Desires || Steddie

Chapter 2.

Eddie wasn't the most reputable person in Hawkin's, he was adult enough to admit that to himself, so when he offered Steve 'the hair' Harrington to join in on watching Hellfire tonight, he surprised himself.

He hadn't exactly planned for it to slip out, but it had and by the time he realized his words, it was too late and Steve was agreeing to it.

Feeling like holes were being burned into him wasn't something he was dumb too as most people in Hawkin's would stare at him and give him dirty looks, but the way Steve was staring at him caught his attention.

Eddie wasn't stupid, at least he liked to think so, his grades may attest to that statement but he was smarter than most knew.

Just because he didn't apply himself and had to yet again repeat his senior year didn't mean he wasn't smart.

Sure being a 20 year old still in high school didn't exactly warrant someone to being called smart, especially repeating it three times over, but he just couldn't bring himself to care anymore.

He wanted to drop out, but his uncle Wayne instantly denied the idea and told him if he wasn't going to at the very least get his diploma, he was out of his house and on his own.

Eddie wasn't too certain about the seriousness behind his uncle's words, but he surely did not want to push his luck and find them to be true.

Eddie wasn't blind to things around him, and he sure wasn't stupid but when Steve Harrington was staring at him, he felt utterly dumb.

Being the known freak around town for his style and music taste didn't exactly earn a man like Eddie the unexplainable look Steve was giving him. If Eddie was smart enough to really evaluate the look Steve was giving him, he'd say he was checking him out, but anyone with half a brain cell, Eddie himself included in that statement, knew far too well that Steve Harrington was as straight as straight could get.

He was a ladies man, the king of Hawkins at one time in his life, the proclaimed caption of the basketball team, and well known for his reputation with women and more specifically how in love he was with Nancy Wheeler, the golden girl of Hawkins High.

No way in holy hell was he checking Eddie out.

Nowhere on Eddie's spectrum of realism was that possible, and Eddie was a leader of a D&D group full of make believe and fantasy. No where in any of that stuff did the look he saw Steve giving him make sense, let alone he imagine it to be real.

Eddie was far from someone to be checked out, let alone have the straightest man on the planet check him out.

Nope, absolutely no way.

It went against every single thing Eddie knew.

So, he convinced himself he was going insane with stress from trying to actually graduate this year and needed to chill out on smoking weed. Even if Eddie knew smoking weed didn't cause you to see shit that wasn't there, he knew better than to try and convince himself what he saw was true.

It just wasn't.

Being called a queer and told he would burn in hell for being gay was something Eddie had grown used to, adding it to the laundry list of names he was called by the people in this town. The sad truth behind the words of those around him struck his heart like a bullet.

Each time the words were uttered to him, flashes of his father denying he raised a faggot for a son flashed through his mind before his father would relentlessly beat him, claiming he'd beat the gay from him, leaving Eddie scarred and bloody in the aftermath.

Eddie's father threw the blame on him for his mother's death, beating her until she couldn't breathe anymore after interfering with one of his brutal beatings, trying to protect her son from his father's harsh ways, claiming he was only a boy.