The sound is low. Croaky. It's raspy and dry after three days of disuse but it holds the warmth Steve had grown so accustomed to living without, the warmth he'd gone for so long without he'd nearly forgotten what it sounded like.
He never thought he'd hear that word out of Eddie's mouth again.
Eddie's eyes are dark. They shine against the hallway light Steve left on, his irises brown, the whites no longer tinged with red. Eddie's scar pulls as his brows draw together and Steve wonders if he's in pain. He wonders if throwing up all those vines is the reason his voice is scratchy, if he needs water or tea or pain meds and Steve is thinking through what he has in the cupboard when Eddie moves again.
His hand moves under the sheets. Soon it finds Steve's under the covers, slow but sure, and Steve realizes he'd frozen, gone stock-still in the wake of Eddie's voice, and he feels as those fingers wrap around his own, Eddie's pointed claws retracted.
"Stevie?" The hand squeezes, those uncalloused fingers achingly unfamiliar and Steve realizes he's holding his breath, his chest tight as Eddie's palm meets his own, his thumb sliding across the edge of Steve's hand.
He doesn't trust this, whatever it is, a dream or a hallucination or Vecna come back to torment them again because Steve had only wanted Eddie alive, had only wanted him breathing, had only wanted him--
But if it's Vecna Steve isn't strong enough to resist. If it's a hallucination or a dream he's too weak to fight the pull of it because the promise of Eddie's memory is too sweet of a reality to fall into. The promise of Eddie knowing him, remembering him, the promise that those arms could wrap around him the way they used to before, could pull him close and hold him tight and it's all Steve has wanted for the last two years.
It's everything he thought he would never have again.
Eddie's still staring at him. His gaze is dark and glittering and clear, his eyebrows pinched in such concern that the scar across his face pulls and that hand under the sheets tugs, an invitation, and finally, his trance breaks.
In a breath Steve is back against Eddie's chest, but now those arms wrap around him, and they don't hesitate. They don't flinch. They pull him close and hold him tight, and Steve can hear Eddie's heartbeat and feel the warmth of his skin and Eddie murmurs his name, over and over again.
Eddie's lips press to the crown of his head. His hands are pulled from Eddie's sides to have kisses placed to the soft skin of his wrists, the pads of his fingers and each of his knuckles and Steve doesn't realize he's crying until he's lifting his head and Eddie is wiping his tears away.
"I missed you." Steve's voice breaks, and Eddie's face crumbles with it. He cups Steve's face. Kisses his nose. His eyelids. The apples of his cheeks before brushing their lips together.
Steve needs more before the moment is even over. Opens his mouth before his eyes are even closed and a broken, keening noise cracks from his chest as he crawls deeper into Eddie's bed.
But Eddie seems to need him just as desperately. He tugs at Steve's shirt, pulling him closer, drops his mouth open so their tongues can meet and it's the truest sense of coming home Steve has ever felt.
Eddie is here, and Eddie remembers him.
Steve kisses him, and Eddie kisses back, and Eddie whispers his name, over and over again, into his ear.
Sleep, somehow, must've overtaken him, because when Steve wakes again it's to Eddie's fingers in his hair. Eddie's fingers are in his hair and his head is pillowed on Eddie's chest and the memory of his name on Eddie's lips rises to the surface of his tear-sodden brain.
Steve stays where he is. Keeps his eyes closed as he absorbs the feeling of Eddie's hand in his hair, his palm on the small of his back and the steady rise and fall of his chest--because now, in the suspension of this moment--Eddie remembers him. He knows his name. He holds him with a familiarity they both share and his gaze holds the years they spent together and Steve isn't prepared to wake up to a world where that was a dream. Where that wasn't real, where that was nothing but a fleeting moment and Eddie will once again not remember him, will once again look at him with golden eyes and uncertain stares and Steve can't--
Lips press to his hairline. The touch is soft. Feather-light. A touch for Eddie and not for him, a touch meant not to wake him. But Steve leans into it. Follows it, like he has followed Eddie everywhere, desperate and searching and longing, and those fingers in his hair still.
Again his name. Just his name and it's enough to have tears threatening at the corners of his eyes and Steve tightens his grip around Eddie in a harsh reversal of that first night Eddie spent with him. This time, though, it's Steve who looks up.
Eddie's already gazing at him. In the filtered light through the blinds Steve can see him more clearly, see that despite the clarity in his eyes his ears are still unnaturally large, although not as pointed as they once were. His face still has the same scars, the same puckered pink that climbs across his cheek, and the words are out of Steve's mouth before he has the thought to form them.
