Boltedfruit Archive

He knows he can’t get away with sequestering himself in his room forever. But he still groans, annoyed, when he hears Eddie knock on his door. He can tell it’s not Robin by how loud he does it. Like he’s trying to be quiet and failing.

He stops. Steve waits, staring up in the dark at the ceiling. He starts up again, this time calling out Steve’s name softly. He wishes it was later so he could just pretend he didn’t hear him and roll over and go to bed.

“What?” he snaps, can’t help it. He slings an arm over his face.

Eddie cracks the door open and Steve listens to him slink inside the room.

“Can I come in?”

“You’re already in,” Steve mutters. The door shuts, and he listens as Eddie sits at his desk.

“Tell me what’s going on, man.”

“Don’t you have Penelope to look after?”

“I left her with Robin.”

Steve lifts his arm to peer blearily at where Eddie’s sitting, straddling the chair backwards. His long legs seem almost longer as he stretches them out.

“We’re not supposed to leave it with anybody else besides us.”

Eddie snorts. Says mildly, “She’s a bag of flour, Steve. I think she’ll be okay for a while.”

He lets his arm fall back over his eyes. “So you do realize this project is crazy.”

“Not crazy, no. It is more fun than writing an essay. Don’t hate me for asking this, but are you okay? I was chalking your mood up to your heat, but you’re still acting like you’d rather be anywhere but here, doing this project. With me.”

Steve groans again. “It’s not–”

Not you, he almost says. But that’s just it. It is him.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he finally says, because at least that’s true. “It’s not that I’m regretting being partners or something. But I also…am.”

“Oh.” More shifting around. Eddie sounds closer when he says, “That doesn’t really make sense. Did I do something? Was it…the library?”

They haven’t talked about it.

Steve was never going to, but now Eddie’s gone and brought it up.

He drops his arm and sighs up at the ceiling. He pulls at his shirt collar, still overheated. The edges of the scent patch itch.

“That’s not it.” He finally looks over at Eddie again, sees he’s scooted closer in the chair. “That guy wasn’t taking no for an answer. He thought I was some virgin who was secretly drooling over his dick. It was so–No. No, I needed help, and you helped me.”

“I wouldn’t have let him hurt you.”

That intensity is back. The look that left him damp and running for the bathroom just to reclaim some scrap of his dignity.

Now, in the privacy of his own room, slowly being saturated in Eddie’s pleasant scent–it’s dangerous.

“I know.”

Eddie takes a deep breath. “So it wasn’t something I did?”

Jesus, why can’t they just move past it. Pretend Steve isn’t some lonely freak and just get on with their homework, finish the class, and move on with their lives.

He laughs. The bitterness is crystal clear even to his own ears. “No, it’s not something you did. You don’t even know you’re doing it.” Then, “I’m just being stupid. It’s my damn biology or whatever.”

Eddie’s brow wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

Eddie comes even closer, abandoning the chair to crouch at his side. He’s all owl eyes and drawn brows, lips pursed in concentration. Like he’s trying to figure Steve out.

Would it be so bad, to be known? For Eddie to hear what’s got him so turned inside out? Explain it’s the class, that’s all. It’s the stupid paperwork making him think of Nancy and what could have been his life if he’d never presented as an omega.

“I’m,” it comes out barely a whisper. Steve swallows, starts again. “I’m fucked up, Eddie.”

He tilts his head. “Huh? No way, you aren’t. Ask any omega, heats can run you ragged. I know a rut isn’t as bad, but I get it. A little. Cycles make the best of us feel off for a few days after.”

He shakes his head. “Not that. I got my suppressants again. The patches. I didn’t let it happen. I skipped it. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“You skipped your heat? You can’t just skip–”

“Eddie, will you shut up for five seconds and let me get this out?”

Eddie glowers at him but shuts his mouth and mimes zipping it closed.

“I’m only gonna say this once. Then we can pretend it never happened, okay?” Eddie nods slowly. “And I’m only telling you because–because I don’t even know why! You get it? This is what’s been so frustrating.”

Eddie nods again, eyes briefly landing on his neck, the patch.

