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scoops-aboy86 · 4 months ago

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Epilogue (Secret Admirer pt 10)

The final conclusion! Because there were some loose ends I wanted to tie up. And @hotluncheddie, you got your Polaroids. 😜

wc: 2612 / rated: T / set after season 3 / also on ao3

In the aftermath, they talk. A lot. Especially after Eddie pulls back from their kiss to gasp, “Hell yeah you can be my boyfriend, as long as I get to be yours.”

Eddie tells Steve about how much his life had changed once his dad went to prison and he’d started living with his uncle full time, and how he’d always had trouble trusting good things at first. (Which probably explains some things about the ups and downs of their relationship so far, Steve muses eventually, and Eddie sheepishly can’t help but agree.)

Steve tells Eddie that he likes the trailer a lot actually, because it feels lived-in and well-loved in a way the house he grew up in never quite has. (Which Eddie gets, because Steve had written plenty about how uncomfortable he feels there sometimes, and how he’s never had a voice in choosing the decor or layout in his own bedroom.)

Eddie shows Steve how to roll the weed he bought into pro-quality joints; he’s a good teacher, it turns out, and praises Steve so much as a student that they’re both grinning stupidly at each other well before lighting up together for the first time.

Steve admits that Robin had spilled the beans about his secret identity. After initially establishing that she wanted to trade the valuable info for something good, the classified information slipping out right after Steve had taken the brunt of the damage at Starcourt (not a lot of details given about that, but it’s fine) seemed fair enough, Eddie can grudgingly agree. And Steve, sweetheart that he is, adds that as soon as she had he’d been struck breathless. He tells Eddie about the loan Robin is giving him and how he’s about to start looking for a place, and that the trailer park is looking more appealing by the minute.

Eddie explains the nerd stuff he’d spouted off the night before, after manfully holding back on giggling at the garbled version Steve repeats back, and explains what a Shelob is. When it turns out to be from those books that Dustin keeps pestering him to read—which, he now knows, is not exactly the same as The Hobbit. He admits to Eddie that he doesn’t know if he can do books that long; letters are fine, those are only a few pages, but it takes a lot of concentration to stay focused on printed words for that long and, after all the concussions, it tends to give him headaches. Immediately, Eddie starts falling all over himself offering to read to him, promising to do all the voices and “It’ll be just like you’re there in Middle Earth, Stevie, I swear!” Which is cute, and Steve is absolutely going to take him up on that.

For now, he’s content to keep cuddling and talking, with occasional kisses and little squeezes whenever it hits either of them again that this is real, it’s happening. They end up spending the entire day together, haphazardly working together to make breakfast that they share with Eddie’s uncle because, well, they made a racket as well as food and woke the poor man up. Steve is about to fall all over himself apologizing for all of it, for staying over unannounced, for sleeping in his nephew’s bed under his roof which is, like, probably not cool and all… Eddie just snickers next to him while Steve babbles himself into a corner, Robin style, then slips an arm around his waist and says, “Uncle Wayne, this Steve. He drove me home last night, graciously nursed me through the consequences of my most recent poor life choices this morning, and now he’s my boyfriend. Steve, this is Wayne. He’s the best, make sure to pour his coffee in the World’s Best Uncle mug.”

Which Steve does, and Eddie winces a bit when he hands it to Wayne with an overeager, “Here you go, sir!”

That’s one of his uncle’s pet peeves, being called sir, but he hadn’t thought to give Steve that warning earlier and then suddenly there wasn’t time. On top of that, Wayne doesn’t take kindly to being woken up before his alarm. He’s the best, but he’s also a lifelong bachelor with a regular night shift and a bad back, for all that he refuses to take the bedroom again now that Eddie isn’t a kid anymore.

Still, it could’ve gone worse. Wayne takes the mug with only a mild grumble about keeping it down, which is pretty tame for him. There will be a conversation about this in Eddie’s future, not least of which will probably be a few blunt questions about whether they used protection, because Wayne reads the same news headlines he does and Steve lives on the privileged side of town and still has a lingering reputation of getting around and Wayne doesn’t know him like Eddie does. Which, sure, Eddie has hooked up with other guys, mostly not in the trailer because it’s a shared space and he is acutely aware of how lucky he is to live here at all considering he could’ve stayed a ward of the state if Wayne hadn’t agreed to take him—and with those guys, he definitely put out on the first date. If they could be called dates. He’s going to have to explain to Wayne that Steve is different, that this is a long haul thing and that Eddie trusts him.

