the shower and getting ready for school.
Eddie is young and healthy, and inclined toward sex. It’s no big shock.
It’s fine.
Because now, in the time between Eddie going into the bathroom and Eddie sitting down beside him, Steve has come up with a plan. He does have another tool in his arsenal, and it’s rarely failed him.
He’s not rolling in dough or anything, not since his folks gently eased him free of their financial support—his mom still gets on his dad’s case about charging Steve a low rent to live in the family home after high school, but Steve is grateful to his dad for making the transition to fending for himself much less jarring—but he has a part time job outside of classes and he’s good at saving. Every month he sets aside money strictly for fun stuff, which up until now has consisted of overnight trips with Robin to cities they want to visit on their scant free weekends and an established movie night at the frat.
He knows he’s still privileged because the one thing his parents did not hand over to him was his college tuition. But the money he’s saved is all his, hard-earned.
He takes Eddie out to breakfast.
It’s early still, the pancake house fairly quiet with a single server managing the tables. They sit side by side in a booth under a spill of sunlight and order a tall stack, a plate of maple sausage, and scrambled eggs and hashbrowns to share. Eddie wakes up fully with another cup of coffee in him, and by the time the server comes by with their check, he’s mid-story about his band’s first paying gig, a little hidey-hole outside of town that has now become a regular haunt.
“I got it,” Steve says, presenting the debit card he had ready, and Eddie’s hands falter where they dig through his pockets for his wallet. Steve smiles at him. “I’ve got today. Please? Let me treat you.”
Eddie nods, slowly at first, but then with a smile blooming sweet across his face. “Thank you, baby.” He leans in, pressing solidly against Steve. “As long as you let me get tomorrow?”
“Uh, yeah.” Steve swallows, turning back to the server. “Yeah, ‘course.” Because he will let Eddie get tomorrow. Now, he’ll have to.
That’s okay, though; he still has all of today to pamper his guy, show him a good time a la Steve Harrington.
Luckily, there are a ton of things to do in this college town and its environs, and Steve has tried pretty much all of them: a pointed get-to-know-you effort when he and Robin first arrived, Steve still reeling from the move, missing his folks, a stranger to his freshman-year roommate (a poli sci major named Trevor), and not sure what to do with himself when Robin had orientations and he didn’t. Once he’d successfully pledged, his time was eaten up by frat activities and getting to know his new brothers, but until then, he’d had too much empty down time, and he’d filled it by wandering around his new town.
Steve knows exactly where he wants to take Eddie.
They drive to the lake and wobble onto a swan-shaped paddle boat, which makes Eddie cackle until Steve slaps a second baseball cap onto his head to protect his nose from sunburn.
“Go Beavers,” Steve smirks to Eddie’s indignant squawk.
“Only one of us here has trucked with beavers, Harrington,” Eddie fires back, so Steve starts paddling while Eddie is still standing, sending him flailing into his seat with a colorful insult about Steve’s ancestors. The dock operator yells at them to put on their damn life jackets, already.
Once they’re fully equipped for water sports (and Eddie absolutely comments about that), the ride descends into a competition over who can paddle faster—which makes no sense seeing as their foot paddles are all attached to the same axle, but they do make it across the lake faster than anyone else on the water. They park in the shade of a drooping willow and make out lazily for half an hour. Steve pulls the hat from Eddie’s head, winds his hands into that curly heat next to his scalp, revels in the way Eddie pushes full-bodied against him, all lean lines and sunscreen smell. It reminds him of the way Eddie held him in his bed.
They take so long that they have to really book it back across the lake in order to return the boat on time, but under Steve’s hat, Eddie is glowing and Steve feels all fizzy and happy, so it’s worth it.
When they get out of the boat, Eddie turns for the parking lot, but Steve cups his elbow, tugging him over to the kite stand instead. He rents them a kite in the shape of a fanged, buggy-eyed bat, and they spend the next half hour trying to get it airborne, Eddie tripping backwards down the beach, unspooling the line while Steve jumps as high as he can to launch it into the sky.
