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hitlikehammers · 8 days ago

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astral cartography✨💫

“And I did always say, right, that tattoos are a map of what you love.” Steve kisses Eddie firm, not least in appreciation for shutting Dustin’s harebrained bullshit down. But that doesn’t solve his original mystery. “These aren’t a map, though,” Steve taps one of the new spots, smaller but still at the neck. No rhyme or reason to it. “They’re the start of one.”💖

rating: t ♥️ cw: post-S4, extensive tattoo/birthmark/scar appreciation, established relationship, romantic gestures, a soupçon of angst surrounding some necessary work on self talk/body positivity re: extensive canonical scarring (it’s hurt/comfort in full service of fluff, so), little ✨sprinkling (lol) of humor, softness ♥️ tags: boys being tactile as shit, steve harrington being the canonical reason anyone ever called them ‘beauty marks’, eddie munson’s philosophy of tattooing, falling deeper in love

for @steddielovemonth day three: "if there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. because it's yours.” —Stephen King, 11/22/63

For all the attention he has wilfully, consciously, and very intentionally given certain elements of his appearance, Steve’s never though anything really about the fact that he’s got enough moles to dress up for Halloween as a fucking chocolate chip cookie.

Like, they don’t bother him at all or anything, but he’s never really understood how a handful of people he’s been with have just…zeroed in on them. Got a little crazy about them. Tracing them. Licking them. Nipping at them so they look more red than brown for a day or two. Whatever, Steve’s always figured. Everyone’s got their thing, and this one costs steve absolutely nothing to indulge, and if there’s one thing Steve prides himself on that doesn’t rhyme with ‘hair’? It’s making sure his partners leave satisfied.

But then there was Eddie.

And Eddie has a…well, a umm…

If you looked up the word ‘fixation’ in the dictionary, Eddie definitely has that.

Probably looking up the word ‘fetish’ might not be too far off, either.

What it means that Steve gets a little hot under the collar of his polo when he so much as thinks about either of those facts is a word he doesn’t know and isn’t going to bother looking up because why the hell would he, when he can just turn to Eddie, and…

Eddie’s fetish-fixations aren’t idle things, guy’s a man of action. Steve’s not gonna pick a book over what he gets out of the bargain like…for anything.

Plus, better stated—now there is Eddie. And Eddie…isn’t going anywhere, ever, if Steve has anything to say about it.

And it doesn’t cost Steve anything to lie there under his boyfriend’s unwavering, devoted attention. Kind of actually the sort of thing Steve never had before this, before him, and got addicted to quick—and that shone hasn’t worn off one bit. Isn’t actually showing any indication of everwearing off.

And when attention grows more heated, grows more more, well, then…fuck.

Ha, ha, that’s: fuck. Literally.

Point is, Steve doesn’t even really notice all the little dots on his skin, but hell if he’s not reaping the benefits.

——

It’s also not really fair to even consider judging Eddie for his fixation with Steve’s collection of birthmarks. Because Steve’s got his own not-quite-but-close-enough-the-distinction-doesn’t-matter obsession with Eddie’s skin.

Notably, but not exclusively, with his tattoos.

And more than that? With his scars.

Which is something that kinda comes about…tumultuously. Steve can acknowledge that.

“It’s too fucking hot, dude,” he’d frowned, rolling over and plucking at Eddie’s soaked-through shirt; “and you’re sweating buckets here.”

Seriously. The mattress was gonna get ruined at this rate.

“Jeez,” Eddie had snapped, straight off the bat; “sosorry we don’t all have central goddamn air.”

Which: the government hadn’t sprung for that, no. But:

“Don’t try and pull that shit on me,” Steve bit back, plain and simple, and it cowed Eddie the way it sure as hell should: he knew better. He knew Stevebetter, by now. They’d been fucking for months, since Eddie got the medical okay. They rarely spent more than a work-shift’s length out of each other’s sight. They were both—for the first time Steve’s ever got to feel it, both of them, together—clear-eyed on the way to bonafide bone-deep love; saying it out loud for keeps, and soon. They slept together every goddamn night.

So yeah. Eddie knew better.

