#retired! Steve

[pencilscratchins]

i have reached the part of the steddie hyperfixation where i make them domesticated men in their 50s. having a blast! (twitter) [ID in ALT text]

[stevieschrodinger]

Mostly retired Steve and Eddie. Part time Honey farmer Steve Harrington who let his husband Eddie spend months painstakingly designing and painting beautiful signage for his business. Eddie who poured his soul into the label art for 'Harrington Honey'.

Only to have to stand and quietly seethe every time Steve answers the phone, 'Steve's Bees, what can I getcha?'

[strangerathecinema]

what gets me the most about the ungodly levels of five’s character assassination in s4 is how it affected his ending. he died feeling alone, useless, unloved, and believing that he failed his family. the family that he spent 45 years trying to get back to. the family that he spent 3 weeks straight fighting for. he took a bullet for them, killed for them, did everything in his power for THEM. he cared about them more than anything. his siblings have ALWAYS been his motivation. but apparently the writers just forgot all of that and decided to give him a creepyass out-of-character homewrecker romance that absolutely nobody wanted and then left him in a place that basically said everything he did was for nothing.

[stucky-headcanon-bot]

🤬

[erroryeswifi]

Woe old man yaoi be upon ye

They go on daily walks together :)

[penny00dreadful]

The mid-fifties retired rockstar Eddie that lives in my heart brings intense Jack Black energy and no one can convince me otherwise.

[morganbritton132]

Steve didn’t want a dog.

The seizures started not long after they officially slammed the gate shut on the Upside Down, but it was suspected that they were probably happening before that. It’s subtle for the most part. It takes a while before anybody notices the shifting behind the eyes, the confusion, the dull drag that sinks into Steve’s body and tightens everything up.

They call them absence seizures. And then when Steve convulsed on the Family Video carpet, they say grand mal. They say brain damage and likely permanent, and it’s scary.

It is always scary when Steve’s brain betrays him, when his memory slips and his body fails, and Eddie knows that it’s frustrating. He knows that Steve hates it. He’s been on the opposite end of Steve’s mood swings, of the tears and the anger at going from a kid with no adult supervision to an adult that can’t drive their own car anymore.

He knows the fear that creeps into Steve’s voice through the phoneline when he’s somewhere he doesn’t recognize and doesn’t remember how he got there because Eddie is there. He is on the other end of the line. He is there for the confusion, for the messy emotions, for every breakdown and the attempted break up and Steve saying that he was holding Eddie back when all he ever did was keep Eddie together.

But it is scary.

It is so fucking scary every time that Eddie sits and waits by Steve’s side for him to come back to himself, fearing – always fearing that there might come a day that he doesn’t. But it’s scarier when he’s not there.

Steve does not want a dog.

The first time Eddie brought up a service animal, there are three adult men living in Wayne’s trailer. He’s flipping through a magazine and Steve says no. He says that they can’t afford a dog, much less a service animal and no, Steve would not ask his parents about it. He was lucky enough that they let him stay on their insurance after they kicked him out.

The second time Eddie brought it up, there is money. There is money for a trailer of their own. There’s money for Steve to go to school. There’s a label that signed them and talks of a nation-wide tour, and there’s a song on the radio, and Steve says no. Steve says that it’s unnecessary. He says that he’ll move in with Robin and Nancy while Eddie tours. That it’s okay.

The third time, they have an apartment of their own. Eddie has more money than he’ll ever know what to do with and Steve says no. He’s teaching first grade and he’s happy all the time, and he tells Eddie no. He says that it’s an almost invisible disorder and that sometimes he can pretend that it doesn’t exist. He says he can pretend that none of the bad stuff ever happened, and if he has a dog then it’s just a neon sign that says he’s got his head cracked open. He says people treat him like he’s something that can break when they know, and he hates it. He says it's like they’re all waiting for him to shake apart.

The fourth time – the medicine change, the overnight at the hospital – Steve doesn’t let Eddie get the words out of his mouth. He’s upset and he thinks that no one listens to him, and he says no. He says when he thinks about dogs than he thinks about dark nights, and the junk yard, and the creatures that weren’t dogs but kind of were, and he doesn’t want to be there anymore. They closed the gate. It’s not fair that the Upside Down still lives inside him.

