"I'm sorry."
It's the first thing Steve says after everything.
After getting Vecna Cursed. After nearly dying. After a hallucination of Eddie saved him. After running through a looped forest. After finding sanctuary in Steve's memory of that Starcourt bathroom. After Eddie reveals himself as Eddie.
It's the only thing he can think of. It's not big enough to fit everything, but it's the only thing that fits in his mouth.
"Don't be."
Maybe that's the only thing Eddie can think of too. The only thing Eddie can bear to say.
Because don't be can't stop Steve's eyes from watering when he sees the vest in his closet. Don't be can't stop Steve's feet from dragging him to the cemetery every evening to clean Eddie's graffiti-covered tombstone. Don't be can't stop Steve from sitting beside Wayne and listening to him talk about the Eddie he remembers. Don't be can't stop Eddie's body from showing up in Steve's dreams, nor Eddie's corpse from his nightmares. Don't be couldn't keep the pain away enough, didn't stop Vecna from latching onto it while Steve was walking alone in the woods.
Don't be isn't enough for what Steve wants to hear. But even stuck here waiting, hoping, for someone to get Steve out, there just isn't enough time.
"I miss you."
"...Why?"
Eddie says it back so quickly, so quietly, like it's just unfathomable to him. Maybe it is, considering their last memories. But their eyes meet and he looks just as sad, just as longing, as Steve.
"You were my friend."
Steve can't help but say it like that. Like they were friends for years instead of days. Like Eddie was that important to him in their final moments. Like his heart really aches for Eddie every second of the apocalypse.
Can't help but say it like he means it.
"I wish we could've had more time..."
Steve's voice cracks a little there as he turns away, hiding. It's all he wants. It's all Vecna used to entice him with. It's all that's keeping him going, to finally fulfill the last request Eddie made. It's all he has left to feel close to Eddie.
The Eddie that's sitting right next to him, silent, his sight weighing on Steve's skin. Conscious and aware and the real Eddie. Trapped in Vecna's head as a backup power source, yet who still risked everything to come save Steve. Who Steve will never see again because killing Vecna means killing Eddie for good, and his heart doesn't want it, is begging for another solution...
But for once, his broken head overpowers his shattered heart.
"Maybe we did."
Eddie takes Steve's hand. Meets Steve's surprised look with his own small smile of hope. They're both suddenly tearing up, eyes glistening with life in this gray stall.
"Maybe in another world, we got a second first chance. A first second chance. Maybe even a third, or fourth. Maybe in a different life, we had everything we wanted. Because you, Steve Harrington, are too good for me to be doomed to meet just once."
And for a moment, Steve sees it. Feels it. Versions of them connected through the universe.
Little kids playing in the lake. One with bruised skin and shaved hair, loud but unfathomably lonely. One with a bruised heart and soft eyes, timid but stubbornly hopeful.
A rockstar with glittering chains, center stage in the spotlight. A set of eyes in the crowd or behind the curtain, watching only him.
A werewolf and a vampire, two cryptids of horror, meeting in the dead of a full moon night to feel safe with the only other one who understands.
A future where they won, where the only death was the one that mattered. A process of healing and learning, coming home to a family every single day.
A world without pain, without their hell, where two high schoolers found freedom from their shackles and company in each other. Hiding away together in the dark corners of the town.
Steve even sees other versions of them. Versions that he knows were originally never supposed to meet, yet forces so much greater than them pulled them together.
A metalhead drug dealer, constantly getting into trouble with one nail-bat-weilding cop.
A criminal's fugitive nature leading him to a rugged trailer park, and the dangerous owner within one such home.
An eccentric king in an old coliseum, always choosing one particular warrior as his champion.
A young programmer being pulled away from his work by sobs above his apartment, running upstairs to check on the law student that recently moved in.
Two actors, finding an easy friendship in the months of filming one season of a show that would change their lives.
In that moment, Steve's overwhelmed by the closeness he suddenly feels with the soul beside him. Falling into tears, he pulls Eddie into a tight hug, holding him so so close to convey everything he can't say. Feeling Eddie hold him back, hearing everything Eddie can't say in return.
Familiar music comes on outside the stall. Robin's voice calls out to him, telling him to come home.
And when he does leave, Steve hopes that someone out there will understand that he never can. Because here in Eddie's arms is the only place that will ever truly feel like home.
