#waking up from anesthesia to flirt with your crush trope

[darlingghoulette]

I haven't caught up on all of your writing, so I'm not sure if you've already done your own take on this:

Prompt: Eddie wakes up in the hospital (after the demo-bats of course) really, really loopy on painkillers and the first person he sees is Steve...

This was exactly the fluff fest I needed to break up all the angst I've been in the middle of :') Thank you!!

He really just had one thing to say to all the soccer moms and televangelists who always said people like Eddie were going to hell–

Suck it. 

Eddie absolutely was not in hell, thank you very much. Sure, for some reason his sides hurt like a bitch occasionally. And he couldn’t really talk super well since there was what seemed like an entire roll of tape and gauze on the side of his face. And maybe he couldn’t move his left leg around much, but who cares about those things? 

In the grand scheme of things, he was living a fucking dream. 

Heaven, if you ask him. Take that, Pastor Davies, you wrinkled prick. 

Honestly, he’d kind of always thought stereotypical heaven was overrated. With the way the stuffy religious folk always talked about it, it seemed like a total drag. Just prayer and eternal…boringness. 

This heaven was way better. 

It was mostly just floaty. Things blurred. Time moved strangely. Minutes stretched out forever, and yet he would blink sometimes and all of a sudden the morning sun in the window would be gone. The lamp beside his bed would be on, instead. He loved those times because usually a voice accompanied it, saying words that Eddie knew he recognized, but just couldn’t give enough effort to understand. It was nice, though. 

The voice sounded kind. It stumbled over words sometimes, like maybe it was reading off of something aloud, but it was familiar and the cadence lulled Eddie back into those peaceful, floaty times where he didn’t have to think about anything at all. 

Whenever he was hungry, food was just there. Eddie could have sworn he’d thought about pudding once and then bam pudding was in front of him. Like magic. Several times he’d come to consciousness with a mouth drier than a motherfucker, and there were always hands that reached over to supply him sips of water. 

The hands were so nice. Big. Gentle. He’d felt them combing through his hair before, he’d thought. 

Best of all, though? The angel. 

God, his angel. 

Prettiest goddamn face he’d ever seen. At first the angel looked sad, red-rimmed eyes and a deep set frown, and that had simply not been okay. No way. A fuckin’ masterpiece of a face like that being upset was criminal. Just…not allowed. Eddie had said as much, mumbled and probably slurred to hell, but it made those pretty lips lift at the corners a bit.

He’d made it his mission, then, to make the literal celestial being in front of him smile every time he could focus his brain power enough to make words. 

His most recent swim up to consciousness had him coming to with fingers in his hair and a light pressure felt to the immobilized side of his face. His eyes met with his angel’s and he couldn’t help his dopey smile. Angel’s lips moved, that kind voice breaking through the haze. 

“...to wake you. Sorry, your bandage was peeling back. It looked uncomfortable,” Eddie’s pretty angel smiled down at him, seeming slightly nervous all of a sudden. Like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

It took him a try or two to push his own voice out, rough from disuse. 

“Don’ say sorry, ‘s fine. You c’n touch me anytime, angel.” Eddie giggled when the angel’s cheeks flushed an adorable pink and his hands fluttered around like he didn’t know where to put them. 

“Oh, come on, man, don’t–hey, stop that. Quit grinning so wide, you’ll pop your stitches!” 

Eddie batted at the hand that came up to grab the non-patchwork side of his face, pushing at his lips like if the angel could physically hold it down he could stop the smile from growing any larger. Silly angel. Eddie took the opportunity to seize one of those hands in his. He shook it around loosely, celebrating. Hah! Caught him. 

It gave Eddie the chance to get a closer look at his fingers. Nice fingers, long. Eddie would smack a kiss on every one of them if he could. (There’s a possibility he may have said that part out loud, if the choked sound from the angel was any judge.) 

No ring on the hand though. His angel wasn’t married. Could angels even get married? Was it against the rules in heaven or something? 

Eddie leveled a very serious look to the other man, clutching the captured hand to his chest fiercely. Or, as fiercely as he was capable, seeing as the soft, floaty feeling was starting to take over again. 

“I would marry you a’nyway. Okay? Don’t care what the rules are.” 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Steve spent the last several nights getting well acquainted with the scratchy vinyl of his hospital chair and the fourth floor’s only vending machine. There were only so many power naps and snickers bars a man could take. 

His back ached from slumping over onto the hospital bed to accommodate Eddie’s hold on him. It was hard to care about that, though, when the hand clutched in his twitched slightly in sleep before tightening back again. He’d been able to relax the older boy back into rest earlier, smiley and malleable. 

Eddie only agreed to it after insisting Steve didn’t “fly away without him” whatever that meant. 

Those crazy strong drugs the doctors had pumped him with were doing the work to keep him comfortable, despite making him say things he never would have had he been more aware. 

Steve didn’t have the heart to pull away. He should. He should put some space between them. He shouldn’t take anything Eddie says or does to heart at all–he’s high as hell on painkillers. That would make any guy a little loopy. Make him say things he doesn’t mean. 

Eddie adjusted in his sleep, smiling a bit, body angled towards Steve. His hand was warm, and if Steve moved his fingers up just a bit to his wrist, he could feel the steady thump there. 

In the quiet of the sterile hospital room, Steve thought he maybe could indulge just a bit. No harm in the comfort of two people, just happy to be alive. 

Robin let herself into the room quietly, a paper coffee cup in one hand that Steve knew would be made perfectly to how he liked it. 

It took her barely a beat, taking in the two boys curled in towards each other. 

“So, how many marriage proposals were there today?”