Steve always gets that look about him when he looks up at the stars. Doesn’t matter if they’re walking in the dark and he looks up instead of where he’s going, trusting that Eddie will watch where they’re going, or if he’s sitting down, his back against a wall or a pole or the backrest of a chair, one knee pulled to his chest, his eyes cast upwards.
There’s something about stargazing Steve that just takes Eddie’s breath away and replaces it with words that get stuck in his throat. Words like, You’re so beautiful. Like, What do you see? What do you think? What’s happening inside that brilliant, brilliant head of yours?
It always makes him feel like Steve is in on some secret of the universe that no one but him will ever be privy to, and it leaves him with a racing heart and a tingling sensation in his hands where he thinks about reaching for Steve’s and finding out about all those words he never says.
Especially at night.
Eddie fell in love with Steve at night. Over the course of many walks in the dark, strolls around Hawkins because they both just needed to move, get away for a while, chase the sensation of running away together. Eddie fell in love with the line of Steve’s jaw and the smile on his lips, the reflection of the moon in those dark eyes as Steve looked up and looked so calm. So serene. Almost at home, with the stars in his eyes.
Steve doesn’t know, of course. Doesn’t know that he looks outright magical like this, doesn’t know that Eddie‘s watching. Always, always watching. Always wondering, too, and always on the verge of asking. Of touching. Of holding and keeping and—
He swallows heavily as he watches Steve beside him, hands stuffed in his jeans, the cool breeze of the summer air blowing through his hair and leaving goosebumps along his arms that carry constellations of their own. Constellations that Eddie has woven stories around on nights where he couldn’t sleep, nights that Steve spent beside him, covered in the light of street lamps or fairy lights; allowing Eddie to watch. To yearn. To fall.
The night sky above them is clear and the moon is merely a crescent, almost gone completely; and it makes Eddie feel like he’s in some kind of movie. Steve always makes him feel like that, but tonight with the stars above them bringing that look to his face, it’s almost unbearable.
“What is…” he begins, but trails off, not at all planning to speak in the first place, cringing a little at the way he took the tranquility away from Steve, who’s looking over now, blinking his eyes as though he needs a second to come back to reality.
“Hm?”
“Nothing,” Eddie says, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, feeling wrong-footed again. Nervous and frantic when Steve looks so calm. So pretty. So at peace with himself and the world.
“Come on, Ed,” Steve says, lightly bumping his shoulder into Eddie’s without faltering in his steps, and Eddie is sure he stops breathing for a second there with how gentle his voice sounds.
It makes him want to know. Makes him want to find out everything about Steve Harrington and the things that make his mind be what it is.
But how do you ask that? How do you begin to know a person on that level without being painfully obvious about the way you’re absolutely certain that your life wouldn’t be the same without them. That your heart wouldn’t be the same without them. That, in fact, it hasn’t been for a while yet.
“It’s just,” Eddie begins, looking back at Steve before feeling all too caught, because Steve is looking back. Not up. Not away. “You… You always look like that when— Never mind.”
“When what?”
A sigh. It’s Eddie now who looks up, finding familiar constellations that have always remained the same, no matter the shit that happened to him. And they will remain the same even if he fucks this up. If he says the wrong things. They will still be there.
And, strangely, it gives him the perspective and the last little push that he needs.
“When you look up. At the stars, I mean. You always look—“ He gestures wildly at Steve’s face, searching for the words. “Uh. Good.”
A smile breaks over Steve’s face and he bumps his elbow into Eddie’s again — because that’s another thing about Steve under the night sky. He’s always touching Eddie somehow. Always trusting Eddie. With his silence, with the way they’re going, with the things he tells him after a deep, heavy sigh. And he always, always touches Eddie. Only ever briefly, but it’s enough.
It’s everything.
“You think I look good, Munson?”
“Yeah.” And it’s too genuine, too heavy between them, too loaded with truth, with yearning past and present; with everything.
So heavy in fact that it makes Steve slow in his steps until he comes to a stop.
“Tell me?”
Eddie swallows, coming to a stop just a few feet ahead of Steve. “Tell you what?”
“What you— What you wanted to say. About. Uh, about me and the stars.”
Oh, you don’t want that, Eddie almost says.
“It’s stupid,” he whispers instead. “A little. It’s—“
“I wanna hear it, though. Swear I won’t judge.” He smiles at Eddie again, in that simple way he has. That sweet, endlessly endearing smile that has stolen full nights of sleep for months now.
“Stevie,” Eddie rasps, but Steve looks so hopeful now and interrupts him before he can protest.
“I can… Close my eyes? If that’s easier.”
They look at each other for a second, and Eddie is careful not to sound defiant or refusing when he asks, “Why?”
“Because I… I wanna know. I wanna hear it.”
