#and I just want to know that if I can't work I'll have the money to pay bills and thats why I don't ever buy myself anything

[brbsoulnomming]

Heart On Your Sleeve Part 5

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

written for steddiebigbang2024 and belatedly posting here!

This part includes the Russian torture scene, so adding a warning for gore/violence just to be safe!

-----

Eddie comes by Scoops, once Steve gets the job there.

The first time, he laughs at the sailor hat for a minute straight until Steve rolls his eyes and calls back, “I'm taking my lunch!”

“Now?” Robin bitches. “Did you actually get a girl to fall for those ridiculous li-” She cuts off as she comes out of the back room and sees Eddie. “Oh. Huh.”

Eddie flashes a sharp toothed smile at her, and Steve rolls his eyes again and elbows him.

“I'll be back before the actual lunch rush hits this way,” he tells Robin, untying his apron and depositing it to the side of the counter.

To Eddie, he says, “Here, since this brought you so much joy,” and drops the sailor hat onto the top of Eddie's head.

Eddie gives a squawk and squirms around like he's trying to bat him off, though Steve notices he doesn't actually push him away as Steve adjusts the hat to his liking.

“There,” Steve says, shooting Eddie a teasing little grin as he steps back. “You keep that on the whole time, and I'll buy you lunch.”

“A small price to pay for a free meal,” Eddie says solemnly, but his eyes are crinkled a little like they do when he smiles, and he doesn't take the hat off the entire time they eat together.

—

He and Eddie sit out back behind Scoops, passing a cigarette back and forth. It's the end of Steve's shift, and technically he doesn't have to stay anymore, but he's not in a hurry to get home.

Dustin's away at camp, after all.

“Why the hell are you working here?” Eddie asks, sounding like he's been mulling it over for a while.

Steve snorts. “Needed to work somewhere.”

“Okay, fine, but haven't you done the lifeguard thing for like three years?”

Steve - didn't actually expect Eddie to know that, and he shoots him a little smile before he rolls his eyes. “Not a real job, according to my dad. It's just hanging out at the pool all day.”

Eddie scoffs. “Would your dad even know a real job if it bit him?”

“My dad's never really had to work for anything,” Steve mutters. “I didn't get into any of the colleges they wanted me to, so I needed to be taught a lesson. Pretty sure he was hoping it'd humiliate me.”

Eddie tips back, looking him over. “You don't look very humiliated.”

Steve shrugs. “Because I'm not. Yeah, sure, the outfit and the hat are stupid, but work is work. Ice cream makes people happy, I make people happy, it could be worse. Besides, he has no idea what I'm even making here. Every paycheck is a little more I can stash away where he can't touch it.”

Eddie's watching him very closely now, in a way that Steve's never seen before.

“How long have you been doing that?” he asks quietly.

“What, saving money that my dad doesn't know about?” Steve asks.

“Yeah.”

Eddie's face is serious - far more serious than Steve's ever seen him, than he thinks the situation warrants. Steve frowns.

“Since I got my first job, I guess? Anything I ask for from him comes with some kind of string attached, and I got tired of paying for it.”

Eddie's quiet again. “You've gotten in a lot of fights the last couple of years,” he says, slow and careful like he thinks Steve might bolt. “Lot of bruises.”

He clocks on to what Eddie's trying to get at, then, and a rush of relief washes over him as he hurries to set him straight. “Oh, no, my dad's not abusive or anything, just an asshole. He's never hit me.”

Eddie considers that. “Your dad can be an abusive piece of shit without ever hitting you.”

Steve licks his lips, takes his turn watching Eddie a little more closely. “Sounds like you're familiar with it.”

Eddie laughs, sharp and humorless. “Come on, man, you know who my dad is.”

“I know what people say about him,” Steve agrees. “But I've learned not to listen to rumors.”

Eddie flicks the cigarette butt off into the distance.

Steve gets out another one, puts it between his lips to light it. He takes a long drag, then - pulls his heart out of his chest, setting it between them before he passes the cigarette over.

Eddie's eyes drop down to his heart as he takes the cigarette, but this time he doesn't say anything.

Steve still doesn't ask to see his, even though he's tempted.

“You can listen to these ones,” Eddie says after a while. “They're mostly true.”

“You deserve better,” Steve tells him.

He looks over when Eddie doesn't say anything, finding him watching his heart. It's beating strong and steady.

“So do you,” Eddie says without looking up.

They sit in silence for a while longer, until the cigarette is gone.