"You remember me." It's barely more than a whisper. A statement and not a question, but despite the recognition in Eddie's gaze Steve needs the nods he gives him in return.
"Yeah," Eddie croaks, his voice breaking, "I do."
A knot--one lodged so deep Steve hadn't been aware of it until those words left Eddie's lips--unravels. Steve exhales, a horrible, gasping thing that tickles his throat and makes him cough, makes his eyes water as he clutches at Eddie's hands, as those hands clutch back, scarred and smooth and still, despite it all, Eddie.
"I'm so sorry." Eddie's voice cracks over Steve's desperate breaths, his eyes wide and red-rimmed. "Everything I put you through--everything you did for me--" he breaks off, his own breath becoming uneven, his hands gripping Steve's so tightly they ache. "Sweetheart I'm so--"
Steve kisses him. It's wet. They've both been crying and the angle is off and Steve kisses his chin before Eddie can tilt his face to connect their mouths, but then Eddie is kissing him. Eddie is kissing him and Eddie remembers him and his hands are releasing Steve's to wrap around his waist and pull him close and Steve knew, on some level, that he was insane for all of this. Insane to care for Eddie the way he did. Insane to so quickly drop his life plans to wrap them around a relationship that started when he was seventeen but now--
But now Steve knows he was also right.
One of Eddie's hands cup his face, pointed nails dragging across his cheek and it feels so good to be touched like this--touched like he's someone loved, someone known--and it hits him that he is.
The kiss is desperate. Steve kisses him like he's the only thing tying him to the earth and the only water he'll ever drink again and Eddie kisses him back just as fiercely, teeth and tongue and nails until Eddie feels real against him, until the press of him doesn't feel like vapor, until the feeling of Eddie under him doesn't feel like blood and broken bones.
"I love you," Eddie murmurs between kisses, voice fierce, "I love you so much, sweetheart." It's too much and not enough and Steve wants to press himself into the the beat of Eddie's heart, wants to wrap himself around his spine and find a home in the shell of his ear, wants to nestle into the hollow of his collarbones so he never has to go without this touch again.
Steve melts at those three words, sags into Eddie's hold as he nods against him, their noses bumping, breaking their kiss. "I love you too." His voice breaks as he says it. He's still sort of crying. Eddie's hands come back to his face to cup his cheeks, to wipe his thumbs across the tear tracks and kiss between his brows and Steve lets out a deep, shuddering exhale that twists Eddie's mouth.
"I'm so sorry," Eddie says, again, those clear eyes haunted, a depth to them that was never there before. "Everything I put you through, you didn't deserve that--you didn't--"
"I love you," Steve interrupts. His voice is steady, now, harsh in a way he didn't really mean but it makes Eddie shut up, makes him bite at his bottom lip so his teeth that are still too long press harshly against his skin. "I would do it all over again," Steve goes on, his hand coming up to Eddie's face, to the scar that twists across his cheek, "Even if you never remembered me." He swallows, his throat tight, his voice thick. "There is no world that's better without you in it."
Eddie's tears spill across his scarred cheek and he kisses Steve again. Once. Twice. Three times until he's peppering kisses across his face, up his jaw and along his hairline, across his brows and on each eye lid, down his nose until their lips meet again, and Eddie says his next words into Steve's mouth.
"So would I," he starts, "I would do all of it, all over again, if I knew it would keep you safe." Eddie's nose bumps against his own, and his claws catch on the stubble Steve hasn't shaved away. "I know I hurt people. I know I hurt people who didn't deserve it but Steve I--" he breaks off, that same darkness flashing across his vision before it flickers away again-- "there isn't a world where you safe isn't worth that."
It's a slow climb back to normal. Even though Steve isn't sure he'll ever know what that feels like again. But he has Eddie. He has him with his pointed ears and curved nails, his teeth that hang over his bottom lip, his memories and his love and his love and his love.
Steve doesn't know how he could ever want for anything, ever again.
Eddie holds his hand when the kids eventually spill into his room. Only lets it go to throw his arms around Lucas and Mike and Dustin, as he holds the last of them the hardest, as he murmurs something that Steve can't hear but Dustin nods at, wipes his eyes and then nods again, goes in for one last hug that Eddie holds onto for long seconds, his eyes closed.
Max stares at them from under her thick glasses, her sight damaged but her perception sharp, and Steve only nods when she tilts her head at Eddie.