And Eddie can feel the air shift between them with the way Steve us looking at him now. Looking at him in that same way that Eddie has been watching for months now. It’s breathtaking, having that starry eyes gaze resting on him now, boring into him with the fire of a thousand suns, and it only leaves him wanting more.
More, like what’s been happening between them lately. More glances, more touches, more watching.
“Wayne has this thing,” Eddie says before he can think about it, approaching Steve slowly. “He has this— When he needs to talk to me, or thinks there’s something I’m not telling him, we go sit on the couch. Back to back, not looking at each other. And then we talk, and it’s easier.”
He places his hands on Steve’s shoulders and they’re so warm, Eddie never wants to let go. His breath catches when Steve leans into him just a fraction, and his thumb strokes a slow, careful semi-circle along his collar bone. Then, slowly, gently, scared that he might spook or break him, Eddie turns Steve around by his shoulders.
“Okay”
“Okay,” he repeats, and Eddie lets his hands slide away from his shoulders, down to his arms, watching the goosebumps chase his touch, and his heart is racing in his chest.
Then he turns around and leans back against Steve just a little, just enough for their shoulders to touch. It’s Steve who closes the rest of the distance, shuffling closer until their entire backs are pressed to each other.
“Tell me now?” Steve whispers then, and Eddie swallows. He can feel Steve’s heart racing, too, and he wonders if this is happening. If this can mean what it might mean.
He takes a deep breath and accidentally bumps his head into Steve’s. He leaves it there, and Steve doesn’t move away either. It feels so intimate, standing here like this on a side road beside a field that’s moving with the cool summer breeze, with only the stars as their witnesses.
“You, uhm. It’s… It’s a bit like summer nights were made for you. Or, not just summer nights, but those especially. When you look up with your little smile, like everything is right. Like you’re seeing an old friend up there, or a happy memory, and you just… You get, uh, you get this look. Not just in your eyes, but in your whole body. I can’t really— It’s. It’s good. Special. Makes me wanna watch.”
Makes me wanna watch — Jesus, Munson!
He’s looking for the right words, desperately wracking his brain for something to make amends, to make this less awkward, less creepy, less I’m absurdly and entirely in love with you.
“It’s a little bit like you’re in love with the stars,” Eddie says at last, and he closes his eyes, clenching them shut to cast out a world in which Steve would laugh at him and call him stupid, realise he was better off without Eddie’s tendency for dramatic declarations of truth, and abandon him here by the field, all alone with no one to run away with anymore.
But Steve doesn’t push away. Doesn’t laugh, doesn’t taunt him, doesn’t do anything Eddie half expects him to. No. There’s only a little sigh — breathless from the sound of it — and Steve’s warmth leaning into him a little further, seeping even through the heavy leather of his jacket.
“It’s not… It’s not the stars that make me look like that,” he whispers, his head bumping into Eddie’s again, gentler this time.
Eddie frowns. “No?”
Steve shakes his head no, but to Eddie it feels more like a caress, almost intimate in its slow, careful movements.
“No.”
“Oh. Then wh—“
“It’s the person who watches.”
The person who— Oh. Oh.
It makes me wanna watch.
But that means…
“It’s you, Eddie.” It comes out almost as a whisper, a tiny little voice that could be excused as an illusion if Eddie were any less hyper aware of everything about them, of every inch of his body touching Steve’s, sharing his warmth and soaking up his everything.
“You… Do you mean that?” He has to ask. He has to be sure, needs to know that he isn’t dreaming, needs his world to catch up with Steve’s, needs their realities to align so he can reach for Steve’s hand and—
Steve laces their fingers together but still doesn’t move, still leaning into Eddie, still not daring to turn around and face him yet.
“I do.”
And Eddie breathes. He sees. He squeezes and turns and pulls Steve in by his hand to wrap his arms around him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he whispers into the crook of Steve’s neck, not quite believing yet that he gets to do this. That they’re so close. That Steve is so warm and right there. He swallows, breathing him in. “Me too. Can’t look away.”
“Don’t want you to.” It’s a plea, breathed into his collarbone. It’s a promise, spoken right into his heart.
They hold each other for a while there by the side of the road, the breeze picking up around them, and the treetops whispering their serenity about the two boys they know so well.
Hand in trembling, giddy hand, they walk back to Eddie’s, and Steve doesn’t look up anymore. He looks at Eddie now, with that same expression. With that same smile. And Eddie looks back.
Summer nights are made for Steve Harrington. And Eddie gets to watch now. Gets to hold him, gets to card his hands through his hair and brush the gentlest of kisses to his forehead, his cheek, his lips. Gets to tell him that he loves him under the light of the stars that remain the same.
And Eddie never learns to look away. And Steve never loses his smile.
happy birthday @auroraplume 🤍✨ i wanted to give you a little bit of starlight. thank you for loving me 🌷
