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atmilliways · 1 year

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Part Four: Shame On Both Of Us

(part one) (part two) (part three) (part five) - complete as of 4/4/23

Rating: Mature Word Count: 2068 Ships: Steddie Major Tags: Jealousy, The Pining Is Mutual Actually, Getting Together Additional Tags: No Smut (Yet), It’s All About the Italicized Oh

Author’s Note: Banner by @xirayn.

Read it on Ao3

When Eddie had first met Steve—really met him, in the boathouse at Reefer Rick’s place—he’d had a beer bottle in hand then, too. He’d mostly been scared shitless, and when he thinks about it he’s pretty sure he’d literally been foaming at the mouth a little bit, but looking back on it there’d also been this charge. It just hadn’t registered then because at that point Eddie was wanted for murder and running on zero sleep.

He has that same feeling now, staring across at the kitchen table (and some weird interpersonal chasm that he’s realizing he might not know the actual depth of) at Steve while they sip their beers and get globs of peanut butter on their fingers. Not that Eddie notices, or watches the way Steve occasionally licks the mess from his own hand.

(Lie. It’s almost hypnotic, the way Steve’s tongue darts out, surreptitious like he’s really trying not to draw Eddie’s attention to it—but oh, the ship sailed on that a long time ago. Eddie is still kind of mad, but he’s also a weak, weak man.)

“Thanks for the milkshake, by the way,” Eddie says impulsively, since he’s still got the cup filled to the brim with water for later. (He has no intention of getting drunk tonight.) “It was, uh. Good.”

Steve nods, not looking at him and more focused than seems really necessary on spreading peanut butter over a new cracker, neatly to all the edges and corners. “It’s that place that uses real fruit, they make a mean milkshake.”

Which Eddie already knows, because he’d recognized the logo on the cup. He also knows it’s an extra twenty-minute walk from their apartment, compared to the closer 24-hour diner that just uses artificially flavored syrups. And in the opposite direction of the bar. He’d been actively ignoring that part earlier, irritated by the suggestion that Steve could buy his forgiveness so easily. Such a douche move.

But he thinks about Nancy’s ‘All I can tell you is that Steve wants to fix this’ and Robin’s ‘So why is he sleeping off a mega crisis meltdown in my dorm room, then?’ and Steve calling himself bullshit, and maybe. . . . Maybe it wasn’t like that.

“Sure do,” Eddie mutters, slapping a lump of peanut butter on a cracker and shoving the whole thing in his mouth, spreading be damned. “So,” he continues with his mouth full, because fuck if he can just say it without some sort of misdirecting distraction involved, “which one of us is gonna put on our big boy pants first and talk about what he was actually mad about?”

Steve snorts, and his eyes actually dart up to look at him for a moment. “Dude, chew with your mouth closed.”

Eddie sticks out his tongue without bothering to swallow first.

“Gross,” Steve snickers. Then he looks down, serious again and gnawing on his bottom lip. “I. . . . I guess I should go, since I started it.”

Debatable, Eddie can’t help but think. Would he have even hooked up with that guy if he hadn’t been upset about Steve not paying attention to him? There’s no way to know now, really.

(Lie. He wouldn’t have—not like that. Not while feeling like it was the best he could get. Since the hookup, he’s barely even thought about that guy in any terms outside of being disastrously hung up on Steve. Waste of a decent blowjob, really.)

“It’s just,” Steve says, and Eddie has never felt more nervous to hear the end of a sentence before in his life. (Does Steve think he’s a slut? For one guy? Did Steve want that guy for himself? Are they going to have to divide up cruising territories going forward?) “I guess I, I didn’t think you were a hookup kind of guy, because I haven’t . . . seen you go off with anybody like that before?” The smile Steve gives him is cracked, a little pained, a touch self-deprecating. “So I kind of panicked, because I . . . I really like, um, living with you, man. And what if you started dating somebody and moved out to live with him instead? So, yeah.” He shrugs and reaches for another cracker, dipping his knife into the jar between them.

“I would never leave you high and dry on rent like that, Steve,” Eddie says, thinking immediately and guiltily of jumping to the conclusion that Steve had done that to him earlier. “You’re a great roommate—” please don’t leave me “—I was just pissed at you because I didn’t know why you were mad at me.”

Steve shrugs awkwardly. “Yeah, well. I was walking back to the bar and started to feel like an ass for overreacting, it was. . . . I was just being stupid, so I got the milkshake as a peace offering. And then I kind of panicked when you didn’t want it, but Robin pointed out that maybe you really just didn’t want to hurl again. Anyway, none of that was your fault, is what I’m saying. It was all just my stupid shit.”

“Okay,” Eddie says slowly, still turning the ‘I didn’t think you were a hookup kind of guy’ thing over in his head while he tugs some of his hair thoughtfully over his mouth. (When had he ever given Steve that impression? How else did Steve imagine he’d gotten any action while living in Hawkins?) “Uh, I appreciate that. And I’m sorry I got so drunk that I basically ordered you to go get my keys for me, that wasn’t cool.”

“It’s fine,” and now Steve is the one talking with his mouth full. “I don’t mind you bossing me around.”

Then he blinks, and his cheeks start to redden, like he hadn’t meant to say it, and Eddie thinks, That’s . . . interesting.

