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“What happened to your van?” Steve asks. He’s got the windows rolled down already, although now that he’s not moving the heat seems enormous, the late-summer air sticky and oppressive. The road is empty this time of day, and heat waves shimmer off the pavement.
Eddie looks sweaty and out of sorts in an Iron Maiden t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off. It’s a size too big, but the thin material is plastered to his torso with sweat. Still, the grin he aims at Steve seems cheerful enough, so hopefully Steve isn’t going to have to kick somebody’s ass about this.
This being Eddie Munson ambling down the side of the highway in the blazing July heat with a ratty backpack slung over one shoulder and his thumb out in the universal hitchhiker's appeal. He looks a little startled to see Steve, but not displeased. His hair is pulled back in a wildly frizzy ponytail, which he flips over his shoulder as he approaches the car to lean in the open window with one of those smiles that Steve’s never quite been able to get a read on: genuine but wry, like there’s some kind of private joke there.
Maybe that should get on his nerves, but it doesn’t. Eddie’s a harmless mystery. Steve likes that about him. Like Eddie, for that matter, more than he ever expected to.
“The king’s chariot approaches,” he intones grandly. Then he props his hip against the door and pulls a face. “Hey, Steve.”
“So, you want a ride, or what?”
“Want. Definitely want.” Eddie pulls the door open and swings down into the seat, bringing with him the smell of road dust and cigarettes and sweat. “A thousand blessings be upon you, my liege.”
“You can just say thanks, you know,” Steve says dryly.
Eddie gifts him with another smile. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Put your seatbelt on.”
He waits until Eddie obeys to pull back out onto the road, and Eddie puts his head back against the seat with a long sigh. Steve, glancing over again, notes the redness across the bridge of his nose and his bare bony shoulders. The scars show up as uneven splotches of white, twisting around under his arm to disappear beneath his shirt. “Looks like you’re getting a sunburn.”
Eddie opens his eyes to peer at his arm. He presses a finger into his own skin like he’s examining an alien life-form, then sighs. “Figures.”
He leans forward to turn on the radio, spinning through the stations until he lands on the very staticky metal station out of, like, Springfield or something. Steve, who has long-since given up protesting this, lets him do it. They get a couple of miles toward town in silence—or, well, road noise and what he’s pretty sure is Black Sabbath—before Eddie shifts his weight and says, “The van won’t start, that’s all.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Fuck if I know. Wayne said it sounds like a bad ignition coil, whatever the hell that is, but he’s in Lafayette for the rest of the week, so I am on God’s good humor and the mercy of passing motorists until he gets back.”
“You could have called me.”
“I assumed you had better things to do than chauffeur me around.”
“Clearly not,” Steve says, and Eddie snorts, straightening up.
“Thanks, though. Seriously.”
“I mean, if you need a ride, just call me. It’s no big deal.” Eddie glances over at him, and something about that look makes it feel like a big deal, in a way he didn’t quite mean. Steve clears his throat and looks at the road. “You want me to take a look at it?”
“Take a look… at my van?” Eddie asks with an unflattering amount of skepticism. “You?”
Steve shrugs. “I got an A in Shop.”
The only A he pulled off, other than gym, in his entire high school career. Not one that made his dad proud, either. As far as the old man is concerned, auto repair is the kind of thing that Harringtons pay other, lesser beings to handle for them. Steve likes it, though. He’s always been better at that kind of thing—fixing stuff, seeing how it all fits together. And it’s a lot cheaper than having to take his car to a shop every time something goes wrong, parental funds having pointedly dried up right around the time he refused the latest order-disguised-as-an-offer to come work for his dad.
“He got an A in Shop, he says,” Eddie repeats incredulously under his breath. “I mean, I guess, knock yourself out, you can’t really make it worse.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Munson,” Steve retorts mildly, and Eddie snickers and reaches to turn the radio up.
The grass out in front of Eddie’s trailer is scorched yellow in the summer heat, dust kicking up under the tires as Steve pulls in alongside the van, which is parked off to the left with the hood propped up. Wayne’s ancient Oldsmobile is, of course, nowhere to be seen.
When he cuts the engine, the air is full of the low drone of insects in the tall grass out back and, more distantly, kids shouting on the playground across the lot. It’s quiet other than that; presumably, everybody who can is inside hiding from the heat. Steve pockets his keys and swipes a hand through his hair, which is going depressingly limp with how much he’s sweating. Not that it matters. There’s nobody here to impress other than Eddie.
He pops the trunk and circles around to pull out the toolbox that he’s taken to keeping back there along with his nail bat and one of Dustin’s flare guns and a stash of emergency snacks. When he straightens up, he sees Eddie staring at him over the roof of his car. “What?”
