#liv's steddie dads verse

[livwritesstuff]

Early on in fatherhood, when his oldest daughter Moe was still a tiny little baby, Eddie had a moment of realization.

What he realized was that he and Steve are the first line of defense between their daughter and the entire goddamn world, and he’s entirely prepared to go to hell and back to make sure Moe never has to find just how awful that world can be.

Flash forward nine or ten years, and Eddie is learning that he had no reason to be worried because his daughter is one of the meanest people he’s ever met in his life.

(Once, when Steve had to out of town for a conference, Eddie brought the kids to a bookstore – for, y’know, fun – and Moe immediately pointed out the wall of cookbooks and said, “Dad, I bet you could find Cooking for Dummies over there,” which, ouch – and accurate, but seriously).

Maybe it’s penance or atoning for their sins or karma coming back around to get them or something, because Eddie knows he hadn’t been an angel or anything as a kid, and while Steve now is about as close to perfect as a human being can get (in Eddie’s opinion), he also hadn’t exactly been the nicest person in the world when he was younger, but, like, jokes over please, because he gets it.

(One time, Eddie dropped the girls off at school in the morning, and as they were pulling into the drop-off lane, Moe requested he play Highway to Hell, which he was pleased as punch about until Moe added, "I need the principal to know how I feel about this place").

Wayne was a goddamn saint among the masses if Eddie was anything like this, and it’s not like Eddie wouldn’t still go to hell and back for Moe, because he totally would. It’s more like he gets the sense that she really does not need him to do so. She’s got it completely covered.

(Once, a truly very nice mom at the playground offered to walk a group of kids over to the baseball diamond and supervise an impromptu kickball game and said to Moe, “Why don’t you ask your mom if it’s okay that you come with us!”

And Eddie could only hold his breath while Moe fixed her with a Capital-L Look and said, “I don’t have a mom. I have two dads. I can ask my dad.”

Later, Eddie asked her through gritted teeth, “Okay, do we maybe think we could be less blunt in the future?”

Moe just rolled her eyes and said, “That’s her fault. She shouldn’t have assumed”).

It’s actually sort of a tough situation because, for one……it’s funny (one time, while Eddie was helping her with math homework, he went to track down a calculator and Moe said, “Nevermind. I can do it in my head faster than that.” – Steve had needed to fully leave the room to hide from Moe how much he was laughing), and he also can totally see how this kind of behavior will serve her well in…well, life, generally speaking.

(Like when Hazel once admitted that a couple kids were picking on her at school and before Steve or Eddie could say anything, Moe, with arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, said, “Names.” in a tone that had him feeling completely confident that she had the whole situation handled).

He just could do without being roasted to one inch of his life before he even had his morning coffee.

[livwritesstuff]

I keep seeing this tiktok of a comedian's daughter calling her while she's in the middle of a set, and now I’m thinking about how often this would happen to Eddie while he's away on book tours.

Like, he's doing a reading or a meet and greet or something, and right in the middle of answering a question –

“Oh, Christ, my daughter’s calling me,” Eddie says, glancing at his phone vibrating on the wooden table, “Should we all say hi?”

A chorus of laughs and some enthusiastic Yeahs come from the crowd, so he picks up his phone and holds it up to the mic as he accepts the call.

“Hi Hazel,” he says.

“Heeey,” she says, all sweet and cool and teenager-y, and Eddie can’t help but grin and roll his eyes as the audience laughs.

“Haze, I’m at a reading – say hi,” he tells her, then grins again as the microphone just barely picks up Hazel’s gasp.

Eddie punches the speaker button in time for Hazel’s, “Dad! Are you for real?”

“Say hi!” Eddie prods again.

Crackly silence comes through the phone for a moment.

“Dad, Robbie and I were looking at your tour dates and we saw that you’re going to L.A. and, like, southern California.”

Eddie shakes his head, pointing at his phone in a can you believe this shit kind of way.

“Yeah, I’ll, like, be in Cali next week.”

“Well, can we come, maybe?”

“How – Hazel, you’re in school. How are you gonna come with me when you guys have school?”

“No, Dad, we have the week off!”

Eddie furrows his eyebrows, because he’s pretty damn sure there’s no federal holidays coming up, or any other reason for his two high-schoolers to have an entire week off of school.

“For what?”

“Well…we have a four-day weekend for professional development or whatever so it’d be just two days we’d have to miss school, plus Friday which, like, barely even counts.”

“Uh-huh,” he deadpans, much to the amusement of the crowd, “What about Moe? Do college professors conveniently have PD days too?”

“No, but it’s fine. She doesn’t wanna go.”

