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hitlikehammers · 2 days ago

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🍪That One Time Wayne Munson Got Gifted Some Homemade Cookies (by the man who’s also His Boy), Some Time to Listen to His Love-Drunk Nephew💍, and Some Opportunities to Answer Questions He Already Knows the Answers To (plus a bonus chance to celebrate Elizabeth Munson—God rest her soul) but Still Got NO COFFEE 🫠

☕️OR: 3/5 times Steve/Eddie talk to anyone but each other about their feelings (for each other), +1 (other time they turn around and talk to one another)

“Stevie made those.”

Wayne turns when he hears his nephew’s voice, the fancy Tupperware still in his hand.

“Figured as much,” Wayne shakes the box; “sure as hell wasn’t you.”

He expects Eddie to squawk, all self-righteous with not half-a-foot to shake on; but he hears Eddie come in just from his footsteps; how he leans against the doorway.

Wayne thinks Eddie’s comfortable way of being in this space is how this little house of theirs has been a place he’s been able to really think of as a home.

“I mean, he made me a batch, and you a batch,” Eddie leans his whole body toward where Wayne’s holding the Hershey-capped cookies: “those are all yours.”

Wayne looks down at the container in his hands, feels something complicated in his throat he don’t have a name for, but is a feeling he is finding himself coming close with more and more these days.

“He gonna be around later?” Wayne asks, gruffer than he means, or expects: but should have done.

Pesky thing in his throat, and all.

“If he gets off work at a decent time,” Eddie answers with a dramatic sigh before his face screws up in distaste as he adds; “inventory.”

Wayne hopes it goes quick; hopes everybody was kind and did rewind or…whatever inventory entails at a video store. He wants very much to thank the boy for his treats—and them being exclusively left for him—Eddie takes the Hershey-tops and leaves the cookie, always has. Grinds Wayne’s gears somethin’ awful.

And Wayne wouldn’t have pegged Harrington as a thoughtful boy, save maybe about the balance of his bank account, if he’d been asked to lodge an opinion on the kid sight-unseen; he admittedly hadn’t heard the name among those he sometimes caught of his Ed complaining about whatever hubbub had taken over the ‘preps and jocks’ in ‘the fiefdom of Hawkins High’.

To his shame as a good supportive listener, but the necessity of his sanity, Wayne mostly tuned out what came after those sorts of words when his nephew went off on one of his…opining spells.

Harrington was only a bit player, though, that Wayne was fairly sure of, simply because he only noticed that name on behalf of his daddy, out of all the names he took little to no notice of at all. And Wayne didn’t notice all that much.

He always perked up for it, and the overarching memory of whatever always followed was mild and tame in comparison to what he expected from the son and heir of that rat bastard.

Most recently, before all hell broke loose and Wayne came to know any better, Ed had been consumed with something of a conspiracy theory involving his new crop of ‘sheepies’ and his dungeon club being bamboozled by a…conniving Harrington seeking to corrupt them into, if Wayne understands correctly, the sins of having a reliable ride to the arcade, to the city for their little dragon supplies, and transportation safely home after dark in the winter.

Also being ‘normal’, which: Wayne knows his boy well enough to at least understand that is indeed an unacceptable offense.

But then all hell had broken loose, and the first time Wayne sees Steve Harrington up close for himself is at his boy’s bedside in clearly pilfered scrubs, which track with how he’s got an IV pole next to him where he sits—he was probably as much a gown-covered patient as Eddie is on the bed in front of them.

I’m sorry, are the first rough, tar-scraped words Wayne heard Harrington say, even if his eyes never leave Eddie to say them. Probably he suspects only family’s allowed in, and maybe already recognizes the sounds of the nurses, and knows that ain’t Wayne.

But those are these words Wayne hears for himself from Steve Harrington.

