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‟Oh!” Steve exclaims and dives for the ground, and Dustin very much hopes that he’s doing it on purpose because he’s a bit too drunk to be able to stop Steve from falling flat on his face right now.
Luckily, Steve pops right back up again, though he does have to grab onto Dustin’s right arm to steady himself as he pulls himself to his feet.
“Look!” he says, grinning as he uncurls his fingers and holds out his hand to show Dustin the solid gold band resting in his palm.
Dustin has no idea how Steve even spotted it; it’s late – past 2 a.m. already – and the street they’re on might be lined with lights, but they’re not doing much good; both Steve and Dustin’s shadows loom tall and dark enough to seemingly blot out the ground in some places.
Steve tilts his hand, and the fairy lights from a nearby restaurant’s outdoor dining area glint dully off the band, and maybe that’s the answer to how he found it. Dustin frowns and turns; does a full three-sixty as he attempts to spot a potential owner, but at this hour everything is closed and the only other people he can see are a couple of girls walking a hundred or so feet ahead of them – and he doubts any of them wear a men’s band in wedding-style.
Steve pats at the pockets of his jacket but doesn’t look too pleased by whatever it is he finds.
“I don’t want to lose it,” he grumbles before something seems to occur to him and he starts trying the ring on his left hand instead until he finally manages to thread the band past the second knuckle of one of his fingers. “Do you have your phone?”
Dustin nods, because he understands what Steve’s getting at; they should definitely post something telling people what they found. He fumbles to pull his phone out of his pocket, realizing that maybe he’s a bit more drunk than he thought when it takes him two tries to type in the code to unlock it.
“Facebook?”
Steve makes a face. “Instagram,” he says, because he’s never really enjoyed the essay-worthy posts people sometimes share on Facebook.
Dustin rolls his eyes and opens the app, and turns to take a picture of Steve’s hand, only then he remembers that his main camera is broken.
“Fuck,” he mutters, switching to the selfie one instead. “C’mon,” he tells Steve, who snorts and stumbles over, draping himself over Dustin’s shoulders.
“Write where we found it,” Steve tells him as Dustin takes the picture, and then Steve steps away and stumbles over his own feet, and Dustin barely has time to grip his phone tightly before Steve’s pulling him down onto the sidewalk.
“Oops,” Steve says, and then he laughs, and Dustin laughs too even though his ass kind of hurts now because he’s tipsy and loose and happy – but the last one’s a given since he’s almost always happy when Steve’s around.
Steve groans as he tries to sit up, because Dustin’s kind of landed on his legs, and Dustin flushes and pushes himself off him and onto his feet.
“Maybe we should leave it here?” he suggests and tries to keep his balance as he reaches down to help Steve back up. “In case they come back.”
“Yes!” Steve enthusiastically agrees, regretfully letting go of Dustin’s hand so that he can yank the ring off his finger. “In that flower pot!”
Dustin scrunches up his nose. “Under the flower pot,” he says, and they scramble over to the pot in question – a large planter that must weigh at least thirty pounds – and Dustin tilts it so that Steve can slip the ring into the gap beneath it.
“Fuckin’ genius,” Steve proclaims, grinning up at him, and something warm and soft blooms inside Dustin’s chest and he wants to feel it forever because he fucking loves Steve, and whenever Steve says things like that it makes Dustin want to grab him and kiss him but also hide away so that Steve doesn’t catch on to the kissing part.
“I know,” Dustin says instead, trying to play off the flush in his face as the fault of the buzz he’s still got going on.
Steve hums. ‟My place?”
‟Your place,” Dustin happily agrees.
//
Dustin wakes to someone pounding on Steve’s bedroom door. He groans and turns to bury his face in Steve’s pillow, wishing he’d slept on the couch instead, because that would mean no door to pound on, but Steve can be very persuasive when he’s drunk and drunk Dustin, in turn, is easily persuaded if it means an opportunity to sleep in Steve’s bed, even if they always end up back-to-back fully clothed and with Steve hogging all the covers.
“Are you lovebirds up yet?” Robin says, because of course it’s her, and Dustin can feel the mattress dip as Steve moves behind him.
“Please make her stop,” Steve whimpers, and Dustin grunts.
“We’re up!” he croaks, feeling like something died in his mouth.
“Good,” Robin says through the door, “because breakfast is getting cold!”
“What the fuck,” Steve groans, because Robin might be an excellent roommate but as far as Dustin knows she’s never made Steve breakfast in her life.
“Dunno,” Dustin murmurs, but now he’s kind of curious to find out.
He carefully rolls out of bed and makes sure not to look over his shoulder at Steve, just in case he’s all ruffled and sleepy-eyed, because the sight might just tempt Dustin into doing or saying something friendship-endingly stupid.
He stumbles out of the room and makes a quick detour to the bathroom before making his way into the kitchen, where Robin’s standing in front of the sink rinsing off the frying pan. On the kitchen bar behind her, there are two plates set out, piled high with bacon and eggs and toast, and over on the counter the coffee brewer’s doing its thing.
“What the fuck,” Dustin says, and Robin looks over her shoulder at him.
“It’s a celebration,” she explains as she sets the frying pan aside to dry and moves over to the fridge.
“Uh, okay,” Dustin says, feeling even more confused now as he takes a seat at the bar and starts to poke at his eggs.
Robin plucks a carton of juice out of the fridge and reaches up to fetch two glasses from the cupboard as Steve stumbles into the kitchen.
“What the fuck?” he says, climbing onto the barstool next to Dustin and squinting down at the plates.
“That’s what I said,” Dustin mutters.
Robin turns to place two full glasses of orange juice in front of them.
“Allow me to say fucking finally,” she declares.