Eddie's memory stays. Eddie's memory stays and each morning Steve wakes up to him spread eagle on the bed, drool on the pillow and leg hooked around Steve's own, and he feels heady in the presence of it. Feels lightheaded every time Eddie's eyes open and his lips part in a smile, every time Eddie rolls closer or pulls Steve towards him, every time he presses kisses to Steve's skin and murmurs his good morning, because every time there is half a moment, an intake of breath, when Steve wonders if he imagined it all. Wonders if Eddie's memory will be gone or if they'll start back at square one, if Eddie will call him <em>Mine</em> or flinch away when Steve reaches, but his Eddie has only ever turned closer.
He picks his guitar back up. Learns to play around curved nails and fills Steve's too-big house with the noise Steve never thought he would hear again. They take turns reading to each other. Eddie's Gandalf voice is far better but he insists Steve does a much better Paul Atreides and so Eddie reads Tolkein and Steve reads Herbert and they read in Steve's living room because Eddie is still a dead man.
Eddie cracks open his D&D books again and starts scribbling notes, starts sketching out bad guys and running plot lines and NPCs by Steve, starts asking Will and Dustin and Lucas and Mike if they'd ever want to play again.
They sit on Steve's back porch while Steve drinks a coke and Eddie drinks juice and Steve paints Eddie's left hand for him and lets Eddie paint his toes.
Together, they breathe. Even when it's not easy. Even when Eddie pretends it is.
Because Eddie wakes, more often than not, in the middle of the night, sweat-damp and panting, a look in his eyes that Steve doesn't recognize, a look that stays until Eddie takes deep, steadying breaths, until he can see where he is and who's beside him and look out the window and see stars and clouds and a clear black sky.
He's quieter than he was before. Can sit still for long stretches without saying a word, can sit through conversations with the kids without ever interjecting.
He gets headaches. His ear rings, a constant hum that goes up and down in pitch, makes him sensitive to noise and prone to a pulsing at his temples that he acts like doesn't bother him.
His scars ache. Steve draws him baths and rubs oil that boasts of pain relief he finds in his mother's medicine cabinet into his scars and Eddie looks at him with apologies in his eyes and Steve presses kisses to his skin until he relaxes into the bed sheets.
"I love you," Steve promises, and Eddie holds his gaze, and says it back.
"Thank you," Eddie murmurs, his words muffled by the press of the pillow, face down and shirtless against the bed as Steve rubs the last of the oil into his skin.
Steve hums in reply, his fingers now deft at the practiced movement, as they twist into the scar tissue he knows will make Eddie wince and then relax, make the pinch in his brows ease, make the line of his shoulders fall as the pain escapes him. It's never gone fully, and Steve knows it probably won't ever be, but he can do this.
They're quiet as he works. The only sound is the slide of skin on skin as Steve massages, the creak of the bed as he adjusts his weight and Eddie's soft sighs as the tight tissue is stretched, and this is a quiet Steve's grown to enjoy. Grown to like the silence that Eddie makes up, because silence with Eddie isn't the quiet of his childhood. It isn't cold or tense or withdrawn, the quiet with Eddie is peace.
Steve sits back when he's done, rubs the last of the oil into Eddie's exposed legs and watches as his boyfriend shifts, the muscles of his back stretching, a deep, contended sigh escaping him before he collapses back down onto the bed, twisting to lay on his side. "Thank you."
Gently, Steve eases off of him, but Eddie pouts when he does, makes grabby hands until Steve crawls back up the bed, until Eddie can kiss him his thank you and run his fingers through his hair. And for a while that's all they do, and Steve nearly falls asleep before remembering what's resting in his bedside table.
Eddie's already looking at him. His gaze is soft. He smiles when their gazes meet.
Steve swallows. "I... did something." Eddie's eyebrows rise, and then narrow, a smirk breaking across his face.
"You <em>did</em> something," he repeats, intrigued, and combs his fingers through Steve's hair. "Is it bad I'm hoping it's a sex thing?"
Steve snorts, and twists his oily hands together. "I, um...I hired a PI."
Quiet. For long seconds there's only silence as Steve lets his own words hang, the envelope in his nightstand burning a hole in the wood. Because he knew if he'd asked, Eddie would've said no. Would've told Steve he could've found him himself, that Steve shouldn't waste a penny on him, that Wayne wouldn't have wanted that either.
But more than anything Steve didn't want Eddie to wait years to see his uncle again. Didn't want Eddie to waste any more days that feel so much more precious now, after everything, away from the only family he has left.
Not if he could do anything to change it.
"You hired a PI," Eddie parrots, hesitance now in his words, and Steve meets his gaze again. "What d'we need a PI for?"
