hitlikehammers' Hobbit-Birthday Fic-Giving Fest: POSTING MONTH

You may recall my HOBBIT-STYLE BIRTHDAY MONTH PROMPT FEST, wherein you gave me prompts to fill for my birthday month?

Well: I wrote during my birthday month. And now the month is over.

So: it's time to start collecting your gifts!

IF my scheduled posts work, they'll start going up on 1 March; I'm traveling that day for a couple days so if the scheduling fails then they'll start when I get back, but if you do not want to see the ficlets, mute the tag #hitlikehammers' hobbit-birthday prompt fest

For the rest of you? Your giftficlets are on their way ✨💜 ✨

@a-little-unsteddie @blubblesandink @cranberrymoons @dreamwatch @findafight @hbyrde36 @kallisto-k @klausinamarink @markcat @medusapelagia @miraculousmultifan @pearynice @penny00dreadful @sidekick-hero @slashify @soaringornithopter @starryeyedjanai @stuftzombie @thefreakandthehair @vegasol @vthx

but there (can only be) ONE BED

inspo post with thanks to @lunaraindrop

“Fuck.”

Steve lets himself spare half-a-second from watching the road, and only half-a-second; the ice is getting bad, and it’s not even dark yet, which is enough reason for the low-breathy-sexy-wait-no-not-sexy-that’s-not-it—

It’s enough of a reason for Eddie to both say and draw out the commentary of fuck, is the point. But it’s not like they only just got on the highway, and only just realized the roads are absolute shit. Steve gets it’s already April; Steve gets it’s a ‘freak’ storm but this is the goddamn Midwest, it’s only ‘freak’ because people don’t like to remember winter pops up into May sometimes because it makes Easter sad or whatever. But there’s a guy on the news every morning giving them a 7-Day forecast, right? So someone had to kinda know.

Not Steve, or else, not enough to have planned for it to be like this but. He doesn’t make a paycheck from it, so.

Point being: if someone who does get paid for it knew? Where the fuck is INDOT, it’s not like they don’t take taxes out of Steve’s paycheck for the goddamn roads or anything.

“What?” Steve asks, deciding that no: Eddie wasn’t making note of the roads. Probably.

“We’re out of fucking cash.”

“What?” Steve feels a little broken-record-ish but, whatever. He’s trying not to spin out on I-70, fucking sue him.

“The gas station,” Steve can hear how Eddie chews his lip, somehow, alongside the scratch of bills being counted in his hands; “cash only, and we filled up because it looked like it was gonna be a whiteout soon and, in fairness,” Steve catches Eddie flapping said bills at the windshield, which is…yeah. It’s a lot of white.

“That was smart, but now,” and Steve glances over at the way Eddie fans out…too few bills. Too few ones.

“Fuck,” Steve huffs, and makes himself focus on the goddamn road.

“Yeah,” Eddie whistles low. So fucking helpful.

“We’re gonna need to pull over soon, man,” Steve sighs, because…even if he knew these roads, things would be getting fucking dicey pretty goddamn fast—and he doesn’t know these roads.

“Oh, good,” Eddie deadpans; “pull over in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of winter, with no money,” and fuck, if Steve wanted to kill them he’d look over to catch Eddie’s eyeroll but, lucky for him, it’s audible as hell and Steve can be offended by it and keep them alive for a little longer by watching the tire tracks in the snow for all three feet of visibility he has. “Wise choice, noble paladin.”

Steve chooses to let the nerd language slide, because he is growing as a person.

“You got a better idea?”

“We’re gonna fucking die, Steve,” Eddie’s drumming his fingers on the dash fast enough that Steve knows he’s genuinely worked up for it; “we survived the goddamn apocalypse and we’re gonna freeze on the side of the road—“

“We’re not going to freeze to death, dumbass,” Steve rolls his eyes, squints through the curtain of white-white-white falling less like pretty-powdered-sugar and increasingly with the threatening clink of ice; “I’m not gonna pull off until there’s a sign with a motel.”

Steve tells himself he reaches blind for Eddie’s hand to still it, to ease him down from the ledge he’s worked himself up toward over bad weather on the interstate, and that is legitimately the reason. He would tell anyone that reason.

The thing he’s telling himself, though, probably, is more along the lines of it being the only reason.

“They’re gonna be cash only outside the city, too,” Eddie bemoans, and great, just great, Steve’s probably lost him to the dramatics, now, and he squints harder through the growing blanket of white for a fucking sign, any sign for an exit, praying it’ll be an exit with a hotel, a motel, a spare bed in a fucking garage or a barn with a space heater, Steve doesn’t even fucking care—

“You don’t know that,” Steve tries to redirect, but it’s mostly moot, useless; fool’s hope, both to the point of stopping Eddie’s spiral and the likelihood of Eddie being anything but correct because yeah, even a spare bed—especially a spare bed—is probably going to be cash only if only for the size of the establishment this far from the city, not to mention on this short notice.

“We won’t be able to afford—“ and see? Fool’s hope. And Steve is the fool: duly fucking noted.

“We’re not out of cash, like, totally out. I heard you shuffling bills, there’s something there,” Steve clings to the very extremely not-at-all-desperate evidence of his own goddamn ears, tells himself the glance he allowed himself away from the highway maybe just missed a couple twenties hidden behind, y’know, which is valid and correct and worth lending weight to, yep. “How much do we have?”

“$19.”

Fuck.

“Count the fucking change, man.”

Okay, fine: so now it’s desperate.

Eddie’s pockets jingle more for the chains on them than for any substantial coinage to donate to the cause which: he makes a point of. A loud goddamn point of.

“Alright,” Steve bites out a groan; “alright, I’m gonna pull off at the first, like, Motel 6 or something, okay? We can just get their cheapest,” Steve sighs, wants to wake a hand vaguely but resists the urge because he’s kinda white knuckling to stay in what he thinks is his lane: “whatever. We’ll make it work.”

They will. They will make it work.

Because Steve Harrington did not survive five separate apocalypses, a plate to the head, Russian torture, alternate dimension bat bites, and taking down an evil psychic wizard who looked like a wrinkled ballsac two whole times, only to die on the way back from a drive to Indianapolis for comic books and a set of douchebags-and-dipsticks dice, okay?

So they’re gonna goddamn make it work. ______

Making it work turns out to be a fucking ten-step program or some shit. Steve wonders what he’s in recovery from. He can’t still be atoning for being an asshole in high school so, what is it he’s trying to make a clean break from here? Sanity? Normality? Any hope ever at finding an inkling of the most innocuous hint of good luck?

“Two beds,” the woman behind the check-in desk drones, at the last motel in the line of full-up motels on this drift-covered road off an exit Steve couldn’t even see a number for, just the vague outline of a bed that signaled hope, and the fact that she hadn’t turned them away at the door was enough to assumed that hope had had some merit, that they weren’t lost causes in the end; “that’ll be—“

“One bed.”

Because that’ll be nothing; they probably don’t have enough for a one bed anywhere but a place like this, which looks every inch like the last establishment in a line of better options for a reason. Two beds are simply beyond their budget.

“One?” the woman’s tone sharpens from her disinterested monotone, a brow raised as she pulls back a little, makes physical distance like the desk between them is insufficient, and Steve fucking knows what she’s thinking.

Fucking biggots in the middle of East Bumfuck, Indiana.

Ha. It’s funny people say that, and then think like they do there.

Bumfuck.

“One,” Steve nods with the exact assurance that made him fucking swim team captain, thank you very much. “I got pickpocketed,” he lies quick on his feet with the flash of a grin toward the woman behind the desk who, distasteful as she is, still does possess the keys to their salvation in the form of a hopefully-functioning heater and a warm shower for the night, so, needs must and whatever: “so, we’re a little strapped, didn’t plan to stop at all until,” he gestures out the window, up at the still-falling snow and down to the mounting accumulation, before he exaggerates a glance at Eddie to his left:

“You okay bunking with your favorite cousin?”

Eddie's still for less than a second before he picks up the ruse:

“Won’t be the first time,” he shrugs under the eagle-eyed glare of the reception lady: “you don’t still do the biting thing when you’re half asleep, do you?” And Steve’s an idiot, really, to think he’d leave it there—a weird enough tale that it would have to be true but no, no, Eddie’s the dungeon matron person and he has to make a story of it—

“Like, you know how everyone thought it’d stop once you were done teething but then it definitely didn’t, and you’d like, fondle people’s arm fat and suckle on their elbows, and then you got the teeth and it didn’t actually stop so you’d—“

“Oh my god,” and wow, okay, Steve shouldn’t have bothered getting them here in one piece, he’s gonna fucking murder Eddie himself.

