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carolperkinsexgirlfriend · 4 months

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Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 112

Part 1 Part 111

Eddie feels anything but serene as he follows Steve up to the front door of the Harrington house. There’s no expensive car in the driveway aside from Steve’s own, but that doesn’t account for all the neighbors. He still remembers the curtains shifting that night, all the rich folks ready to watch the spectacle Billy, Eddie, and Carol were making of themselves.

“What if someone calls the cops?” Eddie whispers, looking behind them at the seemingly abandoned street. When he turns back around, Steve’s frowning down at his keyring. There’s an empty spot where his house key should be. Right. “Wait, let me–”

Eddie bends down to grab the key from the pot where he’d hidden it. He hands it to Steve with a sheepish smile. Steve doesn’t ask. He turns, fits it into the lock, and twists. The metallic clang of the tumbler turning portends their doom.

“Steve!” Eddie hisses, looking back at all the houses hemming them in.

Steve just scoffs. “Why would they call the cops on a kid going into his own house?” He opens the door wide, ushering Eddie inside until he has no choice but to follow. As if there was ever a world in which he wouldn’t follow Steve anywhere. “There’s no way they told anyone they kicked me out.”

Steve closes the door behind Eddie, clicking the lock and deadbolt home like a bad habit. “Besides, you think Chief Hopper’s going to arrest us?”

Steve doesn’t take off his shoes, so Eddie doesn’t either. Steve skips, light-footed up the stairs, but Eddie clumps, muddy boots leaving clods of dirt with every step. When they reach the top of the stairs, Eddie makes sure to ground his heel extra hard into the new white carpet.

When Eddie takes a little too long to follow, Steve clasps his wrist and pulls him into his old bedroom and shuts the door. He’s not surprised when Steve leads him over to his closet.

He’d known right when Steve’d pulled onto the street.

Steve drops his wrist. He puts his back to the closet wall, slides down it, and sort of crouches there, feet planted on the ground, eyes looking up at Eddie. When he doesn’t move, Steve pats the spot next to him.

Eddie slides down the wall beside him. He ends up sitting criss-cross on the carpet, thigh overlapping Steve’s own. As if waiting for Eddie to take his place, Steve drops his own alert position, falling onto his ass and crossing his own legs so his thigh stays pressed tightly into Eddie’s.

Steve didn’t turn on the bedroom light, but the curtains are open, and there’s still plenty of daylight to burn.

“So…” Eddie trails off leadingly, gaze trained on the atrocious plaid wallpaper that covers the room. “What are we doing here?”

Steve sighs. Eddie feels him shift. He looks over, and Steve’s picking at his fingernails. “I just wanted, I mean, you’re just,” Steve stumbles. He groans, burying his head into his hands before peaking up at Eddie through his fingers. “You know?”

Eddie smiles down at him, equal parts endeared and utterly lost. “Not in the slightest.”

Steve laughs, turning his face fully back into his hands. “Yeah, fair,” he replies, voice muffled into his palms. He groans again, long and loud. “Carol and I practiced this.”

Eddie reaches out to pull one of Steve’s hands free. He resists for a second before dropping them both and pouting up at Eddie. He links their fingers together, and Steve latches on like a drowning man. Eddie runs his thumb across his knuckles.

“Fuck what you practiced.” Eddie’s looking down at their hands. “Just tell me.”

Steve breathes in deep, lets it out slow. He squeezes Eddie’s hand once and speaks, all in one go, like he needs to rush it all together to get the thought out. “This is the first place I ever wanted to kiss you.” Steve laughs. “This was supposed to be romantic, but I forgot all my lines.” He laughs again, but Eddie barely hears it. He’s staring down at their hands, eyes so wide they feel like they’re about ready to pop free from his skull. “Should’ve written it down, I guess.”

Eddie thinks he’s smiling, but he can’t quite feel his face anymore. He can’t imagine Steve sitting next to him, reading off notecards as he stumbles through whatever the hell this is.

Steve doesn’t immediately continue, but he’s already given Eddie so much to pour over, that he hardly notices. Steve Harrington wants to kiss him, has thought about it enough to have a first time, is stumbling over his words trying to talk about it.

“Wait the first time?” Eddie asks, shocked enough to look away from their hands and up at Steve’s eyes. “That first night?”

All Eddie remembers of that first night is fear and Steve Harrington’s body pressed close to his.

“No!” Steve says forcefully, almost glaring over at him. But then he winces, eye twitching half closed as he rocks his head to the side. “Well, yeah probably. I’m always sort of thinking about kissing people.”

“What?”

“But I meant that night on Halloween!” Steve raises his hands in defense, bringing Eddie’s up right along with them to hang in the air awkwardly. “You saved me, you know? And you were wearing my clothes.”