"Thank you... for everything, Eddie."
Thank you, Steve. For everything and more..."
--------------------
- List of AUs, in order, after, "Versions of them connected through the universe": Childhood Friends / Rockstar!Eddie / Werewolf!Steve & Vampire!Eddie / Eddie Survives / No Upside Down & High School
- List of Multiverse Steddie AUs, in order, after, "...yet forces so much greater than them pulled them together": Eddie x Gator / Baron x Michael / Geta x Sean / Keys x Eric / Quinn and Keery
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can it be easy this once? / steve harrington
summary: steve accidentally gives a stupid answer to your honest question. (best friends with benefits pining idiots to lovers, fem!reader)
unedited we die like men & title from the alcott by the national ft taylor swift hehehe enjoy
It started as a means of comfort after Starcourt, when he was bloody and bruised up but you took him home and got closer, closer, closer, until it turned into a mess of blurred lines and panting breaths, lips swollen for reasons other than being hurt, for better reasons, reasons that brought forth safety and relief for the two of you. You both tend to hunger for such things. It’d been good, easy, for a bit there. Lately it’d felt like the intimacy was threatening to choke you. Like you’d never met a form of closeness you didn’t cling to. And God, did it feel like you were clinging. Craving an unwarranted change. Was it so unwarranted? You weren’t sure, you could never tell.
The air in his room is hot and sticky with summer, the ceiling fan providing the barest relief, your bare skin providing the slightest bit more. You stare all around his room, taking in all the stark traces of him, though in truth it doesn’t betray much, just as he attempts to. It’s a plain room, plaid walls, matching curtains, his desk messy and cluttered, all the dresser’s drawers slightly ajar like he spent a touch too long shuffling through all his clothes to determine which outfit would be best, which, knowing him in the way you do, he probably did. You knew he wasn’t as secure as he liked everyone to believe. Steve Harrington tried his best, but sometimes you saw right through him.
Other times he was harder to read. It was probably purposeful, layers of protection built around himself. Don’t love anyone, don’t let anyone love you, and you won’t get hurt. People can only hurt you if you let them. Steve wasn’t letting anyone anymore. Definitely not his parents, definitely not Nancy Wheeler, definitely not random girls who would inevitably end up disappointed with him. He swore it all off. He was a hopeless romantic who never wanted to be in love again. You understood it for the most part. Or you attempted to. It was hard when you were halfway (maybe more than halfway) in love with the guy, in his bed most nights, in his company most days, acting like a couple without being an established couple because he was too hesitant and you were too gentle to be pushy.
He nudges you lightly, naked chest peeking up from his covers, naked everything else kept firmly underneath. “You okay? You’re quiet.” He sits up so he’s level with you, and you avoid eye contact by leaning down toward the floor to grasp for the shirt he let you borrow, a faded Spider-Man one he insisted was from middle school. You didn’t entirely believe him, but maybe it was just funny, and kind of sweet, to picture Steve sleeping in a Spider-Man shirt and keeping it a secret just for himself. You pull the shirt on over your head, and before you can do it for yourself, he reaches for your hair and takes it out from where it’s caught under the shirt. The familiarity of it makes you flinch. You can have sex with him all you want but God forbid he’s the slightest bit loving outside of that. It confuses you, the softness in the touches that aren’t in bed with him. If he holds your hand in any context other than bringing you as into him as possible while he slips himself in and out, you lose all sense of normalcy between the two of you. You can’t be normal when he’s holding your hand and stroking your cheeks and being kind, soft, adoring Steve, without being your Steve.
“I’m fine, I’m just…” You reach for your shorts at the end of the bed. Steve watches you get dressed with his eyebrows scrunched together, confused. You’re not usually in a rush to leave after you have sex. Not that he wants you to. He likes that you stay until day sinks into night and he drives you home and waits to repeat it all again. Waits to see you, generally. And it’s not sex every single time. You drag him to see whatever’s playing at the Hawk and he makes you sit with him at Family Video on slow days when it’s just him on the clock and a single tumbleweed blows through the store instead of any customers. He drives you just about anywhere you ask and he lets you put on any cassettes you want in his car even if he hates what’s playing. It’s nice, the friendship part of all of it. If you had to give everything else up and just keep the friendship you’d be willing. He’d be willing. You consider it. “Nothing, just tired, probably gonna head home,” you smile at him over your shoulder before pulling on your socks and it’s half-hearted and he knows it.