“Lowest rate we have for the night is $22,” the woman eyes they carefully, but seems softened by either the story, or the genuine annoyance in Steve’s tone for Eddie’s blatant run at embarrassing him, for something not real, and which Eddie is smirking too wide about for something not real; “one double.”

“We will take it,” Eddie folds his hands under his chin and bows his head gratefully and the woman’s lips quirk like maybe she’s charmed, which: what the fuck.

“Hopefully the weather clears by checkout,” she counts the quarters Steve found in the backseats, from the kids; “which is noon.”

“Noted,” Steve nods diligently when she makes it to the full twenty-two; “hopefully the plows come through between now and then.”

“Fingers crossed,” she’s back to sounding like a teacher in Charlie Brown, but she hands over the keys with a less-than-hateful: “have a good stay, boys.”

They both thank her and maybe walk a little extra quick to the ass-end of the hall, where a door to the outside waits and they brave against the wind to shuffle to their room.

“Jesus fuck,” Eddie shivers as he shakes off the snow that had accumulated on his sleeves from just the short walk, the flakes in his hair already melting because thank fuck, the heater’s working and already on; “I thought she was going to stare a hole through me.”

“Right?” Steve huffs as he pulls his own coat off, hanging it near the radiator. “Like, what if we were just cousins, why is that weird?”

“People, man,” Eddie rolls his eyes; “one step outside the city and they just,” he makes his fingers mime an explosion, which works with the play of the light on his rings, and the sparkle of melted snow in his curls.

Steve takes a moment to process around the way his stomach dips for the motion of those hands, the glitter in that hair before he’s yanked back to reality with, honestly, a weird-ass chose of the voice that matches them:

“Is this, like, a honeymoon suite?”

It’s asked with more distaste than fear, and not the kind of distaste the desk-lady had, though kinda the opposite fear: the room’s hideous but in an over-the-top ostentatious way, and Steve knows Eddie’s gay, but knowing is one thing, even if they’ve fallen asleep next to one another dozens of times and the single bed’ll be tight but nothing unbearable, might even be nice for extra heat.

But if it’s a fucking honeymoon suite with your gay friend—

“Not tacky enough,” Steve squints around and ultimately declares, less because he’s sure—it might be, though the lack of obvious heart-shapes is either a point against the fact of it, or against the commitment to absolutely horrendous decor—but he says it with the certainty he does because he is certain about the fact that it doesn’t fucking matter either way. Wouldn’t change a thing.

Eddie’s quiet—which is probably always the most unsettling thing Eddie can ever be, really, because when when he’s sleeping he’s got a cute little snuffly not-quite-snore—but he is quiet, and he looks at Steve for a few long seconds, not even bothering to reevaluate the room around them because Steve had been right to bank on it not being able the room at all, and then he exhales longer than a calm breath would’ve needed, and Steve kinda hates he didn’t notice Eddie was holding his breath, hates more that he felt like he has to—but when he tilts his head and hums through pursed lips Steve uses his peripherals to watch Eddie’s chest, Eddie’s shoulder even back out to rising and falling in a gentle sort of rhythm before Eddie finally shrugs:

“Fair,” he agrees, flings himself on the bed, and that’s it.

And Steve’s the one, now, who breathes a sigh of relief.

“You wanna,” Steve eyes the shower curtain peeking out of the door in the corner, hooks a thumb over toward the beckoning of hot water on his still-slightly-frost-bitten skin.

“You first, you had the more stressful job,” Eddie’d already closed his eyes where he’s stretched on the mattress but he squints up and mimes hands on the steering wheel before shooting Steve to the bathroom and, well, shit.

“Not gonna fight you,” because if the room has a heater, and a more than decent one?

Steve’s feeling pretty good odds on the hot water, despite his ten-step-no-luck-program.

Because like, hey: they did get the room.

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson @estrellami-1 @bookworm0690 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @nerdyglassescheeseychick @swimmingbirdrunningrock @goodolefashionedloverboi @sanctumdemunson

divider credits here & here

title inspo here

returning to the scene of the sexing

Because Steve is right there to play along with Eddie's plans to prove the haters wrong no matter how many years later indulge Eddie in a 'for old times' sake' blowjob be Eddie's class reunion plus-one (but make it forever), right?

✨CW: explicit content / NSFW✨

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

<<< five: climb 👑

👑 🎶 six: déjà vu 💦 💍

Steve thinks it’s maybe unexpected, save that Eddie’s still the showman of the two of them. Steve had no reason to go back when his invitation came: Hawkins stopped meaning ‘home’ when the last of his family left—he thinks his parents still own the house there, but once Erica graduated, Wayne was the last hold out and only for practicalities; Steve and Eddie went back to see him until he retired on his own terms—they owe me a goddamn pension and I’m making sure I get every cent of it—and then he moved south, not back to his roots so much as southern Illinois, since Eddie and Steve‘s first port of call upon getting the fuck outta dodge was Chicago, and it was a drive, sure, but an easy enough one while keeping Wayne happy, and by then the pair had exhausted odd jobs in and around their hometown, they’d saved enough to have wiggle room, and Eddie’d put a demo together that he was proud enough of, and confident enough in, to let Steve help him plot out his plan of attack for every industry hookup the city could deliver.

And it takes time, but they’ve kinda had to learn patience for far more fraught reasons in their life; Eddie catches the attention of bands in need of a guitar—the Corroded Coffin boys love their music, but they follow other dreams when they graduate and Eddie doesn’t fault them for it—but they don’t need his lyrics, and that’s something he prides himself on, and he’d vowed to try and follow his dream the right way, and he’d give it two years, and then it wasn’t meant to be.

He gets signed for a solo album that makes enough waves to get him an award nomination; he doesn’t take it home because life’s not a movie, but it can be a fairytale, because Eddie tells Steve straight out, after he’s gone from fucking him hard in celebration to rocking into him slow and deep and murmuring his pride in Eddie, in all that Eddie is—Eddie tells him in a whisper, with that glazed-teary look he gets from coming too many times too fast, and a wobbly grin, that he doesn’t think there’s a statue in the whole goddamn world that could ever hold a candle to the feeling he’s coming down from, the feeling of being tangled in Steve’s limbs, the feeling of Steve’s heartbeat under palm as he rides him, the way Steve wraps his own hands around Eddie’s chest and holds him so so close as their chests still heave and Eddie’s pulse jumps into Steve’s touch while they settle: no fucking award could match a sliver of this. And he means it, too; which means the world.

When Eddie decides one album was enough—he has more in him though, always more,he wants to share but he misses a band, misses the brothers-in-arms feeling—it shifts things in unpredictable ways. Eddie’s lyrics catch the eye of the right person and he gets tapped to write for a soundtrack, actually gets his Grammy for the nominated song and confirms that no—after another celebratory round of fucking and pressing so much pride and love by way of lips and hands and the rhythm they strike between them—but no: the honor of a hunk of metal with his name engraved doesn’t match the honor of having this with Steve. Every day. Having this be his life.

Their life.

Steve’s eyes are the furthest thing from dry as he kisses Eddie relentlessly, nothing short of reverent with it, with him: and it kinda just falls into place from there, just different places than either of them expected.

Because where Eddie learns mixing and production on the soundtrack work out of sheer fascination, and starts making both his paycheck and his name as a songwriter and producer, sometimes a special featured guest on a Top 100 track? Steve catches attention much like Eddie did, wholly by chance for something he was doing anyway: wrangling his boyfriend. It wasn’t hard to see the way Eddie could go from tearing his hair out to calming down with a few expertly outfitted words from Steve in the studio when Steve dropped in, and the assumption was that Steve was something of a manager—an assumption neither of them pushed back on—and when one of the studio’s lackeys asked if Steve was interested in more clients, especially the ones who got a little high strung, a little manic with the rush and the pressure of it all in tandem, it hadtaken a second to sink in what was being asked and Steve maybe didn’t have a lick of real experience navigating the industry, but he could learn, he could learn if he tried and if he said yes it’d be harder to get rid of him after hooking him up if it went anywhere so he’d just replied, I was a babysitter in Hawkins, Indiana—because the truth had never come out but after the so-called earthquakes, the rumors had done the work of the truth well enough—and Steve had gotten himself a business card and a date to meet, to ‘sort out particulars’, and maybe Steve had never had much direction save for the fear of working for his father, but landing in the music business had definitely never been on the radar.

