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flowercrowngods · 2 years ago

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yearning hours (bonus track)

🤍 also on ao3

Seeing Steve like this always makes Eddie feel like he’s suddenly in on some secret of the universe. Like he knew nothing prior to this moment, like history is rewriting itself around the two of them just now. It makes him feel like the boy he is — young, stupid, with no idea about the world and what lies beyond, and absolutely in love with another boy.

The light of the full moon catches in his hair, painting it silver and covering him in a sheen of light that Steve knows to wear like a second skin. He’s calm out here, his legs dangling over the abyss of the quarry, his hands in his lap, his chest rising and falling steadily. Slowly. Evenly. Eddie wants to reach out and hold his hand over Steve’s heart just to feel it against his skin, just to give his own some direction; to get it right.

No frown between his brows, no tension in the line of his shoulders, no clenched jaw or balled fists.

He looks beautiful like this; a playing field for light and darkness that treat him like an old friend that comes to visit, to stay just for the night.

Steve is beautiful. And Eddie gets to watch; take it all in, the silver light on the bridge of his nose, the shadows underneath his lips, the dried trail of old tears, telling a glistening tale of the heart that combines history and future.

Eddie watches as Steve stares out at the quarry, his eyes fixed somewhere in the darkness, unaware of his surroundings as he loses himself in that freedom he makes for himself every night he is out here. The freedom he is willing to share with Eddie, apparently.

It’s a privilege. An honour. And still all Eddie can do, all he wants to do, is look at Steve and watch him and see. Justbecause he can. Because Steve won’t tell him to stop, because he won’t ask him about it, won’t duck his face or skip away from Eddie’s smile or his hands or his silent confessions whispered into his very own thoughts. Not here, not in the darkness. Not anymore.

He wants to reach out and take that hand that’s resting in Steve‘s lap, weave their fingers together and breathe a promise into the air between them. Wants to tug on that hand and make Steve fall into him, make their hearts pick up their paces because for just a fraction of a second they’ll think they’re about to lose their balance and fall. Fall down there, into the darkness, and never see the light again.

A breeze picks up around them, brushing through Steve‘s hair and making it dance in the moon light. Eddie’s eyes follow with rapt attention, but still it breaks the spell of yearning and brings a question to the forefront of his mind.

A question about calm, about darkness, about Steve and what that means.

Lifting one leg from the abyss to wrap his arms around it and give his hands something to do, something to hold, Eddie asks, “You ever think about jumping?”

Steve blinks once. Twice. Coming back from wherever he went while Eddie waits patiently and watches.

“Jumping?”

Eddie inclines his head even though Steve’s not looking. “Off. Down there. Y’know...” He trails off.

Steve blinks again, a frown between his brows redirecting the silver light on his face before he finally turns his head to look at Eddie.

“No. Not uhm... Not jumping."

Eddie takes it all in, trailing his gaze over Steve's face, searching for something he's not sure exists. This thing between them that's been growing steadily. This thing between them that has lead to quiet nights at the quarry, to Steve talking about bravery and jumping and all those things that aren't meant for daylight.

"No? What then?"

Eddie reaches for a pebble, scratching its smooth surface with the nail of his thumb because he’s feeling restless again and he needs something to anchor him. He always does, around Steve. The boy just makes him feel weightless and heavy and floating and sinking at the same time, and Eddie is always just along for the ride. Wouldn’t want to miss a second of it.

Steve musters him for a moment and Eddie can feel himself tensing up a little, aiming to seem nonchalant with the pebble in his hand, like it’s the most normal thing to do for a boy who’s not ready to be a man yet in a world that never even let him be a child. A boy who failed his senior year three times. A boy who’s endlessly in love with Steve Harrington.

The golden boy. But he’s painted in silver now in this moment shared just between the two of them. Maybe Eddie is looking for symbolism where there is none, his mind clinging to romanticisations and narratives of beauty and belonging just to defy the bleakness of the world that grownups have always been so adamantly demanding of him to believe in.

