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flowercrowngods · 2 years ago

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yearning hours (b-side) — in which being in love can feel like the greatest tragedy of all until you learn that you’re not alone (or: bravery, despite everything)

🤍 also on ao3

Steve comes to the quarry when he needs to think. He comes to the quarry when he needs to not think. When he needs to feel this rush of adrenaline that feels so much like monsters are real and the world has turned upside down. Except he isn’t going to die here, sitting on the cold ground, legs dangling over the abyss.

He’s not going to die, but life stops for a moment all the same.

And Steve relearns how to breathe. How to think. How to not think. While the darkness below him swallows it all. The pale light of the moon is not enough to reach the ground hundreds of feet below, or to chase away the complete and total darkness that meets his eyes when he looks down there.

It’s all-encompassing, this darkness, the vastness of it; Steve sometimes feels like he becomes part of it. Just for an hour or two. Just for the night.

The cold air that hits his face makes him shiver for a second, and reminds him that he used to think the darkness at the bottom of the quarry had a life of its own. Hell, maybe it does. With what they’ve seen, what they’ve fought, who’s to say there’s nothing down there? Maybe that’s what draws him here so often.

Does the living darkness know his secrets like the darkness in his room does? Does it listen to him, does it care? They’re stupid questions, Steve knows. But they carry a hopefulness he wants to preserve. Something that survived the Upside Down, that survives the nightmares and the flashbacks and the post-traumatic stress, as Hopper and Owens call it.

There’s something primal about sitting on the edge of such vastness, so much so that it makes his heart beat faster, his breath come shallower, like he is just a second away from falling. Like he has to savour this; this second, this moment, this life, because beyond it, around it, below it, there is only darkness.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and lets it all out until his lungs ache. The silence is absolute. He feels like the only person on the planet — but not in the bad, painful way that’s been hiding in the back of his mind for as long as he can remember.

If he only breathes like this for a while longer, lets the feeling settle, lets the thoughts come and bring emotions with them, he knows that soon the tears will fall.

Tears, because he shouldn’t have to sit at the edge of the quarry in the dark of night just to be able to feel. Tears, because he forgot how to be a boy, how to be a person, about three years ago. Almost to the day. Tears, because they all did; but he’s Steve. He can’t let them see. Wouldn’t know how even if he wanted to.

And tears, tonight, because just hours earlier, Eddie fell asleep while Steve made dinner. His arms were curled around the pillow Steve had leaned against all afternoon, and Steve just stood there in the doorway to Eddie’s room, the smell of fresh pasta mixing with that of leather, paperback books, tobacco and laundry detergent that is so purely and wonderfully Eddie that Steve just wants to catch it in a mason jar and open it whenever he needs a dose.

Eddie had fallen asleep, and all Steve could do was look at him. Smile on his lips, ache in his heart that only grew in ferocity until all he could do was leave. Because friends don’t watch their friends sleep. Not like this. Not with their hands twitching by their sides, curled into fists to stop them from reaching out and trailing over soft, warm skin. Friends don’t… They don’t.

So Steve left, pasta untouched. Heart unravelled. Words unspoken.

He left and sped off until he reached the quarry, a safe place to piece himself back together again — but he doesn’t have the heart to leave out Eddie. So every time he comes here and puts the pieces of himself back together, he puts Eddie in the centre. He always does. It’s what keeps getting him in this mess.

But it’s still the closest he’ll get to bravery after the Upside Down; admitting, if only to himself, that he likes a boy. Allowing himself to cry about it. To breathe in and breathe out and have the truth unchanged, unchallenged, undoubted.

He’s still breathing when the all-encompassing silence is interrupted, joined by the unmistakeable sound of tires on gravel. Seconds later, headlights illuminate the night, his arms, the edge of the quarry, but still not reaching beyond that. The car comes to a stop but Steve still doesn’t move, doesn’t turn around, just hopes that whoever it is will just leave him alone.

