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It’s just past 3am when Steve finally caves and reaches for the phone on his night stand. His fingers are trembling slightly as he dials Eddie’s number — he knows it by heart even though he never called before. Eddie gave it to him a few weeks ago, making him promise that he’d call if he ever needed to talk.
“Any time of day or night, alright, Harrington? Call me whenever.”
And so that’s what he’s doing now, feeling strangely vulnerable about it. There’s no way Eddie’s gonna pick up. He’s gonna wake him. He’s gonna keep him from his sleep, possibly even interrupting one of the few nightmare-less nights he has.
Steve feels guilty the very second the dial tone meets the silence of his room, his chest heavy, eyes closed. Part of him hopes that Eddie won’t pick up the phone, that he’s in deep enough sleep to miss the call, that he’ll come into Family Video tomorrow and smile at Steve like he always does, none the wiser.
But, miraculously, amazingly, unfortunately, Eddie does pick up the phone. Rather immediately, at that.
“Yeah?” He sounds sleepy, and Steve’s heart falls immediately. He can’t get his mouth to work, only holding the phone to his ear, soaking up Eddie’s sleepy voice and trying to replace the guilt, the weakness, the heaviness of another sleepless night. “Hello?”
Steve remains silent. Can’t quite get the words to work. Fucking figures.
“Stevie? It’s you, isn’t it?”
He nods, stupidly, before saying, “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Hey now, what the hell do you have to be sorry for?” There’s shuffling on the other side and Steve imagines that Eddie is sitting up now, settling in to listen to the sob story of the nightmare Steve had without even falling asleep first. He does that sometimes. Doctor Owens has a fancy term for it, but Steve doesn’t want a label for his insanity. Because if there’s a label, that means it’s nothing special — and that’s kinda the only thing he has left.
But he doesn’t tell Eddie anything about that. Maybe one day. If he sticks around. Gods, but Steve hopes he does.
“If you’re sorry for calling me,” Eddie continues, his voice impossibly soft, “you don’t gotta be that. It’s fine. It’s why you have this number, alright? I’m here.” There’s more silence for a moment, but it’s the kind of silence that leaves him room to breathe. Eddie is good at that kind of silence, despite the fact that he talks so much all the time.
Maybe it’s the constant talking that makes the silences all the more significant.
“What do you need, Stevie?” Eddie asks then, and Steve hides under his blanket, the phone pressed to his ear. “I could come over. Or you could come over, I don’t really care either way.”
“No. Don’t wanna move. And…” No company, he wants to say, but the words get stuck in his throat. Sometimes company and kindness make the bad times worse. They make it more real, and what Steve needs is for everything to be a little less real. Maybe that’s why he’s calling Eddie. There’s no way that boy with his doe eyes and his wide smiles and his gentle voice in the middle of the night is real.
“Alright, I got it.” Eddie breathes deeply on the other end and Steve remembers that that’s a good idea actually, so he follows Eddie’s breath for a while.
“Can we just…” He trails off. Gives up on finding words, cringing at himself, glad that Eddie can’t see him like this.
“Can we what, hm?”
Steve shakes his head and remains silent, knows that his voice will sound anything but strong when he opens his mouth, and every second Eddie doesn’t hear what a mess he is, is important.
“I’m bad at this,” is what he settles on, closing his eyes against the world inside and outside his blanket.
“At what? Sleep? Words?”
Yes, and yes. But it’s not what he means. “Asking for things. I’m not good at that.”
“Hey, neither am I,” Eddie says and it sounds like he’s smiling. Steve imagines it and he hopes, oh he hopes that Eddie is smiling. “Y’know how I told you to call me whenever? That was essentially me just asking for you to call me. To know that… that I’m here.”
“I do,” Steve says quietly, and his body is sort of trembling with the confession. “I do know that.”
“Good,” Eddie breathes. “So what do you need?”
Steve sighs and pretends he’s somewhere else, pretends he’s in a world where asking is easy, where being known comes naturally and not with shaking voice and trembling hands. Pretends Eddie knows him already.
“Can we just… Fall asleep like this? Talking, I mean, though I don’t even know if I have things to say. The silence is more important anyway. You’re good at those, did you know?”
A light chuckle comes from Eddie, and Steve smiles along with it. “I’m good at silences? Me, Eddie Munson? You sure you don’t have the wrong number?”
“Very.” It’s all Steve says, and then it’s Eddie who’s quiet— as if to prove his point.
“Yeah, Stevie,” he says after a beat, his voice making Steve shiver. “We can fall asleep like this. Do you need me to talk to you, or…?”
He considers briefly, but he already knows the answer. He doesn’t need Eddie to talk. Just needs him to be there.
“Nah. Just… Just be there?”
There’s a hum now — the same kind of hum that Eddie always does right before giving him that secret smile of his, when he’s about to touch Steve or give him a new pet name. Sometimes, when the door to Family Video falls shut behind Eddie and Steve is left to deal with his fluttering heart, he likes to believe that this him has been placed into the universe with his name to it.
He wonders if Eddie knows. If the hum tastes like his name, if it makes Eddie’s heart flutter just as much.
“Hey Stevie?” Eddie interrupts their silence after a while and Steve can’t fight the smile on his lips.
“Yeah?”
“Did you know that otters hold hands at night so they don’t drift away from each other in their sleep?” He waits for a moment, allowing for a reaction, leaving another silence for him to claim. He does, but only with a smile as he grips the phone tighter, imagining it to be Eddie’s hand. “This sorta feels like that.”
The trembling that hasn’t really stopped is back now, the air heavy with implications and possibilities. Steve swallows.
“You keeping me from drifting away, Munson?”
“I hope so.”
It’s whispered words across the lines, crossing lines and blurring them. It’s taking his breath away, replacing it with something else, something new, something he has only felt when they were alone, but never this intense. He fills his lungs with it.
“Hey Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
More whispers, more greedy lungfuls of this something new.
“Is it bad that I kinda wanna hold your hand now?”
A beat, a sigh, a careful breath. It makes Steve think that the air in Eddie’s room is sizzling too, heavy and light at the same time. Maybe it’s just as addictive.
“Only if it’s bad that I’m kinda imagining yours in mine right now.”
Steve shakes his head again and doesn’t feel stupid about it now. “I don’t think that’s bad,” he whispers.
“Good.”
Maybe whispers are their new language. Maybe everything else is too harsh for this fragile thing, maybe the world outside Steve’s blanket isn’t ready to see the smile on his face or hear the rapid beat of his heart. He doesn’t mind.
“Tomorrow. Can I hold your hand tomorrow?”
“What do you mean, Stevie, you’re already holding it.” And there’s that smile again that makes Steve huff out the softest of chuckles, hiding his face in his pillow to ground himself against this heady feeling. “Yeah, you can hold it tomorrow, but only if I can hold yours, how’s that sound?”
“Sounds perfect, Eds,” Steve says, just louder than a whisper, and he waits with bated breath if anyone out there in the universe heard, if their bubble would burst.
But it doesn’t. Eddie only murmurs a sweet, soft, “Can’t wait.” And then there’s only silence because they’re both smiling, hearts racing, hands trembling around the phantom touch of warm fingers. They fall asleep like that soon after.
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