“Nothing, man, just—” Eddie scruffs the back of his neck, then laughs a little. “You were actually serious, huh?”
“Yeah?” Steve says, hefting the toolbox. It’s a nice one, solid metal with sturdy latches—a gift from the rugrats for his twentieth birthday back in April, which he tried and failed not to get too emotional about at the time. Whatever. Point is, he probably has what he needs for this, assuming Wayne correctly diagnosed the problem over the phone. But Eddie is still staring at him like he’s grown a second head, so he says, “I mean, I don’t have to, if you changed your mind.”
“If I—uh, no. No. It’s cool, dude, it’s very cool of you.” Eddie shakes his head and finally seems to break out of whatever weird spell he’s under. “Sorry. Um. Yeah, let me grab the keys, I’ll be right back.”
He pulls his backpack out of the car, slings it over his shoulder, and scrambles up the steps of the trailer, letting the door bounce against the frame in his wake. Steve stares after him, baffled, then shakes his head and closes the trunk.
He’s got his head under the hood of the van by the time Eddie comes back outside, prodding at the corroded battery connections. The rust bubbling up under the paint and grease and dust flakes away when he taps at it.
“You sure this is actually a bad coil?” he asks when Eddie’s shadow falls across him. “Your cables are in rough shape here. Could just be that.”
“Uh, I have no fucking idea,” Eddie says, and Steve turns to look at him. He’s got a thick paperback tome clutched between both hands, a set of keys looped through his fingers. There’s a little skull and crossbones keychain attached, and it makes Steve smile. Eddie thrusts the book at him. “Here. Wayne bought this, maybe you can use it.”
It’s a Chilton manual, the cover art obscured beneath a patina of grease. Steve sets his wrench down to take it out of Eddie’s hands.
“Thanks,” he says, and sets it down on the edge of the frame, turning to face Eddie. “You know, I kinda figured—never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, like, your uncle knows about this shit, so…”
“You wanna know why he didn’t teach me?” Eddie finishes. His smile turns wry. Steve shrugs.
“I mean, yeah. I guess.”
“He tried. I am just” —Eddie’s fingers flick out— “fundamentally unteachable, my friend. As the sad, sordid tale of my entire high school career can amply attest.”
“Huh,” Steve says. Thing is, Eddie did graduate, a month and a half ago, with Robin and Nancy and the rest of the Hawkins High Class of 1986. Eddie claims that it was just because they wanted to get rid of him, but Steve’s not convinced.
Eddie’s not unteachable. He’s just particular about what he pays attention to. Right now, his attention is on Steve.
“Okay,” Steve says. “Did you try jump-starting it?”
“I mean, yeah, obviously. Didn’t work.”
“So it’s not the battery.”
“If you say so.”
Steve glances over at him again. He’s tossing his keys up and catching them with a neat twist of his wrist, over and over again. Metal glints in the sunlight: the keys, and the rings on his deft fingers. Eddie isn’t exactly athletic—for most of the time Steve’s known him, he’s been a barely controlled bundle of chaos and flailing limbs, prone to knocking into and tripping over anything and everything in his path. But in some things, he’s graceful. He’s quick. His reflexes are good. Steve could probably teach him to shoot hoops, in the unlikely event that Eddie would ever put up with it.
He shakes his head again and flips the manual open, paging through until he finds the section he needs. “Can you pass me the multimeter?”
“The what?”
“The—right there. The tan thing, with the screen—it literally says multimeter right on it, dude.”
“I feel like this is a whole new side of Steve Harrington that I’m seeing,” Eddie says.
It’s hard to tell from his tone whether or not he means that as a compliment, but he crouches down to retrieve the tool in question anyway. He bounces to his feet and hands it to Steve, then leans against the van to peer over his shoulder as he connects the leads. He’s close enough that Steve can smell him; close enough that he can feel the shift of air on the side of his neck as Eddie breathes. If it were one of the kids, he’d shove them off and reassert his personal space, but it’s never really bothered him when it’s Eddie. It’s distracting, but Eddie is always kind of distracting. Steve doesn’t mind.
He checks the reading against the manual, then tests it again, working methodically through all of the pins. Then he disconnects the leads and straightens up. “Okay, yeah. Resistance is way too low, I think the coil must have shorted or something.”
Eddie blinks slowly at him. “And that’s… bad.”
“I mean, if you want to be able to start your van, yeah, it’s bad.”
“Is it, like, fixable?”
“If we can get a new ignition coil for it, sure. Should be like twenty bucks. You want to take a ride down to Gary’s?”
“You’re sure you don’t have anything better to do with your day?”
“Seriously,” Steve says, more sincerely than he means to. “I don’t mind.”
