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stubz · 7 months ago

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"Hey guys! 4 days and the rescue team will be here!...any luck with setting up that emergency shelter?" Quip looked towards the others.

They all groan and curse in response. The small group surrounded by pieces and parts and an instruction sheet.

"It's not hard...it's not! We have everything we need; food, water, first aid, enough to last us weeks! ...So why does our downfall have to because of a faulty packaging?!!" screams Glip throwing down the piece she was holding.

"We're not going to die! We'll just have to sleep in the shuttle tonight and bundle up close tonight..." sighs Quip.

The shuttle had crashed thanks to a malfunction on the navigation system which lead to the shuttle getting blindsided by a meteor shower.

No one was killed and the most injured would surely live and the planet they crashed on was a favorable one. They had plenty of emergency food and water but what they didn't have was a proper shelter. The planet they landed on was freezing cold in the night, reaching far below the negatives.

If only the emergency shelter included the much needed tools necessary to build it...

The night was cold and unforgiving. The shuttle creaked and groaned from the violent winds and accumulating snow on it's roof. The beings inside shivered and prayed that when they fell asleep they would wake up in the morning.

When morning came they had to dig themselves out of the shuttle. Over 3 feet of snow from last night. The roof sank in the center in a way that made everyone nervous.

"...just 3 days. We just have to make it through 3 more days and we'll be rescued." muttered Quip.

"If we don't get suffocated in our sleep that is...or freeze." grumbles Glip.

"Would it kill you to be positive?"

"Oh, I'm sorry! Unlike you I don't have a fur coat to keep me warm in the night and stayed up all night worried that I wouldn't wake up if went to sleep!"

"Stop yelling! You're making the others worry!"

"You-!"

"The human is awake! She woke up!" shouted a purple looking avian.

During the crash the only one to really get injured was the human on board, having hit their head on impact and been unconscious for the past 30 hours.

"...how is she?!" calls Glip

"She's lost it! She's digging through the snow like a lunatic!"

Glip and Quip share a look before heading to the other side of the shuttle where the avian was and looked.

There several yards away was the human who was digging through the snow with her bare hands.

"What's she doing?" asks Quip.

"No idea! She was already awake when I went to check on her looking for something in the shuttle and then made break for it once she saw the door was open...think she's brain damaged or something." they muttered.

"...someone should check on her." Glip says before shoving Quip forward.

After some arguing and reminders that out of the three of them he was the most people friendly Quip trudged out where the human was to check on her.

She had dug a hole nearly 4 feet deep and showed no signs of stopping. The look in her eyes and bloody bandages on her head made Quip feel she was too far gone to the Great Stars but he had to the right thing.

"...heeyyyy...Kim...what uh, watcha doing there?" he asked a safe 5 feet away.

"Looking for tools...need tools for the shelter." she muttered.

"Tools? ...Kim the shelter didn't come with tools; they weren't lost in he crash." he tried to gently explain.

"Not those, different tools. Good tools that every planet has."

"And what...tools, are those?"

"Rocks and sticks!"

"...great! Good luck on that!" he walked as fast he could to the others, practicing how to gently break the news that the human was broken.

...

Hours passed and the human Kim had founded 3 rocks of different sizes, some large sticks, and taken whatever pieces of the shuttle that had broken off and put them in a pile in front of the Emergency Instantaneous Shelter manual.

The others looked on with pity with some looking disturbed at how proud she was for her findings.

No one stopped her when she started to grab the pieces of the E.I.S. and smash them together with her rocks and hunks of broken metal. Nor when they heard the scraping and screeching of the metal shards she twisted against them. Without tools it was worthless...plus the determined manic look in her eyes scared everyone too much.

When night was starting to fall everyone had taken refuge in the shelter again. Everyone but the human who was too focused and entertained by the smashing of rocks and scratching of metal.

"Kim! Come inside! You'll freeze out here!" ordered Quip.

"Human! You don't have fur or anything to keep you warm during the night!" Glip shouted.

The human looked at them and smiled, waving and shouting that she was almost finished.

"...she's a little out of it but she's well enough to come inside when she should." Glip pushed her friend through the shuttle door and together they joined the sleep pile.

....

When Glip surfaced from the snow that landed on her face she screamed for everyone to leave. The roof had finally gave and was seconds away from dropping a mountain of snow onto them all.

She grabbed Quip and the purple avian, Kal, and dragged their half-asleep panicked bodies out of the shuttle. When out she watched with them and the others the shuttle concaving from the snow.