Lights go out, the engine is killed, followed by the sound of a car door opening and being closed far too gently.

Steve isn’t too surprised when steps approach him slowly, nor when they come to a stop beside him, chasing away some of the cold that’s been resting over him like a blanket.

Instinctively, he knows it’s Eddie. He just doesn’t know why.

“How’d you know I’m here?” he asks into the void, still unmoving.

“Just knew,” comes the reply, and it sounds so soft, so gentle, so understanding that Steve fears he might fall apart and have to rebuild himself once more. Twice in one night. Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last. “Why’d you leave?”

Because otherwise I’d have crossed the distance and fallen to my knees, brushed a kiss to your forehead and told you dinner was ready. Because otherwise I’d have slid down the doorframe and watched over you, watched you, and the firework of a person that you are even in your sleep. I’d have fallen in love and I’d have fallen, fallen, fallen. So I needed to go where falling is not an option.

Instead of saying any of that, Steve only shrugs. “Just did.”

It’s lame and unfair, he knows, but talking to the darkness is so much easier when there’s not an audience, and Eddie just… he can’t know. Any of that.

“Can I join you?” Eddie asks then, and Steve can hear it in his voice that he would leave if Steve said no.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t; just nods and scoots to the side a bit even though there’s enough room for Eddie to sit just anywhere.

But he doesn’t sit just anywhere, no. He sits down rather clumsily — for which Steve can’t blame him, it is a little scary in the dark, and one wrong move could be your very last — and ends up with his arm and shoulder pressed to Steve‘s, their legs so close he can feel Eddie‘s warmth through the denim.

It’s too much. It’s not enough. It’s dangerous, so close to falling, and Steve scoots to the side, breaking contact. Breathing carefully.

Eddie‘s eyes are on him, he can feel it. He doesn’t react. It hurts, his entire body aches with how close he wants to be. But it’s too much, even for himself to bear. Putting all that on Eddie would be enough to take them both down to the bottom of the quarry, and lower still.

So he swallows. All the words he cannot say, all the thoughts that lump together and clog his throat.

“Are you okay, Stevie?” Eddie asks, and Steve just shrugs again.

“Sure.”

“Right,” Eddie whispers, then sighs. It’s not a heavy sigh or a judgmental one, but it makes Steve flinch all the same.

Too much. Too fucking much even unknown.

Silence falls over them, the quarry working its magic — or its curse — even on Eddie Munson. Steve wonders if it suffocates or liberates him, but he doesn’t dare to ask. It would take too much explaining for the question to make sense, too much revealing himself, too much of… Just too much.

He wants to ask. To say something. To scoot back over again, closer to Eddie, and lay his head on his shoulder, bask in his warmth and withstand the magic, the curse, the darkness.

Withstand it, because that’s what Eddie does. He is brave, despite everything.

And Steve is just the boy who sits with darkness at night because he doesn’t know how to be brave anymore, not when there’s no question of life or death. He forgot all about everyday-bravery.

But Eddie didn’t. He’s still there, still smiling and laughing and teasing his way through life and into Steve’s heart and soul.

And Steve doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know what he can do with it. Doesn’t know how to ask.

It’s no surprise, then, that it’s Eddie who does.

“What are we doing, Steve?” He sounds a bit resigned about it, and it makes Steve hide away in himself even more, focusing on the darkness beneath him rather than the light beside him — they both leave him blinded at equal measure, but one of them doesn’t ask him questions to which he doesn’t know the answer.

“What do you mean?” he asks after a while, his voice a little off. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Apprehension, maybe. Caught. Uncovered. Exposed.

Beside him, Eddie sighs again, just a little bit, but Steve has always hated that he keeps making people sigh. Makes him feel so fucking small, so incredibly useless.

He raises one leg from the abyss to rest his chin on his knee, because suddenly he feels so heavy that he needs the physical reminder that he’s not about to fall. One foot on the ground. Steady, secure, a great illusion for now.