Robin cackles when he relays the news, flipping the card around through his fingers almost wonderingly because: this is his life, isn’t it. And it’s no longer got monsters and near-death experiences around every corner—thank fuck—but it’s still just as wild.

He’d like to blame, or thank, Eddie for that but in fairness: the phenomenon had predated his entrance into the mayhem. Though Eddie’s particular brand of joyful insanity is something Steve…can’t bring himself to imagine life without anymore, so.

Basically: suddenly those playbooks from his jock days and his collective apocalypse-averting planning skills, alongside the patience of being the best babysitter in two dimensions, finally came in hand for something less life-threatening, and paying the goddamn bills to boot.

So when the invite does come—and it’s not even a round year, like the 10th or 20th, they’re doing them on the fives as if anyone cares that often, Jesus—but when it comes? Eddie has no reason to go back there, save for every reason to shove the life he has now in everyone’s fucking face.

And Steve doesn’t follow where Eddie goes as a rule, no: he grabs that hand and walks by his side into whatever’s waiting. It’s worked wonders for them so far; shit, they’re still standing, and that counts for just about everything. Definitely puts stock in their approach: side by side, or they’re not going anywhere.

Which is how Steve finds himself dressed in designer clothes—because we can Stevie baby, and I want them to see it—walking into Hawkins High School when he never expected to see its halls again in his life.

But, when Eddie’d explained—not that he’d needed to, Steve was a sure bet—but when he’d said I want them to see they couldn’t break me, as much as they tried, and yes, I do want them to see me on your arm, to know you’re mine and I’m yours and not that I caught the biggest fish in the pond, the most gorgeous dreamboat this town had to offer, but that he picked me, and I picked him, and that’s we’ve built a life together that’s kinda fucking beautiful, and I want them to see that sometimes your plans fail, but sometimes they backfire spectacularly and the opposite happens and, and—

And Steve had kissed him breathless because: yeah. Backfired spectacularly, into something spectacular.

But that is how he ends up sitting at the same tables they dragged out for prom in Armani, sighing as another person who recognizes him first—you can tell by the eyes, the way they zero in with either something salacious or something malicious in the stare—and Steve turns to Eddie because it’s part agreement, part game, part survival tactics that Eddie goes to get them another drink when the enemy approaches, so he can swoop in at just the right time to do this shove-their-faces-in-it thing.

Eddie’s up, though not before squeezing Steve’s hand under the table, as a vaguely familiar blond with a sneer takes a seat across from Steve. He thinks they may have crossed paths on the basketball court, like maybe he’d be JV Steve’s last year.

He’s definitely here to be malicious. It’s cute.

roll for time-for-sex-in-the-beemer

Because Steve is right there to indulge Eddie in a backseat quickie indulge Eddie in a second pre-campaign-launch quickie help Eddie get his DM groove back, right?

✨CW: explicit content / NSFW✨

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

<<< four: play 🎶

👑 🐍 five: climb 💦 🎲

It actually was kinda weird, the first time Eddie thought about it; weird in the best possible way but nonetheless weird: how just grinding dicks—not even unzipped, just through the denim—blows every other sexual, or hell, even not-quite-sexual-mostly-just-sensual encounter Eddie’s ever had before March: blows it out of the water. Bar none; no contest.

Like, he’d always basically categorized sex as increasing in both pleasure and quality-of-end-product as the clothes came off. Not that he had a wealth of experience, especially not in places or circumstances where there was much opportunity for clothes to come off so much as shoved just out of the way and tugged back up before the chance of sticking a little to the inside of your own fly was entirely off the table but like, he read a lot. He had a stash of mags under his bed like any other guy. And he listened to gossip, of course he did; there had to be some upside to being one of two polar opposites in high school: the center of attention, or part of the furniture.

But like, there was a reason porn wasn’t done clothed.

So, or else he figures: what makes the reality of this—back of the Beemer, panting enough to steam the windows, Steve’s palm braces on Eddie’s chest and that’s like, kinda how they always end up, no matter the place or position, one hand on a chest not like Eddie’s previous partners, yanking him from the hips, but more like bracing, balancing more than just their weight, more than just bodies, this unspoken intimacy where when it’s Steve’s hand on Eddie’s chest he’s keep Eddie steady so he can fucking soar, and Steve just wants to feel it as it happens, Steve just lights up and comes alive in whole new ways like it’s a privilege and what the fuck, y’know, but it’s that and then second, except how could it ever be considered second, but it’s secondary how Steve uses that hand as leverage to grind them just right, the lengths of them caught deliberate, a planned sort of taunting in how they’re both wholly dressed, not even a top button popped and Jesus fuck is is everything—but Eddie figures that this, and so much else, is wholly believable as more and better and bigger and right beyond anything he’s ever known before this, and them, even without a stitch of clothing removed—it boils down to the singular fact of his boyfriend, the love of his fucking life, Steve goddamn Harrington, who rewrites every rule there could ever be.

“Not gonna be able to hold on if you keep going, babe,” Eddie keens, cants up so the perfectly-painful strain of his cock presses into where he knows the vein of Steve’s own dick throbs in those sinful goddamn jeans, even before Steve gasps for it, then groans so low that Eddie has to throw his head back against the window where Steve’s shoved both their coats for cushion; so deep that Eddie has to clench his teeth close to cracking and yes, fuck yes he whines a little for it; is so far past being embarrassed by it for both the arousal coursing through him and causing the goddamn problem in the first place, and the comfort he has in all of this, with this man pressed against him: there’s so very little he has left to be embarrassed about, and fuck: even less of a reason for it, because even when he’s at his most humiliating, he gets to feel loved.

And that’s just fucking wild, man.

Which is probably how Eddie processes what happens next in slow-motion with at least a five second delay: puts together based wholly on sensation when Steve only answers not by stopping, because they’re in the high school parking lot and yeah, sure, it’s the back lot, all the sports have away games, save for the basketball team who’s basically locked in the weight room for the next half-hour, it’s long enough after the last bell that everything’s cleared out save for clubs and Hellfire had delayed their session on account of the aforementioned basketball commitments because sometimes Eddie learns his goddamn lessons: but no. No: Steve doesn’t stop even though they don’t have fucking changes of clothes and Eddie’s gonna, he is gonna—

Nope: Steve slips down, wedges the base of his dick somehow into the seats beneath them and presses hard, holds himself back as he yanks Eddie’s zipper down and slides a warm hand practiced straight into Eddie’s boxers, coaxes him like a goddamn pro through the flap while it nearly sends Eddie over the edge just for his touch save Steve pinches the head the slightest bit to keep him there, just there at the edge until he doesn’t grab Eddie’s hips, more slips his hand right under the globes of Eddie’s ass and lifts Eddie’s dribbling cock in between Steve’s ready lips and let’s go of the pressure beneath the crown, lets his thumb drag that ridge so Eddie jerks for it before he starts jerking full-body, hit straight down Steve’s throat and holy goddamn shit.

Eddie’s only left uncovered from the middle of his dick, all Steve needs to suck him dry before they collect themselves to leave the car but Jesus H. fucking Christ: Steve’s kinda fucking everything lays Eddie wholly bare every time, and Eddie never expected that kind of nakedness to feel so sweet, but.

Y’know. Steve Harrington. Just out here rewriting all the rules.

time for that age old question: is love enough to beat back the apocalypse?

Because Steve's right there to protect everybody like the self-sacrificing asshole he is help Eddie make the music he's not strong enough for yet help them all put Vecna in the ground for good this time, right?(!??!)

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

<<< three: sleep 🌗

🎧 🎹 four: play 🎶 🛡️

To tell the whole truth of it: it comes too quickly—Vecna’s last stand. Of course it does.

But probably, if he’s being fair: they’d never have been really ready. Not for this, and so maybe it’s best that they’re not fully healed, not at full strength when it all comes to a head, not least because that means Vecna and his petal-toothed brigade aren’t at full strength either. And that choice, for their side, is sloppy; the Party stands on the right-side-up against the attack because they have to. Vecna makes his move because—or else, Eddie’s fairly sure—because the sadistic ballsac is losing his fucking mind.

Which is terrifying, sure, but fuck if it doesn’t help their cause.