Then Steve tucks his heart back into his chest and stands up. “Come on, I'll get us lunch.”

Eddie scowls at him. “You bought last time.”

“Yeah, but a conversation like that deserves a burrito bigger than your head, and I've got employee discount,” Steve counters, holding out his hand.

Eddie concedes, accepting his hand up.

—

Steve keeps making up excuses to buy Eddie lunch after that, every time he comes by at the end of an early shift or close to his lunch break on a later shift.

One day he gets them both pizza from Sbarro, and they sit at one of the sticky plastic tables in the food court. It's so small their knees knock together as they devour their slices, but -

But it also means that Steve can tuck his ankle up against Eddie's, hook his foot half around it, and have an excuse if he needs one.

He doesn't need one.

Eddie doesn't move his foot away, but he does shoot wide eyed little looks over at Steve like he's not sure whether this is a joke or not, and -

“Hi,” Steve says, soft and ridiculous and holy shit, he has to have something better than hi.

But apparently hi works, because Eddie ducks his head, looks back up at him with something soft and wary and surprised all at once.

“Hi,” Eddie says back.

And that's -

It's something.

—

Steve gets closer to Robin - their bickering has started to become playful, and even though her teasing's never been mean, now it sounds almost fond. She still gets annoyed when customers watch them work in complete sync and think they're a couple, but now she just rolls her eyes and complains to him later instead of throwing things off by trying to protest it.

It's nice. He thinks he might be winning her over, and it makes the days pass a lot quicker.

—

He doesn't see Eddie for a week after their pizza lunch.

He tries not to think much about it, just tells himself that if he hasn't seen him by the time Dustin comes back from camp, he'll call him.

—

This isn't like any beating he's taken before.

Steve'd thought he was prepared. He was prepared, at least in the beginning. Billy did just as much damage, even if it was in a shorter span of time, and the ache in his ribs and stomach and face is familiar.

He can handle it.

Besides, it doesn't matter how much they hurt him - protecting Robin and Dustin and Erica is more important than anything else.

"Let's take a look at his heart," one of the soldiers says. "See how honest he's really being."

Steve's pretty sure he makes a choked off little guh.

He doesn't want to let them anywhere near his heart.

But on the other hand - he isn't lying as much as they think he is, and maybe that will prove it? They'll have to undo his hands to get him to take it out, and he briefly considers trying to get the drop on them, but he has to concede that probably won't go very well for him.

It's not like they're really asking for his opinion, anyway.

They aren't making any move to untie his hands, either, and Steve's brow scrunches in confusion.

He sees one of them holding what looks like a mix of a gun and a taser. It - honestly, it looks pretty stupid, like a prop in a bad movie, and he wrinkles his nose at it.

They press it up against his ribcage, pull the trigger - and fuck, he jolts back with the force of it.

His chest splits open.

The shock of it makes him numb for a precious few moments, staring down at the gaping hole in his own chest. The pain doesn't hit him until they take his heart out. It feels like it's being carved out of him, ripped from his chest as though he were being mauled by a wild animal, and he has the somewhat hysterical thought that he shouldn't be alive for this.

His heart was torn out of his chest, and somehow it's still beating, erratic and racing.

"Hmm," one of the soldiers says, tilting his heart this way and that. "Feels real."

The soldier squeezes it, and this time Steve screams at the pressure tightening around his heart, making him convulse in his bonds.

The second soldier laughs.

"They're making such good fakes these days," the second soldier says.

The first soldier relaxes his grip, and Steve sucks in ragged gulps of air, too disoriented to really understand what they're saying.

"Much more sophisticated than patches and paint," the first soldier agrees. "What good would a spy be if he showed his real heart?"

"No," Steve protests. "It's real, come on, you can feel it."

There’s no sign of deception from his heart, but it's beating too wildly from the pain to really make a difference.

"We'll see about that," the second soldier says, handing a switchblade to the first.

The first soldier presses the flat of the blade against his heart. "Let's see what's underneath if we shave a little off?"

—

Steve doesn't really remember anything after that. He must have passed out, because the next thing he hears is Robin's voice, and he realizes he's in a different room, tied back to back with her.

His chest aches.

Everything aches, really, but his chest is the worst of it.

Steve looks down, sees himself solid and in one piece again. He might have thought the whole thing was just a pain induced hallucination if it weren't for the unstable beat of his heart. It's pulsing unsteadily, and he feels as though if he even breathes too hard, it might burst into pieces with the next beat.