Eddie does not bring it up again.

It doesn’t matter anyways.

It’s been years. They built a system. There are still seizures, still dissociative episodes and sleepwalking, and still the rare but terrifying grand mal seizures that sits like Chrissy Cunningham cracking to pieces in Eddie’s chest. There are appointments and medication, but there is family and friends, and they take the precautions they know to take and learn to take more. And it works.

It works until it doesn’t.

Corroded Coffins’ popularity started to drop off in the early 2000s. They don’t tour too much anymore, but sometimes Eddie leaves for a week to play a couple shows out of town and that was what he was doing four years ago. Neither of them think about Robin visiting her parents or the research position that took Dustin all over the world, or that half of their friends have moved out of the state. They say their goodbyes and they kiss each other, and Eddie comes home to blood tacky in the carpet.

He came home to Steve at the bottom of the stairs after having a seizure and falling, bleeding and in pain, unable to move and calling for a help no one can hear for three days. They have a system, but there are cracks big enough to fall through. Steve may not want a dog and maybe it isn’t what he needs, but it’s the only thing Eddie knows to ask about.

Eddie asks again for the first time in years, sitting next to him in the hospital. Steve says yes with bruises on his face and taste of a concussion on his tongue, and they get a well-trained dog with light fur that Steve names Ozzy.

Eddie feels for the first time in years like he can take a full breath, a little more of his fear slipping away.

<- Last Post | Next Post ->

[red5seb]

'I just love talking to that man.'

[imavikingo]

I said this in tags on another post, but it’s relevant and deserves its own post (I should be reading my usual pre- sleeping fic selection, BUT! I had this revelation -being sleepy is useful once again! -)

They NEEDED Steve to disappear, to be gone. To never care about Bucky anymore. That way they could treat Bucky as they see fit, and that means treating him like shit.

Steve would NEVER accept or allow Bucky to make amends, he would NEVER let the government take care of Bucky or be part of his “rehabilitation” in any way shape or form. That’s why he became Nomad, that’s why Bucky stayed in Wakanda. He would had fight with teeth and nails for Bucky.

“He died already more than once! He was a victim! A prisoner of war. He saved the fucking universe. What the fuck do you mean with amends!”

He became a wanted criminal for that same reason, to not let them have Bucky (nor other people in a fucking watchlist)

They needed Steves relationship with Bucky to become bitter, to be nothing more than a memory.

Steve being in retirement wouldn’t have cut it and…

Bucky was always going to follow Steve, no matter what.

So they needed him to stay alone (or with a companion that didn’t really care as much as Steve, enter Sam)

This way they killed two birds with one stone in Endgame: Reinforcing Steves “love” for Peggy, because “he’s NOT gay, you guys!”, and the partial isolation of Bucky.

[sad-trash-hobo]

I love Steve Rogers as Captain America. I love Sam Wilson as Captain America. I dont want Steve Rogers to still be Captain America because I want Sam Wilson to be Cap. I just want Steve to still be there as Sam is Captain America. Them exiting Steve when Sam got cap, and leaving Bucky was just so out of character, and I can understand him getting out of the job. Retiring. But the way they did it, that Steve went back in time, and got old, and changed Peggy's timeline. I know we've all said it, but it's still so wrong and it just makes me sad. I remember a post saying that for the falcon and winter soldier show they should have Sam or Bucky calling Steve and it just showing Steve with his phone on silent at the movies, or taking water color classes, and what was so wrong with that? Why does a character ending have to be so permanent. Why does a character leaving mean they have to die or be so old that conspiracies get written that he's on the moon. I dont miss Steve as Cap, I just miss Steve.

[ivysos2001]

You still can’t convince me that the whole ‘Steve abandons everyone in the present to go back to Peggy’ thing was a well thought out/well developed ending for his character that made any sense for his post-catfa character arc (let alone all the time travel stuff) bc wdym none of the people who made the movie can figure out the logistics of it??

[livwritesstuff]

Ok another question for you my friend, vaguely inspired by something my dad said.