Eddie gives him a long look, then shrugs like he’s shaking something off. “You know what, sure. Let’s do it. I’ll even let you pick the music this time, as a token of my gratitude.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“No Journey, though. I do have some self-respect.”
“You know, now that you mention it, I just bought their latest album—”
“Mercy, mercy, I beg of you,” Eddie groans, flinging a dramatic hand over his face, but Steve can see that underneath it he’s grinning.
At Gary's Auto Supply, Steve talks to the clerk while Eddie flits through the aisles, picking things up, putting them back down again. The clerk, who has a plug of tobacco tucked in his lower lip and an embroidered name tag that reads Don, keeps glaring over Steve’s shoulder at him in a way that would be pretty funny if Steve didn’t know that Eddie’s gotten jumped in public at least three times in the past couple of months.
He turns to look at Eddie, who sets down a bottle of antifreeze with exaggerated care, then splays his empty hands with a mocking flourish that makes Steve snort.
Don’s scowl has gotten even more pronounced by the time Steve turns back to him. “I see any funny business, I’m calling the cops.”
“Sure. Whatever. Look, do you have the part, or not?”
Don taps resentfully on the computer, then turns to spit a stream of tobacco juice into the half-empty Coke bottle next to the register. “You ask me, that sonofabitch is guilty as sin, no matter what the papers say. Oughta be in jail. I’ll go grab that coil for you.”
He heads back into the shelves behind the register before Steve can tell him to go fuck himself. Steve flips off the back of his head anyway, then jumps about a mile in the air when Eddie leans over his shoulder.
“Feels like I should steal something now, just on principle,” he says.
Steve glances back at him. His face is very close, his expression mischievous. If he’s bothered by what Don just said, it doesn’t show. So there’s probably no point in Steve making a big stink about it, much as he’d like to.
“I don’t think you could hide anything in that,” he says instead, nodding to Eddie’s outfit—the tight jeans, the t-shirt with the armholes gaping halfway down his ribs.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Eddie says, grinning, and before Steve can make a retort, Don is back. He plants the cardboard box on the counter and gives Eddie a vicious stink-eye.
“That’ll be twenty-two fifty,” he says. Steve goes to reach for his wallet, but Eddie’s already got his out, counting out a stack of crumpled ones and fives onto the counter with deliberate care. He pushes the money toward Don, who eyes it like it’s a dead rat.
“If you’re too good for my money, I’m happy to take this for free,” Eddie says, rattling his fingers on top of the box with a quick spiderish motion. The grin on his face now isn’t the one Steve’s become used to; it’s wide and cold and sharp as a knife. Don recoils like he thinks Eddie’s going to climb over the counter and shank him or something.
Steve sighs. “Come on, let’s just get the hell out of here.”
Eddie gives him a glance, then shrugs, plucks the box off the counter, and hands it to him. “Alright. Only because you asked, Steve.”
There’s a wry curl to the way he says Steve’s name, but his smile has softened. Steve blinks, takes the box, and together they head back out into the afternoon heat.
Back at the trailer, Eddie perches in the scant shade of the porch step while Steve gets to work. He’s weirdly aware of Eddie’s eyes on him as he disconnects the battery terminal and drops the bolt in a coffee cup, then gets the ignition cables disconnected and tucked out of the way. Somehow, that’s almost more distracting than having Eddie right up in his space.
He leans back under the hood and focuses on what he’s doing. He labels the ignition cables with Sharpie so he doesn’t mix them up when he’s putting the new coil in and pries up the electrical plug with a flathead screwdriver, and then he’s ready to swap the old coil out. The whole process soothes his weirdly jangled nerves. This is why he likes working on cars, even junkers like this: they present concrete problems that he can usually figure out how to fix. Very few things in life are like that, he's learned.
The bolts are as grimy and rusted as everything else under the hood, and when a couple of thwacks don’t loosen them up, he sets his wrench down and swipes his hair out of his face—remembering a second too late that his hand is covered in grease, ugh—and goes to get the breaker bar from his car. He’s honestly kind of forgotten that Eddie is there until he closes the trunk and swings the long metal shank up onto his shoulder as he turns.
Eddie is staring at him. He’s sitting on the step with a cigarette burning down between his fingers, lips parted, and he’s staring at Steve like—
“You good?” Steve asks, before he can finish that thought, even to himself. He’s suddenly excruciatingly aware of every place where his t-shirt is sticking to him with sweat, of the fact that his hair and probably his face are smeared with grease.
Why do you care, Harrington, he thinks, but there’s a panicky edge to it. Like if he presses too hard, he’ll figure out the answer.
Eddie jumps, then stubs his cigarette out on the step and lights another one, even though the first was only half-smoked.
“I’m good, man,” he says, and his voice does sound astonishingly normal. “What’s the melee weapon for?”
