#love before sunrise | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hitlikehammers · 21 hours ago

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can it be love if it’s only been a night? ♥️ (steddie au; ✨meet-cute✨ on a train 🚞)

It’s not that it’s the last stop. It’s not even the last stop. It’s more than Eddie feels…suddenly-and-not-suddenly-at-all, like it’s the last chance he has to pivot the whole trajectory of his life. To look down the diverging road toward where he’d planned to try and end up, versus the opportunity to reconsider that maybe he hasn’t started his life at all, yet. Maybe all the years he’s had so far have just been a waiting space. For this.

rating: t ♥️ tags: modern(ish) au, meet cute, double booked for a cabin on a train 🛤️, love a first sight, falling in love, strangers to lovers, fluff, romance, softness, only for tonight✨, (or is it?!), do you walk and go about your way as planned when your LIFE unexpectedly walks into your train cabin?, or do you say fuck every plan you’ve ever had and follow where THIS leads? 👀♥️

for @steddielovemonth day seventeen: 🎬 Before Sunrise

It’s not that it’s the last stop. It’s not even the last stop.

It’s more than Eddie feels…suddenly-and-not-suddenly-at-all, like it’s the last chance he has to pivot the whole trajectory of his life. To look down the diverging road toward where he’d planned to try and end up, versus the opportunity to reconsider that maybe he hasn’t started his life at all, yet. Maybe all the years he’s had so far have just been a waiting space.

For this.

Because fuck him blind, he’d got on that train—whole-ass adult, rockstar wannabe, still can’t drag your ass on a plane?, his band had razzed him bad for it while they headed out day-of to meet with the label who’d shown interest but, well, yeah, to all of it: almost 30, still does not trust tin cans in flight, the train is a more than acceptable alternative—and he’d lucked into one private room with a bed left, and for an almost-two-day journey he’d fucking needed it, and so he’d settled in, he’d ripped his Sweetheart carefully in the corner, and the whoosh of the doors to his little cabinette had startled him, because they’d already checked his ticket, so what, and who—

But then his brain had stilled. And he’d met soft honey eyes in midafternoon light. So sorry, had come the kind of voice that put the music Eddie loved by in his very soul to shame; I think they double-booked this room-thing.

And it’d turned out they had. But there were two beds. And both of them were headed the same direction. Same destination, even. Union Station to Union Station. The attendant had apologized up and down, promised at least partial refunds but Eddie…

Eddie had, like—

Those doors had opened. And it was like his life had walked through. He hadn’t even known he was waiting on it until right here it was.

Eddie doesn’t want a refund for it; goddamn.

The afternoon bleeds into evening. His cabin-buddy, his life-person, his maybe-soulmate or something—Steve—gives up on the book he’d pulled out about thirty minutes in; better than Eddie, who thought he’d watch the country slide by in the 40-some hours between Chicago and L.A. Feel his heart stirred by the purple-mountain majesty, pastoral grandeur, however that shit translates to his genre of choice—but basically, he’d been hoping to glean some poetic lines for the ballads he knows they need to at least consider, to balance an album pitch.

But he doesn’t see shit, in terms of the sights and scenes. In terms of inspiration, though: Eddie stares at Steve like he’s hypnotized. Caught blissfully in a gravitational pull that outstrips anything he’s ever know.

And his heart’s more than stirred.

Steve’s eyes meet his once he zips his bag back, tucks it until the lower bed.

“Was not expecting motion sickness on a train,” Steve comments wryly, massaging his temples. Eddie would like to volunteer for that role, immediately if possible.

He digs out some Advil and one of the complimentary water bottles in the drawer near the head of the beds, and hands both to Steve.

He, despite his condition, smiles so goddamn bright Eddie thinks he can feel it in the marrow of him like soft simmering, like starlight.

He pretends to write in his little notebook he takes everywhere, beat to hell but trusty, little lyrical snippets and campaign ideas he’s kinda afraid he’ll never have the party to set into motion, but still needs to get out of his head just to keep this side of sane.

Right now, his pen is just…sketching.

If it looks like the line of Steve’s jaw, fuck you.

Eddie can do what he wants with his own notebook.

