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hitlikehammers · 1 month ago

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forgive me if I jump✨

steddie post-s4 established relationship ♥️

~ for @pearynice 💕🎂

He shoots up at the sound of the flatline; the screaming follows him as he wakes. By the time Steve’s hand shoots out to the other side of the bed, his pulse is already in his throat—it doesn’t get any calmer for finding it empty, sheets cold under his clammy palm but at the same time: it doesn’t get any worse. ~~~ OR: nightmares. trauma. fear. and LOVE being bigger than all of it. 💕♥️💕

🎶 title and concept inspired by this context-less post from Noah Kahan

(which ultimately became this, for reference, which is not so much aligned in terms of inspiration 🫠)

He shoots up at the sound of the flatline; the screaming follows him as he wakes.

By the time Steve’s hand shoots out to the other side of the bed, his pulse is already in his throat—it doesn’t get any calmer for finding it empty, sheets cold under his clammy palm but at the same time: it doesn’t get any worse.

Because it’s gotten less common with time. But to call it uncommon would be wishful thinking. Dishonest.

And there are so many things Steve’s learned in this relationship—not least how nothing that came before it could ever compare, really; or maybe couldn’t really have been called a relationship at all, more than varyingly convenient ways not to be alone—but one of those many things Steve’s learned?

Honesty.

Just…painful, terrifying, vulnerable fucking truthful, ripped out from the center of his fucking chest honesty. Nothing less. And sure, it’s usually messy.

But every single time, it’s more than worth it.

So: finding the other side of the bed empty and cold isn’t as routine anymore, which is progress. But it isn’t unheard of.

So Steve doesn’t wait for his pulse to settle before he swings himself out of bed to go find the warmth that’s missing at his side.

He hangs onto the railing on his way down the stairs, still shaking off the daze of the particular horror that’d visited his dream tonight, and uses the dig of his nails around the grip to coax himself to waking, to shaking the stupor off a little quicker; to focusing on the mission he needs to complete for the sake of his own heart in more ways than one: to find his boyfriend, the better, far-more-precious half of every part of him, and try to fix what he can of what drove Eddie from their bed, and comfort what can’t be fixed straight-out.

But in the same turn: Steve needs to find his boyfriend so that his own heart can stall how it’s trying to tear out of his skin for the way it’s still slamming against his ribs, through his veins. Steve needs to find him, and soak in every form of proof that he’s there, he’s safe, he’s breathing, he’s not dea—

Yeah. Steve needs to find his boyfriend.

And whether or not said boyfriend has escaped to his now-typical refuge: Steve’ll be better served to meet him wherever he is, the more awake that he is when he gets there.

He stuffs bare feet into the first shoes he finds—they don’t fit quite right, meaning they’re Eddie’s, but they’re close enough. They’ll do.

He grabs his keys from the table, plus his jacket because it’s the middle of the fucking night—doesn’t even have to consciously check in the dark to know Eddie’s is next to his own, because of course Eddie didn’t get his fucking coat, so he grabs that too and takes the garage-side door over the front, slings Eddie’s coat over his shoulder, and it’s autopilot that gets him in his car, just to back out and swing it at an angle, front wheels on the grass so the headlights will help him out—maybe he’ll have to jump the battery from Eddie’s van in the morning but that’s so fucking secondary; almost doesn’t register at all.

It does register just a little that his parents would kill him, to know he’d driven on the grass but, like: that only registers a sense of twisted satisfaction, and whole-bodied resolve: fuck his parents, he’d do, and has done, things far more drastic for the sake of the man he loves.

He climbs out again in seconds, ties Eddie’s coat around his waist in hopes it’ll hold more securely on the way up, and makes damn sure the ladder he heaves from where it’s propped along the wall inside the garage sits even and stands locked on the surface of the driveway before he climbs to the edge of fucking annoying-ass slant of the roof where it hangs closest to the ground, so he can climb up and around to the peak, lift up to the top, and swing into the tiny little hideaway Eddie’s made of the overhang outside their bedroom.

Climbing up here to find Eddie has definitely given Steve a whole new set of reasons to hate this fucking house, and its goddamn torture maze of a layout; he cannot wait until they save enough for their own place. They both agreed not to touch Steve’s trust from his grandad if they could help it outside an emergency, not yet, but…Steve’s beginning to think they should revisit that decision. They were gonna save and stay until Erica was graduated and gone, the last of them safe and out, but.

