recovering!Eddie Needs Help With The Whole Showering Thing💦
Good thing Steve's there to help give Eddie a goddamn stroke at the idea of being naked in front of him? help him, huh?
or: put-up-or-shut-up time, Edward Munson
I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)
Or: Five Times Eddie Has To Ask For Help, Plus One Time He Doesn’t Need It Anymore (but asks anyway)
✨ for @penny00dreadful 💜
<<< one: drink 🧊
🧼 two: wash 🫧🚿
“You’ve basically got two choices, man.”
Eddie folds his lips over on themselves, mashes them together until it fucking hurts, might put the last of the stitches in the gouge out of the left side out of their misery early and pop them clean out of the skin for the force of his, his…
“Pout all you like, dude, they’re not changing.”
He is not. Fucking. Pouting.
He is a grown goddamn man.
“I reject your binary options, Steven,” Eddie volleys, because he’s not pouting, he is applying logic to an honestly-offensively illogical proposal like a mature adult; he is rightly pushing back against two unacceptable options when another has to exist, obviously, because the ones presented are impossible and so there must be a possible one he hasn’t found yet. One that’s just hiding from him. Sneaky.
“Reject all you want, man,” Steve scoffs, and leans back with arms crossed over his chest, stretching his sweater across the expanse and that right there is why there has to be a secret hidden third option waiting for him somewhere, Jesus H. fucking Christ: “they’re not going to change.”
Eddie blinks probably too long, too many times; is quiet for the whole span of moments before he decides deflection is really his only way forward, here.
“You’re very cruel sometimes,” he laments with the best sigh he can heave with the remaining stitches in him; “leaves me positively despairing, almost.”
And it was a good, solid, drawn-out sigh, that he heaved, just for the record. Because there are fewer stitches holding him together today than there were yesterday, and fewer yesterday than last week, and it’s progress, there is so much progress—
It’s just that progress is a very big reason for why he has this particular goddamn problem right now.
To set the stage: he’s been home for almost a week. The freedom is glorious. The new trailer the Feds set them up with is a little bigger, close enough layout though to still feel like home. His room is almost suspiciously similar given that 98% of his belongings were collateral damage or in government lockup. Certain questions Steve had asked him over the past weeks make a little more sense; the main orchestrator of the set up likewise clear on context. Eddie is warm with it every time he thinks about it. Which is whenever he’s in his room. And whenever he sees Steve.
Which is probably the main thing to add, for context: Eddie had been grateful as fuck for Steve while he was in the hospital, the man rarely leaving his side, usually just to check on Max who, while not yet awake, was making progress in healing and Eleven—who Eddie’s finally met now and kind of fucking adores—thinks she finally understands what’s blocking her ability to reach Red, meaning she can work on obliterating it: all good signs. And if Steve’s abounded presence did absolutely fuck all for Eddie’s old and apparently latent crush on the asshole jock-king from high school, flamed into kind of a fucking inferno over the course of spring break—if Steve’s steadfast presence and tireless attention to Eddie’s needs in the hospital had only managed to tame it into some kind of big and bright and undying eternal fucking flame—and that’d be a good song title, he needs to remember that—but if that was the payoff, as it were?
The burn of it—incredible and unbearable alike—was kind of almost secondary to the mixed emotions Eddie was having over leaving the hospital and losing this; losing Steve.
Except—and here’s the fucking kicker—he doesn’t. He doesn’t…lose Steve. Like, not at all.
Sure, maybe Steve goes home more, like, touches base at his own house, and he pops to the hospital where Eddie currently isn’t anymore to check on Max, but on the flipside Eddie is awake more and so he gets to soak up all the time Steve is here, in the trailer, next to Eddie, breathing air in the same space, breathing the same air as Eddie and, and, and—
“Look,” Steve’s sighing, slapping his thighs—such fucking distracting thighs—and leaning in pointedly on his palms; “Wayne’s pulling the night shift,” he nods at Eddie’s little TV tray with the crust of half a grilled cheese and a little cup of his medications; “you take your pills, you’ll sleep until after he’s turned in,” then Steve leans back, lifts a finger demonstratively: “so there’s another day.”
