#STEVE DOES TOO BUT EDDIE GOES INTO THESE RANTS | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

carolperkinsexgirlfriend · 6 months ago

Text

can you see the stars in your dreams (and do they have a lot to say about me) - Part 18

Or: a secret Admirer AU

PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || PART 6 || PART 7 || PART 8 || PART 9 || PART 10 || PART 11 || PART 1 || PART 13 || PART 14 || PART 15 || PART 16 || PART 17

Steve doesn’t see much of Eddie for the next few weeks. Presumably there are still Dungeons and Dragons sessions and band practices, but Steve and Chrissy are no longer invited. Jeff flits back and forth between their two groups like a child of divorce, and Steve? He just misses Eddie.

Eddie, who even once Steve slinks back to his usual seat in the cafeteria for lunch, no longer gives his table top rants. He doesn’t say anything at all, not where Steve might overhear him. But he still has Chrissy, and Robin, and Jeff, and that’s enough.

In his free time, he writes aimless letters destined to never be read.

Steve’s moving on—getting over it is a process, or so he tells Chrissy. He never shows her the letters, can’t bear to see the pity on her face. He doesn’t talk about it with Robin again either–just hides his notebook away and gets on with his life.

Eddie’s just a boy, and it’s just a crush. Steve can move on, he always does. He tells Eddie as much in a letter he’ll never read.

Everything changes when he opens his locker and something drops out. It’s a bright yellow envelope, sloppy sunflowers drawn on the sides with black pen, and there, dead center, is his name written in a handwriting he’d recognize anywhere, is his name. Not Secret Admirer, not even Harrington, just Steve.

He shoves it into his backpack before Robin can close her own locker and notice.

It stays hidden there for the rest of the day as Steve’s heartbeat rabbits away in his chest, and his palms itch with sweat. He doesn’t open it that night either, too afraid of what he might find in it. It’s like that one story Robin had told him, where the guy goes crazy after burying someone under the floorboards or something? It’s calling to him, no matter how hard he plugs his ears.

Steve doesn’t get much sleep that night.

He still hasn’t opened it by school the next day. Might not ever have opened it if he hadn’t glanced toward Eddie during lunch and caught his eye. Eddie’s staring, gaze intense even with all the distance between them. But then, the weirdest thing happens—Eddie smiles just a little, and finger waves at him, like they’re friends.

Steve just stares, gobsmacked until Eddie’s entire face starts to turn a splotchy red and he looks down at his lunch table as if embarrassed.

“What was that?” Chrissy asks, looking behind her at whatever had caught Steve’s eye.

“I have to go,” Steve blurts, rushing out of the cafeteria before she can ask anymore questions.

His and Chrissy’s usual abandoned classroom has a teacher in it, so he ends up in his and Robin’s bathroom stall, this time alone. Still, he sits on the ground, leaving enough room for the ghost of Robin to have a seat, too.

He opens his backpack, zeroing in on the envelope instantly—as if he’d ever, for a second forgotten about it—and finally pulls it out.

He traces the sunflowers on the paper, memorizing the grooves Eddie’s pen had made before finally turning it over and sliding his fingers beneath the seal to tear it open.

The paper’s thicker than he’s used to getting from Eddie, and it’s that same, bright yellow that doesn’t fit Eddie’s aesthetic at all. But it fits Steve’s, and that’s the thought that finally gets him to bring the letter closer to his face and begin to read.

Steve,

I wanted to start this out by saying that I’m sorry—it’s a phrase I’m becoming alarmingly used to saying in recent weeks. To Jeff, to Gareth, and now to you. No matter how surprised I was, I had no right to say all that shit to you. And for that, I’m sorry, okay? Really, truly sorry.

As Chrissy and Jeff pointed out once you’d left, I was a dick, and there’s no excuse for that. And as my uncle told me when he was doing his disappointed parent shtick, I might have been projecting, just a tad.

Eddie Munson might be gay—who knew?

So, I’ll hope you accept my sincerest apologies for how I’ve handled this whole thing, Steve. I can’t imagine how it must have felt. Well, I can now, a bit. And it’s scary, right? But, I think it’s my turn to be brave. If I haven’t already ruined any chance I might have had, maybe we can go on a date?

I’ll pick you up this Friday at your house, say around seven? If you don’t answer the door, I’ll understand. That’ll be my answer.

But I really, really, really hope you do.

Yours, always, hopefully,

Eddie

Steve stares down at it, flummoxed. He reads it again, and again, and again. When the words on the page don’t change, he slips it delicately into the envelope, and goes to his next class, mind swirling away with the clouds.

“Can I drive you home?” Steve asks Jeff before he can climb into Chrissy’s car.

“Uh, sure?” Jeff replies just as Chrissy cuts in with a near-frantic, “are you okay?”

Steve smiles tightly at her and says, “I’ll call you tonight, okay? I just need to talk to Jeff.”

She bites her lip, looking even more worried than before, but all she says is, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Jeff and Chrissy trade an indecipherable look and then Jeff dutifully follows Steve to his car and climbs in. Before he starts the engine, he pulls the envelope out of his pocket and hands it to Jeff.

“What’s this?” Jeff asks.

“Read it,” Steve replies, starting the car and pulling out of the parking lot so he doesn’t have to see whatever expression crosses Jeff’s face as he reads.

It’s silent for a few minutes aside from The Clash filtering quietly tinnily from the radio, but then Jeff says, “so, he finally did it.”

Steve’s fingers clench on the steering wheel at the vague answer to the question he hasn’t yet asked. “Is it some sort of joke?” Steve grits out, still unable to look at Jeff’s face.

“No, man,” Jeff replies, doing that same shoulder clasp thing he’d done last time he’d been in Steve’s car while he was upset. “He’s just been working through some stuff.”

“So he’s…” he finally shifts his gaze toward Jeff, hoping to convey his question without having to say it aloud.

“Seems so,” Jeff replies.

And Steve shudders, all those same feelings he’d been working so hard to suppress bubbling back to the surface, the most dangerous of all being hope.

“Are you going to go?” Jeff asks, voice even enough not to show his opinion on the decision one way or another.

Steve swallows, throat dry. “I don’t know.”

They don’t talk for the rest of the drive, and when he calls Chrissy later that night, she asks the same thing.

“Are you going to go?” she asks breathlessly, like she’s hanging on his every word.

Steve sighs. “He said he might be gay, Chris. What if we go out and he’s wrong?”

Left unmentioned is the niggling voice in the back of his head still insisting that the whole thing is some sort of cruel prank to get back at him. He’d lied, and strung him along, and gotten him hurt. No matter how many times Eddie apologizes, Steve knows he’s not really the one that should be.

“What if he’s right?” she asks.

Steve knows, deep down in his bones, that he’s going to go, just at the chance that Chrissy’s right, that Eddie’s right, that Jeff’s right. Steve desperately wants to be wrong.

***

Steve doesn’t show any outward appearance of having received the letter. Eddie watches, obsessively trying to catch even the barest hint of what he thinks of the note– if, when he knocks on the Harrington’s front door, he’ll open it.

He keeps looking, and looking, and finally, blessedly, when Eddie looks, Steve’s looking back. Their eyes lock, and such a wave of relief courses through Eddie that he, like a fucking idiot, waves at him. Steve stares, mouth open, and does absolutely nothing back.

Eddie looks down at the table, whole body aflame with mortification, hair dangling messily into Doug’s mashed potatoes.

“Dude,” Doug says, shoving Eddie’s shoulder, forcing him away from his precious lunch.

“You good?” Jeff asks, leaning across the table to poke at Eddie’s bowed head like it’s potentially diseased roadkill he found on the side of the street.

“He hates me!” Eddie whines, turning his head just enough to glance towards Steve’s table, spitting a chunk of hair out of his mouth.

Steve’s not there at all anymore.

“Harrington?” Gareth questions around the bite of apple lodged in his throat. “Aren’t you trying to steal his girlfriend?”

“Of course no—not anymore!” Eddie stutters, turning his head the other direction to glare at Gareth instead.

For his part, Gareth just looks down at him, supremely unimpressed. “Uh huh,” he replies, keeping his voice quiet even when very obviously fed up. “Is this more secret bullshit you’re refusing to tell me?”

“It’s not my secret!” Eddie hisses, finally removing his head from the table so he can crouch on it instead, leaning over Gareth like a gargoyle. “And I promised!”

“Bet you told Wayne,” Gareth mutters.

“Oh my god, I told Wayne!” Eddie cries, dropping off the bench entirely to crawl under the table where he belongs. It’s not like there’s anyone in the room right now that he wants to impress—he already scared Harrington off.

“Dude,” is all Jeff says, peering under the table to look down at him judgmentally. “Chrissy is going to kill you.”

Eddie clutches his hair hard enough that it hurts. “It’s Wayne! He doesn’t count,” Eddie whines, “does he?”

Jeff snorts, kicking his foot out until the toe of his sneaker connects softly with Eddie’s kneecap. “He doesn’t count,” he starts, continuing before Eddie’s even slumped with relief, “to you.”

When Eddie slinks out from beneath the table, Steve’s spot is still empty, and Chrissy’s sitting there, glaring across the cafeteria at Eddie like she can just sense that he didn’t keep his vow of secrecy.

God, girls are scary.

He avoids looking in her direction the rest of lunch, picking at his own potatoes and mushy peas just for something to do.

Steve’s not going to open the door—he knows that. But, even still, he wakes up early on Friday morning to sneak into Mrs. Johnson’s yard to carefully cut a few of her sunflowers, ducking low enough that the bushes in front of her windows will obscure him.

When he’s done, he’s got five perfect sunflowers, tied together with the brown shoelace he’d stolen from a pair of Wayne’s old boots.

He leaves them in the kitchen, awkwardly propped into a bowl full of water since the Munson’s aren’t the kind of family to own a vase, or even a tall enough glass, apparently.

By the time Wayne gets home from the graveyard shift, Eddie’s elbow-deep in a trash bag in the back of his van. Wayne peers through the propped-open doors, eyebrows already raised as Eddie freezes, hand in the metaphorical cookie jar.

“What’re ya doing, boy?” Wayne asks.

Eddie stares, brain full of ants and TV static as he fumbles for an answer. What comes out of his mouth is “I asked Steve out!”

Wayne’s lips quirk up, and he’s smirking at Eddie as if to say, see? told ya, the smug bastard. But all he says is, “is that so?” drawling and easy like he’s not acting all-knowing and superior.

Eddie groans and takes his hand out of the garbage bag to run it through his hair and pull. “Or I left him a note?” he says, gut churning as Wayne’s face drops to his more customary frown. “Oh my god, he’s not going to show!”

“Then why’re you cleaning your van out?”

Eddie puffs up, glaring back at Wayne now. “Well I’m going to show up, Wayne!” he replies, voice shrill. “I’m a man of my word.”

Wayne snorts when Eddie calls himself a man, just like he always does, but his lips are quirked up again, looking almost proud as he replies, “good man,” with only a slightly mocking intonation. “Want some help?”

They get all the trash out in a matter of minutes. When it becomes clear that the vacuum cleaner can’t reach no matter how close they park the van, Wayne comes back out with the broom from the kitchen and they sweep as much debris as they can from inside before Eddie steals the comforter from his own bed and lays it across the back carpet, masking the weird stains.

Wayne finishes it off with a spritz of his own rarely-used cologne, covering up any remaining funky smells. Even so, Eddie elects to leave the windows rolled down to air it out for as long as possible.

When Wayne notices his commandeered shoelace around the sunflowers, he doesn’t say a thing.

Then, he’s forced to go to school, wiling away the hours until he’s standing in front of the Harrington’s front door, boots shined for the first time in his life, sunflowers clutched in shaking hands, van parked neatly behind him, hair brushed into submission. He’d even used his fancy conditioner, thoughts of that half-remembered first letter waxing poetic about his hair fueling his action.

All for a boy who won’t answer the door.

But, Eddie’s a man of his word, so he knocks.

And waits.

He waits such a long time that he jumps when the door opens, breath catching as he looks at Steve Harrington, face-to-face for the first time since that disastrous day in his living room. His mostly-healed eye aches with remembered pain, his ribs cold with the absence of Steve’s hands.

He’s missed looking at him.

Steve’s in light-wash jeans, hair perfectly coiffed, wearing a green sweater that makes the gold in his eyes pop, even in the dim light from the Harrington’s porch light. He looks good, put together enough for a first date, casual enough to just be his everyday clothes.

Eddie’s heartbeat flickers with something that feels alarmingly like hope.

“Uh, hey,” Eddie says, finally breaking the awkward silence.

He smiles, trying to be charming, but he’s never done this before, doesn’t know how to contort his face. He holds out the sunflowers, arm awkwardly extending, hoping desperately that his offering will be accepted.

Steve stares down at them, hand still clutching the door like he’s one second away from slamming it closed in Eddie’s face. Eddie holds his breath, heartbeat ratcheting up from the oxygen deprivation.

Steve reaches out, his fingers brushing Eddie’s as he tries to take the flowers from him. Eddie’s fingers stay clenched around the stems for a second too long, hand following the flowers trajectory toward Steve’s own chest until Eddie forces his hand open and lets it drop uncomfortably back to his side.

Steve stares down at them, leaning down to take a sniff. Eddie winces—they don’t smell like much, just dirt and nebulous green things. But Steve smiles, just a tiny, little thing that hits Eddie’s body like electroshock therapy.

“Thank you.” Steve says quietly, not looking away from the sunflowers as he asks, “come inside while I put them in some water?”

Steve swings the door open wider, and Eddie slides past him and into the Harrington’s house. As Steve wanders further inside, Eddie stands in the entrance—foyer?—feeling remarkably out of place. Even from here, he can see enough negative space to house twenty-odd people, a vaulted ceiling, and is that a chandelier? Eddie doesn’t step a toe off the mat beneath his feet, afraid his very presence will stain the perfect white interior.

He shouldn’t be here. Places like this aren’t for the Munson’s of the world. They’re for royalty, kings and queens, and all the upper crust that spits down on the rest of them. But when Steve comes back, sans sunflowers, he’s smiling just a little, tromping his own shoes over the white carpet like he doesn’t give a shit.

Maybe he doesn’t belong here either. Maybe it’s possible to carve out a space for him in the Munson’s shitty trailer, however small.

“Alright, Munson,” he says, still smiling just this side of awkward. “What’re we doing?”

As Eddie holds Steve Harrington’s own front door open for him to step through, Eddie’s mind’s buzzing with maybes.

***

Eddie’s van smells like mothballs and cologne, and the radio’s quietly playing the sort of generic pop music Steve usually mumbles along to on his way to school. But, Eddie’s fingers are twitching against the wheel, and he hasn’t said a word since they’d climbed in, so Steve sits on his own hands and keeps his mouth shut.