“This project is messing with my head. It’s making me think of Nancy and how I thought we’d be mated and have at least one kid by now, but obviously that didn’t happen. It’s just…being in class and having to think about kids, and names, and then having to pretend to be a parent when I don’t even know the first fucking thing? And then there’s you, who just seems to know this stuff. You’re an alpha and I’m an omega, but we’re supposed to be doing the opposite of what we are. I’m supposed to be good at all this baby stuff, but you’re the one treating it like it’s real.”

Steve stops, sucking in air. He sat up at some point and he’s wiping at his eyes, angry for getting emotional again. “And I am fucked up, Eddie. I’m a mess. You smell so good all the time. I don’t know if it’s this class or if I’m going through some kind of delayed presentation bullshit, but I can’t get it out of my head, out of my throat. Your scent is everywhere, and it makes me want–”

Okay.

Okay, too much.

Great job, mouth.

Steve drags his hands down his face, emotionally wrung out and physically tired to top it off.

He dares to glance at Eddie for the first time since opening his big mouth. And Eddie is just watching him, intent as usual, hanging on every word that comes out of his mouth. Steve’s never had anyone pay him even a modicum of that kind of attention before.

“It makes you want what? What do you want, Steve?”

You.

“I don’t know.”

“You do,” Eddie says, and yeah, sure, he’s right. But that doesn’t make it any less difficult to actually say. “Please tell me. You know I won’t judge you. Right? Not for anything, no matter how wild it seems.”

It’s not wild, is the thing. It’s expected, and that makes it something he shouldn’t want. Not if he doesn’t want to be just another statistic in some outdated textbook.

Eddie surprises him by bumping his fingers against his arm, his wrist. He pauses before taking Steve’s hand in both of his, and it’s so nice and it feels safe.

And it shouldn’t. So he thinks of something else that’s true.

“I always wanted kids. But is that me or the omega talking, you know? And Pram with that textbook…she tries, but that book and everybody in our class thinks omegas are just these soft, agreeable baby makers. I don’t want to be some prize for some knothead alpha to claim like I’m just—”

“Like you’re a piece of property.”

Steve nods. A tear slips down his cheek. Eddie squeezes his hand.

“You’re not. You’re not. Nobody is. You have to know you’re more than your designation, or what anyone says about it. I mean, come on, you’re Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High! You lead the basketball team to nationals. You practically made the dating pool. You were so goddamn cool.”

“Until I presented. Then everything went to shit.”

Eddie’s shaking his head, the ends of his hair tickling their entwined hands. “No way. That just made you cooler. You ditched your asshole friends and took a stand for yourself. I respected you for that, y’know?”

It’s news to Steve. Nobody respected him when he came to school after a week spent between being locked in his room and stuck in a doctor’s office, smelling soft, smelling sweet. A few words from Tommy and the entire school turned its back on him by the end of the school day.

If he’d known there was someone else who was on his side…like Nancy had been, like the kids. If he’d been more aware, less focused on his own bullshit, would he have noticed Eddie back then?

Would his scent have been as enticing as it is now?

“Well, that’s uh. Good to know. I never really apologized for how my group treated you back then. I was a douchebag for a long time. Too long.”

Eddie shrugs, looking at their joined hands. “Well, look at us now, huh? Best of buds. And don’t get me wrong, you were definitely a dick before you presented. You kind of still are. So one stereotype down, right? I don’t think I’d ever call you agreeable.”

He huffs at that. Turns his hand over and can’t tell if it’s him or Eddie that threads their fingers together.

“You wanna tell me what you were gonna say?”

Steve tenses up but Eddie holds fast.

“I don’t–”

“Stevie,” Eddie murmurs, and his scent is so wanting just then. This tiny, trusting thing that Steve’s first instinct is to protect it at all costs. And isn’t that something.

“No judgment?”

“None. Ever.”

He takes a steadying breath. If this all goes wrong, he’ll just drop out of college and flee the state, or something. Robin will understand. He’ll write her letters.