Maybe he’s blinded by infatuation, stupid and colourblind with it. Or maybe it means something that this gold-skinned boy is veiled in silver light as he’s looking at Eddie like that.

Like he sees it, too.

Like he can feel it, that something between them that’s been growing.

And Eddie feels hope rising in his chest for a second, dares to let his heart skip and jump and race, brought to life by Steve’s eyes trailing down to his lips; and falling, when the boy only huffs.

“Nothing. It’s stupid.”

Eddie hums, pleading his heart to come down, a little bit terrified that Steve would hear it for how heavily and rapidly it’s beating against his ribcage. “Tell me anyway?”

He loves it, the way Steve’s lips tug up into a smile. A shy, secret little one, illuminated and captured for all eternity by the moonlight for one second, two, before he turns his face away and looks down into the abyss again.

“I like when you do that.”

“What?”

“Tell me anyway. It’s… It makes me feel not-stupid. Or like it’s okay, you know? Like even if it’s stupid, it’s still there, still worth telling maybe. Not an empty phrase. Just… Yeah. You know I’ll tell you anyway, Ed.”

And what do you even say to that? Nothing. There’s nothing for Eddie to say because his heart is still racing against itself and winning and losing and falling ever after.

Stupidly, he offers Steve his pebble. Wondrously, Steve takes it, his fingertips lingering on Eddie’s palm, electric and tickling, and they both huff. Breathless.

“Falling,” Steve says at last.

“Hm?”

A twitch of his lips, looking over for the briefest of seconds before he focuses on Eddie’s pebble, rolling it between his fingers, placing it in the middle of his palm, and Eddie aches to take its place. To place his hand on Steve’s palm and hold him, to have Steve play with his fingers like that. To be the centre of Steve’s attention more than he already is.

“It’s not about jumping. Just falling. And trying not to.”

Eddie swallows, biting his tongue, not daring to speak now. His voice would waver, his heart would jump out and he’d be found out. So he watches. Listens. Longs.

“I’ve never…” Steve trails off and closes his fingers around the pebble. “I’ve never been good at not falling.”

It hangs in the air between them, boring into Eddie’s mind, his thoughts, his desires, and it leaves him reeling. Confused. Blinking.

Steve doesn’t elaborate, though, and Eddie feels like he’s losing his mind. He’s been there, he’s done that, and Steve always makes him feel like he’s terribly close to that, but… There was something in his voice when he said that. The same something that’s in the air when they sit together, just a tad closer than is strictly necessary or acceptable. The same something that floats between them when their eyes meet and neither of them looks away — until they have to, with pink-tinted smiles on their faces.

This something that is reserved in the universe; reserved for them. Reserved for Eddie and his crush that has turned into a flame, a bonfire that keeps him warm and sustained and safe so long as he doesn’t touch it. Reserved for Steve and the way he doesn’t duck his head to hide his smile anymore, the way he started laughing more around Eddie, and the way he always finds excuses to touch him, to linger, to stay.

And so, with a voice that doesn’t quite feel like his, he asks, “Why are you trying not to fall?”

“Because…” He shrugs, frowning at the pebble. “Because the landing always hurts, Eddie.”

And I’ve already hurt so much. I’m already hurting so much. Can’t you see it? It goes unsaid, but it’s spoken still with the tiny shrug, with the tone of resignation, and the way his voice breaks on Eddie’s name.

It breaks something inside Eddie, too.

“Steve,” he whispers. Thought that if he said his name, it would be unbroken. It’s not, though, it’s just a name that hangs in the air now.

Steve puts away the pebble, laying it gently between them, and Eddie feels colder for it. “Told you it was stupid.”

“It’s not,” he hurries to reassure him, insistent and desperate for Steve to believe him. “I’m not judging or anything, shit, Stevie, I’m just…”

“Just?”

Just thinking that I would catch you. Just longing to fall with you. Not just for you. Always, always for you, though.