It’s actually over pretty quick, even compared to Spring Break which, while it felt like a lifetime for how much it changed Eddie’s own, it’s only been those handful of days—but it’s kinda like the grand finale at a fireworks show: everything all at once then, done. In the everything’s though: he might not like it, but Eddie’s not so foolish as to believe he’s not still too tender, still too deep in healing the finer points of being gnawed alive to be anything but a burden in the thick of it. He refuses to be sidelined, though, and he thinks it says a lot for the long-term health of this glorious impossible thing he’s…building? Yeah, he, umm, he, Eddie Munson, is building a real goddamn thing where he doesn’t even just let someone into his heart and treasures them there, no, he’s building a thing where he gives his heart and gets on new and soft and trembling in kind and they both get to work at the treasuring of something more precious than just their own vulnerable insides, but yeah, yeah:

Eddie thinks it bodes really fucking well for the hopes he has that lean hard toward forever, already, in Eddie’s chest at least when Steve looks his way as they’re planning the teams and he locks eyes with Eddie and Eddie doesn’t even get his mouth open to breathe, to plead don’t cut me out, don’t send me to Wayne to be ‘safe’ or ‘out of harm’s way’ or whatever, don’t leave me so fucking far from you my heart hurts just because it’s beating in the middle space unmoored and shaking around all bruised up with it for not knowing and I know I can’t do what everyone else can but it’ll be bad enough not being next to you please don’t push me far enough that I won’t know the moment you’re safe, just—

Steve meets his eyes, and Eddie’s breath catches before his heart trips, and then Steve speaks up—and he doesn’t, not all that often when the nerdiest among them are shoring up the battle plans—but he watches Eddie without blinking when he pipes up:

“Eddie’s on medical and audio, with Erica and Jon.”

And maybe it’s his tone—this almost wholly novel thing in Steve that’s steely and unquestionable but no one pushes, they nod and get back to work, totally seamless and, and…yeah. That’s all Eddie wanted. Best he could hope for. Just outside the gate they go through. Close enough to hold a hand on the way down, and reach for purchase on the journey back.

Steve swallows hard, and nods at Eddie before he looks away and starts gearing up, twirls his fucking nailbat so it catches the sunlight even thought the metal’s mostly rusted, now and just…Eddie hadn’t needed to say a word. And Steve wanted to send him to safety, the way his throat had bobbed made it real clear there was something heavy he’s held back but: he’d said what he said. He’d laid the line in Eddie’s favor. Eddie wants to hold him, wants to pull him close and feel him breathe, and—

Yeah. Eddie kinda feels like the way it goes is a really good sign for their future as a couple. A couple. Them. Together.

With an always on the other side of all of this that could be kinda fucking magnificent, maybe. Given the chance.

Point being: Eddie gets himself set up with at least a full ambulance’s supplies for first aid, definitely not acquired legally, and a stereo set up he really wishes someone had been kind enough to outfit him with in not-the-apocalypse, holy shit is it gorgeous, but since the strength in his hands is still a work-in-progress, he’s gotta be ready to crank up the noise as a distraction from arm’s-length. It’s actually driving him fucking crazy—or, was; it was, pre-active return to the regularly scheduled world ending—the whole not being able to make music, to translate the noise in his head into sounds on the strings but even that, even that’s been tolerable, survivable because of Steve—who he loves, he gets to love Steve Harrington holy fuck—but Steve’s not just there to be everything and more than the air Eddie goddamn breathes, to become the music just by existing, nope, he one ups that shit: he asked Eddie if it’d be enough to learn the chords he needs. So Eddie could match the words with the notes right, so Steve could be a—

“—kinda piss-poor substitute but,” Steve had shrugged for it with a crooked grin; “but even a bad translator gets a message across, and you’d know when it’s wrong so we can figure out how to fix it and—“

And Eddie’d grabbed Steve’s chin and yanked his mouth close to fucking consume that man like a soul goddamn starved.

“I’d be a shit teacher,” Eddie had mouthed against Steve’s lips after they were sucked well-swollen; “if I still can’t lift the fucking neck for more than a minute,” but Steve had heard none of it, just shot right back:

“You don’t think we’ve beat steeper odds than that?”

And in the face of that raised brow, those red lips parted, that pulse in that neck still a little bit visible like a tease: the fuck was Eddie supposed to do but dive back in and love on the man who’d somehow agreed to be his, and to claim Eddie of all people in turn?

Which is a whole other reason why everything’s gonna be fine: Steve’s gonna make music with him. Steve’s gonna be Eddie’s muse and the vessel for what he inspires. It’s gonna be like Greek fucking poetry, except it’s gonna be them.

So Eddie’s all stocked up, s’got everyone’s floaty-bone-breaky songs queued up on blast for immediate deployment as necessary, and Steve’s the last to go through—he always is, in Eddie’s experience, waits for everyone to be safely accounted for before he spares a thought for himself and it might kill Eddie one day but not fucking today, because it’s gonna be fine—

“Eddie.”

It feels a little like history repeating itself, the way Steve huddles him in a little. Henderson’s through, with Lucas and Hopper and the weird stray Russian, but it’s not like history repeating, because Eddie’s got different words to see him off with; so fucking different.

“Last time I didn’t have,” and Steve reaches, cups Eddie’s cheek, drags down to press on his chest as his voice strains hard: “and it almost killed me,” and Steve usually pinches between his eyes to keep his feelings in check but instead of using his free hand to hold back the tears he reaches for Eddie’s and laces their fingers as his voice cracks and he chokes out:

“Please,” and it’s for everything. For all the almosts from last time; for all the possibilities rife this time. For all the hopes Eddie thinks they share beyond how this shakes out.

straw poll: How Many Times Can You Sleep In The Same Bed With A Guy Before It Starts To ✨Mean Something✨?

Because Steve's just there to be a good friend hold Eddie close through the night so Eddie knows what his breathing sounds like as he falls asleep help Eddie through the nightmares, right?(!??!)

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

<<< two: wash🚿

💤🪦 three: sleep 🌗 🛌

Eddie shoots up in his bed, less afraid of choking on his own heart for its pounding than he is for gnashing it apart with his teeth, it’s surged so high and he can’t breathe, he doesn’t know if he wants to because it’s dark and he can’t see and last thing he did see was, was—

“Ed,” and it’s murmured so close, and the bed dips quick as warmth envelops Eddie’s frame, as a hand grabs one wrist, both wrists and crushes them between two bodies to feel, feel—

“Eddie, breathe, breathe, shhh,” and oh: that’s what he’d seen, what he always sees now: the images he remembers, and the things he’s been told of his own near-demise, but it’s not his body; it’s never his body and more, and worse, they’re always too late and he’s being told to breathe but he can’t, he can’t breathe because they failed, he failed and Steve’s not breathing, he’ll never breathe again—

“Right here, Eds, I’m right here,” and one hand lets go of him and starts carefully wiping at Eddie’s face, drying his eyes so they can focus and recognize not just the touch and the scent and the heat but the sight of the body wrapped around him.

“I’m with you, you’re okay,” Steve breathes, he breathes and Eddie can feel it, he can feel it and it makes no sense but it’s clear and it’s deep and deliberate and, and—

“Breathe with me, come on, just breathe,” Steve coxes a little like soothing a wounded animal and…that’s apt, Eddie feels small and skittish and he needs the warmth and the dawning truth of Steve’s weight against his bones; “it’s okay, everyone’s okay,” and yes, yes, that’s important, that’s so important but it’s not enough, there’s still blood pumping like it wants to leap from his mouth as he gasps because he cannot fucking breathe until—

“I’m okay.”

Steve says it as just part of an ongoing litany of reassurance, hopes to calm Eddie into, y’know, the basic needs of human survival, heart and lungs remembering how to move right but—

Steve’s okay.

It’s like Eddie heart and lungs had an agenda; like maybe they didn’t want to move right if the dream—a dream, a dream, just a dream, Steve’s chest lifts against him, falls, lifts again, and again, and again, real—but maybe neither was really invested in survival, if it all hadn’t just been a dream.

“We’re okay, Eds,” and Eddie doesn’t mean to gasp, to half moan and half whimper in something wreathed in pure relief, doesn’t plan to burrow into Steve like he does as Steve presses closer, closer, so it’s only logical, only the reasonable thing when Steve’s lips move against Eddie’s skin at the hairline, at the temple when he speaks, he’s just that close, y’know—

“Swear,” Steve murmurs, and he crushes their hands a little closer between both their chests, and his face is still so close because of it—no other reason, it can’t be any other reason—that his lips drag when he breathes, when he fucking vows:

“I swear we’re okay.”

Eddie nods, just nods; Steve keeps him tucked under his chin, safe: he lifts with his breathing, his heartbeat’s right there, taunt but true, realand maybe Eddie nuzzles there a little, so fucking sue him.