“It might just be the heat I managed to stop before it started, but,” he starts, nerves already frayed, Eddie’s fingers warm and strong between his own. “This project is making me wonder what it would be like. To actually have a kid. What it would be like for someone to want me for me, to want me enough and not just because of my designation. To be mated.” Another deep breath. “To you.”

He blinks, looks up. The intensity is still there, but it’s stronger, makes his belly warm.

“And I know that’s fucking weird. It’s gross, fantasizing about someone you barely know as your mate, let alone the father of your children. So that’s why I’ve been weird, okay? I know I get pissy. Everyone I’ve ever known has called me a bitch at some point, so I guess I can’t do much to fix that. But I know it’s not fair to the people around me. But lately, I know it’s because watching you care for a bag of flour is making me an emotional omega wreck, and I can’t stand that that’s just how it is for us. As if just because I’m an omega, I can’t get my shit together? It’s stupid.”

Eddie’s hand squeezes his so hard, Steve winces. Eddie relents, but only after a beat.

“So your heat,” he breathes, “was that because of me?”

Steve shakes his head, can’t look away. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a heat. And I’ve never felt like this—”

“You’ve never—” Eddie starts, then cuts himself off. He licks his lips and Steve is hit with a burst of wine-soaked flowers. He can’t help but inhale deep, greedy for what isn’t his. “No wonder your scent was so strong. I—god, Steve, I was practically drowning those first few weeks.”

And then he whines.

“Please,” Eddie grates out, small and wanting. “Please take the patch off. I can never smell you anymore. You don’t smell like anything and I hate it.”

“W-what?”

Eddie grapples for words, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “As long as we’re being honest here, your scent, Steve.” He whistles long and high. “It’s like somebody wrapped up apple pie and delight in one big happy punch. And every day sitting next to you is like getting socked in the damn jaw.”

The intensity is cut in half with that, with the ill-timed onset of Steve’s laughter.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah,” Eddie laughs. He hangs his head, bangs obscuring him, before he looks up at Steve from under his lashes. “So don’t take yourself so seriously, okay? It’s totally normal.”

“It’s just biology, huh?”

Eddie’s smile is small. “Exactly. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

He untangles their hands, and immediately Steve wants him back. Wants Eddie touching him. Eddie sweeps his hair back from his face, drawing away and giving them both some breathing room.

“You don’t think it’s weird…me picturing you, us, like that?”

Eddie smiles something big and carefree, almost proud if Steve had to put a name to it. It sends butterflies through him, makes the heat buzz.

“I mean, it’s kind of expected isn’t it? Having to pretend to be bonded mates with a kid? I bet we aren’t the only ones going through it.”

Steve doesn’t miss how he says we. Like he hasn’t been the only one picturing another life, a happier life.

“Just uh, please don’t wear those patches anymore. They’re awful.”

Steve wavers.

“Not that you have to stop or anything. I just,” Eddie says, tugging a hand through his curls again, “I really like how you smell, Stevie.”

He tries to not let how happy that makes him show on his face. “It’s more that I don’t want the extra attention from other alphas.”

“I said I won’t let anyone hurt you. I meant that too.”

Steve nods, something underlying Eddie’s tone settling under his skin, tells him it’s true. It’s different from anything he’s experienced with any alpha.

“What if I end up going into heat?” he asks, because he’s worried about that still. It’s not anything he wants to deal with, ever. Not if he had his way.

“Baby, it’s good to let your body go through its cycles. It needs them. If I forced myself out of my ruts, I’d be sick for days.”

“What do you, uh. Do. During them?”

Eddie’s cheeks darken, and even in the low light of his room, he can tell Eddie’s blushing.

And baby?

Steve bites down the pleased chirp stuck in his throat at the nickname. It’s nothing real. Just how Eddie talks.

Yeah.

“You really want to know?” Steve nods. “Because you haven’t had a heat…and because you haven’t shared a rut with anyone, have you?”

Nancy always went through hers alone. Steve respected her choice, but it still hurt to be rejected from sharing something so intimate.

That…and Steve’s never been with a male alpha.

Steve nods again, his turn to blush.

Eddie’s fiddling with the sheet on Steve’s bed, looking anywhere but Steve now.

