electricity
very loosely based off that one exchange from episode 6 of the dhmis show
words: 4,444
ao3
“Closing shift again, Harrington?”
Eddie watches as Steve’s face shifts from muted disinterest to something like annoyance. “Unfortunately for both of us, yeah,” he mutters, a little red in the face as he rips that stupid little sailor hat off his head and tosses it over his shoulder into the Scoops Ahoy break room. Eddie snorts as it misses the table. Steve runs a hand through his hair and cocks a hip so that he’s leaning against the doorframe. “So, what’ve you got for me?”
Patting the massive tubs of ice cream beside him, Eddie gives Steve as wolfish of a grin as he can muster. “For your beloved freezer,” he says with a low bow, and he glances up just in time to watch Steve roll his eyes. Eddie kicks up the dolly the tubs are stacked on and nods at Steve, to the doorway behind him. “Lemme roll these in.”
“You got it?” Steve asks, stepping aside but hovering at the side of the dolly as Eddie wheels it into the back of Scoops. A couple of the tubs wobble—the ones at the top, because Eddie’s stacked it ten high. He’s not making multiple trips. Steve hisses out a curse under his breath and outstretches his hands by the ice cream, as if he’ll be able to save all of them as long as they fall in his general vicinity. “Careful, careful! Jesus, Munson, these are gonna fall on top of you if you’re not careful, ruin that fantastic hair of yours.”
Eddie huffs out a laugh at the definite sarcasm as he wheels the ice cream into the freezer and sighs contentedly at the feeling of cold air on his skin. He started working at Starcourt a little over a month ago, and the summer’s only gotten hotter. It’s ridiculously hard work, carting around shit to different stores and helping out when security’s short-staffed, and Eddie’s not exactly the most fit person around. Years of smoking and skipping gym class will do that to a guy.
But what makes it all worth it, in Eddie’s humble opinion, is that he gets to spend his summer tormenting King Steve, Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington, Steve from Scoops Ahoy. It’s a fun little dive into Eddie’s favorite pastime—enacting sweet, sweet revenge. Sure, Steve might not have done anything to him directly, more preferring to stare down his nose at people like Eddie while his lackeys—namely Hagan—did the dirty work for him. Nonetheless, Eddie hates the guy. Well, maybe hate is a bit of a strong word, but he still can’t stand Steve and his stupid hair and his dumb little sailor uniform that has shorts that are way too tight and his dashing smile and his long lashes and his sparkly laugh and—
Bottom line is that Eddie can’t stand the guy. No amount of pretty can fix past slights.
“So,” Eddie says, drawing the word out as Steve heaves the cardboard tubs onto the shelves, and he lets his eyes linger over the cord of taut muscle in Steve’s biceps. Sue him, the guy’s nice to look at. “You got any big plans tonight, Harrington?”
Steve makes a sound that’s about halfway between a scoff and a laugh, with a little bit of contrition mixed in. “Not unless you count sitting on my couch with a lukewarm beer and watching reruns of shitty sitcoms as ‘big plans,’” he says, shifting the tub in his hands to one arm so he can do some sarcastic air quotes, and Eddie blinks. Steve raises a brow at him. “Why, are you offering?”
Willing the heat that’s rushing to his cheeks to screw off, Eddie squints. “To make plans with you? Maybe when hell freezes over, Harrington,” he says, coming off a little more biting than he’d really intended, and Steve’s shoulders tense. A minute change, but a noticeable one. Eddie taps his hands on the now-empty dolly and gives Steve a shit-eating grin. “Well, see you tomorrow, sailor.”
“Can’t wait,” Steve says.
Just as Eddie turns to wheel the dolly towards the freezer door, the power goes out. Shit.
“Jesus H. Christ, can’t catch one goddamn break,” he mutters, fidgeting with the flashlight clipped to his belt until it turns on, and Steve groans beside him. Eddie waves the flashlight around the freezer until he shines it at Steve, who squints and throws his hands up in front of his face, and he snickers. “Looking good, Harrington.”