“What? Oh.” Steve swings the breaker bar once, then settles it back on his shoulder. It’s heavy; he probably could use it as a weapon in a pinch, which is another reason to keep it in his trunk. “Uh, some of the bolts are rusted on.”
“Right,” Eddie says. He licks his lips, then nods, then says, “Cool,” and takes another drag of his cigarette.
Steve's stomach gives a weird little flip, the kind he associates mostly with terror these days, though he doesn't feel afraid. Not exactly.
He goes to deal with the bolts. It takes a couple of heaving tugs to get each one loose, his knee braced against the scorching metal side of the van, sweat dripping into his eyes from the heat and the exertion. He swipes it away with his forearm and gets the last bolt loose, dropping it into the coffee cup along with the rest, then sets the breaker bar down, carefully works the bad coil out, and sets that aside too. His hands are black with grease by now, the front of his shirt smeared with it where he was leaning into the engine bay.
“Shit,” he mutters. Sweat is sliding into his eyes again; he swipes at it with the back of his arm, then gives up and just lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe his face clean; it’s fucking ruined anyway.
When he lifts his head, Eddie is staring at him again. The look on his face is—
Steve knows that look, is the thing.
It’s not a what the fuck are you doing? look, and it’s not even a holy shit maybe Harrington has hidden depths look, both of which he’s seen Eddie direct at him plenty of times.
This is different. This is a find a room with a bed and a lock on the door kind of look. Eddie’s eyes track over him like he can’t help it, and there’s a heat in them that’s impossible to ignore.
More surprising, maybe: Steve doesn’t want to ignore it. He’s standing frozen on the packed earth of Eddie’s driveway, absolutely disgusting with sweat and grease and grime, one hand clutching the fabric of the t-shirt he still has pulled halfway up his chest, and he wants Eddie to keep looking at him like that.
So that’s. Something.
He has maybe two seconds with that revelation before Eddie finally meets his eyes, and Steve sees the moment he realizes he’s been made. He jerks his head to the side, then smears a hand over his mouth. His expression has morphed into something else that Steve also recognizes entirely too well: fear. The genuine kind, not the half-thrilling nervous jitters that Steve's got going on.
He should say something, but all his words feel like they’re stopped up in the back of his throat. What the hell does he say to this, anyway? It’s okay? I don’t mind?
I want you to keep looking at me?
Eddie’s nervous gaze flicks back toward him, and Steve does the only thing he can think of: he meets Eddie’s eyes deliberately, then tugs his t-shirt up over his head and tosses it in the direction of his toolbox.
Eddie drops his cigarette, then scrambles to put it out before it can set the dry grass on fire. Heart pounding, Steve picks up the fresh coil and leans back over the engine bay to swap it in. It’s faster than getting the old one out, which is probably a good thing; he can feel his skin prickling, sweat sliding down his back as the sun beats down, and he knows Eddie is still watching him. He’s stock still on the front step every time Steve glances over out of the corner of his eye.
What the fuck are you doing? he thinks, but the truth is, he knows that, too.
He finishes reconnecting the battery and straightens up. “You still got the keys?”
“Uh, yeah,” Eddie says, after a beat too long. He hops down off the step and circles around to the driver’s side of the van. He’s giving Steve a lot more space than he usually would. His cheeks are red, and Steve's pretty sure that's not just the sunburn. “We just, um, just gotta try to start it, right?”
Steve clears his throat. “Right.”
“Cool,” Eddie says, and climbs up into the van. He rattles around for a moment, then turns the ignition, which coughs, turns over, and finally rumbles to life. Steve whoops, pumping his grimy fists in triumph, and Eddie doesn’t even roll his eyes the way he usually would. He lets the engine run for a moment, the smell of dust burning up in the heat, then cuts it and hops down.
“Thanks, man. Seriously,” he says, and holds out a hand. Steve goes to slap it, then pauses, making a face.
“Yeah, I’m kind of all—” he holds out his grease-stained palms in demonstration.
“Right,” Eddie says. He spins his keys around his fingers again, makes a nervous little fluttering gesture with both hands, then says, “Come on inside, you can clean up there.”
“Cool,” Steve says. “You got a shirt I could borrow?”
Eddie’s eyes flick over him again, and oh, he likes that look.
“Yeah,” he says. “Of course, dude.”
In the kitchen, Eddie gets the water running and pours dish soap on his hands so that he doesn’t leave greasy fingerprints on everything he touches. Steve soaps and scrubs until his hands are lemon-scented and clean, goes to turn the water off, then pauses.
“Answer me honestly, how gross is my face right now?”
“It’s fine,” Eddie says immediately.
Steve grins. “Yeah?”
“I mean, you got a little—” Eddie gestures vaguely at his forehead, where he wiped his hair back earlier. “Just, like, right there.”