“I haven’t flown a kite since I was six,” Eddie says breathlessly as he plays out the line. Steve’s caught up with him now, their bat safely riding the updrafts. He shades both their eyes so they can watch it swoop and duck overhead.
“Me neither,” Steve admits, and Eddie abandons the line in favor of gripping Steve’s nape and kissing him on the mouth. The bat nosedives into the pebbles. Neither of them notice.
They’re overheated after, duh, so Steve takes them to the movie theater for some quality time with central air and ice-cold sodas.
That’s when it starts going downhill for Steve. Because it’s a B-level adventure thriller, yes, but it’s also extremely sexually charged between the two leads, right up until it’s not charged at all, because the two leads are making distraught, recently-injured-by-bad-guys love in the soft lilac of a tropical nighttime.
Beside Steve, Eddie snorts at a particularly emotional exclamation from the female half of the couple, and slurps loudly from his soda. He presses his mouth to Steve’s ear. “Oh, baby, take me,” he simpers, making Steve choke on his Reese’s Pieces. “Now, hot stuff, before they find us in this conveniently furnished beach hut!”
Steve snorts too, overcome with the breathless pitch of Eddie’s performance, and they get irritated shushes from surrounding patrons. Eddie busses Steve’s cheek, then settles back into his seat with their fingers tangled on the armrest.
But of course, led right down the path, Steve’s mind backslides into that morning: feeling Eddie hard against him and twitching away from it until he woke Eddie up.
People wake up together and have sex, it’s no mystery. Hell, he remembers doing it. And now he just can’t because the things that he taught himself were supposed to feel right feel all wrong, and here, here is Eddie again, not able to do what comes naturally, what he probably anticipates, because most people do. It’s basically the way of this world.
And Steve needs to not be preoccupied with this while he’s treating Eddie to a day out. He was doing fine until now.
They grab dinner at the local pizza-by-the-slice—thick, greasy, delicious deep dish slabs with stringy, stringy cheese. Steve gets plenty of opportunities to thumb a wayward strand away from Eddie’s lips, only to have Eddie chase him with his tongue. He finally gets Steve’s thumb into his mouth and lets out an exaggerated moan as he sucks on it.
Steve of course ruins it by making some sort of face.
Eddie lets him go immediately, clearing his throat. He grabs for the napkin pile on the table and busily wipes grease from his chin. “Hey, you want the rest of my Hawaiian? Think I’m good with the pepperoni.”
“Sure.” Steve takes Eddie’s slice, face burning, wishing he’d left Eddie’s mouth alone. What exactly had he been expecting? He’d liked the flick of Eddie’s tongue on the pad of his thumb. He’d known where it was headed, and still.
Okay. Get yourself together, Harrington.
They return to the frat to change clothes and then drive back into town. He has one more thing on the menu tonight, and he parks and leads Eddie there hand in hand, lacing his fingers between Eddie’s as they weave down the sidewalk. Eddie bumps his shoulder with a ready smile; it widens when he realizes which venue they’re headed for.
Though the students tend to roll in and out of all that the town has to offer regardless of sexual preference, The Silo is the only explicitly queer dance club, and it’s always hopping. They have different DJs every week, acoustic on Thursday nights, and even a poetry reading once a month. Having grown up in a less welcoming town, Steve loves walking in there and seeing girls Frenching in the corners, guys grinding up close and dirty on the dance floor, throuples and other combinations piled into booths with glasses in hand. He likes seeing people like him laughing, enjoying themselves without a care in the world. The bartenders are nice, throwing together virgin co*cktails with vigor (except on Twenty-One And Over Tuesdays), and the vibe is just… chill.
Steve pays the cover charge for them both, caught by the way Eddie twists his hair in front of his mouth in his periphery, and then they’re in, deluged by thumping music and disco lights. It’s warm and humid; they make their way through the crowd, Steve at Eddie’s back with his arms looped around Eddie’s waist. Eddie’s arm twists around behind him, thumb in the beltloop at the small of Steve’s back, and Steve feels giddy. Feels eyes on them and relishes it.
