#big thanks to the steddie week mods for running this!!!!!

[livwritesstuff]

for @steddie-week day 7 (a day late bc sunday errands got a lil out of control)

this is a sneak peek of an upcoming fic (vibe is slow burn TV co-stars Steddie feat. denial of feelings, a betrayal, and chaotic misuse of social media) and I am Very Excited (that being said pls don't ask about a timeline bc I don't have a clue 😅)

tags: modern day, famous au, actor!steve, actor/singer!eddie, pre-relationship, fake dating (kind of)

The real point of no return in all this, Eddie knows, was the call with PR.

It – as in, having a little fun with the ridiculous dating rumors about him and Steve that had started floating around early on during the press tour for the TV show they'd filmed together last year – was all just a fun little joke until he woke up to a GCal invite in his inbox from the studio’s PR team and ended up on a thirty minute call where a bunch of random suits with fake-ass smiles laughed and said wouldn’t it be funny – wouldn’t it be a goddamn laugh-riot – if you guys played into the rumors? Just for the press tour?

(Just while we can profit off it?)

Yeah. Eddie knows the real motive here but his sense of self-preservation is, like, broken or something (defective at the very least) and he’s always down for a spectacle, so the second he sees Steve nodding his agreement, he agrees too.

It takes less than an hour for PR to send out an updated press schedule, one that now had Eddie paired with Steve at basically every opportunity, which…Eddie feels torn two ways about because, like, it’s an ensemble show. He’d actually really like to do some of this press stuff with Robin and Nancy too. On the other hand, all jokes aside, Eddie does have a pretty pathetic crush on Steve Harrington, so he sort of wants to clock all the hours with him as he can before the show comes out and all this comes to an end, when their paths will separate once again and remain that way probably forever (or until the show gets renewed for a second season, but that’ll be up in the air for a while).

And yes, Eddie sees the irony in the situation. Look – it’s not like he wanted to have a crush on this guy.

Their characters are practically brothers, and Eddie had been on enough sets to know that coming off a project even just being friends with castmates isn’t a walk in the park in and of itself.

Sure, Harrington’s cute – Eddie had noticed it the second they met, but he’d noticed it in kind of a clinical, detached way, like how he could hold an opinion on how good-looking one girl is from the next even if it didn’t do anything for him. He knew that Steve’s a good-looking dude, but more importantly, he’s an honest-to-god good person. Eddie wasn’t even thinking about being anything other than Steve’s friend because he could recognize the kind of privilege that alone is.

So, yeah. No crush on Steve Harrington in sight – not in the beginning, anyway, and not during the entire filming process. Then they started to film all the promo material, and the press tour had kicked off with an eight hour press junket, and after that very first interview (a fifteen minute sit-down with an entertainment talk show), Eddie had turned and asked Steve if he’d fucked up at all (because this is first time on a project big enough to have a real press tour and, seriously, he had no goddamn context for how any of this shit was supposed to go). Steve had just smiled and kicked his ankle and told him he did good and to stop worrying.

And something about that – the little kick to his ankle – had Eddie’s heart turning over like he was part of those trashy romance novels he outright refused to pick up (even though he’d put in a fair bit of time ogling the men on the covers as a horny, closeted teenager).

Oh, fuck, he’d remembered thinking.

Stop it, he’d tried to tell his heart or his brain or whoever else could be responsible for the feelings that were creeping in.

But it was already too late.

It only took a couple hours after the call with PR for Eddie to wonder if he might have made a mistake.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Eddie asked after scrolling through a thread of comments on a clip of an interview that made its way over to TikTok (the thread started with i’ve never seen steve look at anyone like that before and he stopped scrolling after won’t waste my time watching now with an anxious feeling swirling in his gut).

“Huh?” Steve blinked at him.

“I mean,” he paused, “Not every straight guy would be cool with the whole world thinking there’s something going on between him and his gay coworker.”

And Steve had merely shrugged.

“I really don’t think the whole world is tuning into the press tour for some nerdy doomsday show,” he had replied, and then he’d added, “And whoever said I’m straight?”

As if that hadn’t blown Eddie’s whole goddamn mind.

So…fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen?

[steddieficfind]

Welcome mod natalee!!

Natalee has already been a big help here so please give her some love!

Posting should now be more consistent! Anything is better than me letting asks collect dust for a week haha.

But seriously thank you everyone for being so kind and patient this past year while I've been running this blog by myself. I know I don't engage with all of the non-request messages I get, but please know I really do appreciate them. The Steddie fandom is genuinely one of my favorite fandoms I've been in, you're all very kind.