Eddie pouts, now, sees where this is going.
“Wayne might be pulling night shifts all week, in fact,” Steve adds, another finger pointed upward, counting in the air.
Eddie doesn’t nibble his cold crust petulantly or anything. Like, he does nibble. And it is cold.
But petulant; him?!
Never.
“The nurse isn’t due by until Thursday,”and Steve pauses before arching his brow even higher; “afternoon,” and he raises two fingers for that and Eddie’s got enough presence of mind to shoot back, even if it’s muffled, bread still in his mouth:
“You saying I smell?”
Steve’s eyeroll is such a fucking impressive feat it should be, like, an Olympic sport. But it’s probably too arousing for national television, so. Shit, that wouldn’t work.
“I am saying,” Steve draws out the word obnoxiously and why is that attractive, good fucking god: “you’re itching places you’re not even fucking stitched up,” he pokes at Eddie unapologetically in a safe place on his still-fairly-bandaged body and Eddie jumps harder than he should, but makes sure he grins for it, that he doesn’t play up the annoyance or the shock because one, Steve’s eyes go wide and incredulous and kinda fucking scared, like he knows he didn’t touch anything healing or tender, because Eddie’s thinks Steve knows his wounds mapped out so goddamn well he could draw them out blind and he didn’t touch anything bad actually, and that brings up two, which is: Eddie didn’t even have to exaggerate his reaction; he hasn’t been touched playfully in so long and he didn’t realize how much he missed it, how much his body missed it and he’s also kind of fucking thrilled it’s Steve, who broke the sad little standstill—Eddie makes sure to laugh a little and it’s not fucking hard once he starts because the way the tension melts off Steve in a huff is a shot of adrenaline, a hit of dopamine, a bubble of joy stretched to bursting and then fucking popping to spill warm and gooey in Eddie’s chest and he—
What the fuck is happening to him?
But then Steve’s poking him again and he twitches for it and just laughs more because fuck he missed that but also fuck he wants this to mean something and it’s wild and insane and he kind of doesn’t know what to do with it at all when Steve leans in and whispers slyly:
“So I am guessing you’d feel better with a shower.”
It’s not a lie. It’s not a lie but when he says it, particularly paired up with how he says it?
How the fuck can blood run hot and cold all at once?
Because Eddie does want a fucking shower, so he doesn’t feel fucking gross. And Eddie knows he needs help: moving like that, reaching what needs reached, and fuck all, but avoiding all the bandages, for fuck’s sake—but.
But: there’s this line, newly discovered beyond theory for one Eddie Munson, that divides an idle crush from an active wanting; that separates your fantasy jerk-off material from something that sits and grows branches and roots, heavy and tight and real in your chest.
Basically: there’s a difference between imagining what sucking pretty boy asshole King Steve off in the locker rooms might be like and coming hard in the privacy of your own bed for the gorgeous absurd impossibility of it, and the genuine article, not a king but something worse, something more like, like a benevolent god for how he speaks, how he touches, tends to Eddie so careful but sure, so goddamn competent and beautiful, dear god, he’s so much more breathtaking up close, but it’s not even that, it’s not even that, or well, it’s that, but it’s so much more than high-school-distanced-Eddie could have guessed even in his quickest, most satisfying jack-sessions, because Steve as a human being?
Fucking…captivating.
Funny. Bitchy. Cares so goddamn much it makes his heart crack wide to see it, let alone be the focus of it but then he’s so strung tight, so anxious with frontline reflexes that shatter that cracked heart and let it bleed with the desperate fucking need to care for him in kind but somehow tenfold but then you’ll always fail because this level of compassion and just, just this pure kind of love, how can anyone match it, which is where Steve has to land in benevolent god territory, some ineffable chaotic good, and Eddie—
Well. Yeah.
Of course, Eddie’s quiet for the whole of running this through his head and Steve’s taken the entry to care some more and cross over to Eddie, move his tray and hold out his hands expectantly. Like Eddie’s got a choice in the clear intention Steve has to…haul him to his feet?