We were talking, essentially, about mortality. My dad said men, generally, have a very good sense of time marching on, while women tend to see “milestones”; baby’s first steps, first childhood crush, graduating high school, etc. and it’ll just hit them sometimes.

So, two-part question: do you think both Steve and Eddie are as my dad described? Steve—aka Mr. psych major—would, I think; but I’m not sure about Eddie.

And part 2: how do they react to their daughters’ prom/homecoming dresses?

ooh okay

I think Eddie would be the one getting caught up in the minutia of it all. He’s the one being like “holy shit, I can’t believe she’s turning [insert age here]” and getting upset every time they lose interest in some little-kid thing, and he notices when a t-shirt that used to be Moe’s when she was little ends up in a donation bag because Hazel finally outgrew it. I think a plus side of this is that he gets to process the whole passage of time thing as it’s happening.

Psych-guy Steve, on the other hand, I feel like would almost be a little detached from it, and not in a bad way necessarily, but I think his perception would be very clinical – like, kids get older, kids grow up, it’s normal and natural and good and all that jazz. I think he’d have an awareness from the beginning that he and Eddie aren’t raising babies, they’re raising people who are babies for a little bit but are ultimately going to be a whole lot more than that.

He gets excited about all the milestones, especially when the girls are babies, but he’s not really thinking too much about it until suddenly he’s teaching Moe how to drive and he has this moment of, “Uh, hang on…when the hell did this happen?”, and I feel like with each kid, it might get just a bit more distressing.

As for prom, I have a longer post planned for when it gets a little closer to prom season (for the U.S., anyways) but my initial thoughts are that Hazel’s prom might be that moment for Steve, even if it’s just her junior prom and he’s still got another year with her before she’s flying the coop too. He wasn’t expecting to get emotional about it either, because between his three daughters there’s been a bazillion homecomings and proms that he hasn’t batted an eye over, but something about seeing his youngest daughter in a long dress with her hair (which is usually a total disaster) done all nice has him going, “Wait-wait-wait-wait she’s supposed to be a baby.”

[sarahowritesostucky]

Modern Stucky and Howlies AU

The Fic:

What if when Steve came out of the ice, all the Howlies were still alive and living together in one retirement old folk's home? And Steve, having no connections with anybody in the modern world, spent tons of his free time visiting them and playing poker, sneaking them liquor, and just generally creating a headache for the semi-amused retirement home staff?

And Bucky is the care worker who grows to have a crush on Steve.

(**Bonus points if you name the Nursing Home "Shady Acres Care Home" , like where Loki stuck his father in Thor: Ragnarok)

[ad-astra-per-aspera-1389]

how did Steve's phone call to Clint even go? "Hey, I know you're retired, but Tony locked Wanda in her room" "he WHAT?" "Yeah he locked her in her room" "I'm on my way" "hey we could use another team member too, while you're at it" "sure, I got you"

Clint really showed up and said "you locked my newest daughter in her room, man, that's kinda fucked" and proceeded to kick ass

[penny00dreadful]

Rookie Mistake

AO3

17th August 2023

Someone was following him home. 

They were keeping their distance at least. But they'd been keeping their distance through the last three turns.

They could, at the very least, try not to make it obvious what they were doing.

Usually someone following him wouldn’t be a problem. Steve was an expert at what he did and losing a person who was tailing him was easy.

Or it used to be anyway.

His back had taken much longer to heal than any of them had expected and he’d been told his chances of walking again were fifty-fifty. Pretty much a coin toss.

But he’d started to get the feeling back in his legs again around the three month mark. While all of it still hadn’t returned and the doctors were unsure if it ever would, he could at least walk again.

He couldn’t move as fast nowadays, though the cane helped. But it didn’t help enough to escape from his followers' sight.

He was slow, he couldn’t run and he couldn’t stand for extended periods of time. 

He could walk for even less. Which was probably why Claire at the gas station had kept shooting him concerned glances. 

Walking to and from there was pretty much the extent of what he could do in a day. 

Barely fifteen minutes there and back, but enough to have him exhausted and trying to keep the pain at bay.

Eddie was gonna lose his fucking mind once he found out. He worried too much. Steve still remembered the first words he heard when he woke up in the hospital.

