The crack of thunder is loud enough to jolt Steve awake, and for a moment his sleep-clouded eyes search the room wildly for the threat, for whatever woke him, before another peal of thunder seems to roll the tension right out of him.
“Shit,” he sighs, relaxing back into the mattress. “Big one.”
“Yep,” Eddie says tightly from where he’s sitting up against the headboard beside him.
Steve squints up at Eddie in the dim light of the bedside lamp (which Eddie has no plans to turn off, despite the fact it’s gone past two AM). He’s clearly not quite awake, but something in Eddie’s tone has pinged in his brain, and he’s trying to work it out.
Another crash of thunder rattles the house and Eddie can’t help it – he jumps.
It’s small—maybe more like a twitch—but Steve catches it. He always does.
Frowning, Steve reaches out and soothes a hand up the top of Eddie’s thigh, stopping at the bend of his hip and rubbing circles with this thumb.
“Hey,” he says softly, half muffled by the pillow. “Okay?”
Eddie shrugs, hunching over the book in his lap that had been an adequate distraction until the storm had rolled right overhead.
“Not a fan of thunderstorms, I guess,” he admits, lowly, because he’s kind of embarrassed, but willingly, because he knows Steve won’t give him shit – not for something that really upsets him.
“No?” Steve asks, still looking up at Eddie through his lashes, still not entirely awake and an invitingly soft distraction from the rain spattering the window like bullets.
“Nah.” Eddie shrugs again.
Steve hums—a short, distracted sound—and leans in to press a kiss to Eddie’s hip. Then he’s sitting up and stretching with a sharp intake of breath before draping himself over Eddie’s side, kissing his shoulder and looking up at him with expectant eyes.
I’m awake now, he’s saying. You can talk to me.
And Eddie knows he can – and Eddie would, except he’s never really had to put into words why he—Eddie Munson, champion of chaos and discord—has never liked thunderstorms. He’s never had to articulate how the trailer walls had never felt thinner when he was a kid than when a storm was furiously beating at them, or how all the noise and destruction had been something totally out of his control.
Wayne is the only one who really knows, and Wayne had just gotten it. He’d started playing music for Eddie when those Midwestern spring storms started rolling in – and maybe Eddie didn’t love thunder and lightning, but that had been how he’d fallen in love with the idea of making music.
There, at last, had been a form of noise and chaos that Eddie could control and wield for himself.
But it’s late, and Eddie is strung out and wrung out and it doesn’t feel like he has the energy for that conversation.
“Never really liked them when I was a kid,” he says instead. “And then after all the shit with the Upside Down, I think it was the final nail in the coffin.”
Steve makes a little wounded noise, maybe at Eddie’s phrasing, maybe just in sympathy, and he turns his head to press a kiss to the side of Eddie’s throat.
“Anyway, it’s stupid, and I can deal with it. You can go back to sleep,” Eddie says, very much aware that he’s clutching one of Steve’s hands as he does so.
“Not stupid,” Steve says. “I’ll go back to sleep if you lay down with me.”
Eddie sighs. “Steve…”
“I’m serious. Hit the light and lay down with me.” Steve kisses Eddie’s neck again, twice, three times, trailing up to the hinge of his jaw, where he murmurs, “Trust me.”
And Steve is a bastard, because Eddie can’t say no to that, so with another (greatly put-upon) sigh, Eddie leans over to put his book on the nightstand and then, after just a moment of hesitation, he turns out the light.
The storm wastes no time in reilluminating the room with flickering lightning, followed by another crash of thunder.
But Steve’s hands are on Eddie, warm and sure, and he’s telling him come here and then pulling him nearer like he can’t wait.
Eddie lets himself be rearranged without complaint and finds himself lying face to face with Steve, legs tangled, arms caught between them, their foreheads brushing. He can feel Steve’s breath against his lips when he begins to speak.
“When I was a kid, I loved thunderstorms,” Steve says, voice soft.
“Yeah?” Eddie asks, the word feeling small in the scant space between them.
“Yep,” Steve says. He takes one of Eddie’s hands and pulls it to his chest, pressing it flat there where Eddie can feel the beat of his heart, calm and steady. “My favorites were the ones just like this. Loud and strong, in the middle of the night.”
Frankly, Eddie can’t imagine a worse type of thunderstorm, listening to the deluge falling on the roof of the tiny house he and Steve share, his body practically rattling along with the windows when thunder booms overhead.