“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”
And oh, wow, good thing Eddie's not actively dying anymore, because his heart goddamn stops for that, no getting around it for the way it bangs upon restarting; and if he'd still been half-dead regarding the rest of his body, that'd probably have done him in because Jesus flying fuck.
So it’s: haul him to his feet and drag him to the shower. Which he does, so careful but so precise, when Eddie’s mind blanks out and loses the window available to protest by way of stunned silence, which continues all the way to the bathroom where Steve lowers him to the closed toilet lid, again so careful, and goes to work.
Readying a shower. Eddie’s shower.
Which he needs help with. Lots of help.
While he’s, as indicated clearly: fucking bare ass naked.
And not even just in front of Steve, no, nope. Not that that wouldn’t be bad enough. But this?
This is him actively needing Steve’s help. Like…hands-on help.
Eddie thinks his heart’s about ready to crash into his chest wall for the reckless speed it’s taken to racing at because, just…
Holy fucking hell.
“Skipping gym class may have done half the work of failing your ass, but it’s not like you never showed,” Steve points out, still unbothered, so, so fucking unbothered when Eddie’s over here with palms sweaty enough to leave wet-marks on his sweats; “you came into the showers,” Steve barrels on as he moves the bottles of shampoo and the bar of soap out of the way for Eddie to maneuver in, with help, with Steve’s help;
“More than once,” Steve tacks on and Eddie has to blink, has to refocus on what they fuck was being said: he came into the showers. More than once.
Right.
“Wow, thanks for noticing,” Eddie quips, or tries to; it falls fucking flat, and for the way Steve stills, and then sighs with, like, the whole of him, it’s obvious he missed his mark.
“Eddie,” Steve starts, and pulls away from where he’d been learning to start the water, to warm it up right.
“Look,” Eddie breathes out shaky, because fucking hell; “it’s not like…that. It’s not the same.”
Steve stills, and doesn’t know what to expect of the way he freezes, back to Eddie but his muscles going tight beneath his shirt, and Eddie’s stomach drops preemptive-like, because, because—
“Oh,” Steve’s voice gets a little sharp around the edges; “so it’s okay when thirty dicks are swinging alongside yours, I get it.”
Except it really doesn’t sound like Steve fucking gets it; not least because Steve wouldn’t be fighting this, wouldn’t be putting up the front of pushing the point if he did get it. It he got it for real.
“It’s different when it’s you,” and honestly the words come out before Eddie can think them through; they’re not inaccurate but when he hears them out loud he winces because it sounds wrong no matter what he means and—
When he sees Steve’s face fall, eyes so wide, that flash of hurt, he, just: fuck.
He hurts too; he might even hurt harder.
“Jesus,” Eddie half-gasps, half-pleads already because no, no, fucking no; “not like that—“
“No,” and oh god, if Eddie ever thought about what real heartbreak felt like, he only has to hear that voice, in that tone, because Jesus fuck, he feels like a hand’s gone into his chest, snapped a couple ribs, and used the sharp bits to twist his heart around like a goddamn knitting needle.
“No, man, I get it,” but Steve’s tone’s too dull, too measured, and his shoulders are too tight, and he’s not looking at Eddie at all and Eddie kinda want to fucking cry, and—
“No need to explain,” and oh, god, did Steve’s voice break a little? Did Eddie cause that, all on his fucking own? What kind of monster is he, and all for his goddamn…what, shame? Pride? Cowardice? God, he can’t, he can’t let this happen, he can’t let this keep going—
“Maybe I can, like, get you some washcloths? And like, a bar of soap, just for now,” and fuck, no, shit, Steve’s rambling in that anxious way that’s also kind of….mindless, robotic and hollow and then he looks up, finally; he hadn’t been looking at all and Eddie thinks he can hear his own heart crack for the way those eyes are too damn bright, and look too fucking dead all the same:
“Is it still, like, a problem if I help? So long as you’re mostly covered,” Steve asks, and god, it’s like…it’s like he’s a stranger. It’s not like he’s mean, or distant really, but it’s like Eddie was welcome inside this door to him, pulled in close from the threshold and welcome and now it’s not the the doors shut in his face, nothing so definitive or rejecting: more like the door was gone and never there.