“If you ever do that to me again, I swear to god sweetheart, I’ll take you out myself.” Spoken through teary eyes and with shaking hands as he reached for him, like if he didn’t touch him immediately Steve would drift back off into a coma.

This was the first time Steve had been home alone for an extended period of time since he'd been recovering. Eddie had looked at him with a stern pointed finger and an order not to do anything stupid.

So of course he had decided he was going to walk to the nearby gas station to pick up some of their favourite snacks. 

They were gonna do a lazy streaming binge session later that evening, complete with a blanket fort like little kids, when Eddie got back from helping at the garage with Gareth.

What else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t drive anymore. He didn’t have the strength in his legs for the pedals.

And the gas station was just outside the estate they’d chosen to settle in. Eddie had wanted to be closer to his Uncle Wayne and be able to see his friends again and Steve could never refuse him that.

Except now he was limping home, cane in one hand, paper bag of junk food in the other, with pain and exhaustion shooting up his legs, right into his weakened back. 

He could barely even focus on the space around him, he was concentrating so hard on just putting one foot in front of the other and getting home without passing out from the pain, never mind fighting off an assailant.

In his heyday he wouldn’t even have had to think about how he would handle this situation.

Now, however. Now he felt so fucking helpless. 

There was a gun concealed in a secret pocket just inside the front door. If he could just get to it, he might make it out of whatever this was. 

Even though Steve was on medical leave and Eddie was… retired, old habits die hard. They’d never not be trained to be killers and expect something around every corner.

God, he’d been so stupid. This was so stupid. Eddie would never let him hear the end of it. 

Steve would be lucky if he could keep upright once he hit the front door, everything was so painful.

But Steve was well versed in pain. Literally trained in it. Torture, interrogation, field medicine, pushing past injuries to get the job done. Steve had handled it all, always dreading the idea of being put behind a desk. Even now he was determined to make sure that didn’t happen. 

No offence to Robin and her job. He’d be dead ten times over without her but it just wasn’t something he could fathom doing. 

There was a mentor position opening up though. 

Dimitri was retiring to spend more time with his family which meant that Steve could possibly be looking after the new recruits in the near future.

Y’know.

If he didn’t fucking die here and now at the hands of some idiot lacking subtlety.

As far as anyone in the neighbourhood knew, Steve had moved to the area with his husband while recovering from a catastrophic fall, which wasn’t exactly incorrect.

The best lies were the ones that had truth in them.

And the neighbours had all been very… neighbourly. It was a little foreign to him. He was used to growing up in upper class neighbourhoods where he would maybe shoot a quick smile and a hello towards the couple across the road but apart from that, he pretended they didn’t exist and vice versa.

But here, though it was a solid middle class suburb, they all actually spoke to each other. 

Bastien would usually chat while he was out walking his golden retriever named Bread. 

Lucy and Anthony, a couple in their eighties, knew everything about everyone and gave them the best neighbourhood gossip. 

Sandra loved hosting a cookout and invited them every single time. 

Even the neighbourhood kids were all very sweet for a bunch of teenagers.

Best of all was their next door neighbour, Chrissy.

She had knocked on their front door with a freshly baked apple pie in one hand and an invite to her big blowout divorce celebration in the other. It was only the day after they’d moved in and Steve had hobbled downstairs to find her and Eddie chatting like they’d known each other forever.

Steve had originally worried they were only being included in these events as the token queers of the neighbourhood. Just so all these middle classers could pat themselves on the back for their diversity but those worries were quickly put to rest.

Their acceptance was quiet. It wasn’t braggadocious. It was sweet.

Chrissy's divorce party had been a wild night full of karaoke, an obscene amount of chinese food and glass upon glass of pink, glittery, fruity cocktails. 

All things that Jason had hated. 

Things Chrissy loved. 

Things she hadn’t been able to enjoy in her own home in years. But now she was free to do whatever her heart desired. 

Chrissy deserved way better than Jason anyway.

She had leaned into Eddie’s side and taken Steve’s hand in hers and slurred that she wanted “what you guys have. You’re so sweet to each other. How long have you been together?”