“Shut up,” Steve huffs, cheeks flushed, and he smacks Eddie’s flashlight until the beam’s directed away from his face. It’s hard to see him now that he’s not directly in the light, but Eddie can still see the way his eyes dart around the freezer, can hear the way his breathing picks up. “Shit. Shit, d’you think—it’s probably just a power outage. Right?”
Eddie snorts. “What else would it be?”
Steve levels a glare at him, and Eddie makes a face back, because he hasn’t said anything wrong, and Steve’s just being a dick. “Okay, well, let’s just…get the hell out of here so we can go home,” Steve says, and Eddie couldn’t agree more, actually. He moves past Eddie to get to the door, and Eddie half-expects him to shove past, shoulder him or something, but he doesn’t; he makes himself small, even, shrinking back and around him. Steve tugs on the handle, but the door doesn’t budge. Uh oh. Steve tugs at it some more. “Wh—oh, you gotta be shittin’ me.”
“Are we locked in here?” Eddie asks, and it comes out as an embarrassing squeak. Steve’s answering groan doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Why the hell didn’t you prop it open if it locks from the outside?!”
Sighing as he rattles the door some more, Steve glances back at Eddie over his shoulder. “I didn’t know the power would go out while we were in here, man,” he huffs. “Starcourt uses these fancy electronic locks for all the freezers in the building to keep the cold in them as much as possible, helps keep all the stuff in ’em from going bad, but they’re only supposed to go off after hours.”
“So we’re stuck?!” Eddie asks, and Steve gives the door one last yank before giving up.
“Just ’til the power comes back on,” he says, and Eddie can’t think of anything he’d rather avoid more than being stuck with Steve Harrington for an indeterminate amount of time.
That can’t be true. There’s gotta be a failsafe or something, right? That’s a total fire hazard if it doesn’t have one, and the mall wouldn’t cut corners, would it? Oh, who’s Eddie kidding? A corporation cutting corners is, like, a given. Shit. Shit! “For fuck’s sake,” he hisses, doing some yanking of his own on the door handle, flashlight pointed down at the floor, dangling from his belt, but it doesn’t budge. “Fuck! Shit! Son of a fuckin’ bitch, man!”
“Alright, woah,” Steve says with a nervous laugh, “calm down, man—”
“I’m not gonna calm down, we’re fuckin’ trapped!” Eddie snaps, and Steve winces.
“I mean…could be worse? We could be stuck out there, in the heat…?” he offers, and Eddie affixes him with the most supremely unamused look he can muster. “At least we’ve got each other for company, right?”
He can’t make out a lot of Steve’s face in the dark like this, but just looking in the guy’s direction is enough to annoy him. “I’d get heatstroke in a heartbeat if it meant I’d have the ability to be further than five feet from you,” Eddie tells him.
Whatever expression that garners from Steve, Eddie can’t see. “Harsh,” Steve mumbles, and Eddie barks out a laugh.
“Yeah, okay, pardon me for being pissed off that you didn’t do your job and prop the damn door open!” Eddie snaps, and Steve puts his hands up. That, Eddie can see, can make out the gestures in the way his silhouette moves.
“Dude, how was I supposed to know the power would go out?” Steve asks, clearly exasperated, and Eddie hates that that’s a fair point.
He gestures out, all flappy hands and uncoordinated limbs, and he’s pretty sure he smacks a couple of ice cream tubs in his dramatics. “Because it’s common sense! You don’t let a freezer close behind you, man, haven’t you ever worked a food service job before?!” he asks, and Steve is quiet for a while. Eddie huffs out a humorless laugh. “Of course. Of course you haven’t, because Daddy Harrington probably has enough money to—”
“I’m cut off,” Steve interrupts. “Been cut off for years. He sent me money for basic groceries when I was still in school, but he forced me to get this stupid job when I graduated. Since I didn’t get into any colleges, he wants to teach me a lesson about being too dumb for higher education or some shit. I don’t have his money.”
“Oh,” Eddie says.
