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will-grahams-stray-dog · 2 months

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glitter & crimson

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Steve blinks, looks around and processes that he’s in a hospital. He doesn’t remember getting here, which isn’t a great sign. It also doesn’t look familiar; definitely not Stroger, Sinai, Northwestern or even Hawkins Health. He takes a few deep breaths and relaxes a bit when the movement doesn’t hurt his chest. Checks his arms next, lifting both out, bending at the elbow, turning his wrists and flexing his fingers. Once he’s sure everything is accounted for, he moves onto his legs. He’s still wearing his uniform pants, though his shin, knee pads and skates are missing. He can bend his knees and wiggle his toes, and his ankles twist back and forth easily. Next, Steve opens his mouth, and his jaw hurts on the left side a little, but not an exuberant amount.

Robin clears her throat and he jumps a little, turning to look at her with wide eyes. He hadn’t noticed anyone else in the room. “Finished your self-assessment?” She asks, and he feels his face heat up. “What do you remember?”

Steve fights through the brain fog— again, not a great sign— before he settles on his last memory.

“On the ice at Crypto?” He asks. She doesn’t answer, waiting for him to elaborate like she always does when he has concussions. “I, uh. Think it was the second period? I had just swapped in, I think? I was chasing the puck, got it, passed it off, and…” he trails off, frowning at his hands, stained a red-brown color. It was caked around his fingernails, thicker in the creases of his skin. “And Billy hit me. Right? That’s what happened?”

“Well, you remember more than I expected you to.” Robin eventually sighs, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. “They’ve got you on concussion protocol.”

“Fuck,” Steve grumbles, reaching his hand up with the intention of rubbing at his eyes, but Robin catches his wrist and stops him.

“Don’t touch your face.” She’s stern, and Steve frowns. Nothing hurts on his face, besides the little twinge in his jaw. But then it clicks that he must be on some type of painkiller.

“Morphine makes me throw up.” He says, and Robin gives him a soft smile.

“I know, babe.”

He’s quiet for a long moment before he lays his head back and sighs. “How bad is it?”

“You’re going to need quite a few stitches, but they ran scans when we first got here to see if anything in there is broken,” Robin explains, and Steve groans.

“So it’s pretty bad, then.” He absorbs this information, efforts to retain it and not lose it into the brain fog.

“You skated off the ice on your own, if that’s any consolation.” Robin gives him a small smile, which Steve tries to return because it does make him feel better. But smiling seems to spark more pain than opening his mouth had, and he can definitely feel the pull of whatever bandages are attached to the side of his face.

Someone knocks at the door, and Steve prepares himself to be overwhelmed by medical terminology from some ER doctor looking to over-explain whatever is happening with his face, but he’s surprised to see Eddie there, instead.

“Oh, hey,” Steve mumbles, frowns and pats his pockets. “Sorry, did I text you? I don’t remember.”

“Eddie texted me, I told him he could come,” Robin says, and Steve visibly pauses his search to look at Robin, then toward Eddie.

“Hi,” Eddie offers, soft and quiet, looking a little paler than usual. “I, uh. Saw what happened. Worried about you.”

“Steve doesn’t remember everything yet, so don’t tell him what happened. Not for a few more hours, at least.” Robin explains, before tapping the seat beside her. “I pulled this over so you could sit with us while we wait for the doctors to come back with his scans.”

“It looks better in person than it did on TV,” Eddie says as he moves closer, eyes trained on the left side of Steve’s face.

“Feels heavily packed.” Steve mumbles, rolls his jaw again, and lets out a little groan when it cracks.

“Stop that,” Robin chides, smacking at his hand gently. “Max did as much as she could to stop you from bleeding out from your face, stop trying to hurt yourself more.”

“M’not, just feels weird,” Steve mumbles back before he looks over at Eddie again. “Not sure this is going to be the most interesting way to spend your night, Eds.”

“If this is where you’ve got to be tonight, then I’ll be right here with you.” Eddie offers and Steve feels his cheeks heat up, though he’s not sure it’s noticeable because he doesn’t know what the fuck is happening with his face.

It takes what feels like an eternity for a doctor to finally come in and explain that the bone connecting his upper jaw to his eye is fractured, and the team will have to monitor how it starts to heal to see if he needs surgery. Steve asks Robin and Eddie to wait in the hallway while he gets the stitches; he’s told there are nearly 80 running through his eyebrow, around his eye socket and down into his left cheek. The bulkier part of the wound is covered with a bandage, he’s given a prescription for painkillers, and then discharged into Robin’s care. Despite her attempts to explain she has an idea of what she’s doing, she’s given a pamphlet with the signs and symptoms of a concussion. Eddie elects himself to direct Steve’s Hospital Policy wheelchair to the garage, where he’d parked his rental.