The longer the silence drags on, the more Steve regrets ever opening the door at all. Eddie pulls into Hawkins’ drive-in, and buys their tickets and two bags of popcorn. Steve’s hand clenches in his lap, Eddie’s words to Chrissy all that time ago running through his head—we can go to the drive-in and hold hands the whole time.

“I hope this is okay?” Eddie says, finally breaking the silence as he spins the dial to the correct channel to catch the movie. “I wasn’t sure if you liked horror, but this is all that’s playing this weekend, and I’ve been wanting to watch it so—”

“It’s fine,” Steve replies, and it is.

He’s never been much for horror beyond putting it on for dates so he has a built-in excuse to reach out. But, he’s not squeamish, and maybe those same thoughts are running through Eddie’s head: an excuse to reach out and touch.

But, as the title card flashes SLEEPAWAY CAMP in big, boxy font, all Eddie does is reach into his popcorn bag and stuff a handful into his mouth. Steve follows suit, the buttery kernels turning to ash on his tongue.

He watches with little enthusiasm as the stupid teenagers on screen fool around and get torn apart. Eddie makes little comments throughout the movie, but there’s nothing Steve can grasp onto.

What does one say to, “whoa, blood fountain,” or “god, that kid’s a douche,” or, “they should’ve killed him sooner.”

Steve still tries, humming and nodding along and verbalizing his own agreements. Eddie never responds, just keeps stuffing his mouth with popcorn until the bag’s empty. Steve stares down at his own mostly-full bag and wonders if the separate bags were just to make sure they didn’t accidentally brush hands.

He hands his own popcorn over, and Eddie grabs it twitchily, muttering a “thanks, dude,” without really looking at Steve at all.

Steve just wants to go home, crawl into his own bed, and forget this whole thing ever happened.

But he just sits there, silent as the movie plays on. He doesn’t understand the end, but he missed so much of the beginning and middle that he barely questions it.

When it’s over, Eddie turns the dial back to that same, nondescript station that doesn’t fit him at all, fingers clenching hard enough on the wheel that Steve can hear it creak under the strain. Steve turns away, to look out the window, throat clogged up with feelings he doesn’t want to think about.

The longer this date drags on, the more excruciatingly clear it becomes that whatever is driving Eddie to this, it’s not him returning Steve’s feelings. This isn’t how dates go when you’re excited about them, there’s nothing clicking into place–it doesn’t even seem like Eddie’s trying.

He feels small, and sad, and every minute that passes with Eddie saying absolutely nothing at all only makes Steve feel more like a charity case that Eddie’s taken pity on.

He never should have listened to Chrissy and Jeff’s encouragement. They’d both been so hopeful that he’d caved, but they’re not the ones stuck in the devastatingly uncomfortable moment. It’s just him and Eddie, living with the fact that Steve’s got a crush on a boy that can never like him back.

There’s no coming back from this, no matter how nice Eddie tries to be about it. Because he is nice, no matter how he’s been acting the past few weeks.

Steve’s the problem—always has been, always will be.

So, he stews in the silence, watching the same familiar buildings pass him by like it’s the last time he’ll ever see them. And maybe it will be, if Eddie decides to be not so nice. This was all so catastrophically, unbelievably stupid from that very first letter all the way to this moment, stuck in a van with a boy that won’t even look at him.

He’s so lost in thought that he doesn’t realize they’re going the wrong way until Eddie’s pulling into a familiar clearing in the quarry. His headlights illuminate the skid marks Steve’s car had made in the dirt when he’d screeched to a halt to stop Jason Carver from rearranging his face.

Eddie slides into park much more levelly and cuts the engine. The quiet is absolute, made worse by the darkness surrounding them. Steve can hear the crinkle of Eddie shifting on his seat, the sound of his throat as he gulps like he’s about to go off to war.

“I thought—” Eddie starts before petering off as his voice breaks. Steve listens to him take a few shuddering breaths before starting again. “I thought we could star gaze?”

Steve sighs, slumping back into his seat, so unbelievably tired. “Eddie—”

“Unless you don’t want to!” Eddie rushes out. “I just thought…”

Steve would kill to know what he’s thinking, but whatever it is, Eddie doesn’t pick up his trailing sentence, just leaves it hanging in the silence between them. Steve sighs again, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, desperate to keep an even keel.

“Look, Eddie” Steve starts, turning toward Eddie. He can see the silhouette of his frame hunched over in the driver’s seat, but his face is a black void for Steve to project upon. It makes him brave. “You don’t have to do this. You, like, tried it out, right? And it didn’t work out.”

“Steve—”

“It’s fine, Eddie,” Steve cuts in, exhausted. “You can just drop me off at home, and we can go our separate ways.”

Eddie makes a sound like a strangled cat, and then his silhouette lunges across the distance between their seats. Steve jerks back, head banging painfully into the window as Eddie’s mouth mashes against his, more teeth than lips.

PART 19

Shoutout, once again, to my beta reader and friend @queenie-ofthe-void for this one!!! I struggled for weeks on the date, and then they said, "what if you just make it as awkward as possible," and then I wrote this entire date in a day. Truly a muse for me <3<3<3

#koko's steddie secret admirer au #steddie #my fic

405 notes · View notes

estrellami-1 · 2 months ago

Text

March Mating Madness

Day 4: Bitching/Studding

Pretty Damn Good

Ao3 Link

Nearly called this fic “The Bitchification of Steve Harrington” because I think I’m hilarious.

Eddie never thought his big mouth would get him into situations like this.

This being, of course, Steve Harrington asking Eddie to-

No. There’s no way.

“Please?”

Eddie’s ears ring. His vision goes wobbly. “Uh,” he says dumbly. “I, uh. Think you should come in?”

Steve does, and now Steve’s standing in Eddie’s trailer. What the fuck.

“Okay,” he says, trying to pretend like this isn’t blowing his brain. “Um. My room, come on, this way.” He waves Steve further in, then stops so suddenly Steve runs into him. “Shit, sorry, just- water? Can I get- do you-”

“I’m fine,” Steve says. His voice is small, unsure, and when Eddie looks at him, his shoulders are drawn up and tense. Eddie scents the air, but Steve must be wearing blockers because he only smells his own manic confusion and Wayne’s comforting lemon scent, lingering from a few hours ago when he left for work.

“Okay,” Eddie says uncertainly, and continues on into his room, where he flops on the bed and pats an open space next to him. “Now, I’m gonna need you to tell me everything again, because I’m pretty sure I just hallucinated my biggest fantasy.”

The corner of Steve’s lips quirks up in a smile. “Your biggest fantasy?”

“Have you seen you?” Eddie rebuts. “Yeah, man.”

Steve snickers. “Well you didn’t hallucinate. I want you to bitch me.”

“Can you tell me why?”

Steve doesn’t meet his eyes. Messes with a loose threat on the edge of Eddie’s sheet. “I originally presented as an omega,” he admits in a whisper. “I don’t remember much from my presentation heat. Just… pain. I was able to piece together the pieces later. My parents got home during my heat and… my dad is very, uh. Particular about his image. And as his son, I’m a part of that image.” He swallows, works his jaw. “They took me to a clinic. Stopped my heat, turned it into a rut somehow.” He swallows again. His eyes are distant. “It burned like fire in my veins. Just.. hurt.”

Eddie blows out a breath. “Okay, so your parents are pieces of shit, got it.”

Steve sighs. “Yeah. They finally fucked off for good a few months ago. I’ve done the research, I’ve gotten everything I need. I just need someone to do the actual… bitching part of it.”

“Why me?”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe because half your rants are about forced conformity? Maybe because who the fuck else am I supposed to ask in Hawkins?” He shrugs miserably. “I have… one Alpha friend. And… I could ask her, and she’d probably do it, just because… because we’re us, y’know? But that’s exactly why I can’t ask her.”

“Because she’d put your comfort above her own discomfort.”

“Exactly.” He winds the thread around his finger. Unwinds it, and winds it the other way. “You don’t have to.”

Eddie chuckles. “I know. You’ve done the research, you said?”

“Mhm. I have a muzzle. I want this, and hopefully my body does too, so I shouldn’t- but if you want, I’ll wear it. I’ve got a- there’s a cream, that’s supposed to make me… more sensitive? I don’t know, uh. How much you know about this.”

“Not much, to be honest. I mostly deal with the… medical side of things.” At Steve’s confused blink, he elaborates. “Suppressants, dude.”

“Oh. Right. Um, okay. So… right now, with an Alphan body, I have a dick. And no vagina.”

“Right. I did pass biology.”

Steve’s cheeks burn. “Right. The cream goes, uh… where my vagina would be. Will be, hopefully. And then, uh. You, if you’ll help me, basically have to, uh… come. On that spot.”

“Ah,” Eddie says, brain buzzing again. “Okay. Easy enough. Explain the muzzle to me?”

“I want to be an omega, but that means violating the Alpha part of me. I could… become reactive.”

“Ah.”

“There’s also, uh.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “A cock cage? For me?”

“You’re asking me or telling me?”

“No, ‘m- I’m telling. The studding, uh… made me bigger? And the bitching is gonna make me smaller. And, y’know, omegas don’t have knots, so… if I can’t pop one…”

“Right, makes sense.”

“And I can pay you, of course.”

Eddie chuckles. “Why don’t we burn that bridge when we get to it. ‘S not like I wouldn’t be jerking off anyway. At least now it’s going somewhere useful, y’know?”

“Um,” Steve says, “sure?”

“Anything else I’ll need to do?”

Steve bites his lip. “This is also where the muzzle could come in, I guess. Basically you just… need to treat me like an omega you’re fucking. Cuddle me, scent me, things like that.”

“Ah. And while you’re more Alphan, you may react.”

“Exactly.”

“And once you’re more omegan? Anything specific I need to do or have?”

His cheeks burn again. “Um. I’m going to want to do more… omegan things. Like nesting. It’s not vital but it can help it take better. And it can prevent a drop.”

“Okay, so we’re doing it.” At Steve’s unsure look, he says, “Look, man, drops… they fucking suck, okay? And if I can make this process suck a little less for you, then hell yeah, we’re doing it.”

Steve ducks his head with a shy smile. “Okay.”

“Okay. You got the things with you?”

Steve’s head shoots up. “You want to do it now?”

“Is there a reason why you can’t?”

“I… I guess not. Okay. I’ll just, um. Go get it, then?”

“Or we could go back to your place,” Eddie offers. “More comfortable for you. More scents you know.”

Steve shakes his head. “It’s also got my scent as an Alpha there, which can negatively affect it.”

Eddie shrugs. “Either way, man, just want you comfortable.” He walks him to the front door, waits while he grabs a bag from the passenger seat of his car.

They settle back in his room, Steve laying on the bed, lower half bared to the room. He tucks himself into the cock cage and rubs the cream over the area.

“Damn,” Eddie says, lower half also bared. He’s working his cock up to full hardness, adding a little lube to help with the friction. “‘S a good thing I don’t get stage fright.”

Steve giggles—fucking giggles—and Eddie already knows this is going to be hazardous for his health.

But god damn will it be worth it.

Eventually he comes, and he aims for the spot on Steve where the cream had been rubbed earlier. As soon as he pulls away, Steve’s got his hand down there, rubbing it in.

Eddie grins, only a little manic, as he lays down next to Steve. “You gonna snap at me if I cuddle you?”

“Um.” Steve blinks. “No?”

“Cool,” Eddie says, and proceeds to wrap himself around Steve like an octopus. He pulls the comforter up too, tucks his head into Steve’s neck, and rubs his nose along the edge of Steve’s mating gland. “Think it stuck?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Steve whispers, but then he immediately starts laughing, and suddenly Eddie feels a whole lot better about this.

So it goes for a few weeks. Every other day, like clockwork, Steve’s at Eddie’s trailer.

One day Eddie opens the door for Steve and notices something. “You’re not wearing a scent patch!”

Steve beams. “My scent’s turning more omegan!”

“Dude!” Eddie says, and pulls him into a hug. “That’s great!” He ushers him in, locks the front door, herds him to his room. “Come on, come on, let’s go!”

“Jesus,” Steve laughs, “eager much?”

“Excited,” Eddie corrects him. “It’s working!”

Steve nods happily. “My balls are almost gone,” he tells Eddie, unbuttoning his pants and shucking them. “And my cunt’s getting more sensitive.”

Eddie shucks his own jeans. “Lemme see? I wanna see if we can try something different today.”

Steve lays back and opens his legs, and Eddie traces a gentle finger right where his vagina will be. It’s a little puffy, and he thinks he can see the start of some lips.

“Oh, shit,” Steve whispers, tensing his legs and biting his lower lip. “Uh, Eddie-”

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Eddie says. “Did that hurt?”

“Um. It actually felt good? Like… really good?” Steve doesn’t meet Eddie’s eyes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It does make me think my idea will work, though.” He puts a gentle hand on Steve’s thigh. “How do you feel about me pretending to fuck you? Basically I’d rut against your cunt. I’d pull back when I’m about to come, so I’d get it where we need it. But if you need me to treat you like an omega…”

“Okay, yeah, yeah, let’s do it. Do you- um, do you want me to wear the muzzle?”

“Nope. I want your nose in my neck. Getting fucked and being surrounded by the scent of the Alpha fucking you? ‘S gotta kick it up a notch.”

“Worth a shot,” Steve agrees, fiddling with the cream. “Um. Would you want to do this?”

Eddie sends him a crooked grin, plucks the tube from his fingers. “Would I want to prep your pussy to take my cock? Yeah, I would.”

“Oh, shit,” Steve whispers.

Eddie freezes. “Too much?”

“No, uh. It actually. Turned me on?”

“Y’know, you say a lot of things as questions that shouldn’t be questions. Did I or did I not turn you on?”

“You did,” Steve admits, cheeks flaming.

Eddie starts rubbing, dipping in closer to nudge his nose against Steve’s scent gland. “Smell sweet,” he murmurs. “Like cherries.” Steve’s breath hitches, and he nudges his hips up into Eddie’s hand.

“Want you to fuck me,” he murmurs back, notching his nose in Eddie’s neck, breathing in his woodsmoke scent. His hips buck up again, and a whine rips its way from his throat, thin but present.

Eddie rumbles back, a calming Alpha sound, and slows his fingers. “Can’t yet,” he whispers into Steve’s neck. The brush of his lips over Steve’s gland makes him shiver. “Y’want it, though? When I can?”

“Please,” Steve whispers, fingers digging into Eddie’s hips.

“I’ve gotcha.” He pulls away for barely a second to reach the lube, slicking himself up before beginning to rut against Steve. “Think you can come this way?”

“Oh, fuck- I- I dunno. Feels- mm, like heat more than rut.”

“Yeah? You tryin’a squirt on me?”

“Oh, fuck-” Steve goes tense all over, eyes squeezed shut as he pants open-mouthed.

Eddie stops but doesn’t pull away, rubbing Steve’s hip with his hand. “Hey,” he murmurs when Steve’s eyes open. “That looked good.”

Steve hums. “‘T was.” His fingers flex on Eddie’s hips as his eyes slip shut again. “C’mon, keep going.”