Eddie drops his jaw theatrically.

“Oh, that’s real nice.”

“Yeah!"

“And what about Pop? How’s Papa gonna feel about you all leaving him by his lonesome for a week?”

“Duh, he’ll come too.”

"Oh, duh, of course," Eddie rolls his eyes (and now he's trying to hide that, yeah, it would actually be nice to spend the final leg of his book tour with Steve and their kids), "Hazy, I gotta go. I'm working right now, but I'll call you back later, alright?"

"Okay, yeah, please do."

"Please do?" he repeats, "Sorry, why-"

"Okay, love you Dad!"

"Love you too, Ha-" Eddie is cut off by a short beep as Hazel hangs up, "Jesus Christ."

He sighs, then looks back out at the crowd.

“Y'know, I love my kids so much, but…don’t have children if you want to maintain any control in your life. My daughters have been running the show since the day the first one was born.”

[livwritesstuff]

Steve is patently ignoring a good amount of noise behind him as works his way down a busy grocery store aisle.

The noise is his two children and Eddie, his wonderful husband, who’d found out that Steve was planning on stopping at the store on his way home from work and had the bright idea to load their toddlers into the car and meet him there under the guise of “quality family time”.

Sure, Steve thinks, this time definitely has a quality. He’s just not sure if it’s good.

Their daughters, he knows, both did not take naps today (goddamn daylight savings), naps they very much need, so they’re bickering up a storm from their seats in the shopping cart Eddie is manning (the kiddie cart monstrosity that’s basically impossible to navigate with).

Whatever, it’s Eddie’s problem.

Still, at one particularly annoyed whine, Steve finally turns to face whatever havoc is being wreaked behind his back.

He sees that Moe is looking all kinds of irate, and Robbie’s got a conniving half-smile on her face even as her eyes are laser-focused on the aisle ahead of her.

It’s the face, Steve knows, of someone who’s trying her darndest to piss off her sister as supremely as possible.

“Move, Robbie,” Moe whines.

(Clearly, it’s working).

“Robbie, can you give Moe some space please?” Eddie asks, sounding tired.

Robbie, naturally, doesn’t move an inch, and Moe gives another whine.

“Robbie,” Eddie repeats, “Seriously. What do I always say about not poking the bear?”

Steve looks a little closer and sees that Robbie is sticking one leg across the seat into Moe’s space – a capital offense in the world of toddlers.

Truly – it’s a testament to how tired Moe must be that she hasn’t completely decked Robbie yet.

“A little help here might be nice, Stevie,” Eddie grumbles as he reaches across the handle of the shopping cart to try separating their daughters himself. Apparently Robbie is channeling the strength of a thousand suns into one leg, so he’s unsuccessful.

Steve’s not all that sympathetic if he’s honest – not to Eddie anyway, because he’d seen this behavior coming a mile away. He’s got sympathy enough for Moe’s plight though so he tugs Robbie out of her seat and swings her upside down so she shrieks with little-kid giggles.

He keeps holding her like that as he continues past shelves of pasta and tomato sauce, ignoring Robbie’s wriggling and the looks a few surrounding grocery-store patrons send his way (because, seriously, you try taking two toddlers to the grocery store at six PM).

It wasn’t even his idea, either.

“Remember when I said oh, I only need a few things,” Steve innocently points out to Eddie.

“Okay, I–”

“And then you said It’ll be totally fine if we all go,” Steve continues.

"Steve-"

"And then I said, I don't think this is a good idea. And then you said, Steve-Steve-Steve, it's fine."

He looks at Eddie.

"Do you remember that?"

“Okay, Christ, I get it. I forgot that we can’t take the hellions anywhere these days. Forgive me for missing the hell out of you all day long.”

Steve tries his best to glare at Eddie, because Steve’s a total sucker for shit like that, and Eddie’s got a cheeky grin on his face because he knows this about him too.

He feels his nose scrunch a little in his attempt to hold onto the glare, but eventually it drops in favor of a smile he tries to hide as he leans away from Robbie’s still-squirming feet.

“Yeah, I missed you too, you fucker, but I probably could’a held out another thirty minutes just fine.”

“Papa,” Robbie giggles from behind all the hair that gravity has falling into her face, “You can put me down now!”

"Nope, I'm waiting for all the blood to go down to your brain so you can make some better choices."

[livwritesstuff]

It takes two weeks from the first day of school for one of Steve and Eddie's daughters to start raising hell.

(They'd put money on it — two wagers, to be specific: how long it would take, and which kid it would be).

Last year it was Moe, and a month, and Eddie won them both.