I’m sorry, followed close by: I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t save him, I got him here as quick as I could, I swear, I—

And that’s where Wayne had walked up and put a careful hand on this kid’s shoulder, even if he’d tended under the touch—or tried to, like his instinct was to go still but there was some deeper thing that trembled harder, unstoppable no matter how he tried—but Wayne set a hand on that shoulder, where the boy sat at his nephew’s bedside, while Wayne pointed out the important bit:

You did save ‘im, though, and Wayne had waited for the kid to look up, eyes rimmed red and expression just damn…shattered, but Wayne, as much as he’d been feeling much the same himself, he’d nodded toward the bed until the boy had followed the gaze to the very point Wayne had been trying to make, the why for how he’s only feeling shattered and nothing worse: his boy is there on that bed. His chest’s risin’ and falling. The monitor counting his heartbeats is steady.

This young man did save his boy. He tried, and he succeeded in the trying.

And that had been Wayne’s first real impression of Steve Harrington. Nothing like his daddy’s money. No nefarious plots, neither.

Hadn’t gone lost on him that nobody’d come to usher him back to wherever he’d come from with that gown and that line in his own arm, not for hours.

Wayne’s shaken free from his mulling when Eddie opens the fridge, grabs a beer—offers one to Wayne as if the man hadn’t just got up for the goddamn day and hadn’t even started his pot of coffee first.

Though, in honest fact: Eddie probably would grab a beer if he wanted one, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Crazy kid.

“He asked me to call and let him know if you want him to pick up pizza or chicken for dinner.”

It takes Wayne a second—maybe he’s the one who needs to shake off the sleep—but…nope. Nope, Eddie means Steve, there, because who else would come over with takeout, expecting the obvious that Wayne’s pretty damn sure Eddie also mentioned already:

“You just said,” Wayne starts and Eddie pops back out of the refrigerator, leans against the doors to push it closed.

“Robin said she’ll cover for him to bring it over, even if he can’t stay,” Eddie shrugs with a bright grin, and Wayne’s hit with the dregs of thinking back to that bright grin pulled tight under bandages, that spring up from a crouch to ransack the fridge stilled, battered, a question mark in the future of Wayne’s whole world—tries to shake it off before Eddie notices; “so that whatever you pick is here before you’re off.”

Wayne shouldn’t have worried about being noticed for dipping too close to the remnants of what it felt like to dance so long on the edges of grief in thinking on the hospital before—he’s teetering on the very opposite, here and now. Because Steve Harrington in theory really was the last person Wayne could imagine holding any positive feeling toward.

But as it stands: he don’t know what life looks like anymore without both his boys, safe and sound.

His eyes slide to one of those boys and notices how he’s staring off into nothing….except no. Not nothing. The counter where he’s got his hands propped now. And Wayne maybe’s only seeing from the side but…he doesn’t think he’s ever seen that kind of stare on his kid.

And his Eddie’s always been prone to just…staring off into space.

“What’s got you starin’ like that?” he asks, more suspiciously than concerned. Not least for the grin teasing the corner of Eddie’s mouth that Wayne can see.

“He gave me a ring.”

Eddie says it, voice low, never looking away from what Wayne presumes is that exact ring. He’s quietly entranced for a good near-on minute before he turns to Wayne, sobers a touch, but really only the slightest bit.

“Not like,” Eddie starts, then he pauses; bites his lips like it’s both incredibly simple and obvious and mighty complicated, all at once.

“I think he was raised too fancy not to ask you first,” Eddie lands on, spaces the words out slow; “for that.”

“Don’t need my permission,” Wayne half-grouses, more…not offended, but maybe closer to concerned—somewhere in the middle. That the boy would think to need his okay, but at the same crossing, to even second-guess he’s long since more’n had it, either way.

“He knows that,” Ed shoots back simply, definitive-like, which sets something more rustled-up than Wayne had expected it’d get back now to ease.

Before he tips Wayne’s world over in a whole other way, instead.

“He would want your blessing.”

The knowing glint in Eddie’s eyes is…Wayne’s not sure he’s had it turned back on him like that before. Knocks him a little crooked for the surprise of it before the words themselves knock him clear over—he’d never thought about being the person someone’d ask, like that.

