Chapter Text
“You know, you’re allowed to like… chill out?”
Steve looks back at Eddie from where he’s staring out at the trailer park. He didn’t realise he was checking for… something until Eddie pointed it out.
He’s stretched out on the porch couch of his new trailer, given the last one became a crime scene. They were lucky they managed to stop whatever the fuck was going on in Nancy’s vision, cause it seemed like most of the town was on a fast track to ‘moving out’. Whatever, crisis averted. And now, Eddie’s lounging back, free of the false-charges (though not his ‘town-pariah’ schtick), an amused half-smirk hanging off his lips alongside the unlit joint, like he’s been watching Steve do his rounds for a little too long.
“I am chilled out.” Steve crosses his arms out of habit.
Eddie scoffs. He leans forward and the low-cut armholes of his tank pull back to reveal more of the bandages against his side. Steve swallows.
Shit, maybe that looked too defensive.
Steve uncrosses his arms, instead resting his hands on his hips. It’s the ‘Mum Pose’ the kids won’t shut up about, but at this point it’d be weird to shuffle around again.
“Uh huh. Sure. And I’m the king of Hawkins High.” Eddie takes the joint from his lips and waves it around, like he’s conducting some invisible band. “We can just,” he sighs, “hang out normally. You don’t have to be my bodyguard… or whatever this is.”
“This is hanging out!”
Steve didn’t know Eddie’s eyebrows could go any higher.
“Ok, you gonna sit down then?”
“… I like standing.”
Eddie laughs, and with a groan, he stands up. Steve finds himself eye to eye with Hawkins’ least favourite (or maybe favourite?) ex-drug dealer before he can take a step back. They’re a little close, but Steve honestly doesn’t mind. Carrying someone’s almost-corpse out of an alternate hell-dimension seems to break down some barriers.
“I guess we’re standing then. I just wanna meet you on your level,” Eddie says, grinning, and Steve feels… weird. He feels like he should reach out and touch for some reason—he must be worried about him keeling over and like, hitting his head on the porch.
They’re both silent for a second. It feels weird.
Of course, Eddie is the one to break the tension. “This is so not chilling out, Steve.”
“Well, it is for me.”
“Stevie. Ba—buddy. You’ve been standing sentinel on my porch, surveying the park like a battlefield. For about half an hour now. Stop worrying. People don’t really come by this early in the evening. They prefer to sneak around after midnight,” Eddie says, gravel slipping into his voice like Steve’s one of his players. Steve pointedly ignores the swoop in his stomach. He will not be conned into playing DnD, not after refusing to give in this long. So he focuses on what Eddie actually said, not how he said it.
“People are sneaking around? Are they bothering you?”
And all he gets for his trouble is an eyeroll.
“Oh, Jesus,” Eddie gripes, “you worry too much. Of course there are people sneaking around the trailer park at night.” He gestures to himself with the joint and finally ( finally ) whips a lighter out of his pocket. I’m one of them.”
Eddie takes a drag and leans against one of the beams sticking up from the porch. Like he’s trying very hard to act ‘chill’, Steve notes with an almost-smirk.
For all of Eddie’s talk about ‘not worrying’ and ‘chilling out’, he tends to… Well, Steve’s noticed that Eddie tends to push himself mighty far. Not because he’s been watching or anything weird like that. He’s just been looking. Looking out! Looking out for a friend.
He shakes his head, directing his train of thought back on track. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie shifts against the post.
It’s like since… everything; the whole Alternate Dimension deal, since the bat thing, and especially since being released from the hospital, Eddie’s been going above and beyond. Steve isn’t sure why necessarily, but the look in Eddie’s eyes every time Steve drops him off at physical therapy, every time someone wordlessly gives Eddie a helping hand he didn’t ask for, every time Eddie picks up his own goddamn guitar… Something about it tells Steve he’s just desperate to go back to normal .
Now, Steve didn’t exactly know Eddie before , per se, so Eddie could just be acting normally. But he really seems like he’s really pushing himself, waiting until his body forces him to stop. It’s like he’s trying to prove he’s ‘still got it’. Prove it to his new Buddies-in-Arms. To himself.
And clearly Steve has thought about it a lot , if the amount of thoughts he has on the subject mean anything.
“Fuck,” Eddie wheezes, breaking the silence, “I’m puffed out just standing here, how are you doing this?”
Steve’s mind is still whirling around about Eddie’s current self-care (or lack thereof). “Yeah, well. You should be sitting”.
He does. Not very gracefully.
“ Hmph . So should you!”
“You’re injured.”
“ So are you , asshole.”
Steve rolls his eyes but… Eddie isn’t wrong. Like, technically. He’s just worse . He decides to say as much. “At least I wasn’t in a coma for two weeks”.
“Sit your ass down, Harrington.”
With a groan (almost) as dramatic as Eddie’s, Steve sits down on the porch, knee to knee with Eddie. He doesn’t think about the fact that their knees would be touching if he’d decided to go with shorts today. He also doesn’t stare at the hint of skin peeking through the rips in Eddie’s jeans.
“Happy?”
“There we go. A huff and a puff, and even the mightiest King falls down.”
Steve turns his laugh into another groan and turns to look at Eddie. He doesn’t expect his face to be right there . So he pushes it away, heat rushing down his neck. What is up with that?
Steve ignores the fact that he might have… an inkling .
“The King fell down years ago.” Steve snatches the joint from Eddie’s fingers and hurriedly puts it to his lips.
“There we go!” Eddie exclaims, and Steve blows a cloud of smoke at him just to wipe the smug look off his face. Of course, it doesn’t work. “You’re acting like an actual person! Wow, I’m such a good influence.” Eddie leans back, resting against the arm closest to Steve. It sends him into Steve’s space a bit. With the hand not supporting his weight, Eddie clutches at his heart.