He manages to keep quiet, which is a feat for him, but also speaks to this unnameable things he’s already associated with this Steve, a near-cellular effect he’s having on Eddie that he can neither articulate or even attempt to explain, to quantify. He’s…

“I know you didn’t sign up for a roommate,” Steve doesn’t break the silence, his voice pitched low like a whisper when it’s just the two of them; “but if you wanted, since we’re here,” he shrugs, and his lashes flick up near-hopeful, too close to shy for the wrong reasons:

“Maybe we can get to know each other a little? Past just first names and that I apparently can’t write on a moving vehicle”

And Eddie, who is loud and abrasive as a rule but keeps the things that matter pressed close to the vest even with his closest friends, his flesh and blood: Eddie?

Eddie scoots over on the lower bunk—it’s still set to be a sofa-type thing, for now, and where Steve had settled in a chair across from it presumably out of courtesy, Eddie pats the space now open next to him. Hopes like he’s forgotten he knew how that Steve will stand, and sit, and let Eddie feel warm in his orbit.

He does. All three things in a breath.

Eddie feels a little lightheaded. A little breathless.

But Steve is very warm, and Eddie feels immediately at ease like he’s pretty sure he’s never known. They dive in to the real stuff, don’t really start with small talk, just sprinkle it in along the way almost just for variety, for flair. Their hopes, their fears, their ambitions: what they’d both ordered for their shitty included train meals. Life and death and loss: Steve’s year-long engagement broken off three weeks before I Do; Eddie’s guilt over his mom, for losing her when maybe if he’d somehow managed to pull their family name from poverty in time where no one else had ever swung it, her last days wouldn’t have looked like they did. Steve’s pwn parents, alive and hateful; Eddie’s uncle, stubborn, and all he really has.

Steve’s hand grabbing his when he says as much; Eddie wanting to believe it’s deliberate, that it means something.

That Eddie could have…more.

This, even.

Poking at each other’s food with their forks, trading vegetables—why order it if you hate the carrots?because the rest of it sounded good, duh; how can you not like broccoli? They even gave you cheese sauce! that’s any insult to the word cheese, for one, and to the main point: trees should never be considered edible, and in miniature at that—end of.

And then they’d fucking laughed, and Eddie’s heart had swelled, and Steve’s eyes had never left his face and, and—

The move on to their dreams, which account for a lot of why they’d both got on the train in the first place: Steve’s a writer—not published, he’d tried to dodge, to diminish himself, but Eddie wouldn’t have it: you just want to add that part; you’re soul’s always an author’s soul, you’re never not a writer if it’s written in your bones and Steve had flushed so magnetically, all Eddie had wanted was to reach and feel its warmth; and Eddie of course is trying to be a musician, but trying? Steve had turned his own logic straight back at him; you’re a musician because it’s written in you cells, I’d say. Your fingers have been tapping rhythms since I sat down. I’d bet my whole wallet that little Moleskine of yours is bleeding lyrics and for a moment, Eddie thinks he’ll reach for it. He never lets people read his notebook. Steve would find the sketch of himself there, on top of it all.

Eddie had wanted him to reach. He hadn’t, though.

He’d asked instead why the fuck Eddie was wearing Reeboks when the rest of him screamed Doc Martens. Which then slid so naturally into a genuine masterclass on the evolution of the unquestionable supremacy of the vaunted Nike.

It’s long past moonrise before they realize the time. There’s no excuse to have lost track—save for each other.

Given they’d both booked the cabin as single occupants, the linens are only for one of the two berths. They could ask, easily, for another set.

Eddie makes his bed on the top and asks if Steve wants to share, against the chill creeping in.

It’s midsummer. There’s no such thing.

Steve climbs the ladder, flicks off the lights. And Eddie can’t ignore it anymore. The way the veins and tubes, the arteries and capillaries and mechanisms folded in around his heart have disengaged, and the unchained thrumming of the wayward muscle’s flaring like a freed balloon, too much helium and no clear direction save upward, upward—

More.

Steve hesitates, only briefly, before he tucks into Eddie’s chest. The moonlight’s dim but Eddie can read the thing on his features: confusion, too small and inconsequential to have even the slightest chance against a gaping-uncomprehending shade of wonder.

“Tell me you feel it.”

The lips that speak move against the proud bone that runs the center of Eddie’s chest, protects his heart as it feels to be growing weaker, more vulnerable every goddamn second he breathes beside this man.

But it’s in that moment that he learns that Steve is brave, the his heart is the kind legends live for.

“You’re like magic made flesh,” Eddie confesses, because his words tend to live in the clouds a little, but he means them so true; he gently, slowly threads fingers through Steve’s hair and pulls him close to actually be able to chart the heartbeat he’s lined up to; that he’s wholesalely responsible for the way it’s lost everything it knows about pumping to a point.