Maybe somewhere new, somewhere far enough—

He gets close enough for Eddie to startle—fuck, he must be out of it, stuck in his head so far to have missed Steve’s anything-but-silent ascent, especially across the shingles—and oh.

Oh, his Eddie.

Steve doesn’t know if distance, more time, or anything in this world at all they haven’t tried as yet can help—but meeting Eddie’s frantic gaze, catching the way his chest’s still heaving but nearly silent, too quiet for Steve to have caught before; that split second where Eddie is raw and hurting, eyes sunken and lips gnawed bright: Steve’ll plan later.

For now he closes the distance as quickly as Eddie does in kind, once he unfreezes, blinks back to the moment, what’s real: arms reaching, needing while Steve pulls him close and covers every trembling inch of Eddie he can reach with touch, with warmth, stroking his hair, breathing deep and even, murmuring low as he presses Eddie tight to his chest because he’s learned that Eddie’s nightmares come in a lot of varieties, but the ones that drive him up here? Away from their bed?

They’re the ones where he loses Steve, one way or another, and staying next to Steve feels unreal, still, for the way they claw and take gold that hard—they’re working on that, though.

But while it’s never been said out loud: in the wake of living that loss, even if only in his mind, Eddie gravitates toward proof of life, tangible ways to drive out the lies his sleeping mind concocts; it unlocks the tension in him with somewhere safe to fall apart—Steve’s arms.

Somewhere safe to unravel into: the rise-and-fall of Steve’s chest.

“Another one?” Steve eventually mouths at the shell of the ear he’s curled down to press lips along, gentle, rhythmic: real.

Eddie nods, as if he needs to, and presses tighter into Steve’s chest in the way that makes Steve aware keenly of his own pulse, the pressure on his lungs: by rights it shouldn’t be so steadying, so comforting, in the way that it is.

But it is, and he feels Eddie loosen, melt into him, and take what feels like a genuine breath in for the first time in far too long, straight between Steve’s collarbones before he stills.

Usually that’s how it goes. He stills, and he soaks in all the little proof points of Steve’s living, working, real body there against him, until he can let go of whatever haunted his dreams.

Or else: let go enough.

But then he’s tensing, and Steve frowns, already concerned, already preparing to catch and to soothe as Eddie tips his head up and pins red-rimmed eyes so wide on Steve, his cheeks the slightest bit shiny for tears Steve’s shirt must by soaked in, but he hadn’t noticed. That was the least important thing to pay attention to.

“You too?” Eddie asks, hoarse and devastated and Steve doesn’t get it at first, just then Eddie’s hand replaces his cheek on Steve’s chest, the pressure making a point of what’s racing underneath still, giving him away and—

Oh. Well.

Yeah.

This isn’t about Steve though, so he just strokes the pale-pink line at the corner of Eddie’s lips—he doesn’t mean to go all the way down to cup a hand around the side of his neck.

He often forgets that sometimes muscle memory doesn’t just leave when it’s not necessarily needed anymore—sometimes it lingers.

Sometimes it makes a hand on his boyfriend’s neck in affection land so that fingertips can count his pulse, because there was a time, there was a time and it—

“The hospital,” Eddie gasps, knows that’s one of the worst—knows wherever it starts it always ends with when Eleven told them the only way to get Henry’s hold out of Eddie for good, make sure that Eddie didn’t go down with the rest of it, was to let him crash then bring him back—and it’d killed Steve, it’d broken him in ways that weren’t just still tender, but that still hadn’t fully closed and maybe never would but Eddie knows that—

Which is how they end up sitting up, leaning back, Eddie’s hands now framing Steve’s face and drawing in for a slow, soft, but incalculably deepkiss that does help calm Steve’s heart: it’s not aimed to go anywhere, and lead to anything. It’s pure affection and care, and it doesn’t soften his pulse, or even slow it really, but it’s not…it’s more.

Like that love and care are flowing in when the valves open and working to convince him down to his cells that the things he fears—and did fear, in person, lived through and fell apart for—aren’t true, here. Didn’t end in the way that would have killed him, too.