But it’s too much; the words are bubbling inside him, too close to the surface, ready to break out and face the world, but Eddie swallows thickly until they lose their momentum.

So he shakes his head and breathes deeply. Watches as Steve’s shoulders fall slightly as tension bleeds out of them. Maybe it’s better for the words to stay where they are. Unsaid. Secret.

He wants to take the pebble back, but he feels paralysed. Maybe it’s one secret too many. Maybe it’s what will break him, them, this something between them.

But looking at Steve now, streaked in silver and a loneliness that wasn’t there before, something settles inside him.

“I would catch you,” he says, like it’s that simple. “Give it all to find a way. It sounds cheesy as fuck, and maybe it is, but Jesus, Stevie.” His voice is small, gentle like he’s never really heard it out of his own mouth, and he reaches out to tuck a strand of Steve’s hair behind his ear. It was never out of place, he just felt this ache he needed to soothe. Just wanted to touch Steve. He always wants to touch him. “I would find a way.”

Steve looks at him, meets his eyes over the thrum of darkness and secrets, over the terrifying petrification that seems to have overcome them both, and over the hitching breaths and skipping hearts that guide the hand of fate.

“Why?” he breathes. Like it’s just a word. Like it’s not Eddie’s entire heart and soul laid bare, Steve’s name embedded in weeks and months and years of simile and symbolism, deeply ingrained in his every thought now.

“Because I want to,” Eddie says. Like it’s that easy. He leans forward, falling toward Steve to rest his head on Steve’s shoulder and being the one to hide now. “God, I want to.”

It’s a whisper, but Steve’s shaking underneath him. Eddie is ready to bolt, ready to run, his hands wrapped around his middle protectively just in case he’s misreading all of this spectacularly. Hoping and aching and pleading that he isn’t.

“Eddie,” Steve breathes, but doesn’t move away from him. He sounds a little lost with it, and Eddie is reminded of the hurt, broken little sound that was his name just moments earlier. It makes him snake his hand out from under himself to lay it on Steve’s thigh, palm up. Inviting. Offering. “You can’t just say shit like that, man.”

Eddie huffs a breath he wasn’t aware he still had in his lungs when everything has turned into Steve and falling and catching and wanting.

“Why not?” And there’s vulnerability in it, spreading its wings inside him, pushing back everything else he’s been feeling before as a different kind of the same reality comes crashing down on him. Why not? Because we’re boys? Because you’re Steve and I’m Eddie? Because I’ve been misreading this after all?

He pulls away, but Steve does take his hand before he can get too far.

“Because I’m already falling. And falling and falling and falling, and there you are.” Steve’s hand comes up to his hair now, brushing it behind his ear to meet his eyes. “Pretty.” He sighs, leaving his hand on Eddie’s cheek. “What if it’s too much?”

“You?”

“Me.” It’s rotten work.

Eddie shakes his head. “Never.” Not to me. Not if it’s you.

“‘M gonna start saying shit,” Steve murmurs then, his face impossibly closer now, and Eddie’s eyes trail to his lips. He doesn’t want to kiss Steve. Well, he does, and quite desperately in fact; but not right now. He wants to keep looking at him, wants to keep talking, wants to drink him in and just to be there. Make good on his promise.

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Cheesy shit,” Steve grins, though it wavers in the moonlight. Still it makes Eddie’s breath hitch. “Like asking you to hold me. And never let me go.”

Eddie smiles, plucking Steve’s hand from his cheek to rest it in his lap, playing with his fingers and marvelling at the feel of them. They’re so warm. Maybe Steve has that same bonfire inside him.

He almost asks. Instead, what he says is, “And if I do that? If I hold you? And catch you. And never let you go. And tell you that you look really good in the moonlight, and all that cheesy shit…” They grin, Steve’s fingers twitching in his lap. “Would you let me?”

“Let you what?”

Eddie swallows, his cheeks heating, his heart racing again.“Be the one you fall for.”

