#there’s a winnie the pooh analogy here but the tv show started in the 90s so

[scoops-aboy86]

Window pt 1

Steve doesn’t realize quite how much he’s put on recently (or how enamored to a certain metalhead he’s become) and gets stuck in a window. 

Inspired by this. Part 2 from Eddie's POV is here.

rated: T | words: 2765 | cw: none | tags: chubby steve, pre-relationship, weight gain, steve’s bisexual awakening in progress

And, uh. Don’t have a couple beers and drive. But, like, it was the 80s, so. 🤷‍♀️ 

Maybe also don’t try to climb through a window when it’s the 80s and most people don’t lock their front doors anyway. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ 

(Would Eddie and Wayne lock the trailer, when it’s just as easy to pry a window open? I mean yeah Eddie has drugs in there but he clearly hides them well enough that even he can’t find them sometimes, so idk.)

Eddie isn’t home, but that’s okay; it’s an impulsive visit, as most of them are, so Steve knows what to do. He goes into it all confident and cocky because he’s pretty sure it’ll be easier than the other times he’s done it because the porch is right there, no drainpipe climbing required or nosey younger sibling to catch him at it with a look of annoyed disgust that will echo down through the years. 

Mike still looks at him like that, no matter how many free rides or free movies he and his friends manage to wring out of Steve, which is, in Steve’s opinion, really dumb of the kid. He doesn’t even like Nancy like that anymore, for fuck’s sake, get over it Mike. (And it’s easier to go off on a tangent in his head about Mike than really examine the comparison between climbing into Nancy’s room and climbing into Eddie’s, so Steve is just rolling with it.)

Anyway, the point is, he’s got this. He pulls the BMW up a respectful distance away so that Eddie and Wayne will still have room to park later in case he’s here that long, and all but bounces out of the driver’s seat into the warm night air. 

Maybe he should have thought about it a little more, because, as it turns out… he does not got this. 

“Do mine eyes deceive me? Is it the King Steve, what through yonder window breaks?”

“Hi Eddie,” Steve says flatly, unsurprised. He’d heard the van rumble up, and the distinctive squeak of the driver's side door. For the last hour or so he’s resigned himself to standing by on the old easy chair on the porch, chin in his hands where his elbows rest on the dresser just inside the window. At least it’s late enough (and Lucas managed to talk Max into summer camp this year) that no one else is likely to see him.

He can hear the grin in Eddie’s reply. “Hiya, Stevie. Mind explaining what I’m coming home to here?”

Steve doesn’t want to dignify that with a response, because fuck, isn’t it obvious? But he also doesn’t want to antagonize his friend and risk being stuck in this window all night—not that he thinks Eddie would leave him here, but Steve doesn’t want to deserve to be left. With a heavy breath out through his nose, he says, “I’m a little stuck here, man. Help me out?”

Almost immediately he feels Eddie step in close, hand on his right hip where it’s caught in the window frame, and maybe just a hint of warm thumb brushing over where the skin is pink and pinched. Steve has to hold himself very still to avoid reacting to that, not completely sure he didn’t imagine it anyway. 

“Out?” Eddie asks, sounding like he’s trying to calculate something in his head. “Or in?”

“Uh… whichever gets me unstuck faster, I guess?”

Eddie chuckles. “In it is, then. You must’ve been pretty determined to get in there and wait for me, you made some good progress here. I’m guessing you got to a point where you couldn’t get the angle right, huh sweetheart?”

“Jesus, Eddie…” Why did he have to put it like that? And why is it giving Steve goosebumps? “Look, I think if you just lift me by the legs a bit I can, like… walk forward on my hands, kinda, and—” He tries to demonstrate, but bumps the neck of the guitar with THIS MACHINE SLAYS DRAGONS scrawled across its front and makes a failed attempt at lunging to catch it, wincing when it thumps down against the floor.

“What was that?”

“… What was what?”

“Steve…”

“Okay okay, it was your acoustic, I’m sorry dude, I just… I’m pretty sure it’s fine.”

“She’d better be, Harrington. Lucky for you my sweetheart is still safe in the van, far from your clumsy fumblings, or I might have to call in the cavalry.”

Again Steve twists, trying to look at him, and something else falls off the dresser—he thinks it’s just some sort of magazine. “Liar. I know you wouldn’t call the cops on me, Munson.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” Eddie shoots back. “I’d call Robin.”

Steve grimaces again. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“And Wheeler, too. Jon’s still in town, maybe he could be persuaded to bring his camera to document this posterior for posterity.”

Suddenly Eddie’s hands are on his ass, and Steve is torn between a vivid memory of trying to shove Dustin into a vent at Starcourt and a zing of nerves that should not be linked to his pseudo-little-brother in any way, and it’s all Eddie’s fault—

The first real shove catches Steve and his flatlining brain by surprise, jostling him enough that his elbows slip and he nearly cracks his chin on the cluttered dresser surface. “Hey,” he calls sharply over one shoulder. 