“Fuck, Stevie, and I wasn’t there, I’m sorry,” and Steve’s drawn upward in the process of being pulled to lie on top of Eddie, roles reversing as he gets wrapped tight in Eddie’s arms and tucked beneath his chin where Steve’s pretty sure it’s on purpose that he’s crushed against to that wild pulse at its berth, and yeah.

Yeah, Steve breathes a little easier for it. Just…knowing this way. He always does, after that specific memory fuels his nightmares.

He thinks it says a great deal, that neither of them has to speak the need for this kind of comfort, this kind of reassurance. Steve knows it’s sings in his own veins like he’s never felt before, with anyone else, to not only be seen, but to be known for the whole of it. The whole of him.

He lets himself have a few more seconds, more than a few more heartbeats under his ear because Eddie’s still reeling for whatever drove him up here—but Steve lets the sounds of Eddie’s lungs filling up ground him before he wraps his arms around Eddie’s middle now and sits up, pulls Eddie with him.

“Don’t ever be sorry,” Steve kisses the crest of his cheekbone before he asks, so careful, so gentle, and only because the more he knows the better he can help, they’ve learned this.

But the honesty—as he knows just as well by now—sometimes has to hurt in the process.

“Which one drove you up here?”

Eddie shakes his head—not ready yet, and that’s fine, that’s so okay—and he moves to lean, to burrow in Steve’s neck and that’s okay, too, but his eyes catch on the dim headlight-glow against the tarp over the pool and Steve doesn’t even have to be this close to catch the flinch that follows so he asks soft, and only as he guides Eddie into his chest at the same time:

“The car?”

There’ve been more than a couple rough nights caused by contortions involving Steve’s car; Steve can’t know for sure which got center stage tonight, or if it was a new horror show altogether: just knows his chest burns for how Eddie trembles against him—still.

Eddie nods against his neck, though, doesn’t try to fight or deny at all and Steve leans to press his lips to the top of his head when Eddie speaks only—unwaveringly—against the place where Steve pulse beats at the line of his throat:

“Leaving.”

And Steve knows how he means it, and if anything could kill him more than knowing there’s space in Eddie’s head for the absurdity of such a thing—that Steve ever could, ever would even think about leaving him, what they have, what they are working together so hard to make for keeps in a forever kind of way—

The only thing that might have the capacity to kill him more is how that space in Eddie’s head doesn’t fade as quick as a dream, and follows him here. To this.

“But then, you were gone but then there was a,” Eddie hiccups a little—Steve can’t feel if there are tears but it doesn’t matter; there’s clearly heartbreak and that’s bad enough; “an accident, a bad accident, you…”

“Are right here, babe,” Steve takes hold of him and leans back like Eddie did before for him, tucks Eddie tighter up against his own heartbeat which is still heavy but calmer, now, so he whispers fierce as he buries his face in Eddie’s hair:

“I’m right here.”

And Steve holds him there; only moves to pull his unzipped coat up and around them both, to make a cocoon of what it means to live and breathe and feel this much, still, after being been hurt enough to easily have snuffed it all to ash.

It’s Eddie’s turn to need that proof of life: undeniable.

“We didn’t even fight,” Eddie mouths more than anything to Steve’s skin where his chin’s dragged down the collar of his shirt; “you just,” his voice breaks again, and Steve’s arms tighten further by default; “couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t handle…”

He breathes shaky, and shakes his head kinda nonsensically against Steve’s chest, only slightly, never sacrificing where his cheek lies and his ear holds to hear, to listen, and Steve cradles the back of Eddie’s head closer to him, breathes steady and slow as best he can just to try and give Eddie somewhere to grasp at, a foothold to stand on. Anything.

Everything.

“I’m so scared, Steve,” Eddie finally halfway-sobs, so lost and desperate, and clinging so hard onto Steve that it’s tight in Steve’s throat, in Steve’s chest, too. “Yeah, it’s gotten better, but I’m still so fucking scared.”

And Steve gets it. Steve understands. Steve’s not immune to it himself in the slightest.

He still hates it exponentially more for how it hurts Eddie.

“It’s bad enough that that, that place still haunts me, haunts us both when its fucking burned to dust, when there’s nothing, we couldn’t even getthere, fuck, fuck, for all intents it doesn’t even existanymore,” and Eddie sounds bitter for it, which Steve understands well enough; he hates that they gave so much, and ultimately won the war, but that the war didn’t end with the victory. That it claws at them like this. That it hurts Eddie so much, for how soft and big his heart truly is—Steve would have him no other way.