They start on the dance floor, falling easily into the flow of other bodies, jumping and tugging at each other by wrists and fingers and shirt sleeves. Steve starts to sweat almost immediately, can see the moisture glinting at Eddie’s temples. By song number five, Eddie lifts the hair off his neck, fanning himself, and Steve reaches for the tendril still slicked to his throat with sweat. Eddie sticks his tongue out at him, and Steve darts in, pressing a kiss to the corner of that soft, open mouth.
With a whimper, Eddie abandons his hair, flinging both arms around Steve’s shoulders and hauling him close for a real kiss.
A moment later, they get jostled almost off their feet and they break apart, jumping around again and laughing.
“Want something to drink?” Steve shouts, and Eddie nods, so they head for the bar. Steve leaves Eddie standing outside the press of people and squeezes his way in, orders them each a co*ke to start. He’s about to ask Eddie if he wants something ‘harder’ when all of a sudden, a guy is there, plastered to Eddie’s side with a huge grin on his handsome face.
“Hey, man, here to fool around?” the guy asks cheerfully, and what the hell?
“Oh—hey.” Eddie’s eyes get very wide, his mouth hanging open. He’s leaning back, just the top half of him because of the guy’s arm around his waist. “Hey, Dev.”
Eddie disentangles himself in the next breath, and Dev’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Hey?” the guy, Dev, says again. He’s taller than Steve and Eddie, and he’s wearing a tight green button-down that’s mostly open over dark jeans. Tons of bracelets, a delicate necklace charm in the cup of his throat, and the ear Steve can see is rife with studs and hoops, chains connecting each to the other. He’s got an eyebrow piercing over sharp, beautiful eyes, he’s kind of spindly like Eddie, and he’s sporting the most immaculately shaped beard that Steve’s ever seen.
He’s also drenched, his throat enticingly slick and his shirt clinging to his skin.
Steve steps closer to Eddie without a damn thought in his head except for this blaring Danger! Danger! bouncing front to back of his skull, and Eddie, thank goodness, meets him halfway.
“Uh, Dev.” Eddie’s arm snakes around Steve’s hip, fingers gripping his waist. “This is Steve, my boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Dev blinks twice and, to Steve’s surprise, smiles all over again. “Oh, right on. Sorry.”
“Nah, man, it’s fine,” Eddie parries, waving his hand, which Steve notices for the first time—in context—is just as glimmery with jewelry as Dev’s ear, as Dev’s wrists. Dev’s eyes have the same kohl outline, if thicker and more decorative. Dev’s style is a lot like Eddie’s in general, minus the rips and band t-shirts, but then again, Eddie’s wearing neither rips nor a band t-shirt tonight, not at this club.
Dev’s grin is somehow infectious, makes Steve want to smile back. Steve does not like it.
“Stevie, this is Dev.”
“Hey, man!” Dev reaches out a hand and Steve takes it more out of habit than desire. Dev’s handshake is firm; he gives Steve’s arm a pump and lets go. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Steve echoes.
He knows what’s supposed to happen, and he kind of wants to do it: get physical, hang all over Eddie. Stake his claim. Plenty of people here have no qualms about showcasing exactly what they plan to get up to once they’re out of the public eye.
And maybe Eddie’s not one for overt public displays anyway. But it’s still different. Yet again, Steve is confronted by the fact that, with him, Eddie can’t do what he might normally do when he goes out to clubs, bars, whatever.
“You, uh.” Eddie looks wrongfooted, keeps glancing back and forth from Steve to Dev, though he does stay completely wrapped around Steve, his hip almost behind Steve’s to get closer. “You want to join us for a drink?”
“No, you’re good, I gotta take a leak anyway,” Dev says, still looking happy enough to power a small city. “Just glad I saw you, Ed. Steve. Have fun!”
With a wave, he disappears toward the bathrooms.
“Friend of yours?” Steve manages, and Eddie nods.