He curled farther from Steve, into himself, but Steve just followed, even if doing so kinda exacerbated his complaint about the heat as a matter of course. He molded himself around Eddie and pulled him into his chest so he could murmur into the wet curls plastered at his ear:

“I get if you don’t want anyone else to see,” because wearing a shirt in this fucking heatwave really only made sense for one reason; “I get if you’re not ready yet, or if you’re never ready,” and Steve meant that: if Eddie was never ready to show off the worst of his scars? Steve would stand by him every day for the rest of his days.

That was basically the rule for…most things, now. With Eddie.

“But I already saw all of it, babe,” Steve tried to reason, because it wasn’t even that Steve was uncomfortable, mostly-nude in the bed himself; it was that Eddie’s misery hurt in his chest and he just…maybe it was selfish, to want to cast it out, but he just didn’t want Eddie to suffer. Ever.

“I cleaned them at their worst, y’know? I changed the bandages, I saw—”

“How much they look like Frankenstein’s fucking monster?” Eddie’d halfway snarled it, and Jesus fuck, no.

No.

“How much they almost make me fucking start crying,” Steve was willing to admit it, out loud, for this specific purpose alone, which said a whole fuck of a lot—

“Because they’re goddamn hideous—” Eddie tried to derail him but that wasn’t happening. Steve was on a mission, here. And Steve didn’t commit if he wasn’t gonna see something through past the finish line, and in first.

“Because they’re so alive,” Steve pulled Eddie in tighter, pressed his lips into Eddie’s neck.

“You have them, and you’re warm here next to me, I get to hold you in my arms like this and your fucking heart’s still beating, when I was so goddamn scared it would stop because of how torn up all this was,” and Steve laid just his palm blind to the deepest cratering of flesh that’s concave to the bone a little, knew where it was by muscle memory alone and he could feel Eddie’s pulse hammering for the fear and the shame and what had sounded too much like self-loathing, that Steve hadn’t realized was still so strong: but now he knew it. Now he knew, and he’ll wasn’t going anywhere, so he was gonna be right there, watching and helping and coaxing a way through it however he could.

“But it’s fucking beautiful, and it’s not red and torn open and bleeding out to take you from me anymore,” and Steve didn’t even think to feel ashamed of it when his voice cracked around how he didn’t realize that sore spot was still so close to the surface in himself.

“But now it’s pink and healthy and it stretches when you breathe in, because you’re here and you’re alive,” and there came the crack again in Steve’s voice but he expected it that time, and smashed his lips to Eddie’s neck again as he moaned a little:

“With me.”

And he breathed there as long as it took for Eddie’s breathing under his hand at the scars in his side to even out, and he just…appreciated them. Because they’d done the unthinkable; doctors and surgeons and modern medicine, sure, yeah, them too, but Eddie’s own body—the very skin under Steve’s hands—had decided to say fuck the reaper and knitted itself together the best it could, and the best it could had led them both here, had led Steve in Eddie’s bed, and Eddie in Steve’s heart, so.

Steve thought every single one of those scars was goddamn magnificent. He’d praise each of them in gratitude, separately and painstakingly every goddamn day, if he thought it’d convey how thankful he was for the textured artwork of Eddie’s left ribs, the way his whole side stood like a permanent installation in celebration of what it meant to demand to survive.

“They’re so,” Eddie eventually whispered, and it sounded already like he was gonna say something kinda like the opposite of everything Steve saw, so—they’d deal with those mean thoughts later.

For the moment though:

“You know how you said you’d never seen the ocean?” Steve had said, knowing it would sound like it came out of nowhere, but it wasn’t. “And I promised I’d take you?”

Eddie’d just turned, stared at him like he was losing it which…was fair. But Steve had a point to it, promise.

“I’ve seen it though,” Steve had closed his eyes and the memories are hazy because they’re so old but the feeling of it: s’not something you ever forget all the way. “Couple times, just because my parents had to be somewhere and I was too young to leave alone when the babysitter cancelled last minute,” and he’d reached out slow, opened his eyes to watch Eddie every millimeter his hand moved closer to the collage of divots and skin grafting and stitched-together planes that pulled too far to lie even when the staples came out. Eddie tensed, held his breath—it wasn’t that Steve hadn’t touched him here, far from it, but so intentionally, so eyes-open—but he didn’t flinch. And he didn’t stop Steve’s hand from pressing down.