The wind and snow bit and scratched their faces and exposed flesh. The shrieks and howls from the dying shuttle, their only hope of surviving the nights, seemed almost organic. The fear and realization of their fate made them shiver more than the cold did.

"DONE! ITS FINALLY FINISHED! LOOK! LOOK AT WHAT I BUILT!!!" The human popped up from the other side of the destroyed shuttle, eyes wide and glowing from the flare she held for light.

When no one came forward fast enough for her liking she scrambled over and grabbed Kal and dragged them towards the thing she built.

"ITS NOT AS NICE AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN WITH REAL TOOLS BUT I LIKE IT! YOU CAN HAVE SECOND DIBS OF WHAT SPOT YOU WANT!" she shouted over the howling wind.

The two disappeared from view for a minute before Kal popped his head out screaming.

She had built the Emergency Instantaneous Shelter. With nothing but the rocks and pieces of metal she found. It wasn't perfect; a wall or two was dented, the roof was scratched and somewhat held up by two strong sticks she dug up, but it was warm, safe, and dry.

"...how in the f*ck did you build this?" Quip shivered as he climbed inside.

"I just followed the instructions, its pretty simple really." the human smiled.

"...but you didn't have any of the tools!" Glip shrieked.

"Well after reading the instructions I realized that a good rock would perfectly substitute like half of the tools I didn't have. And the metals shards I found worked great as screwdrivers!"

Glip opened her mouth to argue, to scream that a rock was nothing like the sophisticated tools that great engineering minds had invented...until she realized the human was right. The tools simply added the instant to instantaneous shelter. With them you build this grand 20 person shelter in 2 minutes. Without them it would take hours of hard labor.

"...how did you know that a rock would be the perfect substitute?"

"...I don't know. Its basically instinct to most of us. The perfect tool for a simple job is a big heavy object... rock."

"...rock." Glip repeated.

"Rock." the human confirmed.

*weeks later*

"Oh my god it is instinct!" Glip screams as she watches a group of human younglings use rocks to crack open other rocks to simply see the shiny patterns on the inside at the indoor park she walks through. With others using sticks to dig up more rocks to smash.

#humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #the adventures of kim and max running a space child centre #this is inspired by just watching how quick the kids are to use a rock to smash another rock to see what's inside #also by me using sticks lately to pull down berries I can't reach or to 'cut' down thorny branches with them #also I love lego and those wood 3D puzzle things and have built for 3 days straight to complete my Lego typewriter as soon as possible #Fingertips were sore for days afterwards #no beta we die like men

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hitlikehammers · 6 days ago

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Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it’s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

Looking back, he’s afraid he wasted too much of those last weeks. Scared of giving too much away, the hurt from so many sides and the heartache that’s already taking root, but also: the way he clings, but tries not to make it obvious.

Fuck; but of course it was gonna be obvious, and how much energy did he waste, how many opportunities slipped by, because Steve was trying not to give away that Eddie leaving—to get away from a town that hated him, to try and make a real go with his music, to be anywhere without Steve so he could live out the dreams that predated Steve, that Steve had no place in—to try not to give away that all of it; it’d fucking destroy him.

Steve doesn’t know, to this day, how he stood and let Eddie kiss him breathless out the driver-side window, how he waved until Eddie was out of sight. He doesn’t know.

Kind of like he doesn’t know how he fucking keeps doing it.

Eddie throws tapes to every radio station with Van Halen or other top-played bands written on the insert in sharpie like that gives nothing away, and sneaks a demo in every underpaid delivery boy’s hands to record executives as he drives to the West Coast, sends Steve postcards what seems like has to be every goddamn day, filled up with his rambling until there’s no space left, has to draw lines around Steve’s address to make it clear where the damn thing’s going lest it get confused. Like they’re SteveandEddie still. Like only…only the things that changed after graduation are gone.

Steve sobs after about a month of it all, grateful and resentful, hateful and still so goddamn full of love it’s sickening. Literally, it makes him feel nauseous. He…

He keeps every postcard.

When one of them comes to say some idiot in San Francisco accidentally played Corroded Coffin on what’s apparently an important station, and Eddie got a letter in response from one of the labels, he says he’s coming back for the boys, they need to be ready. Steve knows he’s not one of the boys, but.

Eddie wouldn’t have told Steve he was coming if it wouldn’t matter to Steve. And maybe Eddie wasn’t in love with him anymore, maybe never was in love with him.