“Sorry,” he whispers at last, because Eddie hasn’t said anything, has only sighed and created a silence that’s so loud it can probably be heard at the bottom of the quarry, and Steve feels like the silence is his fault this time.

“What for?”

“Dunno,” he confesses, lies, concedes as his house of cards begins to crumble for some reason. The heaviness wanders from his throat down to his heart and settles there, making a home for itself, casting out all the lightness that usually comes when he’s around Eddie.

But it seems he’s reached his breaking point. It seems he can only pretend to be okay for so long, pretend not to yearn and ache and long for intimacy and tenderness. It seems he can only put himself together again, rebuilding himself around Eddie at his centre, until it would break apart for good. Burst out of his heart, dismantle him piece by broken piece until all that’s left is a broken boy, yearning.

And so he can’t stop the tears even if he wanted to. They’re kind in their silence, streaming down his face without demand for sobs or sniffles. Just breaking free, a simple displacement reaction. Following the physics of emotions.

“Hey,” Eddie whispers, reaching out to wrap an arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him into his side. There’s that warmth, that touch, that gentleness he’s been craving — and there’s that sob he’s been suppressing. “Hey, Stevie, it’s okay. You’re okay. You can talk to me, you know that, right?”

He shakes his head into the warmth of Eddie’s neck, wiping dejectedly at his tears.

“No?”

“No,” he whines, sighs, groans, annoyed with himself.

“Don’t want to? Or can’t?”

Both. Neither. All at once.

He shrugs again, still leaning against Eddie.

Eddie, who turns his head slightly and brushes his lips over Steve’s hair in what can only be described as a kiss. Except, it can’t. It couldn’t. It isn’t.

Steve begins to shiver against him — maybe he’s cold, maybe he’s overwhelmed, maybe he’s both and neither and everything all at once.

“I’ve got you, Stevie.”

And then Eddie kisses his head again, and he stills.

“You can’t kiss me, Eddie,” he says, voice still thick, but steadier this time. No more sobbing, no more whining. Just a broken boy, yearning. Always, always that.

Eddie freezes where he’s holding Steve, only his arm still moves in soothing, rubbing motions — warming him, holding him, saving him. Always, always that.

“Sorry,” Eddie says this time. Except it’s wrong. It’s so wrong, and Steve leans back to look at him. It’s impossible to make out his expression in the darkness, but he tries nonetheless.

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispers. “Just…” He gestures vaguely, not quite sure what the just entails. Just mean it. Just do it right. Just don’t do it out of pity. Just leave me alone until I’m over you even though we both know I never really will be.

“Just?”

Steve shrugs. Whispers, “I don’t know.”

“Don’t hide, Stevie.” Be brave, Stevie. Be brave like me.

God, how he wishes. How he longs. How he aches.

“You don’t have to hide, not from me.”

Steve huffs and says, before he can stop himself, “Especially from you.”

Eddie pauses and Steve freaks out a little bit, even before Eddie asks, “Why?” He sounds wounded. Small. He shouldn’t sound like that. Never.

“Because you’re gonna see otherwise.”

“See what?”

That I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Besotted. Enamoured. All the big words you like to make fun of. All of them and more.

“Me.”

There’s a beat where nothing happens. Maybe time stops, maybe reality resets itself, settling in more comfortably in anticipation of vulnerability’s fallout.

And then Eddie takes his hands, reaching for them in the darkness and finding them with ease. Like he’s done it many times before. Because he has. Just never like this.

“Steve,” he begins, and Steve wants to run again. To hide, to confess to another void, and make Eddie forget this conversation ever happened. “I think I already do.”

What? No. No, you can’t.

When Steve doesn’t respond, Eddie continues, seemingly gathering himself and his thoughts as he goes. Always so much stronger, so much braver than Steve.