Eddie tests a thrust. “You’re not too sensitive?”

“‘M sensitive, but ‘s good.”

“Think you can do that again?”

“Hm, maybe.”

“Was it- did you come?”

“Felt like it, but…” he flops a hand down in between them, feeling the cock cage. “‘S dry.” Suddenly he sniffles, and Eddie’s horrified to see tears in his eyes when he blinks them open. Eddie immediately stops, causing Steve to whine.

“Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay, I’m right here. Don’t wanna hurt you. You’re crying.”

“‘M happy,” Steve whispers.

Eddie cups his face, wipes a tear from the corner of Steve’s eye. “Yeah? Feel more like you?”

Steve sniffles, nods. “Keep going,” he whispers, eyes fluttering shut as Eddie rocks his hips once more. “Feels so good, Alpha, wanna come again.”

Eddie groans. “I’ve gotcha, ‘mega. Gonna make you feel so good.” He starts mouthing at Steve’s scent gland, and Steve whines again, little high-pitched hums that show how good it feels.

“Gonna come,” Steve whimpers, and does a second later, wrapping his legs around Eddie’s hips and pulling him in, squeezing as the pleasure runs its course.

“Shit,” Eddie groans. His cock is practically pulsing with the need to come. As soon as Steve releases him, he pulls back and strips it furiously, aiming for the spot he’d just been rutting up against.

He finally comes and gently rubs it in, watching Steve’s face for any sign of discomfort. Thankfully he doesn’t find any, so he grabs for a tissue to clean his dick with then pulls the comforter up as he wraps Steve in his arms.

They’re both silent for a few minutes, and it’s only when Eddie comes down from his high that he realizes Steve’s purring into his neck. He pulls back to look at Steve, maybe say something, when he realizes Steve’s asleep.

He sighs, smiles, and pulls Steve back in, letting his own, deeper purr rumble through him as he lets himself drop off to sleep.

He’s awakened later by his bedroom door opening. He’s warm and comfortable, and there’s a warm, comforting weight in his arms, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes. He compromises and opens one bleary eye to see Wayne looking first at him, then Steve, then back to him. He purses his lips, nods, and steps out, closing the door with a click.

Eddie lets his eye fall shut again, but he’s awake now, so he drifts for a few minutes before his bladder makes itself known. He carefully extricates himself out of Steve’s own hold, pulling the comforter up more securely around him, and silently pads out of the room, shutting the door before going to relieve himself.

He walks out to the kitchen to find Wayne cooking. There’s a pot of coffee on, and Eddie sends out a thankful scent as he grabs a mug.

“So,” Wayne says.

“Yup.”

“You bein’ careful?”

Eddie tilts his head. “As much as I can be,” he finally says.

Wayne hums. “What’s his name?”

“Steve. Harrington.” At Wayne’s raised brow, Eddie chuckles. “I know, I know. Turns out he’s maybe not such a bad dude.”

“You just hookin’ up? Or you two boyfriends?”

“No, it’s… a little more complicated than that. Not really my story to tell.”

Wayne hums. “Always thought it was weird, y’know. That big house. I’d drive by and only ever see one car in the driveway.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, nudging Wayne out of the way to reach the bread, “that’s part of it.”

Just then his bedroom door opens, and Steve stumbles out, rubbing his eye and yawning. Thankfully, he’s put his boxers back on.

Eddie smiles and gestures for Steve to join them. “Hey, Steve. Come meet my Uncle Wayne.”

“Oh,” Steve says, looking nervous. “Hello, sir.”

“Wayne,” Wayne corrects. “Steve, is it?”

“Yes, sir. Um. Wayne.”

Wayne chuckles. “Y’like eggs, Steve?”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to make me anything-”

Eddie snickers and snakes an arm around Steve’s waist. “It’s no use arguing. He’s gonna end up feeding you anyhow.”

Steve’s face flames. “I like eggs. Thank you.”

Wayne nods. “There’s coffee, for if you’re human and drink the stuff.”

Steve laughs and relaxes a little, accepts the mug Eddie hands him. “Thank you.”

“Steve,” Wayne begins.

“Yes?”

“By all accounts, you two are grown and able to make your own decisions. But I’d like to know what you’re doing so I can help, if I can.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and looks uncertainly at Eddie.

Eddie shrugs. “It’s your choice. I’m fine with it, and he’s chill.”

“He won’t, um…” Steve shifts uncomfortably. “I know some people can be weird about it.”

“He’ll be fine if you want to tell him.”

“I’m a busybody,” Wayne says. “Y’don’t owe me a damn thing, alright, kid?”

Steve chuckles and nods. “Okay. Um. I presented omega. My parents got home halfway through my presentation heat, took me to a clinic, and changed it to a presentation rut.”

Wayne’s eyes narrow. “How old were you, kid?”

“Um. Fourteen?”

“Hm. Underage.”

“My parents have… a lot of money. And status.”

“So I gathered. Go on.”

“I never wanted to be an Alpha. I heard Eddie’s rants, during school, and figured if anyone would help me… it would be him. I asked, and he said yes.” He fidgets. “I, um. I did all the research, and bought everything I needed, but I couldn’t- um, outside of a clinic, I need an Alpha to help me.”

Wayne waves him off. “Y’don’t gotta explain yourself. Eddie’s a grown man who can make his own decisions. Let’s back up for a second, though. Y’know you can sue your parents and the clinic that performed that procedure on you?”

Steve blinks. “I can?”

“You were underage, son. That’s not legal. The case tells itself. ‘Specially if you’ve got documentation.”

“I might,” Steve muses. “Or, I guess my dad might, actually. I know where it would be.”

“You have to understand you might not have parents if you decide to sue them. ‘Specially if they’re cut from the cloth I think they are.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t have parents already,” Steve says softly. “But if I could get money, get out of that house, maybe a place of my own… that would be really nice.”

Wayne nods. “I’ll talk to some guys I know. See what we can’t do.”

“Thank you,” Steve whispers, and Wayne pulls him into a hug.

Two days later he’s back in the trailer, scenting Eddie even before he steps fully inside. He seems to realize what he’s doing as soon as Eddie stiffens. Eddie does his best to relax, send a warm smile Steve’s way.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters, ducking his head. “I dunno what that was.”

“I think that was just your omega instincts kicking in.” He shuts the door. “Maybe today you try making a nest? Try and, like… activate those instincts?”

“Sure,” Steve nods, then hesitates. “Um. I have- this is part of what I have ready, actually, but… I’ve got some scents from my pack in my car?”

Eddie gestures. “Yeah, bring them in! This is for you. If there’s anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable, I wanna do it.”

Steve blushes, ducks his head. “Thanks. I’ll just, um, go grab it then?”

He hurries out, and Eddie hurries to his room, does his best to make his bed. Straightens the sheets, fluffs the pillow. The sheets had all been bunched at the bottom of the bed, and maybe that’s better for Steve, Eddie doesn’t know, but he figures a blank slate might be best.

And anyways, he likes the idea of Steve including his scent in the nest. Sue him.

Steve returns quickly, walking in just as Eddie’s finishing with the bed. “Okay. You’re sure you do don’t mind me bringing my pack’s scents in here? There are some Alphas in my pack.”

Eddie smiles warmly. “I’m nowhere near my rut, Steve. I don’t mind you bringing other Alphas’ scents into my room. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Steve nods, and starts on the nest.

Eddie doesn’t know what a nest is supposed to look like, so he’s fascinated. There are thicker sweaters and jackets, and in one case even a pair of jeans. These all get bunched up along the outer wall, with t-shirts and bandanas making up the base. The base is rather patchy, letting Eddie’s comforter peek through, and Eddie’s happy about it, but does his best not to let the happiness show. He’s just here to help bitch Steve, after all. They don’t mean anything to each other, though of course he wants to. God does he want to. He wants to court Steve in a way he’s never wanted to before. He wants to bring him flowers and make food for him, scour secondhand shops for the perfect jewelry for his neck and finger. He wants to show Steve he can provide for him. He knows he may not be able to provide Steve with quite the standard of living he’s used to, but he can love Steve for who he is, which is clearly more than can be said for his parents.

He’s jolted out of his reverie by a sound. He narrows in on Steve and realizes he’s purring, and a smile breaks out across his face when he sees the omega curled up in his nest, happy as a clam.

“I didn’t know it could feel like this,” Steve whispers, broken up by purrs. He looks down at his nest, plucks at an orange t-shirt. “Will you- um. Will you join me?”

Eddie stills. “You want me to enter your nest?”

Steve looks up at him from under his eyelashes and nods. “Yes, please.”

The thing is, Eddie thinks, he doesn’t think Steve knows how dangerous those eyes of his are. Eddie’s pretty sure wars have been fought over less. Surely Helen of Troy, beautiful as she was, couldn’t hold a candle to Steve’s eyes. “I’d be honored,” he whispers back, moving forward and carefully climbing in, slotting himself behind Steve.

“I think,” Steve murmurs, “I’m almost done. I think it’s just… the really physical part left, y’know?”

Eddie hums, scents the air. He smells Steve’s pack, but above all he smells Steve, tangy cherries and something sweet like whipped cream. “You smell like an ice cream sundae.”

“Ugh,” Steve says, “the less I hear about ice cream sundaes, the better.”

Eddie blinks. “Why?”

“Did you never visit Starcourt?”

“I did, like, once. I don’t go to malls very often.”

“Yeah, I should’ve seen that coming.” Steve sighs. “I worked at the Scoops Ahoy there. The amount of cold, sticky messes I had to clean up… if I never have to do that again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Ah,” Eddie nods. “The perils of a corporate job.”

Steve snorts. “As opposed to you? Risking getting shanked for shit weed?”

“I’ll have you know I sell only the finest marijuana grown in Reefer Rick’s attic,” he tells Steve, feigning protest and pulling him closer to squeeze just a little, grinning when Steve laughs and squirms. He relaxes his hold but doesn’t let go, and Steve sighs happily, losing any remaining tension in his body. “This is nice.”

“You don’t puppy pile with your pack?”

Steve works his lip. “Not… while I’m, uh, in-between.”

Eddie’s eyes narrow. “Are they not okay with it?”

“No, they’re fine for the most part. There’s one pup who kind of hates me because I dated his sister for a while, and he’s also just kind of an asshole, but for the most part they’re fine.”

“So why not puppy pile?”

“I guess because… like, I know it’s okay. But it… it’s happening to me, and even though I know it’s okay, it’s still… weird, kinda. And I don’t want anyone else to feel uncomfortable.” He sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t think I explained it right.”

“I think I get it. Your brain knows it’s okay, but your heart is gonna take a little more convincing, even though your pups are fine with it.”

“Y-yeah, exactly.” He takes a stuttering breath, and Eddie sits up to lean over him.

“What’s wrong?”

Steve blushes firetruck red. “Uh. You called them my pups. And I… I love the idea of having pups of my own one day.”

“Yeah? How many little Harringtons you want runnin’ around?”

“God, like six,” Steve breathes. “A vanful. Get a Winnebago and pack everyone up and just… drive. See the Grand Canyon and the redwoods and the beaches in California and Florida and New York City. Just get the fuck out of Hawkins.”

Eddie chuckles. “Sounds pretty damn good.”

“What do you want to do?”

Eddie swallows down what he wants to say. “I dunno. I always thought I’d make it big, maybe in Indy, or somewhere in California. Me and my band against the world, y’know? But I know now that we’re pretty shit. We’ve got a good group at the Hideout, if you count five or so drunks that only occasionally heckle us.” Steve snickers. Eddie buries his smile in the back of Steve’s neck. “But… I dunno. It’d be nice to settle down. Somewhere out of Hawkins, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously.”

“And just… be. Somewhere people hear the name Munson and don’t immediately think Al.”

“‘S that your dad?”

“Mhm. In name only, Wayne’s more my dad than he is. He’s currently in jail. Hopefully.”

Steve hums. Doesn’t offer meaningless platitudes, which Eddie likes, just burrows back into Eddie more. Freezes and flips over to face Eddie, who winces and shuts his eyes. “Eddie.”

“Hm?”

“Eddie.” Eddie opens his eyes to see Steve’s teasing smile. “What about this is doing it for you?”

Eddie groans. “You’re an omega who invited me into your nest, okay? And anyways we’ve been doing this for a while and this is the first time we haven’t… y’know. It’s Pavlovian at this point!”

Steve smiles, slips a thumb under Eddie’s shorts. “I think we should take care of it.”

Eddie stills his hand with a small smile. “Only if you want to,” he says softly. “I’m okay.”

“I want to,” Steve promises, just as quietly. “And even if I didn’t really we should anyways. Because I do want this. I want to be an omega. A real one.”

“You are a real one,” Eddie argues, “but I get it. We can. You still sensitive?”

Steve hums. “It feels different, but yeah.”

“Well lemme see what we’re working with. You might be opening up.”

“God, I hope so.” He shucks his shorts off and Eddie crawls down to the foot of the bed, gently moving Steve’s legs up and out of the way. Before he looks, he finds Steve’s eyes. “Do you want me to grab a towel first? So we don’t get your nest dirty?”

Steve chirps, an inadvertent sound that has a blush rising to his cheeks. “Yes, please.”

Eddie smiles, brushes a kiss to Steve’s knee on his way out of bed. He finds a towel and spreads it out under Steve. “Okay,” he murmurs. “You ready?”

“Mhm. Please.”

Another kiss, this time to the opposite knee, and he lays down, gently moving Steve’s cock out of the way. It’s noticeably smaller, and his balls are gone. He brushes a finger lightly over where Steve’s vagina will be. Steve hisses and bucks his hips, and Eddie instinctually responds with a low croon, soothing him. “Almost there,” he tells Steve. “It’s a little damp, and very thin-feeling. I think after today we might be done.”

“Oh,” Steve murmurs, cherry mixing with something sharper, like pineapple.

Eddie pops his head back up, frowning at Steve. “What? What’s wrong?”

Steve opens his mouth like he’s going to say it, then seems to change his mind with a shake of his head. “No, nothing.”

“Hey, if I’m doing something you don’t like-”

“No, it’s- it’s not you.” Steve sighs, rubs a hand over his face. “It’s me. Sorry. It’s fine.”

“Nope.” Eddie army-crawls back up to Steve’s side, huffing and puffing to get a laugh out of Steve. “You’re upset. I wanna help. I can listen if you need to vent. I can hold you if you need to cry. But we’re not moving on until you tell me whats going on.” He nudges his forehead against Steve’s. “‘S not healthy to keep it all bottled up all the time.”