His breath did catch, but so did Steve’s, just for clearly different reasons as Steve delicately traced the scalloped edgings and whispered, didn’t even try to hide how it made him feel kinda-sorta awed:

“It reminds me of the tides.”

“The sand goes smooth under the waves,” Eddie shot back, but without heat, more just…defeated as he muttered on; “even I’ve seen fuckin’ movies.”

“But the foam, like, of the waves coming up,” Steve pushed back; “it’s so pretty, that’s the part I want your to see most because it was so long ago, and that’s what I still remember,” and he’d sighed a little, going back to that place in his head:

“It’s like layers, and all the motion of it lapping up the coastline feels like like you could just lose yourself in the rhythm forever and never climb out,” and he’d let his eyes open slow, and he’d caught Eddie’s own and let himself do the same inside that gaze until Eddie got the fucking hint:

He was just ad beautiful, as impossible, as incredible as those tides.

“One wave after the next, in turns, crashing so strong but it’s not, like, violent,” Steve had let his thumb trace the raised lines under his touch back and forth; “it’s magic.”

Like Eddie. Who tucked a little further into himself before he turned, jostled Steve’s hand then burrowed into Steve instead:

“It’s not even smooth,” he protested all muffled; “you can’t even—”

“My nan loved photos.”

Again, Steve was pretty sure he sounded insane. But again, he was building to a point.

“Not even ones she took, most came from magazines. She couldn’t travel like she wanted to, my Gramp was building businesses but my Nan wanted like, adventures and the sights. So she made scrapbooks of wishes, she called them,” Steve had smiled at the memory, until the next one washed it away:

“My dad thought she was a silly old woman. We didn’t see her too much, in the end.”

Steve missed her.

“But the most beautiful thing she showed me once was this one tiny island somewhere way far in the north, where the beaches were made of stones.”

Eddie’s turned a little, frowned. It gave Steve access to his side again, though, and that’s all he needed, but his hand right back on that tangled-perfect marvel of scar tissue and indomitable life.

“Not pebbles, but big stones,” and Steve had outlined the larger waves in the flesh like examples with his hands as he spoke. “No rhyme or reason. It was special, the place itself, like it had some historic significance or whatever, but,” and Steve had let himself work around one knot of tissue he knew caused pulling sometimes, just in case it could use a little loosening, a little extra love, and he’d fought a full grin when Eddie’d grunted and caved under the attention, eager for the relief.

“The picture she had was of the waves crashing over the ricks and,” Steve had worked more at the knot as he searched for the right words;

“It was like the could have been at odds, like fighting each other, but instead they were this marvel that people came from across the world to just,” and he didn’t still his hands at all, but he did lean in to kiss behind Eddie’s ear; “just to have the privilege to see.”

And Eddie had shuddered, and his breath had caught hard, and Steve had turned him in his arms and slipped his hands under that sweat-soaked shirt and held held, held him, held him.

“Nothing smooth about it, really,” Steve had mouthed against Eddie’s jawbone then; “think that was most of the point.”

And Eddie’d slept without a shirt the rest of the unbearable second summer, chest-to-chest so Steve could feel the scars straight to his own skin, and from there on, it was understood.

Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for Steve: they were maybe not quite welcome—yet—but definitely allowed to be worshipped for the proof of life, the gift of love that they fucking were.

——

The tattoos aren’t quite the same. Steve thinks that’s because they were something Eddie chose; the scars interfered, deformed—weren’t the marks in themselves.

But after getting the memo about how complicated the scars are, and knowing these marks are no longer unentangled with those ones?

Steve may be oblivious sometimes, but. Once he learns a thing—especially when it’s tied up with loving—he tends to remember.

“Do you mind, when I,” Steve pulls his head up to meet Eddie’s eyes from where he’d already been basically sucking the ghoul head thingy above Eddie’s pec into a purple shade for like fifteen whole minutes, like a free color-job. Steve does like to think Eddie could have stopped him—and definitely wouldn’t be so hard between where they’re pressed together—if he had had a problem, but.