“We met my first year. Classical Music Theory.”
There was literally nothing weird about any of it. Nothing intrusive, no posturing. None of the one-upmanship Steve was familiar with long before his first two years at the frat. It was relaxed and cool, over and done with in seconds.
But—Steve’s no longer a wide-eyed kid. He can tell when two people have had sex before.
His chest clenches up. It feels like the constriction he connects with sex, but it’s not only that.
He figures now’s as good a time as any to find out. “Were you guys together? Dating?”
Eddie shakes his head vigorously, even slices both hands through the air in front of his chest. “No, no way. It wasn’t, um, that kind of relationship.”
“Oh.” Steve is relieved before he really gets what Eddie’s saying, and then, “Oh.”
“Yep.” Eddie looks away, and his shoulders rise and fall in an audible huff. Steve can see the flush of his cheeks even with the crazy lighting. “Trust me, we were not that.”
Steve thinks he’s supposed to feel better. He doesn’t, and he’s not sure why.
**
Steve first had sex when he was sixteen, at one of his swim teammate’s parties, before they all started happening at Steve’s much larger and emptier house instead. Georgia Quinn was in his year, on the cheer squad, and went by Georgie. She laughed a lot even when they were fumbling together in one of the guest bedrooms upstairs, helped him with the condom and with getting her ready. Told him what she liked, asked him if she was doing okay by him, and it turned out fine.
Georgie had only ever done it once before and Steve had never done it at all. It wasn’t great, wasn’t stars exploding behind his eyes and mountaintops singing or... singing on the mountaintop? No, he was pretty sure it was the other one, or, but. Whatever, not the point.
The point was that Steve had kind of thought, Hey, it could have been a lot worse, right?
Seriously, though, what if he’d left her unsatisfied? She could have laughed at him instead of with him. One of them could have cried, or thrown up, or stopped things halfway through.
So it was cool. And as he went on through high school, dated more girls and eventually a guy or two, learned his way around bodies and preferences and what others liked, it kind of became his mantra:
It’s cool; it could be a lot worse.
He’s heard of worse. Heard girls talking loudly in the hallways about how bad their boyfriends were at getting them off, how sometimes they just faked it and got it over with so they could go the f*ck to sleep already, they had track practice in the morning. He’s heard his mom and dad yelling at each other for weeks on end, on both sides: Are you stepping out on me? Why are you never home? Am I not enough for you? He’s seen longstanding relationships bust up in public and heard guys sharing stories in the locker rooms like trading baseball cards, like the girls they’d been with didn’t even have names, were just, like, vagin*s and massive boobs on legs.
So, not always feeling it, stressing over whether he’s doing all the right things between his partner’s legs, having to keep his mind from wandering while getting a blowj*b?
It could always be a lot worse.
After Barbara Holland—after Nancy—he’d briefly convinced himself the fiasco that took place in his backyard wasn’t the norm. Yeah, they’d f*cked up. He’d f*cked up. But it was a bad situation and he should have been paying better attention as host.
It’d be okay if he was just another guest. When it wasn’t his house where sh*t could go wrong, or his watch on which people could get hurt.
Until a house party in his second year of college, when Steve, in the heyday of his keg-stand supremacy and high off of all the hot sorority girls who wanted little ol’ him—who cared if what they wanted him for wasn’t quite the way he wanted them to want him?—and Steve had been a little crossfaded, diligently going down on a Sigma Chi sister in his room, a young woman who had been moaning so loud he thought she might have been faking, which made him even more anxious, and Billy f*cking Hargrove had crashed his car into a light pole outside trying to run down a bunch of terrified pledges.
A joke! f*ck’s sake, I wasn’t going to hurt them, you f*cking pigs! Hargrove had been slurring as the police carted him off, and Steve had gone down to the precinct the next day and told the cops exactly what it was that Tau Ep President William Peter Hargrove thought was appropriate behavior toward the brothers in the house, especially the ones who weren’t white enough, and had gotten Billy’s ass expelled from the school for discriminatory acts.