But he's not alone now.

He's with Robin, and she makes everything better, and even though his heart beats too fast when he thinks of how much he likes her - it's the good kind of too fast, not the kind that makes him think his heart is going to explode.

He is pretty sure that his heart is going to explode, though, that they're probably going to die here. He knows Robin is thinking the same thing - he just knows, like going through Russian secret agent torture together has made them automatically on the same wave length.

They were heading towards being friends before this, he knows, wonders if maybe they could have ever been for real.

It's a shame he doesn't think he'll ever get to find out.

—

Dustin and Erica find them before Steve loses any fingers.

Which is good. He might not be on the basketball team anymore, but he still plays with Lucas sometimes, and he likes all of his fingers attached to his hand and not on the floor of a secret Russian base.

He tells Dustin that as they're escaping from said Russian secret base. Dustin looks a little pale, hugs him tight around the middle, which makes Steve laugh - it should hurt, he thinks, but he doesn't feel a thing.

The only thing he feels is kind of floaty, and the itchy, overheated sensation he always gets when he's had his heart locked inside his chest for too long.

When no one's looking, Steve takes his heart out of his chest.

His stomach turns.

Whatever he's feeling about it seems distant, too far removed for him to be able to react to it, but the physical sensation of his stomach heaving is present and accounted for.

It only barely looks like a heart. The shape of it is hardly visible, more like a double handful of the precut chuck roast he gets to use as stew meat, sluggishly oozing every time it beats.

The thought of putting it back in his chest makes his stomach heave again, but even like this, he knows he can't keep it out in the open.

He rips off the red scarf from his Scoops uniform, wraps it around his heart to hold it together, and ties it off.

There.

Now no one will notice.

This is already written, and my plan is to post one part a day until it's all up here!

-----

Part 6

Taglist (always happy to add more to this if anyone wants): @fairytalesreality @lostonceandneverfound @wheneverfeasible @awkwardgravity1 @theintrovertedintrovert @thewickedkat @ravenfrog @scarlet-malfoy @missmagillicuddy @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @ollyxar @cringe-culture-is-dead-99 @thedragonsaunt @makewavesandwar @ajeff855 @mae-liz @the-fantastical-asexual @jettestar @warlordess @samsoble @persnicketysquares @cryptid-system @my-love-of-books @mydysfunctionallife @dreamercec @holyangelstudentuniverse

[celestialmuses]

She's fucking gorgeous and she knows it, giving him a reverse strip tease that's just as enticing. "I think I like the sound of that. How about no touching yourself without me, but if you simply can't help yourself", then he took on a patronizing tone, "you need to call me right after and tell me all about it." The area around the office building was quiet, street lights just turning on. "Oh? Well then you can have a Caddy, I prefer the way Lexus drives. But you're never going to have to worry abut me blowing my money on a Lambo, I like cars that work well over cars that look flashy." He said simply, starting the car and heading out. Kirk pulled her hand up to kiss her knuckles. "Yeah I like it too." He thought about her question, rolling it over in his brain. It deserved to be really considered. The orange lights passed over them as they drove, him knowing the way already. "Honestly Kelly, I feel like I misled you a bit. I was flying by the seat of my pants earlier, I'm not an experienced Dom. I've read books and talked to people and done scenes in the past, but a lot of it was just improv." He sighed when they got to a stop sign. "I don't think I can be your boss and also those other things, it just isn't right. So we have a choice. Either I stay your boss and this never happens again. Or I let you go and we can be together. And then there's another question. Do I want to be your boyfriend with the occasional BDSM scene or do we want to make this our lifestyle, with rules and behaviors set in place all the time? I'll be honest, I don't which of those two I want, I feel like starting with just dating and possibly graduating to the other would be the best route, if we even want that!" He mused, his hand clenching at the steering wheel. He was fucking it all up and her house was there. He stopped the car and turned towards Kelly. "I want to be with you. I want to hold your hand and kiss you and fuck you and buy groceries with you. I don't want to be your boss if it means I can't have you."

As she gets dressed Kelly take her time allowing him to drink in the sight of her body to commit to memory. "You're the only one I'll be thinking about and unless you let me I won't even touch myself. No matter how bad I want to," she sighed running her hands over her thighs before standing wrapping herself around his arm as they walk out together. "Hm, a Lexus. I prefer Cadillacs myself." She remarks giving him a small kiss before sliding into the passenger seat. Once they've started the drive to her place she reaches out and takes his hand. "One thing to know, I really like holding hands. And real quick, I don't know if you figured it out but I'm living with my brother right now. It's a whole thing. Anyways. How is this gonna work? You wanna be my dom but also my boss and my lover or boyfriend or whatever. I don't think it's going to be as simple as we want it to be. Be honest right now and tell me what you want."