“Here?” Steve asks, swiping at it with the back of his hand.
“No, just—here.” Eddie tugs a paper towel off the roll by the sink and runs it under the faucet to wet it. He goes to hand it to Steve, hesitates, then says, “You want me to get it?”
“Sure,” Steve says. His mouth is dry, and there’s a swooping roller-coaster feeling in his stomach when Eddie steps closer. The wet towel feels good on his skin, and he thinks—he’s pretty sure, in fact—that Eddie is taking longer about it than he has to. Finally, he goes to move back. Steve reaches up impulsively to catch his wrist before he can.
He keeps his grip loose enough that Eddie could pull away if he felt like it, but he doesn’t. He inhales sharply and goes entirely still instead, his pulse jumping against Steve’s fingers. His lips are parted, his dark eyes wide.
And yeah, Steve thinks. Yeah, he wants this. Eddie’s lips look soft, and he wants to kiss them.
That’s not something he realized about himself before now—the Eddie thing, or the guy thing—but he’s rolled with weirder things. Much weirder and worse things than wanting to kiss Eddie Munson.
“Steve,” Eddie whispers, still not pulling away.
“I’m not reading this wrong, am I?” Steve asks. If Eddie were a girl, he’d feel a lot more sure of himself. That’s a dance he knows the steps to. But he’s not sure if it’s different with a guy, and he doesn’t want to get decked or something if it turns out he has read this all wrong.
Eddie’s eyes flicker over his face. Steve’s not sure what he’s looking for, but whatever it is, he must find it. His breath comes out in a shaky laugh, and he says, “No, you’re not reading it wrong.”
“Cool,” Steve says dumbly. Eddie snorts, and that loosens some of the tension between them but doesn’t completely dissipate it. When Steve shifts closer, though, Eddie stops him with a hand on his sternum. His touch is light, careful, and Steve wants more of it, feels wildly greedy for it. He stops, though.
“Just—” Eddie laughs, a little rough, a little scared, Steve thinks, still. “Just promise you’re not fucking with me. Okay? Please tell me you’re not fucking with me about this.”
That stings a little, though Steve can’t say he doesn’t deserve it. “I’m not fucking with you. I wouldn’t do that.”
He thinks about adding, not anymore, but it’s probably a moot point. Eddie knows how he was. They’re neither of them the same person they were in high school, even if some of that bullshit lingers. If Eddie doesn’t want to kiss him because of it, that’s fair. Steve will cope, probably.
Eddie nods and licks his lips, leaving them distractingly shiny.
“Oh,” he says softly, a moment later, and Steve realizes that he’s been caught staring. Eddie laughs again. It doesn’t sound scared this time. Incredulous, maybe. Maybe even pleased. “Okay. I guess you’re not.”
“I’m really not,” Steve whispers, and this time when he leans in, Eddie meets him halfway.
Eddie’s taller than anybody he’s ever kissed, and there’s a faint, unfamiliar scrape of stubble at the edges of his mouth. The novelty makes Steve smile, but still: it’s a kiss like any other kiss, when it comes down to it. Warm lips, warm skin against his fingers, the thrill of learning somebody new like this. Learning Eddie like this.
Eddie makes a soft noise. His lips part; the first hot swipe of his tongue is tentative but amazing. He’s a good kisser. Steve’s not sure if he would have guessed that, but he is, especially once he seems to get the memo that Steve’s not about to bolt.
One kiss turns to two, and then three, and it’s some hot languid time later when Steve realizes that his hands are inching up Eddie’s shirt, mapping out the shape of his body. Eddie is lean, whipcord muscle across the bone, the freshly-healed scars a different texture than the rest of his skin. He hisses when Steve’s thumbs brush over his nipples, so Steve does it again, more deliberately. That gets him another little noise that makes Steve grin against his mouth, delighted.
“You’re sensitive,” he says.
Eddie laughs, a little breathless, and kisses him again. Steve keeps touching him, cloth riding up over his hands, and then Eddie is lifting his arms to let Steve pull his shirt the rest of the way off and drop it on the floor behind him. Then he pauses a little just to look.
He’s always liked boobs—any size, any shape, he’s not particular, they’re just nice—but he likes this too: Eddie’s lean, scarred chest, scattered with tattoos and dusted with dark hair. He’s sunburnt and freckled across his shoulders but paler down below where his shirt covers.
Steve drops his head to mouth kisses across the line of Eddie’s throat—he’d like to nip a little, maybe leave a hickey, because something tells him that Eddie would like that, but the skin beneath his lips is hot and sunburnt, so he keeps them soft, uses his tongue instead of his teeth. Eddie makes a swallowed little noise against his ear, and Steve turns to kiss him again, pressing closer. Their bodies shift, slotting together as Eddie’s back hits the broom closet door, and that’s when Steve realizes that Eddie is hard. He can feel it, a stiff line of heat pressed against his hip.