Dustin glances over at Steve, who simply shrugs.
“No clue,” he says before shoveling a forkful of bacon into his mouth.
“Was it supposed to be private?” Robin asks. ‟Because in that case you probably shouldn’t have posted it on Instagram.”
Dustin feels a thrill of trepidation run through him as his hands go to his pockets, finding his phone miraculously somehow still tucked into the front left one of his jeans. When he pulls it out, the screen comes alive with notifications – all from Instagram – and Dustin swallows hard and opens the app and then nearly closes it in panic again.
“What?” Steve says, leaning over to try and get a look, and Dustin takes a deep breath and turns the screen his way so that he can see the picture from last night.
It’s the two of them against the backdrop of the fairy lights of the restaurant, Steve draped across Dustin’s shoulder with his arm around Dustin’s neck, his hand resting on Dustin’s chest with the gold band on full display on his ring finger. Steve’s smiling, looking flushed and happy, and the expression on Dustin’s face makes Dustin want to disappear because it’s so soft and content that it must be obvious to everyone how he feels about Steve.
There’s no caption, because apparently, drunk Dustin sucks at social media, so the only conclusion one has left to draw is the obvious one.
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“I—“ Dustin starts, but then he snaps his jaw shut because what is there to say? Should he apologize, or should he laugh it off? He might be able to laugh it off, he thinks; he was drunk, after all. Maybe he can convince Steve he was thinking about Suzie when he took the picture, never mind that they broke up two years ago.
Robin chucks a spatula into the sink. “I’m so fucking happy that I don’t have to listen to Eddie complain anymore,” she says with a pointed look at Dustin, and Dustin feels his eyes widen as he freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. “I have enough on my plate as it is, y’know?”
“Um,” Dustin says.
“’Buckley,’” Robin says, and that’s her Eddie-voice alright, “’Steve’s on a date so Dustin’s sitting on the couch crying into his ice cream’.”
Dustin bites back a whimper and wishes he could sink through the floor. “I never—” he says.
“’Buckley, I need to take a shower’,” Robin continues, disturbingly on-point when it comes to her impression, “’but Dustin’s hanging out with Steve later so he’s locked himself in the bathroom to primp and he won’t let me in’.”
Steve’s silent and sitting ramrod straight on the barstool next to Dustin, and Dustin doesn’t dare to even look at him.
“’Buckley,’” Robin faux groans, “’Dustin’s making me clean the kitchen because Steve might be coming over later, what the fuck?!’”
“Dustin?” Steve says, voice faint with either anger or shock or something Dustin can’t decipher, and he winces and glances over at Steve, who’s wide-eyed and a bit flushed, looking like he’s been hit with a metaphorical two-by-four over the back of the head.
“And you,” Robin continues as she, to Dustin’s surprise, turns to stab a finger in Steve’s direction. “’Oh Robin, he’s so smart, let me spend an hour talking about how smart he is’; ’Robin, come taste this, I made it for Dustin, no you can’t have any because it’s only for Dustin’; ’Robin, is this gift too obvious? I want to buy it for him but I don’t want to be too obvious’.”
“What the fuck,” Dustin whispers, because her Steve-voice isn’t too shabby either, and Steve opens and then closes his mouth before flushing an even deeper shade of pink.
“I don’t even care that you skipped the whole dating stage and went straight to marriage,” Robin says as she grabs her bag off the counter, “because honestly, we’ve probably wasted enough time already.” She pauses. “But don’t you dare think of eloping because I better fucking be the best man at the wedding.”
And then she slips out of the kitchen and into the tiny foyer of their apartment, because it’s Sunday morning and Dustin vaguely recalls that she works weekends, but he barely hears the door slam shut behind her because he’s too busy trying to come up with what to say to Steve.
“So, uh,” is what he eventually manages to sputter. “You—”
“Yeah,” Steve says, looking completely stunned, like he saw this coming just about as much as Dustin did.
“Yeah,” Dustin echoes. “And I—”
“Yeah,” Steve says again, but he seems to be recovering now – is starting to smile, and he’s beautiful and soft and Dustin’s struck with the impulse to kiss him, just like so many times before, but now he realizes that such a thing might not be as unwelcome as he previously thought.
He braces himself with a hand on the kitchen bar and leans closer, pretty clearly telegraphing his intent, and Steve’s eyes seem to light up; the next thing Dustin knows, Steve’s pressing his mouth against Dustin’s, frantic like they’ve waited far too long already, which Dustin figures isn’t that far from the truth.
Steve tastes like the bacon he just had, and Dustin grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him closer as Steve digs his hands into Dustin’s hair and holds him in place and parts his lips, groaning when Dustin follows suit. He licks into Dustin like he’s trying to check if he still has his tonsils even though he knows that Dustin fucking doesn’t, and Dustin brushes his tongue along Steve’s, swallowing both their sighs.
And then his elbow slips on the bar and his fork goes careening to the floor with an ungodly clatter, and Steve jerks back in surprise.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, and Dustin’s not sure if it’s because of the fork or because of the fucking amazing kiss they just shared.
“Marry me,” he blurts out, and Steve blinks.
“Okay,” he says, easy as pie, and then he’s getting off the bar stool and stepping in between the spread of Dustin’s legs and kissing him again, and Dustin touches his waist, his hips, the small of his back, and groans at how good he feels.
Steve arches into the touch like a cat and tilts his head back as Dustin pulls away to trail kisses down his neck, the impulse to taste him everywhere an impossible one to resist.
“We’re not telling anyone about how this happened, right?” Steve says, fingers curling into Dustin’s hair.
Dustin, who’s tugging Steve’s shirt to the side so that he can get to his collarbone, pauses.
“Not until the wedding reception,” he agrees.