This year —

Steve: Robbie — why on Earth would your teacher think we were okay with you bringing the lizard home?

(Needless to say, laundry is on Eddie for the next month).

Robbie: *shrugs*

Robbie: She has a signed permission slip

Steve:

Steve: I didn't sign a permission slip saying you could bring a lizard into the house.

Steve: *looks at Eddie*

Eddie, throwing his hands up in surrender: I didn't either — have a little faith, please, Jesus Christ.

Robbie: I never said you signed it.

Steve: *somewhat speechless because Robbie is only seven so he figured he'd have at least a little more time before she starting committing acts of forgery*

Hazel, somewhat out of the blue: Sometimes when lizards are scared their tails will fall off.

Steve: Okay, jeez, well, let's make sure that doesn't happen, 'kay?

Steve, to Robbie: And this better be the last time I hear about any forgery, punk.

[livwritesstuff]

The arrival of fall means the arrival of soccer season for the Harrington family. Soccer, as Eddie has learned, is kind of a gateway drug to the world of sports, the first sport their naive, impressionable youths are indoctrinated with, and all three of Eddie and Steve’s daughters are playing soccer in their town’s youth league this fall, even five-year-old Hazel now (she hates it; it’s probably also the very last time she’ll play too), so Eddie usually spends at least half of his Saturday at a local field watching his daughters’ games.

Steve usually volunteers to coach their daughters’ teams, except there’s another soccer-related first this year – Steve decided to take a step back from coaching Moe’s team like he’d been doing since Moe was in kindergarten, which means that he's actually on the sidelines with Eddie.

At one point during one of Moe’s games, things gets held up for a few minutes while one of the team moms argues with the coach. It seems to be about Moe, given the look of indignation on Moe’s face.

“Did you see what happened?” Eddie asks like he tends to whenever anything happens in Moe's games because they move pretty damn fast and he doesn't have an eye for this stuff like Steve does.

Steve shakes his head, “It’s Moe. Anything could have happened.”

It’s a fair point, honestly, and the coach shuts the whole thing down pretty quick and the game continues. Steve and his ear for drama didn't, obviously, and pretty much the second Moe’s game is over, Steve asks her, “So what was Mrs. Roberts all upset about?”

“I dunno,” Moe shrugs as she hefts her enormous soccer bag higher on her shoulders, “Apparently I said the C-word and she wanted the coach to take me off the field.”

Eddie feels himself freeze, feels Steve do the same beside him because, sure, their kids curse up a goddamn storm (no idea where they got that from) but everyone has their limits and Eddie’s pretty sure that he and Steve have never used that word – certainly not around their daughters, but not really ever (Nancy doesn't like it and they're all a little afraid of her still).

“I didn’t even know the C-word was a bad word,” Moe finishes.

“Okay,” Steve says slowly, something in his tone suggesting he’d rather be asking their daughter anything else, “Well, what…word did you say?

Moe shrugs, “I just said crap.”

Steve visibly relaxes beside Eddie as he does the same. Even still, Eddie can’t help but feel kind of perplexed even by that because, frankly, both Steve and Eddie usually bypass the sanitized expletives and head straight for the bigguns. It’s kind of crazy she didn’t go all in with the F-bomb whenever she got wronged on the field.

“Since when was crap a bad word?” Moe continues.

“It’s not,” Steve waves her off, “But…yeah, don’t use that one around Mrs. Roberts ‘cause she’s weird about that kind of thing.”

“Well, you already said I can’t say shit, so what can I say?”

“Well, you’re ten, so you can say nothing and survive the game totally fine.”

“That’s censorship at its finest, Papa,” Moe rolls her eyes.

“Darling, please don’t cite Dad at me.”

[livwritesstuff]

Steve: Which one of our children do you think is the one putting empty juice cartons back in the fridge?

Eddie, knowing full-well that it’s him: Uhhh, gotta be Hazel.

[livwritesstuff]

Steve reaches the top of the stairs on his way to get ready for bed when he hears the weary call of his husband from the other end of the hall.

“Steeeve,” Eddie groans, “Rescue me please.”

He’s in Hazel’s room, Steve can tell, which probably means that tonight is another night in a long string of failures to get their three-year-old into bed at a reasonable time (seriously – their older two went to sleep without any issues hours ago, but their sweet Hazel James has been in a phase of doing everything she can to avoid her bedtime).

Indeed, Steve walks into their youngest daughter’s bedroom to see that Eddie is the one blinking bleary eyes at him while Hazel, on the other hand, is wide awake and standing on her mattress in her Halloween pumpkin pajamas (yes, it’s June – very few battles are won by Steve and Eddie these days).