He’d also landed his house and all the other houses in the middle of investigations that got all but Tau Ep, Theta Eta Mu, and one sorority, Psi Delta Lambda, disbanded for hazing and exclusionary behavior. The only reason Tau Ep kept its charter at all was the rest of the guys rallying around Steve (the ones who hadn’t been forcefully ejected from Greek campus life anyway), and Steve promising to take on the mantle that had been stripped from Hargrove.
His dad, also a Tau Ep but at a completely different university, had praised him for standing up for his chapter, for pushing for change. He’d offered to contribute money to help the house’s rehabilitation, but Steve had successfully begged him not to. Didn’t want the attention, or any accusations of nepotism, as Robin put it. They’d just gotten an influx of bewildered kids from the disbanded frats, and Steve, by the grace of God, was still under the radar as the whistleblower. He wanted to keep it that way. They were in enough hot water without Harrington Senior, Tau Ep governing council member, riding in on a white horse.
Steve started regular community service, made it a requirement for membership to the house. Every quarter, a portion of their dues were given to a charity of their choice, voted on in monthly house meetings. Older members took a more serious role in mentoring their younger counterparts.
That was also about the time that Steve quit sex cold turkey.
He didn’t particularly want it, he thought, sitting on the floor of the shower as water drummed onto his head, so why was he having it? Just for a little closeness that always left him feeling unsettled after, craving something he couldn’t name? None of his partners ever wanted a serious relationship, were fairly up front about the casual nature of their activities, and for a long time Steve had told himself he was fine with that, but he knew he wasn’t.
The closest he’d gotten was with Nancy. He missed what he’d had with Nancy before it all went to sh*t. Sure, there was sex. But there was also affection, tenderness and warmth.
If you keep sacrificing what you need so other people can have what they want from you, Robin had said carefully one night when they were both wrapped in blankets on her couch, you’re always going to be unhappy. And then she’d apologized profusely until she was snotting up and Steve had hugged her and told her it was okay, she was right.
Steve’d had a lot of sex in his life and no singing mountains, and it was no longer fine. He was finally going to face up to that and deal with it. Push for more change.
**
It takes him a long time to fall asleep Sunday night.
Eddie is curled up against his back again, the in-out of his breathing steady over Steve’s throat. They showered one by one before bed, got the club off them, and Eddie smells sweet and clean, like Steve’s conditioner, his damp hair piled above them on the pillow. One of his feet is stuck between Steve’s calves, fits there so neatly. Steve feels every twitch as Eddie dreams.
The wind picked up about an hour ago, buzzing around the eaves, and Steve can hear the faint tinkle-chink of the windchimes on the neighbor’s back porch. He thinks of the bat kite, how high it would go now. He’s warm under the comforter, Eddie’s heat radiating up his spine.
Eddie hadn’t said a thing more about Dev for the rest of the night. Had seemed to forget about it altogether as the hours whirled on, as they danced and shouted over the music, as they ducked out of the club and hit up the all-night ice cream parlor. He was nothing but easy smiles and heavy eyes when Steve drove them back to the house, turned partway against the door so he could gaze at Steve in the driver’s seat. Sweaty and loose, and looking like a wet dream.
They’d skirted the living room, where some of the guys were watching something with screams and chainsaws, downed full glasses of water side by side in the kitchen, then dragged themselves up the stairs.
And now they’re here, freshly washed and tucked into Steve’s bed, Eddie wearing Steve’s Ben & Jerry’s shirt with cows on it and a pair of Steve’s boxers, and the rest of the house has long gone quiet, and still Steve cannot sleep.
He rubs a finger over Eddie’s wrist, following the bump and fall of bone and the faint line of tendon. Eddie’s hands without his rings are fragile-looking. He has a small spider tattooed on the back of his hand, right below the base of his thumb. Not a scary spider. An industrious spider, Eddie had said, chin tucked over Steve’s neck to watch while Steve traced the design in the lamplight.