“What? You can sleep here, you know that,” he waves a hand around the room, trying to catch your gaze, but you avoid his eyes again. Descending light slants in through the curtains and envelopes him in gold. He glows, he’s so pretty. His hair is messy from where you heatedly ran your hands through it, but it still looks nearly perfect. The fact that he always looks so good infuriates you.
“No yeah, I know, I wanna like shower and stuff too, and I left my new book at home and I wanted to do some reading,” you bluff calmly, standing up from tangled bedsheets and roaming the room in search of your sneakers.
“That Stephen King scary clown book? I’ll take you home and you can come back and read it here, so you don’t get scared,” and he knows you won’t get scared and that you love horror far more than he ever could but he just really, really doesn’t want to be alone. Why would you go when everything’s right here? His parents aren’t home and something about you leaving makes him antsy and desperate. When you still refuse to look at him he feels himself, his confidence, growing smaller and smaller. “Did I- did I do something?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound as pathetic as it does.
You whip around to face him, finally, finally, and touch a hand to his face. Relief floods through him at the heat of your fingers. “No, of course not, it’s all me, okay? I’m all sweaty and awful.”
“You look beautiful, I swear,” he squeezes your hand and you feel like you’re drowning. It’s hard to breathe, your chest tight. “Are you sure you’re okay? You can talk to me, it’s me.” He scoots closer, if that’s possible. “You’re one of my best friends, we tell each other everything.” You look up toward the ceiling, inwardly groaning. Best friend.
“You do this with all your best friends?”
“Well, no, Robin wouldn’t touch me even if she didn’t like girls-“ He feels himself starting to grin, teasing smile lilting at his lips.
“Steve!” You’re laughing a little and so is he as you push his arm back. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“What’d you mean, then?” He’s still smiling, that entrancing, deliberately pouty, lazy smile. Vaguely smirky. You don’t know if it’s deliberate, a ploy to distract you, con you into staying, make you less prone to saying what you want to say, but you press anyway, even though he’s making you want to lean forward and endlessly kiss the smirk off his mouth.
“I just think, I don’t know… you’re not seeing anyone else, right?”
“’Course not, why, you got other plans after this?” He grins again. You roll your eyes. He makes it so hard sometimes.
“Steve,” you whine, “I’m so serious right now.”
“Okay, okay. No, you’re the only one for me.” He means it. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard. “Are you seeing anyone else?” He asks you like it’s the easiest question in the world for him to ask but honestly he’s shitting his pants a little. He’s not sure what’d he say if you said yes, I am, and I think we should end this, which is where he’s assuming the conversation is going. You’ve got we shouldn’t do this anymore written all over you in his eyes and he’s steeling himself for the heartbreak.
“Does it look like I am?”
“Does it look like I am?” He repeats back, and he reaches for your hand in that too intimate way of his, takes it all careful and slow. “What’s this about?”
“I just, I just think, that, you know, I’m not seeing anyone, and you’re not seeing anyone, but we’re sorta… seeing each other, yeah?” You gesture between the two of you. He nods. He’s staring at you very intensely, waiting for you to get your words out. He’s still waiting for you to say you think this whole thing has been a very bad mistake, a miscalculated judgement on your part, you should go back to the way things were, so he’s not expecting what comes out of you next. “Shouldn’t we be, like, official, then?”
And instead of throwing up all the ways he so badly would love for that to happen, he chokes out, because he’s stupid and speechless, “Official?” And the way he says it, like it’s a curse when it’s only his disbelief that you’d want that with him after all this time, makes you immediately go into panic mode.
He quite literally sees the way you lose any sense of confidence in your question and he immediately tries to take it back as you stand from his side and start trying to force your words back in your mouth, too. “Fuck, forget I said anything,” you mumble, spying your shoes shoved under his desk where you’d comfortably kicked them off. You hasten to put them on as Steve scrambles up from the bed and starts dressing, matching your frantic speed.
“Hey, wait, that’s not what I- I didn’t mean it like that-“
“It’s fine, Steve, I get it, I totally do, this isn’t that for you, it’s fine-“
“It is, it is-“ but you’re not hearing him, your mind is already elsewhere. It’s in your own bed in the quiet, alone with your thoughts and not with him, mercifully not with him. You need this one mercy, “I’ll drive you home, babe, c’mon, I’ll explain everything, please-“
“I got it, it’s fine, I’m fine, you don’t have to explain, okay? I got it,” and you don’t just walk out of his house and down the block to yours, you absolutely flee. You take Steve’s heart with you.