They had made eye contact over her head with raised eyebrows. 

The start of their relationship was always a bit of a blurred line.

“Seven, eight years maybe?” Eddie had said, holding her steady with an arm around her waist.

“Really?” She’d asked, blinking her big eyes up at the two of them. “That’s such a long time. Jason and I got married after a year. Don’t do that.” She added, pointing back and forth at the two of them. “It’s a bad idea.”

Steve patted the hand that was held in his. “We won’t. Don’t worry.” 

Especially considering they’d already been married two years by then. 

As the night wore on and more and more stories had come out about what Chrissy’s marriage had been like, Eddie had offered, with three cocktail umbrellas in his hair and a Pink Lady in his hand, to hunt Jason down and make him disappear. 

Chrissy had giggled with a roll of her eyes. 

"Oh sure, you big softie.” She said as she lightly swatted his arm. “If he starts calling around unannounced again, then go ahead."

Eddie had smiled, sweet and innocent, but his eyes had been sharp and hard and Jason needed to watch his fucking back.

Steve had been able to convince him to at least give Jason a warning the first time, before he completely wiped the guy from existence. 

But only one warning was all Eddie would concede to with a pout and a mutter of ‘You’re no fun’. 

If Jason couldn’t take a hint and kept coming around after that, it wasn't Steve's problem anymore.

In general their time in the neighbourhood was nice. It was domestic. The area was safe and sleepy and naive to most of the wrongs of the world. 

It was something Steve and Eddie had never had the chance to have, especially considering the start of their relationship had been so… combative.

Which is what made the guy trailing behind him stick out like a penguin in the desert.

He was unfamiliar.

In an ill fitting black suit that looked like something out of a bad spy movie and greasy slicked back hair.

Steve wasn’t scared of him. 

He was clearly inexperienced. 

Or just stupid.

The guy kept his gaze locked on his target, one hand constantly in his pocket and a look of grim determination on his face. 

Obvious.

But he also seemed to be growing in confidence too. Getting slowly closer and closer.

Steve kept his pace slow and relaxed, trying his best to hide the pain and exhaustion he was feeling sinking into his back and down his legs.

And trying to hide the fact that he knew a fucking idiot was tailing him.

If some fucking newbie gang member or whatever was able to take him down because Steve couldn’t help but push himself, he was going to be so pissed off.

All he needed to do was get inside. 

Unlock the door, get inside and he’d be able to grab one of their concealed weapons and take care of whatever this was.

Easy peasy.

Or it would have been easy peasy if not for the second guy.

The second guy who’d descended on him just as he pushed his front door open, looping an arm around his neck. 

He dropped his bag and his cane, scrabbling against the hold and just barely brushing the hidden gun compartment with his fingers before he felt it.

The sharp sting of a needle in his neck and the cold of whatever it was spreading through his veins. 

The last thought that ran through his head before everything went black was that Eddie was going to be so dramatic about this.

He didn’t know how long it was before he woke up but he could take a guess.

It was an empty warehouse he was being kept in, if the bare concrete walls, metal roof and high ceilings were anything to go by. 

The windows were right at the top, only letting the barest sliver of orange daylight through. 

The sun was low enough Steve guessed he’d only been out for an hour. 

The whole place smelled of damp and was shrouded in shadow, the only light being that bit of orange sun and one bare light bulb hanging over his head.

Brimborn Steelworks, he thought. 

He could smell the sea air, hear gulls outside, and the warehouse had been abandoned for as long as they’d been in the area so it was a pretty safe bet.

Just outside the circle of light he was washed in, he could hear muttering and bodies shuffling around. 

About four by his estimation, along with the sound of metal parts shifting against each other. 

Guns. 

Fantastic. 

Just what he fucking needed.

His hands were knotted behind his back, not even tied to the chair he was sitting on. Who used rope to tie people up anymore?

Aside from certain… intimate circumstances, Steve hadn’t had to deal with rope in ages.

Not since… well.

It was usually zip ties or duct tape that were used. 

Much quicker, much easier to conceal in pockets or pouches.

And judging by how he was tied, fingers pointed downwards, inner wrist to inner wrist and just a bit too tightly, these guys had absolutely no experience with ropes. 