“Uh-oh,” Steve warns her, ”You’re putting Daddy to sleep, sweet girl. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

“Well, first I hafta show Daddy all the places I got hurt today,” she replies, coming up right to the edge of her bed so Steve really has no choice but to pull her in for a snuggle.

“Where’d you get hurt today,” he asks her.

“Don’t,” Eddie mumbles, an arm over his face shielding his eyes from the light of Hazel’s lamp, “It’s a trap.”

But Hazel is already wiggling out of Steve’s arms, backing away just far enough to push her sleeve up and reveal the impressive collection of colorful, patterned bandages decorating her arm.

Earlier this week, Hazel had discovered the magical power of Band-Aids (in other words, she fell and was completely inconsolable until Eddie suggested putting a princess Band-Aid on the nonexistent “owie” – surprise, surprise, the agonizing pain disappeared without a trace almost immediately).

Now, she’s practically covered in the damn things.

“Look,” Hazel says, pointing at a princess band-aid by her wrist, “‘Dis is where I fell and a stick poked my arm.”

“A stick poked your arm?” he repeats.

“Uh-huh, so now you gotta give it a kiss.”

Obviously, Steve obliges, planting a dramatic kiss onto the plastic band-aid.

“All better?” he asks her.

“Yep. And then this one –” Hazel points at a Ninja Turtle band-aid up by her elbow (Steve’s gotta make sure Robbie doesn’t see that one or her six-year-old version of hell will rain down on all of them), “This is where I got stung-ed by a bug.”

Steve kisses that one too, and then Hazel hits him with a pretty fantastic yawn.

“You wanna come cuddle in bed with me and Daddy?” he asks quietly. She nods, and as he scoops her up, Eddie grumbles something that gets muffled into his arm.

“What was that?” he asks (only a little sarcastically). Eddie drops his arm and lifts his head to look Steve dead in the eye.

“You’re a goddamn sucker,” he repeats.

“Let’s go,” Steve ignores him, holding out the hand not holding Hazel. Eddie takes it and lets Steve pull him to his feet, and then they head off to bed.

[livwritesstuff]

boston pride is today so here have an edited repost from when i walked in the parade last year

Steve is getting boring in his old age (forty-four, almost).

It was inevitable, he supposes when he looks back, and he likes being boring. 

He likes the steady routine of the life he and Eddie (married for seven years, now) have built with their three daughters (four, seven, and nearly ten, a notion Steve is choosing to ignore because there’s no goddamn way Moe nearly has an entire decade under her belt already), and he doesn’t find himself making attempts to mix things up all that often.

Naturally, Eddie is the one to suggest they make the trip into Boston with their daughters for the annual Pride parade, and when he does, Steve isn’t automatically inclined to agree.

Look – Steve knows it’s important for kids to see the world and do new things and all that enriching shit, but maybe he still bears some of the scars from keeping a semi-feral pack of teenagers alive amidst the eldritch hellscape of their hometown, and it’s not like they don’t keep themselves entertained at home – Hazel had finally got the gist of Go-Fish not too long ago and that’s been a whole new ballgame Steve is perfectly content to continue exploring.

In the end, however, the logical side of him (and Eddie’s ever-persistent badgering) wins out, and come mid-June of 2011, they all make the drive into Boston to see the parade.

It doesn’t take Steve long at all to acknowledge that it was a good idea. He hadn’t been to Pride in many years (again – he’s boring in his old age), and he’d forgotten how much fun it is – a true celebration of love and happiness in the face of a lot of fucked up shit and all that. The parade’s pretty good too (definitely a few floats he hopes the girls are too distracted chasing after candy to notice and ask questions about later, but only time will tell), and so is the festival afterwards. It ends up being a really great time for all of them.

Of the whole day, though, Steve’s favorite part is the trip home, a drive that should have only been thirty minutes, but turns into nearly two hours with all the traffic on I-90.

The girls are still riding the sugar rush of an afternoon’s worth of lemonade and fried dough and candy thrown from parade floats (Hazel might be succumbing though, if Steve’s quick glances in the rear-view mirror at the way her eyes are drooping closed are anything to go off of), and it seems as if the day’s contagious joy had followed them into the car. Robbie and Moe have been asking a lot of questions – mostly chatter about what floats were everyone’s favorites and who got the best face paint until Moe, perceptive as she’s always been, hits them with, “What’s Pride for?”

Which turns into, “Why do people think it’s a bad thing?” and that becomes, “So how did you and Papa fall in love?” at which point Eddie, who’d been fielding their daughters' questions so Steve could keep his focus on the stop-and-go highway traffic, launches into a dramatic and involved retelling of how their relationship had begun nearly eighteen years ago.