“Eddie,” Steve breathes, and the sound is far from broken this time, spoken as it is around a smile, accompanied by eyes glistening in the moonlight. “You already are.”

His heart is soaring. There is no other word to describe the feeling that overcomes him, body and soul, and he wants to scream about it, wants to laugh and cry and jump and fly. But all he says is, “Good.”

“Yeah?”

And, God, he sounds so hopeful, so innocent, so purely and deeply serene that Eddie can’t help but move carefully until he’s standing, holding one hand out to Steve.

“What are you doing?” he asks, laughing as Eddie pulls him to his feet and immediately wraps his arms around Steve’s middle, leaving him to bury his face in Eddie’s neck and wind his arms around him, too.

“Just making good on that promise, Stevie. Gonna hold you til you’re sick of me.”

“God, I love you,” Steve whispers into his skin, accompanied by another breathless laugh as he burrows deeper into him.

Or, at least Eddie thinks that he said. Maybe he was the one who said it. Maybe he just thought it, made it feel real with how strong he's feeling.

But before he can so much as freeze with the onslaught of both possibility and reality, Steve’s hand comes up to his cheek again and he brushes a kiss to his neck, one to his jaw, and then one to his cheek, before returning to bury himself in Eddie’s embrace.

Eddie closes his eyes and just breathes him in as they stand there, just holding each other. Falling and catching each other. Cradling their something new in trembling hands that tell the tale of two boys terrified and brave, and smiles that speak of future.

yearning hours | yearning hours b-side

#steddie #steddie fic #the yearning hours are not related by story. just by theme and imagery and mood I think #I'm still trying to get back into the groove after the worst writer's block so uhhh I hope this is fine?#dio words #oh look no one's depressed in this one!!! it's more of a deep yearning than a heavy one in this I think #not sure I'm happy with this ending but shhh #it's that kinda bonus track where there's 5 minutes of silence and you think the record is done but then BOOM surprise song

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batsplat · 7 months ago

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from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

#'joan also i guess' hold on now anon that's his former teammate relationship that's most important to ME i love them...#elephant in the room is 'let's revisit this in 1.5 years time'. ik people will try to make that just about the vr46 factor but *shrug*#i kinda feel like maybe i should have mentioned in the casey/marc post that casey is arguably more of an outlier than marc is #like his alienation with the sport ran deep which is how you get him engaging in melandri slander who was pee one million in 2008 #y'know casey/jorge ducati was a real possibility for a hot second and my take on that would ALSO be 'hm yeah maybe not <3'#ESPECIALLY given that it's quite likely the incoming jorge would've been paid way way more than casey was ('09 ducati... let's not even)#AND given how yamaha had repeatedly burnt casey and then handed jorge the seat on a silver platter... like idk man!!#genuinely fascinating '10 counterfactual... i do like casey/marc but i've also game planned casey/vale and casey/jorge i'm a completionist #(either dani or vale would've likely won the title in that timeline. but crucially casey/jorge interpersonally would've been. well)#//#brr brr #alien tag #batsplat responds #morale tag #i need an ask tag so badly but i can't be bothered to back tag... i'll do it at some point #in my notes i did once actually rank the aliens by how much they'd suck as teammates but the order might be a wee bit controversial #i'm sorry to the guy i ranked number one but he did objectively have the worst track record like... it has to be said #i think u have like. different modes right. where how bad u are as a teammate is scaled to how big the threat ur facing is #now EYE actually think marc's not got a particularly *great* neutral mode either but it's not bridge-burning mode #also what even is a burnt bridge... i mean god knows even valentino and jorge are taking photos together these days...#jorge's still conducting autopsies of old beef every fortnight but otoh he's joking about motegi on instagram which is crazyyyyyy #you genuinely cannot. CANNOT convince me that if marc/jorge had had a title fight as teammates it wouldn't have been a MESS #there is literally no way. none whatsoever #and if i said dani had a higher number of strained premier class teammate relationships than valentino did... what then...

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