“I guess I just. Make myself comfortable. Usually I find a way to get something like a shirt scented by whoever I like at the time, and then I just hole up in my room for a few days until it passes. You know, let it work its way out of my system. It can be pretty all-consuming. Then I take the world’s longest, hottest shower once it’s over.”

Steve tries to picture Eddie’s careful mess of dark curls dripping wet down his bare back. What he might look like with no clothes on at all, if he has any more tattoos hidden away.

He stops thinking about that.

“Very generous with the details, Munson.”

“Hey, I don’t have to divulge all my secrets, okay? I most definitely never ignore it.”

Steve hums. “So you don’t spend it with your partner?”

“What partner,” he huffs. The fiddling intensifies. He mumbles something.

“What was that?”

“I said,” Eddie says, louder this time, “I’ve never shared my rut before.” And he must read Steve entirely right because he adds, “What, is that so unbelievable? You know I wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity in high school.”

“But you’re an alpha.”

“So?”

“So? So there were–there are plenty of people who’d hook up with you just because you’re an alpha! You never took advantage of that?”

Eddie’s face twists. He rolls his eyes. “No way! That goes against every rule in the book.”

“What book?”

“My book,” Eddie tells him, definitively. He doesn’t elaborate, but Steve supposes it’s a book they share. After Nancy, Steve can’t really picture himself having casual flings again. “But anyway, heats aren’t so different from what I hear. You just gotta be sure to make a nice and comfortable nest.”

Steve waves that off. “That’s always annoyed me. Omegas aren’t birds.”

Eddie laughs. “You realize everything in here is your nest, right?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that. Nothing good at least.

He watches as Eddie stands up and walks around his room, fingers grazing the pictures he has tacked to the wall over his desk. There’s one of him and Robin at a party he dragged her to against her will, a few of the kids and him at last year’s county fair, some from when he and Robin worked at Scoops, and more. Then Eddie’s touching everything. His schoolwork, his sparse shelf of books and records, his open closet where he has some dirty laundry spilling out of the bottom, the stack of clean laundry he hasn’t put away yet, some dirty dishes, his curtains, the few things he took from his childhood bedroom, and then finally his bed.

Steve has a couple of pillows, standard sheets that cost a little more than the average set. A few extra blankets for when nights get cold. One he uses every night, usually stuffed under his head or hugged to his chest.

Eddie picks it right up, a worn blanket he has folded over on the edge, holding it to his nose. His eyes shut as he breathes it in, breathes Steve in.

And then, to Steve’s utter delight and terror, he starts scenting it. Holds the blanket to the bend of his neck, pressed directly to his bonding gland. He keeps it there, eyes still closed, and runs his neck along the material, holding it to his skin as if he’s embracing it.

Eddie sets the blanket back down, fingers dancing over the top of it until they travel up towards Steve himself. He sits on the edge of the bed, patting Steve once on the knee a little awkwardly.

“It’s just a place where you feel safe. Somewhere that holds the scents you recognize as home. It’s the same for ruts, but apparently omegas really benefit from it.”

Steve stares at the blanket sitting in a lump by his feet. Only when Eddie’s finished does he truly realize what he’s done.

Eddie’s marked something with himself for when he does go into heat. So he can benefit.

He’s given Steve his own scent to mingle with his and Robin’s. To become a part of his nest. To recognize it as home.

As if Eddie is part of his, and he really tries hard never to use the word, pack.

A chirp slips free, his throat burning.

Eddie’s hand returns to his knee at the involuntary sound of happiness, tightening once before he flexes his fingers and lets go.

He clears his throat, as if that will help. “But I–I smell bad.”

“No, you don’t–”

“I know what you said.” Steve straightens himself on his bed, eyes still on the blanket. On the gift Eddie’s given him. “I mean before. You didn’t smell the loneliness on me?”

Eddie’s lack of an answer is answer enough.

“If I let it happen. If I do go into heat,” Steve says. “I don’t want to feel alone. It’ll hurt too much.”