“So I told him that I liked him and what do you think Papa said?” Eddie eventually asks as he approaches the end of the story.

“What?” the girls ask with eager smiles and wide eyes.

“Nothing,” Eddie says ruthlessly, a wicked grin on his face.

“Alright,” Steve cuts in over the laughter coming from the backseat, “Let’s not be dramatic. I said something...eventually, and it wasn’t even that long later – four hours tops.”

“That’s right,” Eddie concedes, “And then we all lived happily ever after and all that jazz.”

“Good,” Robbie says, “’Cos if you hadn’t, today wouldn’t happen.”

“Hate to break it to you, sweet pea,” Steve replies, “but I’m pretty sure Pride would still happen even if Dad and I weren’t there for it.”

“We wouldn’t be here," Moe corrects him, "All together.”

Steve blinks.

Jesus Christ, these kids are gonna be the death of him. Can’t drive the damn car if his eyes are misting over, can he?

“Yeah,” Eddie says as he reaches over to curve his hand around the back of Steve’s neck, “Yeah, bug, that’s true.”

And thanks goodness for that.

[livwritesstuff]

this one is in honor of the 2-year anniversary of st4 (literally last week but my life is a whole whirlwind atm)

It occurs to Eddie one night as he’s putting his and Steve’s daughter to bed that it’s been twenty years since everything in Hawkins, Indiana went to shit (for him, anyway).

Not down to the day, obviously, but it’s mid-March of 2006 and, honestly, mid-March is the only calendrical detail he ever really retained (too preoccupied with the whole on the run thing to be paying attention to the date, which he thinks is fair enough).

It’s kinda crazy, when he thinks about it, because he really didn’t see himself coming out of those god-awful days alive to tell the tale. Here he is though, twenty years later, alive and truly well.

Steve beats him to bed that night (probably because he’d called dibs on their youngest, Robbie, that night, leaving Eddie to wrangle Moe – the difficult one of the pair when it came to bedtimes because, frankly, her ability to argue her way into extra stories is getting a little frightening), already sitting under the covers with a magazine by the time Eddie retires to their room.

Their room.

That’s one of those things Eddie wouldn’t have believed if he’d heard about it while he was bleeding out in the Upside Down twenty years ago. 

The Steve of it all really is the most improbable – that’s Eddie’s opinion anyway.

Surviving a swarm of hungry bat demons? No problem.

Bagging (i.e. marrying the fuck out of) Steve Harrington? Totally out of the question.

Here he is though, defying all the odds.

“You know what I realized?” Eddie asks as he climbs into bed beside Steve.

“Hmm,” Steve replies, not looking away from his magazine. His glasses are slipping a little as he reads, and Eddie reaches out to nudge them back up the bridge of his nose. The gesture has Steve raising his head to look at him.

“What’d you realize?” Steve asks.

“It’s been twenty years since all that shit in Hawkins.”

Steve’s gaze slides off somewhere behind Eddie for a moment.

“Shit, you’re right,” he says, “Crazy.”

“That’s what I said,” Eddie grins. Steve isn’t matching his expression though. Rather, he’s looking at him somewhat pensively, dark brown eyes roaming over his face.

“Hey,” Eddie says, because he gets it. They can make all the jokes they want about how wild that time was, but it doesn’t ever take away the horrible things they'd seen, the horrible things they'd been asked to do.

Eddie’s glad he survived and all, but people don’t always talk about how the after of surviving isn’t necessarily a walk in the park either.

He runs a hand through Steve’s hair, grazes the tips of his fingers over the barely-raised scars on his neck left behind from whatever went down at the Creel House in the Upside Down, “I love you, Steve.”

“Love you too,” Steve replies, gripping a hand tight around Eddie's thigh, "So much."

"So fucking much. Sucks we had to go through all that shit to get here, but...I'm glad we're here."

And Steve only nods as he wraps an arm around Eddie's shoulders to pull him in close.

"Yeah," he eventually says, pressing a firm kiss against the side of Eddie's head, "I'm glad we're here too."

[livwritesstuff]

Saw this on Pinterest and couldn't help but think of my steddie!dads verse.

Like, Robin definitely found the bumper sticker somewhere and gifted it to Eddie, who thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen in his life, because two out of his three daughters are assholes at the best of times, and sometimes they can even manage three for three.

Steve thought it was pretty funny too, but he didn't think it was something Eddie would actually put on his car -- sort of like the "World's Sluttiest Dad" shirt Robin got Steve as a joke-birthday gift a few years back which he doesn't actually wear out and about, obviously.