“It feels like my heart’s beating something better than blood,” Eddie whispers, after Steve can feel the evidence for a moment or two, to know; “like you breathed something more into me, like I was waiting for you.”

“Like we were meant for this,” Steve finishes the line exquisitely, pure perfection, his lips dragging against Eddie’s skin before Eddie can’t bear it, has to reach, to tip Steve’s chin up and try and find what he doesn’t know how to name.

Save that he finds it, immediately, in those eyes—like they were just waiting.

For maybe him, specifically, and the very notion thumps hard in the center of his chest like a track change, a divergence.

Like this is the moment to look back upon when he decides, and soon, if the world is going to change; of the path is gonna reshape itself beneath his feet.

“Am I insane?” Eddie asks, because his head adds everything up to that conclusion, but every part of him feels more at ease, more set to rights than he’s remembers knowing ever, not once.

And Steve considers him before he cups eddies cheek, tender. Like home.

“Entirely,” he concludes, without a shadow of doubt, and Eddie’s chest feels buoyant again, and his cheeks hurt for beaming, and—

And then Steve leans, and kisses him, and the world changes. He can feel it. Because nothing ever felt wholly right before; Eddie sometimes thinks his life this fa head just been chasing anything that felt like it fit.

And now there’s this man out of nowhere, who feels carved to match his very bones. Who exhales when he breathes in. Whose heart thumps his counterpoint so there’s never anything save life beating between them: unceasingly.

Like home, Eddie had thought, as if he’d found it—but no.

No, he thinks they’re making it, here between them now.

He slides his tongue between Steve’s lips and cradles the moan he earns inside the tip of his quaking heart, so it can live in him forever.

So it can be the foundation of whatever home will mean from this moment on.

Then he dives in deeper, to learn the taste of what home will be henceforth, just as sure.

Sunrise is kind of gorgeous, and unfairly so—the windows are small and they need a good clean—but also unsurprisingly: of course it’s gorgeous. Steve is in his arms, his breath on Eddie’s collarbone.

What in this world could be anything less than sublime?

They lounge, mostly hum and kiss and explore each other’s skin—it remains the unspoken rule that anything more isn’t made for here, but unlike the night before, there’s an addendum Eddie can feel in the drum of his pulse that they’re agreed upon:

It’s not for here. It’s for elsewhere. It’s for later.

Just because it’s not for here doesn’t mean it’s not for them.

And it’s that a fucking thought.

It’s strange how much quicker the time sees fit to pass, upon rising with intention: their lunches come—they’d slept through breakfast, are asked if they want both together, a late bit of brunch and Steve giggles a little, and Eddie says yes.

Because he’s decided, just now, that a core tenet of his entire being is going to be coaxing that kind of thoughtless honest joy from this man’s strawberry lips.

They stretch the meal out long past it turned cool; they feed each other delicate, wanton, filled with care that makes no sense because it speaks to years, to life, and not hours, not two worlds that never held one another less than a day before now.

That part’s filled with a quiet devastation, a mourning: how can you love without your life for your whole life?

And now, halfway through the journey: they may both have boarded with the same destination on a ticket. But Eddie isn’t a fool, not about this: if they disembark in California at the very same platform, they’ll never cross paths again.

His heart arches too hard for it to be anything but true.

The sunset is mediocre, but Eddie thinks it may be his own sour fear that colors it. He’s in Steve’s arms, now. It’s not so late, yet. The train will stop soon, let some off. Bring some on.

Then away.

*Ask me not to.”

Eddie says it from nowhere, without context. It’s clear though: ask him not to go, ask him not to meet his band, as him not to be anywhere but here, in these arms, ask him not for less than always, ask him—

“I couldn’t,” and Eddie’s breath catches, because his heart does first. “It’s your dream.”

And Eddie…it’s only been hours, but Eddie feels like Steve’s voice is his true mother tongue. He heard what it says below:

whatever I could give you is nothing compared to what’s driven you this long, this far; however I could maybe come to sneak inside your heart would be pale, child’s play, and insult to what you’ve wanted for always—

And Eddie’s heart fucking hurts to hear what’s underneath, so he kisses Steve with everything that’s true as best he knows and asks him, lips to lips:

“Can’t a dream change?”

because you are magic, you’re a already in my veins, you make the things I thought I wanted more than air look anemic, feel paper-thin because all that’s real is you, is you, is you—

“In a night?” Steve whispers, breathless, eyes wide.