“That does it for you?” Eddie asks, something shaking through his lungs, and making him choke on his words. It emerges as a laugh, unhinged and uncontrolled as he pulls his knees up to his chest, bending down to compress his ribs into them as he shakes with the power of his laughter.

Steve’ still holding his hand up, arm bent awkwardly to the side as he leans forward. “Don’t crack on me now, Munson.”

Eddie leans back, waving his free hand in front of his face as tears stream from his eyes. “Hang on, hang on.” He uses his elbow to wipe the tears away, uncurling as the laughter peters out slowly and dies an awkward death at his feet. “Sorry, sorry.”

He peers at Steve out of the corner of his eyes, afraid of what he’ll see. Steve’s biting his lip against his own amusement, eyes crinkled at the corners the way Eddie loves.

“Can I continue?” he asks, mirth audible in every word.

Eddie rolls his eyes, wiping them dry one last time. He turns away from the ugly plaid wallpaper to face Steve, pulling at their joined hands until Steve turns right along with him, the knees of their crossed legs knocking together.

He’s starting to get an inkling of what this is, and he wants to be able to see Steve’s face as it happens.

“Go on,” he says, squeezing Steve’s hand.

It’s Steve’s turn to look down at their hands as Eddie watches a blush bloom on his face. Eddie keeps holding onto him, and waits. He’s waited a week, a year, a lifetime, for this. He can wait a few minutes more.

“Tommy was my first kiss.” Steve says. Eddie’s shoulder’s hunch then freeze that way. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that. “And Carol was my second.”

The words hang in the air for a second, an arrow to Eddie’s heart. Tommy fucking Hagan who trampled all over Steve’s heart, and Carol fucking Perkins who’d followed right along in his wake.

Eddie doesn’t know what the fuck this is. “What does that…” he starts to ask, voice croaking against whatever feeling is bubbling up in him, but he can’t finish it. What does that have to do with us? He bites his tongue against the words, both hoping and dreading that Steve will pick them out of his brain and answer them anyway.

Steve tugs at his sternum. Eddie shudders and tugs back.

“Carol and Tommy were the ones that were dating,” Steve says, eyebrows furrowed. “That’s what everyone always said, but I was there too, you know?” He looks up at Eddie like he’s expecting something, so Eddie nods, even as his mind spins and spins, never quite clicking back into place.

“I was at most of their dates, and we were each other’s first everythings.” He’s still frowning, but it’s up at Eddie now, and it’s starting to look less like sadness and more like confusion. “They were my everything” He’s squeezing Eddie’s hand hard enough to sting. “So, what was the difference?”

Eddie doesn’t answer. He barely understands the question, even as things start clicking into place. Steve’s heartbreak had always been obvious. In the teddy bear on his bed, and the way he clutched back onto Carol and clung.

There’d always been an empty spot by Steve’s side. The gossip around school was that Steve was too much of a player to ever fill it. It’d continued like that until the trio had imploded upon itself, fracturing into thirds. Even Nancy Wheeler hadn’t made the cut.

Now Eddie’s wondering if there was ever a spot open at all.

Steve still looks like he wants an answer, so Eddie says, “I don’t know.”

Steve shudders, closing his eyes like Eddie had struck him. He pulls Eddie’s hand up to press it to his forehead for a second,

“I don’t know what the difference is,” Steve reiterates, eyes still closed. “But then you kissed me.” Steve pulls Eddie’s hand down his face, pressing a kiss to the back of it as he finally opens his eyes. “And I didn’t know what it meant.”

There’s something burning through Eddie, scorching his veins, cauterizing his words in his throat as he tries desperately to grasp at them. Steve’s looking at him practically begging for answers, and Eddie’s floundering.

Steve throws him a life preserver.

“I heard you talking to Uncle Wayne,” Steve says, and it doesn’t connect until he tacks on, “and Jeff.”

His breath catches. Not a life preserver, an anchor, and he’s at the bottom of the sea drowning.

Steve’s peeking up at him under his lashes. The thing is, he can’t even remember exactly what was said. But he remembers the embarrassment, the pleas for them both to lower their voices.

Was the L word used? He can’t fucking remember.

“But you didn’t…” What? Say anything? What was he supposed to say?

Steve started acting weird that next morning, hadn’t he?

“You said you loved me,” Steve says, a bandaid ripped off a festering wound. “What did that mean?”

Oh. Here’s Steve asking again, what’s the difference. You kissed me, and I didn’t know what it meant.

What does it mean?

Steve’s ears are so red they’re almost bioluminescent. Eddie wants to reach out and see if he can feel the warmth pooling beneath the thin skin. He turns the hand Steve has clasped in his own and held against his face to do just that. The angle’s awkward, and it ends up with Steve’s own wrist bent awkwardly and smooshed against his cheek.