Lo and behold, Steve pulls into the garage one day to see the bumper sticker displayed proudly on the rear windshield of Eddie's car, the one he drives to their daughters' elementary school at least twice a week.

Steve: Tell me you waited until after you picked up our children from school today to put that on your car.

Eddie: I could tell you that.

Eddie: If you're cool with me lying about it.

[livwritesstuff]

oops i have been a little quieter than usual the last week or two. my paid writing time job got v busy and i’m also plugging away at other wips so bear with me if this ‘verse loses some steam for a bit

Anyways, we know that Eddie can be a crafty bastard when he wants to be, and that doesn’t change as he gets older.

As Moe’s second birthday approaches, Eddie is wracking his brain for a gift that works on two levels – the first level being things appropriate for the birthday girl and the second being things that are also subtle gifts for Steve, because Steve is the love of his life and every single thing Eddie does is at least kind of for him (he loves their girl more than he can explain but that will never change).

After ages of searching and ages of pondering to no avail, Eddie starts to worry that he might just have to phone it in with some toy that, sure, Moe would love, but wouldn't mean anything.

And then he stumbles upon a Moe-sized ride-on BMW.

Bingo.

The only thing is – the car is grey.

For a weaker man than Eddie, this would be a problem, but he’s no stranger to the power of craft materials in the right hands (he has, after all, managed to turn a ceramic dolphin into a Behir for a campaign with nothing but paint and a hot glue gun), so he’s not deterred in the slightest. While Steve is at work, he breaks out the supplies (two cans of maroon spray paint and a lot of painter’s tape) and gets down to business.

In the end, it’s not an exact match – the model isn’t even close to right, obviously, but the color’s pretty spot on and it’s got the BMW logo on it, and when Moe’s birthday finally rolls around, the way Steve fucking beams when Eddie rolls the car out has him feeling pretty confident that it’s close enough.

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve tells him, still grinning massively as he watches their two-year-old (holy shit, Moe is two) drive around in a miniature version of his old Beemer, “I can’t believe you.”

“This is the only time you’ll catch me buying a BMW, Stevie,” Eddie replies, wrapping his arms around him and pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, “Savor the moment. Those cars are garbage.”

[livwritesstuff]

inspired by a questionable boy-mom tiktok i was subjected to

Eddie can say with confidence that, if he’d been asked many years ago, he would never have guessed he’d be raising three girls. As phenomena go, he doesn’t know how statistically likely it is (Steve maintains it's 50-50, Eddie isn’t so sure). Thirteen years into parenthood, he’s still fuckin’ thrilled about it. He and Steve are raising a kick-ass trio of ladies, and he’s perfectly pleased with his life and his family, which is great because he’d learned pretty quick that most other people are actually miserable with their own lives and like to project their misery onto everyone else.

He also learned that people have a weird complex about raising boys.

Both Eddie and Steve used to get a lot of comments (mostly from strangers in public) about how they’re raising all girls.

When they’re all out together, it’s usually something like at least it’ll only take one boy to even the playing field for you guys, right?

Alone, Eddie gets quite a bit of sexist crap from people who assume he’s straight and raising the girls with a wife, stuff along the lines of you must’ve been disappointed when the last one came out and what’s one more shot, right and the most frequent grimace with sorry, man.

Steve once had a very odd encounter with a woman who’d apparently told him that he needed to give his wife a boy so she’d know what true love really was. Steve had apparently made a very quiet and very polite scene about it which, in Eddie’s opinion, is entirely understandable because that’s weird as fuck for a plethora of reasons.

Now that girls are older, they themselves report hearing the occasional commentary on the subject when it comes up in their own lives. 

Once, when Eddie had (somewhat stupidly) brought all three girls to the grocery store, he’d rounded the corner to see fifteen-year-old Moe leaning against their shopping cart and regarding an older woman with an expression of politely-veiled disdain (it’s a very Steve expression, actually).

“Three girls,” the woman says incredulously, “God, your poor dad.”

Eddie watches Moe make a face 

“Uh…well, they do like us, y’know,” she replies.

“Right you are, my brilliant girl,” Eddie grins, as he walks up to her, “Right you definitely are.”

[livwritesstuff]

Hey bestie! Have you seen the voicemail trend on tiktok?? I think Eddie and Steve could send the girls and each other funny voicemails at times.