And that hurts…so much fucking more.
“Or, all the chairs are too big but maybe a stool,” Steve’s saying, moving things around in the bathroom where Eddie’s followed him, that voice still tomblike where it should be filled with sun; “just gotta make sure the bandages stay dry, do you think you can—“
“Steve.”
And the man stills, a bar of Ivory soap denting in the shapes of his nails for the way his hand’s clenched and…Eddie was scared. Of losing. Of being tossed aside, which would hurt with anyone, for anything. But the things he’s started feeling now, for Steve, changing the shape of him as much as his healing scar but for the better, if somehow far more terrifying—losing that, even where it lives alone and unrequited, and Eddie’s suspects also only half-formed yet even for how big it stands?
Losing the source of the star in Eddie’s chest would do him in quicker than the fucking bats ever had a chance to.
And the feeling of seeing Steve think…come to the conclusions he’s coming to now because Eddie’s a coward, like he’s misstepped or not given enough or said the rough thing or been supportive or, or, or—
The look on Steve’s face, and the crack in his voice: they’re causing pain under Eddie’s ribs in a way he hadn’t even considered the torment of.
And Eddie’ll probably crumble if this goes wrong, if Steve flinches away for knowing and if Eddie
loses this thing, this person whose presence he’s already grown to depend on, not for the help Eddie needs but for the >i>person Steve Harrington is: but he’ll fall apart anyway if he lets things stand as they are and he refuses to be the reason Steve’s pulled down in the collapse.
So he reaches, and fights the way his heart drops when Steve tenses as Eddie tries to nudge him into turning around, into facing Eddie. Into looking him in the eyes and seeing, or else, Eddie hopes like hell that he will see—
“It is different, when it’s you,” Eddie makes sure he says it careful, gentle; that he pitches it like a prelude to the way he’s gotta give up the cowardice, gotta face the music and be brave for this beautiful boy in front of him who’s scared for all the wrong reasons, for the lie of him somehow being the fuck up here, like he’s the one who did anything wrong—
Impossible. Impossible, so Eddie’s gotta pull back the curtain and if he holds his breath around it then—doesn’t fucking matter. So long as he says it.
“Because I never had an,” he chokes just a little, coughs around it and clears his throat too much; “umm, well, like,” and he stumbles, he stumbles but he tells himself it’s acceptable, that it’s to be expected, gotta build momentum to get this out:
“Never had an arguably-debilitating crush on those other guys,” Eddie finishes, a little shaky but without a hint of nervous laughter, closer to nausea than anything, and yeah: given that he can’t seem to get fucking words out when he tries to just say it, and shit: words are kinda his thing, y’know?
But the fact that he can barely string any of them together makes it really clear, at the very least inside his own chest: it’s debilitating, alright, and it’s already far more than the high school crush that started years ago. It’s…it’s so much more than that, now which, fuck.
Fuck, can Steve hear the truth of it in the shaking, the stuttering? Does he know?
“Plus y’know, eww,” Eddie covers up nervously, always with the babbling, the lunge for distraction; “I didn’t go perusing the dick selection in the Hawkins locker room on the regular, please give me some credit,” and he tries so fucking hard to end on comic disgust, he tries, he thinks he might be shaking, he’s—
He’s being caught by the wrists. He’s being pulled in chest to chest so his own can heave with the trembling gasps he’s not even trying to fight but that can’t really build to their potential against the wall of Steve’s chest but; he can’t feel his heart racing against that sturdy splay of chest, he’s held so tight. He can’t kinda feel Steve’s heartbeat too, faster but not like Eddie’s. Just…faster than normal. It kinda feels like it should mean something. Eddie doesn’t move of his own choosing, but also can’t manage to stop with the shaking. Which is…not ideal.
