idiot - steddie

Nine

"Couldn't we have tried a road, or something just slightly less creepy?" Robin asked as we continued down the rabbit hole we got ourselves into by stepping foot in this vacant forest. I shot her a glance over my shoulder, and shined my flashlight all around us, igniting leaveless bushes and graying trees in a white blanket of light. "I think we're getting close. We're almost out of here. Don't worry." Nancy said to her from where she was in front of us, alongside Eddie. Robin handed over a pressed smile to Nancy as she carried on beside me, south of the two in front of us, quickening our pace in the slightest with each step taken.

"Hey, Steve?." Robin asked from beside me, I turned around to face her, my dampened hair whipping the sides of my face in the spur of the moment. "Yeah?" I replied as she slowed down her walk and looked back at me, stepping over a small vine in her way. I came up beside her and looked over at her mischievous little smile that was slowly growing to be more and more apparent across her face. "So.. me and Nancy have noticed something with you and—" Her sentence wandered off and she looked ahead of us at the two people paving the way for us, but most specifically she looked at Eddie. She threw me a knowing glance. My eyes found their way to her again, and I forced myself into a state of shock, where my lips seemed to be glued together. "Eddie." She finished, even though by that point in the conversation, we knew the answer well and ripe.

She shook her head, looking back at me with a lopsided grin that smothered into a chuckle. "Did you think we— I.. wouldn't notice the way you look at him?" She said, and our conversation went quiet, and that stupid goddamn tension came back, pining me til I was out of layers for it to fight through. And it was just bare bones from there.

"It's gay intuition, Steve." She spoke up, pulling her eyes towards Nancy. I glanced over at Eddie aswell, my eyes raising to the back of his leather jacket, with just a bit of his hair hanging over it. "Oh." I replied to her odd add on. She maneuvered her way past my shoulder and shoved her hands into her jean pockets. "Honestly," She opined, not saying anything else til I looked over at her. "If you want my advice, I would stop trying to put off figuring yourself out." She said, seeing right through my greatest fear. I looked at her from the sideways angle she was stood in. A deep blue light cast over her face. Causing her blue eyes to darken, and her lips to become a deep purple.

She looked over and met my gaze."So, do you like him? Like for real. No lies and no bullshitting." She finally asked, turning to me as we kept on walking forward.

I looked down at the ground, bolting down my breaths so they came out rickety and quick. I did. I really did, I liked the way his hair fell onto my shoulders whenever he was leaning on me, his vanilla-cigarette-weed musk, his soft lips and thick skull. The odd way he dressed and the even odder way he chose to help me, the way he teased me and praised me about the smallest things. The way he never failed to make my heart run laps inside my chest by just doing the smallest thing. Hell, I loved most of those things. Even if they were barely signs of affection.

Robin sighed and looked away from me when I didn't answer. "I don't know what kind of sexuality crisis you're going through right now, or what you think you and Eddie are, but.." She blurred, kicking a larger fallen branch out of the way with her Doc Marten, dragging out a few syllables in her words. I searched her face for an expression or something that could tell me what she meant with the trail off, and how the hell she had come to speak my feelings about Eddie before I even told her.

She inhaled, looking up from the ground, "Eddie was the first to come after you." She said finally, turning to me and extending her hands out slightly in her pockets. I cocked an eyebrow. "What?" I asked quizzically. She stepped over a few more vines in our path and shook her head a bit. "When you got dragged down here, Eddie was the first to dive off the boat and come after you." She said, struggling to step over a larger vine in front of her for a quick second. I looked in front of us at Eddie, who was talking with his head turned towards Nancy, a kind smile pressed against his curved lips as he listened to her talk. "Now, I don't know if you are blind or are just ignoring it, but he likes you." She paused for a second to look at me, splitting her lips open just enough so she could say the next words. "—He likes you a lot." She offered, meeting my gaze that had been locked on Eddie. "See his hanker chief, Steve?" She asked, pointing to the black and white skull patterned piece of fabric falling out of his back pocket, swaying in the light breeze that accompanied us through this walk.