Steve…likes to be careful. When there’s loving.

“Not at all, sweetheart,” Eddie fucking purrs, and Steve grins cheshire-sharp for it, pleased with himself. Hr actually kinda loves this particular tattoo especially; the scars that cut into it make it look like Mr. Zombie-face got into a nasty fight with Wolverine from X-Men—which yes, thank you Henderson, he already knew about before starting to screw your DM—but anyway.

“I just,” Steve traces one long scar of the three as he talks, tries not to grin too much when Eddie shivers, when his nipple proves it’s not too scarred-up to pebble under the attention fucking beautifully; “since you don’t want to get any more, and—”

“No, I don’t,” Eddie says simply, if a little breathy as he arches into how Steve does the same up what looks like the second claw mark, just a fingertip alone the line; “least not right now. But they’re still a map of the things with love, yeah? Present tense, past tense, it’s all a story.”

And that is…Eddie. That answer is so fucking Eddie.

And he’s worked so hard—both of them have—to say that kind of thing from a place where they could believe it, and damn if it doesn’t come out now like its said like a man who’s made his peace, and feels solid standing in it.

“And, like, maybe these are just ink from a really shitty apprentice artist,” Eddie taps at the weave of scars lower, the worst of them: his rocky beach on the waves, and fuck, if he’s willing to try even a kinda shitty joke about it all, in the privacy of their bed where there’s no need to fake it, or force it to make nice?

They really have made progress.

“Hmm,” Steve doesn’t take his hand from that second pseudo-claw mark but he does crawl down a little to get a better look at Eddie’s biggest set of scarring—not that he needs to, but if he’s gonna play alone he’s not gonna half-ass it, so he tuts a little and shakes his head regretfully:

“Honestly, I just don’t think the Upside Down has a real established scene to expect high standards,” Steve laments, shaking his head; “they can’t even keep the lights on down there, man, plus teeth for needles? Can’t be the best practice,” he sighs wearily. “Health code violations fucking everywhere, Robin would pass the fuck out—“

And maybe Eddie’s tackling him them, shaking with cackles as he takes the lead to pin Steve to the bed, sucks between the moles on his neck—perfect vampire bites, baby, marked just for me—and Steve maybe giggles for it, the impatience, the enthusiasm, the joy in the tussle. It’s basically perfect.

So yeah. Eddie’s as marked up as he’s probably gonna get, at least any time soon. Steve won’t let another round of violence touch him ever again, over his dead fucking body, and tats…maybe they’re gonna just stick with the story they’ve got on Eddie’s skin, close that chapter where it naturally turned a page.

To start this new thing, together. Where Steve leave the marks, and proudly, and touches them up as often as need be. With pleasure.

And if Eddie’s as happy about that as he currently looks, flushed and panting and far beyond ready to get on with more than sucking at skin?

Maybe that actually works out perfectly.

——

So, the point is, the love each others marks, the things that trace their skin to make them them, but blemishes but serial numbers: just more undeniable proof to celebrate the person they like most in the whole world.

Love most, as is becoming abundantly clear.

Which means they notice right away when so much as a bruise pops up from knocking into the kitchen table—but Steve’s not looking at a bruise.

He squints—this isn’t really a task he’d lean on his classes for but…so weird and also, odd fucking place underneath Eddie’s chin—

“Did your sharpie break?”

Because that would make sense. Eddie purrs on basically anything that can pass for a writing implement, if he gnawed to much, maybe he was lucky and the ink dribbled rather than sprayed.

“No,” but honestly, Steve is not convinced. It’s not a convincing denial, first off, but then on top of that, there’s more incriminating evidence:

“You’ve got marks, like, all over,” dark little speckles, like an egg at Easter before you dunk it in the bright vinegar water. It’s not sunny enough for his freckles to be coming out yet, is it?

“I do,” Eddie agrees, but kinda distant, like his head’s elsewhere. Steve looks up from where he’d become sprawled out over Eddie’s chest on the couch: he’s working on campaign notes and: oh look. Not a sharpie.