But he’d be lying if he said he thought Eddie didn’t love him. In a different way. A…you-don’t-get-to-come-with-me-but-I’d-still-want-to-see-you-when-I-stop-back kind of way.

And Steve…Steve’s not a fucking monk or anything. But even Robin doesn’t try to push him when he finally just tells her what he feels, lovesick and pathetic as it is:

I gave everything I had to someone else, and it’d be different if I wanted to back, to give again, but…I don’t.

I don’t want it back, not from him. Not if any part of him, wants to keep any part of it.

And because she’s Robin, she knows he means something else when he says ‘it’. And because she’s Robin? She’d push if she thought it was worth it.

She just holds him, and that’s really the best thing he could ask for.

But it becomes a thing. The boys go with Eddie, and they record new shit to impress...whoever. And they do. They come back for Halloween, because Eddie loves it. The label’s dragging its feet, but they’re not deterred, they’re energized. They come back for Thanksgiving because Wayne loves it—except he doesn’t, Steve knows that, Wayne actually hates trying to make a bird and Eddie had lamented more than once that they ended up with lunchmeat cut into cubes one year when Wayne was particularly frustrated with the process. They go out East, and try a few studios in New York. They come back for Christmas.

Eddie spends most of his time with Steve. Steve doesn’t fucking fight that; wants it…like…

There’s nothing to compare how he wants it to. Nothing exists that fits.

Eddie spends most of the time that he spends with Steve, though?

In Steve’s bed.

And here’s the thing: Steve had a decent amount of experience to compare to, but once they’d fallen into a rhythm, got past the awkward bits, the learning curve? Sex with Eddie had been a goddamn revelation. Not just because he was a man—after he’d left, Steve had forced himself to try, and dispelled that possibility quick as hell—and now?

Now, it’s like they never stopped. Every fucking time, it’s like they never stopped.

Steve’s not surprised in the slightest that he remembers every give and tell of Eddie’s body—of course he goddamn does—but that Eddie doesn’t miss a beat in touching, sucking, licking, worshippingSteve’s? That’s insane. That’s…

Unexpected. Every time it’s unexpected and every time Steve’s shown he wasn’t forgotten when he probably should have been. Eddie’s building a life that doesn’t include him.

He’ll only get in the way.

But Steve is selfish and stubborn and maybe it’s often, like almost strangely so, but it’s only a week or two at a go so he tells himself he’s allowed. He tells himself that it felt like making love in the beginning because Steve was in love, and that it still feels exactly the same because Steve…Steve never stopped.

Steve is still just as goddamn in love.

So yeah. Steve sleeps with Eddie and it’s like…it’s like rationed air. He gets a regular taste and he gets to keep breathing.

And it’s okay. Probably more then. Because he gets Eddie—even a little bit. Even just in scraps. When he has Eddie?

He has him, even for moments that were never made to last.

It’s Easter, this time. The band put out their first record in January. It’s doing really well. Eddie’s over the moon. Someone called about a magazine cover for a publication in Cleveland that’s apparently kind of a big deal, Alt..something. Steve will buy every copy in a fucking 100-mile radius. 200 miles. 500—

It’s Easter. Eddie didn’t lament not celebrating it after Spring Break in ‘86 but he’s back every year now. And if it’s just…come to mean something, or maybe did then and circumstances won out against it? Steve will be here. Steve will be comfort and a reprieve or a hot as hell romp with a familiar body, Steve will…

Yeah. Steve will do whatever’s needed. Wanted. Anything.

Pathetic.

But so much better than nothing.

Case in point: they’re both naked, sweat mostly dried, sharing a joint and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet and gentle and put up against sitting alone on a weeknight, not with Eddie?

It’s heaven.

“So when’s the dream happening?”

Steve looks cross-eyed toward his lips; he hasn’t smoked this thing long enough to have heard wrong. He squints up at Eddie, whose chest he’s laid out on, confused. Offers him the smoke but he waves it away.

“The dream?” Steve asks finally, when Eddie doesn’t seem to want to answer on his own.

Eddie looks at him weird. Not weird for its own sake but like: like he’s staring into him, and then like he’s disbelieving, but then also like he’s seeing him for the first time.

That kind of weird.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” Eddie answers like it’s obvious. “White picket fence. Little nuggets.” He spreads his hands as wide as possible without tossing Steve from where he lies. “See the sights.”

And Steve’s response is immediate. Doesn’t even require a thought.