(Lie, it is everything and he needs his overactive imagination not to latch onto it, but he can already feel it happening. A shiver runs along his spine at all the bossing Steve around he would like to do, if he could, if it was his place or he had any right—Why the fuck did Steve have to phrase it like that?! A few simple words and suddenly it’s like Eddie’s now aware of colors he’s never seen before.)

While Steve attempts to glue his own mouth shut with a frankly insane amount of peanut butter on his next cracker, Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He wishes he’d changed into something with more give than the jeans he wears to work. He wishes he could turn off his brain.

And, okay. On one hand, he wants to say something. That’s not (just) his horny brain talking; Steve had just explained that he’d been angry over the possibility of Eddie leaving. Makes since, considering the Harrington’s had always fucked off and left Steve alone in that big, empty house. And Nancy leaving him for Jonathan. And Robin leaving for college, with now only a few more short months before most of the kids follow suit. . . . But the salient point right now is, Steve doesn’t want him to leave that badly. So, what are the chances that Steve would leave over finding out that Eddie would give just about anything to haul him over the table and kiss him stupid, peanut butter and beer breath and all, right the fuck now?

On the other hand, he’s got all these firecracker warnings of fear he can hear calling ‘snap,’ ‘crackle,’ ‘beware’ in the back of his head, and he doesn’t know which impulse to listen to.

(Lie. He does.)

It all feels like an out-of-body experience without the hassle of having to go anywhere. He’s on a roller coaster, tipping over the final incline into free fall and leaving both gravity and his stomach back at the top. His heart is slamming in his chest like something that wants to get out, like cutting the bedsheet rope and running out beneath a sky of murderous demon bats all over again.

The worst he can imagine right now (which is still pretty bad) is that Steve won’t even be mean about it. Apologetic, probably, and almost definitely awkward, while explaining that he doesn’t feel that way about Eddie, but that he really wants to continue being friends. Maybe any kind of being wanted by Steve is something, though. Maybe. . . .

“Maybe I wasn’t being . . . totally honest, before,” Eddie says. His voice sounds rough to his own ears, and he takes a fortifying swig of beer before going on. If he were to tip his head forward he could hide behind his hair, but he keeps his chin jutted forward because he is not going to be a coward about this anymore, goddammit. He twists the rings on his hands and looks Steve straight in his wary hazel eyes and admits, “I was kind of mad at you before you got mad at me.”

“Oh,” Steve says. It sounds more like a sound punched out of him than an actual word. “Because . . . of movie night? I should’ve rescheduled instead of just canceling, I’m—”

“It’s all the guys, Steve.”

There. There it is. He’s doing this.

Oh fuck.

And Steve just looks utterly confused.

“It’s the guys,” Eddie repeats, holding his gaze. “Whenever we go to the bar, there are guys all over you. They dance with you, they buy you drinks, they kiss you. . . . I see them grab your ass and I just want to, to—”

So many possible ends vie to be the end of that sentence, all of them violent, that instead Eddie just growls deep in his chest. At the same time, he slides his socked foot forward under the table to nudge Steve’s, runs it up his ankle a little, and isn’t sure which of the two makes Steve jump.

“You’re always looking at all these beautiful people,” Eddie continues, momentum built, unstoppable now. Wild and aching and leaning halfway across the table to make his point (and, yes, still a little hard in his jeans). “And I see how much you like it when they look at you, because you shine brighter than, fucking, all of them. I mean . . . you look good all the time, but it should be illegal how good you look when we go out, with the eyeliner and tight shirts and tighter pants, dancing with guys like you want them to fuck you right there on the dance floor and it kills me that I’m not the one touching you.”

He sees Steve’s eyes widen as what he’s saying sets in, mouth drifting open to form another perfect oh.

“You go home with them instead of me, and it’s awful, Stevie, because even when we go home together it’s to two different beds. It kills me that they get you and I don’t, and I’m just so—” Eddie breaks off, rubs at his forehead, shakes his head. “Fuck, man, I’ve been so jealous. It was stupid and I was drunk but I just wanted to feel wanted, and you were never going to be an option, so . . .”

Steve is still staring at him like he’s just been completely winded, flushed and speechless.

In the stunned silence that follows . . . the adrenaline of confessing starts to ebb.

Eddie reaches for whatever normalcy he can get out of making himself another peanut butter cracker. Time for damage control, time for making it clear that being just friends is fine and he’ll take what he can get, because he can’t imagine what a life without Steve in it would be like anymore. It’s fine.

(Lie. Maybe he shouldn’t have done this, because he’s put himself out there, waaaaaay out there and now he’s just . . . hanging. And panicking. And, oh god, he is a coward.)

“But I can get over this, okay?” Eddie insists as he goes through the motions. “I can, and I’ll try not to be weird about it because the last thing I want is to not be able to be your friend, so if this is going to ruin anything then I—”

Before he can finish, Steve lunges across the small table, snagging one big hand around the back of his neck, palm against his scarred jawline, and drags him in sharply for a kiss.

And Eddie kisses back. Of course he kisses back, he may have taken senior year three times but he’s not stupid.

#they did it! they achieve an amount of communication!#steddie #steddie fanfic #post-canon eddie munson lives #my fanfiction #stranger music anthology #lie one more time come on fic

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