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Steve echoes. “And besides, just because I haven’t worked a job before doesn’t mean you have to be a dick about it. It’s not like the training Scoops gave me was, like, good. Even without a manager, I'm pretty sure we’re not supposed to leave the freezer open.”
That’s…pretty fair, actually. Eddie’s kinda certain he hasn’t seen a manager at Scoops Ahoy since the day the mall opened. And most of his food service job knowledge is based off of sitcoms and movies made for TV that have someone getting trapped in a freezer as a plot device anyway, so who is he to talk?
Still, though, he kind of doesn’t want to give Steve the satisfaction of being right. “Alright, there’s gotta be some way out,” he mutters, grabbing his flashlight to aim it at the doorframe, but there doesn’t seem to be anything. If there is, he certainly doesn’t know what it is. “Shit, shit!”
“Dude,” Steve says, and he sounds a little farther than he’d just been, “chill out. The power’s probably gonna come back any minute now.”
Eddie whirls around, and Steve is sitting on the floor, twirling that stupid sailor hat around his pointer finger. He squints a bit in the beam of light, and Eddie hates that it makes his nose scrunch up all cute and shit. He can’t stand the guy. “You’re infuriating,” he tells Steve, “you know that?”
Lips quirking up in what Eddie’s pretty sure is a sad little smile, Steve shrugs. “So I’ve heard,” he says, and Eddie’s eye twitches. Steve pats the empty spot next to him. “You can sit down, y’know.”
Eddie sits where he is. He doesn’t feel like getting closer to Steve Harrington than strictly necessary, thanks very much. Steve just shrugs, tossing his hat from one pointer finger to the other, and Eddie redirects his flashlight. There’s the soft thump of something hitting the ground, followed by a quiet swear. Eddie snorts. “You drop your hat?”
“Maybe,” Steve says. “You wanna lend me some light?”
“Not particularly,” Eddie says dryly.
Steve just hums. It drives Eddie a little crazy. “Wanna play twenty questions?” Steve asks him, and it’s so goddamn bizarre that Eddie busts out laughing.
“Are you—you’re not serious,” Eddie cackles. “What, like we’re at a high school party? C’mon, man, why the hell do you wanna play twenty questions with me in an ice cream freezer?”
A short pause. “To pass the time, I guess,” Steve says. “You got a better idea? ’Cuz I’m all ears, Munson, really.”
Damn.
Eddie doesn’t have a better idea.
“Okay, fine,” he sighs, “what’s your first question?”
There’s some shuffling, like Steve is sitting up properly, and it’s not endearing, it’s not. If anything, it should be pathetic that he’s so excited to play some dumb party game in the freezer of a nautical-themed ice cream parlor. “What’s your favorite hobby?” Steve asks him. “Like, not the one you do most often, or the one you’re best at, but the one you think is the most fun.”
Eddie makes a face. “You have hobbies that aren’t fun?”
He moves his flashlight over to shine at Steve, who nods. “Yeah, man. Like, I don’t hate them, but they’re not fun. Just something to do to pass the time, or something I do with my dad and his business partners, like golfing,” he says with a shrug. “Go on, answer, what’s your favorite hobby?”
Eddie’s having a hard time getting past the idea that Steve isn’t passionate about his hobbies, but only does them to have something to do for the sake of doing something. Or for the sake of someone else, someone that had apparently cut him off. “Uh,” he says eloquently, “I don’t know. I like all my hobbies.”
Steve tilts his head like a confused dog. It’s dumb. “Really? Huh. Alright, lemme change my question, then. What are your hobbies?”
“I play guitar for my band, I run Dungeons and Dragons campaigns—”
“Oh, shit, really? That’s cool, the kids I babysit play that game, too,” Steve says, and Eddie’s brain screeches to a halt. Steve’s head-tilt gets a little tiltier, and he snaps his fingers. “That’s right, you run the club at the high school, don’t you? Hotfire or something?”
“Hellfire,” Eddie corrects hollowly, and Steve winces apologetically.