“Eddie?” And Steve’s looking up at him, chin tipped down so he can glance through those goddamn lashes, so Eddie can have proof in the wild off-pace thump his heart gives, that rattles his bones just for extra proof that ‘crush’ alone left the building long ago. He mostly just…just tries not to tremble, mostly wills his knees not to give out even if he trust with everything in him that Steve’ll catch him, it’s just—
Steve looks up at him, and says his name like it’s delicate, like it’s worth something, like he is worth something, then he’s gathering Eddie’s hands in his and that’s, that’s not normal, it’s not for balance or to help guide him save where he need to go: no. No, Steve raises their joined grasps and Eddie’s pulse skips twice to think they’re going to Steve’s lips but he just lifts them to his forehead like a touchstone and breathes for a few long moments, the color on his cheeks changing shade before he sighs long and deep and brings Eddie’s hands under his chin before he whispers:
“Let me help you shower,” and maybe it’s not spoke like a question, but Eddie knows it’s a choice and how; how can this man still want to touch him, see him, he can’t, he can’t—
“Steve,” Eddie barely breathes because of all the ways he’d maybe envisioned this going, from worst case scenario to impossible fantasies, the possibility of it all just…kinda being a non-thing, taken wholly in stride?
That wasn’t in the cards he’d prepared for. Eddie…doesn’t know how to handle that.
“Let me help you,” Steve repeats, as soft and like a given as the first time but then he averts his eyes again and sucks in a breath through his teeth:
“Or, I guess,” he huffs, swallows, really is the braver of them for how quick and firm he meets Eddie’s eyes, then: to ask:
“Do you want me to?” and Eddie’s heart clenches like every way it’s ever clenched before was a trial run, because this is a squeeze and a twist for how earnest he not just sounds but looks, how big and bright and honest eyes are and he’s so beautiful, he’s so fucking beautiful—
“If you don’t, that’s,” Eddie must be staring, quiet for too many seconds in a row because Steve sounds just as earnest but…can you be earnest about being hesitant? About giving someone the space and letting them hold the reins entirely? Jesus, it’s, this is…
“Yeah,” Eddie’s a little breathless, probably doesn’t sound as sure as he wants to but maybe sounds as sure as he can because he’s fucking taken aback, okay? Steve…people in general aren’t this good, y’know?
“Yeah, if you,” Eddie gestures between them, between Steve and Eddie’s crotch because, because, then more generally, more vague mostly to buy time, mostly because Eddie doesn’t even know what the fuck to do with this except, except say yes because he’s grateful, because he’s shell-shocked, because…
“If you’re okay with it,” because if Steve’s is, then: yes.
But Eddie’s gotta make sure.
But of course then there’s Steve, who never once let go of his hands, and now he’s squeezing them, and looking Eddie square in the eyes once more until Eddie returns the gesture; not nearly as steady, but fuck does he try.
“I am here,” Steve speaks clear, enunciates every syllables and barely fucking blinks; “so that I can help you,” and it’s the way he exhales while still holding Eddie’s gaze that nearly does Eddie in before Steve kinda just breathes:
“Okay?”
Eddie’s kinda proud he managed to nod because goddamn.
Given permission, he’s quick to work; he helps Eddie to lean against the closed toilet lid and then he’s shimmying Eddie’s sweats down, waiting for Eddie’s to step out once they’re pooled to the floor, meets Eddie’s eyes with hands on the waist of Eddie’s boxers and Eddie flushes so fucking hot he might set flame to something if he’s not careful but he inclined his head and Steve’s quick about it, stretches the elastic out extra wide around his hips and never looks away from Eddie’s face until they fall to the floor.
Then he’s reaching for something Eddie hadn’t noticed—scissors—and he’s going for the hem, of Eddie’s sweatshirt which—
“What—“ Eddie starts, but it hurts too much to flinch away and even if he could manage it: just because he doesn’t understand doesn’t mean he doesn’t trust.
Which should be fucking terrifying, but here they are.
“I can stitch it back together, promise,” Steve’s saying while he uses the blade not to cut but as an ad-hoc seam-ripper, and making a clean job of it from what Eddie can tell, all things considered.
“Steve Harrington, master seamstress?” Eddie chokes out as Steve moves to tear out the stitches nearest the neckline and then peels the top from Eddie’s body, no painful contortion required.