And he kind of can’t wait.

After breakfast, they hop in Steve’s car and drive out of town and break out the joints they’d rolled, cruising around with the windows down until the high starts to hit Steve and he finds a shady spot to pull over. Somewhere secluded. There’s a blanket in the trunk because of course there is; they spend a few hours out in the middle of nowhere under the trees, smoking and talking more and working their way through the snacks Steve thought to pack before they left the trailer.

It’s not a first date though, Eddie decides, just like their technical first kiss (that he still doesn’t remember, damn it) wasn’t their First Kiss. One of them has to ask the other on a date. Which, because he’s very brave, he finally does.

Steve responds by tackling him into the nearby grass and rolling them around in an emphatic yes until they both have green rubbed into their clothes and red bitten into their lips, giddy and laughing and boyfriends, holy shit.

Their first official date is a picnic that they each bring their favorites to and share. When Eddie asks Steve in advance what he’s planning on bringing, just to make sure they aren’t, like, putting wildly mismatched levels of effort into this, Steve doesn’t answer.

He just grins playfully and hisses, “Sssssecretsss,” and waits upwards of thirty seconds while Eddie tries to place why that seems familiar.

By the time the bottom drops out of Eddie’s brain and he remembers, Steve is already dancing gracefully back from his flailing attempts at a one-sided slap fight, the damn jock. “Steve, get back here! No, you can’t just—You can’t use my own Gollum impression on me and then leave! Where are you going? Steeeeve!”

Next time Sober Eddie sees Drunk Eddie, he’s going to strangle him.

But it’s fine, they both bring their large picnic basket (Steve) and overloaded paper grocery bag that’s so full it has to be carried from underneath rather than by the handles (Eddie) to a hill overlooking the empty fields stretching away from Hawkins at dusk. It turns out they’ve both brought lemon bars for dessert, and spend a good ten minutes playfully bickering over whose are better until it ends with sticky, powdered sugar kisses and murmured agreement to exchange recipes.

Which means Eddie is going to have to beg the recipe off of old Mrs. Anderson a few trailers down, who is always happy to bake for folks as long as they provide the ingredients. But hey, those lemon bars are worth it. And, obviously, so is Steve.

Their second date is a movie night with Robin, who immediately introduces herself as, “Hi, I’m a lesbian and Steve’s unlikely best friend forever, so that makes us friends-in-law. You cool with that? Because if not, we’re about to have a problem.”

It’s not a problem. Eddie had a decent opinion of her before and likes her immediately based on that opening shot alone. They quickly settle into a friendly argument about movie genres while Steve sits back, beaming at both of them with a happiness almost rivaling that first morning of being boyfriends.

Not quite, but almost.

And after, when Steve comes back after dropping Robin off at home, he leads the way to Eddie’s bedroom with a finger looped through a belt loop on the metalhead’s ripped jeans and proceeds to test out some of the things Eddie had described in his letters. Apparently going down on a girl and giving a guy head aren’t as different as Eddie would’ve thought, because Steve only needs a little guidance on what to do (or not do) with his teeth, but when it comes to fingers, lips, and tongue? Twenty out of ten, Eddie has no notes.

He barely has a brain by the time Steve is done with him. Not that he needs it to tug his perfect, rosy-lipped, keyed-up boyfriend up to show him what a musician’s hands can really do.

Wayne takes a bit longer to come around to Steve. A chance comment about some sportsball game or other gets them talking and… suddenly Eddie might not be Wayne’s favorite anymore.

Not really, he knows somewhere behind the ridiculous grin he’s wearing, because his uncle is nothing if not loyal. Eddie’s never been interested in that stuff, and he finds watching them bond over it incomprehensible yet fascinating.

At least, until Wayne gets up to dig out the old scrapbook, saying, “Think I’ve still got some photos of the summer Ed here tried to play T-ball.” Then Eddie jumps up and hustles a very amused Steve the hell out of there, insisting that they have a schedule to keep to and Wayne is gumming up the works.

“Aw, but Eddie, I wanted to see,” Steve teases, pretending to brace himself in the front doorway while Eddie pretends to bodily shove him through it.