But Steve would give anything to take that hurt from under those ribs and into himself, just to spare him.

“Jesus,” Eddie’s inhale catches, and he shakes more than he was—Steve pulls the coat around them closer, though he’s not sure he actually can, but fuck if he’s not gonna try, just in case any part of it’s something he can help fight back.

“But then I have to dream, still, of losing you to the simplest bullshit, these, these normal fucking tragedies anyway, after everything we survived,” Eddie’s voice pitches louder, but stretches thin to breaking; “or straight up losing you because of mybullshit—”

And that, that’s also not new, so neither of them can possibly claim it’s a surprise how Steve hauls Eddie up and stops the words, the simple suggestion with the press of his mouth because: no.

Steve will spend the rest of his life proving it—he’s not immune himself, knows he needs it too, sometimes—but if kissing the nonsense quiet, smothering the sheer pain that the very thought lances through him, twists in his ribs with how much Steve feels the very opposite?

So fucking be it.

“I’m afraid that there’s still stuff you don’t know, even now, not yet,” Eddie whispers between them finally, a little wet on the last syllable in a way that wrings Steve’s heart, and once upon a time Steve would have said that in itself was just so very not-Eddie.

But Steve knows better, now. Knows Eddie better, now, and knows this part of him that’s rarely been trusted to the world at all and while Steve hates with everything in him that it has to exist at all, he’s so goddamn grateful, fucking honored to be trusted; to have proven himself good enough to merit it: to hold the privilege in the palm of his hands to try and keep it safe, and make it better where he can, always.

His Eddie: through and through.

“And then when you find out you’ll know, you’ll realize it was all a fucking waste, on me—“

And that: that’s more nonsense. So Steve’s mouth knows automatically where to go.

Because Steve’s in this forever. Steve’s in this for always. He’s thought himself a romantic from the first suggestion of the idea and yet he had no goddamn clue until he bumped shoulders with a pretty fucking nerd in a hellscape and felt butterflies; until he hauled a body everyone else screamed at him to leave, they couldn’t risk slowing down but they couldn’t understand what Steve already knew:

If the body weren’t a person, living and breathing and already winding tight through Steve’s heart, Steve would be dead, too. He knew that without a fucking doubt, even then.

And so now it’s only grown—the feeling and the certainty and the impossibility of ever letting go—and Steve’s learned well these past months how to say that, maybe best, in the way he kisses deeper than he used to know how, to feel it deeper than he knew anyone could—more likely than not only possible, really, because it’s Eddie.

And what he has with Eddie is something he never knew to think of seeing in the world at all, let alone something he’d even get to touch for himself—and then, to keep?

Steve Harrington’s not going fucking anywhere, not for anything.

He keeps his lips locked to Eddie’s until just past the point where they’re breathless and it could be terrifying—but Eddie chases it even as Steve eases them away, panting and gripping at each other as their chests knock, eyes blown in the dark to see everything.

And so he sees Eddie trembling—which yeah, he has been since Steve found him, Steve’s felt in it holding the man in his arms, and they’re both still levelling for the sake of needing air—but it’s not just the kiss. It’s not just a tightness Steve put there for pushing the way their tongues were trying to coax each other’s soul out whole.

So Steve leans to suck at the visible beat under Eddie’s jaw for a second before he tucks Eddie back in against him and lets him blanket across Steve’s chest, stretches so he can better nestle the base of Steve’s throat.

“Never,” Steve speaks it low, not least so that Eddie feels it rumble where he rests his head, like it could shake straight into that rapid fire brain of his; “I would never. I could never,” he hums; Eddie’s breath catches just short of a whine:

“It’s not possible.”

Doesn’t matter how long they’ve been this, together: Steve cannot imagine his life without Eddie. It’s not even just that he doesn’t want to; it’s that he can��t remember why it would be worth it, now that he knows what his life was built for: this.

Them.

Finally, after beat-after-beat-after-beat of just their gasping coming down, his breath so so fast, and voice so so fragile, Eddie tries to be, what’s the word Rob’s always throwing at him?

Contrary.

(He thinks that’s it.)