Man’s goddamn full of surprises.
But then Steve leaves Eddie buck naked while he goes into Eddie’s bedroom, comes back in an instant with more towels that Eddie thought they owned, pops two big ones on the sink and hands Eddie a big stack of washcloths while he starts lining the floor with the rest, pooling them carefully around the base of the toilet near Eddie’s feet, his head not dangerously close to Eddie’s not limp dick or anything while he gets to work, Jesus H. fucking Christ.
Then Steve’s grabbing for one of the washcloths and Eddie can safely place the rest of his lap for this goddamn modesty.
Eddie almost topples them to the floor and ends up with negative modesty when a damp cloth brushes his forearm, unannounced and so fucking gentle.
“Too hot?” Steve asks, and Eddie shakes his head. It should be. The water’s been running long enough. But…nothing’s probably hotter than Eddie’s skin right now for how he feels his cheeks burn so.
Relatively speaking it’s fine.
Steve raises a brow, fiddles with the knobs a little and then soaks the cloth, soaps it up and…starts from the top.
And he’s so careful, so gentle, so clinical but soft in the precise way he makes points, little triangles like a puzzle to clean just up to the lines of bandages, never submerging or letting the wet get to the edges, threaten the adhesive, and he’s no one-trick-pony either, because it’s soap then it’s a fresh towel to wipe clean, the whole of him, save for the behind he sits on and the…not attentive dick and its neighboring real estate under the extra cloths.
Steve holds up a finger, asks for a pause while his footsteps rush to the trailer beyond, and come back with a…
Chair from the kitchen.
Then he’s busy covering it with towels before he wordlessly helps Eddie to his feet and leads him to sit, back to the shower.
“Lean back as much as you can,” Steve says, and Eddie has no reason to argue before Steve’s got another towel gathering his greasy-ass hair up and then making a barrier between the limp matted mess and the wooden spindles, and then—
Oh god, oh god, then his hands are in Eddie’s hair, holding it at an angle so the water he’s pouring from somewhere falls into the tub basin until the strands are wet and if Eddie thought that was heavenly, then he’s working the shampoo in and Eddie’s been afraid for a little while that nerve damage would impair…y’know but good goddamn no worries there save for coming all over the fucking towels because Jesus H., the feeling of Steve’s hands in his hair, massaging his scalp, ringing and repeating, combing through the strands with his fingers…
That’s what the word orgasmic means. Every other definition is a lie.
Eddie thinks he’s between floating on the high of the sensation and squeezing his dick to keep from shooting off beneath the washcloths and so he probably misses exactly when the water stops rinsing his hair out, and when Steve’s hands stop touching him save to mop the worst of the soaked ends of his squeaky-clean mop, but when he does blink back to the moment Steve’s frowning, but not, not at Eddie.
More like near Eddie.
“We can’t put it in, but,” and oh, he’s talking about the chair, can’t put a wooden chair into a shower, fair, fair, but then Steve’s eyes are lifting back to Eddie and they look…a little apologetic, but mostly resolute: “if I help, do you think you can,” and he nods at the tub, the mid-height lip of it. Eddie sucks in a sharp breath, for the challenge, but.
But also because there is really just one general area of his body that’s not been…attended to yet for cleaning.
So it’s maybe like a 60-40, 70-30 split on that point. Moment of truth, either way.
“I’ll need a lot of help,” Eddie bites his lip, and he’s not even surprised when Steve meets his trepidation with encouragement.
“I can lift you,” and oh, wow, hey, definitely a safe thing to say to a guy before you’re gonna help him wash his dick. “But do you think you can stand if I help you keep your balance?”
Steve’s obviously got a plan and Eddie obviously just needs to not come on them both on the way to, in, and out of the shower right now so, he figures they should both handle their own separate priorities for the home stretch, here.
“Yeah,” Eddie answers, even though he doesn’t believe it.
He believes in Steve, though, so. Probably that’s enough.
And Steve does lift him, and the towels are still covering his front but Steve doesn’t shy from lifting his ass and wow, okay.