(Also do you like when we send asks involving tiktok trends? They could be apart of Hazel’s tiktok page but I just wanted to make sure you’re not getting annoyed with all the tiktok trend asks)

i LOVE when y'all send me tiktok trends bc frankly i haven't actually caught wind of most of them. at the moment my tiktok algorithm can't tell if i like sharks or judge judy more (i truly have no interest in either one) so i do appreciate the assistance.

case in point: i had no idea that this trend was a thing and it is delightful, and yeah, Hazel 100% does it with a particular voicemail Eddie left her:

"Hazel," Eddie starts, his voice muffled like he's trying to whisper, "I don't have much time. I just got an email from Amazon and I think – I think – there's a goddamn colossal package on the front porch, and I reeeeally need you to get it in the house and hide it before Pop and I get home, okay?"

There's a short, somewhat staticky pause.

"I cannot stress enough that your dad is gonna kill me if he sees what I bought. He's still annoyed with me for buying you that fuckin' mini-fridge for your makeup so you totally owe me one – oh shit, here he–"

[end of voicemail]

[livwritesstuff]

You mentioned a while ago, I believe, how Steve and Eddie curbed their curses; I think it might’ve been after the “fucking margarita” moment but I’m not sure. Either way, I could say any one of their girls being the “fucking dammit, oh fucking dammit” girl all over Insta. Any other funny stories from the girls that you’ve got rattling away in your brain?

Hello hello pally yeah I think it’s more that they *tried* to stop cursing when Moe was born, and had totally and completely given up by the time she was like two, two-and-a-half-ish lol.

If we’re interested in a deep-dive, I actually think Steve and Eddie managed to curb their cursing when they began fostering kids. Then they met Moe, and because she was a newborn, they actually relaxed on that a little bit since, in their eyes, it’s not like she actually knew what they were saying. The intention was to go back to not cursing anymore at some point, but…….they forgot, and then all of a sudden, Moe was turning 1 and saying her first words and, unfortunately, the good ol’ F-bomb made it into the top 5.

They did go through a spell of trying to dissuade her from using those words, which is tough to do with a toddler who can’t really understand the why behind it (and it’s especially tough when that toddler’s dads can’t stop laughing every time she uses curse words), and so they eventually just gave up.

I think the margarita incident was less a warning sign about the cursing itself (bc they were so far beyond the point of no return by then) and more that they (Steve) needs to watch their mouths around their kids lol

In terms of funny stories relating to the girls cursing, I feel like I mentioned at one point (but I simply cannot find when or where, so it’s possible I ended up cutting it out of something) that while Robbie’s adoption is taking place, Moe (age 2.5) is on a kick of saying oh shit at every opportunity, so much so that as they approach the final hearing -- the big one, the one where Steve and Eddie sign all the papers and a judge rules that Robbie is actually, officially, finally theirs -- Steve and Eddie aren't even sure they want to bring Moe with them.

Eddie: I mean...obviously it's a big deal and I want her there with us.

Eddie: But...

Eddie: D'you think it's a bad look if the kid the judge already graciously allowed us to adopt is cursing up a damn storm while we're trying to get him to let us adopt another one?

Steve: But would it weird him out if we *don't* bring her?

In the end, they decide to bring her (along w/Robin and Nancy armed w/lollipops and all kinds of other distractions), and then Moe sleeps through the entire thing, so they were all stressed out for nothing.

[livwritesstuff]

ok I saw the voicemail trend ask and it reminded me that my dad actually made my sister’s voicemail for her. So anytime you call her and it goes to voicemail, you hear my dad’s voice, pitched down half an octave, saying, “Hello, you’ve reached the cellphone of ___. This is her father speaking. If you’re one of her female friends, feel free to leave a message. If you’re a boy… Run.”

also please hear me out the voicemail is the absolute HIGHLIGHT of everyone’s day, she still has it for a reason, he did it because he thought it was funny and she kept it because she thought it was funny, but my question is… do Steve or Eddie do something like that for any of the girls? For some reason I’m imagining Eddie and Robbie but I could be completely off.

lol yeah i feel like eddie and robbie could go through a phase of just relentlessly messing with each other for their own enjoyment, and eddie's magnum opus in it all was convincing moe to help him steal robbie's phone long enough to record the dumbest outgoing message of all time.

it would 100% be something along the lines of, "this is robbie's dad. i'm sorry robbie missed your call, unless you're a boy, in which case i'll remind you that i'm one of two dads and we own a least a couple shovels and we're not afraid to use them"

[livwritesstuff]

Heyoo

I am back again because your umiverse is living rent free in my head all the fucking time, and Im not mad the slightist

I have been recently thinking about the time when Robbie got into an accident in Florida and Steve and Eddie rushed down to see her.