Eddie had kissed Steve’s hand a few seconds later, brought the heel of Steve’s palm to his mouth and pressed his lips there.
In the darkness of his bedroom, thinking about the heat of Eddie’s mouth on his palm, Steve gets another idea.
It’s... Ugh, it’s totally a middle-of-the-night idea, where everything is only half real, half in shadow. The concept feels outlandish, but also strangely doable.
Still, it makes his stomach clench. He doesn’t like it nearly as much as he liked treating Eddie to a day out.
He doesn’t even know if he can commit to something like what he’s considering.
He’ll need to think it through. Not now, not in the middle of the night.
**
Steve wakes up alone, wrapped snugly in his blanket with Eddie’s pillow cool to the touch. His clock says it’s way later than his usual, but Steve hadn’t drifted off until well after four. He sits up, feeling off-kilter.
Eddie’s bag is still there on his chair, the drapes pulled tightly against the daylight.
Had Eddie woken up hard again and left before Steve could notice anything untoward? It should make him feel grateful, but it just makes his stomach sink.
He wants to wake up with Eddie, wants to share body heat and feel Eddie’s arms around him. Maybe kiss him first thing, even before they’ve brushed their teeth. Feel how Eddie’s limbs twist and shiver when he stretches that delicious bone-popping cat stretch.
Two mornings in a row, and that hasn’t happened, because of Steve.
“sh*t,” he mutters, and sits up. Presses his forehead and wills the whisper of a stress headache back.
It’s okay. It’s not like Eddie ditched him; he’s somewhere in this house, and it’s ten o’clock so he’s probably gone foraging for food before he starves to death or something equally dramatic. The thought makes Steve smile, but his humor is short-lived.
He just wants to be normal. To have normal. To stop getting in his own way.
That idea from the night before creeps back in.
He hears the top flight of steps creaking, and a moment later, the door squeals open. Eddie comes in balancing two steaming cups of coffee.
“Hey, baby,” he greets Steve with a smile and a co*ck of his head.
“Hey. Hi.” He’s in a pair of Steve’s sweats now, a grocery bag slung over one shoulder that puzzles Steve until he sets the coffees down on the bedside table and pulls the bag open, removes napkin-wrapped bagels that have been toasted and slathered with cream cheese, and two bananas.
“Sorry, this was all I could find.” Eddie settles down on the bed again and butterflies his legs. He hands Steve a bagel and one of the coffees.
He’s in a different shirt too, Steve notices. Maybe he had woken up with a problem, had gone to the bathroom to take care of things and then had to change. sh*t.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie presses his thumb on the frown lines between Steve’s brows. He’s got a dab of cream cheese smeared at the corner of his mouth. Steve wants to wipe it away. He can’t bring himself to try, not here in his bedroom, so close to where Eddie slept and got up and left.
“Nothing. Just, you know. Tired.”
“Mm.” Eddie continues to caress his brow. “Long day yesterday.”
It had been a lot. “I’m sorry,” Steve says, wondering if he’d overdone things again, but Eddie shakes his head.
“I had a lot of fun,” he says, sinking into Steve’s side. He snakes the arm not holding his bagel around Steve’s waist.
“Thanks for breakfast. Everyone up downstairs?”
“A few. I met, let’s see… Patrick, again. Guy named Sean, guy named Luis. A Kris? They, them?”
“Ah, yeah.” One of the kids from Kappa Nu, who had taken a good three months to stop looking hunted whenever one of the guys rounded a corner.
“And then there was one who was just back from a run.” Eddie shakes his head. “Total psychopath, steer clear.”
Steve snorts. “That’ll be Mack. You know, a lot of us are into sports.”
“You don’t say?” Eddie quips, expression as flat as the plains.
“Uh huh. For instance, I’m a fair hand at baseball.”
“Well, that’s alright. You guys have the best-looking legs in uniform.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad.”
“And I am grateful.” Eddie snugs Steve closer, pecks him on the cheek. And it’s not a first-thing-in-the-morning kiss, but maybe that’s okay.
~fin~