Wouldn’t hesitate a second for Steve but…knowing the boy thinks well on you versus hearing, confident-like, that he’d seek out Wayne’s approval of the kinda feelings that have been clear from the early days and seem to grow more, and bigger, everything say, just…

Goddamn.

“But he said this was a temporary placeholder,” Eddie says it with such a smile in the words, his face all sunshine as he admires his left ring finger: always bare up to now, Wayne’s pretty sure; “I think he wants to wait until after I graduate.”

“Smart boy,” Wayne nods, gets back his footing a bit more; “gives you some extra motivation to cross the finish.”

And Eddie squawks his indignation right on schedule for it.

“Excuse you, I am doing very extremely passably in all my classes.”

“And I’m proud of ya for it,” Wayne nods, truthful as anything; “don’t mean a little extra nudge ain’t appreciated.”

That bit’s truthful too.

“Or a…colossal extra nudge,” Eddie concedes, tries to play petulant but his grin too big, too full to bite back any longer as he sighs, drapes himself a little more boneless over the precarious creak given by the kitchen chair he’s lounged in.

“He read my paper over, without bothering to tell mehe had a migraine coming on,” Eddie grouses, but he’s so goddamn fond about it through the worry; “sneaky bastard grabbed it up before I could get home to notice the signs it was imminent,” he whines a little more before gesturing out the window at the overcast sky: “not that I’d need to, with this fuckin’ weather.”

And Wayne will give Eddie that—scatterbrained and easily distracted as he’s always been? His biggest distraction is Steve. Steve’s whereabouts and safety, his well-being and caretaking—just Steve.

It’s…it’s heartwarming, Wayne can’t even think up a good way around that as the explanation that best suits.

“Stubborn,” is the explanation that Wayne vocalizes though, already figuring he’s roped into this conversation, and with an inkling where it could still turn?

He needs to save up his softest moments just in case.

“Gotta be why you’re so fond o’ each other,” Wayne hums like he’s reached some stunning realisation; “opposites attract sometimes as much as like finds like,” and Wayne always has reckoned these two maybe found the best of both in one near-world-ending go.

“Tried to tell me he just figured it wasn’t relevant,” Eddie rolls his eyes, brings it back to Steve as he usually tends to with most things, these days; “said it’s not like his eyes on my writing are worth anything anyway, because he’s, well,” and Ed straightens up there, expression hardening a little.

“He tried to call himself something offensive and also untrue, so I stopped him, but,” and Wayne knows well that argument. He’s taken to stopping it himself more’n once.

“Boy won’t accept his smarts are just as good as those rugrats you got,” Wayne says with conviction; “just look different, his do, s’all.”

Wayne doesn’t come from top-of-the-class stock, but he knows intelligence. In the field, in battle, in working hard with your hands, in honest everyday know-how. Recognizes it well in Steve, where Steve was probably only taught college meant smart, and anything other was just different, but mostly worthless.

Wayne really would enjoy a free shot at Steve’s daddy’s jaw, just once.

Cause he’d only need the once to break the sucker.

“Exactly,” Eddie sighs with an odd amount of enthusiasm, only person Wayne’s ever seen infuse a sigh with so much; “and all that, even without believing that he was willing to put himself in pain to make sure I didn’t miss a fuckin’ comma.”

Less than a minute’s-worth of quiet settles before Eddie’s back to talkin’—‘bout the same subject, of course, as per usual.

“He’s gonna help me with the van,” he announces, and that’s good to hear because that van…needs all the helping hands it can get, for as often as Eddie’s on Steve’s good graces for a ride these days.

Though Wayne don’t think Steve minds one lick.