Okay.
“You lean on me, like this,” and of course he’s manhandling Eddie as he runs a quick cloth—soap, then water—over Eddie’s back and then across the curve of his ass, holy mother of—; “and then,” Steve holds another soapy cloth to Eddie and gestures, this time hidden from a full frontal view by propping Eddie against his still-clothed chest:
“Then you can finish up,” Steve says like it’s simple. Maybe it is.
Eddie’s soaped up his pubes and barely dropped the cloth before he reaches for the wet one to rinse but—
Nope. Nope, Steve’s got a cup, maybe what he was using for Eddie’s hair, a crackled novelty one from the Pizza Hut in Muncie, Eddie remembers getting the damn thing; but Steve got that cup angled so he pours directly below Eddie’s lowest dressing, letting him use both hands to work the soap all the way out.
“How,” Eddie starts, kinda marveling that his short and curlies are…distinctly not bubbly.
“Got good aim,” Steve’s smirk is audible behind him, and tangible for how it lifts his chest with a little huff; “basketball and shit.”
“Fuckin’ jock,” Eddie lobs back without any heat at all; shit, if anything, it sounds fond on the outside.
Adoring if you go any deeper.
“Dry off,” and it’s then that Steve hands Eddie the last of the bath linens that had been his little loin cloths before being hauled into the tub; he dries his front as best he can and then tosses the cloth before Steve’s reaching around him with a wider towel, drying him hip-to-thigh, and cupping across his ass. again before loosing the towel to the floor and grabbing around Eddie
“Hold onto me here,” and Eddie’s being hoisted ever-so-gently over the side of the tub and deposited back on the toilet which has a…fresh towel on it for him to sit on. When’d that get there, anyway?
“Okay, now,” and oh, wow, okay, Steve’s kneeling between his legs and when’d he get there, anyway?
“Slip these on, for your modesty,” Steve winks as he works a new pair of boxers up Eddie’s legs, quick and efficient like Eddie hasn’t had a fucking stroke here; “and let’s get you toweled off the rest of the way and into some clean fuckin’ clothes.”
He gets the boxers up as far as the line of his pelvis before it’s unavoidable, and Eddie assumes he’ll try to stretch the waist far again, to keep his hands as far from anything too weird no, nope: Steve sticks with quick and efficient and he gets those fucking underwear up and settled in no time at all.
And he brushes his forearm twice against Eddie’s shaft in the process, and does nothing. Has no reaction. Is…fine.
Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that at all.
Steve does, though, apparently: which is to careful dab the towels where he can’t rub him dry, and do exactly that until Eddie’s got nary a stray droplet left to be soaked up by the unseamripped sweatshirt and clean sweatpants Steve helps him into, before helping him to bed but Eddie shakes his head, nods at the door, toward the living room.
Steve eyes him appraisingly before helping him in that direction and Eddie’s glad he could fake whatever amount of wakefulness was necessary to bypass the bed because the fact of it is he’s bone fucking tired—all the arousal did not help that specific point—but Steve’ll sit next to him on the couch, as a given, where sometimes Steve sits next to his bed instead of next to him in his bed.
And Eddie wants to tip over exhausted against Steve, okay? Because Steve doesn’t seem to fucking mind, so.
They settle, exactly like always, exactly like Eddie expected. And Steve’s arm welcomes his rapid descent along Steve’s ribs, the soft echo of his heartbeat this hallowed, magic thing that just makes Eddie feel warm.
“Thank you,” Eddie says, for this, for the shower, for the way this is the same and also maybe better beyond all probabilities: for everything, really. For Steve, being Steve.
And Eddie’s almost asleep, and it might be the magic warmth of the way he tipped into Steve’s space and the tangle of their bodies for it but the words Eddie hears last before he’s out come from near his scalp, and lips move in his hair and maybe that’s just coincidence, or maybe all probabilities are still being shatters and it’s almost something like a kiss but either way—
Either way, Steve’s voice is so soft and open when he whispers Eddie into sleep with the most perfect word imaginable:
“Always.”
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