It’s been like this, though. Lately. More than just lately; it’s been like this for a while. Steve had always been around for the nightmares, and he always came to ease Eddie through them but he ended up back on the couch if Wayne wasn’t there, or in the chair in the corner, or the sleeping bag they’d found and he’d set up on the floor before Eddie could protest—and he never wanted to push too hard because, because…

At least on the floor, Eddie could hear him breathe.

But then, then the nightmares stopped being highlight reels of reality; then they turned, and they’re focused on…variations on a theme.

A theme of losing one Steve Harrington.

recovering!Eddie Needs Help With The Whole Showering Thing💦

Good thing Steve's there to help give Eddie a goddamn stroke at the idea of being naked in front of him? help him, huh?

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

<<< one: drink 🧊

🧼 two: wash 🫧🚿

“You’ve basically got two choices, man.”

Eddie folds his lips over on themselves, mashes them together until it fucking hurts, might put the last of the stitches in the gouge out of the left side out of their misery early and pop them clean out of the skin for the force of his, his…

“Pout all you like, dude, they’re not changing.”

He is not. Fucking. Pouting.

He is a grown goddamn man.

“I reject your binary options, Steven,” Eddie volleys, because he’s not pouting, he is applying logic to an honestly-offensively illogical proposal like a mature adult; he is rightly pushing back against two unacceptable options when another has to exist, obviously, because the ones presented are impossible and so there must be a possible one he hasn’t found yet. One that’s just hiding from him. Sneaky.

“Reject all you want, man,” Steve scoffs, and leans back with arms crossed over his chest, stretching his sweater across the expanse and that right there is why there has to be a secret hidden third option waiting for him somewhere, Jesus H. fucking Christ: “they’re not going to change.”

Eddie blinks probably too long, too many times; is quiet for the whole span of moments before he decides deflection is really his only way forward, here.

“You’re very cruel sometimes,” he laments with the best sigh he can heave with the remaining stitches in him; “leaves me positively despairing, almost.”

And it was a good, solid, drawn-out sigh, that he heaved, just for the record. Because there are fewer stitches holding him together today than there were yesterday, and fewer yesterday than last week, and it’s progress, there is so much progress—

It’s just that progress is a very big reason for why he has this particular goddamn problem right now.

To set the stage: he’s been home for almost a week. The freedom is glorious. The new trailer the Feds set them up with is a little bigger, close enough layout though to still feel like home. His room is almost suspiciously similar given that 98% of his belongings were collateral damage or in government lockup. Certain questions Steve had asked him over the past weeks make a little more sense; the main orchestrator of the set up likewise clear on context. Eddie is warm with it every time he thinks about it. Which is whenever he’s in his room. And whenever he sees Steve.

Which is probably the main thing to add, for context: Eddie had been grateful as fuck for Steve while he was in the hospital, the man rarely leaving his side, usually just to check on Max who, while not yet awake, was making progress in healing and Eleven—who Eddie’s finally met now and kind of fucking adores—thinks she finally understands what’s blocking her ability to reach Red, meaning she can work on obliterating it: all good signs. And if Steve’s abounded presence did absolutely fuck all for Eddie’s old and apparently latent crush on the asshole jock-king from high school, flamed into kind of a fucking inferno over the course of spring break—if Steve’s steadfast presence and tireless attention to Eddie’s needs in the hospital had only managed to tame it into some kind of big and bright and undying eternal fucking flame—and that’d be a good song title, he needs to remember that—but if that was the payoff, as it were?

The burn of it—incredible and unbearable alike—was kind of almost secondary to the mixed emotions Eddie was having over leaving the hospital and losing this; losing Steve.

Except—and here’s the fucking kicker—he doesn’t. He doesn’t…lose Steve. Like, not at all.

Sure, maybe Steve goes home more, like, touches base at his own house, and he pops to the hospital where Eddie currently isn’t anymore to check on Max, but on the flipside Eddie is awake more and so he gets to soak up all the time Steve is here, in the trailer, next to Eddie, breathing air in the same space, breathing the same air as Eddie and, and, and—

“Look,” Steve’s sighing, slapping his thighs—such fucking distracting thighs—and leaning in pointedly on his palms; “Wayne’s pulling the night shift,” he nods at Eddie’s little TV tray with the crust of half a grilled cheese and a little cup of his medications; “you take your pills, you’ll sleep until after he’s turned in,” then Steve leans back, lifts a finger demonstratively: “so there’s another day.”

Eddie pouts, now, sees where this is going.

“Wayne might be pulling night shifts all week, in fact,” Steve adds, another finger pointed upward, counting in the air.

Eddie doesn’t nibble his cold crust petulantly or anything. Like, he does nibble. And it is cold.

But petulant; him?!

Never.

“The nurse isn’t due by until Thursday,”and Steve pauses before arching his brow even higher; “afternoon,” and he raises two fingers for that and Eddie’s got enough presence of mind to shoot back, even if it’s muffled, bread still in his mouth:

“You saying I smell?”

Steve’s eyeroll is such a fucking impressive feat it should be, like, an Olympic sport. But it’s probably too arousing for national television, so. Shit, that wouldn’t work.

“I am saying,” Steve draws out the word obnoxiously and why is that attractive, good fucking god: “you’re itching places you’re not even fucking stitched up,” he pokes at Eddie unapologetically in a safe place on his still-fairly-bandaged body and Eddie jumps harder than he should, but makes sure he grins for it, that he doesn’t play up the annoyance or the shock because one, Steve’s eyes go wide and incredulous and kinda fucking scared, like he knows he didn’t touch anything healing or tender, because Eddie’s thinks Steve knows his wounds mapped out so goddamn well he could draw them out blind and he didn’t touch anything bad actually, and that brings up two, which is: Eddie didn’t even have to exaggerate his reaction; he hasn’t been touched playfully in so long and he didn’t realize how much he missed it, how much his body missed it and he’s also kind of fucking thrilled it’s Steve, who broke the sad little standstill—Eddie makes sure to laugh a little and it’s not fucking hard once he starts because the way the tension melts off Steve in a huff is a shot of adrenaline, a hit of dopamine, a bubble of joy stretched to bursting and then fucking popping to spill warm and gooey in Eddie’s chest and he—

What the fuck is happening to him?

But then Steve’s poking him again and he twitches for it and just laughs more because fuck he missed that but also fuck he wants this to meansomething and it’s wild and insane and he kind of doesn’t know what to do with it at all when Steve leans in and whispers slyly:

“So I am guessing you’d feel better with a shower.”

It’s not a lie. It’s not a lie but when he says it, particularly paired up with how he says it?

How the fuck can blood run hot and cold all at once?

Because Eddie does want a fucking shower, so he doesn’t feel fucking gross. And Eddie knows he needs help: moving like that, reaching what needs reached, and fuck all, but avoiding all the bandages, for fuck’s sake—but.

But: there’s this line, newly discovered beyond theory for one Eddie Munson, that divides an idle crush from an active wanting; that separates your fantasy jerk-off material from something that sits and grows branches and roots, heavy and tight and real in your chest.

Basically: there’s a difference between imagining what sucking pretty boy asshole King Steve off in the locker rooms might be like and coming hard in the privacy of your own bed for the gorgeous absurd impossibility of it, and the genuine article, not a king but something worse, something more like, like a benevolent god for how he speaks, how he touches, tends to Eddie so careful but sure, so goddamn competent and beautiful, dear god, he’s so much more breathtaking up close, but it’s not even that, it’s not even that, or well, it’s that, but it’s so much more than high-school-distanced-Eddie could have guessed even in his quickest, most satisfying jack-sessions, because Steve as a human being?

Fucking…captivating.

Funny. Bitchy. Cares so goddamn much it makes his heart crack wide to see it, let alone be the focus of it but then he’s so strung tight, so anxious with frontline reflexes that shatter that cracked heart and let it bleed with the desperate fucking need to care for him in kind but somehow tenfold but then you’ll always fail because this level of compassion and just, just this pure kind of love, how can anyone match it, which is where Steve has to land in benevolent god territory, some ineffable chaotic good, and Eddie—

Well. Yeah.

Of course, Eddie’s quiet for the whole of running this through his head and Steve’s taken the entry to care some more and cross over to Eddie, move his tray and hold out his hands expectantly. Like Eddie’s got a choice in the clear intention Steve has to…haul him to his feet?