“I already do see you. The way you smile at me, light up the whole room with it. The way you hug me, always a little too long, but never long enough if you ask me. I see you blushing, I see you going out of your way for me, and… And I think, if you knew how to look, you’d see the same in me. Because, uh. Because I like seeing you. And I like… I like you. Not in a friends kinda way. In a way where I wanna sit beside you all night and talk about deep shit, but I wanna run my fingers through your hair when we do. I wanna play with your fingers when we do. I wanna kiss you when we do, because there’s deep, heavy, traumatic shit everywhere, but there’s also you. And I don’t want one without the other. I want you. In that exact way that I see you looking at me, wanting me, too.”

Eddie swallows, a little breathless beside him like Steve’s not choking on emotion himself.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Eddie whispers then, pressing and desperate and knowing. “Tell me you don’t like me in a way you think you shouldn’t. Tell me I don’t see you.”

He shakes his head, slowly, frantically. “I can’t.”

“Because it’s true?”

Steve’s nodding now, just as frantic, leaving him disoriented and falling, only anchored to Eddie who’s still holding his hands.

“Yeah,” Steve gasps, rasps, whispers. “It… I’m. I don’t.” It’s he who swallows heavily now, needing a second or an eternity to process Eddie’s words. “You really mean that?”

Eddie nods. He can feel it, somehow.

“I don’t know what has you so scared,” Eddie begins. “Except the obvious, of course, but I feel like that’s only a small chunk of it. But you gotta believe me when I say that I mean it. I like you. So much it makes me stupid sometimes.”

Steve huffs, but it’s a smile this time. A real one. Tinged with sadness and heaviness and disbelief still, but a real one nonetheless.

“I wanna tell you. All of that. Everything, in my own words. And I will, but… Eddie, I’m—“ Steve starts with a quivering voice but shuts himself up before he can ruin this.

I’m broken. I’m not sure if I can let you. I’m just Steve. I’m bullshit. I’m…

“I’m tired.”

It has a double meaning, here at the quarry — but he doesn’t mean it like that. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He won’t.

“Can you just hold me?” It is perhaps the closest to bravery he’s going to get. Tonight, or always. But it’s enough. It can be enough.

Eddie hums and Steve can hear the smile, can feel how some of the heaviness inside him dissipates with it.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

Steve shivers again as he shifts, lying back so it’s only his legs, bent at the knee, that dangle over the abyss now. Eddie joins him, wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle and rearranging them so Steve rests half on top of him. It can’t be comfortable, but Steve doesn’t mention it.

They lie there in silence, and Steve allows himself to let go of the tension in his bones as he feels Eddie’s hands travelling across his back in a tender caress. He doesn’t quite believe it’s real, doesn’t believe he’ll get to keep it beyond this moment, and can’t quite savour it the way he wants to because surely he will lose this, too. Surely Eddie will realise and come to his senses and—

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, leaning up slightly to brush his lips over Steve’s temple. “Yeah, Stevie. I really, really mean it.” And then, after a while, “Will you come back home now?”

Back home. Home to Eddie and Wayne. Home, because Eddie cares and wants and bravely, bravely asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

Another kiss to his forehead. “And will you stay?”

It is Steve now who leans up, hovering above Eddie to meet his eyes through the dark. “I will. I do.” And then he slowly, carefully captures Eddie’s lips with his own, sealing the promise and receiving one in return.

Kissing Eddie is a lot like falling, he realises. But there are arms wrapped around him, holding him, never wanting to let him go — so maybe it isn’t falling after all. Maybe it’s flying.

At home in his bed, Eddie holds him some more, running fingers through his hair long after Steve has fallen asleep.

They’ll make it work.

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #dio words #idk how to describe the mood of this so uh feel free to tell me if you find out #in which being in love can feel like the greatest tragedy of all until you learn that you’re not alone #they need so much therapy your honour #i keep wanting to write this one steddie at the quarry scene but it always gets derailed :/

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