“Sorry. Shit gets mixed up in my brain sometimes. Buncha concussions, you know how it is,” he dismisses, and Eddie very much does not know how it is. Steve perks up. “Your turn.”
Eddie is, admittedly, kind of dumbfounded. “Uh, what’s your dream job?”
Frowning, Steve glares down at the tile. “Hm. I don’t know.”
At that, Eddie scoffs. “Oh, c’mon, you can’t be serious,” he says. “Everybody’s got a dream job, man, even if it’s totally outlandish. I mean, I wanna be a bigshot metal guitarist for a world-famous band—preferrably mine—even though I know there’s, like, an almost-zero chance of that happening.”
Steve just shrugs. “Maybe, like, be a teacher or something? But I couldn’t get into college, so…not likely,” he says. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Yellow,” Eddie says, “yours?”
“Swear you won’t laugh,” Steve says, and Eddie blinks at him. Steve crosses his arms. “Munson, swear it.”
“Okay, okay, I promise I won’t laugh,” Eddie says. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Tiffany blue,” Steve answers finally, and, come on, Eddie can’t help it if he chuckles just a little. “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”
Eddie snickers, trying and failing to hide it behind his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just—that’s such a snooty color to pick,” he wheezes, and Steve glares at him.
He drags his hat around in circles on the ground with one finger and pointedly doesn’t look at Eddie. “Yeah, well, I like it ’cuz it’s my mom’s favorite,” Steve mumbles, brows drawn together, and now Eddie feels kinda bad for laughing. Only a tiny bit, though. Steve glances up at him. “If you had to pick a movie world to live the rest of your life in, which would it be?”
That’s…actually a pretty cool question. Not that Eddie would tell him that.
“Um…my favorite movies are horror movies, so those are a no-go,” he says, and Steve laughs. It’s good-natured and nice, stupid and sparkly. Eddie clears his throat. “But, uh, I’d probably go with Star Wars.”
“No way, me too!” Steve says, and Eddie blinks. Steve grins. “I like the one with the little teddy bear guys, you know the…”
He trails off into an impression of the ewoks, and it’s painfully charming. Annoying. Annoying, not charming. “You know those are called ewoks, not ‘little teddy bears,’ right?” Eddie asks, because he’s nothing if not a pedantic asshole, and Steve just smiles at him.
“Eh, tomato, to-mah-to,” he says. “Your turn.”
Eddie tilts his head back. “Who was your first kiss?” he asks, and Steve doesn’t answer for a while, which is weird. There’s this pained look on his face, and he won’t quite meet Eddie’s eye. “What, is it, like, someone you’ve deemed ‘embarrassing?’”
“That’s…not it,” Steve sighs. “It’s just—I don’t want you to, like, flip out and punch me or some shit, man.”
At that, Eddie laughs, but his curiosity is piqued. “Have you seen me, Harrington? I’m a total toothpick. I’m, like, pretty sure if I tried to punch you, I’d break my own arm,” he says. “Who was it, seriously? Some dorky chick you think I know? Is that why you think I’ll flip out?”
“No,” Steve tells him, “it was, um…it was at camp, summer after fifth grade.”
“I asked you who, not when or where,” Eddie says.
“And I don’t know who it was,” Steve shoots back.
Eddie makes a face. “Oh, bullshit, dude, you were at camp with this girl and you didn’t know who she was?” he scoffs. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past you to forget, but just say you forgot her name, then.”
“I didn’t forget,” Steve tells him, “I don’t know.”
Crossing his arms, Eddie points his flashlight right at Steve’s eyes. “Be so serious. You gotta know. Why else would you think I’d flip out?”
“Because—! It doesn’t matter.”
“Just tell me! You’re not honoring the rules of the game, Harrington, you’re the one who wanted to play—”
“I keep telling you, I don’t know who it was!”
“Bullshit!”
“I never got his name!”
Record scratch.