He laughs. Like, ugly-laughs.

“Man,” he shakes his head as he catches his breath, and passes the joint off this time with purpose, not an offer or a choice as he snorts a little; “that’s not the dream.”

When Eddie doesn’t grab the smoke, Steve finally looks up. Eddie…

Eddie looks like what Steve’s always struggled to understand the word ‘poleaxed’ to mean. He thinks it might be this.

He looks…like something stuck him through the gut. Slapped him silly across the face.

“What d’ya mean?” And it’s just three words, one that’s a cheat, and he says it slow enough to take an age.

Steve breathes out, and then, if he’s gonna be honest, and if he has to keep holding the damn thing anyway, decides to take another drag before speaking:

“Figured out what the dream was, inside the dream,” Steve says, wondering if he’ll get away with the vagary; knowing he won’t.

“All we see or seem?” Eddie jokes a little, but it falls flat, his tone eerily kinda…strained but hollow.

“I like poetry.” Steve smiles up at him, soft, and offers the joint again straight to Eddie’s lips. He takes it this time.

“It was about family. It was about stability, not,” Steve shakes his head, stops talking half-assed around the lungful he’s holding, and lets it out slow; “not in a place, fuck, not in a house, but,” a person he doesn’t say, but he hears it in his head; “it was about sharing it.”

And that's it. That’s the simplest, most straightforward truth. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything complicated, or offensive in it. Hard to swallow. Even if he’s come to terms with it. Is mostly at peace with it.

Which is why it’s weird, that Eddie feels suddenly rigid beneath him.

So Steve turns, and braces his hand on Eddie's chest for balance, and frowns when he doesn’t even have to push down to feel the way his heart’s a fucking riot.

“What?” Steve asks, gentle; Eddie’s face is a portrait of conflict, of distress and Steve can’t fucking figure out why, they just came like four times between them and are sharing some very nice Cali weed—they’re nestled close, they’re together, it’s…

Eddie’s quiet, his breath disconcertingly steady for how his pulse pounds, and then he breathes out slow before covering his face:

“I don’t think I can fuck this up any worse than I already have, so,” he mutters, dejected for reasons Steve can’t even guess, then he laughs, humorless, shakes his head:

“Let me try, I guess.”

Steve frowns, uncomprehending, until:

“I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Steve thinks the world stops. His heart does, at least. Suspended. Silent so he doesn’t miss a syllable.

“And I told myself,” Eddie bites at his lip, worries at the bottom swell; “end of that summer, from the very first, I said: don’t ask him to come with you, even if it breaks your heart,” and oh god, oh god after all this time: Steve doesn’t think he’s projecting to hear the genuinely broken heart in those words for just remembering.

“Don’t ask him to settle, you’re not even in the same universe of what he wants,” fuck, what lies Eddie’s saying; did he believe them? Has he always—“what he needs.”

But Eddie is everything he needs, always was, will always be—

“You’ll never have the picket fence. You can’t give him his nuggets. You should never be trusted to park a Winnebago.”

They could have had a shitty studio apartment. They could have had the kids in college. They could have run the BMW until it died, or sold it to put toward a better van for equipment. They could have—

“You’re selfish, Munson, you’re a rat fucking bastard but,” Eddie’s still going, heart still hammering under Steve’s touch even as Eddie swallows hard and fails to smile, looks ill with the attempt like it hurts to try: “you love him too much for that.”

Oh. Oh god.

“It didn’t break my heart, though,” Eddie clears his throat and glances away, to the ceiling, eyes too bright: oh fuck; “broke my goddamn soul,” and a tear falls, and Steve can��t help but wipe it away, and kiss the track. Even just once.

So he does.

“When I saw you again that first time back,” Eddie starts again, voice rougher and shakier as he reaches a hand for Steve’s. “I could have asked the boys to fly out, the execs offered, but,” and this time, the attempt to grin is more successful, like a weight’s lifted from it: “and you smiled at me, it felt like,” and when he shakes his head this time it’s for disbelief, but the kind that comes with awe; “and when we slotted back together like we’d never been apart, it was…”

Eddie’s voice trails, but it cracks at the end—Steve doesn’t know which does more to stop his words.

He’s grateful, relieved, when they come back. He’s powerless but to give when Eddie touches his cheek so gentle and breathes:

“And I had to tell myself again, and again,” he murmurs, stroking Steve’s skin like he’s precious: “you love him too much to take his dream away from him.”