Kinky or not.

They hadn’t even bothered to blindfold him.

Or gag him.

Eddie would have never been so sloppy. He could’ve done better than this to Steve with his eyes closed and on a Tuesday afternoon.

If he was at full strength, he’d have been able to manoeuvre the weak bindings of his ropes until he was able to tug them free and kick the shit out of the closest guy until he got his hands on his gun.

Then he’d be out of here and on his way home before Eddie had the time to properly spiral.

But he wasn’t at full strength, he could barely even pull against the binds around his wrists, tugged at an uncomfortable angle behind his back. 

Not a gentle angle and not at the proper straining points he was used to. 

The rope was rough and harsh against his skin instead of the delicious soft bite of the silken binds.

But it was fine. 

He wouldn’t be here long.

“He’s awake.” A voice in front of him said. 

The accent was mostly American but with the slightest tinge of Russian underneath. 

Great.

Two men in ill fitting black suits with their guns held loosely at their sides stepped into the light. The other two stayed behind him, probably as some kind of security or intimidation measure. 

Well, it was nice to see them try. 

Cute almost.

“Hello.” Steve sighed. “Can you guys tell me what this is all about so we can get it over with, please?”

“Oh,” the one in front of him sneered, “he thinks he’s funny.”

“I think I’m very funny, yes.” Steve nodded, relaxing into the chair as much as he could.

The guy scowled. Clearly he hadn’t learned that sometimes having fun on the job was necessary. Helped alleviate stress. “You’re gonna answer our questions.”

“Sure thing, Drago.” Steve nodded. The guy really did look like Drago. Big meaty head and short crop of blonde hair. “Hit me.”

Drago smirked. “If you insist.”

With an almighty crack he brought the back of his hand down across Steve’s face, snapping his head to the side.

He could feel the blood welling up in his mouth where his teeth had cut into his cheek and the heat from the strike blooming over his skin that would no doubt turn purple within the next day.

God, never start an interrogation with violence. 

Fucking casuals.

Steve sucked at the blood pooling in his mouth and spat it at Drago’s feet.

“You’re going to regret that.”

Drago scoffed with a roll of his eyes. “Who do you work for?”

“Scoops.” Steve grinned with blood stained teeth and a nonchalant shrug. “Scoops Ahoy. That little ice cream shop at the mall?”

“Cute.” He sneered.

“Thank you.”

“Maybe you need more persuasion.” A voice came from behind him and a sharp blade was pressed against his neck. “How would you feel if I were to cut your pretty throat?”

Steve ran his tongue over his bloody teeth. 

“Do it.”

There was a stutter of movement as the four of them glanced at each other.

“You think we won’t?”

“No, go on, do it.” Steve pressed his neck against the blade which was immediately pulled away. “You think you can get more answers out of my dead body?”

The guy with the blade swung himself around to face him, digging the point into his cheek this time with a snarl. 

Steve couldn’t even be bothered to give him a name in his head. 

He’d be Knife Guy. 

Didn’t matter. 

He’d be dead soon.

“Or,” Steve continued, “do you think that I’m going to cower to any more of your threats now that you’ve just shown me you’re not willing to kill me?” He laughed. “Never start with your last resort.”

The tip of the blade was dug in deeper and dragged across his cheek, cutting into his skin but Steve could barely feel it as he distantly heard the sound of tires screeching to a stop outside.

No one else seemed to have noticed.

“We don’t need to kill you, we just need to make you talk.”

“Well,” Steve sighed, grimacing at the hot sticky blood running down his cheek. If he was lucky it wouldn’t scar.

If they were lucky it wouldn’t scar. 

“I suggest you hurry up, you’re running out of time.”

The four of them laughed. “You think your buddies are coming for you? We targeted you because you were alone and impeded. You had no safety net around you.”

“You sure about that?” Steve took in each of their faces, all looking so confident in a job well done. “You’re right, my buddies aren’t coming for me. If they were, you could take your time. But as it is you’ll all be dead in about,” he tilted his head, listening for the first distant gunshot, which sounded only half a second later, “three minutes so…”

“If not your buddies then who?”