One of those Mr. Sketch monstrosities that smell like ‘fruit’ and everyone’s gotten high off of at some point, which 100% belonged to the school at some point, and 100% now has Steve’s boyfriend’s dental imprints on the end.

Steve just rolls his eyes and, which the colour still isn’t exactly—the speckles on Eddie’s skin really are a more chocolate brown—he’s gonna let this one go.

Maybe get up and make dinner or something, so he’s no stuck with that suffocating alcohol-licorice smell the black marker gives off.

——

“Are you sure you were using sharpie last week?”

Steve also means today. Or yesterday. Or right now. There are more…speckles.

He knows there are more of them.

“I didn’t use any sharpies last week,” Eddie shrugs, not looking up from his book but gesturing broad with his forkful of mac and cheese. “All mine are dried out and I keep forgetting to pick up new ones.”

Okay, well. That does track. He leans in closer, runs a finger over the first spot he noticed: same color, maybe a little less bold; the other ones look a little red around the edges, like when Steve’s moles get sucked at and—

“Look familiar?”

Steve turns, looks at Eddie who appears to have very quickly given up pretending not to care about the conversation. Steve blinks, looks a little closer, and…

That’s ink, alright. But it’s under the skin.

“I didn’t think you were gonna get any more,” Steve says, doesn’t expect his voice to be so soft. He doesn’t understand what they are, what they’re building up to be a part of but it looks like a big sort of project, and definitely in clearly visible places, so it feels worth some respect for the weight of the decision, what it means for Eddie who smiles small and nods; agrees simply:

“Me neither.”

“But, y’see, Henderson—”

“Ugh,” Steve groans because Dustin is, in fact, currently on his shit list. See previous ‘you only know that because you’re fucking my DM’ transgressions. Kid’s on thin fucking ice.

“No, no, it’s to a point,” Eddie soothes him, and it works, cause Eddie is always in his corner before anyone else’s, he killed Dustin’s character weeks ago and Steve still isn’t sure if Dustin’s stilll just watching when they get together, waiting to somehow find a narrative launch-point back into the action: “but he wants ink, which I told him, too fucking young,” and Eddie looks up to soak in the approval he knows is waiting for him in Steve’s eyes—he’s not wrong at all, and preens a little for it, too.

“But he was eyeing my bats, and he tried to say, well, what does it matter, they only meant something after,” and he gestures toward the bigger wound, the more unforgiving mark of bats opposite the still-fairly clean cookie-cutter type fliers on his arm.

“And that was just the dumbest attempt at an argument in his favor, because it not at all fucking true.”

For Steve’s part, it’s the one piece he’s never asked after. Too close to home. But he just figure…cool. Metal. Maybe about Ozzy.

“My mom used to read me nursery rhymes,” Eddie’s face goes so soft as his voice gets all fond, like it always does whenever Elizabeth Munson comes up. “Like, the old ones. And she did it way longer than probably most people, like, I was way too old for it but,” Eddie chews his lip and looks up at Steve like he’s confessing a secret:

“I just really loved it.”

Steve pushes and pulls Eddie a little until there’s the barest sliver of space at the back of the sofa for Steve to lie down in, wholly boxed in by Eddie’s weight, specially when Eddie rolls the priest bit into him to pin him close.

“My favorite one was about bats,” he whispers. “About hiding them from people who didn’t understand how nice they were, and how all they wanted as to do their thing, even if it wasn’t what everyone else liked, and be good for everybody by helping eat bad bugs or whatever,” he hums what Steve imagines is the rhyme; “so you put them under your hat, and give them bacon, and if they’re as good and as poorly treated for no good reason as you suspect is the case, you’ll bake them a cake. Because they deserve it.”

He doesn’t really have to say more for the connection to kinda stick out like a sore goddamn thumb.

“Couldn’t put it under my hat, but,” he ruffles his curls ruefully. “And I did always say, right, that tattoos are a map of what you love.”

Steve kisses Eddie firm, not least in appreciation for shutting Dustin’s harebrained bullshit down. But that doesn’t solve his original mystery.

“These aren’t a map, though,” Steve taps one of the new spots, smaller but still at the neck. No rhyme or reason to it.

