“How bad was it?” Eddie asked quietly. Steve tempered his initial instinct to minimise it for Eddie; the terror; the adrenalin; the panic.
“It was… Pretty bad,” Steve admitted, and he knew Eddie looked at him then; could feel his eyes piercing his fucking soul , but he couldn’t return it. He bit his lip and focused on tempering his heartbeat, which had ticked up in a valiant attempt at danger-move-now , and nodded to himself. “Thought we’d lost you for a minute, there.”
Silence hung in the air between them. Steve traced a finger around the rim of his mug, lost in thought.
Steve shook his head and placed the cup on the table with a soft click.
“Just - can you not do it again? Please?” Steve held up a hand to stop whatever was coming next from Eddie’s mouth, and the young man paused, an affronted look on his face as Steve continued. “Look, I heard what you said before, and I get it, but I’m also calling bullshit on you. This isn’t some fantasy novel, or one of your - your - campaigns , Eddie. Real life doesn’t need to end with the final battles against the big bads, or with the lovable misfit sacrificing themselves for their friends, or some kind of epic power-of-friendship superpowered nonsense battle. The way we’ve survived every other time this crap has happened is by sticking together, moving quickly, and being smarter than they expect. And we don’t leave anyone behind.”
Eddie’s eyes were bright when Steve finally took the moment to examine him.
“Did you just refer to me as a lovable misfit?” Eddie asked, a smile spreading across his face as smoothly as peanut butter on bread. Steve knew he’d fucked up immediately, and felt his ears warm.
“I- shut up, you know it wasn’t- just, look, promise me? No more noble sacrifices-”
“Well if I’d known I was the lovable misfit I would have never been so careless-”
“Fine,” Eddie laughed, holding his side with one hand. “I promise.”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/40022460
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
dededos
titsay
origamiaround
gummygunk