He’s pacing the floor behind the register at Family Video three days and three shifts later, practically clawing at the walls of the place, and Robin is pulling her hair out at the sight of him in distress this way.
“What did you do?” She finally breaks, flipping her magazine shut.
“What? How do you know it was me?” He stops pacing. He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it.
“You’ve had three shifts and she hasn’t visited one single time. She always visits. And I know I didn’t do anything wrong, because I never do anything wrong, so, what’d you do?” Robin places her hand under his chin and stares at him expectantly.
He huffs, his hands on hips. “Maybe she did something, Robin, did you ever think of that?”
“Definitely not,” Robin retorts, waiting for Steve to be serious.
He deflates. “Okay, it was me.”
“I know that, now continue.”
“We were, you know,” he tilts his head down and raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes.
“Having sex, sure,” Robin bobs her head. A customer in the nearest aisle frowns and shuffles toward a different section further away from the two of them.
Steve shushes her. “I wasn’t trying to say it so loud.”
“Having sex,” Robin repeats, louder this time, not bothering to fight back a laugh at Steve’s exasperated expression, “continue.”
“Well, after that, she started asking if, if I was seeing anyone, which of course I’m not, because, you know, I’m into her, obviously, so I told her I wasn’t, and she said she wasn’t, so she said maybe we should be official.” Steve hesitates to say the rest of what happened. He still can’t believe all he could do when you said the words was repeat them back to you with that stupid look on his face instead of giving you the biggest, loudest declaration of love in a big, messy, pathetic, devoted way, the way he pictures himself when it comes to you, messy and pathetic and devoted, and he replays that moment back to himself all day long, thinking of everything else he could’ve said to make you understand.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? She’s all you talk about all day long, you want to be with her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do!” He snaps, dragging a hand across his face. “But when she said it I just couldn’t get the words out and she got, she got so sad and she left without me being able to explain anything and she hasn’t answered the phone which, yes, I’ve been calling, and I don’t know how to do this.” He’d never been good at school but he knew he’d get a Grade A in Pitiful.
“Do what? Tell a girl you love her? You’ve been in relationships before, Steve.”
“I know, but…” he sighs. “I’m different now, like, it’s not as easy anymore, for me, and I- I don’t want her to get hurt, and I don’t want to get hurt, it’s like, everything used to be my fault, and I wasn’t as good as I could have been, and I don’t want to break anything, I don’t want it to get fucked up, because it’ll be my fault, and I can’t do that again. Not to her.” He swallows, the words harder to come by than he would care to admit. “I’m a little… I’m a little in love with her, I think.” This is said quietly. It frightens him to say it out loud. He’s gone over it in his head, those words, so few of them, but they say so much, and it’s scary. He hasn’t said them to someone in years. The last time he did he got so brutally hurt he thought he’d never recover. But he had. So why was it still so scary?
“A little bit?” Robin teases, but it’s all love for him, truly.
“Alright, a lot in love,” he concedes. He wants to get used to saying it. He wants to say it to you. For real. Loudly. “I still don’t know how to do this, though. Not anymore.”
“Come on!” Robin gets up from her stool and places her hands on his shoulders. “You’re supposed to be Steve Harrington. You were using those…” she pauses for a beat and then, “charms,” the word is said with the smallest hint of sarcasm but she persists nonetheless, “on tons of girls in high school and at Scoops! Now whip them out again for our very nice friend that you sometimes go to town with!”
“When did any of those charms,” he says it with a matching sarcastic tone, “work aside from when I was sixteen and an idiot?”
“You might not be sixteen anymore but you’re still an idiot, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t but thank you for the encouragement.”
“I’m just saying!” She exclaims, throwing her hands up and returning back to her seat. “Putting yourself out there is always gonna be scary, but you can’t let that stop you. You’d actually be an idiot if you let that stop you. Are you just never gonna see her again? No, because you’d go insane. It’s not like what you did was all that bad anyway.”
“You really think so?” He perks up a bit, needing that confirmation that he isn’t a totally awful and irredeemable person. It’s easy for him to fall headfirst into that spiral of thinking. It was a trap set with the most accessible, perfect bait and he somehow always found himself walking straight into it without stopping to think if he was being fair to himself.