Steve shudders as Eddie trails his pointer finger against the delicate skin. He pulls Eddie’s hand back and for a heartstopping moment he thinks Steve’s going to let go, but all he does is turn Eddie’s hand to press a kiss to the back of it and then drop their still-joined hands into his own lap.

“It meant I wanted more,” Eddie says, scooting closer in the space they don’t have between them. “Means I want more.”

Steve’s laugh is more like a quiet breath, puffing against Eddie’s face, they’re so close. “More like dating?” Eddie’s heartbeat is all the way up in his throat as he nods. “That’s so stupid, Eddie.”

Eddie sucks in a breath, pulling at his hand, but Steve doesn’t loosen his hold. “No wait!” He drops Eddie’s hand, but before Eddie can get any distance, Steve’s clambering into his lap, patting at his chest like he’s looking for a wound. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Eddie’s breath shudders out of him. He sinks into the carpet more firmly, closing his eyes as he focuses on Steve’s grounding weight atop him. This is Steve. Steve, who would never hurt him. Who let him into his home. Who bleed for him, who tried to die for him, who lives with him.

Steve’s so close, when Eddie opens his eyes. His cheeks are still pink, eyes shining. In the dim light, they look like flat pits of brown. Eddie wants to be this close in the light of day, sunlight shining bright enough to reflect the gold in them.

“I know,” Eddie says, reaching out to clutch Steve’s sides. Whatever prey drive had been thrumming through him thoroughly squashed out under Steve’s bulk. He breathes again while Steve waits, in, out, in, out, in. “What did you mean?”

Steve’s smiling a little as he meets his eyes. The angle’s funky, this close. He can barely see his lips, has to crane his head down a bit just to catch them quirking. “I just meant–” He starts before biting his lip and looking away. His brows furrowed again, like he’s thinking hard about what he wants to say.

Maybe notecards wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.

Steve nods, apparently having reached an accord with his own mind. Eddie loves him so much.

“I just meant, that there is no ‘more,’ Eddie.” He lets go of Eddie long enough to make air quotes around the word “more,” because even in emotional situations, he’s fundamentally a bitch. “You can’t get more than we already are.”

Steve doesn’t settle his hands back on Eddie’s chest; he reaches up to cup his face. “We’re the most we ever could be. Dating doesn’t change that. Kissing doesn’t change that.” Steve’s thumb trails along Eddie’s bottom lip emphasizing the point. “You’re already everything.”

Something untenable is running through Eddie. It’s too big, too untamed. Eddie has to do something with it, or he’s going to immolate on all these feelings.

He leans forward and kisses Steve.

It’s not like last time. Last time was soft, sleepy comfort. It was the warmth of a late night and shared bed.

This time, it’s an inferno. Eddie wants to burn up in it.

Eddie wants to consume Steve; he wants to devour. He wants to die in this perfect, infinite moment.

And Steve’s kissing back, just as ferociously. Eddie wants to get lost in it. But he’s got to know, so he leans back, lets their lips brush as he asks, “but kissing’s okay, right?” He leans in, licking the corner of Steve’s mouth, getting some of his teeth as he laughs. “And you’ll just kiss me?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away, except to reel Eddie back in and press into him, hard and needy. “Just you.” He delves in when Steve gasps, ready to burn up on their connection. Steve bites his lip hard enough to sting.

Eddie loses himself in the moment.

It’s less pulling away, and more kisses slowing, gentling even as they linger.

The light’s almost gone, and both Eddie’s legs are dead beneath Steve’s weight. He reaches out to tuck a hair behind Steve’s ear, smiling as it immediately springs free, Steve’s usual gell released from Eddie’s brushing hands.

Eddie’s lips sting, and his throat’s parched. He never wants to get up.

“Was that anything like you and Carol practiced?” he asks, throat a dry croak.

Steve’s eyes are twinkling as he leans back into Eddie’s space. “Well, I hit all the right beats, at least.”

He leans back into Eddie, slotting their lips back together, lingering, lingering, lingering. Eddie pulls back, the desire to kiss Steve and the perpetual need to be a smartass warring within him. “But in the wrong order right?”

“Hey!”

Eddie kisses him before he can make any more complaints. Steve doesn’t seem to mind.

Part 113

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #my fic #steddie upsidedown au #THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!! also part of my steve harrington is arospec agenda <3!#anyway. hope you guys enjoy 😊#i kept it vague bc Eddie doesn’t Quite get what steve is talking abt. and to be fair. neither really does steve #he's like. devotion is devotion. anyway what is romantic attraction. should we make out?

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