“But you—”

This time Steve doesn’t still Eddie’s lips with his own, not for lack of wanting, but definitely for the recognition that there are things that need saying, much as Steve used to chafe at too many words in a row: he’s learned that too, with Eddie. And he’s so fucking grateful for it; the life they’ve had to live, as much as the life they’re lucky enough to live now—all of it kinda needs the words.

“I’m not some defenseless maiden in one of your campaigns,” Steve tells him in the simplest, surest terms he knows; “I know you, you let me know you,” and he kisses the bow of Eddie’s lips at the top before he noses against the line of his jaw:

“And whatever bits and pieces that maybe haven’t seen the light yet,” he kisses the point of that jaw and goes further, mirrors Eddie again to kiss a ring around the blood beating still so fucking fast at his neck:

“I’m so ready to know them, and hold them close when they’re the scared parts, and square up when they’re the demons and fight them with you, and just,” and Steve finally just kisses that beating heart, when it pounds into the purse of his waiting lips like a gift all its own before he straightens enough to meet Eddie’s eyes:

“I signed on for all of you,” Steve brushes Eddie’s hair behind one ear, delicate and adoring as he’s flooded with how true the words are in his own chest: “because all of you, is what I fell for.”

“You can’t fall for what you don’t know is there—“ Eddie tries to protest, though it’s weak.

The fact that it’s there at all, though, isn’t something Steve was ever going to allow to stand.

“When did you know you loved D&D?”

Eddie blinks; frowns.

“What?”

Steve tilts his head, raises a brow: waits.

Eddie lets out a slow breath and answers, kinda hesitant—uncomprehending, but honest:

“First time I read more than a page of The Player’s Handbook at a flea market.”

Steve can picture it, the innocence; the wonder—how little has really changed, not at the heart of him.

“So you didn’t know everything yet, right?” Steve presses on. “But you still knew?”

And it’s in the inflection, the way he says that last word that Eddie gets it—it’s what Steve has wanted to get picked up and seen—and Eddie tries to sigh, to shake his head:

“Steve—“

“And you still feel the same, maybe more, now?”

“Steve, that’s just a fucking game. You, you’re,” and Steve would like to dwell on Eddie calling it just a game, not least to preen a little that it’s done to elevate his own significance in Eddie’s affections, but it’s not the time, and the tone of Eddie’s voice is too fucking bleak:

“I’m so fucked up, Stevie,” and he sounds just…so forlorn, so resigned; “I’m still so fucked up,” and there Eddie shifts, moves just enough to reach Steve’s face, to stroke his cheek like he’s precious beyond measure, his eyes glowing in the wan light that the car’s still giving, glinting with a welling up of tears that pull at the linings of vital things inside Steve’s chest.

“You’re everything there is, Steve. You’re what makes breathing still feel worthwhile, after everything,” and it’s hard, because seeing Eddie this way is killing Steve by a thousand fucking strikes but then, he can’t complain for being loved like this, would never; not least when he feels the exact same to the fucking letter.

“I’m damaged fucking goods, just a goddamn losing bet,” Eddie’s shaking his head and Steve can’t pretend he’s never felt the same but he likewise can’t pretend he’ll stand for Eddie seeing himself in a way that just so…

Wrong.

So he darts a hand and laces his grasp with Eddie’s in that way that’s become innate as he leads Eddie palm to his own chest and presses hard, to the point of pain, and it feels so fucking right as he near-hisses, pledges like a vow:

“You’re my heart.”

Eddie stills, barely seems to blink, stares at their joined hands. Presses close to feel, even harder.

Only more right.

“Simple as that, man,” Steve’s words land like a shrug, a given. “You’re kinda…the beat that keeps me breathing.”

Steve doesn’t know if that’s corny, or weird to say: but he doesn’t really fucking care, because it’s the unvarnished truth and he stands by it. And he thinks he’s more than qualified to say it and mean it, have it mean something real, because, like—

“And I mean, you know what it’s like, at least a little,” Steve lifts Eddie’s hand, gets a tiny whimper for moving it but makes up for it by kissing his knuckles; he knows that Eddie knows what it feels like, with his parents, with this fucking town; what Steve’s about to say isn’t wholly lost on Eddie, just a different…flavor:

“But I’ve had that heart ripped out and stepped on,” Steve takes a breath—remembering doesn’t hurt like it used to, especially not with Eddie in his arms, but that’s doesn’t mean the sting’s all gone: “spat on for what I tried to give along with it.”