“They’re the start of one.”

Steve frowns, so fucking confused, pulling back a little to try and see if he can read any answers from Eddie’s face.

But Eddie’s just smiling at him softer than he’d even been smiling before, thinking of nursery rhymes and the few good memories that came from the days before living with Wayne. He’s looking at Steve right now mostly like he hanged the moon itself.

“I’m gonna ask again,” Eddie breathes low, and grabs Steve’s cheek:

“Look familiar?”

And Steve, when it falls into place, doesn’t actually thing he should face any blame for not seeing it at first, or second, or even tenth glance. Because he’s never paid attention. Other people did.

But Eddie finally turns his neck and: vampire bites.

Marked just for me.

And then Steve starts touching each dot, and trying to find the sublest hint of a raise in the skin in the same place on himself. Every time, he finds it, some quicker with other slower, some needing him to look at the glass of the china cabinet behind the couch that’s never made sense there, but is reflective enough for the task and…they’re all there.

The marks aren’t…sharpie tips. They’re Steve’s, they, they’re all of Steve’s—-

“I love you something fucking fierce Steve Harrington,” Eddie bites out with what Steve gets the feeling is only a sampling of the very ferocity he’s speaking of; “and tolerating another second where I didn’t have you etched into my skin, the most important, most adored,” and Steve’s heart flips to hear it said so earnest, so felt full from Eddie’s heart:

“You not being on here was just fucking unacceptable.”

And goddamnit, Steve’s eyes are stinging. He, he’s…Eddie is…

“It’s like a star map,” Eddie murmurs, tracing the originals the way he often does, like connect-the-dots but reverent, always; “like how sailors navigated,” then he looks away, doesn’t move his hand but makes sure Steve meets his eyes:

“You’re my way home, because you are home.”

And yeah. No one could ever have expected him to hear those words and not let the waiting tears fall, okay? That’d be fucking insane.

His chest is so tight with so much right now, holy shit.

“All of it’s constellations made of you,” and he says that, too, has made up whole legends for the stars on Steve’s back; “so when I look at them, my heart’s always just that extra bit reminded where it’s meant to be, the direction it’s always gonna be headed, for forever.”

Steve’s breath catches loud and gaspy around a sob, and he’s not even speaking. What the fuck.

“Fuckin’ sap,” he says like it’s the highest honor he could give, and maybe here and now it is; “fuck, but love you,” and he draws Eddie in for a salty kiss that’s sloppy and heady and more heartfelt than Steve might just know how to stand.

When they finally part just for breath, Steve’s thumb is on one of the spots—on of the stars of the map.

“How,” he starts, because why, did he take a photo?

But Eddie just scoffs:

“Think I don’t know every inch of you by heart?”

And yes, of course that earns him Steve trying to suck his tongue from his mouth for the explicit purpose of his soul coming out easier for the way he kisses him deep as he knows how. And they do that, for a long fucking time because…

Steve’s kind of reeling. Steve’s never loved more in his life but then, but then—

No one has ever loved Steve even a fraction of this. Steve’s never had this, never known this. Steve…

Steve thought loving that big was his fucked up burden to bear, but now—

He’s not alone in how deep it rubs. How far he’ll go, and gladly.

What. The. Fuck.

Is this what a cheat is supposed to feel like, is this how normal people who love normal amount so that they get loved back the same got to feel all along?

Steve…almost doesn’t think so. Steve thinks this is what it feels like to love extravagantly and with more than your full self as a rule to the point of insanity for anyone on the outside looking it, and to fucking finally find your match for it.

And to know, then, that it was never crazy. It was only ever exactly right.

“Two more sessions, just for time,” Eddie nips at Steve’s lower lip, slick for spit and tears in equal measure.

“You’re unbelievable,” Steve gales, grinning wide enough it hurts.

“Hey now,” Eddie nips a little harder, narrowing his brow playfully; “I got the little one under your balls and the sprinkle set on your taint this last time,” and Steve can’t help himself.

He bursts out laughing so hard his sides ache.

“Even I needed a breather, sitting on that to drive home!” Eddie protests as Steve straddles him fully, properly, and…

Gets ready to read some fucking maps.

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