Maybe it’s the headspace he’s been in lately. Maybe it’s the flour bag still sitting in the living room. Maybe it’s Eddie’s transparency and his cartoonishly large eyes boring holes into his heart that’s making his tongue loose, but he wants, and he’s so tired of wanting. Of holding it back.

Robin knows his moods, but he’s never put the why into words.

And they don’t even know each other, him and Eddie, not really. They’re strangers, passing ships in the night. But Eddie’s in his room, has just scented something that he must know Steve sleeps with at night, has told Steve how good he smells, and for what? For nothing?

It has to mean something. Something important.

He knows generally what a heat entails. It’s why he’s so adamant about avoiding it. If he never has a heat, then he never has to want so badly that his bones ache. It’s pain is what it is, and he doesn’t have to suffer through that if he doesn’t want to.

The pill suppresses, and the patches help. They kept alphas away before and they will again.

Eddie doesn’t count.

“I don’t want to want, Eddie.”

“But that’s just a part of life, Stevie,” he says, so simple.

“Not mine.”

Eddie sighs. He picks at his nails, chipping the polish, and Steve wonders again how often he paints them. If he has a set designated time once a week where he breaks out a shining black bottle of polish and gets to work. Maybe he does it between sets at his shows.

Do painted nails look cool when playing guitar? Come to think of it, he hasn’t ever seen Eddie play.

He’s drawn away from his thoughts when Eddie tells him, “I bet you ten bucks you can’t go a week without the scent patches.”

“What?” It’s a total one-eighty. “That’s a shit bet. There’s nothing in it for you.”

“My reward is your scent not being covered up anymore. And,” he adds, before Steve can question him on why he’s so adamant about that, “it’ll prove to you that the patches do nothing to stop a heat. I didn’t miss that bottle of heat suppressant pills on your nightstand. Don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right. And you know I’ll keep any alphas off your back.”

“You’re unbelievable. And what if you can’t? What if that asshole from class doubles down and decides I smell too omega to give up?”

“I’m an alpha. I’ll protect you.”

“He thought you were my alpha,” Steve reminds him.

The implication is delicate. Fragile. Eddie could bolt right now and he wouldn’t blame him.

But Eddie just looks at him, a little beyond him. His lips tilt up. “Let him think what he wants. I won anyway.”

Oh, the ego. Steve melts a little at it, at the smugness leaking into his words.

He keeps on. “If you do start your heat after a week, you get ten bucks. And uh,” he reaches up, momentarily holding his hair away from his neck, as if he’s hot too. “You have my number if it gets really bad.”

Eddie lets his curls flop back into place and Steve’s mind swims, foggy with the idea. The possibility of it. It doesn’t help Eddie’s scent has slowly been sinking into his room.

“You’re offering to help me through my heat?”

“If it comes, sure. Only if you want. And if you’re not completely weirded out by the idea.”

On reflex, he wants to think Eddie’s only saying it to get his knot wet. That’s just how alphas are when it comes to an omega in heat. But he ignores it, pushes it away, out of mind. This is Eddie Munson he’s dealing with, not Tommy Hagan. Eddie’s never once come after him like that, like he’s just something to fuck because that’s what an omega is for.

Eddie, teeth white and sharp, growling, red eyes forcing another alpha to submit.

Would it be so bad to let others think he was Eddie’s?

That Eddie was his?

“You know, my dad?” Steve asks without really asking. “He thinks omegas aren’t good for anything besides sex and popping out kids.”

Without missing a beat, Eddie tells him, “Your dad’s a fucking dipshit.”

And yeah.

Yeah, okay.

“Deal.”

And as Eddie holds his eye, as he smiles, Steve knows Eddie is safe.

He peels the patch off, wincing when a few hairs get stuck in the gluey residue. He folds it over on itself and tosses it a few feet into the trash.

“Happy?”

Eddie’s already dark eyes dilate, flooding black, his nostrils flaring. His mouth drops open and Steve sees the hint of sharp canines before his lids flutter, before he’s biting his bottom lip. He just breathes for long moments.

And his scent is happy. Joyous.

Steve did that.

He floods with warmth. With moss and old vines that bloom, flowering full of vibrant colors.