He lifts his head. Eddie’s eyes are huge and dark from inches away, his cheeks beautifully flushed. He looks—well, he looks hot. But also a little anxious, right now.
“Hey,” Steve says breathlessly.
Eddie’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. His hips shift, like he’s trying to pull back, or maybe like he’s trying to rut against Steve, and then he winces and says, “You’re not about to freak out on me, are you?”
It’s a reasonable question, probably. But all Steve can think about is the fact that he can feel Eddie’s dick through his jeans, and he wants to know what it looks like. What it feels like in his hand, or in his mouth.
It’s not a thought he can remember having, at least consciously, about a guy before. He wants it, though: he wants to know what Eddie looks like naked, what kind of sounds he makes when he comes. He can worry about what that means later. Steve’s no good at theory, but he tends to ace the practicals.
“Nah,” he says, and kisses Eddie again. “Are you?”
“I’m kinda freaking out a little right now, if I’m being totally honest with you,” Eddie says against his mouth, but his hands are still clutching at Steve, holding him close, so it’s probably the good kind of freaking out.
“You wanna stop?” he asks, just to be sure.
Eddie lets out a shuddering breath, then laughs. “No.”
“Cool,” Steve says, and drops to his knees.
“Oh, holy shit,” Eddie says faintly above him.
Steve grins and gets to work on his buckle. He pauses once it’s loose to look up at Eddie, who has his head tilted back, his hands flattened against the cabinet behind him like he’s trying to hold himself up, or maybe like he’s trying not to grab at Steve. Steve wants to tell him that it’s okay if he does, but he’s a little distracted with getting Eddie’s pants open, peeling them down enough to reveal dark gray underwear straining over his hard dick. Steve brushes his mouth against it, just to see if this is gonna be the thing to finally make him freak out.
It doesn’t. He can taste salt, feel the heat of Eddie’s skin bleeding through the thin cotton, and when he fits his mouth over the head and sucks lightly through the fabric, Eddie whispers, “Jesus fucking Christ,” in a shocked, vehement tone that he immediately wants to hear more of.
He pulls off and sits back on his heels. His heart is racing so fast that he can feel his pulse in his ears. He can’t get over the sight of Eddie like this: shirtless and flushed with his jeans open and his hair all over the place, looking halfway undone already.
He waits until Eddie finally looks down at him to set his palms on Eddie’s hips, thumbs hooked under his waistband, a silent question.
Eddie swallows audibly, then nods, so Steve tugs his boxers down. He gets Eddie’s jeans shoved down around his thighs too and then just takes a second to look.
He’s seen plenty of dicks before, sure, but never hard, and never from this angle. Eddie’s cut, and his cock curves up, maybe a little thicker than Steve’s but not quite as long. When he wraps his fingers around the base, Eddie’s hips twitch, and a bead of precome slides down the shaft. Steve leans in and licks it up, then rolls his tongue against the head, thoughtfully. Salt and musk, not exactly something he’d order on an ice cream cone, but not unpleasant either. He does it again, listens to Eddie make a strangled little noise, then pulls off to bite a hickey just under the jut of his hip bone, where the skin is soft and winter-pale even at the height of summer. He takes his time about it, feeling Eddie’s cock stiffen even more against his palm, feeling his thighs tremble, his breathing going faster and faster.
Maybe Steve’s never done this with a guy before, but he still knows how to tease a little, how to build anticipation before the main event. He moves lower, sets about making another hickey on the tender inside of Eddie’s left thigh, languidly stroking his cock with a grip he knows is too light, and grins against his skin when Eddie mutters, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Steve, please, are you trying to kill me here?”
His name sounds really good in that breathless tone. Steve leans back in, fits his mouth around Eddie's cock, and gets to it.
He’s had enough blowjobs to have a decent idea of what feels good, but it turns out that coordinating his mouth with his hand is kind of tricky. It takes him a few false starts to find a good rhythm. His jaw starts to ache almost immediately.
It’s hot, though. It’s really hot, actually, in a way he didn’t quite expect: the weight of Eddie’s cock on his tongue, the way he can feel him getting harder as he sucks. Eddie’s fingers thread through his hair—he’s not pulling it or even really trying to steer, although Steve thinks he wouldn’t mind that. Just touching him, keeping contact as Steve bobs his head, presses his tongue against the ridge on the underside, trying to figure out what Eddie likes. Eddie's pretty responsive, which is both helpful and encouraging—the helpless little noises he keeps making when Steve hits on something good, the restless way his hips are shifting, like it he can't even help himself. Steve uses the slick mess of spit and precome pooling at the base of Eddie’s cock to wet the slide of his fingers, and Eddie swears, his hips jerking. Steve gags a little and pulls off.