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”

And oh, wow, good thing Eddie's not actively dying anymore, because his heart goddamn stops for that, no getting around it for the way it bangs upon restarting; and if he'd still been half-dead regarding the rest of his body, that'd probably have done him in because Jesus flying fuck.

So it’s: haul him to his feet and drag him to the shower. Which he does, so careful but so precise, when Eddie’s mind blanks out and loses the window available to protest by way of stunned silence, which continues all the way to the bathroom where Steve lowers him to the closed toilet lid, again so careful, and goes to work.

Readying a shower. Eddie’s shower.

Which he needs help with. Lots of help.

While he’s, as indicated clearly: fucking bare ass naked.

And not even just in front of Steve, no, nope. Not that that wouldn’t be bad enough. But this?

This is him actively needing Steve’s help. Like…hands-on help.

Eddie thinks his heart’s about ready to crash into his chest wall for the reckless speed it’s taken to racing at because, just…

Holy fucking hell.

“Skipping gym class may have done half the work of failing your ass, but it’s not like you never showed,” Steve points out, still unbothered, so, so fucking unbothered when Eddie’s over here with palms sweaty enough to leave wet-marks on his sweats; “you came into the showers,” Steve barrels on as he moves the bottles of shampoo and the bar of soap out of the way for Eddie to maneuver in, with help, with Steve’s help;

“More than once,” Steve tacks on and Eddie has to blink, has to refocus on what they fuck was being said: he came into the showers. More than once.

Right.

“Wow, thanks for noticing,” Eddie quips, or tries to; it falls fucking flat, and for the way Steve stills, and then sighs with, like, the whole of him, it’s obvious he missed his mark.

“Eddie,” Steve starts, and pulls away from where he’d been learning to start the water, to warm it up right.

“Look,” Eddie breathes out shaky, because fucking hell; “it’s not like…that. It’s not the same.”

Steve stills, and doesn’t know what to expect of the way he freezes, back to Eddie but his muscles going tight beneath his shirt, and Eddie’s stomach drops preemptive-like, because, because—

“Oh,” Steve’s voice gets a little sharp around the edges; “so it’s okay when thirty dicks are swinging alongside yours, I get it.”

Except it really doesn’t sound like Steve fucking gets it; not least because Steve wouldn’t be fighting this, wouldn’t be putting up the front of pushing the point if he did get it. It he got it for real.

“It’s different when it’s you,” and honestly the words come out before Eddie can think them through; they’re not inaccurate but when he hears them out loud he winces because it sounds wrong no matter what he means and—

When he sees Steve’s face fall, eyes so wide, that flash of hurt, he, just: fuck.

He hurts too; he might even hurt harder.

Post S4!Eddie Needs a Little Help

Good thing Steve's such an excellent nurse boyfriend? friend, huh?

I Could Be Your Nurse (or something)

🧊 one: drink 🧊

The first thing he clocks, when he surfaces back to the land of the living: he can’t move his fucking arms.

At first, he thinks he’s locked up, restrained somehow: cuffed, but he can’t even know that, he can’t even check because he can barely fucking move at all, he—

“Eddie,” he hears his name through white noise that’s tunneling his vision, that’s caving in with every blow his pounding heartbeat deals to the walls as they close closer—there’s beeping like a time bomb in the background but it’s not just his name, it’s the voice that speaks it: it cuts through. It bolsters the walls and shelters him from collapse as his eyes dart wild, seeking out the sound.

“Breathe,” plush lips and earnest eyes coax him, and Eddie feels his own eyes widen because: Steve goddamn Harrington.

Here.

“You can breathe, okay,” Steve’s saying and his eyes are bigger now, there’s a pleading in his tone and Eddie sees it happen before any sensation, any feeling comes with it: Steve’s got Eddie’s hand in his, cups it to his chest but never breaks from holding Eddie’s gaze and the first thing Eddie thinks he feels as a touch is the warm pressure of the chest under their joined hands lifting almost-too-strong, almost-too-full.

The things Eddie feels that have nothing to do with his five fucking senses—he’ll work those out later.

“Come on, with me, with me, yeah?” and Steve’s breathing deep and even and forced for it, keeping a punishingly intentional sort of time and Eddie realizes oh, hey, right: he does need to breathe and so the next thing that he feels is the tail-end of pain, sneaking up under a fog that hints at any to come when whatever’s blanketing the feeling gets lifted, taken away, but then Eddie’s zeroing in on Steve’s face again, gasping a little and fuck, but it hurts: but Steve.

Steve’s smiling at him, in a way Eddie doesn’t know he’s ever seen before; definitely never felt before for the way it points a direct hit to his sternum, all fuzzy and sunrise-gold, and he doesn’t know if it helps him or hurts him in trying to breathe, to get the rhythm back to is but it sure as shit kicks at his heart and he thinks that punches his lungs hard enough to do…something, because Steve’s smile just grows, and the warm-gold-glow starts to spread through Eddie as something bigger and brighter and fuller than the pain as Steve exhales once out-of-sync and Eddie feels it, how Steve presses his hand tighter to his chest for it and laughs a little around one single word:

“Yeah,” and then it’s back to deep breaths, carefully measured, and Eddie wants Steve to talk again, but his head’s getting clearer, his lungs remembering how to work right, and he feels things under his hand now where he didn’t before: soft sweater. Rabbit-quick heartbeat.

“Steve,” Eddie chokes it, drags the word across gravel and bleeds it out and he’s disgusted in an instant, horrified by the sound coming out of himbut before he can let the terror and the hurt swallow him, he sees Steve, who somehow found a way to grin broader, shine brighter.

“Hey,” he laughs it out with so much goddamn relief, so much feeling, that Eddie can’t help but melt into it; Steve must feel something in him, or maybe he just knows, because he’s gathering Eddie’s hand, flattening it as a palm against his chest to keep breathing, keep breathing, but then he’s reaching and there’s a gentle whisper of touch against Eddie’s left cheek, and it stings, and he knows he should feel more but it’s…it’s goodeven as it aches and he leans, fuck, he doesn’t think twice before he leans.

“God, it’s good to hear your voice,” Steve says and it’s so warm and honest and it’s fucking laughable because Eddie sounds goddamn abysmal, and his throat tries to push the laughter, even if it’s poorly placed, even if nothing really feels fucking funny about anything but the effort’s like sandpaper on glass, wretched and violent, and Steve’s eyes widen when Eddie flaps at his neck, but he’s already reaching for the side of the bed, and—

“Water?” He asks, holding up a pitcher and a clear plastic cup and Eddie bites his tongue, tries to remember breathing without Steve’s guiding hand and he almost manages as he nods and then tries to reach when Steve places the pitcher, cup in his hand but Eddie’s hand…

He can’t lift it right. His vision’s either totally fucked, or his hand is tremoring hard enough to make him dizzy. He can’t feel anything, again. He—

“Eddie?” Steve’s voice is careful, gentle, but it’s firm: like it knows it’ll find steel to press against when Eddie meets his gaze and makes himself listen: he wants the glass. He can’t…he can’t reach for it, let alone hold it, let alone get the water to his mouth, and not all over everywhere else for the shaking. He doesn’t know if he’d feel the width and weight of the cup, or the wetness of the spill: he’s a mess, he’s broken, he’s totally fucked, what even if this, what is he, is this what it means to have survived, what is wrong with him—

“Look at me.”

Steve’s got that tender-pressed iron in his tone, the command less grating where it would make Eddie seethe—still does, the slightest bit but so far beneath everything else; beneath a sense of being cared for, being held close and then Steve’s hand is reaching for Eddie’s face again, brushing along his cheek and oh.

Oh, tears. He, he was—

“We almost lost you, Eds,” and it’s Steve that sounds choked for it, his voice wet and weeping with it and eyes gleaming just a little too bright and Eddie’s pulse trips to see it: proof that he means something. Proof that the wild things Eddie’d let himself imagine in the past days, in what he was so fucking sure were his last moments at all: they might still be wild, but they might also be things he’ll get to touch just an edge of, a gentle mercy of the corner of the things he spun up in his head.

“We almost lost you,” Steve says it again, and it’s sounds just as gutted, fucking…heartbroken, and for what, for Eddie? He, it’s—

When It Turns Out You're In Love With the Sea but also THE MAN YOU LOVE IS LITERALLY THE SEA (Steddie Pirate AU)—COMPLETE

(or: remember when I mentioned MYTHOLOGICAL THEMES in the tags?)