“You guys seem a little new at this.” He said gently, like he was speaking to children. “Have you ever heard of The Shadow of Hawkins?”

Their blank faces told him all he needed to know. 

Fair enough. 

It was a fairly obscure name after all.

And a bit ridiculous.

“How about The Demon of Dresden?” He glanced around. “No? The Bloodyhanded? Ringing any bells?”

Steve blinked at them all in bewilderment. 

Did these guys know anything? 

The gunfire outside was getting louder and closer to their building and the guys around him seem to have finally clued in, clutching their guns tighter. 

Like that would do anything for them.

Steve refused to give them a moment of reprieve.

“Really guys? He’s gonna be so offended.” He shook his head, as though disappointed. “Well, maybe you’ll know him by his most famous title.” The last gunshot cracked through the air leaving a terrible silence in its wake. “Kas. The Betrayer.”

Every one of them flinched at the name, the colour draining from their faces as a door slammed open in another part of the building.

“He's trying to scare us.” Knife Guy swallowed. “Kas is dead.”

“He was." Steve nodded. "But you had to go and resurrect him. But here’s another one for you.” He grinned again, blood coating his teeth and leaned as far forward as his bindings would allow him, despite the strain on his back. “Who do you think I am?”

“Why does it matter?" The third guy spat, but Drago had a horrible realisation dawning on his face.

"You…"

“Who?” The fourth asked, whipping his head back and forth to look at the two of them. “Who is he?”

“He… you…” Drago shook his head, his full accent apparent now. “You can’t be!”

“Who gave us our intel?!” Knife Guy shouted at the others, also cottoning on.

“You…” Drago swallowed. “You’re his-”

“Sweetheart!” Eddie’s voice echoed around the warehouse seeming to come from all directions and none all at once.

Knife Guy was by his side in a flash with a fist in his hair and the blade pressed against his throat again.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Steve said, glancing up. “He’s very protective of my hair.”

His fist only tightened.

“Fine,” Steve shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Hey fuckos!” Eddie was still shrouded in darkness, completely hidden from view. “Tying him to chairs is my job!”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Oh, for god's sake.”

Drago stepped in front of Steve, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest, pointing his gun towards the various dark corners. “If you want your-”

Four loud gunshots rang out, echoing throughout the room. 

Steve felt the warm splatter of blood across his face.

Four bodies fell to the floor, a clean bullet wound through three of their foreheads.

Knife Guy, the one who had his hand in Steve’s hair was screaming in agony, clutching his blown apart knee.

“An hour, sweetheart.” Eddie’s figure stormed out of the dark, coming to a stop just in front of him. He still had grease from the garage streaked over his cheek and embedded into the creases on his hands to go along with the copious amount of other people’s blood spattered all over his body. “I leave you alone for one hour and I have to answer a call from a worried Chrissy checking to see if everything's okay because our front door is wide fucking open. How did you go and get yourself kidnapped by Ruskies?” 

"Oh, I'm sorry, please continue to tell me how getting fucking ambushed outside our home is my fault."

"It didn’t start outside our home, did it?" 

Knife Guy wailed again and Eddie looked down on him with a cold glare. 

“Oh, sorry.” He said, not sorry at all. “I must have missed.”

With a simple squeeze of the trigger he put a hole through Knife Guys head and the screaming stopped. 

Steve expected Eddie to walk behind him to cut his binds but instead he just swung his leg out and sat himself down on Steve's lap.

"It started at that fucking gas station because you can't sit down for five minutes straight." Eddie pulled a small pocket sized first aid kit out and tilted Steve's head to the side. "Even if fucking Hippocrates or god damned Florence Nightingale rose from the dead and told you to take it easy, you'd still be ignoring their orders." He scoffed as he roughly pressed a butterfly bandage over Steve's cheek. "And you call me the hyperactive one." He mumbled.

Steve winced, glaring at him as Eddie pressed down particularly hard on one strip.

His mouth was still pulled into a deep frown but he stroked his fingers gently over Steve’s cheek, caressing his face with the gentlest of touches.

"You okay?"

Steve couldn't help but crack a smile.