“Next weekend, when he’s off,” Eddie’s elaborating, as if always his way, but Wayne feels…different with this. It’s as rambling as Eddie ever ends up being but, also it’s…it feels like it’s building up to something. Bolstering some other thing, though hell Wayne can suss out what. “He’s, like, really good with cars? Probably because of how much he pampers his—”

“Don’t gotta sell me on the boy, son,” Wayne finally cuts him off, “I know he’s good people,” which was a surprise he shouldn’t have made assumptions on without seeing for himself.

“And I know he’s good for you.”

And that, once he’d gotten clear of the assuming? That, Wayne had been sure on quick and with no doubts at all.

But his Ed still beams for it, red still high on his cheeks like every time he thinks of his boy is the brand new, first blush and everything.

“Yeah?” Eddie asks in that way that don’t require no answer.

But Wayne has one, for this, so he’s gonna give it anyway.

“That boy watches you like you walk on water,” Wayne scoffs, because he might’a known Eddie long enough to clock his heartsick ass from the get-go, but Steve wasn’t ever so hard to read, even at the start. By now, though?

“Looks at you like you shat the stars out and hung them for show.”

Ed looks up at the ceiling for a second, drags his hair to hide his face as he blushes full-on now and grins like anything. Wayne just enjoys the opportunity he never expected to get: seein’ his boy not just this happy, but so damn in love.

“He sees the best and worst in you, Ed, has seen youat your best and worst, and he still looks at you that way for all of it,” Wayne feels compelled to underscore the point, the uncommon magic in it all—here. After everything, sure, but: here, in all the world. “Not in spite of all of it, but for all of it,” and it’s true. Steve loves Eddie toe-to-toe, inside and out. Like Eddie loves—almost uncanny for the match of them.

“Kid loves the hell outta you,” Wayne comments definitive-like as he finally goes to get a mug from the cupboard—only to turn around and meet his boy’s too-surprised stare, those big eyes damn-near shocked at Wayne’s sureness, like he don’t have eyes.

“D’ya really think I’da been keepin’ my mouth shut if I didn’t think he was right for you, loved you right?” Wayne asks, which: it’s mostly meant for the way Wayne specifically makes his opinions known. Which are less about opening his mouth and more about certain combinations to grunting and narrowing his eyes—he ain’t foolish to his own peculiarities.

But this doesn’t qualify for any of that, so.

“World’s not always done right by you,” Wayne lets himself say a little softer, a little more…care-true around the vulnerable things. Ain’t ever been his strong suit but: for Eddie.

And for Steve.

“But for all it’s done wrong?” Wayne works a pointed brow. “I’m fairly sure puttin’ the two o’ you together’s something like it trying to make amends.”

Eddie smiles at that, the small kind he does when his heart’s in it most, but then he looks…earnest in a soft, almost-sober way before he says, dead serious:

“It was worth it.”

Wayne stills at the words—not because he’s that surprised, more just that…hearing ‘em out loud hits different.

Takes him back to those early first days where it was all by-the-hour, in God’s hands someone in the waiting room tried comforting him before he was allowed by Eddie’s bedside—cold comfort, that, when Wayne didn’t know he believed in those hands at all.

Just don’t tell his Ma, might be what sends her to her grave.

“I know you don’t agree,” Eddie sighs, but that’s…

“I didn’t say that.”

Eddie levels him with a doubtful kind of stare.

“Your face speaks for itself, old man.”

Wayne takes his time, sucks his lips: ain’t that simple. And he wants to try and get some words to fit right, when he’s not sure there are any that fit the bill—sure ain’t sure he’s the one to find them.

But for his boy? He’ll damn well try.

“I think you gotta make a lot of assumptions, to get t’that conclusion,” Wayne thinks through out loud—the idea that nearly losing his Ed was worth anything is unthinkable, but…Wayne ain’t blind, yeah? He sees all the signs of Eddie’s heart in this.

Sees Steve’s, too.

“But it’s not likely you’d have crossed paths like you did,” Wayne nods slow; “better part of a year o’ him ferrying those kids from your club and,” Wayne gives a pfft to underscore his point:

“Nothin’.”