“Where to?” He asks.

“Crypto.” Steve answers before Robin can, and she frowns at him.

“They’re not going to let you play, and the game is almost over, we should just go back to the hotel.” She offers, but Steve shakes his head.

“Crypto. Please. I… even if it’s just to prove a point, I need to go back.” He holds eye contact with Eddie, who notices the start of a few bruises likely to join forces around his eye in the next few hours and days, and Eddie sighs and nods.

The drive back to the arena is short; the longest part is waiting for the security guard to scan Robin’s team-issued badge to get them inside. Steve leans up to tug at Eddie’s leather jacket once he’s parked. “Not gon’ make you wait in the car, come in with us. Won’t be long, promise.”

Steve moves right out to the rink, opens the door to the Blackhawks box and slides inside easily. There’s a moment when nobody has realized he’s there, and he grins as he taps the coach on the arm, pulling his attention off the ice for a moment. Controlled chaos erupts then, as his teammates celebrate his return. There’s hugs and shoulder pats and hair ruffles all around. When the final shift changes with just minutes left on the clock, they manage to take the lead and secure the win.

Back in the locker room, Steve packs up his bags with the rest of them, offers his congratulations, as Robin hands over his discharge paperwork to the team medics. Eddie’s hanging back by the door, visibly caught off guard when a few players offer him fist taps and polite greetings, before Steve is pressing a finger into his chest.

“Told you I needed to come back. S’good for morale and shit.” He mumbles, slurring and can’t tell if it’s from the injury or the painkillers, but Eddie smiles back at him and rolls his eyes.

“You’re a handful.” Eddie teases, and Steve tips his head thinking for a moment before a slow grin spreads across his face.

“You’ve no idea how much of a handful I am.” Steve teases back, watches as Eddie’s face lights up with delight before he snorts out a laugh.

“I think you need to try and rest off the painkillers, Big Boy.” Eddie decides, and Steve shrugs because, yeah, that’s probably not the worst idea.

“But can we get food first? I’m starving.”

He manages to convince Eddie and Robin he can stomach Jack in the Box, orders a ridiculous amount of food, then only manages to eat his fries before he falls asleep on the sofa in the hotel room he’s sharing with Robin.

~~~~~

Eddie swipes a taco Steve had ordered, and joins Robin on the balcony of their room after Steve falls asleep.

“Does he always order fast food like a stoner?” He muses, crunching into the hard shell, earning a laugh from Robin.

“Only when he’s genuinely high. Pain meds hit him a little harder than weed usually does, though.” She explains around a french fry.

“He can smoke?” Eddie asks, surprised. He might not know much about sports, but he was pretty sure there were usually rules in place about drug use and random testing to check for anything out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, the league doesn’t really care unless their levels are abnormally high. But a lot of players use weed for pain management because the game can be brutal on their bodies, even without assholes like Hargrove on the ice.” She looks back into the room toward where Steve is sprawled out, snoring softly.

“I didn’t see Billy on the bench or on the ice when we got back.” Eddie offers, though it appears to be unhelpful information as Robin nods.

“He was hit with 5 minutes in the penalty box and a game misconduct, which ejected him from the game. Blackhawks are working with the league to figure out if it’s possible to prove it was a premeditated attack to see if they want to press charges against him, or if they’re just suspending him for a few games.” Robin drops her voice quieter like she doesn’t want to risk Steve overhearing, even though he’s sound asleep in another room.

“Do you think that’s what happened?” Eddie asks though he feels like he already knows the answer. Steve getting caught up in his head about this game, saying Billy is the reason the Kings are his least favorite team. All signs are pointing to a highly likely yes that Billy was retaliating for something when he hurt Steve.

Robin’s quiet for a moment, looking off into the city. “Yeah, probably.” She mumbles.

It’s weirdly soothing, the silence they’re sitting in, split by the sounds of the bustling city below them and Steve’s soft snoring inside from behind. Despite hardly knowing either Steve or Robin, Eddie feels he knows enough to be comfortable in this strange moment he’s found himself in with both of them.

~~~~

Steve wakes up a few hours later, feeling nauseous and achy. Robin’s nowhere to be found, but Eddie’s lying across her bed playing a game on his phone.

“Hey, you’re up,” Eddie smiles when he notices Steve moving around, so Steve sends a little wave in his direction. “Want me to grab you ginger ale or something from the vending machine?”

The question doesn’t fully process in Steve’s head; drowned out by the white hot pain and the urge to vomit he’s biting back. Instead of answering, he rubs gently at his right eye, still flinches, and tips his head to the side. “You stayed?”