Steve’s face goes bright red, and he ducks his head so that Eddie can’t see his expression. It’s just as well, because the flashlight clatters to the ground when Eddie drops it, and he hurries to scoop it back up, eyes as wide as humanly possible. There’s no way. There’s no way, right? He’s just doing this to fuck with Eddie, he has to be, that’s—that has to be what it is. It’s eerily silent, and Eddie shines the flashlight at Steve again, swallowing.
It’s audible. It toes the line between gross and annoying.
Eddie toes that line often.
“It was a dude?” Eddie asks, because he really needs some clarification here. “Your first kiss was with another guy?”
There must be something in his tone that he hadn’t intended to put in there, because Steve’s whole posture shifts. His shoulders square, his jaw goes tight, and he looks down his nose at Eddie, even though they’re both sitting on the ground, like it’s a challenge, like it’s a dare. “You got a problem with that, you keep it to yourself,” Steve says, voice carefully even. “We’re gonna sit here and—and we’re not gonna say anything ’til the power comes back on. Game’s over.”
He looks away again. Eddie’s flashlight flickers, and he turns it off, because it they might need it to get out of the mall once the power comes back, in case the timed lights turn off by the time it does. It’s silent for a long while, and Eddie’s kicking himself. He shouldn’t have pried. Shit, now Steve probably thinks he’s a total asshole.
“Sorry for ruining the game,” Eddie says after a while. “My bad, man, really.”
A long stretch of nothing. Eddie calls Steve’s name after another couple of minutes.
“It’s fine,” Steve says quietly. “I don’t know why I didn’t just, like, lie. I usually do, y’know, when that question comes up.”
“If it, um, makes you feel any better, I’m—I haven’t had one,” Eddie offers. “A first kiss, I mean.”
More silence.
“Are you messing with me?” Steve asks, several long moments later, and Eddie shakes his head, even though they’re bathed in darkness, and Steve can’t see him.
He scoots closer, close enough that he can feel the body heat radiating off of Steve without the two of them touching. “Nope. Cross my heart, hope to die, all that good stuff. Haven’t kissed anybody. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but, uh, pretty sure nobody’s exactly jumping at the chance to kiss the town freak, and it’s not like it’d be any good if they did, because, like I said, zero prior kisses,” Eddie rambles. “I’d probably suck at it.”
A light chuckle. Thank fuck. “Probably,” Steve agrees.
“Probably,” Eddie echoes.
They sit in silence for a while longer, though it isn’t uncomfortable this time, which Eddie supposes is a plus. The freezer is just barely less cold, which means the power’s still out, which sucks. How long are they gonna be trapped in here? It’s chilly as hell. How long is Eddie supposed to be trapped in a freezer with Steve Harrington, armed with the knowledge that he’s apparently kissed one whole boy before?
Eddie definitely isn’t straining to see the time on his watch. He definitely doesn’t watch it tick for fifteen whole fucking minutes before Steve speaks up again. “Hey, uh, what happened to your flashlight?” he asks.
“I’m saving the batteries,” Eddie tells him.
A beat. “Saving the batteries…for what?” Steve asks.
“Oh, I was planning on putting them in my Walkman, actually,” Eddie snaps, a little on the sarcastic side, because they’ve been trapped in here for a while, and the freezer is steadily dropping in temperature. Embarrassed, though, because Steve should arguably be the only really upset person in this freezer right now, Eddie barrels on. “Anyway, we may as well get used to being in the dark.”
“Yeah…” Steve murmurs, trailing off, like there’s another thought accompanying it that he just isn’t saying.
Eddie’s brows furrow. “What?”
“Well, it’s just not that great, is it?” Steve hums. “I wouldn’t mind looking at the mall again, and…maybe…looking at you.”
Eddie snorts. “Really? You like looking at me?” he scoffs.
“Uh…yeah,” Steve admits, voice soft. “I suppose I do.”
Eddie feels his face go hot. “Well, I like looking at you, too,” he confesses under the cover of darkness, because it feels a lot safer than it would if he could see the pitying wince that’s probably on Steve’s face right now.