So maybe it wouldn’t have needed to be so drastic, so close to heartbreaking, to get his boy next to the man he loved so deeply. But…history weren’t exactly on the side of that argument.

Heartbreaking as that fact was on its own.

“That poor girl, that would have happened either way.”

Eddie’s expression drops and Wayne hates that but: heartbreaking as it, too, was?

There’s truth to it. Wayne knows enough—and onlyenough—of the cursedness of this town, more of how it’s hurt people he cares about.

“Sometimes my worst nightmares don’t take me to the hospital, but a prison cell.”

Wayne’s voice is rougher than he wants. Eddie’s probably more still, and frozen quick with it? Than hewants.

At least not to be seen for it but: it still cuts. Like as much, it always will.

“I don’t know how I could have protected you,” Wayne admit a truth he holds with shame in his chest, much as he knows—or else, Hopper’s told him as often from the source, as much as Steve and Eddie have made clear in their own ways dancing around a truth Wayne bristles, but understand he’ll never know the whole of. “I would have died tryin’, but even if it was just the police, I,” he shakes his head, sighs out slow; “and the fuckin’ people of this town,” and that’s where he’s made more of anger than guilt because even now: this fuckin’ town.

“Ain’t words for how grateful I am to him, bringin’ you back,” Wayne says because it’s where his opinion of Steve Harrington truly started;

“But he’s like as my own now, for how he’s stayed,” and Wayne don’t speak words like those idly. Or lightly.

And Eddie knows it.

But Wayne knows in kind that his words ain’t no gate being lifted. Weren’t no way of convincing Eddie to say the words he follows with next. No: the words that follow?

Those were ones Eddie’s been sittin’ on. Holding close in his chest long enough that Wayne can hear the soul o’ him colorin’ every goddamn letter:

“I want Mom’s ring.”

And there it is. The thing he was maybe suspecting was coming—finally; what his softer feelings needing saving up for.

“What, no,” Eddie asks when Wayne doesn’t reply right away, less shaking with anything like hesitance, more like squaring up in case he needs to be defiant, needs to defend the love he’s damn well vibrating with; “no nothing?”

And see: Wayne’s been keeping Eddie’s mama’s ring safe since she passed—knew a boy that young couldn’t understand why it mattered, and then when he did grow old enough, Eddie’s asked him to keep hold of it. Don’t let me be stupid with it, Wayne remembers it clear as day, when they both knew that instruction was pointed less at the empty field of possible proposals to be made for Ed in Hawkins and far more at the possible temptation to pawn it, for rent or groceries, in the best of cases. And Wayne would rather have starved than lost this piece of Elizabeth, especially when Eddie has so few after Al’s endless string of idiocy, of cruelties and straight-said fuckups, Wayne can’t call ‘em less than they are.

So Wayne had kept hold of the ring.

And had got it shined up nice in a brand new pouch and everything, the first night he found Eddie asleep on Steve’s chest on the sofa, T.V. still on to static, clinging to him as hard as Steve was clinging back with one hand, stretched protective almost over Eddie’s chest, curling over and again ‘round his hair with the other, idle-honest affection even in his sleep.

It hadn’t been the first sign. Or the second. Or the hundredth. But it had been how Wayne had been sure of them, for whatever his own opinion in it counted for at all—again, they don’t need his permission to love.

But that was when his blessing went from full-throated to full-chested, whole-hearted. When Steve had slid from family, to his boy, too.

“Boy,” Wayne meets his other boy with a bit of pu-upon indignation of his own, learned from the master of it sat gaping like a fish before him, and Wayne ultimately can’t hold onto it when the smirk’s just too hard to fight; “you think I ain’t had that at the ready for months? Waiting on you to ask,” he puts his thoughts into words for sharing, which is always a task for him but is getting easier, with Ed. With Steve in a new way, for the chord it struck in him to get to know that boy, as under-appreciated and worn down on the inside as he’d been—save for how he’d loved Eddie brighter than the sun through all of it.