“Sorry sweetheart, did you need a ‘one two three go’?” Eddie pats at his ass with both hands, tapping out a little rhythm, and Steve has to restrain the urge to donkey kick him. 

“This isn’t funny, Munson,” he insists. “And some sort of warning would’ve been nice, yeah.” His tone is sarcastic, but his face is burning red, and once the words are out he has to bite his lip to keep from saying anything else. Not that Steve even knows what, there’s just… something, precarious, on the tip of his brain that might spill out his mouth if he’s not careful, and he doesn’t want to find out what it is like that. 

Eddie snickers. “It’s a little bit funny, but point taken. I’m going to give you another push here. Ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.” What a fucking day. All Steve had wanted was to smoke up a little and hang out, like they usually do. And okay, maybe he’s a little grumpy that Eddie wasn’t even home when he got here— “Where were you, anyway?” he asks, grunting and trying to wriggle forward with every shove. Might as well talk, get his mind off the vice grip the window frame has on his hips. “You’re usually—oof—here when I finish a closing shift.”

“Practice ran long,” Eddie grunts back. After the first few rounds of ready steady go he started to get more serious and really put his weight into it. “That, and Gareth’s been having some… shall we say, romantic troubles lately, and needed consolation and advice.”

Steve feels a vague prickle of jealousy, even as he manages to grip the dresser edge hard enough to hold onto a fraction of an inch of progress. “What kinda consolation? Been smoking without me, Munson?”

“No,” comes the amused reply. “Just a couple beers. I do have other friends besides you and the monster hunters club, you know.”

Which really makes Steve’s face flame, because he… doesn’t. Not anymore. Not even a girlfriend; it’s like his heart’s not fully in it anymore and they can smell that on him. He tries to replace his embarrassment (Eddie didn’t mean it like that, Steve knows he didn’t) with determination, wrenching himself forward without regard for the way the window frame’s hard metal edges scrape against his skin. He doesn’t feel the full bite of it in some places, thanks to the knots of scar tissue the Upside Down had left him with on his sides, it’s fine. 

But almost immediately there’s a strong grip on the outsides of his thighs. “Woah there Stevie,” Eddie cautions, and he actually sounds concerned. “Don’t hurt yourself, man. We’ll get you out of here and get you caught up if you want, I have beer here too, alright? Just…”

“Just what?” Steve grumbles. He doesn’t know why he feels so stung, feels like Eddie ditched him—they didn’t even have plans for fuck’s sake. At most, they’ve had a string of casual hangouts roughly every other night at around the same time for a months now, but they’ve never really talked about it, never solidified anything. 

He tells himself that he wouldn’t even care if he hadn’t gotten stuck in the window like an idiot, but if that’s the case then why does this show of concern feel like a cooling balm over his temper?

Eddie sighs, but not like he’s annoyed. More like… he’s choosing his words carefully. “Just, uh… try to suck in a bit?”

Blinking, Steve tries to look over his shoulder. He can’t quite see Eddie, just out of the corner of his eye, but it looks like he’s chewing on his lip. Then he pushes himself up on the dresser and looks down along the front of his body to where he’s stuck, trying to make sense of…

Oh. His face goes hot again. 

The window doesn’t open very far, is the thing, and for the first time Steve fully registers that it’s not just his hips that are caught. Reddened skin peeks out from the bottom of his shirt, and some of that is because it’s ridden up during his struggles, but he also… makes contact with the top of the dresser, which comes up to about an inch or so below the frame. Now that he’s paying attention, he registers part of himself pressing against the metal of the trailer exterior, too.

He used to be pretty trim, but that had been back in high school and while running from monsters and dark wizards in an alternate dimension. 

When did he get a belly?

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath, and does as he’s told. 

Eddie doesn’t belabor the point, just gets his hands on Steve’s ass again with a “One, two, three, push.”

And it’s still a hard drag against his front, but it works this time. Steve jolts forward, too caught by surprise and still flustered, catching himself hands-first on Eddie’s messy bedroom floor and gracelessly flopping the rest of the way in. The carpet (or really, the layer of dirty laundry on top of it) doesn’t smell great, but he stays slumped there for a moment, recovering. 

At least he avoided landing on the acoustic guitar, though. 

“You okay there, dude?”

Steve groans. “I’m fine. That fucking window looked bigger from the outside, that’s all.”

Eddie lets out a disbelieving snort, then follows him in, shimmying over the narrow sill with an ease and silence that comes from years of practice. When he’s done, he leans his scrawny ass back against the dresser and spreads his hand in a tada motion. 

And Steve’s not dumb, he knows that he’s put on weight since the Upside Down. Since finally coming down from constant recurring nightmare panic mode. Yeah he didn’t realize it was so obvious, but he can admit (at least in the privacy of his own head) that that’s why he got stuck. 