“Sorry, sorry, shit, I’m sorry,” Eddie whispers. His eyes are squeezed shut.
“It’s okay,” Steve says. His voice is so hoarse that it almost sounds like it belongs to a stranger; his mouth is weirdly tender. He feels slightly dazed. He just wants Eddie to look at him, and finally, Eddie does: his eyes flutter open, and he stares down at Steve, lips parted, chest heaving. Steve catches his hand, then turns to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “It’s okay. Here, just—”
He guides Eddie’s hand to the base of his own cock, watches him wrap his fingers around it—blunt, strong-looking fingers, short nails, rings gleaming, then catches his eyes again as he leans in to take the head in his mouth again. Eddie's mouth drops open a little, his breath shuddering out.
“Sweet fucking Christ, Jesus, Steve—you look—” His head thumps back against the cabinet and then he laughs breathlessly and cups Steve's cheek with his free hand, thumb brushing against the slick stretch of his lips. “If this is how I go, I think I'm good with that, actually.”
Steve can’t exactly smile like this, but he can roll his tongue against the underside of Eddie’s cock and feel how that makes him shudder. He lets Eddie set the pace this time, fucking into his mouth with quick, jerky thrusts that get less and less controlled as he goes. His fingers clench and unclench in Steve's hair like he's trying not to pull it but keeps forgetting himself, and that just makes it all better somehow: the sparks of pain in his scalp and the ache in his jaw sharpening his senses like there’s an electric current running beneath his skin.
“Fuck,” Eddie whispers. His fingers clench tight again, his knuckles bumping Steve’s lower lip as he grips himself tight, his hips jerking, and Steve realizes that Eddie’s trying to pull him off at the same moment he realizes why. Eddie’s cock pulses against his tongue, and gripped by some dazed and horny instinct, Steve presses closer, taking him as deep as he can as Eddie starts to come.
He swallows what he can, hears Eddie curse raggedly, and pulls off to brace his forehead against Eddie’s thigh, gasping. His mouth feels swollen and tender and used. Eddie's other hand is still fisted in his hair, but he doesn’t seem to realize until he finally sags back against the cabinet. Then he lets go and strokes apologetic fingers against Steve's scalp.
“Hey,” he says hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”
Steve shakes his head without pulling away. He’s trembling a little, hot all over and so turned on that he's dizzy with it. He’s been so focused on making Eddie feel good that he didn't really register that until now.
He lets go of Eddie’s hip to palm himself, then muffles his groan against Eddie’s warm thigh, fumbling to get his jeans open.
“Oh, shit,” Eddie says in a very different tone. He palms Steve’s cheek with one warm hand, then drops gracelessly to his knees and pulls him into a kiss, batting Steve’s fingers away to undo his fly. Steve shudders into his hand, clinging to him for balance, and Eddie kisses him again and murmurs, “Shit, okay, you’re really—I didn’t think—”
He doesn’t say what he didn’t think, and Steve doesn’t really have the mental wherewithal to guess, let alone ask. Not when Eddie is kissing him messy and sweet and shoving his jeans and underwear down. He pushes gently at Steve’s shoulder and Steve lets himself be pushed, tumbling back onto the linoleum tile with Eddie’s warm weight on top of him, bracketed between his thighs. The slide of bare skin and Eddie’s softening cock against the groove of his hip makes him shudder with helpless wanting for exactly this: Eddie, three-quarters naked and propped above him on his elbows, flushed and wide-eyed, his wild mane of curls tumbling down. He leans down to kiss Steve again, quick and hard, then says, “I wanna blow you. Can I?”
“Jesus,” Steve groans, letting his head thump back against the floor. “Yeah. Holy shit, yeah, of course.”
Eddie grins, kisses him again, and slides down.
It’s pretty immediately obvious that he’s got more practice at this than Steve does. He takes him all the way to the root so smoothly that Steve would accuse him of showing off if he could get the breath to form words. Eddie isn’t taking the time to tease: the pace he sets is fast and relentless from the get-go, like he knows how desperate Steve is and is delighting in goading him on. That delicious tension winds tighter and tighter until Steve chokes out a warning and comes an instant later, helplessly, into the slick heat of Eddie’s mouth.
It takes him a minute to come down from it. By the time he does, Eddie has pulled off and slithered up just enough to brace his chin on his folded hands over Steve’s ribcage.
“Hey,” he says, after a moment. He’s smiling, but there’s something wary there that softens when Steve reaches down to touch his face: the dimple denting his cheek, his soft lips, the faint roughness of stubble along his jaw.