“Oh, yeah?” Steve asks, sounding vaguely pleased, and Eddie doesn’t get him. He doesn’t understand King Steve, Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington, Steve from Scoops Ahoy, who apparently babysits D&D-playing kids and likes the ewoks in Star Wars and kissed a boy at camp. Steve’s shoulder presses against his own. “Thanks. For that.”
Eddie swallows. It’s audible again, and he really wishes he knew how to cut that shit out, because it does a hell of a job of giving him away. “Yeah, man, no—um, no problem.”
“You know,” Steve starts, “I could be your first kiss. For practice.”
“For practice,” Eddie repeats flatly.
What an asshole. He should’ve known this was some elaborate setup to get Eddie to admit that all the rumors about him are true, to humiliate him or some shit.
Steve laughs, but it isn’t cruel like Eddie’s expecting. It’s soft, almost embarrassed. “Sorry, I just—that’s how the boy at camp got me to kiss him, figured I’d try the line out,” he says. “Guess I still don’t have my game back.”
“Your game?” Eddie asks, because what the hell is happening right now?
“You know, how I, like, suck at flirting lately,” Steve says. “I mean, I’ve been flirting with you all summer, and it took us getting stuck in a freezer for you to be even a little nice to me. Well, to get you to admit you don’t hate looking at my face, but I’ll take it.”
Record scratch number two.
“I—sorry, what?” Eddie asks, eyes practically bugging out of his head, and Steve shrugs with a quiet laugh. Eddie shakes his head. “Not fucking funny, man, you can’t just—you can’t say shit like that.”
“What, I can’t be honest with you?”
“You’re not—! You aren’t being honest, you’re fucking with me!”
Another little laugh. “Well, I’d like to be, but you don’t seem to like me very much,” Steve tells him. “What’d you say again? ‘When hell freezes over?’ Robin’s gonna have a field day with that ‘You Suck’ board of hers when I tell her I got rejected again.”
Eddie rethinks his entire summer.
Come to think of it, if he doesn’t consider a lot of Steve’s comments to be sarcastic, it actually does come across as incessant flirting.
Son of a bitch.
“How—why are you—what makes you so confident I won’t be an asshole about this?” Eddie asks, utterly bewildered.
Steve tilts his head—the shadows move, he sees the silhouette of Steve’s annoyingly perfect hair sway with the movement. “I mean, considering you apologized for ruining the game after I told you my first kiss was with a dude, figured I’d have nothing to lose except for my pride, of which I have remarkably little,” he says. “I’m pretty much shameless, man. And besides, your whole thing is, like, standing on tables and shitting on everyone else for conforming to society’s expectations, so…it’d be pretty weird if you were homophobic.”
This shit just gets crazier and crazier. “You paid attention to me in high school?” Eddie asks, and his eyes are adjusting to the light now. He can make out the faint, nostalgic smile on Steve’s face.
“Oh, I had the biggest crush on you my freshman year,” Steve tells him. “But, y’know, you made it very apparent you weren’t the biggest fan of jocks, and I’d already joined, like, a bunch of different teams, so—”
Eddie cuts him off by practically smashing his mouth against Steve’s, all jittery nerves. He’s not a very good kisser, but Steve lets out a tiny, pleased hum anyway as he lifts his hands to Eddie’s waist, tugging him closer just slightly. It’s insane. It’s bizarre. By all rules of both basic logic and the Munson Doctrine, this should not be happening. Steve Harrington should not be carefully and softly moving his lips against Eddie’s, but here they are.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie breathes, pulling back, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re kind of an asshole,” Steve tells him, and Eddie can’t really argue with that, “but, uh, I’m sorry, too. The whole pigtail-pulling strategy really doesn’t work with you, huh?”
The mental image of Steve tugging his hair does something to Eddie that he’s a little too ashamed to admit. “Um,” he manages, “yeah.”
“Sorry about all of high school, then,” Steve says, and he kisses Eddie again.
And just as Steve’s hand snakes underneath Eddie’s shirt, the lights in the freezer come back on, and cold air begins to blast through the vents.
Once again, son of a bitch.
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