“You’ve both been in bad spots, you reacted the way you did and she reacted the way she did out of what was most likely panic and embarrassment. She’s definitely not even mad at you. Probably just, again, embarrassed. If you explain I think it’ll all be okay, Steve, I swear.” Robin can’t take much more of this conversation circling around, as much as she loves Steve and wants to be there for him, she would love him even more if he acted on his feelings and allowed himself some happiness for once. “So do you think you can you, like, maybe go tell her so she can keep visiting us at work? I need more company than just you and Keith and these customers with no taste,” she complains, glaring at the closed door that hides Keith, in all his absolute glory. The customer from before hears her comment and storms out. Robin rolls her eyes.
“Right, yeah, tell her I love her, tell my best friend I love her,” he frowns, nerves creeping up the back of his neck. “Maybe you could just call her first and ask-“
“Steve! I am not meddling in your love life like that when you already know everything there is to know!” She throws her magazine at him. “She said she wants to be with you, go be with her!”
“Alright, alright!” He waves his hands dismissively. He begins to pace again, this time his eyes held to the clock. Robin groans. There’s still three hours left of their shift.
You’re in your room wallowing, or doing what’d you call attempting not to wallow but failing at it miserably. You haven’t touched a single page of your book, mostly content to just listen to sad records and more or less stare at the wall. It was stupid, you knew, to behave in such a way over some guy. But it didn’t feel like some guy. It was Steve, after all. It all felt deeper than just some guy. You two had been through a lot together, more than most people have been, and if you’d just ruined your friendship with someone you always felt safe, felt at home with, over feelings you couldn’t control and probably would be better off not having, you were going to need some serious therapy.
It probably was silly of the two of you to start this thing up anyway, you reason, fighting back your urge to do any further crying into a pillow. You try to focus on painting your nails a nice shade of dark blue but it reminds you of Steve’s old Scoops uniform and of that night (and all that nights that followed) so you stop in the middle of your second thumb and grab nail polish remover and start scrubbing away at your finished right hand.
“Fuckin’ ridiculous,” you mutter, the cotton ball in your hand soaked through with blue and your nails discolored and muddy. “I am ridiculous,” you say to yourself, shaking off your wet hand. Your room is filled with the smell of acetone and disappointment. You think about lighting a candle when your doorbell rings. You debate answering it before it rings again. And then again. And again, more frenzied this time.
You open the door to a distressed Steve. His cheeks are red and he’s breathing like he can’t anymore. He’s not the multi-star athlete he was in high school, he realizes in this moment. “Did you- did you just run here from work?” You ask him, but he’s already too close to you, not answering your question, gazing at you because simply looking isn’t enough and has never been enough. He is gazing. He is flush with adoration. It’s hard not to bloom under that radiance. He makes you want to forget everything and go back to plush lips on hot skin and the quiet contentment that came alongside being with him in those first few months. You back up a little into your doorway but he steps up to you, following your steps. “Where’s your car-“
“Forget that for a sec,” he says, and you stop talking out of surprise. “Just, just tell me if we do this it’ll be okay, and we won’t be terrible for each other, and we’ll be good,” because he needs to hear it, even if it’s ridiculous and he’s jinxing it before it’s begun he needs to know you’re right there with him. “Like, just tell me it can be easy this once. If you broke my heart I don’t know if I’d be able to handle it. ‘Cause I love you. I do. And I want this.” And you get it. He’s letting you get it. He’s letting you all the way in. You realize, flustered and basking in it, that he’s the first one to say those words. That you hadn’t even said them when you posed your first question. But he’s saying them out loud and it’s brilliant and beautiful. He is beautiful.
It makes you want to weep, the love that swells here, out in the open. “Fuck, Steve, what type of girl do you think I am, breaking the heart of the guy I’ve been in love with since he started sneaking into my bedroom?” He smiles. He glows. It’s so beautifully Steve. Maybe it can be easy.
When he kisses you, he proves it: the ease, the tranquility. He is fervent and burning. Everything is urgent with Steve. Especially kissing. He captures every bit of you immediately. His touch is light when he urges you out of your doorway and into your living room so he can shut your front door and quit giving the neighbors what he’s sure is the show of a lifetime. It is for him, at least.
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