“What other length would a dream ever have?” because it’s an honest question. It’s probably why everything feels so deeply urgent all of a sudden in the middle of the night: dreams fade with the daylight.

This one won’t leave Eddie’s heart until that heart stops beating for good. But he’s deathly afraid of alighting the stairs and losing this.

He needs to lay the bricks of the new road he travels, with Steve’s hand in his. He needs it before Steve fades away.

“I want you.”

Steve looks at him with tenderness; with far too much resignation.

“You want what’s out there.”

He had. That’s true. But—

“I want you,” Eddie repeats it, tries his best to stamp it into the road he’s choosing here and now, tries to explain that Steve is a revelation he wasn’t looking for, but only because he didn’t know it was there to find:

“I want this, with you, not least because you couldn’t ask.”

Steve quirks a brow at him, as he fluffs Steve’s feather-soft hair behind his ear.

“You said you couldn’t ask, and for my sake alone,” Eddie breathes, hopes Steve can read the distinction, the crucial difference glowing in his eyes like it thrums in his pulse. “Not that you wouldn’t want to.”

Eddie wants to feel shame that the last bit comes out a little like a question, in need of reassurance, but before he can give in, Steve leaps, comes alive to rebuke all doubt and it’s then that Eddie knows, feels the track click right.

“It’s all I want,” Steve half hisses, eyes on fucking fire; “but—”

Eddie frames his face and kisses him like he’s the most precious thing, which he is; he is.

“Let me play for you while you write your novel,” Eddie narrates the track they’re on, now, the world they’re changing with eve try heartbeat. “Let me sing for you. Let’s try all of this together, and see if we can’t be better for the whole of it that way, better than we’d have ever managed apart.”

And he leans in again for a kiss, because he can’t help it.

Because in this new life, on this new road: it may well just be that he can, as often as he likes.

“Because I fuckin’ swear the moment you walked in this room, my soul stood up,” Eddie whispers fierce; “or maybe, better said, it slid in place, like it’d been lost, at loose ends my whole life,” and he traces Steve’s lips, gazing into him with the single aimed to drown forever:

“Because it’d been always looking for you.”

Steve stares at him, lips parted a little, and Eddie’s breath shudders, maybe he, maybe it was too—

“You’re the writer, you have better words—”

But then Steve breaks, surges into Eddie and is commanding, demands Eddie with his lips, his tongue, his hand splayed on his chest and the other coiled around the nape of his neck.

To call it merely thrilling will be an insult.

“I want my heartbeat to be your metronome, in the quiet moments,” Steve murmurs against his swollen lips; “I want it to be the tempo of your cacophony, on a stage bigger than you can see across,” and then he licks those swollen lips, temptation and possession and the utmost care.

“I want to be selfish with you,” Steve confesses, as if it could change anything, as if it’s anything but desired in the whole of him; “and selfless for you To give you everything,” and he slides his open palm over eddies giddy-galloping heart, eyes flickering watch the motion of his own touch, to feel the blood-better for how Steve’s already living in it, racing through the chambers and the veins: “keep the most precious parts of you to myself.”

Eddie doesn’t have enough breath just then to laugh entirely, but he huffs a little, his smile half-lost to an ecstasy he’s never felt quite like this before as he gasps:

“Told you you’d have the words.”

And Steve: he does laugh.

And Eddie knows this new road is heavenly; is so right.

“Your band,” Steve asks suddenly, but not in the tone from before that was aimed to dissuade. Just a question.

His hand still stretched open on Eddie’s chest.

“I’ll tell them the train got delayed.”

Steve snorts. And Eddie loves him, doesn’t he.

Eddie’s already so in love him.

“That information’s public,” Steve points out with a kiss to the notch at eddies clavicle.

“Public information is wrong all the time,” Eddie flick a hand; he’s so far from even pretending to be bothered. “Delays can last forever, if they need to.”

And Steve uses the hand on Eddie’s chest now to brace himself upward, to lift and hover over Eddie, to stare at him in wonder and declare:

“You are insane.”

And Eddie can only smile, broader than he thought his face could contain, like maybe finding your life for real, and falling in love for keeps, teaches your joy to stretch wider as a rule.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and marvels a little that he can reach up and cup this man’s face; that he can touch to keep.

“Isn’t it incredible?

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