And this time Eddie’s the one whose hand twitches: fierce, held tight, almost protective.

It’s a reaction Steve’s never been on the receiving end of before, not like this. As if he’s worth it, and unquestionably so. He’s definitely gotten used to it, a little at least, but is still always a little surprised how warm it lands, spreading through him molten like gold.

“Hurt like fucking hell, y’know, and I think that was when I stopped believing I’d ever find someone who could put up with me,” Steve admits, not as if he’s tried at all to hide it, but more in that he doesn’t think he’s said it quite so plain, right out loud; “like, who’d want me even if you erased all the Upside Down fuckery,” and the molten feeling gets a little extra kick for the sound that escapes Eddie at that, close-on to a growl.

“But then the fuckery grew, and then there were Russians and it was like I was made up more of just how it fucked my head up, wrapped in a bunch of gnarly scar tissue, more that than anything else, and my love was still too much, so I mostly tried to hide it,” he lands on, and somewhere while he was speaking Eddie’s curled down to replace his hand with his head over Steve’s chest again, still protective. More so, maybe.

“So I was scared, too,” Steve admits, not ashamed now but actually kinda proud, maybe a little, because here he is, actually putting it in words:

“I was scared at the beginning. With you.”

Eddie finally looks up, then, meets Steve’s eyes with lips parted, hanging on each word but visibly working through a struggle to make it all sink in, add up the way Steve means it to.

That’s okay. Sometimes it is hard; doesn’t mean it’s bad, or wrong, or anything less than the best thing he knows; the only life he even wants, anymore.

“I hid,” Steve nods, swallows a little rough; “in my own way, I hid, too.” From embracing how his eye was caught more indiscriminately than most; from accepting that his heart was always going to swell quick and ready first, and it wasn’t a fucking crime, it just more often than not was gonna hurt; that Eddie Munson had been a puzzle he couldn’t understand at the peripherals of his world for a while already before they were thrust into the apocalypse.

That’d all probably been a good bulk of the reason for his little nugget speech in the RV, which still gives Eddie a good laugh now and again, so no matter how mortifying, he can’t even fully regret what the hiding made him do.

Until—

“But then we almost lost you, we did for those horrible handfuls of seconds, worst of my whole fucking life, when all I could see out of nowhere was the future, and it was made of you, and it was the piece of me getting spat on except it felt like allof me,” and it had, the experience never leaving Steve, not really, that hollow fire that’d destroyed him unrelenting; “all of me just getting ground into dust because I’d lost you before I could ever have you, and all I knew was that you were all that mattered and you were gone, so what even was the fucking point—“

Steve runs out of breath, and Eddie sits up, but Steve’s takes the in to flip their hands caught between them, takes Eddie’s from where his own pulse has picked up for he memories, and the feeling and pressed his palm to Eddie’s chest: the point.

He didn’t expect to need proof of the whole fucking point as badly as he does.

“Then you were back,” Steve’s sighs out relief and gratitude the same way every single time, Eddie’s heartbeat a balm as much as a fuel, a sacred sort of fire in his veins to keep going because the words are maybe never going to be easy, never going to come natural like they do for Eddie but: for Eddie, Steve will do just about anything.

With that as the starting point: this is child’s play.

“Then you were breathing again and I knew I couldn’t let being afraid be enough. It could live here, maybe will forever,” he brings his other hand back to his chest, where the terror simmers, and Eddie sees the opportunity to touch again and slides his fingers in tight to hold there, too; Steve can’t help but smile, and relish the little extra beat that the feeling nudges through his veins.

“It could live here forever,” Steve squeezes Eddie’s hand against his ribs; “ but never at the cost of you.” Then he pulls, presses his other hand in Eddie’s on top and gathers everything to the core of him as he pledges, vows exactly that deep:

“Never more important, here, than you.”

And Eddie’s breath catches, and he tips forward into Steve’s neck again—and Steve slips one hand free to hold him, to protect him from all sides, too.

And to hold him together, in case the rest of what Steve needs to say, needs him to hear, shakes through him too strong.