Still, he dutifully asks, “Why?”
Steve is quiet for a moment, still collecting his words.
“The world didn’t feel as empty, when there was a storm outside,” he finally says. “If there was noise, it didn’t feel like I was alone.”
It’s a much more thoughtful admission than Eddie was expecting, much more somber, and he’s not quite sure what to say. He presses a little closer to Steve, nudging their foreheads together.
Another rumble of thunder passes over them, still so loud that Eddie can feel it in his bones, and Steve sighs like he’s perfectly content.
“I liked that, too,” he says. “When you could feel the thunder in your chest like a second heartbeat. Like there was someone there with me.”
Eddie finds Steve’s free hand with his own and squeezes.
“I think I just forgot after a while. Or maybe it wasn’t enough. When I got older, I went out and surrounded myself with people instead. The noise at a really big party felt like a storm sometimes.” Steve gives a subdued little laugh. “But when I was a kid… just this was enough.”
“What about now?” Eddie asks, practically whispering, just loud enough to be heard over the percussion of the rain.
Steve tilts his head forward until their lips meet, sweet and certain.
“This will always be enough,” he says when they part.
He doesn’t go far; their foreheads are still pressed together, their noses are still brushing, hands and arms and legs are still tangled like Steve wants to pull Eddie inside of himself so he can feel the storm the way Steve does.
So Eddie closes his eyes and he tries.
He and Steve lay there quietly, listening as the storm finally begins to pass from over their heads. It isn’t great—it’s loud, it’s violent, it’s nerve-wracking—but Eddie never has to check to know that Steve is still awake, still with him, keeping Eddie’s hand pressed to his steady heartbeat.
Eddie doesn’t start to magically enjoy the storm. He’s not sure he ever will. But – for the way Steve loves them, for the way they had given him comfort for so many years, Eddie thinks he might just be able to make his peace with them.
[Prompt: Touching foreheads]
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sneak peek friday 👀
“Regina,” Shane says, poking her in the arm, like he’s been trying to get her attention for awhile. “Fuck that guy. He’s just an asshole.”
“He was right, though,” Regina says before she can think too hard about it.
The words hang in the air for a moment, and Shane looks at her, eyes almost comically wide.
“About… you being beautiful?” Shane jokes tentatively.
“Well, yes,” Regina concedes. She swallows, mouth suddenly dry. “But also about—”
Shane reaches out and grabs one of her hands without taking his eyes off the road, squeezing it.
“About me… being gay,” Regina finishes, the words coming out so quietly she isn’t sure Shane heard them, but he turns to her briefly, grinning.
“Oh man, how are you going to tell Cady?” he asks, cackling when Regina uses the hand not in his to swat his arm.
“Shut up,” Regina says, but she’s smiling, too.
Suddenly, Shane hits his turn signal and takes his hand back to make a U-turn in the middle of the deserted street.
“What are you doing?” Regina asks, gripping the armrest.
“Milkshakes!” Shane declares.
“But it’s ten pm.”
“Something’s gotta be open,” Shane says confidently.
After driving past a closed Dairy Queen, Shane pulls into the parking lot of 7-Eleven and leads Regina to the back of the store to a machine Regina’s never used before.
“Aha!” Shane says, taking a small container of ice cream out of a freezer and putting it into the machine. He taps a button, and the machine whirrs to life, eventually dispensing the container with its contents blended into a milkshake. Absently, Regina thinks Cady would lose her mind over this.
Shane pokes a straw into his milkshake and gestures to the machine. “Your turn.”
Regina balks; she can’t think of the last time she’s had a milkshake. She peers into the freezer at the flavors, resisting the urge to flip them around to read the nutrition facts. Finally, she chooses an acai smoothie, which feels the safest. She mimics Shane’s process and internally laments that there is nowhere she could take Cady that would be more impressive to her than this.
Shane pays, and Regina lets him, and they head back into his car. Regina takes a cautious sip of her smoothie, and it’s not bad.
“So,” Shane says, looking at her expectantly.
“So… what?” Regina responds.
“Have you told anyone else?” Shane asks. “I mean, I’m sure Cady has put the pieces together.”
“Very funny,” Regina says with an eye roll. “No, not… in those words.”
Shane’s eyes light up, and he smirks. “Am I your first?”
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