Steve gusts out a breath. “Fine, it is you, okay? But it’s not, because you’re just being nice and doing me a favor and I know that, I swear I do, but my stupid heart doesn’t and it wants you, okay? I want to be your omega, I want you to be my Alpha, I want you to court me and meet my pack but you’re just helping me out. And again I know that! I know you’re just helping me out!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Eddie soothes. “It’s okay. You’re hyperventilating, Steve, take a few deep breaths. With me, okay? Come on, you can do it, in and out with me.” He breathes for a few seconds, nodding encouragingly when Steve’s stuttering breaths start matching up with his. “There you go, good job. Steve,” he starts with a chuckle, “I think we should’ve talked about this a while ago.”

“I knew it,” Steve mutters, shuffling down the bed to reach his shorts. “‘M sorry, I can leave. I didn’t mean to- to lead you on. I’m sorry.”

“Whoa, hey, wait.” He cups Steve’s cheek with his hand, then shifts down to rub his wrist on Steve’s scent gland. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying I want the exact same thing you do.”

Steve’s eyes flutter. “You do?”

“Mhm. I wanna be your Alpha, baby. Wanna take care of you. Buy you all the pretty things and let everyone know that you’re mine. Wanna court you properly, meet your pack, speak with your pack Alpha about asking for your hand. I want to give you every good thing you deserve.” He nudges Steve’s cheek with his nose. “How’s that sound?”

“Sounds pretty damn good,” Steve manages, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s neck.

“Steve.”

“Hm?” He doesn’t move, just tightens his arms a little.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes. “Please.”

He rolls them over, bracketing Steve in a move that makes the omega whine a little. He leans in and slowly, gently brushes their lips together.

His eyes fall shut just after Steve’s, and he exhales, brushing their lips together twice more before they’ve both had enough.

Steve leans up just as he presses hard into Steve’s lips. Their noses smash together and they pull apart, giggling and blinking, before Eddie carefully, gently pushes him back down. He takes advantage of Steve’s parted lips and dips his tongue in, licking across his teeth before sealing their mouths together.

Steve exhales shakily into his mouth, fingers tightening at the nape of his neck, and one of his hands finds its way to Steve’s hip, grips hard, hopefully leaving bruises.

Steve pulls away to pant, pushing his head back into the pillow. “Eddie, please.”

“I’ve gotcha, baby,” Eddie murmurs, dipping down to nip at Steve’s throat. “Tell me what you want.”

He thrusts his hips up. “Want you to fuck me,” he murmurs, gasping when Eddie nips particularly hard. “Fuck, Alpha, please.”

“Yeah baby, yeah, I’ve gotcha. I gotcha, omega, gonna fuck you. Fuck, you’re a dream. Can’t wait ‘till I can fit inside of you.”

Steve whines. “Can’t for a week,” he tells Eddie through gasping breaths. “After I open. Gotta- gotta let it, um. Shit,” he breathes. “Gotta let it heal. Want to, though, want it, please-”

“Yeah, baby, I gotcha. Y’want me to rut against you again?” He rubs the cream in, focuses on where he can feel Steve’s clit coming in. Steve kicks a leg out, whines high in his throat.

“Yes,” he gasps. “Please, Eddie- Alpha, wan’it-”

Eddie shushes him. “I know, baby, I know. I’m right there with you. Fuck, can’t wait ‘till I can go down on you. Gonna eat you out, bet you taste so sweet.”

“Fuck,” Steve moans. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, baby. Gonna get my tongue in you, deep as it’ll go, ‘till it hurts but I won’t care ‘cause it’s you, fuckin’ perfect for me. Gonna make you come just from my mouth on you, maybe even twice, then I’ll slide in easy as anything. You’ll be so loose for me, so perfect around my dick, around my knot. Gonna pump you full, get started on those six pups you want.”

Steve’s whining nonstop now, humping up into Eddie, meeting every one of his thrusts downward. “Eddie, Alpha, please-”

“C’mon, baby,” he murmurs. “Come on my cock. Can’t you feel it in you? I can feel you, squeezing me. You want this, don’t you? Want me to paint your insides with my come.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Steve chants, squeezing Eddie’s hips with his thighs. “Gonna- gonna come, gonna-” he cuts off with a high whine, going still as he throws his head back, panting.

Eddie worms his hand in between, squeezes the base of his dick hard, gritting his teeth and panting as Steve slowly relaxes.

He sits up and wiggles back a little so he can finish, aiming for the spot that, at this point, has featured in his dreams. Rubs it in when he’s finished, then collapses half on top of and half next to Steve, tucking his nose into Steve’s neck and letting Steve do the same. “So good, baby,” he mumbles, yawning.

“So good,” Steve agrees, breathing it into the space between them. “Can’t believe you want me back.”

Eddie pulls back, swipes a gentle thumb over Steve’s forehead, moving his hair out of his face. “Baby,” he whispers, “I’ve wanted you since I saw you. Pre-presentation, even. You walked into school one day, laughing with Tommy about God-knows-what, and the light was coming in behind you like you were a fuckin’ angel, and I couldn’t breathe I thought you were so pretty.”

Steve huffs something like a laugh. “And then I ruin it by being a douchebag.”

“Nah,” Eddie tells him. “Cause I saw you. That wasn’t ever you, baby. That was your fuckin’ clown of a friend trying to get his king’s approval. It was Tommy knocking books out of hands and shoving heads in toilets. And you just looked on, and I saw you, baby. Your face said try harder but your eyes said how do I stop this?”

“I tried,” Steve whispers. “I tried to stop it, didn’t know how. Couldn’t find the words that worked.”

Eddie presses a quick, sweet kiss to his lips. “I know.” His lips quirk up. “Y’know I overcharged him for weed?”

Steve starts laughing. “That was my money, you dickhead!”

Eddie shoots up as his jaw drops. “It was?” Steve turns into Eddie’s shoulder, giggling almost hysterically, and nods. “Shit,” Eddie whispers. “Uh. I mean, I can pay you back? But it’s gonna take a while, I didn’t overcharge him much but you bought a lot, so…”

Steve shakes his head, finally calming down. “I don’t care. That’s just- shit, Rob’s gonna have a field day. I can’t wait.”

“You… want to tell him?”

“Her. Robin. Buckley? From band?”

“Oh, yeah, I know her. How do you know her?”

“We worked at Scoops together. I think we’re both traumatized from that job, honestly.”

“I’d expect nothing less from a corporate job.”

“Anyways. She’s the Alpha I was talking about? The one who would help me, but I couldn’t ask her?”

“Okay, yeah. She’s not gonna, like, come after me, is she?”

Steve waves him off. “Nah, you’re fine. She’s just gonna tease me about it.”

“M’kay.” He lays back down, kisses Steve’s shoulder. “Can I meet her?”

“You want to?”

“I mean, not to overstep, but… that’s kinda the next step, right?”

Steve giggles happily, pumps out sweet cherries and cream. “Mhm. Come see me at work tomorrow? Family Video. Robin works there too, her shift starts at one.”

“When does yours start?”

“Nine. I get off at three, with a half-hour break for lunch.”

“What if I bring you lunch at one?”

Steve smiles broadly. “That sounds perfect.”

“M’kay. What do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t care. Whatever you wanna get is fine, I’m really not picky.”

“Baby.” Eddie looks into his eyes, serious. “I’d drive to Indy if there’s something there you want. I promise you, whatever you want, you can have.”

“Even if it’s really out of the way?”

“It could be past Indy and I’d get it.”

“Benny’s?”

Eddie chuckles. “Baby, Benny’s is nothing. Course I can pick that up.”

“M’kay. Thank you.”

He picks up Benny’s the next day, also buying a brownie for Robin. He doesn’t know what she likes, but it’s hard to go wrong with brownies. Especially from Benny’s.

He walks in and grins at Steve, who’s manning the counter. “Hey, Stevie.”

“Eddie!” Steve perks up, runs around the counter, and jumps into his arms. Eddie laughs and catches him, turning in a circle and burying his nose in Steve’s neck.

“Well you’re certainly happy.”

“Mhm, I am.” He releases Eddie, bounces on the balls of his feet. “Guess what.”

Eddie hums, wrapping an arm around his waist and guiding him back over to the counter so he can put the food down. “Uh… you get off early today and can come see me even earlier.”

Steve pouts. “No, but I wish.”

“I can just stay, baby, I don’t have anything to do.”

“But it’s boring here!”

Eddie gasps. “Are you saying I’m boring? Are you saying it’s even possible to be bored when I’m here?”

Steve giggles. “I guess not.”

“‘Sides, I can never be bored when I’m with you.”

“Flirt,” Steve mutters, but his cheeks pinken anyways.

Before Eddie can guess again, Robin walks in. “Hey, Steve. Munson.”

“Buckley,” Eddie nods. “Got you a brownie if you want it.”

Robin blinks at him for a minute. “Steve?”

“Hm?”

“Keep him.”

Steve laughs. “That’s the plan. Oh, you’re both here! Great! Okay, guess what!”

Robin and Eddie exchange a look. “What?” Robin asks.

Steve leans closer to them. “It opened.”

It takes a second, but Eddie gets it just a split second before Robin does, yelling in excitement and gathering Steve up in another hug to swing him in another circle. “Baby! That’s so great! I’m so happy it worked!”

“Thanks to you,” Steve murmurs.

“Nah, I had the easy bit,” Eddie winks. “You did the hard part. And all the research, Christ, I woulda failed that immediately.”

Robin bats at Eddie’s arm, hard enough he finally lets go of Steve to swat at her. She zips in while she has the chance and tackles Steve in her own hug. “How do you feel?”

Steve chuckles. “Honestly? Not that different. I’ve already been acting more omegan with the two of you, and you treat me more like an omega too, so it’s really just the final physical part slotting into place.”

“Still,” she mumbles, tightening her hold on him. “That’s really great. I’m really happy for you.”

“I am too,” he says honestly.

“Stevie,” Eddie starts. “How would you feel if I left a little early? You’ve got your nest stuff in my room, but now that you’re, like, officially an omega, and not making Alpha hormones, and not influenced by the scent… what if we air out your room and move your nest there? Would you want that?”

Steve pulls away from Robin. “Oh, right, of course you don’t want it in your room. That’s fine, we can move it.”

Eddie furrows his brows. “Hang on, sweetness, that’s not what I said. I love having your nest in my room. I just want it where you want it. I’d be overjoyed to keep it in my room. I’d also be more than happy to help you transfer it.”

Steve looks up at him with fucking dangerous eyes. “It can stay?”

Eddie pulls him into a hug. “Of course it can, baby. I’m so sorry I made you think it couldn’t.” He runs a hand over Steve’s hair, smiles at him. “Hey.”

Steve immediately turns pink. “Hi.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes, please.”

He does, thoroughly, only pulling away when Robin clears her throat. “Steve, if you’re gonna bone, at least clock out for it. And please go into the break room. At the very least.”

Steve turns firetruck red. “Uh. No. Sorry.”

“Can’t anyways,” Eddie adds. “Not for a week now, right?”

Steve pouts. “Dammit.”

Eddie snickers. “What, cuddling with me isn’t enough?”

Steve just rolls his eyes.

Eddie starts courting Steve that day. By the time he’s given Steve his last present, it’s in the trailer, which they both call home now. That night, Wayne gets home and tells Steve his contacts came through, and Steve will be getting compensation for being forced into an underage studding.

It’s more than enough, especially with the sale of the house in Loch Nora, to pay for a modest house on the edge of town.

Steve goes through a few heats while his body remembers how to be an omega, but after his third heat, he and Eddie stand in the bathroom, looking down at the stick in a little purple cup.

Two blue lines stare back up at them.

#STMMM25 #stranger things March mating madness 2025 #bitching #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #omegaverse #a/b/o #a/b/o dynamics #omega steve harrington #alpha eddie munson #starambles

324 notes · View notes

strangersteddierthings · 1 year ago

Text

Here's a lil idea that I simply do not have the time to make a full fic of, but I gotta get it out or it won't leave me alone.

Steve thinks he's in a happy, fulfilling relationship with Eddie, while Eddie's insecurities have him believing he's just a place holder for the future Mrs. Harrington.

It comes to light when Steve does something cheesy and romantic and Eddie, not able to handle it because it's too romantic, tries to joke about it like "why would you bother to put all this effort in just for me?"

And Steve like "what do you mean? You're my boyfriend and I wanted to"

And then Eddie like "yeah, no, I know that. I just don't understand why." And then he goes on a little self-deprecating rant, explaining all the ways he's not good enough for Steve, all while Steve just stares at him, brow furrowing more and more as Eddie speaks.

When Eddie finally runs out of words, Steve says, "I don't understand? What have I done to make you think this?"

And Eddie kinda blue screens. Because Steve hasn't done anything to make Eddie think this; he's been a perfect boyfriend. It's just... it's inevitable, isn't it? That Steve'll move onto to bigger, better things? Eddie says as much.

"Why?"

"Because it's- because you're Steve Harrington!"

Since Steve's brow can't possibly furrow anymore, he starts to frown now. "I still don't understand?? Why did- do you think I'm just going to be going through the checkout at Melvald's and just decide I want to marry some random woman instead of being with you?"

"What? No. It's not- I don't think you'll intentionally decide you want someone else more just randomly but, like..."

"There's no 'but' here, Eds. I asked you out because I want to be with you. You said yes because, I assume, you want to be with me, too! Was I wrong to assume-"

"NO! No! I do want to be with you!"

"Then.... you think I don't want to be with you?"

"I didn't say that."

"Sorry, it felt like you were implying it. So. If I haven't done anything to make you think I don't want to be with you, and you just said you want to be with me, then what... I don't understand where these thoughts have come from. Have you- were you just going to go through our whole relationship waiting for something bad to happen?"

And Eddie can just look down and shrug because, well, yeah. He had been thinking that. He has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now they're having this conversation and he's ruined Steve's sweet, romantic gesture with his own bullshit. So, even if the shoe wasn't going to drop before, it will now, because he's gone and fucked it up by putting his insecurities onto Steve and-

"What can I do to help you believe I'm in it, for as long as you want me?"

Eddie looks back to Steve then, because that's not what he expected to hear. "What?"

Steve steps closer, the furrowed brow and the frown gone, replacing it instead is the sappy look he catches on Steve's face every now and then, when Eddie's doing something particularly Eddie-ish. "Tell me what I can do to help you believe in this. In us. And I'll do it. Every day until we die."

"Steve," Eddie warbles out, surprised by his own watery voice. "I-I'm sorry. I-"

"Hush," Steve says, gentle and sure as he takes Eddie's face in his hands. "No apologies. I get it, so you don't have to apologize. Just. Talk to me, okay? Because I'm not holding out for something better. Not when you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Besides Robin."

"Besides Robin," Eddie agrees, nodding his head as much as he can in Steve's grasp. "But, uh, things like this. This helps." He gestures at the romantic candle-lite dinner slowly getting cold. There are flowers in a vase, and a cheesy little Garfield plushie sitting on the table, leaned against Eddie's wine glass. It's a Tuesday night in June and nowhere near a birthday, or holiday, or anniversary. Steve's just made him a sweet, romantic dinner just because.