[ryllen]

something i promised on my kofi 6 months ago... 🫠

[mokeonn]

I think something that is REALLY fun about having a small animal that needs to live in a habitat is making it a hobby to try to make the best possible habitat for them. Like there's nothing more fun than planning and executing different ways create paradise for an animal with a brain no larger than a peanut.

[lostxones]

"Yeah." Now it was her turn to want to avoid the subject of conversation. While Reid hadn't wanted to talk about his family, she didn't want to rehash what had caused her to drop out of school. It wasn't just a lack of interest. Her family hadn't had much money and so she'd dropped out to start working as well as helping make sure her siblings could participate in whatever activities they might have wanted. "I guess it depends on the situation. If I can't make you love concerts, that'll be my biggest failure in life and I don't know if I can handle it."

Carsyn grinned, sending him a quick text so he'd have her number. The fire emoji was right. "Wednesdays and Thursdays...okay. I'll look tomorrow and see what I can find. Do you want options or do you want a surprise?" A soft laugh escaped her. "So you're cool if the concert has a mosh pit but you don't necessarily want to be in the mosh pit. Got it."

'Yeah I tried to get it all done as quick as possible. School wasn't my thing either. Just wanted to go start living you know?' He laughed a little more out loud then. 'Yes that's a lot of pressure but you strike me as the kind of girl who works well under pressure, Carsyn.' He shrugged his shoulders, taking another sip of his drink as he watched her slide her phone over to him. Well at least was going good enough that she wanted his number. That it wasn't all a show since they'd kind of been forced to sit next to each other. Reid picked up the phone, quickly putting in his number and placing a fire emoji next to his name.

'There, so you remember who I am.' he teased with a wink as he slid her phone back towards her along the bar. 'Usually I'm not on call Wednesdays and Thursdays which, I already know are not the best days of the week but being one of the only single guys at the station I kind of work all the days no one else wants to. But if there's something happening on a specific day then I'll make it work.' He raised a questioning eyebrow at the question of most pits. 'Afraid of them? No. Wary of them? Yes. I know getting pushed around can happen at concerts but I don't really wanna willingly jump around like that.'

[thedrotter]

a once in a lifetime miracle: oc art!! this is Shiva.

doodles from a month or so, but i cant really draw properly right now. but i wanted to do something meanwhile so i colored these :33

[mypeggableromance]

.

[adore-gregor]

🙄🫠

[anaalnathrakhs]

i <3 feeling like i'm literally always making the wrong choice

[katamarei]

I just got tickets to see my favorite band in the world (Justice) live and liiiiterally all I can think about is how I shouldn't have done it 😭

[lycorisicecream]

Rework of an OC of mine, all that's really different is that I used green instead of red for the eye

[running-in-the-dark]

okay but seriously the way everyone always focuses on me finally getting a job as if that's the ultimate end goal of life and there's nothing else that matters at all is making me feel like. if I can't do that. what is left.

like it's.. not that unlikely that no matter how hard I try I'll never be able to work full time (or even part time, who knows at this point honestly), and it makes me feel like - okay so then I just need to stop existing I guess

[thelovelyblark-barg]

I'm so tired of having a body that has never liked me

the corkscrewing spine, the tonsils the constant size of ping pong balls, the cyclical vomiting syndrome, the chronic migraines, the periods that go for anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months,

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Oh haha yeah I'm definitely feeling better <- he is not talking to people

[dylawas-reblogs]

me: yeah so we haven't had a meeting about it yet, but I asked my coworkers about past interns and why they left; chances are they won't hire me full time at my internship immediately. However, the chances of having it extended are pretty good, and I like what I'm doing, and they're going to be talking about budget in July. Sure my finances are a little tight but--

my sperm donor (only slightly exaggerated): look for a new job immediately and tell them if they won't hire you full time you're leaving. and no, I don't care if you don't find something in your industry and you have to settle for a job that will make you hate being alive even more than you already do. Also I'm going to ignore how long it took you to find this internship to begin with

me:

[moinsbienquekaworu]

I thought about working a 9-5 for the next 45 years of my life and all of my love for life has evaporated