“Hey,” Steve says back. He’s smiling too, wide and giddy and not the least bit smooth at all. His whole body feels shaky and pleasantly hollow, like a bell that's just been rung. “Hey, c’mere.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, and slithers the rest of the way up to let Steve pull him into a kiss that lingers sweetly for a moment before Eddie starts laughing against his mouth.
“What’s so funny?” Steve asks. He’s trying to sound annoyed, but even he can hear that it’s not really working.
“Nothing,” Eddie says, but he’s snorting laughter now, completely undignified and ridiculously cute. “I just, I mean, I can’t believe I actually got in your pants at long last and it happened on the fucking kitchen floor. Like, there’s a couch right there.”
“Well, get off me and we can move,” Steve suggests reasonably. He could probably pick Eddie up without too much trouble, but he doesn’t try it. The floor is nice and cool on his back, and he kinda likes the way Eddie’s weight feels on top of him.
Also, he’s not totally sure his legs will hold him right now. He lifts one hand to push his hair out of his face, then makes a face when he realizes it’s still sticky with grease. And, okay, possibly some jizz right now. Whatever.
“Nah,” Eddie says, and leans down to kiss him again, lingering and soft.
It’s a while before they get around to moving.
“You know,” Eddie says some time later, after they’ve finally cleaned up and relocated to the couch, “it would have saved me a lot of unnecessary angst over the past few months if I’d realized earlier that you were into dudes.”
Steve rolls his head over to look at him. He’s leaning over the coffee table in a clean t-shirt and plaid boxers, rolling a joint on the back of a Woody Guthrie album cover. Steve watches the deft movement of his fingers and the way he’s got his lower lip absently caught between his teeth and—yeah. Honestly, he probably should have figured this out a lot sooner.
“Sorry,” he says, plucking at the front of the shirt he borrowed from Eddie. It's got a flaming skull on the front and it smells like him, which makes Steve feel stupidly warm the way he always used to get when a girl wore his clothes. “Although to be fair I didn’t know either until, like, an hour ago.”
There’s a lengthy, incredulous silence. Then Eddie says, “Are you fucking kidding me.”
Steve groans. “I know, okay? Robin’s gonna strangle me.”
“Robin’s gonna—Jesus Christ, okay,” Eddie says. He finishes off the joint and puts it between his lips, settling back against the couch to light it. “I have—so many questions. You’re gonna tell her?”
“Yeah? I mean, unless you don’t want me to, I guess.”
“And she’ll be cool about it?”
“Uh,” Steve says, because of course she will, strangling aside, but he can’t really explain how he’s so sure of that without telling Eddie a secret that isn’t his to tell, even if Eddie would also presumably be cool about it for much the same reasons. He wonders if there’s, like, a transitive property to all this, in terms of who you can say what to. Another thing he’ll need to ask Robin about.
But Eddie seems to put it all together on his own in the time it takes Steve to get to the end of that train of thought. “Right, of course she would. But you want to tell her?”
“I tell Robin all the important stuff.”
Eddie cuts him an unreadable glance, smoke curling up from the joint in his fingers for a moment before he passes it over. “I’m important?”
Steve shrugs. It’s maybe a little too early to be showing his hand here; he still doesn’t know what, if anything, Eddie wants from all this. Other than orgasms, obviously.
Smoke lingers on his tongue, stinging his throat and lungs. His jaw still kind of aches, and he keeps wanting to press his tongue against his lower lip, remembering the feeling of pressure. Eddie’s fingers in his hair. The way he sounded when he came. And other things too—his quicksilver grin and the way he’s always talking with his hands. The way he looked earlier today, ambling down the side of the highway with heat waves rising up around him.
He lets the smoke slip out of his mouth on a slow exhale and passes the joint back to Eddie. “Yeah, man. Of course you are. I never even thought about any of this before you.”
“Well, I am honored to be the vehicle for your belated sexuality crisis,” Eddie says with an easy grin. “Truly, I am.”
“Not because of that,” Steve says, before he can think better of it. And, well. Fuck it. Truth is, he’s never actually been any good at playing it cool. “I mean—yeah, I guess, that too, but—I really like you.”
“Yeah?” Eddie asks, glancing at him sidelong. His grin has faded to something softer—something pleased and hopeful, almost shy.
Steve catches his cheek with his fingertips, then leans in and kisses him. It’s a different kind of kiss this time, without all the pent-up urgency of earlier behind it. Eddie’s lips are very soft, and there’s the bitter aftertaste of weed on his tongue, and he makes a soft noise in the back of his throat before kissing back.
“Yeah,” Steve says, once they finally come up for air. “And I wanna do that more. And maybe take you out on a date sometime. If that’s cool with you.”
“It’s cool with me,” Eddie says immediately, and he’s laughing this time as he pulls Steve back in.