"Oh good. You have no idea how much I'm restraining myself by not doing this weekly," Steve whispers before placing a kiss to Eddie's forehead, nose, then lips. "Now. Let's eat dinner before it gets too cold."

And it might take a while, for Eddie's insecurities to fade, but Steve keeps being Steve, which means perfect if not a little snarky, and then the next thing Eddie knows, it's been several decades and Steve will walk with him hand in hand to the courthouse and stand in line for hours to quickly get married. (They'll spend another two years planning the actual wedding because Eddie's dramatic and Steve's a perfectionist.)

#steddie #my fic #i just like the idea of steve having already worked out his insecurities with the help of his bestie #so hes better equipped to help eddie through his #is it realistic? who cares. its cute and thats more important

2K notes · View notes

adverbally · 2 months ago

Text

Yours, Mine, Ours

Written for the @stmarchmm prompt “collaring” | wc: 596 | rated: T | cw: none | tags: Steddie, Alpha Steve, Omega Eddie, established relationships, courting/mating traditions, dare I say: internalized omegaphobia

———

It’s everything Eddie never knew he wanted.

He’d spent many a lunch period ranting about how the tradition of collaring was archaic and demeaning. It dehumanized Omegas and cemented them as the property of their Alpha. He vowed not to be like those collar-chasing Omegas, with no aspirations beyond becoming a trophy spouse or a broodmare, defined by their designation and their mate.

But that was before Steve started courting him. Steve, who is now offering his collar to Eddie, the perfectly wrapped gift box shaking in his hands. “I know you don’t really subscribe to the whole, uh, ‘traditional dynamics’ thing but it’s… It feels important for me to give it to you. You don’t have to wear it all the time, obviously,” he’s quick to reassure, “but I dunno, maybe when we’re at home, just us?”

Eddie‘s whole world is rocked when he opens the box to reveal a collar of thin black leather with silver hardware. It’s clearly well-made, soft and supple, with no sharp edges or rough stitching to irritate the sensitive skin of his throat. The tightness can be adjusted to his comfort level. It even goes with his wardrobe and usual jewelry, for God’s sake.

“Turn it over,” Steve suggests shyly.

The back is embossed with tiny letters spelling out ‘I’m yours.’

Steve explains, “I don’t want to mark you as my territory, o-or chain you up in my room or anything, but I wanted you to know that it goes both ways. If you’re mine, then I’m yours, too.”

It clicks, then. A collar isn’t meant to be a neon sign advertising an Alpha’s ownership for society to see. It’s for the Omega themself– a tangible reminder of their Alpha’s devotion that they can reach out and touch throughout the day, a source of pressure against their scent gland to mimic the bite of their mate’s jaws. Possessiveness, not possession; belonging together, not belonging to.

The silence must stretch too long for Steve’s comfort, because he reaches for the box. “Or, you don’t have to wear it at all or even accept it, actually, I can just–”

Eddie yanks the collar away, tucking it protectively to his side. “No, it’s perfect and it’s mine now, no take-backs!”

Steve’s smile is small but full of relief and fondness. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I love it. And I love you.” He hands Steve the box and turns around so Steve can see the fastening while he works. “Put it on me?”

Steve does so with a gentle touch that makes Eddie feel like something precious. There’s a tenderness in the way Steve sweeps his hair out of the way, lifting it this way and that as he works so the strands don’t get caught. After he fastens it at the back of Eddie’s neck, he trails his fingers along the collar’s edge, shifting back and forth from soft leather to soft skin, then leans in to press a kiss at Eddie’s nape.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve tells him reverently.

Eddie spins in his arms so he can see the full effect. “Gilding the lily, huh?” he jokes, keeping his tone warm and soft to match Steve’s.

“Uh-huh.” Steve’s eyes are locked on the collar, pupils wide and as dark as the leather against Eddie’s pale neck.

“You know what would make it look even better?” He leans even closer to whisper in Steve’s ear. “If I take off everything else.”

Steve’s hands settle on Eddie’s hips, toying with his waistband. “We’ll have to test that theory.”

Yeah, Eddie might actually like this collar thing.

#stmmm25 #omegaverse #steddie #steddie fic #steve/eddie #steve x eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #mine

186 notes · View notes

loveinhawkins · 1 year ago

Text

was this written to solve my own inconsistencies because i keep forgetting Eddie literally hotwired the RV, they don’t need keys, why do you keep mentioning keys, you fool? maybe. do i also think they’d be this stupid? yes. ❤️

“Oh, son of a bitch,” Dustin says, midway to The War Zone.

Steve, who is used to this sort of outburst for things as mild as Dustin forgetting just one out of the eight pens on his person, does not react.

However Eddie—Hellfire rants aside—is not quite as familiar yet. He jumps practically a foot in the air.

“Jesus Christ, what now?”

All Dustin offers by way of explanation is an accusatory, “You,” pointing his finger right in Eddie’s face.

And then Eddie sees what’s dangling from said finger.

“… Oh.”

“What?” Steve says, glancing at the rearview mirror; Eddie quickly blocks Dustin from view, goes right up on his tiptoes and spreads his arms wide, curses when Dustin throws the keys—

—to Max, who catches them one-handed, who gives Eddie a grin that’s not so much pitying as it is evil, and then she—

—throws them to Lucas, and he somehow gets the metal ring to land on his finger, like he’s in a movie, and he twirls them round and round until Max snorts, and he grins like that had been his aim all along.

“Sinclair,” Eddie says, “I am begging you.”

“I’m not hearing much about what’s in it for him,” Erica says.

Aha! Eddie zeroes in on Erica and blocks her from Lucas, like a very unjust game of Keep Away.

“Dude,” Lucas says, affronted, “that’s not fair.”

Eddie has the decency to look a bit ashamed. Not too ashamed to stop because he is a pathetic man, but at least Steve still hasn’t noticed the—

“Lucas,” Erica says, in the aggrieved tones of a sister who’s despaired at him many, many times. “You’re on the basketball team. Just do a pass fake, nerd.”

Lucas feigns to the left, and Eddie falls for it—but, in what he’s sure is a completely unsportsmanlike move, he uses his height to his advantage, jumps…

And drops the keys with a clatter.

Steve must instantly recognise the sound for what it is, because he starts to cackle.

Eddie’s only saving grace is that Steve is driving, so at least he can’t see—

“Eddie’s going, like, super red in the face right now,” Dustin narrates helpfully.

“Scarlet,” Lucas says.

“Vermillion,” Robin pipes up from the floor.

“Ooh,” Dustin, Lucas, and Max chorus, impressed. Jesus Christ, they almost harmonize.

“Yeah, Eddie,” Steve says dryly, “you fucking moron. How did you miss those, it’s not like you had literally anything else on your mind.”

“You’re a real gentleman, Harrington, anyone ever told you that?” Eddie says weakly.

“Maybe once or twice,” Steve says, drawing it out teasingly, as if he means not often enough.

“Well, at least we got on the road,” Nancy says. Her voice quivers like she’s trying not to laugh—perched on the table, eyes shining with amusement. “And it did look pretty cool, Eddie.”

Eddie thinks this is an incredibly generous assessment, considering his main thought while breaking into the RV had been don’t get stuck in the window, Jesus Christ.

And then… like, he didn’t expect Steve to actually come up and watch him hotwire the damn thing, like, with rapt attention, so close that Eddie was kinda concerned he’d electrocute himself instead. Honestly, it was a miracle he got the engine started.

“That’s sweet of you, Wheeler, but I’m self-aware.”

“Since when?” Erica says.

Underneath everyone’s laughter, Steve grins and says, “Hey, don’t worry, man.” He catches Eddie’s eye in the rearview mirror, winks. “It was an educational experience.”

“Oh, wow, your face is even redder.”

“Henderson, I’m gonna put those goddamn keys so far up your ass.”

#in which i kept forgetting what hotwiring actually means so came up with this #they are ridiculous #i love them ❤️#pre steddie #eddie and the party #steddie ficlet #eddie munson ficlet #eddie and dustin #steve x eddie #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington

514 notes · View notes

steventhusiast · 1 year ago

Text

STWG prompt 18/4/24

prompt: the beemer

pairing/character(s): steddie

"I didn't see your van outside, you need a ride home?" Gareth asks as everyone's packing up their dice sets.

Eddie looks up from scribbling notes down about important character actions with a hum, and notices that the concerned look on Gareth's face is mirrored by Jeff and Freak.

The freshmen members of the club aren't interested, whispering excitedly amongst themselves about something that will probably cause Eddie problems at their next session. (He catches some complaints about biking home too. Losers.)

"What? No, no, don't worry man." He assures with a smile, and goes back to his notes. Steve's picking him up today. They have a date. Which, sure, he's been on a few official dates with Steve now, but they still make him so... jittery and excited.

He shakes his head at the half-finished page of his notebook and readies his pen. He can't forget that Mike now has a bag of holding, so he writes that down and then closes the notebook and nods to himself, satisfied.

When he looks back up his bandmates are still staring at him in concern.

"What?"

"You literally never leave your van at home." Jeff points out, and then Freak adds on:

"You call it your child sometimes."

"Hey. Pac-Van is a she, thank you very much." Eddie says, "But seriously, it's fine. I just got a ride this morning and he's picking me up too."

He hasn't gotten round to telling them about him and Steve yet. He knows they'll take great pleasure in making fun of him getting with a jock. You know, because of all those rants he likes to go on at the lunch tables about said jocks... Whatever.

"From Wayne?"

"No." He rolls his eyes at the questioning and shoves his stuff into his backpack, then makes a quick decision. Fuck it, "I promise I'll be fine, you big babies. Harrington's a good driver."

"Harrington?!" They all ask in sync, and that gets the attention of their newer recruits, who are still chattering away. Their heads all snap over to them.

"Why're you talking about Steve?" Mike asks, looking vaguely disgusted. Dustin elbows him in the side.

"Don't worry your angsty little head about it, Wheeler." Eddie says with a grin, and then finally picks up his backpack, "Now I have places to be and people to see so I trust you all to leave this room as you found it? I gotta go."

And with that he leaves the room, ignoring Freak's voice from behind him.

"I thought he was just giving you a ride home."

He makes it to the parking lot just as the beemer pulls in, and finds a smile appearing on his face at the sight. Because he's feeling dramatic, he does a wild little wave at the car. He can't see Steve yet, but he knows that made him chuckle, or at least smile.

"Hey, taxi for Munson?" Steve yells out of his window as he slows the car to a stop, and Eddie's smile widens.

"Oh, we're roleplaying tonight, are we?" He asks as he walks around to the passenger side and gets in. He's pretty sure Steve rolls his eyes at him, but he's also pretty sure he's doing it in a fond way. Hopefully.

Steve doesn't drive off immediately, a glint of something intense in his gaze as he looks at Eddie. He's leaning toward Eddie a little too, and having Steve Harrington's full attention on him is not something Eddie's used to yet, so an unbidden blush appears on his cheeks.

"Good day?"

"Great day, Stevie."

"Good. Can't wait to hear about it over dinner." Steve nods, and his eyes flicker down to his lips for a second, and then he leans out of Eddie's space to start the car up again.

Right. Public space. Homophobic small town. Yadda yadda, kissing can wait until they're safely indoors.

Eddie's too busy fiddling with the radio as the beemer drives off to notice Freak, Gareth and Jeff stood staring at the car from in front of the school doors, perplexed looks on their faces, as the freshmen run over to the bike racks. But he'll definitely be hearing all about their thoughts at band practice.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie ficlet #steddie drabble #stwgdailyprompt #mywriting #dailydrabble

723 notes · View notes

wheneverfeasible · 9 months ago

Text

So we all know the mechanic Eddie aus out there, all love a greasy dirty Eddie Munson in coveralls, but what about mechanic Steve?

Steve, who has a nice car, who learned how to take care of it himself. Steve who found that he was actually pretty good with his hands, and a knack for fixing things. He understands cars, likes to tinker with them in his spare time, even if he had to teach himself at first.

Eventually he sees a Help Wanted sign at the mechanic’s and…well, why not? He applies, and he’s inexperienced, but they hire him. He sweeps and keeps things clean and tidy at first, and then he learns some hands-on experience, moves up in the job, and eventually he becomes the guy everyone wants to work on their car.

When the owner retires, it’s Steve who takes over the place, making the shop his own and making certain that it’s a safe place in a town where safety isn’t always guaranteed. The kids he used to babysit who aren’t kids anymore all learn car basics, Steve making certain they’re not caught in a jam and unable to help themselves, especially the girls. In the window, a small picture of Dorothy from Wizard of Oz rests, letting those who know…know.

And then maybe one day rockstar Eddie Munson returns to the small town he blazed out of after finally graduating, packing his shit up and high tailing it outta there like the bats of hell were chasing him. Maybe he’s still driving a shitty van, or maybe he got something a little more fancy. Maybe fame and money got to him a little bit and he’s got some fancy high end sports car and a bit of a dick personality. And this car breaks down. Who does he have to call?

King Mechanics.

And Eddie is huffing and complaining at it all, at his car for crapping out, for being late to meet his uncle, for having to wait for some mechanic to show up. And one does, not too much later after that first annoyed phone call. And the mechanic has surprisingly well-styled hair, and a body firm with muscle, filling out those oil stained coveralls nicely, and maybe Eddie starts to sort of flirt with the guy, until he looks at him properly.

Until he sees it’s Steve fucking Harrington.

And maybe they don’t get along well at first, and it’s all Eddie’s fault really, who is now huffy and puffy about having to deal with King Steve. Steve, on the other hand, is nothing but polite and professional, maybe even friendly. He might have taken back the moniker of king for his shop, might have even taken it as his last name after his parents disowned him when he came out as queer, but he’s far from who he was in high school.

And honestly? Teasing Eddie is kind of fun. Watching him get flustered and annoyed is funny because enough time has passed that Steve is comfortable with who he is and everyone in town knows he’s turned over a new leaf and it’s just amusing watching Eddie not realizing this yet.

They didn’t really have the parts he needs to fix Eddie’s car at the moment, however, so he orders them in. Offers to give Eddie a ride to wherever he needs to go. Maybe even mentions Wayne, with whom he actually got kind of close with, and who sometimes comes around for a cold drink now that he’s retired and has more free time on hand.

Eddie is incensed Wayne never told him he was friendly with King Steve, but Wayne never cared much for gossip, and Steve has been a godsend more than once when Wayne’s old clunker died frequently.

And so Steve and Eddie are thrown together, and Eddie realizes that maybe there’s more to Steve than meets the eyes, and that’s even before he discovers the Dorothy in the window. Sadly, he doesn’t discover it until after he goes on some rant about how Steve is clearly homophobic, but Steve just stares at him amused because he hadn’t even known Eddie was gay back in high school.

Eventually, Eddie realizes he and Steve have more in common than he ever realized. Realizes he’s become the sort of people he always despised and was a bit of an ass. Steve meanwhile was already aware of his crush on Eddie and was merely waiting for the right time to make his move.