And it's that word, the we, the implicit trust that Eddie has in him, that he knows whatever it is, it's for the both of them, that gets him into motion. He leans away from Eddie. Stretches to reach the nightstand drawer, and pulls out the Manila envelope.
He thumbs at the seal, broken and worn with how many times Steve had opened it up just to assure himself that he wasn't hallucinating, that Wayne's alive and well and they could visit him, if they wanted. The contents proves it.
He hands the envelope to Eddie. It's light, despite all the time it took the PI to track Wayne down. A deed, a new driver's license, and a few phone calls to the right people, and they had the old man's home address.
Eddie's halfway through opening the envelope and he freezes, eyes going wide under Steve's words and he looks to Steve and back down to the envelope like the contents could jump out and bite him.
"He's in Montana," Steve tacks on, "he's got a house and land and lives just about as far away as he can from anyone else." He cracks a smile that Eddie doesn't match, his eyes still wide as he eyes the unopened envelope. "He doesn't have a land line. He lives so far out in the middle of nowhere he's gotta pick up his mail at the post office." Steve nods towards the envelope. "There's photos."
Eddie swallows. Steve can see the flex of his throat as he does, the muscles of his jaw popping as his unsteady fingers slip under the second prong, and release what's inside.
A small stack of photos, a property record, a print-out of a DMV signature and Eddie stares at it all with fear in his eyes, his pupils blown wide and his mouth twisted to the side and Steve moves closer because he doesn't know what else to do. With shaking hands Eddie flips over the photographs, blurry but unmistakably Wayne. At the post office. At the grocery store. In a truck at a stoplight and at a bar with two men Steve doesn't recognize and Eddie's curved nail trails across his uncle's face.
"He's the first person I remembered," Eddie whispers, his gaze still on the photo, dark and clouded, "when I was..." he trails off, but Steve understands. He nods, and Eddie folds himself into Steve's side, and he doesn't hesitate in pulling him close. "Before my parents," Eddie goes on, "before my mom or my dad or anyone it was Wayne." Eddie sniffles. "But is he even going to want to see me again? Is he even going to be able to look at me like--" he gestures, long nails flying high to point to his ears, and he turns in Steve's hold to bare his unnatural teeth. "I can't take it if he doesn't want me, Steve, I'd rather never see him at all, I'd rather live without him, I'd rather--" he breaks off again, long teeth biting into his lip and he shakes his head, his curls tossing. "I'd rather remember him as loving me." Eddie's hands settle back at his sides, now clenched into tight fists. "I can't lose another dad."
And Steve doesn't know how to tell him about the look on Wayne's face when he left. At the expression that went beyond heartbreak, at the look of a man lost, at how he held Eddie's rings made of nickel like they were worth more than gold and how the man who served in Vietnam and kept guns under his bed cried when he left the town that killed his son.
"He still loves you." Steve says it firmly. Says it sure, says it with as much confidence as his sixteen year old self can still give him, and Eddie's gaze lifts from the photos to meet Steve's own. "Eddie, there's nothing you could do that would change that." And Steve points to the glint of light in that blurry photo, to the necklace around Wayne's neck that had undoubtedly come loose from under his collar, to the boar's head that's recognizable even through a camera lens. "You're not gonna lose him," Steve murmurs, softer now, his hand coming up to run along Eddie's spine, "you've just gotta take him back."
He feels as Eddie's muscles tense, and then relax, the pinch of his brows softening as his lips curl to one side, taking in the glimmer in the photograph in front of them. "I just want it to be like before."
Steve nods, because he knows, and because they both know it never will be again.
Eddie leans against him. Relaxes in his hold as Steve wraps his arms around him, kisses him softly before resting their foreheads together. "You'll always have me though," Steve assures, "that will always be like it was before." He kisses Eddie again before he does it. A peck to his lips before he's fiddling with the clasp around his neck, unfastening the necklace that hasn't left him since Eddie handed it to him.
With wide eyes Eddie lets him fasten it back on, the red stark against his scarred pale skin, and Steve thumbs the spot where it rests against his sternum. "I have you back," Steve points out, smiling so he doesn't cry, "I don't need to hang onto this anymore."
Another kiss. And then another. Eddie kisses his lips. His nose. His cheeks and his chin before settling against his chest. He holds Steve's hand. Plays with his fingers. "Mine," he murmurs.
Eddie closes his eyes. He hears the steady pound of Steve's heart against his chest, the warmth of Steve's skin against his own, and breathes.
Finale of this fic on AO3