“You were like,” Steve licks his lips, shakes his head, holds Eddie a little closer, this time maybe more for his own sake, as he breathes out just against Eddie’s ear:

“I think maybe we both, in our own ways, are scared fucking shitless,” he huffs, because it’s not that simple but it’s exactly that simple; “and on the surface even, we deserve to be ‘til the day we die, if that’s what it shakes out as,” and Steve does believe that, Steve’s come to terms with it and yeah, he’s still working on not judging it so harsh but he is working on it. Robin pushes him.

Eddie…inspires him.

“I hope it doesn’t,” Steve admits softly, because part of him is scared of being a little scared forever; “but it’d be more than understandable. More than justified.”

So yeah, part of him is a little scared—but more of him?

More of him—

“But I think we’re more scared, and so much deeper with it,” Steve threads his fingers through Eddie’s curls, buries his face a little in the mess of them to breathe him in:

“And in the deeper fear, that deeper place, I think it means that we,” he swallows, and is grateful that Eddie is held tight where he is just now, so that the words Steve says when words aren’t his strongest suit can be backed up by how fucking hard his heart’s beating again, because he feels this, he fucking means this:

“That we feel something so fucking big, this massive beautiful thing that could tear us apart as quick as it lifts us up and we want both, or either, or all, whatever it gives because we just,” Steve sucks in a breath, because honesty, honesty; “we need it, we—”

And Steve stops on a dime when he feels Eddie’s mouth press to the center of his chest even through their clothes, heady and potent; feels his lips move as he speaks, hoarse but not trembling, scratchy but sure:

“Loving is terrifying,” he says, and not at all like it’s a regret, more heavy like it’s a privilege with real goddamn weight as he slowly works his lips up Steve’s throat and the leans back just enough, onlyenough to meet his eyes:

“But I’ve never felt more alive than I do for every fucking bit of it, with you, because it’s you,” Eddie grabs the hand of Steve’s he’s not still holding square-on and laces their fingers, unshakable.

“Living at all hasn’t ever felt more right.”

And there’s something in those words, or maybe the way they’re said, that shakes Steve to his bones, tightens his hold on Eddie to the point of a blissful sort of pain.

“I jump when you grab your keys, when I hear them rattle,” Eddie whispers like a secret, like he’s not proud of what he’s saying but he can say it, because it’s Steve. “Sometimes even when you’re next to me, driving us both home, because home is the same for us both and most times I can latch on to that, and remind my body that we’re just going home,” Eddie sucks in a sharp breath and his eyes almost glow as he locks them onto Steve’s even more unbreakable, somehow:

“That you are my home.”

Steve’s heartbeat trips again for that, overfull, and Eddie’s hand clenches in his shirt so tight, still protecting.

“But sometimes,” Eddie closes his eyes, clenches his jaw before spilling out, voice suddenly so very small:

“Sometimes I’m scared you’re just dropping me off, and stopping in while you pack.”

And god, he…that’s what he…

“That’s why you were so,” and Steve doesn’t have to say on top of everything, he doesn’t have to say building on the obvious—he doesn’t have to.

“I went to the car.”

Eddie swallows hard; nods like it’s a battle. Yet he does it.

Steve’s so proud of this man. Steve’s honestly proud of the both them.

“Yeah,” Eddie grinds out, sandpapery and a little painful even just to hear but now it’s there, now they know.

And Steve can gather him close, press him in slow and arrange just so atop him as he lays back down, remembers he brought Eddie’s coat too as the real dead of night starts to settle in, so he shimmies it off his waist and doesn’t bother convincing Eddie’s arms to give up where they’re wrapped around Steve, he just tucks it in as a blanket around them over where his own jacket’s pulled as tight as it can go to keep them both, and then he sighs, exhausted but content and maybe they’ll climb down the ladder Steve had made sure was waiting; maybe they’ll swing straight into his room, the same as Steve’s sure Eddie made his way out in the first place. Maybe they’ll wake up to the sunrise right here, just like this.

Steve’s happy regardless of whichever he gets, because all of it happens together.

“Just for the lights, babe,” he breathes into Eddie’s curls, kisses them firm and holds until the sentiment, the single statement swells to keep the whole of what Steve means for the keys, the car, the idea that he’d ever go anywhere without Eddie that he’s not coming home from, and that his home is Eddie, too: always.

Always.

“Only the lights.”

♥️♥️♥️

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