“Next time,” Wayne promises with a self-satisfied air. He never gets to do this, none of Eddie’s friends have ever shown this kind of interest and god knows he’s never brought anyone he’s attempting to date around to meet his uncle—not that there’s ever been anyone who fell in that category, before Steve.

“Never,” Eddie hisses, trying to sound threatening. And fails, mostly because he’s busy goosing Steve to get him through the door and laughing about the affectionately affronted look it gets him.

Both Eddie and Robin come with Steve when he looks for a place, and a very pleasantly surprised Eddie pays up the five dollars he owes her when by the end of the summer Steve really does pick a small trailer on the other side of Forest Hills. And sure, Steve kind of de facto shares it with one of his kids—Billy Hargrove’s little step-sister, whose mom Eddie only really saw around while they were moving in across from the Munsons, so. Yeah. But Mad Max is a cool kid, and doesn’t give them shit for being so close. He knows that Steve has always wanted younger siblings, and that one’s just the temperamental tip of the iceberg.

Which is cool, because it sounds like the boys are shoe-ins for Hellfire and Eddie has a binder full of half-formed one-shot ideas that he’s itching to whip out and take for a spin. A sentiment that, when he mentions it to Steve, somehow ends up earning him his first chance to prove just how good with his hands he can be.

And after, when Steve shyly opens up about the six little nuggets in a Winnebago daydream he’s had ever since his parents started leaving him alone more and more often, the collection of mildly feral younger teens makes sense. They lay on the double mattress liberated from the Harrington house—currently on the floor because Steve is determined to make himself a new bed frame, the crazy bastard—with sweat cooling on bare skin and Steve’s gay cherry well and thoroughly popped in every way either of them could think of, Eddie realizes something.

Steve’s new room features zero plaid. The curtains match nothing, not even themselves, because he let Robin pick them out and she got a little whimsical with it. There are a few band posters—some of the bands Eddie covered for his second mix tape to Steve (which he know knows was the catalyst for them getting their shit together, even though he still doesn’t really remember that part), and one of the Corroded Coffin posters that Eddie designed himself—and some movie posters that Steve can get for free once Family Video is done with them.

Mostly, though, it’s Polaroids: of Steve and Eddie, Steve and Robin, Steve and the kids, and various other combinations.

Eddie never expected any of this to turn out the way it had. Hadn’t felt worthy of Steve, who has generally floated through life surrounded by the finer things and white picket fence dreams. It had never occurred to him that Steve didn’t care about having nice things, he wanted nice things. Kind, supportive, good things, regardless of what they looked like on the outside. Things that make him happy.

And the handful of candid photos Eddie took of himself for when, for whatever reason, their schedules don’t line up? He knows those make Steve very happy because they have pride of place, tucked secretly between the mattress and the wall by the head of the bed.

Life is great, which is saying something considering they’re still in Hawkins, Indiana.

Eddie’s van is all fixed—the auto shop even offered him a part-time job because he’d identified the problem just fine, just hadn’t had the equipment to fix it on his own. The guys in the band are coming around to the idea that King Steve is actually kind of a dork underneath it all, helped in part by the many, many, many stories that Dustin, Lucas, and even Mike have unloaded on them before and after the summer one-shots that constitute their trial period in Hellfire as incoming freshman. He’s got Robin, who’s sworn to be his study buddy until, as she’d once cheerfully put it, either Eddie graduates or they strangle each other.

But mostly, he gets to be Steve Harrington’s boyfriend. They sleep at Steve’s more often than not, letting Wayne have the actual mattress instead of that shitty old cot, falling asleep tangled together and waking up the same way. (Sometimes Steve still has nightmares, still occasionally radios Robin in the middle of the night on the walkies the kids gave them—Eddie doesn’t ask, just holds Steve when he needs it. He’s letting Steve come around to telling him what happened in his own time. Even though Steve keeps assuring him, so earnest it’s a little disconcerting, that “it’s over.”)

1985 had some major ups and downs. He wouldn’t trade any of it for the world, but this coming one is going to be different. He’ll start it with a boyfriend and, goddamn it, he will finish it having finally snatched his diploma and flipping Principal Higgins the bird. From there, who knows!

He just knows one thing’s for sure… 1986 is going to be his year.

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#steddieweek2024 #scoops words #secret admirer steddie #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #steddie getting together #robin buckley #platonic stobin #eddie and robin getting along like a house on fire #wayne finally having someone to talk about sports and rag on his nephew to

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