Anyways. I just like the idea of done-up Eddie, slick and fancy, and dirty grubby mechanic Steve.

hostage tag: @derythcorvinus

#mechanic au #steddie au #mechanic steddie #mechanic steve harrington #rockstar eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie munson #wayne munson #stranger things #plot thots

375 notes · View notes

transvampireboyfriend · 2 years ago

Text

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8

"I'm just saying, if the heat bothers you so much, you could cut your hair" Nancy points out, after declining Eddie's pleas for her spare scrunchie.

Robin sits on Nancy's lap, clutching the back of Steve's seat and she looks at Steve through the side mirror like she's afraid that he's about to go on a mission to defend Eddie's honor or something but Steve rolls his eyes at her. He's not that gone.

Or at least he knows how to hide it well.

Eddie's lost several of Nancy's favorite hair accessories and two weeks ago she bowed to never lend him any ever again.

Which, does not stop Eddie from asking her anyway at least once a day.

But the point is, even if Steve wanted to, Eddie's honor cannot be defended in this situation.

Nancy's leaning behind Argyle's back now to glare at the metalhead. Steve can see them in the rearview mirror.

Eddie gasps "I would never" he says, clutching his chest dramatically.

Steve secretly breathes a sigh of relief.

Johnathan chuckles at the wheel. "But you could" he comments, eyes on the road.

Steve can see Argyle subtly laughing and shaking his head out of the corner of his eye.

Today is a rare occasion, Jonathan is driving them in Steve's car.

The goal of Steve's rant earlier about having to drive them everywhere was to get Eddie to drive them, so Steve could sit shotgun and watch Eddie drive.

Instead, Jonathan had offered first and then Steve couldn't go in the backseat because he's in charge of their map.

But whatever, this is fine too. He trusts Jonathan and it is nice to get a break and to be able to fully turn around when he's talking to someone in the backseat.

"Jon, I would lose all my sex appeal, you don't get it" Eddie answers, getting a box of Twinkies from one of the many bags they packed and placed on the floor of Steve's car.

"I get it" Argyle chimes in, watching Eddie pull out a Twinkie and shaking his head no when Eddie offers him one.

"You'd still be sexy with short hair" Robin comments from her seat on Nancy's lap.

Everyone turns to look at her.

"What?" she shrugs "I can say that"

Nancy chuckles into her shoulder.

Steve opens their map again to stop thinking about Eddie's 'sex appeal', even as the guy is excitedly munching on a Twinkie in the backseat of Steve's car.

He's got cream in the corner of his mouth and he clearly put more in his mouth than he can comfortably chew. He's leaning one elbow on Argyle's shoulder, his hand holding half a Twinkie, his other hand holds his mop of hair up in a high bun, causing his cut off tank to sit barely covering his nipples, his tattoos on display and his armpit hair fully visible.

Steve's fairly certain nobody else in this car would get it, but to him the sight is mouth watering. The guy is practically irresistible.

"I don't think i would've gone on even half the dates I've gone on if i didn't have my hair" Steve muses, for something to say and to add to Eddie's point, even though he agrees with Robin.

Almost everyone answers with agreeable noises, except Eddie and Robin.

Robin snorts and says "You are relentless"

While Eddie says "You don't get dates for your hair" at the same time. In a tone that suggests he thinks this is an obvious thing.

"I mean- it doesn't hurt" provides Nancy, she sends Steve an apologetic look but Steve waves her off. It's a compliment as far as he's concerned, he loves his hair.

Eddie finishes his treat and opens a new one while everyone else gives their opinions.

"For a lot of people, hair is a big part of attraction" Jonathan is saying, trying to seem like he's not speaking from experience.

"Especially hair as luscious as Steve's" Argyle agrees, leaning forward to lightly comb the side of Steve's hair, making him laugh.

"Thanks, man" Steve says overlapping Eddie's response.

"And I agree!" he exclaims "I'm saying he doesn't get dates because of his hair." Eddie goes on, waving his new Twinkie around for emphasis. "People throw themselves at Steve, and always will, but it's not because of his hair" he repeats.

Steve feels his cheeks heat up but still asks "Then why?"

"Well, because you're very pretty!" Eddie answers easily, like everyone should already know this.

Steve keeps his eyes carefully trained on the map, like he needs to study it meticulously, right this moment, while they're in the middle of a highway.

His cheeks are burning up and he can feel it spreading to his ears.

"And that's if they don't know you!" Eddie continues "If they do know you they know you're kind and brave and strong ...and generous and funny. Who wouldn't want all that in a date?" Eddie finshes.

Oh I don't know, you? Maybe? Do you? Steve thinks.

"Even bald, people would still go crazy for you" Eddie adds, his words slightly muffled towards the end as he shoves almost all of the new Twinkie in his mouth but apparently thinks better of it, biting all but a small piece.

"Here. You want the rest of this?" Eddie offers Steve, talking through his mouthful, and presenting the small piece with his ringed fingers, right in front of Steve's face.

Without thinking, Steve leans forward and takes it with his mouth, his lips burning where they touched Eddie's fingers.

As Eddie retrieves his hand Steve realizes what he just did and how quiet the car got.

He sends Robin a panicked look through the side mirror as Jonathan awkwardly clears his throat.

"Argyle's got nice hair" Robin tries.

The car immediately fills up with enthusiastic agreement and Steve slowly breathes out.

He can't bring himself to look at Eddie as he chews on his bite. He practically licked Eddie's fingers. Unprompted! The guy probably meant for Steve to grab the treat and then eat it. If he even accepted it at all!

Steve feels like an idiot and he frowns at the map again, willing himself to ignore the goosebumps in his arms and the tickling on his lips.

He doesn't see Eddie worriedly staring at him for the remaining of their conversation, until Nancy takes pity on him and offers up her spare scrunchie to distract him.

part 2

#if there's one thing you should know about them is this: they are sooooo dumb <3 #steddie #steveddie #steddie headcanon #stranger things #.#i hope the car configuration isn't too confusing here #also i didn't tag the other ships bc they're so minimal and I don't wanna clog those tags #also this could be platonic. or it could be polycule. you decide :)#i might have a part two but don't tell #also if this by some curse this is seen by someone who was there when i acted like Eddie is acting here SHUT UP #this is fictionalized and NOT YOUR BUSINESS #steddie lake fic

2K notes · View notes

steviesbicrisis · 2 years ago

Text

Steve’s best relationship wasn’t even a relationship. He could barely call it a fling, a flirt. They never even went on a date. They never kissed.

Steve still thinks of it as the best whatever-it-is he has ever had with someone.

At the beginning it was mostly infuriating, how quickly Eddie managed to win the kids over, compared to Steve’s months of work as babysitter/nailbat swinger/monster fighter. Steve had to literally bleed multiple times to get an ounce of respect, Eddie only had to run a nerdy club about fictional bleeding and monster-fighting.

Then somehow, and Steve still has trouble pinpointing when and how it happened, everything changed.

Taking the kids back home from hellfire became something he impatiently waited for.

He and Eddie would barely talk for a few minutes and he would find himself replaying the conversation in his head for days. Anything he could say to get a reaction out of Eddie became fundamental, and if he started by picking subjects to piss him off, he ended learning about Eddie’s favorites, because few minutes after hellfire were never enough and Steve needed Eddie to talk as much as possible, until the kids were begging to drop it and go home.

Steve never questioned the change, most likely out of fear. He doesn’t think he ever was clueless, just really scared about what would potentially mean to be staring at another dude’s eyelashes as he goes on a rant about why Ozzy Osbourne is the best artist of his generation. Or blush whenever said dude would call him “baby”, or “sweetheart”.

Steve convinced himself that the thing he and Eddie were having was as good as it was going to get, nothing more.

Then Chrissy Cunningham died, Eddie ran, and Steve realized that the thing will never be enough for him.

He couldn’t not have Eddie. Not watch him as he entertains a bunch of freshmen, as he stomps with his worn out sneakers on top of forniture, as he puts his terrible music on to push away anyone who doesn’t care enough about him to stay.

Steve needed to see Eddie being alive, doing what his heart desires, and he needed to be next to him when he does.

Obviously, this realization came at the worst possible time.

Steve tried to tell him so many times: when they found him at the boathouse, when he was hiding at refer Rick’s house, when they were taking a stroll in the upside down, and even when they were driving a stolen trailer to a gunshop.

But, it seemed, Eddie had come to a realization just as important and he tried his best to avoid Steve at every given chance.

Steve tried to initiate the conversation as Eddie did his best to run away from it. And he ran until Steve had no chances left to tell him how he actually felt.

———

Steve doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say he lost something he never had. To mourn a relationship he never began. A partner that, technically, never became a partner.

After Eddie dies, Steve has no one to be next to but he can’t say he ever did.

Steve just exists waiting. He can’t tell if he’s waiting for the pain to go away or for Eddie to jump out of a bush and yell “ah! I got you sucker!! By the way, I’m in love with you too.”

For obvious reasons, that never happens.

What does happen, is a call.

It’s a normal Tuesday, as normal as you could define it after Hawkins almost collapsed into the upside down. Steve got into a routine, between checking on the ones at the hospital, helping out at the shelter, allowing Robin to check on him to see if he’s still alive.

The call happens while Robin is doing her kitchen check up - aka making sure he has food and that he’s eating it-, so she picks the phone like she did a million times before.

“Harrington residence, this is Robin” she says, cheerfully.

Steve doesn’t pay much attention to it as he’s folding his dad’s old clothes that intends to donate to the shelter, until he hears Robin’s loud gasp.

“What is it? Is it the hospital? Is it Max?” He rushes to the other room where Robin is.

She doesn’t answer but she gives him a look as she passes him the receiver.

Steve goes quiet, a million thoughts going through his head as he takes the phone from Robin.

He’s still unprepared when he hears that unmistakable voice “Baby”.

Steve gasps for breath “Eddie?”

Is that really you? What happened? Are you hurt? Isn’t this impossible? Is what goes on in Steve’s head, but he ends up just asking “are you okay?”

He can hear a chuckle, Eddie’s wicked chuckle, a further confirmation that it is him, “I’m- hanging in there… are you okay?”

Steve finds the question absurd. He isn’t the one who got left in the upside down, the one that got eaten by demonic bats, the one who died before Steve had the chance to tell him how he felt.

He answers truthfully nonetheless, “I’m… I’m not okay.”

“I’ll be there soon, I promise.”

“Please Eddie, come quick.”

“I’ll break the sound barrier for you.”

#if you can’t tell #im in my RWRB era #if you watched the movie then you might like this?#just felt inspired honestly #that ‘baby’ lives inside my head rent free #also Kas Eddie we always love to see him #basically Eddie and Steve got close during the school year but Steve realized his feelings only during the events of season 4 #Eddie dies but comes back #because this is the only way I can cope with it #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve and eddie #stranger things #steve x eddie #platonic stobin #robin buckley

2K notes · View notes

acowardinmordor · 2 years ago

Text

You Left Me - You Miss Me - Six

Sup, I finally wrote the next part. Mostly because of someone trying to find it via the fic finder blog, which gave me a big ol spike in anxiety about the lack of update.

Part One .... Part Four - Part Five

---

“Rob, no.”

“Don’t you tell me ‘no,’ Steven Dingus Harrington!”

“You can’t drive to Hawkins and kill the guy.”

“Oh yes I can! I'll take your bat with me!”

“Babe, you still don’t know how to drive, and I have work in the morning so I can’t take you.”

“I’ll figure it out on the way!”

She wouldn’t. She wasn't going to drive to Hawkins. She would definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent kill Munson if she had the chance and Steve didn’t talk her out of it, but Robin wasn’t going to leave him alone when he’d had a breakdown an hour earlier. She wouldn’t let him sleep alone for the next few days, and she would go to work with him in the morning, and she’d probably skip her Stats class so she could stick by him after work too.

It took Robin about thirty seconds to realize something had happened.

That was the gap between her opening the car door, and Steve speaking. All he said was “hey, Robs” and she cut off her ramble about chlorofluorocarbons. The same way he could tell by the sound of her stirring soup, or which color eye shadow she wore, she knew immediately something had happened.

She touched his arm.

And he had a breakdown in the college parking lot.

Steve updated the tag on the side of the box and put it back on the shelf. He was,technically, working. Robin was ranting and using a tie-dye shirt as a prop.

“You don’t need to crash our car trying to go kill a guy I’m not even mad at.”

“Ugh,” she flapped the shirt at him and slouched against the edge of the shelving unit. “Why not? Why are you not mad at him? How? I’m mad at him! He took the kids away from you! They’re annoying little shitheads but you loved them and he jus---”

“Rob,” he interrupted softly. He couldn’t get into that side of it right now.

“Sorry. Sorry. But you’re not this nice, Stevie. You’re wonderfully bitchy and petty and it’s one of my favorite things about you, and I don’t get this. He sucks! This was super shitty! Why aren’t you mad at him for being an asshole?”

“It’s not his fault.”

“He said it was his fault!”

Eddie blamed himself, and maybe it was his fault, but it didn’t matter. Not in comparison.

“Are you going to inventory anything tonight, or is this just going to be me?”

“No! And why are you working?”

Because if he stopped, if he let himself turn his full attention towards it, he was going to fall apart again, and stupid as it was, checking inventory used up just enough of his focus that he couldn’t drown. Steve flicked through the stack of size smalls, and wrote it down on the list. “Uh, because we’re at work?”

“We both work tomorrow tonight and there is no way that Mary or Nick have ever looked at the stock sheets in their life, they aren’t going to look tomorrow either. No one will know.”

“I’ll know.” He glanced up to make eye contact for a second, and she caved with a groan.

“If you were anyone but my soulmate, buddy…” She folded the shirt terribly, shoved it into the gap between the cardboard and the other shirts, and finally closed the box.

Letting the silence settle gave Steve a minute to breathe, and reset himself without the rising tension. She knew that, and waited until, unspoken, she knew he was ready to keep going.

“Steve.”

“I am mad, Robs. I am. You know that it’s.. At the kids, and at Hopper, and at myself for agreeing to this stupid idea, but I’m not mad at him.”

“Why does he get special treatment?”

Hearing how that sounded, he tried again, “No, uh. I’m mad at him, but, like, the same way you get mad when the grandma in the crosswalk is going really slow and then drops something and goes back, and you end up stuck waiting again even though you should have made it through the light before. Yeah, it sucks, but it’s not like grandma was doing it specifically to fuck with you. She’s just, you know, shopping or whatever.

“It wasn’t like there was a friendship there that he betrayed. He did something for his own life and it was sorta sucky, and it sucks for me, but he feels really shitty about it, so I don’t think he meant for them to, you know, vanish.”

Robin thumbed down the stack of Levis, whispering the count as she went. Three more sizes got counted before she responded.

“You carried him out of there. You saved his life.”

Steve hummed absently. “He wasn’t bleeding that bad. His trash lid kept most of them off. I panicked when I saw blood and picked him up.”