He opens his mouth to say something along the lines of you don’t have to rub it in, but snaps it shut again when Eddie steps forward and offers him a hand up. The grip is calloused from guitar playing, strong and sure from slinging amps around—and he feels that zing again, phantom handprints on his ass. 

“You okay?” Eddie asks once they’re on the same level again. “You were really wedged in there, looked kinda painful.”

“I,��� Steve starts, but stops when Eddie’s other hand lands on his hip. Which is not completely unusual… Eddie is a touchy guy, very hands-on with all his friends. He’s poked at Steve’s sides before, comparing their bite marks, and Steve hasn’t really thought about it much before now. 

Because that’s what trauma-bonded people do, right? The last party that had rounded up all the young adults, Nancy smoked with them and she and Jonathan had spent most of the rest of the evening cuddled up together, lining up the scars on their palms. 

Eddie’s thumb brushes the skin above his waistband, ghosting warmly over where it’s red and a little raw. 

“I’m fine,” Steve manages to say, but he’s not. His brain is going haywire—from the touch, from Eddie’s Bambi-eyed stare, from all the thoughts that have been pining around his head tonight and everything he’s pointedly not thought about too. (About climbing in a boy’s window. About being jealous. About hands on his ass and how it hadn’t been a bad surprise, and the thumb grazing deliberately over the swell of softness at his middle with concern bordering on reverence.)

Something in Steve aches, and it’s a familiar pang. It reminds him of how he used to feel whenever he looked at Nancy, before he had let go of the last scraps of that dream. Eddie seems more real, more touchable… He always is, when they hang out, and especially when they’re by themselves. Eddie is a touchy guy. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says slowly, distracted. He keeps running his thumb along Steve’s softness, drifting up a little further under his shirt until his pointer finger meets skin too like a dazed afterthought. His tongue darts out to lick his lips—Steve can’t help the way his eyes are drawn to the motion. “Yeah, you are… pretty fine…”

Not once, not for months, has Steve felt electricity like this in the air, under his skin, sparking at a simple touch. It’s why he stopped flirting with the girls who came into Family Video, even the ones who eyed him in a way he knew meant they were a sure thing. The way Eddie is looking at him right now, even though he’s…

Well. He’s let himself go, hasn’t he? And he knows it, kind of knew it for a while and just not thought about it because he didn’t think he had too, but it’s getting obvious now. Steve has never felt more self-conscious about his body in his entire life and, right while he’s in the middle of reconciling wanting to pout because his best guy friend was off having fun without him, Eddie just had to go and compliment it. 

Steve swallows hard. “You, uh. You think so?” He’s not fishing for complements, he’s not, he just wants to know what Eddie means. 

Still slowly, Eddie looks up at him through his eyelashes. It’s almost shy, which is so unlike the Eddie that Steve has come to expect, but his eyes are big and brown and a little wild in an achingly familiar way and Steve has to resist the urge to sway forward—

“Of course, Stevie,” Eddie says quietly. Is he afraid that they might be overheard in the empty trailer? Afraid to break the moment by speaking too loud? His hand is still just under Steve’s shirt, light little touches that Steve can’t help but find soothing, almost hypnotic. “Always.”

Steve wants to lean in, because he knows he’s not reading the signs wrong. 

But then, at the last second, he remembers what Eddie had said about having a few beers with Gareth. Probably just enough to be a little tipsy. But if Eddie is gay—and, like, Steve wouldn’t be surprised, he’s learned some of the clues from Robin and there have always been rumors—he’s not out. Not to Steve, anyway, and Steve… is whatever he is, apparently, which definitely warrants a phone call and possibly a bathroom floor confession to his platonic other half as soon as he gets a chance, holy shit… Suddenly everything feels delicate, like there is something there but one wrong move and it could shatter, and Steve doesn’t know if he could take anymore shards to his heart. Not these days, not if it’s Eddie. 

He just wants to be a little more sure first. Do this right, if it’s really happening. So, for now, he only says, “So, uh. Wanna smoke?”

Eddie smiles, dimples popping and eyes lighting up, and his hand gives Steve’s hip a little inadvertent squeeze as he bounces past him. “Yeah, we can do that. I’ve got a few joints already rolled, I’ve got snacks—” He’s already hauling his black metal lunchbox from under the bed and riffling through it, his bright enthusiasm making Steve feel warm all the way through. “Prop my baby back up, will you? Treat her right, Stevie, or I’ll be forced to rescind my offer of pretzels and bagel bite pizzas.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Steve agrees with a chuckle, and does as he’s told. It doesn’t escape his notice that Eddie just mentioned some of his favorites for when the munchies set in. 

He’s going to figure this out, but for now they can just hang out like normal and have a good night.