“What did it matter?” Steve can’t help but ask, no malice in it, just the need to understand. “You had your dream, you have—“

They have a contract. They have an album climbing the charts. They’re not just on their way—they’re there. The only next step is to get bigger, and bigger, and—

“Dreams within dreams, wasn’t it?” Eddie murmurs close to Steve’s cheek, where maybe he’s pressing to be close, or maybe he’s hiding a little, so Steve strokes his hair because he can either way and relishes how Eddie leans, melts into it like always. “Inside the dream?”

Steve nods, more to encourage more words. More Eddie.

“Break my dream open and there’s you with me, every step,” Eddie whispers, his lips warm on Steve’s skin. “Break my heart open, same damn thing,” and that causes Steve to shudder, and his heart to pick up now, too. “Both just kinda crumble if you take out the center.”

Steve can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Wants to. Doesn’t think they’re lies. It’s just, he…

“Those,” Steve tries to speak but his voice cracks; he clears his throat and kicks his lips while he tucks Eddie into his neck, under his chin: “those would be good lyrics.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head and nuzzles Steve’s throat with the motion and this can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, can it?

“No, those words were only ever meant just for you.”

And Eddie kisses the pulse point close to his mouth and holds there, like a sentry and a miser, and holy shit.

Holy shit.

“And I don’t know,” Eddie’s saying more, but it’s pitchy, thready, like he’s barely holding the words together at all; “I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, or convenience, or routine,” his voice breaks again and the sob’s in the word when it comes even if it’s not streaming down on his cheeks: “pity,” and no, no, not fucking ever, how—

“I was never your dream then, and I don’t even know if I can be your inside-dream now, and,” Eddie’s rambling, and he does that when he’s desperate, when he’s overwhelmed and overfull with feeling—and Steve knows that. Steve knows that about him.

Steve knows. Better than he knows himself, Steve still knows him.

“I just want the world for you,” Eddie whispers, stroking up and down Steve’s jaw; “my sweetheart. My sunshine,” he smiles so real and soft and Steve melts, like the heart in his chest starts spilling through his ribs, warm and liquid: “you deserve more than the world, more than fuckin’ me and I,” Eddie shakes his head again, more this time like he’s stopping himself, like it’s a defense mechanism and Steve reaches for his cheeks, broad palms on either side to hold him still because…he doesn’t want Eddie to stop.

Ever.

“Did I ruin it?” Eddie breathes, and barely at that, eyes so wide and swimming and oh, god; “did I—"

And Steve can’t help it. He can’t help but kiss him with all he’s got, even if it couldn’t be all Eddie’s worth in all the world. Steve can’t contain all that Eddie’s worth.

But he can give everything, because this is the man who already has it.

“What the hell was I supposed to be to a rockstar?” Steve tries to talk through his own tight throat, his own growing smile, his own threat of tears bubbling close to the surface. “How the fuck was I ever going to measure up, ever do anything but hold you back when you could have—“

“I come back to you, for you,” Eddie answers immediate; it’s not what Steve’s asking but he won’t lie and say he didn’t want to know, at least a little. “The handful of times I’ve tried,” Eddie shakes his head once now, definitive; “I have always left my everything with you.”

The idea that Steve’s spent all this time feeling empty, and hollow, and missing the best of himself where it lived in the man he loved—the idea he was wrong, that they both were so fucking wrong is…insanity.

“I had a bag half packed.”

Steve doesn’t need to explain further. The noise Eddie makes is pure pain.

“Baby,” he nearly croons, falls into Steve somehow closer, wraps him up tighter; “I wanted to kidnap you in the night.”

“I sobbed in my bed after you were out of sight.”

“I pulled over before the town sign, because I couldn’t see the goddamn road.”

And Steve…Steve doesn’t really have a decision to make about what he says next. What dream he wants; always has.

“I never got rid of the luggage.”

And Eddie hears everything he says in those words, because after everything, Eddie Munson knows him, and…yeah.

Steve’s been kissed in a lot of ways before. By this man in particular, even.

But this: if leaving broke Eddie’s soul, if somehow the lack of Steve somehow did that?

This is…this is the body meeting another body, heart to heart and tasting the way a soul slides back in place. It's Eddie’s hands in his hair like hell never let go and he’s happy about the idea; blissful for it, even. It’s—beyond anything Steve’s ever known. So: yeah.

It’s not a decision. It’s just a fucking given.

♥️

🎸also on ao3

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