“He’s family already, Ed, s’far as I’m concerned.”

And Eddie closes his mouth, and his eyes look too sparkly, so Wayne clears his throat and looks away to let him…let those tears free or not, and make that decision for himself without an audience.

“Found a guy at the plant, knows someone who can try to resize it, though probably safer to reset it on another band, but,” Wayne folds his hands and locks the fingers, tapping them on his thighs in thought, but also with meaning:

“Bert thinks you could cut the original, somehow embed it inside something bigger, more like yours.” He points to Eddie’s collection, even his latest placeholder—as thick and right for his boy as it could possibly be.

As Steve would obviously know, and make damn sure if.

“No matter,” Wayne says, peeks to see if Eddie’s decided whether he needs some extra space with his feelings, closer to the surface now than they’d ever dared to be before—the doctors warned it could happen after he was discharged but Wayne knows it’s not that. It’s being soft-hearted and having something like what he’s found, to want his mama’s ring; “however you want it done,” and Wayne sees Eddie’s just blinking, red-rimmed but wiped mostly dry.

“However he wants it, to be honest,” Eddie’s breath in is a shaky thing, but it’s true, it’s a thing Wayne can recognize as devotion without trying even to look. “I just want him to have every piece of me he can, y’know? All of me,” and his voice cracks, and now Eddie’s the one who’s clearing his throat to get some footing: “everything I can, every way I can.”

And then he looks up properly, and meets Wayne’s eyes, means every single word when he says the most important part, the most honest thing—the most obvious truth:

“He’s my heart, y’know?”

And the only thing Wayne can think is: he’s found a good one, Lizzie, you’d be so proud of your boy.

So proud of this boy, for your boy.

“And he already graduated, so,” Eddie picks at his nails, the way he does when he makes a smart ass side comment he wants to flag to Wayne that he’s making, but smooth-like. Wayne might be old, now, but he remembers what counted for smooth—and this was never it; “nothing I need to hold it back for as motivation.”

Wayne goes ahead let’s a snort loose to at least acknowledge Ed’s poor attempt, score he shoots for the core of the matter:

“Boy,” he shakes his head with a loose grin, the kind that’s ready to grow as and when needed: “maybe you’ve got yourself a mighty fine placeholder ring,” he nods down to Eddie’s hand and hell, but Eddie’s already admiring the thing at the slightest suggestion, if’n he ever entirely stopped at all.

“But he was never ‘round here with nothing but his whole heart for you,” Wayne says, one of the surest things he knows in this world.

“Almost as obvious as you with it,” he lets himself smirk a little for how Eddie goes a little red, but shineswith it so goddamn bright.

S’just another sure thing Wayne knows.

“Lemme go get you that ring,” Wayne gets to his feet and heads further past the table, waits out Eddie’s confusion, and the inevitable ask:

“You keep it in the kitchen?”

And so what if he did? Wayne lets Eddie dog his steps all the way in before he flips the Mr. Coffee on—fucking finally.

“I ain’t had my coffee yet,” Wayne turns, raises a daring, of teasing kind of brow Eddie’s way as he goes to grab the mug he’s fetched before, lest it feel abandoned; “and my son-in-law-to-be baked me blossoms,” he pops open the Tupperware and breathes in the peanut butter deep; maybe a little extra dramatic because he’s actually pretty tickled to be able to say that for his own self: son-in-law-to-be.

Not that Steve wasn’t already family, but, y’know. Something in the words, out loud.

But still:

“I’m allowed a detour.”

The ring’s waited this long, for something that’s been true all this time already. It can stand a cup-o-joe and some homemade cookies with risk of gettin’ abandonment issues.

1: Gareth // 2: Mrs. Harrington // 3: Wayne // 4: ??? // 5: ??? // +1: ???

☕️

✨also on ao3

💫for @penny00dreadful—happiest of happy birthdays, my lovely 🖤

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divider credit, weird as it is: ME ☕️🍪

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