“Well, yeah.” Eddie shrugs, sitting up so his back is against the headboard of Robin’s bed. “Told you I was going to be wherever you had to be tonight.”

Steve lets the response sink in, resists the urge to cry at how fucking sweet the guy across the room from him is, and lets out a heavy breath. “Ginger ale might help,” he eventually decides to answer.

When Eddie returns with the soda, munching on a bag of chips, Steve accepts the drink but raises his next question. “Where’s Robin?”

“She got a call from Max about an hour ago? Asked me to stay with you, but I was already planning on that.” Eddie answers, before offering the bag of chips in Steve’s direction. He shakes his head, pushing the bag back toward Eddie. The smell wasn’t making him feel less like throwing up, and the salt was sure to inevitably burn the split skin near his mouth now that he was feeling more of the injury.

“S’wrong with Max?” Steve asks, again, and Eddie gives him a grin.

“You really like to play 20 questions, huh?” Steve can’t be blamed if it takes him a moment to realize that Eddie’s referencing their previous conversations and picking on him, and flushes when he’s worked it out, but Eddie just laughs softly. He puts the bag of chips down, cracks the cap on the soda open, and plops himself down into the chair next to where Steve had been lying on the sofa. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Max, Robin didn’t elaborate past saying she called and she had to go to her.”

“S’probably freaking out about Billy,” he doesn’t mean to make the observation out loud, but Steve can’t take it back once it’s out in the world. Eddie raises an eyebrow, and Steve sighs, rests the cool soda bottle against the bandage over his cheek, and offers the short version of the explanation. “They’re step-siblings. Ex-step siblings?” Okay, maybe it’s not the shortest explanation, but Steve’s concussed. “Whatever you call the kid your ex-step dad had before he married then divorced your mom. They’re that.”

Eddie’s clearly amused at Steve’s delirium, which is mildly frustrating, but Steve allows it because he’s not being mean about his confusion. “I didn’t realize Max was related to Billy.” He observes.

Steve nods, takes another sip of the soda. “Yeah, but like I said, only on a technicality. They don’t really talk anymore.”

“Because Billy’s an asshole?” Eddie guesses.

Steve deflates a little, thinking about it before he shrugs. “Because of me.” He answers, simply, with no explanation. He can tell that Eddie’s itching to ask for details, but he doesn’t. “You aren’t going to ask?”

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready to.” Eddie shrugs and Steve feels a little part of himself burst into flames. He decides he wants Eddie to know, to have the background and all the information, to understand the choices Steve has made and what has led them here to this too-expensive hotel room in a city neither of them particularly cares for, with nearly a hundred stitches in Steve’s face.

“He was on the Blackhawks roster when I was drafted. And we had history from school and juniors, but we worked well together. And after a game we’d both played particularly well in, Billy came to my room and we, uh. Celebrated.” Steve explains, trying to find the best way to put things in order to explain the nature of their relationship as he picks at the wrapper from the soda bottle Eddie had gotten for him. “It became a thing, for a while. Win a game, hook up after. But then Max caught him at my place and he melted down. Cut contact completely with me, gave me a black eye at team practice the next day, and pushed to get traded. Does everything in his power to make my life hell when we’re on the ice together, now.”

Eddie’s quiet for what feels like a long time, but Steve’s sure his sense of time is skewed given his entire perception of reality feeling ever-so-slightly off-kilter. “So, you’ve hooked up with Billy Hargrove?” The comment earns Eddie a big frown, and Steve watches as he scrambles to continue. “That came out wrong, I didn’t… I just meant… I didn’t know if you actually liked guys, I guess. Not that you owe me an explanation about that.”

Steve considers his answer for a long moment, thinks about what to do. He wants to reach out and take Eddie’s hand, press it to his jaw, come out with confidence and pull the other in for a kiss. But it’s unrealistic, not how his brain is going to let him do things anyway, so instead he says, “I’m out as bisexual to everyone who counts. Robin, the Party. And now you.”

Eddie visibly softens, a small smile settling on his face. Steve takes another sip from his soda and rests his head back, only to hear movement, then feel the sofa dip beside him. When he opens his eyes again, Eddie is beside him, still wearing a soft smile. He throws his arm over the back of the sofa, behind Steve’s head, and taps his shoulder gently. “C’mon, lay back down. You gotta rest up.” He says, gently.

And Steve doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get most of the interactions he’s had since Billy knocked him for a loop, but he also doesn’t want to question the invitation. Instead, he buries the uninjured side of his face against Eddie’s t-shirt and lets his steady breathing, warmth and the faint scent of expensive but not overwhelming cologne ease him back off to sleep.

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