🌊Under the Water (Our Hearts Will Dream Again)🌊

Chapter Eight: No Idle Exaggeration

✨NOW COMPLETE✨:

START AT CHAPTER ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE // SIX // SEVEN

also on ao3

Eddie’s body fails him wholly, in that moment, bones trembling and breath catching and knees wholly giving out but in that moment, his crumbling frame is not the only phenomenon to take place.

Because when he pitches forward, those cool-firm-familiar-beloved-too-strong hands are already catching him, already pulling him close to a similarly familiar and beloved chest that’s rising and falling against Eddie’s cheek with real breath, that’s beating fast and full and almost frenzied but there’s a restraint in it, not of feeling but of rhythm: like the, like it’s the—

Like the whole goddamn Ocean is held in the chambers that draw in, and beat out, again and again and again; like the world entire, above and below the water’s pulsing reassurance, intent and devoted to the fixed point that is Eddie’s needy ear pressed against the sound.

It helps. It does help. He can breathe, a little; he can’t stop sobbing but he doesn’t think that’s really in the cards any time soon no matter the strength of the heart under him, the undeniable proof of life-life-life—it’s not foolproof. It cannot stitch every tear in him left festering these long weeks alone but; but.

But gods, does it help.

“-eloved, sweet angel, breathe with me, gentle and sure, listen, just listen,” and Eddie is, now; he doesn’t know what time must have passed but his weight’s leaned wholly in Steve’s arms, translucent only on the surface now, it seems, to the point of iridescence in the moonlight with a certain ebb and give to the shimmer—like the Ocean dances with the moon—and it’s a transfixing sight, maybe moreso with the wavering focus through his own ceaseless tears as he shakes in Steve’s—Steve’s—hold as Steve’s chest lifts him with the strength of the tides as much as the soft cradle of the surf, a lingering hold that does not dare halt in the middle, between inhales and exhales lest there creep any doubt in the break—for Eddie’s sake.

Wholly for Eddie.

“Hold onto me, darling,” and Eddie hadn’t noticed Steve’s litany of gentle endearments hadn’t paused any more than his breath or the heavy, unassailable knock of his heart to Eddie’s cheekbone; Eddie doesn’t notice the words having never stopped until they shift, and even then it takes a moment, a few cycles of breath before he processes them, murmurs at the same pitch, in the same lull of life through lungs and blood through veins.

Eddie grips tighter to Steve’s shoulders, hopes that’s sufficient and Steve only reaches, breathes and hums and never once shifts Eddie’s head from its place above his heartbeat as he bends, as he scoops Eddie’s from his boneless knees into what he thinks may be a bridal carry but that will shift him too far, that will move the beat away and if he loses his breath again, he whines at the threat, the terror rising in him—it wasn’t real, it was only a dream, the truth a nightmare he’s barely survived this far and won’t much longer, can’t after this; not after this—but he had nothing to fear, not further loss to weather because Steve…moves, bends, flows effortless as he cradles Eddie’s head to the center of his chest, safe against the drum of the undertow not seeking to wash him away but envelope him with its force and carry him always; then reaches with a strength so far beyond a man, yet seemingly as effortless as him curls Eddie’s legs around his middle, keeps hold at his thigh in case he can’t brace himself and he’s not sure he can, in truth: he needs Steve.

He needs Steve’s strength as a practicality; he needs Steve’s hold as further proof.

But it’s like that, with his unwashed hair split and wild burrows tight to Steve’s tidal heartbeat—it, too, stronger than any human chest should hold, more might in the sound than Eddie thinks the heart itself was build to stand and yet it echoes like a lullaby, like a promise wrapped tight and true inside the kind of sound a child has to imagine is the closest to be found alongside the voice of a god; it’s twined around his frame and held up in his arms, held close to his heartbeat and kissed at the temple for every second step, surrounded as best he can be by proofproofproof of the unimaginable, that Eddie is carried to the chambers that has been theirs, together.

Eddie is being carried there by Steve, so that they might be there…together.

Eddie’s not sure he ever wholly stopped his tears from falling, but gods: the sobbing reclaims him as the weight of it hits him anew: this space, this haven, this home, and all of the loss and the heartbreak—

Theirs. Together: theirs, and as Steve settles them soft upon the bed and wraps his legs around Eddie all the close and tighter, his hold all the more firm and unflagging, Eddie thinks also: theirs, and maybe mending where it had shattered so completely. Beyond all possibilities, even the smallest shards and crushed fragments ground to dust unrecognizable are somehow impossibly shifting toward whole again—because here, here, is Steve.

Eddie’s chest clenches but…not in a wholly bad way, or perhaps no degree of bad about it at all as Steve settles them, curls around Eddie like a cocoon, fostering the rebirth of a self that Eddie had thought lost, the version of him whole and in love and held close to a warmth that was close enough to love to be more than all he needed in this life; Eddie’s eyes flicker idle toward the door and he burrows into Steve all the closer, suddenly afraid Steve will try to wedge the entrance for privacy, but Eddie won’t be able to bear it, he won’t be able to watch him with both eyes and not still think his own sight a liar, a figment of a broken mind, he—

“They won’t bother—“ Eddie blurts out quick, his muscles tensing but his pulse still strangely so steady even if it seems to transmute speed into strength, still it should be racing, terrified; he isn’t wholly sure why he volunteers the proof that his crewmates had written him off as a lost cause as his main argument for keeping Steve precisely where he lies, here, but.

Eddie’s never claimed to be of the most sound mind on any day of his entire life; and damn it all if the days that have preceded this moment could even rightly be counted as life, for the pain in them. For the shell of him that barely moved and scarcely lived.

He forgoes making sense of anything, save the sound of Steve’s breath, the beat of his pulse, the coolness of his touch that isn’t cold but refreshing, something protective in it that lends it the most untenable contradiction of warmth that tremors through Eddie’s limbs, sparks feeling in them again.

“They know not to bother you,” Steve acknowledges Eddie’s nonsense divulgence with something close to vehemence, certainly a cutting, steel-line of a thing as he gathers Eddie’s closer to him, wraps him tighter where the patch of curls are slowly softening from sea grass to fluffy hair on his chest.

“Your care was not theirs to interfere with, nor theirs to commit to,” Steve hisses so low it’s nearly a snarl when he adds: “to be trusted with.”

Eddie almost shivers for the razor edge in the words but: he wouldn’t. Not ever. In fact he feels just about the exact opposite, as if safety and protection, reverence and a vow deeper than words is flooding his mind, the breath he’s slowly regaining as if the promise beyond speaking is why he’s able to gasp that very breath back at all.

“Not that you made it simple for me,” Steve cocks back at the neck to shoot a narrowed gaze downward, one that Eddie’d believed he’d never see again save in the tortuous dreams that would plague him until rest claimed him, granted him clemency; “I have never restored my human form so quickly in all of time, do you understand that?” Steve fusses with the linens in tucking Eddie into the bedding, close and tight; “Every source of nourishment I could find across the sprawl of my entire being, the whole of the body of my First Form taking in the strength to heal, so as to pass it to you as you chose to neglect your wellbeing, to let yourself languish, as if you are not infinitely precious,” Steve’s voice halts when Eddie whimpers, when Eddie feels his eyes prickle, then the tears fall anew when the words sink in, when the truth of the voice being hereseems undeniable, despite…everything, despite the sense-memory of Steve’s blood-tacky chest stilling under Eddie’s hands—

But then there are hands moving Eddie, and Eddie whines again to be ripped from the comfort, the reassurance, the certainty in the motion, the breath and beat of Steve’s chest but hands cradle his face ever so gently, but intent still, almost urgent as eyes that have darkened closer to amber again pierce him to the soul:

“Did you think it was all exaggeration?” Steve asks, somehow both incredulous and heartbroken and it leaves Eddie feeling just the same, lifting his hands to cover Steve’s and take comfort in how they’re laced together immediately, no hesitation: there’s no hint of incredulity in that.

“I told you the Ocean was a part of you always,” Steve tells him with a vehemence that tips the boat, like the Ocean responds to a call upon its presence; “I asked you to feel it for yourself, the way I made the whole of me move and give in time with your pulse that night,” and Steve’s gaze may ask if Eddie recalls clearly enough but oh, Eddie remembers, of course Eddie remembers Steve’s body on his body, taken needy and as a gift received and given into his body, carnal yes but so far beyond, like it replaced the blood in his veins with the salt of the Sea.