“Mmm. Good influence. That’s one way to put it,” Steve mutters like he isn’t speaking directly into Eddie’s ear.
“I’m a treasure.” Eddie isn’t leaning away. In fact, Steve notices with a start that he’s basically leaning over Eddie. Gently, slowly, so as not to disturb the moment, Steve hands the joint back.
Breathlessly, he says, “that’s another way to put it.”
“I am living stress relief.”
And Steve can no longer keep a straight face.
“You have stressed me out more than anyone else I have ever met. Maybe even including Dustin.”
Eddie chokes on the hit he’d been taking. “You’re shitting me. Ugh, want another one?”
Steve resists the urge to thump Eddie on the back, if only because he knows it would hurt him more than help him.
“Nah. Not big on the cloudy-head-feeling.”
“Don’t like the…” He waves his hands around like he’s trying to pluck a word out of the air. “Being not-alert?”
“Something like that. It’s possible to ‘be chill’ without drugs.”
“Ok, ok, Nancy Reagan I know that. I’m just wondering what you do do to chill out. Especially considering I remember you having… significantly less inhibitions before.”
It’s true. Even if he never personally went to Eddie, his friends sure did. And there was a reason King Steve was known for his parties. Thinking about it now, was Eddie ever there? At a party? If so, he would’ve seen… Maybe Steve had spoken to him before. The idea that Steve could’ve already met Eddie and simply didn’t remember makes him feel a little sick.
“You said do-do.”
Eddie throws his head back, cackling. Someone a couple of trailers down screams something unintelligible, but it seems like the gist is ‘shut the fuck up!’.
“You’re worse than the fuckin’ pipsqueaks, Steve,” Eddie says, wiping his eyes theatrically. “You’re also deflecting, I asked you a question. Shit.”
“I dunno , I’ve never really… Driving around, I guess? Listening to music? Orgasms?” Honestly, Steve’s just throwing out random shit that he knows are methods of chilling out.
“Now we’re talking. That I know.”
Huh?
“Jerking off?”
Well, that makes sense, Steve thinks. Who isn’t familiar with jerking off? Biblically that is.
Eddie, however, doesn’t seem to be on the same page. He chokes on his inhale again , much worse this time.
Jesus, is he coughing up a lung?
Worried Eddie’s about to pass out from a lack of oxygen, Steve gives him a good whack between the shoulder blades. He goes to do it again until he notices the coughing has turned into Eddie hissing in pain, trying to twist away from Steve’s reach.
Fuck.
“Fuck, Eddie, I’m sorry!”
Still unable to talk properly, Eddie makes some half-baked placating gesture then stumbles to his feet, wheezing his way into the trailer. Before he can move too far, Steve scolds him (“Sit the fuck down, where you’ll fall over maybe a foot if you pass out”) and dashes in. Before either of them knows it, Eddie has a mug full of water in his hands, taking dainty sips.
“Well,” Steve starts. “That was dramatic.”
“I aim to please, big boy.”
There is absolutely no stupid blushing going on. At least on Steve’s part.
Eddie opens his mouth again. “For the record, I was not talking about jerking off. Or sex. Like,” he giggles nervously, “I’m familiar with… the concept. But—”
God, Eddie is so red.
“I was talking about music , obviously.”
Ok, maybe Steve is a little red too.
“That was not obvious.”
“Music, which I know very well. Intimately , you might say,” he wriggles his eyebrows at Steve, and he breathes a sigh of relief when the weird tension fizzles a bit. Steve still has to resist the urge to touch his cheeks, to make sure they aren’t burning.
It’s fine. They haven’t talked like this before. New territory, yada yada. Of course it’s a bit… awkward.
“Uhuh, so; jerk off to music. I’ll put that on my to-do list, Munson.”
Eddie screeches in response, and God, Steve is laughing so hard, it’s pulling at the literal stitches in his sides. He can’t bring himself to care. Eddie’s neighbours definitely hate them both, though.
“What I was actually saying, you heathen, is you should come to our next rehearsal. But maybe I’ll have to rescind that invitation…”
“No, no! I want to come to your Mouldy Casket practice!”
“I don’t know why I keep you around.”
Steve levels Eddie with a look. The one that he’s been told looks a bit like a pathetic little puppy with abandonment issues (Robin’s words).
Eddie mutters something under his breath that Steve can’t quite catch, what with the low ringing in his left ear from all the head trauma or whatever. Staring at Eddie’s lips, he makes out something along the lines of ‘holy fucking eyelashes’. Crit hit.
Steve listens to the nerd shit.
“You, um…” Eddie seems suddenly… shy? Steve could fucking laugh. Eddie? Shy ? “It’s not like, a big deal if you don’t want to. Rehearsal is a lot more boring and fucking-around than an actual show, but if music helps…”
“I think we’ve pretty well established that music is the strongest force on earth, or whatever.”
Eddie’s grin goes a little crooked. “I think you’re thinking of a different ‘powerful force’, Stevie.”
Steve matches the angle that Eddie’s tilting his head and scrunches his nose. The way he does to look… sweet. Or something.
“Sure.”
“Who knows!” Eddie suddenly pulls back, taking a deep breath and leaning hard against the back of the porch couch. He takes a sip of his water and seems to overestimate his ability to drink and talk at the same time—his next words come out a bit gurgly. “Maybe you’ll find a new favourite outlet, and I’ll have converted another poor soul to the dark side.” He leans back into Steve’s space, and Steve likes watching the spark of surprise that flashes over Eddie’s face when he doesn’t lean away immediately.
“Dark side?”
“Good music.”
“Ah. Can I bring my WHAM tapes—”
“Nope. No longer invited.”
“Nooo!! I’m coming. Someone needs to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”