“And that doesn’t make you friends?”

“It’s not like I only saved him because it was him. Not like I stopped and thought about whether I should get the bleeding guy to the hospital. Lifeguard, remember?”

The other half of the thought, he bit back. He’d had nightmares about Billy after Starcourt. Dreams where he could have saved him, and didn’t. Where he could have saved Max from having to see that, having to recover from that. He saw Eddie bleeding, he saw one of his kids screaming, and there wasn’t a thought in his head. Just the need not to let it happen again. Not again. Not Dustin too.

He kept his eyes on the inventory form so she didn’t see that part.

“Still think it should have mattered more. Life saving creates friendships.”

“He was unconscious. I know you don’t know much about how guys act with each other, but generally both dudes are awake when they become friends.”

She snorted at his weak joke, throwing her pencil at him. It wasn’t anywhere near her.

“New record, champ, that one wasn’t even close enough for me to pretend to dodge it.”

“Ugh, I hate you.”

“Love you too, Robs.”

He got through a full set of kids dress shirts in peace, counted and listed. Then he pulled down the crate of kid’s dresses, next on the list to check.

The whole can of worms would tear open when, if, when Eddie showed up with something from the kids. There was no version of that day that wouldn’t end with him falling apart. If he skimmed them, if he burned them, if he read them, if he wrote back, if he refused to take them at all, it didn’t matter. He was going to fall to pieces.

If they wrote and it was real, if it was petty, if it was anger, if it was grief, if it was gloating he was gone, if it was begging him to come back, if it was proof that it was always fake, always a temporary placeholder until they found someone they actually like. The imminent breakdown was going to be bad no matter what.

Like those safety videos in school about seat belts.

Like knowing the car crash was coming, knowing it couldn’t be stopped, and knowing that nothing he did was going to make it any easier to bear. Slow motion, watching a car come -- a beat up old van come towards him. No time to put on a seat belt, no way to brace for it, just accept that it was going to happen and hope you survived.

Robin cleared her throat to get his attention, and Steve blinked back to himself.

“Did, uh, did you say something?”

Robin watched him for a minute. He let her this time. It was easier to let her see what he was feeling than try to turn it into words, and he needed her to let it go for now..

“I’m going to skip my bio lecture on Friday afternoon.”

“Birdie, you don’t--”

“You are going to call in sick at the skate rink. We are going to make snickerdoodles and brownies and the cracker bark thing, and order pizza, and we’re going to make ourselves sick eating too much, and we’re going to watch some random movie on mute and make up our own story and dialogue. Got it?”

“Got it,” he smiled.

And it wasn’t going to make it all better. Eating two pounds of butter in a day wasn’t going to make it easier when Eddie showed up, but it was like hitting pause on that video. Car crash was still coming, but he could look away for a while.

***

Steve clung to the pass shelf from the kitchen as the expected car crash hit him on Monday. John, always eager for the chance to throw someone out of the diner, looked over Steve’s shoulder. It was a nice moment. A nice little thought before he had to face what he’d agreed to. If he asked, John would throw Eddie out. Literally. Nice image, but not the one he got to see.

Instead, he declined the offer, and grabbed the plates.

“Gimme a minute,” he mumbled to Eddie, heading to the sweet elderly couple celebrating the birth of their second granddaughter with a leisurely breakfast. If he spent an extra minute talking to them, complimenting the polaroid of what seemed to be some kind of mashed potato swaddled in white and pink, it was to get a good tip, not because he was stalling.

Eddie hadn’t moved when he got back. He was a step back from the counter, stiff, holding a paper grocery bag under one arm, eyes trained on the ugly teal of the stool’s seat.

“Well?” Steve asked bitchily, “Did you bring milk and eggs and bread, honey?”

He put it on the counter, clutching the folded top hard, like he was making sure it stayed shut.

Like it was full of spiders or something. Mutual sentiment.

Steve grabbed it, tossing it onto the shelf where they kept personal belongings and the leftovers they’d called dibs on. He hadn’t expected Eddie Munson to be up to Franklin at eight am on a Monday. Eddie wasn’t a morning person. Steve thought he’d have a few more hours to brace. Now he had to deal with customers while that bag burned a hole in the back of his head.

Luckily, Rebecca was serious when she said he could get mean with guests if he wanted to. Today wasn’t a want. It was going to be a necessity.

Eddie was still standing there.

“You can tell them I got it, or whatever,” he tried to dismiss him.

Something that looked like the tortured remains of a smile flickered on Eddie’s face. He gave up after a second and nodded too many times. “Thanks. Thank you. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, right?”

It took a minute for Steve to catch up to the question.

“I haven’t said I’m going to answer them. Or open them. Or keep them.”

Eddie was quiet for a minute, still not looking up, and Steve’s Travel-Size-Robin was vibrating with the need to make him so they could guess what the hell he was thinking.

“Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings?” he repeated.

“Yeah. Sure, yeah,” Steve gave up.

Eddie left, and Steve did the entire day’s front of house prep before Susan got in, trying to keep his head away from that damn bag.

***

Steve didn’t open it.

He fell asleep in Robin’s bed, grateful he didn’t have other work that evening, and doubly grateful when she made him eat some crackers and drink some water before they passed out for the night.

If he was waiting for the impact the day before, seeing Eddie again the next day was so unexpected that the crash whooshed past him without an impact. He didn’t sit down, and he looked a little rough, probably from driving to Franklin in the early morning twice in two days.

“Do you have…?”

“No? No,” Steve boggled at him, “How could I have anything for you to even -- No. Man, no.”

Eddie nodded.

Eddie left.

***

Steve stared at the bag instead of taking a nap before their shift in the stockroom. Didn’t open it, that was way, way beyond him, but he did manage to look directly at it, and it was only a few saltines, but he did successfully eat.

Robin, angel, light of his life, soulmate and perfect person got in the car after class, handed him a kinda gross protein bar that she stole from an athlete in her class who she didn’t like, and made him eat it.

She didn’t make him talk about the bag shaped elephant in their apartment, and she spent the entire shift explaining the way Ann Carson’s translations of Greek plays had totally shifted how people read them, making them more accessible, and how the push to do the same with Shakespeare was incredible.

When he went to crawl into his own bed that night, she grumbled, brought her favorite pillow, and climbed in after him.

***

Eddie walked in at quarter to seven, right after three four tops seated.

“No.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Eddie looked small, probably because he was speaking at a normal volume, sounding like a normal human, which ran opposite to how Eddie was in Hawkins. He also looked like crap.

“Why are you here, dude? You hate mornings. You don’t have to leave that early, I work until one.”

Eddie scrunched his face, but didn’t answer that.

“No?” he asked instead.

Someone at table six shouted ‘waiter!’

“I’ll bring your coffee in a damn minute!” Steve yelled back, half turning with the carafe in his hand.

“Steve?”

“Look, I don’t have anything for you. Nothing. You don’t need to waste your time. I haven’t opened it.”

“There’s more than one -- oh,” Eddie scrubbed over his face. “Okay. Yeah. Okay. Do-- Are you going to? Open it.”

Thinking about opening it made him want to run away to Canada.

Thinking about never knowing made him want to puke.

Whatever weird face Steve made was something Eddie could translate. He only raised his head for a moment, just long enough to look. But then he covered his face with both hands, taking a deep breath that shuddered on the exhale.

“See you Monday,” he said as a goodbye.

“Where’s my coffee?” the same guy yelled. Steve didn’t have the energy to deal with customers and whatever the fuck was going on with Eddie’s early morning emotional mess.

“Wait a second,” he complained to both of them at once. Steve grabbed one of the big mugs, the ones they used for the expensive hot chocolate, filled it with coffee, and set the pour jar of sugar next to it. He looked from Eddie to the cup, pointedly. “Don’t crash. Bring the cup back with you.”

The asshole yelled for him again, and Steve turned on the terrifyingly polite smile that Robin had helped him hone. Then he deployed it on the asshole at table six.

---------------

We are headed towards Steddie, on a path that will, hopefully, not feel like I brushed off all this to get there. However. Wow, they're hurting right now. You can't have Eddie's pov yet, it would spoil things, but. just. trust me. ow.

Still don't do tag lists. Once I know how many parts it'll be, this will go to Ao3, promise.

#You left me - you miss me #steddie #my writing #angst

880 notes · View notes

dreamsteddie · 28 days ago

Text

I'm sick, I'm languishing, I'm wearing a blanket in 70 degree heat, and I've been watching The Price is Right on loop since 10 AM.

Anyway, related to my previous posts (here and here), Eddie goes on tour for a couple of months and while he's away, Robin and Steve take a cross-country road trip on a whim to try and be on the Price is Right together.

She's glad Eddie was a good partner and took Steve to be on his favorite show, but she's a little offended they didn't bring her with them. She is mostly appeased by Eddie's continuous and vehement denial that Steve was talking about her and not him when Bob asked him about having a special girl back home. No mater how many times she brings it up, he always gets all red in the face and gives some long winded speech about love and being queer in public and coded speech. It's always hilarious.

Anyway, they get bored one day, and Steve has no qualms about using his and Eddie's joint account, even if it's mostly Eddie's money these days, while Steve does charity and volunteer work. So, when Robin asks Steve if he wants to go to California with her and try to get on again, he kind of just shrugs and goes to grab his shoes.

They drive for two days to get there, singing along to their music, eating too much junk food and not drinking enough water. Robin even forces Steve to listen to one of her book cassettes for "enrichment."

When they get to LA they grab a room at a semi-decent hotel (they could afford something luxury but they are so deep in Roadtrip Mode they don't even think about it). Robin lets Steve try on a million outfits that all look the same and makes up critiques and compliments for each of them because she knows her best friend and knows he won't leave until he feels like he's made the 'right' outfit choice. Steve, who still never fully let the outfit thing from last time go, will add this onto his once-yearly rant to Eddie. The man in question will find this equal parts endearing and aggravating.

They wait in line for two hours with the rest of the hopefuls, partake in interviews with PAs out on the street, and get ushered in. With their dynamic and good looks, they were never not going to get in.

It's the mid-90s, but everything is mostly the same as when Steve and Eddie went together in 89'. Some of the curtains are different and some of the small decals have been removed or changed and Steve delights in pointing off each and every minute change to Robin who finds it fascinating. She likes to pose outlandish hypotheticals for why they had to change it. Apparently, the last set of curtains got eaten by a pack of alpacas that broke in after hours. Who knew?

They watch and cheer and give standing ovations and it seems like the show is going to end without either of them being called up. Neither of them are too put out by it, chances are always low that they call your name, but then they go to call up the last contestant and the name is Robin Buckley. It takes a second for them to register what they heard, and the camera pans just in time to see them holding hands and jumping around like children. Robin steps on several pairs of shoes on her way to contestant's row

Bob catches it and ribs her a little about the number of toes she just broke and how she might need to win to pay off some medical bills. She laughs, extremely awkwardly, and they get to bidding. It's a pair of bicycles which she actually loves since her Women's History course last year had a lesson on how the widespread accessibility of the bicycle in Europe and the United States was seen as a "dangerous" gateway into women's liberation and a potential cause for lesbianism due to the shape and placement of the seat.

Steve knows she's been looking for a good bike, and has been given many a second-hand lesson about Women's History from his best friend, cheers extra loud in the audience. They both know she's got this.

Robin guesses the exact right number on the first try and wins that extra hundred. She kind of hates reaching into Bob's pocket to get it, but a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars. She plays Danger Price and wins all four prizes (a secretary, a stereo system, a barbeque, and a fancy-looking clock). She is so extremely smug about the whole thing.

When it's time to spin the wheel, she get's a dollar across two spins and gets the 1,000 dollars, which Steve absolutely loses his head about. The camera pans to him on his feet, clapping and screaming her name. Unfortunately, another contestant does the same and loses in the spin off. Steve is in no way put off by Robin not being in the showcase because he's too busy going on about statistics and average winnings like this is an actual sport.

At the end of the day they pack away all their stuff into the back of Robin's old station wagon, check out of their hotel, and spend a couple of nights in San Francisco before heading back home. It's a miracle no one breaks into their car.

Eddie comes back home about a month later, and Steve just...never mentions it. For how much he loves The Price is Right, he never says a word about their little trip until a week after his return when the episode airs. At first, Eddie doesn't even notice because the camera pans over everyone so quickly. It's not until Steve runs to grab their now cordless phone, an unheard of act for Steve who takes this time of day very seriously, that he even clues in on anything being different.

It's only when he hears Steve talking into the receiver to Robin about "our episode being on" that he cottons on completely to what exactly is happening. The camera snatches a close up of the two of them whispering to each other and clapping when they come back from commercial break.

He nudges Steve with his toe the entire episode just to bother him for not telling him about an entire multi-day trip, but he knows trying to tear his boyfriend away from both The Price is Right and Robin is a lost cause and resigns himself to waiting until the episode ends before they talk about it.

It turns out Steve did call Eddie the night they got back from filming to tell Eddie all about it. Unfortunately, it was one of those nights where Eddie is both in a different time zone and deeply asleep after a performance and he answers the phone half awake and doesn't remember it in the morning, having hummed and agreed in the right places on instinct and only remembers the call as a hazy dream the next morning.

#platonic stobin #the price is right #steddie #background steddie #again #this is an imaginary world where certain particulars about the price is right are not real #stranger things #dreamer speaks #fanfiction #robin buckley #steve harrington #eddie munson #this took twice as long to type as it should have #due to the illness #please ignore the errors #I am unwell

118 notes · View notes

rogueddie · 1 year ago

Text

Trinkets of Affection T | 700 words Prompt for @steddielovemonth: Love is not in the big things but in the small ones

Steve is Eddies first serious relationship. Even when he fantasized about what his future love life might be, he never thought he could get anything even close to what Steve gives him.

He loves with everything he is, Eddie quickly realized. If there's anything he can think of that might make Eddie smile, he does it. He turns up with flowers, or mixtapes, or rings.

One time he'd turned up with a paper rose that he'd made himself. He explained that he had thought Eddie might like things that were made, that took effort, more than expensive things.

He's right, of course.

But it all builds up, and Eddie wants to give Steve things too.

The first thing Eddie thinks to get him is a ring. He's noticed how much Steve's eyes linger on his own, how often he'll start playing with Eddie's rings when they hold hands, how he has favorites.

He can't simply buy Steve some ring he thinks he might like though. Anyone could do that. Eddie wants it to be special.

So, he digs through the tub he uses to organise all his rings. He separates them into two piles; rings he wears, and one he won't miss.

It's almost too easy to find one that Steve will like.

But, looking it over, he starts to doubt himself. Especially because it's not one of the rings he bought- it's the one he made.

The ring is painfully simple, and poorly made. Eddie is surprised it's lasted as long as it had.

It's little more than a a plain silver band with a cool rock he found on the ground stuck onto it. He can't even remember what he used to get it on there.

He had been so proud though. He had wanted to do something, and he did it.