"Yeah baby, I'm good. But they got the angle of my arms all wrong. It's really uncomfortable."

"Hmm. Well as an expert in tying you down to chairs, I'd have to agree. How dare they steal my thing. I fell in love with you when you were tied to a chair."

Steve raised an eyebrow, complete disbelief written on his face.

“Oh yeah?” He tried to bring their faces closer but he was impeded by his bindings. Eddie just gave him a feral grin. “Which time?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Eddie cooed. “No.”

“Asshole.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Would you mind?" He tugged at the ropes again. "My back is fucking killing me."

"Of course." Eddie muttered into Steve's mouth but never properly closing the distance while simultaneously lifting his weight up. “All you had to do was ask.”

With the bindings now gone, his shoulders and arms felt like fucking lead and the blood rushing back into his hands was causing terrible pins and needles.

Eddie was digging his fingers into Steve's muscles, trying to alleviate as much of the strain as he could.

Steve closed his eyes and groaned, his earlier ill-advised trip was catching up with him again and he was dreading having to walk out of this place. 

He just wanted to be at fucking home, in his fucking bed with his fucking husband.

Or maybe they could still do that naked blanket fort in the living room with a movie marathon and an obscene amount of snacks.

When he opened his eyes again, Eddie was on one knee with his back to him.

“Hop on.”

Steve grumbled but couldn’t find it in himself to argue, sliding himself forward, slinging his arms over Eddie’s shoulders and allowing himself to be carried off.

Eddie was strong and steady under him, barely flinching as he grabbed tight to Steve’s thighs and stood.

Their walk back was quiet and Steve wasn’t looking forward to the amount of paperwork that would have to be filed as a result of this but he hoped since he was still on medical leave he could get out of it.

The sun was starting to set outside, the sky splashed with brilliant shades of reds and oranges and pinks. Now that he was outside he saw he was correct about where he was being held.

Brimborn Steel Works.

Still got it.

When he turned his head back around to face forward he saw that Eddie had driven Steve's beloved bimmer here. 

The driver's side door was flung open and the car was at an odd angle, the direction and darkness of the tire marks behind telling Steve that Eddie had practically drifted into the lot at speed.

There were a few bullet holes in the doors and the passenger window was shattered but it wasn’t the worst that car had ever seen.

Bodies littered the ground around them, all in the same out of date suits Steve’s four goons had been wearing, all with the same guns, all with the same kind of build and all with slowly coagulating pools of blood and brains around them.

Damn. 

Eddie really didn’t hold back this time.

Steve looked back at his car. 

He couldn’t drive her anymore. 

Probably never would be able to again.

They’d talked about trading it in for a model with push-pull controls for his hands instead of floor pedals so he could have that freedom back.

But they hadn���t gotten to it yet.

Eddie had taken his motorcycle to the garage, he would have arrived home with it. Probably seen the front door wide open and a grocery bag on the ground like Chrissy said. 

It would have been quicker to get here on the motorcycle.

But Steve couldn’t ride on it. 

Not as a driver or passenger. 

At least not yet, not until he was further healed. 

So Eddie had come here with the car, either because of hope, stubbornness or pure confidence, knowing he would get Steve back.

Steve smiled to himself, tightening his arms around Eddie’s shoulders and burying his face in his neck, peppering little kisses on any skin he could reach.

“You okay back there?”

He could hear the grin in his voice as Eddie lowered him down into the passenger seat, turning on his knees to rest his forearms across Steve’s thighs.

“Yeah.” Steve smiled down at him. “Just… thanks for finding me.”

Eddie straightened up to his full kneeling height, taking Steve's face in his hands. 

“Of course, sweetheart.” He leaned up, pressing the softest of soft kisses against Steve’s lips, full of love, adoration, dedication. 

Steve could feel it pouring out of him and into his own body. 

The gentlest intimacy from a man who could cause so much violence. 

Eddie brushed their noses together. “I’ll always come find you.”

“You always say that.”

Eddie hummed. “Because I always will.”

AO3

A prequel fic set in this universe will be dropping next week 👀

@geekymagicalpotato

Big thanks as always to @hbyrde36 for her magnificent beta work and to the STWG for their motivation.