“And then so much more,” Steve confirms it, tracing his lips without every looking away, not once and Eddie feels the strangest sensation where his heart should be racing for the gravity in it all: it’s almost like it shivers instead, shudders deep, like the breaking of the waves as Steve breathes against him:

“I gave you my Heart,” he exhales like a holy thing: “to keep.”

After The Storm (Steddie Pirate AU)

(you guys totally made it through the storm fine, right? no issues, all good?)

🌊Under the Water (Our Hearts Will Dream Again)🌊

Chapter Seven: As Offering or Mercy

ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE // SIX // FINAL CHAPTER on 7 April 🌊

also on ao3

In the days that follow, only two things remain constant.

The first is perhaps most obvious, most inescapable: Eddie Munson is, in the aftermath, no more than the shell of a man, hollow and barren, though the prices of him meant to be hollow, to fill with air and blood and bring life to the whole of him—those hollow parts are leaden, now. The chambers of his heart struggle endless, the expanse of his lungs shriveled; calcified.

He wishes both would just…give up the ghost already. The rest of him’s managed it well enough.

The crew somehow pried him from Steve’s body the night of the attack; Eddie doesn’t remember. The next thing he does recall is stumbling onto the deck again to see the last of the bloodstains being scrubbed away, no bodies in sight and panicking, where was Steve, where had he gone—

A burial at sea, of course. But Eddie…Eddie had come undone.

He’d screamed and lashed and…and he doesn’t recall what all he’d said or done but he knows they don’t bother thinking, his crewmates. They leave him to his hollowness within the quarters that were Steve’s. That were theirs, together. They either respect his space, or expect him to rot.

Either is…sufficient.

The second constant, though, are the questions. Because he is silent, winnowed to only bones he can’t comprehend as still possessing the capacity to stand, to hold weight and move, until he does both and leans dependent at the edge of the shop in the dark and asks whatever listens, in the water or beyond:

“Was I,” he croaks; the first time in particular; they’re the first words he didn’t speak over Steve’s body, and then scream for the faceless loss of even that; “did I disrespect you?”

He addresses the Sea; thinks he’s doing the closest thing to offering prayer, or maybe the opposite of prayer—more that he thinks he’s speaking to the closest thing he’s ever felt to a deity; divinity as understood in Eddie’s frame of comprehension.

At least: how he understood it, before he knew Steve’s touch.

There is no reply.

“Was I,” he clears his throat the next time; it grates like glass, to no avail; “was I selfish?” And he shakes his head and feels faint for it, for so much more than it too—feels like he may fall, his body finally processing the message that he is finished, and he may simply tumble into the Waves: where he gave his heart first.

Where they threw his heart last.

“What did I do,” he asks but in truth he begs, and the barest spark in him left sees fit to flare, and almost try to demand; “was wanting him like,” he licks his lips, cracked and bloody, iron against the salt on the breeze that’s not comfort here, now, where always it was: it mocks him.

It tastes like Steve.

“Was wanting him an offense to the universe, to the gods themselves, if there are any?” He barely huffs the question, cannot laugh, no capacity for it left in him; “or whatever’s out there instead of them, if they’re a lie?”

He suspects they’re a lie. He hopes they are. He doesn’t want to believe in a cosmos as callous as this by design. With intent.

And of course there are no answers. It makes him fear a little, for the inherent heartlessness of the universe.

“Was loving him a sin, like,” he gasps the next time, In the very depths of the night; “can I sin if I don’t believe in what I’m sinning against but if I can and if I did,” he babbles, rough and breathless, manic as he pants;

“Was being with him, someone like me just, presuming I could,” he shakes his head, and then can’t seem to stop as he rails hoarse and shaky against the ship’s wake;

“Was simply holding him a desecration, did I defile him by default?” Eddie feels sick for the thought, for the seed of the idea planted in his head. “Was it an insult on, on some level deeper than,” and he looks out into the endless shift of waves and asks it, this thing that was once unthinkable:

“Deeper maybe even than You,” he addresses the Ocean, this thing that he’s loved, he asks one love to explain the loss of another:

“Was it a violation, somehow of something I couldn’t know, merely to think that I deserved to love him?”

Hi there! I do think you're intending to address this to the inimitable and ineffably talented @pearynice, as Turn and Face the Strange is their incredible masterpiece; I just get the absolute privilege of reading it over a little early now and again!

@pearynice, my lovely: your adoring (and so VERY well deserved) fans are calling!

The After the Sex and the Love and the Calm Storm (Steddie Pirate AU)

(I regret to inform you this is the end storm wherein bad things do in fact befall the boys)

🌊Under the Water (Our Hearts Will Dream Again)🌊

Chapter Six: Quite So Cruel

ONE // TWO // THREE // FOUR // FIVE // Chapter Six on 5 April 🌊

also on ao3

They are about as far from land as they ever venture—they’re risk-takers, and they’re foolish, the lot of them, you don’t become a pirate in the abundance of fucking self preservation and brains—but they’re not suicidal.

So: this is familiar, but further would be more than they venture toward.

That’s not to say others abide by the same limitations.

Steve stiffens in Eddie’s arms for no apparent reason; though the important observation is apparent, because Steve…does very little without reason.

He grabs Eddie’s hand, squeezes it and draws it to his lips for a kiss to the knuckles before untangling himself where they’d simply been resting, pressed body to body in comfort, where if Eddie concentrated very hard he could make Steve’s pulse out where he sprawled in Steve’s lap, pressed tight to his chest; but then Steve’s standing, letting go of Eddie’s hand with an apologetic grimace before he breathes low:

“Only a moment, angel,” and Eddie does melt easily at such ineffable endearments; “just need to test the currents.”

Which isn’t outside the norm, by any means: Eddie doesn’t comprehend how it’s done, or what it entails, or indeed the purpose it serves but Steve stands—sometimes with Eddie at his side—

Only…it’s not sometimes that Eddie’s stands at his side.

It’s most times. All times, Eddie would venture the wager blind.

Which sinks through the split of his heart right to his guts, when he lets the implications of this time, pursued alone, to sink in.

Eddie is barely on his feet to follow Steve unbidden, heart ricocheting, quaking from his ribcage and up his throat, when his arm is caught. All motion in his frame arrested for the hand on his sleeve, clenched around his limb: vise-tight and commanding, unforgiving, but desperate.

Eddie looks up, knows the touch is not its tenor simply for the shape of the hand, and Eddie needs to amend his assessment: his figure is frozen. His lungs are stuck.

His heart is shaking, for the wide frenzy in Steve’s eyes.

“They are almost upon us,” Steve pants, chest heaving, his hands on Eddie heavy, his hold so impossibly tight; “too swift and too much heft,” and his face drops, his breath catches and his eyes look bright almost stung to tears as he reaches a hand, cups Eddie’s face so soft, almost terrifying for how it juxtaposes to the death-grip he keeps on Eddie’s shirt, Eddie’s arm.

Eddie can near feel the break of his vessels to shape a bruise in the shape of Steve’s hand and he hates, he hates how his mind immediately whispers poison:

To keep for when he’s go—

No. No, Eddie doesn’t even know what’s happening, what’s the matter; he can’t afford to jump to conclusions—

His heart won’t withstand jumping to those conclusions—

The rest of the ship takes time to be roused, and if they did not trust in Steve’s uncanny intuitions they’d stay put but he’s not been wrong yet: a vessel is gaining on them, larger but somehow faster, pirates alike but no pirate crew is an ally to another, especially not in open waters, and Steve is certain they seek to do harm. They seek to plunder, certainly. But then: worse.

Eddie grabs for him, pulls him around a corner and asks how he knows it’s worse, where his fear is rooted and Steve stares at him, those sea-shift eyes flashing before he grabs Eddie’s face and draws him in, kisses him harder and needier than he’s ever done before and Eddie’s heart skips then surges for all the worst reasons when Steve pulls back, bows his head to Eddie’s brow and breathes:

“Blood,” and Eddie shivers for the closeness, for the word, for the promise of violence in the waves; “blood in the air, in the water,” and how Steve knows Eddie cannot guess, supposes it another talent learned where he hails from a world away, but Eddie never once thinks to question it. Because this is Steve, with whom he shares a bed. With whom he shares his heart.

If he’d had doubts, though, the way Steve looks at him—soft but unafraid, remorseful and yet so tender as he traces Eddie’s features, caresses his face; Eddie could never question this. No part of it. Not for an instant.

“I am sorry, my darling,” Steve breathes almost sorrowful, and the tides dip a little, the ship along their lead, as if Steve’s grief is deep enough to stir the fathoms below; “I’d have stopped them if I could.”