I am just really curious to know if you ever thought about expanding more of the story? Because I would be really interested to read about Eddie going full on protecting mode and Steve sleeping next to Robbie on nights when she just needed to be held.

Its totally cool if you dont want to Im just really fond of these comforting moments beetween the dads and the girls ❤️

Hello <3 apologies for the delay I was giving this one some extra thought (and then I got sick but whatevs)

I actually was also thinking about this recently.

I definitely think that the Florida situation would be an absolute worst moment for Steve and Eddie as parents because it was the closest they ever got to losing one of their kids (see these two posts for context if you’re new here).

Like, Moe’s had all kinds of injuries from playing sports – sprains, broken bones, concussions, a dislocation or two, the works – and Hazel’s had a few long-term overuse injuries from her years doing ballet (her knees, most notably).

This though, a late night phone call reporting that their fifteen-year-old daughter is in the ICU in critical condition…they really have no words.

Steve manages to hold himself together better than Eddie, at least at first (it wouldn’t be the first time he’s pushed all his emotions down for the sake of getting through a shitty situation).

Eddie is a wreck during their travel down to Florida, switching between threatening to kill the kid who’d been driving the car and threatening to sue the shit out of the school for allowing the whole situation to happen to begin with.

(Steve’s pretty sure they’re gonna land somewhere in the middle – more like suing the living daylights out of the kid’s parents at a minimum).

So Steve’s a little preoccupied making sure Eddie doesn’t turn into the murderer people thought he was thirty years ago (plus, he’s pretty sure that Eddie’s threats to bribe the pilot into speeding up the plane are a joke to ease the tension but…not completely sure).

He’s still doing okay as they’re making their way through MCO, especially since by then they learn that Robbie’s condition had leveled off while they were in the air – she’s stable.

Asleep still, but stable.

His resolve starts to shake a bit at the hospital, because they’re met with staff from Robbie’s school and police officers and all kinds of other people who seemed under the impression that he and Eddie will want to stand around and talk about what happened to their daughter before they even see their daughter. They tell them to kindly fuck off, please and thanks, obviously.

When they’re finally able to see Robbie, all bets are off because Steve gets one look at her and his mind immediately goes all the way back to 1986, to seeing Eddie lying in a hospital bed in awful shape, and Robbie is so much like Eddie in so many ways, ways that Steve loves and ways that driving him completely insane, ways that scare the shit out of him sometimes (clearly for good reason because look where they ended up).

Plus, Steve’s been through this before – the moment he thought he was gonna watch Dustin get eaten by demodogs, the moment he realized Max had been Vecna’d, and no offense to Dustin and Max but it’s a billion times worse when it’s his own kid, and Robbie may like to act all tough these days, but to Steve she’s still got that same sweet face, the same big blue eyes as the day she was born, so it’s like a switch is flipped.

Steve holds it together enough to not freak Robbie out more than she already is, but Eddie knows Steve better than Eddie knows himself, probably, and there was no way in hell he was going to let his husband, the love of his life, live out his worst nightmare in real time just to talk with a goddamn school chaperone about it right after.

Eddie manages to hold off the masses until Robbie finally woke up, but they start getting pushy after that and he doesn’t want to stress Robbie out so he gives in, ducks out into the hall to talk with the nurses and school staff and police officers about the car accident that put Robbie in the ER to begin with.

It’s not a role Eddie usually fills – the rational one, the one who takes care of shit. In their relationship, that’s usually Steve because Steve likes it that way. He likes taking charge of all the boring, tedious, “administrative” aspects of their life together so that Eddie doesn’t have to, but the thing about being life-long partners with someone is being able to switch up those usual roles when it’s needed.

And in this moment, it’s definitely needed.

So Eddie’s dealing with the paperwork, filing the police report, getting a hold of their lawyer, sending updates back home to Robin and Nancy, asking questions about any medical stuff he doesn’t completely understand because the nurses really are there to help, while Steve stays with Robbie, holding her close and keeping up a quiet spiel of idle, nothing-talk because, as the nurses said, she's gonna be groggy for a little while.

They lose track of how much time they actually spend in the hospital before Robbie is finally discharged, but leaving poses new challenges, because Robbie’s still in pretty rough shape, obviously, and they also didn’t exactly bank on Robbie being afraid to be in a damn car, Jesus H. Christ.

Steve clocked it before Eddie (duh – trauma counselor), because they’d been talking about their travel plans to get home and Robbie had been asking all kinds of oddly specific questions about the drive from the hospital to the airport that eventually had Steve pulling Eddie into the hall and saying, “Okay, so she’s afraid to get in a car.”

(Again, Jesus H. Christ)