He only hopes that he's right in thinking that Steve is as sentimental as Eddie thinks he is. That, or he also likes cool rocks.

"A gift?" Steve teases, immediately. "Aw, for me?"

"It's not much, it's..." Eddie awkwardly pulls the ring out, keeping it hidden in his fist. "I made it, like, years ago and... that seems like something you'd think was cool. Or, uh, romantic. Right?"

"Very romantic."

"Ok, uh... here."

Steve stares at the ring, dropped onto his palm, for a horrifyingly long amount of time.

"I know it's not-"

"You made this?" Steve cuts him off. He finally looks up at Eddie, with an unreadable expression.

"Well... yeah. I was only, like, thirteen so it's not very... uh... pretty?"

"What? No, Eds, this is- this is perfect."

He shifts the ring in his hands, before trying to squeeze it onto his pinky finger. It only just fits.

"I can get you something better."

Steve snorts, still looking at the ring as he turns his hand so he can see the different angles. "Good fucking luck," he mumbles.

Steve doesn't take the ring off that day, or that week, or ever. Eddie isn't sure he ever does take it off, outside of taking a shower.

"I don't want it to get, like, water damage!" Steve explained, when Eddie asked.

"It's just... isn't it annoying?" Eddie tried. "Wearing it all the time? It's clunky and-"

"And I like it. You made this, Eds. It's not a small thing to me."

"It's just a rock."

"Sure it is."

"Steve-"

"Eddie," Steve's tone is sharp enough that Eddie's mouth snaps shut. "This is something you made. It's your ring, and I get to wear it. Like... I can't tell everyone how much I love you, but this way I can at least show them."

"... oh."

"You get it now?"

"That- yeah. Yeah, I get it."

Steve glances around the shop before leaning in, stealing a quick kiss, before turning to the shelf in front of them. "Good. So, I was thinking this one might fit better. What do you think?"

"Yeah, it looks great."

But his eyes are still trained in Steve. He grins, barely paying attention to what he goes on to rant about, too lost in how his heart flutters when he glances down at his hand, at the ring he still wears.

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #steddie fic #ficlet #nav.slm

462 notes · View notes

wynnyfryd · 1 year ago

Text

Trailer park Steve AU part 48

part 1 | part 47 | ao3

cw: mentions of smoking/sexual activity

Chapter 11

February

For two and a half months, Steve’s life goes perfectly. He didn’t realize how far into a pit he’d fallen until Eddie showed up to help Robin and the kids lift him out, but the difference is jarring. Golden hour sunlight after catching a matinée.

Steve spends two months blinking.

He sloughs off his sadness like a snake shedding skin; spends the winter getting back to being Steve, restocks his favorite hair products and restarts his fitness routines — morning runs through the woods, afternoon pick-up games with Lucas and some of his teammates when the weather doesn’t suck. Weightlifting in the evenings because Eddie says he likes how Steve’s arms look when they get a little big, says it’s more fun to pin him down when he knows it’s just for show.

And he tries new things, too, just because Eddie likes them or because the kids think they're cool. He reads a Vonnegut novel. He eats Indian curry. He even learns a song on guitar.

...Sort of.

Eventually.

(Actually, that whole thing goes pretty horribly and takes for-fucking-ever. Eddie spends an afternoon patiently encouraging him and doing his best not to tease while Steve clumsily moves through a beginner chord progression, and then breaks down wheezing when, after the sixth attempt with no improvement, Steve puts the guitar down in a huff and threatens to demote his pinky finger from his hand if it doesn't start cooperating. Eddie laughs so hard he tips face-first into Steve's crotch, and it takes them a sticky-spitty-sweaty half hour to get back to the lesson.)

Anyway, he likes the way their lives entangle. As easy as weaving his hands through Eddie’s hair.

He gets invited to band practice; he sits in on D&D. Sometimes he watches sports with Wayne when he's got a day off, then he heads out with Eddie for long joyrides through the countryside.

Eddie blasts his metal music when they get out to the backroads, and he talks too loudly over the bass and laughs even louder and rants about nothing and smokes cigarettes while he headbangs to his favorite guitar solos — almost lights his hair on fire on more than one occasion, fucking dumbass — and he does this silly, lewd shit that makes Steve's chest just ache. Makes it clench around the word that's been burning a hole in his tongue since New Year's Eve. Eddie wags his brows and palms himself through his jeans and asks if Steve wants to take another joyride when they get home, and Steve thinks:

God, I love you.

I love you.

How could I not love you?

And really, how could he not? And how much longer can he keep not telling him so? When it feels like the word is going to burst out of his chest Alien-style any second.

When it feels like Eddie's the reason he even has a home to get to.

Slowly — so slowly, hours spent thrifting and bartering and keeping an eye out for free stuff left out on the curb, even more hours sanding and painting and caulking and sweating to death between trips to the hardware store — they redo Steve's whole trailer. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, they exorcise the haunted tin can. They make it his; they make it theirs.

Eddie injects life into every inch of the space, fills it with weird art and funky lamps and a big, comfy leather couch that he likes to bend Steve over. Comes inside him in every room when they get done working on it as a reward; gasps in Steve's ear about how he always wants to be inside him: in his home, in his body, nestled deep inside his heart. "Keep me right here, baby," he breathes as he fucks Steve against a wall, his left hand gripping Steve's chest while he fills him from behind.

It’s perfect.

It's perfect.

Everything is beautiful and nothing hurts unless Steve asks.

And then, because this godforsaken town and everyone in it are fucking cursed, one day it isn’t anymore.

—

part 49

tag list in separate reblogs under '#trailer park steve au taglist' if you'd like to filter that content. if you want to be added please comment and let me know (must be over 21; please either verify in the comment or have your age visible on your blog)

#trailer park steve au #steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #my writing #my fic #oh giant joseph head we're really in it now

347 notes · View notes

flieslikeamoron · 4 months ago

Note

For the ask meme, if you're still doing it! I wish you would write a fic where either Eddie or Steve can read the other's mind, or feel their emotions, or are otherwise psychically linked in some way. :)

Hiiiii! At one point I was thinking about writing a soul bond type of thing where the bat bites create a hive mind that Steve and Eddie share. Your ask reminded me of the idea so I wrote a little bit of what that could have been like. Some dicks and stuff behind the cut.

-*-

It’s not that weird.

Sure, it’s a little strange Steve always seems to know when Eddie pulls into the parking lot at Family Video. Even if he’s in the back room, couldn’t possibly have heard the rattle of the van’s rusted muffler.

And yes, he can tell when Eddie’s hungry. Thirsty. Tired. Can tell without asking if he’s craving a burger or spaghetti. Can tell where Eddie is in a room without looking. Can feel it like a magnet pulling. But he knows when Robin’s hungry just by looking too. Or when she has a crush on someone. He knows when Nancy’s fed up or trying not to laugh. He knows when Dustin’s about to go off on some nerd rant before he starts talking.

It’s just because they’re friends now. That has to be why he feels so much better when Eddie’s around. Like something he didn’t know was missing clicking into place. That’s friendship, isn’t it?

It’s not that weird.

Not compared to all the shit they’ve been through. It’s nice, actually, the way Eddie smiling at him sinks deep into him like sunshine on his skin. The way Eddie’s pacing footsteps or the drumming of his fingers on the counter thumps in a rhythm against Steve’s chest. Even when Eddie’s pissed, it rattles like rain on a tin roof in a way Steve kind of likes.

It’s just because Steve likes him. It’s not a big deal that he hasn’t felt exactly like this about any of the other people he’s friends with. Any of the people he loves. Different isn’t bad. There’s no reason to mention it. What would he even say? Do you know when I’m thirsty too? Do you feel like a lock turning when you touch me? That does make it sound weird. And what if Eddie says no. What if Eddie has no idea what he’s even talking about.

No, Steve will just give him a Coke when he knows Eddie wants a Coke. And bask in the smile that gets him. There’s no reason to bring it up. To make it weird.

Until.

It comes out of nowhere, heat building low in his gut when Steve’s in the middle of putting his laundry away. He’s got the phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder, Robin on the other end giving him a play-by-play of her latest not-date with Vicki. He puts the rest of his jeans away, trying to ignore how turned on he is for no apparent reason. But there’s something fucked up about having Robin’s voice in his ear while he’s popping a boner.

“I gotta go,” he interrupts. “Sorry, I forgot I have to-” He tries to think of something he could be doing that’s not jerking off.

“Am I boring you?”

“No I just-” He stops again. This time because he has the oddest feeling. Almost the feeling of a hand on him. Of fingers pinching into his nipple. It’s never really done much for him, having his nipples played with. But a pulse of heat goes right through his balls. He curls a hand thoughtlessly against his boner, feeling the needy weight of it. “I’ll call you in a sec.” He can hear Robin protesting as he hangs up and tosses the phone aside.

She calls right back, but he lets it ring. Too busy tugging his pants down. He can’t explain anyway. That he just really needs to get off right now. It’s rude as hell. He doesn’t know why he’s- But he’s so turned on. He’ll make it up to her after he gets this out of his system.

He tugs his underwear down enough to get his dick out, starting to stroke himself with one hand, the other braced on his dresser. He likes to start slow normally, get himself worked up, but he feels strung tight as if he’s already been at it for a while. He spits in his hand, spreads precome down the shaft. Watching his hand move, the head of his dick red and slick in the circle of his fingers.

There’s something wrong with his vision, something sort of blurry like a double exposure in a photograph. He blinks. It’s like the almost there of another hand, that’s not his hand. Of a dick that’s not his dick. He can almost feel it ghost against his skin when that hand moves, off rhythm with his. It’s making his dick throb, gut snarled tight with heat. It’s making him dizzy. He closes his eyes, and tries to focus on the slide of his hand. Just his hand. Tries to picture Phoebe Cates getting out of the pool. Perfect boobs and a slo-mo smile. But the picture in his head feels impossible to hold on to. Feels like he can’t-

And then he’s seeing himself a little hazy and far away like looking through clear water. It’s him pulling himself out of the pool in his swim team speedos. Muscles flexing. Water streaming off him. Hand running through his own wet hair, and a cocky grin on his face.

And okay, he knows he’s a good-looking guy. But he’s not- His ego isn’t this big. This isn’t the him he sees in the mirror. It’s sort of- Everything a little better than he actually is. The him he wishes he was.

He didn’t- The shape of it feels wrong inside his head, like it doesn’t fit right. But he’s watching himself sitting down now, at the edge of the pool. And there's someone still in the water. There are hands on his thighs. A mouth on his cock. He can’t see much of the other person but long, dark, wet hair. He can almost feel it, the heat of that mouth on his cock. The sizzle of it through his mind going straight to his balls. And every time he strokes himself it’s like he feels it in his dick, and then he feels it again somehow like an echo throbbing through him. An overwhelming feedback loop of want and need and how good it feels. God. Fuck. I’m gonna come. He is gonna come, but he hears it against the inside of his head, and it doesn’t sound like him. It sounds like-

“Eddie?” he says cautiously. Out loud and in his head too.

He feels a quick stab of shock, fear. It feels like the rest of it. Sort of the wrong shape inside his body, inside his head. That picture of him winks away. And then it’s like he’s got a song stuck in his head, but it’s a heavy metal song he’s never heard before.

“Eddie?” He thinks it harder. Tries to make it a scream, send it out past the inside of his own head. But the music keeps going, the noise of it so loud he can hardly think past it, can’t hear past it to whatever Eddie’s thinking behind it. That is Eddie behind it though, he’s pretty sure. That was Eddie just now. The things Steve was feeling. That was what Eddie was thinking about while he was getting off. He was thinking about Steve.

Steve should be more weirded out by that, probably. Knowing he’s starring in Eddie Munson’s wet dreams is a bit of a surprise. He didn’t even know Eddie’s gay. He waits to feel shocked or upset, but outside of being kind of confused how any of this is even happening, he doesn’t seem to mind it. It’s a compliment, really. If that’s the way Eddie sees him. He kind of likes it, actually, in a deep down, self-satisfied way that makes him wonder if he does need to work on his ego after all.

He feels vaguely guilty that he accidentally ruined the guy’s jerk off session. He looks down at his hand on his dick. He’s not sure if he should finish now. It’s like stolen valor or something. Is he even horny or was he just piggy-backing? However he got here, he’s still pretty close. He gives himself a couple careful strokes. Can Eddie feel that? Or was it just a one way connection? He heard it when Steve thought his name though. The heavy metal is still fucking blasting, so maybe he can’t hear or feel Steve past that just like Steve can’t hear him. He doesn’t know if he should risk it though.

It’s pretty fucking weird.

The kind of weird he can’t ignore.

He takes a cold shower, the heavy metal stuck in his head starting to give him a headache. Could you turn it down a little? he tries thinking. If it gets through to Eddie, he ignores it. Steve tries to figure out if there’s a way to turn down the volume on his end. Putting his fingers in his ears doesn’t help. He tries counting backward from a hundred and that seems like it does something, sort of. But as soon as he stops counting he can hear the music just as loud. Maybe Eddie will turn it off on his own if Steve gives him a little time to stop freaking out.

He’s got to be freaking out. Having the dude you’re jerking off about pop up in your head has to be the nightmare scenario of all time. But how is Steve supposed to tell him it’s cool if he won’t stop putting up a wall of sound?

Or maybe Steve could try something a little less direct than whatever this head to head connection is. He tries calling Eddie’s trailer. No answer. He tries the walkie. No answer.

He wonders if Eddie can tell he’s pulling into the trailer park like Steve can always tell when he’s pulling up the street to Steve’s house. Steve can feel it. That magnet tug as he walks up the stairs. That feeling just underneath his breast bone that always seems to orient toward Eddie like a compass pointing north. He wonders if Eddie can feel that too.

But maybe he can’t, because he looks shocked when he opens the door. Wide-eyed for just a second. The music breaks apart in Steve’s head enough that he can feel fear, just for a second. Less than that. Barely long enough to notice if he hadn’t been paying attention. And then the music starts up again, and whatever Eddie’s feeling is hidden behind it. Behind the easy laugh as he reaches out to thump Steve on the chest with the back of his hand like normal. Says, “You couldn’t call?” like Steve didn’t. Says, “You’re lucky I don’t have a life,” and tugs Steve in through the doorway. Like normal.

For a moment Steve thinks maybe it was all in his head. Maybe he’s making up weird shit and thinking he and Eddie have some kind of psychic connection and hearing things that aren’t there and seeing things that aren’t there. Maybe none of it is real. And there’s nothing weird here except him.

But there’s music in his head. And he doesn’t know this song.

#i might write more of this idk #the reason i didn't before was because i got too caught up in trying to figure out plot stuff #but writing this i was like if you don't actually try to explain things and do plot it's fun!#i'm still taking requests btw if you tell me the fic you wish i would write i'll try to write you a bit of it #steddie fic #my fic #ask game #my fic: hive mind

46 notes · View notes